Archive of Our Own

“So...what’s going on here, exactly?”

Stan sighs, barely looking up from the book he’s reading. The pages are frayed and yellowing at the edges. The spine is cracked, and it’s entirely dog-eared. It looks well-loved, but it isn’t. “Ask Richie,” he says.

“Don’t ask Richie,” Richie says, even as Ben turns his attention to him. “He’s busy.”

He is far too aged to be perched on his knees on the punishing, cold ceramic of the kitchen floor. And yet, this is where he finds himself. There is a sheet of paper spread out before him, roughly tabloid sized and already blooming with blots of colour. The paint, which is responsible for the heavily intoxicating sweet scent that permeates the air in the room. There’s a lot of it, in both tubes and small pots because he couldn’t find a matching set, try as he might, and they are scattered haphazardly around him, bear traps lying in wait for unsuspecting feet to fall upon. 

One tube is already lost to the dark, unknown space between a kitchen cabinet and the floor. He salutes it goodbye in his mind, because there’s no way he’s sticking his hand under there to retrieve it. He hopes it isn’t the orange - the color of apricots in the summer - he’d settled on for the shirt.

“Richie,” Ben’s voice takes on a note of strangulation. “Is that your face?”

Richie leans back slightly so as to get a better look at the sheet of paper. It is, indeed, supposed to be a self portrait. He’s just not actually that artistically inclined, is the thing. He squints at the paper, tilting his head to the side.

“Yes,” he replies firmly. “Yes, it absolutely is. I’m so glad that you can see the likeness.” 

Though perhaps that is not a good thing, he thinks, as he eyes the sallow colour of the painted skin - distinctly jaundiced because he could not locate the most accurate shade -, the hair created with too-heavy brush strokes protruding from an over sized head, the obnoxiously thick black frame of the glasses. He feels the ridiculous urge to find a mirror, just to confirm to himself that his nose is not nearly as large as he has apparently decided it is on paper.

“I don’t understand,” Ben says. He takes a seat at the table opposite Stan in a motion that is almost lurching in nature, as though he is unsteady and might need a moment to gather himself.

Stan says nothing.

“Are you reading The Catcher in the Rye ?” Ben fixates on him, instead. He doesn’t look any more comfortable with this distraction, features twisting into something deeply troubled as he studies the cover of Stan’s book. 

Actually, Richie might say that Ben appears to be spiraling.

Stan sighs again. His frown is deep and looks like it could become a permanent fixture to his face. “Yes. It’s awful. I can’t believe people actually like this book,” he replies as he turns another page carefully pinched between digits, eyes not lifting from the typed lines even with his brow taking on the appearance of furrows on a ploughed farm.

“People don’t like that book,” Richie pipes up. He’s still positioned away from the painting, at an angle that is doing nothing for the tired slope of his back. He doesn’t bother to take his gaze away from the painting as he speaks. “Who told you people like that book?”

This does make Stan raise his head. “Patty?”

“Ah,” Ben and Richie say in unison. They nod at one another thereafter.

“What does that mean?”

“She teaches teenagers, doesn’t she?” Ben asks.

“Yes?”

“Of course teenagers like that book.” Richie laughs. The pink tip of his tongue slips between his lips as he bends over the portrait. “Actually, you know who else likes that book...? Murderers. That’s a fact. You can fact check that.” He adds a dot of white to each of the eyes with a fine paintbrush.

It’s quite terrifying, he thinks. 

It’s perfect, he thinks. He inspects the splayed bristles of the paintbrush he’s using, frowning at the damage caused to it by his clumsy handedness.

“Oh.” Stan seems to consider their words, accept them, and then return to his reading.

“But what about this?” Ben gestures towards Richie and the painting. “What’s happening? Have you enrolled in an art class?”

“You think this is good enough for an art class?” Richie asks hopefully.

Ben’s lips twist, his expression becoming reminiscent of that of a trapped animal that has a deep preconception of its fate, and Richie takes pity on him. 

“I’m kidding,” he says. “I know it’s dog shit. You can say it’s dog shit.”

“But what’s it for ?”

“He’s posting it to our dear friend.” Stan closes his eyes, like this knowledge physically pains him. 

Ben still looks puzzled.

“Mr Kaspbrak.” Stan explains.

“Oh.” Ben says. And then: “ Oh !”

Richie smiles. “It’s an invitation.”

They all three crane their necks from their positions to look at the painting doubtfully. Richie spots a speckle of carob brown paint (for the aforementioned too-heavy hair) on the corner of one of the marbled tiles. He’s going to have to find a way to hide that from Stan, he thinks, if it won’t come out. Turpentine and bleach to eliminate the stain.

“He’ll understand,” Richie says, after a while. He’s aiming for confidence but just falls at the last hurdle. “He will understand, right?”

“I think - ” Stan says slowly, frowning down at the book as though it is a quite peculiar puzzle. “- That he’s going to file for a restraining order against us.”

“ Us ?” Ben squeaks nervously, at the same time that Richie claps his hands together and crows, “Perfect!”

Then he says, “Can you get high off paint fumes?”

*

It turns out that you can, in fact, get vaguely high from sniffing paint. Not that Richie was doing much sniffing - at least not deliberately. He had to breathe . It couldn’t be avoided. He hopes the fumes haven’t permanently addled his brain, though perhaps it is too late for such concerns. Stan would say it is too late for such concerns.

Alas, he spends the majority of the night complaining about his nauseating headache, after his masterpiece is completed. Nobody has any sympathy for him - not even Ben, who slips back out of the door without so much as a goodbye as soon as Richie starts alluding to the pain he’s in. He’s surrounded by cold-blooded beings (i.e. Stan).

“Your mom would be sympathetic,” Richie grumbles from his position splayed across the couch. Faded teal velvet that he loves, rescued where it was discovered abandoned in the recesses of a thrift store (Ben had had to help them shift it, on account of his having the most robust arms of the three). His elongated legs are hanging uncomfortably over the hard edge of one of the couch arms, his body all length and too large. “Sympathetic all over my dick.”

“Maybe you should go and visit her then,” Stan replies blandly. “I’ve heard that beds in retirement homes are surprisingly comfortable.”

This, Richie thinks, is what you get when you remain friends with someone you went to kindergarten with. Stan doesn’t bite anymore, not after thirty odd years of this. He wishes Ben were still here, because he never tires of making Ben bashful and strawberry-cheeked. It’s an artform.

“I was there last night. I don’t want to wear her out.”

“Wonderful. Next time she has a heart attack, I’ll let everyone know to blame you.”

Richie sighs. He rubs at his temples with paint-stained fingers in brown and orange in an attempt to ease the mild throbbing there, and closes his eyes. 

When he opens them again, Stan is standing just to the end of the couch with the painting in his hands, tilting his head to the side as he looks upon it with a critical gaze.

“What’s the verdict, doc?” Richie waits.

“He might actually block you on Twitter this time.” Stan admits.

Oh, shit. Richie hasn’t actually considered that. 

He sits quickly upright, wincing when the elevated arm of the couch digs into his calves as he does so. He absolutely does not want to be blocked on Twitter.com by Mr E F Kaspbrak, renowned NYC food critic. That would be the worst possible outcome. Earth-shattering, maybe. It would certainly make their interactions far more difficult, considering Twitter is one of the only places that Richie can really contact him.

He’ll have to create a burner Twitter account, in the event that that happens. Is that a thing? It should be a thing.

“Do you really think so?” Richie brings his fingers to his mouth, momentarily forgetting the paint. The cracked dryness and distinctly toxic taste has him pulling a face, dropping his hand quickly. “Maybe we should scrap the plan.”

“ We’ ? You came up with this yourself, Tozier, don’t try and drag me into it.”

“Stanley. Stan the Man. We’re business partners. We share a passion . There’s no ‘I’ in teamwork.”

Stan narrows his eyes. “Why is it a self-portrait, then? Why am I not on here?”

That’s a fair point.

Richie blows his cheeks up with air as he turns his attention back to the painting that took an inordinate amount of time. The thought of spending another few hours adding Stan’s face to it is not all that appealing. “...Do you want to be?”

“Fuck no.”

“See! That’s why. I knew you’d say that.”

They fall silent, still staring at the frankly grotesque piece of amateur art in Stan’s hands.

“We’ll post it tomorrow.” Stan nods decisively.

*

Edward F Kaspbrak wakes up at 9:25am on a Monday, and has a decidedly peaceful hour and twenty five minutes thereafter. Shards of clear blue sky peek out between mountainous clouds, which a liquid sun is trying in vain to penetrate. If he were out, he would be faced with the rawness of the cold boreal air. Luckily, he is surrounded by the snug solace of his home so it is a pleasant morning, all things considered.

He has coffee and cream with his morning newspaper and leaves his apartment at approximately 10:45am in order to retrieve his post from the secured mail boxes in the lobby. The key - brass, unremarkable - hangs delicately amongst the ring of others: for the apartment door, for the windows, for the garage, for his car. Every one of them kept on or around his person at all times (even hung on the hook of the bathroom door when he showers).

There is something thick and sizable stashed within the black metal box, and it immediately grasps his attention. He frowns as he pulls it out, together with an assortment of other far more professional looking letters. Business letters. The envelopes stamped with branded names and logos give them away easily enough.

Upon his return to his apartment, he discovers that there are five items of post besides the conspicuous looking package. Two of them are bills; one of them is an invitation to a newly refurbished Japanese restaurant in Manhattan; the remaining two are spam, set aside for the shredder without hesitation, forgotten in the blink of an eye.

He considers the evidently personally posted letter with apprehension. It won’t be the first time that he’s received something less than desirable in the post. There are, apparently, a lot of easily angered people who read his articles and opinions. Many of whom are quick to jump to the defence of their favourite eateries when they are of the belief that he has wronged them in some way.

It’s endearing to some people, that they are so passionate in their support of these businesses. Not to him. He’s waiting for the anthrax any day now.

Lifting the envelope gingerly by its corner, he’s relieved to hear the crinkle of paper within. Realistically, then, it’s probably just a letter, plain and simple. Envelopes can be deceiving, but it doesn’t feel like there’s anything untoward located therein. So he opens it, where the old Eddie may have included it in the pile for shredding without pausing to consider it in any depth.

At first, he’s confused. It takes a moment for his brain to catch up to his eyes and confirm what it is that he is actually seeing.

He’s already reaching for his phone, fingers as rigid as the bone beneath the skin as he jabs at the buttons on the screen.

“Hi, honey,” Bev’s voice comes gaily through the phone. “I was about to call you, actually. Do you think you could stand in for some measurements in about three weeks? I think you’re roughly the same height as this client.”

“He’s sent me his face.”

There’s a loaded pause.

“I’m sorry,” Bev says slowly. “Could you repeat that?”

“He’s sent me,” Eddie snaps. “His face . In the post.”

“Okay,” Bev sounds agreeable despite the evident bewilderment laced there. “Can we start from the top? Whose face? Do we need to call the cops?”

“Yes. Actually, no. I’m going to kill him. We can’t get the cops involved.”

“Oh, great. It’s not an actual face, then? If this person’s still alive, they can’t have sent you their actual face.”

Eddie pauses. “Beverly,” he says. “In what world would someone send an actual face in the post?”

“Haven’t you ever seen a horror movie? Screw that, what about the news ? We live in a fucked up society, Eddie.”

“I’m so glad I don’t live in your head.” Eddie says. And then: “It’s a painting. It’s… I think it’s supposed to be a self-portrait. It’s horrible .” He laments, even as he tilts his head to stare down at the painting some more.

Bev sounds semi-concerned now, at least. “Is this, like, a fan thing? Do food critics even have fans?” Eddie refuses to provide an answer to that on the basis that he is offended, but she continues without waiting for one in any event. “Do you have a stalker?”

“No,” Eddie sighs. “It’s Tozier.”

“Oh.”

“Mhm.”

“Well,” she sounds like she’s trying to hold back laughter. “He could technically be classed as a stalker. I’m not far off.”

“Hang on,” Eddie pulls the phone away from his ear, sending a quick snap of the offending item to her via text. In order to get it all within the frame he has to spread it across the floor and hover over it with his arms stretched unnaturally out to the side like a baby bird discovering its wings for the first time. “See!”

“Oh my god,” she snorts unattractively. “This is fucking gold.”

“No. No it’s not. It’s in my apartment . What am I supposed to do with this?”

It takes a moment for Bev to regain herself. Eddie stands listening to her giggling down the phone with the expression of a man who has lived through this exact occurrence one too many times before. He can’t seem to tear his eyes away from the monstrosity laid out before him. It truly is awful. A three year old could probably have done a better job, he thinks. The only reason he can even tell who it’s supposed to be is because of the glasses and the obnoxiously colored shirt.

Oh, and the fact that it’s signed in the corner. 

“It’s actually kind of sweet.”

“Are you deranged?” he demands, grasp clenching painfully around the phone. 

“Probably.” Bev hums. “Maybe you should just go to his restaurant.”

“Bev.”

“What!? I don’t know why you’re so against it. You can go and, like, return that to him or something. You don’t even have to stay.”

“Because he’s a comedian ! He doesn’t know the first thing about good food! If I go there, it’ll be like I’m supporting this - this joke venture of his. This is just a money pot for him, Beverly, you know exactly how I feel about this - ”

Bev interrupts him before he can fully get into the flow of his tirade; one which he is always only too eager to get into, despite how red-faced and irate it makes him. At forty, he has been coming to the displeasing realisation that he is the cause of his own unsettled disposition. 

“I do know. I really do. Please don’t make me listen to this again.” They both sigh for entirely different reasons. “Fine. Just post the damn thing back to him. You can probably return to sender. Or just look up the address of the restaurant.”

Eddie opens his mouth to complain. He closes it immediately. “That’s not a bad idea. Thanks, Bev.”

“I’m full of them,” she replies brightly. “Now, about that fitting…”

*

“Oh my god.” Richie whispers reverently. 

Stan squints at him from behind the bar where he’s running the accounts. His fingers flex dubiously where they hover above the keyboard of the laptop, wired to the till by a pretzel of corded snakes.

It’s just past closing, the last of their customers ushered out for the night, and the restaurant’s lights have been almost entirely dimmed. There are still a few candles lit, burning down to their wicks contentedly across the divided tables. The tables themselves are bare barnwood in grayscale brown and elongated, boxed in with benched seating running along either side; communal eating finding a home in the heart of a city perhaps not always so accustomed to amicability between strangers. The wall of glass towards the front of the restaurant allows the golden orange glow from the street lights to filter in against the backdrop of a darkening sky, reflecting prettily off the windows.

The sleepy, homely scent of chamomile floats into every corner of the room from the tea they have brewed to provide comfort in this winding down period; mingled with the slightly acrid antiseptic lemon of their cleaning products.

“What?” Stan frowns. “Is there a reason you’re sitting on your ass over there instead of helping me with this?”

“You crunch the numbers,” Richie points at him. “That was the agreement. The agreement was that I would never have to look at the numbers. You know what they do to my brain.”

Stan mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like ‘ lazy bastard ’, which is not entirely inaccurate. Numbers may not be Richie’s area of expertise, but he is surprisingly (or unsurprisingly dependent upon whom you ask) intelligent when he can be bothered, and this does cover a fairly expansive menu of topics. Information retained over the years, usually meaningless but interesting enough to pull out at a party. Trivia, he calls it. Ask me to name any capital city in the world. I will. And he will, too.

The thing is, he always got a little tired of the people who told himself he could be someone if he just started to ‘apply himself’. So he just never did.

“Anyway. Yes. I have a reason. A super valid fuckin’ reason.” He’s elated. He could float with the feeling of it. “Look!”

A weighted breath leaves Stan, but he halts his fingers where they have been tapping incessantly on the keyboard for the better part of an hour. He looks up at Richie and squints at what he’s holding up from halfway across the room. 

From this far, it looks like a thin, white cloth blemished with something unpleasant. Richie can see the exact moment that Stan realises what it is, features relaxing with the shock of it.

“Holy shit,” he blinks. “He didn’t.”

“He did!” Richie’s grin spans from ear to ear. “He really did.”

Stan makes his way around the counter to get closer, reaching out to inspect the painting. It has creases all over it from where it has been folded in a different manner than that of the original (a move that Richie suspects is entirely deliberate) and posted back to sender. 

“I’m impressed.” Stan admits.

“He’s taunting me.” Richie nods. If he doesn’t sound mad about it, it’s because he isn’t.

“Is he, though? I feel like it’s the other way around.”

“Stan, please. He posted my painting back to me . What isn’t taunting about that?”

“To be fair, I’d have done the same. Nobody wants to hang this up in their house. I’m surprised he didn’t shred it.”

“Don’t say that,” Richie says reproachfully. “I’ve already saved a place for it in the lounge.”

“No. You’re not putting that in the lounge.” Stan shakes his head as he moves back towards his laptop. “I will burn the entire apartment down before I let you put that in the lounge.”

“Excessive.” Richie mutters. 

But his mind has already circled back to the real issue at hand, which is this clear refusal of his invitation by one E F Kaspbrak. A thought hits him quick as a flash, and he tosses the painting aside carelessly to check his phone, tapping on the familiar little blue bird.

Kaspbrak’s Twitter profile is already the most recent search in his history. It doesn’t, therefore, take long for him to land there.

“Yes!” He hoots triumphantly, rushing towards Stan just so that he can shove his phone in his face. “He didn’t block me! Look - look at this. Look at that! I’m not blocked.”

Stan’s eyes cross as he tries to look down at the screen, tilting his head back and away from it. “He doesn’t follow you.”

“Yes, we already know this, keep up.” Richie says impatiently. “He hasn’t followed me, like, ever. But I’m not blocked. That’s the takeaway here, Staniel.”

He lets Stan go back to his numbers thing, if only because he doesn’t appear to be listening now anyway. 

Sinking back onto one of the nearest benches, the wood still body-warm from previous occupation, he stares at the profile for a minute or so longer. He enlarges the profile photo as he has done potentially a hundred times before (big eyes, thick, dark, slanted brows, clean shaven here but not always) and then scans through the latest tweets, even though he has already examined these in some length. 

The first one is his latest review of some new Japanese restaurant called Amai . In it, Kaspbrak raves about the authenticity of the east Asian cuisine served there, going into some detail about the delightful consistency of the soba noodles and the succulency of the beef in the mildly sweet gyūdon, but mourns the apparent lack of teppanyaki dishes available. It is, by anyone’s standards, a good review. It reads as though the restaurant is fine; good, but could be better.

By Kaspbrak’s standards, this means that the restaurant can be considered top tier.

Richie has hungrily devoured every single one of his reviews by now, eagerly anticipating each new post or article. Nobody quite understands it, perhaps not even himself. But he likes how Kaspbrak writes - without an iota of pretentiousness, unlike so many of the food critics in this city, straight-forward to the point of being comically blunt. The guy is hilarious and the best part is that Richie is almost certain that he has no idea, because the reviews aren’t meant to be entertaining in the slightest. Factual, is their intention. Opinionated . Well... he definitely has that part of it down to a fine art. The man has opinions on everything .

“I’m going to tweet him,” he declares.

Stan sighs. “If you must, please do it from your personal account and not the restaurant account.”

“That was one time . And it was an accident, contrary to popular belief.” Richie sniffs, and then grins. “It was gold though.”

In retrospect, posting a ‘please step on my neck’ tweet from the official Pennywise NYC account, directly mentioning Kaspbrak, had not been his finest moment. He’s willing to accept that.

At least some people had seen the funny side of it before Stan had callously deleted the tweet. It was funny. Very layered. It alluded to the cool candidness and heartless energy that Kaspbrak maintained in each and every one of his reviews, Richie had tried to explain to Stan after. “I just want him to step on the restaurant’s neck”, he’d said.

That familiar exhilarated buzz builds at the base of his neck as he begins to compose a new tweet, Kaspbrak’s Twitter already the top suggestion as soon as he inputs the ‘@‘ sign. He’ll save the embarrassment of that for another time.

He’s aware that this excitement is perhaps not the most typical of reactions to have to someone who has never so much as liked one of his tweets, but he’s always been only too happy to stoke a fire. In this case, he’s almost hoping for the sparks that may catch upon his skin and melt him to the bone.

Snapping a photo of the returned painting, he attached it to a tweet directed at Kaspbrak, captioning it with ten sad face emojis.

*

The night air is crisp and refreshing to the touch, especially when a person is just being released from the heat of a building. Lately the weather has been temperamental to say the least, the glow of the sun only dampened by the ceaseless breeze. 

Tonight, the wind is just strong enough to tug the collar of Eddie’s charcoal pea coat up towards his face, and he makes a few attempts at righting this before he gives up reluctantly, counting it as a loss against a force of nature too powerful for him. Digging his hands into the enclaves of his pockets, he relishes in the comfort the warmth provides his wind chapped skin and tries to keep up with the conversation that Bill and Mike are having.

“I liked it,” Bill is saying, and Eddie realises that they’re still discussing the restaurant the three of them have just departed. Too uninhabited; slow service; mediocrity at its most obvious. “I thought it was nice.”

“N ice doesn’t mean good,” Eddie interjects because he can, and because he’s right. “Nice is something you call a warm bath, not a plate of shrimp.”

“Well, I thought it was good , then.” Bill amends. “Mike?”

“My burger was a little undercooked,” Mike replies, and in an instant he looks contrite. It makes little sense to Eddie. There’s nobody here to care. “But other than that, it was great! Eddie’s just particular, you know that.”

“It’s literally my job.” He reminds them.

Bill frowns. “But you aren’t even reviewing that place. You can just enjoy it.”

As if that’s how it works. Eddie has neither the time nor the patience to get into this for the hundredth time with Bill, though, so he just sighs and keeps his mouth shut, thin-lipped.

Food, he thinks, is made to be enjoyed. That much is true. But when you’ve tasted some of the best flavors to ever touch upon your tongue, it’s very difficult to go back to anything even slightly subpar compared to that. It’s like swallowing down the gift of ambrosia only to be told you will never experience anything like it again; that you’ll have to suffice with water for the rest of your - now worthless - existence. 

He’s not much for words of sentiment, but for food he can make the exception.

Eddie has had the honor of tasting many exquisite dishes during the last ten years or so of his life. He has also had the misfortune of tasting some of the worst, so it balances itself out nicely. You don’t get sun without the rain . 

Sometimes, though, you just get the rain.

He only feels the vibration of his phone because his hand is already in his pocket, fingers just brushing against the cool metal of it. His brow creases into a deep ‘v’ shape, and he takes the phone out so that he can check the notification. His steps slow against the sidewalk. 

“Oh, for fucks sake,” he mutters under his breath upon seeing the bright blue of the Twitter logo; the handle that reads, undeniably, @trashmouthtozier ; the mention of an image link that he absolutely does not want to view. 

He doesn’t realise that he’s completely halted his steps, thus causing Mike and Bill to stop too, until they’re turning to look back at him.

“What’s wrong?” Mike asks.

“Why doesn’t this guy give up? Does he have a complex? Have I given someone I don’t even know a complex?” Eddie demands of them. He can already feel the blood rushing to his face, quick to take to the irritation that flickers up his spine. “Is it possible to do that?”

“Woah, woah,” Bill frowns at him, hands raised with the palms facing forward. “Slow down. Who are you talking about?”

“ Tozier ,” Eddie says, like it’s obvious. It should be, he thinks. When was the last time he mentioned a man that wasn’t Tozier? “He’s tweeting me again .”

The twin expressions of recognition on Bill and Mike’s faces is almost too much for Eddie, despite the thought that he’s just had . 

Admittedly, he does talk about the idiot Trashmouth a lot, in a way that may have been embarrassing for him, if it weren’t for the fact that the man gives him so much to talk about. It’s a never-ending catalogue of material that he doesn’t even want, but feels obliged to use; each new notification something to be vocalised with spiteful energy.

“Why don’t you block him?” Mike looks like he thinks it’s that simple.

Eddie almost wants to laugh. “I can’t do that, Mike. I can’t. I won’t. Why? Because then he wins. I can’t let Tozier win.” He’s aware, vaguely, that he appears to have taken on the ranting of a deranged man. All bark. Plenty of bite, too, if it comes down to it. “Do you know how annoying this man is? Do you? I don’t think you do, because if you did, you’d know why that’s not an option.”

They both stare at him. He huffs, shoving his phone back into his pocket, even though his fingers twitch with this perplexing desire to look at the tweet again. As though he can inspect it for some underlying message beyond the absurdity that Tozier exhibits in each and every one of these.

“I’ve seen his comedy,” Mike tries. “He seems okay.”

“‘ Comedy ’?” Eddie squawks. “You think that’s ‘ comedy’ ?”

Mike shuffles from foot to foot uncomfortably. Bill looks at him, and then at Eddie, and says, “Comedy is objective.”

“Subjective,” Eddie sighs. “You mean subjective .”

“That’s what I said.”

It’s not. It’s not at all what he said. But Eddie knows better than to expect any back up from Mike when it comes to proving Bill wrong, so he valiantly stays quiet. Let him be wrong. It isn’t like it matters. 

All at once, his temper subsides; a wave crashing upon the shore, only to return to the water from whence it came. He clenches and releases.

“Look,” Bill shrugs. “Why not just go to his restaurant? Isn’t that what he wants?”

Eddie opens his mouth, and then closes it again. That is what Richard Tozier wants, as far as Eddie knows. This whole charade had begun when Pennywise NYC had first opened, just a few months prior to current events, and he’d fielded many, many emails and telephone conversations from Tozier inviting him to dine there.

It’s not that he has anything against the man (except that he sort of does), but Eddie Kaspbrak, renowned NYC food critic, does not entertain these whims and fantasies of b-list celebrities who think that they can open up restaurants just because they have the money to do so, and enough of a reputation to guarantee patrons. It’s cheapening the industry. 

Not to mention that he has, in fact, seen the so-called comedy of ‘Trashmouth Tozier’, and it’s real low grade, second rate, scraping the bottom of the barrel stuff. It’s ridiculous what passes as humor these days. A man takes to the stage and says: I had sex with a woman last night . It’s funny because it’s true, or it’s funny because it isn’t. Eddie doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care to know, either.

Whatever the correct response is, discomfort grips him.

But Bill is talking again, “So just go? What’s it going to hurt? Just go, eat, and write some bad review of the restaurant, and you’ll get him off your back.”

“You probably won’t even have to write a review,” Mike supplies helpfully. “I think he’d combust if you just ate there, man.”

Bill is nodding, like he agrees, and suddenly Eddie wonders if it’s such a bad idea after all. He could do it. He’s all about honesty, but -- well, he has very little doubt in his mind that whatever food is being served in this man’s restaurant is not even going to be nearly up to standard, so. It’s not like he’s even going to have to lie if he writes an absolutely scathing review of the place, is it? He doubts Tozier would even care if he did; he’d probably find it hilarious and work it into one of his awful shows, garnering himself even more of the attention he flourishes beneath. 

Besides, Eddie hasn’t written a truly terrible review in a while. There have been a remarkable amount of leading eateries popping up around the city. It’s both wonderful and boring, though he’s aware that he probably shouldn’t think the latter.

This, he thinks, as he lets Bill and Mike pick the pace back up and lead him through the bustling, winding streets of New York, is perhaps not a bad idea at all.

*

It takes Eddie four long days to decide to actually follow through with it. 

Despite having already seemingly decided that it’s a fine idea, his mind is intent on reminding him exactly how long he has been ignoring Tozier for, and how much of a loss this could look like for him. It’s been months . Months of being called and tweeted and even written to (not to mention the latest predicament with that God awful painting), and months of him staunchly refusing to acknowledge Tozier’s presence in the slightest. Be that in person or online.

He is a very real person, though. As unfortunate as it is, Eddie is well aware of this.

He’s seen the videos. So many of them. 

There are an obscene amount of fan videos posted to YouTube and various other social media sites, not to mention the specials that always seem to pop up in his Netflix recommended, ignoring the fact that Eddie has not and never will watch an entire hour long show with that man in it. Their algorithm is fucked. He makes a mental note to send a strongly worded email to them about it.

Anyway, there may have been a period when this all first started during which Eddie had been mildly interested in who this supposed celebrity was, and he had, admittedly, Googled him. It had resulted in him watching some clips of his shows through horror blown eyes, with a disdainful curl of his lips twisting his features at almost every step of the way.

Dick jokes. An inordinate sum of dick jokes. Eddie had never heard the word ‘dick’ said so many times in an hour before, and they were all clips from different shows . He’d turned away from the computer with that word still ringing around in his head for days, and that was pretty much all he had taken away from that research . 

No, he had decided. He would definitely not be attending Tozier’s restaurant.

Not that he had really been considering it anyway, given his distaste for celebrities putting their fingers into pies that have nothing to do with them. 

The culinary industry is full of vibrancy and potential and professionals , and Eddie loves it. He’s incredibly passionate about it, he knows, and not just because it provides for his career. The idea of people treating it as nothing more than a cash cow leaves him feeling bitterly resentful. 

There should be something sacred in providing food to people, because it’s always been about more than that just that act of service. At least to Eddie.

Now he’s considering forgetting all of that. Or not forgetting, but at least disregarding it for the time it takes him to consume the food and write the opinion piece. 

It drudges a perpetual unease within him, not being one to stray from his own clear cut set of morals so easily. His career - which is still young in essnce, despite his age - has been built on a few explicit foundations, this being one of them. 

In the comfort of his home, he deliberates. 

The old grandfather clock that he hates, inherited from a mother who always gave him too much, tolls balefully at him from the corner of the lounge to declare that it’s 9.00pm. He glowers at it like his gaze might scorch the black walnut wood within which it is framed. 

Get rid of it , his mind sings. And then: I can’t .

Before he sends the message, he leaves the room. Hidden away from its prying observations.

*

“That’s not what constitutes a sandwich.”

“Oh, please, Stan, tell me. What exactly constitutes a sandwich?”

“Something which has a layer of bread on both sides.”

“Interesting...Really interesting. How is a hot dog not a sandwich then? It literally has a bread wrapper.”

“Uh, guys?” Ben interrupts the important debate that Stan and Richie are engaging in to slide Richie’s phone across the kitchen countertop. It moves easily across the freshly bleached surface. “Richie, your phone just went off.”

“Thanks, Ben,” Richie says, already picking it up. “Do me a favor and tell Stan that a hot dog is a sandwich.”

“No,” Ben replies without hesitation. “A hot dog is a hot dog.”

“Thanks, Ben,” Stan says with a satisfied smile in Richie’s direction.

Richie frowns, looking at his phone. “You’re a traitor to the cause, Hanscom.”

He leans absently on the mop he’s holding as Stan and Ben get back to sweeping the floors of the kitchen. 

They’ve let the staff go home early for the night, hence why the task of cleaning has fallen to them, and Richie has spent half the time mumbling his gratitude for the people they hire to do this every day. Not only is it gross (it’s unbelievable how dirty a commercial kitchen gets on a daily basis), but it’s also exhausting . It leaves him puffing out air and perspiring heavily; glasses slipping in the sweat across the bridge of his nose. He’s pretty sure he heard something pop along his spine when he bent to dust under the wall of cabinets on the left hand side of the room. 

His eyes widen impossibly behind his glasses when he finally reads the notification, giving the impression that he has bug eyes, like he did when he was a kid and the available lenses weren’t quite so refined as they are now. He uses his forefinger to push the frame back back up his nose.

The faint music that they’ve had playing in the background fades into nothingness, the beating of his heart the only sound reverberating in his ears.

“Guys,” he says faintly.

They pay him no attention.

“ Guys ,” he repeats, louder this time. 

“What, Richie?” Stan frowns. He is inspecting something caught amongst the tangled bristles of his brush with the air of someone who wants to be anywhere but here.

“I have a direct message,” Richie begins ominously. He holds his phone in both hands, outstretched in front of his stomach. “From Mr Kaspbrak.”

Stan makes a sound of disinterest. “Probably telling you he’s applied for the restraining order.”

“Restraining order?” Ben looks between the two of them. “I thought you were joking about that. That’s not good for business. Mine or yours.”

“He is joking,” Richie reassures him

At the same time, Stan says, “Ben, you don’t even work here. He’s not going to get a restraining order against you. He doesn’t know you.”

“My name is on the website,” Ben is doubtful.

“Yes,” Stan’s patience is wearing thin. “It is. But he isn’t going to go looking on the website to file a restraining order against our architect . This is all on Richie.”

“Nobody’s getting a restraining order,” Richie says, voice pitched high. He blinks at his phone. “He wants to come here.”

“What the fuck.” Stan says flatly.

“The painting worked?” Ben asks. Still doubtful.

“Shit, he’s actually coming… fuck,” Richie’s not listening to them. 

Because, the thing is, this all started as a bit of a joke, didn’t it? When he’d realised that there was no way on God’s green Earth the guy would set foot in their restaurant, he’d had to pursue the concept with dogged determination. He can’t help it. It’s an itch within him, aching and demanding. When he sees a loose thread, he pulls and he pulls until everything unravels before his eyes. 

Sometimes, he doesn’t realise that what he’s toying with is a potential bomb until it’s too late. 

Stan raises a brow. “What’s the problem?”

“Nothing. Nothing. This is good.”

“I still don’t get it.” Ben says. He’s moved on to refilling the salt and pepper shakers with alarming precision, leveling them against one another, because he doesn’t work here, but he might as well. “What’s so special about this guy in particular? You’ve had loads of critics come.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal. To him, it isn’t. “They’ve all said good things.”

“He’s the best,” Richie still has his phone in his hands like it is glued there. “Plus, he’s, like, the most irate man I’ve ever come across. Have you even read his reviews? He’s so mean . It’s hilarious. He wrote an article last year describing Neibolt ’ s steak as smelling and tasting like year old used gym socks.”

Stan looks at Ben. “This has nothing to do with the fact that Richie thinks he’s hot, obviously.”

Richie laughs, loud and joyous. “Stanley,” he says. “If I wanted to sleep with this man, do you think I’d have sent him a fucking garbage painting of my face? I’d have got Ben here to write a poem or some shit.” 

Maybe. Probably not.

If he wants to sleep with a man, he follows the neon lights humming with static to the nearest gay bar, transforms the liquid of his body into more tequila than blood, wakes with a name, sometimes, a blurred memory more often than not. Leaves behind a fake number plucked from the air. Rinse and repeat .

He puts his phone back without replying, mops the floor as though nothing has happened. The correct response must be formulated, though he itches to shoot off a reply (probably stupid; definitely exasperating) immediately. These things take time, even for Richie, who is spontaneous by birthright. Where it truly matters, he can exercise patience. Just scarcely.

“Let me know when he’s coming in, then,” Ben says easily. “I’ll stop by too.”

Maybe he has fixated a little, is the thing, on the man with the angular face and the shoulders pulled taut by some unseeable force. He said no . When everyone else was saying yes , clamoring to attend the opening night of NYC’s ‘hottest new bistro’ (a journo’s words, not theirs), Edward F Kaspbrak had said no, and he’s done so at every opportunity since then, too. 

There’s something about the continuous rejection that draws Richie in like a moth to a flame, and he is weak but to obey it.

*

Sunday, Tozier had said. 4.00pm. 

The acceptance makes Eddie’s hands itch with nerves for the following days. This is my job, he thinks, and then: no, it isn’t. Because his job is not one he enters into with any preconceived intention. He is supposed to enter these situations with a clear mind, which is precisely why he tries to keep his work life separate from everything else. His goal is to relinquish himself to the food that is placed in front of him, in the interest of being unbiased and honest. 

It is the one time that he can find to quiet everything except the white noise in his head; providing him with a deep-seated comfort that he cannot seem to attain in his day to day life. 

He looks up the restaurant’s website online. To acquaint himself with their cuisine, he tells himself, though his hand wavers on the mouse and he clicks straight through to the ‘About Us’ page instead. 

The grandfather clock judges him from the corner of the room in all its silence, its face muted greys of unpolished silver.

The website lists two people as the founders. His fingers falter on the mouse, something inexplicably stuck in the confines of his throat. He didn’t know that. It feels a little like guilt, maybe, obliged to the third party he hadn’t known existed, too blinded by his dislike of Tozier to consider any other factors in his adamant refusals to date.

It makes him want to enter that profile first. Click, click. The whir of the laptop’s hard drive is the only sound as it kicks into motion, and it’s momentarily deafening.

Stanley Uris . Handsome, Eddie thinks, and then flinches. He reminds himself that he has traveled this particular trajectory of thoughts before and does not wish to do it again, pointedly turning away from the clock. Back to the photo. Curls of hair coiffed upwards atop a face that isn’t friendly but isn’t hostile either. A face that is distinctively full, angled into the chin. He looks honest. Jewish: the bio mentions that food served at the restaurant is kosher . Eddie blinks, perturbed at this sudden knowledge of his own lack of knowledge.

He presses backspace, reverting to the landing page. There’s another name: Ben Hanscom. Not an owner but an architect. The correlation does not fall into place quickly enough for Eddie to linger there, and he moves on swiftly, already distracted. 

The pixelated arrow hovers over the profile of one Richie Tozier. 

When he does finally press down on the link, he is met with a photograph of a man smiling larger than life at the camera. Looking more relaxed than what little Eddie can remember of those poorly shot videos that he’d watched with tight-lip. Buck teeth, he notices first, and then: bent smile. Tousled hair, like he’s been running his hands through it. He looks charismatic in the way that Eddie could never hope to be. Wearing a smile so big Eddie pictures split skin in the corners. The shirt he dons is aggressive, and Eddie is instantaneously reminded of the painting; the vibrant orange of the half shirt beneath the crudely depicted head. 

Richie Tozier, he decides, has a charmingly flawed face. 

He is not charming. Eddie knows this from recordings alone. He refuses to be charmed by a person who makes their living on uncouth humour and a reliance on people who find that to be funny eating at a restaurant that he -

Must reserve judgement on. For now.

The laptop burns something fierce through his clothed thighs where it’s rested precariously upon his lap. He shifts back into the malleable, worn leather of the couch.

Still, he finds his attention fixated on the photo. Something within him roars. He thinks, okay, Trashmouth Tozier. Show me what you’ve got.

*

Sunday brings with it a parched sky that looks like it does not have the energy it requires to produce the rain it so desperately needs. The clouds are swollen and grey still, threatening a downpour that never comes, try as they might.

4:00pm arrives far quicker than Eddie would have expected or hoped, and he finds himself hovering ambivalently outside the warm, inviting windowed entrance to Pennywise NYC . 

Nervousness is not an emotion that he feels often, not when it comes to his job. He never has any reason to feel this way. That’s something for the owners and chefs on the other side of this - this situation in which the scales of power tip fortunately to his side. He has nothing to lose from these visits, whereas the fate of a restaurant could very well be in his hands. It comes with the territory of being successful in this business.

The point is, only those who are certain of themselves ever invite Eddie Kaspbrak to their restaurant for a tasting: the brave or the foolish. He isn’t certain what category Richie Tozier falls into, but if he had to hazard a guess, he’d bet on the latter.

He supposes it’s time for him to find out.

The door gives easily beneath the press of his hands, and he is hit immediately with the earthy scent of the wood from which the furniture is crafted. It’s cloyingly candied, fusing with the other fragrances more similar to that which he would expect to find in a place that serves food. The savory hints of meat sizzling on an open grill; spices that he can identify instantly from the next, chili powder and smoked paprika being the most obvious; a sharp hint of antiseptic lemon underlying the heavier aromas.

It feels homely. Makes him feel at ease, which is a feat unto itself.

Rustic decor is so typically overdone and bored, but there’s something deeply comforting that Eddie can take from the unrefined benches, smooth to the touch due to the glossy top layer but nicked with indentations and blemishes, both purposeful and natural. He runs his hand across the closest vacant table to the door absent-mindedly. His eyes are driven upwards, catching on the light fixtures dangling like icicles from the ceiling, some of which are covered with a gauzy canvas-like material, remarkably fine. It helps to subdue the harsher artificial glare of the light. Higher still, exposed rectangular beams travel in clean, linear lines; exceptional architecture for a building surrounded by metal giants, towering and cold. There is nothing oppressive about this place.

In essence, the atmosphere of the restaurant somehow manages to be both cosy and classy.

His surprise must be palpable, he thinks, ducking his head and stepping away from the table like a shot; too little, too late. He catches the eye of someone across the room. The tall, imposing figure leaning against the bar who straightens as soon as he spots Eddie, practically tripping over one of the benches in his haste to rush over.

“Mr Kapsbrak,” he says cheerfully, hand outstretched before he even gets close enough to offer it properly. “Glad you could make it! Honestly, I thought you were gonna pussy out, but, fuck no, here you are! Look at you, man.”

Tozier .

Loud. Raw .

Eddie blinks at the hand for a moment too long before he takes it, already thrown off by the fact that the real Tozier is every bit as brazen as Twitter Tozier. His own grip as they shake is less strong than it would be if he didn’t suddenly feel caught unawares. He feels unanticipated callouses lining the digits of Richie’s hand (large, everything about him large ), and Eddie’s brows slant imperceptibly. “Mr Tozier.” He says, tone clipped.

It draws a laugh from him - just as loud as Eddie would have imagined. His shoulders shake with it. “Richie, please. Nobody has called me that since… well, nobody has called me that ever, actually. Mr Tozier makes me sound like my fuckin’ dad.”

Eddie is unsurprised to hear this. Richie Tozier exudes the energy of an overexcitable man-child . His shirt - so similar to that which he had included on his painting - is a shade shy of lime green, dotted with pink ; his jeans bootcut and slack, barely concealing the off-white sneakers marked with evidence of wear and tear. Eddie resists the urge to look down at himself - fitted cotton dress shirt in a deep red the color of wine, paired with tailored slate grey pants (too tight; courtesy of one of Bev’s shopping trips) - and simply arches the straight line of his brow instead.

“Really.” he says, tone as blunt edged as before. Too much like Sonia, he thinks. Mean and uncharitable. He works his jaw around the tension collecting in the joints there, masking the motion with a quick turn of his head around the restaurant. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“This time, or all the other times?” Richie quips. He smiles, like it’s amusing, like Eddie is something amusing.

“All of them, I suppose,” Eddie replies shiftily.

“You won’t regret it.” Nothing wavers in his tone. He looks like he means it, leaning backwards with his hands hidden from view in the depths of his pockets, the epitome of casual confidence. His smile sticks, like he couldn’t possibly not smile. “I knew I’d wear you down.”

Eddie bridles at that. His fingers clench once, twice at his side. “Did you?”

“Well, yeah,” Richie blinks. “Never met a person I couldn’t charm, Mr Kaspbrak.”

“Eddie.” It falls from his mouth unbidden. Immediately, he wishes to take it back, but he can’t. “People call me Eddie.” He repeats; words stilted, like speaking a foreign language but only knowing the basics.

“Eddie,” Richie echos. And then: “Eds.”

“No.” Eddie scowls. Rude , he thinks - of himself more than Tozier. Politeness never really became him. “No, don’t call me that.” 

Nobody calls him that. Silly, stupid, cute . He feels all at once five and twenty and forty.

Richie throws his head back and laughs, pale of his neck on display, cords tugging with the effort of his apparent glee. He rolls back onto his heels, body tilting on an axis, and then he’s back in Eddie’s space. 

“We’ll see,” he says, unrepentant. “You just get me today, I’m ‘fraid. Stan - he’s my business partner - is away for the day. Ben’s hanging around somewhere - he’s the architect, so if you like what you see, be sure to let him know, it’ll make his day. Any preference on -?”

“Architect?” Eddie blurts before he can stop himself. 

He wishes he had bothered to look deeper into the website, making the link between architect and restaurant, peering into the things he had deemed as inconsequential, though it makes little sense to him as to why. Familiarizing himself with a restaurant before he attends is nothing new. He’s meticulous to a fault, but perhaps the distractions of this particular case have been only too clear.

Meeting Richie Tozier has him off balance already. He is all at once familiar and unlike anyone Eddie has ever met before. There are two soldiers at war within him: one says fight , the other says patience . He doesn’t yet know which one is going to prevail.

The man in question seems unperturbed. He steps to the side, gestures with his hand for Eddie to follow when he begins to move. “Yeah, our architect. This place was a fucking slum when we came across it, man, you wouldn’t believe. But we liked the area, you know?” He shrugs, looking back at Eddie as though he does know. “We bought it, applied for planning, and knocked it down - boom !” Big hands mimicking the action of an explosion. “That was cool, watching it come down. Like, shit, I thought - maybe I should’ve been a demolitions man. You get to blow shit up at all the time!”

Eddie’s feet, he thinks, have to be moving of their own accord now, because he has no idea what is going on.

Richie talks . “Anyway - where was I? Oh, yeah, knocking it down… our friend - that’s me and Stan - he’s an architect. You might have heard of him, he’s worked on tons of projects across the city now. Ben Hanscom?” He pauses, then barrels through the blank expression on Eddie’s face. “He’s great, man. We just got him in to figure out what we wanted to do - what we could do, ‘cause there’s so much you have to work out with this stuff, I had no idea. It took months, but… well. It was worth it, obviously.” Chest puffed with air, hands gesticulating at their surroundings, smile pulled smaller but all the more genuine. He’s proud of it, of this, and Eddie -

Didn’t expect that. Not from a cash cow . The place has literally been built from the ground up.

He has to say something, he realises. Richie is looking at him expectantly and it makes Eddie’s cheeks heat with fire, as though his thoughts might be audible. 

Finally, he says, “Oh,” and then, on an afterthought, “It’s nice.”

If Richie is offended at the understatement, he doesn’t show it. The smile curls upwards at the edges, a blinding crescent moon, and Eddie wonders what will happen if it disappears. Then he thinks maybe he doesn’t want to know.

“Thanks, man.” Richie taps his knuckles on the hard edge of an unoccupied table. “This good for you?”

“Yes,” Eddie slips back into business professional like a second skin. “This will be fine. Please just treat me like any other diner. I mean it,” he fixes Richie with a shrewd gaze. “I’ll know if you’re going out of your way or doing anything you wouldn’t usually do, and I won’t write a review if I think that’s happening.” The usual spiel. His job is both easier and harder since he fled the cage of anonymity. 

Sometimes, he wants to retreat back to those iron bars. “Just… do what you normally would, and we’ll be fine.”

“Yes sir,” Richie grins, overbite pronounced. “Let me know when you’re ready to order, and I’ll send someone over. If you need anything -” he stops. Grins some more. “Don’t ask me. You’re just a regular customer.”

Eddie glares at him with borehole eyes, brow creasing effortlessly through the paper-thin of his skin. He’s already retreating, though; it’s Richie’s back that gets the full force of those eyes, and Eddie breathes a quiet breath of a sigh as he slides onto the bench. There is a menu ready and waiting, scripted font in gold-lined ink, the letters light and curling. 

He looks over the menu as though he hasn’t already studied it in depth online. He thinks that, if he were in a competition to recall as many items from this as another, he would win. Maybe even against the owners themselves. His eyes trace unseeing over the stylised parchment stenciled with edible flowers and herbs, scientific names aligned. Myosotis. Helianthus annuss. Laurus nobilis . Pretty.

Already, his choices have been made. The cuisine is nothing unfamiliar to him - good, hearty food served bistro style, in fitting with the homespun surroundings, each dish with an apparent twist to make it more desirable in an oversaturated market.

Not expecting the worst now; not expecting anything special either. Hovering somewhere in the inbetween.

Ten minutes trickle by too slowly in the way that only overwrought anticipation allows, and he drums his fingers against the wood of the table. Traces the concentric growth rings therein, catching the skin upon the chips.

He casts a few short, clandestine glances in Richie’s direction: where he chats with a bartender, long-limbs folded in on himself so as to get down to height; again, when he greets some new patrons with a goofy smile, stature unabashedly open.

Thoroughly involved. Eddie wonders if it’s for show - if this is just another stage for him to perform upon.

Unfair , he thinks. He doesn’t know this man at all. That didn’t stop you before .

He doesn’t have to think upon it for long. A waiter arrives to take his order, well-dressed and polished, but relaxed all the same, as though this setting is comfortable for him. Like he enjoys working here. When Eddie’s mind circles back to Richie and his gossiping with the bartender, he thinks he can believe that to be the case.

His order is carefully planned. He focuses on the different cooking techniques and the extensive variety of ingredients; slides his finger over the sauteed mushrooms on the menu, moving swiftly onto the boeuf bourguignon and, finally, the creme brulee to finish, made with coconut milk in place of dairy. 

Something about this simple act of placing an order still has his heart skipping in his chest, like the beat of a song misplaced. Every time.

Eddiebear, what are you doing? You know you can’t eat that!

Eyes closed, palms discretely flat against his diaphragm, he tracks the motion of it with each great breath.

Watch me , he thinks.

Service is quick. 

By the time the first plate has arrived, placed delicately before him, he has all but forgotten where he is, focused entirely on the task at hand. This, for him, is more of a religious experience than any church service his mother forced upon him as a child. His relationship with God is complicated, he thinks. His relationship with food isn’t. Not any more, at least.

He’s ready. Fresh notebook - standard stationary, no distinctive markers anywhere thereon - placed to the side, perpendicular to the laid cutlery, the knife edge lined up with the stiff binder. Some people do this after. He used to do it after, back when he was an unknown face doing this as most do - secretly, sliding in and out of a place as quietly as a fugitive might. There’s no need for that now that he only goes where specifically requested, the guest of honor that he had never dreamed of being.

Sauteed mushrooms in a garlic sauce. He is met with all the anticipated flavors at first. The thick, filling creamy texture unfolding across his tongue in an instant. He’s hyper aware of his expressions when he does this. It’s not like him to give too much away, but perhaps startlement is a force too powerful even for him to temper. It’s good; rich in intensity that he hadn’t prepared himself for. It takes a second for another flavor to hit, something with infinitely more kick that takes the entire plate to another level. Cloves . Atypical but remarkably well married with the dish as a whole.

Short-hand notes fill the first half of the page in clear, spaced handwriting. None of the chicken scratch that makes it illegible, even if Eddie will be the only one to ever cast an eye upon this writing. He takes his fill, forcing himself not to leave the handcrafted blue glazed crockery spotless, and moves onto the next, a sensation eagerly ravenous clawing at his stomach. 

It’s never easily sated. 

Boeuf bourguignon. He could cry. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s shed tears over a home cooked meal. Red wine in all it’s full-bodied vibrancy bursts across his taste buds and they sing with the deliciousness. The beef falls apart at the first press of a silver knife against it, braised meat easy on his mouth. The vegetables, stewed to perfection, star anise something a little different. 

He’s half mad with it; feels like a caged animal. To discover this, here, in a place he has been so vehemently against entering - owned by a man fast believed by him to have no experience with such things.

But it doesn’t stop him from consuming. Notes become sloppier, filling half a page and more with his comments on this - the main dish. A thousand times before he thinks he may have had this same meal: sometimes brilliant, sometimes worthless. This falls nearer to the top of the scale, a scale which he feels is ready to crumble beneath the revelation of it.

He has been to Michelin starred restaurants. He has been to hidden gems, diamond-rough and unbeknownst to most until discovered by him. But it is in Richie ‘Trashmouth’ Tozier’s restaurant that he finds himself to be unraveling.

Blame , entirely upon his own narrow shoulders. For coming into this with his own predetermined truth based upon facts not yet presented to him. He hadn’t prepared himself for the (believed to be small) likelihood of him enjoying his time here.

He is saved from salivating over the next course before it even arrives by a jumble of legs and arms falling onto the bench opposite him.

“How’s it going, chief?” Richie asks pleasantly. He smiles and smiles.

It must hurt .

“Who is your chef?” Eddie demands, pen poised over his notebook as though to document the response.

“It.. changes?” Richie blinks at him. “I mean - Jonny’s leading up the team today, but he doesn’t do all of it, could you imagine? We’d have fuckin’ one star on yelp for poor service.” He snorts.

“No,” Eddie waves a hand impatiently. “Whose recipes are these?”

“ Oh ,” Richie grins easily. Recognition dawning across an unbarred face. “Right, I got you. That would be me. I mean, they’re kind of my grandmother’s, I guess - that’s where I got the basis for most of ‘em, anyway, but -”

Eddie isn’t listening anymore, stuck on the confession. His hand jerks untoward at the admittance, nib slashing wet blue ink across the paper and piercing through to the other side. He turns the page and glares down at the tear.

“Uh. You okay, man?”

“Yes.” Eddie replies shortly. “Where did you learn to cook?”

“Uh,” His smile falters. Eddie thinks: don’t . “My grandmother, mostly. When I first went off on tour, she didn’t want me eating preprocessed foods and ramen out of a tub, so she kinda forced her ‘lessons’ on me.” He uses air quotes around the word, pulling a face that is steeped in fondness. “Guess it all worked out in the end, huh?”

Fondness at the memories, Eddie supposes. A sliver of his heart yearns to relate. It can’t. He can’t.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters beneath his breath. His next notes are scrawled and angry, flicking across the paper as Richie watches with brows lost to his hairline. “What the fuck.”

“I don’t know what’s happening right now,” Richie says. 

When Eddie looks up, he’s squinting. His smile is there but frozen in place; Eddie could chip away at it with an ice pick in no time at all. For the first time, Richie seems hesitant, unsure of himself in a way that Eddie already knows does not fit him. Like a too-small pair of shoes, pinching at the toes and cutting off the circulation needed to keep them alive.

Reluctantly, he lets his pen drop and sighs, “these recipes are good.”

Laughter lines around blue eyes that sparkle deceptively in the low-hanging lights. He’s always liked blue. Purer than brown.

“Thanks, man,” Richie rubs at the nape of his neck, rosebuds of pink high on his cheeks. “Grandma would’ve been delighted to hear it.”

There’s a silence in which Eddie stares and Richie smiles. It makes Eddie tense. 

He braces himself for the punchline.

It doesn’t come.

Instead, there are hands shoved almost in his face, Richie sloping across the table towards him, “Cooking’s a bitch though, right? Got burns all over my hands, all the time. Barely even do any of the cooking anymore, but still got the battle scars.”

Eddie looks at the raised bumps along the ridges of his fingers and swallows. “I don’t cook.”

“Shit, really? What the fuck? Is that not, like, a requirement for this job?”

“You don’t have to cook to know good food.” Eddie frowns, jaw hinged, hackles risen.

“Guess not,” Richie says. He’s squinting again. Like he can see Eddie clearer this way, with his vision as blurred and indistinct as it surely must be.

It makes Eddie shift in his seat. Something throbs in his throat. He wants to pull himself away from the conversation, but he has nowhere to go and there is still a dish left. Dessert. His favorite. His fingers twitch and he curls them deftly around the extended handle of the dessert spoon. One hand dealt with. The other, he slides to his knee beneath the cover of the table.

From the corner of his eye, he spots the waiter on an unswerving pathway back to them, curved plate stippled with gray in hand. 

The ravenous thing in Eddie’s stomach leaps.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Richie says, unfurling his body out of the compacted space between the table and the bench. He winks. “See you soon, Eds.”

Eddie’s throat labors on the words that slip through anyway, “I’ll be back,” he says. “Soon.”

The wink leaves him off kilter. Feeling unsteady despite the fact that he is sat with feet on solid ground, and his head so far from the clouds that he could not be more anchored to this Earth. What he needs is to leave. Soon, he thinks. The parameters of this venture are shifting unplanned before his eyes, and he dislikes feeling ill-equipped to deal with it.

His words give Richie pause for thought. A considering tilt of his head, hair flattened atop his head but curling at the ends. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he nods and lowers his gaze. “Three times for a review.” 

Not strictly. Sometimes two. One, he had intended for this. A meal, something written quickly and bitterly, a way of putting Richie Tozier in a box and out of sight. Out of mind. His fingers dig firmly into the bone of his femur.

“Awesome,” Richie grins. “I’ll look forward to it.”

Again, he turns to go.

Again, Eddie’s mouth works of its own accord.

“The painting,” he says, pitched higher. “What did you do with the painting?”

It’s unmistakable surprise that creates perfect circles out of Richie’s eyes, and Eddie wants to crawl into himself and disappear. Find a home amongst the skeleton that can act as his protection; an ivory sentinel. But then it’s gone, replaced with sheer delight that gives Eddie a secondhand high, the rigid lines of his body softening.

“Pride of place in our lounge,” Richie says, teeth touching on his lower lip. “Stan hates it. No idea why. I could be the next Van Gogh or some shit, what do ya think?”

A question that doesn’t warrant a vocalised answer. Despite himself, Eddie snorts. A flimsy puff of a thing that catches them both off guard. 

Then the creme brulee is placed before him, hardened caramelized sugar tempting him almost as much as the treacly scent, so strong he can already taste it. Two contrasting layers of the same recipe, burnt sugar and thick cream, balanced and working in perfect symphony with one another. He loses himself to the cushiony place where nothing exists but this: heaven on his tongue and passivity seeping into his frame, thoughts gossamer light and floating.

He leaves beneath the cover of the twilit sky, with a scribbled account over half a dozen pages of this only too fleeting experience at the restaurant, short form and begging for expansion. 

Richie Tozier is nowhere to be seen.

*

Unforeseen .

The whole situation. 

For two days, Richie keeps searching eyes fixed to the swing of the door, longing to witness the second occasion upon which Eddie Kaspbrak will walk through it. 

“How was it?” Stan had asked. “If we’re going to be out of business by tomorrow, please let me know now.”

Richie hadn’t known how to answer; still doesn’t, if he thinks upon it for even a second. 

“Fine,” he’d said, in the end. “I think we’re gonna be okay. You underestimate me.”

Stan had been bemused. Even more so when he’d continued to catch Richie’s careful watch over the entrance, an altogether too knowing expression passing over his features. Richie has to turn away when he gets that look on his face; knows Stan too well by now to trust that he’ll be happy to hear what he has to say. After all these years, Stan always cuts a little too deep to the bone where Richie is concerned. It comes with territory of a friendship rooted in childhood, two tree stumps growing up through the Earth together.

Richie sits behind the till on a worn, low wooden stool, his feet propped up against the metal bar underlying the counter. Half relaxed against the wall, relieving some of the pressure that builds without the assistance of a back support, each pang a keen, unwelcome reminder of his years. He has one eye on the door still, one on the notes fanned out across his lap, tangible evidence of his upcoming show in another part of town. 

It’s easy for him to slip into a panic about these things. The closer they get, the faster he slides. Down, down, down , until the prospect of hauling him back dances dangerously along an impossibility. His silence always speaks volumes anyway when it comes to this, because he’s a motor running 190 miles per hour usually. Not many people know what to do with a quiet Richie, but Stan and Ben, they do.

That hasn’t happened for years, though. Stan and Ben may still wait with bated breath, but Richie likes to believe he has it under control. Has to believe he has it under control.

The door opens and a whistle of a breeze comes with it, reaching even the farthest corners of the room, chilling them abruptly. A group of young adults spill into the restaurant, each highly stylised in their effort to be casual, snatches of bright, noisy conversation being caught by the diners they pass. Even from back here in his sanctuary behind the till, Richie acquires bits and pieces, every one as meaningless to him as the last, but he smiles as they’re greeted by one of the servers (Caroline, he thinks). 

They’ve become a fucking hipster hot spot. He blames Stan, as he always does, and the thought makes him snort.

He runs his fingers along the page of notes. Tries his hardest not to look like he’s waiting on tenterhooks for something ( someone ), when that’s exactly what he’s doing. It could be today, tomorrow, never. He hopes not the latter.

That first time, he was expecting something messy. Something dramatic. Fireworks. He was expecting a man ready and waiting with a switchblade for a tongue and a disparaging view of Richie Tozier and his restaurant, insults loaded like bullets in a gun, primed and ready. He assumes, blindly, that that was what Eddie was expecting too. Neither of them were met as far as Richie can tell. Maybe they both came away from that first meeting with eyes wide open, without the anticipated disappointment sinking like a stone. 

Perhaps his fixation now runs deeper.

Dangerous. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s fallen headfirst into a situation easily turned sour for him.

A shadow, slight but pronounced, falls over the paper, obstructing his view of the barely legible script. Surprise swoops low in his gut when he raises his head to see the man of the hour. Caught unawares when just a few moments before he would have been alert and too eager with it. Probably, it’s for the best. He doesn’t want to be read so easily like pages of a book splayed wide for all to learn, and he thinks he just might be, otherwise. The excitement is already lifting at his features, the tension he had not realised he was carrying beginning to evaporate.

“Eds!” he crows, shoving his notes onto the ledge beneath the counter and jumping to his feet. “You’re back.”

Eddie Kaspbrak looks at him with a hint of wariness about his creased eyes. “I said I would be.”

His shirt is pale blue today, the top button undone. Richie’s gaze is compelled to pause upon the minute expanse of sun-kissed skin that glimpses through the gap, but he banishes the desire to stop there. Eddie dresses like he’s somebody put together and sophisticated, and Richie so desperately wants to rumple that surface image, see what’s lurking beneath the exterior. Instead, he grins around a swallow, already hip-checking his way out from around the counter.

“You can meet Stan today. He’s in the back avoiding doing any of the heavy lifting.” He raises his voice on the last sentence, so that it carries through the hatch behind them.

“Your mom does all the heavy lifting for me,” comes the bored reply, followed by the head of the man himself. Stan rests his forearms on the wooden ledge, ducking his upper body through the hatch and leveling Eddie with a gaze. “Mr Kaspbrak. I thought Richie had imagined you.”

Eddie blinks. His gaze flickers between Richie and Stan as though he isn’t sure of the situation, before he focuses on Stan. “Does he do that often? Make people up?”

It startles a laugh out of Richie, rumbling in his chest. He throws a glance at Stan in time to catch the pleased, impressed smile that he wears, still looking back at Eddie.

“Oh yeah,” Stan waggles his brows. “This place is named after the clown he dreamt up when we were kids. Vivid imagination, this one.”

“Horrible child-murdering bastard, he was,” Richie says cheerfully in the face of Eddie’s evident confusion, resisting the urge to laugh more; harder, louder, madder. 

“And you named your restaurant after that?” Eddie looks horrified. Richie feels an intense urge to reach across and tap his fingers on the high line of his cheekbones. His fingers twitch. “What’s wrong with you? That’s so fucking stupid.”

That’s more like it, Richie thinks. He bounces in a jerky rhythm on the balls of his feet for a beat or two, delighted at this turn of events. There’s a bit of the bite he had been anticipating. Wanting, too, if he’s getting into the habit of being honest with himself.

“Tell me about it,” A lofty sigh from Stan, before he’s retreating back into the depths of the kitchen. “Good to meet you, Mr Kaspbrak.”

“You too,” Eddie calls back, “Eddie...Eddie is fine.”

His back is poker-straight and his shoulders pulled taut, as though he might crumble if he loosens the reigns to any real degree. Richie wants to see it. Wants to witness what would happen if that frigid overwrought nature dissipated from his body. He knows it’s wrong, wrong, wrong of him, but he’s wanted it since he first laid eyes upon the man from behind the confines of a computer screen, image imprinted on the back of his eyelids long after he had had to peel himself away. 

It must hurt . To be so fraught.

A memory interrupts his thoughts, forceful as a shot from a gun and just as sudden. Three years ago, a man in a bar (short, dark, fiery) Richie had thought could keep up with him in all his glory. In the end, he had tended to a fire that had burnt him almost beyond repair. He pushes the image down and aside as quickly as it arrives, as though he can bury it somewhere in the space between his ribs and his kidney. Somewhere it can fester without travelling back to his brain. 

There is a box that lies there: Bad memories . Repress .

Eddie is watching him when he comes back from that place. His gaze averts as soon as their eyes meet.

Richie smiles. “Where’d you wanna sit? We have a table right by the windows, if you want a view...”

The sun is trying again today. Just enough to take the chill off and melt away the ice threatening to cling to the tarmac. The windows act as a conductor to the heat, reflecting the warmth upon those who sit beneath them; rays glimmering gold and white upon whatever they touch. The sky is whirling shades of gray still. Looks like rain, Richie thinks nonsensically, but it’s ‘looked like rain’ for weeks now, and not one drop has fallen from the heavens.

He’s already walking, gangly and uncoordinated on legs that are too long, only too aware of the height difference between himself and their esteemed guest. He’s more content with his height these days, though sometimes he still wonders if he was made this way so that nobody could deny that he is too big for this world. The jury is still undecided as to whether he means this in a good way or not. Once: not . Now… 

The menu is slid across a table already dappled with sunlight. “People would give their left nut for this table,” he jokes, delighting in the way that Eddie’s face screws up in disgust.

“I’d rather pay with money, thanks,” he frowns finally. Like the words take effort.

“You’re in luck, we accept that too!”

Eddie’s eye twitches. Richie watches as he brings the menu towards him with stiff hands. He has the air of a person who is always on alert. He noticed that the last time, too. For what ? Richie wants to ask. For who? What are you so afraid of ?

He doesn’t ask any of those questions. Instead, he says: “Can I ask you...who put that stick up your ass?” 

He knows he should regret it the moment that Eddie becomes impossibly tighter . As though invisible strings are being tugged at from above, controlled by some other force. He resists the urge to gaze up at the beams, wondering if he might see the hidden face of a puppeteer staring back at him. 

“Excuse me?” Eddie hisses. The cadence of his voice, though harshed by the meanness of his tone, still appeals to a deeper part of Richie. 

This voice, he thinks, might be the melody of his soul. He shoves the thought aside as quickly as it arrives, embarrassed by this sudden rush of romanticism unfamiliar to him and out of place in this interaction.

“Just be careful,” A severe lack of survival skills. He’s always pushing; unable to help himself. Richie smiles through his teeth. “Not a nice place to get splinters. How the fuck would you get them out?”

He could melt, he thinks, beneath the ire of one Eddie Kaspbrak. He thinks it could be quite pleasant to do exactly that, too.

“Do you speak to all your customers like this?”

Richie hesitates, placing his hands palm down on the table and shifting his weight forward. From this position, their heights are almost equaled, even though Eddie is sitting.

“Nah,” he presses his tongue into the corner of his cheek. “Only the ones I like.”

He pushes away from the table and spins on his heels, back towards the safety of the till. For all the bravado, he feels he is hovering over the precipice of a cliff. At the top stands Eddie, hands tightly wound around the rope attached to Richie’s waist. The only thing keeping him aloft. Stupid . He’s not connected to this man through months of unanswered tweets and letters and one and a half in person meetings. And yet -

A glance chanced back over his shoulder confirms that Eddie has not yet opened the menu presented to him.  Though his form is still dense with unrelenting sternness, his expression is something more curious - half sour and half sweet. Lines creasing his forehead that speak of exasperation, but a twist of his lips that is more up than it is down.  Humor. Like there might be a laugh caught in the back of his throat that he doesn’t quite feel ready to release. 

Richie hopes it is that; but then, his imagination is nothing if not a wild horse, untamed and keen to explore that which may never truly exist.

He should be careful, he knows, and yet he still trudges forward with all the grace of a bull. He knows better than to tempt fate, and there is nothing like inviting a person like Eddie to your restaurant to do precisely that. He could make or break them - break them , Richie thinks they both probably thought in the beginning. There had been no hiding that he had enjoyed the food that he had tasted the last time he was here, even if he had not thought that he would. That’s all they need. For him to enjoy his visits here, write a rave review, provide an excuse that Richie can hide behind for asking him here in the first place.

Yet he’s picking it apart at the seams already, like he can’t help himself.

He signs himself up to cook today. If only to stop himself from perching back upon that stool and sneaking furtive glances like a teenager with a crush all day. Bundles himself away into the sweltering confines of the kitchen, sweat on a steady incline down his back when he’s only fifteen minutes in, but he relishes the feeling of hard work and exertion that it brings. Similar to when he’s stood beneath the sticky artificial heat of the spotlights on a stage, sipping water to get him through each of the jokes that spill agonisingly from a dry mouth. 

But it’s not like that anymore, he reminds himself, not in the wake of his coming out, since the jokes have turned real.

The kitchen is a familiar setting of noise and heat and camaraderie. Orders zip through the hatch as soon as more are placed, and it’s only too easy for him to get back into the rhythm of it. He knows the recipes like the back of his hand. Years of being playfully scolded by his grandma for not using the right ingredients or for not spending the correct amount of time on one technique, followed by years more of practicing the dishes and of perfecting them. It’s like memorising the lyrics of a song by now. Each recipe plays out like a melodic tune in his head. All Richie has to do is follow it.

A particularly strong gleam of light mirrored into the kitchen from the restaurant catches his eye about an hour in. He follows it all the way to a table beneath the windows, sun creating the perfect halo around Eddie’s head, and the breath is punched out of him. It’s not just because of the soft hue that chases the shadows from the planes of his face, even from this far away.

He’s on dessert now, it seems. And - well, there’s no stick in sight now. Everything is more at ease. The gentle curve of his back as his torso folds carefully over the table, the drop of his shoulders from their typical linear position, posture relaxed and undefined. He shifts his head to the side to pore over the notebook in which he delineates his thoughts, and Richie catches sight of slack lips corrugating on an almost smile.

Fuck , he thinks. And then: dangerous . 

As though he hadn’t known it would come to this so swiftly after months of craving for the full effect of his attention.

Hat and gloves tossed to the side but apron still wound snugly around his middle, he exits the kitchen to make a beeline for the table. Catching his hip on the blunt corner of another as he passes but not stopping before he arrives at his proposed destination, even though his skin smarts with the contact.

“How’s your second time treating you?” He asks casually as though his chest isn’t visibly lifting with the force of his breaths, escalated by his haste to get here.

Eddie starts. He comes back from whatever different world he is transported to in these moments. Circular eyes are briefly unfocused when he blinks at Richie, before he casts a disarmed glance around the restaurant. Richie rubs clammy hands across the front of the already stained apron and takes a seat opposite him. Enough to hide the unsteady tremble of his knees.

“Um.” Eddie frowns. He hasn’t yet righted his posture, Richie notices. “Fine, I guess. I can’t tell you much. You’ll have to wait for the review.” Terse; blunt.

“Are you playing hard to get with me? I’m shocked… what did you order today?”

“Steak tartare, confit of lamb shoulder, vanilla panna cotta.” He lists them off, pointedly passing over Richie’s first comment. An almost contented sigh slips out that seems to come from deep within him, his whole body tremulous with it in a way that has Richie rapt, his gaze unrelenting.

He places his palms against the table, taking in the honeyed scent wafting from the now finished plate between them. “Good choices.”

“I know food,” Eddie raises a brow. “Of course they’re good choices.”

“But you don’t cook…” Richie affirms. He tilts his head. He lets his eyes wander, making no move to hide how he peruses Eddie. “Why not?”

“I can’t.” Unyielding. Lips thin and slashed across the bottom of his face, rough at the edge and reminiscent of a tear made by a sharp instrument. He picks up a white napkin, clenching his fingers in it. “I never learned.”

“Okay.” Richie smiles like it’s enough. It is. “I probably wouldn’t have either, if it wasn’t for my grandma. She was a dictator in the kitchen, I’m not kidding.”

The conversation could be over there, but he chases it like a dog with a bone. Wants to sink his teeth and not let it go, sitting here forever in the company that is neither comfortable nor particularly pleasant. 

“I could teach you,” he offers, something out of the blue even to him. Stupid . He wants to backtrack immediately. “I’m a fucking great cook.”

Eddie eyes him coolly. “The stick in my ass might get in the way.”

It pulls raucous laughter from Richie’s chest. Deep and robust, his shoulders hunched as his body involves itself in this inexplicable bout of pure glee. “Eds gets off a good one! You’re fucking funny, you know that?”

It’s instantaneously clear that no, he doesn’t know this. His frown is deep; quizzical and unsure. One side of his lip tugs heavenward but not enough for it to be a smile. As though he’s not quite sure whether this is part of the act. Like Richie may be mocking him.

He doesn’t want that. “Well you are, if you didn’t know. Now you do.” 

“Funnier than you,” Eddie counters with jest, and there is a smile now. Genuine and small but it packs a punch. Richie leans back in his seat, wounded by it. “How many mom jokes have you made today?”

“I don’t know,” Richie grins, honest. “But there’s always room for another.” He presses his still clammy hands to the denim around his thighs so that they do not do something he does not permit. “Tell me about yourself.”

Eddie pauses where he’s taking a sip of his water. Richie watches the roll of his Adam’s apple as the liquid travels down. “Like what?”

Whatever there is to know about Eddie Kaspbrak that’s on the internet, Richie knows. He’s pretty sure of this. The thing is, there isn’t that much out there at all beyond the basics of what he does, what little can be gleaned from his writing. He’s private. Keeps himself to himself whereas Richie’s life is on display, scrutinised under a magnifying glass by fans and foes alike.

“I don’t know. Anything. Everything.” Richie licks his lips. “Where’d you grow up? Who was your first celebrity crush? What made you finally give in and get your ass down here?”

It’s a breath of a giggle that Eddie lets loose, as though he doesn’t know what else to do. He narrows his eyes, hands moving to his lap. Out of view. “Connecticut. Patrick Swayze.” His gaze shifts. “I wanted to shut you up.”

Richie beams delightedly.  This man is a firecracker. He wants to touch when it’s at its most lethal. He rests his forearms on the table, angling his body as close as he can get with this barrier between them. “That’s a lot to unpack, Eds, I gotta tell you. What the fuck is in Connecticut?”

“Yale.”

“...You went to Yale ?”

“No. But it’s in Connecticut.”

“Oh, so you think you’re smart, too, huh?” Richie shakes his head. His smile aches and aches but he refuses to let up.

There’s an answering smile on Eddie’s face. It is radiantly blown and reaches his eyes, which have so much depth Richie feels briefly as though he is freefalling into them. It would be worthwhile, he thinks. 

“Something like that. Where are you from, jackass?”

“Maine.”

“Maine? Fucking Maine ? You can’t say shit about Connecticut.”

“They’re both terrible,” Richie amends. “We should sing our praise for New York, rescuing us from the shithole states.”

Eddie pulls a face.

He could let it die here, Richie thinks. But he won’t. He finds another incision and prods; hopes it isn’t tender. “Patrick Swayze?” It answers a question in the back of his mind he was not yet willing to vocalise.

Twin flares of crimson light up Eddie’s cheeks. An embarrassed pull of his lip. “Shut up... I snuck out to watch Dirty Dancing when I was, like, eleven. It was an innocent crush.

Richie leans back. He squints, like he’s surveying him. Lets his gaze flicker up and over what little he can see from this position, unhurried with it. Small. Compact. “Doesn’t strike me as your type.”

“You don’t know me,” Eddie points out. There’s no bite to it. The sleeves of his shirt are pushed up to his elbows now, delicate wrists and a spattering of dark, fine hairs along his forearms on display. Rumpled . “Besides, I was eleven . I didn’t have a type.”

What about now ? Richie wants to push. What’s your type now ? He swallows down the need and it embeds itself in the lining of his stomach; a seed beginning to grow. He tries not to think about the fact that soon enough it will fill him, expanding until he cannot contain it any longer.

“Touche. As for that last one...I knew you’d give in in the end. Bet you’re glad you came.”

“I don’t know. It didn’t exactly shut you up, did it? You’re here giving me a migraine with your talking right now.”

“I can go fuck myself?” He offers, with an exaggerated gesture. “Happy to. Do it daily.”

“Gross.” Eddie’s face creases with the force of his aversion. “You’re disgusting.”

Something undeniable is shifting. Richie wants to grab hold of it with both hands and cling onto it. He drags his nail across the side of the table imperceptibly instead, digging at a splinter of wood that sticks out at an angle. “Your mom is into it,” he says. “Filthy woman.”

There is a moment where Richie wants to run for cover. Thinks, this is it . It’s going to blow . A muscle, delicate but visible, pulsates at the side of Eddie’s neck. His mouth snaps shut, teeth clicking with the effort of it. Richie simultaneously wants to push forward and slip away from the fallout; like he can’t decide whether to throw himself onto the grenade for his sins, or take the coward’s way out. Probably the latter. The latter usually wins for him.

“Thank you for desecrating the memory of my late mother,” Eddie says. It’s a little sour and a little curt, but then his eyes catch onto Richie’s and he continues, “She probably deserves that.”

The relief is flooding, followed swiftly by curiosity. But there’s an apology on his lips too and he slides his tongue across his teeth. “Sorry,” too twitchy with it, “force of habit. Can’t keep the ole Trashmouth shut sometimes.” Most of the time.

It’s like a knee-jerk reaction. Someone says ‘mom’ or ‘mother’ or ‘ma’, and Richie says something along the lines of ‘ oh, yeah, I fucked her’ , even now, even when he’s been out for nigh on two years now and everyone knows he hasn’t touched a damn woman since he was nineteen and cried after his first unsatisfactory time trying to feel something he was never able to.

Beneath the table, he shifts his feet and makes contact with something sturdy. Eddie’s foot, he realises, when it moves, though not taken away entirely.

“It’s okay,” There’s a tiny shrug of Eddie’s shoulders. “I meant it.”

Richie doesn’t know what to say to that. He feels all at once as though he’s discovered more about Eddie Kaspbrak than he could ever have hoped to know, and that he knows nothing at all. Something in him hungers for more. He wants to crawl inside his head and find out what lives there, what makes him tick, and then - 

And then, what? What is he going to do with that information?

He looks at sun darkened skin and big, sad eyes. Fingers dusted with ink from the nib of the pen too close to the tips. The shirt once neatly pressed and now creasing from the steamy heat of the restaurant and the slouch of his stature, relaxing as one as though it’s somehow aligned with him; stitched to the fibres of his being. Let’s himself focus discreetly on an angular chin and cheekbones that he incomprehensibly wants to cut his teeth on.

His leg bounces beneath the table. He knows what he wants to do with the information.

“I guess you’re done for the day.” he says abruptly, instead. 

Eddie looks at him, one thick brow dipping, and then nods. Something firm but cursory, reverting them to strangers in a partnership of purely commercial benefits. His body seems to lift back up into itself, every movement polished and without error. “Yes. Thank you for your hospitality.”

They both stand up and away from the table in unison. Richie’s foot kicks out against a table leg and he winces. The movements each of them exhibit are distinctly awkward now. 

Inclining his head, he makes as though to continue on his way, but then turns unwittingly at the last second. His smile feels syrupy and stuck. He hopes it doesn’t show, “One more, right?”

It gives Eddie cause to stop where he’s packing himself away. Pen lidded, notebook caught between slender digits, bag unlatched and gaping open, flap held down. “Sorry?”

“One more,” Richie repeats. He doesn’t let his smile falter. “Before the review?”

“Oh,” Recognition seems to dawn. There’s a nod, albeit stilted. “Yeah. Yeah, one more.”

“Good.” Richie mimics his nod. A little too frenetic to be cool . He feels like a livewire all of a sudden, knows better than to stick around like this. He might catch alight. “I’d give your compliments to the chef, but he’s already had them.” A flick of his tongue; a subtle warning to himself.

He doesn’t wait for the response, just lets his legs guide him back towards the kitchen whilst his heart clamors painfully against his rib cage, so loud he thinks it could interfere with the diners who still converse and eat as though the world has not just altered beneath them. Selfishly, he wants to be one of them, despite his hand to play in all of this.

Stupid. Idiot. Jackass .

Fuck . Stan’s right. He’s always right. 

Richie wants to sleep with Edward F Kaspbrak.

He just barely resists the desire to sneak a glance back, slipping into the kitchen and tipping his head against the hard of the wall to ground himself. Inhales the familiarity of basil and paprika, focuses on the metallic clangs of pans against hardwood, and rushed, splintered conversations between the employees around him, just catching the odd word and phrase here and there, things that make little sense out of context. Table 40 . Chicken thighs . Fucking lazy .

Somewhere, the creator of the world laughs at him.

He emits a thunderous groan that seems to cause a ripple through his torso, scrubbing a hand across his face.

Potentially, he wants to do more than sleep with Edward F Kaspbrak.

*

“I thought you were just going the once,” Bev’s voice rises from her position kneeling on the floor, muffled by the row of pins carefully held between her lips. “What happened?”

The question is reasonable, Eddie knows, but it still catches him off guard. He steps with an awkward gait, catching his toes in the hem of the trousers Bev is currently pinning, and she looks at him reprovingly.

“Sorry,” he mutters, righting his footing on the stand. 

He still doesn’t provide an answer to her tendentiously posed query straight away, mulling it over for a few moments as he tries to decide how best to approach it. Meaning, how to approach it without giving her reason to assume anything untoward. 

There isn’t anything untoward going on, and he just wishes his body would catch up with that. He’s only met Richie Tozier twice, and yet both times his stomach seemed to be abuzz with life, swooping in a way that made him feel -  nauseous? No, not nauseous.

Stupid .

There’s something intimidating to Eddie about Richie’s presence and it’s stupid. Eddie is rarely unnerved around people these days. Once, maybe, but he’s had a lot of time to work on that, and his job automatically puts him in a better place to be confident in these situations.

“The food is good,” he admits begrudgingly. “Really good…unfortunately, it deserves a real review.”

Bev drops the pins from her mouth into her open palm. “Turn a little to the left for me...Even though it’s Tozier?”

“Even though it’s Tozier.”

“Wow,” she whistles but doesn’t look up, focused on tucking along the seam of the pants. “The food must be really fucking good, huh? Is it sprinkled with coke or something?”

Eddie snorts, reaching down to swipe at her head, but she easily ducks out of the way, smile stretching. “No, Bev, they don’t lace their fucking food with cocaine, Jesus.”

“Maybe they should… imagine the money you’d make off that kind of business venture. A lot of repeat customers.”

Eddie drops his face into his hands as he laughs despairingly. When he looks back in the mirror, he can see that Bev is laughing too, and she grins wide and gorgeous when they catch each other’s eye in the reflection. 

Pale skin dotted with raspberry freckles, red hair lightened in parts and even more vibrant beneath the force of the sun they’ve had, eyes glowing with the wicked spark of humor that she holds. She’s breath-taking. He loves her, just not in the way he used to wish he could (not that she would have ever been interested in him like that, but it would have been easier ). 

Nowadays, he looks at Bev and he sees family.

“Tozier isn’t that bad, either.” It’s a little spontaneous. He isn’t sure he wanted to admit that, his mouth running without his permission, and he can see the moment Bev’s brows rise to her hair. He’s quick to proceed, “I mean, he’s rude and loud and ridiculous, but he’s… he’s actually kind of funny.”

“Okay, now I’m worried,” She pushes up to her feet, instantly pressing the palm of her hand to his forehead. He scoffs, pushing it down and away gently. “Do you have a temperature? Have you been body snatched? Quick, tell me something only Eddie Kaspbrak knows!”

“Shut up, oh my god,” he rolls his eyes, heat dancing atop the surface of his whole face. “You’re the worst.”

She simply grins. “Just never thought I’d see the day. I thought you hated that man, Eddie.”

“Yeah, well,” He fidgets uncomfortably, turning back to the mirror and straightening the lapels of the jacket he’s wearing for her. “Maybe it’s not always accurate to judge a book by its cover.”

“Jeez,” She raises one wry eyebrow. “I wonder who’s been telling you that for years. Glad to see the message has finally sunk in.”

The scowl that Eddie shoots her way just barely scratches the surface; not intended to be genuinely abrasive and mitigated almost entirely by the quiet smile he wears thereafter. “On rare occasions, Marsh. Most of the time, first impressions are exactly what they seem.”

Bev just hums in response, gracefully lowering herself back to the floor so that she can finish up the fitting. “Well, Tozier has certainly left something of a first impression on you, hasn't he?”

She sounds saccharine and agreeable and nice and Eddie doesn’t buy it for one second because he knows her too well. 

It’s not like he can even open his mouth to disagree in good conscience, either, because he would be lying if he said that Richie hadn’t crossed his mind since the last visit to the restaurant. He has, too many times to be considered typical, and Eddie finds himself both looking forward to their third and final meeting, and wanting to delay it for however long he can.

The first impression he had garnered of Richie Tozier through a computer screen is nothing compared to the first impression of real life Richie Tozier. The latter blows the former entirely out of the water - like, miles and miles out. It’s the only impression that matters now. He can admit this to himself of his own volition, though aloud it is much harder a confession to make.

He spends the rest of the fitting glaring daggers into Bev’s head through the mirror whilst she continues her work unconcerned, a permanently entertained quality to the twist of her lip.

*

“A communications degree? What does that even mean ? They had to teach you how to talk to people, shortstack, is that what you’re saying?”

“Do you ever shut up?” Eddie snipes back, brows dashed dark above his eyes. “That’s - that’s so stupid, Jesus, no they didn’t ‘teach me how to talk to people ’.”

“Yeah, no, actually that’s pretty obvious. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Richie grins smugly back at him. He’s got one arm folded across the table in front of him, the other resting on his elbow, propping his face up with a hand under his chin. “You’re fucking awful at talking to people.”

Eddie just barely resists the urge to close his eyes, focusing instead on inhaling deeply through the nose. The now familiar aromas of the restaurant are quick to greet him, strangely stabilising. 

It’s the third time he’s visited the restaurant and, therefore, the last time. He’s trying not to think about that too much, as the thought leaves him feeling vaguely crestfallen, his throat closing up around the dismay caught there. It’s something unknown to him. He’s dined in so many of the city’s best restaurants, and yet he’s never grown such an attachment to one like this; he feels as though he’ll be saying goodbye to an old friend. It leaves him desperate with this need to prolong the day.

Richie has joined him today for the entirety of his time here. No hesitation, no questions - just him occupying the bench on the other side of the table, as though he has no better way to spend his time than with Eddie, watching him eat and write without actually knowing what it is he’s writing. Usually, this would go against so many of Eddie’s rules about how he operates, but he can’t bring himself to send Richie on his way today, enjoying the company far more than he should.

“I was supposed to go into business or HR or something,” he says, finally. “Well. I did do the HR thing, for a while.” Back when he had first graduated and his mother had encouraged him to find a safe, suitable office job.

Richie whistles lowly. “Shit. How was that?”

“Awful,” Eddie’s smile is a little hapless. “Hated it. Not really cut out for it. It was like every third person I had to deal with was a moron. You know how many idiots that is, just walking around out there?”

“Those are my people you’re talking about, watch it,” Richie’s eyes gleam with it, already responding to Eddie’s smile with one of his own. “Why’d you finally quit and start doing this so late? You were - what, thirty?”

It shouldn’t be a loaded question and, coming from him, it isn’t. But it immediately has Eddie shifting in his seat, eyes dropping to the table as quickly as the weight drops in his stomach. Low and heavy, it’s an abstract sort of discomfort. Not real, he knows, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel like it is. He lets the silence stretch, dragging the curved edge of his nail across the flat of its neighbour beneath the table, before he shrugs.

“I didn’t start living til then,” he says, because Richie somehow manages to pull all of this honesty from him, no matter how buried and tangled it is inside. “Fuck, that’s - that’s fucking cheesy, I know it is, don’t say anything , dickwad. I know you want to.” 

He’s got his finger raised, pointed at Richie like a defence and a warning in one, but when he actually looks, he can’t see any flicker of humor across Richie’s face. Nothing that tells Eddie he thinks this is amusing which is… unexpected.

“I’m not.” Richie says.

It’s an invitation for Eddie to say more, if ever he knew one.

It isn’t something he discusses in depth or often. There’s a small, spindly key embedded in the cavities of his heart and it unlocks a lot of this repressed emotion that he usually saves for therapy sessions, but Richie’s face is open and his eyes attentive, and Eddie thinks fuck it . He uses the key.

With a swallow, he starts. “My, uh… when I was a kid, my mom told me I had all these allergies and intolerances - things that could make me really ill, you know? Or even kill me. It meant everything I ate was heavily regulated and really, really bland,” he pauses to laugh harshly, to pull a face at the memories of dry meats and unflavored carbs. “I didn’t even really like food back then, that’s how crappy it was, I never understood how people could love food when it just seemed so - boring, right? I didn’t really start eating real food until I was in my late twenties and when I did - it was insane . That’s what I’d been missing out on!?” Another laugh, though filled more with joy this time around. “I just started documenting everything I ate, more for myself than anything else, but it got traction online pretty quickly, I guess…”

“You guess?” Richie makes an incredulous expression. “Dude, you literally blew up, like, overnight. From zero to one hundred like that.” He snaps his fingers.

Eddie narrows his eyes. “Someone’s been internet stalking me…”

There’s some truth in that, though. 

His is a story of unexpected victory, and one that he never thought he’d get to tell. 

The hurt of his mother’s lies had left him agonisingly hollowed for so long: it was never just about the food, but the realisation that she had prevented him from experiencing something so simple in the eyes of most… he’d been a changed man. He’d dove headfirst into the deep end, making every meal he ate for months something new and unfamiliar, and he’d fallen in love with food . 

It hadn’t taken long for him to start getting noticed for his writing, in the beginning intended to be nothing more than his own personal reviews, suddenly branching into something more far-reaching. As soon as he’d realised he could make a living off of eating food and writing about it? He’d quit his job in HR. It had taken some time for him to be convinced that he could actually make a career off this, but there’s not a day that he regrets his choice.

“Yeah, I thought we knew this.” Richie is grinning, like it doesn’t bother him to be accused of stalking at all, however jokingly. His gaze has Eddie feeling like his skin is ablaze with fire wherever it trails, flames abruptly doused as soon as it moves on elsewhere. “What happened?”

It throws him off guard. He thinks back on the last part of their conversation, frowning when it still doesn’t make sense to him. “What?”

“Your allergies,” Richie waves a hand towards him. “I mean, you eat everything now, right? What happened? Did you grow out of them or something?”

“Oh.” Eddie blinks at him, and then blinks at the table. He pulls his lower lip between his teeth, fingers flexing around the edge of the bench beneath him. “No, I - I never had any. My mom,” he risks a glance back at Richie. “She, um. She lied about it all, so.”

He braces himself for the reaction, knowing from experience just how much this admission can anger people. It’s fucked up. He knows it’s fucked up, but she was also his mother, and he slinks back behind that shield of defence too often still. 

“That’s rough,” is all that Richie says. His eyes have widened and he looks blindsided by this development (which, yeah, Eddie gets that), but he’s not rushing to condemn. Eddie lets his shoulders fall from where they have bridged up practically around his ears. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Eddie replies easily as the floodgates of relief open within him. “I’ve had a lot of time to come to terms with it. She passed a few years ago, anyway.”

“Ding dong the witch is dead?” Richie offers, holding up his hands instantly when he’s leveled with a fierce glare. “Too soon? Too soon, that’s fine, I get it.”

“ Always too soon, dickwad! There’s not going to be a time when that isn’t too soon.”

“I don’t know... You could change your mind."

“Oh, yeah, sure, I’m gonna change my mind about you calling my mom the wicked witch of the west.”

“That’s the spirit.”

God, he’s infuriating. 

Everything about him has Eddie seething, waiting for the moment when the melting pot bubbles over and causes a disaster. It’s not anger he seethes with, though; it’s a collection of emotions that he can barely parse from the next, that have him more confused than ever, twined neatly with a bow of interest that nobody has instigated within him in many years.

It’s just typical of him to be attracted to the straightest guy in New York.

Eddie isn’t one for making assumptions but, well, the videos speak for themselves. 

“You’re an idiot,” he says finally, because he has to fill this quiet with something or his rib cage might just cave in around his rapidly beating, too tender heart.

Almost on cue, his dessert is placed before him by an enthusiastic waitress who pauses to chat with Richie for a moment. White chocolate and raspberry cheesecake; he’s been saving the best for last, though he doesn’t feel quite so ravenous now as he has been on the previous occasions.

With the waitress skipping away, both he and Richie glance down at the plate. The last dish. As though they have both come to that realisation at the exact same time, and neither of them are quite sure how to acknowledge it.

“So…” Richie says.

At the same time, Eddie says, “Well.”

They pause, share an amused glance, and look away instantly, laughs awkward.

“You go,” Eddie insists. “What were you saying?”

“Ah, nothing,” Richie shakes his head, offering up a smile in lieu of whatever it is he’s holding back. “Just… wondering when we can expect the review, I guess.”

Eddie deflates at that, a little. He’s not convinced that that was what Richie was intending on saying at all, but it’s what he’s left with. “A week or so, probably… I’ll need to go through all my notes and make sense of them somehow, and there’s a lot of editing to do, but... it won’t take too long.”

“Great,” Richie is already sliding out from the table, flashing Eddie a grin as he does so. “Try not to trash my reputation too much.”

“No promises, Trashmouth .” 

“I’ll leave you to it. Thanks again, for finally answering my request and coming by. Even if you don’t appreciate my artistic talents.”

“What talents?” Eddie arches a brow, but then smiles. “It’s fine. I’m… sorry it took me so long to get around to this.”

He’s sorry it’s already over, too, but he can’t say that without it being mortifying. He already feels too obvious, his eyes catching on every muscle and facial feature that Richie uses throughout the course of their conversations, documenting the nuances of his expressions like he won’t get to witness this again. Chances are, he won’t. It makes no sense for that to bother him as much as it does.

“I’ll see you around,” Richie is saying, and then, “And I think - I think you’re, like. Fucking brave to be doing this, by the way, after all that shit with your mom. It’s never too late to be brave, Eds. I promise.” 

Eddie doesn’t even have a chance to respond, sat with his pink mouth gaping and closing around air, because Richie’s already moving away with a jerky wave and one last smile.

Leaving Eddie with a cheesecake that isn’t going to touch the sudden, aching cavity he feels in his chest. It’s so ridiculous. He didn’t come here with the intention of making a friend, but somewhere along the way he started to believe that that was exactly what he was getting from this. Now… he feels like he’s leaving with less than he came with, despite that being so completely impossible and ridiculous and - he’s smarter than this. He knows he is.

Disappointment licks at his edges as he finishes up, trying to push all of the negativity aside so that he can do this last, delicious offering justice in his writing. It would taste better if it wasn’t tainted with the bitterness layered on his tongue, caused by his sudden sadness at this being the end of his journey with Pennywise NYC . But it’s wonderful; glorious, just as everything he has ever tasted here has been, even if the taste is dampened by his spirits. He knows that he will be writing a piece on this restaurant that will leave Richie and Stan proud and pleased, because there’s no way he could write anything else with what they’ve given him over the course of the last few weeks.

He takes his time, not just to try and savor this, but in an effort to give Richie a chance to reappear. 

He doesn’t.

It comes down to this: Eddie paying the overly friendly waitress with the dimpled smile and tipping as generously as he ought to, eyes searching as they explore the expanse of the room over the narrow shoulders of the man, as though they may rest upon the face he so desperately wants to see once more before he must bid his farewells. His eyes aren’t met with the sight that they yearn for, though, and he leaves the restaurant with a gait that even he can tell is outwardly despondent; dejected, even, the hunch of his shoulders and the slope of his usually upright back. Hands buried in pockets and gaze trained on the grey sidewalk, the grey buildings, the grey sky.

He’s already halfway down the block when he hears the unsteady pitter patter of footsteps raining heavily down onto the concrete behind him, somehow discerning this sound from the many others of the busy city. Eddie half turns, relaxing his left shoulder so that he may look behind him without coming to a stop, but it doesn’t matter, because he stops anyway. 

The moment he sees Richie running down the street towards him, bright green shirt untucked and billowing around him with the force of the wind against his speed - and for a moment, Eddie has the absurd thought that Richie might take off into the sky -, he stops. There’s not really much else for Eddie to do in the moment. His jaw unhinges to an impressive degree, shock and confusion melting into one to draw his expression into something utterly bewildered.

“Thank God,” Richie chokes out the words around a cough as he slows and halts before Eddie. Bending at the waist, he has his hands pressed palm down to his thighs, just above his knees, his whole body moving with the effort of him trying to catch his breath again. “Give me - a minute -,” he manages between breaths.

They’re causing a scene. Eddie’s cheeks heat when he notes the curious glances their way they are attaining from passers by, but it’s not enough to have him hiding away. Evidently, Richie has something to say to him. His heart clenches with the multitude of possibilities as to what that could be, each one somehow more farcical than the last and yet he almost hopes .

He lets himself look at Richie because there’s little else that he can do as he waits for him to gather himself enough to start speaking again. From this angle, Eddie can see the way Richie’s hair (too long, he’d have thought before, and yet now he wouldn’t want it shorter) curls at the nape of his neck, brushing against the delicate skin there. It looks soft to the touch, and in a split second Eddie pictures brown locks knotted around slender fingers.

“Jesus, fuck, and you’re telling me people run marathons?” Richie quips, finally standing to his full height again. He arches his back into it, cheeks puffing out a deep breath as he looks at Eddie. 

“That wasn’t even a percentage of what a marathon would be like.” Eddie squints at him despite himself. “That was - what? 200 yards?”

“Yeah, okay, I get it,” Richie winces. “I’m unfit. That’s not even the point.”

He doesn’t say anything more for a second, until Eddie prompts, “- which is?”

“Right,” Richie says. “I wanted to ask you if you wanted to come to my stand up show this weekend. The venue’s cool… you can bring some friends, too! You’re probably busy, I don’t even know why I’m asking, but I just thought -”

“I’d like that,” Eddie replies quickly. For once Richie looks like a fish out of water, flopping around on the too hot sand and in danger of drying out. It feels like a reversal of roles. “I’ll, uh - well, give me your phone.”

It’s not what he was expecting Richie to say after running out of the restaurant and down the block, but he doesn’t know what it was he was expecting either. What does it even mean? He has no idea. His focus is on ignoring that for the time being, because he is well aware that even at this stage of his life he never seems to know what anything means when it comes to the complex intricacies of human relationships. 

Richie blinks. “My phone?”

“Yes,” Eddie sighs, waving his hand, but it’s still with more patience than most would anticipate from him. “So that I can put my number in it and you can text me the details.”

He hasn’t done this in years. Given someone his number for social reasons, not business. But Richie’s already scrabbling in his pocket, almost flinging his phone at him, caught just about between blanched fingertips. 

Eddie tries not to think about how his fingers shake when he taps in his number as a new contact; tries not to think about the fact that Richie can probably see it too. He feels utterly transparent. So obvious that it’s a wonder Richie hasn’t commented upon it yet. 

Wordlessly, he hands the phone back with a nod of acquiescence that makes little sense.

Around them, the city continues to get on with its day, not so much as sparing them a glance now. But this feels like an almost seismic event for Eddie. It is his heart that rests on a faultline; his ribs the tectonic plates that move as though inviting something in which could well damage the soft muscle they usually protect with their boned armor.

“Right. I’ll, uh - I’ll do that.” 

“Okay. Well.” Eddie pauses, swaying slightly on his feet. “I’ll see you this weekend, then.” 

It’s a promise that sets his stomach abuzz with the flutter of a hundred delicate wings, but it makes him smile, too. He bites down on the inside of his cheek to stop it from taking over his entire face.

“Awesome, yeah,” Richie doesn’t bother to hide his grin, or the relief that overtakes his features. It’s curious, Eddie thinks, that he is relieved. Like Eddie could ever say no now that he knows Richie. “I’ll see you.”

This time when Eddie continues down the street, it doesn’t feel like a goodbye. It feels more like a beginning.

*

“Hold on - Richie? As in ‘Trashmouth Tozier’? You’re going to one of his comedy shows?”

“Bev was right when she said you’d been abducted by aliens or something, huh?”

Eddie ignores both comments from Bill and Mike to instead swivel his head around and glare at Bev. She looks only slightly sheepish perched on the restaurant chair beside him, shrugging with a press of her lips. 

“Do you guys want to come with me or not?” He says with a sigh, in lieu of responding to any of the questions posed to him. He squirms uncomfortably in his own seat as all three of his friends catch one another’s eyes without an ounce of subtlety to the actions.

“Of course we will,” Bev says soothingly. “And not just because we’re all dying to meet him now.”

Eddie frowns, shaking his head. “We probably won’t even get the chance, he’s going to be busy doing the show and everything. We’re literally just going to go and watch the show because he gave me four free tickets, okay? That’s it.”

“Mhm, okay.” Again, there is nothing subtle about the way Bev raises her brows across the table at Bill and Mike.

“So…” Mike’s face is inherently kind, and there’s nothing teasing about his words now. It makes Eddie relax, an effect which Mike always has on him. “Are you two friends now?”

The question fills Eddie’s chest with a ball of golden warmth that feels suspiciously like hope. He busies himself with poking at the food in front of him with the prongs of his fork, careful not to meet anyone’s eyes. “Maybe. I don’t know.” I want us to be .

“That’s great, though!” Bill is grinning earnestly. “It sounds like you’ve had a good few weeks doing this review. We’re happy for you.”

The underlying, unsaid sentiment is that they’re happy (relieved, perhaps) that Eddie is capable of making friends outside of their close-knit group, he knows. There’s nothing malicious about it. And he knows that there is a lot right about it; this idea that he’s become reliant upon these three people in his life, comfortable with remaining inside this box and not pushing the boundaries. He’s always been content with the friends that he has, but Richie Tozier and everything (or everyone) that comes with him - well, Eddie knows there’s a place for all of that in his life too, if ever he has the guts to express it. If ever Richie wants to take that place. The thought is as terrifying as it is wondrous to him.

He hasn’t set himself up for rejection in years, even in the strictly platonic sense.

He ignores the part of him that demands more , though it’s cruel of him to deny this hunger that has not sparked within him for many years. 

But perhaps it is crueler still of his own body to want only after that which is entirely unattainable to him.

*

The venue for the stand-up gig is far more intimate than Eddie would have imagined.

There can’t be more than eighty people here, a surely small crowd for someone like Richie who is used to performing in front of thousands; but he was right. It is a ‘cool venue’. It manages to be dark without being grungey, chrome and marble meeting in harmony to bring some distinctiveness to the underground bar. He almost imagines that they’ll be asked for some kind of password at the door, as though they are being admitted to some secret club (or cult) - but it’s nothing like that. Of course it isn’t. 

He hands the tickets over and the four of them are beckoned inside with a flourish.

Photographs line the walls of the winding staircase leading down deeper into the city. They take their time to inspect some of them, and he waits and smiles indulgently whilst Mike and Bill gush over some famous author or other who has evidently graced this venue at some point. Plenty of celebrities have apparently walked these hallowed walls, but the place does nothing to appear pompous or ostentatious. The vibe is welcoming, the people smiling, and the dim lighting when they eventually enter the main room casts shadows over each corner and dip, somehow making the surroundings appear even more personal.

There is a table reserved for them, which awards Eddie more raised brows from his so-called friends, which he is keen to ostensibly ignore. It’s situated a few rows back from the front of the stage, though still close enough to be fairly uncomfortable for someone like him. There are already two people sitting there when they arrive, and he recognises them instantly as Stan and Ben; is that weird, he has to wonder, to be sat with Richie’s closest friends? Immediately his mind wants to delve into what it means, though he knows that chances are it means very little. Still, his palms sweat on cue.

“Who is that?” Bev grabs him as they make their way to the table, voice pitched low.

When he turns his head, he sees her eyes permanently fixed to Ben’s side profile, and he presses his lips together to stifle the sudden bubble of laughter that wants to breach them. He folds his hand over hers where it is clenched almost painfully around his bicep, patting once, twice, three times. 

“His name’s Ben,” he murmurs. “He’s an architect. Designed the restaurant. Single.” His lips twitch. 

It falls to him to introduce everybody when they reach the table, something which does not come naturally to him. He suddenly finds himself to be the glue binding these two distinct groups of people together, even if only for the night, and it forces him to the middle; to be the awkward centerpiece of this heavily attended table. Feels a little like he’s on display, though he knows that is a thread of thought that he would be better to ignore. Instead, he does his best, though he feels stilted with it at first - quickly, he finds that there is little reason for his uncertainty. These are his friends, and two people whom he has come to know fairly well, and at least knows to be good people. 

They meld together perfectly, as though these people were never destined to be anywhere but here, with one another for company. They discuss the restaurant; Bill’s books; Bev’s fashion line, all of them somehow spilling pages of information about themselves in the space of ten minutes, as comfortably as though they have known one another their entire lives. 

It’s a little spooky, how quickly they bond. Twenty minutes in, Eddie wonders if he’s ever going to be able to split them apart again. Then he thinks that he wouldn’t mind so much if the answer to that is no .

Then the lights are out, save for the one too-bright spotlight centred on the microphone stand on the stage. A hush falls over the bar, now full without making it claustrophobia or losing any of that intimacy. What was previously abuzz with chatter and noise now falls almost silent, a blanket of anticipation falling upon the room.

Every nerve in Eddie’s body feels alight with a mix of excitement and trepidation. How does Richie feel ? If Eddie feels like this, how much stronger is that for him?

He thinks about him, and in the blink of an eye the man in question materialises on the stage as though by magic.

Though, not quite.

He’s as gangly as ever, very nearly tripping over a slick, black wire that winds from the base of the microphone stage to somewhere unseen by the audience (presumably backstage), but he still manages to look entirely at home up there. A place where Eddie would rather die than be.

“Well, hi - I’m Richie Tozier, and I still don’t know my left foot from my right apparently,” he greets into the microphone with a quiet little laugh, clearly emboldened by those that echo back politely from the watching crowd. “Just as a pre-warning, I can’t see shit right now, so if it looks like I’m looking directly at you into your fucking soul - I apologise in advance. I’m blind as a bat and it’s dark out there tonight.”

And he’s off.

Eddie knows what to expect. He braces himself for it, hands shoved under his thighs and pressing painfully into the hard metal beneath the cushioned seat under him.

This is a bad idea, he thinks belatedly. He shouldn’t have come, because he knows - he knows that he’s not going to be able to laugh at half the shit Richie ‘Trashmouth’ Tozier says and he doesn’t want… he doesn’t want this to ruin the image of him that has been carefully constructed in his mind after weeks of actually getting to know him, through food and conversation. He doesn’t want to revert back to the conception he had of him before, when all he’d had was poorly shot comedy shows that didn’t ignite even an essence of humor within him.

He grits his teeth and tries not to flinch as he pictures a statue of Richie, near-perfect and concocted from all of this knowledge that Eddie now has, cracking from chiselled jaw to too-big feet and crashing down around him.

Impossibly, the opposite happens.

Richie grows into something even more majestic before his very eyes within minutes of getting into his set. There’s still a crude sense of humour there, still a few jokes that make Eddie cringe all the way up his spine even as he laughs, but this is a far cry from the Richie Tozier that he thought he knew from what he’d seen. He’s still too self-deprecating for Eddie’s tastes - he’s worth far more than jokes about his thinning hair and failing love life, and Eddie yearns to tell him that. Maybe one day he will.

But he’s funny . 

Gone are the days, apparently, where his shows were filled with misogyny and gross out humor and jokes about people who are different to him. 

What changed? Because between then and now, something clearly has.

The revelation of what, exactly, hits Eddie when he leasts expects it; right in the middle of Richie’s set, when he comes off of one tangent only to jump straight into the next. He lets his overgrown body come to a stop where it’s previously been parading around the stage all night, leaning half on the microphone stand even as he holds the microphone in his other hand. Eddie thinks he might be too big for this world.

Richie’s gaze sweeps over the audience. 

Despite what he’d said right at the beginning, Eddie still feels unbearably seen.

“As you all know,” Richie’s saying, a goofy smile on his face. “Or maybe not, I don’t know, some of you look like you still live in fucking caves - I don’t know if you know anything . But, as I’m sure most of you know, I’m an out and proud gay man. Been two years now,” a cheer from the back of the room. “Yeah, thanks, I know, I’m braver than our troops, what can I say?”

Eddie’s mind goes blank.

His heart might stop, just for a moment, before it kicks back into action at quadruple its previous rhythm, the only sound in his ears other than the distant voice of Richie continuing his act. But he feels as though he’s been submerged in ice cold water, still under the waves - everything slow and heavy and far off, yet accelerated at the same time.

“He’s gay ?” He hisses as he reaches across to tug at Mike’s shirt less than gently, pulling the much larger man toward him in a surprising feat of string. There are a few concerned and confused expressions from the rest of the people at the table, and he hopes his voice isn’t loud enough for them to hear. “Is he gay ?”

“...Yeah?” Mike replies hesitantly, voice just as low. He looks at Eddie with wide, quizzical eyes, keeping everything slow as though he thinks Eddie is crazed. He feels it, a little. “You didn’t know?”

“No, what the fuck, I didn’t know !” It’s definitely a louder hiss this time, but he can’t even bring himself to care; not even when he’s sure all eyes at the table are on him. “His fucking… he talked about sleeping with women . In the videos I watched months ago! It was all about women!”

Mike chuckles. It’s shades of worried. “How old were these videos? You must have been watching his earlier stuff.”

He feels like someone has taken an iron bar to the back of his head. It’s the only way he can explain how jarring this knowledge is to him, and how quickly it morphs into another realisation in his mind; the realisation that he wants Richie Tozier. 

It’s been stirring for weeks, of course, but he’s never let it become a fully developed thought until now, never let himself think upon it for longer than a millisecond, given the impossibilities of the scenario, the chance that even the thought could bring pain unto his life which he has not and never will be prepared to deal with.

But with one sentence, half-joking and filled with devices purely for comedy, everything has changed.

The rest of the show is little more than a blur. A part of him will feel guilty about that later, about not giving Richie his full attention whilst he’s stood up there on the stage, but for now all he can think about is the fact that Richie is gay , that he might actually have a chance. It isn’t something he’s wanted before, not as strongly as he wants this, and maybe that scares him more than anything else. That he wants this. Something he can’t remember really wanting before; never having had this connection with another human being before. And in such a short space of time? It’s crazy. It’s the sort of thing that happens in the lives of romantics, and he isn’t - he isn’t a romantic. He doesn’t know how to be cute and affectionate and sweet, but maybe he wants to fucking try for once.

They wait around after he’s done; some of the rest of the audience filter out, though a fair few remain to take advantage of the bar and the fact closing isn’t for at least a few hours. Eddie drums his fingers across the tabletop skittishly, not even pausing to consider the bacteria that may lie therein. As soon as he spots Richie making his way from backstage, he’s up and out of his seat, practically vibrating as he stands, lifting up onto the tips of his toes and back down again in a move that tries to expel some of that energy buzzing within him (to no avail).

“Hey, guys,” Richie says a little breathlessly. He’s red-faced and sweaty but wearing the most blinding smile Eddie has ever seen. Looking at him feels like staring into the force of the sun right now, almost painful on the eyes but still he doesn’t pull his gaze away. “That was good, right? Thanks for -”

“You’re gay.” The words come jumbled, tripping over one another in their effort to leave his mouth, but he says it and the message seems to land, if the taken aback expression that Richie wears is anything to go by.

Vaguely, Eddie hears Bill say, “Okaaaay…” slowly, elongating the word. Someone else says “let’s go over here” - Stan, maybe, he isn’t sure but he’s thankful because the entire group pulls away from them, disappearing deeper into the bar. 

And then it’s just him, standing in front of Richie.

“Uh… yeah?” Richie says like it’s a question. He chuckles, scratching at his head. “I mean. Yeah. I am. All my life, I’m pretty sure, though technically I only came out two years ago. But who’s counting really?”

“I didn’t know.” 

“You didn’t - wow. I think I’m offended? Not to gloat, but it was a pretty big deal when I came out, Eds. I was on buzzfeed and everything, you wouldn’t believe -”

“Shut up.” Eddie says desperately, because he can’t stop looking at Richie’s bright red mouth when he talks, and he needs to not focus on that right now. “I’m gay too.”

Richie nods slowly. “Yeah, I know. You told me your first crush was Patrick Swayze, Eds, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work that out.”

“That’s not - that’s not what I mean!”

“I’m a little lost.”

“Clearly.” Eddie huffs out a breath and then steps closer. 

As though on auto-pilot, he notices the way Richie’s body moves with his, until their bodies are angled towards one another. Like a sunflower seeking the sun.

It loosens something in his chest. 

“I like you,” he says, wincing immediately thereafter. “Jesus fuck , that makes me sound like a teenager - but, no, never mind. It’s true. I like you. I think we should go out. For fucking food or something. Somewhere that isn’t your restaurant.”

“Holy shit.” Richie blinks. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

Eddie laughs on the edge of delirious. “Yeah, no shit, idiot - I guess I am.”

He feels unhinged, but it’s not as terrifying as he thought it would be. He just feels like he’s taking a leap of faith here - not his first, but his first in a while - and whether he ends up falling into the pit below or making it to the other side, he’s not sure he cares. It’s the fact that he’s done it, and that he feels loose with it.

“I want to date the shit out of you.” Richie’s grinning at him, stepping closer into his personal space and Eddie doesn’t care. “Obviously yes . I wanted to jump you the first time you came to the restaurant, honestly.”

“Good thing you didn’t.” Eddie wrinkles his nose, even as his own smile breaks across his face. “Sounds unsanitary.”

“I’m going to kiss you now.” Richie says. It’s not a question; more of a warning, and not one that Eddie needs, though he appreciates it.

His knees are weakened already, and he can only nod his acceptance before Richie moves in. This near, Eddie can see the glint in his eyes and the fine hair across his cheeks and then he has to close his eyes against the image. There’s a pause where he can feel Richie’s breath fanning out across his lips, and he shudders with the anticipation of the moment, before soft, if slightly chapped lips are being pressed to his. It’s so gentle it almost hurts; just a quick, chaste touch that’s more tentative than anything else.

He curls his fingers beneath Richie’s collar to keep him close, kissing him close-mouthed and sweet, embracing the scratch of stubble across his skin. He appropriates some of the confidence that he is so used to seeing from Richie, lets it fill him up golden from his fingertips to the rest of his body, and he uses it to deepen the kiss. Drags his teeth along the swell of Richie’s lower lip and lets his tongue soothe the dull ache left behind until Richie’s mouth is opening up for him and he has a chance to map the expanse of it.

It feels like an entire lifetime passes whilst they stand there kissing, but the reality of it is so much less. 

When they pull apart, Eddie’s lips tingle with the reminder of a kiss he will never let himself forget, his cheeks dusting with pink as he remembers where he is and what he’s just done. It’s the sort of recognition that could send him into a panic so easily, but Richie is there; stable and warm and tangling their fingers together before Eddie can even think about crawling back into his own head like a turtle finding sanctuary within its shell.

“You okay?” Richie ducks his head so that he can look him in the eyes properly.

Eddie nods. “Yeah. Absolutely.”

“Well, you did just have the best kiss of your life, so I’d hope so.”

“Jesus Christ, shut up. That was not the best kiss of my life.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No.” Eddie presses his lips together at the genuinely offended expression Richie wears. “That was your mom, actually.”

“Fucking hell,” Richie beams at him. He doesn’t sound or look mad in the slightest. “I think you were fucking made for me, Eds, you know that? Can I say that before we even go on a date? Shit, I just did.”

Eddie lets Richie drag him off in the direction of their friends who have all been making varying efforts to appear like they aren’t eavesdropping, and doesn’t answer. He’s not a romantic; he doesn’t believe in soulmates, in being made for people . But he thinks he knows what Richie means anyway.

For the first time in a while, he gives into the hope his body yearns to feel and he embraces the fall.