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Eddie woke up trapped and alone. The cistern had collapsed, and by some miracle he had ended up in a small pocket of air, lounging against the rocks like he wasn’t buried in a killer alien clown's subterranean lair.
He took a deep breath—at least, he tried to. The air was laden with dust, and his chest hurt like something had torn it open.
Which was, he recalled with a shudder, exactly what had happened.
Despite his best efforts, he started to panic. His breath came fast and ragged. He had no idea where his inhaler had gone, and he just knew the air around him was probably as thick with toxins as it was with heavy, ominous, terrifying silence. With a desperate shove, he pushed at the debris above him. It fell away with ease.
What had once been a massive, twisted cavern, the home of nightmares, was now nothing more than a sea of rubble. Eddie stared at it, horrified. There was absolutely nothing left; no signs of clowns, or lepers, or Losers, or even a fight at all. He called out, but his voice wouldn't come. He coughed—then fell into a fit of coughing—and tried again. Nothing but his own cries echoed back.
Panic took over completely.
Eddie scrambled out of the hole, his grave, and stared wildly at the remains of the cistern in search of an exit. He couldn't breathe. The wound on his chest was closed, but it was burning like mad and, by god, he had died.
At least, he was pretty sure he had died. That's what typically happens after a giant monster punches a gaping hole into your chest.
And if he had died, then anyone else could have died, too. Any of the Losers—Bev, Mike, Ben, Stan, Bill, Richie— buried less miraculously under the ancient debris of fucking Neibolt. Eddie could be the only one left. He probably was, statistically speaking, and he couldn’t even be certain Pennywise was gone for good and not just hidden away waiting to torture him with the faces of his dead friends.
"They're fine," he said aloud to no one. To himself. The sound of his own voice brought him back from the brink of blacking out. "I'm fine, so they're fine, everybody's fine—"
He stopped, realizing for the first time that he was fine. Filthy, exhausted, bleeding in a few places, and sore literally everywhere, but fine. Alive again, somehow, despite definitely dying. And he had to believe that the others were, too, or he would never be able to reign in his fear.
"I've got to get the fuck out of here," he whispered.
The Losers, or what remained of them, stayed in Derry for over a week after everything had ended. Bev wasn't ready to go home, back to real life and her shithead soon-to-be-ex husband. Ben stayed for her. Stan told his wife that he would be gone for a while, that his friends still needed him. Bill and Mike had been trying to help wherever they could.
Richie could hardly get out of bed.
His phone had been ringing constantly since before they even faced the clown. Angry managers and publicists were trying to drag him back to LA, but now more than ever, he couldn't face them. Couldn't face anyone, really. Richie was different now, with all these memories crammed back into his head, all this fear, and regret, and all this fucking love that would never have anywhere to go. How could he possibly just go back, make the same tired jokes, pretend nothing was different?
The others visited him in shifts. For the first couple of days he wouldn't even let them in, but it got too annoying to listen to them through the door.
Bill tried to relate, sharing stories about Georgie that were more comforting than Richie wanted to admit. He stuttered less, now that Pennywise was gone, but he was especially smooth when he spoke of his brother, like it grounded him.
Mike assured him that it was all over. He said Eddie was a hero and, yeah, Richie fucking knew that, and it didn't make it any easier, didn't make the hole in his heart any smaller. But it was nice to remember, if only briefly, the determined jut of Eddie's jaw, the spark in his lovely eyes.
Stan came to reminisce, but he never dredged a memory that was too painful. He had a way about it that Richie didn't understand, a look that he gave after every story that felt like a question. He kept reminding Richie that he could talk to him about anything, and Richie kept making empty promises to do so.
Ben was obviously a lot more clever than Richie had ever given him credit for. He knew way too much. Richie tried not to flinch when he mentioned how "especially close" he and Eddie had been. But Richie wasn't blind either, and he figured Ben's thing for Bev wasn't that different, really. Except Bev was still alive.
Beverly. Richie had been so close with her when they were teenagers. They had often bonded over vicious rumors and cigarettes, once Richie had finally warmed up to her.
She didn't say much when she came around. The first time she slipped in to see him she had simply sat down in a chair by the bed, and offered him a cigarette.
"The smoke detectors don't even work," she had said with a shrug. "I already checked."
This had produced the first thing even slightly resembling a smile on Richie's face. "Good ol' Bevers," he had slurred into his pillow. "Raised like a real scoundrel."
They had sat together like that for a long time, Richie slumped against the headboard, smoking like a chimney. It didn't do much for him, but the habit was familiar. And he was finally sitting up, at least, so it had to be a step in the right direction.
As it turns out, getting stabbed through the chest, dying, being buried in rubble, and then coming back to life really fucking sucks.
Eddie had managed to dig his way out of the cavern, though he had cut his hands up in the process. It wasn't the way they had come, if that way was even still standing. He had crawled for a while through a small tunnel, trying and failing to ignore how filthy the stone was, and the open wounds on his hands and face. Every movement sent a shot of pain across his chest. At one point, he had stopped and checked on it, only for his heart to skip several beats when he saw the angry red scar across his ribs.
"I should be dead," he had said to himself faintly. "I totally died."
Without his inhaler, Eddie hadn't managed to get a good breath since he woke up, so ranting aloud was the only thing keeping him calm. Part of him was worried he might draw unwanted attention, but there had been no sign of Pennywise in hours. Or maybe minutes.
"Hard to tell when you're fucking undergound."
Eventually, the tunnel widened until he was able to stand. His legs protested, and the pain in his chest made little black flecks dance across his vision, but he did it anyway. The floors were still uneven and the walls were slimy, slowing his progress. He hadn't seen anything familiar since the cistern.
A few times, he wondered if he would ever make it out at all, if he would be stuck down here forever. Maybe he wasn't even going the right way. Maybe Pennywise's last trick was to resurrect him just so he could die alone, covered in filth, in a fucking sewer.
"Fuck that," he muttered hoarsely. "Fuck that, and fuck him. You can do this, Eds, just keep moving."
He pictured the other Losers, alive and well and waiting for him, visualizing their faces when he turned up in one piece.
Bill would lose his mind. He had waited a long time for someone he had lost to come back, and Eddie was doing just that.
Mike would ask a million questions. Call Eddie a hero or something, which would be ridiculous because he was pretty sure he hadn't even fucking killed the thing.
Stan would ask him what had taken so long. Eddie laughed just thinking about it.
Bev would probably cry. So would Ben, if he had to guess. Eddie might cry, too, even if Richie teased him for it.
Eddie liked to think that Richie might, for once, just shut the fuck up.
Eddie liked to think that maybe, for once, he would force him to.
By the end of the second week, Richie was mobile. He dragged himself out of bed for the sake of getting some coffee, and some bourbon to pour into the coffee. His friends would cheer him on in their own ways, and it wasn't nearly as pitiful as it sounded.
"Baby steps," Bill would say to him, "it's all about baby steps."
The weather was far too nice. Richie found it profoundly inconsiderate to his mood. Warm summer air swept into his room whenever he opened the window to smoke with Bev. Which he did every time, despite the dead smoke detectors, because he could still hear Eddie in his mind.
"You're sucking in first and secondhand smoke, dumbass. That's twice the carcinogens. And y'know, those smoke detectors are there for a goddamn reason. This place is one giant fucking fire hazard, really, someone should call the fire department, or OSHA, or something because—"
Richie would let the rant play out in his head, which was just pitiful, he knew. But it was all he had, and if he had to leave Derry eventually, forget about Eddie forever this time, then he would cling to that nagging ghost as long as he fucking could.
It was on the tenth day post-Neibolt that Bev asked him what his plans were. She wasn't the first to ask, but she was the only one Richie felt obligated to actually answer. Which is why he had hoped she never would.
"I mean, what else is a hack comedian supposed to do?" He shrugged, an effort to look fine when he really, really wasn't and probably never would be. "I'll go back to LA eventually. Maybe I'll even still have a career if I'm real polite about it."
"I get it," Bev said, blowing a cloud of smoke out the window. "I don't think I could ever really be ready. But we can't hide here forever."
"Maybe you can't."
"Rich."
"Don't "Rich" me," he said lightly. "I could totally just spend the rest of my days wallowing in this room until I wither up and die. Can't be hard."
She gave him a look. "Eddie wouldn't."
Fuck that. Fuck that, and fuck Derry, and fuck evil clowns, and fuck absolutely everything else.
"Eddie had a wife to go home to," Richie snapped, voice cracking pathetically. "So does Bill, and so does Stan, and you have Ben, and Ben has you, and Mike has Florida or wherever the fuck. What do I have, Bev? A big, empty apartment where I can drink myself into a coma and hopefully forget that I'm forgetting him? Screw that."
Bev blinked at him, cigarette dangling between her fingers like she had forgotten she was holding it. "Richie, is that what you're worried about? Forgetting again?"
He shrugged at her, and then stared out the window, taking a drag. "Yeah, Bev, I'm worried about forgetting again. I'm a weepy little bitch. Sue me."
Bev rolled her eyes, which was as comforting as it was insulting, honestly. "You won't," she insisted.
"What?"
"You're not going to forget Eddie."
"How the fuck do you know? What, the ol' clown sent out a memo that I missed or something?"
She laughed, and the sound was so unexpected that Richie snapped his mouth shut with a muted click.
"You won't for the same reason that I won't forget you, or Bill, or Mike, or Stan. We're friends, Richie, we're Losers."
Richie stared back at her blankly. "Okay, I appreciate the enthusiasm, pal, but we were friends before, and that didn't seem to make a difference."
"Pennywise wasn't dead then, Richie. But now he is, because of us." She smiled brightly. "He can't take our lives from us this time."
Richie hadn't thought of that. Mostly because his thoughts had been occupied with Eddie's lovely eyes, his sharp smile, the sound of his voice, and everything else that Pennywise had taken from him. He had been so frantic at the thought of losing those memories that he hadn't considered that he might get to keep them.
He couldn't leave Derry with Eddie, but he could leave with the ghost of him. It was a greater relief than he would ever admit.
That was a light. Eddie was certain of it, that was a light!
He had been trudging through sewer water for what felt like days. His body was screaming for him to stop, and he had never ignored so many of his own maladies in his life. The tunnel had gone from uneven rock, to uneven brick, and Eddie had briefly convinced himself that he had turned around and was headed back into Its lair.
Then the brick became smoother, worked, rounded. When Eddie realized that he was walking through the sewers of Derry, he actually teared up a little. He had never been so happy while standing ankle deep in grey water.
And now, finally, finally, he could see the literal light at the end of the tunnel. It was faint at first, and he had already had a few false starts—the glint off of a glass bottle, a trick of the eye. This time, however, the light held and grew as he moved closer.
He broke into a jog, though it was more of a controlled stagger. The water sloshed noisily, dragging at his feet, and the sound echoed through the tunnels.
Eddie started to panic again. He was so close, almost too close.
What if this was Pennywise's last trick? What if he was still trapped down there, and this was all just an elaborate vision? The tunnel would collapse right before he escaped. That awful laughter would float up from behind him. The water would rise, his wounds would reopen. He would die all over again. He would never see Richie, would never hear his dumb jokes or his stupid laugh. He would never get the chance to shut him up the way he had always wanted to. He was so close now, dammit, so close…
Sunlight.
Warm, blessed evening sunlight.
The Losers finally departed from Derry nearly two weeks after crushing Pennywise's heart. Bill went first, since he had a deadline, but it took a day and a half of convincing to get him going. Stan was next, giving Richie one last heavy glance after hugging him goodbye. Richie promised to call him, and found that he really meant it now. Ben and Bev left together, and despite himself, Richie wished them the best. Mike went home to his apartment to pack for his trip to Florida.
Richie was going to miss them. They never would have left until he was okay, and although he was far from being back on his feet, he was no longer scared to leave all of this behind. It was actually kind of baffling, to think that he had been nervous to leave Derry fucking Maine in the rearview.
Still, he didn't leave until the afternoon. The New England sun was nice this time of year, and Richie was trying hard to focus on that instead of bottomless chasm in his heart. The future stretched out in a way it never had before, empty and bleak. Apparently, forgetting Eddie while he was still alive left Richie with more hope than remembering him when he was dead. Funny how that works.
Only it wasn't funny at all.
When he finally loaded his things into the car, and said a final farewell to Mike, it was well past noon. Richie took the long way out of town, hoping for one last grab at closure.
He had been to the kissing bridge a handful of times, back when he was growing up, but no more than anyone else. Mostly because he was terrified of the one spot in the whole world where he had let his secret see the light of day. As he pulled up to the old bridge, he dug around for his pocket knife.
The carving was weathered to match the wood around it. Richie crouched down and ran the point of his knife over the letters until they were stark and clean enough that he could read them through the tears in his eyes.
R+E
He sat there for a while, for once just letting himself cry.
Then he wiped at his face, said a soft goodbye, and left.
The sun was setting over Derry, Maine, and Eddie Kaspbrak was alive to see it.
He stumbled out of the sewers and collapsed into the shallow water of the river, gasping in the fresh air. He was filthy, sore, tired, and fucking free. For a moment, he didn't even bother with caution, splashing the river water over his face, letting it roll down his neck to soak his shirt collar. When he looked up, he felt the fading sunlight on his cheeks, a faint breeze tugging at his hair, and he laughed.
Then he stopped laughing, because it fucking hurt.
It took an immense amount of effort to pick himself up again. He had to make it back to the townhouse, to the other Losers, to Richie. It was impossible to tell how long he had been down there, but his first priority was getting to them. The rest could come later.
The walk back into Derry was shorter than his trek through the sewers, but it felt like more of a hike. About a mile, mostly uphill, through the woods in the dying daylight. It didn't help that every odd shadow had him jumping out of his skin.
When he finally saw the light of town, he practically ran.
Being back in civilization was like finally waking up from the nightmare, to an unfamiliar room. He was okay, but it wasn't home. He wouldn't really be safe and sound until he found the others. Which was still fine, because he was almost back to the townhouse, and he could practically see them turning to look as he came through the door. The shock on their faces, the disbelief, and then they would surround him, and it really would be okay. Richie would say something stupid, Eddie knew he would, and that's when Eddie would shut him up with a—
The townhouse was empty.
The lights were all off, despite the early hour. No one was there when he went inside. The lady who ran the desk in the back said that all the guests had checked out. They were gone.
Eddie asked in an unsteady voice if he could use the phone. She glowered at him, clearly not happy about the dirt and various other substances he was coated in, but she pointed to an old landline. Eddie had nothing, no wallet, no inhaler, not even a pen. But the Losers had all exchanged their phone numbers back at the restaurant, and Eddie only bothered to remember one of them.
Richie was almost an hour outside of Derry when his phone rang. He figured it was his manager again, or his publicist again, or maybe someone else who wanted to bite his head off for disappearing for weeks. He glanced down at the screen. No name, but the number tickled something at the back of his mind. He let it go to voicemail.
He didn't think he had room for more long lost memories.
A few seconds later, it rang again. Richie glanced down, saw that same number, and cursed. Maybe it was Mike, calling to tell him that Pennywise had a son or something, and the terror was only just beginning. He let it ring out again, as a nagging feeling grew in his chest.
When it rang a third time, Richie caved.
"Listen, you can't expect me to keep this shit going, okay?" he hissed into the receiver. "One supernatural showdown a year! That's the new rule, and I have hit the quota. What the fuck more could you possibly want from me?"
There was a silence, just long enough for him to start getting nervous. And then…
"Richie?"
There was a terrible screeching sound on the other end of the line. Eddie heard Richie curse, and then some rustling, and then silence.
No, not quite silence. Richie was muttering something, barely discernible. Eddie strained his ears, and made out enough to recognize the familiar chant.
"This isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't real."
And okay, Eddie understood, he really did. He likely would have reacted the same way, in Richie's place. But that didn't stop the flare of indignation. He was just so desperately relieved to hear Richie's voice, and he was a little delirious, and he had died, for fuck's sake, and there had been several minutes there where he didn't think Richie would pick up the phone and, well…
"I am totally fucking real, you dipshit!" He practically snarled it, earning another glare from the lady behind the desk. "You would know that if you were here right now. What the fuck, dude?"
Richie didn't answer, but his breath was rattling through the receiver in short bursts. Eddie was almost sorry for snapping at him.
"No," Richie choked out. "No, no, no, no, you're not. This can't be real, you were… you're… I was fucking there, and you were…"
Eddie sighed, the anger draining out of him and leaving him empty and exhausted. "Yeah, I was, Trashmouth. But now I'm not, I guess."
There was another pause, filled only with the awful sound of Richie's ragged breathing. It sounded too much like one of Eddie's nastier asthma attacks. Eddie needed him to be there in person, and not just a voice on the phone.
"How?" he finally asked, voice too small, too unsteady to belong to Richie Tozier.
Eddie sighed again. "I don't fucking know, Rich. Look, I'm back at the townhouse, and I don't have my wallet, or my keys, or my phone, or anything else. No one's here. I don't even know what fucking day it is." He ran a hand over his face, feeling a thousand years old suddenly. "Just please tell me you're not on the other side of the goddamn country."
There was another curse, and more rustling. When Richie spoke again, his voice was more sure, a hint of urgency hidden beneath it. "I'm not, I… I left like an hour ago, after everyone else." A pause. "Had to pay my respects to your mom."
His voice cracked as he said it, and Eddie decided to ignore the break. "Fuck off."
Richie's breath hitched audibly, and Eddie ignored that, too.
"Give the phone to the lady, I'll get you a room," Richie said. His voice had gone hoarse and unsteady. "But don't get the wrong idea or anything, I don't do prostitutes anymore."
Eddie rolled his eyes, scoffed, and handed the receiver to the sour-faced woman. He didn't trust his own voice now, worried it would give away the delirious relief that had come over him. They were okay. Richie was okay. He was only an hour away, and he was coming back, and he was okay.
The woman rattled off several questions, and pecked at the keyboard of the ancient computer in front of her. A minute later, she curled her lip and passed the phone back to Eddie.
"You'd better be fucking real, Kaspbrak," came Richie's voice, a bit more steady. "I'm pretty sure I just got ripped off."
The irony of driving almost twenty miles over the speed limit for the sake of Eddie Kaspbrak was not lost on Richie. He had almost crashed the car once, at the first raspy sound of Eddie's voice. Now he was hurtling down the highway at breakneck speed, back to Derry, back to him.
Richie still wasn't sure the call had even been real. Part of him was absolutely certain that he was having some awful dream, that he would get back to Derry and Eddie would be just as dead as when he left.
The other part, the one that was playing and replaying Eddie's voice in his head, was almost sick with hope.
He had been crying ever since Eddie had told him to fuck off in that just-barely-fond voice that he so rarely used. It had occurred to him, of course, that Eddie would never let him live that down, but he couldn't stop.
Eddie was alive. Eddie was fucking alive.
Alone, and probably hurt, and definitely pissed off, but alive nonetheless. Richie would have had a much harder time believing it if he hadn't fought and killed a giant, shape shifting killer clown two weeks ago.
It was a miracle that he hadn't been pulled over, but he pushed his luck even further anyway, creeping up toward a hundred.
There was a paranoid little voice clamoring in the back of his head, shouting things like "trap!" and "danger!" and "impending doom!" Richie ignored that voice. It didn't matter.
Eddie was alive.
Eddie was falling apart. He had made it back down the hall, up the stairs, and into the room before the miles of crawling, climbing, and fighting to survive finally caught up to him. Three steps past the threshold, he collapsed.
The room was empty, but it had clearly not been that way for long. It reeked of cigarette smoke. It might even have been Richie's—he and Bev were the only ones stupid enough to smoke—but he wasn't sure. Eddie slumped down onto the floor, and lay there for several minutes, mind blank.
Then he started thinking about all the awful little things crawling around in the carpet, and he became acutely aware of everything still coating his body.
With a new surge of energy, he hauled himself up and into the bathroom. There was no first aid kit, no isopropyl alcohol, and no sterile bandages, but at this point Eddie would settle for an incredibly hot shower.
He almost lost his balance getting in, which made his heart plummet in his chest. But when he stepped into the water, his whole body unwound like a cut wire. The grime of the sewers fell away, sluicing off his skin and draining back to where it had all come from. Eddie watched his own blood circle the drain, and shivered despite the scalding water.
Richie had barely left, and he had mentioned that the others weren't far ahead, so it couldn't have been long since Neibolt collapsed. Eddie figured two days at the most, and two days wasn't all that long to be dead. At least as far as being dead went. There wasn't exactly a standard for that.
He had been dead for two days.
Unless, of course, Richie had stayed, had waited for him.
"Had to pay my respects to your mom."
Eddie shook his head. A fog of delirium and exhaustion was blanketing his mind and was clearly affecting his judgement; Richie wouldn't stay any longer than the others. He wouldn't have waited for Eddie to rise from the grave. He wouldn't stay in a town he hated just because Eddie wished he had.
Eddie shut off the water, wrapped himself in a towel, and left the bathroom, lungs clogged with steam. It wasn't until he was standing in the middle of the room, strength once again draining from his legs, that he realized his only clothes were no more than filthy rags. He fell down onto the bed, and cursed at the ceiling.
Several minutes later, there was a knock at the door.
Richie made it back to the townhouse in less than forty-five minutes. There had been one more close call when he got off the highway a bit too fast and fishtailed, but he had made it in one piece.
He barely remembered to turn the car off before scrambling out of it, barreling through the lobby, and up the stairs. And then he was staring down the door to the same damn room he had been suffering in for the last two weeks.
It was then that he finally slowed down, stopped. Eighty miles, and he hadn't let himself doubt this, but now he was paralyzed with nerves. What if Eddie wasn't there, and he had been drawn back to this room as a sign that he really should just curl up and die in it?
He shook his head, took a breath. It didn't matter.
With a shaking hand, he knocked on the door.
A second passed. Two. Three. A silence just long enough for Richie's heart to stop.
"It's open."
Then it started again, full throttle, slamming against his ribcage as he opened the door.
And it skipped, soared, and dropped through the floor all at once, because Eddie was stretched out on the bed in nothing but a towel, hair still wet from the shower, covered in cuts and bruises and definitely, undeniably real.
There was a massive, raw scar where Pennywise had run him through. The hole in his cheek had closed, but it hadn't completely healed. His chest was rising and falling in short movements, like he was struggling to breathe.
Richie was dangerously close to bursting into tears again.
After a moment of silence that seemed to stretch for hours, Eddie turned his head to look at Richie. The movement was slow, almost wary, as if Eddie was just as terrified as Richie. They locked eyes, and—
Fuck. Eddie was looking at him, with shining eyes and parted lips, alive and right fucking in front of him.
Richie took a shallow breath, and then another. His throat was all twisted up.
"You look like shit, Eds," he whispered.
Eddie's face twitched, brows sliding down into a sweetly familiar scowl.
"Yeah, well you're no fucking portrait, asshole."
Richie shuddered, and suddenly he could breathe again—he hadn't been able to breathe in weeks— and then he was laughing. Before he really thought about it, before his brain could catch up, he was striding over to the bed and sinking down next to Eddie.
His skin was too pale, making all the bruises and blood stand out harshly. Richie reached over and brushed his fingers over the large scar on his chest.
Eddie went stiff, but made no move to pull away. Richie, not thinking beyond the need to feel him, solid and warm, traced the scar lightly with his fingertips. It spread across the lower half of his chest and down over most of his stomach. In his mind's eye, Richie could still see Pennywise's claw protruding from the spot, dripping with Eddie's blood.
"How the hell did you survive this," he muttered.
Eddie shrugged mechanically. Richie looked over to meet his gaze.
There were more questions, a thousand more, but they all died as Eddie's eyes fell on him again.
He snatched his hand away, finally realizing where it was, its creeping path along Eddie's skin. Eddie seemed to realize something, too, as his face regained some color.
"Richie, you wouldn't happen to have a change of clothes I could borrow, would you? Mine are covered in sewage."
Richie's brain finally caught up, and his own face grew hot. He nodded, mostly focused on not staring at Eddie's barely clothed body now that he had really noticed that Eddie was barely clothed. "Yeah, obviously," he stammered, "in the car. I'll, uh, yeah."
He stood, and Eddie sat up but didn't follow. He looked dizzy.
Richie practically sprinted to his car. It took three tries to get it unlocked, his hands were shaking so bad. As if Eddie would disappear in the thirty seconds it took to grab the first bag he saw and haul it back up to the room.
When he came back, Eddie was leaning his elbows on his knees. He looked half dead, and Richie tried not to think about that too hard. He dropped the suitcase on the floor and flung it open.
"Most of this shit's been worn already," he warned. "Just once, but I know how you are."
"Where's my stuff?" Eddie asked. It wasn't an angry question, really, but Richie's blood ran cold anyway.
"It's, um… it's in my car, actually," he mumbled. He had taken what remained of Eddie's things the second night after defeating Pennywise, hoping it would help with his grief. And it had, just a little. None of the other Losers had said anything. "I could go get it, I was just in a hurry, and I—"
"No, it's fine," Eddie said, shaking his head. "Just give me something comfortable. And nothing with your fucking face on it, either."
Richie scoffed reflexively. "You think I would wear my own merchandise? That's probably the most insulting thing you've ever said to me, Eds."
"Shut up and give me some clothes."
"Wow, are you that eager to get into my pants?" Richie grinned. He couldn't help himself. This was the back and forth that he hadn't been getting from Eddie's ghost in his head. "You're so much more forward than your mom."
"Richie, I will fucking strangle you."
"Hm. Not the kind of foreplay I'm used to, but I think I can work with it."
Eddie threw a glare at him, and Richie was filled with the usual buzz from his undivided attention. He wasn't even ashamed of it now; it was better than anything he had felt in weeks.
He dug out a pair of sweats and his last clean T-shirt, trading insults with Eddie as he did so. It was a tired exchange, neither of them were on the top of their game, but it was so familiar and easy that Richie felt drunk. Eddie went into the bathroom to change, and Richie had to resist the urge to keep shouting at him through the door.
When he came back out, though, Richie's words died on his tongue.
The shirt was too big, and the pants pooled at his ankles. Eddie was glaring at him like he was braced for an onslaught of teasing, and Richie hated to disappoint, but his heart was up in his throat and the only thought in his head was how amazing it was that Eddie was actually here, wearing Richie's fucking cookie pants.
When he didn't immediately say anything, Eddie rolled his eyes and shuffled back over to the bed. "Quit fucking staring, asshole, it's not my fault you have a lamp post for a body."
Richie watched him settle on the bed, not bothering with the blankets. He looked exhausted, but he didn't close his eyes, didn't even pretend to fall asleep. Neither of them spoke for a moment, and Richie was scrambling for something to say when Eddie broke the silence.
"I thought you might be dead."
His voice was small, a little breathless. Richie blinked at him, and finally found words again.
"What?"
"When I woke up," Eddie went on, "I was buried in the rubble, and I was worried... I thought that maybe you guys were buried too, that the whole place had come down right on top of us."
Richie was hit with a sudden wave of guilt. Eddie had been down there for weeks, and they had left him there. "Fuck, Eds," he breathed. "Fuck, I–I'm sorry, man, I tried to get you out of there, but it was happening so fast." He turned away, shifting so his back was leaning against the side of the bed. "I would've stayed down there with you, but Mike and Ben dragged me out."
Eddie scoffed. "Then you really would've been dead, idiot."
Richie huffed out a laugh. Bev had said nearly the same thing on the fourth day, after Richie had snapped at Bill for not letting him stay in that sinkhole.
"Hey, Richie…?"
"Yeah?"
"How, uh… How long was I down there?"
Richie sucked in a breath, let it out, felt the weight of too many nightmare-fueled sleepless nights dragging at his body.
"Almost two weeks," he sighed.
"What!?" Eddie barked, sitting up so fast the bed shook. Richie craned his neck to look at him, and Eddie stared back with wide eyes. "Two weeks? I was dead for two fucking weeks?"
Richie's stomach dropped at the words. "What the hell do you mean, you were dead?"
"I was fucking impaled through the torso, dumbass, of course I was dead. For two fucking weeks! That can't—I mean, that can't be fucking possible, right? I would have started to decay. My pancreas would be digesting itself, and my cells would be breaking down, and maggots would—!"
He cut himself off, too busy hyperventilating to continue detailing the slow process of his own decomposition. Richie really wished he had brought Eddie's bag, oversized T-shirt be damned. His inhaler was gone, burned up and buried beneath Neibolt, but he probably had a backup somewhere.
Instead, panicking, he climbed up onto the bed and took Eddie's face in his hands. "Eddie, hey, Eds. Look at me, dammit."
Eddie's eyes were wide and endless, a shade of brown that Richie could stare into for hours—but he focused on the glossy fear in them instead of his own stupid heart.
"Listen, I don't know how you did it, but you're not fucking dead. You're right here, and there's no maggots, or clowns, or fucking disease zombies, or whatever. It's just me."
Eddie's brows drew together, like he was reaching for some conclusion and couldn't quite connect the dots. His breathing was starting to slow down.
"Just you," he wheezed. "You were so close. You were just an hour away."
Richie swallowed. "Yeah, I wasn't really ready to leave until today. Kinda hard to just pack up and go home after… y'know, everything."
Eddie stared up at him for a moment, doe eyes doing cruel things to Richie's heart. Then he grabbed Richie by the waist and pulled him into a hug.
Richie tried to breathe, but it was difficult with Eddie's face pressed into the crook of his shoulder, and the smell of generic hotel soap scrambling his senses. He held himself still, unsure of what to do. Then Eddie started shaking, and Richie broke from his stupor to wrap his arms around him.
"Eds?"
"Don't fucking call me that," came the unsteady reply. Richie swallowed the urge to tease him, to break the tension that hung in the air, to mask his racing heart with humor.
"You're, um," he managed instead, voice breathless, "you're okay, right?"
Eddie made a sound somewhere between a sob and scoff. "Oh yeah, totally fine. I just remembered my entire fucked up childhood, fought a killer space clown, fucking died, came back to life, and thought all my friends were dead too, but it's not like it's a big deal."
"Oh good, I was worried you might be a little stressed," Richie laughed.
Eddie sucked in a breath and squeezed tighter. "I’m not okay, Richie."
His voice was strained, like he was struggling to keep it steady, and Richie held him closer in return. It felt like an eternity had passed since that morning, since the days spent drifting listlessly through an empty void of grief, and even longer than that since he caught his last glimpse of Eddie’s lifeless form among the rocks. The last two weeks had been the worst of Richie’s life.
And now Eddie was back, and his breath was filling is lungs in unsteady heaves, his chest rising and falling in Richie’s arms. A nightmare worse than anything Pennywise had ever dreamed of had passed, and Richie found himself on the other side of it with so much desperation that he ached.
"Me neither," he whispered into Eddie’s hair. He would’ve held him like that forever. "We probably ought to get some sleep, though. I'll take the chair, and we'll go see Mike tomorrow, figure this out when we're not, like, in shock, or whatever."
Eddie hesitated before nodding against Richie's shoulder. He waited even longer to finally loosen his grip, wiping at his eyes as he turned away.
God, Richie wanted to kiss him.
Eddie rose from the bed with visible effort. Richie helped him turn down the covers, waited until he was settled, and then moved for the chair in the corner. It was an old piece of shit that made his neck hurt just from looking at it, but it would do for tonight. He was halfway through wadding up his jacket for a pillow when Eddie called out to him.
"Rich, this might sound a little weird…"
Richie grinned. "Weirder than coming back from the dead, or just typical Derry weird?"
"Shut up. I just… can you just come over here?"
"I was just getting comfy," he grumbled, even as he stood.
"No you fucking weren't."
Richie laughed. Eddie sat up to glare at him as he stepped back over. The shadows under his eyes made him look like a ghost, and Richie pushed that thought away as soon as it formed. If he was seeing dead people, he was way more fucked up than he thought. Eddie blinked up at him from the bed.
"Well?" Richie asked. "The fuck do you want?"
Eddie rolled his eyes. The color that rose in his cheeks was visible even in the dim light of the lamp, which they had both silently agreed to keep lit. Without saying anything, Eddie shifted over until there was just enough room on the bed for one more. Richie took an embarrassingly long time to process this.
"Oh come on, shit for brains, just get in," Eddie snapped.
Richie almost didn't hear him over the rushing of his own heartbeat in his ears. He slid in slowly, as if Eddie would change his mind and run like a frightened animal if he wasn't careful. It was like crossing a threshold into unknown and dangerous territory, or standing on the edge of a cliff. The bed was warm, and Eddie was close enough that their arms pressed together. Richie reminded himself to breathe, somehow struggling more with this than the unexplained resurrection of his best friend and lifelong love.
Eddie shifted, shoulder brushing against Richie's and sending his brain spiraling. "Thanks, by the way," he whispered, "for coming back."
Richie nodded, not trusting himself to look at Eddie. "Yeah, no problem."
He wanted to say more, except his thoughts were too jumbled to really make sense of them. But the silence was too much, and he worried that Eddie would hear his racing heart if it went on too long.
"Why did you call me?" he asked. "I mean, Mike's still in town, and I'm pretty sure Bev went back to New York with Ben. Stan's in Chicago, I think, and—"
"I know where everyone lives, asshole, I was there when we talked about it."
"Oh, that was you?"
Eddie elbowed his ribs, and Richie smiled, despite himself.
"Well the point is, I could've been a few thousand miles away, and you were stranded."
"Yeah, but you weren't thousands of miles away, so it's fine," Eddie said, shifting again.
"But you didn't know that." Richie risked a glance at him, and regretted it instantly when his heart did a wild little dance. The lamp sat on Eddie's other side, casting him in a soft orange halo of light. "So, why me?"
Eddie was silent for several moments, staring at the ceiling like a message was hidden in the plaster. And then he said, quietly, "You were the only one I thought of."
Richie didn't want to overthink that, but he knew he was going to. "Oh."
Silence stretched again. Richie let it sit for long enough that he could safely assume Eddie was asleep before saying more.
"Y'know, just for the record, I would have come no matter what. Even if I was all the way back in LA. I'd always come back for you, Eds."
He was just starting to think he was in the clear when Eddie let out a sharp breath and clutched at his sleeve.
"I love you, Richie."
The erratic beating of Richie's heart stopped cold. He turned to look at Eddie, but his eyes were screwed shut, spilling tears from the corners.
"Fuck," he whispered. This night was getting more and more unreal by the hour. In one careful motion, he tugged his sleeve out of Eddie's grip and reached for his hand. "Y'know, Eds, that'd be a lot more flattering if you weren't crying about it."
Eddie's eyes snapped open in horror. God, they were beautiful. Big, and brown, and sparkling even when he was furious.
Especially when he was furious.
"Are you fucking serious right now?" he hissed. "You're gonna joke about this? You know what, never mind, I fucking hate you."
"Aw, c'mon, Eddie Spaghetti, don't be like that."
"Fuck you," he fired back as he fought to tug his hand away and roll over. Richie laughed and hooked an arm over him, pulling him close.
"Hey now, you're the one who wanted me to share a bed with you, the least you could do is cuddle."
"Let go, Richie." Eddie wriggled, but Richie held him tight. Fuck that, he wasn't planning on letting go for at least a few weeks, if ever. "I swear to god, I'll kick you in the dick."
"Don't do that, I might need it later."
"Yeah right. Like I'd ever want to get anywhere near your unwashed junk."
Richie hummed thoughtfully. "I don't think I said anything about needing it for you, Eds."
Eddie stopped squirming abruptly and turned to face Richie, which was unfortunate, since Richie was trying to banter and Eddie's eyes always left him speechless.
"Shut up, Richie," he whispered, and his breath brushed across Richie's mouth a moment before his lips did.
Richie had figured that if this really was a dream, this would be the moment he would wake up. That was how it always worked when he dreamt of Eddie, ever since they were kids. A kiss would build up between them like static, and he would startle awake with a pounding, aching heart, and a cold sweat on his brow. The cycle of his entire repressed childhood.
But he didn't wake up now. Eddie's lips moved against his, hungry and hesitant at the same time, and it was so much better than any dream. Richie sighed into it, letting thirty years of wanting unfold in his chest, letting the last two weeks wash away. It didn't matter anymore. Not with Eddie here, alive, and kissing the breath right out of his lungs.
Not when Eddie loved him.
By the time they pulled away from each other, Eddie's eyes would hardly open. Richie smiled, and even though he couldn't see it, he could tell how ridiculously soft it made him look.
"Wow," he murmured. "You should come back from the dead more often, Kaspbrak."
Eddie managed to roll his eyes before they drifted shut again. He gave a weary grunt, and offered no further comment. Richie watched him for a moment, but he was struggling to keep his own eyes open, and Eddie was warm against his chest, and he was happy for the first time in weeks—in years.
Just before he fell asleep, he reached up and pressed a kiss to Eddie's forehead.
"I love you, too, by the way," he whispered. "Always have."
And as he drifted off, Eddie held him just a little bit tighter.