Chapter Text
Mrs Kaspbrak has imposed a new grounding regime on her son, only allowing him to leave the house for school, but Eddie finds that he doesn’t really care. The sentence is pretty old hat really, being locked away barely more than a tired old cliché by this point. But what made the next four weeks an actual punishment is the complete lack of a Richie. Any other time Eddie was grounded, Richie’s lanky limbs would be breaking in through his window every evening and, after negotiating past the protests Eddie felt he was obliged to make, smuggling him out on weekends. Without his partner-in-crime, Eddie found he had no motivation for jailbreaks. And while he may have thought the previous absence of old-Richie was hard to get through, not talking to him at all was the most terrible withdrawal. The kind that left you pale and weak, numb to anything but the continual throbbing ache deep inside your chest, until you were left with nothing but a limp lifelessness.
He doesn’t talk to, or even approach Richie whenever he sees him at school, which is hardly a difficult task considering that Richie avoids him like a particularly virulent strain of plague. Eddie cannot blame him for this. The rest of the Losers still try and talk to Richie, and then immediately report back to Eddie and tell him he’s being an idiot and that Richie desperately wants to see him again. When Eddie asks them if Richie actually said that however, they only respond with silence. If he duly asks how them how they know that Richie wants that, despite scurrying immediately away upon noticing that Eddie is looking in his direction, then their silence only grows louder. It becomes ear-splitting when he inquires why Richie should even want to spend time with the boy who so clearly, and deservedly, terrifies him.
Ben keeps encouraging Eddie to approach Richie anyway, because Love, he intones, and friendship is a form of love! ,he hastily squeaks upon noting Eddie’s wide-eyed stare and whistling breath, can conquer anything. Eddie thinks that’s very sweet but pretty dumb, considering feelings of love was what sent Richie, rightfully, fleeing in the first place.
Bill tells Eddie that Richie is a dumbass, which Eddie thinks is also kinda dumb because Richie hasn’t been in anything other than AP classes since high school started, and can finish his homework in the time it takes Bill to work out which chapter they’re supposed to be reading.
Bev bluntly, but kindly, tells Eddie that Richie is smart as fuck about everything except himself, where he is in fact as dumb as fuck. Eddie thinks…actually he thinks Bev may be onto something there.
Because while Richie has always told ridiculous stories about his looks and charms, and how, and I quote, he is such a legend in the sack, that songs shall be sung of his exploits with Mrs K. for generations to come, he’s also balanced those tales with increasingly frequent self-depreciating comments over the past few years. Eddie knows both sorts of tale are bullshit of course, that he no more has a wang longer than an python on steroids, than he is too much for pest control to handle, both comments he made a week before The Silencing.
With Bev’s words echoing in his head, and his gaze fixed on Richie standing at the end of the corridor with the broken look on his face that he wears constantly nowadays, the one that still causes Eddie’s heart to spasm every time he sees it, Eddie begins to re-evaluate his ideas.
***
Richie finds a sort of perverse pleasure in the punishment of his isolation. This is the penance that he deserves after all, walking around the halls whipping himself. The bad sort of whipping, not the fun kind, he thinks wryly. It’s hard to grin or wink or waggle your eyebrows when there’s no one around to appreciate your quips, and just using the mirror as a substitute seems like too much effort nowadays. Besides, he has to focus on avoiding Eddie at school. At least he has his schedule memorised, and it’s not too hard to resist following him anyway just for the chance to watch him from afar. He can totally resist doing that. Easily. No problemo.
Some problemo.
The rest of the Losers still try to talk to him, and after dancing the usual dance, he always wiggles his way out of those conversations sharpish enough. He doesn’t want to bring a demolition ball to their lives the way he did with Eddie’s.
Mike is different though, as he doesn’t even attempt to converse with Richie, he just gives Richie brief, wordless, albeit bone-crushing, hugs every time he sees Richie at school. This is probably just because Mike is the freak result of a niceness machine overloading when someone accidentally spills a bag of kindness into it. That’s Richie’s explanation of why Mike does this anyway. There won’t be another reason.
Richie also fails to escape Stan’s deadpan clutches. One day Stan corners him after school, and then apparently decide to break a record player and jam it straight into his own mouth. This record player then simply repeats “Why are you avoiding Eddie?” over and over again, the inflection unerringly the same each time; and none of Richie’s patented dodges, not his claims that actually Eddie is so small Richie actually has him right here in his shirt pocket, not even his querying if this is Stan’s way of asking Richie if he fancies a threeway with the pair of them, gets the record to stop looping. Eventually Richie can’t help but embarrassingly mutter under his breath that “Eddie doesn’t want me bothering him”, which, mortifying as it is to say out loud, does at least result in Stan lapsing into a merciful silence for a full minute.
Until Stan abruptly breaks it with “Richie, you’re are the most bothersome person I’ve ever met. That doesn’t mean I don’t want you around all, some – most - of the time.”
“Oh, Staniel I never knew you cared-“ Richie tries in some voice that is rusty beyond the point of recognition.
Stan does not let him finish. “And if you think that Eddie doesn’t want you around, then you’re a bigger idiot than I ever thought possible.”
“Stan the man, surely-”
“He misses you. You miss him. I don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing, but whatever reasons you think you have, I assure you that they’re dumb. Just look at him. Look.”
And with that, Stan turns and walks away, leaving Richie with a desert of words in his mouth.
This does get Richie thinking. Because, apart from the fact that Stan presumably hates him just as much as Eddie and all the others either secretly already do, or will do soon enough, Stan has never been anything but refreshingly, and painfully, blunt. Stan is an honest fellow, so maybe, maybe Richie should just look at Eddie.
Obviously he has been looking at Eddie, all the damn time (because actually there was a big problemo), but never a real look, never for more than two seconds at a time, and always for much less time if he spots Eddie’s head turning in his direction. Richie honestly doesn’t have the strength to bear Eddie’s eye contact and see what Eddie thinks of him reflected back in those big doeish peepers.
But the next day, Stan’s voice echoing in his head, he finds himself not looking away when Eddie’s eyes end up locking with his. What he sees in those brown orbs is simultaneously familiar and confusing.
He sees sadness, the same sadness Eddie’s eyes held the time Bowers broke the mix tape Richie had made for him. And longing, identical to whenever Richie pretended to eat all the red gummy worms from a new pack. But also…contentment. Like whenever it was just the two of them lying on their backs in the grass down at the Barrens, and Eddie would look relaxed and like he was letting both the sunlight and Richie’s non-stop chatter wash over his body while he gazed up at the clouds, while Richie would convincingly pretend to stare at the sky as well, and surreptitiously keep shooting quick looks at the bundle of beauty next to him. Richie only ever got to see them from a side-on perspective, but Eddie’s eyes looked content, as if at that very moment everything in the universe was just right. And now those eyes were sort of looking at him like that, as if just seeing Richie for more than a few seconds for the first time in a month was enough to make everything else tumble away and carry him straight back to that summer field.
Which sets Richie’s puzzler on puzzle mode for the rest of the week. Even when he spends the entire weekend cooped up in his house, receiving no more than fifteen words and half-a-dozen looks from his parents between them the entire time. Gradually, this puzzling begins to light a fire in his cold and empty belly. Sure he deserves this penance of isolation, but why, just fucking why, does that mean he has to like it? He doesn’t want to sit here and take it anymore. Even though really, he’d love to take it he says with a wink directed at the imaginary Eddie sitting cross-legged at the foot of his bed.
He hates this, he loathes the silence and the loneliness and the dullness and the emptiness.
He wants.
He wants his Eds. Maybe he should say so.
***
Eds
Eddie
Eds
I miss you. I guess I know that you don’t care about that, and that’s okay, because you really shouldn’t. I’m glad that you’ve been able to amputate my annoying ass, because your life should be free of irritating buttocks.
But I do miss you. I miss your giggle. Your fire. The heart the size of Wyoming you keep inside of that tiny torso. Your smile obviously. Your thi. Never mind.
No fuck it. I miss your thighs because they’re a goddamn sticky dream. I know you didn’t want to hear that, least of all from me, but dammit you deserve to know because they’re fucking beautiful and because and I wanted to tell you that.
I even miss the damn fanny pack.
Most of all I miss being around you. In like any context really, you made even the shittiest of them better, even the Bowers ones. Obviously there won’t be anymore of those times, shitty or no, because I couldn’t help but ruin them. Burnt the bridge and ground the bridge-bits into dust. Bridge-bits are what you make bridges out of right? Well, whatever they are I ruined them and I am sorry.
Sorry.
Like a lot of sorrys. Sorrys for the terrible jokes, for being so inappropriate all the time, and being needy and doing anything to get you to look at me. It was never a great sight, and I shouldn’t have kept dragging your eyes over to me. And I’m sorry for being so blatant with all those gay dirty thoughts I had. But can you blame me? Actually yes you can and you should. And on the offchance that you’re telepathic, major apologies for all those fantasies thoughts, but frankly that’s kinda your fault for having such kissable lips. Well, kissable-looking. They might taste like wet dog for all I know, but I’d still think about kissing them anyway. Sorry for that. I know you don’t like that sort of thing. My fault.
But, could you do me a favour here Eds? Could you try and remember the good times, because I’m sure there must have been some. Right? Before I Richied them all. Like the time with the . Or the. There must have been some. If there were, could you just think of them sometimes? You don’t need to obviously, but please? If that’s alright.
You obviously won’t see me around much anymore, so at least that’s a gangly weight off your mind. Especially because soon enough I’ll be quarantined in LA, and you’ll be doing so fucking good at NYU (so proud of you for that by the way). But if you do happen to spot me try and remember something nice rather than all the other annoying shit I did. It would mean the world, a few other planets and several large asteroids if you did.
If you want to. Please.
I hope that’s what you do when you see me now anyway. Sometimes I think that’s what you were thinking when you looked at me on Friday. Maybe.
There was probably someone standing behind me.
Good luck with everything. I’ll know you’ll do great, deadweight-free.
I lo root for you always.
Bye.
Chee Your Richie Richard Tozier
***
Bev’s words and Richie’s face weigh heavily on Eddie’s mind that weekend. Obviously Richie’s face is always hovering somewhere around the outskirts of his mind, and Bev’s words are remarkably effective at elbowing their way to the forefront of his thoughts. Bev is like that, even in imaginary utterance form.
But by Sunday night, they have together helped Eddie in his reassessment project. Maybe this isn’t entirely his fault. Richie’s heartbroken face could be due to something other than Eddie driving him away. Or not just because of that at any rate. After all, he’s clearly trying to avoid the other Losers if their intelligence reports are to be believed, and they haven’t done anything to drive him away the way Eddie so cruelly has. And, he chides himself, it’s not as if Eddie is or should be the centre of Richie’s world. Richie has many orbits, and if Bev is right, and it’s something in Richie’s inner sanctum that is causing him all this pain, then maybe maybe maybe Eddie can help. Help in a way that, well, helps, unlike the last disaster. Limited contact, maximum results.
He grabs a pen and paper, and is finished in a remarkably short amount of time. Eddie the coward never knew moving from the safety of mind-words to the danger of paper-words would be easy, but it turns out it is. Talking about Richie is always easy he supposes.
It’s odd that he’s doing this without Richie for the first time, but apparently the thought of Richie is enough for him to screw his mother’s rules into the dirt. Checking quickly that she’s already asleep, hardly a surprise, Eddie strides, determinedly, madly over to his window. Breathing deeply and regularly he is surprised at the small amount of panic that is coursing through his veins. It’s probably because, finally, he is doing something for Richie and not for his own foolish self. It feels good to be doing this. It’s the first time anything has felt good since that night.
Eddie pulls open his curtain, hoists up the window, places one hand on the window ledge and – what.
What. The. Fuck.
***
At five minutes to midnight, Richie was lying on his bed, his heart penduluming wildly from a sort of furious pride to abject terror. Terror of course that Eddie would be horrified by the letter and all it revealed in stark purple-and-white (Richie owned only purple pens as a point of principle). While it had been a month since Richie had driven the final enormous nail into the coffin of the friendship, there was still the gut-wrenching fear that the stupid, impulsive, stupid letter represented nothing more than Richie the Ruiner’s last kamikaze run, the culmination of his manic need to leave nothing but a wasteland behind him.
On a dime though, he would switch to fierce indignancy, a blazing fuck-you. He hadn’t said a word to Eddie in so fucking long, and barely a smattering before then, so dammit wasn’t he entitled to say something now? He deserved something right, even if it was just one last chance to tell Eddie was a goddamn gem he really was. Then ‘Annoying little boys don’t deserve anything’, Went’s Words of Wisdom Vol. 23 would appear before his watery eyes, and the pendulum would swing straight back.
At midnight, and during the seventeenth swing of the pendulum however, his window screeched open, and a tiny ball of fury came tumbling through.
“How the fuck do you manage to make that look so goddamn easy?!? It took me ten fucking minutes to scramble up that tree, and another five to reach the freaking window! My arms are scratched to shit, I have fucking sap in my hair, it had better be sap, because if it is bird shit, I’m going to kill you I swear to god!”
“E-Eds?” Richie chokes out. Which is a pretty pointless question, because yes Eddie is indeed here, in all his Eddie-glory. Richie’s brain is still processing this remarkable fact, while the glory rages on, quite unabated.
“Why the fuck would you make me do this? Don’t answer that!” Richie couldn’t answer if he tried.
“I’ll you why! Because I went to sneak out to give you this –“ Eddie throws a bit of paper vaguely in Richie’s direction, and it floats down to land on his chest. He does not dare to look at it, partially because he’s not sure if he’s allowed, and partially because he can’t tear his gaze away from Eddie’s face. Even with such anger in his eyes, he is still looking right at him, and that isn’t something that Richie feels he can just abandon.
“And on my windowsill I find this!” Eddie holds up the letter that Richie recognises as his own. “I pour my heart into that fucking note, only to find that you have, somehow, turned it into a joke! Made your own little, pre-fucking-cognitive version, to what - make fun of me? Because that’s what it is right? Another, chuck, or something. A joke…. right?” he finishes almost softly, his fingers twitching and his lips quivering.
This is not what Richie expected at all. Fire and ice-water courses through his veins. “It wasn’t a joke Eds,” he finds himself saying.
“Then what was it?”
“The…well…I know you don’t want to hear this, but, um…it’s kinda the truth. Kinda. Totally” Richie stammers out, quailing under Eddie’s wide-eyed glare.
“Well, maybe that’s the truth as well!” Eddie indignantly chokes out, hand flapping towards the note he had thrown at Richie.
Cautiously, lest it leap up from his chest and bite his face off, Richie reaches for the piece of paper and turns it over. He only manages to read the first few lines before his brain collapses in on itself.
Chee
I know your jokes are ridiculous, but you are still the funniest person I have ever met. I know you dress like a paint factory in Honolulu exploded, but you are still the most beautiful man I have ever seen. I know that your arms are made of ramen, but they still give the best hugs I’ve ever felt.
I know the Losers care so much for you. I know I do. I know everyone should care about you because you -
Richie tears his eyes up to stare at the boy before him. More energy burns through his body than he has ever felt before, so much blazing, conflicting energy that he doesn’t know what to even name it, let alone what to do with it.
“You meant all of this?” he asks.
Eddie nods briefly, a blush imprinting on his face. He drops his gaze down to Richie’s letter, unable to meet the look, whatever that look is, that the taller boy is giving him. He scans the words before him, the same words that he has already read half-a-dozen times, the ones that set his innards aflame and sent him careening right to Richie’s house in a desperate sprint of confusion, fury and a hastily-repressed bubble of elation.
“This is actually…true?” he asks the Trashmouth, from whom a vague sound of assent whistles from his glowing face.
Eddie’s eyes fix back on the letter. The confusion, waning fury and growing bubble of elation push more words out of his mouth. “You want to kiss me? Why would you want to kiss me? We’re boys, that’s gross…right?”
The unidentified energy that has occupied Richie’s body and mind now seizes his lips and forces them to say “I don’t think it’s gross.”
“Please, you don’t think ANYTHING is gross,” Eddie responds. “You didn’t think that time Bill face-planted into a cowpat was gross”
“No, that was totally gross, but that meant it was funny. Gross equals funny. That’s just science right?” Richie’s mouth continues to emit sounds, quite out of his control. “I don’t think kissing you would be gross though.” The flush that appears on Eddie is different to the ones he has seen before, and Richie isn’t sure that he entirely minds the loss of control that the energy has taken away from him after all.
Eddie’s mind is whirring frantically. “But…you like girls. I see you staring at Sally’s butt all the damn time!”
“Sally has a nice butt. But yours is nicer.”
The jolting thrill that is normally restricted only to Eddie’s alone time, throbs through him right now. “So what you like…both or something?” The small laugh that he adds at the end is supposed to make it sound funny. Not plaintive.
Richie shrugs. “Yeah, butts are butts. Boys’ butts, girls’ butts, Spaghetti’s butt. They’re all awesome. Isn’t that obvious?”
The bubble is ballooning in Eddie’s chest, but with it grows his manic incredulity. The anger begins to wax again. “So what, you’re actually saying that you, like…like me?”
Richie thought facing down the firing squad of that question would be terrifying, but the coursing energy blocks the fear, shielding it with a furious ire. “Yes,” he admits. “Obviously.”
Anger and desperation and panic and giddiness and sheer fucking energy fills Eddie’s and Richie’s chests in equal measure.
“Well, maybe I love you more!” Eddie retorts.
Richie growls in frustration. Eddie clearly isn’t getting it. “Well, maybe I want to kiss you right now!”
Eddie squeaks indignantly. “Well, maybe you should!”
The energy propels Richie forwards. He strides across the room, places both hands on Eddie’s cheeks, leans down, closes his eyes….and freezes.
He has no energy whatsoever. His body and mind are devoid of anything but horror at his actions. At how in-a-propriate they are. At how they are being foisted on someone who does not deserve them. At the repellence of his urges and at the hurt that they shall bring.
Then Eddie’s lips crash into his own.
And everything other than those lips burns away.
Nothing about this is gross Eddie thinks. This is a kiss, a kiss with a boy, with Trashmouth, with Richie FUCKING Tozier, and it is soft, and wet, and firm, and desperate and so so fucking good. He deepens the kiss, before pulling back and plunging in again. Their mouths move against one another, and when Eddie’s tongue caresses Richie’s lower lip he whimpers. This could never have been wrong and disgusting. Not when Richie’s own tongue pushes insistently into his mouth like that. Not when Richie’s hair feels so perfect between his fingers.
The kiss breaks down into several smaller ones, light pecks and the feel of one another’s breath.
“Do you get it now?” Eddie whispers. Richie giggles and buries his face in Eddie’s neck. He can feel Eddie’s arms around him, his fingers carding softly through his hair, his chest heaving against his own and his nose nuzzling against his cheek.
He melts.
Eddie is all around him.
It takes several minutes of soft breathing and gentle, inarticulate murmurs before they can leave the cocoon and look into one another’s eyes.
“Sorry” they both utter at the same time.
“What are you sorry for? Everything’s been my fault!” Eddie exclaims.
“Hey, that’s my line!” Richie squawks.
“Well, maybe I’m sorrier!” Eddie ripostes, the grin quite unhidden on his face.
“Doing this again are we?” Richie hesitantly leans in for another kiss. It doesn’t take long for the hesitation to vanish into Eddie’s mouth. Then again, neither is it long before it returns.
“Eds,” Richie breathes out, his eyes still shut tight. “I really am sorry. I know just how annoying I’ve been, and how I never shut up, and all that staring and touching and everything I say, how much you hate all that, I never wanted you to of course, it’s just that…fuck…I’m sorry.” His gabbles fade into nothing. Silence reigns for several seconds before Richie can open his eyes a crack.
Eddie is staring back at him, looking quite intimidating. “Did you not notice my tongue was literally in your mouth a minute ago? Do you really think it would have been there if I’d hated you?”
Richie considers this. The presence of the tongue was admittedly undeniable, but that didn’t mean…Obviously this couldn’t actually be a case where…
Right?
“I wish you’d never run away,” Eddie continues. “I’m sorry. I know I made that happen.”
Richie’s brain cannot accept what this might mean. Granted however, the thumb rubbing soft circles into his cheek makes a strong case.
“It was never you,” Richie gasps out, looking down at the Eds before him through a decidedly watery haze. “It was, just…um…you know…” It seems Eddie’s lips have snatched all traces of articulation from his mouth. Or maybe his mind simply cannot wrap itself around the look that Eddie is giving him. “I know you were busy, so I didn’t want to…” he finishes lamely, with only the faintest clue as to what he is saying.
“Oh, well that was because…” Eddie flushes once more, his gaze bouncing swiftly from Richie’s eyes, to the floor and back again (maybe stopping to hover on his lips a few times. Maybe).
After a short while of Richie not miraculously reading his mind, Eddie realises he should continue. “Because I had a lot of extra-credit work to do. To get into…um, college.”
“But you got into NYU months ago”
“Yeah, but not UCLA…”
Richie’s knows Eddie doesn’t mean what Richie wants Eddie to mean. “UCLA?”
“Yeah. With, um,” Eddie swallows heavily. “You.”
Richie now knows Eddie does mean what Richie wanted Eddie to mean. This knowing may be more than his heart, which has already had quite the heavy evening, can actually take.
Eddie attaches his eyes permanently to the floorboards. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but I didn’t want you to think that we – you – had to…” He shrugs, pupils fixed on a speck of dust. “You know. Being a coward and everything”
Eddie knows it shouldn’t be so mortifying to admit something that everyone already knows. It shouldn’t make tears prick his eyes and shame drench his body. It does anyway.
Richie finds that the absurdity of what Eddie just said brings his articulate trashmouth sprinting back. “That’s fucking stupid. You’re the least cowardly person I’ve ever met.”
Eddie’s ears can’t process this, but apparently his mouth can. “Richie, I just told you I was scared of telling you which fucking college I was applying to.”
“Yeah, but you did it anyway”
“I’ve been terrified of kissing a boy my entire fucking life”
“Yeah, but you did it anyway.” Richie’s fingers reach out, hook under Eddie’s chin and gently push it upwards until their eyes meet. “You were terrified and did it anyway. That makes you the bravest little Spaghetti that ever lived.”
Eddie’s not sure he believes that. But the heat of Richie’s forehead against his own, and the feel of his thumb on his lower lip and that fucking look in his eyes? That Eddie does believe. Maybe that will be enough.
Eddie pulls Richie back down. Their eyes close and their mouths join together once more.
There isn’t a ruin to be seen.