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Eddie’s fingers slide over the glossy photo. He’d found it being used as a bookmark for some old story that maybe he’d had to read for school and liked enough to keep around. The photo is old and yellowed slightly in the corners. It’s bent and there’s a small rip that’s been mended with a piece of peeling scotch tape.
The photo is of all of them. It was taken by Mike’s automatic camera timer the day they met him after the rock fight, down in the quarry. They’re bleeding and bruised and shaken but triumphant. Eddie admires his own proud grin, bruise already evident beneath his hairline. He hadn’t even worried about a concussion then, so full up of vigor and the adrenaline of winning . He pauses when he notices Richie in the photo, arm slung over Eddie’s shoulders and caught in a moment of something he might call weakness but it’s what Eddie calls strength, looking at Eddie like he hung the moon.
Eddie smiles crookedly, the memories already having surfaced months ago, but the physical reminder making him feel warm. He’d kept the photo when he was moving to his dorm in college. At the time the memories were already faded and fuzzy, but the joy the photo brought him was enough to tuck it into a little box of mementos of moments and feelings he couldn’t place.
“Richie! Get in here!”
The responding groan makes him chuckle. He twists his torso from where he sits on the floor of their now shared bedroom, watching as Richie shuffles through the doorway.
They’d been unpacking for what felt like days. Richie had pared down many of his belongings from Los Angeles, but the moving process from West to East coast had been, admittedly, draining.
“If this is another ‘cutlery’ scare, I swear to God I’ll order something from Amazon, horrific business practices be damned. I’ll do it, Eds. I’ll order rainbow forks and you’ll never see the inside of a Crate and Barrel again.”
Eddie reaches out and smacks Richie on the shin, gesturing for him to join him on the floor. He noticed weeks ago that their bantering had petered out to light ribbing, and that Eddie’s automatic response to Richie’s teasing is less shouting and more kissing. It feels more like a natural evolution than he ever thought possible.
“You will contribute to Jeff Bezo’s wealth over my dead fucking body, Rich, and you know it.” Eddie shuffles slightly to the side to allow for Richie’s immense leg-length, but still leans his shoulder against Richie’s and rests his chin on Richie’s shoulder.
“Look at this,” he says and his voice has gone soft, handing the photo over. Richie holds it out, away from him and squints and Eddie is filled with an incredible fondness.
“Wow, I was… really not subtle, huh?” Richie says after a moment and Eddie’s mouth pinches a little, snatching the photo back, knocking his shoulder against Richie’s. “It’s sweet as hell, don’t undermine the aura of that day.”
Richie smiles, reaching up to pinch at Eddie’s cheeks. “All high on that rock-pummeling energy. Look at you! You look like you just ran a fucking marathon. Check out those pit stains!”
Eddie scrunches up his nose at Richie but the smile is breaking out again. It’s something that keeps happening more and more. The easy way that smiles find their way to Eddie. There was a moment a few weeks after he and Richie first kissed where he’d let himself have a small moment of existential spiraling over the fact that he had genuinely never been this happy.
“It was a brave kinda day,” he says, wistful, and Richie beams at him and, as if there was something pulling him forward, Richie kisses him. It’s gentle and quick and more about the fondness and the feelings of finally being able to do something with being so in love than anything else, and Eddie drinks it in, like he always does.
“It sure was, fuckin’ ruthless motherfucker. You were pure crackhead that day. Remember when you broke Ben’s paddleball and then blamed it on Stan’s face ? You blamed Stan for some stupid shit you did . That was… that was braver than throwing any stupid old rock.”
Eddie snorts with laughter, suddenly filled with a desire to call Stan, just to hear his voice, but they’d just talked to him earlier that day about proper kitchen organization and they were trying to minimize phonecalls to one-call-per-Loser-per-day. It was hard, but Eddie had read somewhere that boundaries were important, even if they sucked.
Richie gently takes the photo out of Eddie’s hand to inspect it again, grin splitting his face in half. It was the commemorative introduction of the venerable Mike to the Loser’s Club. It was a photo that felt like a stamp on the back of a letter. It was all of them, whole.
“What a good fucking day.”
“Well, it wasn’t, like, that great. The after part was good, but the before part kind of fucking blew.”
Richie’s shoulder twitched in a half shrug. “‘Rather think of the good parts.” He says, mumbling, but his attention is caught by something else nestled in the memento box. Eddie follows his line of sight to where a piece of lined paper is folded up neatly, tucked against the rigid spine of an expertly-kept comic book.
“What’s that,” Richie asks absently, reaching out to grab it. Eddie had assumed that all of his memories had returned since Derry, but it was with a sickening slam to the back of his skull that the image returned of him a few months into his freshman year of high school, hunched over his desk, scribbling frantically in the middle of a sleepless night. The image mirrors the paper as Richie unfolds it to reveal the words printed neatly at the top,
The List
God, he’s so melodramatic.
Eddie lets out a shrill shriek, snatching the paper like he had the photograph, wrinkling it slightly in his fingers. He feels his cheeks burning and ignores Richie’s jaw-dropped, dangerously amused expression.
“Just because we make out now doesn’t mean you get to fucking pilfer my childhood keepsakes, you fucking klepto!” His voice is still a few octaves too loud and too high than strictly necessary, but Richie is grabbing at the paper and cackling, and his panic level is set to pleasantly high.
“You made a list that was so important you kept it for like… decades ?” Richie is actively wrestling with him now, “is it your highschool crushes? Is it a hit list?” He gasps, “is it a fuck list?”
“You’re such a fucking weirdo , get the fuck off of me!” Hysterical laughter rips from his chest and his skin is buzzing where Richie is touching him on his wrists and shoulders. That still happens. It happens more often than he would have expected after several months of consistent physical affection. It happens every fucking time they touch.
Finally Richie gets hold of the paper and yanks it away, gasping out a triumphant shout as he holds it over his head. Eddie faux-reluctantly crosses his arms, faux-scowling at Richie. A lot of his anger towards Richie is fake now. He thinks it might have always been. There’s an echo of an instinct to get Richie’s attention in any way possible, even if it meant shouting and punches and insults. Even if he doesn’t mean it, not fully. He thinks it might be a love language.
“I barely even remember what’s on the goddamn list, but I can tell you that--”
“Oh, shit, Eds… this is fucking depressing.”
Eddie’s curious now, the contents of the list still slightly fuzzy in his mind. He leans over and reads the small description right below the title.
‘ All the things I want. Everything I’m not allowed to have. A perfect summer. ”
The words hit gentler than he thought they would, but they still hit and he finds himself blinking away at a wetness at the corner of his eye. He wipes at it and sniffles and Richie peers sidelong at him to make sure he’s okay. He is, he’s fine, and Richie never dotes on him when things are, generally, okay. Only when he needs it, which is one of the many things he loves about what they have now.
“This is… this is like a fucking bucket list for the most repressed child in the world.” Richie says, breathless.
Eddie rolls his eyes to hide the sting. “You’re looking at him,” he says, bitter. Richie frowns at him but turns back to the paper. Another thing Eddie loves, Richie never takes his trauma-induced bait. His knee-jerk reactions developed over years of what he’s now comfortable enough to call abuse.
“Is this… this is what your perfect summer was?” Richie asks. Eddie reads over some of the bullet-items. As far as a “perfect summer” goes it’s pretty fucking pathetic. He thinks he had a certain thing in mind when he wrote it, a certain someone, and many of the items are distinctly about--
“I mean, ‘have someone to make me a mix tape’? Did I never do that for you? That’s insane, I’m sure I made, like, a… like a hundred…” Richie’s sentence tapers out with the trademarked Regaining Your Memories expression. “But I never fucking gave them to you, did I. Jesus Christ.”
There’s a slightly sour feeling of misdirected hurt. It wasn’t Richie’s fault that he never gave Eddie a mix tape, it was Derry’s fault and the blatant and violent homophobia and the fear of rejection. They’d had this conversation dozens of times now in different iterations. Not only had Richie been severely traumatized by the prejudice of their small town, but he had also been fighting with this insane notion that Eddie would never speak to him again if he knew. All the while, Eddie had the same fears.
He shrugs.
“You can just make me, like, a Spotify playlist or something. Make it super long to make up for wasting my goddamn time.”
Richie frowns, eyes squinting like he’s thinking hard about something. Suddenly, he shakes his head.
“Nope, I’m gonna make you a real-life, honest to God mix tape. I’m not gonna put anything on it recorded after 1999 and it’s going to be romantic as shit,” he says it like he’s coming up with the words as he says them, but his tone is resolute all the same. Eddie laughs, the grin coming easy.
“Fine, you fucking nerd. But you have to record a break where you confess all of your feelings into your shitty tape deck microphone and sing some stupid love song completely off key.”
Richie looks at him warningly. It’s a threat.
Eddie just laughs again and kisses him until they’re smiling too much for it.
It’s the last he hears about the List for nearly two months.
He wasn’t disappointed that Richie never brought the List up again. Not necessarily. It’s not like he ever expected anything to come of it. There’s nowhere to even buy tape decks and old school blank cassettes anymore. Some of the things on that list were just outright undoable in their old, happily in love state. Things like the ever depressing ‘ have my first kiss ’ or ‘ sneak someone through my window at night to make-out ’’ or ‘ kiss in the rain ’ or ‘ get kissed on the beach ’. Many of the bullets in the list were very kiss-oriented. He was an extremely repressed and horny teenager. Despite the currently undoable nature of the List, it still rattled in the back of his mind and shook loose some sort of vague wanting.
---
6. have rich someone make me a mix tape
It’s mid-June.
The sun is hot and Eddie feels it soaking into his skin like a balm, the warm air warming him and making him feel a little radiant. It’s a Saturday morning that he wakes up alone, feeling lazy in his sun-warmed bed and, when he turns towards his beside table, he is so pleasantly surprised to see a small cassette tape there that he starts to cry, just a little.
Richie had ducked out early for a meeting with one of his producers. He’d been writing his own material and was working on a comeback special with Comedy Central. Eddie was unendingly proud. In his hasty and early retreat, Eddie didn’t seemed to notice him place a small tape next to where Eddie kept his glasses, water cup, and anxiety medication. It was tucked up so that when Eddie arose, blurily, it would take a moment for him to notice. When he finally does he gasps audibly and snatches it from the table, turning it around in his hands as his eyes begin to tear up.
On the little white strip it says, on one side, ‘Summer Lovin’ and on the other it says, ‘to my eds, i love you’.
It’s short and sweet and simple and everything Eddie would have hoped to have read on a mix tape from Richie Tozier. He holds it in his shaking hands and squeezes his eyes shut, feeling warm and soft and full of love. He takes a small, tiny moment to sit in the reality of his life now. That his boyfriend - or lover or partner or whatever word they decided to use this week - cares so incredibly deeply for him and knows him and sees him explicitly.
Eddie scrambles to find some way, any way, to be able to listen to the tape as soon as possible.
Luckily, when he heads into the kitchen he notices a small portable tape player and a set of old school headphones lying innocently on the countertop. This gift comes with no notes and almost seems as if it had been casually tossed there. The headphone wire is tangled. Eddie smiles privately and feels his heart swell.
Throughout the morning, Eddie listens to the tape. He laughs at the beginning riffs of “Somebody to Love”, and by the end he’s singing the song out loud into his empty apartment as he cooks himself eggs and toast. A few of the songs seem more like jokes than anything, but then a few hit closer to home than he expects. He ends up leaning against the countertop, dirty dish forgotten in the sink as he holds his mug of lukewarm coffee to his chest and listens to the interlude he’d asked for two months ago.
“ Eddie, Eds, dearest love of my life. I’m only a tiny, snot-nosed, pea-brained sixteen year old idiot living up this summer dream, but you-- ” Richie takes a pause, leaving the stupid voice he’d been doing, as if he had been parodying himself as a teenager, and suddenly he sounds so serious, “ Eddie, you are the sun that makes the summer possible. I know that sounds cheesy but it’s… it’s basically the only way I can describe you. Like, you make my stomach hurt with how much I love you sometimes. Did you know that, the other day, I saw you spin the butter around after I used it so that you could cut it all weird and left-handed and I fucking cried ? I cried, just a little, because you’re, like, it for me. You’re here in our apartment that we share together and I’m so fucking in love with you. I can’t believe we- we danced around it for so long… how did I even let that happen? I should have kissed you that first night at the Jade. I should have kissed you when we were kids. The moment I saw you. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. ” Richie’s crackly voice begins to sound a little tinny and watery and it keeps moving in and out as if he’s adjusting and moving around. Finally, Eddie hears sniffles and then a big, disgusting snort inward, and the first few notes of a guitar filter through the speakers.
“ Anyway, Eddie my love, this one goes out to you. ”
Something about Richie Tozier that not many know is that he has a surprisingly good singing voice. Eddie theorizes that it has to do with practicing so many voices for so many years. He just got used to how his voice sounded and how to change it. It’s not amazing by any means. He shouldn’t leave comedy to become a rock star or anything, but it’s pleasant and it’s on-key and when he sings ‘ Eddie My Love ’ by The Chordettes, it’s sweet and open and honest and it makes Eddie cry. He’s open about it this time, hiccuping a sob and laughing through the tears when Richie gets some of the lyrics wrong. It’s perfect, and it’s everything he’d ever dreamed of.
When Richie’s singing ends, there’s some commotion and Eddie hears the click of mouse or some other device and the songs come back. The interlude is followed by the original song and hearing it again doesn’t have the same effect, obviously, but it’s sweet and pretty and gives Eddie time to wipe vigorously at his eyes and collect himself.
The rest of the songs are much of the same from before. Nostalgic 80s and 90s classics about being in love, about dancing, and summer.
Several listen-throughs of the tape later and Richie’s walking through the door only to be greeted by an armful of Eddie.
“You are the biggest fucking sap in the entire goddamn world,” Eddie says, mumbling into Richie’s jacket. Richie laughs, surprised, and wraps his arms around Eddie. “So I take it you found the tape. Now that I’ve laid out my feelings for you through song, will you go out with me?”
Eddie lightly punches Richie’s shoulder, though they’re still pressed together.
“I’ll think about it.”
Looking up at Richie, still wind-swept from his walk to their building, flannel sleeves rolled up due to a miscalculation of the weather, grinning at Eddie like he’s something untouchable and magnificent, Eddie leans up and kisses Richie. He lifts his hands, holding Richie’s jaw tenderly and reveling in the scratch of day-old stubble beneath his fingertips, he lets himself sit in this sweet, full-up feeling. He doesn’t usually allow himself to be too vulnerable, even with Richie sometimes, but his emotions are bubbling over and he laughs wetly into Richie’s mouth and presses their faces close.
“I love you,” he says quietly, not a secret but something special only they get to share. Richie kisses him again and says against his lips, “I love you, too.”
---
4. go on a picnic date with ri
At the beginning of the summer the heat made Eddie feel drunk on sun and vitamin-d, but as the days wore on and all he ever felt was heat, the novelty of it began to wear off.
Eddie uses the door of the refrigerator as a sort of makeshift fan, pulling it back and forth in an attempt to waft the cold air onto his sticky skin. He’s wearing the shortest shorts he owns, which come up to about mid-thigh, and a tank top. It’s one of the hottest days of the New York summer so far and he’s starting to be a little over it.
“What should I make for lunch?” He calls over his shoulder, not bothering to move from in front of the fridge.
“Please, for the love of God, I told you not to cook anymore! I swear to God you’re trying to poison me!”
Richie’s voice comes from their bedroom down the hall and he can’t see the eyeroll that Eddie gives him, but it feels cathartic anyway.
“I’m getting better, for fuck’s sake! That first try was a fluke, I was too nervous about impressing you and then you distracted me , if you recall!”
Eddie listens to Richie’s unnecessarily heavy footsteps grow nearer to the kitchen until he’s suddenly leaning against the frame of the doorway, one eyebrow pulled up high on his forehead.
“I really don’t think I count that as me distracting you , pal. You’re gonna have to try harder on your shitty excuses if you ever want me to trust you in the kitchen again.”
“You had literally kissed me for the first time after the New Years Eve fiasco. Like, sober. On purpose. It’s not my fault the fucking meatballs burned while we made out on the countertop .”
“You were wearing an apron , Edward. An apron . What the fuck was I supposed to do?”
A grin had been slowly growing on Eddie’s face throughout their whole conversation until it finally reaches a breaking point and, in lieu of a response, Eddie lunges at Richie, football-tackle-style, attempting to push him down on the floor. Richie shrieks and clings onto Eddie’s back as they tumble onto the carpet, Eddie cackling as he pokes at Richie’s stomach and ribs. With some maneuvering, Richie hooks an ankle over a leg and gets the leverage on Eddie’s arms, successfully flipping them over until he has Eddie’s wrists pinned at his sides and their faces are inches apart.
“You’re a menace,” he says, breathless and smiling wide. Eddie cranes his neck and gently kisses Richie’s nose before peppering the rest of his face with kisses, too. “It’s a gift,” he says against Richie’s cheek.
With an sharp inhale Richie replies, “I’ll show you a gift,” before promptly rolling off of Eddie and springing back up to his feet, reaching a hand out to help Eddie up.
Pouting, Eddie takes Richie’s hand and pulls himself up. Richie then marches into the kitchen, rifles around in the fridge for a moment, and returns with a black lunchbox cooler and a small satchel slung over his shoulder.
“Let’s go for a walk.”
The walk to Central Park isn’t too long, but the sun is beating down on their shoulders relentlessly. Eddie wants to complain, but Richie seems weirdly nervous about their destination and he doesn’t want to push him into full-blown panic, so Eddie keeps his grumbling to a minimum and slows his pace under the shade of trees.
“If this is what you call a gift, then I’m really glad we never exchanged Christmas presents.”
“We never exchanged Christmas presents because we were both way too emotionally repressed at the time to admit we were super hot for each other. Besides, I’m trying to make up for it now, so shut up, we’re almost there.”
Eddie allows himself one more grumble before he does, in fact, shut up.
They walk through the park for almost fifteen minutes. Eddie has always loved Central Park, so the whole time he’s looking around at the trees and the people in quiet wonderment. He catches Richie glancing at him a few times and relishes in the fact that he can actually smile and acknowledge the attention and it doesn’t leave them both blushing and pretending nothing happened. Instead, he takes Richie’s hand and squeezes his clammy fingers lightly and his heart flutters when Richie squeezes back.
The Rock is, somehow, mostly quiet. It might have had to do with the heat, or the fact that it was too late for a real outing, but Richie quickly finds them a spot off to the side with a beautiful view of the lake and takes a soft blanket out of the satchel, spreading it out on a somewhat flat looking rock.
Everything clicks.
Distantly, Eddie knew what the goal of the outing was. Richie wasn’t exactly being subtle, but the List returns to Eddie’s memory and he remembers what the forth item on it was.
“Holy shit, Rich, are you fucking kidding me?”
Richie glances up from where he’s pulling out tupperwares of food he had somehow made without Eddie realizing. “What?” He asks, slightly dumbstruck, “did you… did you want to do something else? I know it’s hot out, but I thought--”
“When the fuck did you do all this? I can’t fucking believe you!”
Looking slightly dejectedly at the food he was laying out, frowning slightly. “Sorry, I guess I just-- we can do something--”
“No, don’t you dare. This is the most romantic shit anyone has ever done for me.”
And with that, Eddie plops down on the blanket with a confusingly upset expression.
There’s a tense sort of air around them for a few moments as Richie seems to be evaluating how to handle this sudden change in mood and Eddie stares at the spread of food over the blanket.
Finally, Eddie presses his palms to his eyes and takes in a shuddering breath.
“Rich, this is the nicest thing-- and after the mix tape… you have to understand that no one has ever done something like this for me before. No one has listened to me the way you do and I’m so fucking happy and I’m so fucking in love with you. It’s sort of overwhelming how much… how much this means to me.”
Richie watches Eddie closely, expression neutrally schooled, before he leans forward and cups a hand under Eddie’s jaw, guiding him into a short, tender kiss.
“You deserve the fucking world, Eds. You deserve someone to do stupid romantic shit for you on a whim. You deserve this. It’s not even-- it’s literally just a picnic lunch. You deserve so much-- if making some mediocre food and dragging you through the sweltering New York wasteland to sit on a rock and eat means this much to you, then I’m happy I did it. But I want you to know that I always want to do this kind of shit for you, I always want to make you feel seen and heard and cared for and all that other shit. I would do literally anything--”
Eddie leans forward and cuts him off with a kiss, fingers digging into Richie’s forearm and hands shaking a little more than he thinks is strictly appropriate for the situation. It is just a picnic lunch, but it’s also proof that Richie gets him and that he is maybe the luckiest person on the planet.
“I love you,” he says, because he can, and Richie returns the sentiment, pressing the words against Eddie’s lips.
After a few long seconds, they separate and breathe in deep. Eddie wipes at his eyes absently as he gestures at the food.
“So, are we gonna eat this shit already or what?”
---
9. have my first kiss
They’re sitting on the couch, Eddie reading a book that Mike had suggested to him and Richie answering emails on his laptop. They’re in pajamas and it’s a Saturday afternoon, everything feels comfortable and quiet and Eddie distantly registers how content he is, the feeling buzzing under his skin in a way that it has been for months now.
Suddenly, making Eddie jump slightly at the movement, Richie turns towards him, cheeks noticeably flushed and laptop discarded next to him.
“Uh, so…” Richie says and he looks nervous . Eddie’s eyebrows pinch in concern and he gently places the bookmark in between the pages, setting his book aside as well. “What is it, Rich?” He asks.
Richie breathes in deeply and when he exhales, there’s a ghost of a smile playing on his lips.
“I know I’m always talking about how I’m always getting laid and how me and your mom are in love and shit, but can I tell you a secret?”
Eddie is visibly confused but he can feel a smile pulling at his lips.
“Yeah, Rich. You can tell me anything.”
“I’ve never kissed anyone before.”
Eddie covers his mouth to hide the snort of laughter that bursts out of him. He and Richie had spent most of the morning making out in bed, so he knew that this was some sort of bit, but Richie seemed to be building up to something, so he played along.
“Oh,” Eddie responds after a moment of stifling laughter, “that’s okay, man. You know, I haven’t kissed anyone before, either.”
Richie’s face lights up and he leans forward to grip Eddie’s shoulders. Eddie laughs delightedly. “Wait, really?” Richie asks, playing into the role, “that’s great! We’re in it together, then!”
Eddie realizes what Richie’s doing with sudden, heart-fluttering clarity.
“Yeah, man, we’re both gonna be mouth virgins together forever.” Eddie says and Richie’s eyes are glittering with mirth.
“You know,” Richie says after a moment, looking slyly at Eddie, “we could… we could practice on each other.”
A part of Eddie, the internal, repressed child pining hopelessly for his best friend, was in disbelief. Eddie is fairly sure that this was the word-for-word fantasy he’d had many times as a kid.
“I-- yeah… I would like that…” Eddie’s words weren’t coming to him the quickfire way that they usually did. His skin is buzzing and his heart is fluttering and it was stupid , it was really stupid because they’ve kissed now more times than he can count, but the sense memory of thirteen, forteen, fifteen year old Eddie wanting desperately to kiss Richie, wanting it more than he could even comprehend, wanting Richie to be his first kiss… it’s embarrassing how nervous he is.
Richie leans forward and places a gentle hand on the side of Eddie’s neck and Eddie stays stock still for a moment before he remembers: oh yeah, he knows how to do this, and leans forward to kiss Richie sweetly. It’s chaste, hesitant in a way it shouldn’t be, and after a few beats there’s a laughter that bubbles up Eddie’s throat and spills out, causing him to buckle forward with the force of it. Richie looks momentarily surprised before he, too, is laughing.
“Was that too much?” He asks in between bouts of giggles. Eddie shakes his head, hand coming up to Richie’s shoulder. “No, no, that was great, everything I imagined as a hugely repressed forteen year old, thank you, Rich.”
Richie grins and goes in to kiss him for real, kiss him like they can and know how to now. Eddie kisses him back and thinks that things can’t really get better than this.
---
7. go on a roadtrip
“How do you feel about going to visit ol’ Mikey?” Richie asks one day, seemingly out of the blue. Eddie is reorganizing his bookshelf and Richie, perhaps trying to infuriate Eddie, is stacking the books on the floor by order of size. Eddie snatches a small paperback out of Richie’s hands, scowling at him, before placing it gingerly on the shelf.
“Why? Did he say something?” Eddie asks after a moment of making sure his alphabetizing was correct.
“Nah-- well, kinda. He was just mentioning how he missed all of us and I thought it might be nice to drive down to Florida and visit. Get to the beach, finish off the summer right.”
Eddie narrows his eyes at Richie, attempting to glean anything from his facial expressions. Richie has been slowly making his way through the List, doing the little things that Eddie had written about and every time causing Eddie’s poor little heart to burst with love. The mix tape had started it off, but there had also been the late-night skinny dip session in their own personal pool (thirteen year old Eddie might have fantasized about breaking into a public pool, but adult Eddie was far too practical for that sort of tomfoolery), there had been the nearly disastrous “sneaking into a bedroom window to make out” role play that mostly ended in Richie getting a stitch in his side and Eddie fussing until Richie had to eventually pull him in to straddle his face for an absolutely stellar blowjob, there had been the achingly romantic kiss in the rain where both of them got absolutely soaked and then had to take a warm shower together - a far more fun activity than getting drenched and cold in their backyard, and there had been other little things, too. They were dwindling down to the big ticket items, but Eddie had been having trouble remembering exactly what they were until Richie randomly brings up some innocuous activity.
“Are you talking about… a road trip?” Eddie asks, still eyeing Richie but half returning to his reorganizing. Richie shrugs, picking at the corner of an old worn hard-cover of the Illiad.
“I mean, yeah. It could be fun, and it’s only like… twenty hours. We could see if everyone else would wanna come down, make it a whole thing.”
Eddie makes a gesture like he’s weighing the options, as if his heart didn’t immediately begin to soar at the idea of spending these last few weeks of summer with the car windows down, listening to music and shooting the shit with Richie while they stop at stupid roadside attractions, getting shitty diner food, eventually going to the fucking beach to see their best friends.
“I think I could be convinced.”
His one insistence is that they have the car serviced first, and then he uses his leftover vacation days and they are on the road. The rest of the Losers were ecstatic about the idea. After their last get together on New Years Eve they’ve all been itching to see one another. Eddie can’t shake the suspicion at the immediate, enthusiastic responses. As if they had all already discussed it without him. There’s an itch at the back of his head that makes him think about the List, but that was likely from the road trip that he remembers as being one of the dream items. Something he couldn’t even conceptualize as a potential reality when he was young. The idea that he could leave, get in a car with someone he loves and just go , it was a pipedream at best, and a distraction at worst.
But… here he is. He has the window down and the wind whips his hair against his forehead and Richie is singing obnoxiously along to a shitty pop song Eddie doesn’t recognize and Eddie is the happiest he’s ever been.
In the end it takes them close to thirty whole hours over the course of several days. They stop in seedy motels and Eddie doesn’t even check the seams of the mattresses for bedbugs. By the time they roll into the driveway of Mike’s oceanside home, Eddie feels loose and content.
It turns out that the rest of the Losers are already there, most of them having arrived earlier that day or the day before and Eddie is far too calm to question why. Each of them greet Eddie and Richie with warm, loving hugs and he catches Bev watching him from across the livingroom with loving, proud eyes. He had spoken to Bev before he and Richie got together. They had shared their twin traumas and comforted one another, encouraged one another, and it was everything he had needed to take the leap to leave Myra. Now, he’s happy and laughing and Richie has his arm slung over Eddie’s shoulders and she can see how good he is now. When they make eye contact, her eyes crinkle around the corners and she blows him a kiss, which he catches and presses to his heart.
---
10. go to the beach
Later that night, the group heads down to the beach. Bev and Richie and Mike have their shoes off and Eddie scoffs at them until his sneakers begin to fill with sand and he’s forced to take them off. He has to admit, it feels good on his bare feet and he feels yet another knot in his chest loosen, even when Stan makes overexaggerated retching noises and mumbles about betrayal. If all of this healing and happiness continues at this rate then Eddie might be completely open and unburdened by the time he and Richie return to their New York apartment.
They walk down the beach for a little while, chatting and enjoying the warm night air against their cheeks. Sometimes the conversation peters out and they enjoy the silence and the sound of the waves lapping at the shore.
There’s an anticipation that washes over the group as they walk up to a private beach sign and Eddie moves to turn back, but Mike pushes on and the rest of the group sort of smile at one another secretly and the realization comes crashing down on Eddie.
---
11. get invited to a party
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Eddie screeches as the continue along the shore. Everyone’s fucking tittering and exchanging these frankly rude looks and Richie has the audacity to look smug.
“How in the actual hell did you all keep this a secret?” He asks, “you have the biggest mouths on the planet!”
Stan says, “coming from you,” at the exact same time that Richie says, “I’ll show you a big mouth,” and Eddie has to tamp down an actual scream. Stan smacks Richie on the shoulder and that’s almost as satisfying. Bev and Ben are cackling, using each other to keep themselves upright and Mike and Bill are marching ahead, both of them grinning huge and pretending like they don’t know any of them.
Pressing close to Richie, Eddie hisses, “did you tell them about the list?”
Richie looks genuinely taken aback by that and shakes his head. “What? No, of course not. I just told them I wanted to surprise you because I thought it’d be funny. And it was! Totally worth it.”
Eddie feels his eyes strain as he rolls them dramatically.
Not far away there’s a small, manmade firepit with wood already stacked beside it. There’s a cooler set near a picnic table and it all feels a little surreal. This is exactly what he pictured when he wrote that sad, sad bullet into the list. A gathering, a time for him to relax and be with people he loves, to drink beer and watch a fire crackle on the beach in summer sitting next to the love of his life.
They gather around the firepit and Mike and Bill tag team getting the fire started. Ben hands out drinks and Eddie and Richie drag the picnic table closer to the fire while Bev and Stan pretend to ‘direct’ them, sipping their beers from several feet away.
It’s truly magical. It feels like something out of a coming-of-age indie film where everyone is struggling with their growing bodies and sexualities, except everyone is also forty and somehow grew up to be inhumanly beautiful. Ben tells a long-winded story about an asshole track coach he once had which gets plenty of sympathetic gasps and surprised laughter, Bev nearly passes out from laughing at an impression Richie does of Eddie trying to make crepes and it’s not even all that funny, there’s just this incredible, carefree energy that seeps into all of them. It happens, Eddie notices, every time they get to see each other’s faces. The group chat is one thing, but when they’re all together their shared energy bounces off and absorbs into each other and they become one in such a satisfying, bone-deep way.
Richie stands up, nearly toppling Eddie over.
“A toast!” He announces and everyone gets sort of quiet and Eddie’s heart rate starts to pick up because this feels planned and if he knows anything it’s not to trust a Richie plan.
The rest of the Losers raise their bottles and Richie takes in a deep breath, nervously sticking his free hand in his pocket and turning towards Eddie.
“Eddie Spaghetti,” he begins and Eddie’s eyes widen so much he’s afraid they’re going to fall out of the sockets, he feels like his chest is going to cave in, his ears begin to hum with the blood rushing through them because he suddenly understands what is happening, what is really happening and his brain is shutting down.
Richie swallows and Eddie can see the bob of his adam’s apple. Richie’s hand is shaking where he’s holding the bottle aloft and all Eddie can do is stare .
“Eddie, my love, you are-- God , you are a hero amongst men. You’re my hero. Fighting a demon alien before your balls dropped, spearing that fucker in the mouth just to save little old me, leaving your wife, coming out? Fuck, man… you’re so incredible. An obnoxious little firecracker, but incredible nonetheless. I thought I’d get sick of you after, like, a few days of being in New York but you made that whole shitty fucking city worth it. I would have lived in Ohio with you, if you’d asked. You would have made Ohio tolerable--” Richie pauses, closing his eyes and shaking his head minutely and Eddie can recognize that he’s gone off track and is trying to find the thread again.
“I guess what I’m saying here, in front of God and all of our friends, is that you are… you’re it for me, buddy. You’re my endgame. And if I ever end up in the hospital, I only want one neurotic fucking hypochondriac allowed to legally be at my bedside so, um--” Richie fumbles, dropping his half-full beer into the sand, cursing under his breath before wrestling his other hand out of his pants pocket to procure a small, black box. He kneels in front of Eddie and Eddie knows for a fact that he is every picturesque engagement photo with his eyes glassy and his hands pressed against his mouth and his chest shuttering with unshed, joyful tears.
“Eddie Kaspbrak,”
12. fall in love
“Will you marry me?”
Eddie lets forth a shuddering sob and nods, holding his hand out when Richie gestures for it, both of them openly crying and grinning and Eddie vaguely registers cheering as Richie slides the practical silver band with a small, black diamond nestled in the metal. Eddie feels himself collapsing forward, wrapping his arms around Richie.
“I can’t believe you called me buddy during your proposal,” he says through shaking breaths, “and you somehow managed to insult me, like, three times.”
Richie laughs against his shoulder, burying his face further into Eddie’s neck.
“God, I fucking love you.”
Eddie feels the words resonate through him and it leaves him feeling raw and cracked open and so, so happy.
“I love you, Richard Tozier, you disgusting imp of a man.”
The chorus of laughter echoes and echoes and it becomes the backdrop to the rest of their lives.