Work Text:
“- chie I got It I killed it! Richie, we’re gonna be okay-” Frantic, shaking hands run through his hair and along his face. “Pennywise is dead! I did it!” Richie tries to open his eyes. He… can’t. The will seems to have been slurped from his body by what? (deadlights) The hands still, suddenly, and a sharp choking sound silences Eddie. Warmth spills onto his chest and Eddie collapses.
From a place outside his body, Richie finds the strength to open his eyes and maneuver himself so he’s sitting up. Eddie stares back at him, their faces more or less three inches apart. He’s staring at a zombie- Eddie’s eyes are inhumanly wide, and blood spills everywhere. He’s still trying to talk through the blood in his mouth, and then there’s
(scary)
The gaping hole just between where his lungs must be, and the sheer, inconceivable amount of blood spilling from it onto Richie and all over Eddie’s legs. Richie distantly hears himself scream, and with a coherent need to be gentle, takes Eddie in his arms and runs. He runs until they find a place just far enough where they can pretend that none of this is real. Where they can’t see Pennywise or the rest of their friends fighting to stay alive. Somewhere, where Eddie too, remains alive as the rest of them.
Richie rips off his jacket and nudges Eddie until he’s laying flat, now squirming with a hand hovering over his mutilated gut. Rapid footsteps make Richie dimly aware that some of them are coming to join him and Eddie, but he doesn’t spare time to be thankful. He ties the jacket as tight as he can get it directly over the wound.
Eddie makes a sound he never wants to hear again. It’s something terrible, wretched. A cry and a hiss and a sob. Richie cups Eddie’s cheekbone, his own hands shaking so dramatically that Eddie’s head wavers against the concrete. He watches his thumb rub where the gauze wraps Eddie’s face. Eddie flinches and leans into it, all the same.
“You’re gonna be fine, Eds,” Richie says, voice barely there. “You’re gonna walk out of here- you’re- we’re gonna get you some help. A hospital, we’re gonna win and you’re-”
Then hands are pulling him back, back to the deafening roaring, scuttling sounds outside the crevice he dragged Eddie into. They’re tight and Richie recognizes the grip as Bill’s. How could he ever forget?
(beep-beep, richie)
Bill and Ben are able to pull Richie no more than a few feet from Eddie before he gets himself free.
Ben shakes his head with a fragile “c’mon” and stares at Bill.
The argument ends when Eddie thinly protests, holding an arm out to Richie before the arm falls, strength usurped from his body.
“Stay h-here. We’ll do it,” Bill says before darting off, flashlight in hand leaving the other two in darkness as he retreats.
Ben runs a swift hand through Eddie’s hair before he follows.
“.. R-Rich-,”
Richie scoots closer, and turns on his own flashlight. It flickers, having been thrown around more than any flashlight should. “Yeah, Eds?”
Eddie shakes his head. Richie wants to cry when he notices how deathly pale he is. The boy- the man, had always been pale. Now he looked downright cadaverous.
“Don’t call me Eds.” An obvious pain runs through him at that moment. It’s clear because his hands gravitate to the center of the wound, and he squeezes the knot Richie had made out of his jacket. The jacket is soaked with blood. He doesn’t even know if it’s helping, but Richie believes it was because that’s all he could do.
(it kills monsters, if you believe it does)
Eddie whimpers before making his next statement: one that shattered Richie inside out. “Go,” He says. He lifts his arms again, actually grinding his teeth with the effort it took. Even with his attempt to look stoic, Eddie trembles so badly that Richie gets dizzy. Richie wonders, all of this work for him? Eddie’s near-death, and still insisting Richie be here?
“Oh, no no.” Richie shakes his head twice in quick succession. “I’m not leaving you right now. You’ve got to be kidding me, Eds.”
“Richie, I-” He coughs roughly, spilling blood over the two of them. Eddie, in his precarious manner, wipes his face before using those arms to push Richie away. “You have to go fight with the others,” Eddie says. “Before we all die.”
“No.” Richie bites his lip against the lump in his throat.
(a big, red balloon ready to pop and release every tear he’s held since Eddie made his dumb, tiny way into his life)
Eddie stares him down, still defiant as ever. Richie should have known some fire could never be doused.
(oh, but he knew well enough, didn’t he)
“For me,” Eddie tries.
So Richie does, not before pulling Eddie close and kissing his cheek. If it was the last thing he did, Richie would want it to be that. His lips linger and he thinks he can hear Eddie’s heart speed up. He knows his own is pounding.
Then he runs like mad. He emerges into the cavern, and sees Mike and Bill clinging on to one another, Ben and Beverly watching each other’s backs while delivering syncopated blows. And himself, alone.
When all is said and done, he goes back to Eddie. This time, they all do.
He’s still there, of course. But he’s breathing shallow and uneven. Richie grabs him again, not as careful as he could be but gingerly, he rubs Eddie’s back. Eddie laughs into his ear, all-knowing.
“You did it.”
Then Mike looks at Richie over Eddie’s shoulder. “Rich, we can’t.”
Richie would have punched any of them if Beverly hadn’t stepped up first.
“We can try.”
Bill stepped up next, dirtied save for the tear tracks on his face. “It’s w-w-what Stan w-would have wanted. He duh-duh-di-didn’t want a-any of us to duh-die.”
Ben nods. And the decision is made.
Richie carries the increasing weight through the sewers as long as he can before his arms give out, almost dropping the deadweight once. Ben side-eyes him and Mike helps Ben take Eddie. Richie watches Eddie’s chest rise and fall as they hold him above the graywater, half wading and half walking.
Then his flashlight flickers on, and he sees the weary group more clearly than ever. Bill Denbrough, Big Bill isn’t so big anymore. He, save for Bev, is the shortest of all of them. But the instience, the unforgiving catalysts in his eyes are what make him tower over them. Bill lost a brother and lived in the dusty shell of a family all his life. He’s doing everything he can to feel free again- free from guilt and free from himself, perhaps. Then there’s Mike, who spots Ben and momentarily glances at Eddie’s head to assure himself he’s still with them. Mike made the largest sacrifice out of all of them. He gave up every form of potential happiness he could have gotten- away from Derry and away from the Hell they all had the pleasure of forgetting. Richie admires Mike, admires him so greatly for doing what he did, that for a second, he can’t breathe. They all could have been heroes, but they were heroes because Bill found them, and Mike pushed them. Beverly hadn’t grown more than a few inches, but he had grown into the maturity she had as a child. Her solemn frown said it all, how determined she was, and how she wouldn’t allow herself to rest until the remainder of them were safe. She was selfless. Always had been when she grew up under the roof that she did. Richie doubted she knew how to indulge for herself. Her father hadn’t allowed her the privilege, and her husband certainly hadn’t either. He would then, he and the rest of them, notably Ben, would fix that. If they had more time. Ben had one arm in the air, measuring the depth of which they were trudging through. His other arm was cradling Eddie to his chest like a mother and her baby. Richie, below the layer of graveness, wanted to crack a joke. All of Ben’s excess had gone into pure strength and pure heart. Well, that wasn’t a joke; that was the truth. Nobody else could wax themselves into something as sweet. And Eddie. Eds. Richie was a fool to come home and think Derry was anything without Eddie. It was laughable how quickly he had fallen back into his childish rhythm of demanding Eddie’s attention and making him laugh. Honestly, Richie didn’t know how he fell out of it in the first place. How he could ever love anyone who wasn’t Eddie the same way was something he could hardly fathom.
Finally, light peeked through the stone entrance they had squeezed through.
It definitely wasn’t any sort of peaceful down there in the sewers, but it was nothing down there leaving exhaustedly, compared to now, scrambling for reasons for Eddie’s predicament as they got him into an ambulance.
Richie had driven them all here, and Bill had driven there before any of them. They had sorted out the carpool for the hospital since the paramedics wouldn’t let any of them stay with Eddie. Bill would take Mike and Richie would drive Ben and Beverly.
They all cry on the way there for different reasons. Richie drags a hand over his eyes and mourns the loss of his glasses- all cracked and broken now. He’s surely driving illegally without the glasses, but the two passengers don’t have it in them to protest.
Beverly weeps into her hand, high, heavy sounds that spur them all one. She’s drenched to the bone in what looks like blood. Richie doesn’t think it’s hers, though. Ben stares blankly between her and him, out the window, as sobs and huffs wrack his body. They stay like that for a long time until Bev clears her throat. The chain reaction sobers Richie into flicking on the radio- Dear God by XTC and Ben to humming along,
They’re fine if they try to forget Stan’s absence or Eddie’s choking on his own blood.
(everything they saw, everything that floats)
The monster is gone but the fear hasn’t left them.
They make it to the emergency room first. Ben makes a noise when they spy Bill’s car behind them. Beverly reads aloud Mike’s text- traffic. meet in waiting room?
Richie tells her to send back yes.
They do. Richie, bone-weary and scared out of his mind, slips and there’s a chair there to catch him. He buries his head in his hands. He thinks about how Eddie always hated hospitals. He hated the way they pretended to be so clean and crisp, but the only thing that had ever seen those walls were sickness and hurt. He remembers visiting Eddie here when he broke his arm, and Bill riding him on the back of his bike after Eddie’s mom- Sonia Kaspbrak, kicked them out. Mike is the only one who doesn’t cry. But his shaking stature reveals that he isn’t faring better off than any of them. Bill alternates between bouncing his leg and shaking his head. Ben simply holds Bev in an embrace where they seem to be in their own world.
A time that stretches on for another twenty-seven years passes, and a nurse approaches them. Her frown sends Richie’s heart to his throat.
“He’s recovering. We wanted to ask his wife about the surgery, but we had no choice. He’s hanging on for now, but we’ll need to keep him here for a while.”
Richie nods. He expected that much. “Can we see him?”
She shakes her head. “Can’t risk contaminating the air in his room. (don’t touch the other boys, richie) But by tomorrow, if his condition improves any, I think we can allow a few visitors at a time. Honestly, I’m in awe of how long he’s hung on. Any other person would have died hours ago. Something, someone, wanted this man to live.”
(nothing in derry ever really dies)
Bill breaks down right there. He sobs, loud and ugly, and claps the nurses hand. “Thank you, thank you,” he says in a mantra until Mike puts an arm around his shoulders and pushes him into an awkward-fitting half-hug.
“I w-wish S-S-S-Stan were he-re,” Bill says after a few heaving sobs.
The rest agree.
Then Beverly speaks up. “I have an idea.”
“What is it?” Mike.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she says.
Richie hums, speaking for the first time since they left. “Did you see what happened last time we went on walks around town?”
“T-this time w-we’re t-t-together,” Bill replies.
“And we stay together,” says Ben.
Richie takes the hand he’s offered, and lets Beverly encourage him out of his seat. It’s only when they actually get to the door that he pulls back.
“I want to stay.”
Beverly looks at him with eyes like the deadlights. He flinches back involuntarily when he reaches out for him. She minds this, and doesn’t move any closer.
“Honey, this isn’t good for you. Come with us. You need to eat and we all need to clean off. We look terrible.”
And she’s right. She’s soaked in blood, he’s covered in blood and sewer water and grime. Bill has been leaving a trail of water everywhere he goes. Ben is sodden in dirt, for some reason. He looks like a man who dug himself out of being buried alive, and Richie’s only noticed now. A sharp pang of remorse hits him, for not administering the same care for everyone else that he did for Eddie. Mike senses his shift, and Richie is, like Bill, pulled into a hug. And he clings for life despite how Mike smells like sweat and blood and shit and how he feels like he’s being crushed.
He goes with them and walks it off. With the insistent sunlight and perturbed street people, the tears and stains dry. Richie even smiles once or twice. It doesn’t feel right, it hasn’t without Stan, but they make do with what they have. Bill’s grit, Mike’s determination, Beverly’s home, Ben’s heart, and Richie’s burnt humor.
Then they’re at the Quarry. A fence has been put up between the trail and the cliff, with a useless sign that says NO JUMPING OR DIVING. Richie, in a fit of needing to move or fly for a fleeting moment, trips as he kicks off his shoes, sticks his glasses on the blacktop, and sprints forward until he can no longer feel ground under his feet. He flies. He flies like a bird gone wild. Just for good measure, he ingrains into his head the time Stanley called him some species of bird when Richie, at age eleven, flapped his arms as he leaped. Then he’s hitting the water with a great pressure to his chest. It’s cold. Freezing cold. He gets a little sick with how chilly it is, but a warmth is beginning to fill his chest, and Richie figures that the warmth would keep him safe. He opens his eyes. They sting and for once, he doesn’t mind- what, with every other muscle in his body drawn tight and tired, he finds this cathartic, that his eyes feel it too. He stares into the abyssal water, the color of the grass. It’s disgusting, sure, but Richie feels cleansed in an odd sort of way.
When he breaks the surface for air, Bill claps him on the back. They hold each other for a minute, relishing in the concreteness of each other being alive. Beating hearts and blinking eyes and all that jazz.
Ben and Beverly come up next, both red in the cheeks, if not a little green in the gills too. Sickly sweet. They kiss, and then sheepishly duck when Mike splashes them.
They dissolve into a splashing fight. Bill laughs in domestic glee when he splashes some of the muck off of Richie’s face. Richie wants to cry, and he wants to smile too, and he does both without a fuck to give. Stan should be here. Eddie should be here. That isn’t new, but their beginning is.
Long after the time usually allotted for child’s play, they hold each other, not physically any better, but fuller in the heart and clearer of the mind. Richie is between Bill and Beverly with each of his arms draped over their shoulders. Ben is behind him, arms locked around his neck. Bill and Beverly hold Mike against Richie’s chest. Again, they’re cold, hypothermic, maybe, but so, so warm.
When Beverly’s shoulders become sharp stones and Ben’s arms grate against his neck, and Mike’s head lulls his heart into a steady thump-ba-bump, thump-ba-bump, thump-ba-bump, Richie straightens up.
“There’s enough of me to go around, but I think we should save it for the townhouse when we’re all clean, huh?”
They laugh mildly, and separate as they hike back up to where they started. Their shoes are soggy as they trek back to the hospital, check on the nurse ( Eddie’s asleep right now. He’s stable, she said) and drive home. This time Richie drives Mike. They leisurely discuss the future and it goes something like this:
“So Mikey,” Richie sighs at the wheel. “Where are we going now?”
Mike senses the question isn’t direct. They’re going to the townhouse, but where after that? Where when Eddie gets departed from a hospital bed and Beverly has no home to return to?
“Somewhere kind, I hope. I think I’ll go to Florida.”
“You said that when we were kids.”
“And Bill said we’d always be friends. I’m going to make both of those come true.”
Richie makes a left, nods. “You have our numbers.”
“I do,” Mike says. “I expect Beverly will find a place, and Eddie can afford the hospital fees.”
“Something like that,” replies Richie as he parks alongside Bill’s car.
He reaches to open the door, but Mike stops him. He looks back, seeing the intensity in Mike’s eyes concentrated on him.
“Wha?”
“Thank you Rich. Thank you. I know it was hard, and I-I made it harder by bringing you here so suddenly, but we did it. We saved ourselves and we saved-” he moves his arms as he speaks in wide motions. “-so many people.”
Richie’s throat closes up for the seventh or so time that day. He nods his head, and manages a small missed you, mike.
They are the last to arrive to their rooms, and listen to the soothing bustle of Bill’s shower and Beverly’s hair dryer and Ben’s electric toothbrush as they shuck off their clothes.
Lucky for them, being fish out of freezing water, the showers run hot. The hot water ran in abundance, which was a treat for Richie, who emerged with faintly red skin. Out of all of them, he took the shortest amount of time under the water. Cleaning off Eddie’s blood was a vile, heart-throbbing sensation Richie couldn’t shake. He didn’t bother trying to tame his hair. It was clean, but perpetually messy due to the ragged waves he didn’t ever bother to tame. It smelled like the provided shampoo though- fresh and fruity.
The Losers (Lovers) made a point to stick together- leave doors open and carry idle conversation because they knew full well the second one of them was left alone, the events would overwhelm them. Richie’s halfway through a remark concerning how Bill dressed the same as he did when they were in high school when he gets a thought.
He travels until he finds Eddie’s room, and digs through one of his suitcases. Richie sucks in a breath when he sees just how many pill bottles Eddie had packed. If one of them could cure a hole in his chest or a knife through the face, Richie would have liked to know. But he finds a comfortable change of clothes- a navy sweater and jeans that he thought Eddie would be grateful for. Also, a grey hoodie, because hospitals were chilly and Eddie was small.
Richie decided to throw the hoodie- which was his size, apparently Eddie liked to wear clothes a size up- on himself until they got there. He felt calmer when it felt like Eddie was right there- around him.
He waits anxiously in the lobby, flicking through his phone and darting his eyes every which way at each occurring sound. This is what life would be like, he thought, now that he had no choice but to remember it. Derry, Maine did a lot of weird shit to you, but it couldn’t make you forget twice.
After a bit, Beverly, cleaned up with her (winter fire) hair shining again and clad in a neat cardigan with a blouse and jeans, settles next to him. She lays her head on his shoulder without a word and his chin rests in the crown of her hair.
He kisses her forehead, feeling the urge to offer more than just minimal contact. This was Bev, he reminded himself, their Bev.
“Love ya, Molly Ringwald.”
“Beep-beep, Richie,” She smiles. “Love you, trashmouth.”
From there, it all begins to work into their limbs. The motions of comfort and the mental rendering of footage they themselves can hardly believe. It’s healing, and it’s a slow, time-consuming process they’re enduring together.
Bill walks in with coffee. They each take one with thanks at the tip of their tongues and sip until their surroundings grow more vivid. Bill sits down on Richie’s other side. He takes Bev’s hand and his fingers trace patterns into Richie’s shoulder.
“We’re too o-old for t-this,” Bill laughs. “I’m s-s-sore all over.”
“You can say that again.” Bev.
Richie wheezes. “We were too young before and too old now.”
“Is there ever really a right time to fight a murderous clown?” Ben takes a seat at Bev and Richie’s feet.
Mike shrugs as he walks in, a History of Derry book in his hands. “I suppose not, now that there isn’t a clown to fight.”
They sigh in collective relief until Bill asks about the book.
“I’m returning it to the depths of the library where it belongs,” Mike says.
They walk out to Bill’s car, which was the largest, and don’t bother to split up. They pile into the thing, Mike and Bill in the front seat and Bev squished between Ben and Richie.
Some sort of delirious, caffeine-driven, urge overtakes them and they play music over the radio. Bev and Mike sing loudly, Ben hums like before, and Bill drives with a wistful smile. Richie sways to the rhythm, lighthearted but worried nevertheless. He thinks that if he tried to sing he would choke on the words and start crying again.
The library hasn’t changed much, but Richie resists going in because he’ll vomit if he sees Henry Bower’s body again, knowing he killed him. Bowers deserved it, that was true, but Richie couldn’t get over that he had killed another human being.
Ben stays with him, afraid that if he goes into the library he’ll experience some sort of psychotic break. Ben had told it as a joke, but Richie saw the waver in his smile and heard the uncertainty in his voice.
He throws his legs onto Ben’s lap.
“We did it, Haystack.”
Ben smiles. He stops picking the residue from under his fingernails and pats Richie on the knee. “Let’s pray we did it for real this time. I can’t ever do that again.”
Richie agrees. He holds up a fake glass- his hand curved into a c shape and clinks it against Ben’s fist on his leg. “Cheers.”
They’d done it. Richie Tozier knew from the MISSING posters blowing away in the wind and in the lively carnival music they could hear vaguely in the distance. He knew in Bill’s guilt put to rest and in the tension ebbing out of Mike. He knew because Eddie wasn’t with them for a reason, and that reason was that he weakened It for them to deliver the final blow.
But Richie also knew, they could and would do it again if need be. They were born, and they were born to do as they had done. Stanley included too. Part of Stan was still in Derry, and nothing in Derry ever fully went away.
Then Richie receives a call. He answers, and just about drops the phone. Ben watches his mouth fall open and his eyes scan the car while he listened, the beam of a child on Christmas day overtaking his features.
“Eddie’s awake,” Richie says, and bolts out of the car and into the library, pretenses forgotten.
Mike was shelving the book while Bill explained a shelf of artifacts and Beverly recounted a story about what Richie heard was the most embarrassing thing to happen in a library when you’re fourteen years old and they all turned around when he rushed in.
“Eddie’s awake. We need to go. Now. I’ll drive.”
Beverly shakes her head. “I can drive this time around, let’s go, Rich.”
This time around, Bev and Richie sit in the front and Bill is the one being held captive between Mike and Ben. It all comes back to them as quick as it left, ghostly fingers turning their brains around so that their fear faced forward and schooled their faces into blanched frowns.
They pile into the waiting room, half-shocked that it’s empty because again, this is mother-fucking Derry for Heaven’s sake. Now they’re too high-strung to sit, so Richie paces, biting into his thumb to conceal any haphazard jokes from escaping, while Bill taps his feet on the floor and Ben and Bev squeeze each other’s hands. Mike goes to the front desk and asks about Mr. Eddie Kaspbrak.
The nurse smiles. “Yes, he can have one visitor right now. He’s still a bit shaky.”
Oh. Richie looks around, expecting Mike, Bev, or Bill to volunteer. Maybe even Ben, but they’re all looking at him. Beverly gives a knowing smile and thanks the nurse. As Richie is still speechless, she takes a visitor sticker and sticks it on Eddie’s hoodie, which he’s still wearing.
“Tell him we said hi, and Richie?”
“Hmm?”
“Tell him the truth.”
Richie is summoned away by the nurse before he can delve deeper into Beverly’s words. Tell him the truth. Tell him the truth. Tell him the truth. What the fuck did she mean by that?
(my heart burns there too)
He doesn’t have time to get into his head about it before he is being shown to the door. The nurse holds it open, and Richie steps through, still holding the neatly folded clothes he took with him in his hands. The stench of dirt and blood mingle with the sterile reek and come together to create a smell that would be making Richie sick if Eddie wasn’t smiling at him like that.
Eddie Kaspbrak was propped up by a pillow, covered by blankets and a hospital gown and nursing a glass of water with a trembling hand. If he looked closely, Richie could see the tips of bandages wrapped around his stomach where the gown had ridden up. They both stare for a while. Eddie had never looked so soft before, and Richie was sure he never looked so studious before.
“Are you gonna sit in the chair near my bed like you’re my wife or something?”
Richie laughs, and secretly wishes he could flat out say yes but instead he walks to the edge of Eddie’s bed. He can see the man clearer now. The bandages on his face had been replaced, and stitches peeked through the gauze. God, Richie couldn’t even look directly at the cut. It made his blood boil.
He nudges Eddie’s foot under the covers. Eddie flinches and sets his water down.
“Remember when you used this damn foot to knock off my glasses when we were kids?”
Eddie chuckles. “I remember how you wouldn’t let me have my turn in the damn hammock.”
Richie rolls his eyes. “We shared it just fine.”
Richie fully blamed the lighting, but it seemed like Eddie blushed before he smiled and said “yeah, we did.”
A pregnant beat passes between them, and Eddie opens his mouth to speak. Richie did too, at the same moment, and their words overlap.
“You know, I-”
“How are you feeling, Eds?”
Eddie shrugs. He looks so vulnerable doing so that Richie wants to melt.
“I lived, bitch,” he spits out at nobody in particular, curling his right hand into the middle finger for a second. “Hurts like hell but I’ll be fine. I have a month to three month recovery period because I have more stitches than cells in my body and more medicine to take than my mom would ever fucking be okay with.”
His voice is so weak, drained of all the spitfire-quality that made Eddie so Eddie. Richie listens intently, and then puts the clothes on the bed. “I’ll visit everyday, Eds, I promise. I brought these in case you’re tired of the-” he gestures plaintly. “- hospital gown.”
“Don’t call me Eds and maybe I’ll heal faster,” Eddie says. He eyes Richie for a long time. With every passing second Richie sinks into his skin more. He’s about to snap what when Eddie starts to laugh. Adorably, that is, but Eddie cuts himself off when he clutches his chest.
Richie rushes and gets close to Eddie’s arm. “Are you okay? What can I do?”
Eddie shakes his head. “You’re wearing my jacket,” he says.
Richie flushes. “I brought it for you.”
“Help me change?” Eddie asks.
“Sure.”
The simple task of getting Eddie out from under the blankets is a feat in itself, as Eddie possessed little to no strength to do anything himself.
“This is hard work,” Eddie says at one point as Richie moves his left leg over the side of the bed.
“I don’t care,” Richie says. “Not if it’s you.” And by God, he meant it to come out all cheeky and smooth Richie Tozier style, but it sounded nothing short of sincere.
He looks up quickly, and Eddie was staring back at him with his eyes nearly black- pupils blown wide.
Richie backs up, pulled by the thick strings of self-doubt that he let navigate his life, and that he let fucking IT dangle above his head, then remembers Beverly’s tell him the truth. Richie sets to work on moving Eddie’s right leg while he speaks, thankful for the excuse not to look him directly in the eyes.
“You know the kissing bridge, Eddie?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, looking the slightest bit confused and also, hopeful?
He steps back, having moved Eddie into a sitting position well enough. Then he unties the hospital gown and hands Eddie the sweater. Eddie tries to shrug it on, but when his arms go past his shoulders, he lets them fall and gives Richie what have to be the worst puppy eyes he’s ever seen.
“Really?” Richie asks, unimpressed.
Eddie doesn’t say a word.
Richie grunts and takes the sweater, urging Eddie to duck his head and move his arms. With clumsy teamwork, they get Eddie into the soft fabric without it catching on the mass of stickers, bandages, stitches, and medical shit on his torso.
“The nurses aren’t gonna like this,” Richie realizes.
“I don’t give a damn, I’m comfortable.”
Richie laughs. Another beat.
Then he has to help with the jeans, he realizes.
Eddie shakes his head. “I can do the pants, I just need you to get them past my feet. I can’t bend over. Hurts.”
Richie nods, and does just that, burning up all the way. He never imagined he’d be this close with Eddie fucking Kaspbrak. If Richie saw this was what the future held when he was twelve, boy, he would have wept with joy.
When Richie’s at his knees, Eddie clears his throat. Richie turns his back, wiping his sweaty hands on his own jeans while Eddie shifts around and gets his on.
“What were you saying before, Rich? About the kissing bridge,” Eddie prompts after a bit. Richie’s knees are about to buckle when he sees what he’s gotten himself into, and he actually does sit in the chair by Eddie’s bed. His tugs at his fingers where his hands lay, clenched in his lap.
“I went there a lot as a kid,” Richie says.
“Fascinating.” Eddie’s voice drips with sarcasm. “Was that it?”
Richie swallows. “N-no.”
Eddie tilts his head, cat-like, almost.
“That wasn’t it,” Richie steels himself, now white-knuckling the chair. He never thought he’d do this in his life. He never thought he’d get the chance to fall in love again. That was, if Eddie didn’t kick him out of his room the second he was done talking.
“I, uh. I carved something there once.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it said-”
“R + E?” Eddie asks at the same time Richie says it.
His blood runs cold. He thinks he’ll maybe throw up again. “How did you know?”
Eddie looks out the window at the setting sun, and says: “I had to walk by the kissing bridge to get home after school, and one day I was walking and I saw a new carving- you know, I used to have them all memorized because I saw it everyday. It said R+E, and I liked to play with the thought that it was about me and you, trashmouth.” Eddie smiles, face bright red and breath hitching with the adrenaline of taking what you’ve repressed and lifting it into the open air. Richie grins, toothy and weird and leans against the bed.
When Richie runs his hands through Eddie’s hair- slick with grime and likely blood, Eddie continues. “At least once a week, I’d sit down and trace it with my fingers, imagining that it could have been us. Our thing.”
Richie’s body is on fire. He can understand now how Ben couldn’t even look at Beverly for more than four seconds max before he had to take a deep breath. That was being crazy in love, and Richie was back in the thick of it, and it was reciprocated.
So he does what Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier does best. He makes a joke that has no place in a sane, adult conversation. “Did somebody want to suck face with yours truly on the kissing bridge?” He purses his lips, laughing at himself before he chokes on Eddie’s answer.
“Yes,” Eddie says, seriously.
Richie locks eyes with him.
He leans down, and Eddie keeps his eyes on him the whole way down. Richie cups his cheeks, the same way he did down in the sewers, and kisses him. And it’s what he’d been waiting for since he became closer with loneliness than with love. Eddie’s lips were not even the slightest bit chapped, in fact, they felt as if he’d just put on a load of chapstick. Of course, of fucking course.
Eddie’s hand crawls up to hold Richie’s face and Richie thinks he might just die right there.
He pulls back, seeing Eddie give him a smile he’d never seen before. It was frightening to see that much blatant love on another person’s face. And Richie had to look away from Eddie’s lax smile and liquid eyes.
He doesn’t get the chance to go too far, because Eddie’s grabbed Richie with a hint of neediness that has Richie reeling, and holds him there while their lips meet, bruising this time. Richie sighs into the grip and moves one hand to Eddie’s hip. And they stay there, so content it feels like the world has frozen over and they’re the only two still moving.
Until one of Eddie’s machines abruptly goes off, releasing a multitude of high-pitched beeps.
“My heart monitor,” Eddie says.
Richie starts laughing again, so hard he falls back into the chair at Eddie’s bedside, while Eddie mutters an adorably grouchy beep-beep, Richie under his breath.
A nurse enters, looking terribly alarmed and Richie almost feels guilty.
“I’m fine,” says Eddie in a rush, face too red to be believable.
The nurse checks his vitals and then leaves, giving Richie a disapproving look.
They wallow for a few minutes, both absorbing what had just happened. After years of dreaming of this moment, it was difficult for either of them to come to terms that it was real.
“I like the jacket on you,” Eddie says cheekily.
Richie smiles, resisting the weird urge to cry again, and this time, be held while he did so by somebody he loved.
Then Bill walks in, Bev, Ben, and Mike, following.
“W-we made s-s-s-some calls,” Bill says. “And Ben, B-B-Bev, and I have d-decided to work f-f-f-from here for a w-while. For the next few m-months until Eds is f-f-feeling better.”
Eddie glows, actually glows. “You actually?”
“Mhm,” Beverly says, and hugs him tightly until he gasps for breath.
“Why would you want to do that?” Eddie asks.
Beverly eyes him. “Because we love you?”
Eddie just smiles, the crinkles below his eyes saying it all.
They take seats around Eddie’s bed, and Richie, at Eddie’s request, haphazardly sits beside Eddie on his bed, an arm around him and their hands entwined.
“To the Losers Club,” Eddie manages through their conversation.
To the Losers Club indeed.