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Eddie isn’t sure precisely when it becomes routine for him to storm downstairs to Richie’s apartment whenever something of the mildest of inconveniences has particularly gotten on his nerves that day, or if he can’t breathe and his inhaler isn’t working wonders like usual. He also isn’t sure if Richie genuinely enjoys his company, or if he just feels sorry for the insane, pocket-sized bundle of anxiety who frequently lets himself into Richie’s apartment of his own accord, without knocking, like, ever. Seriously, it’s becoming a problem. The amount of times he’s shouldered open the door while Richie is taking a shit or fucking jerking off or something is borderline embarrassing. He tells himself it’s Richie’s fault for never locking his fucking door.
Eddie supposes it all started when he moved into the apartment a floor above Richie’s. The guy had been standing out on his balcony having a smoke, entirely unbeknownst to Eddie, who was busy giving the moving guys an earful about how no, cushions are not technically classified as fragile objects, but who’s fucking paying you, dipshits? Eddie should have charged Richie for the performance he gave that evening, because the bastard was cackling so loudly from his balcony that at some point, fuming and red in the face, Eddie had no choice but to hang his head over the railing to make sure the psychopath below him wasn’t actually choking to death.
Their friendship only blossomed from there on out, as some would say. Richie turned up on Eddie’s doorstep the following morning wearing a neon pink shirt and a goofy, lopsided grin, offering a plate of what looked to be pre-packaged chocolate chip cookies. Eddie made sure to promptly inform him of how cliché he was being, but let him inside nonetheless. That morning, they bonded over mugs of coffee balanced on moving boxes neatly labeled “KITCHEN”, and everything was normal.
Everything was normal, until Eddie had a random asthma (panic) attack in the middle of the night, freaked the fuck out, and bolted downstairs to Richie’s apartment. Richie had immediately ushered him inside, despite having just been woken in the ungodly hours of the early morning, made him tea, and stroked his back until he’d calmed down. And that was that; the start of something beautiful.
They’ve had this dynamic going for a while now, and it’s honestly not the worst thing in the world. Although Eddie feels sort of parasitic at times — feeding off of Richie’s energy, using him as a source of comfort and happiness, while giving hardly anything in return — their friendship is far from one-sided. Or at least that’s what Richie tells him on a regular basis. Yes, Eddie has shamelessly expressed his concerns about Richie “therapizing” him, but he always gets different variations of the same answer in response. Every. Damn. Time.
“Making you happy makes me happy, Eds. So shut the fuck up.”
And then, after reminding him not to call him Eds, Eddie usually shuts the fuck up.
It’s tonight that Eddie’s life is flipped completely fucking upside down. Well, maybe that’s a little overdramatic, but it’s still true to some degree.
Eddie sits with his back straight against the headboard of his bed and his knees tucked up against his chest, engaged in a very heated argument with himself. His brain is running circles around the inside of his skull, throwing itself against the walls seemingly with the force of an oncoming freight train, and Eddie’s head is positively pounding.
Deep down in the murky, repressed depths of his soul, he knows he wants to go to Richie. That is, realistically, the only way he’s going to feel better tonight, and the only way he’s going to get any sleep at all. Richie doesn’t even need to say anything, really. He just has to sit there and listen while Eddie spews forth the usual endless tirade of anxieties, pacing back and forth until he makes himself dizzy and has to sit down.
But the thought of talking to Richie about the subject currently making itself at home inside his throbbing head makes him want to spew forth a lot more than just frantic words. He groans and thumbs at his temples. Fuck this, fuck this, fuck this.
Okay, well, Eddie is running low on Tylenol, so maybe it’s perfectly logical for him to break into Richie’s apartment to borrow some. Yeah, it definitely is.
Eddie puts his thoughts on hold for the time being and slips into an oversized hoodie which, to be honest, is probably one of Richie’s that he’s left lying around. Eddie doesn’t have time to think about the implications of that. Instead, he pulls his slippers on over his socks and bolts for the front door.
If Eddie hadn’t already been panicked enough, the fact that Richie’s door is most definitely fucking locked sends him into overdrive. All rational thought is catapulted out of the window, and all Eddie can think is: holy shit, he hates me. He’s finally had enough of me and he’s gone and fucking deadbolted his door closed. He’s probably got a fucking restraining order on me, too. Oh, Jesus, fuck.
He must be rattling the door handle more aggressively than he had intended, because now he can hear a weary groan and shuffling footsteps approaching the door from the inside. His heart skips a beat in his chest. Richie is either about to shout at him to piss off, or open the door and shoot him in the fucking head, neither of which Eddie thinks he can emotionally handle right now. Actually, now that he thinks about it, the latter doesn’t sound all too bad.
“Eddie?”
Eddie flinches at the quiet call of his name, and he almost flings himself backwards into the wall behind him as the door clicks open. Richie is standing there in his fucking pizza-patterned boxers and a pale pink t-shirt, one arm scratching the back of his neck and the other holding himself steady against the doorframe. To Eddie’s absolute relief, he grins groggily when they make eye contact.
“Shit, it is you. Fully thought I was about to get murdered.”
Eddie can’t even fake a laugh. His hands are shaking. “Why did you lock your fucking door?”
The grin vanishes from Richie’s face the moment he realises Eddie isn’t joking. He’s being entirely fucking serious, and his whole body is trembling, and for a split second Eddie thinks he sees Richie’s arms twitch forwards to try to hug him, but then they’re hanging at his sides again.
Eddie is impressed by how deeply furrowed Richie’s eyebrows are. “Sorry. I’m sorry, I should’ve told you in case you needed me. I was just thinking about what you said about safety and—” Richie is now picking at his thumbnail and Eddie feels guilt mixing with the anxiety in his stomach. “— I thought it was kinda smart to, ya know, lock my fucking door at night.” He laughs dryly.
Eddie doesn’t really know what to say, so he pushes past Richie instead, stumbling into his living room and throwing himself onto the couch. Richie follows on his heel but makes sure to keep his distance. He looks like a half-naked flamingo, hovering by the doorway and awkwardly trying to balance one of his feet on top of the other.
Having calmed down slightly, Eddie decides to put his pride on the line and not be a total dick. He sighs. “You don’t have to be sorry. You’re allowed to lock your fucking door. It’s not like you’re my therapist or some shit, you can’t be there for me all the time. Sorry.”
Richie raises his eyebrows behind his dumb, coke-bottle glasses.
“Sorry,” Eddie repeats, letting his head flop forwards so his chin is pressed into his chest. He’s the biggest asshole ever. He literally just pounded on the door of Richie’s apartment while he was sleeping and then yelled at him for being sensible for once in his goddamn life. Such a dick move.
Eddie winces when Richie doesn’t respond for a few long seconds, but then his lips stretch into a lopsided grin, and everything is momentarily okay.
“How about we both stop apologising and call it even?”
Eddie nods gratefully. He watches Richie trudge his way into the kitchen, mismatching socks snug on his feet. He’s hardly even wearing clothes, which Eddie is very much aware of, and has been since he walked through the door, but what’s he gonna do about it? Tell Richie to put some pants on? Tell him that his hideous pizza boxers are personally offending him? He would never. Just because Eddie wears full pyjama sets to bed doesn’t mean that Richie’s preference to walk around his apartment in his underwear is invalid.
Eddie buries his face in his hands. Although he has been significantly distracted from his headache, he can’t help but hop back on his earlier train of thought. He can’t even imagine how Richie would react to what he wants to say. Does he even want to say it? No, not really. Would Richie judge him and laugh at him and probably not want to be friends anymore? It’s a real first-grader mindset, but Eddie guesses the answer is yes. Maybe he’s just paranoid, but when is he not?
Richie’s voice echoes from inside the kitchen, “Uh… Do you want some tea? I can make some t—”
“Richie, am I pathetic?”
He blurts it out before he can even think about the consequences, or the follow-up conversation that Richie is definitely about to force him to have. He lets it spill from between his lips like the dumb fuck he is, despite running through this very situation a million times in his head. This is, admittedly, not one of the ways he imagined he would begin the conversation.
Richie’s head appears from around the doorway. His stupid mane of hair is tousled and unbrushed and falls across his eyes. Eddie wants to run a hand through it. To push it out of his face, obviously.
“Why d’ya ask that, Eds?”
Eddie is frozen in his seat, back straight against the cushions and knees pressed firmly together, hands clasped in his lap. He risks a glance at Richie, but promptly looks away when their eyes meet.
“I just… fuck.”
Okay, it’s okay. Maybe this won’t actually be as bad as you thought. Richie won’t judge you. When has he ever? Maybe talking about it will help you feel better. That’s what they all say, right? Better out than in.
Richie shuffles across the hardwood floor and makes himself comfortable beside Eddie. Eddie is half expecting a reassuring hand to press against the small of his back, but Richie is still.
“You know you can tell me literally anything in the world, right?” His voice is so sincere, which is still a bit weird to hear, only because of the usual sarcastic, humorous tone he takes up with Eddie. When Richie talks seriously like this, he means what he’s saying. He might be a massive idiot ninety nine percent of the time, but he’s a fucking good friend. That rare one percent of sincerity is reserved for Eddie. Or so he’d like to think.
Eddie swallows, hard. “Yeah. It’s just… This is actually so fucking stupid. It’s so… pathetic.”
This time, Richie’s hand really does reach for Eddie, settling on his knee. It’s a bit awkward, but he means well, and it helps to ground Eddie and reign his brain back in from outer space.
“Eds, I guarantee you that anything you say right now will not even come close to the most pathetic thing I’ve ever done.”
Eddie surprises both Richie and himself when he giggles like a fucking schoolgirl. “Yeah, I doubt it.” Then he adds, for good measure, “Don’t call me Eds.”
Richie groans dramatically and leans half his weight on Eddie’s shoulder. “My sincerest apologies, Princess Edwina.” When Eddie is obviously not amused, he continues softly, “Just spill. I will happily sit here all night and listen to your stories of patheticness. ”
So Eddie does spill. Because why the fuck not? It’s Richie .
“You know I’ve never had a girlfriend before?” Eddie starts, making sure to avoid all means of eye contact with Richie so as not to reveal the hideous blush rising on his cheeks. “In elementary school, every time my friends told me that a girl had a crush on me, I’d freak out. Basically everyone in my grade had their first kiss by the time they were, like, thirteen. And I had mine when I was sixteen with some girl in the year above because of a fucking dare .” Eddie pauses and glances at Richie out of the corner of his eye. Richie is looking at him intently, like he’s genuinely enjoying whatever the fuck this story of childhood trauma is evolving into, and it makes Eddie feel a bit warm inside. “Kids would pick on me, too. They’d call me fag and a fairy and shit, you know. The usual.”
Richie laughs grimly at this. “Yeah. The usual. I got those names, all my friends did. Fucking sucked.”
Eddie nods in a solemn agreement. “Yeah. It really did suck. And it didn’t make it any better that I was probably the only guy in the whole fucking school who had never, ever had a girlfriend. I never really wanted one, either.” Edde sighs and pulls his knees to his chest. It’s something he does out of nervous habit now, like his own legs are a safety blanket for him to cling to when he feels like he’s losing his mind. “I suppose I thought that once I graduated and got the fuck out of that hellhole, things would change. But they didn’t.” He cackles, almost maniacally, the lump in his throat growing larger and larger with every strangled breath, tears stinging the corners of his eyes. Fucking pathetic. “I’m still the same guy I was in high school. I’ve literally never asked a girl out in the twenty five years I’ve been alive. I’m a fucking loser .”
Eddie feels Richie shift beside him, and then there’s a cautious hand snaking around his waist and another is nudging his knees away from his chest. Eddie’s breath catches in his throat. It’s because of his asthma, it’s because he can’t breathe, and of course he left his fucking inhaler in his apartment. He lets himself sink into Richie’s embrace, lets his feet fall back onto the floor. Richie pulls him against his chest and just holds him there, like he’s cradling a little baby. Eddie should feel claustrophobic, like he normally does when people touch him, but now it feels like the warmth of Richie’s body against his own is opening up his chest and clearing his lungs, and he can breathe again.
“You know, If you’re a loser, then I am too.”
The sentence is so simple, so silly, probably just a meaningless attempt to make Eddie feel better, but it’s still enough to drive him to tears. He doesn’t see a point in trying to stop them, so instead just buries his head in Richie’s chest and lets himself sniffle like a fucking child.
He manages, “I just… I feel like I’m wasting my fucking life. No one’s gonna love me and I… fuck, I don’t even think I can love at all.”
Okay, that was definitely overdramatic. If Richie thinks so too, he doesn’t mention it. Instead, he pulls Eddie impossibly closer.
“I know for a fact that isn’t true.” Eddie wants to ask him to elaborate, provide proof or something , but Richie is speaking again before he can open his mouth. “I meant it when I said I’m a loser too. I’ve never had a girlfriend, either. Well, at least not a real one. Which I guess makes me equally as pathetic.” Then he adds, a little too nonchalantly, “Unless you count boyfriends, of course.”
The world around Eddie sort of slows to a grinding halt. He feels for a second like he’s just been thrown out of orbit, nudged off his axis, drifting freely out into space among the stars, weightless. The realisation he’s just been hit over the head with really shouldn’t be as life-changing as it is. It’s just one word. It’s one fucking word that forces open his eyes and slaps a sticker to his forehead reading: WORLD’S BIGGEST IDIOT. Maybe he needs Richie’s glasses more than he does, because Eddie must be fucking blind.
So he says, timid and unsure, “Boyfriends?”
And Richie answers, equally as unsure, loosening his grip around Eddie’s shoulders slightly, “Yeah. Is that, like, a problem?”
“Fuck no.” Eddie replies far too quickly, surprising himself and Richie, apparently, judging by his little “hmm” of bemused recognition. Eddie is suddenly and painfully aware of the intimate position he and Richie are curled up in, but makes no move to sit up.
Richie’s hands drift over Eddie’s hair, but then swiftly return to his back, as if he hadn’t meant to do that; like it had just been an unconscious reflex. “Uh… well, I just want you to know that you don’t have to date girls. Not that I’m assuming or anything, but I went through that shit too. Except instead of wondering why I didn’t want to make out with fuckin’ Rachel from algebra, I was too focused on the way Connor Bowers’ fingers moved over the joystick when he played Street Fighter.” Richie laughs, almost sadly, and Eddie feels like everything he’s ever known has just been forcibly extracted from his brain and tossed into a dumpster fire. “Kind of knew nothing could ever happen, though. Connor was my bully’s cousin.”
Eddie makes a noise of astonishment against his chest, and Richie laughs again.
“Yeah. Very unfortunate, I know.”
Eddie wants to say something. He really does. But someone seems to have shoved a handful of rocks down his throat because he’s having a hard time getting anything out.
As much as he is thoroughly relishing in the heat and comfort of Richie’s arms around him, Eddie decides it’s a good time to move away. He shimmies out of Richie’s grip and sits up straight against the couch, trying to ignore the look of panic now creeping onto Richie’s face. He looks worried, almost regretful, like maybe he’d said too much, or maybe he shouldn’t have ever touched Eddie in the first place. Eddie couldn’t disagree more.
Eyes still burning into the side of Eddie’s face, Richie says carefully, “I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t think y—”
“Shut up for a second. I’m thinking.”
Eddie really should think less often. It’s becoming a problem. He’s pretty much convinced that his anxiety should pay its own taxes, because at this point, it’s more of a functioning individual than he is.
He slides down the couch a little, brushing a shaky hand through his hair. He can say the word in his brain. He can hear it loud and clear, an echo bouncing off the walls of his skull. Gay . Richie is gay and he’s never wanted to touch a girl or kiss a girl or date a girl in his life. It’s not that Eddie is completely stupid and oblivious; he’s just overwhelmed. He definitely did not expect to have his Sexuality Crisis™ at age twenty five in his best friend’s apartment at two in the morning, but he supposes there’s a first time for everything, and the circumstances really aren’t all that awful. Quite the opposite of awful, actually.
After another minute of semi-comfortable silence, Eddie thinks he’s probably as prepared as he’ll ever be to have this conversation with Richie. So he finally looks over at him, and it isn’t difficult to meet his eye because Richie is already staring back at him. Eddie swallows the fear rising in his chest. He decides that he’s not going to analyse this any further because, for one, he has no idea where to even fucking start, and for another, he’s pretty damn tired.
So he just… goes with it.
“Okay. So.” Eddie clears his throat, voice trembling. Richie looks far too concerned. “What you’re saying is, you think I’m gay?”
Richie’s eyes widen to the approximate size of dinner plates. “Oh, shit, no that’s not what I meant! Like, I’m not telling you that you’re gay, that’s fucking stupid. I was just trying to h—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Richie clenches his jaw.
“Just listen,” Eddie insists, fingers fiddling in his lap. “I think what you said makes so much sense to me. I don’t… I’ve never really thought of it like that.” He sighs, suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. “I think it’s ‘cause I’ve never actually let myself think of it like that.”
Richie shifts in his seat. He looks like he either really wants to say something, or really needs to shit. Eddie doesn’t give that too much thought.
“I don’t wanna, like, get into my fucked up childhood right now, but—” Eddie chokes on a laugh. “— I was sort of raised to think that there was no other option but normal . You know?”
Richie nods, expression morphing into one of distaste. “Trust me, I know.”
“Yeah. So.” Then Eddie is laughing, and he probably looks like an actual psychopath, but he can’t bring himself to care. This whole situation is just so fucking stupid. He wipes the tears from his eyes with the back of his sleeve. Well, Richie’s sleeve. He is now one hundred percent certain that the hoodie he’s wearing is not his own, and he’s oddly not too bothered by that.
Richie hasn’t said anything for a while, so Eddie takes it upon himself to break the ice. “I don’t reckon any guys would want to go out with me either. I’m pretty unloveable.” Although he says it in a joking tone, the words send a pang of realisation through Eddie’s body. He’s probably going to die alone like he was destined to, gay or not gay, and he’s not sure if he’s okay with that.
“I don’t think that’s true.” Eddie sees Richie grin nervously in his peripheral vision.
“How is that not true?” Eddie folds his arms across his chest and glares at the side of Richie’s face. “Give me one good reason.”
“I’ll give you a very good reason,” Richie says, turning to meet Eddie’s eyes carefully, and Eddie could recognise that all-too-familiar hint of anxiety in his voice anywhere. “You have to promise not to laugh at me, though.”
“Why would I la—”
“Just say you won’t.”
Eddie only agrees because Richie looks so desperate and small looking at him like that , and Richie never looks small, because he’s a fucking six-foot-something giant .
So Eddie promises, “I won’t laugh.”
“Okay.” Richie inhales through his nose, and blows the air out through his mouth like it’s cigarette smoke. “Okay. So, like, I totally wouldn’t be opposed to going out with you.”
The words are out in the open, hovering between the two of them, just waiting for someone, anyone, to reach up and grab at them; anchor them to the earth, and then cement them into the ground. Eddie feels… well, he feels something, and it’s surprisingly similar to the feeling of plunging a thousand feet off the top of a skyscraper.
He says quietly, “I don’t get it,” even though he thinks he does, because there’s not much to get.
Richie chews on his bottom lip. Eddie watches him closely.
“Look, that might be way out of line, but I can’t have you going around thinking you’re fucking unloveable or whatever.” Richie looks at Eddie, then down at his lap, then back up at Eddie again. “I’ve been wanting to ask you out for a while now, actually, but I wasn’t sure if you were even into… that .” Richie gestures first into the air around him, then to himself.
Eddie snorts, partially because he can’t believe it, and partially because he doesn’t know what else to do. “Bullshit.”
“No, not bullshit.” Richie’s shuffling closer to Eddie on the couch now, letting their knees brush together. Eddie flinches but doesn’t move away. “You’re not quite as repulsive as you think you are, Kaspbrak. You’re fucking cute .”
“I— cute?!” Eddie splutters. He’s flattered, obviously, but also terrified. Nobody has ever called him cute in a way that isn’t meant to insult him. This is new fucking territory, but he doesn’t completely hate it.
He obviously doesn’t make his feelings clear enough in his expression, because Richie is now flushing bright red and shaking his head.
“You know what? I shouldn’t have even said anything. I’m sorry.” The disappointment and humiliation clinging to Richie’s face as he pushes himself to his feet tugs at something deep in Eddie’s chest. “Can we forget I said that? I didn’t mean to fuck this up. This friendship is so important to me, dude, I’m s—”
Richie stops talking then, but only because Eddie does something so impulsive and so uncharacteristically Eddie that it leaves both of them speechless. Like, actually physically incapable of speech. Because Eddie just sort of makes a wild grab for the front of Richie’s stupid pink shirt and tugs him back down and crashes their lips together in a kiss that is neither objectively good nor bad, but somehow completely fucking perfect.
To quote one of his favourite movies of all time, Eddie is soaring, flying. And yeah, he’s pretty sure that at this very moment — hearing Richie’s little grunt of surprise, feeling the way their mouths are slotting perfectly together, heads tilting and lips parting like it’s second nature — there’s not a star in heaven that he can’t reach.
Sure, Eddie has imagined this moment a few times. Not with Richie, of course, but just kissing someone in general. Someone he wants to kiss. As an adult. He’s never really expected to enjoy it — the idea of his own spit mingling with someone else’s isn’t a particularly pleasant thought — but now he’s rapidly coming to the conclusion that the reason for this is that his fantasies tend to only involve girls . He’s still wrapping his head around it, trying not to let his mother’s words ring in his ears and feel so dirty, dirty, dirty. But it’s hard to feel dirty when Richie’s gentle hand on his cheek is making him feel like the only person in the world.
The kiss doesn’t necessarily last a long time, but it’s still long enough for Eddie to come out of it flushed and panting and wide-eyed. Richie flops down beside him on the couch, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. He looks positively stunned, and Eddie can’t blame him.
“Well.” Eddie doesn’t wait for the awkward silence to settle in. “Maybe I’m not fucking straight, then.”
Richie gives him this look, where his eyebrows are furrowed in a sort of half-concerned, half-disbelieving way, and then he lets his mouth drop open and an ear-splitting cackle fall out of it.
“You just kissed me, man.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says between Richie’s bewildered bouts of laughter. “Yeah, I did.” He’s quite disbelieving himself, actually. Eddie Kaspbrak is probably the person you’d least expect to impulsively kiss someone in their apartment at two in the morning, especially a someone who is a man. A very male, very masculine man. Well… as masculine as a person wearing a pink shirt and pizza boxers can be.
Eddie feels panic clawing at his chest. Okay, maybe this was a mistake after all. It’s hard to think of it as a mistake when it felt so fucking good , but who’s Eddie to know? He’s made a lot of mistakes in his life. He once almost set his college dorm on fire after trying to make microwave popcorn. He talked back to his mom sometimes when he was still living with her, without considering the consequences. He’s yelled at people — work colleagues, classmates, complete strangers — without really meaning to yell at them. He’s hurt people, not physically, but emotionally, which strikes him as being just as bad. He’s not the best person in the world. He’s far from it.
Okay, now that he thinks about it, maybe this “mistake” of kissing Richie feels quite a bit different from the time he almost burnt down his dorm room, and the time he yelled at his mom. Maybe this isn’t really a mistake at all. Something that feels so good surely can’t be.
So he turns to Richie. “Was that bad?”
And Richie looks back at him incredulously. “Eds, that was the opposite of fucking bad.”
There’s something warm bubbling in the pit of Eddie’s stomach now, flooding the panic and anxiety in his throat and turning his brain all giddy. He grins, and Richie looks like he’s about to “aw” out loud.
“Do you think we could maybe do it again, then?”
Richie beams and reaches for Eddie’s hand. “In what world would I turn down that offer?”
So Eddie leans in and kisses him again, and Richie winds his fingers into Eddie’s hair and kisses him back.
And for the first time in Eddie’s life, a lot of things start to make sense.