Work Text:
Eddie settles down at the table Richie already nabbed them at the aptly named Unicorn and Narwhal. The place absolutely drips with whimsy, and the riot of candy colored painted colors is borderline eye watering. He catches his bag of shopping under the table between his feet, on guard for just about anything. A floor show wouldn’t be out of place. Given the look of the crowd, he half expects a drag queen to come swinging down on a chandelier. Eddie waves a hand at the visual mayhem. “Get a load of this place, huh?”
Richie points behind Eddie to the arcade, from which the mechanical noise of pinball machines can only just be heard over the music playing in the bar. “You haven’t even seen the claw machine yet,” he says, waggling an eyebrow.
Oh, score. It’s a good thing Eddie got back some cash earlier, he’s never met a claw machine he couldn’t beat and he’s not gonna start now. “I’ll show it who the fuckin’ boss is,” he promises.
Richie stands up and leans over the table made from a shellacked game of Chutes and Ladders. “Win me something pretty, baby,” Richie purrs at him, patting his cheek. “I’ll go get us liquored up.”
Dazed, Eddie watches Richie turn on the spot and make his way over to the bar to put in an order. His hand flits to his face where Richie had touched him for just a moment before he gets a hold of himself. He’s going to have to nut up and actually flirt back one of these days. Considering the fact that this is somehow the first time he’s gone drinking one-on-one with Richie after everything- it might be this day.
It’s always been like this. Richie fawning over him with pet names and tickles and cute cute cute! alongside all the typical boyish horseplay. Eddie soaking it up like a cactus, prickling a bit on the outside, but craving the spotlight, too. For the longest time Eddie had chalked it up to Richie being the only Loser influenced by a sister, who also used affection as a means of harassment. Back then, he’d been too wrapped up in his own constant need to get Richie’s attention to notice if this was special treatment or not- and then they’d left Derry and he’d forgotten entirely how it used to make him feel, and now? Now if it is- if it’s been the same for Richie as it was for Eddie this whole time? Now he’s finally free to do something about it.
“First date?”
“Wha?” Eddie blinks and looks around to the next table, where a woman with pink hair is sipping a drink with an orange slice in it.
She grins. “He looked pretty nervous before you got here, so I figured...”
“Oh! It’s not- well. It might be. I’m not really sure.” Eddie swears under his breath. “It’s not like he asked me out, it just sort of mutually happened? We were already in town at another thing, and we saw a poster for the bar and when you see a place has a drink called ‘Unicorn Jizz’ on the menu you don’t not go.”
“True dat,” said the pink haired woman, raising her glass. “Where’re you from?”
Eddie points at himself. “New York. He’s from LA.”
A look of realization dawns on the woman’s face. “Long distance. Fuck.”
“That’s nothing compared to the rest of it. We grew up together, and then-” Eddie shakes his head, thinking better of it. There is no way he is explaining the whole memory loss/killer clown/forty years in the closet/near death clusterfuck to a stranger, however sympathetic. “We lost touch. But we’re spending the holiday together now. Going to a friend’s wedding. Seemed like a good time to... figure it out.”
The woman grimaces. “Ah! No pressure!”
Richie comes back with two tall drinks and a table number sign stuck out at a precarious angle from between his long fingers. He puts all of these down on the table and slides one of the concoctions to Eddie. It’s layered red, white, and blue with a cherry that he immediately plucks out and tosses into Richie’s drink.
“Danke,” says Richie, holding out his glass to clink. When he takes a swig he watches Eddie over the rim. “If I’d have known you would let me take your cherry, I woulda started buying you cocktails a hell of a lot sooner.”
Now that’s just revisionist history. Eddie holds up his hand in objection. “Rich, if we got our mitts on anything harder than your mom’s wine coolers you’d of spewed all over me and I wouldn’t have spoken to you for decades.”
“Hey! Either way we’re meeting again as old, miserable assholes with more fucking issues than Boys’ Life magazine.”
“Cheers to that.”
After their order of appetizers is delivered and promptly demolished, they go to scope out the games. Eddie is drawn immediately to the glowing treasure chest that is the claw machine. It’s one of those doublewide cases with a joystick as opposed to a D-pad, the prize pit’s not too tightly packed, and the timer allows for thirty seconds... not bad. He inspects the stuffed animals closest to the chute (always the best bet) and sure enough, there’s a good sized narwhal sticking out amongst several sibling whales and unicorns, totally ripe for the picking.
Richie stands by while Eddie checks out the case from the side so he can triangulate the depth. “Care to make it more interesting?” he asks.
“If I can get it on the first dollar, next rounds on you,” says Eddie. “But I get to choose the drink this time.”
“-and if you miss, I’m picking the absolute nastiest brew they sling here, Eds.”
They high five on it and Eddie takes out a dollar, folds it lengthwise and holds it out to Richie. He smirks at Eddie.
“Shit, I forgot about that,” he says, leaning in and then blowing on it.
It’s a tradition they’ve had forever. They saw it in some classic movie a thousand years ago- one of those black and white gangster ones with dice playing gamblers, and adopted it for the arcade. It used to make Eddie feel like one of those suave fedora guys, back when he thought that the coolest thing he could ever do was grow up and go to New York. Having already been there/done that, now it makes him feel like he’s a kid in a Ninja Turtle shirt again, splitting his lunchmoney with Richie for a thrill.
Eddie puts his money in the game and exhales before he puts his hands on the controls. In a moment, the machine starts tootling its little countdown song. He moves the claw all the way to the back even though that’s not where he’s aiming, just to get a feel for how much jerkiness he’s working with.
“They really went balls to the wall on theme here. All unicorns and narwhals, all the time. Which one are you going for?” Richie asks, close by his elbow.
Eddie narrows his eyes and twitches the joystick toward him, bit by bit. “Blue guy in the front.”
Richie identifies the narwhal he’s talking about. “Looks good.”
It’s one of the only stuffed animals that doesn’t have it’s pokey little horn sticking straight up from the prize pit, making the length of its body easier to grapple. Eddie drops the claw and lets go of his held breath. “C’mon...”
The claw closes perfectly around the body of the narwhal, jiggles once-
Richie leans closer like he’s got a private question, which is ridiculous because Richie missed the day of kindergarten where they taught manners. “Anyone else kinda horny?”
The claw starts to pull up, swinging the narwhal towards the chute and-
“Most people try and keep their My Little Pony fetish under wraps, dude.”
The claw drops the narwhal perfectly. Eddie knocks open the flap at the bottom of the machine and presents it to Richie with a showy bow. Richie gasps like he’s receiving a bouquet and takes it.
“He’s beautiful. Is this the unconditional love people feel when they have their first child? I’m naming him Eddie Jr.,” Richie declares. “Look, he has your beady little eyes.”
Eddie’s heart squeezes in his chest, at least until Richie swords him in the face with the narwhal’s stuffed horn. “Don’t think I won’t kick your fucking ass in front of the baby, Tozier.” He wrinkles his nose and blocks his face with one hand.
Richie stops and frowns at the narwhal, held at their eye level. “Uh oh, you hear that Eddie Jr.? Sounds like Daddy needs another drink.”
That was the wager, after all. Eddie tries to smile at Richie in a way that says I win! instead of I wish...
“I want the Montezuma." Eddie is going to require tequila tonight. "And a burger. You go order and I’ll break a twenty for pinball.”
“Yes sir!” Richie salutes him with the whale and takes off.
All right Kaspbrak, Eddie thinks. Settle down. He was just supposed to try and flirt back with Richie, not go all in on an imaginary family. He throws a mental bucket of cold water on whatever demented little corner of his brain lost its shit at being called ‘Daddy’ and goes to find the change machine.
As he feeds in his money, Eddie looks up over the machine to the bar, where Richie is standing with his prize tucked up in one arm like a football, twiddling another table number sign. Next to him, a guy who is somehow pulling off unironic suspenders turns to Richie, says something, and reaches out to touch Eddie Jr.’s horn.
Eddie hears sirens that aren’t just someone hitting the jackpot at Skee-Ball. Okay. All right, buddy. You don’t just fondle the horn of another guy’s narwhal that his secretly-in-love-with-him best friend just won for him. That’s Eddie’s horn to fondle, fuck you very much.
As fast as the coins fall into the well of the machine, Eddie scoops them out, but he doesn’t stop staring.
He (a risk analyst, for fuck’s sake) should have seen this coming when he saw the rainbow flag outside the bar. He should've picked Richie up on any one of the dozen suggestive quips he’s made in the past hour alone.
Richie’s eyebrows bounce with a joke and Mr. Suspenders laughs and signals the bartender, two fingers up.
“Oh, puh-leez! You cannot find that jackass attractive. He hasn’t changed his fucking clothes in like, two days!” Eddie mutters. “And that’s my sweatshirt he’s wearing!”
After shoving coins into all four of his pants pockets, Eddie picks up his stuff and heads over toward an empty hightop that will be in Richie’s line of sight from the bar. Remember me, Richie? It's still my turn!
He can’t keep dragging his feet like this. Maybe not here at the bar, but he’s got to talk to Richie. If he doesn’t, soon, someone else is bound to snatch Richie up. He’s available. And he’s tall. And he’s got those cute crinkly eyes ‘cause he smiles with his whole stupid face when he tells one of his terrible jokes, and hair so ordinary yet so messy, Eddie just wants to sink his hands into it, all the fucking time, if only to make it behave. To Eddie, Richie might be an intimidating, be-all-end-all chance at lifelong happiness so volatile that Eddie feels like he ought to wear a hazmat suit, but to anyone else he’s a cool, single, relatively famous dude who’s worth a shot. He envies how Mr. Suspenders can just! Buy this guy a drink! Like it’s nothing! Like it’s not the hardest, bravest thing he’s ever been called upon to do and yes, that’s including spearing a twenty foot tall demon spiderclown.
Later, he decides. When they get back to the hotel. He’ll... he’ll ask.
