Chapter Text
The thing was, Eddie had never known what real love was like.
His dad had died when he was too young to remember him, but even if he had been around, Mr. and Mrs. Kaspbrak probably wouldn’t have been the paragon of healthy loving marriages. With just Sonia, however, Eddie’s only point of reference for love was her overbearing facsimile of it; she just wanted to protect him, keep him safe, keep him healthy. If that came at the cost of his freedom and happiness, well, that was the sacrifice.
And love was all about sacrifices. Eddie knew that. He had seen movies, had been raised on tragic comic book heroes, and it certainly made his own experiences easier to swallow. It wasn’t love that made him miserable, it was all the world’s sicknesses, which his mother was only protecting him from.
Then he met the Losers, and he started to learn better. Because Bill always saw him as part of the team, and Beverly showed him that the world wasn’t just one big threat. Stan never spoke to him like he was a baby. Ben’s form of sympathy was entirely different from his mother’s coddling, and Mike didn’t ever treat him like he was too delicate. Richie didn’t pull any punches, and he never allowed Eddie to, either.
They brought out the best in him. They cared about him. Eddie was always desperate to spend more time with them, because it actually felt good to be around them. They made him happy.
And then he forgot.
He never really made friends after leaving Derry, and not for lack of opportunity. In college, he focused all his attention on studying, and once he graduated that energy channeled into his work. Friends were never a priority. The most he had was a few casual acquaintances, which he never let himself get too close to knowing they would never meet the inexplicable expectations he had.
Eddie met Myra, of course, through his mother. He was three years into a career in risk analysis when she started to pester him about dating, and he couldn't have cared less about the idea if he tried. But Sonia Kaspbrak was nothing if not persistent. Eddie couldn't remember a time when she didn't get her way eventually.
It was no surprise that the woman she chose was her spitting image, both in appearance and personality, but Eddie didn't bother ruminating on it. His mother loved him, after all, and she was getting on in years. He owed her for all the sacrifices she had made for him, so he agreed to humor her for a while.
When he and Myra started dating, it was equally unsurprising how similarly she treated him. She doted on him, fussed over his various medications and dispositions, kept his diet balanced, and held him in the same sheltered box as his mother. Before he knew it, they had been together for three years, and Myra was talking about engagement rings, and Eddie figured she must love him if she wanted so badly to chain him down. So, he made the sacrifice.
Because love was all about sacrifices, and fetters, and safe little boxes.
He loved her back in the only way he knew how: with yes, dear, and thank you, honey, and don't worry, Myra. She either didn't notice, or didn't mind that he rarely managed to show affection any other way; they barely ever so much as held hands, let alone any further intimacy. She was content with protecting him, keeping him safe, keeping him healthy. Because she loved him. And it wasn't the love that made him miserable, it was all the world's dangers, which Myra was only protecting him from.
Dangers like strange phone calls. Dangers like car accidents. Dangers like the evil lurking in the murky shadows of his past, always looming, never cresting, yet suddenly rushing up to swallow him.
She was a wreck when he came home, meeting cancelled, a flight already booked. “Eddie, sweetheart,” she keened, “what are you doing? You should be in the hospital right now. You know how easily you bruise—you could be bleeding internally.”
Eddie was barely listening to her, although a part of him was seizing up with guilt at the worried look on her face. She was scrambling after him from room to room as he packed, tugging at his arm.
“Tell me what’s going on, Eddie-bear.”
The problem was, the guilt was only that: a small part of him. The rest was suffocating under an entirely different weight, that of horrible realizations and gut-wrenching dread. He wished he could explain it to her. He wished he could explain it to himself.
“I’m sorry, Myra, I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t? Eddie, this is absurd.”
“I know,” he said, hands trembling as he clipped his toiletry bag to his suitcase. “Trust me, I know. But I have to go.”
She cried, and he apologized, and she expounded on every possible horrible thing that could happen to him, and he continued to pack. She couldn’t stop him, nothing could stop him. His heart was stuttering with a profound and unfathomable ache, the words 'Mike Hanlon, from Derry' echoing in his head like a siren. He had to go.
He spent the entire flight to Maine on the inner edge of a panic attack. The guilt of leaving Myra fought against something desperate and compulsive inside him. Memories came in fragments, out of context but so tantalizingly familiar that reaching for the missing pieces was making him crazy. All the while, a knot of fear tangled itself tighter and tighter in his gut.
It wasn't until he walked into the restaurant, memories coming in longer and clearer flashes, that things started to make some sense.
Eddie recited his list of dietary restrictions by reflex as the hostess led him through the restaurant. Usually Myra took charge of it, rattling off every allergen and irritant like she was performing for an audience, but Eddie had heard it all enough times to say it in his sleep. He was just getting into the nut portion when he heard familiar voices and looked up.
At first, he stood frozen in a shock of cognitive dissonance. He knew them— of course he knew them, it was Mikey and Big Bill, he knew them down to the music they liked best for a spontaneous trip to the Quarry—but at the same time, they were barely more than unusually familiar strangers. It felt like his head was being torn in two.
Then Mike beamed at him and stepped forward to pull him into a hug. Eddie wasn't typically very fond of hugs.
But in that moment, as Mike laughed, clapped a hand on his back, and said his name like it was something sacred, Eddie wouldn't have pulled away if the man was drenched in raw sewage.
Bill looked about as bewildered as Eddie felt, which was mildly comforting. He and Mike had been standing close when Eddie entered, so he figured they had probably been through the same process moments before. He wasn't the only one, then, who was scrabbling through memories like they were quicksand.
And if it wasn't enough trying to stumble through whatever words were possibly appropriate for an occasion like that, the ring of a gong shattered the air and tore Eddie's attention to something even more confounding.
Richie Tozier.
Usually, a douse of ice cold water to the face was enough to wake people up from wild dreams, but Richie's stupid grin as he spoke— ”This meeting of the Losers' Club has officially begun," he announced, as if Eddie's head wasn't already spinning—was all the same shock with none of the relieving clarity.
At least the holes in his memories were starting to fill in.
Mike hugged each of them with the same reverence that he'd had for Eddie, and they all seemed to take it the same way, if the odd smiles were anything to go by. Hesitance and sincerity made for a pretty distinct combination.
They ordered alcohol before food, and they ordered a lot of it. Normally Eddie would say something about safe drinking habits or whatever, but he wasn't really thinking about any of that. Richie was making Bev, Ben, and Bill laugh like they were kids again, and Stan was rolling his eyes, and Mike was still grinning at all of them in wonder, and Eddie was finally starting to remember everything. The Quarry, and the Barrens, and the clubhouse, and long summer afternoons, and a feeling of belonging that he had missed desperately but had never even remembered.
It was one of the greatest nights of Eddie's life, he realized somewhere between the first round of shots and his stupid arm wrestle against Richie. He couldn't believe he had forgotten what it was like, being with the Losers, with friends who cared.
No wonder his standards had been so impossibly high.
Mike finally stopped smiling when Richie gave a flustered recounting of his phone call, broaching the subject they had all been avoiding. Fear had festered in Eddie's gut since he crashed his car in New York, but he had drowned it in wine and buried it in the presence of his friends. It was nice, at the very least, to know he wasn't the only one.
Then again, it would've been nicer if there wasn't a clown to fear at all.
Later, in the dark of his room, reeling from everything that had come after, he wondered if he should call Myra. He hadn't spoken to her since rushing out of the apartment, and now there was a good chance he would never see her again. A good husband would at least let her know.
But on the heels of that thought came a sudden, bone-deep desire to never go home at all. The urgency of the feeling knocked out his breath. Despite the fear, the alarms going off in his mind about how much danger he was in already, he couldn't bear the thought of leaving the Losers behind. Myra would demand he come home, and she would probably find a way to stop the Losers from ever speaking to him.
A memory came, in the jarring way they had all come so far, of his mother banning Richie from the Kaspbrak household for a reason still lost to time and strange amnesia. Eddie had thrown what could only be described as a tantrum, but Richie was never allowed back. It had made Eddie's last three years in Derry all the more hellish. The thought of it happening all over again made him nauseous.
He felt like a child staunchly refusing to leave the playground. It might've been enough to make him laugh at himself, but he was too caught up on the realization that he cared so much about people he hadn't seen in thirty years that he was willing to risk his life. And he couldn't bring himself to tell his wife.
His suitcases were still packed, but his inhaler was deliberately tucked near the top of his toiletry bag. Eddie scrambled out of his bed, fingers shaking as he dug it out. Several puffs helped with the tightness in his chest, but did little for the panic thrumming through his veins. He needed more than hollow reassurance.
Before he could even figure out why, he was standing in the hallway, knocking on Richie's door.
"Listen, Mikey, I'm not gonna risk my fucking life on less than four hours of—Eddie?"
It shouldn't have been such a relief to see him. Eddie had made his way to bed barely an hour ago, they hadn't seen each other in decades, and they barely knew each other anymore. Still, Eddie felt lighter as Richie fumbled with his glasses and blinked owlishly at him.
"Dude, you look like shit," he was saying.
Eddie took a breath. He still had his inhaler clutched in one hand, and his body was jittery. "I'm freaking out here, Rich."
"Yeah? Well, join the club." With that, Richie stepped to the side and held an arm out to his room in invitation. Eddie brushed past him, and started pacing.
"Okay, before you say anything, I know we promised to stay," he stammered as Richie shut the door behind him. "I'm not going back on that or anything—but this is fucking insane."
"You can say that again," Richie sighed. He had flopped back down onto the bed, and was staring up at the ceiling like he couldn't bear to look anywhere else. "I keep remembering all this shit like it happened yesterday. Like it happened hours ago, instead of years."
Eddie nodded in agreement. "I can't believe I forgot," he said. “I always figured I’d had such an uneventful childhood that I just didn’t have anything worth remembering. And now I’m here, and it’s all coming back.”
Richie scoffed. “Yeah. So much for uneventful.”
“We have lives, man,” Eddie huffed. Richie raised an eyebrow at him. “How the fuck do we go back to being regular people after this? If we even survive?”
Richie sat up then, and the look on his face made Eddie’s head hurt. “We’re not regular people, Eds. We never were. We grew up here, for fucks sake.”
Eddie scowled. “Take this seriously, Richie.”
“I am taking it seriously,” he said. “Just look at us. Bill’s head is full of horror stories that are definitely based on all the shit that happened to us, Stan is such a nervous wreck that he almost didn’t make it out of his bathtub, Bev showed up with bruises on her arms. Eddie, you’re still using an inhaler that you don’t need! Face it, this place has fucked us up in ways that even the clown couldn’t cover up.”
Eddie stared at him, the inhaler clutched in his white-knuckled fist. “So, what, we just go back and pretend we don’t have fresh childhood trauma?”
Richie laughed. The sound gave Eddie a weightless feeling. “Are you kidding? Childhood trauma is a comedy goldmine. Plus,” he paused, leaning back on his hands and sending Eddie a smile, “it wasn’t all bad.”
Eddie stared at him for a moment, trying to push past the fear and the dread to find something worth remembering. It wasn’t easy. “Care to share?” he asked. “Cuz I’m a little hung up on the imminent threat of a horrible death.”
Richie sighed, lowering himself back down onto the mattress. He glanced at Eddie without turning his head, then looked back to the cracked plaster. "Do you remember when we used to go to the theater? Just the two of us?"
He said it casually, but it drew Eddie up short. The memories came sudden and clear, as if summoned by name. There had been a lot of just the two of them, back then, between all the time spent as a group. They would cruise the streets of Derry on their bikes, and later in Richie's piece of shit Buick, going anywhere that wasn't where they ought to be. The theater had been one of their favorite places, mostly since they could stay there late when Eddie didn't want to go home.
And, Eddie recalled coldly, there had been plenty of nights where he didn’t want to go home. He shook his head.
“I remember your obsession with Street Fighter.”
Richie grinned, and it lit up his whole face. “Well, I remember your obsession with one of those alien shoot-em-up games.”
Eddie paused, thinking, until the memory came in a flash. “Galaga,” he uttered.
“Yes! Galaga!” Richie shot up again and beamed at Eddie. “Captain Kaspbrak, the best starfighter pilot in the galaxy.”
“Shut up,” Eddie said, blushing at the moniker. “It wasn’t that hard.”
“Tell that to everyone who tried to beat your highscore.”
“Pretty sure that was just you, Richie.”
“Nope. I definitely remember coming out of the movies once and hearing a bunch of kids arguing about it. God, we spent a lot of time in that place.”
Eddie smiled softly as the memories continued to flood in. "We used to pool our allowances to buy way too much junk food," he said.
Richie laughed again. "Yeah, and you would complain the whole time about how unhealthy it was, then steal half of it anyway."
"It wasn't stealing, dipshit. I literally just said that we put our money together."
"Whatever, you know the cheese puffs were supposed to be mine."
"Richie, just because something is messy and unhealthy doesn't mean you're the only one who gets to enjoy it."
Both of them fell silent at that. The words darted from Eddie's mouth, chased by the echo of his own boyish voice; he had said the exact same thing when they were kids.
By the look on Richie's face, he was recalling the same thing. He leaned forward on his elbows, eyebrows rising up above the thick frame of his glasses as something soft passed through his eyes.
"Sure it does," he murmured. "That's why they call me Trashmouth."
Another echo, completing the memory.
The words sounded like his own personal revelation. They sat in the air for just a moment, before Richie broke into another grin and laughed like he wasn't a forty-year-old man staring down potential death in the near future, like their entire lives hadn't been completely overturned and uprooted.
After a moment, Eddie laughed with him.
They spent the next hour or so just like that, calling up old memories that felt new, arguing about half of them, and falling into fits of laughter over the rest. It didn't take long to figure out why instinct had driven him to Richie's door before anyone else's; decades hadn't changed the way Richie's humor made Eddie want to laugh and throw punches at the same time, made his anxiety dissolve like salt in hot water.
Eddie had depended on Richie for comfort and catharsis for years. If being around him eased the anxiety about Myra, well, that was just an assurance that he still could. And if that anxiety was eerily similar to how he'd felt towards his own mother for most of his adolescence, well… it was easier to focus on the better part of those memories.
Eddie didn't remember falling asleep. At some point, he had sunk down onto the bed next to Richie, never giving a second thought to how easy it was to be near him. They bickered for a while over who had been faster on their bikes, and then suddenly it was morning.
Richie was spread out on his side, one arm flung across Eddie's chest, a leg hooked over his knee.
For a moment, Eddie floated in a confused state of semi-consciousness. He hadn't woken up with a hangover in a good ten years, and he hadn't woken up wrapped in someone else's warmth in more than thirty.
Which brought another memory gliding through the haze: a younger, even ganglier Richie wrapped around Eddie just like he was now, both of them crammed into a twin bed with He-Man sheets. The image carried with it the warm nostalgia of summer, of impromptu sleepovers, of nights spent quietly bickering in the dark. Eddie could remember how the air grew thick when they were forced to whisper to each other instead of shout, like the whole world was condensing itself down into a little bubble just for them. It was enough to make Eddie sigh and smile as he opened his eyes.
But the spell was broken as he shoved Richie away with a noise of disgust. "You fucking drooled all over my shirt, dickhead!"
Myra didn't so much as cross Eddie's mind again until after they had clawed their way out of Neibolt, stumbled to the Quarry in the stunned silence of seven people who had nearly died, jumped off the cliff, swam in the cool water without a care in the world, and then finally made their way to the hospital like they should have in the first place. Eddie, upon finally coming to his senses, had been livid.
"We have open wounds, for Christ fucking sake," he had spat, herding them all out of the water. "It would literally be easier to list off all the things that won't kill you after this. What the fuck was I thinking, letting us all swim in this disgusting cesspool? Kill a fucking monster and then die from an infection like a bunch of goddamn, grade-A morons."
"Eddie, relax," Mike had soothed, smiling serenely. "It was symbolic."
"Symbolism doesn't protect you from disease, idiot!"
They'd had the audacity to laugh at that, and Eddie had pushed down a wave of affection so strong that he almost forgave their stupidity. Their walk to the hospital was anything but silent.
Despite the traumatic nature of their gauntlet through the Derry sewer system, they were largely unharmed. Bill, Mike, and Stan had walked away with only some nasty scrapes. Bev and Ben had some bruised ribs from falling, or being thrown, or whatever the hell had happened. Richie had a bloody nose, a few bruises, and a cracked pair of glasses.
Eddie ended up with the worst bill of health out of all of them, which he vowed to hold over them for the rest of their lives. Seven stitches in his cheek, and a mild concussion from when Richie had thrown him to the ground after waking from the deadlights. Richie had been in the room when the doctor gave him the news. He shrugged unapologetically in response to Eddie's glare.
"Quit looking at me like that," he laughed once the doctor was gone. "She said it was a mild concussion, dude. It's not like you'll die."
"I wouldn't have a concussion at all if you hadn't tackled me like a fucking animal."
Richie didn't respond to that with the stupid, inappropriate joke that Eddie expected. Instead, he offered a half-assed smile, and stared at his hands. Alarm bells sounded in Eddie's head.
"Hey, asshole." Eddie kicked at his leg until he looked up from his fidgeting. "You okay?"
"Am I okay?" Richie grinned, but it was forced and didn’t reach his eyes.
"That's what I fucking asked, yeah."
"Eddie. You could've died."
He raised an eyebrow. "We all could've died, Richie. But we didn't. So why are you acting like we have a funeral to plan for?"
Richie looked like he wanted to argue, or make a joke, or say something annoying instead of answering the question, but then he sighed. His mouth opened and closed a few times before he finally spoke. "I saw Pennywise kill you."
Eddie's blood ran cold. "What?"
“In the deadlights,” he explained. “It happened so fast. I tried to save you, but I couldn’t. There was so much blood, and the place was already collapsing, and I…” He shuddered. “And then I came back, and I saw you there, and I knew it was going to happen. So, I kinda panicked.”
Eddie stared at him. He shrugged again, with a little more remorse this time, and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. "Probably didn't have to pull you down quite so hard, but it did get you out of the way."
Slowly, Eddie shook his head. "Holy shit," he breathed. "You saved my life, then."
Richie barked a stilted laugh, but Eddie didn't miss the pink in his cheeks. "All part of my elaborate plan to sweep you off your feet, my dear Edward,” he joked stiffly. “I'll be your knight in shining armor!"
Eddie rolled his eyes so hard it made him dizzy. Stupid concussion. "If by shining armor, you mean the ugliest T-shirts in the world."
"The shirts are my brand, Eds. The Richie Tozier Experience. You'll have to get used to them once I succeed in sweeping you off your feet."
Eddie laughed. "You couldn't sweep me off my knees without giving me a brain injury, jackass."
"Y'know, I'm starting to think you're not gonna let me live that down."
Eddie laughed harder, and Richie beamed up at him like it was his greatest achievement. Then the doctor came back to tell him he was free to go, and they met back up with the other Losers in the waiting room.
Eddie briefed them on his own injuries while they drove back to the Townhouse. They had all been reassuring him regularly of their own good health, keeping him updated as they made their rounds through the emergency room. Eddie might've felt like he was being too much, but they seemed eager to humor him. It was like they were all trying to wrap their heads around their own survival.
They pulled up to the Townhouse and piled out of the car. When they made their way inside, greeted by Bill and Mike, who had gone back separately, they crowded into the lobby area and ordered pizza. It was the Jade of the Orient all over again, only this time there was nothing to fear. The sun went down, and the food was eaten, and they stayed there curled up on sofas and chairs and, in Richie's case, sprawled out on the floor. Half of them were leaving in the morning, but none of them were quite ready to split off to their rooms. Eddie wasn't the only one who was dreading goodbyes.
It was well after the food was finished that Richie hauled himself into a sitting position and stretched his long arms. It had been a while since he had said anything, and for a moment Eddie thought he was about to say goodnight and head to his room. He was trying to swallow the dread that rose in his throat when Richie spoke, much too softly for comfort.
"Look, guys, I know we're pretty fucked up after all this, and we probably need a lifetime supply of therapy, but I think we can agree that we're past the fear, at least. Right?"
Eddie nodded along with the others, not quite sure where he was going. Richie glanced around at each of them, and then stared at his hands like he had in the hospital.
"Right," he continued hesitantly. "So, y'know, in the spirit of that, or whatever, I just want to tell you guys that I… I'm gay."
There was a short silence, and then the Losers Club released a collective breath of relief, as if they had expected something terrible.
Then Stan said, "Fuck, I am so glad to hear you say that, Richie."
Richie blinked up at him, a succinct ‘what the fuck?’ sitting plainly in his eyes. Stan slid down off the couch and put a hand on his shoulder.
"I don't know about the others, but I've had my suspicions since we were in high school. Always kind of figured it was that stupid clown and this awful town that made you too scared to tell even us.” He nodded. “So yeah, Richie, I think you’ve proven that we're definitely past the fear." Then he smiled, and he looked just like he had when they were kids, sitting in a field and swearing by blood that they would come back to each other. "I'm proud of you, Trashmouth."
Richie took a long, shuddering breath, and then the rest of the Losers chimed their agreement. Mike leaned forward where he sat to squeeze Richie’s shoulder. Bev wrapped him in a hug. Even Eddie gave him the best smile he could muster despite the tightness in his chest. When Richie started crying, even while he laughed, Eddie’s voice failed him. The Losers drifted quickly back into a lighter conversation, following Richie's lead of course, and Eddie sat quietly in his own bubble.
His brain, for whatever awful reason, had chosen that moment to finally remind him of his wife. He had survived It, and Bowers, and everything else Derry had to offer, and he found that he still didn’t want to go back to her.
The only thing that stopped him from spiraling into a panic attack right then and there was a surge of laughter that pulled him from his thoughts entirely. Richie had wiped at his eyes, and was doing a surprisingly good, if scathing, Reagan impression. Eddie watched him with a pounding heart.
He didn't want to leave. It was childish and selfish—he knew he had to go back, obviously—but he just couldn't bear to lose this again. New York was waiting for him, harsh and desolate, no Losers there to remind him of who he really was, who he could be. Eddie hated Derry, but he would stay there forever if he could stay with his friends.
But the night wound down despite his wishes. Bev started to doze against Ben's shoulder, and Richie yawned three times in the middle of his own story, so they decided to call it a night. Eddie watched them file away to their rooms, wanting desperately to call them back for just a little longer. But he didn't.
"Hey, Eds, you good?"
Eddie stared up at Richie, the last to go, feeling that tightness in his chest again. "What? Oh, yeah, I just… didn't want to get up." He tried to smile, hoping it was more convincing than it felt, and pushed up from the chair. A wave of lightheadedness made him sway a bit. Richie held a hand out, but waited for Eddie to steady himself before actually touching him.
"Woah. Dude, you alright?"
Eddie regained his balance and shook his head. "I'm fine. Stood up too fast."
Richie searched his face. Eddie braced himself for the onslaught of coddling, the exaggerated care, the kid gloves. Then a grin spread over his features, and Eddie was reminded that this was Richie fucking Tozier, and he wouldn't know how to dote on anyone if his life depended on it.
"So you're swooning over me now?" Richie teased. The hand that had reached out, apparently by reflex, retreated into his pocket.
Eddie scoffed. "Fuck off. The concussion's your fault, remember?"
"Ugh, that's so harsh, Eds." Richie sighed as they made their way to the stairs together. "Next time I save your life I'll be sure to follow strict safety protocols. I'll get you a little hardhat first."
"If we're following protocol, then there won't be a fucking next time," Eddie replied.
Richie laughed. They started up the stairs, and though Richie kept a close eye on him, he didn't seem ready to rush to Eddie's aid at the slightest sign of strain. Eddie kept one hand on the banister, and from the corner of his eye, watched Richie watch him.
"Pennywise never would have managed to kill anybody if those OSHA bozos had done their jobs," he was saying. Eddie had only been half listening, focused on the way Richie's gaze somehow felt soft and heavy at the same time, but he laughed. And as if spurred by the reaction, Richie launched into an exaggerated Don't-Worry-I'm-A-Professional voice, and started detailing all the least alarming things about the Neibolt house. Eddie tried not to laugh too loudly.
And then they were standing at Eddie's door, and Richie fell silent. For a moment, neither of them moved. Eddie thought back to the morning before, when he had woken up in Richie's arms, bathed in warmth and soft memories. It seemed like a lifetime ago now, but the feeling was easy to recall. Eddie found himself aching for it so completely that he couldn't quite catch his breath.
He almost just asked Richie to stay. The words formed on their own, and came rushing up his throat so fast that he wasn't even sure how they would sound in the open air. Then right as they reached his tongue he remembered Myra again, and they died there. Eddie had a wife, he was an adult, and he couldn't just crawl in bed with Richie like they were twelve because he was on the verge of a midlife crisis. So he said nothing.
Richie was still watching him, although there was no longer any chance of him falling down some stairs. Eddie couldn't read his face. His eyes were wide behind his glasses, like he was seeing something in Eddie that he couldn't quite believe. When he opened his mouth, Eddie's heart sped into a sudden wild rhythm.
"You're really okay?"
The question caught Eddie off guard, though he really wasn't sure what he had been expecting. "Uh, yeah," he stammered. "Yeah, I'll be fine." And then, because he realized that despite everything he wasn't often asked that question with such sincerity, he added a soft, "Thanks, Richie."
Eddie was certain he had never seen Richie smile like he did then—slow and small, gentle in a way that wouldn't have fit the younger Richie that lived in Eddie's memories nearly as well as it fit him now. It left him speechless.
"Well then, uh, I guess I'll see you tomorrow?" Richie adjusted his glasses, lifting them back up the bridge of his nose the same way he always had when they were kids. Eddie, struck dumb by a baffling cocktail of emotions, simply nodded. But as Richie turned toward his own room, Eddie’s voice rose up to stop him.
“Hey, Richie.”
He turned back expectantly. Eddie wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted to say, so he gave it his best shot. “I’m glad you told us. Y'know… earlier.” He winced as the words fell flat, but Richie just smiled.
“My pleasure, Eddie Spaghetti.” And then he shrugged. “It was pretty long overdue.”
Eddie watched him shift on his feet, like a part of him wanted to run. He understood the feeling all too well. “Still,” he said, “you’re really brave, Rich.”
Richie gave him a startled look, and for just a moment, something seemed to crackle in the air between them. After a prolonged second, Richie choked out, “So are you, Eds.”
Eddie didn’t entirely believe that, but he offered a weak smile anyway. “Sure thing, Richie. Goodnight.”
Richie nodded slowly, and slipped into his room.
Eddie stared after him, unmoving. The dread had eased, but only because a different, indescribable ache had drowned it out. He briefly considered knocking on Richie's door, but shook his head at the thought and let himself into his own room.
He went through his nightly hygiene ritual on autopilot, and fell into bed. It was too quiet. Eddie had always fallen asleep to silence, but now the air was too heavy, and his thoughts spun wildly through the pool of his recovered memories. Tomorrow, he would return to New York, to Myra, to his job, and all he could think about was how incredible he felt here. With the Losers, with Richie, he felt like maybe there was more than just overbearing concern, and denying possibilities for the sake of safety. Eddie felt like he could do anything with them. And he couldn't give that up again. Not after coming back to each other just as they had promised, and certainly not after everything they had been through.
He wouldn’t lose them again.