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Chapter Text

Eddie stands in the middle of the bathroom and prods experimentally at the stab wound on his face. Neat black stitches run through it, professionally done and about as even as you can get them. They remind Eddie a little bit of rows and rows of millipede legs, running down the side of his face forever. He shudders at the thought, his skin crawling.

Like the hole through his chest, the one on his face is never going to heal. The stitches are there only to hold the two flaps of skin together, and they are never coming out. He covers the row of sutures up with a flesh-colored band-aid, as he does every morning. There: now it looks like it could have just been the result of a simple morning shaving incident.

Quite a large shaving incident, though.

 Eddie very carefully does not look at himself in the mirror as he finishes applying the cover-up to the contours of his face, the way Bev had taught him the last time she had visited. Not caked on too thick the way he had become accustomed to doing it before, which apparently made him look uncanny. But not too thin, the way it had become in vogue recently, pale grey skin peeking out visibly underneath the flesh-colored mousse. To remind the world that you were a dead thing.

“Eds!” Richie’s voice calls out from behind the closed bathroom door. “Eds, quit hogging the fucking bathroom! I’m gonna be late to my meeting!”

“Almost done!” he yells back. He screws the lid back on the container of cover-up and wipes the residue off of his fingers in a piece of toilet paper. Prying his left eye open, he carefully pops a contact lens in, then repeats the action with the other eye. Finally, he allows himself to focus on the figure in the mirror.

There. Eyes- normal, human, brown. Skin- passable as alive, as long as you didn’t look too hard. After months of this and also Bev’s makeup crash-course, he’s gotten quite good at it. 

“All yours,” he nods to Richie as he exits the bathroom.

“About time, Deaddie Spaghetti,” Richie declares, shouldering past him. He does not make eye contact.

“Don’t fucking call me that-” Eddie starts, but Richie is already gone, the door shut behind him. Eddie touches his hands to the side of his face, automatic, wondering if he’d missed a spot, or forgotten a contact lens, or something to give away his deadness. But he knows the answer.

Richie has been avoiding eye contact with him ever since he’d moved in.

Five years ago, Eddie had watched Richie’s retreating back as darkness closed in around the edges of his vision and thought to himself, “this is a good death.” He’d closed his eyes with that sight in mind, and hadn’t expected he’d ever be able to open them again. He hadn’t expected that he'd ever get to see Richie again.

Almost precisely one year after he died Eddie lurches upwards from the position he’d died in and opens his eyes again, although the semantics of whether or not he’s able to see with them is one up to the philosophers to debate. Sure, light reflected through his ruined pupils were being translated into electrical impulses along his optic nerve. But could it truly be called “seeing” if there was nothing at the helm to process these impulses?

Four and a half years after he dies he finally sees Richie again, for every definition of that word.

It’s in a government-sanctioned facility in San Bernardino (meant to serve the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area and surrounding unincorporated counties). Eddie had been on a plane and then a series of covered trucks for the better part of two days, and although he doesn’t sweat anymore, he desperately wants a shower. “You’re one of the furthest we’ve had to transport,” a very young-looking man in camouflage armor, the only guard willing to talk to them, had informed him. “Most people get picked up and processed pretty close to where they were buried, which means they’re pretty close to any family or acquaintances willing to be assigned as a designated caregiver. But you, we’ve had to move you clear across the country for your pickup point!”

Eddie squirms in the tacky plastic chair he’s sitting in and tries not to panic. Overhead, the whine of the too-bright fluorescent lights is audible, buzzing like a nestful of angry bees. He waits, and then the door opens, and anticlimactically, Richie is there.

Six months earlier, Eddie Kaspbrak had come back into awareness surrounded by doctors, blinking awake under bright medical lights. Later, he’ll recall how they stood clustered a safe distance away from his jerking body, one of them with a large syringe of Neurotriptyline clutched in a thick glove, another holding a professional-grade taser. Later, he’ll notice how he’d been strapped down and restrained to the hospital bed as a “precautionary safety measure” just in case the medication didn’t take. In that instance, though, he could only think about one thing, because it was the thing on his mind when he’d died, and it’s the first words out of his mouth in a long, long time.

“Richie?”

By the time uncharacteristically heavy winter rains had finally flushed him out of the cistern after he’d been trapped in it for years, the inhabitants of Derry (as well as most of the planet) had a well-established protocol for dealing with beings like what Eddie had become. He’s actually a bit of a late arrival, the doctors explained to him. They’d already gone through all the fun and excitement of dealing with a zombie apocalypse back when everyone had risen and society had become a bit chaotic as a result, but then someone had invented a drug that could wake the dead up and life was more or less back to ordinary by the time Eddie had shown up.

It’s lucky, Eddie supposes. He had shambled around Derry a bit after picking himself up out of the sewers and, in a fitting display of irony, managed to frighten a group of children playing in the woods (where, naturally, they were absolutely forbidden from going). However, in the intervening years Derry had apparently finally wised up to the possibility of monsters in the woods, because the children had immediately retreated and told their parents, who told the police department, who contacted the government, who picked him up and pumped his brain full of medication until enough neural pathways had been repaired such that he could remember his own name and no longer felt like eating people’s brains.

The doctors and a series of cheerful but sterile posters and pamphlets informed Eddie that what he has is “Partially Deceased Syndrome” (PDS for short), although the symptoms sounded suspiciously similar to the zombies in the B-list horror movies Richie had made him watch so much of as a child. There’s a short brochure listing some common stereotypes and misconceptions about being undead (not transmittable in any form, which at least explains how easily society had managed to bounce back. Eddie has enough stuffed into his head about the bubonic plague and the Spanish Influenza and the AIDS epidemic to know how easily things can go south very quickly). They teach him how to administer the Neurotriptyline and explain he’ll have to take a dose once a day for the rest of his not-life, lest he revert to his previous, rabid state.

Eddie’s not sure about this strange new future he’s been thrust into, and he’s finding that he really hates being dead. But if there’s anything he understands its disease and medication, so he clings onto that familiarity as best he can. For possibly the first time ever there’s actually something wrong with him, but as long as he remembers to take his daily dose of medicine he’ll be okay. The sickness bubbling inside him will be held at bay, and everything will be okay.

“We would like to reintegrate you back into society now that you’ve been treated,” they’d explained, “Only legally you’ll need a non-partially deceased human caregiver, just to sponsor you and make sure you’re accounted for, and can you think of anybody from your old life who would be willing to do this?”

Nonsensically, the first person to pop into Eddie’s mind is Richie , which was utterly insane given that Richie is a man who probably should never be given any responsibilities Eddie was friends with as a child, then didn’t talk to or remember for three decades, then became reacquainted with over the course of about two days, most of which was spent fighting a murder space clown. And then Eddie died.

The other problem was that Eddie is married and has a wife, who is just so much more the logical choice in literally every aspect. So he called Myra instead.

Except, several phone calls, a screaming match and a bunch of paperwork later, it turned out he isn’t married and she wasn’t his wife anymore. The legality of dying and then coming back to life was apparently pretty tricky, but generally it’s agreed upon that the death of one party is a good reason for a marriage to end. Five years was also a pretty long time to not be alive, and in the interim a widowed Myra had remarried. Eddie can’t blame her for that.

The screaming, though, had been because Myra vitriolically didn’t want to see or have anything to do with him, or PDS sufferers in general, or “any of you rotting abominations.” She’d hung up after yelling at him to never call again, or she’d contact the authorities.

Eddie found he doesn’t mind the rejection too much. The sudden disintegration of his decades-long marriage should probably have worried him more than it did, but if he were being honest, privately he’d always known Myra was kind of a bad person. If anything, he felt relief, and with no other options he could think of, he called Richie.

Richie had picked up after the second ring. “Richie Tozier speaking, who’s this?” He had mumbled into the phone, sounding groggy as he answers. The call must have just woken him up. Belatedly, Eddie realized that it must still be very early in the morning over on the West coast, and Richie did not feel like the sort of adult who gets up before noon on a good day.

There’s really no good way to ease into this, so Eddie had plunged right in. “Hey Rich, it’s Eddie- hey Richie? Richie? It’s going to be ok-” because one sentence into the conversation, Richie had drawn in a sharp breath and then promptly burst into tears.

“Shit sorry, sorry!” Richie was babbling over the phone now, voice still thick with emotion. “It’s not like I didn’t think this was a possibility, but then the months kept passing and they never found you and it felt like everybody and their mom was getting brought back to life, and I wondered if maybe you were some sort of fluke thanks to Pennywise and just missed the boat, or maybe you’d been killed again during the initial chaos, and I didn’t want to hope and- I just missed you so much.”

It had been so good to hear Richie’s voice that Eddie had had to sit down. He let it stream over him, grasps at it like the lone anchor in the sea of uncertainty his life had become. “I was trapped in the cistern until about a few months ago- flooding finally washed me out, and then they had to explain what the fuck has been going on since I died, and make sure I wouldn’t go rabid again, and it’s just been so much and- I missed you, too.” And even though for him it’s only been a few months since they’ve last spoken, he had known it to be true. He took a deep breath. “Richie, I have a favor to ask.”

“Anything!” Richie’s response had been immediate and earnest.

“They say I need a human caregiver to take responsibility for me in order to get out of here and I seriously couldn’t think of anybody else and I’d hate to impose, but do you think I could move in, just until I get my shit together-”

“Eddie,” Richie had cut him off, voice serious, “Of course you can come stay with me. The guest bedroom already has your name on it. I’ll have it deep cleaned tomorrow.”

So they sewed close his injuries the best they could, and gave him some medication and contact lenses and makeup to make him look more alive and two and a half hours of government-mandated therapy (and not a second more), and shipped him all the way out to California in the most roundabout way imaginable. And well. Now, here they were, finally facing each other in a small, sterile waiting room in San fucking Bernadino.

It had been five years since Eddie had died looking at Richie’s figure shrinking in the distance, although 45 year old Richie looked very much the same as 40 year old Richie. His hair was a little shorter and a little grayer and there were maybe a few more laughter lines around his eyes, but five years was not yet enough time to render him unrecognizable in any way. Although, Eddie suspects that even if it had been another 27 years and Richie were now an old man with no hair and a limp from arthritis and liver spots, Eddie would still be able to recognize him regardless.

Richie breaks the silence first.

“Eddie, I-” his voice cracks on the syllable, and he clears his throat, and then tries again. “Eds, why are your eyes the wrong color?”

“What?” Eddie pauses: for the first face-to-face conversation they’re having in years, it’s a bit of a non-sequitur. He’s wearing his contact lenses, remembers putting them in just before Richie arrived, so his eyes shouldn’t be the terrifying milky white that gave him away as one of the undead.

“They’re the wrong shade of brown, I mean. Your eyes were always very dark, almost black, but now they’re so much lighter?”

“They’re contact lenses,” Eddie tries to explain. This is not how he expected their reunion to go. He was picturing something so much more emotional, something that would start filling in the emptiness in his chest that had been forming ever since he woke up. Instead, this is the opposite- stilted and awkward. Richie hovers a few feet away but makes no motion to move closer. “Government only provided the three most basic colors, so they aren’t going to match up entirely in most cases.”

Makes sense,” Richie hums, shuffling his feet. “I suppose that explains the whole- skin- bit as well.” He gestures vaguely at his face, looking down at where Eddie is still huddled awkwardly in his uncomfortable plastic chair. Eddie clears his throat.

“I really do hate to intrude, you know. Sorry for making you drop everything just to deal with me. I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I’m allowed to.”

Richie makes like he wants to grab Eddie’s hand but pauses at the last second, his fingers stopped as if by a brick wall. “Come on Eds, this place is giving me the creeps. Let’s get out of here, my car’s parked out back.”

Eddie stands up and follows, trailing after him to his car, and into his home, forcibly crawls his way into the gaps in Richie’s life. The awkwardness between them had never dissipated but neither had Eddie. And here he still is, all these months later.

Richie leaves soon after with a cursory goodbye and Eddie is tasked with another day of trying to fill in the hours by himself before he has to go to group therapy. He doesn’t much care for leaving the house in the daytime, worried that people would easily see through him even though logically he knows that this is Los Angeles and nobody cares. Theoretically he could go about finding a new job (his previous one- reasonably- no longer available after he’d been dead for half a decade), but he’s heard that the job market is not great for PDS sufferers and does not relish the thought of having to interact with a series of strangers, some of them possibly holding opinions similar to Myra’s. Also, Richie had jokingly promised that he would look after Eddie with his “huge piles of comedy cash money” if Eddie never wanted to work again, and at any rate being dead at least means Eddie’s living expenses are almost nonexistent.

Eddie still hates being dead. Left to his own devices like this, puttering around the house as if he were some sort of ghost, brings out the worst of his neuroses. He makes an attempt to straighten and dust and clean up Richie’s surprisingly neat home as a distraction, but it doesn’t really help.

Eddie’s very existence makes no physical sense. Breathing is ingrained in his body as an automatic function but even if he were to stop, the only negative side effect would be that he would no longer be able to talk: he won’t asphyxiate, won’t suffer brain death due to lack of oxygen, and at any rate his heart no longer beats so there is no circulation to carry that oxygen, no hemoglobin on which for it to bind. He doesn’t need to eat or drink (and in fact, has been warned trying to do so will make him very sick), but without incoming carbohydrates or lipids or hydration there’s no reason his body should be able to continue functioning. And yet, like an impossible machine, it does. If he thinks too hard, Eddie imagines worms burrowing into his flesh and chewing through his cartilage, his form falling apart at the seams like flesh off a bone, his cold grey skin peeling off in fatty flakes to reveal the rotting mess of meat and greywater that must surely be hidden underneath.

So he calls Stan.

“Eddie? How are you doing? Is everything alright?” Stan picks up almost immediately, his voice polite and comforting as always. It’s November but it’s also Los Angeles, so the sun still shines bright in the cloudless blue sky. Eddie curls up under the patch of sunlight on the couch and wills it to keep him warm.

Stan’s back the way Eddie’s back, all the way over in Georgia, but he’s had a few months longer to adjust to the whole situation, for whatever amount of adjusting is even possible. And so, against all odds, the Loser’s Club remains whole, just with two very large asterisks amongst its members.

“I just needed someone to talk to for a bit.” Stan makes a noise of understanding. Despite being on completely opposite sides of the country, there are some universal constants to the undead experience, and it’s good to have a friend. Occasionally he’ll catch Richie whispering away on the phone with Patricia Uris of all people, no doubt talking through the difficulties of their shared experience as caregivers as well.

Richie had always looked slightly guilty when Eddie found them talking, like he’s just been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

Like Eddie, Stan’s unemployed, floating through life untethered with no idea what he’s going to do next. As a result, he too spends most of his time whittling away the hours. Eddie’s not sure, but he thinks Stan may have taken up stamp collecting: the last time they’d talked, Stan had mentioned off-hand that his current self had a tendency to scare away the birds.

Eddie wonders if the real reason is, like himself, Stan finds the idea of leaving the house overwhelming.

“Is anything specifically the matter?” Stan asks, when Eddies doesn’t volunteer anything up.

“I’m freaking out again thinking about being dead, and I need you to talk me down. So you know, the usual.”

“Is it the… body stuff?” Stan asks. “The disease eating you up from the inside out thing?”

“Yeah,” Eddie nods even though Stan can’t see it. He knows that Stan doesn’t share in his squeamishness towards his own physical form, that Stan sees his miraculous return to life as a gift to be cherished. But then again, Stan has never dealt with the particular cocktail of neuroses constantly churning through Eddie’s head. Stan doesn’t have a horrible, unforgettable gaping wound going straight through him, or a second wound on his face he must look at each day to remind him of what he is, both of which will never heal, stark reminders that no matter what he is now a dead thing.

Stan does have two stitched up cuts, one neat line on each wrist. These too will never heal.

“Ok, what brought this on? Let’s dig to the bottom of this,” Stan says.

“I just started thinking about what a body is and isn’t supposed to be able to do, and aging, and decomposition? And it just kind of spiraled.” Eddie pauses for a second, tries to think back onto what train of thought led him down this path.

“I think something that’s irrationally stressing me out is that everyone else is aging, but we’re still 40 and we’ll always be 40. It seemed like it would be an immutable fact that no matter what else, the Losers Club would always be tied together by our age. That we’d all step through time together at the same pace, but now-” Eddie chops his hand through the air in frustration, unable to vocalize why he feels so unmoored, why the steadily increasing age gap between him and his friends brings with it a feeling of loss, of mourning. “-now it feels like-”

“Like we’re being left behind,” Stan finishes. “Hey, I just remembered. It’s your birthday today, isn’t it?”

“Yep, or it was,” Eddie replies, drawing his knees up to his chin from where he is perched on the couch. “And the thing is, Richie didn’t mention it at all before he left this morning. I know it’s dumb, ‘cause we really haven’t known each other that long as adults and maybe he just forgot, but when we were kids he’d always go all out for my birthday. Like he’d sneak cake to school because he knew my mom wouldn’t let me have any, and bring little party hats for everyone and throw confetti and sing badly and blow that stupid party horn in my face the whole day and I just-” Eddie finally lets it out. “I think Richie is disgusted by me being dead, and he’s too polite to kick me out.”

Stan laughs in disbelief. “Are you sure? Eddie, we once saw Richie eat a slice of pizza without hesitating after it had fallen on the ground. Cheese-side down. The man has no standards.”

“You don’t understand,” Eddie whispers softly. “He barely talks to me anymore, and he’s always careful not to come too close. Like the idea of taking care of your dead best friend is fine on paper, but then you’re confronted by the reality of living with a walking corpse. It just feels like he’s avoiding me, and I don’t know why or how to stop it. Not that I blame him, or anything. Being dead is really gross.”

“I think it’s just in your head,” Stan insists. “I don’t think Richie could ever be disgusted by you. You should just talk to him about it.”

Eddie hums. He’ll believe Stan when it happens. “How’s Patty?” He changes the subject. “How’s Georgia?”

“Savannah is still alright.” Something in Stan’s voice seems hesitant. “Not so hot, now that it’s almost winter. Raining all the time now, though.”

“And are you still having trouble finding a job? It must be worse out there, Georgia being how it is.” Eddie knows it’s a little unfair, but he imagines the inhabitants of Georgia as not dissimilar to the inhabitants of rural Maine in some regards. The underlying question lurking behind his words is: “does it still feel safe, living there the way we are now?”

“Well, Savannah’s not as bad as if you were out in the less developed areas of Georgia, so to speak. But yes, job hunting has been a bit of a slog.” Stan sounds a little self deprecatory, his voice flattened by the phone’s speakers into tinny sarcasm. “Turns out there’s not much demand for accountants who have been dead five years, who knew?”

Eddie makes a sympathetic noise. “And Patty?”

“Patty is lovely, as always. I’m incredibly lucky she decided to have me back, it’s just taking some adjustments.”

Something in his tone sounds off. Eddie hesitates- he doesn’t want to press on a sore point, but:

“Is something the matter?”

“Yeah,” Stan finally answers, “Let’s just say Richie and you aren’t the only two going through it right now. But it’s not Patty or anything, it’s just a really bad situation.”

Eddie waits for him to elaborate.

“So when I passed, there was already a bit of a delay in getting the life insurance payout, because I’d committed suicide, right? But she got it eventually, so she was able to keep the house.” Stan pauses for a moment so Eddie can absorb that.

“That’s good, right?” Eddie asks. “So you guys still have the house. Life insurance companies are always dragging their feet about these things to avoid paying out so you really have to push them- and I should know, I worked for one.”

“But then I came back, and now the life insurance companies are claiming the payout is invalid and they want it back. And since I haven’t been able to find a job, she’s had to pull double shifts to keep the mortgage paid so we don’t get foreclosed on while this whole mess gets figured out. And I know she loves me because otherwise she wouldn’t have agreed to be my caregiver, but sometimes I just worry about the way she looks at me. There’s something about it I don’t recognize, but I’m worried she might be starting to resent me? Because after all, I’m the one who put her in this bad situation by killing myself, and then coming back, and it’s just fucking, a lot.” The curse word hangs heavy in the air, made all the more powerful by the fact that Stan never, ever swore.

Eddie frowns. “But that doesn’t seem right,” he says. “When I came back they told me my marriage to Myra was no longer valid, because I had died. You can’t have it one way and not the other. And anyways, aren’t debts canceled after death anyways?”

“Yeah,” Stan groans, “But the insurance companies don’t want to play nice, so they’re claiming I never died at all, basically. Obviously there’s no clause for being undead, so they’re looking at it like I had faked my own death, or something. There’s a pending class-action lawsuit, but the court case is making its way up the system and it could take years for them to make a final ruling on it.” Eddie feels his heart clench in sympathy at that. Even if the insurance company was ruled in the wrong, it would take years for them to get their money back, and of course by then it would be far too late. He is all too familiar how things in the corporate world worked.

“The legal status of people like us- it’s all very ambiguous,” Stan is on a roll now. “I heard a rumor- only a rumor, mind, that someone killed a PDS sufferer and the small-town cops let them off scott-free. Because you can’t murder what’s already dead.”

The thought sends chills up Eddie’s spine. He knows the people who live in rural Maine, and he thinks he knows the people who live in rural Georgia, and he can imagine this scenario playing out all too easily.

Eddie is suddenly struck by how lucky he’s had it- Myra hadn’t wanted him so they’d had a clean break, very simple, and then Richie had come in and scooped him up with the explanation that “he’d already taken care of everything.” Eddie, too preoccupied with his new state of existence, had accepted that it really was that easy and hadn’t thought any more on it.

He wonders for the first time if Richie, of all people, had had to deal with any of these legal complexities. Richie doesn’t seem like the type of person who’s filed his taxes on time once in his entire life, let alone be equipped to deal with the legal mess that Eddie’s very existence might entail.

“Thanks for listening to me,” Stan interjects, interrupting Eddie’s train of thought. “Sorry, I’ve just been dealing with a lot and it kind of poured out of me.”

It feels strange to be the one to comfort Stan, who had always been the responsible, steadfast one. “Hey man, always here to repay the favor, god knows you’ve done it enough times for me over the years. And by the way, I’m really excited to finally see you next month!”

Stan chuckles at that. “Yeah, me too. I miss everyone so much- but out here, it’s hard to see anyone except Mike.”

Since his return, Eddie has seen most of the other Losers at least once. Bill’s in the city pretty frequently for his various projects and Eddie meets up with him on a semi-regular basis. Bev and Ben, too, both have satellite offices in the Los Angeles area, and at any rate the two can afford to come visit on a whim. Mike’s a little trickier now that he’s settled in Florida on the steady but not glamorous salary of a research librarian, but even he’d been able to drop by for a weekend.

Stan and Eddie living on completely opposite coasts bring with it their own set of challenges, namely that PDS sufferers were currently banned from flying, so the logistics of meeting up inevitable involved some combined 40 hours of driving. They hadn’t been able to coordinate it until now, but for the December holidays Stan and Patty and Mike were driving across the country for the first complete Loser’s meetup in so many decades. Eddie couldn’t wait.

“And listen,” Eddie finds himself saying, hoping it’s true. “If nothing’s going on between Richie and me, then Patty and you will work things out, okay? You guys love each other, right?”

A pause. “Yes,” Stan replies, sounding more sure of this than anything else in their conversation so far. “Yeah, we do.”

The two of them exchange goodbyes, and Eddie ends the call. Talking to Stan definitely helped- he can feel the anxiety receding, although it continues to lurk at the edge of his periphery, ready to swoop in and ruin his day at a moment’s notice.

But he’s glad he doesn’t have to face it alone.

The first time Eddie had stepped foot in Richie’s home, he hadn’t been sure what to expect. Eddie had assumed Richie would either have some sort of fancy penthouse apartment in the bustling city or else an eccentric, sprawling mansion in the middle of nowhere. Instead, Richie lived in a friendly two-story house in a quiet suburb. Eddie had been able to tell by the size of the house and the distance of the nearest neighbor and the enchanting greenness of the lawns that surrounded them that this was a very pricey suburb, but he’d never expected Richie of all people to settle down here. The house was charmingly ordinary, creamy whitewashed walls and California terra cotta roofing. The bright blue window frames, which clashed terribly with the orange roof tiles, were incredibly Richie and helped tip Eddie over into realizing that this home was lived in and loved instead of something pulled out of a catalog.

Eddie had loved it immediately.

“I moved here a couple of years ago,” Richie had explained as he shouldered the door open. “I just needed a change, you know? My party days were long behind me, and then my career skyrocketed and I figured, why not? A little peace and quiet would do me some good.”

On the drive from the drop-off facility Richie had done his best to get Eddie caught up on what he’d missed. Bill had written several novels with endings people actually liked, and was now in the process of getting what felt like every book he’d ever written adapted into either a TV show or a movie. Mike had done a road trip across the country before settling down in sunny, beautiful Florida. Beverly and Ben had finally gotten married just last year- Eddie had felt a pang at that, regret at having missed the wedding. His friends deserved happiness, and he just wishes he could have been there celebrating it with them.

“And Stan’s back!” Richie had exclaimed suddenly, “Can’t forget that! So you’ll have someone to talk to about the whole- ” and he had gestured vaguely at his whole body, taking both hands off the steering wheel as he did so.

“And what about you?” Eddie had asked, after he had finished screaming at Richie to keep his eyes on the road. “What’s new for Richie, other than dropping everything to take care of his dead best friend?”

“I’m doing really good, actually?” Richie had replied. “Surprising, I know. It wasn’t great for a little bit after, you know, the whole thing. But I got my shit together. Got a therapist and some meds and things are just so much better now! Somehow completely rebranded my image and started writing my own shit and now a lot of people actually like my comedy. You can Netflix my specials if you want, but do me a favor and watch them when I’m out of the house? I kind of hate seeing and hearing myself on screen.”

The inside of Richie’s home had also turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Eddie, who had been picturing piles of dirty laundry on every inch of available surface like some sort of eternal frat house, was surprised by how neat everything looked. But the cleanliness didn’t feel sterile or impersonal; the house was clearly lived in. Eddie spotted a shoe rack crowded with battered sneakers and a single pair of nice leather oxfords in the entrance hallway. Next to it was a coffee table holding up a crystal bowl filled with keys and various pieces of stationary. Further down the hall was the kitchen, also painted the bright electric blue of the window frames outside. A row of ugly novelty mugs lined the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard, and underneath was a surprisingly large assortment of cookware, slightly dented but polished and clearly well loved.

Richie had looked sheepish at that. “I cook a lot,” he explained. “I started after I decided to get my life together, my therapist thought it would be calming, and then I never stopped because guess what? As with all things, she was right. I bake too, and like to think I’m pretty good at it! Do you want some? I think I have some leftover lemon bars in the fridge.” And then Eddie had had to decline regretfully, explaining that if he ate anything it would make him very, very ill.

Eddie fucking loved lemon bars. Or he used to love them, at any rate.

The rest of the house had been much the same way. Very little in the way of actual clutter, but any knick knacks or coffee table accents had felt carefully chosen and uniquely, chaotically Richie. Vintage movie posters had been framed neatly and hung on some of the walls. There were even a few houseplants in eye-searingly painted clay pots. The sole exception was the dining room table, which was covered in papers and looked like a hurricane had recently passed over it. Eddie had craned his neck to look: the top page was a pamphlet featuring a familiar-looking stock PDS woman smiling at the camera and, in bold white text, “SO YOUR LOVED ONE HAS PDS: NEXT STEPS”.

Richie had hastily gathered the stack of papers together and then offered to show Eddie to the guest bedroom and Eddie hadn’t thought any more on them.

Much later, after Richie had gone and Eddie was mostly settled in, he pulled up one of Richie’s Netflix specials on his new phone, settled himself into his new bed, and hit play. 

The comedy was remarkably different than any of Richie’s old work. It’s punchier, darker, more personal and also much less sexist. Richie talked at length about clown-related trauma but also his insecurities towards having to grow up and Eddie found himself laughing along despite himself. And then Richie made a joke about hot guys and-

-Eddie’s world tilted entirely on his axis.

Five minutes of furious googling later, Eddie had gathered all the details on the one, very important thing Richie had neglected to mention in his abbreviated summary of the past five years. Post-meltdown and pre-comeback, Richie had broken his months-long radio silence by coming out as gay on twitter, then immediately disappearing again for another six months. The Internet, already swirling with rumors about Richie crashing on stage, had gone absolutely feral. And from there Richie had managed to pivot away from his previous work and into the upper echelons of a successful comedy career, into the sort of genuine but thoughtful humor that people nowadays favored.

Richie was gay.

See, here’s the thing. Eddie had already justified to himself why he needed to stay with Richie as opposed to the other Losers (Mike had done enough and deserves a break, and Bill wasn’t even in the country half the time, and Ben and Beverly traveled too much for their jobs, and clearly Stan was out of the picture) but the truth of the matter was simply that Richie is, and has always been his favorite, and also that, since childhood, Eddie had been hopelessly in love with him.

Before he’d died, he’d wanted so desperately to tell Richie, but had chickened out at the last minute. It had been the one regret he’d died with, staring at Richie’s familiar shoulders and his retreating back- that in his last moments, he’d still been a coward.

Eddie had vaguely wondered if he should bring it up, now that he’d apparently been given a second chance, but now he knows he can’t. Richie being gay would make the confession just a little too uncomfortable. Richie being gay meant that Eddie was just one bitter step closer to what he can’t have, what he could never have. He wanted to scream.

He never directly mentioned his newfound knowledge to Richie, but did make an offhand remark about watching the special. A few days later Richie made a comment about dating men and Eddie did his best to not look surprised, so he figured Richie knows that he knows, and that’s the end of that.

Eddie’s back in the cistern.

It’s dark and it’s wet and it’s utterly disgusting and he hates, hates, hates it down here. The bottom of the cistern is flooded with about a foot of foul greywater, mud mixed with raw sewage and other unspeakable fluids. And it’s so cold: the sun doesn’t reach down here, not anymore. There’s no way out within reach, all entrances closed off when the cistern collapsed in on itself. And so Eddie wanders, around and around and around in circles through the sludge, like a wind-up toy, for what feels like years and years years.

“Eds!”

Eddie has always been in the cistern. He is never going to be able to leave.

“Eds, hey Eds! Eddie! Wake up, you’re having a nightmare!”

Groaning, Eddie startles awake to Richie hovering above him and shaking him by the shoulders, glasses glowing slightly in the dark. Even in the dim lighting of the bedroom, the concern twisting his face is palpable.

“I heard moaning and I was afraid something was wrong so I came by to check and you were all twisted up and I’m not sure if PSD sufferers can actually dream? But it looked like you were having a nightmare so I decided to wake you up. Sorry if I overstepped my bou-”

Eddie holds up a hand and the panicked stream of dialogue falling out of Richie’s mouth immediately tapers off. He tries to pull himself together and not think about how stupid Richie is, to hear guttural noises from the ex-zombie’s room and immediately come running.

“-Thanks, Rich. For waking me up. I’m okay now,” Eddie manages to force out. He does not feel alright. A large part of himself does not feel like it is currently present- it feels like he’s still trapped in the cistern, never escaping the cold and the damp. Distantly, he’s aware that he’s gasping for breath (which is utterly ludicrous, seeing as he doesn’t actually need air). Eddie’s heart doesn’t beat anymore, but if it did it would probably be jackhammering right now.

“Are you sure? Dude, you don’t look so good.” Instead of taking the confirmation and leaving him to his own devices, Richie drops his weight down on the bed, settles his legs underneath him and looks at Eddie with a frown.

It’s difficult looking directly at Richie like this, when Eddie still feels like the greywater he’d been stuck ankle-deep in has become a part of him, filled his lungs with an infection he’ll never be able to rid himself of. He looks down instead, fiddles with a loose seam on his blanket. “At group,” he begins, “sometimes we’ll talk about the nightmares. It’s perfectly natural, a byproduct of the Neurotriptyline reforming neural connections in our brains. Usually, they’re memories from when we were in our untreated state that we weren’t able to unlock until now. That’s what brought this on, I think.”

“Okay,” Richie nods, “So you had a nightmare about… your time as a zombie? I don’t understand why that would be scary. It sounded like you had a really boring time, all things considered. If anything, you were the one doing the scaring-”

Eddie laughs. “Everybody else is always telling me how lucky I am, that I was basically trapped the whole time I was untreated. And they aren’t wrong. At least I don’t have memories of myself hurting or killing or eating anybody, like most of the others have to deal with. I don’t know how they live with that guilt. So it feels like I don’t really have a right to complain, comparatively, it’s just-”

Richie’s moving closer to him, the warmth of his body almost in reach, and it is very distracting. “It’s just, I was trapped in that cistern for four years. And now I’m remembering every moment. Can you imagine it? Just wandering endlessly in this tiny, awful space you’ve been trapped in, but with no way to escape and no way to stop.”

Distantly, Eddie acknowledges this is the most they’ve talked to each other in weeks- maybe even months. There’s something about the quiet darkness surrounding them that facilitates honesty in a way they haven’t been able to achieve on their own.

“That’s fucking hilarious!” Richie cackles. “So you were basically, like, this glitching video game NPC? Just blindly walking into walls until you finally clipped through one of them. You were functionally a Roomba for four years.”

“Please stop making fun of my trauma,” Eddie snaps back at him, deadpan but not actually annoyed. “It’s very hurtful. I feel like you aren’t taking me seriously,” and for a moment it’s just like old times. Like whatever strange rift has been opening up between them since Eddie’s return is finally closing.

Richie pokes him affectionately in the cheek. “Don’t think I don’t notice you stress cleaning our house when I’m out. What, the dishes magically do themselves after I leave? And the shelves magically dust themselves? Face it, you always were and will always be a Roomba. You’re certainly about as tall as one.”

“Beep beep, Richie,” Eddie groans. It feels so good to beep Richie, like scratching an itch he didn’t even know he had.

The cistern feels further away, when they are like this.

“You shouldn’t compare your pain with others, you know. Trauma is equally valid, and it’s not healthy to trivialize yours.” Richie’s tone is sober now, earlier humor gone. He is very serious about this, Eddie realizes.

“God, I liked it better when you weren’t in therapy and didn’t have words to describe unhealthy patterns of behavior.” Eddie lets himself smile. “But thanks. Sometimes I get a little trapped in my own head, and it’s nice to have someone tell me otherwise. It just sometimes feel like I never left, you know?”

Richie smiles back, and it breaks Eddie’s heart. There’s sorrow there, and something that looks like it could be regret.

“I’m really sorry we left you in the cistern,” he says. “I know you would have hated it down there.”

“Yeah,” Eddie shrugged ruefully, “It smelled terrible and it was cold and dark and damp but hey, it’s not like I can actually get sick anymore, so you know. Small mercies.”

Richie leans over, resting his head on his hand so Eddie and him are lying side by side. With his other hand, he reaches out and touches the stitched-together cut on Eddie’s cheek. “Does it hurt?” Richie murmurs to him, and Eddie wants to cry.

“Not really. I don’t really feel things, the way a living person would. The cold is worse, in a way.”

“Are you cold?” Richie sounds worried at that. “I know you can’t actually generate body heat anymore, but if you need to be warm-”

“It’s not that,” Eddie tries to find the words to explain. “The cold doesn’t really bother me- and Richie, preemptively going to say if you make a Frozen reference I will kick you off the edge of this bed- but I remember how it’s supposed to feel, to be warm. And no amount of blankets or comforters can help if you don’t make any body heat, so sleeping is usually not a great experience. Particularly since being in the dark and being cold just reminds me of being trapped-”

He is cut off, unexpectedly, by Richie wrapping his arms around him in a hug. “Is this okay?” Richie asks. Eddie doesn’t know how to answer when it feels like all the breath has just been knocked out of him, but after a moment he throws his arms around Richie’s broad shoulders, touches his back as if to say, this is okay .

Richie awkwardly shuffles his body underneath the covers, presses the warm line of his body to Eddie’s cold one, tangles their legs together like when they were kids. After a few moments, the space underneath the mess of blankets begins to warm up. Eddie sighs in relief. He cannot help himself. 

“That’s much better, thanks.”

“We can turn on the lights as well, if that helps? You said that the cistern was really dark-” Richie makes to roll back off the bed but Eddie stops him, panicked. This is the closest Richie has allowed Eddie to be in so many months, and cruel as it is he would give anything not to lose this.

“Don’t,” Eddie croaks, then, “I don’t- I’m not wearing any coverup or my contact lenses right now, I don’t want you looking at me when I’m like this.” Richie peers closer at his face in response and Eddie has to will himself not to cringe away. Even in the darkness he knows he must make a terrifying sight.

“You know, I actually like it better when your eyes are like this than when you put in those dumb contact lenses,” Richie confesses. “Those are just close enough to your old eye color to be uncanny- but since they aren’t, I just know they’re fake and I don’t like it.”

“They’re monster eyes,” Eddie tells him. He knows what his eyes look like: the irises so pale they were almost whiter than the scleras, the pupils jagged and bleeding irregular edges.

“They look like nebulae to me,” Richie murmurs back. Eddie can’t think of how to respond to this, so he buries his face into Richie’s chest. Richie lets him, so he allows himself this small luxury.

It’s warm and it’s comfortable and it’s all he’s ever wanted. Eddie can feel himself drifting off, thinks he can feel Richie’s hands carding softly through his hair but that might just be wishful thinking.

“Happy birthday, Eds,” Eddie maybe hears Richie mumble, but by this point slumber is dragging him back down into its depths.

He sleeps peacefully, and this time he doesn’t have a single dream.

Richie’s gone by the time Eddie wakes up, his half of the bed rumpled and growing as cold as Eddie’s body now is.

Chapter Text

“And then,” Eddie whispers urgently into the phone, covering the mouthpiece so Richie won’t be able to hear him from the next room, “And then, do you know what happens the next day? I get an Amazon delivery, and when I open it, what do I find? A goddamn electric blanket and a fucking nightlight.”

“Mhmm,” Stan replies. Behind him, Eddie can hear the ambient noise of vehicles rushing by in the distance. “Eddie, I’m at a rest stop in New Mexico right now. This is the 3rd time you’ve told me about the blanket and the nightlight in the last two weeks. I’ve been trapped in a car for about 30 hours and the end is in sight so if you’ve got something important to say, say it now, otherwise save it for when I’m actually in LA, ok?”

Eddie knows he’s being unfair. The electric blanket had been just about the most expensive one you could get on Amazon with one-day shipping, and there were no reviews on the listing complaining about it accidentally catching on fire the way the cheaper ones might. It and the (completely tasteless, zombie-themed) nightlight actually are helping with his nightmares.

It’s just that Richie hasn’t crawled into his bed since that night, and Eddie would much rather have one over the other. The blanket helps, but not nearly as much as a warm body holding him close and telling him everything is going to be alright. So he’s allowing himself to be a little bitter.

“I just have no idea what’s going on in his head, you know?” Eddie ignores Stan and continues to ramble into the phone. “Like, is he disgusted by me? I thought he was, but you don’t usually try to comfort something you find nauseating. But now he’s just gone back to avoiding touching me, and getting me that blanket is sending me the message of ‘that was a mistake and it’s never going to happen again, but here’s something that might help’, so maybe he was grossed out the whole time cuddling with a dead body but was too polite to say anything? Maybe he was just being a good friend-”

“Eddie, you’re so fucking stupid. Oh no, Eddie, we’re going through a tunnel- I think we’re breaking up, I’ll have to call you back-”

“Stan, you literally just told me you’re currently at a rest stop,” Eddie interrupts, impatient. “Also, there’s only one highway tunnel in all of New Mexico, and it’s certainly not on the I-40.”

“How on earth do you know that? How on earth do you even know which highway we’re pulled off of right now? Nevermind. Eddie, you’re spiraling again. Just last week you were telling me that Richie was talking to you more, and that you were ecstatic things finally felt like they were settling back into place.”

This was true. His continued reticence in regards to touching Eddie aside, Richie’s been talking to him more, cracking jokes and ribbing at him and curling up on (the other side of) the couch in the evenings to make fun of crap television. It’s Eddie’s brain that’s wrong, flip-flopping constantly between cautious optimism and anxious fear, and poor Stan has had to bear the brunt of it.

“Okay,” Eddie finally deflates. “Okay, okay, okay. Sorry, just a little bit stressed right now. How’s the drive going?”

“Nice of you to finally think to ask,” Stan says dryly. “It’s great for me, since I don’t get tired anymore and the government won’t let me drive. Poor Patty and Mike have been switching off on four hour intervals the whole trip while I hang out in the back like a particularly useless golden retriever. We’re all disgusting. 40 hours of straight driving is intolerable, why did I agree to this.”

“I like driving,” Eddie replies wistfully, “but even if the government gave me back my license I would be too scared to drive here, the people are insane. Also, they really should be switching off every two hours, it’s much safer. Anyways, you know how excited Richie was to host.”

“Complaining aside, I really am excited to see everyone,” Stan laughs. “Hey, I really gotta go now, though. I can see Patty and Mike coming back from the gas station, so we’ll probably head back on the road soon.”

The two of them say their goodbyes, and Eddie hangs up. 

“Eds! Hey, Dead-Head! Are you done with your phone call? Can you come over here for sec? I need a hand!” Richie hollers from the living room. Eddie sighs and stands up.

To say Richie is excited to host would be a little bit of an understatement. He’s gone all in, and the resulting chaos has blanketed the house and (hopefully temporarily) disrupted the neatness Eddie had so admired when he first moved in. There’s ugly decorations for every December-ish holiday corporate America has deemed culturally significant. There’s a tiny Christmas tree on the shelf. There’s a menorah on the shelf. There’s also a clown-on-the-shelf. It is a very large shelf. Even though only six out of the eight people attending can actually eat food, there’s a pile of Christmas cookies cooling on the counter, and even more in the oven, and a messy stack of dirty pots and pans unwashed in the sink. Eddie had watched Richie painstakingly ice each one; he hadn’t been kidding about his newfound ability in baking.

Richie’s balanced precariously on a kitchen chair, arms outstretched and on his tiptoes trying to hang up the last bit of garland. The risk analysis part of Eddie’s brain screams that Richie could slip and break his neck or crack his head open. The larger part of Eddie’s brain screams about Richie’s broad shoulders in his incredibly hideous Christmas sweater and the tiny, tiny gap of skin peeking out from where the shirt is riding up.

This is so unfair. All these months Eddie hadn’t let himself think too hard on his dumb crush, had even half-convinced himself that he’s almost over it, and then Richie had wrapped his stupid, giant, comforting arms around him all night and now he can’t stop looking, can’t stop thinking about being held again.

Eddie’s pretty surprised he even has the capacity to want in this way, what with the whole undead thing, although he’s not yet at the point where he can even begin thinking through the logistics of it. He lets himself admire Richie for five seconds, knowing full well he’ll guilt over it for the next five hours.

“Eds! Can you help me grab that? I dropped it by accident earlier.” Richie gestures with one of his feet to a push pin on the ground. The movement unbalances his position even more, and Eddie has a brief moment of panic where he worries that Richie really will fall, and crack his skull open, and then the house will have twice as many corpses in it as before. He hands Richie the pin, who uses it to successfully tack up the garland (leaning over even further and exposing another strip of bare stomach in the process) before finally, finally leaping off the chair and onto stable, flat ground.

This is torture.

“In the future, please use a step ladder or something so you don’t hurt yourself,” Eddie suggests, trying not to let his relief show.

“Aww, you do care!” Richie replies as he pushes the chair back into place before going to check on the latest batch of cookies. Seemingly satisfied, he pulls them out to cool.

Most of the Losers have breezed their way through Richie’s house in some way or another since Eddie’s return, so Eddie’s not sure why Richie is so obsessed with making sure this week goes perfectly. Something about him feels distracted and nervous, and the frenetic energy he’s emitting is contagious. In need of something to do, Eddie starts in on washing the dishes, which earns him an appreciative noise from Richie, which makes his stomach do something weird and floppy. Behind him he can tell Richie has started to frost some more cookies (a pan that had been cooling for a while and not the batch he had just pulled out, because apparently ‘it was a total rookie mistake to try and pipe icing on a warm cookie, it’ll just melt right off’), and everything about the situation just feels pleasant and calming and nice, and Eddie can let himself pretend, for the sake of his idiotic crush. Stan’s right. Richie and him are going to be just fine.

Everything is not alright, and Stan is an absolute idiot. Is the hole in Eddie’s face getting bigger? He prods at it gingerly in the bathroom mirror. He thinks it might be.

He knows he shouldn’t be hogging the bathroom like this, not when there are so many living people out there who actually may need to use it. It’s just- there are so many people, more people than Eddie had become accustomed to being in the house at once. Even though they are all his friends- at this point, really, his family- it is beginning to feel a little overwhelming.

It’s not even that many people yet. The Stan-Patty-Mike road trip from hell hasn’t arrived yet, which is unfortunate because Eddie could really use someone to talk him down from his latest anxiety attack. He opens the bathroom door and peeks out, swallowing nervously. From his position, he can see Bill and Ben engrossed in conversation. Richie is somewhere in the hallway, having excused himself to take a phone call.

Everyone out there is so clearly alive, and compared to them it is more clear than ever that Eddie is not. Eddie isn’t sure he knows how to function alongside them anymore. He feels like a pale facsimile of a human being.

Swallowing, he edges his way out of the bathroom to join them.

“Eddie!” Beverly spots him and waves from where she’s standing by the food table, so Eddie goes to join her. “How are you doing? I see you’ve been following my makeup tips!”

Eddie’s fingers automatically fly to his face again. “Was it that bad before?” He cautiously asks, and is rewarded by a peal of laughter. Good. Maybe he can still do this.

“Man, you were practically caking that concealer on,” Bev grins. “You look so much better now, trust me. Like you’re basically alive again.”

So his deadness is still noticeable, then.

“You look really good,” he tells her, and it’s true. He hadn’t really noticed it when they’d gone back to Derry, too preoccupied with the murder clown, but there had been an air of defeat about her, the feeling of someone who’s been ground down over and over again, for years, until they were barely holding their head above water. Maybe it had been there even when they were children, but not yet pronounced enough to be noticeable.

Maybe they’d both suffered from it.

It’s not completely gone, but it’s better now. Her brilliant red hair is chopped even shorter than the last time he’d seen it, even shorter than when they were children, but she’s practically glowing, brimming with positive energy.

“Divorce,” she tells him, serious, “does wonders for a soul. That and marrying someone who actually gives a shit about you.”

“So Ben’s still good, then?” Eddie asks. The fond look on her face is all the answer he needs. “Good. You deserve happiness.”

“Everyone should have someone like Ben in their life,” Beverly informs him. “Sometimes I can’t even believe how lucky I am, you know?” She crunches down on a cookie. “By the way, these cookies are amazing! I still can’t believe Richie, of all fucking people, got good at baking.”

“Yeah,” Eddie shrugs and tries to look nonchalant. “I can’t eat them, but they look really good. I know Richie worked hard on them.”

Richie’s panic baking had resulted in a proverbial truckload of cookies. The dining room table is practically groaning under the weight of them. There’s cookies decorated with snowflakes and trees and stockings and reindeer, and gingerbread men, and lemon bars, and one batch (and only one batch; Eddie had made sure of it after catching sight of them) of anatomically correct hearts and brains.

“Mmm,” Bev finishes her peanut butter cookie and picks up a brain. “Get yourself a man who knows how to bake, I guess.”

In the distance, the doorbell rings.

“That should be Stan,” she mumbles, mouth still full of brain cookie as she gestures in the direction of the door. The two of them head towards it, but Richie, who has apparently finished up his phone call and was already by the entrance way, has already beaten them to it.

Sure enough, the door swings open to reveal their missing friends.

“Stan!” Richie exclaims in pure delight. “Stan the man, how’s it going, man?” Without hesitating for even a second, he throws his arms around Stan and pulls him into a big hug.

“Hey Rich,” Stan laughs as he awkwardly pats Richie on the back. “It’s good to see you too. Hey, Eddie!” He waves as best he can, still engulfed by an armful of Richie. Eddie tries not to feel jealous.

Eddie waves back. Beverly- all the way back in 1989- had been right, Stan really does look exactly like an older version of him childhood self. His hair is a little darker but still a mop of messy curls, and his eyes are still kind but old. Somehow, he’s found contact lenses that look exactly like the shade of color his eyes should be, and his cover-up is flawlessly applied. It’s only because Eddie knows they’re both dead that he can even tell Stan is no longer alive.

Belatedly, Eddie realizes that this is probably the first time Richie and Stan have seen each other in person since childhood. In fact, it may be the first time most of the Losers have seen Stan in person since childhood, judging by the way they’re crowding around him. Deciding to give them space for their reunion, he turns to Mike and Patty and starts helping them wedge their bags into the house.

“Thanks, Eddie.” Mike leans down and hugs him, a quick pat on the back, once the bags are safely sequestered away in the hallway. He gestures at the enthusiastic crowd gathered around Stan jokingly. “Man, what am I? Chopped liver?”

“Sorry, Mike!” Bill calls over. “You’ll get yours next, don’t worry!”

“So you must be Eddie!” Patricia Uris smiles and holds out her hand without hesitation, and Eddie shakes it. “Stan talks about you all the time. I’m really glad he’s not alone in all this, it can get a little stifling in Georgia sometimes.” Her handshake is firm but her smile is kind and so are her eyes, behind her glasses. The stress lines around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes are the only things that betray that the past few years have not been kind to her. Eddie decides he likes her immensely, and he can already see why Stan would fall in love with someone like her.

“It’s great to meet you!” Eddie tells her. “How was the drive? The route shouldn’t have been too bad, though the roads up through Flagstaff can get snowy this time of year.”

“Mike actually did that bit of the drive,” Stan interjects, having finally escaped Richie’s grasp and appearing at Eddie’s elbow. “Don’t get me wrong, Patty’s a fantastic driver, but it basically never snows in Georgia, whereas Mike’s lived in Maine for his entire life.”

“Here to defend my honor,” Patty laughs. Eddie watches as she hesitates for the briefest flicker of a moment, something unnameable passing over her face, then leans over to peck Stanley lightly on the mouth.

The group drifts back into the house, where the new arrivals obligingly ooh and aah over Richie’s fantastic cookies. Richie even bumps Eddie’s shoulder on the way in, smiling when he gets Eddie’s attention.

The Losers Club, complete at last.

They order delivery and eat and chat late into the night, until Bill finally excuses himself for the long drive home. Richie’s house really isn’t big enough to house all of them and Mike immediately elects to go with him, citing that Bill and him still need to catch up properly.

“We’ll be back first thing tomorrow!” Bill promises. “Richie p-p-promised to cook us real food for Christmas dinner, and I just know it’s either going to be jaw-droppingly amazing, or hot dogs on wonder bread.”

“I’ll have you know they’re the nicest gourmet hot dogs money can buy, made from only the finest grade Kobe beef,” Richie calls after them primly. “Also, why would they call it ‘wonder bread’ if it’s not, in fact, the most wonderful type of bread?”

Eddie cannot resist. “It’s because you’re supposed to wonder what’s in the bread, I think,” he yells from his spot on the couch.

Mike chuckles at that, and then Bill and him are gone.

The next to bow out are Stan and Patty, Patty already yawning from their long drive. It takes some shuffling around, but they finally decide on the sleeping arrangements. Stan and Patty are taking Richie’s bedroom because they’ve been driving all day, and Ben and Beverly are crowding together on the couch. Eddie and Richie, wonderfully, devastatingly, are both going to be in Eddie’s room.

“I can sleep on the floor,” Eddie tells Richie. “You’ve worked hard all day getting everything together, you should take the bed.”

“Nope, there’s no way I’m kicking you, a literal corpse, out of your own bed. I’m taking the floor.”

“Oh brother,” Stan says from the doorway, leaving as fast as his legs can carry him. Patty follows him, still yawning.

“Guys, do you mind?” Beverly asks from where she’s been trying to settle onto a nest of blankets on the pull-out couch. “We’re trying to sleep here.”

“Okay, night Bev!” Richie waves as they head towards Eddie’s room, decision still not made. “Please don’t fuck on my couch in the middle of the night, it’s got a squeaky spring!”

“Beep beep, Richie,” someone mumbles from the living room.

Richie closes the bedroom door behind him. “I’m serious, man,” he tells Eddie. “If you try to sleep on the floor, I’m lying down there too. Mutually assured destruction, baby.”

“That’s not what mutually assured destruction is,” Eddie retorts. He frowns down at the bed. It is rather large- he wonders how far he can push his luck without tempting fate.

“Are you okay with sharing the bed?” Eddie asks.

“Yeah,” Richie responds immediately. “Are you okay with sharing the bed?”

“Yes,” Eddie frowns. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I- never mind.” Richie looks away. “I guess we can share the bed, then. We’ve done it before, I mean. Just for the next few days, until everyone goes home.”

It’s the closest they’ve come to acknowledging the night Eddie had had his awful nightmare since it happened. Richie hesitates, then crawls to the far side of the bed until he’s on the very edge of it, back facing the doorway. Eddie flicks off the light, then clambers in after him so they’re lying back to back, careful not to touch Richie lest he freak him out. Even with the size of the bed, he can feel the heat radiating off of Richie. It’s just as comforting as it was the first time.

“Thanks,” Eddie tells him softly, after a few minutes have passed and it feels safer. “For the electric blanket, I mean. It really does help a lot. More than anything else I’ve tried.”

“You’re welcome,” Richie replies muzzily. “Now go the fuck to sleep, ‘m tired.”

Eddie comes into awareness the next morning to find Richie tapping furiously away on his phone. He groans and rolls over, the movement alerting Richie that he’s awake.

“Morning, Eds!” Richie chirps, finishing his text and putting away his phone. Without waiting for a response, he swings his legs out of the bed and then he’s gone.

It’s early- nobody else in the house seems to be up yet. Richie puts on another terrible Christmas sweater- somehow, every color on it clashes all at once- but the way the fabric clings to his shoulders is doing something to Eddie’s brain and he has to look away. Richie helps Eddie administer his shot of medication, and then Eddie does his morning routine before watching idly as Richie begins to make breakfast and simultaneously prep the ingredients for dinner. At some point the clatter of dishes and utensils wake Beverly and Ben, who trot dutifully into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee, Bev rummaging in the backs of Richie’s cupboards to uncover a half-used bag of coffee beans.

“Sorry, I don’t really drink much caffeine anymore and forgot to put on a pot,” Richie apologizes to them. “Really fucks with my anxiety. Makes me all jittery.”

From the distance, voices drift from Richie’s room, too muffled to make out the words. They increase steadily in volume, still indistinct through the walls, before abruptly cutting off. Then-

Stan emerges, shutting the door behind him. “Sorry,” he tells them sheepishly. “Patty’s still very tired from the drive, but she’ll join us in a bit.”

But Patty doesn’t emerge from the bedroom until noon, after Bill and Mike arrive back at the house and everyone (sans Richie) is dressed to go out.

“I think I’ll stay in and help Richie make dinner, actually,” she says, looking out at the group of people. “No really, I’m fine, Stan. Go have fun with your friends.”

So they go out for some last-minute shopping, and catch a movie, and do some sightseeing for the people who haven’t really been to Los Angeles before. Even without Richie, just being out and about like this with his friends helps chase the dead feeling in Eddie’s chest away.

By the time they get back to the house it’s almost dark. Richie and Patty don’t notice them at first, too engrossed in a murmured conversation by the stove. Richie says something and she laughs, but the two of them quiet as they notice the rest of the Losers approaching. Patty maneuvers gracefully around the kitchen island to stand next to where her husband is. Bill unloads the bottles of expensive wine they’ve picked up with a flourish, and they all settle in for Richie’s (non-hot dog based) Christmas dinner.

It was easier last night, when they were crashing in the living room and the coffee table was covered in take-out containers and everyone was helping themselves and Eddie and Stan could sort of just blend in despite not eating anything. It’s much more awkward tonight. Now that everyone’s sitting properly around the dining table and passing around bowls of mashed potato, Eddie and Stan look so much more out of place.

“This looks really excellent, Richie!” Ben beams over a serving of green beans, and Eddie is inclined to agree. He knows Richie can cook, but usually when they’re alone he’ll go for something simple, an easy pasta or a stir-fry. But he can see the effort that went into these dishes, and it makes his heart ache.

In another lifetime, he’d have complained about the level of saturated fat and oil and sodium Richie uses to cook with, or worried that the cream sauce would trigger his lactose intolerance, or picked at the thick beef stew for fear of being allergic to something in the rich gravy. In this lifetime, he doesn’t have to worry about any of that because he knows that eating anything at all will make him sick.

After dinner the conversation drifts back into the living room and gamely turns towards topics like Bill’s newest movie, and Beverly’s newest solo fashion line. Eddie can’t help but notice Patty getting quieter and quieter as the night progresses, until she’s barely giving single-word answers to any questions Stan lobs her way. Maybe she’s still just tired from the trip, he thinks to himself.

Richie finally tears his attention away from his phone to join the conversation. “I may have somehow gotten my life together in the last five years, but that doesn’t mean I actually know how to do my taxes,” Richie is explaining- or practicing a new bit from his next comedy set, it’s hard to tell. “I don’t think anybody really knows how taxes work, so it’s not really a sign of not being a respectable adult or not if I don’t do ‘em right. We’re just guessing a random number, and we give it to the government, and the government- who already knows the answer, by the way- goes ‘Yeah, that looks like it’s in the ballpark of correct,’ or they go ‘no! That’s completely wrong! You owe us one million more dollars and then some more as penalty for being bad at math and paperwork, even though we had the answer all along!’ Like, I don’t think I’ve turned my taxes in on time once my entire life, and that’s probably not changing anytime soon.”

“I fucking knew it!” Eddie mouths to Stan from behind Richie’s back.

“Anyways, the only constant in life,” Richie jokes, “is taxes.”

“I thought the saying was death and taxes?” Stan asks with a frown. In response, Richie makes an exaggerated gesture at Stan, then at Eddie, then throws his hands up in the air as if to say, not anymore!

“What if you go to jail for tax evasion?” Eddie wonders out loud absentmindedly. “What happens to me, then?”

Richie immediately turns to Stan. “Stan the man, my best friend since childhood who also happens to be an accountant, I am 100% not joking right now, please help me figure out my taxes this year. I cannot afford to go to jail.”

“Alright,” Stan says with a shrug. “I can certainly look over them. Not like I’m doing much else in the way of work, these days. Although, I have to say, at your level of success you really should just hire a personal accountant.”

“Excellent!” Richie beams at him. “I’ll pay you for your time, of course. Actually, I bet you could find a ton of freelance work. If you wanted, I can pass your information onto some people I know-”

Patty stands up, so abruptly that her chair goes flying. Her face is stone. “Excuse me-” she starts, and then, when Stan stands up and makes to go with her, “Can you not follow me, please? Just- leave me alone for a bit, please.” Brushing Stan off, she strides to Richie’s room and shuts the door resolutely behind her.

Stan stands there for a few seconds, swaying as if struck, and then bolts for the front door.

Richie and Eddie exchange glances.

“I’ll go talk to Stan, and you go see what’s up with Patty?” Richie suggests. “I think I might have just been an asshole, by accident. She probably doesn’t want to talk to me right now.” Without waiting for an answer, he strides down the entrance way after Stan, crashing the door shut behind them.

“We’ll just-” Beverly gestures at the pile of plates on the table- “Start cleaning this up, I guess.”

So with no other options, Eddie goes after Patty.

He knocks on the door twice. “I’m coming in,” he calls when there’s no response, and lets himself in.

“Oh,” Patty says, looking up from where she’s curled with her back to the bed, surprised, “it’s you.” She wipes a tear from the side of her face.

Patty’s not angry, Eddie realizes. Patty is crying. He closes the door behind him and walks over to her, cautiously sitting down beside her when she makes no motion for him to leave.

“I’m so sorry you have to see me like this.” Patty’s voice is muffled, her arms covering her face. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“I’d ask if you’re doing okay,” Eddie replies, “but you’re clearly not. Hello, it’s me, a complete stranger whom you’ve known for less than a day. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she finally tells him. “That’s the problem. There’s nothing really the matter, it’s just- being here, it’s upsetting to me and I can’t figure out why.”

“Are you mad at Stan for something?” Eddie asks her.

“No! Well, yes. Maybe a little, but it’s so irrational and I hate myself that I’m mad at him for- for dying. For committing suicide, I mean.”

“You’re mad at Stan for killing himself?”

“See?” Patty blows her nose on the bedsheet. Eddie lets her, Richie kind of deserves it. “It sounds so bad! Please don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade having him back for anything in the world. And it’s not the whole life insurance debacle, either, it sucks but we’ll get through it. But even before he came back- there was part of me that was upset, at him. Why did he do that? Why didn’t he think he could talk to me about whatever was bothering him? I’m supposed to be his wife. I’m supposed to protect him, and in the end I couldn’t even do that.”

“He already told me what you guys all went through, with the terrifying childhood sewer clown- so I shouldn’t even blame him for it, it’s just really hard.” Patty tells him through shaky breathes. “I’m angry at him. I’m angry at you guys, a bit, for taking him away from me, which is even worse, because I’ve never even met any of you before today. Which is super irrational. None of you should be blamed for whatever decisions he made.”

“Do you want me to leave?” Eddie asks, relaxing when she shakes her head.

“You’re ok, you’re dead too after all- shit, I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t actually hate any of you, I think you’re all very cool people,” she tells him. “And I told Stan I would be okay taking this trip, and I stand by it. He’s the one who’s actually dead, so why am I the one so affected by it?”

“I don’t think you’re wrong to feel that way.” Eddie cautiously pats her on the shoulder. “Like, emotions aren’t always rational, you know? It’s okay to let yourself be mad. I’m certainly not going to hold it against you.”

Patty wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Yeah, that’s what Richie told me earlier today, actually.”

“Really?” Eddie asks, surprised. “Richie?”

“Yeah,” she nods. “We had a really good conversation about Stan and you while making dinner, it turns out we’re struggling with pretty similar things. He really cares about you, you know? You’re very lucky. But then I told him about all the economic stress we’re going through, and I guess he got it in his head to fix it the best way he could. I just didn’t like feeling like a charity case, you know?”

“Yeah,” Eddie shrugs helplessly. “Richie just wants to help his friends in any way he can. The way he goes about it is sometimes a little stupid, but that’s because, at the end of the day, he’s still kind of an asshole and no amount of growing up or maturing will probably change that. But sometimes he gets it stuck into his head that he knows the best way to deal with a problem and then just does it, instead of fucking talking about it.”

“Everyone was just talking about all these insane projects they’re working on, and meanwhile I’ve barely got my head above water,” Patty groans and buries her head in her arms again. “And then Richie did the thing, and I think all the weird irrational emotions I was feeling bubbled up and I just kind of lost it. Oh my god, I left Stan out there by himself. He must think I hate him. I know he already feels super guilty about leaving me in this situation, even though he shouldn’t.”

Eddie thinks about it for a second. “I mean it’s kind of unfair that everyone else in my friend group gets to be both wildly successful AND alive, and meanwhile Stan and I have to deal with both being one tragedy away from bankruptcy and also, dying horribly? Which I guess was the tragedy? That’s weird.”

Patty lets out a little laugh at that, sounding much calmer than before. “Super weird,” she agrees.

He ushers Patty back into the living room. Stan’s already there, sitting next to Richie. Both of them stand up when they see Eddie and Patty approaching.

“Sorry,” Richie apologizes to her sheepishly. “I think I probably should have been a little more tactful. I’m not always great about thinking my actions through. Bev’s already chewed me out for it, though.” From behind him, Beverly flashes the rest of the room a thumbs up.

“Pat, I’m so sorry-” Stan starts, but Patty waves him off.

“It’s okay, dear,” she tells him. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”  

“Look, this may not be my place, particularly given my recent fuckup,” Richie begins, “but I talked to Patty about this earlier today and I think you two should really go to couples counseling- Hey! Don’t look at me like that, I know the kneejerk reaction is couples counseling is only for failing relationships, but that’s not really true.” He pauses for a moment, looking for the right words to say. “There’s nothing wrong with your marriage, and there’s nothing wrong with either of you. But humans are barely equipped to deal with the grief of losing someone, let alone losing someone to something as difficult as suicide, and then there’s the complicated mess that must be losing someone, dealing with your feelings, and then suddenly getting them back. You two have clearly been through something mutually traumatic that you are ill-equipped to deal with, and it would probably be good for you to just talk through it with a professional.”

Patty shoots Richie an appraising look. “Thanks, that’s actually some pretty good advice.” She punches him playfully on the shoulder then, cryptically, tells him, “you’d be wise to follow it yourself, you know.”

“I hope they manage to work it out,” Richie tells Eddie as they get ready for bed later that night. “It would be nice to have one successful marriage in our friend group that doesn’t involve only members of the friend group. Three failed marriages is already a lot, let’s not make it four.”

“My marriage didn’t fail,” Eddie tries to argue, “I was literally dead for half a decade.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Richie looks away. “I guess if you hadn’t died back in the cistern- if you hadn’t been stabbed, or if we’d managed to save you, I mean- you’d probably still be with Myra right now, huh? And not here with me.”

They hadn’t really talked about Myra before now. Richie gets the general gist of it, about how Myra had told Eddie to fuck off and never contact her again and how that left Eddie with Richie as his only option.

Eddie stares up at the dark ceiling. “I’m not sure about that,” he finally tells Richie. “I think- even if I had lived, I probably would have ended up divorcing Myra anyways.”

“Huh,” Richie says.

“Being with you guys again- remembering that part of me, and how brave I could be when I wanted to, and all that childhood trauma shit, it really made me realize some things. I think the two of us- were not very good for one another. So I like to think that, if I had lived, I would have finally realized how toxic our marriage was and left her.” Eddie pauses for a moment, carefully calculating his words before continuing. “Who knows? Maybe in the middle of my post-divorce mid-life crisis, I would have quit my job and moved out here to California anyways. Maybe we could have been roommates for a bit, under better circumstances.”

Richie doesn’t respond for so long that Eddie begins to worry this is the last straw, that he’s finally scared Richie away.

“...I would have liked that,” Richie finally replies. “I would have really liked that.”

Eddie awakens the next morning to find the both of them have rolled inwards sometime throughout the night, and now both their legs and the blanket are tangled hopelessly together. Holding his breath, he extracts himself from the mess and doesn’t let himself breathe until he’s managed to escape, miraculously without waking Richie up in the process.

The days bleed together and the holidays end much too soon, and before they know it the Losers are collecting their things and saying their goodbyes, drifting back out of Richie’s house with armfuls of leftover baked goods.

“Take care of yourself, okay?” Stan tells Eddie as they hug goodbye. “Please don’t forget, you deserve to be happy too.” And he runs to join a beaming Patty on the sidewalk, slinging their arms together before turning to wave their farewells. Mike, who is busy saying goodbye to Bill, follows not long after, and with the beep of a car horn the three of them are on their way home.

That night Richie flees back to his own room, as Eddie always knew he would. He tries not to let it sting.

The other Losers leaving reopens both the strange rift between Eddie and Richie and the death anxiety Eddie had somehow managed to shove away for the past few weeks. It’s a little frustrating, to feel like they’re just back at where they started, and the frustration stretches between them like a rubber band reaching its breaking point. The house feels too empty now, too quiet, with only the two of them shuffling around the elephant in the room. Eddie knows something has to give.

Three days into the new year, the stifling awkwardness between them finally tips over and crashes into a million pieces on the ground.

Richie’s out for the first time since the break, citing some incredibly important work meetings that had suddenly come up and apparently could not wait another moment. To Eddie, this just sounds like another excuse to avoid him. This means that, once again, Eddie is left to his own devices, which in this case is trying not to feel sorry for himself, debating if Richie will be happy or not if he starts taking down and cleaning up the decorations, and ruminating on how truly horrifying the clown-on-the-shelf Richie had somehow gotten his hands on is.

He misses his friends already.

Eddie’s phone dings. He checks it to find Richie has just texted him. As he watches, more messages pop up, urgency apparent in the speed at which they are being sent.

Trashmouth: eds

Trashmouth: eds whatever you do dont google me right now

Trashmouth: im now realizing me asking you this absolutly means you will google me, immediately

Trashmouth: i didnt realize they woudl post the whole thing and it got a little heatedf

Trashmouth: im omw home now pleas edont do anything stupid and don tfreak out

“Huh,” Eddie muses to himself, frowning, and immediately goes to google Richie. He notices several recently published articles highlighting Richie’s name, and clicks on the first semi-reputable news source on the list.

“Trashmouth Tozier Photographed At PDS Caretakers Support Group: Comedian Finally Breaks Silence”, he reads out loud. The attached picture is a terribly unflattering candid, clearly taken without consent, that somebody has posted onto Twitter.  Richie has his back to the camera and looks to be reaching for something on a cheese platter. He’s still wearing one of his ugly Christmas sweaters in it, so Eddie knows this image must be at least a few days old. Had this been taken before the Losers holiday bash? He begins reading.

Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier, the esteemed comedian perhaps best known for his on-stage breakdown in 2016, made waves in early 2021 when he once again vanished from the public eye. The cause and aftermath of his 2016 disappearance are still shrouded in mystery and the notoriously private comedian has staunchly refused to comment on it, though the most commonly held belief is either an overdose and stint in rehab, or a cancer scare. Either way, it led to his now-iconic tweet where he came out as gay, and his subsequent meteoric rise in popularity. In recent years, Tozier had cemented himself as a mainstay in the American comedy scene, managing to pivot away from his older, crass humor and into a new era of darker, heartfelt comedy that audiences had consistently been able to connect with.

This came to an end when Tozier, apparently at the top of his game, abruptly canceled his much-anticipated and sold out “Sometimes The Closet is not a Metaphor” tour and went on a sudden hiatus, citing personal issues. His unexpected and mysterious disappearance once again rekindled speculation of a potential drug habit or terminal illness.

Logically, Eddie knows that Richie had put parts of his career temporarily on hold to babysit him, but he hadn’t thought it had been this extreme. Canceling an entire tour, just when he’s hitting his stride careerwise? The familiar feeling of guilt seeps into his gut.

Last week, however, we finally received unexpected confirmation of the comedian’s status in the form of a series of photos of him at a local PDS support group meeting. It is now completely apparent why Tozier has chosen to step away from the spotlight. Since the news broke, Tozier’s fans have been sharply divided, with some supporting the comedian’s choice and others expressing disappointment or criticizing him for cancelling his entire tour. Some have even condemned him for choosing to put the needs of the dead above the needs of the living. Now the comedian himself has finally broken his silence and released an interview on the issue.

Eddie keeps scrolling, and there at the bottom of the article is a transcript from an interview with Richie. It’s short, and, Eddie realizes, it must be recent. Possibly this is what Richie left the house to go deal with earlier today. This is what Richie didn’t want him to see.

Interviewer: So the reason you went MIA, so to speak- was that you’d volunteered to be the caretaker of an individual with Partially Deceased Syndrome?

Richie: Yeah, that’s basically it! Surprise! No salitious drug scandal here, I didn’t murder someone with an axe, although by the way some people are acting online you’d almost think I’d done something worse? I’d hoped people would be a little more understanding of it, to be honest. It’s certainly been a lot of responsibility.

Interviewer: Sounds like a tough time.

Richie: Tell me about it! No, but it’s been entirely worth it. I still can’t believe I get to have him back in my life. I’m really hoping by finally saying something about what I’ve been up to, I can help remove some of the stigma around sufferers of PDS? I’m really lucky and fortunate to be who I am and to be where I am, but I’ve watched people- both online, and people who I know personally, really struggling with adjusting to the situation and, more importantly, adjusting to how the outside world perceives them. So since I got outed by some dipshit with a camera- and I’m allowed to make that joke, I’m actually gay- I figured I’d publically say it. Maybe it’ll help someone out, who knows.

Interviewer: So what do you have to say to the people online who are calling you names such as, a quote unquote, ‘corpsefucker’? Callous, but you have to understand, up until a few years ago these beings were trying to eat us. So can you really blame them for lashing out?

Richie (getting progressively more upset): But PDS sufferers are literally harmless now! They’re basically the same people they used to be, the people we thought we had lost forever. Can you imagine that? I’m sure everyone knows the pain and grief of losing a loved one. And it’s not just lovers, you know? That’s such a one-dimensional way of looking at it. Like yes, I know people who are taking care of spouses, but I also know people who are taking care of children who they had to bury, or parents who they never got to say goodbye properly to. It’s a second chance. So if anybody else wants to say anything, I want them to go fuck themselves, here’s a refund and don’t bother getting tickets for my future shows. Show some fucking empathy. And if you can’t sympathize with this, you don’t know how lucky you are.

Interviewer: And are you at all resentful to the PDS sufferer for stalling your-

Richie (interrupting): I don’t give a shit. Because in this case, yes, it’s someone I’ve been in love with for a very, very long time. I would have traded my entire career for another day with him without hesitating. So yes, like I said, it’s been completely worth it.

Eddie Kaspbrak: I read it.

For a moment, Eddie can only stand there, frozen, his universe narrowed onto the tiny square of text on the screen in front of him.

Richie loves him.

Richie’s in love with him- or at least, he had been.

Does Richie still love him?

“Of course he does,” Eddie reasons with himself. He’d said as much in his outburst during the interview.

But then, why hasn’t he mentioned anything in the months and months since Eddie’s moved in? Why, unless, outside of the public persona he must maintain, Richie’s starting to regret his decision. Maybe it had been the way he’d described it, at first, before exposure to the reality of Eddie’s situation had finally washed away Richie’s illusion of a happy, fairytale ending.

Eddie’s horrible, lifelong crush on his idiotic best friend burns like fire underneath his ribs. The thought that Richie may have loved him once but may no longer, that the two of them are like two ships passing each other in the night, is almost too much for Eddie to bear. He wants to laugh at the cruel irony: both of them, for all those years? He wants to cry. He’s about three seconds from completely losing it.

He dearly wishes with a startling clarity that he were alive right now, because maybe then, Richie would still love him. More than ever before, Eddie hates being dead. The greywater trapped in his lungs is steadily rising and he can’t stay here, can’t stay still- he has to do something, anything-

There’s still a small plate of leftover cookies on the kitchen counter.

Eddie stops, and studies them. Richie had worked so, so hard on those cookies, and Eddie had watched, knowing he would never be able to eat them.

Well, he doesn’t think he can, anyways. The doctors had warned him away from human food, telling him that it’ll make him extremely sick, but he hasn’t actually tried, has he? How does he know he’ll get sick unless he tries it? Maybe the doctors were wrong. Maybe, by some miracle, in the interim he’d gotten better and hadn’t even realized it. People got better from things all the time, right?

Well, not death, usually.

Gingerly, he picks up one of the anatomically correct heart cookies off the plate and nibbles at it. When nothing bad immediately happens, Eddie takes a cautious bite, and then a second. Maybe he can do this. Maybe his digestive system is okay, actually. The cookie’s been sitting out for a few days and is more than a little stale and it may be the best thing Eddie’s ever had. Eddie can’t even remember the last time he’d had a cookie, even when he was alive. They were caloric sugar bombs, after all, and could contribute to a myriad of health risks ranging from diabetes to cavities and tooth decay and gingivitus, and everyone knows that the bacteria in unhealthy gums can lead to heart disease-

He takes a third bite and then pauses for a moment, waiting again to see if any ill effects will occur-

-And then promptly vomits black fluid all over the kitchen counter and floor.

So that was clearly a mistake. Eddie groans miserably, clutching his stomach as it lurches again. It turns out that, once again, doctors knew what they were talking about. He makes the mistake of lifting his head, and freezes.

He can see himself reflected in the stainless steel of Richie’s stupidly expensive smoke hood. He’s not wearing his cover-up and he’s not wearing his contact lenses, not having expected to need to leave the house for the rest of the day, and the light reflected back from his pale eyes looks positively animalistic. Now, face and chest covered in dark, sticky fluid and old blood, it is more apparent than ever that he is clearly dead, and clearly should not exist. It’s the greywater that’s infected him, finally forcing its way to the surface and out of him as he always knew it would.

The walls of the house, which, a few minutes ago, had seemed too large without the rest of his friends, now seem much too oppressive and small, like they are closing in on him.

The body that had once belonged to Eddie Kaspbrak lurches upright and down the hallway and out of the electric blue front door. The Los Angeles night air is still pleasant in January, although really, at this point anything will be warmer than how Eddie’s body feels. It stumbles down the front path and out onto the sidewalk, takes a left, and then two rights, and then comes to an intersection.

He looks one direction, then the other, as far down the street as the streetlights overhead will allow. Which way should he go? He’s not sure, his unfailing sense of direction finally lost. All around him the cul-de-sac stretches, looping around and around in neverending tracts of suburban lawn. The buzzing in his head is somehow getting even louder and louder, drowning out all other semblance of thought. Distantly he is aware he must make a horrible sight, swaying indecisively on the street corner and covered in sticky black fluid.

Something grabs him by the arm and pulls.

Eddie jerks his body around. At last, it seems, death has finally caught up to him.

But it’s not death. It’s Richie, familiar eyes wide and gasping for air. “You were gone,” he pants, breath ragged. “I got home but you were gone, and I didn’t know where to look- and there was black blood all over the floor, so I wasn’t sure if you were hurt or if you had hurt yourself or something, so I just ran out and followed the trail of splatters like an even more fucked up version of Hansel and Gretel and thank god, you didn’t get too far-”

Richie only pauses his ramble when Eddie violently jerks his arm out of Richie’s grip to cover his mouth. Richie manages to get out an indignant “ Hey!” before-

Eddie vomits again, all down his front. He gives himself a few seconds, hunched over panting with his ears still ringing, before straightening to swipe futility at the awful black fluid staining his lips and chin.

“No, no, nonono,” someone is chanting, and then Eddie realizes it’s Richie. “Eds no. What did you do? What’s happening? Oh god, oh god. No. I can’t go through this again.”

“I’m okay,” Eddie tries to say, but what comes out is a sticky gurgle. This does nothing to reassure Richie, who has begun hyperventilating, that Eddie isn’t a horrible flesh-eating monster.

“Only one of us,” Eddie decides, pulling himself together as much as possible, which is not a lot, “can be having a breakdown at once.” He clears his throat and tries again. “Richie, look at me. I’m fine, it’s me, I’m not going to hurt you-”

He’s interrupted unexpectedly by Richie, who, counter-intuitive for someone who must be scared out of their mind right now, throws his arms around Eddie’s shoulders and begins touching Eddie’s face as if checking that he’s still real.

“-Rich, stop, I’m covered in rotting body fluid, you’re getting it all over yourself.” But Richie continues grasping at Eddie like he’s the only lifeline in a sea of uncertainty.

He’s also shaking, Eddie notices. Some of the lights in the surrounding houses have clicked on, and Eddie realizes they must be making a scene. God, Richie’s neighbors are going to hate them. They should probably go back inside, lest some busybody calls the police.

Eddie manages to navigate them back to Richie’s house without much difficulty, his feet taking him  in the right direction. Richie had left the front door unlocked and slightly ajar, and Eddie gently nudges it open with his foot before navigating a shivering Richie through it and onto the couch.

Finally, Richie opens his mouth. “Could you just-” and Richie gestures shakily at the bloodstained front of Eddie’s t-shirt.

“Oh- oh! Sorry, hang on.” Eddie casts his eyes around the room until he spots a spare shirt- one of Richie’s old button ups. He peels the ruined t-shirt off of him, looks at it for a moment, then shrugs. It’s definitely a lost cause now, so he uses it to wipe as much of the black fluid off of his hands and face as he can. He unceremoniously deposits the t-shirt into the kitchen trashcan, then pulls on Richie’s shirt.

He can feel Richie’s eyes following him around the room and lingering on him as he does his best to do up the buttons.

“Sorry, I thought I had lost you again, and I then I couldn’t think.” Richie sounds much calmer now, or at least not like he’s on the verge of a panic attack. “What happened? I’m guessing you read the article I told you not to, but that doesn’t really explain why you’re so sick. Please don’t tell me you’re dying. I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it if you’re dying.”

“Richie, I’m already dead. And yeah, I read the article.” Eddie watches Richie’s face as he talks, looking for a reaction. “But the reason I’m throwing up is because, uh, this is embarrassing, but I panicked and tried to eat a cookie even though I’m not supposed to, and it made me really sick. I’ll be fine in a bit, apparently zombies do it all the time and it’s not supposed to cause any lasting damage.”

“You learned that I’m in love with you, and decided poisoning yourself was the preferable option?” Richie mutters under his breath. “Man, tell a guy how you really feel.”

“No,” Eddie responds, eyebrows furrowed, “I learned that you used to be in love with me, which was terrible because for some reason I’ve also been in love with you since childhood, so in my despair at being dead and missing that opportunity I idiotically tried to eat something?”

And there it is, his secret laid bare for all the world to see.

“You’re in love with me?” Richie asks, dumbstruck. “You’ve always been in love with me? You think I, what, hate you now because you’re one of the undead?” Eddie swallows and nods.

“Eddie, you absolute dumbass,” Richie yells, eyes still wide, “how do you read something like the interview I just gave and not immediately realize how in love with you I still am?”

“Yeah,” Eddie yells back, “so why didn’t you say anything earlier? You’ve been weird around me since I moved in. You’ll act super friendly one day and draw back the next, and you try to touch me as little as possible. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. What was I supposed to think?”

Richie covers his face with his hands, pressing his fingers into his eyes in frustration. Eddie, who had been hovering around the couch awkwardly like an undead moth, takes his chance to finally sit down. He leans into Richie and knocks their knees together, and Richie doesn’t pull away. He’s still got some black fluid smeared on his arms and shirt, but Eddie figures he doesn’t have a right to be disgusted, on account of them being his fluids.

“Eddie,” Richie finally begins, “Do you have any goddamn idea how much like… how much legal power I have over you right now?”

“No?” Eddie frowns. “How is that important?”

“Because,” Richie answers, “It’s a lot, actually. It’s basically all of the legal power. I just have to say the word and they’ll drag you back to the containment facility. They made me fill out so much paperwork.” He twists his fingers together nervously. “And you’d literally just told me I was your only option, so how could I make you deal with my own selfish feelings? Welcome home, and by the way, now that you’re stuck here for the foreseeable future just to let you know I’ve had an unrequited crush on you since I was twelve.”

“Well, just so we’re clear, your feelings absolutely aren’t unrequited-”

“-but even so, I didn’t want to pressure you into anything, if you had nowhere else to go. I didn’t want you to feel trapped, god knows you’ve been trapped for so much of your life.”

“Ok,” Eddie argues, “But I’m sure tons of PDS caregivers are spouses, or in relationships. Stan and Patty are arguably in the exact same situation we are. And even before all this, people held power of attorney for loved ones all the time?”

“Yeah, but people like Stan and Patty were already married before he died. The two of us? We’re nothing. We were basically strangers. We’d known each other for about two days, as adults. Can’t you see those situations are different?”

Eddie shakes his head at this. “Sure, but that argument stinks because I know you’d never hurt me, and don’t I get a say in this? It’s weird, but I already feel like I’ve known you my whole life, and I missed you even when I didn’t know you were gone. I trust you. Please give yourself a little more credit. Besides, I’m more liable to be the one that hurts you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Richie’s the one questioning him now. “Unless you mean how I’m finally going to tell a joke that crosses the line, and you make the executive decision the world would be better off if you murdered me.”

And at last, Eddie lets his fears out. “What if I attack you? What if the medication just stops working? Sometimes I think I can feel it, lurking in the back of my mind and waiting to spill out of my body. Even now, if I don’t take the Neurotriptyline every day,” Eddie whispers, “I’ll turn back into a mindless, rabid zombie. A flesh-eating sewer monster. A horrible-”

“So what,” Richie snipes back. “If I don’t take my antidepressants, sometimes I won’t get out of bed for days at a time. You aren’t special, bitch.”

“And what if I die? I still don’t understand how I’m functional.” Eddie touches his chest, thinks about the stitched-together hole there that’s never going away. “It doesn’t make sense. It should be biologically impossible, I mean. There’s no reason why I should be able to talk and move and think. Tomorrow, you could wake up to find my body has finally fallen to pieces, the way it should have years ago.”

Richie thinks on that for a moment before answering, voice quiet. “I’m going to be honest, I don’t know why Stan and you and everyone else got brought back. Maybe us killing IT released enough ancient eldritch space energy into the magnetic field around the planet to bring back the dead. Or maybe there IS a semi-benevolent god fuck knows where who finally took pity on us, or is rewarding us for killing a monster, or something. Or maybe it’s some other reason that doesn’t even have anything to do with us! The world’s a big place, and it doesn’t always revolve around the seven of us. I honestly don’t give a shit about why.”

Eddie risks a glance over at Richie’s face. He’s looking away, but the glimmer of his eyes betray that he’s holding back tears.

“After you died, I was in a dark place for a long time. It was really, really bad. Like, I’m mostly okay now, but it took a lot of work, and it took a lot of time to get myself to this point.” And here, Richie’s voice broke. “But don’t think I wouldn’t have given anything in the world, just to have you back. So like I said, I don’t care what you’ve come back as, I don’t care that you’re dead, I’m just so glad that you’re here. And yeah, if you died again tomorrow, I would be fucking heartbroken. It would shatter me completely. I would probably go back to that dark place, but then I would heal again, and eventually, I would be fine.”

“But you just got your career back on track-”

“Eds,” Richie says, with finality, “fuck my career.”

And Eddie believes him.

“Besides,” Richie continues, “Can you imagine if the exact opposite happened? It’s also wholly possible the magic keeping you alive just continues indefinitely. I’m afraid of getting older and grosser and you’re just 40 forever while I’m a creepy old man. I’m pretty sure some of my hair is turning grey. You know, it’s dumb but I really hate the fact that no matter what, we’ll never be the same age as each other again.”

“I know what you mean,” Eddie says softly, thinking of the strange grief he carries at the steadily widening age gap between Stan and him and the rest of their friends.

Richie laughs. “Imagine, like what if we didn’t kill Pennywise after all and in 27 years we have to go back to Derry, only its a permanently youthful Stan and you carting a bunch of gross senile old people around and pushing them into a sewer like ‘oh, if you go down there there’s a really nice cask of wine at the bottom, you just have to defeat a murder clown to get to it’ and then you guys wash your hands of the whole situation and just go home and collect the insurance payout?”

And Eddie’s laughing now, too. “Are old people even scared of anything?” He asks. “Old people don’t give a shit. That’s why Pennywise mostly went after kids. Senior citizens would have immediately started off slinging insults at him until he gave up and died.” He sobers up. “I wanted to grow old with you, you know.”

“Me too,” Richie murmurs back. “I guess we should give each other a bit more credit. I mean, we’re both dumbasses with anxiety. Guess now I have to worry both about you living forever, and of dying immediately in my arms. Sort of a terrible undead Schrodinger’s cat situation here.”

“And I,” Eddie grumbles, “hadn’t even considered that I might have to deal with living forever. So really, thanks for that, Rich.Yet another thing to keep me up at night.”

“Well,” Richie jokes, “you can just be hot and young and unable to hold down a job forever, which is honestly fine. You can be my sugar baby, baby.”

“Hghh,” Eddie’s traitorous brain makes with his mouth.

Richie stops dead. He turns slowly to Eddie, disbelief in his eyes. “Oh fuck,” he says, a shit-eating grin slowly unfurling itself on his face. Eddie is never going to live this down. “Oh fuck, are you actually into that?”

“I’m requesting that we shelve this discussion for now, on the grounds that we’ve both had a very long, stressful day, and no longer have the mental fortitude to discuss this properly,” Eddie tells him primly. “And yeah, it’s something that probably does need to be discussed, particularly because of the whole legal power thing you mentioned earlier.” He pauses for a moment. “But I’m not, not into it. And regardless, I still want to be with you, if you want to be with me.”

Besides him, Richie lets out a long, loud whoop of unrepentant joy. “Oh man,” he cackles. “If you were alive, I bet your ears would be so red right now. I always did like making you blush.”

“Shut up,” Eddie grumbles at him, but allows his head to lean over onto Richie’s broad shoulder, and then further down onto his chest. After a moment, Richie wraps a long arm around Eddie to pull him closer. It’s warm and safe and comforting, and everything he ever wanted. Eddie listens hard and locates Richie’s heart, beating strong and steady in his chest. Maybe, he decides, it’s beating strong enough for the both of them.

“So, what now?” Richie asks him.

“I want to just lie here for a bit, if that’s okay,” Eddie sighs. “I’m going to be honest, you’re a million times better than any stupid electric blanket. And then, I would like to go brush my teeth.”

“Brush your teeth?” Richie frowns. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for dental hygiene, my dad was a dentist after all, but why is brushing your teeth right now so important?”

“Because,” Eddie tells him, “my mouth is currently coated with mystery death fluids and probably tastes like literally like the inside of a coffin, and I would quite like to try kissing you, if you don’t mind.”

“Ah,” Richie says. “Carry on, then.”

“Eddie!” Stan answers the phone just as Eddie is starting to think he’s not going to pick up. The blinding enthusiasm in his voice is appalling for how early it is. “Eddie, Eds! What’s up, my fine fellow? How’s life on the road?”

“Ignore him,” Patty says, taking the phone and laughing. “He’s just really excited because he went bird watching this morning, and he managed to spot a… what was it again, dear? A sandhill crane?”

“Yes!” Stan sounds like he is positively beaming. “It let me get really close, too. I think maybe the local wildlife is getting used to me being around them? The birds don’t fly away when I’m in the immediate vicinity anymore, at any rate.”

“That’s great!” Eddie grins, happy for his friend, even though he knows Stan can’t see him. “And life on the road is fantastic, actually, now that the government trusts me to drive and I don’t have to rely on Richie, who drives exactly like you’d expect him to.”

“Ah,” Stan tuts understandingly  “So, like a maniac. Where are you guys now?”

“We’re at a gas station a little bit outside of Austin? Richie’s just gone inside for some snacks. There’s a terrifying beaver statue in front of the doors, and it won’t stop smiling at me. I’m pretty sure his eyes are following me. I think his name is Bucky.” Eddie glares at the statue. Bucky glares back. “Austin’s pretty cool, actually. Everyone there is a hipster fuck. Richie’s secretly thrilled. He bought like, three awful shirts and a pair of cowboy boots.”

“Oh god,” Stan groans. “At this rate, you guys will need an entire moving truck before you get to my house. Where are you heading next? Houston?”

“Yep, tonight’s show is in Houston. We technically have plenty of time to make the drive, but Richie needs to get there early for sound check and rehearsals.” Eddie turns his head at the sound of the gas station doors sliding open. “Oh, and speak of the devil-” and there’s Richie striding out of the gas station, his hands laden with snacks. He’s sporting his new, awful cowboy boots and an even newer, more awful baseball cap with Bucky’s face on the front.

“I hate it,” Eddie tells him plainly. Richie bumps him with his shoulder and then, without hesitating, pecks him lightly on the row of stitches across his cheek. It’s quickly become one of his favorite places to kiss Eddie, and that's saying something because he likes kissing Eddie a whole lot.

“Is that Stan?” Richie leans over so his voice can be picked up by the phone. “Hi, Stan!”

“Hi, Richie,” Stan answers. “Tour still going strong then? God, I still can’t believe you managed to spin a whole tour just to drive to my house. Wish we had the luxury of driving forty hours over several weeks last year.”

“The ‘Help Me Road Trip To My Friend’s House In Georgia In Time For the Holidays Because The Government Won’t Let My Undead Boyfriend Fly’ tour, to be exact. It’s sold out everywhere. I can only fail up,” Richie informs him smugly.

“Richie, you can’t keep suddenly disappearing without warning, then reappearing with an important life secret that you somehow manage to use to revitalize your career.” Stan’s voice is exasperated, but fond. “There’s no way that’ll work a third time.”

“I’m still trying to figure out what my even deeper, darker secret is going to be, and if it’ll be enough to convince SNL to let me host,” Richie informs him dryly. “Now excuse me. Dead-Head Spagh-Eds over here and I need to hit the road, and both of us have some snacks we should be enjoying, if you catch my drift.”

“If you make a joke about Eddie eating you, I just want you to know that I will not let you into my home.” Stan sounds like a man who has heard an inappropriate joke too many times before, and is not going to put up with it any longer. “This is the last straw. You can just turn around and drive back to Los Angeles.”

“Okay, bye Stan! Love you! I’ll see you in a week or so with the rest of the Losers!” Eddie hangs up before Stan can respond.

“All set?” He asks Richie. Richie nods from underneath his Bucky hat, eyes glowing with mischief and face radiant, and Eddie knows that, whatever the future may hold, he wouldn’t trade this for anything else in the world.

The two of them get into the car, and Eddie drives away.

6000 miles away, a young woman on the other side of the planet pauses in her tracks. She has flowers in her hair and a vividly patterned dress on and she has staunchly refused to wear any cover-up for a long, long time, and while she doesn't think she was the first to rise, she must certainly have been close. She’s been feeling rather oddly for a few days now, and although she tries not to let it show it’s been worrying her.

Amy Dyer draws in a gasping breath that she had not needed until now, startled, and her fingers fly to her chest in befuddled amazement.

For the first time in years, her heart is beating.