Work Text:
By age six, Eddie hates the smell of cigarettes.
He hates how it clings to everything, seeping into clothes, skin, hair, the walls around it. He hates how his mother immediately jams his inhaler into his mouth and starts screeching at the smoky offender. He hates how at some point the very sight of one makes his lungs close up.
At age thirteen, he nearly has a heart attack when Richie starts showing up to school smelling of smoke. He turns his head away in homeroom, panic seizing him as he waits for the coughing fit.
It never happens.
He still avoids Richie whenever he smells strongly of it. Refuses to go back behind the school with Bev and Richie during lunch, when he knows they'll gossip over a smoke.
The smell follows him everywhere. It's in Richies clothes, Richie’s hair. He constantly chews mint gum, a combination of ADHD and a bad breath deterrent.
He no longer brings Richie home when his mother is around, fearing the smell will cling to him too.
At age fifteen, Eddie is used to the smell. It's still there. He doesn't think it's a scent one can ever go nose blind too.
But he doesn't hate it anymore.
Richie no longer pretends either. On their walks home smoke wafts down the sidewalk, lit cigarette dangling from his hand, or clamped in his teeth. Unlit ones seem to be a new accessory, held between long fingers, lighter and pack shoved in his back pocket. The teachers cast disapproving looks when he walks down the hall, but Richie Tozier had long since won the battle against the smaller things like that.
At seventeen, Eddie associates the smell with Richie and only Richie. At seventeen, he cuddles into Richie’s jean jackets and breathes in cologne and smoke.
At seventeen, Richie’s hands smell like nicotine and Eddies scented hand sanitizer. Eddie loves it.
At seventeen, Richie smokes three in a row on a bad day, and Eddie chastises him as Richie's voice goes rougher and raspier. Richie insists it's good vocals for his garage band.
He feels bad, being comforted by the smell. He knows how awful it is for Richie's lungs. He hates how Richie's fingers begin to twitch and drum beats in class as he waits for his free period. Richie takes to non-stop chewing and snapping gum during class, and none of the teachers or students can get him to stop.
Richie often promises in between kisses he’ll stop one day. Eddie kisses him back and makes him swear it.
He still wonders how long the scent will cling to Richie, like it's become embedded in his skin.
At nineteen, Richie comes home with a pack of nicorette gum and a scowl on his face. Eddie doesn't tease him, but kisses him.
When Eddie is twenty, the scene of cigarettes stays in Derry when they move away. In their new home, it smells only of Richie and Eddie, Eddie and Richie.