Chapter Text
The problem began when Eddie decided he was going to make out with Stan Uris. Make out, possibly take on some dates, maybe hook up — the details of what they’d do were still kind of up in the air, but Eddie was sure of one thing: to some degree, he was going to do Stan Uris. He didn’t know Stan Uris well, but what he knew (in a very cool band, somewhat uptight, very smart, very tidy and together) he liked. He was absolutely certain they’d have great chemistry, and even if they just hooked up, it would be a great time.
Making out with Stan Uris wasn’t a problem in and of itself. Eddie was unattached and, as far as he knew, Stan was too. And he’d be fucked (or wouldn’t be, he supposed) if a boy with perfectly coiled hair and a full wardrobe of neatly-pressed pastel button ups didn’t like boys. And, to the shock and surprise of almost all of his friends, Eddie didn’t have any significant difficulties in getting boys to make out with him. Despite his short stature, he was a pretty hot guy. He was always pretty well-dressed, always had pretty nice hair, and, thanks to years of track and field and the training that came with it, had a great ass. If he was a little high-strung, a bit of a clean freak, and kind of overbearing, well. That didn’t matter when it came to making out. It didn’t get Eddie a boyfriend, per say, but if he wanted someone in his bed at the end of the night, he was more or less capable of making it happen.
So: he was single, Stan was single, he was gay, Stan was… probably gay, and they were both hot. It was nearly a perfect situation, just steps from being cut-and-dry; the problem in this scheme was, to Eddie’s great disappointment, that he hadn’t spoken to Stan since they had a first year accounting class together (that Eddie dropped after a month). They were in their third year by then, and at that point, Eddie really only saw him in the library, or glances in the corners of his eye at parties. It didn’t stop his sudden and inexplicable desire to make out with him — if anything, it only made him more determined. It wasn’t just a crush, it was a challenge. Eddie wasn’t great at meeting challenges head-on, as a general rule. He couldn’t remember the last time the fight instinct overpowered flight. But, if nothing else, Eddie Kaspbrak was a bullheaded, stubborn motherfucker, and he liked to get what he wanted.
So, as any high-strung high school-high achiever would, Eddie made a plan. It was, quite possibly, his best plan ever.
“This? Is the duh-d-dumbest thing I’ve ev-v-ver heard in my fucking l-l-life.”
“Okay, but, like, it’s not though, right? It’s actually really smart. It’s a great idea.” Eddie’s self-satisfied smile faltered for a moment, brows creasing at Bill — Bill being his roommate (in a very literal sense). Bill had grown up with Eddie, not unlike a rash, and when they’d moved to the city for college, they decided to get a place together instead of bothering with dorms. So excited to live together, they were blind to the realities of renting in a big city — thinking a 300-sq. ft. studio apartment would be an okay place to share (for their budget, at least), they ended up living in a shoebox. When they couldn’t fit two double beds into the apartment, they opted to go for one king-sized. For some reason, that Eddie had yet to determine and was even farther from understanding, they had gone on with it for the three years they’d been in college thus far, and would probably continue to graduation (or longer). It was a ridiculous situation, and it meant that they were basically married, but Eddie hated Bill with his whole gay heart, and one of them had to sleep in the bathtub whenever the other wanted to have someone over, in the biblical sense. It worked out alright.
“It’s stupid. And… duh-d-don’t you think it’s a l-little… manipulative?” Bill asked, and Eddie stared at him, blank-faced.
“Yeah, duh. Don’t you think I’m a little manipulative? It’s fine.” His plan, as he had explained to Bill, was: find a way to Stan through the only lead he had, a jackass-loudmouth-dipshit in his Economies of Sex class. Did he particularly like the jackass-loudmouth-dipshit in his Economies of Sex class? No, he did not. But, unfortunately (and, somehow, conveniently), that jackass-loudmouth-dipshit was named Richie Tozier, and he was the frontman for Stan’s cool band. So they were, like, friends, or whatever. He was also Eddie’s best chance at actually talking to Stan without having to physically stalk him. That bug-eyed asshole was Eddie’s one-way ticket to Stan Uris’ pants — and Eddie was going to swallow his dislike, and befriend him, so he could make it happen, because Eddie Kaspbrak made things fucking happen. “What am I going to do, hurt his feelings? It’s just Rich Tozier. I’m not entirely sure if he has an amygdala — that’s the part of the brain that controls emotions — there’s like a solid 80% chance that it’s just fart jokes or something equally juvenile. I don’t think I could hurt him if I tried. What could go wrong?”
“You’re very manipulative. And — a l-lot of things could go w-wr-wrong, Eddie.” Bill was frowning at him now, and Eddie’s own smirk had entirely dropped off his face, now replaced with a soured kind of frown — as much as he loved Bill, he hated what a good, moral person he was. It was kind of disgusting. Eddie Kaspbrak did not have time for that kind of softness. He was a communications major — basically a marketer. That meant he didn’t have a heart.
“It’ll be fine. I’m going to ask Richie to get coffee after class, no biggie. God, Bill, you’re acting like I’m trying to make him fall in love with me and then crush his little heart up. I’m not a fucking supervillain, I’m just trying to fuck his friend. It’s not unreasonable.” With that, Eddie kicked off the covers and rolled out of bed, Bill curling into the warm dent he left in his stead. Bill was his best friend, but he was also so dramatic sometimes — after all, Eddie’s plan, while convoluted, made sense. It was going to go as planned.
…
Eddie knew that his plan was not going to go as planned when he walked into the classroom and saw the words “GROUP PROJECT” scrawled across the chalkboard. Before anything else, a flash of mind-numbing anxiety crossed him. He had all of one friend in high school, who rarely ended up in his classes, and even though he was a fairly well-adjusted, socially-accepted young adult, the primal kind of fear associated with being the one not picked for a group project never left. But when he took a deep breath and moved through the doorway, letting the terror pass, he was struck by an idea: this was how he could entangle himself into Richie Tozier’s (and thus, Stan Uris’s) life. He would sacrifice his sanity, and partner up with Richie.
Honestly, the group project starting this day really worked out in Eddie’s favour. His original plan was vague at best, and included: asking Richie for coffee, becoming his best friend, making out with Stan Uris. He didn’t really have any of the details in-between worked out. This could bridge the gap between never having spoken with Richie before and going to get coffee. So, instead of taking his regular seat, he sat in the one typically unoccupied directly beside Richie’s normal spot, and waited.
And waited.
Ten minutes into class, Eddie was starting to wonder if Richie was going to show up. Twenty minutes into class, he started to question if the man existed at all — or if he was just an unpleasant figment of his imagination, constructed from boredom. Twenty-five minutes into class, Eddie was pretty sure that even if Richie was real and he did show up, he didn’t want to work with him anyways. Still, when they were doing sign-ups, and the prof asked the class if anyone would pair with the absent Richie Tozier, Eddie raised his stupid, stupid hand.
He made it eventually, flying through the door at the half-hour mark (of an hour-long class), with a lopsided kind of grin that made Eddie hate him, and dropped into his chair, throwing the professor a lofty two-fingered salute. “Sorry, Prof, I got caught up — you know what? It doesn’t even matter. Proceed.” The prof frowned at him, shook her head for a moment, but continued nonetheless, and Eddie took a deep breath, glancing over at Richie again. He was wearing jorts, in the middle of November. There was frost on the ground.
Eddie didn’t know how he could possibly talk to him like he was a real, human person, worthy of dignity and respect.
Stan, he reminded himself. Those eyes. Those hands. Goddamn guitar player fingers. “Psst. Hey. Why the fuck were you so late?” Richie turned to Eddie, eyes narrowing, magnified behind those massive glasses. He smirked, facing the front of the class again, speaking through the corner of his mouth.
“Fell asleep on the subway.”
“Why are you smirking like you’re proud of it? You’ve wasted a solid five minutes of all of our time, and probably, like, $40 of your tuition money, probably more. Jesus Christ. You missed the entire explanation of the group project. We’re working together, by the way. And we’re getting coffee after class, so I can actually lay shit out for you.”
“What?” He cocked his head to the side, looking like Eddie had smacked him in the face.
“We’re working together. I’m Eddie, by the way.”
“I know who you are, but what the hell are you talking about—” His voice had raised above a whisper, and the professor shot him such a sharp look that it stopped even Richie in his tracks. With a cheeky, pointed grin, he nodded at the prof. “Sorry!”
“Coffee later. Jimmy’s on Baldwin. Does 3:30 work?”
“I — sure. Jesus.”
…
Nearly an hour following their conversation, Eddie was sitting in a coffee shop, table claimed, staring at his watch. 3:26. Richie was almost certainly going to be late. Eddie was late to most things most of the time, save for classes, so he couldn’t possibly judge, but he was anyways — the kind of attitude with which people like him approached lateness, after all, was vastly superior to the attitude people like Richie took. Richie was smug, entitled to another person’s time. Eddie was apologetic — ‘I’m late because of who I am as a person, but I really am sorry for making you deal with it.’ This time, he was ten minutes early, because he had practically sprinted from class to Jimmy’s. Twisting the sleeve of his drink (Green jasmine — any drink with more caffeine than tea was officially banned from Eddie’s life and the Kaspbrak-Denbrough household after the premier of The Force Awakens), he wondered if Richie would show up at all. Eddie wasn’t one to hesitate before making a bad decision, necessarily, but he was certainly one to fret over it for weeks afterwards. He had said he was going to show, but he’d also looked pretty shaken up at all of Eddie’s demands, and Eddie was a demanding person, and it scared a lot of people off. And, while he didn’t particularly care how Richie Tozier, who probably only took Economies of Sex because it had the word sex in the name, felt about him, it complicated things a great deal if he decided he wasn’t a fan. 1: Eddie would never get to make out with Stan, if that were to happen. 2: He would have to latch onto a group late, or wade through the project on his own, and that would suck.
But, to his great amazement and surprise, at 3:29 one Richie Tozier threw the door open and breezed through, still wearing those stupid jorts.
“Sorry, sorry!” he called, across literally the whole café. Eddie bared his teeth in a not-quite-grin and waved back. “I made it though, right? I’m on time. Oh, shit — coffee. I’m gonna get a coffee. I’ll be there in a hot minute.” As Richie moved closer to their table, Eddie felt something akin to a sense of doom encroach upon him. After all, it wasn’t just a group project with anyone, it was Richie Tozier. And it wasn’t just that this meeting had a lot riding on it — namely 10% of their grade and any chance Eddie had of getting with Stan Uris, bar a miracle — but Richie was a little infamous. Some kind of improve prodigy, which meant that he was deeply beloved in the acting department and deeply hated everywhere else. In Eddie’s own experience, Richie Tozier was not necessarily a fantastic comedian, but he was a fantastic nuisance. He suspected that, to some extent, Richie’s successes elsewhere came mostly from the sheer volume of output, because he’d never spent a class with Richie where the man hadn’t cracked at least three inane jokes, made at least two useless comments, and added another bullet to the list of ways he’d earned the professor’s ire. Annoying Eddie and wasting everyone’s time — that was just the partridge on the pear tree, it seemed. At the same time, a nagging voice in the corner of his mind asked what Richie could possibly think of Eddie — quiet, demanding, who stewed in the front of the class in silence for fifty minutes every single lecture, save for short quips that he could only hope were to-the-point and insightful, but he feared might’ve been vague and confusing instead.
Richie dropped down in the seat in front of him, though, effectively drawing him out of his head. He had some massive, sickly-sweet smelling abomination sitting in front of him — his ‘coffee’, presumably, and an ever-present smirk twisted onto his lips. “So, Eddie. Eds. What are we up to? What’s happening?” Eddie’s nostrils flared involuntarily, twisting the sleeve of his drink with increased speed and aggression.
“Just Eddie is good, thanks. And we have to do a presentation on one of the chapters, or some bullshit like that. It’s not going to be that hard, but your ass is stuck with me because you weren’t fucking… in class for the sign ups. I need this project to go well, because I care about my education, so. We aren’t going to just bullshit this. Like, there needs to be some degree of effort put into this.”
There were several points during his little rant that Eddie was certain Richie was going to try and interrupt, but each time those curved lips started to part, he narrowed his eyes and spoke faster. The result was Richie opening and closing his mouth like a fish for several beats following the conclusion, and Eddie going so fast he almost tripped over his words.
“Can you, like, chill? Just a little bit.” His voice had a quality to it that Eddie had only really heard from Bill before — a kind sort of sternness, where the words were not necessarily soft, but there was a lightness behind them. It actually managed to stun Eddie into silence, his eyes dropping to his cup. He took a shaky sip of the tea, and met Richie’s eyes again. “Okay, cool. Thank you, Eddie. Just Eddie? Come on. The nickname potential there is huge.” Eddie bared his teeth again, in another not-smile. “Come on, Eds. Eddalicious. Tedward? Listen, I’ll find one you like sometime. And dude, don’t worry, like, even a little bit. This project’s going to be smooooth sailing. You’re on the Tozier train, baby, it’s all good.”
“Trains don’t fucking sail, smartass.” Still, his anger had largely dissipated (even with the Tedward nonsense; Eddie was the only acceptable nickname, save for his mother’s Eddie-bear, and he never let it slip) and he was halfway to cracking a smile, to his chagrin. There was something a little magnetic about Richie, and he hated it, but it would also make this whole ordeal a little more bearable. “Well,” he said, digging through his bag, getting his ancient laptop and heavily-annotated textbook, “let’s get started.”
It was actually pretty easy to get into the flow of working with Richie — for all of his idiocy, he wasn’t actually that stupid. Tasks were delegated (by Eddie, of course), and Richie took them on with little complaint. Eddie sipped his tea and puttered away quietly, Richie took ridiculous swigs of his ridiculous coffee, worked in bursts and chattered in-between, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as Eddie had worked himself up into thinking it would be. After all, Richie was just a person. A person with an incredibly big mouth and an endless stream of commentary to spill from it, but a person nevertheless — and he was a person that Eddie could see himself actually being friends with in a genuine way. He hoped Stan was like this, too.
After an hour and a half — longer than Eddie had planned on sticking around, but time had gotten away from him — he had long finished his first tea, and his second, and his brain was finally fried. He closed his laptop, and smiled at Richie from across the table. Richie, for his part, stopped his rattling monologue, looking up at Eddie in surprise.
“Going already?”
“Yeah, I’ll be off. Dinner with the ol’ ball and chain.” Richie raised his eyebrow, though Eddie decided to ignore it — few people understood the nature of his relationship with Bill, and he didn’t feel like explaining it to a new acquaintance. “We should do this again sometime.” He raised his eyebrow higher, and this time, Eddie felt his cheeks heat up slightly. “Working. We could probably bang this out in a couple hours — I’m going to quit while I’m ahead.”
Richie chuckled. In the quickly-fading afternoon light, Eddie noticed just how many freckles he had — lots, apparently. Cute. “See ya later, Ned. Ned Stark. Game of Thrones? Ned’s a nickname for Edward — no?” Eddie rolled his eyes, groaning.
“It’s Eddie.”
“Well, Eddie-dear, it’s been swell.” He was putting on some kind of funny accent — not one that Eddie could place, maybe a vague approximation of a Southern Belle, but it didn’t stop his lips from quirking into a half-smile. “Say, my band’s having a gig at Wonderland Records tomorrow night. You should come. Bring the missus, too. It’ll be a grand ol’ time.”
Eddie’s ears perked up at the mention of band and gig. After all, Stan was in the band, and would thusly be at the gig. He stopped packing his backpack for a moment, pausing to flash Richie a small smile, nose scrunched up a bit. “Sounds fun. I’ll be there. What kind of music do you play?”
“Ever heard of the Mountain Goats? We sound kinda like that, but also, different. Why, what kind of music do you like?”
Eddie shrugged, slinging on his backpack and stepping away from the table. “Eighties’ synth-pop is always good. Love me some Duran Duran. Catch you later, Richie.”
Plans had changed, but they were marching forward either way, and Eddie could only see them going well — he was getting along great with Richie, he was seeing Stan tomorrow night.