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Richie lounges alone in the clubhouse hammock, a comic book spread open across his lap. He looks at it without really seeing it.
He’d been alone a lot over the last few weeks since his and Bill’s explosive fight after everything at Neibolt. He’d seen the others once or twice in the intervening days — smoked up with Bev around back of the Aladdin, dragged Stan to the canal to skip rocks — but it hadn’t been the same. Hadn’t felt as good as it did when they were all together.
He’d tried to call Eddie after all of it, but his mom had answered the phone and promptly hung up on him. He’d seen them once, together. Mrs. Kaspbrak was gripping Eddie’s shoulder tight, frog marching her son into the grocer’s. He’d caught Eddie’s eye from across the street, waved at him. Eddie wiggled his fingers back at him discreetly where they poked out from his gleaming white cast. Then they disappeared into the store.
It just wasn’t fair, was the thing. The clubhouse was meant for them, for all of them. Richie had abandoned the arcade to come down here every day this week, hoping to cross paths with the others. But it was just him, alone. Again.
He pushes his glasses up into his hair and rubs his eyes. He feels the phantom ache on his cheekbone where Bill had struck him. Sighing, he jerks his head forward, glasses falling back down onto his nose, and when he opens his eyes, Eddie is standing right in front of him.
“AHHGH! What the fuck, dude?”
“Sorry,” Eddie says, grinning, not looking sorry at all. “You didn’t hear me come down?”
“No, I clearly fucking didn’t,” Richie grouses, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
He looks Eddie over as covertly as he can manage. Eddie looks good for having had his arm bent in the wrong direction the last time Richie had seen him. His skin has a golden glow, like he’d managed to get some sun since Richie saw him last, though he doesn’t know how Eddie would have managed that while he’s been under his mother’s thumb all this time. There’s freckles peppered across his nose, darker than Richie had noticed being there before.
Cute, cute, cute, Richie thinks, unbidden, like he’d tease when they were younger. He doesn’t say anything now.
“Move over, Trashmouth,” Eddie says, and climbs bodily into the hammock. He does so casually, the same as before, the same as always- except this time he settles right next to Richie, bodies lined up top-to-toe. Eddie’s shoulder rests on top of Richie’s, pinning it beneath him. Their hips are slightly angled toward each other where the hammock dips in the middle, and their thighs press up against each other, knees knocking together. Richie’s brain short circuits.
“Jeez, Eds,” he says belatedly, hoping Eddie hasn’t noticed. “Take a guy out to dinner first, maybe.”
Eddie barely reacts, just says, “Like you care.” And it’s so matter of fact it almost feels accusatory. It almost feels like he knows. Richie’s stomach twists.
Eddie grabs the comic book from where it lay abandoned in Richie’s lap and flips idly through the pages. Richie watches him warily from the corner of his eye. It’s relatively cool in the clubhouse, nestled underground and shaded under the cover of the trees up above, but the day had been the hottest of the summer. Richie can see a faint glimmer of sweat along Eddie’s hairline, and his cheeks are flushed prettily from the heat. Eddie’s shorts had ridden up with the clamor into the hammock, and his bare thigh is pressed right up against Richie’s. It makes Richie feel warm in a way he can’t explain. In a way he doesn’t think has anything to do with the heat.
Richie tears his eyes away, leans back further into the hammock and looks up at the roof of the clubhouse, letting out a long breath.
“What are you doing here anyway?” he says finally, still not looking at Eddie. “I thought your mom had you on lock down,” he tacks on, bitterly.
Eddie makes a dismissive noise, “She can’t keep me in that house forever. I was bound to get leave for good behavior eventually.” He turns his head and grins at Richie. “I wanted to see if you guys were around. I haven’t seen anyone since-”
Since Neibolt goes unsaid.
“That’s probably my fault, sorry,” Richie mumbles, uncharacteristically contrite. “Bill and I sort of… had it out, after everything.” Richie adjusts his glasses. “He may have punched me in the face.”
Eddie clicks his tongue, says “Richie...” admonishing, but doesn’t launch into the frenzied tangent that Richie had expected.
Instead, he watches Richie for a moment, then, quietly, “That’s okay. You’re the only one I ever want to see anyway.”
Everything in Richie stops — his heartbeat, his breathing, all the thoughts in his head — and then picks up again all at once, in double time. He stares at Eddie, who’s still just looking at him. As if he hadn't just voiced the one thing Richie's ever really wanted to hear him say. And if Richie hadn’t noticed before how closely they were huddled up together, he’s certainly hyper-aware of it now.
Eddie’s face is so close to him.
Richie opens his mouth to say something, say anything-
“Aw, Spaghetti, does that mean I’m your fav-”
“Oh, come on, Richie,” Eddie interrupts him, looking at him shrewdly. There’s something almost predatory there, like he knows he has him caught.
“I see the way you look at me.”
Richie’s stomach drops and his heart pounds madly in his chest. He’d tried so hard, been so careful- Not fucking careful enough, his thoughts scream back at him wildly. Look at how you’re sitting in this fucking hammock, asshole.
And it’s true, is the thing. Richie hadn’t been careful enough. Hadn’t been content to just be Eddie’s friend. Had needed to tease, and needle, and touch, in all the ways he wasn’t supposed to. He’d been greedy.
But Eddie doesn’t say anything more. He doesn’t push Richie away, or call him ugly names. He doesn’t do any of the things that Richie has thought about, lying awake in the middle of the night, his stomach in knots.
Instead Eddie’s eyes flicker down to Richie’s lips, and he leans in slowly toward him, as if there’s any space left between them as it is, and Richie can’t breathe, can’t fucking believe that this is happening, but he just wants so badly, has wanted for so long, and so he lets himself lean in too, eyes fluttering closed, and-
“Oh, my God!”
Richie jumps back, like he’s been prodded with a hot poker, pushes himself away from Eddie as far back into the hammock as he can get.
Eddie looks at him, eyes wide, a knowing smile starting to curl on his face, “Richie…”
No, Richie thinks, heart thundering in his chest, No, no, no!
“Richie,” Eddie says his name again slowly, a laugh starting to color his voice, “There’s no way that you could think that I-”
Richie bolts upright, practically falling to the ground in his haste to get out of the hammock.
How, how could he have gotten this so deeply wrong?
“Eddie, I-” he doesn’t know what to say, for once at a loss for words. “I’m- I’m s-sor-”
Eddie sits up in the hammock, hands gripping the side, leans over and leers at Richie like he’s his favorite toy. “God, Rich, spit it out,” he grins at him. Eddie gets out of the hammock, moves toward Richie slowly. “You’re starting to sound like B-b-big Bill.”
“I didn’t mean to-”
Eddie smiles, and it looks twisted on his face somehow. It looks wrong. “That’s disgusting, Richie.”
Richie takes a sharp breath, his heart clenching in his chest. He backs away from Eddie, stumbling over his feet, but Eddie just keeps following, staring him down. Richie can’t tear his eyes away from the look on Eddie’s face, still smiling with cruel glee. Richie watches him advance even as Eddie’s eyes begin to glow yellow.
“How could you think I’d ever want a dirty, fucking f-”
Eddie gags.
It sounds just the same as it had when Richie had last seen him, teasing him as they took their first steps into Neibolt. This time though, it doesn’t stop. Eddie hunches over and dry heaves, again and again. The gagging sounds begin to mix with the rattling, wheezing gasps of breath that are usually followed by a loud pull on his inhaler.
And then all at once, it stops. Eddie slowly looks up at Richie from under hooded eyes. It’s not Eddie, though. Not anymore.
Richie stands rooted to the spot, horrified.
Black sludge, the same stuff from the imitation Eddie back at Neibolt, begins to pour from Eddie’s mouth, quickly staining his shirt and dripping down his legs. Eddie’s hair has become damp with sweat, hanging limply across his forehead. His skin has a sallow, pallid look about it. His eyes look sunken into his skull, rimmed with dark circles. Blood begins to pool in his cast which has become soiled with grime.
“Beep beep, Richie,” the Eddie-thing says, but it doesn’t sound like Eddie anymore. It sounds like-
Richie stumbles backward, back slamming into the wall of the clubhouse. Dust and dirt rain down over him as Richie slides down the wall, hands flying up to cover his ears as he squeezes his eyes shut. The last thing he sees is Eddie — no, not Eddie — It racing toward Richie, limbs bending at unnatural angles.
“It’s not real,” he whimpers, remembering what Bill had said back in that fucking house. “It’s not real, that’s not Eddie. Eddie wouldn’t- It’s not real. It’s not real, it’s not real-”
“Richie?”
Richie jolts back, flinching violently at the hand gently touching his shoulder.
Eddie is there. Not looking so distorted anymore, not looking so wrong.
Eddie takes a step backward, hands up.
“Woah, woah,” he watches Richie warily, “It’s just me.”
“It’s not-” Richie blinks up at him, chest rising and falling rapidly as he tries desperately to catch his breath.
It is Eddie, he thinks, he’s sure of it this time. But before, before It had changed, he’d been sure of it too. Richie curls in on himself, feels bile rising in his throat.
“Richie, what happened?”
There’s real concern in Eddie’s eyes, real worry as he looks down at Richie, hands held up cautiously like approaching a frightened animal. Richie feels sick at the look on Eddie’s face.
He crumbles.
“It!” he gasps out, arms wrapped tightly around himself like he’s scared he’ll come undone at the seams if he doesn’t hold on tight enough. “It was- It was you, and It said-” he chokes, unable to finish the sentence.
“It was you,” he says, quieter this time. He looks up at Eddie, tears blurring his vision. “It was you, and It knows. It knows how to get me. It was you.”
Richie quiets, tears silently streaming down his face as he stares at the ground. Eddie crouches down in front of him, tentatively reaches a hand out. He holds Richie’s shoulders when it’s clear Richie won’t flinch away again.
“Richie,” Eddie ducks his head down, trying to get into his line of sight. Richie can’t meet his eyes.
“Whatever it did- whatever it said,” Eddie’s fingers flutter nervously at Richie’s shoulders. “It wasn’t real.”
Eddie looks at him so kindly, looks so worried, and Richie can’t fucking stand it. He feels rotten, rotten from the inside out. And he can’t have Eddie look at him like that, can’t have Eddie be so nice, because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that Richie’s not right. And if he doesn’t tell him now, he’s scared he’ll make Eddie rotten too.
“It was real,” he whispers. He finally looks up, meets Eddie’s eyes. Richie tries to capture the moment in his head, freeze it in his memory so that he can call it back up later. So he can remember it later once Eddie learns to hate him.
“I love you,” he says, a confession.
“I love you like- like I’m not supposed to.” Richie’s voice wavers. “And It knows,” he whispers. “And I’m really sorry.”
Richie’s face crumples, and the tears start back up. Eddie just stares at him, eyes wide. His hands are still resting frozen on Richie’s shoulders.
“I’m so sorry, Eds. I tried so hard to stop, I swear I did, but I- I just can’t help it. I look at you and I-” he chokes, gagging on the words. Richie’s breathing so hard and his chest is so tight, he can barely speak anymore, and there’s a rushing in his ears that make it hard to hear Eddie say his name-
“Richie?”
One thought pushes its way into Richie’s head; He sounds scared.
“Please don’t leave,” Richie whispers, sounding broken even to his own ears. “Eddie, please don’t hate m-”
Eddie grips Richie’s shoulders tight, and he kisses him.
It’s like a shock to the system. The rushing sound in Richie’s ears rises, becomes deafening. His heart is thundering so hard in his chest it’s a wonder it’s not pounding against his t-shirt, a wonder Eddie can’t feel it from where he’s leaned over into Richie’s lap. Richie’s hands feel numb at his sides, and it’s like he can’t feel the ground underneath him anymore, can only feel where Eddie’s touching him; his hands on Richie’s shoulders, his lips on Richie’s lips.
And then all at once, it’s over.
Eddie pulls away, hands still gripping Richie’s shoulders impossibly tight.
“It’s not just you,” he whispers. There’s a blush burning across his cheeks, and his eyes have never looked so bright. He’s the most beautiful thing Richie has ever seen.
“It’s not just you.”
Eddie nods at him, his eyes begging Richie to understand.
Richie begins to cry in earnest now, and Eddie collapses to the ground. He hugs Richie to him, arms wrapping around his shoulders and whispering in his ear like a secret only meant for him, “You don’t have to be scared.”
Minutes pass, diligently counted by the quiet ticking of the clock Stanley had insisted on installing in the clubhouse. Richie’s tears calm. He slowly disentangles himself from Eddie’s embrace. They carefully avoid each other’s gaze.
Richie doesn’t know how he’ll ever be able to look at Eddie again without his face betraying him, like Eddie's the sun and Richie's been caught in his orbit.
“I do have to get going,” Eddie says apologetically, looking sideways up at Richie. “I just wanted to stop by on my way back from the pharmacy. My mom’s gonna fucking murder me.”
Richie smiles faintly, finally looks back at Eddie.
“Ah, just tell her you’re with me, Eds. I’ll butter her up for you.”
It comes easy, the way it always has.
“Fuck you, asshole, and don’t call me that,” Eddie glares at him and something warm blooms in Richie’s chest. A warmth that’s different than before, but still has nothing to do with the heat. Like maybe he’s okay. Maybe they’re okay.
(And somehow, impossibly, maybe he can have this, too.)
They rise to their feet, and Eddie kindly looks away while Richie wipes his eyes with the hem of his shirt.
When their eyes meet again, a small smile crosses over Eddie’s face. A laugh bubbles up from Richie’s throat, soft and delighted.
They grin dopily at each other until Eddie shoves him toward the ladder, “Yeah, yeah, let’s go asshole.” They climb up one after the other, bickering all the way.
Richie holds his hand out for Eddie at the top to pull him up, into the light of the fading sun just now beginning to dip down toward the horizon. And if their hands linger for a second longer than is necessary, neither of them mention it.