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Richie always thought that learning how to skate would make him cooler. Bev, however, was always quick to remind him that his wardrobe never strayed far from clashing colors and Hawaiian print. Learning how to skate would not change the fact he was a total dweeb. The ‘your mom’ sticker on the bottom of his board was proof enough that Richie was far from being the cool skater boy he often dreamt of being—but that never stopped him from skating.
Richie pushes his foot against the pavement. The town they live in is small enough that hardly anyone drives a car anywhere, so Richie skates down the middle of the road without fear.
He lifts his chin, the wind howling in his ears as he looks at the mountains surrounding the town, closing them off from the rest of the world. He supposes it would be a beautiful sight for most people. To him, it’s claustrophobic.
A blurry figure finds its way into Richie’s periphery, and Richie looks to see a boy—maybe 16 or 17—riding a bicycle. His brown hair whips in every direction as he pedals. Richie can see his chest rising and falling with each breath he takes. Richie squints, and adjusts his course.
Richie catches up to the biker fairly quickly. He reaches out a hand and latches it onto the back of the bike, hitching a ride.
“Don’t mind me,” Richie says, and the bike swerves.
“What the fuck!”
Luckily the biker is good at what he does, and he’s able to keep the bike balanced before either of them can face plant into the gravel.
“What part of ‘don’t mind me’ did you not understand?” Richie shouts in alarm. “Holy shit, I nearly ate ass.”
Richie can only see the back of his head, but he imagines the boy’s face going through a series of complicated expressions before he finally calls back, “I don’t think that’s the expression you’re looking for.”
“I said what I said.”
The boy makes an incredulous noise and shouts, “You know, you can’t just go hopping onto random bikes! Do you know how fucking dangerous that is—I could have killed us both! Who even are you?”
“You don’t recognize me?”
“What?” The boy turns his head for half a second to look at Richie, and Richie gets a glimpse at a freckled cheek and one brown eye before he turns back again. “No. Should I?”
“Well, your mom and I have gotten very close. I’m surprised she hasn’t shown you a picture of me so you know what your future step-dad looks like.”
Richie barely gets through the full sentence before the boy is swerving the bike more purposefully, and Richie cackles as he holds on for dear life.
“You’re fucking disgusting! You—you’re—God!”
“I’m Richie, actually, but I’m flattered,” Richie says through his laughter.
Richie desperately wishes he could see the boy’s face because, after a moment of silence, the boy’s shoulders start to shake—just slightly. If Richie didn’t know any better, he’d say he was laughing.
“I’m Eddie,” the boy calls over his shoulder. His voice is less pissed now, more amused in an exhausted sort of way.
“Pleasure to meet you, Eddie,” Richie says in what he likes to call his British Butler accent.
“You’re definitely not what I expected of a skater,” Eddie says. “You look like you’d try to drink bong water.”
“All these stereotypes! Tsk tsk,” Richie says teasingly. “Not all skaters are stoners, Eds. You watch too many movies.”
“Don’t call me Eds,” Eddie says.
“You love it!”
“I’m quite certain I don’t.”
“Agree to disagree,” Richie says.
“You literally cannot disagree! If someone says they don’t like something you can’t just go ‘oh, well, I disagree,’” Eddie says, imitating Richie in a mocking tone, but there’s a hint of a laugh in his voice that makes Richie’s smile widen.
“I don’t sound like that!”
“Yes you do!”
Richie laughs, and now he’s certain that Eddie is laughing too. He can hear it clearly now, carrying over the wind and the rattle of the bike chains. Then Richie remembers why he was skating in the first place.
“Wait, shit—can you do me a favor?” Richie says.
“You’re in no position to be asking favors.”
“C’mon, Eds, we’ve got a bond!”
“Shut up, asshole,” Eddie says, but quickly follows it up with, “what kind of favor?”
“Can you give me a ride to Mav’s?” Richie says. “We’re out of cheesy puffs back home and my parents are out of town for the weekend, that’s why I was skating in the first place.”
“Why’d you hitch a ride on my bike then? Can’t you just skate there yourself?”
“You mean you don’t appreciate our new friendship?” Richie says. “I’m wounded, Eds! I really thought we had a connection here!”
“You’re literally a total fucking stranger!” Eddie shouts incredulously, but Richie notices he still turns down the street that heads toward the grocery store at the edge of town.
“Thank you, Eddie, my love!” Richie says.
“Yeah, yeah, shut the fuck up,” Eddie grumbles. Richie sees a hint of a flush rise on Eddie’s neck, and Richie feels his face heat in return. Is sympathy blushing a thing? It must be.
They end up at the store quicker than Richie anticipates. He lets go of the bike, letting the momentum carry him up to the front of the store. He brakes before he reaches the doors, remembering how many times Greta Keene has yelled at him for skating right into the store.
Richie looks back, hoping he hasn’t missed Eddie already—but thankfully he’s still there, one foot on the pavement. Richie tries to take in his appearance without seeming like a total creep. Eddie’s button nose scrunches up a little bit when he notices Richie staring, though, so Richie quickly raises a hand and waves it once before hurrying into the store, praying that his face isn’t as red as it feels.
“What’s wrong with you?” Greta says from behind the cash register as soon as he enters the store. She pops a gum bubble, smacking on it obnoxiously. “You look constipated.”
“Cheesy puffs,” is all Richie says, and she points a lazy finger towards the chips and dip aisle, even though they both know that he knows exactly where they are.
He grabs the oversized bag with little finesse, the plastic crinkling in his fist. He’s too busy lamenting the loss of his biker friend. Sure, it’s a small town, but he had never seen him before today. Who knows how long it will be before he sees him again?
Apparently, not long. When Richie leaves the store with the newly purchased cheesy puffs, Eddie is still outside, exactly where he was before. Waiting.
Richie stops when he sees him, arms going a little slack in surprise, but he thankfully doesn’t drop his board or cheesy puffs. That would have been a whole other level of embarrassing.
Eddie’s mouth pinches to the side when he sees Richie staring at him, ears burning a lovely pink.
“Shut up,” Eddie says, despite Richie not saying anything.
Richie holds his arms out in the universal sign of surrender, but he’s sure the smirk growing on his face speaks enough for him.
Eddie starts pedaling, and Richie quickly hops onto his board and catches up, latching onto the back of the bike like before.
“So—”
“Shut up,” Eddie hisses.
“I didn’t even say anything!”
“You were going to!”
“Well, obviously. That’s how talking works,” Richie says, knowing it’ll get a rise out of the other.
“You’re so fucking infuriating, oh my god.”
“Apparently not that infuriating, if I’m worth waiting for,” Richie says smugly, cackling when Eddie just grumbles a string of colorful swear words.
It becomes a habit. Richie skates every day for weeks. Sometimes he spends the day skating alone, but most of the time he’s lucky enough to find Eddie out riding his bike. He’ll hitch a ride (Eddie thankfully stopped getting spooked after the first three times) and they’ll go wherever Eddie decides to take them.
Richie likes it best when they ride around town with no specific destination in mind. No worries or responsibilities—just the sound of wheels on gravel, their laughter and bickering mixing together until their voices are nearly indistinguishable from one another.
Within just a few weeks, Richie has a new best friend. He also has a new crush. These things are not separate.
Richie is sitting at his bedroom window, looking out into the street when he sees that same bike that has grown to make his heart pound. He’s developed some sort of Pavlovian response to the thing at this point, his lips stretching into an easy smile whenever he even thinks he hears a bicycle in the street. He dismisses the pathetic thought and quickly hops off of the sill, shoving the window open.
Richie shoots his head out and shouts, “Hey! Eds!”
Eddie brakes quickly, head swerving left and right to find the source of the noise until his eyes finally land on Richie. Richie makes a ‘wait there’ motion with his hands and quickly bolts downstairs and out the front door.
“Is that your house?” Eddie says when Richie finally approaches him, panting slightly.
“Nah, I’m squatting. What the fuck do you think, dude?” Richie laughs as Eddie glares at him. Then he groans, a familiar weight missing from his hand. “Shit, I forgot my skateboard. Hang on just a second—”
Richie only makes it a foot towards his house before Eddie shouts, “Wait!”
Richie halts, raising an eyebrow at Eddie, who blinks at his own outburst.
“Uh—I mean,” Eddie continues. “You can just...hop on? If you want?”
“Oh,” Richie says a little dumbly. “Yeah, I can do that.”
He joins Eddie, carefully arranging his limbs until he’s hugging the boy’s stomach. It’s only a minute before Eddie is already stopping the bike again.
Before Richie can say a word, Eddie tells him to wait there, and he takes off into the house they’ve parked in front of. He’s gone for several long minutes, and Richie would complain if the weather weren’t so nice. He leans his head back and breathes, feeling the cool air against his neck as his eyelids fall shut.
Someone clears their throat and Richie blinks his eyes open. Richie rolls his head to the side to find Eddie back from his house, the apples of his cheeks tinged pink. He has a bag of some sort clutched in his hand, red cherries printed along the fabric. Cute.
“Sorry,” Eddie says, “took me a second to find it.”
“No worries,” Richie says, although he’s still unsure of what ‘it’ is, exactly. He figures he’ll find out soon enough.
Eddie hauls the bag into the basket at the front of the bike before hopping on himself. Richie wraps his arms around Eddie’s middle and they take off again at a slow pace.
Richie thinks about Eddie’s even breaths, measured and precise. He thinks of Eddie reading a manual on how to breathe while biking and he stifles a snort, burying his face into Eddie’s back.
“Something funny?” Eddie says.
“Your mom,” Richie mutters.
“Your jokes are getting weaker every day, Trashmouth,” Eddie says. He had told Eddie about his old nickname the fifth time they rode together, and Eddie had been sure to use it as often as possible. It shouldn’t make Richie blush so easily, but it does.
“Yeah, yeah,” Richie says lazily. The warmth of the sun blankets him to the point where he almost worries he’ll fall asleep.
“You staying awake back there?”
“Best I can, Eds,” Richie says. “Not my fault you’re a good pillow.”
“Something tells me you could sleep on a rock.”
“Won’t know until I try,” Richie says, delighted in the way Eddie’s shoulders hitch up to his ears, definitely readying to argue about how bad that is for Richie’s back.
Before Eddie can go off on a tangent, Richie slides his hand up from Eddie’s stomach to his chest, feeling the way it moves beneath him. Eddie’s breath hitches, and from this close Richie can hear the surprised noise that escapes his lips.
“What are you doing?” Eddie says, strangled.
“Nothin’,” Richie says. “Just take me somewhere nice, Eds.”
Eddie breathes in, breathes out—slow and deliberate—and picks up the pace. They ride for much longer than Richie thought they would, to the point where they even go outside of town. Richie doesn’t mind. The buildings become less frequent, until eventually they’re riding down a tree-lined path, bumping along the dirt. Richie wonders how many times people took this trail—what kind of friends or strangers or lovers went down this path.
Richie lets his eyes fall shut, and the sunlight filtering in between the gaps in the leaves bleeds through his eyelids, glowing red. He’s not sure if he wants this ride to end.
He can feel when Eddie finally brakes, and Richie whines softly as he opens his eyes, hopping off of the bike to stretch out his muscles with a groan.
“Did you seriously fall asleep?” Eddie huffs, his lips turning upward into an amused smirk as he follows Richie’s lead and dismounts the bike.
“I would’ve fallen off if I seriously fell asleep, but I may have rested my eyes a bit,” Richie relents. “Couldn’t help it.”
Richie stretches his hands up towards the sky, and that’s when he finally notices where they are. He lets his arms fall back to his sides, eyes wide as he takes in the scenery.
Right in front of him lies a lake that stretches farther than he can see. They’re completely encompassed by towering trees, and beyond that, the mountains which Richie knew surrounded the town.
Usually, Richie hated the sight of the mountains. They always made him feel suffocated—as if they were there to say you’re never leaving this town. Out here, he feels more free than he’s ever felt before. Like he could go anywhere in the entire world.
“Holy shit,” Richie breathes, and he thinks he hears Eddie chuckle, but he’s too busy staring at the clear waters to check.
Finally, Richie looks over at Eddie, only to see him plunge his arm into the hollow of a tree.
“What the fuck!” Richie screeches, arms thrashing out in front of him as if he could get Eddie to move away from the tree using only his mind. “There could be spiders in there! Are you insane?”
“Don’t be a baby,” Eddie says, digging further into the tree.
“Oh, you’re one to talk,” Richie snaps back.
Eddie grunts once before his face brightens, breathing out a soft ‘aha!’ He withdraws his arm, and in his hand he holds a plastic bag covered in dirt and leaves. Richie wrinkles his nose at it.
“That’s fuckin gross, dude. I thought you were the hypochondriac.”
“Shut up, I do this all the time,” Eddie says. He removes the bag to reveal another, less dirty plastic bag. From that bag, he pulls out a completely clean blanket.
Eddie marches over to a patch of dry land and sets up the blanket, whipping it in the air like a chef with a tablecloth. It floats onto the ground, and Eddie steps onto it for hardly a second before he’s turning around to run back to the bike.
“Nearly forgot,” Eddie mutters as he pulls out the cherry print bag from the bike’s front basket.
Eddie sits on the blanket, setting the bag down with a soft thud. He looks up at Richie, who had been watching everything unfold with curious eyes.
“Well?” Eddie says. He pats the blanket impatiently.
Richie snaps out of his haze and plops down onto the blanket, much less gracefully than Eddie had been. Eddie always seemed more put together than Richie. Richie wonders what he could have possibly done to get Eddie to stick with him for this long.
Eddie reaches out to the bag and pulls at a zipper that Richie hadn’t noticed before, and it’s then that Richie finally realizes what the bag is. A cooler.
“Are we having a picnic?’ Richie says, awed.
Eddie falters with the zipper for a moment, clearly thrown off guard from being called out. “So what if we are?” He says defensively.
Richie watches Eddie’s fingers as they work to unzip the top of the cooler all the way, mesmerized. “Then I’d be very happy. I like picnics.”
Eddie clearly wasn’t expecting that response. He pauses to look up at Richie, mouth slightly agape. He swallows and nods curtly, eyes darting back to the inside of the cooler. “Good.”
He digs in and pulls out two packages that Richie quickly recognizes as Lunchables. Richie snorts and slaps a hand over his mouth.
“Shut the fuck up, asshole, I didn’t have enough time to make anything!” Eddie snaps, but his words are laced with laughter as they shoot from his mouth at rapid speed.
“I didn’t say anything!” Richie chuckles. “I think it’s cute.”
Eddie doesn’t say anything after that, but Richie watches as a deep blush trails up his neck and to the tips of his ears. He tears off the wrapping to his Lunchable rather viciously and chucks the other to Richie, who throws his head back in a full-bodied laugh.
Even though Eddie clearly wants to continue to pout, he still holds out his Lunchable and mutters, “You can have mine if you don’t want the pizza one. I got the cheese and crackers.”
And it’s just so sweet, so innocently juvenile, that Richie has to take a moment to stop himself from ripping his hair out.
“I like the pizza one,” Richie says, clearing his throat. “Thanks though.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Eddie says, staring daggers at his cheese and crackers as he shoves one topped with ham into his mouth as if it personally did him wrong.
They eat without talking, but it isn’t silent. The leaves brush together with the wind, singing with the breeze. Somewhere in the distance, Richie hears a bird call—a long swooping sound that Richie tries to imitate. He fails, and Eddie snorts, which results in a spray of crackers spewing from his mouth. Richie nearly falls over from laughing too hard, having to hold onto his knee to stay upright. It’s not that funny, but watching Eddie’s disgruntled little face scrunch up in disgust at the crumbs is enough to make Richie double over, his stomach aching with the force of his laughter.
Once they finish their food, Richie spends several minutes convincing Eddie to stick his feet in the water. Eddie reluctantly agrees, placing his shoes and socks neatly next to where Richie had left his scattered haphazardly in the dirt.
They’ve only got their feet in for a minute before Eddie nearly jumps out in alarm, screaming about something touching his foot.
“Wait, wait, calm down,” Richie says, dipping his hands into the water before pulling them out again. “It’s just this little guy.”
Despite Eddie’s constant worrying, it only takes a little curiosity for him to come right back to Richie’s side, peering curiously at Richie’s cupped hands. A turtle sits in his palms, shuffling back and forth as it tries to find it’s way back to the water.
Richie stretches his hands out towards Eddie, who shrinks back. Richie pauses, looking up at Eddie for permission. After a moment of hesitation, Eddie nods, and Richie hands the turtle to him.
Eddie holds it so gently, his eyes so big, as if he’s afraid he’ll hurt it if he looks away for even a moment. He blinks, breathing in, and Richie can see the tension fall from Eddie’s shoulders as he exhales. A practiced exercise.
Eddie brushes his thumb over the turtle’s shell carefully, and Richie wonders what that would feel like on his own skin. It’s a dumb thought. He pouts at the turtle. Eddie bends down and releases it back into the water.
“Goodbye, my son,” Richie says dramatically.
“How do you know it’s a boy?” Eddie teases.
“Oh, I guess I don’t,” Richie says, following Eddie as he sits back down along the edge of the lake. “They’ll tell me when they’re older.”
“That’s what I did,” Eddie says.
“Yeah?” Richie says. Eddie wraps his arms around his chest.
“Yeah. Told my mom I’m a boy recently, actually,” Eddie says. His face goes a little darker as he speaks. “She didn’t like it. That’s why I’ve been biking so much—to get out of that house.”
“Well, fuck her, then,” Richie says resolutely, and Eddie laughs, a bright grin on his face.
“Yeah, fuck her!” Eddie shouts at the lake.
“Fuck her!” Richie shouts again, and they laugh together, shoulders bumping as they gravitate towards each other.
Richie thinks Eddie will pull away, but instead, he settles into Richie until his head is on his shoulder. Richie purses his lips, his brain a scrambled mess. He takes a page from Eddie’s book and breathes in, holds it, and breathes out slowly, repeating that until his heart has stopped racing.
“This is nice, Eds,” Richie says when he feels like he can control his voice again.
“Yeah,” Eddie sighs, and Richie can hear the smile in his voice. He’s quiet for another moment before he continues, a little more hesitant than before. “It’s uh...it’s my favorite spot, actually. No one else knows about this place, as far as I can tell, so I like to come here sometimes to clear my mind and stuff.”
Richie pauses, processing what the other has said. He pulls back from where they lean against each other so he can look Eddie in the eyes, and Eddie blinks in confusion.
“Am I the first person you’ve shown this place to?” Richie asks, a little breathless.
Eddie blushes, eyes darting to the side, and nods.
“Why?” Richie says. He doesn’t think he needs to elaborate for Eddie to understand that he means, why me?
Eddie tenses, fingers curling into the dirt. “You know why, Rich,” he says softly.
And Eddie looks so fucking scared as he says it. His posture is deceptively calm, leaning on his hands with his legs stretched out in front of him. But Richie can see the way his shoulders slowly inch up towards his ears, the way he’s kept his eyes locked on one spot on the ground, probably not even seeing it.
And Richie can’t have that—can’t have Eddie second-guessing himself when Richie’s feelings should be so obvious.
Richie slides his hand over to Eddie’s, slowly intertwining them until Eddie’s forced to relax his fingers. The gasp that leaves Eddie’s mouth is so soft and quick that Richie would’ve missed it if it weren’t for the fact that all of his attention is on him. Eddie looks down at their fingers, eyes wide.
“Yeah,” Richie says. He squeezes Eddie’s hand, and Eddie finally looks up at him, the light reflecting from the lake and shining across his face in a way that can only be described as enchanting. “I guess I do.”