Archive of Our Own ^beta

No pain should feel like this, not after what Eddie’s been through. It feels downright good.

His middle is full, like the happy-hearted ache of eating too much candy. He opens his eyes and strains to lift his head- but not for long. After a moment it’s easy. When he looks down he can see that he’s still been speared through, but where he should be pouring with gore he bleeds only light. It radiates out of him, casting out into black nothingness, even inkier than the cavern where he died. Smoother. There were edges there, but here the light meets no craggy wall or dripping rock. It reaches out toward a single shining red dot on the horizon, if there is such a thing as a horizon here. A morning star, if there is a time of day.

Eddie’s light politely dwindles as he gets to his feet. It seals itself inside again as the ache finally fades. With nothing else to see or feel, he moves towards that little red spot. He wants to touch it. He could pick it out of the vastness where it hangs and pop it in his mouth. He wants nothing more than to meet it, as it grows larger and clearer and yet takes no shape. Somehow, he knows it wants to introduce itself to him even more urgently. So, he thinks, somewhat relieved to know he can think, This is death. Meeting an eternal M&M.

H̵͎̝̫̺̫̪͖̗̟̊̎e̸̮̙̼͎͂̈l̸̛̦̐l̷̪̻̉͝ö̵̗̈́̄͆̅̋͆̑͂̽ ̸̛̼͚͍̓͑̽̈̍̀̌̈́͛Ẽ̸̹̯̹̳̣͗d̵̡̯̱͙̙͕͍͈͛͒̐̌̒͑ḍ̴̫̰̘̮͍͑̒̃̇̄̃͒͜͝i̴̯̟̲̪̹͙͆̽̾͌̈͋̋̐̚͜e̵̖̔̂̌͂̀ͅ

Instead of white gloved cartoon hands, it forms limbs then, unfurling in silhouette. It raises its head from broad shoulders, though no features appear, at first. Then it cracks a grin. That alone is enough to give it away.

It’s Richie.

“Oh sure, you already made my childhood a living hell,” Eddie rolls his eyes. “This makes perfect fucking sense.”

The flash of his grin disappears into a pout, and then there Richie is, all right. His shirt is red with a small yellow pattern instead of the other way around, but otherwise he’s dressed exactly as Eddie left him. Schubbly jacket, scruffy face.

“Way to spoil the reveal, dude.”

“Yeah, my heart literally bleeds for you. At least you’re still alive, asshole.” Then Eddie second guesses himself, but there’s nowhere here to withdraw, nowhere to hide from his sudden fear. Even when he tries to look away, he’s still somehow always facing him. “Shit. Aren’t you? Is he?”

“Your Richie is alive,” Richie says, which is- not very reassuring to hear in its third-personedness, actually, because Eddie is in Hell, and Hell was apparently directed by Robert Zemeckis.

“Then why Richie?” Eddie demands, his bluster at least restored.

“Why not?” Not Richie vogues a few poses. “He’s a handsome devil, don’t you think?”

Yikes, has this guy miscalculated. Eddie crosses his arms, unimpressed. “So. Are you supposed to be like, my Virgil or some shit? A manifestation of my dark side? Satan himself? What ?”

This guy’s a fucking amateur. Already forgetting the laser focus enforced by this place, Eddie tries to spin on his heel like he’s scanning a Whole Foods for a store manager, but it only makes him stumble closer to Not Richie, who grins. Eddie fumes right in his face.

“What ever the fuck you are, miss me with that Oh, I took the form that we thought would be most comforting to you bullshit, devildick. Richie’s been pissing me off for thirty goddamned years. You blew it!”

Not Richie beams down at him with a giggle. “You are...” he spreads his hands at Eddie. “Totally breathtaking. A wrathful wet dream.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Nice guy,” Not Richie waves offhandedly. “But you, you little monster. You’d fit riiiight in here. If you want to stay, that is.”

“If?” Eddie frowns. He’s still warming up to the idea of an afterlife, but if it’s anything like the one they prepped him for in Sunday school, they don’t just hand out ifs. Especially not the basement staff.

“Well, I’m gonna level with you, Eds, Can I call you-”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Well, sparky,” Not Richie barrels on, “You might have noticed a certain little extra-dimensional intrusion while you were-”

“Yeah,” Eddie scoffs. “The fucking twenty foot tall demon spider did in fact catch my eye as it killed me.”

“Not a demon,” Not Richie winces.

“Not the point.”

“No,” Not Richie agrees. He straightens up, appearing as businesslike as Richie Tozier’s likeness can. “The point is- It was cramping our universe's style and you, mi amigo, curb stomped it. We owe you big time.”

“We?” Eddie points out a finger from his crossed arms, up and down... both? Not Richie nods. “Then why am I dealing with you, if this was such a fucking victory for Earth or whatever?” Eddie asks. “Isn’t like, God the authority?”

“Do you know how many people you recommended Eat, Pray, Love to, Kaspbrak? We’ve got first right of refusal.”

Eddie groans. “Myra made me join a fucking book club!” If this is the draft criteria, Hell must be full of pussies. Now he’s verging on being insulted he got picked first for dodge ball.

Not Richie steps back and considers his fingernails. “You can have your boring ol’ eternal reward if you’d prefer to be dead and can’t get enough of Now That’s What I Call Harps. By all means, dude.” He huffs on his fingers and then polishes on his shirt front. “I’ll call upstairs, no sweat. I just figured since you’d only just realized what a waste your life was, you might like a do-over.”

Ever since Eddie’s light plugged itself back inside where it belongs he hasn’t really felt his body properly, but now he has a pit of his stomach again, and it’s sinking. Maybe the score keeping around here leaves something to be desired, but he can’t help but agree he’s been cheated. He came back to Derry and every lie he’d ever told himself to make life bearable was stripped away. He wasn’t really a natural loner. He had friends once who meant more to him than his family ever had. The hours of pointless overtime he spent in the office thinking it was preferable to sitting around ‘enjoying himself’ at home were lies, too. He had a sense of home and a bone deep, gut wrenching longing for it, and it was with them.

“A do-over?” Eddie asks. “What, like? Of the battle?” Would that even be worth it? His life was ruined long before he returned to Derry, it turns out. “Or,” he ventures, “-everything.”

“If you wish.” A light gleams in Not Richie’s eyes, and now Eddie realizes they’re not the right color, flickering between red and yellow like flame. The uncanny effect should make him harder to look at but it doesn’t. Not Richie shrugs. “You can scrap the whole thing. Grow up in New Mexico or Zanzibar or the fucking gorilla enclosure at the Bronx Zoo, see if I care!”

“You must, or you wouldn’t be offering,” Eddie points out. A resurrection is a hell of a free lunch, and Ma always said there’s no such thing. Then he realizes. “Your guys don’t want me here.”

Not Richie reaches out and taps Eddie on the tip of the nose. “Of course we do, you’re infuriating,” he coos.

Eddie bats his hand away. “How’re you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm when they hear about Eddie the fucking demon killer, huh?”

The smile on Not Richie’s face drops into a sullen line. “It wasn’t a demon-”

“No.” Eddie bites. “It was much scarier.”

The gulp that forces its way down Not Richie’s throat says it all.

Eddie crosses his arms again. “I dunno. It seems like a lot of hassle, going through puberty again. Getting a Master’s all over. Saving up for a house and redoing all the fucking floors... I might be better off here, running circles around your fuckwit ass.”

“Hey,” Not Richie objects feebly.

Eddie just laughs in his face. “You’re already trying to buy me off and I haven’t even offered my fucking soul!” Eddie will come right out and say it. Faust was a chump. Come into any negotiation already having killed an extra-dimensional entity, it's a much stronger bargaining position, bro. Eddie squares up, very nearly chest to chest with his adversary, perhaps The Adversary. “Go ahead then, asshole. What’s your best deal? Why shouldn’t I stay here and wreck your whole shop?”

Not Richie shivers. How is this the guy they sent to fend off Eddie? He looks about ready to break a sweat. “Thirteen wishes,” he says. “You can go back, and you can make your life whatever you want it to be.”

“Thirteen? What, is there a fucking fire sale?” Eddie must really have his game face on. He was expecting to be lowballed with a classic three wishes, and work his way up to an auspicious seven. He really only has the one change in mind, for now, but he’ll come up with something. Thirteen wishes. He could blow a few on being a little taller or bringing the Dodgers back to New York, for fucks’ sake.

“Thirteen wishes, in return for the service you’ve already rendered.”

“No soul?” Eddie checks. Not that he knows what he’s doing with his, or if it’s all a con anyway.

Not Richie shrugs. “Like you said, dude. Demon-killer soul is hot stuff. Maybe in another forty some-odd years, when we’re equipped to handle it.”

Eddie looks at his face, as sincere as Richie’s on the instance he was giving being a jerk a break. He’s wired like him, all right. And stupid though it may be, Eddie’s wired to trust Richie when it comes down to it. He might be a bonehead, but he would never hurt Eddie on purpose.

“Okay,” Eddie agrees and holds out his hand.

“Thank fuck,” Not Richie exhales, shaking it. “Now that’s over, let’s get you a fuckin’ life.” He claps his hands together, and everything (or rather, the nothing) around them changes.

They’re standing in the dark cavern below Neibolt again, but there’s no It, no sign of the Losers except for Richie’s jacket, suddenly clamped in Eddie’s hands over his stomach. He peels it away from himself, ready for the grisly sight, but his shirt and his body beneath are whole. He then feels his cheek, but that doesn’t sting to the touch, either.

“So, I’m alive now?” he says, feeling a little underwhelmed.

“Ta da!” Not Richie dances his hands.

“Right, so, how does this work? What do I say when I want to make a wish? There’s got to be some kind of fail safe, or I’ll just go around bitching about the weather and wasting them all.”

“Shucks, I was hoping you’d take a little bit longer to work that out,” Not Richie admits. “I hate it here, I never get to have any fun.” He sticks his hands in his pockets and kicks a stone. It skitters across the rough floor of the cistern, the notes of it’s clonking uncomfortably close to the opening ‘Sympathy for the Devil’. 

Eddie clears his throat. “You’ll cope. So?”

Not Richie looks back at Eddie. “All right, all right. Wishes’ll only count when spoken directly to me. Happy?”

“Ecstatic. But that means I’ll still need a way to summon you,” Eddie reasons. He watches Not Richie pull a phone out of his pocket. “Unless you text?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to depend on Hell’s 5G. Can’t download porn for shit,” he says, furiously swiping away what must be a deluge of notifications, now that he’s topside. “We’ll do it the old fashioned way.”

Eddie takes a wild shot in the dark. “Want me to draw a pentagram?”

Not Richie looks up from his phone at Eddie and covers his heart (if he has one). “That’s adorable. You’re adorable. Did your Richie ever tell you how adorable you are, doodling your sidewalk chalk pictures?”

Eddie’s not going to admit that he has many a fond summer memory of crawling around the Tozier's driveway, scorching his knees on hot asphalt with Richie. That doesn’t belong to this Richie, and neither does he.

“Fuck you,” he barks. “Stop jerking me around and tell me what to say.”

“Well, it shouldn’t be anything you’d say by accident, so ‘Fuck you, Richie’ certainly isn’t gonna do it...”

“How about Wow, Richie, you’re brilliant,” Eddie gasps mockingly.

“That’s not bad,” Not Richie says, considering. He turns around his phone screen to Eddie. “But you have said that, historically.” A stream of dates and times in the Eighties and Nineties fly by on some kind of hellacious databank before he whips the phone back into his pocket. Then, in a movement more graceful than Eddie’s own Richie could manage, he crowds Eddie, with those flamebright eyes gleaming. “How about... I love you, Richie? You’ve never said that before.”

Eddie sighs. “I guess that’d work. Who fucking cares?” He has people to resurrect, things to do. “Can I tell you my wish already, or do you need me to get on my fucking knees first?”

Not Richie’s eyebrows shoot up. “If you’re offering-”

“I wish Stan had lived,” Eddie says, not waiting.

Bare minimum, he’s getting his family back.

-

It has always been like this.

He was late getting to Derry, but he came just in time for the battle. Stan dusts Neibolt debris off of himself and sits in the open hatchback of his Subaru to trade his boots for some clean shoes. He offers Eddie a beach towel and takes the emergency blanket for himself, so they don’t get the seats wet as they drive back to the Townhouse. There are a pair of women's sunglasses tucked into the sun visor, and a handful of bobby pins and hair ties in the change tray, and when Eddie searches the glove compartment for some kleenex to blow the gunk out of his nose, an array of cosmetics. He spies some tweezers stashed among them.

“Mind if I-? I got a splinter under my nail, hurts like a bitch.”

“We could stop at the emergency room if it’s really serious,” Stan nods.

Eddie shoves back an avalanche of tampons before he tries to tend to his finger. “So you share your car, huh?”

He can’t imagine it. His car is His Car. Fuck constantly adjusting the driver's seat, the mirrors, and the radio tuned to Myra’s insipid pop stations. He’d go ballistic if he ever found one of her bottles of nail polish in his cup holder, let alone saw evidence of a slip up. There's a bright pink splotch on the steering wheel between Stan's hands at ten and two, where she must have been painting her nails while waiting out traffic.

“Well, we have home offices, when only one of us needs to go in,” Stan shrugs. “If we both do, she’ll usually drop me off first then head to work. Everywhere else- except here, anyway, we usually go together.”

Eddie shudders. “I can’t deal with Myra when I’m driving.”

“Okay,” says Stan, in his placid way.

“Okay?” Eddie knows he sounds like a fucking asshole. Can’t deal with Myra. Mr. Wifeguy here shouldn’t just let him off the hook for that.

“No offence Eddie, but I wouldn’t be dying to share a car with you, either.”

That’s probably fair. Eddie sighs and squeezes his finger, trying to get the sliver as close to the surface as possible. “So does Patty have any idea what you’re doing here?”

Stan hums. “I put her on speaker phone for a while when I was driving up. Told her everything-”

“Everything? ”

“Everything I could remember, at that point, anyway,” he allows. “Which honestly, I... almost pulled off and turned around, hearing myself say it all out loud, but she- she said it was the right thing. To help you guys.”

“She believed you? Shit.”

Sure, they’re all dreading having to account for their sudden departures from their regular lives. Most of them have precarious contracts and professional burdens, employees and the like who they left in the lurch. It doesn’t sound like Bev has any intention of seeing her husband without a lawyer, ever again, but him and Bill, though. They’ve got some ‘splaining to do, while Stan got a head start. You can’t be married to someone and not tell them about all the childhood trauma you’re suddenly vividly aware of, and the near death experience you just hopscotched your ass out of. That shit changes people. It’s noticeable. It’s worrying. And Myra already worries about shit no one needs to worry about. It’s exhausting. Is the temperature right in the car? Eddie will dry out his sinuses. Is Waze selling his data? What if they track when he speeds, why is he speeding? What does keeping with the flow of traffic have to do with it, Eddie Bear? Fuck, if he could get away without ever bringing it up to her, he would. If he needs to talk about it, he has the Losers on speed dial now. Failing that, a fucking therapist.

“I think if I explained before I left, Patty would have packed her gardening shears and come with me,” says Stan.

“You married up, dude.” Eddie digs at his nail bed. Luckily Patricia Uris has the really pointy kind of tweezers that are as good as a needle. He’d happily hack off his finger with her nail file though, if that was the price that had to be paid to send her husband home.

Eddie thinks about her, this woman he’s never met, when he’s on his flight back to New York and the woman sitting next to him has on sparkly pink nail polish. He thinks about what it must be like to willingly share things with someone instead of living in a decade long game of Keep Away. He thinks about how if he had died in Derry, it wouldn’t upset him one way or the other whether or not Myra cried. He thinks about Stan and Patty Uris when he stands at the door of his house, his hands full with his luggage. He already hit the bell and he can hear Myra calling his name on her way to come let him in- and by let him in, he means trap him. Seal him in like he’s been condemned to be buried alive. She is going to freak the fuck out because of the way he left, and she will be up his ass 24/7, grilling him about what happened and flinging all kinds of accusations when Eddie claims there’s nothing tell.

He knows how brave he is now. He could take it. He could hear out her anger that he most definitely deserves for marrying someone he fought tooth and nail to keep himself separate from in the first place. And then, he could tell her it's over and pick up his bags and turn right back around- but honestly? Fuck that.

“I love you, Richie,” he huffs, like he’s giving in to taking out the recycling after being nagged.

Eddie’s front door opens, but instead of Myra, red and angry, it’s Not Richie, even redder. He looks like he pulled his latest outfit’s inspiration from her closet- a neat tracksuit over a floral patterned tee that on closer examination shapes into a hollow eyed skull.

What a fucking tool.

“Honey, you’re home,” Not Richie purrs, palming a stemless glass of wine.

Eddie tries to look past his shoulder to see what’s become of Myra, but then realizes he doesn’t really care. Not Richie leans against the door frame and blocks him, anyway. “Is there any point in me bringing in my suitcase? No, right?” He lets go of his things and pushes past, into the house.

Not Richie follows along into the living room and sits on the coffee table across from where Eddie collapses. “It’s sweet that you missed me already, Eddie, but I did think I was off the clock for the day. You’ll have to ex-squeeze me,” he apologizes, and then he throws back the rest of his drink.

How the lowercase hell does uppercase Hell have better hours than his firm? Eddie peers at Not Richie curiously. “Can you even get drunk?”

“Anything Richie can do, I can do wetter,” Not Richie winks. “Up to and including chew crackers and whistle at the same time.”

“What about the stuff Richie can’t do, like shut the fuck up?”

Not Richie crosses his legs and props his chin in one hand, chuckling. “I can do that. If you want to sit quietly and make goo goo eyes at each other all night, that won’t even cost you a wish,” he says. “But I’ll bet you’ve got something more exciting in mind.”

Eddie settles in a little more comfortably and nods. “Avoiding lawyers. Though maybe that’s the opposite of fun for you.”

“Those jags?” Not Richie blows a raspberry.

Eddie snickers. “But if I add a new wish, Stan will still be alive, right?” He has to make sure.

“Yup. As long as a new wish doesn’t contradict an old wish, they’ll stack like coupons.”

“Then I wish I was divorced,” Eddie says, right to the point.

-

“Well, gentlemen, I think we’ve reached a settlement,” says the lawyer sitting opposite Eddie. He can’t look up at her. The sooner this is done, the sooner he can never think about it again, and not having a lingering visual will do wonders for his recall ability. He fixates instead on the pen in his hand that he just signed with, the wood grain of the conference table, the swish of the stack of papers being distributed to the necessary parties.

Then there’s a little whimper. A little noise so pitiful, Eddie would have to be made of stone not to react. He looks up across the table at Richie, covering his mouth with one hand to muffle another hiccuping sob.

“What is-” Eddie looks around. “What is he doing?” He doesn’t see Myra in the room, or her lawyer/sister-in-law. He turns to his own lawyer. “Is this to get more money? Does Myra want more money, so she dug up people to tell lies about me?”

“Mr. Kaspbrak-”

How could Richie do that? How could he play along with this? He’s Eddie’s friend! The best friend Eddie ever had!

“Myra,” Richie wails. “Who the fuck is Myra?”

“Mr. Tozier-”

The tears are flowing freely now, and Richie keeps batting his glasses painfully into his face as he wipes and weeps. “Is that what this is really about? You’re cheating? If you’ve been cheating then you can take this deal and stick it up your ass!”

“Woah,” Eddie holds up his hands. “No, no, Richie. There’s no one else. I just-”

Richie stops trying to fight his water works. He clutches at Eddie’s hand across the table. “Please, Eds, please. It doesn’t have to be like this. I know- I know it’s too much with the press and the jokes about you, I hear you, I hear you now. I’ll stop. Just say the word and I’ll stop and we can- I’ll quit and we can move to Nowheresville, Montana and I’ll wear a fucking paperbag over my head in public, Eds, I swear. Please,” he quavers. “I love you.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Eddie realizes.

He should have expected the fucking devil to toy with him a little bit, really.

He runs the mental math. At least he’s free of Myra, but now- shit. No. He can’t ride this out. He’ll never be able to be friends with Richie again after this, and considering Richie’s pathetic display, the Losers will not be taking his side on this one.

Mustering all the care he has for his and Richie’s friendship, be it a hold over from here or otherwise, Eddie pats his hand gently. Richie's always been more sensitive than he let on to other people. It’s not his fault he’s been pranked like this. “I love you, Richie,” Eddie says, to let him off the hook.

Everyone else in the room snaps out of reality, and Richie shifts. Not Richie wipes one last tear away from under a fiery eye.

Eddie drops his hand, disgusted. “Change it! You fucked this up on purpose!”

Not Richie pushes back from the table and spins his wheely chair around in a circle. “Ain’t I a stinker?”

“His heart was broken.”

“Masterful use of the passive voice there, Eddie. By whom?”

“You, fuckwad!” Eddie shouts. “You made me do that. I don’t want to be married to Richie.”

“Then I guess that’s why you’re getting a divorce.” Not Richie stops spinning and grins at him. “Just fork over the beach house you bought for your anniversary and you’ll be a free agent again, dude!”

Eddie can’t bring himself to ask how long this had been going on if there were anniversaries and jointly purchased houses in the mix. He can’t get over the first road block in that mental path.

“We’re not even gay! How did this happen?!”

“Speak for yourself, Brando, but as a Richie facsimile-”

“Oh, that’s fucking homophobic,” Eddie sneers.

Not Richie puzzles. “What is? Being gay?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Making the literal goddamned devil gay, yeah.”

Not Richie scratches his head. “'Goddamned’, sure, but ‘literal’ is kind of a clumsy way to-” he cuts off his own semantic argument. “Look, Richie being gay made me gay, not some idiot in a writer’s room who’s never even heard of a GLAAD award.”

Well. That’s news to Eddie.

“Then this was just plain mean!” he says, at a loss for anything more cutting. Because he deserves a little misery. Richie doesn’t, but this is what Eddie gets for general insensitivity and trying to skip over the dirty work of ending a marriage. He’s not the only asshole in the room, though. “You stole my wish,” he grumbles at Not Richie.

“Then make a new one, I dunno what else to tell you, dude!”

Eddie thinks. No one has to get their heart dragged through the mud of loving him by devilish decree or otherwise if he just... never loves.

“I wish I never married, never got that serious. With anyone.”

-

Eddie can see it coming from a mile away, but Ma hasn’t caught on yet. Her favorite character is getting written off her show. She won’t hold a grudge, though. He’s putting family first - that’s even the title of the episode, and that’s the only excuse that she can ever wrap her head around. At some point Eddie got tired of trying to make all the others. Self improvement, independence, happiness- none of that weighed against moving back home and taking care of her.

Like many people meeting his particular description of isolation, Eddie has a twitter where he doesn’t say much. It’s mostly just to keep an eye on the news outside of the narrow slice of perspective of the pundits Ma prefers. Judging by the trends, he might have to co-opt the remote as soon as NCIS is over, and insist on a movie instead of checking in on Nightly. Just a day after their blow out over him attempting an unannounced trip to Maine, there’s a story breaking in their old neck of the woods that even the New York stations are bound to pick up. Considering that just the mention of Eddie’s being in Derry resulted in him prying a 911 call out of her hands, this hometown bloodbath is sure to send her into one of her spells of paranoia.

Eddie shuffles around through the shelf of DVDs under the TV, doing his best to keep from obstructing her view.

“Eddie, Eddie be careful, your knees!”

“They’re fine Ma.”

“You run too much for your knees. You don’t need to run, Eddie. Daddy never ran to keep in shape. He did his exercises in the house where it was safe.”

“I run at the gym, Ma, it’s safe. No cars.”

That’s a lie, but she hasn’t left the house since the Costa Concordia shipwreck. They were supposed to take a cruise together a month later but she made Eddie cancel, and well- she wasn’t in the business of checking up on places he went any more. This was a relief in some ways, but now if she was always home, he couldn’t keep claiming they kept missing each other while both running errands. She wants to know where he is at all times when he isn’t with her. So he ‘goes to church’ and he ‘does some extra filing at work’ and only ever runs where it’s safe, Mama. Promise.

He finds a good distraction. “How about we put on Forrest Gump after your show?” Eddie suggests. Forrest is a momma's boy and Jenny practically begs for some of Ma’s moralizing. It’s a buffet of her favorite passions.

Ma squints at him through glasses that could probably use an update to the prescription, but again... housebound, stubborn, unwilling to address her declining health in favor of scrutinizing Eddie’s- take your pick. “It’s a bit late to start a movie, Eddie. You need your sleep.”

“We could sit up in your bed, Mama. I’ll turn it off when it gets late.”

“Well, all right, Eddie Bear.”

That’s his self-sacrificial checkmate. He can steer her away from most spirals with the offer of nearness. The more he relies on it, though, the further his chances of having a close relationship with anyone else slip away. Who would want to date a forty year old guy who lives with his mother and can’t even text or call most nights, because he has to get in bed with her to get her to calm down? No one. And that’s fine. It’s not exceptional, at any rate. There’s a loneliness epidemic going on in his generation- he’s heard that, seen the headlines. He’s not alone in being alone.

He sets them up in her room, with only a knotty old crochet blanket spread over his legs so he can slip away easy when she falls asleep. She’s got her CPAP, she’s got her inoffensive cinema, and she’s got her boy right where she can see him. Hopefully the news from Derry will blow over and something else will be at the front of the cycle tomorrow night. If Ma falls asleep quick enough, he might try calling Mike back, but for now Eddie puts his phone on the dimmest setting and surreptitiously checks in for updates. 

What’s happening
Maine ∙ Earlier today
Comedian Richie Tozier arrested in
connection with Derry slayings

Last Eddie looked, they had taken someone into custody, but this- this is new, releasing a name. And a celebrity, holy shit. Maybe Richie Tozier isn’t a household name, exactly- well. Not this household, where Eddie wouldn’t dare watch stand-up in his mother’s presence, at least, but this guy’s legitimately famous. Maybe not OJ famous, but that’s the last time Eddie can think of someone so well known being accused of such a violent crime.

He clicks into the article linked in the tweet and is absolutely floored. “Oh my god.”

“What’s wrong Eddie? Eddie?” Ma struggles to turn to her head to see his phone, but her machine is a bit too constricting.

“Nothing Ma, just- it’s a- I have a- I remembered I need to open a window,” he stammers, pushing himself off the bed. “CO2 build up. It’s a real thing, when you spend so much time indoors-”

He shuffles off of the bed and hurries over to the window, shoving aside Ma’s unopened As Seen On TV merchandise boxes so he get to it. He throws it open and breathes there for a minute before returning to her, because he needs the rush of the cool night air. He needs to wake up- he’s already waking up because he just remembered.

Popular comedian Richie Tozier, originally from Derry, Maine was taken into custody this-

They knew each other! Him, and Richie, and Mike and- the others are starting to come back to him. He couldn’t put together their faces and their names when it was just Mike calling, asking him to come home, but now it’s all there. Stan and Bill and Ben and Beverly, too.

“Well don’t leave it open long, Eddie, your allergies!”

“Yes, Ma.”

Eddie grips into the window sill and breathes, nice and slow. He has to collect himself. He has to bring it back down before Ma sponges his panic. The cold glass against his forehead is helping, just a bit. In another minute he’ll be- not okay. He’ll never be okay. But he’ll be that much closer to Ma falling asleep and the chance to figure out what the fuck is going on, because he knows Richie didn’t kill those kids- Bowers, who fucking knows? But never in a million versions of reality would he hurt someone who was defenseless. He’s a protector, not a predator.

He reads every single article, every tweet related to the story while he’s waiting out Ma’s wakefulness. His browser history is a deep dive of every profile of Richie from the last ten or fifteen years, his website, several fan sites, and even his derelict MySpace. Taken all together, it paints the picture of someone living as lonely a life as Eddie, though instead of an ailing mother, he’s nursing a fake, unsustainable persona as some kind of perpetual frat boy.

But how does Eddie know that? Oh. Fuck.

Ma has fallen asleep, at least. Eddie waits a little longer to be extra sure. Sometimes she exaggerates.

“I love you, Richie,” he whispers, not to the little publicity photo glowing at the top of the last article he opened, but, you know. Aware of it.

There’s more room on the bed then as she disappears and he, Not Richie, takes her place. He’s stretched out on his stomach, pajamaed in shorts like Eddie, kicking his hairy legs in the air as he thumbs at a Gameboy. He doesn’t even look up.

“Are you kidding me?”

“Just a sec, I almost beat this level aaaand-” Not Richie’s win is heralded by an electronic toodle. “Sorry!” he says, rolling to his side and tossing the game over his shoulder. “Idle hands, yadda yadda. You’ve heard it before. Anyway- heeey, thanks for the slumber party invite!”

“Uh?” For a moment Eddie forgets why he summoned Not Richie, as the slogan on his tee shirt is revealed.

HORNY

“You are just the worst,” he frowns at it.

Not Richie grins. “Oh stop, you big flirt! I'm blushing.”

Eddie shakes his head like he’s got water in his ears, clearing whatever enchantment keeps him from fully knowing about all the lives he’s lived before. The one where he died, the ones where he didn’t, and now this.

He points at his phone, and the horrible headline. “That’s not what happened!”

“That’s kinda what it looks like when a bunch of people turn up dead all at once and you’ve got an axe covered in blood in your hands, it turns out.” Not Richie shrugs. “You weren’t there to make him wipe the prints.”

Richie had been so shaken after Bowers, puking and panicking. He needed a reminder that when this was all over, fingers would be pointed. But if Eddie never went to Derry...

“Why did they die?” Eddie demands. “The kids! I thought by destroying It I saved them!”

Not Richie pulls himself together to sit up, legs crossed across from Eddie. “You did, you destroyed It. It won’t kill anyone else ever again, but It still came here. It’s like a stain. You can wash it out and wear that shirt again but if you look at it in the right light you’ll remember the time you got so plastered you baptized yourself with a lasagne.”

Eddie runs a hand back through his hair, thinking. “Can I like? Wish it so It never came at all?”

“If we had the power to do that we wouldn’t be bothering to give you a fucking handjob for killing It, now would we?”

“It’s a reasonable question!”

Not Richie sighs. “This always happened, somewhere, always will. Now, your like, final observation of reality doesn’t have to include It, but once you start making wishes that take It out of Eddie Kaspbrak...” He tilts his head from side to side like a charmed snake and grimaces. “Shit could get weird.”

Hmm. So far, the tweaks Eddie has made with his wishes really only altered his past five or ten years, tops. Could he take the gamble of unwriting thirty or forty years of his personal history, and never have encountered It at all? He’s got a lot of wishes.

“It wouldn’t hurt to try. Next time,” Eddie decides, because he can't stay here. 

Sure, he could head up to Maine and try to help Richie clear his name, and get in touch with all the other Losers, but he’d be abandoning Ma. Somehow he gets the feeling that any version of himself that’s not shackled to Myra will include her, and of course he can’t wish her gone. He just needs to wish so that she’s taken care of. There must be a way to head off how she deteriorated emotionally, so she wouldn’t need him so desperately.

When did it start? Thinking back, he can hardly remember when she wasn’t like this. Overwrought and constantly on edge. Maybe when he was very little. Maybe-

“Daddy,” says Eddie.

“Yyyyes?” Not Richie smirks.

“Ugh gross.” Eddie automatically sticks out a foot and shoves him so that he nearly topples off the bed.

Not Richie scrambles to stay aboard. “You summon me directly into bed, call me daddy and then kick me out? Make up your mind!” 

“I have! I wish my dad had lived to take care of Ma.”

-

After work, Eddie cruises through the closest Target to pick up something for Dad’s birthday next week. He doesn’t have a particular gift in mind, but Frank Kaspbrak is the kind of man who’s had the same likes and hobbies all his life, so he’ll know when he sees it. It will have an aura of appropriateness.

Dad’s already packed to the gills with all the sporting equipment he could ever need for his fishing, but right next to that section are the books. Eddie pokes through the new releases and picks out some non-fiction on economics that will be right up Dad’s alley, and a horror novel, Attic Room, for himself. He can tuck a few gift cards to Dad’s favorite restaurants in the pages, that’ll be nice. Hmm. What else? The weather’s starting to get chilly, so maybe a new sweater or two. He wheels his cart around the perimeter of the store where the groceries are, but doesn’t dip in. He’ll stop at Market Basket later. Better prices, better butcher shop. At the front corner of the store, Eddie gets waylaid briefly by an endcap of mugs and tea towels printed with birds, but decides he has enough mugs, really, and makes it to Fashion without putting anything else in his cart. For some reason, ninety percent of men’s sweaters right now are cardigans, which Dad hates, so Eddie resorts to grabbing two identical pullovers from Rogan & Marsh, in different colors. All set for check out, and then on to the next errand!

When he gets back home, Eddie unpacks his load of groceries like he always does, seeking out the perishables first. He gets the kitchen scissors out of the junk drawer and cuts away two pork chops from the plastic shrink wrap, so that he can freeze the other four in the pack for next week. A few of the tupperwares in the refrigerator are past their prime, so he clears those out to make room for his lactose free milk and veggies. He bumps the doors open and closed with his shoulder as he zips between the fridge, the sink, and the recycling, so the magnets need some adjusting, when all is said and done.

The landlord’s contact info is stuck on there pretty good with an I Voted sticker, but the photos affixed by chip clips and an array of Welcome to ManchVegas and other local business magnets keep slipping. The picture of Dad’s retirement party at GE Aviation dangles by one corner, so he rights it. That was a few years ago now, and it’s crazy to think how long there’s been a Kaspbrak at the plant. Dad worked there for as long as he can remember- since they moved to New Hampshire from Maine when he was little, some thirty five years ago. Eddie followed him there after college, never really giving a thought to any other professional path.

There’s some generic striped wrapping paper in the back closet that Eddie’s been milking for at least six years, since the only people he gives non-Christmas presents to are his parents (okay, and they’re also the only people he exchanges Christmas presents with, so what?). He grabs that and some scotch tape and the stuff he picked out for Dad and lays it out on the coffee table, so he can put on some Netflix in the background while he wraps and waits for the oven to preheat for dinner. Some comedy special is showing up in the New Releases, which’ll be perfect for only half-listening to from the kitchen.

He comes back with his plate and a bottle of beer to this guy telling a story about throwing out his back while plowing some chick that is just so obviously made up. This guy’s got Hasn’t Been Laid in Ten Years written all over him- Eddie should know. He thinks maybe none of his material is particularly funny or true to life. Still. There’s something about him. Maybe the delivery? Or his stage presence? He feels like someone Eddie would find hysterical if they ever actually met. Watching him fills Eddie with some kind of energy that he doesn’t know where to place, but wishes he could feel in real life.

Oh. Wishes.

“I love you, Richie?” Eddie calls into the empty room of his empty apartment, where he lives his empty life. Is anyone there?

“-and the worst part is, she still wouldn’t let me come on, dude, let him finish the joke,” Not Richie on the TV sighs. He looks directly at the camera, at Eddie.

“He’s- he’s funnier in real life, but I never knew him did I?” Eddie realizes. “When Dad didn’t get sick, he moved the family before I ever made it to school and met the Losers. He wanted Ma to have her sisters closer, and have more to do in a bigger city, and-” 

Dad took care of Ma, just like Eddie wished. When her anxiety disorder got out of control, he made sure it was treated. She still had her problems over the years, but it was nothing like the childhood Eddie fled before.

The stage lighting in the background of Not Richie’s shot pulses a contented yellow. “You can admit I did a good job, you know.”

“I guess you didn’t totally bomb,” Eddie rolls his eyes. “It’s not perfect, though.”

“Figures,” Not Richie sniffs. “I rewrite your entire life, heroically resisting the opportunity to make you a stripper or worse- a podcaster, and still-”

“We can keep most of it! But-”

“Buuut?” Not Richie grins over his microphone.

“But what if the Losers were here and they were people I knew, who lived nearby?”

“Pfft. Here in fucking Manchester? I thought you liked them.”

Eddie bristles. “You're from Hell!”

“Oh right.” Not Richie squints. “I guess it’s not so bad.”

It’s better than Derry certainly. If Eddie brought them all here, away from It, it could turn all their lives around. Bev might never have marry that piece of shit, and Bill wouldn’t lose his little brother, and the others wouldn’t be so relentlessly bullied. That’s better. That’s definitely better.

“Okay. Wherever I wind up,” Eddie starts. Not Richie perks. “I wish the Losers were still people I knew.”

-

Since she lives on the first floor of their triple-decker, Bev catches Eddie when he’s coming back in from his morning jog. She’s new to the building, and friendly enough to learn everyone’s names, but has been too busy moving in over the past week to really chat.

“Oh, shit,” Eddie pants, realizing how disgustingly sweaty he is. He tries to mop his forehead on his shoulder while she closes the door behind herself to keep her cat from escaping into the stairwell. “Hey, how’s it going?”

“Hey, Eddie!” Bev says brightly. “I just wanted to say thanks for letting me use your dryer the other day, it was a lifesaver. I had all this hand dyed stuff to ship out before the post office closed but it was still damp, and- you know. I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Eddie nods along. “Any time. What are neighbors for, right?”

He wouldn't have noticed if she had run a few loads without asking, honestly. Eddie only has a lock on his storage area down in the basement because he enjoys locks on a mechanical level, not because he doesn't trust Stan and Patty on the third floor, or their landlord, Bill, who was in and out to get his supplies when he did yard work.

Bev knocks her knuckles on her own door at her cat’s anxious meowing. “Penny! Stop scratching!”

“She misses you,” Eddie says, sympathetically. It’s always an adjustment when you move.

“Nah, she just wants to eat the third floor’s bird.”

“I take it back. What an asshole.”

Bev laughs. “Listen, uh? Can I buy you a coffee sometime? I’d feel better about asking for any future favors if we knew each other.”

“Oh!” Eddie is suddenly very conscious of the fact that the last time he put deodorant on was twenty four hours ago. “Yeah, I- I’d like that. Er, when were you thinking?”

“Now’s not bad, if that’s okay? I’m stalling on unpacking the kitchen. Please enable me.”

“Uh-”

“Have you been to Meeting Grounds?”

It’s two blocks over in the opposite direction of work, so Eddie usually picks up his boring old cup o’ joe at the Dunks on the way instead.

“No. I mean. Now’s okay. I haven’t been. But now is good if, uhm,” Eddie points up towards his apartment and swallows. Shit, Kaspbrak, this is the closest thing to a date invitation you’ve had in years, pull it together. “If I can grab a quick shower first. But no, I haven’t been to- to there.” Eddie clears his throat.

Bev smiles. She’s very pretty, like a magazine ad. “Yeah sure, just come knock on my door when you’re ready.”

“Cool!”

He comes back down when he’s not a mess, and they walk and talk through the neighborhood together. She’s got an Etsy shop, which is what her wet fabric was all about. She does silk screening mostly, but some dye work here and there. Apparently the set up of their building makes for a really good studio, since there’s a kind of useless and dark little office room on each floor where she can do photo emulsion, and a sunny backyard where she can put things out on the line to dry when she’s not in a rush. He likes that, the idea of things out on the line to dry, like when he was a kid. People don't do that so much these days.

“Did you figure out what was wrong with your dryer, by the way?” Eddie holds open the door to Meeting Grounds for her. “I’m a machinist at GE, I could probably fix it.” Sure, they build planes there, not appliances, but he wouldn’t be in this field if he couldn’t suss out just about anything with a schematic.

Bev grimaces at him. “Bill already took a look. Turns out I moved in an electric dryer and the hook up is for gas.”

“That’ll do it,” Eddie chuckles.

There’s no line at the counter, so they walk right up. A guy with glasses who’s on the taller side is sliding some muffins into the display case and pulling out a tray of cookies to be replenished next.

He stops what he’s doing and smiles at Bev. “Hey girl, what can I get you?”

Bev ooo’s and peeks at the bakery and asks after some of the goods while Eddie quickly studies the menu for himself. He should get something that says like, I’m actually a reasonable dude who can chill for a second, not, in truth, someone who routinely drinks it black because he has no idea what ‘treating himself’ looks like. But there’s a little chalkboard with a cartoon of their glasses-wearing barista licking his lips and suggesting The Drizzle, so when it’s his turn-

“Can I get the drizzled latte?”

“Which kinda drizzle?”

“Honey.”

“Honey? Beg your pardon, I hardly know ya,” he winks. Richie. That’s what his name tag says. He turns away to go make the drink.

Eddie narrows his eyes. “Hey, you’re the guy who lives behind us, right? Like, the backyards touch,” he gestures indistinctly. He thinks he recognizes him from hanging out in his hammock in the evenings. There’s usually a little radio playing, and occasionally Eddie will catch himself humming along if he has the windows open in the back end of the apartment.

“Are you the green house or the yellow house?” Richie asks, and now Eddie feels like a creep that he has scoped this guy more thoroughly than he has been scoped in return. His house is white.

“The whi-”

“Just kidding,” Richie snickers. “You’re Mr. Take The Recycling Out Exactly At 5 AM.”

Eddie blushes. “Oh shit, is it that loud?”

“Not as loud as what I’m doing at 5 AM.” Richie waggles his eyebrow as turns around again to pump the honey on top of his coffee. “Actually, I have to get up then anyway to open here, so it’s kind of an alarm clock for me.”

“In that case, you’re welcome.” Eddie picks up the drink that slides across the counter to him and takes a casual sip. It’s only a little bit too sweet for his liking.

Richie starts to ring up their order. “Together, or separate?”

Bev says together, of course, because she offered, and even though Eddie was vaguely thinking maybe this outing could be a stepping stone towards a more premeditated, official date, he catches his brain shouting Separate!

Whatever that’s about.

“Hey, Bev- this guy’s our backyard neighbor,” he points out.

“Yeah,” she says, apparently already aware, and pointing. “Richie.”

“S’my name, don’t wear it out,” he grins back. It’s kind of funny to look at him up close, and match that smile with the music and the comfortable, familiar sight of someone always nearby, going through his life’s routine so close to Eddie’s. Maybe for years, now that Eddie thinks back. It’s crazy they’re only meeting now.

“I’m Eddie.” He offers his hand to shake. “I’m the second floor. Bev just moved into the first. Hey, is that your roommate who’s been out there grilling?”

Now that the floodgates are open he has a thousand questions. How long has Richie lived around here? Does he know what’s up with that Plymouth Fury on the corner? Is he the one who stuffs that little library box with Chuck Palahniuk paperbacks? Is his music playing off of Spotify or something, and could he maybe check out his playlists?

“Oh! Yeah. He’s just my roommate- Mike,” Richie shares. “I know though, it smells awesome, right?”

“I can never tell what it is? Beef, or pork?”

Richie leans into the counter and whispers like he’s telling a secret. “Lamb. His family's got a farm up in Maine so we’ve got heaps o’ sheeps in the freezer. I’m sick of it. I long for a chicken breast.”

Eddie leans in, too. “Tell you what, next time you guys are out there, I’ll trade you.”

“Yeah, man! Just hop over the fence, I’ll hook you up.” 

Another customer comes up to order and Eddie realizes that Bev already took a seat at one of the tables. He looks back at Richie, mouth hung open stupidly. “I... guess I’ll see you later.”

He has a nice enough time hanging out with Bev- she’s a cool lady- but he thinks it would probably be weird to ask her out when they live so close together.

This turns out to be a moot point later that evening. While Eddie sits on the porch with a book, idly contemplating getting his own hammock, her boyfriend Ben brings some boxes in through the back door. It turns out he took a week longer to move in because he painstakingly drove over a dollhouse he built for her from their old place in Washington state, while everything else was shipped over. That’s kind of an untouchable level of commitment.

Eddie helps Ben bring the dollhouse in while Bev spots the corners and minds the cat. He offers them both some welcome beers, which they happily accept, but after an hour or two on the back porch (with no sign of Richie, unfortunately) they decide to turn in.

Three new friends in one day is pretty good, he thinks. And this is a pretty good life.

But it could be better.

“I love you, Richie,” he says, preemptively holding out a beer.

“Grassy ass, Eduardo.”

Not Richie plops into the deck chair across from him that Ben had been sitting in a few minutes ago and kicks up his heels on Eddie’s armrest. Eddie lets him get comfortable and take a swig before suddenly knocking Not Richie’s feet down with his elbow. He snickers as Not Richie spurts all over himself, dressed in a red version of the apron from Meeting Grounds.

“Oh, you suck!”

“Not as good as your mom does,” Eddie smirks over his own beer.

Not Richie whips off his apron, which vanishes before it can hit the ground. “I’m immune to Yo Momma jokes, I was never born.”

Eddie stretches his arms over his head. “Ah, what a world that would be. No Richie Tozier.”

Not Richie’s face falls. If Eddie didn’t know better, he’d say he looked sad. “Is that what you want?”

“What? No! I’m just. You look like him. Sometimes, I just wanna fuck with you, because I wanna fuck with him, you know?”

“Better than you think,” Not Richie says, resuming his usual mischief.

“Well, anyway. I think we’re on the right track.”

“Hail Satan!” Not Richie toasts with what’s left of his beer.

“I mean, it’s really really good having them all here,” Eddie hedges, “-but it’s completely ridiculous that we’re all living up each other’s butts. Like, I dunno exactly what the others are pulling down, but at my salary I don’t need to be living in a three family building with a landlord. Not in fucking New Hampshire.”

“Doesn’t everyone up here want to be like on Friends?”

“That’s New York, that’s completely- they could never afford-” Eddie rubs his forehead. Of course Not Richie would have a finer understanding of sitcoms than the rent disparity between cities. “Fuck it. Uhm.”

“Do you want to be back in New York?”

“I want to be with them!” That much Eddie knows. “We could be anywhere, doing anything, and it would click.”

As long as he has the Losers he could make anything work, but he does have more wishes to burn. He can keep fine-tuning it. He’s just not sure what it is that’s leaving him unsatisfied. The work is pretty good. He likes it. But this Eddie? He’s only doing it because that's what Dad did.

“So let’s go do something, some place else, dude,” Not Richie says easily. “What’d you want to be when you were a kid?”

Eddie tries to think back that far, before so many paths had been shut down for him by his mother and his fear. “Same as every other kid, I guess. Like, a train conductor or a doctor or an astronaut or Willy Wonka-”

“Willy Wonka? ” Not Richie wheezes. “I mean, it’s your fucking party. I can make that happen, but just remember- an Oompa Loompas forever, not just for Christmas.”

“I just wanted the candy!” Eddie defends. “Which obviously I can get without being it’s fucking manufacturer-”

“Still,” Not Richie pouts at him. “That’s precious.”

“Oh shut up! We didn’t all grow up dreaming of spearing Hitler with a pitch fork or whatever the fuck little demons want.”

“That’s racist.”

Eddie glares at Not Richie. “Uh huh, sure, what’d you want to do when you were a little demon?”

“Spear Anne Hathaway. You have no idea the shit she gets up to.”

Eddie laughs. He goes to take another swig of his beer, but unfortunately it’s empty, and between him and Bev and Ben and Not Richie, the six pack is empty. He stands and picks up the case. “Come on, there’s more in the fridge.”

Upstairs, they debate the next wish over some Netflix. Not Richie tries to talk him into becoming an astronaut, but Eddie suggests the happy medium between that and making airplane parts is simply... being a pilot. He’d see some new places, for sure, and if he hates it? Well then in his next life he’ll just happen to be a dude with a pilot’s license.

-

The radio light blinks on as Air Traffic Control for Bangor comes through. “Delta Romeo Yankee, continue as clear.”

“Thank you, Bill,” says Mike.

Eddie waits for the light to go off again then eases his way out of his seat. “Jesus that took forever.”

“Tell me about it. You gonna go ‘balance the fuel’ before we land?”

“Ah-yup.”

He pats Mike's shoulder on his way out of the flightdeck and makes a beeline for the bathroom, flattening Ben and the armful of courtesy blankets he carries against the cabin wall. As soon as he’s in the compartment he throws the lock and summons Not Richie. 

“Is that your control column, or are you just happy to see me?” he oozes, appearing in the confined space with one thigh wedged between Eddie’s and an arm braced against the wall behind him.

Eddie squirms back as best he can without winding up in the toilet. He really didn’t think about the geometry of this situation, so much as the initial privacy. “You wish,” he huffs. It’s a blur of red and blue uniformed limbs as Eddie tries to untangle himself from Not Richie. “This was a mistake. No more drunk wishes. The only thing worse than being a passenger on a ten hour flight is flying a ten hour flight. And the food is terrible! A fucking bus driver could eat better. A bus driver could pull over and kick someone off the bus who was caught smoking weed in the bathroom. Twice.”

Not Richie moves around Eddie as he struggles, trying to look down into the trash and up the empty slot where paper towels come from. “Did he leave any behind? That could be fun. You wanna get blazed and join the Mile High Club before we call this one a bust?”

Eddie ignores him as he finally gets his hand and then his body positioned so he can access the latch and open the door again. “We’re going with Plan B.”

“Which one was Plan B, again?” Not Richie yelps as they stumble out. “This one was my bad, I could upgrade you to astronaut, free of charge.”

“The food would be freeze dried, that's even worse!”

“That’s true.” Not Richie straightens his tie thoughtfully.

It’s so fucking weird for Eddie to see Richie’s face wearing a uniform. He shouldn’t look this good, he should look like he got dressed out of a Lost and Found box. But it’s even weirder to be questioning this, he thinks. To notice it. Whatever, it's probably just some kind of contact high from getting squished against a being made of like, personified Lust or some shit.

Eddie demonstrates his composure by planting his hands on his hips, the picture of captain-like control. “If I have the chance to come back from the fucking dead and do anything, I should like, give back to the net good, right?”

“Yuh-“ Not Richie looks constipated, trying to form a word. Eddie’s not the only one out of sorts, apparently. “Yyyyye- nope. I physically cannot encourage that.”

“But you’d still have to do whatever I ask?” Eddie grins.

Not Richie folds his arms, but he can’t help the quirk of a smile. “It’d be a bummer, but it's your wish, dude.”

“Then, I want to help people.”

“You wanna be a little more specific, Mother Teresa?”

“Plan B,” Eddie says. “I wish I was a doctor.”

-

When he was around twelve or so, a farm near Eddie’s house was sold off for the land to be developed into housing. This was terrific not only because one of his best friends, Ben, ended up living in one of those houses, but because the construction site was off limits. The town he grew up in had become so small (too small!), so accessible since he and his friends had reached the age where they were allowed to ride their bikes wherever they liked, and not just the cul de sac, and now there was someplace forbidden. Someplace with big sloping piles of dirt, and deep dug holes and the skeleton of a house to come. They would sneak in when the crew weren’t around and race their bikes through like it was BMX, and mess around with nail guns, and make a clubhouse out of the tarps and unfinished construction. Eddie particularly liked when they made the clubhouse, and took great pride in setting up a hole in the plywood floor with a pulley bucket. Well, he liked it until he fell through it, at any rate.

The allure of the clubhouse was replaced by his fascination with the gruesome compound fracture that resulted. Like he had studied the beams and structures of house construction, now he was granted exclusive insight to bones and ligaments and how they layered together into something so commonplace as a body, that he had taken it for granted. Eddie, the unlucky boy, kept up this special interest over the years until finally he was Dr. Kaspbrak, orthopedic surgeon.

“Am I gonna live, Dr. K?” asks Richie Tozier, a repeat patient.

He had his arm and collarbone crushed by a full grown deer running into his car door while he was stopped at a red light. It’s taken two surgeries and a dozen pins to repair his collection of injuries. The second surgery was four days ago now, so for Eddie the hard part is done, but he can appreciate that recovery is a real drag. He tries to be gentle with post-op patients.

“Drama queen,” he sneers.

Just not this patient.

“And yet I’m not receiving the royal treatment,” Richie protests. He turns up his nose, and Eddie has to admit his profile would make a fine stamp, if America had monarchs.

“You’re a pain in the neck, that’s why.”

Richie peeks back at him. “You said that’s referred pain from over compensating for my left side.”

“I did,” Eddie grins. “But now I’m thinking your neck hurts from having to hold up your big ass head.”

With a staged moan, Richie wilts back into the bed. “The curse of my noble bloodline. Incredible intellect has gotta be housed somewhere.”

“Hey,” Eddie laughs, and slips a hand under his shoulder. “Come back here, I wasn’t done with you yet.”

“I hope not.”

Richie sits back up and cooperates while Eddie listens to his lungs with the stethoscope. The little ‘Talkin’ Trash’ R2-D2 tattoo on the back of his shoulder is so stupid, Eddie has to keep looking away to concentrate on what he’s hearing.

“You have some rales in your breathing. That’s probably irritation because you aspirated under anesthesia, but we’ll get you referred for an X-ray to make sure everything’s all right.”

“Like later this week? Cool.”

Eddie frowns. “It should be today, sorry.”

Richie snaps out of his smirking demeanor. “Okay, uh, If you think it’s like, an emergency?”

“More like, let’s not wait. We don’t want you to develop pneumonia. You’re already having enough medical fun, right buddy?” Eddie gives him what’s meant to be a comforting smile before he turns around and puts an order for a chest X-ray into the computer. Richie can slide from Ortho over to the ER as soon as he’s done here. “All right, got that ball rolling. You can do that in the ER. Let’s get a look at your arm, in the meanwhile.”

Eddie gets himself some sterile gloves and the things he’ll need to check and re-dress the incisions. Richie gives a cough as Eddie rolls over his stool, then holds out a thumbs up like, Woah, wait, I think it’s just nerves from hearing about my lungs. He’s a trooper. That’s why Eddie doesn’t mind his annoying sense of humor. If he’s making jokes, he’s okay, and if he’s okay, then Eddie’s doing his job.

“Well, I guess there’s an upside to this, Dr. K,” says Richie. He watches Eddie peel away his bandages, unflinchingly.

“What's that? Cool scars?” Eddie lifts an eyebrow. “You could tell people the deer ran you right through on his horns...” The bigger incision looks pretty good, so Eddie irrigates it and pats it dry before turning Richie’s arm to the smaller wound on the other side.

Richie laughs. “Trust me, I already spin it like we were engaged in deadly hand to hoof combat.”

“To impress the ladies?” 

“No?” Richie says, kind of high pitched. Eddie hopes he’s not pressing so hard that it stings. “Not the ladies. The other bucks.”

“Oh, like-?” Like what, Eddie, like what?

“Anyway,” Richie barges on, not allowing Eddie to wonder, “I mean- if I’m gonna have to stick around the hospital for longer than I was expecting, waiting for an X-ray...”

“You’ll get to cancel on some plans?” Eddie guesses. Now they’re talkin’ his favorite kind of upside.

Richie grins. “If I boo-hoo about not getting to hit up T-Bones on my way home, I might get you to buy me lunch out of pity.”

Eddie sits back and checks his watch. “Hmm.”

“I’ll give you cash!” Richie clarifies. “Just like, when you take your lunch, maybe you could, you know. Come hang out with me?”

“After you I have another two quick follow ups, actually, but then-” It’ll probably take two-ish hours for Richie to get an X-ray, realistically...

“And I’m supposed to be following up with my GP after this, so maybe like-”

“-I have some time for lunch, but nothing near as good as T-Bones, it’s either the cafeteria or the Panera next door-” Eddie looks up from contemplating the time to Richie, face scrunched, wincing at his own rapid speech.

“-If you’re not technically my doctor anymore it could be... a date?”

Eddie goes dumb. He- he likes Richie. He thinks he’s good looking even if he has a dorky robot tattoo and sideburns that are decades out of fashion, and he’s funny and optimistic in a way Eddie really admires, but uh- he’s not gay. He’s- well, he doesn’t think so anyway. He’s only ever dated women. Barely, because med school was really busy and he didn’t have the energy to study and socialize, and then residency was crazy competitive and for whatever reason he was the only dude, and he wasn’t about to screw up by screwing anyone there and-

“Hey, Dr. K, sorry if that’s uh, inappropriate.” Richie shrinks. “It’s just, I might not see you again otherwise, unless I can get a moose to like, step on me break my leg or something. I figured...”

“Oh, no!” Eddie sputters. “It’s uhm. It’s-?”

Inappropriate would asking him to meet up in the handicapped bathroom. Inappropriate would be saying, Gosh, Dr. K, it's so hard to take these off with my arm in a sling. Lend me a hand? Inappropriate would be Eddie touching him, not to heal, but to feel him and see if maybe-

“It’s just lunch,” Richie says.

Right. Eddie doesn’t have to be gay to have lunch. He’s had lunch with men before.

“Well, er-” Eddie looks back down at Richie’s arm. That he knows how to respond to. “Your swelling is down to where it should be, you’re lined up for all your PT. Are you toughing it out without painkillers, again, like after the first surgery? That’s fine if you can stand it. You know you can’t skip the other meds, though. Do you like this sling? We have another kind you could try if this one’s irritating.” Eddie’s mouth has completely run away with him, because apparently it’s pretty anxious to wrap up all their official Doctor/Patient Business ASAP. He catches his breath. “Do you want Panera?”

Eddie could just start with lunch and see where this goes...

So, he meets his other appointments. He walks around the corner to pick up some sandwiches. He peeks over the ER’s patient board and figures out where they put Richie while he’s waiting for his X-ray. He ducks through empty Bay 8 to Bay 9.

“You didn’t say which kind of chips you want, so I got both salt and vinegar in the hopes you don’t like it-” Eddie stops. There’s no gurney. “-so I can have both,” he sighs.

Probably Richie’s up getting his X-ray right now. Shit. Eddie won’t be able to wait around for him to come back before he has to get back to work. Disappointed as he is, he’s still gotta eat. He can leave the other sandwich with the nurses.

He sits down on the chair in Bay 9 and pulls out one of the bags of chips to pop it open when he realizes what else is out of place. The pillow from the gurney is at his feet, the crash cart is pulled out, and there are sterile wrappers littering the floor.

Eddie drops the chips back into the take out bag, unpopped, and jumps to his feet. He spots Mike first, at the nurses station. “Hey, what happened to Tozier in Bay 9?”

“Oh, that wasn’t me, that was-” He scratches the back of his head, thinking. It does look pretty busy down here, maybe they had to bring someone else into Bay 9 while Richie was taken up for his imaging. “That was Stan, I think.”

Eddie reels around, looking for Stan’s curly head of hair and spots it over by Bay 2. “Thanks,” he pats Mike’s arm without looking and takes off in a jog. “Stan!”

Stan looks up from his clipboard. “Oh, Eddie. Okay. That saves me a call.”

“Call for what?” Eddie looks at the patient in Bay 2, who looks a little sweaty, but not like they’ve broken anything Ortho needs to come take a look at.

Stan shuffles for a folder from lower in his pile. “That post-surgical follow-up you referred for chest X-ray had a pulmonary embolism-”

“They saw it? Oh, whew.” Eddie breathes a sigh of relief. Good thing they caught that so it could be broken up before it did any serious damage!

But Stan’s eyebrows draw together in a dark expression. “Uh, no. Sorry. He coded first.” He offers Eddie the patient folder, but it slips through his fingers and flops on the floor. “We lost him.”

Eddie heads swims, trying to process that. He feels cold.

“Fuck. Fuck.” Worse than cold, for some reason, he feels dead, himself. “Why didn’t anyone page me!?” he demands. But he knows why. Ortho already discharged him. He was the ER’s patient.

“It was quick, Eddie,” says Stan. His mouth draws into one of those tight, professional frowns, which are really the only kind of frown Stan does, anyway- but especially because they’re doctors and it was just another patient.

Eddie’s lost patients before. Ones that he felt like he was friends with, even. But this one...

“That asshole,” is all Eddie can say. 

He doesn’t go back to Bay 9 for his sandwich. He couldn’t eat it. He doesn’t feel hungry or full or much of anything at the moment. He heads back to his own floor, his own wing of the hospital where he gets to fucking fix people more often than not, because that’s the only thing he can bring himself to do, right now.

When he gets home later, he’s not hungry for dinner.

When he wakes up the next morning, he’s still in a funk. He doesn’t want his breakfast, either.

Yesterday wasn’t an ordinary bad day, he thinks, and that’s when the veil lifts.

Best he can figure, each time that he gets to a point of dissatisfaction with life that’s beyond what the Eddie of this particular reality is used to- that’s when he remembers. He’s got all of it now, and it’s unbearable. Dying. Living. Missing the Losers. Getting them back. Saving Stan. Losing Richie.

Usually he’ll summon Not Richie as soon as he remembers, but he needs to sit with it for a bit this time, and not just react. He needs to process and plan. Richie will be okay with the next wish no matter what happens, but Eddie needs to think about where to go from here so he doesn’t have to go through this sort of thing again.

So a few hours later, instead of being back at the hospital, he’s still sitting at his kitchen bar, watching his smoothie curdle. He finally throws it out around noon and then calls Not Richie.

Before he can say anything, Eddie lifts a hand. “Look, I don’t wanna talk about it. I’ve thought about it enough. Being a doctor, it- it was a nice idea. But I wanna do something that would help stop people from hurting in the first place. You know, ‘ounce of prevention, pound of cure’, saving lives, for sure. Just... a little more distance from the hospital, you know?”

“No, I get that,” Not Richie says, shuddering. “I can’t stand hospitals. They’re all named for saints, and full of healing, it’s awful.”

“Yeah, no,” Eddie says, rubbing his forehead. “That’s... the opposite of my problem, but uh. Anyway. This next wish, I want to be like, helping people on the grand scale. Advocating for real change and having the power to make a difference.”

Not Richie perks up. “Ooh, power? That’s a classic!”

“Not like that. I don’t want to be the fucking president, but maybe like-” Eddie waves around, trying to grasp it. “Political, maybe. I just want to make a difference and I know you need like, fucking connections and resources to really go for it. I don’t know how to put that all into one wish. But I think like, an activist?”

The fire in Not Richie’s eyes is as bright and lively as Eddie has ever seen it. He clasps his hands in excitement. “Oh-ho-ho boy, this is gonna be a banger. You’ll like this.”

“I fucking better.”

“Just say ‘I wish’, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

Eddie takes a deep, steadying breath. “I wish-”

Not Richie twirls his finger like a conductor’s baton. “Blah blah blah blah!”

-

Instead of saying good morning, Richie tosses a duffle bag onto Eddie’s bed. “Rise and shine, Spaghetti. We’re going to New Jersey.”

“Nooo,” Eddie groans, pulling the covers over his head. It’s Sunday, for fuck’s sake.

“I don’t like it either, but you’ve had a credible threat- at this address - and them’s the brakes.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he should care about the fact some psycho who’s out for his blood has figured out where he lives... But maybe if he reminds Richie of all the wonderful things they can do that aren’t in New Jersey, Eddie sleepily reasons, he’ll change his mind.

“What about the steaks we have marinating?” he muffles into his pillow. “What about Bill and Mike? We always play basketball on Sunday.” 

And they play it at noon, not four in the fucking morning. Sure, when they play every man for himself, Mike and Richie always clobber him and Bill with their height advantage, but it’s fun. It’s the only time when they’re out and about Eddie gets to really fend for himself. Everywhere else, if someone drops a glass, Richie jumps. If a car backfires, Richie jumps. If someone in a crowd is giving the wrong kind of vibe, Richie puts himself between them and Eddie, instantly. That’s what bodyguards do. They protect. Not on the court, though. He’ll bodyslam Eddie in a heartbeat. He doesn’t care who gets a bloody nose as they recklessly foul each other. One time he even picked Eddie up and threatened to dunk him before bodily tossing him at Mike, who caught him, of course, but what if he hadn’t? Eddie could’ve broke his back! What a fucking blast.

“I don't want you doing anything you’ve ‘always’ done right now,” Richie says in his Serious Voice. It’s overly articulated but calming and deep- designed to be persuasive in a crisis. It cuts right through to Eddie, under his blanket. Richie keeps pulling open the drawers of his bureau as he continues on being Serious. “That’s predictable and that’s dangerous-”

Eddie sits up like a shot and catches a folded and pinned shirt that’s just been frisbeed at him. “That’s dry cleaned!” He huffs and starts getting out of bed.

Richie is grabbing all the wrong things. If they’re going to go camp out in a safehouse for the weekend he’s not going to need a fucking tux shirt. He wants some polos and sweater. He shoves Richie out of his way and starts pulling the right sort of clothes from the drawers.

“You’re gonna wear that?” He grins at Eddie’s rugby shirt, striped yellow and white. Every time he wears it Richie takes a break from wearing out his old code name, Spaghetti, to dub him Macaroni, instead. Somehow this is not a deterrent for Eddie.

“It's my favorite color,” he says, stuffing it into the bag. “You're gonna wear your gun?”

“It's my favorite gun.”

“I hate it.”

Richie pouts. “I know, Spaghetti, baby.”

Eddie frowns.

That only makes Richie lean in to pinch his cheek. “If I had your mean little scowl I wouldn't need it to protect you, but here we both are. Go ahead and pack, Mac. You should take the sneakers that match, it’d be cute.”

Maintaining eye contact and scowl the whole time, Eddie backs into his closet and grabs the most clashing pair of sneakers possible and drops them into the bag instead.

“You are cold, Kaspbrak. Oh, I checked the weather. Pack a sweater.”

“I was already planning on it,” Eddie sighs, half peeved, half warmed by their special brand of telepathy.

They ought to be a pretty good unit by now- it’s been the Richie and Eddie show since college, when Dad got the party nomination and Eddie was first placed with a Secret Service agent. Richie was his shadow for all of Dad’s term as President, and then when that was all over, he went into private security and Eddie hired him right away.

“And don’t worry, we can put the steaks in the cooler and bring them with us,” Richie points out. He’s been hankering for them, too.

“All right.” Eddie fights a smile. “Toss me that tux shirt. I’ll put it with the rest of the monkey suit.”

Richie picks it up and fakes like he’ll throw it but then he hugs it to his chest instead when Eddie flinches. “Or, you could bring it with you. We could sit around the safehouse, eat steak, and pretend we’re in Clue?”

“You’re trying not to get me murdered, though, right?” Eddie raises a hand and his eyebrows.

“How long have we been together?” Richie throws him the shirt.

“Sixteen years.”

“And in sixteen years how many times have I let you be assassinated?”

“Zero times.” Eddie rolls his eyes and sticks the shirt into the garment bag with his tux. That way it will all be together when he needs it for the next screening of the documentary. “And in sixteen years how many times have you asked me that?” 

“Sixteen times fifty-two, uhh... eight hundred and thirty-two.”

“Once a week.” Eddie stalks out of the closet, right up to Richie. Right in his space. “I’m sick of it. It's poisoning me. This! This is the real threat to my safety! What if I go to the safehouse and you stay here? That might be safer. Or, you go and I stay.”

Richie narrows his eyes and stares down at Eddie with the kind of challenge in his eyes he usually reserves for playing ball. “You’ll go crazy without me. I know you hired me for the company.”

“I hired you because it was cheaper than sending my mother to a spa for the rest of her life.” When Eddie graduated and declared he intended to make taking down the NRA his life’s work, she practically started spinning her head around, Exorcist style.

“And I’m so grateful to dear Mrs. K for that. I should call her. Have her make you go.”

Eddie’s caught wise to that trick. “You can’t. I bribed the front desk at Betty Ford last time you went over my head.”

“You’re a terrible son.”

“That’s what sh-”

“-she said, oh dip!”

They high five, and even after that initial smack the air seems to keep crackling like they should do it again. They should keep touching. They should kiss. Eddie takes a quick breath. But then he would have to fire Richie, because there’s no way they should get involved while he’s a protectee, he’s not stupid, but there’s just never been a good time to turn everything upside down. And what if- if what he thinks he feels going on between them is a mistake? Besides the work, they live together and they’re best friends. Eddie can’t ruin all of that for Richie because he’s got a crush. 

Like the thousand other times they’ve stood on this brink, nothing happens. Richie clears his throat and backs away, sweeping an arm at the bureau so Eddie can keep packing.

“My liege,” he grovels.

Eddie’s already packed shirts for two days and some jogging (if Richie will allow it) but he’s not sure how wild he should go here, as he digs into his underwear drawer. “How long is this for, Richie?”

“Best case scenario, Mike and Bill work out this fucking nutcase’s location today, and you get to spend the weekend working on the book in a woodsy cabin like some alcoholic from the Fifties, just for the hell of it.”

It doesn’t sound so bad when Richie puts it so colorfully. Still. “And the worst case scenario?”

“Considering Bowers’ problem with you is the documentary? We’d have to cancel a bunch of events this year and circle the wagons until it’s release blows over, or you- I dunno- YouTube yourself destroying the print.”

“Yeah, we’re not doing that,” says Eddie. He shoves some pants into the duffel bag. “I’ve been working on the doc for three years, I’m not gonna let that dickhole scare me into fucking mothballing it.” The craziest thing is, originally Bowers interviewed for the documentary before rescinding his permission. Most people Eddie gets death threats from are laughably anonymous and without access, but he’s looked in that fucker’s eyes.

“I know,” Richie says in his Serious Voice, again. “I just want you to make it to the premier in one piece.”

Eddie hefts the strap of the bag over his shoulder and looks at Richie, just as serious. He knows Richie has been with him every step of the way, and would be just as disappointed if they had to chop the balls off the documentary’s screening tour. No matter what they joke, he’s with Eddie because he believes in him. And really, he believes in Richie, too.

“Okay,” he tells Richie. “Whatever you think is best.”

Richie smiles. “And I want you to win an Oscar for it, because I wanna be in the audience and split a bag of Skittles with Dame Judi Dench. Taste the rainbow,” he finishes in a matronly British voice.

“You are such a leech.”

“Yup. Do you think you could introduce me to The Rock? He’s so majestic...”

“Majestic?” Eddie balks. “You know the former fucking President of the United States on- not even a first name basis - you call my dad ‘dude'!”

“Yeah, but has your dad ever been in any Fast and Furious movies?” Richie rolls his eyes.

Despite himself, Eddie can imagine taking Richie to the Oscars. Showing him off, if they ever- “You realize you’d be my protection not my guest, right?”

“That’s why The Rock would respect me. We’re both super ripped.” Richie makes a fist and flexes a fairly impressive muscle. He’s no 300lb pro-wrestler wrecking ball, of course, but he’s got the strength and size to toss Eddie around and ward off people who think the former First Son is a tourist attraction. Straining Eddie’s last nerve, Richie pushes up both sleeves of his LICENSE TO CHILL tee shirt to really show off the goods. It’s annoyingly hot.

“You’re gonna need protection in a minute,” Eddie warns.

Richie licks his lip. “Really? I’ll duck into CVS on our way out. You’re not allergic to latex or anything are ya?”

“I hate you so much.”

Richie fingerguns. "Back atcha."

They don’t hit up CVS on their way out of New York, but to make up for dragging Eddie out of bed at a cruel hour, Richie stops off at a diner and gets Eddie some chicken and waffles that helps to lull him into a sleep-like state of food coma. Eddie can never really sleep in cars or airplanes, much to his parent’s dismay while Dad was a senator. They were always zipping around with little Eddie in tow, exhausted out of his mind since travel was the scheduled down time. Driving with Richie is way better though. He sets the radio low and hums along, and he has a way of drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel that might just be Eddie’s favorite sound in the whole world.

As he sits in the passenger seat, sleepy eyed and lovesick, he thinks about telling Richie that some time in the fuzzily imagined future, when it’s not a compromise of anyone’s safety. When they have the elusive ‘time to breathe’. Eddie imagines them driving, not to a safehouse or an event or even to go visit his parents for the holidays, but just for pleasure. Maybe to the beach, or dinner someplace special. They’ll be on their way back home from a romantic evening, and Eddie will feel all tender and unhurried. He’ll tell Richie, and he’ll grin, and then later at home he’ll take Eddie’s face in his hands and tap his thumbs at his cheeks and hum REO Speedwagon as he kisses him all over. And I meant, every word I said, when I said that I loved you, I meant that I loved you forever.

It's been like this for sixteen years. Fuck. May as well be ‘forever’. That’s nearly half of Eddie’s life. A whirlwind of classes, and then press appearances, and speeches, and high profile projects, and never ever having the time to just be Eddie and Richie without the pressure. Even now, ‘keeping their heads low’ for a week will mean hourly sweeps for Richie, and monitoring Mike and Bill’s progress on tracking Bowers. Meanwhile, Eddie will be holed up with his laptop and an endless stream of phone calls as he works on adapting the documentary into a printable companion text. They’ll be in the same place, sure, but there are always deadlines and death threats getting in the way.

The safehouse is up a winding, hilly road in Stirling, with an overlook of a wildlife refuge. It’s kind of like what you’d get from crossing Idyllic Suburb with Castle Defense. Eddie doesn’t love that the only thing between the lane and the steep slope is one of those low galvanized fences, but he supposes that being unnerving to approach is part of the appeal. As an additional treat, it’s on a poorly marked dead end that even the GPS isn’t convinced exists- Richie’s favorite kind of hiding place. He backs the car up to the house for easy unloading of their luggage, and an even easier getaway, if the need should arise.

Since Eddie is nearly asleep on his feet, Richie takes pity on him and carries in his bag. He does a walk-through before allowing Eddie past the foyer, then heaves their things up the stairs. By the time he gets back down the living room, Eddie has discovered a throw blanket and made camp on the couch.

“Mmm!” Eddie flaps under the blanket for his attention without even opening his eyes. “Wake me up when you do your next sweep.”

He can feel Richie sink into the vacant end of the couch at his feet. “G’night, Eds,” he says with a squeeze of his toes.

He doesn’t wake up Eddie until the second sweep, though. A gentle touch rocks Eddie by the shoulder until he opens his eyes to Richie’s smirk.

“All right. Take two on Sunday morning, aaand go!”

Eddie gropes around the floor and checks his phone for the time. “Nine?” It’s an even later start than expected. “Dude, I’m gonna have to work through dinner to get the next section to Bev on time. When I said wake me up at-”

“You won’t,” Richie says. He sounds as grudgingly fond as you might when tossing a meatball from your own plate to the dog. “You needed the sleep or you were gonna be useless, Eds. Quit at six, and then I’ll take a pass at the proofreading.”

It’s not the first time he’s maneuvered Eddie into such a trade. Eddie calls it ‘ambushing’, Richie calls it ‘enforced delegation’. 

Eddie sighs. “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” Richie says.

When he comes back from his circuit of the house, the car, and the neighboring structures, they settle in together on the couch. Richie checks in with his tech support, while Eddie watches and rewatches interview clips, making note of timestamps he’d like to use a still of for this section. When he knuckles down to writing an introduction on lobbying reform, he prods Richie for nitpicky opinions.

“Is it very douchey or extremely douchey to put bunny ears on ‘educate’ in: Lobbyists look for opportunities to educate relevant staff...?”

“Oh, Eds. Anyone who’s reading the book version of a film they can sit back and watch while they house a bag of Cheetos and jerk off is already on your side. Go full bunny ears.”

Eddie moves his cursor and drops in the punctuation. “If Bev red pens it I’m ratting you out. Also- why the fuck are they jerking off with Cheeto fingers? To a documentary about gun law!?”

Richie snorts. “Make sure your author portrait takes up the whole back cover, maybe they’ll jerk off to the book, too. What do I fuckin’ know?”

“Not how to look up porn like a normal person, that’s for sure.”

On the arm of the couch, Eddie’s phone lights up with a scheduled reminder, Change For Basketball, immediately followed by a feeble pop up alerting him to it’s dying battery. He taps in his passcode and the 10% battery drops to 5% and he just barely pulls up the menu in time to see he’s had his Bluetooth on all day. No wonder it’s drained. Before the screen goes black he guiltily flicks it off, since Richie doesn’t approve of hackable signals when they’re supposed to be laying low like this.

“Ah fuck,” he realizes. “I left my charger in the car.” Eddie starts to put aside his laptop to get up and go retrieve it, but Richie swats him back down.

“I got it,” he says automatically. “Your ass is under lockdown, remember?”

“I’m not even allowed to stand up?” Eddie whines back. “What am I supposed to do for exercise so I don’t fucking atrophy?”

Richie braces himself with one hand on the back of the couch as he gets up, leaning and looming over Eddie. What the fuck time did he get up this morning in order to manage a shower before they left, that he’s smelling this fucking good?

“Don’t worry, we can chase each other up and down the stairs later,” he grins.

Christ. What about just chasing each other upstairs and into the nearest bed? Fuck coming back down again.

Eddie watches Richie go and shrug on his jacket and double check the placement of his keys, his phone, his gun. Then he heads out the door toward the car, locking the door behind him. It’s too bad he’s just grabbing Eddie’s cord. If he was making a full sweep Eddie might have time to take this edge off before he gets back and then behave himself for a few hours. One of them has to.

For a moment, Eddie considers breaking for a shower when suddenly he hears a noise that makes him think one of his background tabs must have started spontaneously playing.

Crack CRACK CRACK

Gunfire.

Eddie freezes to his core. That’s a handgun, too. That’s not a rifle with all the insane attachments that Bowers himself had once been so proud to demonstrate for him, that should be impossible for civilians to get their hands on. That’s got to be Richie.

As soon as he connects the sound with Richie, he’s in motion, letting his laptop slide away and crash to the floor as he bolts upright. He doesn’t even have shoes on as he fumbles with the lock on the door, but there’s no way in hell he’s stopping. There’s a peephole, but he doesn’t bother with that either, throwing the door open and rushing out.

He doesn’t have to look far. Eddie’s eyes fall on what’s wrong as though it's underlined in a squiggly red like his manuscript. A few yards away in the driveway, Richie slumps against the passenger side of the car, nearly on the ground. The front door is open and a sickening streak of red marks his collapse down the back.

It doesn’t matter if Bowers is still out there, waiting for Eddie to give himself away, Eddie screams, unable to care.

“RICHIE!”

His socked feet crunch painfully on the gravel between stepping stones as he stumbles along, diving to his knees and catching Richie around the middle. He doesn’t have enough hands, he realizes, as he tries to stopper the wet, blooming holes in his body.

“Oh fuck, Richie, please-“

At the sound of his voice, clenched eyes open. “G-got him,” Richie gasps. “But-“

Eddie shoots a glance over his shoulder, following Richie’s eyeline to a prone figure in a tangled mess in a neighbor’s garden. He must have posted up on a roof and fell when Richie returned fire. Hopefully he snapped his fucking neck, and if he didn’t, Eddie’ll do gladly do the honors himself. Richie sputters, and instantly Eddie snaps back to him, fury melting away.

“Richie, Richie, hang on. This is bad,” he says softly, trying to help, trying again to cover his wounds and failing. “We need to-“

“C-call M-mike.” Richie’s eyes flutter like they’ll close again. Eddie can’t let them shut forever.

He peels into Richie’s bloody jacket, where just a few moments ago he watched him drop his phone into his pocket. There’s no additional horror left in him to feel as he pulls the destroyed thing out. He can’t call Mike or Bill or nine-fucking-one-one. His own dead phone is inside the house and who knows where his cord is- here in the driveway or in the car, sure, but he is sure as fuck not gonna leave Richie alone to reunite the two.

“Gonna be okay,” Eddie grunts, pulling Richie's arms up and putting his shoulder into his chest. Now would be a great time for Richie to fucking cooperate for once. He gets his legs under him again and hoists up, forcing Richie to his feet. “We’re gonna get you to the hospital,” he tells him.

“Mike,” Richie tries to insist, but what does he know, half his blood is in the driveway, now. He doesn’t really help Eddie to help him, but he does hold tight around his neck. “Dr-drawn you. Oww. ”

Mike’s drawing him? See! Nonsense. Richie’s grip loosens and he hisses in pain.

“Shhh. Shh, c’mon, Richie. I’m not leaving you.”

Eddie gets him into the car and shoves at his legs to get them in too so he can shut the door. He races around the front so he can keep one eye on him through the windshield, and then barrels into the driver’s seat.

“Shit!” He’s like a kid wearing his dad’s suit, trying to reach the pedals with the seat where Richie left it. Usually it serves as a reminder that Richie is here, with him, but now it’s just one more thing slowing him down from keeping Richie here with him.

He’s dying, he’s dying, oh god.

“Out,” Richie slurs, head drooping. He’s collapsing in on himself since Eddie didn’t buckle him in. “Get out.”

“Hold on, Richie, please just hold on, please fucking hold on, I can’t lose you-“

Eddie is trying to get them out of here! He cranks at the adjustment bar and lurches forward, grasping at the GPS at the same time. It suctions off of the dashboard and into his hands, smearing with blood as he mashes at the buttons to turn it on. Richie will have pre-set the address of the nearest hospital. He always has stuff like that planned. Eddie’s favorite kind of take-out. Somewhere they could safely go for a work out. He always does such a good job looking after Eddie, just this once Eddie needs to return the favor. With shaking hands he jams his keys into the ignition.

Next to him, Richie chokes, flecking blood everywhere. “No,” he coughs and wails another oww. “No. Eds-"

Eddie turns the key once, to no avail. It’s kind of a chilly day for late summer, but definitely not enough to cause the engine any trouble. He glances over at Richie to reassure him, but he can hardly understand what he’s seeing. As though the vehicle is filling with poison gas, Richie claws at the door, his whole body pressed against it desperately. Finally he must catch the handle, because he tumbles out, falling to the ground outside as Eddie half twists the key again.

“What the FUCK!?” Eddie cries, bashing open his own door and jumping out to go get him.

One step-

-and then he’s on the ground, and the chilly day isn’t so chilly anymore. There’s a blast and a flash of heat so close, Eddie’s eyebrows stand on end. He turns his head against the pavement to see flames licking up the front of the car from under the hood and into the cabin- but underneath... Underneath he can just about see Richie, on the ground on the other side.

Eddie’s on his feet before he knows it, skirting around the back of the car and down to his knees again, beside Richie. As he turns him over onto his back, he tries to pull him farther away from the fire, too, onto the neatly manicured lawn. He’s shivering as Eddie takes him into his lap, giving into shock.

Richie must have realized. He must have thought if Eddie called Mike, he’d know Bowers was just drawing him out. He’d warn Eddie. Don’t get in the insecure exploding car, you fucking idiot. Wasn’t that Bowers' whole thing? He wanted Eddie dead but he didn’t want to prove him right? He couldn’t just shoot him and make him another gun violence statistic.

“Eddie,” says Richie’s struggling voice. The blood that drains from his mouth has traveled down his neck, staining the collar of his stupid shirt, meeting the spread of blood from his chest. His messy hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat and his face is clammy white. He still has on a little smile, though. He says Eddie’s name again.

“I didn’t wanna come here,” Eddie whimpers.

He scoops a hand under Richie’s neck and bends, pulling them as close together as he can. Foreheads touching, both pinched in agony. One of Richie’s hands clings to his arm, just barely. There’s so little movement now. His shivering is weak.

“I wanted to stay in bed,” Eddie tells him, burying his face in Richie’s neck.

Richie wheezes into his shoulder. “Hhh. We shoulda.”

“Richie,” Eddie knows this is his last chance, now. Richie is as cold to the touch as his own face is overheated, running with tears. Their cheeks slide together in the slick. Eddie presses what kisses he can to his face before it’s too late. “I love you, Richie- I always loved you-“

“Oh, Eddie,” comes a much stronger voice, even though it’s sighing. Tighter now, is the grip on his arm. “I didn’t know you cared.”

“Not you. Not fucking you,” Eddie breaks, his words croaking. “Let me stay with him until he-“

He lets go and scrambles back from Not Richie because the grief ripping through him is so physically unbearable, Eddie can’t imagine how anyone else could stand to touch him. He feels like a bomb that ought to be launched out into some lonely desert and detonated before he causes any further collateral damage.

Whether he’s relying on his nature as a creature of hellfire, or as a shade of the one person who could disarm him, Not Richie decides to risk it. He sits up and comes to enfold Eddie again in his arms. He cradles him as he weeps.

“He’s already gone,” he tells Eddie, and pets the back of his head. His fingers comb into his hair and it’s so unexpectedly gentle, it would be easy to mistake for the real thing, if Richie had ever held him like this. “But you can have him back. You can have anything you want.”

Eddie shakes his head against Not Richie’s shoulder. “Not here,” he knows.

This was a good life, a meaningful life- but a crucial part of that was Richie. Finally, he can see that. He could bring Richie back here, but there would always be danger. He could and would put himself between Eddie and death, even if he wasn’t paid for it. He could be killed again and again and one day Eddie will run out of Get Out Of Jail Free cards. He couldn’t go on without him, here. He would blame himself forever- he’s blaming himself now. If he had listened, he wouldn't have started the car, and wasted all that time. If Richie hadn’t been trying to protect him, he would have gone and got the charger for himself. If he'd just turned off his fucking Bluetooth...

He can’t simply wish for Richie never to die. Beyond the obvious pitfalls of immortality, that’d be the same as wishing this pain of survival on him. One day, Eddie will die, and if Richie feels this deeply, too- so deep that it’s taken lifetimes to dismantle all the walls built to contain it, and to discover it again-

Then Eddie remembers that first go around, where he already had. Richie had held him tight like Not Richie holds him now. He had pleaded for him to stay, too. Unfortunately, Eddie can’t stop his own death from repeating itself either.

Eddie pushes away from Not Richie’s chest, whole and perhaps not so heartless as he suspected, until he lets him go. He swallows at the sight of those open but unfamiliar eyes.

"What do you want to do?" Not Richie asks.

“I just want- I just wish I could protect him. That’s all.”

-

“Just like a detective in the pictures,” a voice tsks. “I was preparing myself for disappointment, but you’re a real looker, aren’t ya?”

Eddie peels his eyes away from scanning the classifieds and sets them on the figure that just quietly stepped into his office. Dark obscures his face, and the man’s long shadow slices across the floor as light from the hallway spills in behind him.

“It’s my job to look,” Eddie replies, without allowing a smile for the man’s intended meaning.

Eddie Kaspbrak is a private detective- it says so on the door. His business is to watch people. To know who they are, where they go, and what they want. Maybe he’s not so used to being observed so closely in return, though.

“I’ve seen you around The Capitol Club, but usually I don’t-“ The man steps into better light and pockets his coke-bottle glasses and then they both recognize each other better. 

Eddie’s been down to that local haunt to dig up dirt for clients, all right. They’ve been introduced a few times, running in the same circles, and he’s heard Big Mouth’s singing impressions while looking for the bottom of many a glass of gin. There are all sorts of tunes and gags. French romance, for instance, or the latest Broadway smash as sung by Frankenstein or FDR, and even female impersonations so sweet, you’d swear it was Lady Day herself. It’s pretty popular stuff.

“Richie ‘Big Mouth’ Tozier,” Eddie says evenly, concealing his surprise to see such a glamorous talent in his crummy little office. “Don’t suppose you’ve lived up to that name and landed yourself in some hot water?”

It’s hard for Tozier to look anything but dismayed, squinting like that. Now that he’s made his point, Eddie wonders that he doesn’t put his eyes back on, but- and he can already imagine Tozier putting on a voice of a vain ingenue if he suggested it- Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.

“Big Mouth is just my act, I’m not a rat.”

“But you’re in trouble or else you wouldn’t be here.”

Tozier takes a step closer to his desk. "Bill Denbrough said you helped track down his kid brother with nothing to go on but a receipt for a raincoat.”

“I did.”

The hands plunged in Tozier’s pockets come out empty and twist in front of him. “I don’t have anything like that to give you, the police took it all.”

Eddie sits back and crosses his arms. “You’ve already been to the police?”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“What’s the other way?”

Tozier sways on the spot and sighs. “They arrested me a week ago.”

“I think you’d better start at the beginning. Sit down before you fall down.” Eddie folds aside his newspaper and replaces it with a pad of paper.

“You’re not gonna name your price first?”

Eddie smiles. “Might wanna raise it after what I hear.”

“And Bill called you a bleeding heart...” Tozier mutters. He looks around for a nearby chair and heaps himself into it like a fur coat, legs crossed and an arm dangling over the back, which he’s deemed to be a side. A headful of bouncing curls are freed as he takes off his hat and balances it on his knee. To complete his languorous effect, he draws a silver cigarette case from his breast pocket. “Got any matches? It’ll keep me awake.”

Eddie pulls out his desk drawer and flips him a book. “You can keep it. If I take your case, I’ll expense it.”

“If you don’t?” Tozier lifts a single brow over the flame that makes his eyes twinkle without his glasses on.

APP CON, Eddie writes down, beginning his notes. Appearance conscious. He’d bet the farm this is a blackmail case.

“If I don’t,” he says. “-I’ll enjoy imagining you out there somewhere, offering people a light from some free advertising.”

Tozier checks the cover and reads it off with a grin. “Edward Kaspbrak, private detective. ‘Private’? What’s that mean?”

“It means I usually like to be the one to decide when and if the police are involved.”

The look Eddie gets back for that remark is not the smirking enjoyment he’s coming to expect from their little back and forth. Tozier’s arrogant mask falters.  “Does it mean if I told you something- something that’s not hurting anyone but me- you’ll keep it to yourself?”

He’s not so sure about Tozier just yet, but speaking for himself, Eddie wouldn’t say he was a rat either. For every good, moral law, Lord knows there are ten rotten ones. “I’d prefer it that way,” he tells him honestly.

“Right.” Tozier mulls that over the slow inhale of his cigarette and blows out the smoke. “Well, this is about being Big Mouth, I guess. I don’t know how else it would have happened. You’ve heard my act? Singing in funny voices. Accents. Making words up for special guests.”

Eddie nods to confirm.

“I suppose it started a joke. Or, I thought it was a joke-”

“Aren’t you sure? You’re a comedian.”

There’s that flash of teeth again. Tozier fits his fingers into the dimples of the hat on his knee and spins it around. “The pay wasn’t a joke. Someone sent me a letter asking for me to telephone their father and sing him Happy Birthday like I was Louis Armstrong. And... ten whole dollars.”

Eddie whistles. That’s what he’ll charge a man he really doesn’t like for a day’s work. “I’m in the wrong line of business.”

“You can say that again.”

“Did you do it?”

Tozier lifts the hat off his knee and spreads his arms wide. “Ten dollars already in my hand? I felt like singing anyway.”

“So far, so good. Then what?”

“There were a few more letters like that. I threw them all out, but I started to get the idea they were from the same person pretty quick. An anonymous admirer from the Capitol.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Not long after I started there. Two or three years ago.”

Eddie starts to make a note. “Longer than that. It was ‘41, before we went in on the war. I remember you did a song from Road to Zanzibar that made me rush out and see the picture.”

Verever you are, you're near me
You dare me to be untrue
Vunny, each time I vall in love
It's alvays you

“How’d you like it?”

“I was disappointed when Dracula wasn’t really in it. You owe me a quarter for the ticket. I’ll add that to your bill, too.”

Tozier grins and points with his cigarette. “If you’re such a long time devotee, Mr. Kaspbrak, maybe the letters are from you.”

“No,” Eddie says flat as table, to toy with him.

Tozier squirms. “No?”

“I’d ask for ‘Jolly Good Fellow’. Now, were these letters signed in any way? Handwritten? Typed?”

Tozier shakes his head. “Typed.”

Eddie doesn’t even make a note of that, it’s becoming so obvious. “Then there was a letter without any money, I’ll bet.”

A shadow passes over Tozier’s face and he stalls with his cigarette again. “That one said I ought to call a man named- Cain? or Keene? I think it was Keene. No song. Just said that I should tell him his wife wouldn’t appreciate hearing about his unpaid gambling debt.”

Sometimes there’s no comfort in being right. Eddie watches the color drain from Tozier’s face and dreads asking, but he has to. “And what did the letter blackmail you with, to do it?”

Tozier’s Big Mouth works silently, forming one word after another without speaking until he finally decides on an answer. “A lover,” he says weakly.

Eddie draws a sharp breath. “Now, you tell me if I’ve got the right idea, here-”

As though the cloud of smoke might shroud him from further question, Tozier keeps puffing away. Other people’s ideas can be dangerous. He starts trying to volunteer facts instead, trying to head Eddie off. “I didn’t keep up with it, all this time, if that’s what you’re thinking. I ended it, as if that would help. Obviously that didn’t change me... But the letters didn’t stop. Sometimes there’d be money, too, to keep me feeling too guilty to tell anyone.” He chances a look at Eddie. “Call someone like an Italian. Call someone with a deep, drawn out voice. Call someone and tell them you’ll end their career if they don’t pay up. And I did.”

At this rate, it's a wonder he’s not still in police custody.

“Any chance that your lover and blackmailer are one in the same?”

For a moment, Tozier looks horrified, but recovers. “Not likely. Not with overseas postage,” he says carefully.

Foreign mail speeds? Eddie notes. You never know.

“I take it that when you were arrested they confiscated all of these letters as evidence?”

Tozier rolls his eyes. “Naturally. But I only had two or three lying around. Ones with names I thought I might be able to look up. The rest I got rid of. Burned them as quick as I got them.”

Eddie has Tozier put back on his glasses and write a list for him of every name he can remember and another of what kind of voices he was told to use. Mostly the accompanying threats were monetary, but a follow up call from the Grim Reaper wasn’t unheard of. He’ll have to look into those of the names that have a chance of being unique in a town like New York, and see if they’re at all related. Are they links in a chain, or a whole damn fence? Either way, if he can find and rattle one, more are sure to follow until he finds the hungry dog on the other end, doing all this barking.

“Do you know how you wound up getting fingered for this?” Eddie asks. He’s not convinced this isn’t a dirty cop to begin with. It can be a hell of a lot more profitable to squeeze someone than to lock them up.

Tozier ashes his cigarette vindictively. “One of my calls- I made it from the club. I didn’t have time to find another phone. The poor sucker on the other end- a gambler- recognized Hanlon bowin’ horn in the background. One of his own songs. He knew right where to send the police, and there weren’t any other fellas working that night with access to the phone in the backstage office. If he hadn’t turned up dead while I was busy being in holding, I don’t think they woulda let me go. They thought if I turned up dead next... they wouldn’t mind so much and then they’d have a little more to go on.”

Eddie looks over his notes and Tozier’s list, looking for any pattern that might stand out to him. There are a few notions he’d like to try on and see how they fit.

“So you didn’t tell the cops any of these names?”

Tozier shakes his head. “No. I let them talk themselves into their own boneheaded theory.”

“Did you lie?”

“I said I did it for a gambling debt, same as the other guy, not that I-" he pauses. "Not that I was being blackmailed.”

Eddie rubs his eyes in disbelief. “Definitely stop volunteering crimes to the police, you numskull.”

“They worked me over for hours!” Tozier defends himself. “But don’t worry, I’m not going back to them.”

“Why on earth would you?” Eddie boggles. He was luckier than the devil to get away the first time. Still, he can’t help but feel a swell in his chest that he’d been entrusted over them.

Without his smoking to keep him going, Tozier starts harassing his hat again. He pinches the brim and turns it in his hands. “There was another letter, after the arrest. At first I thought the gig was over. That I was too hot to keep using, and the same way that spider,” he spits, “-knew everything else, I thought he’d know that, too.”

“You destroyed that one, too? What’d it say?”

The rotation of the hat in Tozier’s hands comes to a halt.

“No more stupid mistakes or else next time I’ll make sure the police have something to charge you for,” he tells Eddie. He looks pale as the grave again. “That was all. No instructions for Big Mouth. I’ve been- I’ve been afraid to go home, since. The letters- well obviously he knows where I live if he has my address, right? I’ve barely left the club except to come here, in case someone else the police can connect to me turns up dead and I don’t have an alibi.”

Tozier was arrested a week ago, Eddie realizes. Assuming it took a day or two for his blackmailer to find out and send a letter- “When’s the last time you slept?”

“When’s the last time it rained?” Tozier winces.

“Two nights ago.”

“That’s when Bill kicked me out. I slept two or three hours backstage last night before the owner found me... I think? Maybe that was the same night?”

Eddie gets up from his desk and pulls his coat off the rack. “I’ll take you home.”

Tozier startles. “But if-“

“Anyone who wants you dead will have to get through me first,” Eddie promises. “Dead clients don’t pay, you know.”

And then when he’s not exhausted to the point of paranoia, he’ll explain to him why he’s more use to this blackmailer alive and out of custody. Meanwhile, Eddie can check if Tozier received any more letters while avoiding home. 

Tozier looks up at him wide eyed. “You’ll take my case?”

Eddie puts on his hat and then plucks Tozier’s out of his hands and drops it on his head, too. “Come on, Mr. Tozier.”

“You’re gonna be a guest in my home- Richie, please,” he reintroduces himself, getting to his feet.

“Richie,” Eddie places a hand at his back. “Go get some sleep so I don’t feel like a heel taking your money while you’re half out of your mind.”

At his touch, Tozier- Richie falls into step. “Oh, I’m always half out of my mind. Ask anyone.”

“No thanks. That would mean admitting that I know you. I’ve already got a reputation as a sap, apparently. I can’t afford people thinking I’m a lunatic.”

Despite everything weighing on him, Richie laughs, and Eddie thinks it might just be the best sound that Big Mouth makes.

While Richie sleeps off his waking nightmare, Eddie takes a look around his shabby little apartment. It’s typical bachelor fare, with little decoration and water that runs too cold, too long. The private telephone (no one has cut into it’s circuit, he’s checked) is really the crown jewel of the place, the one luxury aside from a pile of records. To play those, there’s an immaculately kept turntable, though for some reason it’s located by the sink where Eddie sees the traces of java grounds. Since the cupboard is bare but for a half loaf of bread and some beers in the ice box, that’s probably the most cooking that happens here, while Richie subsists on meals from the club. There are venetian blinds but no curtains, and no spare pillows on the low, lumpy couch where Eddie gets a few winks, himself. There is no ‘woman’s touch’, nor any other soft effect in the apartment until Richie reemerges from bed, having slept half a day. A pleasing hum teases his arrival, weaving from bedroom, to bathroom, to hall, and then blends into a chuckle as he swans into the kitchen. 

“I thought you might have been a dream,” he tells Eddie.

“Let me know when you rule out ‘hallucination’.”

“Hmm. I’ll need coffee for that.”

While he’s turned away, Eddie lets his gaze linger. The pomade in Richie’s hair has been brushed out, leaving his curls feathery, and his earlier pallor has been replaced by the blush of a hearty rest. With no audience to impress but Eddie, he wears his glasses so he can navigate the hot plate without scalding himself. A comfortable sight, indeed.

After he starts that boiling, he pulls the sash of his dressing robe tight and glides over to Eddie, reading the paper he retrieved this morning at the table. He peeks at the headlines, hanging over Eddie like a garland at a threshold, smelling honeyed, and blooming with a smile. It makes Eddie want to hold his breath to keep the sweetness inside.

“Did I viciously murder anyone while I was out?” Richie inquires.

Eddie folds back to the obituaries. “Nope. How’d you sleep?”

Richie’s fingers travel down the page until he gets to the T’s absent of a Tozier. “Aha!” He taps it. “Above ground, it turns out. Any thoughts on how we might keep it that way?”

“A few.” Eddie lays down the paper and twists his chair to face the other, which Richie happily takes as an invitation to sit with him. “First off, no more placing calls from here or the club- but when you get a letter, do what she says. Then bring it to me as soon as you can.”

Richie’s brow makes the expected crease. “She?” he asks. “What makes you so sure it's a broad?”

“Were you ever asked to make one of your calls in a woman’s voice?” This is the most glaring detail missing from the lists they made last night.

“No, now that I think about it.” The confused lines in Richie’s forehead multiply.

“I think that’s what she wants you for, your spider,” says Eddie. He can’t help but be self-satisfied with the amazed way Richie watches him. “I think her blackmail empire’s too difficult to enforce without the perception of brute strength.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t notice-“

The pot of water starts to rattle loudly, boiling on the hot plate.

“Finally.” Richie holds up a finger to excuse himself and hops to his feet. “You want some?”

Eddie follows him to the counter, keeping close while Richie makes his brew. “Sure. But- it’s just a hunch. Don’t lull yourself into a false sense of security-“

“I’m on tiptoes and tenterhooks,” Richie promises. He twists toward Eddie, indeed a few inches taller than before as he holds up on his toes. “I suspect everyone. What was your excuse again, Mr. Kaspbrak?”

“Better taste in music,” Eddie grins up at him. “But I really think it's a woman. You said yourself, you thought it was an admirer at first-“

Richie quickly looks away and fusses with their coffee, pouring out two cups for them both. “Who can keep track of every stagedoor Johnny?” He laughs, a bit unnaturally. “Cream or sugar?”

“No, thank you.”

Truth be told, he doesn’t want the coffee at all, not at this hour, but Eddie waits to be handed his cup before pressing on. He won’t sneak up on Richie from behind. He has to look him in the eye so that Richie knows he doesn’t mean any harm. When Richie faces him again, he has the nervous look of a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

“What woman knows about your lovers?” Eddie asks quietly, because it must be asked.

“...I only mentioned the one.” Worried eyes flicker to meet Eddie over the rim of Richie’s own cup.

“But they’re all alike, aren’t they- and she would know how,” Eddie says. “Maybe a jilted wife?”

Richie gestures at the surrounding empty apartment. “I don’t have a wife.”

Eddie lets Richie hold that line for a moment while they sip their drinks quietly. The next time Richie lowers his cup, Eddie covers it from the top, takes it and puts it aside, slowly. As the distraction is pulled away, Richie’s spine straightens, preparing for fight or flight.

“But did he? He went to war, didn’t he?”

“Who?” Richie asks superfluously. “And who didn’t?!”

“You and me, for a start,” Eddie reminds him. Obviously Richie would have 4F’ed right out of a draft physical with his wretched eyesight as quickly as Eddie with his bum lungs and the lingering paresis. Odds are, Richie's lover was probably similar aged, but able bodied. “Maybe there wasn’t enough money to go around at home with him gone?” Eddie supposes.

Finally Richie stops trying to talk around it and he fixes Eddie with a wary look. Eddie can see how badly Richie wants to trust him. He’s been trying to, all this time. “No. Not a married man,” he admits. “I’d rather be alone.”

“Because- you want to be the only one who’s wanted,” Eddie says certainly. It’s his job to see what other people want, even if it’s taken a few years to sort out the same for himself. Even then, it had to walk into his office and practically sit in his lap for Eddie to be ready to take the chance. “Now who’s the bleeding heart?”

Richie shakes his anxious head. “Mr. Kaspbrak, you won’t- you won’t quit, will you?”

Eddie reaches to still him, fitting a hand to Richie’s cheek and shaking his own head. “I couldn’t.”

“But, for your reputation- you- you wouldn’t want to be seen-”

“-Don’t tell me what I want, I’ll tell you what I want.” Eddie leans closer, tracing his thumb at Richie’s trembling lip. “I want you. Always you,” he murmurs just before kissing him.

There’s a quick sip of surprise, but then Richie softens into it. He’s warm lipped and eager, opening his mouth to Eddie and sharing his delicious sigh. He kisses unhurried, so opposed to the way he speaks- but it is a language. At last, says his kiss. Let’s make this count. And ludicrously, Let’s make it stick, this time. Richie’s hands slip to Eddie’s back, gathering him in like a bushel, so that even when they break apart they’re still together.

“I wish I’d come to you sooner,” he says, searching Eddie’s face like he’s still a little suspicious of hallucination. “Years ago.”

“My rates were better then,” Eddie grins.

“I didn’t want to make things worse,” Richie tells him sincerely. “I don’t want anyone else to be in danger ‘cause I’m too stupid not to take a wooden nickle.”

Eddie grips him by the chin. “If I can handle you, don’t you think I can handle myself?” He draws Richie down into another kiss.

As they trade tender nips that stretch into longer, more exploring kisses, Richie’s solid, sensational body pushes against his. Eddie pushes back, cornering him into the shelter of the nook between the kitchen counter and the door. When his hand falls from Richie’s chin to his chest, it comes to land half on the satin of his robe and half on his skin, and Eddie knows which is more tempting. There’s no surprise or resistance as he spreads his fingers across Richie’s heated flesh, only an encouraging moan that morphs into a contented yawn.

“I’m boring you,” Eddie teases as his roams. “If you’re still tired you should go back to bed.”

“Tired as tombstones. I’m exhausted. I’m a wreck,” Richie gushes. He starts rending apart the knot at his waist. “If I don’t watch out, I might collapse in the hallway between here and there.”

And of course, Eddie has already sworn to help Richie look after his interests. They go to Richie’s cramped little bed in his cramped little room and have no choice but to hold each other tight, press close, press deep into one another. It’s new to Eddie, but Richie makes it so easy to be his lover, as long as he keeps paying attention to him as raptly as he has for years, now. He makes sounds even better than his laugh. And with as desperate as he says he is to look at Eddie up close, see him here in his arms rather than out in the crowd at the Capitol- Eddie knows that when he shuts his eyes now it can only be for something very good.

“What time is it?” Richie asks after, while they lay together. It's been a while, now. Their kisses have slowed to a lazy, sated pace. “Hell, what year is it?”

“1989, I think,” Eddie chuckles. “Come here, kid.” Richie shuffles in closer against his chest and then it’s easier to hook his arm around and read his watch. “Four o’clock.”

Richie groans. “I have to get to the club. Can I call your office later?”

“You’ll have to be careful what you say,” Eddie reminds him. “Don’t do any more Big Mouth calls here or at the club. You don’t know the police aren’t listening.” Sure, he checked that the phone was clean now, but that can always change.

“Well, sure. But just to say goodnight to my fella?” grins Richie. “Unless you’d want to come and see me in person...”

Eddie shivers at the enticing hand that strokes his back. Much as he would like to... “I do have a case to work, you know.”

“I know,” Richie dots him with a grateful kiss.

“Call me.”

“I’m gonna,” Richie boasts.

“You better,” Eddie prods him in the gut.

Richie rolls them, pushing to be on top of Eddie. He flattens himself like a pancake at the top of a shortstack and laughs his buttery laugh. “Only way you could stop me is if you held me down.”

Eddie grins up at him. “Then you wouldn’t need to call me at all.”

“You and your detective logic mumbo jumbo.” He kisses Eddie soundly, like he’s making up for later. He hums a happy, directionless tune into it and then trails off in a sigh. “We probably shouldn’t be seen together at the club too often, or coming and going from here,” he admits.

Eddie hates to agree. “No. Not until we catch your spider.” Then things will be safer.

A bright thought occurs to Richie. “Could I see you at your place?”

If only. To smooth the disappointment, Eddie pets Richie’s fluffy hair and nests a kiss at the top of his head. “I’m living with my mother while Dad’s in Washington with the WPB,” he explains. “I’m at my office for everything but sleeping and showering, though. If I’m awake, I’ll get your call. Otherwise, I have an answering service.”

“Eh, alright, handsome.” Richie kisses him. “I’ll start thinking up a real humdinger of a joke in case I have to leave a message.” He kisses Eddie one more time before slipping out of bed for good.

Maybe it’s an over-correction avoiding the Capitol all together over the next few weeks of their affair, but if it protects Richie from the suspicion that he’s hired a gumshoe, it’s for the best. Eddie chases up every name he can on Richie’s list- some dead ends, some just dead- while Richie feeds him the information from any new letters. Unable to meet openly, they make do with long, furtive calls in the middle of the night. Occasionally they can arrange a rendezvous at a hotel, but mostly it breaks Eddie’s heart every time they hang up without knowing when they’ll see each other again. Why should everyone else in New York get to wander into the Capitol and stare at him and yet not really see him? Night after night, there are people who get to hear Richie’s laugh in person, and they only hear Big Mouth.

That makes it all the more troubling when Richie calls him out of the blue early one evening. Eddie can hear the commotion of the club in the background. Stan, Richie’s pianist, noodling around the keys, glasses clinking, the murmur of a crowd. It all sounds so pleasant, in sharp relief with the fearful edge to Richie’s voice. Why can’t anyone else hear this? 

“Eds, I need to see you,” is all he can say before someone backstage butts in, squawking that it’s nearly dinner. “I heard ya the first time, Hayes!”

“Rich, what’s wrong?” Eddie clutches his receiver.

“I read a good book.” That’s their code for a new letter. It’s about a salesman named Marks, you’d like it. Richie hesitates, drawing a sharp breath. “But I can’t tell you about it, you’ll have to borrow it for yourself.”

Eddie’s stomach can’t decide whether to sink because this is out of the ordinary, or burst with butterflies because this is an offer to meet tonight. “Can you bring it to my office?” he asks, breathless.

“After work. But it’ll be late.”

“That’s all right, kid, I’ll leave the light on for ya.”

After a few hours of waiting, trying and failing to get some work done in the meanwhile, Eddie decides to save Richie the shoe leather and meet him down at the club after all. He’ll make the most of it. It’s been slow going working Richie’s case from the side of the victims, maybe it’s finally time to try narrowing things down from the other direction. Just who is their nefarious perpetrator? Someone who knows about Big Mouth’s skill, firstly- so everyone who steps foot in the club- that’s not rocket science. Who knows he talked to the police? Presumably anyone who was around the night Richie was arrested. Who might they have tipped off? Once he’s answered a few of these questions, Eddie’ll get a good look around and then find some place quiet to duck his head with Richie. If he’s worried about their being noticed at his address, Eddie could afford a room, if Richie’s willing to sit through a cab ride to a cheaper part of town. No matter what, he’s going to end the night in Richie’s arms. Whatever the other unknowns, he steps into The Capitol Club sure of that, at least.

Tonight the crowd is being treated to one of Richie’s rare straight up and down renditions. No accent, no funny pinched nose, or squeaky voice. Just a handsome man in a dazzling white dinner jacket and a pretty song winding through the air like the smoke of many a cigarette, curlicuing to the ceiling.

Listen, sweet, I repeat,
How long has this been going on?

It’s odd to see Richie without his glasses again, as he had for years until recently. His Richie- the Richie that tells Eddie dreadful, filthy jokes and then kisses him so sweetly that no one could believe the same mouth had done both things- his Richie wears glasses. And he can’t stand to keep his collar buttoned, let alone wear a bow tie. It’s strange to think in the same way that there was a secret Richie hidden in plain sight- someone else here might have a secret identity. Unfortunately, it’s not such a charming one.

Eddie gets himself a drink and stands at the end of the bar closest to the stage, thinking he’ll take advantage of the light to survey the crowd. That’s not how it winds up, of course. He spots one or two particularly crafty looking women intently watching Richie that he could strike up some investigative conversation with- but instead he falls to their same fate. He’s under Richie’s infuriatingly distracting spell. It was kind of stupid to think coming here would go any differently.

What a break! For Heaven's sake!
How long has this been going on?

When Richie’s number is done, Eddie knocks on the edge of Stan’s piano.

“Point me out to Rich, will ya?”

Stan cranes around the corner of his piano and gives him a nod. “Hey, Richie,” he motions. 

They whisper back and forth to each other, and Stan launches into another melody that’s not so much underscoring for a vocalist as its own feature.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Stanley Uris,” Richie introduces, before bowing away through the curtains at the back of the stage.

Before long, he reappears, his white jacket glowing through the shadowy corner where the backstage door opens to the main floor of the club. As he weaves through the cafe tables filled with candles and customers towards Eddie, he pulls his glasses out of his pocket and puts them on.

“Where’d you learn to sing like that?” Eddie asks as he draws close.

“I took a correspondence course,” Richie grins, meeting him at the bar. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.” He can’t kiss him hello here, but Richie slides an arm around his shoulder almost as tenderly.

“Hey, Rich,” Eddie beams back. He has a hard time mastering his expression into something less gaga, until Richie gives him a fake sock in the jaw. Fake or not, Richie’s got big boney hands, so it still smarts. “What’s the big idea!?”

“That’s for lying to me, you little weasel.”

“No?” Eddie protests, pulling away from his arm. He always shoots straight with Richie. He’s more honest with him than he’s ever been with anyone. They finally have each other and there’s no need to hold back, at least when they’re alone. Really, the only thing he’s kept from Richie is that he loves him, that he’s in love with him. There just hasn’t been a chance to say it in person, yet.

“If looks could kill.” Richie doubles over laughing. “You did! Not that I’m not glad to see ya, but you said you’d wait for me at your office.”

Eddie rubs his jaw, but he’s smiling again. He can’t help but catch whatever happy bug Richie gets. “I knew I was gonna see you and I couldn’t wait.”

Richie straightens back up and leans against the bar, smirking. “Head over heels, eh?”

“Richie...” Eddie’s eyes dart around, from Richie, to the table nearest, the bartender, and back again. “I was worried. About the letter.”

The look on Richie’s face freezes unnaturally. “Eddie...” he says, with so much regret in his tone, so jarring when paired with the fixed smile, Eddie could drop dead. “The letter... was to call you. I found it on my way to the club tonight, I- I-,” he pauses and looks around, then steps a little closer to Eddie to whisper. “I don’t know how much the spider knows.”

Eddie fights the urge to take Richie’s hand, so close to his on the surface of the bar. “What did it say?”

Richie leans closer still, as there can be no miscommunication, not now. Eddie’s heart races, traveling up his throat and threatening to pop his adam’s apple right out ahead of it.

“'Tell Mr. Kaspbrak if he doesn’t drop Big Mouth, I’ll drop him',” Richie whispers. He lets his cheek brush Eddie’s as he pulls away again.

“Richie...”

“I’m not scared,” Richie says, defiantly.

“You are.” Eddie is. It’s OK. They can be scared together. He feels the pinch of his eyebrows broadcasting this to Richie.

“Fine, I am. I’m-” Richie huffs. He’s clearly a little angry, too. The two so often go hand in hand in times of powerlessness. “You shouldn't have come here, Eds,” he says. “You should have let me come to you.”

“It’ll be fine,” Eddie says automatically, and instantly he feels his gut rebelling against making such a baseless promise. They’re honest with each other, remember? “As far as anyone knows- it doesn't sound like they know how close we are. ‘Drop Big Mouth’?” Eddie searches Richie for any sign of his infectious optimism, and failing that, somehow becomes overwhelmed with it himself. “If they knew they could do better than that.”

Tell your lover, if he doesn’t drop your case, I’ll kill you in front of him.

Richie considers this for a moment, then looks back to Eddie. “What do we do?”

“We can go somewhere tonight,” Eddie says, falling back on his earlier plan. “A hotel. We’ll figure it out there. Hell, if it comes to it, we’ll get out of New York.”

Richie blinks rapidly, a flurry behind the magnifying effect of his glasses. “What are you saying?”

Eddie glances at the bartender and the nearby crowd again, and leans in. “Forget all this. Run away with me. I could work in Washington for my father, and I’m sure you could find a dance hall at one of the bases down there. We could start over.”

There’s always a light in Richie, that's what makes him so beautiful, but now he practically ignites. It’s a wonder everyone in the club doesn’t stop and turn to look at them, this shining, newborn star, Richie’s brilliant hope that they could have a life together.

“Eds,” he says, voice choked like he’s on the verge of tears. “When?”

“Now.” Eddie skids his hand across the bar top to nudge Richie’s.

Richie shakes himself to sense. “I- I can’t just leave Stan high and dry, he’ll start playing Dvořák and get booed off the stage and he won’t get paid for the week- he’s got a wife and kid!”

Eddie muffles a laugh with one hand. “Can you just finish the night, then?”

“Okay, okay,” Richie laughs too. “Just a-” he peels away and passes Eddie to go lean at the edge of the stage and say something to Stan. Play another song after this, if Eddie has to guess, by the shape of Richie’s mouth. He circles back to Eddie, “Okay. Just two more hours here. After my next song I’ll call Bill and tell him to pack a bag for me and-” he pauses. “Where should he send it?”

“-Send it to the Dorset on 22nd,” Eddie supplies. He waves his hand at his own concerns. “I can get my mother to send me things once we’re in Washington.”

Richie grins from ear to ear. “Okay. Eds-”

“-It’ll be okay Richie.”

One of the Capitol’s waitresses breezes by, and Richie flags her down with one hand and dips into his jacket with the other. “Nellie, give me a light!”

A celebratory cigarette, then.

Nellie stops in her tracks, but doesn’t yet reach into the bulging pockets of her apron. “That’s not my name. Give yourself a light.”

“I can’t, you took my matches last night!” Richie dangles a cigarette from his mouth with a pitiful frown. “Nellie...”

She sighs and checks her pockets, then strikes a match for Richie, and shakes it out when he’s done. “What about you?” Nellie asks Eddie, offering the matchbook and a more hospitable smile than she ever gave Richie.

“What’s your name?” Eddie asks back.

“Penelope. It’s Penny, not Nellie.”

“Penny. Let me apologize for my friend’s poor manners,” he sighs, offering her some change as a tip for the light. “I know what a putz Big Mouth here can be with the ladies.”

She pockets his coin. “Don’t I know it.”

Eddie looks down the bar. “Is there anyone else I should be treating while I’m at it?”

Penny looks around and narrows her eyes at a woman with piles of red curls poised atop her head. “He’s always pestering Miss Marsh.”

“Thank you.” Eddie hands her another few bits. “One for Miss Marsh then.”

“Nothing for you? No light?” she checks, holding up the book of matches again. 

Edward Kaspbrak - Private Detective
  46th Street between 9th and 10
                   New York

Eddie shuts his mouth quickly then opens it again. “No, thank you. I was just leaving.”

Sirens are going off in his head. He and Richie have been carrying on discreetly for weeks, but she took his matches last night. She saw that Richie was in touch with a detective. Within a day, Richie had a threatening letter, connecting the two of them.

“Ah-” he tries, to Richie.

But Stan is winding down, again, by the sound of this song. Behind Penny, Richie steps away from the bar. He waves a hand at Eddie and mouths something he can’t possibly process on top of everything else, and then disappears into the crowd.

“Good night,” Eddie blurts, whether or not Penny is still paying attention to him. He plucks his hat off the bar and ducks away in the opposite direction of Richie, like he really is leaving.

His instinct that this is wrong, that he should stay and protect Richie rushes with blood to his ears like a scream. His palms sweat, and he drops his hat to the floor of the club, accidentally kicking it under a table as he flails to catch it. It doesn’t matter. Leave it. Don’t leave Richie. Eddie keeps moving. I’m never going to, he tries to tell his racing heart. He just needs Penelope to believe he’s leaving.

He doesn’t look back until he reaches the entrance, and then he ducks behind a woman taking off her lush coat, shucks his own, and trades it with the coat of her husband on the disinterested arm of the maître d'. Eddie rushes away and then shrugs the borrowed coat on, several shades darker. Perfect.

He spots the stage door Richie had appeared from earlier on the other side of the club from the bar. He winds his way toward it, trying to blend in. Trying not to look like he's panicking inside. When he finally gets to the door he squares himself authoritatively to pass through. No one tries to stop him, and if even they did, Eddie wouldn’t let them. He needs to get Richie out of here, immediately.

The door is unlocked, but it’s pitch black when he shuts himself on the other side. Richie must feel his way through here by memory, half-blind as he is. Eddie gropes along in the dark, but the route is winding and warren-like, with boxes stacked unpredictably on either side jutting into the path. He stumbles through until he sees a haze of light coming around a corner up ahead. The music from the stage is getting louder again. Richie is doing his singing Dracula bit, and it’s killing. When he turns the corner he can see the narrow backstage proper. The backside of the curtains he’s seen from out front make one wall, while a row of office doors and dressing rooms and prop storage make up the other. Eddie sneaks up close to the sliver of light between hanging curtains. He only means to keep an eye on Richie while he waits, but instead he falls in love all over again.

Eddie can't wait to get him out of here and all to himself, he thinks, humming along dreamily.

“You should have left, Mr. Kaspbrak,” he hears, between verses.

He turns, but the wrong way. A pitcher of water waiting for Richie’s break smashes to the ground, splashing his shins. The little bit of light from the stage glints on the blade of a knife and disappears again in the dark. An elbow catches him in the gut. He can’t see back here, dammit, he can only feel- and then he feels too much, too sharp. Eddie reaches to his own neck, wet and burning. He sees the flash of the knife again, and dives for it. He catches Penny by the wrist and tackles them both down to the ground, driving her blade with them. It won’t catch the light again, buried in her chest.

Eddie falls back, his already poor vision swimming. It’s funny how much more green the curtains look now. It’s funny how everything seems more colorful. It must be the loss of blood. He feels at his sticky wound, trying to hold it closed so he can get up again, but he’s so weak. He crawls closer to the gap in the curtains and wilts once more. At this angle, the best he can do is painfully turn his head on the floorboards and watch Stan’s feet at the pedals of his piano as he accompanies Richie.

Vunny, each time I vall in love
It's alvays you

It has been Richie every time, hasn’t it?

Odd thing to think.

The crowd beyond breaks into the patter of applause, and the shape of the light between the curtains changes.

“Hey! Is some screwin' around back- Eddie!”

Hands tug at Eddie, pulling him around, but he has to fight to keep his eyes open.

“S’Penny,” he tries to tell Richie.

"Penny?" His bright white coat is darkening as Richie holds him in his arms. “I- I forgot! I totally- I didn’t care. She came on to me years ago and I turned her down and I didn’t even think... We should have just left, Eds-”

“Rishh,” Eddie hisses through a mouth choked with blood. He reaches up to touch Richie’s cheek, instead. He wants to tell him that even though he prefers his Richie, he’s glad he doesn’t have his glasses on to see this. Richie shouldn’t have to watch him die.

-Again?

Still odd.

Eddie would like to clear his throat, but it’s pointless. “This is... it,” he says.

“No no no, Eddie, no,” Richie cries. He smudges a long kiss at Eddie’s forehead, afraid to break it, even as he speaks. “We just found each other! It’s been years alone and we only just! Eddie- don’t,” he pleads. “Eddie- I love you.”

“I- know now,” Eddie smiles up at him, even as he coughs. It speckles more of Richie’s shirt and jacket, already seeping red, the edges of it spreading until Eddie can’t see the white at all. “I- love you,” he sputters, against the searing pain. "Richie..."

Then the pain is gone as he lays in that blood red embrace- but cleaner. It was always a red suit. Slowly, Eddie lifts his head to look at Not Richie. “You again,” he sighs, and pushes away to sit up independently.

“Always,” Not Richie smiles. He sits back, hands braced behind him and crosses his legs.

“I’m sensing a pattern.”

“For someone with a Masters in statistics your pattern recognition is kinda dog shit.”

Eddie would love to be angry with Not Richie, really he would, but he can’t help but feel relieved as he looks around with fresh eyes. He gets himself to his feet and peeks out through the curtains. The Capitol Club is empty now, but the vintage trappings are all still there. The smoke, the old ribbon microphone, the posters on the walls-

Are YOU doing all you can? Buy war bonds!

“What the fuck happened?’ Eddie asks. “How did we end up in the fucking Forties?”

Not Richie slinks up beside him and leans an elbow on the piano. “You made a lot of layers of wishes, dude. I told you it might get weird.”

“Yeah! It got weird!”

“Yeah, I’m wearing a fucking cummerbund, I know!” Not Richie snaps back. “And we didn't even get to the part where you’re an underground commie...”

“What?”

“It's this whole thing with your dad,” Not Richie waves. He pushes himself away from the piano and starts to lazily pace the stage.

“What the fuck, what the fuck,” Eddie buries his face in his hands. “This place fucking stinks like my grandma’s, can we can just get the fuck out of here so I can fucking think?”

Not Richie shrugs at him. “Yeah, man, that’s cool.” He wanders up to the edge of the stage and hops off, down to the floor of the club, then turns around expectantly to Eddie. “Are we going, or what? Are you okay?"

"Nuh-no?"

"You wanna chill out a minute? Get dinner?” Not Richie tries. He holds up a hand to help Eddie jump down, too.

Eddie stares at him like he’s crazy. “Not here, everything’s fucking boiled and they’re rationing the butter.”

“That’s fair...” Not Richie scratches his sideburns.

“I am kinda hungry, though,” Eddie realizes.

“You’ve had a busy eternity.”

That’s fucking right. He could stand to treat himself and regroup before slingshotting into the next reality. If this fucking circus is where things stand ten wishes in, he’s gonna need to think up some damage control.

“Let’s go to like, Bee Dubs, I don’t fucking care anymore.”

Not Richie staggers. “Woah, woah, woah. You wanna go get wings? Sloppy, messy, shitty chain restaurant wings. VIP ticket to The Gas-X Express. Right now...?!”

“It doesn’t count right now!” Eddie throws his hands in the air. “Nothing fucking matters, anymore! I can't watch him die over and over and I can’t keep him safe and- and keep him, either, I-”

Even if this time they nearly worked it out, he’s dead again. He went and died on Richie again- Richie who’s loved him for forever- but now Eddie knows exactly how that feels to hold the man he loves as he dies. Like he fucking deserves Hell if he can’t stop it. Eddie tears at his hair and growls.

He marches right up to the edge of the stage and snarls at Not Richie. “So, I’m in love with him, right?! I’ve always been in love with him. That’s why you look like him. You fuckers can keep me out of your way if you throw me at him- that’s... That’s what this- all of this was all about?” Eddie’s voice is starting to choke again and for a moment he thinks he can taste the blood welling up, from before. “I can’t stand not knowing him, not knowing if he feels the same way, not being with him, not knowing that he’s all right. That’s it, right?!” he demands. “Right?!”

Not Richie folds his arms and looks up at him, the lines around his flaming eyes etched with sympathy. “What do you think, Eddie?”

Fuck it.

“I think I wish we were at fucking Buffalo Wild Wings.”

-

Eddie’s got a 22oz beer towering in front of him and a dumpster’s worth of Hot, Blazin’, and Asian Zing wings spread out on the table between him and Not Richie. His eyebrows haven’t stopped twisting in confusion as he watches Eddie deepthroat bone after bone.

“What?”

Not Richie looks away and pinches his straw to take a nonchalant sip of his mudslide. “I’m just surprised you wanted to do this, is all. With me.”

“Why?” Eddie grabs his beer with his sticky, saucy fingers and sloshes some down, not caring as it runs down his chin. “You're like, my friend now.”

Not Richie drops his straw and looks back at Eddie, wide eyed. “Really?” 

“I guess so. Fuck, man. A friend is someone who's there to talk to and helps you figure shit out, right?”

A little smile squirms on Not Richie’s face. “Yeah, I just- this is your second to last wish, I didn't think you’d use it on little ol’ me.”

The bottom of Eddie’s glass thunks to the table. “This is my tenth wish.”

“N-no?” Not Richie squints at him.

The Rules Lawyer that lives in Eddie’s brain at all times jumps up from his table and into the courtroom well. “I have three wishes left,” he says, tight.

“One. You have one left.”

“Bullshit, I have one!” Eddie counts off on his fingers. “I came back from the dead, I got a divorce, I never married, Dad never died, the Losers still have each other,” he drops one fist down to the table for five- “The airplane, the hospital, the- the safe house, the Forties, and dinner.” Two fists. “That’s ten,” he bites.

Not Richie shakes his head. “You and Stan came back from the dead, and I stopped calling you- that thing you said not to.”

Eddie slams his hands on the table. “That fucking counted?!”

“You said ‘I wish’.”

“I was being sarcastic!”

“I know.” Not Richie lands his chin in one hand and grins at Eddie. “I love it when you’re feisty.”

“Fuck you!”

Not Richie mimes the squirt of a minty breath spray. “If that’s your final wish!”

“I fucking hate you!”

“That’s not what you said before at the safeho-” Not Richie dodges a buffalo wing hurled right at his dumb devil head.

Eddie seethes. His nose is prickling in warning. “That wasn't meant for you.”

Not Richie thumbs at the restaurant, full of framed sports jerseys and more TVs than tables. “Then what are you fucking doing here, Eddie?! You know what you want!”

“I know I know! I want Richie.” Eddie can finally, fully admit that. But. “I want him. But it’s fucking complicated. I don’t wanna trap him and I don’t wanna hurt him, anymore. I just want him to be happy.”

The weight of the truth, the weird electric light, the sting of the wingsauce he accidentally wiped too near his eyes, his heartbreak- it all finally comes crashing down on Eddie. He struggles to find an unsullied napkin amid their chicken-based carnage. A clean one slides across the table to him, under the fingers of a familiar hand.

Eddie looks back up, dabbing his face. Not Richie smiles, so like him, it hurts.

“No offense to your dick for brains,” Not Richie says, “But that doesn’t sound complicated at all.”

It really doesn’t.

Eddie swallows. “For my last one, forget everything else. Start over. I just want a world that makes Richie happy. That’s it,” he says. “Whatever that means. A weird hippie commune, Chicago deepdish is the only pizza that exists, we all have to suffer through six fucking subpar Star Wars a year, we're together, we're not, I live- I die...” Eddie sighs. “I’ll take it.”

“Dang, that’s beautiful,” says Not Richie. He scrunches his nose rather than make the same mistake of touching his face. “Well. I guess if you’re gonna dump me at least it’s not for someone uglier, right?”

Eddie snorts. “Yeah. Here’s your last chance for break up sex, I guess.”

Not Richie leans back in the booth with his arms spread along the top and neck stretched in an unmistakable Take me, I’m yours that he spoils by giggling.

“Yeah, no. Moment’s passed.” Eddie slides out of the booth to offer a parting hug instead.

Not Richie gets out too, and wraps him up tight. “I’ll miss you, Eddie. But like, absolutely do not hurry back. Literally the whole point of this is that you get out of our hair. Like, I cannot stress this enough- Do Not Die.”

“Right, right,” Eddie snickers at his shoulder before pulling away. “I guess I’ll-”

“-see you in Hell?” Not Richie winks.

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. “Thanks.” 

Eddie takes a breath... and he wishes.

-

It has always been like this.

The song playing on the radio is one that reminds Eddie of high school and their ten year reunion, so of course he can’t get out of the car until it’s done. He waits it out, thumbing through the few emails he received during the commute home, deleting most, saving a few for tomorrow. There’s a text from Stan, too, confirming what he and Patty will be bringing to the barbecue this weekend. Sounds like five people are bringing meat. Hmm. Maybe he should do zucchini instead...

A knock on the car window breaks him out of his bubble. He cracks the door and Richie pulls it open by the corner, balancing an empty laundry basket on the other hip. He must’ve been crossing the porch on the way to the clothesline when Eddie pulled into the driveway.

“Speedwagon, noice.”

“Yeah.” Eddie lets his head fall back against the seat as he looks up at Richie, remembering. “You wanna go make out in the back?”

They didn’t hook up until a month after the reunion, but damn if Eddie wasn’t thinking about it. He hung around with Richie all night, catching up, goofing around to the 80's music, feeling like he hadn’t felt in years, only now he was old enough to know what that was all about. What he, Eddie Kaspbrak was all about.

More than another ten years on, he is still all about Richie.

“That only works for your short ass.” Richie sticks out his tongue, then hoists his basket. “Help me get the stuff on the line and then we’ll have sheets for making out in our actual bed.”

The radio has moved on to KISS, anyway. Yawn. Eddie turns it off and gets out.

He chases Richie up the steps to the porch and leans at the railing with him while he reels in the sheets that flutter in the breeze. As Richie hands him clothespins, he clips them to the hem of the UNICEF shirt he shamelessly stole from Eddie. He says the blue washes Eddie out, so he’s doing him a favor, but really he just likes it when Eddie picks a fight to steal it back, right off his body.

“I’m so jealous of these,” Richie sighs, pulling down a zebra striped sheet from one of the kids’ beds. There’s some spaceship sheets on the line too, that they like to mix and match with the zebra. Of course, any children of Richie’s are fearless tastemakers.

“They don’t make ‘em in our size, but if you want, you can get a twin bed and sleep alone,” Eddie smirks.

“Now, now! Let’s not be too hasty!” Richie tosses the sheet to Eddie and starts reeling in the next one. “I can always ask Bev if she’s got connections...”

Eddie flaps and folds the eyesore of a sheet savagely. “Yeah, and she’ll say no ‘cause she’s connected to me, who likes a little visual peace and quiet in the bedroom.”

“You like it ‘quiet’ in the bedroom? Fuck, I’ve been boinking you wrong for years. Apologies.”

“Not accepted," Eddie laughs. "-Until you make it up to me.”

“Unff.” Richie rips another two sheets off the line, sending clothespins snapping into the air. “Hurry up!”

Eddie snickers and shakes out the spaceship sheets and crams them into the basket along with the others. “Get the big ones!”

Richie leans over the porch rail, grasping for their own bed’s sheets. “Mmmyeah,” he moans, butt in the air. “Gimme the big one!”

“I’m gonna push you into the rose bush.”

“No problem. I love your bush, Eds.” Finally Richie gets a hold of the thing and drags it in.

Eddie yanks it away from him and starts folding immediately while Richie hauls in the next. “You gotta shake off the bugs before you take them inside,” he whines, watching Richie skip this crucial step.

He waggles his eyebrow at Eddie. “You don’t want any creepy crawlers in your bed?”

“Isn’t one enough?”

Richie dutifully shakes the sheet over the railing, but instead of folding, he whips it around Eddie and pulls him close. He chuckles deep from his belly as he wraps Eddie in both the sheet and his arms and kisses him. “You don’t really want me to be quiet though, right?”

“Oh, hell no.”

“Whew! Good. That almost hurt my feelings,” Richie pouts.

“Can’t have that,” Eddie pouts back.

He wrestles up to kiss those tempting lips, just because he wants to, not just because Richie knows exactly how to bait him. Richie pretends not to know where Eddie is aiming, weaving his head around and giggling, and giving Eddie no choice but to nibble up his neck and tease the tip of his nose along his jaw. He’s never going to hurt Richie's feelings or anything else if he can help it, and if he does, he’s always going to make sure and kiss it better. Finally they connect and slide together in a hot sear.

“Mmm. But what about like, purple satin sheets?”

“I love you, Richie, but no.”

“What?” Richie grins. “Not interested in doing an impression of a hockey puck every night?”

Eddie narrows his eyes. “Purple’s too dark, it would show like, every jizz stain forever. Pick another color and we’ll talk.”

“Okay, okay- I’m hearing you. We get purple and white, pick a special occasion, totally wreck the purple- then we throw it out and go on living with the white.”

“...I don’t hate that.”

Richie squeezes him happily and nuzzles a rough kiss into his hair. “I 'don’t hate' you, too, Eds.”