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When Richie is released from the deadlights, he hits the ground with such force that he’s sure he’s got a concussion. There’s a resounding CRACK! echoing through the cavern, and his vision is swimming; his chest is heaving, there’s a metallic, bloody taste in his mouth, but he can hear Eddie’s voice. He’s nearby, he’s somewhere nearby, that’s all Richie can tell. That’s enough, he thinks; Eddie is nearby and I’m still alive and that’s enough. Before he has a chance to fully begin to process anything, up to and including that throbbing pain on the back of his head or the ache in his left ankle, Eddie comes into his line of vision, all frantic energy and high-pitched excitement.
“Rich! Oh! Rich! Hey, Rich, wake up! Hey!” Richie hears as Eddie runs to his side and starts shaking him. “Yeah, yeah, there he is buddy! Hey, Richie, listen, I think I got him, man! I think I killed It! I did! I think I killed It for rea--”
Eddie’s words are cut off as It pierces through his chest with one of his spindly spider-like legs, and Richie is suddenly awake. He’s wide awake and he’s terrified and he doesn’t know what to do. All he can think is that he didn’t have enough time. All he wants is more time, enough time, however much time it would take for him to have had his fill of Eddie in his life. He hasn’t had enough time and he doesn’t know what to do.
The rest of the battle is a blur, with only a few moments scattered throughout actually sticking in Richie’s memory; only a few moments matter enough to him that he remembers them hours later, as he stands in front of a sink in the visitor bathroom of the hospital trying to scrape Eddie’s blood out from under his nails. He can still hear Eddie’s wheezing breaths, he can feel the warmth of his blood oozing out of his chest, he can smell the damp cavern and the blood and the rotting stench of death, and he scrubs and scrubs and scrubs. He scrubs until his fingers are raw, until Ben comes into the room to check on him and gently pulls his hands out from under the water and wraps them up in his own, pulling him close and holding him tight.
Eddie was talking, was making stupid jokes, and then he pulled Richie close like he was about to utter some benediction meant only for Richie’s ears, and Riche still isn’t sure if it was real or if it was what he desperately wanted to hear. He could have sworn Eddie had brushed his hand across his face with as much pressure as he could muster, which was no more than the minimal amount to make sure Richie felt it, and Richie could swear, would swear, did swear that what he heard Eddie whisper was I love you. The three words Richie had longed to hear come tumbling from Eddie’s lips since they were thirteen and he first thought he knew what love was. So maybe he heard it. Maybe he didn’t. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Eddie is in surgery. He’s alive. He’s nearby. And maybe they have more time. Maybe they’ll get to have more time. Maybe…
Ben pulls him out of the bathroom when someone starts knocking incessantly; it’s Beverly, and she has a straight face on, but there’s something manic in her eyes, and Richie clings tighter to Ben’s hand, reaching out for one of hers, letting them pull him toward the waiting room where a doctor is murmuring softly to Mike and Bill. Richie doesn’t hear a word that is said, doesn’t hear the full diagnosis; all he hears, all he registers is alive and ICU and touch-and-go. He doesn’t hear the doctor ask about next-of-kin, doesn’t hear the words major blood loss or what in the hell did this?
He doesn’t hear anything, he doesn’t process anything. He just clings to Ben and Beverly and represses the shivers that try to force their way through his body. He stands there and he clings and he doesn’t move until the doctor walks away; he hears the words visit him later, once his family has arrived, and watches the doctor turn his back and walk down the hall, and Richie drops Ben and Beverly’s hands, collapses into the nearest chair, puts his head in his hands, and sobs.
Bill and Mike drop into the chairs on either side of him, while Ben and Beverly sit side by side in front of his legs, leaning back against him. Nobody says anything because there’s nothing to be said; Bill takes one of Richie’s hands in his own, Beverly leans her head against his knee, Mike runs a soothing hand down his spine, and Ben gently grasps his other hand. Richie’s sobs eventually subside to gentle tears, and shivers tear their way through his body as he tries to calm himself down. A couple of hours pass when they hear something that shocks them all enough that they spring to their feet.
Richie could swear he was hearing Sonia Kaspbrak’s shrill, over-protective screech from beyond the grave, and it instilled a fear in him not even Pennywise had achieved; he had never once understood the phrase blood run cold, but he thinks he might now as he watches the woman who can only be Myra Kaspbrak come into view, screaming at the nurses to take her to “my Eddie! Where is my Eddie?”
Richie physically recoils at the sight of her, immediately moving himself behind Ben and Mike, afraid to look in her direction for too long should she decide to make eye-contact with him. He knows deep in his bones that Eddie marrying a carbon copy of his mother is likely something to do with the curse Pennywise seemed to put on their entire fucking lives, but seeing Myra in the flesh is so dramatically different from teasing Eddie that he married his mother. Something about it is too real, too reminiscent of his childhood, and he’s thankful Ben and Mike can sense this; they’ve repositioned themselves so that Richie is entirely hidden behind them, and he takes a shaky breath to try and convince himself that he’s fine, that he’s not thirteen anymore, that Sonia Kaspbrak isn’t risen from the dead to scream at him that he’s bad, wrong, dirty, or going to ruin her Eddie.
In fact, Myra seems barely to register their presence in the waiting room at all; she simply screeches at the nurses and follows them to Eddie’s room. It’s several hours of hiding and pacing and waiting before she reemerges, and it’s then that she finally seems to notice them.
“You!” she half-screams. “You people did this to my Eddie, you’re the ones who dragged him into all of this and made him leave me alone. You did this!”
Richie is still too stunned by her resemblance to Sonia that he can’t do much beyond gape at her like a fucking fish out of water, but Beverly….beautiful, fiery, tired of all the bullshit Beverly has had enough, it seems.
“Mrs. Kaspbrak, we are very sorry for what has happened to Eddie, but before you dare to pass judgement on things you do not understand, here’s a piece of advice - shut the FUCK up.”
Myra stares at Beverly, frozen in place, before scrunching her face in disgust and storming out of the hospital entirely. There’s a beat of silence, in which Richie makes eye contact with Bill, Ben makes eye-contact with Mike, and Beverly takes a deep breath before all five of them burst out cackling simultaneously. Richie throws his arms around Bev’s waist and lifts her, swinging her in a circle as her laughter grows louder. “Did I ever tell you you’re my hero?” he sings, loud and off-key, as the rest of the group dramatically bow before her when Richie sets her back down.
“Seriously,” Mike starts, “Bev, that was -”
“Incredible,” Ben finishes. Richie nods approvingly, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, and Bill just silently bows when Bev looks his way.
The doctor comes back to them at that moment, and they all fall silent immediately. “Mr. Kaspbrak is awake,” he says, taking off his glasses and tucking them into his coat pocket. “I am unclear on the details but he has removed Mrs. Kaspbrak as his next-of-kin and replaced her with a Mr. Richard Tozier. Is he present?”
It’s as though everyone moves in slow motion, turning to look at Richie, who just dumbly raises his hand. “I’m Richie Tozier,” he says, as though the gesture and stares weren’t obvious enough.
The doctor nods, and waves his hand as he turns. “Mr. Kaspbrak is asking for you.”
Richie looks at the others, surprisingly calm, and shrugs. “Guess I’ll see you guys in a bit,” he says, and follows the doctor down the hallway toward the ICU. The strange sense of calm that overtook him at the doctor’s words is quickly replaced by anxiety racing through his body the closer they get to the room; his heart is racing, he feels nauseous, his palms are sweaty, and his breathing has gone shallow. The doctor turns one last corner, opens a door, walks past a curtain, and Richie follows.
There, lying on the bed, looking beautifully, mercifully, unbelievably alive is Eddie. When Richie comes into view, Eddie smiles, and Richie feels the weight of the last twenty-seven years lift off his shoulders all in the span of a single heartbeat. Eddie is alive and smiling and there’s color in his cheeks and a fresh bandage on his face to match the one on his chest and he’s fucking alive. The doctor explains that Eddie looks like he’ll be making a full recovery, but that they need to be careful, and he’ll be in the hospital another several days if not a full week, just to be safe. Richie barely processes any of it, never once tears his eyes away from Eddie, and the second the doctor walks out, he lets out a shaky breath.
“So,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “You put me as your next-of-kin?”
Eddie’s face pinches into a familiar disgruntled look. “Yeah. Myra came in right as I woke up and started crying and whining about me leaving her behind and running off to help complete strangers and how could I worry her like that and blah fucking blah. I just couldn’t take one more fucking second, so I told her to leave.”
“And, what? She just did? She doesn’t strike me as the type to just do what you say immediately or without question.”
“She’s not. It took a lot of yelling, actually. And, well. I think the thing that finally convinced her was me yelling that I was gay and had been in love with my childhood best friend since we were thirteen,” Eddie says, casual as can be; his face betrays nothing, but Richie knows him well enough to recognize the fear in his eyes. He thinks his own must mirror the same fear.
“Yeah? And she bought that?”
“Rich,” Eddie says softly.
“What, Eds? What? You’re telling me you really said what I think you said down there?” Richie asks, a little louder than he intended.
“Richie - ”
“Look, Eds. I’m giving you an out. Okay? You thought you were dying and I’m giving you an out. You can take it back.”
Eddie sighs and pushes himself into a more upright position. “Richie,” he says, raising his voice when it looks like he’s going to be interrupted again. “No, Richie, right now is my turn. You’re going to let me have my turn and I’m going to say my piece and then it’ll be your turn because if you don’t let me have my turn I’m going to have to yell and it really fucking hurts my goddamn chest with a gaping whole in it when I fucking yell.”
Richie shuts his mouth and leans against the doorframe. “Fine. It’s your turn.”
Eddie takes a deep breath. “For my entire childhood, I had to live by the choices of my mother. The woman who forced me to take fake medications and convinced me I was allergic to every fucking thing in the world decided my entire life. And then a fucking space clown put a goddamn curse on me and took away all of my memories of that town and that life, and I wound up marrying someone who was exactly like her, and then every choice in my life was hers. There was not one choice that was mine. But now? Now that fucking clown is dead, my fucking mother is dead, and I am divorcing my wife. I’m alive, my memories are back, and I get to be like everybody else. I get to make my own decisions, have my own life, do whatever the damn hell I choose. Now here’s the good part, so you listen and you listen fucking good, Tozier. What I choose is you. I would have chosen you twenty-seven years ago if I could have. You’re who I want to wake up with and go to bed with and do everything in between with. I get a choice now. I get to choose you. I choose you, Richie. I love you, I’ve loved you, I’m going to keep loving you. Because nobody can fucking stop me anymore.” He pauses to take a breath, and says, “Okay. It’s your turn now, Rich.”
Richie feels like his soul has left his body, like the oxygen has left the room, like maybe he’s still in the deadlights; his body is practically vibrating from the terror, and he opens his mouth to speak, when suddenly he just....runs. He turns, and bolts, running from the room, stumbling through the halls and not stopping until he slams into Ben.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what’s going on? How’s Eddie?”
Richie stares at Ben blankly for a second before he just tosses his head back and laughs. He laughs and laughs and laughs and just looks at Ben and says, “He loves me. He fucking loves me. I’ve been in love with the asshole for three decades and he tells me now that he loves me.”
Ben grins widely at Richie and pulls him in for a hug. “Rich, that’s great!”
Richie hugs Ben back and nods. “Yeah, it really fucking is.” He pauses, pulling back slightly to look at Ben with a panicked expression. “Oh god. I didn’t say it back. I just...ran out of the room.”
Ben pulls all the way out of Richie’s hold and smacks his arm hard enough to hurt but gentle enough to not bruise. “What the fuck, Richie?! Go! Go tell him!”
Richie laughs, smacks Ben back, and turns around, running back to Eddie’s room. He bursts in, chest heaving, eyes wild, full of frantic energy. “Okay, it’s my turn, right? It’s still my turn?”
Eddie smiles, something soft and private; a smile Richie has only seen a few times in his life. “Yeah, Rich. It’s your turn.”
Richie smiles back, and takes a deep breath. “So…”
That night, a nurse comes in to change Eddie’s bandages; the Losers have all gone to a hotel nearby to clean up and rest and regroup, save Richie, who is curled up on the armchair next to Eddie’s bed, snoring lightly. Eddie is watching him, smiling softly, as the nurse does her job; when she goes to leave, he calls out for her attention. “I tricked him into marrying me,” he says quietly, not wanting to wake Richie. “How smart am I?”