Archive of Our Own

They’ve haunted the house on Neibolt Street since 1820. 

Eddie arrived first, all furrowed brow and grumpy disposition as he glowered at the empty house around him. He took one look at his pale and translucent hands and immediately knew that he was a ghost. With no recollection of his past prior to ghosthood, he thought, at least for a brief moment, that he was free to do whatever he wanted.

Until he realized that he could not leave the house. He couldn’t go through the doors or the windows or even the vents leading out of the house (as being a ghost meant you could assume any shape, which was also interesting for Eddie to experiment with). 

So he was stuck in this empty house that currently had no residents. People would frown as they walked past the house; horses would rear their legs and run away, spooked by the house in a way that only a horse could be. In the dark of the night, Eddie would sometimes assume his orb form and float in the windows, waiting for someone to pass by and do a double take at the round ball of light illuminating a single window of the house on Neibolt Street.

He started keeping a tally for how many people he could lure into the house to investigate. It was mostly teenagers and dumb kids looking for a story to tell their peers. But he was a ghost and he was lonely, and there was nothing else to do other than haunt the abandoned house.

Until, suddenly, he wasn’t alone.

He had just finished up his daily tour of the house, spooking any mice and rats off that had made their home within the crevices of the house. As he came through the wall and into the kitchen, Eddie froze as he realized there was another pale, translucent creature in front of him.

Eddie frowned, checking first to make sure there wasn’t a mirror there, which was silly since he knows for a fact he can’t see himself in the mirror. It didn’t look like him, either. Eddie realized that he had maintained his human figure as a ghost, unless he was in orb form, so he isn’t sure why he thought this tall ghost with glasses, curly hair, and broad, translucent shoulders was his reflection. 

“What the fuck,” it said, and Eddie startled backwards. After not hearing another voice in so long, it was jarring to hear anything other than the creaking of the house.

And that’s how Richie came to also haunt the house on Neibolt Street with Eddie. Similar to Eddie, Richie had no memories from before he was a ghost. His pale translucency had a blue tint to it, whereas Eddie’s was slightly red. They figured out early on that if they held hands, it made a nice, pale purple color as their hands settled literally into the form of the other’s. 

Eddie wasn’t sure if he was capable of emotions as a ghost, but after just a few months with Richie, he was certain that love was an emotion that ghosts could experience. He and Richie would haunt the windows together, both turning into their orb forms, lighting up two windows or the same window or morphing into one single, purple orb to startle any observers. During the daytime, they would hold hands and throw books off the abandoned bookshelves, seeing who could haunt their book the farthest. 

And when they kissed for the first time, it was icy and cool. Richie’s lips were pressed against his own and he could feel the coolness of his lips without there being any solid pressure back against his own. The chill settled throughout his whole being, and he saw himself glow an even darker shade of red as Richie continued to kiss him. 

The years passed, and they had a few humans move in and out of their house, too spooked by the benevolent ghosts that haunted their residence to stay for longer than a few months at a time. Eddie wasn’t sure if he preferred the house empty or not; it was fun to have residents, it gave him and Richie something to do other than spooking people through the windows. But there was also something fun with just the two of them in the house, left to do whatever they wanted within the confines of the home.

In 1900, a small, red-headed woman moved into the house and immediately sniffed the air and squinted directly at where Richie and Eddie were standing. They realized early on that humans could not see them outside of their orb form, so to have this person look directly at them while in their full form was slightly disconcerting.

Her name was Beverly and she turned out to be a witch. In the 80 years Richie and Eddie had haunted the house on Neibolt Street, neither of them had encountered another supernatural being. Beverly was able to see them and talk with them, and for the first time in 80 years, Richie and Eddie had a resident in the house that they wished would never move out.

Five years later, Beverly came home with a spellbook and opened it to page 147. Eddie peered in at the page, frowning when he saw the words “Non-Corporeal Binding” on the top of the page, followed by words in a language Eddie had never seen before. 

“It’s a spell I could use to bind you two to each other,” Beverly had explained with a shrug. “Like a ghost marriage, I guess. So even if something tries to separate you, you’ll be magically bound together for the rest of time.” 

Beverly performed the spell while Richie and Eddie stood in a circle of moondust, vampire fangs, and fairy wings that Beverly had gathered from the underground supernatural market. She chanted what Eddie assumed were words as Richie’s hands morphed with his own. His hands felt cold where Richie’s merged with his own, and Eddie glanced down and smiled at the pale purple that illuminated the space between them. 

Beverly finished her chanting and Eddie watched as the objects around them started glowing, a tornado-like wind picking them up and spinning them around the two of them. Richie had laughed and watched as the moondust started to weave between their forms, forming an infinity link around their torsos, drawing them closer and closer until their metaphorical chests were pressed together. Eddie’s whole body felt the chill from where he was beginning to morph with Richie’s as Richie grinned down at him again.

Beverly let her hands drop, and all the objects dropped to the ground along with them. The infinity-loop of moondust remained glowing around them as Eddie smiled up at Richie.

“Is this the part where we kiss?” Richie asked with a wolfish grin, waggling his eyebrows at Eddie. 

Beverly shrugged. “Do whatever your little spooky hearts desire.” 

Richie kissed him and Eddie felt the usual icy chill against his lips that always accompanied Richie’s kisses, except this time, it felt like forever.

Beverly stayed with them for the next 20 years, which is how Richie and Eddie discovered that for every 20 years of human life, Beverly only aged a single year. Eddie was just beginning to get excited that Beverly may be staying with them forever when one day, she came home with a tall and handsome warlock named Ben and revealed that they would be getting married and moving into a new house upstate.

With the promise to visit them frequently, Beverly and Ben rode out of the chimney on a broom with all of their stuff flying behind them. After having Beverly in the house with them for so many years, the quietness of the house was almost unnerving to Eddie and Richie. She left them with a few objects in the house that they could use for entertainment, and they resumed their competition to see who could haunt a book the farthest until their next set of residents moved in.

They went through countless more residents as the years passed, and after the joys of having Beverly with them for so long, Richie and Eddie began to grow bored after about 50 years of only having human residents. They took to spending a lot of time in the attic, kissing and holding hands and throwing books and watching the world through the attic window, talking about what they could be doing if they were people on the outside instead of ghosts stuck in the house on Neibolt Street. 

With the passing of years came the advancement of technology, and Eddie realized that he absolutely did not want to ever be seen in a photograph taken by one of the human’s little square devil devices. It happened once around the first time he encountered the devices, and the sound of the human’s screams was enough to make him want to stay in the attic forever.

“I want them to be scared of me but not like, scared of me,” Eddie explained to Richie in the attic with a huff. “I’m a ghost, not a fucking demon.” 

Richie laughed and kissed him, and that’s when they silently agreed to try and keep their distance from the residents of their house.

Until the present day of 2020, that is.

Eddie is floating above the attic floor in full form, staring up at the ceiling and willing a book up and down with his energy. Based on the light coming in through the attic window, it’s probably about midday. He can hear Richie humming around somewhere behind him, throwing in a few spooky moans just to make Eddie laugh.

“So maybe we should re-organize the books by color today, you know, it could give us something to do,” Richie says as he floats to the window and looks out of it. “Maybe rainbow colored.” 

“Not everything has to be rainbow colored,” Eddie says with a sigh. Richie has taken a liking to rainbows for the past few years, trying to channel his energies to make rainbows in the attic with their orb light in the darkness of the night.

“We are literally gay. It’s our brand.”

“We are literally fucking ghosts, Rich.”

“Gay little ghosts.” 

Eddie laughs and sends the book over to Richie, laughing again as Richie yelps when the book passes right through him.

“Watch it, Eds!” Richie shouts. “I’m fragile.”

“You’re a fucking ghost. You’re already dead.”

With the book now out of his possession, Eddie lets his eyes shut as he continues to hover over the floor and stare up at the ceiling. It’s been a few months since the house has had any residents, but they still seem to gravitate toward the attic these days. Richie likes to look at the dust, and Eddie just likes to be near Richie. 

“I hope we get a TV back with the new residents,” Richie says, coming up next to Eddie and hovering over the floor next to him. “I miss National Geographic.”

“You and your wanderlust,” Eddie sighs, glancing over at Richie with a soft smile. “It just makes me mad that we can’t ever leave this house. What’s the point of being a ghost if I’m just going to spend the rest of eternity in a single house?”

Richie hums and sends his energy over towards the window. The window flings open, and Eddie feels the sunlight from outside begin to stream across his translucent form. It doesn’t warm him necessarily, but it brings back the vague recollection of warmth, a memory that he maybe once had as a human, creeping into the edges of his mind just enough to give him the sense of something familiar. 

“At least you have me,” Richie says after a few moments of silence and listening to the leaves of the tree rustle next to the window. “Imagine if you were here alone.”

“Thank fuck you showed up here only shortly after I did.” Eddie crosses his arms over his chest and stands up, floating over towards the window and looking out at the world. “I probably would have become a malevolent ghost if I didn’t have you to simmer me down.”

“You do have the evil color to your translucency,” Richie adds. “You would have just orbed into people’s rooms at night and thrown books at them.”

“Fuck you. I could be evil if I wanted to be.”

“Your definition of evil is skewed, Eds.”

“Only because I have you, shithead.”

Richie laughs and Eddie is just about to say something else when he hears a truck pull into the driveway of the Neibolt house. He looks back out the window, jumping when he sees a moving truck in the driveway.

“Oh shit,” he says, looking over at Richie. “New residents.”

It doesn’t bring him with the same joy that it used to. It’s fun for the first few nights, spooking them a little, just enough to get them on edge but not enough to make them think the house is haunted. But then it gets old after a while and Eddie gets too fearful of being caught on a camera while in orb form, and the fun of it fades just as the residents begin to think that maybe this isn’t their dream home after all. 

Richie floats downwards into the floor, waving at Eddie as he sinks through the floor and heads toward the big front window, if Eddie were to guess. Eddie follows, ghosting first through the floor, then through another floor, and then through a set of two walls until he’s next to Richie again. 

“Two people,” Richie reports, watching as a man and a woman climb out of the front of the moving van. 

“Clothes these days are weird,” Eddie says as he watches them open the hatch of the moving van. “Why are all pants so tight?”

“Are you checking out his ass, Spagheds?” Richie laughs. “Gonna leave me for a mortal human?”

“Mortal human is redundant,” Eddie sighs, crossing his arms over his chest. “All humans are mortal.” 

Eddie says it, but he isn’t sure if that was actually the case. While he can’t remember anything about his life prior to when he manifested within the Neibolt house, Eddie can assume that he was probably human before. While from waist down he just has what he and Richie call their ghost tails, he can clearly picture what was probably once a set of legs. 

Eddie is startled out of his thoughts by the front door slamming open. Richie jumps a bit next to him, and Eddie narrows his eyes as the man and woman enter the house, their arms full of boxes.

“Home sweet home,” the man says with a grin, setting his armful of boxes down before grinning at the woman. “Think it’s big enough?”

“Doesn’t matter, really. We just wanted the woods behind the house.”

“True, but for 29 to 30 nights of each month, we will just be in the house, babylove.”

Eddie furrows his brow at them, watching as they head up the stairs to probably set some boxes down in the master bedroom. He tries to process what the man might have meant by that, what they might be doing one night each month that would allow them to not be in the house.

“They can’t see us,” Richie says once they’re out of sight. “So, humans.”

“Mortal humans, according to you,” Eddie quips back with a laugh, and Richie punches his arm through his chest, pretending to knock Eddie over but really just filling the spot where Eddie’s heart should be with a chilly, familiar sensation. 

They get bored after a while of watching the two new residents move-in. They learn that their names are Stan and Patty and that Stan has a tendency to call Patty ‘Babylove.’ Eddie swears he sees Stan raising an eyebrow at him at one point, but he shrugs and turns back to Richie before nodding at him and floating up and through the ceiling until he’s back in the attic.

“I’m feeling haunty,” Eddie says once Richie joins him in the attic, floating up through the floor until he settles next to Eddie in the air.

“Oooh, it’s been a while since we’ve orbed,” Richie grins, stretching his arms over his head. “We should ease them into it, though. Don’t want to scare them away before they’re even really settled. That’s just rude.”

They spend the rest of the day tossing books around the attic again, giggling when they hear Patty calling for Stan from the bedroom underneath them, yelling about how the pipes in the house might be making a weird noise.

“I’m a GHOST,” Eddie yells with a laugh. “I’m not a fucking pipe.”

“Hottest ghost around, babe,” Richie agrees with a nod. “Nobody is as spooky as you.” 

Night falls and Eddie listens as the residents settle into their newly moved-in bedroom for the night. The master bedroom is directly under the attic, which makes for easy access when they are in the mood to do a little spooking. 

“I hope they have some kind of doll or stuffed animal or something,” Richie says, turning his neck side to side and rolling his shoulders out before bouncing up and down in the air. He looks like a boxer ready to go into the ring, all wild energy and wide smiles. “I’m feeling up for some mild possession tonight.” 

“I’ve never understood why you like doing that. It makes me feel trapped. The whole point of being a ghost is the freeform energy, and you take that and shove it into a 12-inch -- what’s the popular plush these days, fucking -- Squishmallows? You possess a 12-inch Squishmallow?”

“In my defense, that baby loved it until her parents started screaming.” Richie shrugs, and Eddie is just about to reply when Richie suddenly bursts into orb-form with a flash of blue light. 

“Fucking nuisance,” Eddie grumbles, and Richie’s orb lets out a low and prolonged noise resembling a squeak. 

Eddie closes his eyes and wills himself into his orb. When he opens his eyes again, he sees Richie’s orb dancing in front of him, spinning in excited circles before dashing down through the floor.

Eddie follows after him, squinting in the darkness until he sees Richie’s blue glow coming faintly from the closet door. It’s just cracked open, just enough so that his light softly glows through. The sight, if it was possible, would make Eddie’s heart warm with love for Richie. Blue was always his favorite color.

He goes to join him in the closet, the small space between them turning a faint shade of purple as the light from their orbs meet. Eddie nudges the door open with his energy, remembering that the closet door creaks loudly at even the slightest movement.

Patty jolts up from the bed and squints at the closet door. Eddie wills his light to dim a little bit so that he’s not quite as obvious, but Richie moves out from the closet and goes closer to the bed. He’s always been a little ballsier with his haunting, a little more apt to directly haunt someone with his orb.

“Stan,” Patty says, her voice strained as she smacks at Stan’s chest next to her. “Stanley.”

Stan grumbles from his side of the bed, and Eddie takes that as his cue to zoom across the room to Stan’s side of the room. He settles behind the dresser, letting himself peak out from behind it just enough so that his light can just be seen from where Stan is in the bed.

He looks around for Richie again and, if he still had eyes as an orb, Eddie’s would be rolled so far up into his head that he would probably be worried they would pop out.

Richie, true to his earlier statement, decided to inhabit the lightbulb on their bedside table. The lightbulb illuminates faintly, a soft, pale blue, soft enough where in the dark of the night and with sleepy eyes, you could pass if off as just your imagination.

He sees Stan’s eyes open and look directly at him for a second before closing again. “Just go to sleep, Pats,” he grunts. “Ignore them.”

“Ignore them,” Patty hisses. “There’s --”   

“Trust me, babylove. Just go back to sleep.”

Eddie would be frowning if he was in his whole form right now. He feels himself grow a little brighter in confusion, and Richie dashes out from the lightbulb and quickly floats on over to him before dashing up and through the ceiling.

Eddie glances at Stan once more, sound asleep again with Patty tucked under his arm, before floating up and through the ceiling and into the attic.

“What the fuck,” Richie says, already back in his full form by the time Eddie’s in the room. “Eddie, what --” 

“I don’t fucking know,” Eddie shrugs, sitting down and letting himself hover over the floor. “He definitely saw me. He looked directly at me.”

“Patty was spooked but like, she wasn’t ever more than spooked even when I got in the lightbulb,” Richie goes on. “They’re always scared once I get inside the lightbulb.”

“I know, sweetheart,” Eddie says gently. “I don’t know what happened. Maybe they’ve encountered ghosts before.”

“Maybe,” Richie sighs, going to sit next to Eddie and setting his head in his lap. Eddie laughs softly as his head sinks through his lap, their colors merging. “I want to scare them.”

“So we’ll just keep trying. We can even try and do stuff in our usual forms during the day. Floating books are always fun to do.”

Richie hums and Eddie leans down to kiss him, and the chill from Richie’s lips is familiar and warm in a way that a ghost’s kiss shouldn’t be.

“I love you,” Eddie sighs against his mouth.

“Love you, too.”

Unfortunately, nothing they do seems to scare Stan and Patty. 

They try throwing books at them, turning on the oven in the middle of the night, setting off the smoke detector. Richie is able to possess one of Stan’s bird figurines and makes it chirp for a solid 3 hours before he realizes that they just really, simply, do not seem to give a fuck that their house is haunted.

“I’m fucking scary,” Eddie huffs, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m a fucking ghost from 1820. That’s terrifying.”

“Preach it, babe,” Richie replies from where he’s perched by the attic window. “You’re terrifying.”

“I’m a fucking ghoul ,” Eddie continues, floating back and forth. “I could be a demon if I wanted to be.”

“Would prefer if you don’t get yourself exorcised, though. I do kind of like having you around,” Richie says absently without looking at Eddie. 

“Why aren’t they scared of us, Richie?!” Eddie asks, his voice cracking at the end. “This has never happened before.”

“I don’t know, Eds. It’s 2020. Maybe humans have evolved and are no longer scared of ghosts.”

Eddie grumbles and goes to perch next to Richie by the attic window. “I think I’m just bored.”

And he is. He’s getting a little stir crazy in the Neibolt house. He’s been here since 1820 and while the house has gone through renovations and changes, it’s still the same house. The same landscape, the same scenery. Different people have come and gone, but Eddie thinks that 200 years might be his limit.

“I am, too,” Richie admits softly. “I was watching National Geographic last night --” 

“Stan was watching it, dipshit, you were just lurking in the background.”

“I want to go to a beach,” Richie continues, ignoring Eddie’s quip. “I want to see a whale.”

“A whale.”

“Yeah. On a boat, with the sunset in the background and with you by my side, preferably.” He looks over at Eddie with a soft, melancholy smile, and Eddie knows exactly what he’s feeling, because he feels the same thing.

While his dreams may not be as specific as Richie’s whale spotting, he thinks about being out and about in the world with Richie. They could float over the ocean, over a river, could go to Niagara Falls that Eddie has read about in so many books. He wants to do it all, and he wants to do it all with Richie. 

For the first time in 200 years, Eddie feels unsettled.

They sit in silence for a bit, watching as cars drive past the house, neither with any words to say or add. Eddie feels Richie’s energy swarm around him and when he looks back over at him, he’s engulfed by a trail of blue energy, surrounding him like a blanket. 

Even if they are stuck here for the rest of eternity, at least he does have Richie and Richie’s love. 

“Someone’s here.” 

Richie’s voice snaps Eddie out of his thoughts and Eddie glances back out of the window. A car has just pulled up into the driveway, and Eddie squints to try and see if he can make out who is behind the wheel. 

“Could just be their family,” Eddie says, watching as the driver’s and passenger’s doors both open on the car. “Could be --” 

“Holy shit. ”

Richie cuts Eddie off with his exclamation, and Eddie jolts upright and leans his head through the window until his head is outside of the house, craning to get a better look at the car. 

“God damn your stupid fucking glasses, they gave you binoculars in ghosthood,” Eddie grumbles, still squinting as a woman steps out of the car. “I can’t --” 

“It’s Beverly,” Richie grins, bouncing up and down next to Eddie. “Holy shit, it’s been -- so many fucking years --” 

“Beverly? Witch Beverly? And is that . . . that’s Ben, I’m guessing?”

Richie laughs and Eddie feels himself grinning as he watches Beverly walk up to the front door. 

“What is she going to tell them?” Eddie asks, nodding at Richie as they begin to ghost through the floor. “Is she just going to ask for the ghosts?”

Richie shrugs as they make their way towards the front door.

“Oh, wolves,” they hear Beverly say before she’s fully in view. Richie and Eddie pause and frown at each other for a second. “I knew it stunk the second I pulled into the driveway.”

Eddie, truly, has no idea what she’s talking about. Wolves? He thinks the house smells pretty normal but, then again, he isn’t sure if his ghost sense of smell is quite the same as a witch's.

“Stan, make sure they’re not going to hex us before you let them in,” Patty says with a huff. 

“Oh my god, we’re not going to fucking hex you. We used to live here.”

“So, what, did you forget something?” Stan asks, and Eddie can practically imagine him squinting at Beverly and Ben. 

“No. We’re here to see the ghosts.”

Richie and Eddie both freeze before looking at each other. If Beverly is just coming out and saying that to Stan and Patty, then they must be able to --

“Holy shit,” Richie breathes next to him. His eyes are wide and Eddie thinks that he looks a little panicked. “Holy shit, Eds. Stan and Patty are werewolves.”

Eddie thinks back to the past month they’ve spent with Stan and Patty in the house, and he thinks they’ve been pretty normal, except -- Well, except for the times he swears that Stan and Patty would watch them mull around the house in their full form. Or the times that Stan would come home with a giant dog and a rawhide bone, or the time that it was a full moon and Stan and Patty were gone for a whole day --

“What the fuck,” Eddie looks over at Richie and he swears that if he had a heart, it would be beating out of his chest with how panicked he feels. “Richie. Rich. We’ve been trying to fucking haunt werewolves.”

“It’s fine, it’s just -- I mean, they’ve obviously been able to see us this whole time, we --” 

“They’re going to fucking kill us.” 

“We only made out in their presence like, maybe four or five times, it’s fine --” 

“Richie. We. Fucking. Tried. To. Haunt. Werewolves.”

Richie pauses and looks back at Eddie again. “Good thing we’re already dead?”

“Oh, you absolute fucking --” 

“They’re usually in the attic,” Stan says casually, cutting Eddie off and presumably opening the door wider so that Beverly and Ben can come in. “But they’re just arguing in the hallway right now.”

Eddie’s head snaps up as he hears footsteps round the corner, and then Patty is standing in front of them while grinning. “Sorry, boys,” she says with a laugh. “We just thought it was kind of funny that you were trying to haunt werewolves.”

“I thought it was kind of assholish, actually,” Stan supplies as he rounds the corner with Beverly and Ben in tow. 

“They clearly didn’t know, love,” Patty replies.

“Then they’re dumbasses on top of assholes.” Stan shrugs.

Beverly laughs when she sees them and rushes over to them. She’s grinning and clasping her hands in front of her, her small form bouncing up and down with excitement and Eddie knows that she is desperately wishing she could hug them.

“Oh, you two haven’t changed at all,” she says, running her hand through each of their cheeks and grinning when they pass right through. “It’s been so long.”

“You haven’t aged a day, Red,” Richie grins, and Eddie glances over at him to see him beaming down at her. Beverly was really their only friend other than each other. It really is good to see her.

“Just a year or two,” Beverly says with a shrug. “I would have come to visit sooner, but Ben and I were searching for something.” 

“Don’t worry about it, Beverly,” Eddie replies. 

“Oh, you can call me Bev now, sweetie,” she grins. “It’s 2020.” 

Stan and Patty eventually usher all of them into the dining room, where there’s enough chairs for all six of them even though Richie and Eddie don’t need to sit. Eddie feels a little overwhelmed, almost yearning for this morning when his greatest problem in the world was that he wasn’t able to scare the residents of the house. Which, in hindsight, does make sense now since they are apparently fucking werewolves. 

Bev tells them how she and Ben have been wandering, consulting with other witches and warlocks and mages, trying to see if there is any kind of spell that may be able to free Richie and Eddie from the house. Stan and Patty interject saying that they really don’t mind that Richie and Eddie are there, but Bev just smiles at them and tells them that they’ve been in the house since 1820, and Stan and Patty immediately understand her desire to help free them. 

Eddie listens as Bev talks, telling them of their journey and all the other supernatural beings they encountered. It feels -- melancholy, almost, listening to her adventures in the world, a world that Eddie doesn't know and has never known and may never know. He might have known it in his past life, but as he has no recollection of what he was before he came to haunt Neibolt house, it might as well be a world of mystery and unknowns.

He feels a coolness settle over his arm, and he glances down and sees that Richie’s hand has morphed into his forearm. The purple glow makes his eyes burn a bit, and suddenly all he wants is to be with Richie somewhere other than in the house.

“We found one.”

Eddie’s eyes snap up to look at Bev. She’s smiling softly at them as she brings her bag up, sets it on the table, and rifles through it until she pulls out a big spellbook. It’s reminiscent of the day she came home with a spell to marry them, a spell to bind their non-corporeal forms to one another for the rest of time. 

She flips through the book and sets it open on the table, pointing at a spell that is, once again, in a foreign language. From next to her, Ben sets her bag down for her and smiles at the both of them. 

“There is a catch,” Ben says slowly, and Eddie glances over at Bev as she bites her lip while still looking down at the book.

“You might not like it,” she says. “But I still wanted to at least offer.”

Eddie glances over at Richie to find that he’s looking right back at him. Richie’s eyes are drawn, his eyebrows creased, and Eddie knows that Richie feels just as panicked as Eddie does. They’ve been in the house for 200 years and, while they may be feeling a little stir crazy, a little bored, it’s still their house, their home. They’re safe here, and they’re together here.

“You have to do it separately,” Bev says slowly, trailing her finger down the page. “In the opposite order that you manifested. And once the spell takes hold, you can’t be within the premises of the house.”

“Oh, that’s not so bad,” Richie says with a relieved sigh. “So I’ll just go first and then you can just do it on Eds --” 

“There’s a latent period between spells,” she continues quietly, and Richie immediately stops talking and deflates. “Which means I can cast them both at once, but the second one won’t take effect until later.”

Eddie glances over at Richie and bites his lip. Richie looks worried, his eyebrows drawn and his shoulder hunched, and Eddie knows, knows deep down in whatever soul he currently has, that they have to do this. But the thought of Richie out there by himself, Richie alone when Richie has never been a ghost on his own, is enough to make Eddie consider just staying in the Neibolt house with him forever. 

“How much later?” Eddie asks after a few moments of silence. He watches as Bev glances over at Ben and bites her lip again, and Eddie feels his heart drop in his chest and knows that the answer isn’t going to be good. 

“That’s the tough part,” she says slowly. “Everyone we talked to said it could be anywhere between days and . . . and years.”

“Years.” Eddie deadpans, looking first at her, then at Richie. “Fucking years.”

“Eddie --” Richie starts, but Eddie holds up his hand to silence him.

“You mean to tell me that he could be out there by himself for years just waiting for the spell to take effect on me,” he says, his voice rising as he continues to talk. 

“It was rare, we only met a few who said that was the case,” Ben pipes in as Bev frowns down at the book again. 

“And what about our binding spell that you did, won’t that keep it from working at all?” Eddie asks, suddenly hopeful that maybe they’ll have an out, maybe the binding spell will keep them together.

“Because I did the spell, it’s my magic binding you. It won’t resist another spell from me.”

“So have Ben do the fucking spell.”

“We both have to do the spell, Eddie. It’s an ancient spell. Old. It requires a lot of magic, more than I have just on my own. It needs both of us.”

Eddie deflates back in his seat, and quickly decides that, fuck it, he doesn’t want to be here anymore. He quickly morphs into his orb as Bev shouts for him to come back, and he just hears Richie swear as he floats up and through the ceiling. He can’t be there anymore, can’t listen to Bev saying that they have to be without each other for a while if they want to get out of here, can’t can’t can’t, he just, he can’t -- 

He doesn't want to be in the attic, doesn’t want to be anywhere that any of the -- well, not humans, but any of the supernatural beings with a physical form could find him. So he settles in the vent just above the study. He dims his orb light until it’s just a faint pink, just enough to barely light up the immediate space around him.

For the first time in nearly 200 years, Eddie wishes he could cry. He spent a few months alone in the house before Richie, and they were fine, uneventful, but that was because he didn’t know , he had no idea how lonely he was until suddenly Richie was there and he wasn’t alone anymore. He doesn’t want to go back to that. 

Eddie feels Richie’s presence before he sees him. The air around him feels a little chillier and it takes a purple tint rather than the pink hue that occupied the space before. He glances over and sees that Richie is in his orb next to him. Richie does a little one-two bounce, small and quick with a hint of nervousness, saying I’m here, are you okay?, without the use or need for words. Richie has always been expressive as an orb in a way Eddie could never achieve. 

He slowly slides up to Eddie until he’s pressed against his form, the space around them becoming a more vibrant purple as Richie’s orb overlaps his own. Richie nudges against him once, twice, three times in the direction of the attic. He wants to just stay here and hide; he doesn’t want to talk, doesn’t want to think about Richie leaving and him just letting it happen.

But he knows they need to talk. Bev and Ben aren’t going to stay forever, and it could be another however many years until they come by again. They were just talking about how they want to get out of this house on Neibolt Street, and this may be their only chance to do it.

With a sigh, Eddie floats out of the vent and comes down through the ceiling before ghosting into the attic. He morphs back into his usual form and sighs before flopping down onto the ground, hovering over it and throwing his arms over his face.

He feels Richie enter the room a few seconds later, and then he feels his hands on his arm again, trying to pry his arm off of his face so that he can look at him. 

“Eddie baby,” Richie’s voice is soft next to him, cautious in a way Eddie hasn’t heard it before. Eddie opens his eyes and looks at him, and Richie is looking at him with sad eyes and a concerned furrow to his brow. 

“I don’t want to be alone,” he says, the words rushed and quick as he avoids Richie’s gaze. “I don’t want you to be alone. I don’t want to be separated.”

“Love,” Richie whispers, lying down on the ground next to Eddie. “It’ll be okay. I can go find us a house to haunt on a beach. I’ll warm the owners up, get them just enough on the edge that by the time you get your ghoulish ass over there, it’ll be enough to send them packing out the door.”

Eddie laughs, and he thinks that if he were capable, he would be crying. “We’ve been together 200 years.”

“And in the grand scheme of the rest of time, what’s a few years?” Richie asks. Eddie glances over at him, and Richie is watching him intently. “I’ll hate every second of it, Eds, I literally haven’t been without you since I manifested right in front of you in 1820. But I think we need to do it. We have to.”

And Eddie knows this, knows that this is what they have to do. He wants to see the world, he wants to explore, he wants to get out of the house on Neibolt Street. They could move to the beach, then they could skip continents and maybe see how easily humans of other countries spook. The whole world would literally be at their metaphorical feet -- or, well, in this case, their ghost tails.

“You’re right,” Eddie says after a few moments of silence. 

“And it may not even be years,” Richie supplies. “Could just be days, like they said.”

And Eddie hopes, hopes with everything that his intangible body has that it is just days, that they don’t have to wait for that long to be reunited again. 

“I love you,” he mumbles when he can’t think of anything else to say. Richie turns to him and smiles, and Eddie feels himself at least starting to smile back.

“I love you, too, baby,” Richie mumbles as he leans in to kiss him. “Forever and always.” 

They tell Bev after a few hours, when Eddie has calmed down enough to realize that they did, in fact, make a rational decision. It still makes him want to turn into his orb and hide in the vent for the rest of time, but he thinks they will be able to do it. 

Bev smiles at them and presses a kiss through each of their cheeks, Eddie laughing when her lips go right through his translucent cheek. 

“Ben and I will go gather everything we need, and we should be ready to do it by midday tomorrow,” she says as she puts her coat on. 

Richie salutes them as they leave, and Eddie slinks over to the living room before curling up on the corner of the couch.

Patty is in the room, humming as she knits what he presumes is a blanket. It’s pink with hearts and balloons on it, and she has at least 10 different colors of yarn strewn out around her.

“Why so glum, Spook?” She asks, not looking up from her work. “I can smell your sadness.”

Eddie watches her hands as she knits and, for the first time, he notices something about her.

He hasn’t paid much attention to her since she moved in, more focused on the fact that he couldn’t fucking scare them, too pent up with anger about potentially losing his ability to haunt. She was petite when she moved in, slim and short and bounding with energy. But, as he looks at her now, he notices that she’s glowing in a way he’s seen in past residents before, happy with a hint of exhaustion. Her feet are propped up on the footstool, swollen from the ankles down, and the blanket she’s knitting is resting on what he can only assume is the start of what will eventually be a decent sized baby bump.

“Patty,” he starts, eyes wide as he watches her knit. “What --” 

She must be able to sense that he knows, or maybe she can smell it since she’s apparently a werewolf, but she sets her knitting needles down and smiles at him. “Little pup is due in 4 months,” she says with a smile, rubbing her hand over her belly. 

“Oh, congratulations,” Eddie says, smiling at her as she hums softly at her belly.

“If you’re still here, I’m sure she’ll be thrilled about meeting her ghost Uncle Eddie,” she says quietly, smiling up at him now.

And, Eddie thinks, maybe he might have something worth staying here for after all.

Bev returns that night with the supplies, and she and Ben retire to the living room for the night to make plans for the next day. Eddie and Richie ghost their way up into the attic again and head towards the window. Eddie opens it and rests his arms against the windowsill as he peers out into the quiet world beyond the house.

“Patty’s having a baby,” he says quietly, listening as the wind blows past the window. 

“Aw, a little puppy,” Richie grins from where he’s floating next to him. “I did have a hunch, though. She asked Stan for chocolate and mayonnaise last week.” 

Eddie hums and rests his chin on his folded arms. “What if I can’t find you?”

He says it casually, like it’s not all he’s been able to think about all day. If he can’t find Richie after all of this, then what would even be the point of completing the spell?

“We’re bound, sweetheart,” Richie says quietly, and Eddie feels the cool press of his lips against his temple. “Bev said our binding spell will still be in place once you’re out of the house. Once we’re both free, that spell takes hold again.”

Eddie sighs and nods. He knows this, Bev had told both of them and it does make sense to Eddie. He’s just nervous, fearful of everything that’s going to be changing tomorrow. 

Richie wraps his arm around Eddie, and Eddie watches as the night passes by with the faint tint of purple around them. 

“Okay, so, Richie and Eddie, I need you to morph hands.”

They’re standing in a circle, or maybe more of a square, since there’s only four of them. Richie and Eddie are standing across from each other with a pile of pixie dust, unicorn hair, and dragon scales set between them. It’s reminiscent of their binding ceremony, but Eddie knows that this is going to have completely different results. 

Eddie reaches out at the same time Richie does, their hands settling together and morphing into one purple form. 

“Remember,” Eddie says thickly, his voice shaking a little as he looks at Richie. “The one beach in California that we found on the map.”

“I’ll wait for you every day, Spagheds,” Richie says. “Every day.”

“Find us a good fucking house. I don’t want anyone who’s going to try and exorcise us.”

Richie laughs wetly, and Eddie, for once, wishes that he could cry, because he feels like he needs to right in this moment.

“Ready?” Bev asks softly. Eddie looks over at her and nods before glancing at Richie again. Richie nods once, and Eddie gives him a soft smile. 

“Okay, we’re going to do the spell once but, because your hands are morphed, it’ll apply separately to the both of you,” Bev explains. “Rich, as soon as the spell’s over . . . you’ll kind of be sucked out of the house.”

“Oh,” Richie deadpans, his eyes widening with what Eddie knows is a hint of panic. “That fast, huh, there's no real, ah, time to pack or anything?” 

Eddie watches as Richie’s eyes dart around the room. Eddie knows he’s worried about being alone, knows he’s panicked about being without Eddie when literally all he’s ever known is Eddie’s presence. 

“Sweetheart,” Eddie says softly, bringing Richie’s attention back to him. “It will be okay. I promise.”

Richie takes a deep breath and nods, and then he nods at Bev and Ben to start the spell.

“I love you,” Eddie murmurs as Bev and Ben begin to chant around them. He feels Richie’s hands shift in his own, and Eddie tries to commit the feeling to memory. The icy chill of Richie’s hands in his, of Richie’s lips on his cheek and his neck, of Richie’s arms wrapped tight around him as he hugs him against his form. All of it he needs to remember for their time apart.

“I love you,” Richie replies, and Eddie wants to put the sound on loop forever. 

The pixie dust begins to swell around Richie and Richie’s eyes widen again as he looks at Eddie.

“It’s okay, honey,” Eddie says, willing his voice to stay calm. “It’s all going to be okay, I promise, I promise, I love you --” 

Richie opens his mouth to reply as the pixie dust engulfs him, and Eddie watches as the dust trails out of the open door, leaving nothing but an empty spot where Richie used to be in its wake. 

Eddie stares at the spot, willing, hoping that Richie will materialize in front of him again. It feels colder than it does with Richie’s presence around. Empty. Something he hasn’t felt since the first few weeks he was in the house alone before Richie manifested right next to him.

“Um. I think it worked,” Bev says quietly from next to him. “He should be -- out there. The pixie dust will settle here and then when it’s ready, it will do the same thing to you.”

Eddie nods and gives her a soft smile, one that he knows doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He wants to be alone just as much as he doesn’t want to be alone right now. He wants to be alone with himself, away from Bev and Ben and Stan and Patty, but really, all he wants is Richie. 

“I’m just -- I’ll be in the attic,” he stutters, quickly morphing into his orb before anyone can say anything to him. He zooms up to the ceiling and ghosts through it until he’s in the attic. It’s dark up here, all the lights turned off, and Eddie searches for something, anything that might remind him of Richie’s presence. There’s a few books scattered on the floor from their latest book throwing contest, but other than that, it’s almost as if Richie never lived up here at all.

Eddie pushes the window open with his energy, settling his orb onto the windowsill to watch the world outside, hoping, maybe, that he’ll see a flash of blue light somewhere along the periphery of the house. He feels his own color fading, turning into a shade of red that is barely, barely red at this point. Who knew that Richie was what gave his color such vibrancy?

Eddie looks at the clock. It’s only been about 20 minutes since Richie left. If this is how it feels after such a short amount of time, he can’t imagine how it’s going to be once it’s been days, weeks, or even fucking years. 

And that’s when he hears the moaning.

It startles him, at first, completely unexpected in the quiet of the evening. He squints out at the horizon, wondering if he’ll see a dying animal somewhere along the road. But there’s nothing. 

Frowning, he moves to the other window, the one that faces their neighboring house. They rarely used this window, preferring to look out at the world rather than at the closed blinds of their neighbor’s attic. He pushes it open and glances at the neighbor’s window, and he swears he almost explodes with color and energy when he sees a flash of blue from the opposing window. 

His orb lets out a squeak and he hears the low, ghoulish moaning from the neighbor’s window again. There’s another flash of blue light, and then Richie’s full form is grinning at him from the window across from his.

Eddie can’t transform out of his orb fast enough. Once he has his ghost body back, Eddie leans his head out the window to get a closer look at Richie.

“What the fuck are you doing?” He hisses as Richie moans ghoulishly again. “Richie?!”

“I realized that I would, in fact, die again if I was more than 10 feet away from you,” Richie says with a shrug. “And what do you know, our neighbors needed a friendly neighborhood ghost to occupy their space.” 

“You moron,” Eddie huffs, shaking his head. “You fucking moron.”

“Like you weren’t in there crying in your orb, Spagheds. I saw you go all pale from the window.”

“Fuck you, I wasn’t crying,” Eddie huffs, which is true, but really only because he is physically incapable of crying. 

“But, anyway. Figured I could just stay here until the pixie dust decides to spit you out of the house. We can even go up on the roof and have dates from six feet apart. I can throw things into your window; it’ll be great.”

Eddie feels his color lighting up the room around him again, and he smiles when he sees that Richie is glowing so deeply blue that it’s almost blinding. 

“I love you,” Eddie says again, because up until approximately three minutes ago, he wasn’t sure when he was going to get to say it again.

“I love you, too.” 

The weeks pass, and Eddie watches as the pixie dust stays in its pile on the floor. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but he feels like it should maybe start giving him some sign that it might be his turn to leave the house.

Richie has taken to throwing paper airplanes in Eddie’s window at all hours of the day. The residents of the house that Richie now haunts are a family with six children, so Richie has been staying in the attic just to avoid the noise and chaos from the family below. He’ll throw the airplanes at Eddie while singing about his love for him, and Eddie laughs and shakes his head but saves each and every airplane that Richie makes. 

He misses Richie’s touch, misses feeling the chill from where his hand would melt into his arm; misses the cool touch of his lips against his own, sending a chill across his whole body and making him glow a darker, more vibrant shade of red. Richie may only be about six feet away when they’re both hanging out their respective attic windows, but it’s still too far for Eddie.

Bev and Ben leave eventually, this time giving Patty and Stan their cell phone numbers and instructing them to let Eddie call them whenever he wishes. Eddie, for the first time since he saw his first cell phone, wishes that he had one. He could use it to call Bev and Ben, but he could also use it to talk to Richie right now. He knows he would only be visible on the phone while as an orb, but seeing Richie’s orb up close through a phone would still be better than what they have going on right now.

Weeks turn into months, and Eddie finds himself spending more and more time with Patty as her due date grows closer. Richie has realized that one of the kids in his house does, indeed, have a collection of Squishmallows, and Richie has taken to haunting them during their pretend tea parties just to hear the kids laugh when he makes them drink from their play tea cups.

“These kids, I’m telling you, Eds, they are the perfect children,” Richie says one evening, resting his arms on the window and grinning at Eddie. “They don’t say a word to their parents or older siblings about their friendly neighborhood ghost. They sometimes will even point at a different Squishmallow that they want me to haunt.”

Eddie hums as he listens to Richie. He’s listening, of course he is, but he can’t help but think about the unmoving pixie dust that’s still just sitting in the living room.

It feels unfair, keeping Richie here when he could be out in California, resting by the beach and exploring and searching for a house for them to haunt together. While he is happy that Richie is at least enjoying himself in the neighboring house, Eddie thinks that it might be time for Richie to leave.

“Rich,” he says suddenly, drawing Richie’s eyes to him and effectively pausing his stream of consciousness.

Richie must see it on his face. His mouth closes and his eyes look down at his folded arms before looking back up at Eddie. 

“It’s been months, Richie. Hopefully it won’t be much longer. You should really go now.”

“Eds --” 

“No, sweetheart, listen,” Eddie says before Richie can continue, before he even has a chance to talk him out of what he’s going to say. “Go find us a house to haunt in California. Go enjoy the beach, maybe find us a ghost dog if you want.”

“Ghost dog?”

“Yeah, Rich, I know you would love to have one.”

Richie hums and looks at Eddie again as Eddie continues. “The baby will be born soon and I’ll be able to help out with her. I’ll have something to keep me occupied and I know you’ve actually been enjoying that house, but. The whole point of this was to be free, Richie. Be free for both of us until I can join you.”

Eddie watches as Richie’s color fades until he’s just barely glowing, a soft, pale shade of baby-blue that is hardly tinted. “I’ll miss you,” Richie says, and that’s when Eddie knows that Richie’s agreeing.

“I’ll miss you, too, sweetheart. I love you so fucking much.”

Eddie wants to kiss him, wishes he could just lean over and press his lips to Richie’s. He wants to wrap his arms around him and tell him that it’s going to be okay, that of course he’ll find his way back to Richie. 

“I love you,” Richie says. He throws one last paper airplane into Eddie’s window, and Eddie smiles as it lands softly on his lap. When he glances back up, Richie is gone, nothing left in his place but an empty space and a faint chill in the air and where Eddie’s heart should be.

Patty has her baby a few weeks later. They come home from the hospital with a tiny little girl named Luna wrapped in blankets with dogs on them. Eddie greets them at the door and she looks at him with big, wide eyes, and that’s when all three of them figure out that Luna is, in fact, a baby werewolf by birth. 

He helps how he can, which is less than he would like given his intangible form. He’s found that his orb works as a good flashlight when Patty has to make the trek across the hallway in the middle of the night to settle a howling Luna. His color is pale but bright these days, mostly just white but bright enough to illuminate the hallway so that Patty can see where she’s going.

During the day, he just likes to watch the baby. She starts kicking her feet and sucking her thumb, and Eddie is so distracted by her at all times that he doesn’t even notice when the pixie dust in the living room begins to stir. 

At night, as he listens for any sounds of the baby crying (Stan and Patty both realized after a few days that Eddie is better than any baby monitor they could ever purchase), he thinks of Richie, wondering what he’s doing. He wonders if he’s found them a house to haunt, if he managed to track himself down a ghost dog. He throws books, competing against himself now that Richie isn’t there to one-up him. 

Two weeks after Luna arrives, Stan rushes into the attic with wide eyes and a crease between his eyebrows.

“Is she okay?” Eddie immediately asks, standing up from where he was perched by the attic window.

“Oh, yeah, she’s fine,” Stan replies. “It’s just -- I think it’s time, Eddie.”

It takes Eddie as second to realize what he’s talking about. 

“Oh.”

Eddie follows Stan down into the living room. He pauses when he sees the pixie dust making a small cyclone in the middle of the room. Patty is standing to the side and holding Luna with a big smile on her face and a few tears streaming down her eyes.

“Thanks for all your help, Eddie,” she says softly, and that’s when Eddie realizes that this is really it. He’s leaving. He’s going to find Richie. He’s going to get out of this fucking house.

“We’ll miss you, Spook,” Stan says, reaching out to pat Eddie’s shoulder and laughing as it passes right through it. “Go get your ghost.”

Eddie nods and looks over at the pixie dust again. He feels himself lighting up a bit, smiling when he sees himself starting to glow red again.

“I’ve missed your color,” Patty tells him with a soft smile. Luna gurgles at him and Eddie waves at her. His heart feels cold as it always does, but he is incredibly thankful for this family of werewolves that have somehow dug their way into his heart. 

“See you later, little pup,” Eddie tells Luna with a smile. He traces his finger along her cheek, grinning as she shivers as the chill passes from his hand to her warm little body. 

“Stan’s been talking about moving to Cali,” Patty says to him as the pixie dust begins to revolve around his form. “We’ll find you.”

Eddie is just about to reply when suddenly, his vision is clouded by gold dust and he feels himself being carried away by the wind. He feels flightless, as he has for the past 200 years, but he also feels carefree. No need to look back at the house; he’s been there for so long he will truly never forget what it looks like. The occupants are just temporary, and he knows that Bev and Ben and Stan and Patty will be able to find them again. It’s not the last he’ll be seeing of them, but he hopes it’s the last that he’ll see of the house on Neibolt Street.  

He just closes his eyes and lets himself float. He knows where he needs to be. 

When Eddie opens his eyes again, it’s to the sun shining down on him and blinding his vision. He frowns and looks around and finds himself outside of a house on a beach. Of course he would pick a house that is, quite literally, directly on a beach. 

He can feel him inside, the pull between them strong as their binding spell takes over once again. He feels a chilly tug leading him towards the house, and all Eddie has to do is follow. 

He morphs into his orb, wanting to get there even faster, and he quickly ghosts through the walls and looks around until he sees Richie in his full form. He feels his chilly ghost heart thump once in his chest, only ever once, never multiple beats, and Eddie’s orb shines a brighter red than it ever has before. He’s thankful that it’s daylight and that his glowing isn’t going to give him away before he’s ready to announce his presence.  

Richie is frowning at the couch at the end of the living room, and Eddie knows just what to do. He morphs back into his normal form, floats directly behind Richie, and says, “Boo.”

Richie startles and turns around with wide eyes, his color flashing bright blue before settling down again. He looks confused for a second before his eyes settle on Eddie, and he breaks out into a giant grin before launching himself at him.

“You fucking demonic ghoul,” Richie laughs as he lets his arms melt into Eddie’s back. Eddie hums and looks at the glow of purple that now surrounds them, a color he hasn’t seen in so long. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“I told you that I’m fucking scary,” Eddie laughs, pulling his head back to look at Richie with a smile. 

Richie kisses him, and as Eddie kisses him back, the familiar chill settles back within his intangible body as the room around them glows bright purple, brighter than either of them have ever glowed before. 

He loses track of how long they just stand there in the living room kissing, and Eddie forgets about everything but Richie until the front door slams open and two people enter and stare directly at them.

“What the fuck,” the tall one says, looking from Richie to Eddie as they quickly pull their faces apart, their arms still wrapped around one another. 

“You can see us?” Richie asks with a frown. “I thought . . .”

The shorter one opens his mouth and reveals a pair of fangs with a hiss. Of course Richie found a house for them to haunt that is housed by fucking vampires.

“You didn’t tell me our now house came with fucking ghosts, Mike,” the shorter one sighs, smacking the one who is apparently Mike on the chest.

“I swear they weren’t here when I looked at it the first time,” Mike replies, squinting at Richie and Eddie. “I’m telling you, babe --” 

“Don’t ‘babe’ me right now, I swear to Dracula, I am fucking Bill to you right now until you manage to find us a house that doesn't have some kind of supernatural being in it.”

“Uh, not to break up this -- lover’s quarrel?” Richie asks tentatively. “But we can leave, we’re not like, bound to this place and he literally just got here. We can find a different house to haunt.”

Bill looks over at Mike, and Mike shrugs. “They seem harmless.”

“If I get fucking haunted, I’m blaming you.”

“I don’t do possession,” Eddie supplies, rather unhelpfully, he realizes. 

“He prefers to throw books,” Richie adds, and both Bill and Mike turn back towards them again to glare at Eddie.

They decide not to leave, in the end, and Eddie finds two people to haunt with his book throwing that are really, actually, and truly mortified by it.

As Richie and Eddie sit on the beach in the middle of the night, Eddie leans into his side as Richie wraps his arm around him. Eddie watches as the waves crash against the beach, and he feels like he’s been here before.

He closes his eyes and listens to the ocean, feeling the chill of Richie next to him and the wind blowing in his hair. He’s finally free of the house, finally on the beach with Richie by his side and the smell of the ocean around him. 

He has a flash of memory, the vision of him as a young twenty-year-old on the same beach in 1800. His legs are crossed as he sits in the sand, and there’s another man sitting next to him. He has dark, curly hair and glasses, and he reaches over and hooks his pinkie with Eddie’s discreetly, hidden between their two bodies and the sand. The sun is glowing purple in the background as it begins to set under the horizon.

Eddie opens his eyes and looks over at Richie, and suddenly everything makes sense again. Even in the after-life, it was always meant to be the two of them.

“I love you,” Eddie says quietly, smiling when Richie turns towards him. “Forever.”

Richie kisses him on the beach as the sun begins to set, purple just like in Eddie’s memory, and Eddie, for the first time in 200 years, knows how it feels to have the feeling of purple freedom and love surrounding you from every angle.