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oh, to see without my eyes / the first time that you kissed me
boundless by the time i cried / i built your walls around me
white noise, what an awful sound / fumbling by rogue river
feel my feet above the ground / hand of god deliver me
While his mother never really let up on his leash, Eddie tugged so hard she had no choice but to loosen her grip. He never got true freedom, but the closest he got, maybe, was when he was fifteen years old, and after weeks and weeks of begging, he got permission to take a day trip to Acadia National Park. He didn’t have much interest in national parks, and neither did Richie — his de-facto accompaniment, not because his mother wanted him to be, but because it was him who, without fail, could be found by Eddie’s side at any given time — but he did have an interest in getting the hell out of Derry, even if it was only for a day, and that was the place they ended up latching onto, after Richie found a pamphlet for bus trips on the arcade floor. It took a lot of pleading and a lot of promises of safety precautions he certainly wasn’t planning on taking to get permission, but, at any cost, permission was obtained, and they boarded a bus for the Acadia National Park at around 4am.
The sun wasn’t yet peeking over the horizon and no teenage boy should’ve ever been awake, lest it be the leftover hours of the night before. They each had backpacks slung over their shoulders — in Richie’s, his walkman (that always went forgotten in Eddie’s presence), a box of granola bars (in case the growth-spurt-fuelled hunger he was cursed with made an appearance) and several books, that he would pick up on the bus ride and start to read but not make any real progress on; in Eddie’s, a first aid kit (small but filled to the brim), a bottle of water (that would be drained in the first hour of the bus ride, easily), and a half-filled notebook, with private nothings scribbled into it — not that he thought he’d get enough peace to actually write in it privately while he was there, but just in case.
Within minutes of the bus rolling out of Derry, Eddie and Richie were asleep on each other; Eddie on Richie’s shoulder, Richie’s head tipping onto Eddie’s. It was moments like this, quiet moments of peace that he most enjoyed — though, had be been awake, he’d have been embarrassed by the closeness. At fifteen years old, physical contact was frequent but rarely tender, and though, when he woke up, thrown out of sleep by a pothole in a poorly-paved road, he’d jolt away like Richie was fire, he’d spend the next day and a half thinking about the feel of the crook of Richie’s neck, the weight of his head on Eddie’s. Richie didn’t wake up, even through Eddie moving; his head rolled back onto the seat like it was nothing. Eddie took Richie’s walkman from his bag, slipping the headphones onto his head — it was Richie’s walkman, but in name only, since Eddie felt he had just as much right to it as Richie did, so long as it wasn’t in present use. He’d been listening to a mixtape, which was his latest obsession — making mixtapes, carefully listening to the radio and frantically recording whenever the right song came on — and Eddie picked up where he left off, some old Psychedelic Furs song crooning in his ear. He didn’t fall back asleep, eyes glazed as he watched the Maine scenery blow by, but Richie’s head dipped back onto Eddie’s, and he didn’t shrug out of it. He slept, without interruption, for the entirety of the bus ride, and when he woke up, it was only because Eddie elbowed him in the shoulder. Richie grinned, fond and devilish, and aside from an offhand comment about the drool in Eddie’s hair, they didn’t talk about it. Eddie didn’t want to, and Richie, he supposed, didn’t have to.
Since his revelation about the actual state of his lungs, how they worked so much better than he’d been led to believe, Eddie had become something of an athlete — outrunning Richie on the trails, scampering across the uneven terrain where Richie’s long limbs tangled. Over the years, they’d settled into their silhouettes, though Richie, who was long-limbed and lanky, never really figured out how his body moved. Eddie, on the other hand, was small, compact, not quite delicate anymore and instead careful and controlled in his movements. Eddie laughed every time Richie tripped over his own feet, but he waited, too. There was a rhythm to each of their movements, a long-rehearsed tandem to how they moved — a perfect duet.
“Allergies?” They were winding up a particularly steep hill, climbing wooden stairs, legs aching. Richie was cursing all the books he’d dragged along that he knew he wouldn’t read; Eddie was wishing he’d brought more water.
“Nope. Took some Claritin before we left.”
They had a habit of talking a lot — maybe too much, competing to fill the airtime and crowd out the silence, bickering and arguing and joking overtop one another, but they were capable of quiet moments, too. Quiet, peaceful truces, settling into the silence of nature, voices lost between the trees as they hiked. They didn’t need to speak — or maybe, it was more that they couldn’t. Beyond the wheezing of the hike, with little water under the pounding sun, their voices trapped in their throats for reasons beyond their reckoning. Eddie couldn’t think about it; though, at the same time, he couldn’t stop.
They’d been hiking for two hours before they stopped — it wasn’t a busy day, despite it being beautiful, the start of summer, since it was still early, and a weekday at that, but they hadn’t wanted to stop anywhere busy. As teenage boys, despite not being up to anything, privacy felt important. And — when it was just Eddie and Richie, they liked to be alone together. Somehow, onlookers felt almost voyeuristic. So they waited, until they found a spot that was tucked away, off something Eddie’d once heard was called a ‘desire path’; a trail made by human choice, rather than a trail laid out by a Parks department or something. He’d always liked the term, and the romance of it — some of his favourite childhood hangouts were found by chasing desire paths, like their spot in the Barrens, so when he saw one, he ducked down it immediately, Richie on his tail. They’d found an isolated clearing by the water, with shade from the sun (high in the sky at this point, bearing down from above like a hammer), and untrodden grass, still sparkling emerald-green under the bright sun. The water lapped at the shoreline, and Eddie dropped down in the grass, flat on his back, facing the foliage, blinking up at the sunspots that filtered through, listening to Richie’s running shoes crunching against the sand.
“Come sit,” he mumbled, still out of breath from stumbling down the path. He wasn’t an asthmatic anymore, but that didn’t make him invulnerable to exhaustion.
“You,” he heard Richie say, though he sounded distant, “come here.”
Eddie wasn’t planning on moving, though, the warmth of the sunlight mingling nicely with the cool breeze off the lake, until he heard what sounded almost like — slurping . He shot up like a bolt, and saw Richie kneeling over the water, hand to his mouth.
“Je-e-esus Christ, Richie, stop that!” It took Eddie about a second to spring to his feet, backpack abandoned, in a full-tilt sprint towards him. At the end of the year, his gym teacher had extended an offer for Eddie to join the track team, and he’d turned it down, since that would be pushing it a little too far with his mother, but as he was hurtling towards Richie, he realized why his teacher might’ve suggested it. He was going too fast, and he couldn’t stop.
He ended up crashing into Richie, sending both of them flying into the water.
Eddie landed in the face-down in the water, arms sprawled before him. He breathed out, slowly, and felt the bubbles pass his cheek, rising past him. His eyes were tightly squeezed — he’d never been able to open them underwater, always too afraid of salt or chlorine or dirt damaging his eyesight, and this was no exception. It took him a beat to lift his head above the surface. The lake was relatively shallow at that point, and Eddie hadn’t flown that far in, so he was able to prop himself up above the water with fair ease. His elbows dug into the sand, and he wiped the water from his eyes with a grown.
“Rich, I’m going to fucking kill you.”
“Me?” He heard sloshing behind him, and by the time he managed to turn around, Richie was towering over him, menacing grin on his face. “You’re going to fucking kill me? I’m going to kill you , you little bi—”
Richie took a step forward, but at the same time, he didn’t. His leg raised, and all of a sudden, before Eddie could even realize what was happening, he was toppling towards him. It was, all at once, a jumble of limbs, thrashing around in the water like fish trapped in a net — the panic of the moment combined with the awkwardness of teenagerdom created a situation not easily resolved.
It ended with Richie, hovering on top of Eddie, propped up with noodle-arms and a prayer. He wiggled his eyebrows. “Hello there.”
“Get off of me, you freak.” Eddie didn’t push him off, though. He didn’t dare move a muscle.
Richie stopped cutting his hair last year, and it had gotten long — half-drenched in the sunlight, it hung in tendrils, like some kind of sopping halo around Eddie. Reaching up, hesitantly, Eddie brushed a curl away, out of Richie’s eyes. For just a moment, skin touched skin, the pad of Eddie’s fingertip against Richie’s temple. He couldn’t hear anything but for the waves around him and the sound of his own heartbeat, drumming in his throat.
Richie shook his head wildly, shaking the water out of his hair like a dog, and just like that, the moment was over. He rolled over beside Eddie, and burst into hysterical laughter. After a beat, Eddie started laughing too — shakily at first, heart pounding in his ribcage, but it grew, as it always did with Richie, into a laugh that burbled up from his stomach and overtook him.
“Let’s get out of the water, huh?” he said, softly, still choking on giggles as he stood. He extended his hand to Richie and pulled him up, shaking his head. “God. I fuckin’ hate you, man.”
“Oh, likewise.” Richie grinned back, mostly playful but a little mean. Eddie snorted.
They trudged back to land, clothes dripping, dropping down onto the grass. Eddie laid all the way back, close-cropped hair already drying in the hot sun. Richie sat cross-legged and hunched instead, picking at the grass.
It was quiet, for a moment — not the kind of quiet from when they were hiking, exhilarated and out of breath. No, it was tense, like something was bubbling beneath the surface, aggressive and ill-contained. Eddie had an inkling of what that tension was — he wasn’t stupid. Or, rather, he was , but not that stupid. He knew what it meant, when he stared too long, or when their hands brushed when they walked, or when the teasing turned from regular ribbing to a slow, almost flirtatious back-and-forth. And — of course, he’d thought about Richie before. Thought about him. He was caught, all at once, between wanting him more than anything and wanting nothing more than to push him away. It wasn’t a good place to be. He tried not to think about it unless it confronted him, but it was doing that more and more lately. It wouldn’t leave his mind.
He stared straight up, blinking through the trees. Sunspots danced in his eyes, and he tried not to think about how Richie’s eyes danced behind the black spots.
Richie was rummaging in his bag — at least, it sounded like he was. Eddie heard the shuffling of paperbacks, the crinkling of granola bar wrappers, the clattering of plastic-on-plastic, and a satisfied “A-ha!” when Richie found what he was looking for. Eddie glanced towards him, and saw the Walkman from the corner of his eye.
There was a clicking noise — Richie popping the tape deck open — and a groan. “Shit. I only brought the cassingle.”
“Huh?” Eddie propped himself up on his elbows, squinting at Richie. He was holding the Walkman, a deeply dissatisfied look on his face. Two pairs of headphones were tangled in his lap.
“Only brought one song. Damn it.”
Eddie shrugged, reaching between Richie’s crossed legs to grab a pair of headphones. His hand stopped a moment before he took them; a half-second hesitation that made all the difference. When he did take hold, he darted his arm back, curling it inward. “Dumbass. It’s a good song, though. I’ll listen.”
Richie had two pairs of headphones; the traditional, on-top-of-the-head kind, and the cooler kind, with the neckband, so it wouldn’t mess up the wearer’s hair. Richie always took the latter, since he had hair that needed to be left undisturbed. Eddie’s was more low maintenance, brushed back neatly with a touch of pomade, and the straight strands were unshakeable, so he took the former. They’d become his de-facto pair, and Richie tended to bring both wherever he went, whether Eddie was accompanying him or not.
Eddie slipped his pair on. Richie plugged both into the Walkman, and flipped the switch.
He too dropped back on the ground, uncrossing his legs and kicking them skywards. Eddie snorted. “What’re you doing?”
Richie shrugged.
They lay side by side as the song played. Behind the music, through the headphones, Eddie could hear Richie’s breathing; he was so close — too close. Eddie didn’t know if the ringing in his ears was the synth beat or his heart, but it pounded so loud he was nervous Richie could hear it. Much too close. When the song came to a close, Richie clicked it to a start again. Eddie’s whole headspace felt a little like the song rewind sound, buzzing in his ears, clouding his head. He wished he’d thought this through. He wished he couldn’t think at all.
Normally, they were good at maintaining a tandem, a kind of rhythm-and-beat that made the two of them flow perfectly together. Eddie was the steady, unwavering drum backing Richie’s riffs, wild tandems that together made perfect music. Somehow, things changed, and Eddie didn’t know who to blame, or if there was anyone to blame. They weren’t in-sync anymore. Something had thrown them out of the song.
“So, wh—”
“I don’t—”
They paused. Richie shook his head, pushing his headphones back. “No, you go ahead.” Eddie blanched, pulling his off too. Richie rarely let others speak when he was given the option; grabs for attention were taken with vigour.
“I don’t. I don’t… know what we’re doing.”
Richie propped himself up on an elbow, casting a shadow over Eddie. Eddie still wouldn’t look at him. “Why do we have to be doing something?”
“Richie.”
“Why do we have to know, then?” He dipped lower, closer to Eddie. Eddie held his breath. He didn’t want Richie to hear him wheeze.
“Richie…” he mumbled, trailing off. He was scared of what Richie was doing — and at the same time, he was utterly terrified he wouldn’t. “Don’t —”
It halted Richie in his tracks. “Don’t what?” He was inches away from Eddie’s face, suspended in the air, a knowing grin and wide eyes that gave away more insecurity than he’d wanted them to.
“Don’t… don’t play, Rich.”
“You’re making this hard on me.”
“I’m not trying to. It’s just hard.”
He couldn’t stop himself. He leaned up, propping himself on his elbows, and kissed Richie. Richie pulled back, wide-eyed and surprised. Eddie dropped back to the ground, covering his face with his hand.
“I’m sorry — I. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Richie kissed Eddie again, close-lipped and soft. He pulled back, waiting for a response, and Eddie sat up, still leaning into him. They kissed once more, open-mouthed and hungry this time. Desperate.
They didn’t so much move against each other as they did bump and elbow; awkward, rattling limbs trying to figure out how to slot themselves into place, pressed up against another person for the first time. Richie’s hands settled around Eddie’s waist, cupping the back of his neck, hovering and shifting uncomfortably. Eddie’s hands carded through Richie’s hair, twisting strands between his fingers, like his curls would ground him somehow. They kissed, rough and sloppy, unsophisticated and uncaring. It was the closeness Eddie had felt so desperate for — so desperate to have and so desperate to avoid. This was the meaning of the way his throat tightened and the way his heart thrummed when Richie stood too close, laughed too loud, looked at him too softly, too fondly — this was where the shame and the fear lived, bubbling up from the pits of his stomach.
Humiliatingly, he choked back a sob, head buried in the crook of Richie’s neck.
“Eddie?”
“I’m — God, I’m sorry.” He kissed Richie again, eyes shut so tight tears couldn’t leak. “I’m sorry. This is embarrassing.”
“Eds.” Richie pulled back, arms holding Eddie away. Eddie, pathetic as he was, leaned into him anyways. “Are you…”
The question of ‘okay?’ dangled in the air, unspoken. “Yes,” he whispered in response, but he shook his head anyways. He knew why he was crying, but he couldn’t say it.
He was afraid.
While he’d watched this cord tangle itself between them and tauten, he hadn’t thought about what it would mean when it finally snapped — and he was afraid of what the tension would do to their friendship, but he realized, moments after crossing the line, that everything was about to change, and not in ways he could predict or control. Not in ways he knew he could handle. Eddie was terrified. He gasped another sob.
“Oh, Eds.” Richie pulled him back close, letting Eddie curl against his chest. “Eddie.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
“This isn’t, like, sexy.”
“I think you should be glad this doesn’t turn me on.”
He breathed a little laugh, small and fluttering. “Oh yeah?”
“My ego is bruised, sure... but my psyche remains impenetrable. Freud hasn’t made a total pervert of me yet.”
“Thank God.” He kissed Richie once more, hesitant and sweet. “You’re already enough of an freak.”
“Mmm.” Richie’s lips pressed against his forehead, trailing kisses up to his hairline. It was painfully, unspeakably tender — so much so that it made Eddie ache.
Richie’s hands slid up his shirt, pads of his fingers dragging across his ribs, and Eddie gasped, tears still welling in his eyes. Though it was terrifying to admit, even just to himself, he loved Richie — he loved him more than he’d thought possible, and it made him afraid. Afraid for himself, afraid for Richie, afraid for their futures and their futures together. He moved against Richie, tipping the balance, crawling into his lap. Despite Richie’s nonchalance, he could tell he was afraid too. He was afraid, and he couldn't show it. Eddie thought that had to be worse.
They would’ve stayed in that clearing forever, had it not been for Eddie’s watch, wailing for them to start their return to the bus to make it back to Derry. They trudged along the path, with so much less vigor than they’d started the day with, hands brushing as they walked in the isolated, hidden parts of the path — moving a foot apart each time they became visible. When they got back onto the bus, they didn’t speak. There was so much to be said, but nothing that they could say in public, or to each other; they wouldn’t be able to talk for weeks after that. In their coach seats, backpacks at their feets, their hands brushed, and each felt a little thrill. Richie, in true teenage fashion, settled into a nap within moments of the bus firing up, and Eddie took the Walkman. Digging through Richie’s bag, he found several cassettes clattering in plastic cases, neatly sorted and labelled. He didn’t know why Richie lied, but he didn’t change the tape either. For the whole drive home, Psychedelic Furs crooned into his ears, and for years, he wouldn’t be able to listen to that song without his heart squeezing, his stomach swan-diving.
When the bus pulled into the Derry station, and Richie lurched awake, their hands brushed. Richie smiled at Eddie and Eddie, hesitant but hell-bent on being brave, smiled back, interlocking a finger with Richie’s as he stood. He pulled away a second later, and hopped off the bus, two paces ahead of Richie. Richie followed.
oh, woe-oh-woah is me / the last time that you touched me
oh, will wonders never cease? / blessed be the mystery of love