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Eddie definitely has a type. He doesn’t actually date very much - school usually keeps him on a pretty tight leash and it’s hard, sometimes, to find the time. When he does, though - when he can carve a second out of his very tight schedule to go on an actual date - he has a type.
Tall, for one. He doesn’t know why it’s a thing for him, but it is. Broad, too. Tanned, long hair, straight teeth, nice smile. Eddie isn’t much for the gym, personally; they’re fucking cesspools, and it’s disgusting, but he likes to work out when he can, so that’s something else. Somebody he can work out with, somebody that, at the very least, would tag along for his runs through the city. Chris Hemsworth, in the very first Thor, is probably his dream man.
Richie, from across the hall, is almost none of those things. He’s tall, at least, and he definitely has more than a few inches on Eddie, but he’s tall in a weird, gangly way. He’s skinny, lanky, like a newborn deer, and he’s about as coordinated. He’s consistently pale, even now that it’s finally spring and the sun’s starting to make an appearance more days than not. His hair’s always up, without fail, pulled into a messy knot at the crown of his head, and his smile is too wide and always a bit crooked. Eddie knows he’d never go for a run with him, either — they’d taken the stairs together once, when the elevator had been down for maintenance, and Richie had been winded after the first floor. He isn’t at all Eddie’s usually type.
So it’s weird, really, that Eddie is so into him.
He doesn’t know what it is about him. It isn’t even that Richie’s exceptionally nice, or anything. He has his moments, soft and sincere, but they’re far and few in between. Normally, he’s crass and he’s loud and he doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up. He makes a lot of jokes at Eddie’s expense, and he always manages to take them just a bit too far. Eddie will be the first to admit he’s a bit of a hothead - sometimes his patience wears a bit thin and sometimes his patience with Richie wears even thinner and sometimes, because of it, they don’t get along. They bicker and they argue and they overtalk each other and still, Eddie’s smitten. It’s a little inconvenient, if anything.
He can’t say that Richie doesn’t have his moments, though. For the most part he’s crass and crude and terrible at reading a room, but sometimes he’s so thoughtful it catches Eddie off guard. He works at a second hand record store downtown, staying true to his hipster roots, and he has a habit of bringing Eddie home records that make Richie think of him. Sometimes it’s music that he knows Eddie likes, sometimes it’s music that he thinks Eddie will like, and Eddie has a proper collection of vinyl now, because of him. When Richie found out he didn’t actually have a record player and they were all collecting dust, he brought him one. He claimed it wasn’t a big deal, that they’d had it in the back room at the shop and that it hadn’t been working, but before he’d brought it to Eddie, he’d fixed it for him so he could actually use it. It’s in his living room now, next to his couch, and sometimes, when Eddie looks at it, it makes him feel warm all over in a way he can’t quite explain.
So maybe that’s what it is about Richie. Or maybe it is his smile, toothy and too wide for his face but always bright enough to rival the sun. Maybe it’s his horrid little tattoos, stick and pokes that Eddie’s pretty sure he does himself but that are so distinctly Richie that Eddie can’t help but be a little charmed by them. Maybe it’s the sound of his laugh, too loud, or maybe it’s the constellation of freckles over his nose. Richie isn’t even slightly Eddie’s usual type, but Richie laughs louder than anybody Eddie’s ever met and he only downloaded Spotify so he could make and send Eddie playlists - before that, he’d listen to music on vinyl and vinyl exclusively.
Eddie supposes it doesn’t really matter what it is about him. The damage is done. Eddie’s got a thing for Richie’s weird, lanky self. He’s got it bad, too, so much it’s embarrassing. So much he’d walked downtown after his class had let out early and the first place he’d gone was Richie’s record store.
The bell over the door chimes when he pushes it open. One of the other guys that works there, Mike, looks up at the sound of it, and his face splits into a grin that’s a little too knowing for Eddie’s taste. “Smoke break,” he explains, in lieu of an actual greeting, because, in fairness, he does know exactly why Eddie’s there. It’s the same reason he’s always there.
He smiles sheepishly but he doesn’t deny it. “Out back?”
“He is,” Mike agrees, and Eddie smiles gratefully, elbowing him as he walks past him.
“Thanks, dude,” he says. He walks through the store, making a beeline through banks of records and pushing out the backdoor that’s technically only for employee use but that everybody kind of lets Eddie use, anyway.
Richie’s leaning against the wall just next to the door, cigarette in one hand, phone in the other. He’s wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, emblazoned with a picture of the cast of Mamma Mia!, and his jeans are ripped to shreds. He looks up when the door swings open, and the way his face lights up makes Eddie feel a little lightheaded. “Eds!” He exclaims. He holds up his phone. “I was just texting you, my love. Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”
“My lecture let out early,” he explains, and Richie nods, lifting his cigarette to take a slow drag.
“And you missed me?” He asks when he exhales. “And you needed a little lovin’? You came at a good time,” he tells him, lifting himself from the wall to wrap his arms around Eddie tightly, resting his chin on the top of head. “I’ve been jonesing for some love, myself.”
“Get off of me,” Eddie says, muffled, into Richie’s chest. “I don’t need love from a fucking discount Timothée Chalamet.”
Richie pulls away to look at him, affronted. “I’m enough Timothée Chalamet for your mom.”
“You’ve literally never met my mother.”
“That’s what you think.”
“Do you even know her name?”
Richie lifts an eyebrow at him as he takes another drag. “Careful. Or I’ll make you my stepson.”
“You’re fucking irritating,” Eddie tells him.
“I’m serious,” Richie muses. He flicks the ash from the end of his cigarette. “It could work. You could call me daddy.”
It isn’t, for the life of him, what he expected Richie to say. He hopes his flush isn’t too noticeable. “Beep beep, Richie.”
“What?” Richie protests. “That was funny. Situational humour at its finest.”
“You’ve never been funny,” Eddie says. “Why would you start now?”
Richie laughs, too loud and too bright. “You really know how to sweet talk a guy,” he says. “You get that from your mom, y’know.”
“Fuck you,” Eddie says plainly, and Richie laughs again.
He drops the butt of his cigarette, rubbing it out with the toe of his boot. “C’mon,” he says, pulling open the backdoor again. “I’m actually really glad you’re here. I have a present for you.” He holds the door open for Eddie, herding him into the backroom after following him inside. “I was really hoping we’d get some time in public after I gave it to you,” he admits.
Eddie narrows his eyes, immediately suspicious. Richie’s given him a lot of gifts in the time he’s known him, but for the most part they’re records, and for the most part Richie gives them to him in the safety of his apartment, when there’s nobody else around. Those are some of Eddie’s favourite moments, actually - when it’s just the two of them, on the floor of Eddie’s living room, and Richie smiles at him almost sheepishly and tells him why the newest record made Richie think of him. Music’s a big thing for Richie, it really means a lot to him, and every time he hands Eddie a record that’s a little frayed at the edges and smiles at him, sheepish, it makes Eddie feel nearly giddy.
Following Richie into the backroom, he’s just suspicious. He keeps his eyes narrowed at his back as he asks, “why? What is it?”
Richie flashes him a grin over his shoulder. “Close your eyes.”
“No,” Eddie says immediately. “Absolutely not.”
“Fuck you,” Richie says. “Close your eyes. Don’t ruin your surprise.”
“I hate surprises,” Eddie says. It isn’t true.
Richie knows this, too. “That is absolutely not true,” he reminds him. “Close your fucking eyes, Eds. I promise you’ll love it.”
“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says, but he still shuts his eyes.
“Thank you,” Richie says, and Eddie nearly jumps when he feels a hand on his cheek, pinching him gently. “Was that so hard?”
Eddie pushes his hand away. “You give me hives.”
“You’re a fucking liar, your complexion is clearly flawless,” Richie says. As he flushes, Eddie can feel Richie step back, then he can hear him knock into a chair on his way across the room, and the coffee table on the way back. “Okay,” he announces. “You can open your eyes.”
Eddie cracks his eyes open slowly. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but the t-shirt that Richie’s holding out to him catches him totally off guard. It’s the same shirt he’s wearing, the horrible Mamma Mia! one, but it’s about thirty sizes bigger.
“Surprise!” Richie exclaims.
Eddie laughs loudly. “What the fuck, Richie?”
Richie grins proudly. “I had to pick up a shirt on the way to work today,” he says, and Eddie lifts his eyebrows immediately. “Somebody threw paint on me on the subway,” he explains. “They thought I was somebody else. It’s whatever. But I needed a new shirt, right? I found a ton of these bad boys at that thrift store down the street, so I grabbed us both one. I wasn’t sure which size you are so I went with three extra large. That should work, right?”
The shirt is clearly enormous. Eddie laughs again. “Are you sure you didn’t have somebody else in mind?”
“Impossible,” Richie says. “You’re all I think of, sweets.”
Eddie tries to will himself not to blush again, reaching out with one hand to touch the horrible shirt. It’s surprisingly soft, actually. “I hate it,” he says.
“I knew you would,” Richie grins. “But you’re gonna put it on anyway, right? For me?”
Eddie would like to be able to say no, but Richie’s right. That’s exactly what he’s gonna do. He takes the shirt from him. “If you even try to post this on Instagram, I’ll strangle you to death.”
“You can’t reach high enough to strangle me,” Richie says, and winks. “Which is a shame, ‘cause I’m into that.”
“Fuck off,” Eddie says.
Richie grins again. “And you’re fucked if you don’t think I’m posting this on Instagram. I’m posting this everywhere. I’m posting this on the stores Instagram.”
Eddie pulls the shirt on. It’s enormous on him, hanging most of the way down his thighs. “Oh, God,” he groans, as Richie erupts into laughter. “It’s like you’re asking me to hate you.”
Richie laughs again, shoulders shaking with as he steps into Eddie’s personal space. “C’mere,” he says, fingers brushing Eddie’s arm as he starts to roll up his sleeves. “Let me help.”
It could almost be an intimate moment, if Richie hadn’t laughed through the whole thing. He’s still grinning when he steps back to look him over, but as he looks at him it takes on a softer edge, almost fond. “You pull it off.”
“Shut up,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes, even as warmth seeps into his chest. “It’s clearly still horrible.”
“You couldn’t look horrible if you tried, my love,” Richie tells him, but he doesn’t give Eddie any time to properly process that before he’s grabbing him around the wrist. “C’mon. We gotta show Mike. He’s gonna fucking hate us.”
Eddie feels sort of warm all over, from the matching shirts and Richie’s touch and the way he’s looking at him, like he’s delighted by how genuinely awful they look. His hand is warm where it’s wrapped all the way around Eddie’s wrist, and Eddie almost can’t help it when he pulls free to grab Richie’s hand, instead. “You’re not on the floor ‘cause you’re hiding in the backroom with me,” he says. “Mike already hates us.”
“He’s gonna hate us even more,” he corrects, and he doesn’t let go of his hand as they walk back out into the shop. It’s still empty, except for Mike, who looks up when they walk back in. Immediately, his eyes roll back in his head. “What the hell?”
“Somebody needed to see our shirts,” Richie explains. “Aren’t we fucking adorable?”
“I can’t believe you let him talk you into this,” Mike says to Eddie, who lifts his shoulders.
“It was against my better judgement,” he admits.
“Shut the fuck up,” Richie says. He fishes his phone from his back pocket with his free hand, holding it out to Mike. “Just take our picture, dick.”
“What’s the magic word?” Mike asks.
“Go fuck yourself,” Richie says.
Mike snorts but takes the phone from him, anyway.
Richie takes his hand from Eddie’s, and Eddie only has a second to lament how cold he feels without Richie’s touch when Richie slings an arm around his shoulders, instead. “How do we look?”
“Like a couple of idiots,” Mike says honestly, holding up his phone.
Richie grins at the camera as Eddie pouts, trying to look as put out as he possibly can. Mike makes another amused sound as he takes the picture, but when he hands his phone back to Richie, Eddie leans over to peer at it and it actually doesn’t look half bad. The shirts, though, are horrendous. Eddie’s is so big on him it’s almost comical.
Richie, however, grins at the picture like it’s his favourite thing. “We look damn good in these shirts.”
“We look like fucking idiots,” Eddie says. “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I look like I never learned to dress myself properly.”
“Okay,” Richie admits, “so I may have taken a little liberty with the size,” and Eddie punches him in the arm. Richie only laughs, the bastard. “I think it looks good.”
“It clearly doesn’t look good,” he protests. He looks down at himself, in real time, and snorts. “I look like I let the dude that sleeps in the lot next to our building dress me. I look like the kind of guy you’d avoid sitting next to on the subway.”
“I like it,” Richie says.
“You absolutely do not,” Eddie tells him. “I look like I shrunk. I look like a toddler.”
Richie laughs again, tugging at Eddie’s sleeve with one hand. “It looks good on you.”
“It doesn’t,” he corrects. “It looks like I’ve never seen another person before. It looks like this is the first time I’ve ever been let outside. I look -“
Then Richie’s kissing him.
All things considered, it’s a pretty effective way to cut him off. One second, he’s talking, kind of rambling through his train of thought, and then Richie’s mouth is on his, his hand on Eddie’s waist through the fabric of his massive shirt. His skin is rough with stubble but his lips are surprisingly soft. Eddie makes a surprised sort of noise into his mouth, he can’t help it, too stunned to do much else, and then - too soon - Richie’s pulling away, eyes blown wide behind his thick glasses.
“Uh,” he says.
“Richie,” Eddie says, and even to himself, his voice sounds far away.
He looks up at Richie, his heart beating an unbelievable pace against his rib cage, and Richie stares down at him, looking like the wind’s been knocked out of him. It’s Mike who finally says, “this feels like a private moment. I’ll be over there if you need me.”
“Thanks, Mike,” Eddie says weakly.
Richie still doesn’t say anything. He’s uncharacteristically silent for three, almost four whole moments, before he exhales a breath that sounds painful and says, “uh, I wasn’t - I didn’t mean to - I mean, I meant to, obviously, but I was - it wasn’t -“
This time, it’s Eddie that cuts him off. He cradles the back of Richie’s head with one hand, pulling him down to shut him up and slot their lips together. Richie tenses up under his hands, and Eddie has just about a second to feel a pang that feels a lot like regret, a bit like shame, a bit like he read the moment totally and wrong and maybe Richie really didn’t mean to kiss him, maybe he genuinely just didn’t know else to shut him up -
Then Richie’s hands find his waist again, just beneath his rib cage, and pull him close against his chest. He kisses a lot like Eddie thought he would - messy and enthusiastic. His lips move against Eddie’s as one of his hands finds his back, keeping him close, holding him there.
Eddie grips Richie’s waist with his other hand, and he feels sort of dizzy and sort of lightheaded but it’s in the best way he could imagine. He clings to Richie and kisses him until the bell over the door chimes, effectively bringing him back to the real world and the small, second hand record store.
They break apart quickly, but Richie doesn’t let him get too far away, keeping an arm around Eddie as he greets the girl that walks in with a smile, probably aiming for casual. Instead, he looks guilty and a little out of breath.
Eddie laughs. He can’t help it. He feels, a bit inexplicably, like a weight has been lifted off of his shoulders, but he knows it’s because he’s been waiting to do that for what might as well have been an eternity. “I should probably let you get back to work, right?”
“No,” Richie says immediately.
“Yes,” Mike calls from across the shop.
Richie groans. “Fuck off, Mike.”
Eddie laughs again, pulling Richie down to kiss him once, lightly. “I should go before Mike puts my picture up on the banned wall.”
“Yeah,” Richie agrees, but he kisses him again, anyway. “He’s pretty ban happy, that guy.” Eddie laughs, smiling against his mouth when Richie kisses him again. “I’ll see you after work, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. “You know where to find me.”
He kisses Richie again, just once, for good measure, before he turns to leave. He gets maybe a foot towards the door when Richie stops him with a hand on his wrist. “Eds?”
Eddie looks back at him. “Don’t call me that.”
Richie grins widely. “Eds,” he repeats, “will you have dinner with me?”
Eddie cracks a grin, despite himself. “We’re already having dinner together, dumbass.” It’s kind of part of their routine - if they’re both home at dinner time, they have dinner together. If they’re not - if Richie works a closing shift or if Eddie is drowning in coursework then sometimes, they’ll have dinner after midnight, when they’re both half asleep but finally free to spend some time together. Maybe that’s something else that Eddie sees in him.
“I’m just making sure it’s like, in a romantic way,” he says. “We can make out a little. Maybe fuck in these shirts. Maybe -“
“Why,” Eddie interrupts, “would we fuck in these shirts?”
Richie shrugs. “I really do like how it looks on you. It’s kind of doing it for me.”
Eddie pulls his hand away, flushing pink. “I’m leaving,” he announces. “Bye, Mike!”
“Bye, Eddie,” Mike calls.
“Bye, baby,” Richie calls after him, and Eddie turns as he pushes out the door to flip him off.
Richie blows him a kiss. His grin is blinding.
Admittedly, Eddie does keep the shirt. He wears it home, he gets a few long looks on the subway, he keeps it on even after he’s alone in his apartment. He still has it on when Richie lets himself in later than night, but he draws the line at leaving it on when they fuck. They do fuck, but he takes the shirt off, and it’s still pretty phenomenal. It’s phenomenal enough, actually, that Eddie thinks that maybe Richie is a little more his type than he’d been willing to admit before. He’s happy he was wrong.