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Chapter Text

“We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake in this room loving him in silence.”

             - Madeline Millar, The Song of Achilles

The first thing Richie Tozier thinks to himself when he wakes up at half past eight on a mundane Tuesday morning in October is hhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHH . His phone is vibrating under his pillow, By the fucking Seaside blaring it’s jovial, homicide-inducing melody as his fingers fumble to navigate the snooze button in the near-dark of the dorm. He can’t open his eyes, not really, because that’s committing to being awake. He curls in on himself and bunches his fists, before deciding, ultimately, he quite enjoys this life. Isn’t in the mood for Beverly Marsh to murder him.

He sits up and slides his fingerprint smudged glasses onto his face haphazardly, about to throw himself gracelessly out of bed, when he glances to his right. There’s gold streaming through the blinds that weren’t completely closed the previous night, and tiny dust particles dance around a mop of soft brown hair peeking out from behind a plaid duvet. Eddie makes a little sleep-sound, a snuffle if you will, and Richie’s heart hammers so hard in his chest he worries it’ll just stop altogether. Freeze in his ribcage. Death by snuffling Eddie Kaspbrak. ( Not a bad way to go , Richie thinks). One of his arms is hanging out over the mattress in Richie’s direction, all tan and small, a gold ring glinting on his thumb. Richie itches to touch it, trace the veins and knuckles; brush the soft skin and feel the warmth of flesh and blood and Eddie underneath his fingertips. And then he thinks to himself, dude, that’s so fucking gay , scoffs, and gets out of bed.

It’s the only day this week that Eddie gets a lie in, and for all his asshole qualities, Richie would never, ever disrupt Eddie Kaspbrak’s Once A Week Lie In for the world. Not necessarily because he cares about Eddie and wants him to be eternally happy, definitely not that, but because Eddie would just remove his kneecaps or something for waking him. So, he tiptoes around the dorm, picking up random articles of clothing to put on his under-caffeinated body (which has started to shake, it’s so under-caffeinated), not quite knowing which clothes belong to whom. He thinks he’s wearing Eddie’s socks from yesterday that he’s kicked off in the night, but he’s not entirely sure. Doesn’t really matter, anyway. They don’t smell (too badly). He’s brushing his teeth in the bathroom as quietly as humanly possible, which is an incredibly difficult task for Richie, when there’s an abrupt knock on the door.

“Phwo’s ‘at?” asks Eddie, face pressed into his pillow.

“Fuck,” Richie replies, spitting toothpaste everywhere. He swings the door open to 5 foot three inches of Beverly Marsh, in all her furious glory. “You woke the baby.”

Beverly peers over Richie’s shoulder and frowns. “Sorry, Eddie.” Eddie mumbles something incomprehensible and promptly begins to sleep-snuffle again. Shut the fuck up, heart, Richie thinks.

“If it isn’t the love of my life, fire in my loins.” Richie grins at her, mouth foaming.

She wipes some toothpaste from her face with a grimace. “That isn’t the quote. Why aren’t you ready? Class started three minutes ago.”

“And you care, why?”

“Please spit out your toothpaste.”

He does, and she comes and sits on Richie’s bed. “Why’s Eddie asleep?” Beverly doesn’t usually come to get him from the dorm, since he’s not usually late.

“Only day he doesn’t have a morning class,” Richie says. “Great, to be honest, ‘cause it means when he’s at his night class I get to give Mrs K a good fucking-”

“Bmph,” says Eddie from the pillow.

“He said ‘beep’,” Beverly translates. Richie gives her a deadpan look, as if to say, you think I don’t know what a beep sounds like muffled under a pillow from a half-asleep Eddie on a Tuesday morning?

“We going?”

“It’s too late now, is it now?”

Richie thinks. “I mean, it was only improv class.”

Eddie shifts. “Don’ mmph me gemph upf.”

“No one’s making you get up,” Richie tells him.

“MMPH.” He lifts his head, cheek dented with the impressions of his pillow creases, and scrunches his face up. “Go to fucking class or so God help me I will eat your fucking kneecaps.” There’s the kneecap thing. “Yours too, Bev.”

“Thanks, Eddie.” She smiles at him sweetly, then grabs Richie’s arm and starts to drag him out of the room.

Richie grabs his near-empty backpack as he’s being hauled, and says, “Have a good sleep Eds, MWAH!”

“Don’t call me that!” Eddie yells as Beverly slams the door behind them.

She sighs. “Fuck.”

“We don’t have to go,” Richie suggests. “We could bother Stan?”

Beverly shakes her head and starts walking down the hall. “Stan’s bothering Mike today. Skipping class ‘cause he’s a bitch.”

Stanley Uris, the most pragmatic nineteen-year-old Richie has ever met, Richie’s best friend, a dance major and the best damn ballerina Richie’s ever seen (although he hasn’t seen many, if he’s being honest), does not skip class. “Is he okay? The fuck is he missing class for?”

Beverly wrinkles her nose. “Mike has a cold or something. God, it’s so gay and romantic. I hate them so much . Imagine being in love .” She gags.

Richie’s used to Beverly being forlorn about being single, although it always confuses him. Bill Denbrough and Ben Hanscom, two of Eddie’s writing major friends, unquestionably have the hots for her. Ben wrote her a fucking poem in high school, January fire or something, all poetic and shit, as poetry usually is. And Bill tried to start a Snapchat streak with her after they met at a party last year, and keeps sending her blank screens with ‘hey’ in the little text bar, which is totally indicative that he’s attracted to her. At least that’s what Eddie told him, since he doesn’t actually use Snapchat.

“What about-”

“No.” See? She’s impossible .

“At least Ben, Bev, baby,” he pleads, because he’s met Ben and he’s sweet. He really is. Bill is cool, but Bev’s definitely way out of his league. 

“Richie,” she says softly, but there’s a quiet fury in her eyes. They’re in the carpark, now, walking toward the campus. “I’m not gonna date Hanscom.” If looks could kill.

Richie holds up his hands defensively. “Fine! Fine. I’m just saying,” he speeds up so he can walk backwards and look at her, “don’t complain about not getting dick if you aren’t actively gonna seize the dick.”

She laughs, and it’s probably one of the brightest sounds in the world, apart from maybe Eddie’s sleep-snuffles or the noise he makes when he wants to laugh but it’s quiet and he can’t, or his general, like, voice. Richie just thinks Eddie has a nice voice, okay? Not weird.

“Believe me,” Beverly mutters. “I don’t wanna seize the dick.”

Richie grins. “Just hasn’t been the same since you got a piece of me, has it?” Beverly tries to kick him, but he darts out of the way and heads toward the separate drama block of the uni; a sprawling, white building with one floor accommodating five studios and a piss-ass theatre, if Richie’s being honest.

It’s true, though; Beverly and Richie had dated in high school for two whole years. Never did anything further than kiss, and Richie wasn’t that keen, if he’s being honest. Felt like kissing his sister or mom or something equally weird. Beverly had actually been the one to break it off, and she’d even called him a ‘crap boyfriend’. It was pretty cool. Very indie coming-of-age film, when he thinks about it. Lots of man-angst he could’ve taken from that whole ordeal (if he had have cared all that much, that is). He’d said that to her after she had called him a crap boyfriend; “I feel like the protagonist of an A24 film or something”, and Beverly had guffawed and slapped his arm and said, “I hate you”, but there was no malice. They were best friends, after all, and they always would be, breakup or no breakup.

Beverly runs to catch up with Richie’s preposterously long legs. “No way, trashmouth. Dumping you was the best thing I ever did.” She’s smiling smugly, and Richie’s looking at her with fondness when he sees something that catches his eye behind her in the hallway. “What? What are you looking at?” She whips around, and Richie has to push her out of the way so he can see the stapled poster.

SCHOOL PLAY AUDITION SIGN UP SHEET

PLEASE SELECT IF YOU WOULD PREFER AUDITIONING FOR A MAIN, A SUPPORT OR AN EXTRA

STAGE MANAGEMENT AND STAGE HANDS HAVE ALREADY BEEN SELECTED

SEE DIRECTORS BILL DENBROUGH AND EDDIE KASPBRAK FOR FURTHER DETAILS

Richie traces his finger over Eddie’s name. There’s a lump in his throat. “He didn’t tell me.”

“What?” Beverly sounds breathless when she says it, just as offended as he is.

“I knew he wrote it. Co-wrote it, whatever. But he’s directing?” Then, a smile spreads over his face, slowly but surely. He turns to Beverly. “I need to get the lead role.”

Beverly cocks an eyebrow. “Okay?”

“Yep. Richie Tozier,” he gestures a sign with his hands, “name in lights. The main attraction. Eddie Kaspbrak his director.”

She’s tsking, now, which he doesn’t necessarily appreciate, and is about to say something, but Richie’s already holding his phone to his ear. Kneecaps be damned. 

“Mmph.”

“Eds, my man, my bro ,” - tries not to grimace because that was way too far, wasn’t it? - “You’re a director and you didn’t tell your BFF?”

There’s a groan and shuffling from the other end of the line, and Beverly’s face all impatient and unimpressed in front of him, and then, “I’m a who-what?”

“A director! For the play! That you wrote!” A beat. “I’m super proud, BTW. You’re the man , Kaspbrak.”

Eddie moans, very obscenely, and Richie’s face heats up. Beverly’s eyebrows shoot up her forehead and she leans her head into Richie so she can eavesdrop. “Fucking Bill. Fucking, fucking, fucking Bill.”

“You’re fucking Bill right now? Is that what’s happening?” Beverly smacks his arm.

“BILLLLLLLLLLL,” Eddie groans, and there’s a vague noise of someone hitting their head off of a semi-hard surface. Richie pulls the phone away from his ear slowly and stares at it with concern.

“You good, buddy?”

“Fuck no , that fucking prick of a shit put me down as co-director when I specifically asked him not to because I don’t want shit to do with that play after I just slaved all summer fucking writing it, I am so not doing this no fucking way on my fucking life Bill Denbrough can suck my massive dong for all I fucking care .” A breath. Then, softer, “Are you auditioning?”

“For the lead,” Richie tells him happily.

Eddie sighs. “You better fucking get it. Make this whole thing a little more manageable.”

Richie doesn’t hide his confusion. “You’re doing it?”

“Yeah. I mean, I did tell Bill that I didn’t want him to fuck it up, which I know he will, now, since he’s put me down as director. Still removing his kneecaps.”

“What is it with you and kneecaps, Eds? What the-” but Beverly’s taking the phone from his hand.

“Thanks, Eddie. Go back to sleep, babe. Sorry trashmouth woke you. Bye.” She hangs up and starts to drag Richie to studio B, but Richie resists.

“Bev, I need to sign!” He searches his pockets for a pen or pencil, then nabs one out of the front pocket of Beverly’s overalls. He’s about to scrawl his and Beverly’s names when he stops short. There’s only one name that’s signed so far, in untidy capital letters. OLIVER DELANCEY. “Who the fuck is that?”

Beverly shrugs. “Fuck if I know. New guy?”

“If he’s in drama we’d know , though,” Richie says, squinting at the name. Oliver. He doesn’t like it. “I don’t like it.”

“Like what?” Beverly leans her head against the notice board the poster is stapled to and Richie signs their names and slips the pen back into her pocket.

He considers the poster one last time, then says, “We’re skipping again.”

“Fair.” Beverly holds her hand out and Richie takes a cigarette out from the pocket of his Hawaiian shirt and throws it to her. His mind is buzzing, something familiar about the name Oliver that’s sent his thoughts ricocheting.

Eddie. Eddie had mentioned an Oliver just last week. Something about a new kid who had transferred from somewhere not-Derry and was majoring in performing arts. He thinks. The conversation’s blurry in his memory, because they’d had it while Eddie was tucked under Richie’s arm while they waited for the latest Buzzfeed Unsolved episode to upload, and it had proven difficult for his mind to focus on anything else but the tickling sensation of Eddie’s hair on his cheek and his body warm and solid against his side.

He doesn’t think it matters that much. He’s sure Oliver’s decent enough. If Eddie likes him, he has to be.

“You know what the play’s about?” Beverly asks him once they’ve scaled the drainage pipe of the drama block and are sitting back on the cold tiles, feet dangling down below them, the grey sky vast and imposing.

“Fuck no,” Richie replies, wrestling the cigarette from her hand and taking a drag. “Eddie wouldn’t let me know. Top secret.”

“Ah.”

“It’ll be fucking good, though. It’s him.”

Beverly looks over at him, her eyes sad for some reason. “Yeah.”

Richie nods once. “Yeah,” he repeats, and then he says something dumb about fucking Beverly’s aunt and Beverly nudges him and tries to flick the cigarette out of his hand and he scrambles to his feet. 

They chase each other on the mono-pitched roof of the drama block, squealing and shouting, knowing it’s mere minutes until someone comes out and yells at them. Eventually, just before class ends, they collapse together and catch their breath as faint rain starts to dribble from the thick clouds above them. Beverly giggles as Richie tickles under her chin that’s dropped into his lap, and she’s talking to him, something about getting brunch or shit, but he’s not listening. He’s preoccupied with thinking about seeing Eddie’s bed-head and sleepy eyes and soft bare collarbones when he gets back to the dorm. But there’s this voice in the back of his head, growing in volume steadily, until it’s screeching gay gay gay , and he snaps out of it. 

-

A few days later, Richie is sprawled on Eddie’s bed, head dangling upside down as Eddie types brutally on his Macbook. Richie’s never known poetry to be so intense . “What’s the theme?” he asks, poking Eddie’s sweater-clad arm. His blood hightails it to his head, and he’s instantly a little light-headed.

Eddie snaps his eyes from the pixelated screen for all of two milliseconds before he’s punching the keys again, scowl on his face. “Fuck you is the theme.”

Richie sighs and propels himself upright, swivelling on the bed so he can lean forward and read the screen. Childhood Memories . Oooooh.

“Oooooh.” Eddie doesn’t stop screaming on the page. “Sonia Kaspbrak is getting wrecked .”

“Hell yes she fucking is.” There’s a ghost of a smile, there, which makes Richie feel at least a little bit accomplished. He wants to make Eddie less tense. Wonders if he’d allow him to massage his shoulders as he types; run his fingers through his hair, maybe. Wonders if Eddie would become pliant in Richie’s hands. Wonders, wonders, wonders-

“I’m done.”

Richie smiles. “Good. C’mon.” He gestures to Eddie’s bed, and he flops down face first beside Richie. He decides quickly that he doesn’t really want to wonder anymore. “Massage?”

“Okay.” Eddie’s voice is muffled and small, and he keeps talking, something about auditions and scripts. Richie isn’t listening, because Eddie’s sweater’s rode up a little and there’s a strip of tanned skin on display. From the awkward way he’s lying, Richie can see how his hip bones dip into his plaid pajama pants, and he aches and aches and aches. And then he’s being kicked in the head.

“The fuck was that for!”
“Massage me before I kill you with my bare hands,” Eddie says sweetly, face turned so he can be heard.

Richie starts to knead Eddie’s back, and it’s fine, it really is, because this is a totally normal bro thing to do for your best bro. It is . Just because Richie thinks things about Eddie sometimes doesn’t fucking mean anything, because he can’t control his thoughts! They aren’t reflective of what he actually wants, right? He doesn’t actually care about Eddie’s tanned skin or Eddie’s little sleep-sounds, or the fact that he feels himself twitch when Eddie expels a little groan and says, huskily and directly into his mattress, “Right there, Rich.” So what if his hands are a little clammy after that? Doesn’t mean shit. Doesn’t mean fuck .

“The...play.” Eddie’s groaning again, and Richie crosses his legs for entirely unrelated purposes.

“Wh-what about it?” 

“Your audition is next week, right?”

“Yeah, I think. With Bev. Why?” Richie can tell his voice is unusually high, but if Eddie notices, he doesn’t say shit.

“Just thinking. I’m, um. Ugh.” A pause. “I’m gonna be judging. Or whatever you call it.”

Richie stops kneading. “You are?”

“Yeah. Why’d you stop?” He pouts. Richie commences kneading.

“Shit, man. You better favouritise me.”

“Of course I’m gonna favouritise you, I’ve been favoritising you since I was five years old.” 

“Oh yeah?” Richie smirks. 

“Do you wanna read it?” Eddie says against his duvet.

“The play? ‘Course I fucking do. You’ll let me?”

Eddie slips from under Richie’s hands and hikes himself off of the bed to fumble in his desk drawer. He pulls out a manuscript, coffee-stained and dog-eared. His face is pale.

“You look like you’ve just took a shit, Kaspbrak.”

“Whatever,” he mumbles, throwing the paper into Richie’s lap. He sits opposite him and pulls his sweater sleeves over his hands. Cute, cute, cute. “It’s so fucking embarrasing, really. But you’ll have to read it at some point, won’t you? So.”

Richie doesn’t reply, just looks down at the title page.

THE LIBERATION OF ORPHEUS

WRITTEN BY EDDIE KASPBRAK

AND BEN HANSCOM

“Didn’t know you were such a sucker for mythology, Eddie baby,” Richie teases.

“It was Ben’s idea,” he says, hurriedly. “What with him being in love with Bev and all.” Then his eyes widen, and Richie is opening his mouth, and, “Forget I ever said that, oh my God, Rich, please, don’t say a fucking word.”

He isn’t cruel, so he says, “I won’t.” But the temptation remains. Operation Bev and Ben is go, he decides. “God, Benny Boy is whipped. Just totally fuckin’ whipped.” He mimics whipping Eddie and says, “ Thwip, ” eliciting a sigh from him.

“Just read the script, please.”

Richie drinks in every single word while Eddie stares at him tentatively and observes every expression that crosses his face. It’s a modern retelling, as far as he can tell, but it follows the original pretty closely. For the first act, Orpheus is heartbroken after Eurydice dies, obviously. He worries his lip as he reads. He’s going for the lead, which is Orpheus of course, and he can’t exactly feed his performance off of real-life experiences like Daddy Stanislavski would implore him to. All his previous breakups have been amicable. More than amicable, actually. They’ve been...welcome? Relieving? He knows he’s never been heartbroken before.

But then in act two, it shifts. Orpheus goes to the Underworld to get Eurydice back, and Hades lets her go as long as Orpheus doesn’t turn around. Everyone knows that bit; how Orpheus turns around and Eurydice is lost forever and it sucks balls. But no, Eddie Kaspbrak and Ben Hanscom had decided this tragedy needed to be adequately more tragic. Because Orpheus goes back to try again, and Eurydice, who had just been screaming for him and waxing poetic about how in love she is, apparently doesn’t love him anymore. According to Hades, that is.

And Orpheus moves on. He fucks around. He drinks. He forgets about Eurydice and he settles down with a guy (ah, there’s the gay part, of course there’s a gay part, this is Eddie Kaspbrak we’re talking about here), and he’s happy.

About an hour later, Richie flips the script closed again and stares at Eddie, feeling like sitting on his hands so he doesn’t jump up and hug him.

“Well? What do you think? Did you like it?”

“You, Edward Niamh Kaspbrak, are the best damn writer I’ve ever had the pleasure of fucking.”

There’s a beat, where Eddie’s blushing and Richie’s dying, dying, dying, and then-

“Fuck you, Richie.” A foot to his face; just a gentle tap to his cheek. It really shouldn’t be affectionate, but it is, and Richie holds Eddie’s foot in his hand.

“Fuck me yourself, Kaspbrak.” YOWZA, YOWZA, YOWZA. Richie Tozier gets off a good one! Despite it being a gay good one. Still a good one!

“Oh, fuck up . Fuck up, fuck up, fuck up,” Eddie’s saying, as he rolls on top of Richie and starts hitting him softly in the abdomen. Richie’s hoodie starts to ride up, and he lets Eddie’s cold hands touch his too-warm stomach. He’s laughing so hard he can’t really breathe, and Eddie’s giggling softly, too. 

Richie rolls on top of him easily and presses his hands into the mattress either side of Eddie’s head. “For real,” he says, a little breathless. “It’s amazing. Orpheus is a dick though.”

Eddie’s face contorts. “What? No, he’s not!”

He can’t help but snort. “Yeah, he is! He moves on so fucking quick!”

“He goes to Hades for her,” Eddie replies, voice small.

“Yeah, but. I mean. He was in love with her. She was in love with him, still.”

“She’s dead, Rich.”

“Does that matter?”

“And the second time-” he tries to wriggle out from under him, but Richie wraps his legs around Eddie’s torso so he can’t escape. He groans. Richie feels heat in his cheeks. “The second time he goes back. Eurydice…” he pauses, blinks a few times up at Richie. His voice is barely a whisper when he says, “...falls out of love.”

“Hades just lied about that, though,” Richie replies. There’s a vague shift in energy between them, and Richie feels his heart pump a little more enthusiastically. He’s so close to Eddie’s face he can see every single freckle, small and brown and perfect. He can see their dorm light reflecting in his sparkling eyes, the way it casts shadows on his face, the way his lips quirk downwards in a little frown. He smells distinctly of a Halloween Yankee Candle and fabric softener and Eddie.

“Hades just lied about what?” Eddie breathes. His eyes flicker from Richie’s eyes to his...lips?

So Richie licks them, self-consciously, and says, “Lied that...Eurydice wasn’t, um. In love with him anymore.”

At that, Eddie’s eyes flash with something akin to realisation, and he heaves Richie off of him and pushes him back. He scrambles to the opposite end of his bed. “Yeah,” he says, definitely. “Not in love with him.” As an afterthought, he adds, “Hades doesn’t lie.”

Richie scoffs to lighten the tension, even with Eddie at the other end of the bed. “No, I’m pretty sure Hades lies, but okay.” He chucks the script at him. “You and Ben knocked it outta the park. Can’t wait to be your Orpheus, Eds.” He winks, and Eddie rolls his eyes and says,

“Don’t call me that.”

And the energy rights itself again. There , Richie thinks, back to normal .

-

It isn’t until he’s sitting outside his audition, leg bouncing manically, that he meets his downfall. They’ve got him doing a scene from Romeo and Juliet , which is laughable, although Richie isn’t laughing. He’s nervous .

“You’re nervous,” Beverly comments. She places a hand on his thigh to stop it shaking but Richie’s pent-up energy disagrees with her aim. 

“No shit,” Richie says. He’s clammy. He expands and contracts his hands as if that’ll stop them from being clammy. “And you sure you know all your lines?”

“‘Course I do. You?”
Richie scoffs, because he learnt them the day he got his script and Beverly knows it. For all his pissing about, he’s an A plus student and he’s not gonna risk the chance of not having an excellent statement on his resume. Lead in original amateur production at Derry University of the Arts. He can see it now, glowing black ink; symbolic of a ticket out of this fucking town. Or something. He doesn’t really have a plan except move to L.A. and convince Eddie to come with him, and he hasn’t even really fully formulated that idea in his head, yet. It’s just nice to think about. Still being able to live with his best friend, but in a proper apartment. Maybe they’d get a pet. Dog, probably. Richie had always wanted a pomeranian. He thinks Eddie would be so good with a dog, definitely, the best dog-dad there ever-

“Hey.” It’s an unwelcome interruption to his idyllic thoughts, and Richie’s gaze snaps to the boy who’s manspread himself all over the seat beside him. He reeks of Lynx and weed, and has weird chains protruding from his neck and belt loops. He’s some kind of fucking e-boy, with too-high cheek bones and eyebags that may as well just be FX makeup they’re so dark. And he’s built ; Richie can see muscle under his tight black t-shirt.

“...Hello?” Richie considers him for a second. How he’s slouched with his arms crossed and- are those Yeezys ? Does he have fucking YEEZYS? 

The boy’s chewing gum loudly and it makes Richie cringe. “You auditioning?”

“No, I’m just fucking sitting here for no goddamn reason outside of the studio where they’re holding auditions.”

“He means yes,” Beverly provides. “I’m Beverly.”

“Oliver Delancey,” the boy says, dipping his head at Beverly. “A pleasure, I’m sure.” And Richie suddenly doesn’t think he likes this guy at all.

“Richie Tozier.” He holds his hand out, which he knows is sweaty, but he doesn’t care. The guy probably deserves a little sweat on him.

Oliver stares at Richie’s hand and raises an eyebrow. “What are we, like, fifty year old business men or something?”

Richie narrows his eyes, hand still suspended between them. “Did you really think that was funny? Did you really say that and think, ‘this is gonna land really well and be really hilarious and impress these people’?”

“No,” Oliver says. Then Oliver narrows his eyes. “Richie, huh? I’ve heard about you.”

It’s Richie’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “How so?”

Oliver considers this. “You that short kids roommate?”

There’s a sudden heat in Richie’s face. “His name is Eddie.”

Oliver stares at him. “I know .”

Richie’s blood fucking boils. He’s about to deck this fucking idiot in the face, he’s sure of it. How the hell does he know Eddie? “If you have anything to say about my best friend, you better say it right now,” he hisses. Beverly’s hand finds his arm, and she squeezes.

There’s a moment where Oliver looks completely taken aback. And then the asshole smirks. “Eds is fucking cool, Tozier. I like him. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

He has absolutely no time to process any of this, because the studio door is opening and Eddie is sticking his head out and grinning at them all. Richie’s face is definitely bright red with anger, but it relaxes as soon as he sees him. “Rich, Bev. You’re up.” He gives them a thumbs up, then turns to Oliver. “Hi, Ollie,” he says. Oliver gives a little wave before Eddie disappears again.

Beverly is already making her way to the studio, and she calls back, “Richie?”

He turns to Oliver, his blood boiling. “Don’t call him Eds,” he says, and then follows Beverly.

Inside the studio, Eddie and Bill sit beside Miss Swift, one of the drama teachers who just so happens to be Richie’s, opposite the metal fold-out stage. They’ve dragged a table in front of them, and while Eddie sits with a notepad and several pens and highlighters scattered around it, Bill and Miss Swift have nothing in front of them. It makes Richie feel at ease, knowing Eds is the only one taking notes.

“Hi, Richie. Beverly.” Miss Swift nods at them politely. “Whenever you’re ready.”

They mount the stage and Richie moves around a bit, trying his best to find where he’d naturally be for this scene. He’s hyper aware of Oliver just outside the door, and knows he’ll probably be able to hear the performance. Better make it fucking count, Tozier. You have one shot at this.

He looks to Beverly, and she nods her head and begins to say her line. Richie’s hands shake, but he infuses his anger into the performance, voice booming.

When they finish, they get a little round of applause. Richie bows dramatically and Beverly laughs. “Well done,” Miss Swift says, and she’s smiling. She passes a knowing look to Bill, who nods once at her. Richie hadn’t spoken to Bill much before, but he sure as hell wants to kiss his face right now, because whatever that nod meant, it feels like success .

Eddie’s beaming. “I can’t say shit-” A look from Miss Swift, “-I mean, stuff. I said stuff. I can’t say stuff about that, ‘cause, you know, that’d be unfair. But. Yup.” He gives Richie a little look, something private, and then gets up to usher them out. “Now get outta here, turds.”

Richie feels like he’s just bagged himself a lead role, if he says so himself. He pointedly avoids looking at Oliver and he and Beverly walk down the corridor.

He saunters out of the drama block, into torrential rain. When had that started? Beverly hikes her denim jacket over her head, then sticks a cigarette in her mouth and fumbles with the lighter. “God, that Olivier guy was a creep , wasn’t he? The fuck was his problem? And how does he even know Eddie, I swear to-”

“I need to tell you something,” she interrupts around the cigarette, nerves evident in her voice.

Richie’s a little taken aback, but he goes with it. “My place or yours?” he says, wiggling his eyebrows unhelpfully. Beverly doesn’t respond, just takes a drag now she’s finally gotten it lit and blows it in Richie’s face. She starts walking around the back of the drama block, Doc Martens squelching in the mud under her feet, and then shimmies herself up the drainpipe. “For real?” Richie asks, but follows her nonetheless, his shirt sticking to his torso uncomfortably.

When he pitches himself onto the roof, Bev is curled in on herself, cross-legged and very wet. “I should’ve told you sooner,” she says, a sad smile playing on her lips. Richie crawls over to her and sits down, his leg pressed against hers.

“Tell me what?” He starts to fiddle with the hem of her jacket that’s still flopped over her head, something anxiety-inducing about this whole ordeal.

“That I’m…” she sighs, closes her eyes. “Jesus fuck. I’m gay. Maybe bi. I don’t know, yet.” A beat, and then, “Girls. You know?”

Richie smiles, and he lifts her chin to look at him with his thumb and forefinger so she can see him smiling. “Miss Beverly Marsh. I adore you.” Beverly smiles back, and collapses into Richie’s soaking chest. He wraps his arms around her protectively and hugs her so tight he thinks she might pop and deflate like a balloon. 

“I love you,” she mutters into his neck. He just squeezes her again. “You should’ve known. I should’ve told you.”

“You don’t owe me shit, Bev. Don’t say that.”

“I do, though. Stan knows. Has done for a year or so, now. You should have known, too.”

“That doesn’t matter. I promise. You tell people in your own time and that’s gonna be different for everyone in your life. You need longer for some people, I get it. I do.”

Beverly nods and she wraps her arms around his middle. “Yeah. I...was scared, I think. You’re my best friend. We’ve been through shit together. I didn’t want things to be weird.”

“Why would things ever be weird with us?” He pinches her lightly in the arm. “Always knew you were too cool to be straight.”

Beverly laughs, a full body laugh that’s ugly and messy and so beautiful. He loves her so much. “What do you mean, aren’t you straight?”

Richie blinks. Once, twice. Oh shit. I don’t know , he thinks. I don’t know if I am. I’ve spent nineteen years of my life telling myself I can’t like boys and I will continue to do so and then I will die a virgin. But he’s kinda scrapped that idea ever since coming to uni. Boys make his pants twitch too often for him to deny it anymore. And, hey. He wants to not care about this. Wants to pretend that Henry Bowers didn’t fuck him up so bad about his sexuality in elementary school that he cried so hard he vomited. Wants to pretend his dad didn’t throw a rage when same-sex marriage was legalised and he had a breakdown in his bathroom that lasted four hours. Wants to pretend he didn’t carve his and Eddie’s initials into the kissing bridge when he was thirteen. Stupid fucking childhood crushes. So fucking dumb.

“I don’t know.” He whispers it, barely there. Just loud enough that the harsh breeze carries it to Bev’s ears, and she looks up at him from his chest. It’s a lie; of course it is. He’s always known. And he thinks that might not be for now, but there's something about this moment on this roof that makes him add, "I guess I'm not straight," in a whisper.

Beverly smiles. “Always knew you were too funny to be straight.” It might be the rain, but Richie doesn’t realise he’s crying until Beverly’s sitting up to wipe his cheeks under his glasses. He can’t really see her, what with the fat raindrops littering the glass in front of his eyes, but he thinks she might be crying, too. “I love you, Richie Tozier.”

“God, we’re a fucking mess.” Richie laughs, hugging Beverly tight to his chest again. The rain continues to pour, but Richie Tozier doesn’t feel quite so cold anymore.

Chapter Text

The next week, Eddie wakes him up by lunging himself on top of Richie’s sleeping form. He doesn’t wake up immediately, just savours the weight and heat of another body on top of his own, before he realises that it’s not actually normal for another body to be on top of his own. “Wh-”

“Richie,” Eddie says, straddling him around the waist. It’s too fucking early for this shit. “Richie, wake the fuck up, man.”

Richie rubs his eyes and slips his glasses on, cracking them open just wide enough to see Eddie, in all his bed-head glory, staring at him with a grin on his face. “Wha?”

Eddie drums his hands on Richie’s chest. “Cast list, Rich. Cast list .”

Richie almost throws Eddie off with how quickly he sits up. Their foreheads knock, and Richie groans, but Eddie’s laughing, so it doesn’t matter how much it hurts. He’s slept in one of Richie’s hoodies which is far too big for him, and boxers which Richie thinks are also his. Richie’s face gains heat pretty quickly once he realises this. It’s normal; they share clothes all the time because it makes sense . They live together, who cares about separating clothes into Richie’s and Eddie’s. There’s just their clothes, belonging to both of them collectively. But for some reason, seeing Eddie on top of him, wearing his hoodie and boxers with messy hair and tired eyes and soft dimples makes him itch all over. 

He’s suddenly terrified he’s gonna pop a boner with Eddie directly on top of him. He tries very hard to convince himself that he isn’t aware of the fact that Eddie in his clothes is making him think he’ll pop a boner.

“Richieeeeeeeeeeeee,” Eddie whines, and God, Eddie, please don’t fucking whine like that I swear to Christ little Rich if you so much as move down there-

“Wait,” Richie says, “Cast list?”

“Yes!” Eddie crosses his arms over his chest and pouts. 

“What time is it?” He mumbles, fishing for his phone under his pillow. 7:15. It’s his turn to whine. “Eddieeeeeeee.”

“You have improv at nine, Rich,” Eddie says. “And I couldn’t wait any longer for you to wake up. Come on!”

“I’m skipping,” Richie tells him. Eddie tuts. “Can’t you just tell me my role? Tree number five, right?”

Eddie rolls his eyes and gets off of him, grabbing at his wrists to pull him out. “I want you to see the list, Rich.”

“Now?” Richie is wearing boxers and Eddie’s fucking Elton John shirt that’s too tight on him. He’s not leaving this dorm. “I’m not leaving this dorm.”

Eddie’s already pulling on sweatpants and socks, and he throws Richie some pajama bottoms with the Cookie Monster on them. “Oh, yes,” Richie says. “This’ll be a hoot with all the ladies down at the cast list. I tell ya, I tell ya, boy, I’ll have pussy up to my eyeballs when they see my tight ass in these-”

“Beep beep,” Eddie says, throwing him socks with pizzas on them. 

They make their way across campus, stopping to order coffee at the on-campus Starbucks (an iced double caramel latte with whipped cream for Richie, obviously, and an oat milk latte for Eddie), and finally step into the main foyer.

Slowly, the cluster of students surrounding the cast list turn to stare at them. Richie can’t see a single fucking face he knows, and it’s disconcerting. Tree number five is clearly a popular role. He doesn’t even have time to consider the fact that he’s in Cookie Monster pajama bottoms and is holding a cavity-inducing latte at half past seven in the morning, because Stanley Uris is throwing himself into Richie arms. “Well done! Holy shit, you’re amazing!” He’s saying, and Richie looks at Eddie over Stan’s shoulder to share his confusion, but Eddie’s just smiling.

“My favouritism paid off, then,” he says, small, and Richie’s heart leaps.

“Orpheus,” Stan says, pulling away. “You got Orpheus.”

He almost drops his latte with the shock of it. Lead fucking role. “No fucking way .” He grips Eddie’s arm. “Eddie Kaspbrak, I could kiss you.”

Eddie’s face flashes with something, and he turns toward the clusterfuck of uni students, making to go to the cast list. “Wasn’t just me, fuckface,” he says, “Bill and Miss Swift, too.”

“Ew. Kissing Bill.”

Then there’s a crowd of people congratulating him, people from his drama class and people from the performing arts course and people he’s never fucking seen in his life who somehow think they can call him ‘Rich’ without ever having a conversation with him. Beverly appears at some point, wearing a bright yellow sundress in November, and jumps into his arms. “I’m your Eurydice!” she says excitedly.

Richie grins at her. “I know! My fucking wife , everybody,” he says as he puts her down, gesturing to her grandly. She bows. No one really pays attention, except Eddie, Stan and Ben, who Beverly has arrived with for some unknown reason.

“Fiance,” Ben corrects, and Richie’s mind helpfully supplies him with the knowledge that he’s head over heels for Beverly, and she might not even like guys at all.

“Hey,” says Stan. “We should celebrate. Go get some…”

But Richie isn’t listening, because someone’s just walked over from the cast list. Someone wearing chains and a black beanie and is that a fucking dangling earring what the fuck-

“Orpheus,” Oliver says, holding out his hand as if to shake Richie’s, imitating him from their first encounter. “Seems like I’m your Hades.”

Richie blanches. Why hadn’t he actually processed any other names but his own and Beverly’s? “You are?” he asks, dumbly. Eddie kicks him softly.

Oliver sucks his teeth. “Yep.”

There’s a few varied “congrats”, and then there’s this moment where everyone kind of looks at each other, and Richie kind of wants to punch Oliver in the face for reasons he can’t fully comprehend (and he’s not a violent person: Oliver just exudes asshole and Richie can’t fucking shake it). He’s terrified of Stan repeating that they should go celebrate, just in case Oliver feels comfortable enough to invite himself. And then something incredibly strange happens.

Oliver kicks Eddie’s ankle. It’s gentle, and Richie only catches it because he’s looking at the floor anyway when it happens, but it’s weird. It’s not normal. That’s a RichieandEddie thing to do. Dumbass, he thinks, you don’t own the rights to kicking Eddie’s ankle . And then he sees Eddie’s face. Smiling this secret smile at Oliver; Oliver grinning back, all teeth. He feels a little intrusive seeing it. He suddenly remembers Oliver calling Eddie Eds and telling Richie he was cool. How the fuck could he forget that? He guesses it’s something to do with the sexuality crisis Bev plunged him in just afterwards, but he’s still mad at himself. 

“Can’t believe our play is really gonna come to life,” Ben says, in all his purity. “I’m so excited.”

“It’s gonna be amazing, Ben,” Beverly assures him, hand on his arm.

“Yeah, holy shit,” Stan adds for something to say. Richie fixes the collar of Stan’s shirt. “Thanks, Rich.”

“Anytime,” Richie says, at the exact same time Oliver says,

“Kinda pissed it’s not a musical.” There’s an awkward silence.

“Well, Eddie and Ben aren’t composing majors.” Richie’s eyes are narrowed. Oliver is just so easy to be pissed at. So, so easy.

Eddie laughs nervously. “No way we could’ve written a musical. I thought you liked it?”

“I do!” Oliver’s voice is all high. “Just wanna sing. I’m a theatre kid, it’s in my nature.”

Richie makes eye contact with Stan, then with Beverly, and they all collectively seem to cringe together. But Eddie’s laughing at this prick, and it’s uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable .

And then. And then ,

“We still on for tonight?” Oliver asks, and at first, everyone looks at him, because who the fuck could he be talking to? 

And Eddie replies, fiddling with the lid of the oat milk latte Richie bought for him, “‘Course we are,” all soft and syrupy sweet.

Richie feels a little bit funny. Only a little. There’s a pit in his stomach, and his chest burns. “Shit,” he says, taking the attention from Eddie and Oliver and shining it on himself. He clutches his chest. “Heartburn. A bitch, am I right?” He laughs, and everyone ignores him. Rightfully so. What the fuck was that, Tozier?

Ben looks at his watch. “I have a lecture at nine. You’ll be there, Eddie?”

Eddie shakes his head. “Nah, I’m good. We should get changed, though. Rich has improv a nine.”

“As if I’m going to improv at nine,” Richie scoffs.

“I’ll drag you to improv at nine by your earlobe if that’s what it takes.” 

“See you guys later, then,” Ben interjects, giving a little wave. Beverly must think this is also her cue to leave, because she waves, too, nodding at Oliver and then following Ben. “Bye, babe,” she calls back to Richie, winking. Richie blows her an elaborate kiss.
“Tomorrow on the roof!” Stan calls after her.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“‘M gonna head, too,” Stan says, glancing at Oliver who is still standing there? For what reason? “Make sure he washes his ass, Eddie.”

“I will not be supervising such activities,” Eddie says, and this is one of those times that Richie doesn’t understand why Eddie and Stan aren’t closer friends.

Stan leaves, and it’s just Oliver and RichieandEddie. “You gonna wash my ass or not?” Richie asks.

“No.” He looks at Oliver, “See you later?” 

“Yeah, Eds.”

Richie’s entire insides feel like they’ve been rearranged. Oliver and Eddie are looking at each other like there’s something else that needs to be said, which will not be said if Richie has anything to do with it.

Without thinking too much about it, he grabs Eddie’s hand and starts to drag him away. “Your hands are so sweaty,” Eddie comments, grimacing, but he’s following, so bingo . Richie: 1, Oliver: 0.

When he goes to ask Eddie about Oliver, though, about why they’re hanging out tonight, about why he’s calling him ‘Eds’, his throat closes over and his heartburn comes back full force. He decides he can ask him tonight in bed. After all, it’s not like it’ll be anything important. Probably a project on some shitty extracurric club Eddie’s joined and failed to inform Richie on. Whatever. 

Eddie drops his hand as soon as they leave the foyer, and Richie expertly pretends to not be disappointed. Being a drama major has its perks.

-

Richie and Stan lean over the edge of the roof, watching Beverly shimmy up the drainpipe and throw them her backpack. “Please don’t get shitfaced,” she says solemnly. “You’ll fall off the roof and die.” 

“You think I’m getting shitfaced off of one Kopparberg?” Richie asks, throwing the can up and down in his hand. Stan fishes out a bottle of the shitty beer he loves.

“No, but I have vodka in there.” She plants herself on the other side of Richie, fishing in her 

bag for a little square bottle of Smirnoff and a can of coke.

“It’s tiny, though.” Richie cracks his cider open and takes a slug. “Where the fuck are you mixing that?”

Beverly’s face goes blank. “Um. Didn’t think of that. Think I can pour the vodka into the coke can?”

“No,” Stan says. He leans back on his elbows, shirt sleeves rolled up his arms. “How was class?”

“Shitty,” Beverly replies, at the same time Richie says, “Great.” The class was focused on their devised projects and Beverly wasn’t a fan of devised acting, but that was Richie’s shit . Writing his own play and being able to improv pretty much the entire thing? That’s what his wet dreams consist of.

Stan hums. “I got an A on my ensemble choreography.”

“Yowza!” Richie slaps him on the back.

Beverly throws her leg over Richie’s lap so she can nudge Stan with her foot. “Knew you would.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Stan takes a long guzzle of beer. “Mike’s taking me out to dinner and everything, ‘cause he’s all romantic like that.”

There’s a far-away look in Stan’s eyes that makes Richie long for something he doesn’t even know he wants. Being in love seems so fucking wonderful. He vaguely wishes he could experience it.

“How is Mike?” Beverly asks softly. She’s tried to pour her vodka into the coke can at some point, but it spilled over her lap and the roof in front of her, so she’s just sipping her coke.

Stan smiles, small. “The fucking best.”

“We know that.” Richie thinks Mike is one of the best people he’s ever had the pleasure of annoying. Mike is so present. Understanding. Laughs at Richie’s jokes and jokes right back, always smiling, always bright and open, arm slung around Stan’s waist, hand on Richie’s shoulder, arms wrapped around Beverly’s neck in a warm hug. So touching and loving. Richie thinks that Mike is who he would strive to be, if he was a little less...well, him . Wants for a personality that makes people feel good , if he could ever achieve that.

He’s not sure if he’ll ever be capable of such an impossible task, though. Richie’s personality just makes people beep beep, Richie and roll their eyes and feel shitty, probably.

“I think…” Stan’s saying, eyes a little glazing. “Think I wanna marry him.”

Richie’s mouth opens and closes again. Marriage. He wants to shudder, but knows that would be a terrible response. But Stan and Mike, getting married, slow dancing, buying a house together. Having kids. Richie can see that for them, clear as day.

“Really, Stan?” It isn’t accusatory, or sarcastic. It’s gentle and genuine. Are you sure? Thank God for Beverly Marsh.

Stan looks embarrassed, shrugging. “We’ve talked about it. We’re nineteen, nearly twenty. It’s something we can do, now. Something that might make life a little better.” He spends a few seconds finishing his beer bottle, then makes grabby hands at Beverly’s bag for another.

Richie thinks he might hate gay people, a little bit. Moving so fucking fast, being so fucking in love. Infuriating, really.

“That’s so fucking gay, Stan, really,” Richie says as she hands him another bottle. “Commitment like that at nineteen.” She shakes her head as if to say, unbelievable. “Crazy ass gay people.”

“No need to project your commitment issues onto Stan, Richie,” Beverly says wryly.

“Fuck you.” He turns to Stan. “I love Mike. I love you. Get married.”

Stan sighs. Richie faintly wonders if Eddie would get married that young, and then wonders why he’s wondering that. “I found him,” Stan says. “I was meant to find him, and I’ve found him. Why waste time?”

There’s a part of Richie’s brain that’s still focused entirely on the fact that Richie has definitely seen Eddie adding shit to a Pinterest board entitled ‘wedding’, so he’s totally thought about marriage before. Why didn’t Eddie ever talk to him about marriage? Apart from the fact that Richie has always expressed explicit disdain towards the subject-

“Can I be the maid of honour?” Beverly asks.

“Hey! No! I wanna be!”

“You can be the ring boy,” Stan tells him.

“No fair.” 

“Doesn’t the maid of honour have to be married?”

Beverly hums. “I didn’t know that.”

“Beverly won’t be married by then. Won’t even be in a relationship.” Beverly narrows her eyes at him. “Me, however.” He wiggles his eyebrows.

“Don’t say Eddie’s mom, don’t say Eddie’s mom,” Stan mantras, closing his eyes.

“Me and Eddie’s mom will still be fucking up a storm by the time your wedding comes around.”

Stan groans. Beverly steals Richie’s cider, and he whines for it back, because he’s not even buzzed. He needs at least two cans of that shit before he feels it. 

At some point, Stan’s head ends up on Richie’s shoulder, and Beverly’s in his lap. He runs his fingers through her hair absentmindedly.

“Thas a pigeon,” Stan says, pointing at a bird drenched in yellow light on the grass below, pecking underneath a lampost. The sun is setting, pinks and oranges amalgamating with blue. 

“You have such a keen eye for birds, Stan the Man.” In the end, only Stan managed to get past tipsy, his speech a little slurred. This was a usual Friday night for the three of them; drinks on the roof as the sun sets. Richie sometime feels as though he’s never known peace until they started doing this. 

“Whaddaya wanna call him?”

“Greta,” Beverly says, looking up at Stan from Richie’s lap.

Stan pulls a face at her. “No, his name’s Mike.”

“Okay, lover boy.”

Stan starts singing Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy by Queen, but it’s off-key and he doesn’t know the words. Richie fucking loses it when he sings, “Ooooh, love. OOOOOoooooooh lover boyyy. Watch you poop, tonight, hey boy,” and then stops and says, “Oh, no, Freddie, noooooo .” Beverly is laughing, too, her face turned into Richie’s thigh.

“Not the words, Stan,” Richie manages, but he still looks so upset by Freddie Mercury’s apparent toilet humour. Richie pats his cheek.

“Oh!” He exclaims suddenly, lifting his head from Richie’s shoulder too fast and almost toppling onto his side. “Who’s Eddie’s boyfriend, Richie?”

He think’s Stan is joking, of course he does, but then he thinks at Stan’s face, and no matter how drunk he is, he would’ve let up and laughed by now. His eyebrows are furrowed, innocently. “What,” is all Richie can say, voice hollow.

“Eddie,” Stan says slowly, “I,” He points at himself with both hands, “saw him,” gestures to his eyes, “on a date,” pretends to use a knife and fork to cut something, “with some guy,” shrugs, “Don’t know. At, um, Starbucks.” He wiggles, like he’s pretending to be a fish.

“What are you doing?” Beverly asks him, deadpan.

“Mermaid,” Stan mumbles, stopping his wiggling.

But Richie doesn’t really care. He’s staring at his dirty platform Vans like they’re gonna answer the questions that are burying inside his brain. “He would’ve told me,” he whispers. 

Beverly is sitting up, now, and looking at him. She shakes his arm. “He would’ve told me, Stan,” he repeats, frantic. “You’re drunk off your ass. You’re shitfaced .”

“I am definitely not ,” Stan waggles his finger at Richie, “That drunk, Trashmouth.”

Richie laughs. “Eddie would’ve told me if he was seeing anyone. He’s my...he’s...I’m his…” But what are they? Richie has best friends, Beverly and Stan. He has friends. He has acquaintances. And he has Eddie. That’s the way it is. And Eddie tells him things, things that not even Eddie’s best friends know. Things like when he gets a fucking boyfriend, for Christ’s sake. 

“Just ask him, Rich,” Beverly suggests, her cheeks rosy. The pink has eaten all signs of blue from the sky, and there’s an uncomfortable black spilling from the heavens, ready to demolish the soft sunset hues. Richie feels like he’s peering into his own chest cavity when he looks at it.

“Okay,” he says. He knows Eddie wouldn’t keep something like that from him. He knows it. Eddie was the first person to know about him and Beverly, before even Beverly fucking knew. Richie had texted Eddie just before he’d asked her out. Eddie had known. Richie would know, too.

-

“Hope Bill takes care of him,” Beverly says as she swings her and Richie’s clasped hands between them. They’d brought Stan back to his room and tucked him into bed, giving Bill (his roommate, God forbid) clear instructions on how to ensure he won’t choke and die on his own vomit during the night, while he tried very hard to flirt with Beverly using finger guns and complimenting her on her sweatshirt (which is an ugly knitted thing with a massive wolf face on it that actually belongs to Stan). 

“Should I have brought him back to mine? Eds wouldn’t have minded.”

“Denbrough isn’t thick, Rich. He’ll be fine.” She turns around so she can pretend to read the flyers on the notice boards they pass in the hall, then looks at Richie again. “You okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be, babygirl?” Richie asks her, flashing a toothy smile. He swings their hands a little more feverishly. 

“Don’t know.” A beat, and then, “Are you gonna ask Eddie?”

Richie knows that’s what she was talking about, but he doesn’t wanna think about why. He shrugs. “I guess. It’ll be no, though. He would’ve told me.” He grins at her, shakes his head around a little. “He needs the Tozier seal of approval, and he knows it.”

Beverly stops in her tracks, spinning Richie around under her arm. “Sure he does.” She laughs when Richie picks her up around the waist and starts walking as he’s carrying her. “He was probably hanging out with Bill or Ben, you know. Stan knows he needs glasses.”

For some reason, this eases Richie. He wasn’t aware he previously wasn’t at ease, but hey. He wasn’t, apparently. “Yeah, yeah. God, Staniel with glasses. He’d get the fucking square ones, I know it.”

“We should take him,” Beverly says into his hair, where her face is pressed.

“Just in case he starts seeing more imaginary boyfriends.” He drops Beverly and she yelps, taking both his hands and spinning him a few times. “Stop, fucker.”

“Jesus,” she holds her head. “I had, what, two sips of vodka?”

Richie gives her a pointed look. “You stole my cider.”

“Oh, yeah.”

They hold hands again as they make their way up the stairs to Richie’s floor. “Wanna come in and watch something with me and Eds?”

“It’s midnight,” she says, as if that means anything and holds any real weight. She realises it doesn’t, because then she says, “Lils is picking me up tonight, anyway.” 

Lils is Beverly’s aunt, who Richie kind of adores. Bright and eccentric and loud and brash and everything Bev is, but taller and older and a little wiser, if that’s even possible. She’d read Richie his tarot, once, and he’d loved it so much he’d made Eddie order him tarot cards with his Amazon Prime account. They’re currently collecting dust somewhere under Richie’s bed, but that’s besides the point. 

“Love of my fucking life,” Richie sighs, and Beverly smacks his arm, hard.

“Stop trying to get into my aunt’s pants, Toe Shur ,” she says.

They come up to Richie’s room at last, and Beverly goes to open the door when Richie stops her. “Ah, ah, ah. Baby’ll be sleeping.” 

She raises her eyebrows, but takes her hand off of the handle. “‘Kay, then. See you tomorrow, boyfriend.” She kisses her hand and pats his cheek, then makes for the stairs again.

“Thought you said I was a crap one!” Richie calls after her. He huffs a laugh to himself, excited to see Eddie and tell him about Stan’s blind observation, maybe crawl into his bed with him to watch a film (The Shining, for the third time this month. It’s October , can you blame him?), or watch YouTube or some shit Netflix show Eddie’s started that Richie doesn’t have the attention span for (Richie Tozier has never seen a TV series in his life, sue him) but still watches an episode or two for Eddie’s sake, even if it won’t make any sense. He’ll feel bad about waking him, but he knows Eddie doesn’t have morning class tomorrow, and it’ll be worth it to talk to him, wrap his arm around his shoulders and pull him in and tangle their legs together, make him smile and laugh and-

There’s moaning from inside the dorm room.

Richie’s a mouth breather, because of course he is, so he shuts his mouth and starts breathing through his nose so he can hear better. Presses his ear to the door and everything, just to make him seem even more ridiculous. But there’s nothing. No moaning. No sound. He grins to himself, amused at his own mishearing.

“God, Eds, I could’ve sworn you were having sex in here with all the-” he swings the door open.

And there is Eddie Kaspbrak, positioned under one shirtless Oliver Delancey, the latter’s lips fastened to Eddie’s throat.

It’s like a fucking tableau. Richie stands in the doorway frozen, his hand still on the door handle, his face slack. Eddie stares at him, wide-eyed, still lying on his bed directly under Oliver. And fucking Oliver. Oliver, for some reason unbeknownst to man, is still sucking at his neck like Eddie’s Mina fucking Harker and he’s Count fucking Dracula.

Richie hasn’t actually read Dracula since he was forced to at fifteen by the American education system, but he’s pretty sure this is exactly what Jonathan felt like when Dracula started nibbling at his wife’s neck. And he’s not sure what to make of that.

Although, he’s not sure what to make of anything, really, because his brain has definitely ceased to function, and now he’s thinking about Jonathan Harker and being gay and how those two things are probably linked in his brain, and Oliver’s lips attached to the milky freckled expanse of Eddie’s throat, and how Eddie has a hand planted firmly in Oliver’s curly brown hair, tugging, and-

And then everything catches up with him, and the next few seconds are a blur. Eddie yelps and throws Oliver off of him with both hands, pushing hard. Oliver lands on his ass on the floor, groaning, a very visible tent in his grey Nike sweatpants. Richie slams the door closed again, runs down the hall to the nearest bin, and vomits up every last morsel of food he’d consumed that day, mixing with the cider he’d just drank.

When he’s finished retching into the bin, he leans his sweaty forehead against the nearest wall so he doesn’t have to look at the half-eaten McDonalds someone had thrown out covered in his own concoction of blegh , and breathes heavily. Whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck- “What the fuck.”

Once he’s calmed down enough to know he won’t upchuck again, he walks unsteadily back to the room and swings open the door. “What the fuck,” he repeats, this time to a live audience.

Eddie is still lying on his bed, but Oliver has since gotten up and is currently searching around the room for...his shirt, probably? He glances at Richie and has the fucking audacity to smile at him . Richie wants to punch him in the dick so fucking badly. 

“Eds, baby, um,” Oliver starts to say, and Richie closes his eyes, fists clenching at his sides.

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie says, at exactly the same time Richie mutters, “ Don’t call him that. ” 

Oliver stands, lips pressed together in a tight line and eyebrows raised. He nods, once, and then starts to poke around again. “Yep. Here, I can’t find my shirt, can you hel-”

“Ollie,” Eddie says softly, and he sits up, now. His cheeks are crimson. “You need to leave.”

“Okay.” Oliver nods. Crosses his arms over his bare chest. Richie sways where he stands, has to reach over to the wall for support. “Okay. See you tomorrow?”

Eddie smiles, this secret, delicate smile that makes Richie want to burn the entire world down, and takes Oliver’s hand quickly to press a kiss to the palm. “‘Course. Go.”

Oliver smiles, but it drops off of his face when he looks to Richie. If looks could kill, Richie thinks. I would have eaten your fucking limbs by now, and decapitated you, and-

“Bye, then. Bye, Richie.” Oliver, tall, burly, pretty fucking toned if Richie does say so himself Oliver, shuffles past Richie looking as small as a six foot five guy can. 

And then he’s left. Shirtless, bonered Oliver Delancey has left the motherfucking building, ladies and gentlemen. 

Eddie starts to get up, rubbing his neck as if to wipe away the hickeys that Oliver was obviously attempting to leave. “Richie, listen, I can explain-”

“It’s okay, Eds.” Richie looks anywhere but at Eddie. Can’t fucking deal with those overtly apologetic doe eyes right now, thanks. He crosses his arms, then uncrosses them when it reminds him of Oliver a moment before. Leans his body against the wall. Stands up straight, wobbles, starts to make for his bed. 

“It’s not, Richie, I should’ve told you.”

Richie wants to scream SAY MORE THAN THAT. EXPLAIN WHAT THE FUCK I JUST SAW. MAKE IT MAKE SENSE TO ME. But he knows that’s unreasonable and Eddie doesn’t owe him shit, so he just sidles into the tiny bathroom in their dorm room, slides onto his knees and promptly vomits into the toilet, again. 

Eddie’s by his side in seconds, rubbing his back and running his fingers through his hair, and it’s too much. Too fucking much. Richie wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and flings his body to the left, against the wall and out of Eddie’s grasp. “Sorry, I’ve just.” He’s just what? He doesn’t even fucking know why he’s throwing up suddenly. “Too much to drink.”

Eddie crawls over to him, puts his palm on Richie’s forehead. “You’re roasting. Take your sweatshirt off.” 

Richie shakes his head vigorously, thinking about Oliver’s toned, tan abs and his own pale, puckered, rounded belly, not enough, never enough. “No, no, ‘m okay.”

“You’re usually good at knowing your limit, Rich. What the fuck happened?” Eddie sounds tired, and Richie’s hit with the sudden realisation that he’d interrupted what was potentially going to be Eddie getting laid. He’s an asshole. He’s a fucking useless, overdramatic asshole.

“I don’t know,” he says, but the words get choked and he wrenches his glasses off so he can rub at his face.

“I’m sorry, by the way,” Eddie says, face so close, so soft and perfect. “I should’ve told you.”

“Told me what?” Richie asks, because he’s a masochist who’s never known what things to say are the wrong things to say. 

Eddie gives him a knowing look. A you know exactly what look. Still, Richie wants to hear him say it. Hopes that hearing him say that Oliver was just a fuckbuddy, just a one night stand, will help alleviate the beating his heart is currently giving his ribcage and the nausea that is settling into his stomach. 

Eddie avoids his eyes when he says it. “Oliver. We’re- um. He’s. My boyfriend, now.”

Richie crawls over to the toilet bowl and throws up for the third time. It’s just bile, but his throat works nonetheless and it hurts like hell. Eddie’s at his back again, and Richie fights back tears.

Tears . What the actual fuck is happening?

“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” Eddie’s murmuring, so soft and caring. Richie wants nothing more than to throw himself at him, cling to him, push him so far back he can’t touch him again.

“Sorry, sorry,” Richie says, wiping his mouth again, suddenly embarrassed. “Shitty fucking cider.”

“Cider’s your favourite.”

“Must’ve been fake or something.” It wasn’t, he knows that. But it’s an easier excuse than the truth. Richie himself doesn’t even fucking know what the truth is, at this point.

Eddie leans his forehead against Richie’s back, where he’s still leant over the toilet. “You wanna watch anything? Or just get into bed?”

Richie’s stomach churns. “Bed. Bed, definitely.” He twists to face Eddie, catches him easily. Swallows down bile. “‘M sorry. I don’t know what the fuck happened. Sorry for… for interrupting.” 

Eddie shakes his head and lifts a hand to Richie’s cheek, running his thumb under Richie’s eye. “Stop apologising. It’s new, this- this thing. Me and Oliver. It’s- er. The day the casting went up. Last week? And then- after. I don’t know. Wasn’t official until tonight, I guess.” He looks sheepish, but there’s that secret smile dancing on his lips.

He knows he’s just upchucked thrice, but Richie could really use a drink right now.

“Hey,” he says, taking Eddie’s hand from his cheek. “It’s okay, Eds. You don’t owe me shit. But you gotta get the Tozier seal of approval, you know that right?”

Eddie looks at his lap. “Do I have it?”

Richie Tozier, for all his lying escapades, has never told a lie quite so big in his life when he replies, “Yep. One hundred percent Eddie-worthy.” And then he revises what he said and adds, “He’s still punching above his weight, though.” He tries a smile on for size, crooked and phoney, and Eddie smiles back, genuinely. 

“Sure, Rich. Sure.” He shakes his head. “Let’s get you to bed.”

He helps Richie stand and leads him to his bed, waits for him to take his jeans off, tucks him in and everything; even presses a kiss to his gross sweaty forehead. Richie, despite everything, despite Oliver’s lips sucking on Eddie’s neck being the only thing he can see when he closes his eyes, can’t help but smile at the warmth where Eddie’s lips had been on his temple.

“You’re not going to class tomorrow. You’re sleeping in, then we’re watching movies and shit, ‘kay?” Eddie’s out of sight, now, over on his side of the dorm, getting into his pajamas, probably.

Richie’s not sure how he’s supposed to act normally around Eddie, now, which is stupid, because nothing’s actually changed, has it? It isn’t as if he was Eddie’s boyfriend, before. Eddie having a boyfriend shouldn’t be in issue. No shift in dynamic, there. But, still. Something simmers in his stomach, warning and nauseating, telling him this whole situation is not something positive. That he won’t watch movies and shit with Eddie tomorrow, because he just- he can’t. He can’t.

“Okay,” he replies anyway, because he just wants to sleep, some sick part of him wanting to wake in a reality where Eddie doesn’t have a boyfriend and Richie doesn’t feel like cutting his midriff open and pulling his stomach out.

Eddie’s voice comes muffled from his bed. “Night, Rich. Love you.”

Richie freezes for a second, fists clenching. “Night, Eds.” He tries to say love you, too , but his tongue feels swollen and he can’t breathe all that right, and words won’t come to him. He hears a little shuddery breath from Eddie.

He reaches a hand out of the bed and feels for his jeans, plucking his phone from the back pocket. The glow of his phone screen makes him groan a little and blink excessively, and he clicks into his messages out of pure muscle memory.

To: stan’s bitches

richie: staniel the maniel u were r8

eds has a bf

is oliver

He’s not expecting a response from a drunk and definitely asleep Stan, but Beverly responds almost immediately.

my wife: hold the fuck up

are u fr

jesus fuck

richie: ofc y would i lie lol

also won’t be coming to class tm bevs

threw up a shit load

my wife: holy shit rich

u ok?

richie: idk

my wife: do u know why u were sick???

was it to do w eddie?????

He switches his phone off and pushes it under his pillow. He doesn’t wanna deal with Beverly’s weirdly intrusive and insightful commentary on the entire situation. Was it to do with Eddie? He feels like he has no fucking idea. All he knows is that when he closes his eyes, sleep chasing his brain, and sees the imprint of Oliver’s bare chest on the backs of his eyelids, he feels bile in his throat again.

Subconsciously, he flips his body and reaches a hand out to Eddie’s bed, feeling for his hand. Nightmares usually never come this early, but Richie knows Eddie will understand and hold him through it. Richie finds Eddie’s arm, and taps, one, two, three times. Light as a feather. Trails his fingers down his arm to find his hand; the remedy to every bad thought and sour taste in Richie’s mouth.

But when he touches the palm, just a press of his fingers, Eddie flinches. He flinches.

And then, he makes a little sleep-snuffle, and turns his entire body away from Richie, completely out of his grasp.

Chapter Text

Two days after Eddie’s revelation, which also happens to be a Tuesday, Richie gets up early for morning class as usual and listens to Eddie’s sleep-snuffling and complains when Beverly wakes him up ( “The baby, Bev! You woke him again! Well fucking done!”) and then he gets brunch (Beverly’s word, not his) with Bev and Stan.

“So,” Stan says as he slides into the booth beside Beverly. They’re both facing him like this is some fucking intervention. “Oliver Delancey, male, age nineteen and a half, birthday unknown as of now, height - probably fucking tall.”

“Thanks Staniel, very cool,” Richie replies. He cradles his iced triple caramel latte with whipped cream (he’d upped the caramel dosage because he deserves it , alright?) like a rugged forty-year-old alcoholic cradles his beer in a shitty pub after being abandoned at the altar by his childhood sweetheart and wife-to-be who found a younger, more toned, less funny man to elope with, and thought the best time to reveal this would be just as she’s asked to say “I do”. 

Beverly sips her smoothie.  “I can’t fucking believe it, though. Eddie Kaspbrak is a dick magnet. Should’ve known.” 

Stan laughs. “No, I totally saw this coming. He came out aeons ago, and gays move fucking fast. I should know.” He grins, probably at the mere allusion to Mike. Richie decides he absolutely despises romance and never wants to be in love, and this entire situation proves it. “Oliver, though? Holy fuck.” Stan makes a hoo sound, probably signifying how hot Oliver is and how well Eddie’s scored, but Richie’s ears are roaring.

“I don’t know,” he starts, and his voice cracks uncomfortably. What is he, thirteen? “The dude gives me a bad fucking vibe. Can’t explain it. Just bad.”

Beverly points a finger at him, green nail polish chipped into a little circle in the centre of her nail. “You did just meet him once, Rich.”

“Twice,” Richie corrects hotly.

“Wait, I don’t think I caught this whole thing. Bev tried to tell me this morning but I didn’t truly get to appreciate it.”

“He caught Olddie snogging in the dorm, basically.”

“What the fuck is an Olddie, Beverly.”

She purses her lips. “It’s their names, like, mashed together. Oliver and Eddie. Olddie.” She raises her eyebrows at Richie, who clearly wants to die right then and there, and then raises her eyebrows at Stan. “No? How about Eliver?”

“Oddie?” Stan asks.

“Oliver was sucking neck and Eddie was moaning like a Goddamn pornstar, are we finished?”

Beverly and Stan stare at him. He lowers his eyes to his latte and takes a tentative sip. “You didn’t divulge the moaning part,” Beverly comments.

“Yeah, well, didn’t think I had to.”

“Rich…” Stan kicks his foot gently under the table. “What’s going on?”

Richie sighs, because he doesn’t actually fucking know, so he says, “I don’t actually fucking know. I’m just tired and sick, I guess.”

“Have you been sleeping?” Beverly asks.

Richie gives her a pointed look. “When am I not ?”

“Fair.”

“How are you and Eddie?” Stan asks, and it’s a question that makes Richie’s stomach flip, and his brain think, what does he know? And then his brain thinks, what does he know that I clearly don’t fucking know?

Beverly definitely kicks Stan under the table, from the way he crumples a little and clenches his hand around his cappuccino.

“We’re fine?” Richie says, but it sounds like a question more than an answer. 

“Have you guys talked?” 

Richie thinks about how he hasn’t really talked to Eddie these past two days. It hasn’t been any different than usual, and Eddie’s still wearing his sweatshirts and touching him when he can and beeping him the usual amount, so it’s all good, it’s normal . But there’s an unspoken thing, now. This you have a boyfriend you can’t touch me like that you can’t wear my sweatshirts you can’t hold my hand stop stop stop that radiates off of Richie in waves and Eddie definitely picks up on, if his careful movements and soft voice is anything to go by.

Richie asks, “About what?”, for lack of anything constructive to say in reply.

Beverly presses her lips together. “About Oliver.”

“No. Not since I- I. Vomited my guts up.”

“Ah.”

Richie buries his head in his hands briefly, regretting ordering a large fry as his stomach churns. “I’m so fucking ill . My stomach is tryna fuck my intestines out right now.”

“Lovely,” Beverly says.

When his large fry comes, he cleans the plate anyway.

-

That night, Richie is an innocent onlooker to the crimes of Oliver Delancey and his stupid fucking mouth. He drops Eddie to the dorm, because of course he does, and leans in the doorway with his arms crossed and an asshole-y smirk on his lips, Eddie draped all over him. He’s wearing a dumb tight-ass black t-shirt that looks really fucking uncomfortable, and grey sweatpants. The chains around his neck glint in the fluorescent lights of the hallway. Richie pretends that he’s fiddling with his phone, but he’s really watching the entire exchange very carefully.

“I’ll see you later, baby,” Oliver says lowly, in a voice that’s probably supposed to be sexy. Richie thinks he sounds like he’s trying to pick up a clearly uninterested girl at a frat party instead of talking to his boyfriend, but that’s just his two cents. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie replies. He slaps at his chest flirtatiously. Their demeanours around each other clearly announce yes, we are fucking, and it’s all just a little gross to Richie.

Oh, fuck. Is he homophobic? God, he’s gay. He’s gay . Maybe. He’s into dudes , definitely. He shivers. Do homophobic gay people exist?

Oliver reaches around to grab Eddie ass, and, yeah, if Richie’s homophobic for hating what he’s watching right now, then fucking sue him. You’d be pretty homophobic too. It’s a shitshow .

Eddie laughs a little weirdly and wriggles out of Oliver’s grasp. “C’mon, Ollie, go. Go. See you tomorrow.”

“Okay, baby.”

What the fuck is up with the baby thing? Is Eddie his fucking child? Why is he using such a basic petname? Eddie Spaghetti is right there. 

They kiss, and it’s just a peck, but Richie has never felt iller at the sight of two people kissing in his entire life.

Then Eddie’s turning around, and Richie’s back to fiddling with his phone. He texts Beverly ‘yes im gay yes im homophobic we exist’ and then throws it on the floor once he hears the door click shut.

“ Okay, baby, ” Richie mocks, because he can’t fucking help himself. “He’s like a Riverdale character, Eds, babe.” A loud laugh rips out of Eddie’s throat. 

“You just called me babe,” he says, smiling slyly. “ You’re the Riverdale character.”

“That’s different,” he bites back, but he’s not sure how it’s different, so he shuts his mouth and wills himself to say no more.

“I think you’d like him if you got to know him.” Eddie throws himself onto Richie’s bed, his head in Richie’s lap. Richie’s fingers immediately wander into Eddie’s hair without his permission. Muscle memory, or something. Gay gay gay gay that’s gay Richie he has a boyfriend that’s gay that’s- I mean, we’ve established you’re into dudes, Richie. That is gay. Technically, everything you do is gay, now. Or has it always been-

“I mean it,” Eddie starts to say, “You guys would get along so well. He’s really like you, Rich.”

Richie’s stomach churns. “Yeah?”

Eddie closes his eyes against Richie’s fingers and smiles. “Yeah.”

Richie is trying to imagine how the fuck Mr Oliver DeFuckface could be anything like him at all, and what that says about his character, but that train of thought is cut off when Richie notices Eddie’s wearing a hoodie than belongs to neither of them, because it’s a grey Nike hoodie, and God forbid Richie or Eddie own something so boring and plain. He feels his eyes burning, which is weird. Why are his eyes burning? He stares at the hoodie, at how the sleeves are too long on Eddie’s hands so he has paws, and thinks about how it probably smells like Oliver. Because, you know, Eddie would like that. The hoodie smelling like Oliver. Because Oliver’s his boyfriend.

Oh . He’s gonna cry. That’s why his eyes are burning.

He inhales slowly, praying to whatever God-Turtle hybrid that’s up there in the sky or in his mind or in his dreams that the tears don’t fall and Eddie doesn’t realise. Luckily, he keeps his eyes shut, and hums as Richie rakes his fingers through his soft hair. 

“Have you- ahhhhhhh that’s so nice, Rich -started learning your script yet?”

Richie’s cheeks warm, and he has to get Eddie to repeat his question before he can answer. “Yeah.”

Eddie opens his eyes and scrunches his nose. “How much of it?” 

“All of it?”

Eddie squeaks. “All of it?” Richie nods. He sighs, dreamily. “You’re like a director’s wet dream, Rich.” Richie decides that he would listen to Eddie say his name for the rest of his life, over and over and over, forever. He grins, so wide it hurts a little. “Should you practise? I could help you- Nope! No. Stop doing that face. Stop it. Richie, stop it.”

Richie does not stop it. He even pinches Eddie’s cheeks for good measure.

Eddie grumbles, and then sits up. “Do you want me to read in for you?”

“What?”

He gives him a look that says are you fucking kidding me you’re a drama major Richie what the fuck , and then throws himself on his stomach and reaches both hands under Richie’s bed until he comes up with a very wrinkled script. He throws the script on Richie and it hits him in the head.

“Hey!”

“Start acting, bitch.”

Richie sighs and clears his throat. “What scene?”

Eddie gives him a dead stare.

“First scene,” Richie declares. “Got it.”

“God help me,” Eddie says, but he’s smiling. He throws himself in front of Richie and wriggles his feet into his lap. Then he scrunches his nose. Jesus fucking Christ on a bike, Richie thinks vaguely, I would like to take that nose scrunch’s hand in marriage. Eddie takes Richie’s script and flicks to a page near the end of the play. “Start here, actually. Wanna see you do this bit.”

“What bit?” Richie asks, but he can see Act Three at the top of the page and he immediately knows. “Ah. You evil fucker.”

Eddie blinks innocently at him and nudges him in the soft of his belly with his toe. Then he snatches up Richie’s script.

“I came back to thank you,” Richie says, because he can’t exactly act properly with Eddie’s feet in his lap, but he’ll humour him all the same.

“ And why would that be?” Eddie replies, reading in for Hades. For Oliver.

“Because you allowed me to do it. You allowed me to move on.”

“I did?”

“Of course you did. You took her away from me and-and you. You saved me for it.”
“How so?”

“She never loved me, did she?”

“No.”

“No. And I could never live like that. Loving someone who didn’t love me back. Didn’t- didn’t care.”

“So you’re not back for her?”

“Would you let me have her?”

Eddie says, “No.”, but in Richie’s head, Oliver says the line, and he feels his stomach churn again.

“Yeah. So. I’m over it. I’m over- I’m.”

Eddie takes a deep breath. “She never loved you.”

“No. No, she didn’t.”

He’s louder, now. “She never ever loved you.”

“Yeah, I-”

“Why are you here?”

“To thank you!” 

“That’s not why you’re here.”

“It is! It-it is!”

“And you say you’ve moved on? Someone could- love you?”

“I- yes. Yeah. Of-of course. I have. Just-”

“He’s more certain than that.” Richie jumps at the sudden break in script and looks up to see Eddie frowning at him.

“What?”
“You gotta be more certain with that one.”

Richie shakes his head. “The fuck are you on about? Why would he be certain?”

“Because he’s moved on?”

Richie stares at him. “Eddie-” he starts, as if he’s not sure how to break this to him. “Eds. He- you- um. You wrote this part, right? Not Ben? He’s not over her. He never gets over her.”

Eddie opens his mouth, then closes it around five times before saying, “She’s out of- out of his life and shit. He’s not. He has someone else and he’s-”

“He’s still in love, Eddie,” Richie says definitely. 

Eddie shakes his head, hard. “No, no he’s not, Richie, see, I know because I wrote him-”
“Eds.” Eddie looks at him. “I know how I’m playing Orpheus. You don’t get over someone you loved that much. Love doesn’t- it doesn’t fucking die. Like Titanic . Or Dead Poets Society. You don’t see- see Rose and- or, or Todd moving on all that quickly, do you?”

Eddie blinks again, and there’s a tear, there. Tracking down his cheek, leaving a little wet path through his freckles. “Okay,” he says. 

“Eds-”

“It’s okay. I’m okay. I just- weird when you think you wrote one thing and-and you wrote the other.” He wipes furiously at his cheeks, then rubs his eyes hard. They’re bloodshot when he pulls his hands away.

Richie scoots closer, trying to close the gap between them; wanting to hold Eddie so fucking badly. Comfort him. Stop his tears. “It’s only a play, Eds,” he says softly. “it’s okay, I promise. I’ll say it more certain if you want me to. I will.”

Eddie barks out a laugh, and it tears through the gentle atmosphere and turns it into something sourer. He moves his body backwards, away from Richie. “Rich, I’m fine . Mom rang today. It was probably that. I’m just tired.”

Richie feels like he’s falling down, down, down. There’s an uncomfortable, heavy emotion settling into his chest. He doesn’t know what’s happening. He doesn’t understand what’s happening to them. He moves an inch closer, and Eddie moves an inch further away. What the fuck is going on? “You don’t have to lie to me, you can tell me what’s going-”

“I can’t ,” Eddie says, but he doesn’t snap. He sounds pained. “I can’t, Rich.” The tears come thick and fast down his cheeks, and he groans into his hands frustratedly. 

Richie crawls over to him and scoops him half into his lap, wrapping his arms around his waist. Eddie hides his face in Richie shoulder and cries, hot tears hitting Richie’s neck. From this angle, Richie can see deep purple marks on Eddie’s neck. Hickeys. From Oliver.

His hands start to shake, but he bunches them in Eddie’s (Oliver’s) hoodie and elects to ignore it. 

“You’re really fucking heavy, Spaghetti,” Richie tells him, even though he isn’t.

Eddie lets out a watery laugh. “Shut the fuck up,” he retorts, arms tightening around Richie’s neck. Then, quieter, “You were right.”

“About what?” Richie asks.

“Orpheus. He never fell out of love.”

“It doesn’t matter-”
“It does. And you’re right.”

“Okay.”
Eddie takes a deep, shaky breath. 

They stay in each others arms for a long, long time. When they part, they say nothing, and get into their respective beds.

Richie feels the shift. He wonders idly if Eddie feels it, too.

-

He realises it when he’s sitting in a theory lecture, drumming his pen on the desk and kicking the desk of the guy in front every so often to make up for how not-loudmouthed he’s being. It’s three weeks into Eddie and Oliver, now, but he’s not thinking about Eddie and Oliver, hell fucking no; Richie’s brain soon learnt that ignorance is bliss when it comes to Eddie’s romantic endeavours. He thinks about the hickeys on Eddie’s neck and how he’s been left alone in the dorm room most nights the last two weeks, and it elicits an uneasiness in him, a things are changing and I can’t stop them changing and I’m gonna lose him forever. He’s also still reeling over Eddie not telling him as soon as he began liking Oliver, because that’s an asshole thing to keep from your best friend slash whatever the fuck Richie and Eddie are, right? Richie would never keep anything like that from Eddie. But he had , hadn’t he? Because as he sits in the shitty lecture, he remembers something. Something he’d buried a long, long time ago.

Stanley Uris kissing him.

He blinks, realising that this was a thing that actually happened in the past, and not some weird, mid-lecture hallucination. He pulls out his phone almost immediately after, ignoring the text from Stan in their group chat that says, I hate gay people so much its unreal , probably in relation to something EddieandOliver related.

To: staniel the maniel

richie: stan rmbr when u kissed me

in the clubhouse when we were like 12

staniel the maniel: God that's so embarrassing yes Richie I do why

Richie types then retypes his next message. Then he just hits send before he can overthink it anymore.

richie: think u were my gay awakening bro

He chews his pen lid anxiously until the plastic is sharp enough to cut his tongue. It takes Stan all of a minute to reply with five separate texts consecutively.

staniel the maniel: Holy shit no way

Ur gay????

Proud of u Rich!!!!!

Love you

Wait are u asking me out u know I have a bf right

Richie sighs, hard.

richie: ur so dumb ofc im not asking u out

im lit rally besties w mike???>£^$^*”

ur so stupid

n idk if im gay gay but hey. Boys

love u more tho

staniel the maniel: Pretty sure that's not possible but ok

richie: it is possible 

its real

gay luv bwtn 2 bros

2 pals

gay solidarity is being each others gay awakenings

Stan sends him a voice memo of him singing Macklemore’s Same Love, which Richie conveniently blasts in the lecture hall. Luckily, he’s in the back row, so only the few people sitting around him turn to look. And anyway, the memo ends with Stan trailing off into giggles, which makes it worth it. 

richie: fuck u

staniel the maniel: See u later Rich xxxxx

Later happens to be right after his lecture, which Richie isn’t expecting. Stan stands beside the door, tapping his fingers on the doorframe as the students exit the hall. When he sees him, he tugs on Richie’s green Hawaiian shirt he’s wearing over a distasteful Homer Simpson t-shirt (the t-shirt has Homer holding two doughnuts in his underwear with the caption ‘ Sugar Daddy’ . Before Oliver, Eddie used to wear it to bed all the time. Richie has taken to wearing it again since- yeah.), dragging him into a hug.

It’s gangly because both Richie and Stan are tall and lanky, but they slot together perfectly, somehow. Stan sways in the hug, clutching around Richie’s shoulders. “‘M proud of you,” he mumbles into Richie’s neck.

“You smell like jizz,” Richie replies.

“Aaaaaaand you ruined it.” Stan releases him and holds him at arm’s length. “You forgot to go to yesterday’s rehearsal, by the way.”
“Shit.” Richie bites his lip. “Eds didn’t come home the night before, so I just-”

“He didn’t? Again?”

“No. Or last night. I didn’t get much sleep, either.” Then, adds, “Completely unrelated.”

Stan grimaces.

This thing is this: Eddie Kaspbrak has never dated anyone before now. He has never had any reason to not be in the bed across from Richie every night. Before uni, Richie would scale the apple tree in Eddie’s backyard and tumble through his window to climb into bed with him without Mrs Kaspbrak’s knowledge. It’s a simple algorithm; Richie and Eddie sleep near one another, always. So with Eddie’s bed vacant, Richie’s finding it a little hard to get some shut-eye. He pins it on how Eddie helps him through nightmares, because those are sons of bitches alright, and he can’t really survive a night of them without Eddie’s hand there to hold his.

“Where was he?” Stan asks, and Richie thinks it’s funny, a little bit, that Stan thinks Richie knows.

“Probably fucking Mr Darcy,” he replies.

“You didn’t ask him?”

“He didn’t come home , Stanny.” He shrugs as if he doesn’t care or something dumb like that. “Anyway, why you here? You’re not missing class just to congratulate my gay ass, are you?”

“You have a rehearsal, now, dimwit. I’m walking you.”

“Didn’t know that,” Richie says, vaguely surprised. 

“I know . That’s why I’m here.”

“What would I do without you, baby?”

Stan overtakes Richie as they reach the foyer. “Die.”

When they make it to the studio, Miss Swift and Bill seem to the hotly debating the staging of a scene, pointing and sighing and moving chairs around. Richie scans for Beverly, but she isn’t there. “Bev-”

“Not in this rehearsal, Richie.” Stan takes him by the shoulders. “Please learn your rehearsal schedule.” He considers Richie’s blank face for a moment. Then, he releases him and crosses to the back of the studio, sinking down to the floor and establishing an appropriate order for his pastel highlighters in front of him so he can highlight theory work or something. 

“Richard,” says Miss Swift, all practical and down-to-business. “We’ll be starting with act three today. That okay?” Richie hums in response. “I’m gonna safely assume you know your lines for this act, too?”

“Don’t know why you even bothered phrasing that as a question, Miss.” He grins, toothy and charming.

Miss Swift purses her lips. “Oliver better know his. Eddie’s gonna have an aneurysm,” she mutters, and clacks her pen off of her clipboard that she insists on carrying around like she’s on some fucking construction site. Richie thinks she fails to notice that even if Oliver didn’t know his lines, Eddie wouldn’t care.

Speak of the fucking devil, the studio door swings open and laughter spills through, a rosy-cheeked Eddie hanging off of a terribly dressed Oliver. He’s wearing a black beanie, today, with a little ghost on it. Richie wants to eat him alive.

“And-and-”

“No, please, don’t-”

“And then you said gay cakes and I-” Eddie breaks off into laughter, and Richie’s hands start to sweat.
No one makes Eddie laugh that loud. That bold and bright. No one but Richie.

“Eds, God, shut up .” 

The nickname. 

No one calls Eddie Eds.

No one. But. Richie.

“Boys, nice of you to join us. Act three today, Oliver.”

Eddie drags Oliver over to Richie, for some Godforsaken reason. Richie almost wants to warn him that he could potentially cause Oliver detrimental damage if he gets too close. 

“Rich, Richie,” Eddie says, and he’s holding Oliver’s hand, bigger than his own, encapsulating his own, fingers interlocked in that romantic way. He’s wearing Oliver’s Nike hoodie again. Oliver grins, and Eddie’s smiling at him, and Richie looks between them both and feels every ounce of joy drain from his body. Then, Eddie snaps his gaze back to Richie and says in such a nonchalant manner that Richie’s taken aback, “Could you crash at Stan and Bill’s tonight?”

Richie blinks. “What?”

Eddie leans a little closer, as if he’s getting out of earshot of Oliver (he isn’t), to say “Ollie’s roommates are getting bitchy. It’s only for a night, I promise.”

Richie stares at him for a few seconds, wide-eyed, before snapping his eyes down to his checkered Vans. Eddie’s asking him to be complacent while he takes Oliver DeShitBalls back to Richie and Eddie’s shared dorm so they can hook up. He wants to die. His hands are shaking, which they love to fucking do on the regular, these days. He says, “fuck you, fuck you for everything, fuck you for having a boyfriend and fucking him and using our dorm and kicking me out of our dorm and not telling me you liked him and avoiding me and spending all your time with him”, but instead it comes out as, “Yeah, that’s-that’s okay.” He goes to walks past them to the stage but stops to pat Oliver on the shoulder. Try to be nice, Richie.  “Get some,” he says. And then he proceeds to turn away and contort his face so much it’s painful, in the physical manifestation of his cringe.

He mounts the stage and stands in the middle, lamely, hands shaking and mouth dry, as Eddie takes his seat with Miss Swift and Ben and Oliver gets his script.

He looks at Eddie, bundled in his boyfriend’s hoodie, smiling at his boyfriend absentmindedly, and Richie thinks, has this always been there?

It doesn’t happen grandly. It isn’t shocking and paralysing and life-altering. It’s Richie Tozier standing on a stage, fingernails embedding themselves into his palms, and thinking oh . I like Eddie. I’ve always liked Eddie. I’ve wanted to kiss Eddie my entire life thus far.

Oliver comes up beside him suavely, one hand in his sweatpants pocket. Richie turns to look at him, setting aside his own body so he can become another.

He thinks this entire play might just be a curse when he says to Oliver, “I came back to thank you.”

Chapter Text

Beverly emerges from the bathroom, the neon pink cast on her arm an eyesore in the low-light of the dorm. “What do you think?” she says, and does a twirl. She’s wearing her aunt’s old boarding school uniform, and her hair is badly straightened, kinking up at the bottom. It only reaches just below her ears, which isn’t long enough, but it doesn’t matter.

“Ugh!” Richie sighs dramatically, flopping onto the bed. “You sexy ass motherfucker.”

“I’m in a school uniform, Richie,” Beverly says.

“I’d tap that.”
“You’re gay.”

Richie sits up and frowns. “Might be. Let me love you.” He makes grabby hands for Beverly, who rolls her eyes and sits beside him on the bed so he can drape his arms over her in a hug with too much limb.

“You okay?” Her voice is gentle, which he fucking hates.

“Why wouldn’t I be, babygirl?”

“I hate you so much,” she says, and kisses the top of his head. “We should get going, you know. Stan texted me when I was getting changed, and people are starting to show.”

Richie thinks about people showing up, and how Eddie and Oliver are two of those people. His mind briefly reminds him that this is the first Halloween he’s spent without Eddie since they were both in diapers. Fucking diapers , man. Boyfriends ruin everything . He stands up and offers his hand. “M’Lady Bird.”

Beverly giggles and lets him pull her up. “Han Solo. The honour is mine.”

Pulling up outside Mike’s farmhouse is a little magical, for lack of a better descriptor. Fairy lights adorn the apple trees outside, and dozens of pumpkins with all kinds of faces are lit with candles on the porch. There’s already around ten people milling around with red solo cups; a few Batmans, a mummy, a few Harley Quinn’s and a lot of sexy devils and angels.

“My outfit is way too niche for this demographic,” Beverly comments, shutting off the engine.

“It’s creative,” Richie assures.

They make their way into the house, trepidation beginning to gnaw at Richie’s stomach, which is stupid as fuck, because parties are his favourite . Beverly takes his arm and starts to pull him through the hall, past couples making out messily and loud laughter, and into the mammoth kitchen, orange and black confetti littering the countertops and pumpkin lights dangling from the kitchen hood, bathing the room in a soft orange warmth.

Mike’s chatting to some people from the drama class, arm slung around Stan’s waist (Stan’s wearing a plaid shirt and a cowboy hat, that both definitely belong to Mike), but immediately excuses himself when he sees Richie and Beverly and runs toward them.
“Mikey!” Beverly gushes, throwing herself at him. Mike lifts her up in a strong hug, spinning her. She laughs her bright laugh.

“Bev, God, I’ve missed you.” He puts her down and gestures toward her outfit. “Lady Bird!”

As they chat, Richie takes the opportunity to scan the room for Eddie, but to no avail. He doesn’t care if he’s with eboy supreme, he just wants to see him and talk to him. Accepting the fact he can’t find them, he crosses to the kitchen table and starts mixing himself some Sprite and Malibu (his personal favourite, which he recommends to everyone at every party. Only takes him three to get rightfully pissed.)

“Rich,” Mike says suddenly over his shoulder, and Richie jumps.  “I’ve missed you, buddy.”

Richie knocks his solo cup into Mike’s glass of water. “Pretty sure I missed you more, Mikey. You not drinking?”

“Hosting,” Mike says. “Can’t let the place get too trashed.”

Richie scans the kitchen again, peeking down the hall. “There’s, like, crazy stupid amount of people here. Good luck.”

Mike laughs, “Yeah, whatever. You wanna be on music?”

Richie puts a hand on his heart dramatically. “Lil ol’ me?” he says in a terrible Southern accent. “There’s no way Mr Hanlon wants me controllin’ his party music! An honour, sir!”

“Play the damn playlist, Richie,” Mike says fondly.

And so Richie does.

The first few songs are tame enough; warming people up. Mike’s got a nifty surround sound system in the farmhouse, since his dad’s pretty fucking loaded, so the speakers in the kitchen and living room link up. Richie thinks there’s a bedroom upstairs that’s playing, too, but he’s not sure. He thinks he’s doing really well, with this playlist shit, and has gotten a few drinks down him so he feels buzzed and pleasantly numb when he finds himself dragged into the mass of bodies by Beverly when Teenage Dirtbag comes on.

“It’s our song!” a clearly intoxicated Beverly screams, her hair curling with the humidity and her grey school cardigan abandoned, white shirt unbuttoned halfway.

They dance and scream along, limbs flying, twirling each other repeatedly in the most sophisticated choreography two drunk nineteen-year-olds can manage.

As the song fades out and Franz Ferdinand fades in, Richie goes to refill his cup, down one Beverly, who seemed to recognise a girl in the sea of students and went to dance with her. He’s on his fourth, now. Maybe fifth. He also might’ve had a few jelly shots, but that’s besides the point. “Drunk test!” he giggles to himself, trying and spectacularly failing to walk in a straight line down the hall, bumping straight into-

“Eds! Eds, Eds, Eds!” Richie takes Eddie’s face in his face, caressing over his cheeks, zeroed on the freckles smattering his nose. He starts to press his finger against every one, counting under his breath.

“Rich,” Eddie snorts. He’s wearing a leather jacket and his hair is gelled, and Richie’s drunk brain helpfully supplies him with variations of the word hot . “What are you doing?” 

“Countin’ freckles, my dear Eds, baby,” he says, laughing as he boops Eddie’s nose. His nose crinkles, and it’s probably the most wonderful thing Richie has ever seen in his entire life, so he boops it a few more times for good measure. Then he starts singing. “Wanna count the freckles on your face, rearrange ‘em, put ‘em in the same place.”

Eddie’s cheeks are dusted with a brilliant pink, and Richie could cry with how much he loves that specific shade. Eddie’s eyebrows furrow, because they tend to do that, so Richie tries to smooth them out with his thumbs. He needs to loosen up , Richie thinks idly, and starts to lead him back into the kitchen by the hand, dismissing the task of erasing all traces of worry from Eddie’s features.

“Richie, Rich,” Eddie’s saying, but Richie’s dragging him mercilessly toward the table. 

“What shall it be, Guv’nor?”

Eddie pauses, hand outstretched toward Richie’s arm, before he drops it and says, “Vodka coke.”

“Righty-ho.” Richie gets to work making Eddie the weakest vodka coke he’ll probably ever have, because he doesn’t really know what he’s doing or how much he should be putting in. Half of it ends up sloshing on Richie’s Han Solo vest due to his severe lack of co-ordination. When Eddie takes a sip, he nods happily, and Richie beams.

“God, drunk Richie sure knows how to make a guy feel loved,” Eddie says, a smirk on his face, all rosy cheeked and freckled and perfect, perfect, perfect.

He giggles, because drunk Richie giggles, apparently, and reaches out to smooth his fingers over Eddie’s brow again. Just to make sure. Eddie leans into the touch, skin so warm under Richie’s fingertips, so many feelings boiling under the surface of everything, vodka cokes and Malibus forgotten for the stronger poison that is Eddie Kaspbrak, and Richie’s mind is a mantra of I want to kiss you I want to kiss you I want to kiss you so hard I want to kiss you so so much I want to marry you and have a dog with you and sleep beside you and have sex with you and love you and hug you and kiss y-

“Eddie.”

Richie looks up, confused, his vision tunnelled. Oliver Delancey hovers behind Eddie, hands on his shoulders. He’s wearing tight leather and his curls are corkscrewed. Fucking Danny Zuko and Sandy, aren’t they?

“Orpheus,” he says in greeting.

Richie swallows hard. “Hades.”

Richie looks between them, in their fucking couples costume, and almost feels a repeat of post-walking in on Oliver sucking Eddie’s neck clean of blood coming on when bile rises in his throat. 

And then he hears the telling brassy keyboard effect that signifies the beginning of Africa by Toto, and his face splits into a grin. He extends a hand for Eddie, Oliver somehow forgotten. “Edward Eds Danny Zuko Kaspbrak, if ya would do me the honour.”

Eddie looks briefly to Oliver, then grabs Richie’s hand and pulls him into the mass of bodies in the living room. “It would be a pleasure, Richard Richie Han Solo Tozier.” 

They scream the lyrics at each other, pointing dramatically and twisting under each other’s arms. Eddie grabs Richie’s hands and spins him around, and holy fucking shit he might throw up or die but if Eddie laughing and spinning and wearing a leather jacket is the last thing he sees then fair fucking play, God. He’s dying a happy man. Richie captures Eddie in his arms, dipping him back like they’re ballroom dancing, and Eddie opens his mouth in a laugh, crows feets crinkling.

This is the moment Richie realises something has been gauged open in his chest. He looks down at Eddie’s beaming face, thinks a particular word in relation to how he feels about Eddie’s beaming face, and drops him.

“ Fuck !” Eddie yelps, back hitting the floor hard. “What the fuck, Richie!” He groans, rolling onto his side.
“Oh, shit, Eds, Eds.” Richie drops to his knees and pushes Eddie’s body so he’s facing Richie. “‘M so sorry, I didn’t mean to. ‘M sorry. Eds, forgive me, please, ‘m-”

“Beep beep.” Eddie sits up, arm twisting behind him to rub his back. “How many drinks have you had? We need to get you water-”
“Hey, Eddie,” Mike says, and, woah, where’d Mike come from? “I’ll get him water, it’s okay. I think Oliver was looking for you.” He gives him a smile that looks a little pained.

“I have had one drink, Edward Kaspbrak,” Richie slurs, smiling up at Mike.

“I’m Mike,” Mike says. “And you’ve had six, Richie. Maybe seven. I lost count.”

Eddie sighs. “Richie,” he says, like he’s pleading. Richie makes grabby hands for him and Eddie takes his hands in his own. “Be careful. Go sit down.”

“I might need to puke,” Richie replies.

“Alright,” says Mike, hauling Richie up with his strong hands. “Let’s go.”

Richie lets himself be half-led, half-dragged to a bathroom upstairs. It’s already been defiled, by the looks of it, because there’s empty cans of beer littering the floor and a puddle of something in the corner. Richie hangs his body over the toilet and groans. “Where’s Stanny?” he asks, vaguely aware that Stan is usually the one helping him out in situations like this.

“He’s downstairs with Bill,” Mike tells him, brushing Richie’s hair back from his face gently. “Denbrough went a little too hard on the jelly shots, I think.”

“Don’t let Bev date him,” Richie says.

Mike laughs. “No, I don’t think she will, don’t worry.” Then, his voice changes into something softer. “Why’d you get so drunk, Richie?”

Richie thinks about the wound in his chest, and throws himself back from the toilet bowl and against Mike’s bathtub. He starts to sing along to Take On Me which has begun to play downstairs, softly drifting into the bathroom. Mike sits beside Richie, leaning against the tub.

“Mike,” Richie begins, slapping a palm to Mike’s knee. “How’d ya know you were in love?”

Mike looks at him, face schooled. He’s dressed as Spider-Man, and there’s a water stain down the front of his suit. “That’s a big question, Rich.”
“I need you to answer it,” Richie pleads, taking Mike’s shoulders and shaking them lightly. “Please, pleaseeeeee -”

Mike whistles, low. “It just kind of…happened? One day I just looked at him, and he was, like, eating cereal out of the box in his plaid pyjamas after sleeping over, and his hair was all messy and stupid, and he looked really fucking tired because he won’t let himself fall asleep during the middle of films because he hates things half-finished, and I.” Mike stops, and a soft smile spreads across his face. He closes his eyes. “I thought, I’m so in love with you . And you know what?” Richie shakes his head. “It didn’t even surprise me. I think I knew since we were kids. Think I always have. And that moment just slotted it all together for me.”

“Were you dating when you realised?” Richie whispers.

“No.” Mike looks at him, in this knowing way that makes Richie feel like he’s being analysed. “And that’s the purest part. I hadn’t even kissed him and I knew.”

“He wants to marry you,” Richie tells him. “He told me and Bev he wants to marry you. Really badly.”

Mike’s face crumples, then. “Good. I wanna marry him, too.”

Richie hums and puts his head on Mike’s shoulder. “I wish I could marry someone.”

“I thought you hated marriage?”

“I do.” But he thinks about Eddie with messy hair, in Richie’s sweater, in Richie’s bed. Ring on his finger. “But I’ll make an exception.”

They sit there like that for a little while, Richie drumming patterns onto Mike’s knee, before Mike says, “We need to get you water.” He stands up and Richie groans, but lets himself be pulled up anyway.

On their descent down the stairs, Richie feels the unpleasant bubble of nausea in his stomach again. Mike leads him through the living room, and he sees Beverly pressed up against a girl dancing, and Ben sitting on a couch close by, watching her intently, his face stony. Richie suddenly wants to talk to Ben, because he thinks they’d be able to bond over- over all this , but Mike says “Nuh-uh, come on,” and before he knows it, a cold glass of water is being pushed into his hands. “Drink it all.”

Richie moans in protest, but downs the glass, anyway. “Mikey, Mikey, Mikey,” he says, “Les’ dance.”

Mike laughs and starts to swing Richie’s hands around to Come On Eileen. At some point, Stan joins them, clearly tipsy enough to not care about how terrible his dancing is.

“For a ballet major,” Richie shouts, “You sure are a shit dancer.”

Stan grins at him. “Take a look at yourself, Tozier. I thought drama students were supposed to be in complete control of their bodies.”

The three of them spin in a circle for a while, until Richie’s stomach lurches and he breaks away and stumbles to the couch Ben was sitting on moments (or maybe hours, Richie has lost track of time a bit) before. He throws his head into his lap, suddenly knackered, letting his head hang between his knees for a while, eyes closed and ears roaring. Then, he hears a laugh cut through every over noise in the house.
Eddie straddles Oliver on a couch just across the room from where Richie resides, his hands planted either side of Oliver’s face, whispering to him. 

Richie doesn’t think that people usually have to realise they’re heartbroken. It’s something you should know as soon as you feel that hot, heavy pressure in your chest. Richie’s been feeling that pressure since he walked in on Oliver and Eddie in his dorm. Richie’s been feeling that pressure since Oliver first kicked Eddie’s ankle. Richie’s been feeling that pressure, he realises, since he was thirteen years old, bug-eyed and bruised and aching, carving and R beside an E on Derry’s Kissing Bridge, just to tell someone. Just to stop hiding, for a second. 

He knows he’s been in love with Eddie since that day. Since before that day. It’s now, on Mike Hanlon’s couch, watching Eddie slowly lick into Oliver Delancey’s perfect fucking mouth, that he realises this.

Then he gets up and stumbles into the kitchen to pour himself a shot.

He ends up taking four, all straight vodka.

“Richie, fuck,” Stan says, as he braces himself against the kitchen sink and pants. The burn of the vodka has absolutely fucking wrecked his throat, but he’s totally cool with it, because somehow the knowledge that he’s in love with his very-not-single best friend is no longer at the forefront of his mind. “You need to stop drinking.”

“What I need to do,” Richie says, brandishing a finger at Stan. He flicks Stan’s cowboy hat. “Is vom.” And then he vomits into the sink.

“Okay,” Stan says. “Yep, okay, let’s go, let’s go, Richie.”

For the millionth time that night, Richie is being dragged by someone considerably more sober than he is. He finds himself in a darkly lit bedroom, being prodded into a bed. “Damn, Staniel, if you wanted me in your bed this badly, you shoulda just asked.” He tries to wink, but he thinks he just blinks hard instead.

“This is Mike’s parent’s bed, Richie,” Stan tells him, pulling the covers up to Richie’s chin. “And you’re gonna relax for a while, okay? See that?” He points to a lump beside Richie in the bed. “That’s Bill. Bev might be joining you three in here if she keeps up with the cider.” Stan kisses Richie’s forehead. “Don’t choke on your own vomit.”

“I love you so much ,” Richie tells him.

“Love you too, Rich. Go to sleep.” He leaves, shrouding the room in darkness. 

“Bill Bill Bill Bill Billy Bill,” Richie’s saying, rolling over to face a very asleep Bill dressed as...the Joker? There’s definitely an attempt at clown makeup, anyway. “Why are you asleep?”

“I’m a hollow shell of the man I once was,” Bill says, his eyes still closed. There’s green hair chalk in his hair, and it makes it look kinda greasy. Richie absentmindedly strokes it. “I have no idea why I thought coming to this fucking party was a good idea, and now I want to die.”
“Dude, same,” Richie says. “It’s like, why subject myself to this fucking misery?”
“Honestly.” Bill’s eyes open, half-lidded. “I can’t see them kiss. I can’t do it.” He sighs.
“Who?”

“Stan and Mike.”
“Why?”
Bill squeezes his eyes shut and lets out a broken sob, then curls in on himself. “I like him.”

“Who?”
Bill opens his eyes, tearing tracking sideways down his face and ruining his makeup. Richie can see Mike’s mom’s dressing gown hanging on the wall behind him. The whole situation is a little strange and wrong. “Mike.”
“Everyone likes Mike,” Richie supplies helpfully.

“UGHHH,” says Bill. He rubs his eyes angrily and- yep. Makeup is truly fucked, now. “You don’t get it. I know I don’t have a chance with him, ‘cause, I mean, he’s my roommate’s boyfriend . How fucked is that?”
Richie pulls Bill into an awkward hug, long legs wrapping around Bill’s middle. “They’re gonna get married,” he says.

Bill cries into Richie for a little while, before pulling back and setting his head on Richie’s pillow. Well, Mr Hanlon’s pillow, really. “I’m in love with Eddie.”

“I know,” Bill says, like Richie’s just divulged to him that the sky is blue or that Moonlight is a masterpiece of modern cinema or something equally as inherently true and known to everyone. “I can’t believe he’s dating that prick.”

“I know .” Richie thinks he starts crying, which is so terrible, because he has contact lenses in. “Oh no, I can’t cry, I have contact lenses in.”

“It’s okay,” Bill says, and pats his head.

“I want to kiss him very badly.”
“I know the feeling.”
“Oh, Bill,” Richie says, tucking Bill’s face into the crook of his neck and probably suffocating him. “I think you’re the only person who understands me.”

“Why aren’t you and Eddie dating instead?”

Richie laughs. “I’m me , Bill.”

“Oh.” Then he asks, “Should we kiss?”

“Why would we do that.”

“I don’t know, we’re both gay and sad.”

“Are you not bi?”
“I am.”

“Why do you think I’m gay? I didn’t come out to you.” Richie scrunches his face in confusion.

“You just told me you’re in love with Eddie.”

“Oh.”

“So…” Bill coughs. “Kiss?”

“No, Bill,” Richie says. “We should not kiss.”
Bill nods. “Okay.” And then he falls asleep wrapped in Richie’s arms.

Richie stays very still for Bill’s sake for what he feels is fifteen minutes, but is probably two minutes or three hours or something. Then, he carefully gets up from Mr and Mrs Hanlon’s bed. It’s dizzying, trying to navigate the black room while drunk, and he stubs his toe on the edge of the bed and cries out. Bill makes a noise in his sleep, and it reminds Richie how it’s nothing at all like Eddie’s soft sleep-snuffles, and soon Richie is filled with a new sense of drunken purpose: find Eddie.

Even drunk Richie knows not to tell Eddie anything he’s regret, because drunk Richie is pretty aware for being very drunk. But when he comes face to face with Oliver Delancey in the hallway, he feels anger prickle in his chest, and drunk Richie is no longer smart.

“Where’s Eds?” he asks him, trying to sound demanding but failing miserably, since his words are slurred.

“He’s in the toilet,” Oliver tells him, eyeing him like he’s trying to work out what Richie’s about to do next. He’s also, decidedly, drunk. Richie realises that Oliver’s standing right outside the downstairs toilet. “What do you need him for?”
Sussing out Oliver is something Richie has been trying to do since he first met him outside those fucking auditions, so who would’ve thought that a drunk Oliver and a drunk Richie was all it took to see the pure, unrelenting fire in Oliver’s brown eyes.

“I hate you, I think,” Richie tells him. “You’re a dick.”

Oliver laughs. “I am?”

“Yep. Coming ‘round here and taking Eds from me like you- like you own him . Well here’s the fucking thing , Mr Big Dick. Eddie Kaspbrak is way too good for you. He’s way too good for anyone, ever. Nobody deserves him, he’s so good.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Oliver asks, crossing his arms.

“Oh, no, you don’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be fucking dating him, would you?”

Oliver sways a little, his face pinched in anger, and then shouts, “You are a massive dickbag, Richie Tozier.”

“I know!” Richie says, hands splayed in the air. “Maybe if you didn’t ruin me and Eds fucking friendship I wouldn’t be!” He stumbles against the bathroom door.

“Richie, stop, please,” Beverly’s saying, considerably sobered up and pulling at Richie’s collar. Where’d she come from? Why is she trying to ruin Richie’s confrontation?

“No, Bev! I haven’t-” his voice breaks, and there’s tears welling up in his eyes. “I haven’t slept in God knows how long. I need-” Richie takes a shuddering breath. “I need him back.”

“What makes you think you own him?” Oliver bites.

“I don’t!” Richie says, and maybe he’s sobbing, now, and maybe everyone’s fucking watching him breakdown, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care.

“Then stop acting like it. I’m his boyfriend, not you.”

The door to the toilet opens, and Eddie walks out, gelled hair a little messier than before. Richie is in love with him, so, so much. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Your boyfriend here thinks he fucking owns you,” Richie answers.

“When the fuck did I ever say that?” Oliver shrieks.
“I don’t fucking know! It was implied.”

“Rich, you’re crying,” Eddie says, going to put a hand on Richie’s cheek. Oliver pulls him back, though, and into his side.

“He’s being a dickhead, Eds, don’t.”
“He’s my best friend, Ollie-”

Richie practically growls. “Don’t call him Eds, you fucking homewrecking shitdick motherfucking bitchass.”

“SEE?”
“Leave him alone, Oliver, come on -”

“You’re telling ME to leave HIM ALONE?” Oliver’s shouting, now, and Eddie sinks into himself in this careful way, eyes to the floor. 

“I’m sorry,” Eddie murmurs. “Come on, let’s just leave.”

“NO,” Oliver shouts, and that’s it , that’s fucking it .

Richie throws a hand to the wall beside him out to stop himself from falling forward, and then he pulls his fist back and punches Oliver in the jaw.

He barely moves, but the punch is hard, and Richie glares at Oliver as he nurses his jaw, right after he says “ow, ow, ow,” because the punch really fucking hurt his fist. “Never fucking raise your pissing voice at Eddie again, or I will cut off your dick,” Richie says, voice low. A crowd has gathered around them, watching the scene unfold, and he puts his hands on his hips for extra flare, feeling really goddamn cool. Eddie’s hero.

And then Oliver pulls his fist back, grabs Richie’s collar, and decks him in the nose.

“OLIVER!” Eddie screams. There’s commotion all around them, people screaming and laughing, and pain springs to his face and rapidly spreads as Richie crumples to his knees and holds his nose while he whines, blood flowing steadily into his lap.

“It’s okay, Eds, I-” Richie starts, thinking Eddie would stay to help him up, but Oliver’s gone, now, and Eddie is too. Eddie left him.

Richie curls up on the floor in a miniature pool of his own blood, whimpering lamely, feeling bile prod at his throat. He’s still drunk as fuck, but he knows, now. He knows how fucking miserable he feels, and he knows he shouldn’t have touched Oliver, and he knows Eddie would leave him, eventually. Stupid of him to ever think he’d choose Richie, anyway. People are goading someone on in the kitchen, but Richie’s mind fuzzes and his hearing is staticy. He wouldn’t mind falling asleep, actually. Just forgetting about the whole fucking night. Maybe he’d never wake up.

Beverly’s prodding at his cheek, appearing from seemingly nowhere. “You good?” she asks, although he clearly isn’t, and then she’s heaving him up, her hands firm under his armpits. She pauses. “Richie,” she says, frantic. “We gotta go. We gotta leave. Stan-”

Stan appears in front of him, looking panicked. He’s breathing hard, and there’s a bruise on his cheek. His cowboy hat is missing. “Whaddya do?” Richie asks, falling back into Beverly.

The party is alight with the conflict playing out in front of them.

“Did Stanley Uris just kick Delancey in the balls?”

“What the fuck-”

“Delancey’s so gonna castrate him for that-”

“I kicked him in the balls,” Stan whispers, realisation dawning on his face. “Bev, I kicked him in the balls.”
“URIS-”

“We have to leave! Now!” Beverly shouts, slapping Richie’s cheek a few times to get him to fully wake him up. She’s pulling him by the hand towards the front door, her pink cast rough against his palm, and Stan’s hot on their heels, hands on Richie’s shoulders as he hastens them down the hall.

The cold October air hits Richie’s stinging face, all bite and sting, and he groans. Stan grabs his other hand and he lets himself be led away from the farmhouse, the three of them eventually breaking out into a run as they hear a holler behind them, probably from Oliver.

“Holy fuck,” Beverly screeches, laughter litling her voice.

They run for God knows how long, down the dirt path that leads them into a small woodland, alcohol sloshing in their stomachs and stitches stabbing their sides. Eventually, they come to a sharp cliff’s edge. Beverly drops Richie’s hand and collapses in a heap, throwing her head back against the yellowing grass, while Stan bends double to catch his breath.

Richie stumbles to the edge of the cliff and looks down the cliff face, into the shallow quarry below. “Fuck,” he breathes out. “This’s the quarry.”

“What?” Stan heaves.

“Me and Eds-” but he can’t finish. He stares at the black-green water rippling with the stark Autumn breeze, and takes a shaky breath.

He can see it, now. Him, younger, just as lanky and ridiculous, all limbs and glasses. Back when he used to straighten his hair with his mom’s flat irons it because he hated it curly. He’s drenched, shivering on a rock at the edge of the cliff because he wanted Eddie to use the towel first, exhaustion heavy in his bones after swimming and splashing for hours. Eddie, his skin tanned and glistening, his hair damp and falling into his eyes a little bit, scrubbing at his arms to rid himself of the water. Richie’s heart, beating far too fast for someone looking at their best friend drying off. His hands shaking. His mind whirring, clamouring mockeries of himself, stop looking at him stop thinking about him you aren’t allowed you’re disgusting you’re dirty you’re impure you’re going to fucking hell, Richie Tozier, and it’s because of the way you look at the boy in front of you.

Richie has a habit of dousing rotting memories in nostalgia. Dipping them in, until they come out dripping in romance like sticky honey. Days at the quarry with Eddie, which were once reduced to exhilaration and Richie’s self-hating internal monologue and nothing more in Richie’s fourteen year old mind, are looked back upon as one of the happiest times of his life. Eddie. Him. The water. The towel. Averted eyes.

Richie isn’t sure if he’s the same. He thinks that Richie wouldn’t have punched Oliver in the face, but he also thinks that Richie wouldn’t have had any reason to. He knows, now. He thinks he’s known for his entire life, maybe, but chose not to know.

He sits on the edge of the cliff, and he starts to cry.

It takes a few minutes before Beverly and Stan come and sit beside him, because they can’t hear him at first. It’s ugly and brutal; Richie only really cries when he’s watching films or listening to songs that make him think about things too much. Never over real-life things. No, he can’t bring himself to, because he’s shut that part of himself off. Richie Tozier’s best friend has always been, excluding one Beverly Marsh and one Stanley Uris, repression. And Richie’s been repressing quite an amount his entire life. He’d thought that one more thing can’t hurt, can it? But he thinks he owes it to fourteen year old Richie, who stares just a little too long at the muscles working in his best friend’s bare back, to be truthful.

“Rich,” Beverly whispers, her voice cracking. He can tell she’s sobered up considerably, now, and he thinks he might still be a little drunk because he can’t feel his head. “What’s wrong?” She pulls him into her, hand on the back of his neck, her fingers sinking into his hair. “Shhh. Shhhhh.”
Stan pulls them both toward him, his arms wrapping around Richie’s waist. He presses a kiss to Richie’s shoulder, warm and long. “It’s okay,” he mutters. Richie buries his face in Beverly’s shoulder and lets his sobs scratch his throat red raw.

Eventually, he calms down enough so he can breathe, and says, “I’m still drunk, I think, but I’m telling the truth.”

Beverly brushes some hair from his face and wipes under his eyes with her thumbs, her pink cast scraping his cheek. “The truth about what?” she asks softly. 

Richie breaks his face away from Beverly’s hands and looks out at the quarry, the blank expanse beyond the cliff’s drop. “’M in love with Eddie.”

There’s a beat of silence. “Yeah?” Beverly says eventually, and she wraps her arms around his shoulders. 

“Yeah,” he sniffs.

Stan’s grip tightens on his waist. “That’s okay, Richie.”

“It’s not,” Richie protests, wiping his eyes furiously. “No, it’s not okay, I can’t fucking do it. I can’t be near him. And- and. Oliver. I can’t. But I don’t wanna lose Eds, but it’s the only fucking option, isn’t it? It is, I know it, it’s the-”
“Shhhhh,” Beverly says. “We can talk about it in the morning. You’re staying at mine tonight, I think.”

“I’m just-” And the tears bubble up again. Richie knows he’s an emotional drunk, so why the fuck he let himself get this shitfaced, he doesn’t know.

“Richie,” Stan says, voice so light and gentle. 

He wraps his arms around them both tightly, pulling them even further into him. He doesn’t need to say it, because they all feel in the way Richie’s clinging to them, white-knuckled. He loves them. They both know.

Chapter Text

Richie wakes up as Han Solo on Lily Tartt’s velvet purple couch with his head pounding and his throat inconceivably raw. He propels himself upward with great effort, and pats around on the floor for his glasses. He’s still not entirely certain why he’s here, but he remembers soon enough when he squints and sees his glasses folded on the coffee table with a few more items. He slips them on and, sure enough, there’s two aspirin, a glass of water, and a note that reads ‘breakfast is in the microwave :)’ in a curling scrawl. 

His mouth tastes like fucking death , and he scoffs the aspirin, choking briefly, and downs his water so fast it spills all over him. He lets himself take in his surroundings; the chandelier hanging over his head dripping in fabrics, the bright red wall opposite him, the china figurines littering the coffee table and the fireplace. There’s a big brown school desk in the corner of the room, shrouded in books upon books about paleo diets and bikram yoga and zodiac signs and shit, and there’s a candle burning on the desk, something musky. 

One of Richie’s favourite places in the Tartt home. He slips up from the couch, stomach aching to be filled, and trods into the kitchen where- ah.

“Morning, shit brain,” Beverly says. She’s wearing yesterday’s makeup, but the cast is cut off her arm and she’s in a pale pink dressing gown and fluffy slippers. She seems to be making herself hot chocolate. “It’s one in the afternoon.”

Richie, as if unbelieving, looks to the kitchen clock. “Ah. Fucking hell.” He sidles up to Beverly and pokes at her sides. “Watcha up to? Making me brekkie?”

“Didn’t you read the note?”

He pops the green microwave open to reveal two croissants. “Very fancy,” he says, then takes them out. “I want them cold.”
“Of course you do.”

“Where’s Lils?” Richie asks around a mouthful of flaky pastry, sliding into one of the velvety kitchen chairs (also purple, to match the couch).

“Work.” She sips her mug, which is shaped like a woman’s chest and has two very large boobs protruding from it. “I have this terrible craving for pistachio ice cream. I might text her, actually.”

Beverly takes her phone out of her pocket and texts Lils while Richie makes his way through his croissants and tries to ignore how nauseous he feels. “I wish you made me eggs,” he muses.

“Well, I didn’t.” Beverly slips into the chair opposite him, and moves the extravagant floral centrepiece on the table so she can see him. She ties her hair back in a hot pink scrunchie and drops her head into her hands. “So, Eddie,” she says.

Richie groans, loudly. He steals her hot chocolate and finishes it in three gulps. Then, he says, “Eddie.”

“How long, Richie?”

“You had no idea?”

Beverly nods her head, as if to say, as course I fucking did . “I only figured it, like, this term. Don’t sweat it.”

“I’m not sweating it.”

“You reek.”

“That’s completely irrelevant.”

She shrugs. “You do. Anyway, how long , Richie?”

He takes a minute to think about his answer, because he knows saying I don’t know won’t suffice, but equally saying I’ve known for only one day and also for my whole life because loving him isn’t something I’ve ever not done I don’t think sounds really weird and implies he, like, came out of the womb loving Eddie Kaspbrak. Which he probably did. But Beverly doesn’t need to know that.

“God visited me in a vision when I was a sperm cell racing for dominance among my peers through the oviduct and said, ‘you’re gay as shit for your best bro’ . And I was like, ‘aight’ .”

“You’ll get to visit God real soon if you don’t beep fucking beep, trashmouth.”

“Real mature, Marsh.”

“My head is splitting , and it’s okay if you don’t wanna talk about it but you should, Rich.” She pouts. “You’re sad.”

He fake gasps. “Am not. How dare you.”

“You’re a nineteen year old child. A big fucking baby in diapers. And you’re telling me I’m immature. Grow up and talk to me about your feelings.”

Richie sighs, because she’s right and he’s defeated. “I knew when I was fourteen. Maybe, um. Maybe before that. Knew I saw him differently, anyway.” The kissing bridge pops into his mind, and his eyes sting suddenly. He winces and continues. “I guess I repressed it so hard I forgot? For a while. And then last night-”

“You have this life changing revelation last night ?”

“Just remind me to schedule my life changing revelations at a more appropriate time next time, then, will you?”

Beverly’s face is completely blank.

“Yes, it was last night. Which is why I lost my fucking shit .” 

“What did it?”

Richie takes a moment to consider. “Probably the fact I want Oliver Delancey dead. Probably that.” It makes sense, now, knowing that what he was experiencing was red hot jealousy. “Never thought I was a jealous person.”

“You are.”

“I’m aware of that now. God, I wish I could remember last night more. I think I told someone I’m in love with Eddie but I can’t remember who. Fuck.”

“You might’ve told Mike, maybe. Ask him.”

“No, because if I didn’t tell Mike, I’d just be outing myself by asking him if I did.” He buries his face in his hands. “ Bevvvvvvvv . I outed myself to someone last night.”

Beverly hums. “I think you were in bed with Bill?”

A trickle of memory floods back. “It was Bill, oh my God.” His eyes widen slightly. “Fuck. I cried all over you and Stan. And I-” He stands up from the table abruptly, panic settling into his bones. “I fucking punched Oliver! Bev! I punched Eddie’s boyfriend! Oh fuck, oh god, oh fuck, oh fuck .”

“Shut up,” Beverly says, rolling her head in her hands. “Head, head, head.”

“Marsh, this is serious . I’m gonna be eradicated from Eddie’s life!”

“You’re so dramatic. Please fuck up,” she groans.

He runs to the living room and finds his phone wedged down the back of the couch. “I need to text him, or, or, ring him. Now. Ring. Better option.”

“Stan punched him, too,” Beverly calls from the kitchen. “In the dick I think.”

“You don’t fucking-”

“Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail of Eddie Kaspbrak. Please leave me a mess-Richie stop!”

Richie grips his phone and listens to Eddie’s incessant, grainy laughing from the other end.

“I want to die,” he informs her.

“Uh huh.”

“Really, I do, I’m having the worst fucking time right now.”

Beverly appears in the doorway. “What do you think you’ll do about it? About Eddie? He has a boyfriend.” She wrinkles her nose. “And you punched him.”

“Thanks for reminding me, I almost forgot, Bev. What makes you think I’m gonna do anything?”

She shrugs with one shoulder, then yawns. “I don’t fucking know. Go shower, please, I can smell you from here.” Richie flips her off, but her eyes soften. “And Rich?” 

“What?”

“Go talk to Eddie. You don’t have to- to say shit. But. You’re drowning in communication issues, here.”

-

He finds himself in McDonalds at seven o’clock that night after a gruellingly awkward five hour rehearsal with Bill Denbrough opposite him in a sticky booth. He’s shoveling fries into his mouth, pretending not to glance every two seconds at Eddie and Oliver in a booth across the way.

“So,” Bill says. He drums his fingers on the table. “I remember I told you some shit last night.”

“You did?” Richie asks him, definitely not looking at Eddie. Confusion sweeps through him, but only briefly, because he’s not really thinking about Bill right now. “I thought I told you some shit?”

“Oh, you did,” Bill assures. “You’re in love with Eddie, yadda, yadda.”

“Not so fucking loud, asshole.”

“You’re practically telling him right this second, Richie. Your eyes are screaming ‘take me now, Kaspbrak. Let me show you some sweet, sweet loving. Let me have my way with you, baby boy’ .”

Richie had never had the urge to beep someone else in his entire life prior to this moment. He pins Bill with a hard stare, and Bill snorts. “Baby boy?” Richie says incredulously.

Bill slurps his chocolate milkshake. “My head is fucking pounding. You got aspirin? Paracetamol? Oh, my God. Ibuprofen. Please.”

Richie throws him a strip of paracetamol from his denim jacket pocket and Bill pops three, which is definitely not correct, but whatever. He dry swallows them, despite having a drink right in front of him, and then grins at Richie. He’s wearing a stupid fucking docker hat and a hoodie with a Die Hard poster on it. Richie has already expressed how much he fucking hates that hoodie several times today. “Anyways,” Bill starts. “You don’t remember shit?”

Oliver has draped his arms across the table, his hands loosely grasping Eddie’s elbows. Eddie rubs his fingers into the fabric of his ( Oliver’s ) Champion hoodie, listening intently to whatever bullshit Oliver’s spewing from his perfect fucking mouth. 

“I can smell the weed from here,” Richie mumbles, as if he definitely didn’t used to smoke pot on the regular when he was a freshman. 

“Richie.”

“Yes, yuh, uh huh.” Richie follows the movement of Eddie’s feet under the table, kicking and prodding at Oliver’s, his Docs dancing with a pair of fucking Yeezys. Jesus fuck, Yeezys.

“Oh, fuck, you’ve so far gone, dude.”

“Wh-”

Suddenly, Bill’s bitten fingers are snapping in his face, and he faces him abruptly, knowing his cheeks are flaming under his wire frames. “Did we miss the part where I’m homo for Mike?”

“Oh,” Richie says. “Come to think of it, I do remember you saying that.” He nods once. “Yep, makes sense. Good choice, Denbrough.” A beat, and- “HE’S DATING STAN!”

Bill slams his palms on the table. “I know! What the fuck do I do?”

“They’re getting married!”

“You told me that when I was crying I think. Do you really-”

“I don’t know, I think so. I don’t doubt it?”

“Fuck. Change the subject, I might vom.”

“It’s ‘cause you scoffed a twenty box of McNuggets, Billiam.”

“You helped?”

Richie looks pointedly at his own empty Big Mac box. Then he says, “I punched that dude, Bill,” and jerks his thumb in Oliver’s general direction. “What the fuck do I do?”

“He’s staring daggers at you.”

“Helpful, great.”

“Sorry, sorry. Um.” He shrugs. “Stan’s got it worse?”

Richie makes an executive decision to ignore him. “Not to dump emotional shit on you right now, but…”

“Dump away,” Bill says, gesturing to himself as if he’s the emotional shit dump. 

Richie leans across the table desperately, leg bouncing so hard the table shakes lightly. “I can’t lose Eds. And I am. I can feel it. I know . And I’ve been so shitty since, since. Oliver. I can’t- I’m not me . And I need over this shit. I need over Eddie. I need to make this work. Me, Eds, Oliver.” He glances over at them again, their feet touching, hands touching, eyes locked, deep in conversation. “I need to grow the fuck up.”

Bill whistles low. “Wish I had your motivation. But then again, I guess Mike hates me.”

How Bill could ever make that conclusion, Richie has no idea. “He could never,” Richie tells him. “He’s Mike, for a start.”

“We’re not talking about Mike, anyway,” Bill says, shuffling his milkshake from hand to hand. 

“Me, Oliver, and Eddie threesome is far less interesting than Mike.” He screws his face up. “God, even for me, that was too far.”

“Yep.”

Richie glances back at Eddie and Oliver canoodling, his chest a cavern of fuck this shit . He realises, quite abruptly, that all the time he has been scared to fall in love, and that he’s been thankful he wasn’t in love, he actually has been the entire time. Cruel twist of fucking fate, it seems. How he’s failed to realise all his gay Eddie thoughts up until this point aren’t just his horny, confused brain grasping onto the closest person he has, but a clear signal of being in love , he has no idea.

He turns back to Bill and says, “Tell me about your book,” because despite not being close with Bill, he knows Bill’s constantly writing; always working on a new plot every time Eddie mentions him. Richie also considers him and Bill bound in a friendship, now. Sharing your innermost secrets with an acquaintance kinda calls for that sorta thing.  

Bill smiles, eyebrows disappearing under is hat, and he launches into an explanation about the lore behind the Salem Witch Trials. Richie kicks back, sips his Coke, and for the first time all night, does not look at Eddie Kaspbrak.

-

Richie’s been in the same static position on his bed for all of forty minutes, absentmindedly trying to find faces in the crevices of the popcorn ceiling and muttering Orpheus lines under his breath, before Eddie gets back to the dorm. He creaks the door open suspiciously slowly, as if he thinks Richie might be asleep, then sighs presumably because he sees Richie is laying on top of his duvet in just his boxers and one of Eddie’s too-small zip-up hoodies, the hood up and cinched around his face.

Richie stops saying his lines. There’s that fucking awkward energy, again. Circulating around the atmosphere of the Tozier-Kaspbrak dorm like some kind of suffocating gas.

“I’m going to die of asphyxiation,” Richie mumbles with absolutely no context. 

Eddie, because he and Richie are so fine-tuned to the other, understands exactly what he means. “Then talk to me, Rich.” He moves over to Richie’s bed so he’s finally in his line of vision, and his hair a little messier than it was earlier at McDonalds. He has a different Oliver hoodie on, too. Richie’s hands are shaking.

“I can’t.”

Eddie sits on the side of his bed and puts his hand, carefully and deliberately, on Richie’s arm. “Why do you hate Ollie so much?” His voice is a little broken, Richie realises. He uncinches his hood so he can see him and- sure enough, Eddie’s rubbing a hand over his face wearily now, cheeks red. “Why?”

Because Richie would do absolutely anything to stop Eddie feeling like- whatever he’s feeling like, even lie preposterously, he says, “I don’t hate him, Eds. Promise.”

Eddie laughs bitterly. “You punched him in the fucking face, dude. Let’s not forget the facts.” He pauses, and then laughs. “Holy fuck. You’re a colossal idiot for that, you know.”

“He punched me back! He’s the colossal idiot!”

He’s fixed with a look. “And I already called him much worse than ‘colossal idiot’ for doing that.”

Something about that sentence makes Richie sit up. “What? Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you call him much worse?”

Eddie sighs, shakes his head. Removes the hand from Richie’s arm. Places it on Richie’s ankle. Turns his body away, sighs. Swivels so he’s sitting cross-legged in front of Richie. And then he says, “You’re the most important person in my life, fuckwad.”

Oh. “Oh.”

“No one gets to punch you and get away with it.”

“He’s your boyfriend.”

“And?” Eddie’s face is a challenge, and Richie is so in love with him he could choke on the tangibility of it. He defended me. He called Oliver much worse. I’m the most important person in his life. I’m the most important person in his life?

“I’m the most important person in your life?”

Eddie shrugs. It’s not something that he seems to be doubtful of, though. “Course. So I really need you and Ollie to get along. Like, really badly.”

Richie, high off of being the most important person in Eddie’s life, just nods his head.

Eddie smiles and braces his hands on Richie’s knees. “Come to dinner with us.”

“You have to be fucking kidding me,” Richie replies, not even hiding how disdainful he is of the offer.

“Not just us! Mike and Stan, too. You can invite Beverly so you’re not fifth wheeling.” Eddie drums his hands on Richie’s knees, as if that’s a persuasion tactic.

“I don’t think-”

“Ollie will apologise! And you can apologise back even if you don’t mean it, which you should because you punched him for no fucking reason but I won’t get into that-”

“I wouldn’t say no reason! Drunk Richie doesn’t just punch people-”

Eddie crosses his arms over his chest. “Your reason for punching him was a little stupid, Rich.”

Richie grimaces awkwardly. “I don’t, um. Actually remember why I did it?”

“You said he was talking like he owned me.”

He falls back onto the bed and buries his face in his hands. “Ah, of course. How could I forget.”

“But it’s over now, and Ollie’s not mad,” Eddie supplies, as if that fixes everything. “You both just need to apologise and then bam-a-lam! It’s all sorted out. Two best people in my life don’t wanna murder each other.” He points at his face, smiling. “Happy Eddie.”

“Happy Eddie,” Richie says, muffled into his hands. He groans. “Okay. Okay. Dinner. With Miss Marsh, to ground me and shit.”

“I knew you’d come around.” Eddie shuffles around on the bed until he’s laying on his stomach right beside Richie, and drops a leg over Richie’s middle. His whole body is on fire . “Only two weeks ‘til the show.”

Richie exhales audibly. “Are you scared?”

“I’m always scared.” His breath tickles Richie’s cheek. “But you’ll smash it. You’ll fucking murder it dead . I know you will. An’ you’ll be the best damn actor up there.”

Richie scoffs in reply. Eddie’s boyfriend is on that stage, how the fuck can he say that? “I don’t think so, Spaghetti.”

“I do.” He lifts a hand to Richie’s stomach, and draws a little pattern there. Richie thinks he’s drawing a flower. Or maybe it’s the sun. He focuses on the soft fingertips carefully, deciphering the meaning behind it as best he can. 

“Eds,” he says. “Are we okay?”

“We’re always okay, Rich.” He slips his hand up Richie’s hoodie, eliciting a sharp gasp, and draws the outline of a heart, just above his belly button. “Put on a playlist,” Eddie mumbles into his ear.

This, Richie thinks, as he fumbles with his phone and shuffles The Cure with shaking fingertips, is wrong. Eddie can’t wrap himself around me like this when he has Oliver, can he? But he’s lain like this with Beverly before, hasn’t he? And Stan. It doesn’t matter, he supposes, because he’s pretty sure that he’s being subjected to tortue. Being shown what he could have, but can’t. 

For a moment, he allows himself to pretend. Pretend that he is Eddie’s boyfriend, and that this entire situation is romantic. That Eddie only ever wraps his legs around Richie, and only ever draws patterns into Richie’s soft stomach, and only ever whispers into Richie’s ear. He’s punch drunk on this pretending, vision swimming as Just Like Heaven croons from their little Bluetooth speaker on Eddie’s writing desk. Realisation dawning like a quiet sunrise behind the closed blinds of the dorm.

Eddie Kaspbrak is not his. But as he lays in his arms, he can’t help me think to himself; what, then, can he complain of, except that he has Eddie in his life, in his arms, at least for now? That although it may not be in the way he craves, he is loved by Eddie nonetheless?

“You, soft and only,” Eddie sings sleepily.

Richie falls asleep, his arms cocooning around Eddie’s torso, his head pressed into Eddie’s silky hair.

Chapter Text

The restaurant isn’t ridiculously elaborate, but it’s definitely classy. The bottom floor is small and very warm, with only seven tables all packed tightly in front of the kitchen, which is in clear view.  Pots and pans hang from the walls and ceiling, as well as vines of ivy that drape over the bricked walls and twist up the legs of tables. Richie’s eyes stick to the pizza oven, visible from the kitchen.

“I don’t think I’m stomaching shit tonight,” he tells his phenomenally dressed date, Beverly Marsh, who looks ridiculous in a tight floral mini dress and red heels next to Richie, wearing jeans and a stained Hawaiian shirt. It’s his go-to outfit, sue him. His shirt has little Santas on it, too, which he thinks is pretty cool. Adds to his charm, if you were to ask him.

“You say that,” Beverly starts, taking Richie’s hand and beginning to drag him up a little brass spiral staircase in the corner of the room. “And yet you’ll be scrounging for my leftovers once the night’s up.”

“True.” 

He and Beverly have discussed this ordeal in great detail. Operation Richie and Eddie’s Friendship Remains Intact Despite Eddie’s Asshole E-Boy(friend) and Richie’s Undying Homosexual Love For Eddie. Or something like that. This encounter, this entire evening , is merely the first step in the operation. Make amends with Oliver. After tonight, hopefully: check.

At the top of the staircase, the restaurant is bizarrely vast. There’s warm chatter and laughter sifting through the air, and a grander set of stairs that lead to a balcony-area looking down upon the restaurant. “I see an Eddie.” Beverly points up at a table on the balcony, Eddie’s face covered by the brass railings, his body turned toward whoever is beside him. Oliver, obviously. Who else?

Beverly pulls him up the stairs and stretches her mouth in a smile as the table comes into view. Mike’s wearing a fucking blazer, because of course he is, but he’s also wearing jeans, and Stan’s in a cream turtleneck and checked trousers. They look extremely classy, it’s unfair. Eddie’s wearing one of his stupid pink polo shirts and jeans, and Oliver-

“He’s wearing camo trousers,” Beverly mutters. “I think I see chains.”

“Why hasn’t he taken his beanie off?”

“Is that a roll-up behind his ear? Holy fucking shit, what the fuck.”

“I suddenly feel extremely ill and am going to die horrifically if I don’t leave,” Richie says through the fake smile he’s painted onto his face as they approach the table. 

Beverly uses the hand wrapped around his bicep to pinch him, hard. “Over my dead fucking body, Tozier.” She gives Stan a little wave and he waves back with a thinly veiled pained expression on his face. “Play nice.”

“Who do you take me for?”

“A homewrecker,” Beverly replies through her teeth. And then they’re at the table.

Eddie’s face splits into the most wonderful grin, and he grabs Oliver’s hand and shifts them over a seat so Richie can sit beside- Oliver.

Beverly kicks his shin when he doesn’t move for a solid thirty seconds, so he scrambles over to the chair and sits down hard, glancing at Oliver’s enigmatic face to his right. Mike pulls the chair out beside him for Beverly, and she smiles at him gratefully. Greetings are hashed out clumsily, and Oliver makes a point of grunting in Richie’s general direction. How lovely. Eddie peaks around Oliver and kicks Richie’s foot under the table tactifully, as if trying to tell him something. If that something is to talk to Oliver now , it’s not fucking happening. He needs some alcohol in him before he can even think about it.

Beverly shoves a menu in front of Richie’s face. “Do you guys know what you’re having?” she asks the table. Her short curly hair is clasped back with a pearly snap clip, and her lipstick is bright red. Richie wishes, if only for a moment, that his life was simpler. That he could love Beverly, instead, properly. That he wasn’t being consumed by debilitating jealousy at every waking moment. But even the thought of not loving Eddie Kaspbrak terrifies him. How he got this far without knowing he loved him the entire time, he has no idea. 

“Think so,” Stan says. His hand is on Mike’s thigh under the table.

“Yep,” Mike answers, smiling charmingly at Stan, who looks so loved up and bright in the low-lighting of the restaurant. Richie yearns .

“I’m sorted,” Beverly says. “Rich?”

“We’re sorted,” Eddie cuts in, leaning on his elbow so he can look at Richie. “And Richie’ll have a carbonara, won’t you?”

Richie, having not even picked up his menu, stares at Eddie. He looks so enticing, his eyes half-lidded and his mouth licked pink. “Yeah. Yeah, I will.”

Eddie smirks. “Yep.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m also decided,” Oliver says deliberately, taking the roll-up from behind his ear and sticking it in the fanny pack he has around his waist. Maybe that’s why Eddie’s so into him. He’s always been a slut for fanny packs, hasn’t he?

“Cool,” Beverly says, then waves down a waitress from across the restaurant, despite there being a waiter just a table down from them. Richie smiles inwardly. Smooth, Marsh. “Hi,” Beverly greets her, hand hovering over the waitresses arm, as if she wants to place it there.

“Ready to order?” she asks, leaning into Beverly’s hand. Beverly jumps a little at the contact, her freckled cheeks blazing. The waitress is tall and gangly, her brown hair pulled into a little messy bun atop her head and her eyes sparkling under red-framed glasses. Richie can’t wait to rib her for this later.

“Yes, yup, yeah, um, can I get, um, hawaiian pizza, please?”

They all order respectively, and Oliver orders for Eddie, which is repulsive, in Richie’s opinion, especially because he also gets a carbonara. Rude.

When the menus are collected and Bev’s waitress leaves, Richie kicks her under the table just as Mike asks, “How’s rehearsals?”

“Stressful,” Oliver replies, clasping his hands in front of him. “But Eds here is so calm about this shit. So ready for whatever happens on the night.”

“It’s gonna be insane,” Beverly adds.

“For real.” Oliver’s nodding.

“The week leading up is always the most stressful, anyway,” Mike says. “Right? Like, once you get to opening night itself, it’s always exciting.”

“Yeah, that’s what I find, anyway,” Stan says. “With dancing. Nerves galore the week or so before, but when it’s time for me to go out there, I’m so fucking ready.”

Richie thinks it’s a little rude of him not to join in, since he’s the lead and all, so he says, “Orpheus just wants to get out there, at this point.” 

Mike nods at him, and Beverly taps her fingers against the table. Stan makes a crane out of his napkin. The silence that follows is stifled, for a table of six fucking people. “How’s the farm, Mikey?” Richie eventually asks.

Mike’s face lights up. “Great! Brilliant! I found a few frogs, yesterday, in the pond. Very rare in these winter months. And Stan saw a hare!”

“I did,” Stan adds.

“He did.”

“Very cool,” Richie replies. He wants to make a joke or something, try and lighten the palpable tension, but he feels like he can’t with Oliver there. Feels like it’d be wrong or something, or no one would laugh, or Eddie wouldn’t laugh. What’s the point of making jokes if Eddie doesn’t laugh at them?

There’s another tangible silence that looms over the table, and it’s physically painful, in a way. Stan clears his throat. “Me and Mike wanna get engaged.”

Nice one, Staniel, Richie thinks, as Beverly gasps as though she didn’t already know this. “Oh my God, it’s happening! When? When?”

“You’re getting married ?” Eddie squeaks. He’s suddenly gone quite pale, and he twists his hands in his lap. “Now? At this age?”
Stan frowns, but Mike, ever the gentleman, just says, “Why not? We love each other. This is it for us, right?”

Stan brings his hands from under the table to fiddle with one of Mike’s. He slides Mike’s ring on and off. “Yeah, exactly. And the fact that we can , now. It’s kinda exhilarating.”

“There won’t be a wedding for years, obviously. But we think we’ll get engaged start of next year.”

“I’ll move into the Hanlon farm, so I can start saving for a place for just the both of us.”

“You’re not gonna dorm next year?” Richie asks, heart dropping. That means Beverly and Stan won’t be on campus all the time. And because Stan isn’t a drama major, he’s never gonna fucking see him. And he doesn’t wanna lose him.

“Probably not. We’ll see how it all works out.”

“I can’t believe you’re committing like that,” Eddie says weakly.

Oliver turns to him. “Can’t you?” he mutters.

Eddie’s face is stony when he looks up into Oliver’s. “No.”

Silence threatens to consume the table once again, until the food finally arrives. As soon as Bev’s waitress sets a bottle white wine and a full glass in front of Richie, he has half of it guzzled and is mopping his jeans with a napkin.

“Fuck, Richie,” Beverly says, a warning in her voice. He stares directly into her eyes as he finishes the drink, then pours himself another.

They eat in silence for almost fifteen minutes, and phones eventually come out onto the table too, with occasional chatter amongst themselves (Mike and Stan muttering, Beverly and Richie sharing looks and showing each other memes).

“So, Richie,” Oliver says, suddenly. The first time he’s actually spoken directly to Richie all night.

He almost drops his phone in his carbonara and coughs, once. “Oliver.”

“How’s it going?”

Richie stares at him, a single spaghetti tendril hanging out of his mouth. He slowly sucks it up as he sureys Oliver’s pinched face. He has a four o’clock shadow. Is that what Richie’s doing wrong? Does he not have enough facial hair? “It’s going fine. Dandy, actually. Yourself?”

“Good.” Oliver takes a large (very, very large) bite from his meat infested pizza slice and tries for a smile. He has tomato sauce on his teeth. “Still a little sore, you know.” He winks, he fucking winks at Richie, and rubs at his jaw. Richie hardly left a dent.

He knows what he has to do, and that he has to do it now. In front of everyone. This is for Eddie, he thinks pathetically, as he says, “Sorry about that, by the way.” He swallows hard. “No hard feelings?”

Oliver holds out a veiny hand, and Richie shakes it in his sweaty one reluctantly. “‘M sorry, too. Didn’t break your nose, did I?”

Richie looks to Eddie, whose entire face could be the sun right now. He’s beaming. “No, dickhead,” he says goodnaturedly, using the smile elicited from seeing Eddie’s smile and directing it at Oliver. “It only bled a little.”

“Good. That’s all I wanted it to bleed.” It’s not funny, but Richie laughs anyway, and he feels Beverly’s foot curl around his ankle in a secret signal of approval. He’s doing it. He’s making peace.

“Oh! Rich,” Eddie pipes up. “Tell Ollie about the time you put your entire hand in an oven.”

Beverly snorts at even the mention of the incident, and Richie shakes his shoulders out. “Buckle up, Buckaroo. This’s a long one.”

“I can say it in four words,” Stan says. “Richie hand oven cry.”

“Dumbass,” Eddie adds.

“Yes.”

“Oh, c’mon. It’s more nuanced than that!” Richie pushes his plate away from his and turns to Oliver. “So, Eds, my man, my boy, my bro, my-”

“Eddie,” Beverly supplies, to speed it up.

“Thank you, Bev,” Richie says. “Eds is making some toasties in my house. Back in the olden golden days, y’know, highschool-”

Eddie taps Oliver’s arm. “When Rich used to climb through my window and take me back to his, remember I told you?” And, oh. He told him. Okay. That’s interestingly new material for Richie’s brain to gnaw at. 

“Yeah, so,” Richie coughs. “I’d taken Eds back to mine at, like, I dunno.” He looks at Eddie for help. “Midnight?”

“Half one,” Eddie says easily.

“Half one,” Richie repeats dazedly. “Yeah. Anyway, so, it’s early morning. We’re in my kitchen. And Eddie’s in his ridiculously big sweater-”

“It was yours!”

“Was it?”

“Why else would I be in a ridiculously big sweater?”

“You had loads of big sweaters!”

Eddie groans. “Yes, Richie, and all of them were yours.”

“I think I would’ve noticed if you were stealing my fucking clothes, Kaspbrak.”

“So you have always been this fucking oblivious, then?”

Richie scrunches his brow. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“Is this part of the story?” Oliver asks mildly, looking between them both.

Stan is shaking his head in dismay. “No. It’s part of this double act they have, where they bicker like my gran and gramp.”

“I don’t even think they realise they’re doing it,” Mike says, astonished.

Beverly nods, shoving five pieces of tortellini into her mouth at once. “They definitely don’t.”

“ Anyway ,” Richie continues, shooting a look at the table, eyes landing back on Eddie, whose expression is blank. “He’s in my ridiculously big sweater, and he’s making toasties. And I’m eating cheese straight outta the bag, because what else am I gonna do?”

“Is the cheese detail important?” Eddie asks.

Richie glares. “It is to me. So, Eddie puts his sweater-covered hand into the oven to fish out the toasties, and he gets his hand stuck.”

“The sweater catches on the grill-thing.”

“He starts fucking screaming .”

Eddie’s started to laugh now. “Maggie runs down, of course, out of her mind with worry. I’m not even hurt, right? It’s the sweater that’s caught. My hand is, like, at my chest. And Richie’s just fucking-” he stops as laughter dissolves his words. “He…”

“I’m, like, monkey dancing in panic? And then I-” he breaks off to cackle. “Whole hand. In the oven. Whole fucking hand on top of the fucking pan ."

“So now Richie’s screaming, too, and Maggie doesn’t know what the fuck to do, so she starts screaming.”

“And Went comes down and we’re all fucking screaming and I start crying really hard ‘cause it fucking hurts .”

Eddie throws his head back with laughter, pale neck on display. And that’s all it takes for the spell to be broken. Because there’s a fading hickey, there, just to the left of Eddie’s adam’s apple. Barely noticeable, but visible all the same.

Beverly’s guffawing, clearly adoring of this story, but Mike and Stan just smile fondly. And Oliver- looks very confused. Richie wipes his eyes and pats Oliver on the shoulder. “Feel like you had to be there,” he says unhelpfully, suddenly uncomfortable.

Oliver nods a few times, and then he turns to Richie quickly. “Can you let me out? Bathroom.”

Richie clambers to get up, and watches as Oliver walks quickly down the stairs and towards the bathrooms.

He isn’t sure why he does it. He thinks it’s the way Oliver’s eyes were when he turned to Richie; a little pleading. Desperate, almost. And he wants to right things with Oliver. He has to, for Eddie. For him and Eddie’s friendship. “Damn,” Richie says, motioning behind him with a thumb. “Didn’t ask him to do one for me. Better go do it for myself, then.” Beverly raises her eyebrows high, her eyes saying the fuck? He replies with a look that says shut up, Marsh, and follows after Oliver as casually as possible.

The bathroom is a deep red, with a plush velvet couch in one corner and five stalls, wooden doors with black metal bolts making it seem as though they’re the bathrooms in a medieval castle. There’s even some tapestries around the walls of battlefields and castles. Richie sits on the couch and calls, “Oliver? You okay?”

He hears a flush, and one of the bolts in the stall closest to him slides out. “I’m fine.” Oliver stands in the doorway of the stall, hands in the pockets of his camo pants, and regards Richie incredulously. And then he says, “Why you?”

Richie blanches. “What do you mean, ‘why me’? The fuck does that mean?”

Oliver shrugs and goes to the sink. “I told him I love him, you know,” he tells Richie, back to him. Richie’s body goes ice cold. “I told him I love him, and he cried. He cried and cried. And you know what?”

There’s a few seconds of strenuous silence, and Richie realises he’s waiting for an answer. He swallows. “What?”

Oliver laughs, bitterly. “He didn’t say it back.”

Richie stands up, then, and stalks toward Oliver. “It took him a hell of a long time to come to terms with his sexuality. He dated girls for years .”

Oliver turns around and presses back into the sink, face stony. “He told me about Myra.”

Richie scoffs. “So why are you acting like you don’t know why he didn’t say ‘I love you’ back?” He jabs a finger into Oliver’s chest, even though he knows Oliver could snap him in two if he felt inclined to. “I thought you were growing on me, but you’re the same dickbag I always thought you were.”

“I do know why he didn’t say ‘I love you’ back.”
“Good. We’ve already fucking established that, Oliver. Join the fucking party.”

Oliver grabs Richie’s wrist. “But it’s not because of Myra.”

“I don’t care what you think it’s because of, you fuckwad, if he doesn’t love you he doesn’t love you!” Richie all but shouts.

Oliver’s head drops, and Richie stares at the top of his dirty grey beanie for hours and minutes and years. He just stares, and thinks about how much of an asshole he is, and how he’s fucked up his chance to make Eddie happy. Make Eddie believe that he can get along with his boyfriend and not fuck up their RichieandEddie-ness.

Oliver walks toward the door and opens it with one swift movement, but bows his head again just before he leaves. He turns back to Richie, and says, “Eddie wrote the play about you.”

And time fucking stops.

Chapter Text

“What?” Richie’s heart is in his fucking throat, and his hands are shaking by his sides. He balls them up in his shirt.

But Oliver’s gone , out the fucking door before Richie can do anything.

He sits back on the couch in the bathroom. Eddie wrote the play about you. Eddie wrote the play about you? What the fuck? What the shit? Richie stuffs his hands under his legs to stop them shaking and takes a shuddering breath, closing his eyes. He’s Orpheus, right? And Orpheus loses the love of his life, and she doesn’t love him back, she never will, so he fucks off and finds someone else-

“Fuck.” He’s Orpheus. Eddie knows he’s in love with him. Eddie knows it, and he wrote a play about it to- to what? To tell him he didn’t feel the same? To tell him to back the fuck off? That can’t be right, though, because Richie only recently realised he loves Eddie, so how could Eddie have known? He wrote the play in summer, so there’s no way-

Unless he was too obvious. Unless he was so oblivious to his own feelings that the closeness and the teasing and the hand-holding that he didn’t think twice about came across as extremely not-platonic to Eddie, who’s in touch with his sexuality and isn’t living in the worlds shittiest case of denial Richie’s ever fucking seen.

He knows Eddie doesn’t love him back. He’s in the process of making peace with it. He was supposed to make peace with it tonight . And now he can’t, because Oliver had to go and be a prick, again .

He wonders when Eddie told him. Thinks about Eddie and Oliver, laying together naked in Oliver’s bed, limbs tangled and brows sweating. Eddie turning in Oliver’s strong arms, stronger than Richie’s will ever be, and frowning at him. Telling him that his dumb roommate (“You know, the lanky one with the ugly glasses that can’t do anything right? With the terrible sense of fashion? The one who punched you in the face for no reason because he’s a terrible, incompetent asshole with zero self-control?”) is in love with him, and he doesn’t know what to do about it. That he’s tried to send subliminal messages by writing the play about him and casting him as the lead. But he’s still moping about after me, Ollie, he won’t get the fucking message .

Richie doesn’t realise he’s crying until a tear drops onto his jeans, and he starts to wipe furiously at his face, angry with himself. “Fucking loser,” he mutters. He sniffs hard and stands up.

In the mirror, he sees his own reflection. His cheeks are a fiery red, and his eyes are bloodshot. There are dark, purple bags laden under each eye, visible beneath the drooping frames of his glasses, so big and scraped, the middle sellotaped. He has carbonara on his button-up, tears on his jeans, material indents on his trembling hands from where he’s sat on them. His dry lips are bitten raw. He decides in a matter of seconds, taking in his appearance one more time, that he needs to leave. But he can’t, can he, because that’s letting down Eddie, and he’s in fucking love with Eddie, so letting him down is out of the question.

He needs to get shit-faced.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Deep breath in, deep breath out. “Nothing to lose, Tozier.” His voice cracks, and his eyes burn raw. “Nothing to fucking lose.”

He leaves. He stalks back toward the table, led by Eddie’s bright laughter at something Oliver’s just said, and grabs a waiter by the arm as he passes. “Alcohol,” he says, and the waiter grabs his notepad and furrows his brows. He opens his mouth, but Richie says, “Five beers,” and points to their table. The waiter nods.

“You okay?” Beverly asks as he slides back into his seat. He can see Oliver staring at him in his peripheral vision, but avoids looking at him. He’s had enough of this shit today.

Richie smiles at her, stretched and clearly faux. “Perfectly fine.” He kicks her ankle under the table for good measure, in a good natured gesture, but she just furrows her brows at him and glances between him and Oliver incredulously.

He maintains eye contact with the spaghetti-stained tablecloth until the waiter returns, distributing the five beers around the table. “Sure it wasn’t six, sir?” he asks, and Richie shakes his head, reaching over to collect the beers.

“All for me,” he says, and smiles sarcastically at him. The waiter coughs and promptly walks away, leaving five pairs of eyes boring into him. “What?” he asks innocently.

Beverly grabs one of the beers and takes a long sip, clearly ignorant of her warning she’d given Richie earlier. “Hm,” she hums, thinking. “I guess if you’re getting pissed, so am I.”

“ Guys ,” Mike pleads, “Don’t get drunk! We don’t need alcohol to have a good time!”

Richie laughs. “No, Mike, we do. It’s fine, I won’t get drunk from this many.”

“Yes you fucking will ,” Eddie hisses, and it plants a seed of doubt in Richie’s chest. Eddie doesn’t want him to do this, Eddie disapproves, Eddie’s the one who’s gonna have to drag him into bed and- Eddie wrote the play about him.

He chugs half a pint and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, beer dripping from his chin and seeping into his unwashed jeans. 

“Well, I guess we could order dessert?” Stan suggests. “Get the table cleaned up? I wouldn’t mind a margarita.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Mike says fondly, brushes back Stan’s hair from his eyes.

“I’ll go for beer,” Oliver says to Eddie, deliberately turning his back on Richie. “You want a Budweiser?” Richie scowls and chugs the rest of his pint. If Oliver were Richie, he would know that Eddie’s favourite beer is actually Corona, but then again, Oliver isn’t Richie, because if Oliver was Richie everything would be absolutely fucking fine and Richie Tozier wouldn’t have his heart set on alcohol poisoning or worse by the end of this abysmal night.

When the waiter returns, he orders two more.

-

“And you ,” Richie says, swinging his body around to Stan. “Can’t fucking leave me . ‘M never gonna see you if you get-” he hiccups, “married.”

“Richie, Richie, shush, come on, now,” Beverly is trying to grab his hands from across the table, her movements languid. “We need to go, come on now, it’s okay, come on now, it’s-”

“Are they always this bad drunk?” Oliver asks, sipping on his second beer and just being definitely one-hundred-percent sober if his posture and general disgust toward Richie, Beverly and Stan was anything to go by. 

Richie pokes his shoulder weakly and imitates spitting in his face. “RICHIETOZIERDON’TSPITATPEOPLE!” Beverly yells, hands flailing. Stan snorts with laughter, causing some alcohol to come out his nose, which just elicits more outrageous flailing from Beverly.

Mike jogs back to the table, and Richie idly wonders why he left in the first place before he sees the receipt in his hand. “You all owe me a lot of shit,” he says, glancing at them all. “You good, Eddie?”

Eddie has his head buried in his crossed arms on the table, and he groans weakly in response. “The second-hand embarrassment,” he muffles. “How haven’t we been kicked out yet?”

Mike coughs. “We, uh. We have, actually. They just told me that we need to leave immediately.”

Eddie groans again, much louder this time, and Oliver strokes a hand over his back. Richie scoffs and rolls his eyes, then gestures with his thumb at Oliver as if to say get a load of this guy . Beverly giggles. Richie doesn’t quite process the scowl Oliver sends him.

Mike fiddles with things on the table for a second, and Richie can’t quite make out exactly what he’s doing, but then he comes over to where Richie is and tells him to stand up. He does, if you call catapulting himself into Mike’s arms standing up .

“Wish you weren’t Mike right now. Wish you were…” Richie murmurs to Mike. He stares at Eddie, who is crowding close to Oliver at the table, whispering. “I am not straight.”

Mike’s eyes flash with something, and he shares a look with Stan who is in the process of helping Beverly to her feet. “You are not sober , Richie.”

“Fuck no , I’m not !” He flings his frame out of Mike’s arms and throws his hands in the air in a spectacular display of drunken stupidity, as he immediately stumbles into the table. “Tooooo ooooooo much.” He taps Mike’s chest with a finger. “Needa puke.”

“Fuck,” Mike mutters, arms once again encircling Richie to help him move around the table and get him out of the restaurant as soon as possible.

As soon as the cold night air hits his flushed skin, he bends over double and upchucks.

“How pleasant,” Stan remarks, smiling tightly as Beverly immediately does the same.

She laughs brilliantly afterwards, and stumbles over to Richie, slinging an arm around his shoulders. “We vommed!”

Richie laughs and high-fives her. “We did!” 

Richie can’t quite tell what happens after that, swaying with Beverly draped around his shoulders and Mike’s hand on his waist. Eventually, a car, presumably an Uber, pulls up in front of them. Mike supports Richie as he scrambles into the backseat giggling. The driver reminds Richie of Eddie’s mom, and he’s about to voice such observations when Oliver climbs into the back seat beside him, holding Eddie’s hand and dragging him in too.

“Miiiiiiiike!” Richie sing-songs, confused as to why Mike isn’t riding with him, too. What about Beverly? Stan?

“We’re going to campus, Richie,” Eddie says tiredly. He’s still holding Oliver’s hand, and Richie reaches over to Oliver’s thigh and pulls their hands apart with a grunt. Oliver stares at him.

There’s something about Oliver’s penetrating stare that sobers Richie slightly. His eyes are detailing exactly how Oliver’s going to go about tying him up, hang him upside down, and castrate him or something for ever considering being in love with his boyfriend.

“The price one pays for love,” Richie says, and, no, he’s definitely not sobered, but at least Oliver’s metaphorical eye-murdering has given him perspective. There are worse ways to die, he thinks, than being in love with Eddie Kaspbrak. An extremely kind way to go.

The journey is tense. Oliver makes a point to put space between himself and Richie, practically on Eddie’s lap, and Richie isn’t sure whether it’s because he’s repulsed by the overwhelming smell of vomit or he’s repulsed by the overwhelming Richie-ness of Richie. Because Richie sure is full of Richie, and it’s kinda gross, if you were to ask Richie about it. Who’d want all that Richie? Not Oliver. Certainly not Eddie. Would anyone?

He hums the Super Mario theme tune under his breath as he thumbs the spaghetti stain on his shirt and enjoys the feeling of being absolutely shitfaced while he can. His brain is just a little monkey with cymbals and a bow-tie, dancing and clapping. Dance, monkey, dance.

“Richie,” Eddie is saying, tapping him on the thigh. “Rich.”

The Uber has stopped moving. Eddie is beside him. “Where’s Olly? The Ol-ster? Ol-man?”

Eddie looks like Richie has just kicked him in the balls. “Please, shut the fuck up. He left, Richie. You passed out for a while there. We need to get you inside.”

“He’s gone?” Richie asks and Eddie wraps an arm around his shoulders and tries to pull him out of the Uber. He tries to remember why he got drunk in the first place and can’t seem to. Seems like it worked, then. He’s attained the result sober-Richie craved.

“Sorry,” Eddie says to the Uber driver, ignoring Richie. “He’ll just be a minute.” He turns to give Richie a wild look. “Get up!”

“Okay! Okay!” Richie propels himself forward and upwards, his body crashing into Eddie’s tiny frame and his hands clasping around his waist. “Eddie,” Richie says, as bile rises in his throat.

“Stop,” Eddie whispers, and it sounds like he’s hurt. Like Richie has hurt him. “Stop this, Richie.” He pushes Richie away from him and slams the Uber’s door shut, leaving Richie staggering behind him. Eddie starts to walk off, but Richie grabs hold of his hand. Can’t see in the dark. Vision is too blurry. Whatever.

Campus at night is uncanny; buildings curve into one another unnaturally, and the silence is overwhelming. Richie can hear his footfalls. Can hear Eddie’s footfalls. Can hear the electricity running from his sweaty palm to Eddie’s soft one, just where skin grasps skin. His nails are burying themselves in the back of Eddie’s hand, but Eddie doesn’t seem to mind. Allows it. Holds on just a little tighter.

When they reach their dorm room, Eddie stops short of opening the door with his key and turns to Richie. He stares at him for a long, long moment. Eyes flickering to brows and cheeks and lips and chin. He reaches out with the hand holding his key; the hand not preoccupied with Richie’s hand, and brushes the curls from his forehead. And it makes Richie’s blood boil .

“Why the fuck would you do that?” Richie asks, spitting venom. Eddie’s hand immediately recoils as if burnt, and he’s still staring at him, but this time he looks wounded.

“Do...what?” Eddie asks. 

Richie briefly forgets what he was talking about, and thinks he can’t possibly mean Eddie brushing Richie’s hair out of his face, since that was entirely harmless and extremely welcome. He settles on saying, “Everything.”

It seems to be enough, because Eddie looks away and fumbles with the key, opening the dorm room door and leading Richie inside by the hand, towards his bed. So many of Richie’s fantasies have involved Eddie dragging him to a bed by the hand, but the action happening in real time is so wrong, and there’s not enough sexual tension and far too much tension tension. 

Once Richie’s on the bed, Eddie gently prys his own coat off and throws it on his bed, then throws Richie’s quilt open and climbs in. Richie, mind slow and fumbling, hums at him in confusion. Eddie huffs and opens his arms. Silently, Richie crawls in, confused as to why Eddie would allow this after what he’d just said. Eddie loves you , his brain supplies. Not in the way you want, though, he replies to himself. You fucking loser.

“Why would you get so drunk?” Eddie asks, hand coming up to pet Richie’s hair back, curls twisting around his fingers. Richie has his head against Eddie’s chest, and he can feel his heartbeat, a slow drumming, comforting and entirely encapsulating Richie’s concept of safety.

“I can’t remember,” Richie murmurs, hands roaming across the expanse of Eddie’s back, still clothed, much to his dismay. He briefly considers pulling Eddie’s shirt off, and then realises that he can’t really do that, can he? 

“Did…” Eddie breaks off, voice hoarse. He clears his throat. “Did Oliver say...anything? To you? In the- in the bathroom?”

And oh, yeah, Oliver in the bathroom. Forgot about that. Richie contemplates the plush red chairs of the bathroom’s interior, the deep blood red it’s walls were painted. The red in his vision as Oliver told him-

Richie uses all the drunken strength he can muster to push Eddie off of him.

“Wh-”

“You’re a dickhead,” Richie says, and he knows he doesn’t really mean it, but he does , in a way. He’s so fucking finished with being heartbroken and pining all the fucking time. He wants this to end. Eddie’s hurt expression does nothing to hinder the drive inside him to say this, and say it now. “I know what you did.” Richie puts more space between him and Eddie, careful to not lose his balance on his knees and topple over the side of the bed. “I know you wrote it about me, Eddie.”

Eddie blanches. His face is pale white, deathly, his lips parted slightly. Tears spill over his cheeks as if on cue, as soon as his name leaves Richie’s lips. Richie moves forward instinctively, ready to reach out and wipe away his tears, ready to comfort him. He’s so drunk, he doesn’t understand the gravity of what he’s saying. Of course he doesn’t. He’s fucking everything up and he doesn’t even know it, because that’s a key character trait of being Richie Tozier. I’m a fucking asshole , Richie thinks. Eddie flinches away from Richie’s touch. I’m breaking him apart.

“I don’t understand,” Eddie starts, voice small. He slowly stands from the bed, creeping toward the door as if wanting to run. Richie carefully slides to the edge of the bed and steadies himself on his feet, ready to stop Eddie leaving.

“Oliver. You wrote the play about me.”

Eddie’s breath is coming in little gasps, and he looks around the room panicked; anywhere but Richie’s eyes. Eventually, he stares Richie squarely in the face, features crumpled. “What do you mean, Richie ,” he asks, stronger.

Richie reaches for Eddie, grabs his shoulders. Shakes him as he says, “And I understand it! I do! And I’m okay with it! But couldn’t you have told me any other fucking way? ” There’s a venom in his tone, he can hear it, but he feels he needs to convey how shitty this is for him. I’m in love with you , he thinks, as if thinking it hard enough will transfer the words to Eddie’s brain. I’m so in love with you. Why can’t you love me back? His drunken brain trips to say it, stumbles with words, says, “I’m so- Why? Why?”, because he can’t; not really. Admitting this to Eddie would be suicide. He’d be putting himself in a direct line of fire. He can’t . “I can’t .”

“I didn’t know Oliver knew,” Eddie mumbles, shaking hands gripping Richie’s arms, holding him there, his eyes glassy with tears. “I didn’t know, I didn’t, Richie, I didn’t. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“You could’ve told me differently!” Richie all but shouts, his breathing irregular, heartbeat stuttering. “You could’ve just t-told me! Just- just. Just.” He falls to his knees, rather dramatically, sobbing in his hands. Big, wracking sobs. Nothing to lose now, is there? Just let it all flow.

Eddie kneels, trying to pry Richie’s hands from his eyes, trying to see his face. “I couldn’t have! Richie, I couldn’t have. You know I couldn’t have. I’m sorry you had to find out this way- I can. I can say it. I can say it now, if you need me to-”

Richie heaves in a breath and rubs his eyes furiously. “Fuck it. Fuck you. No.” A sob. “No way. It’s okay. I should’ve known. When you made me Orpheus. I-I’m sorry I didn’t. Realise.”

Eddie looks confused for a brief moment, and then shakes his head repeatedly. “Richie, listen to me, you’ve got it all wrong, I-”

“It’s understandable, it’s okay, I’m disgusting-”

Eddie looks horrified. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m gross. I’m vile. I should’ve never been so obvious.” 

There’s a moment of silence, where Richie hangs his head and breathes deeply, and Eddie softly cries in front of him, and it’s so pitiful. It’s a Renaissance painting, should be titled The Lover And The Loved or something otherwise pretentious; two teenage boys on their knees crying for the deterioration of everything they’ve ever loved, which just so happens to be each other.

Eddie, eventually, uses his hand to tilt Richie head up. “You aren’t vile, Rich. Why the fuck would you say that?”

And Richie replies, in a mere whisper, the thing that he has thought since that jarring moment at the party. Since he realised he’s in love with Eddie Kaspbrak. “I don’t deserve to love you.”

Chapter Text

“I don’t deserve to love you.”

The statement settles into the thick atmosphere of the room. Richie dares not look Eddie in the face. He stares at Eddie’s shaking hand as it floats away from Richie’s chin where it had just nudged his head upwards, fingers splaying, shaking. That’s it, Richie’s slow brain absentmindedly thinks, that’s the end of that. All he can do is stare at Eddie’s shaking hands clasping in his lap and await the outrageous response he’s bound to receive any fucking second-

“What the fuck,” Eddie mutters, bitterness laced through every syllable, poison in one harmless phrase. Ah, there it is. Eddie's breaking point has been successfully reached. Nice love confession, Richie.

“Eds, I’m not-”

“Shut up, Richie.” His voice is minuscule, the words slipping out wetly. Richie looks up, head pounding with pain, now. Eddie’s face is of sheer disbelief. And he leans forward, ever so slightly into Richie space, and for a beautiful, painless, fleeting second Richie believes that Eddie may just kiss him. And then he says, “Fuck you.”

“Eddie, I can-”

“No.” Eddie stands up. He balls his hands into tight fists. Tears stream down his face, drip from his chin. “No, I had it all figured out. You’re drunk. You’re really drunk, and you think this is some game. You’re straight. I’m so fucking- I’m so-” He lets out an estranged whimper and turns from Richie harshly, bringing his fist to the wall. 

“Hey! How do you know I’m straight?” Richie goes to stand up, but his legs betray him and he falters, body folding onto the bed. Still too fucking drunk to fix this. Still too fucking drunk to understand the consequences of this shit. He’s not particularly sure why he feels as though this headache is some sickening karma for ruining everything, but he knows for sure that future Richie is gonna hate present Richie more than he already does. There’s something niggling in his brain, though, just there , telling him to get to Eddie. To just touch him, and maybe the tension will release from his shoulders and the tears will cease to wet his shirt and he’ll breathe again and they’ll breathe together , but. But.

But then thinks he can fix this another way. Turn it around. Maybe make Eddie less annoyed at him for falling in love by showing him how much he’s hurt. Richie’s massive fucking genius mind is whirring, everybody, and the output? “I don’t think you can love anyone.”

Eddie turns around slowly. “What?”

Richie props himself up to standing, hand on the bed. “Yeah, Oliver told me. You don’t love him back. You wrote that play about me, and you think you’re capable of loving him when you take, like, pleasure or something in sending me sublimin- sublim- subwimi-”

“Subliminal,” Eddie provides quietly.

“Thank you. Subliminal messages through a play and casting me and acting like you care about me,” he hiccups, “and- and I know I deserve it, and Oliver deserves to love you because he’s kind of a massive asshole, too, isn’t he? So you should keep fucking him and that’ll keep everyone happy or, or whatever.” 

There, Richie thinks proudly, Richie saves the day again.

“Oh,” Eddie says. His face is an open wound. Maybe the day isn’t all that saved, actually.

“You and,” he pauses. Scoffs. “Ollie. You were made for each other.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie spits. “Fuck you, Richie Tozier, and fuck the fact you’ve ruined me for anyone else. And fuck your games, and your fucking, your fucking drunkenness and your penchant for never letting me be fucking happy. Why can’t I be happy? Richie, why?” Eddie rounds on him, rightfully so, if he says so himself, and jabs a finger at his chest. Might as well be a poison-edged dagger. There’s a flash of something in Eddie’s eyes, and he looks so feral and hurt. So hurt. Richie did that. Richie hurt him. All he's done tonight is hurt him over and over and over.

“Why aren’t you happy?” Richie asks him, small.

Eddie screams into his hands. “Because of you! And of Oliver, and, and-”

“Oliver?”

“Yes! I can’t love him! I can’t love him, because I-” and then he stops abruptly. Clamps his hand over his mouth. 

“Because what?”

Eddie slowly removes his hand, tears steadily spilling. “Because I can’t. I can’t.” He breathes hard, once. 

They sit there, atmosphere laden with their charged silence for what seems like hours. Richie’s brain is trying so very fucking hard to understand what’s happening. What Eddie means . There’s a reason he doesn’t love Oliver? Was there always a reason? Is there ever a reason why someone doesn’t love someone else? What’s the reason Eddie doesn’t love Richie? Maybe it’s because he’s a giant prick with a penchant for, quote on quote, “never letting Eddie be fucking happy”. Yeah, that’s probably it. He should’ve just wallowed in his sadness by himself instead of dragging Eddie into his Eddie-related mess. Jesus fuck.

“I didn’t mean anything I said within the last…” He considers how long they’ve been in the dorm for. “Hour. Or so.”

“You sure as fuck didn’t,” Eddie says, running his hands down his face. “You,” he punctuates. “Are drunk.”

“Yes.”

“God Almighty.” Eddie slumps to the floor again, against the wall. “What are we doing to each other, Richie?”

I don’t know , Richie says in his head. I love you , he tells him. I’m sorry , he whispers. He falls to his knees and crawls over to Eddie’s crumpled form, laying his head in his lap. For a few blissful seconds, Eddie’s fingers drift through his curls, and things seem almost okay again. Richie sighs into the touch. He listens to Eddie’s heaving inhales, wet and throaty. 

“What did you think I wrote the play about, Richie?” Eddie murmurs. 

“I’m Orpheus,” Richie replies, simply. “And you want me to leave you? To, like, let you sit in the underworld? Eds, I’m really tired, should I sleep? Think I might-”

“That’s not what…” he trails off. “It’s for the greater good I stay away, okay? It’s better for everyone.”

Richie looks up at him, not quite computing the words he's just said, and lifts a hand to trail a finger over Eddie’s jaw. He momentarily closes his eyes, basking in the light touch. Then his brows furrow, and he opens his eyes. Stares at Richie for a beat. And tries to push his head off of his lap. 

“Eds, no, please-” Richie tries to grapple at Eddie’s hands, but he snatches them back.

“No, Richie. You’re drunk. And you’re. You’re so- you’re too much. You’re too much, Richie.” His voice quietens, then, and he breaks off into a little, desperate sob. “You’re too much.” And Eddie gets up swiftly, swings the dorm door open, and leaves. And he doesn’t look back.

-

“Have you seen Eddie yet?” Richie asks Beverly quietly. They’re sitting on the floor of studio F, the smallest studio in the block, getting orange makeup patted on their faces by a few of their classmates that have definitely never attempted another person’s makeup before.

“I was about to ask you,” Beverly replies, before swatting at a guy hovering over her with an eyeliner pen. “I do my own eyeliner, thanks,” she hisses.

“Why would you ask me? He’s avoiding me, we’ve been over this.” And over this they had certainly been, if you consider Richie sobbing into Beverly’s lap on Lily Tartt’s infamous purple velvet couch as Lana Del Rey crooned from Beverly’s phone being over this . Richie had refused to disclose the exact details of his and Eddie’s dorm breakdown-encounter-confession-fight to Beverly for ‘privacy reasons’, the privacy reasons being he was so drunk he can’t actually remember everything that happened. He definitely told Eddie he loved him. Eddie was definitely pissed. Some other shit happened. He doesn’t have a fucking clue.

“You should go to Oliver,” Beverly says nonchalantly, as if she hasn’t just suggested Richie put himself into a direct line of fire. She shuffles on her knees to the floor-length mirror on the wall and pulls at her eyelid.

“Are you fucking insane?”

“I’m high on stage nerves, Richie. Do you really need to sort this out tonight ? You had a week. You saw him at rehearsals that entire week. He hasn’t been able to avoid you.”

“I wanna speak to him alone , and since he’s been sleeping at Oliver’s, it’s been pretty fucking hard. Oliver’s at every rehearsal, too, Bev, you’ve seen him there, he’s all cold and brooding and-” Richie’s sprayed with a considerable amount of setting spray. God, it tastes like acid. “Thank you,” he supplies to his spritzer. “And looking like he’s gonna crush my puny body with his big masculine hands.”

“I think you could take him in a fight,” Beverly supplies.

“Really?” Richie smiles despite himself, pretty pleased with this assessment.

“No, fuckface, you already took him in a fight and Stan had to intervene, you were so goddamn hurt. Stanley .” He’d almost entirely forgotten about the Halloween party due to more recent events.

“Oh, fuck you.” More setting spray. “More? Thanks. So, why would speaking to Oliver help this shit?”

“Apologise,” Beverly shrugs, “Ask him how Eddie’s doing. See if Eddie wants an apology or not. Then he has to run back to Eddie and tell him how respectful you are, seeing whether Eddie wants you to speak to him or not before attempting to.”

“That would work if I didn’t try to ring him sixteen times the night of our...”

“Your domestic.”

“Don’t call it that, it makes it sound like we’re dating. I’ll cry all my makeup off.”

“Please don’t,” interjects Aaron, the guy doing Richie’s makeup. “This has taken me so long.”

“Tell her that,” Richie says, jabbing his thumb in Beverly’s direction.

Beverly sighs and looks around from the mirror. “I know you think it’s insane. But it’s the best thing you can do tonight. You could get some closure from it?”

Richie considers his options. Not talking to Oliver seems like a very nice option indeed, but Beverly’s right about the closure. Plus, he doesn’t really want to survive the afterparty tonight at Mike’s with an Oliver Delancey imagining bullets puncturing his sickly Victorian-child body. He’s not into that at all.

“It’s not a bad idea, actually. I mean, I can’t speak to-” Beauty blender right over his mouth, do his lips really need to be orange, Aaron? Do they? “Thanks. To Eddie tonight ‘cause he’ll, like. Run away. So.”

“Just promise me,” Beverly says, “You won’t talk to him before the show. Do it afterwards. We don’t need whatever he says to fuck you up.”

“Good call, Bev. I promise.”

-

He doesn’t promise at all, actually, because he’s a little shit, and so he finds himself in full Orpheus costume seeking out Oliver Delancey. His Orpheus attire consists of ridiculously uncomfortable khakis with a white shirt and a long overcoat. He feels like a scrawny gay trust fund baby. It is a modern retelling after all, so he supposes it makes sense Orpheus would be a pompous financially comfortable upper class bitch. I mean, how’d he be able to afford travelling to the underworld, anyway?

Richie slips out of Studio F and into Studio E beside it, hoping to find Oliver getting his makeup done in there - but it’s just full of stressed fine art students fiddling with prop pieces and background scenery. “Sorry,” he mutters as they all look at him with a death glare. He tries four more studios before giving up, deciding that he’s a little sick of being looked at like he’s just walked into an operating theatre and caused the surgeon to fuck up and kill the patient upon entry into every studio.

He’s not entirely sure where Oliver would be right now, and with only twenty minutes until curtain, he’s feeling a little funky in the gut area. An upchuck would do him nicely right about now, he thinks, so he power walks his way to the bathroom, just down the hall from the back entrance of the theatre. The halls are congested with people, his fellow actors and extras and stagehands bustling up and down, running, jogging, shouting at each other. Thankfully the audience is filing in from a door outside that leads straight to the shitty theatre, so the magic of the show isn’t ruined for them by witnessing the utter panic occurring in the hallways of the drama block.

It’s this that Richie has a love-hate relationship with when it comes to acting. The excitement and fear intermingling in his stomach, reflecting off of everyone else’s excitement and fear and causing it to grow grotesquely until he’s shaking and jittering. Fuck being calm before a show. Fear makes you raw, which is exactly what’s needed for a good fucking show. So Richie stumbles his way into a cubicle in the men’s toilets, hands pressed to the door, and lets his body lean into the fear and anticipation, right down into his fingertips. Orpheus would be fucking terrified right now. He’s just lost the love of his life. And so has Richie.

Richie realises that he was wrong, about not being able to perform Orpheus properly because he’s never experienced heartbreak. He’s been heartbroken his entire life thus far, and it doesn’t look like it’s packing it’s bags any time soon. The part of Orpheus was made for Richie, quite fucking literally, and he’s going to inject every single piece of himself into this performance or so help him.

He doesn’t need to vomit anymore. He already feels empty enough, and he heaves a breath and swings open his cubicle door.

And there, washing his hands, is Oliver Delancey. Dressed as Hades himself, oranges and purples and reds clashing harshly in his mismatched costume of the God of the dead. If Richie was on costume design, he’d probably have Hades in a smart black suit. Much more Hades-like. But then again, he is a manic kidnapper and he’s pretty fucking psychopathic in the play, so. 

Oliver looks at Richie in the mirror, and a scowl transforms his face as his eyes connect with his.

“Oliver-”

“I don’t really want to talk to you right now,” Oliver says curtly, crossing to the hand-dryer.

“I need to as-” Richie starts, but Oliver raises his eyebrows and juts his hands under the hand-dryer, which is exceptionally, needlessly loud. Richie stares at him as he concentrates on drying his hands. What a dickhead. What a fucking arsehole. “Can I speak now?” Richie asks when Oliver’s finished.

“No, they’re not quite dry,” is the reply, and once again his hands go under. 

After about ten seconds, Oliver finally relents and drops his hands. “What,” he says weakly, his demeanour flattening. It’s almost laughable, the way his large body looks in the costume; the way he hangs his shoulders and scuffles his feet. 

“I’m sorry,” Richie says through gritted teeth. “Again,” he adds. 

“Is that it?” Oliver gestures behind him to the door out of the toilets. “Can I go?” He goes to open the door.

“No!” Richie says too fast, and Oliver’s hand flinches off of the handle. “No. I. Goddammit. I’m sorry about that night, specifically. Wanted to make sure you’re...um. Okay.”

Oliver’s face scrunches obscenely. “What? Richie, whatever the fuck you’re going for here, I’m not up for it. I just puked my guts up-”

“You too?” Richie interjects. “I mean, I didn’t puke, but I was fully prepared to.”

Oliver scratches the back of his neck with a massive hand, then sighs. “I’m so much better when I’m singing. I get so lost, like, in it? Jesus, anyway, yeah. Acting usually isn’t my shit.”

“You were gonna be in the play whether you wanted to or not,” Richie supplies. They both know why both of them were cast in such prominent roles. He knows Oliver isn’t stupid enough to think it was a fair casting.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“In through the nose, out through the mouth?” Richie heaves himself up to sit on the surface between the sinks and swings his legs a bit, trying to release his excess energy.

“When has that ever worked?” Oliver quips, and Richie lets out a little breathy laugh. They look at each other, surprised. “How are you feeling, now?”

“Fucking terrified. Always am before a show. This your first rodeo?”

“First play, yeah.”

“You need the nerves.” He slaps his hand into his chest. “Good for the emotion.”

“Are they?”

“Fuck if I know.”

Oliver snorts, and the weirdest thing happens. He trudges over to the sinks Richie is perched on, and he slides up beside him.

“You ever messed up a line?” Oliver asks, quiet.

Richie smirks. “Is it really messing up if the audience hasn’t ever seen the script? I ad-lib. I improvise. It’s what I’m best at.”

“At least give me my cues,” Oliver says. He’s really fucking scared, Richie realises. His chest is collapsing in on itself with how heavy he’s breathing.

“I would never not give another actor their cues. I’m not that evil.”

Oliver scoffs, then sighs. “I’m sorry, Richie. For. A lot. Everything.”

Richie studies his face a second. He’s aware his hands are shaking, but he’s proud enough that his voice is level. He has to keep reminding himself, as he’s tempted to lean into Oliver’s company and enjoy this rare bonding, that he hates Oliver. He’s Eddie’s boyfriend. He’s an asshole. And he only wanted to speak to him for one reason only.

“Oliver,” Richie says, gently. “How’s Eddie?”

Oliver’s face rises slowly, brow furrowing. “What do you mean?”

“How is he? Do you think he’d accept an apology from me? Like, does he wanna hear from me? Or-”

“You’re such a fucking asshole. Jesus,” Oliver buries his red face in both hands. “Christ, you prick.”

“What?”

“You think this is funny?”

Now it’s Richie’s turn to furrow his brows. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?” He lifts a shaking hand and holds it between them to make his point. “You think I’m in the fucking mood to be funny? I just wanna know if he’s okay, I haven’t heard from him and I wanna apolog-”

“You don’t know,” Oliver says, disbelief causing the words to come out short.

“What do you mean? What don’t I know?”

“Richie,” Oliver says slowly. “Eddie broke up with me.”

Richie opens his mouth, but his brain comes up blank. And then Miss Swift swings the door to the men’s toilets open, her nose upturned. “Boys! Oh, thank god. You’re on in five! Get the hell out of here and get to the stage door.”

Richie grabs Oliver by the shoulder as soon as she leaves, just as they hop down from the sinks. “Oliver, when? When?”

“The day after the dinner,” Oliver says. Then he sighs, and offers his hand to Richie. “Come on. Like we’re fifty year old business men or something. All crimes forgiven.”

And Richie, heart stammering, hands shaking, grips Oliver’s sweaty palm in his, and shakes.

They make their way backstage and up to stage right, pushing past sweaty bodies of stagehands and extras. Beverly is across from them at stage left, and she gives a little “what the fuck where you doing?” gesture to Richie before shaking her head and smiling, then giving him a thumbs up. 

He begins to shiver. It’s cold, yes, but he can hear the audience murmuring incoherently and he can feel Oliver’s body heat radiating from beside him, and then Miss Swift is making her introductory announcement and then- Eddie.

“Hi, um. Everyone. Thanks for making it tonight.” He’s standing in front of the stage and Richie can’t see him, but his heart catches in his throat at the unpredictable sound of his voice. “I wrote this play with help from my amazing classmate, Ben Hanscom. And it’s. It’s a very personal play to me. Our actors are absolutely phenomenal, and they really bring this vision to life. I’m so grateful for all the hard work they’ve put in. That all departments of Derry University of the Arts have put in. I hope you all enjoy.”

The audience clap, a colossal noise, and holy shit, maybe there’s more people than Richie previously thought. Oliver grips onto Richie’s bicep - a comforting hold, and Richie places his hand on top of Oliver’s. You’ve got no enemies, here , Richie tells himself. Maybe he doesn't need to remind himself to hate Oliver anymore. He's not even Eddie's boyfriend now. They broke up. He’s just another poor sod in love with Eddie Kaspbrak who will never be loved in return. You can’t blame him for that, now, can you?

“You got this,” Richie tells him in barely a whisper, syllables escaping his mouth into the clammy air surrounding them.

Oliver smiles. “And so do you.”

The lights darken. The curtain opens. And Richie steps out.

-

Richie stands under the spotlight. Nerves are ever-present, but they’ve morphed into something more powerful and malleable, now. Act two, scene whatever the fuck it is. He’s not sure, he’s just flowing with the story. One long, winding, living, breathing narrative. Captive in his body. He’s telling this shit, and he’s killing the fuck out of it.

“I came to Hades for you,” he says to Beverly’s Eurydice, who is separated from him by a thin sheet of white fabric, underworld separated from the world of the living. He can’t see her through the sheet, so this scene is expertly choreographed to make it seem as though they are responding to each other without being able to see each other. It’s one of Richie’s personal favourites.

“Why? He won't let me out. He’ll never let me out, he told me he’d-”

“Eurydice,” says Richie, and he wills the tears to fall. They’ve been aching to cascade down his cheeks for hours now, and now, finally, they fall freely. Not even in Act one, when Eurydice had died, did he cry real tears. “Even if he won’t let you out, I need to tell you something.”

And there it is. Deviation from the script, well and truly. He can see, from just around the edge of the sheet, a stagehand wildly waving her arms in panic toward Richie, as if to warn him he’s getting his lines wrong. That this isn’t what’s meant to be said.

He steels his face and stares at the sheet in front of him. He knows this isn’t what’s meant to be said. Fuck what’s meant to be said.

Eddie doesn’t get to tell him how he feels. He’s writing Eddie his own fucking speech.

“What is it?” Beverly replies calmly. He can tell from her tone that she begins to cry also, flipped a switch and let the tears fall just as easily as she always does. She is a powerhouse, she is a true talent, and Richie loves her for leaning so gently and perfectly into his improvisation. And to add to it all so perfectly, she breathes, with a hint of relief, as if she’s just came up with the perfect solution, “Why have you come back for me, Orpheus?”

Richie sobs a little, and it’s acting, it’s acting , but his emotion feels so raw. “Because I love you.” He turns to the audience, gesturing a hand, falling to his knees. Wiping his eyes to gain some composure. He has to do this in character, but he won’t let Orpheus ruin this for him. Orpheus will just have to compromise. “I’ve loved you since the day we met, I think. And I’m asking you to come back from the dead for me, I’m asking you to escape eternal rest, and it’s not right of me.” He lets out a long breath through his nose. “Nothing I’ve done has been right of me. And you know that. I have been a drunken fool. I haven’t held you the way you deserve to be held. If you have never even loved me back, I don't think I care at all. You’re it for me. I came back because I want to be saved, and you’re my only fucking salvation. And if we never meet again, my Eurydice, know this. I am so in love with you, I have ached. I have longed. I have carved our initials into wood.” A breath. He’s said too much. He gets up, off of his knees, and reaches a hand out to the white sheet. “Come back from the dead for me,” he says, easing back to the script. Because he would never leave an actor without their cue. “Come back.”

And the show goes on.

Chapter Text

The curtain falls to ferocious applause, and Richie is swamped by grappling bodies and discordant screaming and cheering. He’s caught in the midst of an embrace, Beverly’s red hair tickling his chin, Oliver’s strong arms wrapped around his chest from behind. Stagehands and other actors piling over them, clapping his back and head.

Beverly raises her head and leans in. “You’re a force of nature, Richie Tozier,” she says quietly, her lips pressed to his ear. “And I’m proud of you.”

He pulls her back from him to look at her face, rosy and tear-streaked, her little red freckles fighting to be seen under orange foundation. Curls a hand around her head and strokes his thumb under her eye. “You were perfect,” he tells her, and she beams at him with crooked teeth.

The moment falls away when Oliver slaps Richie on the shoulder hard, and Richie turns into his chest. “Told you you had it,” Richie says.

Oliver shakes his head, eyes bright under the stage lights. He leans forward, smelling of sweat and coffee, and whispers, “You do deserve him, Richie.”

Richie blinks. “What?”

“And I know, because I’ve spent the last few months trying to convince myself you don’t. But you do. And he deserves you, too.”

It should be jarring; the knowledge that Oliver knows. Oliver knows that Richie is in love with Eddie. Oliver knows that Richie is gay. And Richie, for one stark moment, is absolutely terrified. But there’s sincerity in Oliver’s eyes, and Richie’s realising that he and Oliver understand each other better than he’s been led to believe. That Oliver knows this thing about Richie, shares this thing Richie harbours, and accepts it for what it is. It’s a goddamn tragedy, Richie thinks, that he’d been at war with this boy for so long, when they’re both just idiots paralleling each other.

“I…” he takes a breath. “Thanks, Oliver. Thank you. I’m. I’m sorry. Again. But he’s not- he’s- it’s not what it-”

“It is what it is,” he says, easily, as if he’s already came to terms with this- whatever the fuck this is. Being roped into Eddie and Richie’s mess, he supposes. “Ask him why he broke up with me, Richie.” 

“Why?” Richie asks, voice small.

Oliver shrugs with one shoulder. “I pegged you as a smart guy, Tozier.” He smiles sadly, and then turns away, and he’s gone.

-

Richie and Beverly fall into her car in a flurry of laughter, their smiles pushing cheeks back to their ears. Beverly’s freckles have finally been freed, and she’s brushed some purple eyeshadow on her lids and smeared clear gloss on her lips.

“Insanity,” she comments mildly, buckling her seat belt. “Absolute insanity.”

“We did it,” Richie replies, turning to face her in his seat.

Beverly turns to face him too, but her smile falters a little when her eyes travel his face. “What’s wrong?”

“Huh?”

“What’s wrong, Richie?”

Richie furrows his brow. “Nothing?”

Beverly barks out a sarcastic laugh. “Okay, yeah, I’ll believe that.” She sighs and quirks her lip. “Everything you said was perfect. I promise you. No one will suspect you went off script.”

Richie splays his hands on the dash dramatically and groans. “Except everyone who read the script.”

“Who the fuck would know exactly what all that meant? Not even I did! Carved our names into wood ?”

Richie straightens up and swallows uneasily. “On the kissing bridge. I was thirteen and scared fucking shitless. I don’t know why I did it.” He chews on some skin around his thumb. “I think I just wanted to tell the world without, like, saying it.”

“Richie,” Beverly says quietly. She places a warm, steady hand on his shoulder.

“I’m just scared,” he starts, then hiccups through a small sob. “I’m- scared, Bev.”

She pulls him into her over the shift, tucking her head into his neck. “You just need to talk to him. Everything else? Everything after that? That’s easy.”

Richie holds the nape of her neck tightly, willing himself to stop crying. “I just wanted him to hear it when I was sober and- and when I couldn’t hurt him. I’m so so sick of hurting him.”

“Sometimes loving someone is hard like this,” Beverly whispers. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it.”

He takes a minute to breath Beverly in. “Thanks for going through this with me. I haven’t been easy.” He squeezes her in his embrace. “Beverly Marsh, you are the love of my entire life.”

Beverly laughs her wonderful laugh and pulls back to wipe his tears. “No, I don’t think that’s quite true.”

He catches her wrists in his hands and rubs circles into her skin with his thumbs. “ No , Bev, it is. Soulmates, we are.”

Her face collapses into something so familiar and fond, and Richie’s anxiety ebbs away just looking at her. “You’re the love of my life, too, Richie Tozier.” He kisses her hand and she snorts. “Now, can we go to the party? Ella Simmons said she’d meet me there.”

“Oh, Ella Simmons said that, did she ?” Richie teases. He searches for any intel he has in his head on Ella Simmons and comes away pretty sure that she’s a fine art student who worked on the backdrops for the play. “And why wasn’t Ella Simmons aforementioned?”

“Because Beverly doesn’t wanna jinx anything with Ella Simmons, okay?” she rebukes, but she’s smiling despite her tone. And is that not the most important thing, anyway? That Beverly Marsh is smiling?

“Okay, okay. Oh my God. Beverly Simmons-Marsh .”

“Let’s not jump the gun, Tozier.” Beverly sighs, and starts the engine. She turns to him once more, eyebrows pinched. “Enjoy yourself tonight, Rich, yeah? You deserve this.”

Why does everyone keep saying he deserves things? What the fuck did he do to deserve anything? “I’ll try.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear.”

She pulls out of the campus car park and flicks the radio on, an EDM track blaring from their local radio station. Richie winces and goes to turn it off, but to his surprise, Beverly is nodding her head to the bass as she drives. His hand falls away into his lap, and he stares out of the window, reminding himself that if nothing else, he always has Beverly. He’s going to enjoy this party for her, and he’s going to forget about how much he’s potentially fucked up, or so God help him. So God help him, he’s going to pretend for one night that Eddie Kaspbrak isn’t killing him. 

-

Beverly takes him by the hand and drags him through the clusters of students, all still in costume or their backstage attire, nursing drinks of varying electric colours in clear solo cups. The music is loud and the house is brightly lit, a far cry from it’s orange hues on Halloween, but the familiar rooms still elicit a certain trepidation in Richie’s gut, the memories of that night swimming in his indistinct memory. Beverly thrusts a cup into Richie’s hand, and he doesn't even ask what it is before swallowing half.

Beverly purses her lips. “Be careful, yeah?”

“I’m not getting pissed, if that’s what you mean,” Richie replies, sniffing his drink. Definitely some kind of vodka mix, but with what he isn’t sure.

He props himself against the kitchen counter and Beverly pulls her body up to sit beside him. They talk in hushed tones for a while, only interrupted when Mike strides over and pulls them together, into his arms. Beverly squeaks and falls onto her feet from the counter.

“Mike!” She exclaims, voice booming from the alcohol she’s already downed. “Thank you for this.”

“You nailed it,” Mike replies. “Both of you. God, Richie, that one scene . Jesus. You’re a talent.”

Richie beams despite himself. “Aww, Mikey.” He swats at Mike’s chest. 

“For real.” 

Richie sees Stan heading towards them beyond Mike’s shoulder, and goes to high five him, calling “Stan the Man, how’s it-” but is abruptly cut off when Stan throws himself into Richie’s arms. “Oh, woah, we’re hugging, okay.”

“God, Richie,” Stan mumbles, muffled by Richie’s shirt. “‘M so proud of you.”

“Gee whiz, Stanny, you’ve gone soft.”

Stan pulls back and holds Richie at arms length, pinning him with an icy stare. Then he smiles, small and lopsided, one hundred percent Stan. “I mean it.”

Richie ducks his head. “Thanks, Stan. Really.”

Stan nods once, then wraps an arm around Richie’s shoulders and pulls him into the side, both of them tuning into Mike gushing over Beverly’s performance. Richie attunes himself to the weight of Stan’s arm, the lull of Beverly’s laugh, and calming tone of Mike’s voice, and tries his very best not to let his eyes flit around the kitchen, just in case - because it is pretty packed in here; it’s a big kitchen after all because it’s a farmhouse, so there could be a chance that -

Eddie is in the corner. He’s leaning against the wall with one shoulder, nodding along to something Ben Hanscom is saying to him, and he has a solo cup of something clear. In his smart slacks and a shirt with a jumper over-top, looking all scholarly and smart and perfect and irresistible. Shirt collar rumpled just perfectly, sticking a little against his neck. Jesus fucking Christ, he’s perfect . Hair windswept, presumably from the walk from his car to the farmhouse, and he hasn’t had time to check it yet because if he knew it was windswept it would not look windswept. Richie prays to whatever God is above him for the wind that swept that head of hai-

“Richie,” Stan says in his ear. He jerks himself to attention, stares around at his friends. They all give him pitying glances of varying intensity. Mike’s pitying glance is akin to a kicked puppy.

“What- stop looking at me like that. Stop.”

“Like what?” Mike asks.

Richie groans. “I need another drink.”

“I’ll pour you one!” Beverly says, reaching for a bottle. She pours vodka into Richie’s cup, then adds a little cola. 

“Not enough cola,” Stan says, but Beverly’s already distracted.

“Ella,” she says, voice soft. And then she’s moving into the living room, through the swarm of sweaty bodies that have begun to move as one, dancing and grinding in synchrony. 

“Oh my God, they’re playing my eighties hits playlist,” Mike says. “Care for a dance?” he asks Stan, bowing, and Stan snorts.

“Always,” he replies, taking Mike’s hand. “You coming, Rich?”

Richie glances at Eddie in the corner of the room. “I’m gonna add more cola to this. I’ll catch up.”

“Sure,” Stan says, a knowing look in his eye. He’s dragged away, and Richie is left leaning against the counter alone.

He swirls his drink a little, watching it wash against the edges of his cup, and when he looks up, Eddie is staring at him. 

Richie’s stomach flips uncomfortably. Ben is gone. Eddie sips his cup slowly, maintaining eye contact from across the room, bodies sometimes cutting their view of the other but their eyes always finding each other again. He’s breaking out in a cold sweat; his shirt is sticking to him intolerably in awkward places, and he sips his drink with shaking hands. What is he doing? Why the fuck is he staring at me? Is he evaluating how pathetic I am? Oh, that has to be it, Richie thinks. He’s sussing Richie out. Trying to figure out why he’d do such an idiotic thing not once, but twice. Why’d you not take the hint the first time? Richie thinks desperately to himself. Why did you have to embarrass him like that? You know he doesn’t love you back. He got angry that night you told him, right? He just needs to talk to him. Apologise, right? That should at least prevent him from cutting off all contact with Richie. Hopefully.

Richie slips his gaze away from Eddie and stares out of the kitchen window instead, the blackness outside a glaring contrast to the lucidity of the house’s lights. When he looks back to the corner - Eddie’s gone.

-

Richie slumps on a couch in the living room, watching bodies sway to a Cyndi Lauper song. He’s just finished his second drink, knowing full well that if he gets drunk with this heavy weight on his chest, he’ll most likely break down completely. And he’s not up for ruining the night any further.

At some point, Beverly marches up to him, her crisp white Eurydice dress stained with a red beverage, and hauls him from his seat to the middle of the room. She sways in front of him, eyes tracing his face. “What’d I tell you?” 

Richie comes closer, taking her hands and spinning her once. “What did you tell me?” 

“To enjoy yourself!” Beverly shouts.

He’s experiencing extremely unpleasant, anxiety-inducing déjà vu from Halloween, and every slowed thought that crosses his mind seems to relate to Eddie and Oliver. They’ve broken up , he reminds himself as he’s jostled by someone tripping and falling into him. And yet Eddie hasn’t tried to speak to him all night.

Richie feels nauseous. Eddie isn’t going to come to him like Beverly said. And even while there’s a niggling thought in Richie’s head telling him that he deserves this, he deserves to be ghosted and forgotten and ignored, there’s a more potent feeling burning in his chest that tells him he can’t let this be the end. Not without trying, one more time. Eddie Kaspbrak cannot leave his life this easily; he won’t let him, not when he’s in this very house and Richie can get to him so easily.

“I need to find him,” he tells Beverly, pulling her close to speak in her ear.

“What?”

“Eddie.”

“What- where is he? Did you talk?”

“I…” Richie swallows hard. “No. No, but I need one more chance.”

“Go, then.” Beverly pushes him away from her with both hands and gestures for him to leave.

He turns out of the living room and into the hallway, waving his hands to see through the vape smoke being blown in every direction. Checks up and down, pokes his head into what looks like a small study that has a half naked couple making out heavily on the desk. “Watch the computer,” he says mildly, pointing at it. The girl turns around and frowns, then shifts up the desk a little, away from the computer. “Thanks.”

He takes the stairs two at a time, and steels himself before peering into the first bedroom - Mike’s parent’s room - which he vaguely recalls being in before with Bill on Halloween. What a surprise, then, that Bill is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, head bowed toward another boy he hasn’t seen before as they speak in soft whispers.

“Richie,” Bill says, caught off-guard. He smiles. “How you doing, man? You were crazy good tonight, BTW.”

“Thanks, Bill. Just, uh...” Richie peters off, offering a small smile in return. He notices Bill and the boy in front of him are holding hands loosely, and a sharp pang of longing travels up his throat. “You seen Eddie?”

Bill frowns. “Sorry, Rich.”

Richie blows out a long breath. “It’s cool. See you.”

“Eddie Kaspbrak?” The boy says, brow furrowed. “Oliver’s boyfriend?”

Richie can’t help but wince. “Um- yeah.”

“He was leaving the party just as we were coming upstairs.”

“He...left?” If Eddie left the party- if Eddie just left without even trying to- how was Richie ever gonna- Where would he even go?

“Pretty sure it was him,” says the boy, looking apologetic. “Sorry.”

“No- no, thank you. Thanks. I-”

“Go find him, Rich,” Bill interrupts.

Richie nods, once. “Yeah. Yeah. Bill-”

“Hm?”

He nods at Bill and the boy’s hands, interlocked, and then smiles slyly and winks. 

“Tozier, get the fuck out of this room.” Bill throws a pillow at him with his free hand. Despite it all, Richie lets out a snort as he closes the door.

He makes his way back downstairs, eyes on the open front door of the farmhouse and the inky night beyond it. His skin immediately reacts to the sharp breeze, goosebumps coating his arms and neck, and he wraps his arms around himself. He doesn’t know where the fuck he should go. Would Eddie have gone back to their dorm, knowing Richie wouldn’t be there? Maybe to pack up the rest of his shit so he can finally leave for good tomorrow. Richie wonders if Eddie’s requested a new room already without his knowledge.

He looks desperately up and down the wide drive, but the moonless night is nothing but barren. He sits down hard on Mike’s front porch, reaching for his phone in his trouser pocket, debating whether or not it would be acceptable to ring Eddie when - there’s a ping. He switches his phone on, internally berating himself for hoping, praying for just a second that the notification could be -

Richie breath hitches when he reads the text.

eds: i’m at the quarry.

-

Richie doesn’t run. He won’t let himself. Won’t let himself believe this is something when it’s most likely nothing. Instead, he walks briskly, shivering, steeling himself for what’s waiting for him across the woodland. Why’d he even text me in the first place? Does he even want me to find him? Did he know I’d look anyway?

The walk is long, a lot longer than he remembers it being before, and he finds himself stopping in the middle of the winding dirt path, forest pines bracketing him, and fumbling to turn on his phone. He hadn’t texted Eddie back, which he probably should have, he’s now realising.

richie: im omw

It’s not even a minute later, while Richie is scanning through his and Eddie’s texts, rereading his pathetic attempts at contact with him the night he was drunk and trying not to curse himself for it, when Eddie replies:

eds: hurry up then. i’m cold.

Of course he is. It’s all he needs to see to keep his legs moving forward.

The dirt path eventually clears to golden grass, a black sky with a smattering of occasional stars, and a short boy sitting on the cliff’s edge. Richie drops his phone, prepared to run to Eddie now he’s there  right in front of him, but he makes himself slow his walk, and stops short just a metre or so away from Eddie’s back profile.

“Eds,” Richie whispers, anxiety gnawing at his gut.

Eddie’s head whips around, eyes bright despite the inky dark swallowing the skyline whole. And just like that, the nerves vibrating Richie’s bones fall away, and are replaced with a much simpler feeling. Warmth.

“Richie,” Eddie replies. He swallows visibly. “You’re here.”

“I am,” Richie says lamely. “Um. Crap party, am I right?”

Eddie turns his head away and shrugs. “It was alright. Bit shitty when there’s no one to dance with, I guess.”

“Yeah. I mean, yeah. Well, there are people. To dance with, I mean. Maybe you didn’t...look in the right places?” Richie chews on his thumb nervously. Since when did Eddie make him nervous? There’s a beat of silence, in which he decides he’s said the opposite of what he should have said and scrambles to backtrack. “I mean, it wasn’t a crap party at all, really. I don’t know why I said that. Mike’s a great party-thrower, or, what’s the word- host? And I didn’t mean you should’ve danced with me, because that would be-”

“I’ve missed you,” Eddie says. He sounds so fucking sad that it breaks Richie’s heart.

“God, Eddie,” he says desperately, clambering to sit beside him on the cliff’s edge, and turning to face him. “You have no idea- I’m so-”

“If you say sorry, I’m pushing you. I know you’re sorry, and I know you came here to say sorry.” Eddie breathes hard through his nose once. “I’m sorry, too.”

“Eddie...” He looks at his hands; picks some skin around his thumb. He frantically forages for the right thing to say, but he’s never had to figure out the right thing to say with Eddie before, so he comes up short. All he can think about is how beautiful Eddie looks. Richie’s close enough to see his freckles; lashes fanning faint shadows on his cheeks, nose scrunching slightly in that extremely Eddie way. It takes everything for Richie to restrain his fingers from smoothing over Eddie’s tan cheekbone. “Remember when we’d swim here?” he says eventually.

Eddie turns to him smiling, a little crease in his brow. “Yeah, back when you’d-” a laugh erupts from him, bright and real, and he reaches a hand out and trails his fingers over Richie’s messy fringe. “You’d flat iron your hair. But it got wet, anyway, and it always dried curly.” His hand falls away, in tandem with his smile. “I always liked it better curly.”

Richie’s heart stutters. “You see, if you had’ve told little Rich that way back when, he would’ve bashed up the flat irons with a baseball bat.” 

“Well,” Eddie murmurs, eyes flicking over Richie’s face. “Little Eddie didn’t think he was allowed to tell little Richie that.” He says it like it’s confessional, his lip pulling between his teeth. “You always let me dry off first.”

“And why do you think that was?”

“I…” the words must catch in his throat, because his mouth turns downwards and he steals his gaze from Richie fast. “Did you really carve that R and E on the kissing bridge?”

Richie’s eyes sting. “Of course I did,” he replies roughly. “Who else?”

“I thought it was- I didn’t believe it was you. When I saw it.”

There’s a moment of terrifying silence, before Richie breaks. “Why did you break up with Oliver?”

Eddie’s eyes fall directly on him, now, all confusion and fear. “You really don’t know?”

“Maybe I’m just an idiot, but no , I don’t know.” He leans his head forward to rest his forehead on Eddie’s shoulder. 

“I thought that was me, Richie.”

“What?”

Eddie leans his cheek against Richie’s head. “I’m the idiot in this situation. I’ve let you go again and again and again.”

Richie bites his lip in an attempt to stop his tears from falling. He reaches a hand to Eddie’s arm and draws a little pattern there. “I’m right here.”

Eddie breathes heavily into his hair. “Don’t cry, Rich. Please don’t.”

“How do you know I’m crying?” It’s the most moronic question he’s ever asked, because of course Eddie knows he’s crying. Two bodies, one head. Richie and Eddie have been synchronised since birth, orbiting each other like a planet and it’s sun, speaking without having to say anything. “I was so sure we’d forgotten each other,” he says as a way of explanation. He hasn’t been able to understand Eddie in months. Maybe it’s not heartbreak that’s been rotting his heart; maybe it’s being unable to understand the person he’s always understood better than himself.

“I don’t think we can,” Eddie replies slowly. “I’m not sure the universe would allow it.” Richie screws his eyes shut. “I don’t think I’d allow it. And I almost did.”

“We’re so dramatic,” Richie says, laughing wetly, a breeze-block weighing on his chest.

“Yeah, well, we did this to ourselves.” Eddie sniffles. “You nailed it tonight, Rich. I don’t think I can tell you just how much that performance meant to me.”

Richie swallows hard. “Thanks, Eds. I’m. Are we…” But he’s scared to ask. Scared to break the candid intimacy they’ve constructed on this cliff’s edge. “Are we gonna talk about all this? What’s happening to us? What…” he trails off, shakes his head against Eddie’s shoulder.

Eddie hums. “You were never Orpheus.” That gets Richie to lift his head, brows knitting together in confusion. Eddie makes direct eye contact, tears spilling over his cheeks. “I was.”

“What?”

“Richie,” Eddie says, lips quirking into a little smile. “You’re Eurydice.”

His breath’s pulled from his lungs all at once, eyes searching Eddie’s, confusion sweeping him. He’s...he- but he can’t- But if Eddie is Orpheus- 

“I was so convinced you didn’t love me back,” Eddie begins, and it’s like he’s taken a sharp knife to Richie’s heart, the way those words puncture the cold air between them, the meaning of every word that came before them falling away to nothing. “And I was so fucking sad. I wrote it about me. I’m Orpheus, and you’re Eurydice, and Oliver was that guy at the end who Orpheus fucks, because, you know-”

“I get it,” Richie whispers.

“Do you?” Eddie squints into the night ahead of them. “Because you didn’t get it the first time I tried to tell you, or the second-”

“Eddie?”

Eddie turns to look at Richie. “Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

He launches himself forward, hand coming to cup Eddie’s cheek and pull him in, but he leans too much of his body into his left side and oh fuck , he’s falling? He’s falling. Right over the fucking cliff. He screams, the icy air rushing in his ears and stinging his eyes. He feels thirteen again, a gangly body plummeting through sticky summer air to reach Eddie beneath him, sharp pangs of excitement vibrating his bones at the splash he’s about to make beside him. 

Eventually, he’s enveloped by the glacial water, and he struggles to swim to the surface in his Orpheus slacks, which weigh him down considerably. When he resurfaces finally, sputtering water from his mouth, he spies a dark spot in the water a few metres from him.

Eddie breaks the surface, laughing brightly. “Come back from the dead for me!” he calls dramatically, flinging his arms out toward Richie.

Richie laughs, his most genuine laugh in a long time, he thinks, and reaches towards Eddie in the water. They meet each other, hands interlocking, and press their chests together. Eddie’s face is slick with quarry water and tears, and he licks his wet lips. Richie knows, then, that loving Eddie is built into his DNA. It’s non-negotiable. In any universe, in any timeline; there he is, soaking in a quarry, scared shitless, in love with Eddie Kaspbrak.

“I’m sorry. Really. For- for being scared,” Eddie says. “And running away from you. I didn’t wanna accept it, just in case it wasn’t real.” He huffs. “Felt a little too good to be true.”

“Hey, I’m sorry too,” Richie murmurs, letting go of one of Eddie’s hands and snaking it around his cheek to the nape of his neck. “We’ve hurt each other. But we get to fix that now. We have the rest of our lives to fix it.”

Eddie smiles. “Yeah, we do, don’t we?” Richie presses a kiss to Eddie’s forehead. “I love you,” Eddie says, and suddenly the world, all screaming noise, is quietened for Richie Tozier.

“I love you,” he whispers back.

Eddie grins, all perfect in the blue black dark, and pulls Richie underwater by his shoulders. Richie opens his eyes in the blue, and Eddie’s looking right back, bubbles flowing from his smiling mouth.

People wax poetic over how there’s no ‘fireworks’ in a first perfect kiss; it’s a soothing salve, gentle and calm and loving. Or how it’s more than fireworks; it’s galaxies collapsing and expanding inside your chest. But when Richie Tozier kisses Eddie Kaspbrak for the first time, it’s transcendental. It’s salvation, and it’s redemption, and it’s holy.