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Chapter Text

Richie had thought – when he was marching to Ben’s house imagining what he could say to convince him to help – that he’d be above begging. But when he asked his question and was answered with a deep frown and a shake of his head, Richie found his hands clasped in front of his face before he could think about it.

“Please, Benny-Boy. C’mon you’ve gotta help me out, man.”

Ben’s frown tightened, but his eyebrows turned down in sympathy. “Rich… You know I can’t.”

“Ben-n-n,” Richie whined, trying to channel every time as a kid that he’d given his mom his best ‘puppy dog eyes’ – but all he could think about was how Eddie’s huge dark eyes proved that it didn’t matter that Richie was actually part wolf, he could do it much better.

Ben’s expression remained the same.

Damn.

Richie readjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Look, I’m not asking for anything permanent. I know that can’t be done. I just want… one night. Just one.”

Ben sighed and rubbed at his face. “Richie…”

Watching Ben struggle made Richie feel like shit, because they all knew that he would try his best to help anyone with anything, and here he was putting him in a situation where he couldn’t win either way; he’d either help but do something he wasn’t comfortable with or refuse and let down a friend.

There was a smudge of soot on Ben’s chin, his pointed hat was slightly askew, and he smelt strongly of the mixture of sweet and sharp scented herbs that always clung to his robes. Richie’s wolf ears twitched as they caught the sound of flames crackling, firewood popping, and liquid bubbling from somewhere deep within.

“Aha, I thought you might say no – so I have a very solid case to present to you, and that case is…” Richie trailed off as he saw the beginnings of another apology form on Ben’s lips. Fuck. It was time to be serious. He took a deep breath and let all his vulnerabilities and fears and feelings for Eddie thrum through his chest as he cut the bullshit and said just one word, “Please.”

Maybe it was the lack of a punchline, or the expression he felt on his face; twisting with the hurt that was clenching his heart, but Ben closed his mouth and blinked in surprise. He stared hard at Richie and then finally straightened his hat as he quietly said, “You better come in.”

Richie’s ears and tail perked up in hope as Ben turned in the doorway and motioned for him to follow. While it wasn’t necessarily a yes, it had progressed a little from the absolute no from when he’d first opened the door.

“Ben, Benny-Boy, Ben, Ben, Benjamin – has anyone told you that you are the most amazing friend of all time?” Richie nearly sang as he entered the house and trotted after him. Ben’s shoulders hiked up as they walked, and Richie watched with amusement as the tips of his long, pointed ears went pink.

“I just, don’t want you to get your hopes up. I don’t even know if it can be done,” Ben warned softly over his shoulder. “And even if it can be done, if it doesn’t stick, and Eddie finds out… the consequences for you both…”

“I know,” Richie sighed, “trust me, I know.”

“And anyway, I think you might be overestimating my abilities.”

Richie tried to stop his bushy tail from wagging in delight. “Are you kidding?” he scoffed. “I believe in you, dude. If anyone can do it, you can. I saw that crazy shit you pulled with that potion you gave Stan.”

Ben ducked his head down bashfully as he led him through a long, narrow hallway, with various doors spaced out along the walls. “I have a few books on Vampires, so I was pretty confident about brewing the daywalking potion, but I’ve never actually read any books about Werewolves, so this is pretty unknown magical territory for me.”

The excitement bubbling through Ben’s voice was clear, and it made Richie feel a little less guilty.

“Maybe you could write one,” Richie suggested, trying not to get freaked out by the stone floor suddenly sloping sharply downwards, obviously carved deep into the ground. “‘My friend the college werewolf who continuously makes bad decisions, but hey, at least he was funny.’”

He was surprised by how much bigger Ben’s house was than he expected, though he remembered him mentioning that he’d built it himself, and if he had the ability to build his own house, he’d probably make it huge too. The winding passage continued down and led to some steps, also carved out of stone, that ended with a wooden door. Richie hesitated as Ben descended the steps and turned a comically large key in the lock that clunked satisfyingly as it unlocked.

“Wow, you really committed to the whole Witch thing. Props for dedication, Benjamin.”

“It’s my secret passage,” Ben said proudly, “and besides… I am a witch, so…”

“I’m just glad we’re close enough for you to show me your ‘secret passage’-”

“I was going to neaten it up, but I kind of like the rustic look,” Ben continued in the same excited tone, completely unaware of the double meaning Richie had been going for. That was why he liked Ben – he was so earnest and sweet – but god did he miss the chewing out he would have gotten for that garbage level attempt at a cheap laugh from Eddie.

As if the thought of Eddie boldened him Richie leaped down the rest of the steps in one go. He landed lightly on his feet, with his tail out for balance, and coughed at the dust it stirred up.  

Ben coughed too as Richie dusted down his jeans and shot him a grin, then he followed Ben through the door (that creaked noisily when it opened, obviously) into a large room filled with all sorts of magical paraphernalia and instruments. Richie whistled. The stone was polished and smooth inside, and it looked like a Witch’s paradise: there were shelves of bottles and jars containing powders, plants, and oddly coloured liquids; worktables were piled with all sorts of equipment, that Richie couldn’t even begin to identify; and tall stacks of books made an obstacle course of the floor. There were sheets of paper pinned to any spare wall space not being occupied by shelves, with red circles and notes scribbled onto them, and a thick red string that connected some of them together. Three huge bubbling cauldrons sat atop log fires that popped and crackled with the intensity of the flames, spewing out various coloured smoke in swirls. The smell was almost overwhelming, and Richie slammed his hands over his sensitive nose. “Holy shit,” he said nasally.

Ben raced around the room to pick up abandoned books and papers into his arms, though the room looked just as busy as before anyway, and he dumped them all onto a nearby table that was already nearly overflowing with more piles of books. He brushed down his robes and leaned on the table with one arm, then jumped as a few pages slipped off and scattered over the floor.

Richie eventually pulled his hand away from his nose and winced as the smell hit him again. He was getting used to it though. He crinkled his nose and sneezed again. Maybe not.

“Wow, I had no idea you were such a nerd, Hanscom.”

“Oh gee, thanks.”

“No, no, I meant, like- you read all of these?”

“Not all of them…”

“You’re basically a walking library, dude! I’d be telling everyone who’d stop to listen to me for five minutes,” Richie said, stunned by how quiet Ben had been about all of this. He adjusted his glasses and slipped into a posh voice when he added, “‘Excuse me. Do you know how many books I’ve read? I could turn you into a toad right here.’”

Ben reached over to stir a long wooden spoon in one of the cauldrons, the liquid pink and foamy, while his cheeks bloomed the same colour. He smiled and tried to hide a giggle.

“I’d support you, y’know,” Richie continued conversationally, “if you turned anyone in Derry into a toad. Especially any of my professors. Or Bowers and his gang. But they’re basically toads already, so maybe it wouldn’t work on them.”

Ben’s giggles escaped him, and Richie flashed his fangs in a pleased smile. If he couldn’t say I’m a terrible fucking friend and I’m sorry for asking you to do this in words, then he sure as hell would say it through making Ben laugh.

“I spent a lot of time by myself before I met you guys,” Ben eventually explained softly, still stirring. “I wasn’t really interested in making friends, and nobody bothered me out here on my own. Building my house, all of my reading and studying… it kept me busy.” He rested the spoon back onto the side of the cauldron and smiled wider. “Now you all keep me busy instead. And anyway, Witches can’t actually turn anyone into toads – you’ve been watching too many human movies.”

Richie pouted. “Seriously? What’s the fun in having magic powers if you can’t turn people into toads?” He paused. “And who told you I’ve been watching human movies?”

“Bev.”

“That little snitch!”

Ben frowned and Richie waved his hands. “I’m kidding! Bev knows I love her to the moon and back. It’s just, I don’t know, another way I feel weird compared to the rest of the town.” He shrugged and picked at a loose thread on the corner of his open shirt. It was his lucky shirt – bright yellow with black dog bones on.

“Richie… You know I’d never tell anyone, right? And Bev didn’t exactly tell me, it was just because she…” – Ben faltered and smiled sheepishly – “…she said how cute it was that you and Eddie had similar taste in movies.”

Richie’s tail curled with embarrassment and he covered his face with his hands, feeling his glasses digging into the bridge of his nose. “Damn Hanscom, you can’t say shit like that.”

Ben giggled again. “Wow, you really like him, huh?”

“Yeah,” Richie whispered through his hands, “I do. Fuck.”

Richie thought about the way that his skin went all tingly when he accidentally brushed Eddie’s hand while they were walking sometimes, or how he could feel his heart-beat race when he threw an arm over his shoulder to deliver one of his punchlines. He was forever glad that Eddie couldn’t see any of the supernatural stuff in town because that meant he’d never seen the stomach-churningly embarrassing way his tail wagged like a puppy whenever he said his name. Or how the whole group could be together, and his ears would always angle themselves in his direction.

He’d never just wanted to make someone smile so much before, so he found himself acting up and making jokes and always, always checking to see Eddie’s reaction – was he happy? Did he make him happy?

Frankly, it was a little pathetic.

“I get that,” Ben continued. “I mean, not the liking Eddie part – I do like him, but just as a friend. I mean, finding out you have feelings for someone that you are already friends with. And then you’re, I don’t know, scared of messing that up.”

“Yeah, I just…” Richie groaned, his hands still covering his face, unable to unpack who Ben was referring to right now. “Ugh, feelings are dumb. I’m not gonna lie, I would lick a rock just to get his attention and have him yell at me.”

“I already saw you do that!” Ben laughed.

Richie sighed wistfully. “And it worked like a charm.” His hands pushed even harder against his face, unable to bear looking at Ben while he spoke so truthfully. Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me. “I know that he can’t even see that I’m different, so he doesn’t… he doesn’t know what I am. He doesn’t even really know the real me... But the feelings I get when I’m around him… I know they’re real. The rest of the town won’t understand – because he’s a human and I’m… not. But…”

There’s one for the records, folks, he thought, Richie Tozier can’t find his words!

There was another long stretch of silence that Richie could hardly bear. His stomach lurched and churned uncomfortably with the desire to pull his hands away and say that he was kidding, and it was all a big joke. Gotcha! But he clenched his eyes shut and took a deep breath through the nausea.

“Okay then,” Ben said softly, “let’s get you on that date.”

“Date?” Richie’s voice cracked horribly as his hands flew away from his face.

Ben leaned over and pushed a pile of papers from one of the desks – they tumbled to the ground and made Richie jump, but Ben didn’t even react to the mess. Once the desk was clear he dashed around the room and examined the piles of books and papers stacked here and there.

“Uh, Ben?” Richie said, but he didn’t think Ben heard him. He was so focused on checking the spines of every book that he could. He ran his finger down a pile, then moved on, his robes swishing with every movement.

Eventually he made a noise of triumph and pulled a thick book from a pile that wobbled precariously as he took it, then slammed it down onto the well-worn wood with a heavy thud. Ben quickly flicked through the large pages – making a pleasant sound that almost tickled the sensitive fur in Richie’s ears.

“And don’t worry about the rest of the town, you should ignore them,” – he turned a page with a little more force than was necessary – “it doesn’t matter what they think. We’re all outcasts, and we love each other all the same.”

For some reason, his words reminded Richie of something he’d heard Stan say once.

“We’re Losers,” Richie pointed out with a grin, echoing Stan’s sentiment, “and we always stick together.”

“Exactly.”

“Hey, listen, thanks. I really mean it.”

“You’re welcome. I promise I’ll try my best. But I’ve got to be honest, trying to stop your transformation sounds nearly impossible…” Ben glanced up. “It’s like trying to cheat nature.”

Richie didn’t say anything to that, and Ben returned his attention to the book. He couldn’t deny it. There’d been so many times as a kid he’d tried to will away his transformations, and nothing had ever worked – it really did sound impossible...

Another silence descended on them both, broken only by the background bubbling of the cauldrons and the sound of old, brittle paper turning as Ben made his way through the huge book. The word ‘date’ continued echoing around Richie’s head, and he wanted it to stop, so he looked around and turned to the desk nearest him. There was an odd metal contraption sitting on it that looked a bit like a cross between a sundial and one of those desk pendulum things that he’d always wanted. He reached out a slender finger to poke at it and make it swing, but it immediately fell apart at his touch and clanged noisily as it fell over. Richie scrambled to grab the pieces as they fell apart, but some of them clinked against Ben’s stone floor as they rolled off the desk.

“Wow, fragile,” he observed, as he picked up the fallen pieces.

Ben threw him a pinched look but didn’t comment. “I think I have an idea for a potion that might work,” he said instead, “a combination of herbs that I think could work together to negate the effects of the full moon… if I can just find the right base… I’m sure it was in this book.” Ben flicked faster and then stopped suddenly. He ran his finger down the page as he read the tiny text aloud, though none of it made any sense to Richie. He wasn’t even sure he was speaking English. Ben didn’t even look up as he pointed across the room and said, “Can you pass me a roll of parchment, a pot of ink, and a quill?”

Richie snapped to attention and grabbed one of the rolls of parchment sticking out of a box on another one of the desks, a glass pot of ink, and the first feather he saw. Only when he was handing them over did he notice that the quill was a deep flame red colour with copper flecks at the base. “Why, Benny-Boy, I do believe this is one of Bev’s feathers.” The Voice was unintentional, but it came out anyway – bordering on teasing, but entirely good natured.

Ben’s whole face bloomed a soft pink as he rolled out the parchment and dipped the end of the quill into the pot. Instead of saying anything, he scribbled furiously, but the pink on his cheeks deepened in colour as the silence dragged on.

For a while, the only sound was the scratching of a quill running across parchment, and the page of the book being turned every so often. Richie bounced backwards and forwards on his heels. His scuffed and dirty sneakers had seen better days, and he had been promising himself he was going to change the fraying laces for months, but he just hadn’t gotten round to it.

“You… uh- you really think this is a date?” burst out of him, unable to take the silence anymore.

Ben finally looked up. “Isn’t that why you want to go so badly?”

“Well, it’s like- I mean- when he asked me to go to the Full Moon Fair with him, he said it’s so that I could show him around. Which is ironic because I’ve never even fucking been – y’know, since they’re on the full moon and everything, and I’m otherwise kind of occupied.” Richie gestured to his ears and tail.

“But he asked just you to go to a fair with him. No matter how you look at it, it sounds like a date to me.”

Richie hummed an unconvinced kind of sound.

“Just you. To a fair...” Ben raised his eyebrows and gave him a pointed look.

Warmth crept up Richie’s neck and he groaned. “Fuck. You’re right. Shit, what if it is a date?”

“You’re only just realising this?” Ben chuckled. “I thought that’s why you were here.”

“I just wanted to spend more time with him!” Richie’s voice wobbled precariously on cracking again. (It was endlessly embarrassing that he was twenty and his voice still cracked when he got emotional.) “We’ve been studying so hard recently it feels like I never get to see him, and when he asked me, he was doing that thing where he looks at me.”

“That thing where he looks at you?”

“Yeah! You know! With his eyes!”

Ben chuckled harder. “Isn’t that what everyone does?”

“No, not with Eddie, man, it’s like- have you seen his eyes? It’s not like I could have given him the real reason for blowing him off either, like, ‘sorry, Eds, I’ll be too busy running around on four legs and chasing after Derry’s local rabbit population to go to the fair with you, have fun though’.” Richie clicked his tongue and made finger-guns with both hands. He snorted one derisive laugh and flattened his ears. “Nah, there’s no way Eddie would want to go on a date with me. Even without knowing about my monthly extracurricular activities. That’s just not happening. It’s like he said, he just wants someone to show him around.”

“He could have asked any of us though, and he asked you,” Ben pointed out softly.

Richie groaned and ruffled his hands roughly through his hair. “Hey, c’mon, don’t give me hope like that.”

Ben held up his hands in surrender and went back to taking his notes, but after a few more minutes he placed the tip of the quill to his chin and looked back up. “You really chase rabbits?”

“Yeah,” Richie sighed.

Ben looked a little torn at that and Richie snorted. “Hey, you’ve got how many frogs up there” – Richie gestured to a shelf filled with jars of preserved frogs – “but you’re sad that I go after the bunnies?”

“Rabbits are cute…”

“And they taste great and provide my little wolf brain with hours of amusement.”

“Oh, so you don’t chase them on purpose?”

Richie shook his head. “Nah. I just can’t help myself. If it’s small and furry and moves – game on. Man, even if I could tell Eddie about all of this I probably wouldn’t anyway. I don’t think I’d want him to see me like that. I’m an absolute dumbass as a wolf.” He grinned. “And don’t say I am as a human too anyway.”

“I would never!” Ben replied instantly with a good-natured smile, and Richie couldn’t stop the thought that, no, Ben wouldn’t, but Eddie absolutely would have. Amusement and affection warmed him at the thought of how quickly Eddie would have taken that bait and fired a shot at him. He missed Eddie so much and wanted to see him so badly that he knew he was already in way too fucking deep.

He felt a renewed hope that this was going to work and that they’d spend a nice, normal night at the fair, whether it was a date or not.

Richie had always wanted to go anyway.

He realised Ben had placed the quill on the desk, and that there was an intensely interested gleam in his eyes as he looked at him. Richie was reminded of the fact that he was basically living in a library he’d made for himself and lived as a hermit for years doing nothing but studying.

“So, you’re not… you… when you transform?”

“Not exactly, but also yes,” Richie said, with a flick of his tail. “It’s complicated.”

“Are you dangerous?” Ben asked in a small, almost apologetic voice, like he was sorry to ask, but had to know.

“No way! It’s hard to describe… I’m still the Richie Tozier you all know and love – my personality doesn’t change, but complicated thoughts are too hard to process, because they’re too human or something? I’m still there, but it’s like thinking through mud? I can do complicated stuff, but it’s hard, so I don’t usually bother. Just be a wolf for the night.” Richie scratched the base of one his ears, where the wiry fur blended into the skin of his scalp, a little self-conscious to be saying this stuff out loud. “Last month it had been raining and I spent a full ten minutes barking at my own reflection in a puddle.”

Ben laughed from somewhere deep within his chest and there were tears in the corners of his eyes as he wiped them with the sleeves of his robes. “No way.”

“I’m serious!” Richie chuckled. “And then there was this one month when I’d been pulling some serious all-nighters to meet an assignment deadline, so transforming just wrecked me, and I ended up sleeping the whole night in Mike’s barn.”

“Really?” Ben laughed even louder.

“Ask him! He brought me coffee and let me borrow his clothes. Huh, that’s how we met actually. He stumbled across some naked guy sleeping in the hay and brought him coffee and clothes. What a guy.”

“That sounds like Mike.” Ben smiled fondly. “So you’re just, back to normal in the morning?”

“Hm? Oh yeah, it’s go time as soon as the sun sets on the night of the full moon” – Richie mimed fangs with his fingers at his lips – “then as soon as it rises the next morning” – he gestured to himself with a flourish – “naked Richie with a belly full of rabbits and the odd stolen chicken, with bones that feel like jelly.”

“Wow…” There was a new respect in the way Ben looked at him, but Richie didn’t feel like he deserved it. He probably seemed so well adjusted now, but Ben hadn’t seen how many years he’d spent trying to deny his condition – hating that he couldn’t make it stop – and trying to not think about it all month, until the one night that he had to face it. Pretending the problem didn’t exist had made him pretty fucking miserable, so he was glad he’d found friends like Stan and Bill who helped him to accept himself better – and then he met Mike who was so chilled out about seeing a werewolf that it almost made Richie feel totally normal. He’d initially been a little bitter about the dynamics changing When Ben and Bev joined the group, but he was so close to them both now that it was like they’d all been friends the whole time anyway. Eddie appeared on the scene the most recently, when he moved to Derry to go to college, but although he fit right into the group, Richie was still doubtful over whether he’d want to know any of them if he found out what they were. Ben felt bad for the rabbits he inevitably hunted on his full moon nights, but he couldn’t imagine Eddie’s reaction would be anything short of downright revulsion.

Ben saying, “Maybe I will write a book…”, jolted Richie out of his head.

“Just don’t tell any of this to anyone.” Richie grinned, desperately trying to mask the deep fissure of hurt he’d opened in his chest from his last train of thought. “Especially about Mike’s farm. He’s been sworn to secrecy too. I’ll never live it down.”

“Oh, I won’t, I promise!”

“Thanks, Haystack.”

Ben smiled at the unexpected nickname and returned his attention to his notes. The quill scratched across the page with a speed that both impressed and terrified Richie, considering he couldn’t read a word of what it said. Seeing the feather dance like that made him think of Bev’s beautiful red wings. He wondered what she would think of what they were doing, and he thought of the last time they’d sat and shared a cigarette together on the roof of her apartment building. He’d been more open and honest with her than he’d ever been with anyone in his life – and he considered that if he’d never had that conversation with her, he probably wouldn’t have been able to say half of what he’d said to Ben. Like a warm-up for having heart-to-hearts. Fucking opening your chest out and laying your heart bare for someone else to see was terrifying.

Richie knew that Bev had a soft spot for Ben, so he hoped that she wouldn’t be mad with what he’d asked him to do. But he thought that she’d want to support him too.

Man, friendship was hard.

Ben jumped up from his seat, startling Richie again, and looked at a line of bottles on a shelf nearby. He grabbed at one and placed it next to the open book, scribbling more notes down. He looked back up at Richie, excitement practically sparkling in his eyes. “I think I’ve figured something out.”

“Yes, Haystack!”

“But it’s going to take a few hours to brew, and I’m going to need to concentrate…” Ben pursed his lips together and looked at Richie pointedly.

“Your version of ‘Richie, you’re distracting so please fuck off’ is so soft, I love it.”

Ben paled. “No- no, I didn’t mean- you can stay if you want to, but you’ll just have to be really quiet.”

“I’m just teasing, man. The Q word is basically my kryptonite-”

“Your what?”

“-so I’m definitely getting out of your hair.” Richie stretched his arms above his head and his tail straight out behind him. “I should probably think about what I’m wearing tonight anyway.”

“Wow, Eddie’s getting you in clean clothes? You really do like him.”

“I never said they’d be clean,” Richie pointed out with a laugh as he turned to go. He stopped when he got to the large wooden door. “Really though, thank you. I mean it. Even if it doesn’t work. Thank you for trying.”

Ben flashed him a smile as he left.

---------

Richie squinted at the sun as he emerged outside. Ben’s underground basement had been lit with candles and cauldron fires, so it was nice to see a bit of daylight again. He closed Ben’s front door with a click, rested his forehead on the cool door for a moment, and hoped his heart would slow down. He just needed a minute. That was one of the scariest things he’d ever done. Not only did he talk about his condition so openly, but he basically admitted to being in love with his friend.

Richie pulled his glasses off with one hand and scrubbed the other over his face.

“Well, fuck Tozier,” he breathed, “cat’s outta the bag now. Or wolf. Wolf’s outta the bag… Wolf’s outta the bag doesn’t have the same ring to it. Why would anyone put a wolf in a bag anyway? Who’s going to have a bag big enough?” He placed his glasses back on his nose and sucked in a deep breath.

Looks like he had a few hours to kill.

Chapter Text

He ended up at Eddie’s house. Which was a stupid idea even amongst the other stupid ideas he’d had, because of course, his mom’s car was sat shining obnoxiously on the driveway.

He knew that she didn’t even go anywhere – Eddie had already told him the car was just for medical emergencies, because she didn’t trust ambulances. And Eddie had never been allowed to take lessons.

He glared at the driveway, annoyed that he didn’t know enough about cars to even know what kind of car it was. He hated it anyway. Seeing it there just reminded him that she never left the house, and that she would never let him in. He’d tried to knock on the door a few times, when they’d first started hanging out, but she always glared at him and said that Eddie was too busy to go anywhere – like he was twelve fucking years old and Richie was asking if he could come out and play!

And the worst part was that she’d brainwashed Eddie into thinking he needed her permission too!

Richie turned away from the Kaspbrak house with a scowl and nearly stalked straight through Bill. “Holy fuck!” he shrieked as he leapt backwards. “Would you stop doing that!”

Bill smiled, probably going for innocent, but the little shit just looked as smug as always at making Richie jump again. “S-Suh-Sorry. I can never r-resist.”

The sunlight went hazy where it partially shone through Bill, giving him the appearance of someone made of smoke. He was hard to focus on unless Richie looked hard, and even then, sometimes he would flicker in and out of looking almost solid enough to touch and barely there at all.

“Does Eddie know that y-you’ve become his stalker?”

“I’m not stalking him, Billiam. I just came by to see if his mom was home.”

“She’s a-a-always home.”

“Lucky me,” Richie said with a wink and a wiggle of his eyebrows.

“Beep b-beep, Richie.” Bill shook his head with a fond smile. “I can’t believe you’ll m-muh-make jokes about Eddie’s mom while he’s not even h-here.”

“They’ve transcended the need for him to hear them. They’re a part of me now.”

Bill folded his skinny arms over his flannel shirt in a show of his disapproval and Richie once again wondered how it would feel to never be able to ever change clothes. They didn’t even rustle when he moved. “You ever get tired of flannel?” came out of his mouth before he could stop it.

“Well, it’s the clothes I duh-d-died in,” Bill said with a wry smile, “so y-yeah, Richie. I do get k-kind of tired of looking at them.”

Richie held both his hands up and his ears flattened to his head. “I’ll just beep beep myself on that one.”

“G-Good idea.”

There was a moment of quiet before Richie – with the tact of someone unable to stop picking at a scab – barrelled on with, “Well, at least you didn’t die naked, like, if you were taking a shower and had a heart attack or something. Or if you had to wear your pants and underwear around your ankles forever because you died taking a sh-”

“I hear you’ve been invited to the Full M-Moon fair this month.” Bill’s voice interrupted him quietly, but with all the power of a knife slicing straight through his words. It was always like that with Bill, he didn’t need the volume when he had the authority.

“What the fuck? Who told you?”

“Mike.”

“How the fuck did Mike know?”

“Eddie t-t-told him.”

“Oh.”

Richie tried not to think about what that meant – that Eddie had spoken to Mike about taking him to the fair. Would he have told him in an excited way? Would Mike have told him it was a bad idea?

“I’m just s-surprised you agreed,” Bill continued in a level voice, his usually pale eyes suddenly seeming very bright and clear.

Richie squirmed under the intensity of his gaze. “So… Okay, look. I might have done something stupid, and possibly a little bit reckless and could maybe be considered a total mistake, but- hear me out…”

Bill was not going to like this.

But before he could find a way to explain, Bill’s attention moved to just over Richie’s shoulder. “You should probably duck,” he said.

“What- Ow! Shit!” Richie hissed as something collided with the back of his head and bounced to the ground nearby.

Bill was laughing with a mischievous ring that Richie didn’t hear from him much. It made him sound how old he looked, and he wished he would do it more often. But he still flipped him off as he looked down to see a brown slipper upside down on the sidewalk. When he picked it up, with one hand rubbing the back of his head, he noticed the small teddy bear pattern stitched into the fabric.

Richie’s wolf ears angled backwards to catch the hissing sound of someone whispering his name as loudly as they could, and he jolted in surprise as he recognised the voice. He whipped around to see Eddie’s torso hanging out of his window, ridiculously adorable baby-blue polo-neck shirt and all. He cupped his hands around his mouth as whispered his name again, then waved an arm in the air.

Richie’s tail wagged enthusiastically, and he grabbed it to keep it still, despite Eddie not being able to see it anyway. He didn’t really want Bill to see him like that either, but when Richie turned to provide a come-back to whatever comment that he was going to make about it, Bill had gone.

Eddie whispered his name loudly again and Richie shrugged as he jogged across the road, slipper still in hand.

As he got closer Richie pulled his arm back as if he were going to throw the slipper like a baseball, even adding in a little skip for momentum as he went, and Eddie waved his arms frantically with a scowl. “Don’t fucking throw that back in here!” he hissed.

Richie chuckled as he slowed down directly beneath the window. He rolled the slipper over in his hands as he looked up. “Gotta admit, Eds, I would never have put money on ‘death by Edward Kaspbrak’s teddy bear slippers’ on the way that I’m going to go.”

“I love that you referred to me twice in one sentence and didn’t use my correct name once.”

“Edward is your name, Spaghetti.”

Eddie groaned and leaned over the sill further. “You know what I mean, dickwad.”

“Yeah, because the names you use for me are so much better.”

“Shh,” Eddie hushed frantically, lowering his voice again, “my mom’s in the living room.”

Richie opened his eyes wide behind his glasses, knowing it would make them even wider, to add to the effect of his innocent, “I just left her there, did you not hear us? That’s why I was here in the first place. She’ll be too blissed out to move for a while though, don’t worry.”

Eddie made a gagging noise and brandished the other slipper in his hand. “I’ll throw this.”

“You nearly gave me a fucking concussion with the first one. This close you’d probably kill me.” Richie felt his heart practically skipping in his chest as they bickered back and forth and struggled to keep his tail still. He could barely see the frown on Eddie’s face from where he was on the ground (the irony of having acute wolf hearing versus his terrible human eyesight was not lost on him) but he knew it was there. One of his favourite Eddie Kaspbrak expressions.

“I hope you’ll come visit me in hospital when I end up there with a deadly slipper-induced brain injury.”

Instead of the response Richie expected Eddie looked away and mumbled, “Ah, yeah, I’m- sorry about your head.”

Richie had only ever heard Eddie apologise a small handful of times, so he knew he should just act his age and accept it with humility or some shit. But instead, he put on an exaggerated Voice and said, “That was a mighty fine throw for someone with them there spaghetti arms.” He wobbled his arms in the air for effect.

“It’s just impossible to miss your big head!” Eddie shot back immediately, which made Richie snort with laughter. He checked over his shoulder in a panic, but Richie could still hear the television in the living room, and there was no other movement that he could detect. “Just get in here already,” Eddie hissed as he retreated away from his window.

Richie stuffed the slipper into the back pocket of his jeans, ignoring the strain it put onto the stitching, and went to get the trashcan. Dry grass crunched beneath his sneakers as he walked around the house, and he wrinkled his nose at the smell of the dead garden. It wasn’t hard to believe that Sonia Kaspbrak wouldn’t be a gardener, since it required actually getting up from the sofa, but he hated that Eddie wouldn’t touch any of the greenery either, for fear of the allergies Richie knew he didn’t have.

He knew who had planted the seeds of that in his head though.

Richie pulled the trashcan from the side of the house, trying not to let it drag and make too much noise, and settled it underneath the window. He rocked it slightly to check the stability before he got onto it (because that was a mistake he was only going to make once) and hopped up.

Climbing into someone’s first floor bedroom window would be so much easier if werewolves really had super strength like in most of the human movies he’d watched, Richie thought petulantly. With super strength he could scale the side of the house in a single leap. No wobbly trashcans or sore fingers or aching arms.

But it’s not like he’d have been able to do that with Eddie anyway, he supposed, unless he was willing to try and explain how he could jump so high to someone who still thought he was human.

Richie wobbled and kept his tail straight out for balance as he stood tall on the lid, adding enough to his height that he could grip onto the small section of roof that jutted out from the back porch. He hoisted himself up with some effort and had a short break, balanced precariously on the narrow strip of roof. He also hated that the movies always made climbing into someone’s window so easy. Richie took a steadying breath before he leaned up and grabbed onto Eddie’s windowsill. He felt his arms strain as he jumped, and he tried to brace his feet against the brick to help himself up, but as he neared the top his left foot slipped. A yelp burst out of lips before he could stop it.

Immediately there was a vice-like grip around his wrist that steadied Richie enough to find his balance and another hand tugged at his shoulders to help him the rest of the way. He tumbled onto Eddie’s floor with a loud groan.

“And that, ladies and gentlemen, is just good parkour,” Richie said breathlessly.

Eddie was standing over him with his hands on his hips. Richie’s glasses had skewed on his face from his fall, so Eddie was a little blurry, but he still appreciated how the blue of his polo accented the dark brown of his eyes and the perfect wave of his cowlicked fringe in a cute preppy way, even if the top button was undone, and the collar was ironed a little lopsidedly. Richie grinned up at him, trying to keep his eyes on his face and not his shorts.

“Do you do any exercise?” Eddie groused. “You’re always poking fun at my ‘spaghetti arms’ but yours are like- like limp noodles.”

“Ah, Eddie my dear, there’s no amount of exercising that exists that can prepare these guns to hold the full weight of all this…” Richie gestured to himself, which only added to the hilarity of his statement because he was still on his back, sprawled out on Eddie’s floor trying not to breathe too heavily and show just how much effort the climb had been. “Besides,” he huffed, “climbing through my best friend’s window is my exercise.”

Eddie scoffed – a single forceful breath out of his nose – but he smiled too. “If you don’t try and get into some kind of shape you could fall and break something next time, just saying. And it won’t be my fault.”

“Won’t be your fault? It’s your window!”

“If you fell from this height it wouldn’t be fatal though. Unless you landed on your back. If it didn’t kill you immediately it could paralyse you for life. So don’t fall backwards. It would be better to drop straight down and break your ankles- although there’s a chance that if you break them badly enough you might never walk again anyway.”

“You have such a sweet way with words, Eds. Your pillow talk must be amazing.” Richie clutched his hands to his chest and put on a sultry voice to whisper, “You wanna hear the probabilities of dying from falling from a first-floor window?”

Eddie flipped him off with a huff that only made Richie grin at a job well done. “Are you planning on lying there all day?” Eddie asked. “Or are you getting up any time soon?”

“That’s what your mom said to me earlier,” Richie replied automatically, then seemed to think about it and frowned. “No wait. That implies I have trouble getting it up – which I don’t by the way – so I take that back.”

“One, you’re fucking gross. And two,” Eddie said wryly, “I think there’s some pills you can take if you’re having problems, Rich.”

“You only know about them because you already take them.”

“Yeah, your dad let me borrow his actually.”

Richie laughed so hard it came out as a horrifically embarrassing snort through his nose. “Eds gets off a fucking good one again.” He was lucky he was still lying down because his tail had little range of movement and couldn’t wag, even though he felt it trying to.

Richie often felt like they’d both got the maturity of twelve-year-olds when they started bickering, and they’d been told the same thing by their long-suffering friends too. But sometimes their childish antics rewarded him with one of his favourite sights: Eddie’s face breaking into a smile so wide it crinkled his eyes and revealed the dimples in his cheeks. Even somewhat lopsided and upside down, because of his position on the floor, it made something twist and dance in Richie’s stomach.

It had been amazing how fast they’d just… clicked when they first met. It was like all the times Richie had made terrible jokes were just practice for his real audience.

“You’re making my room look messy.” Eddie made a big show of rolling his eyes, but Richie looked up in surprise at the hand he offered out to help him up. For someone who regarded human contact as one of the seven deadly sins Richie was often surprised at how easily Eddie would offer out his small touches to him; poking his arm to get him to pay attention, helping him through his window, bumping into his shoulder when they walked sometimes and holding out a hand to help him up. He was about to happily accept the generous offer when a soft, “Come on then, Noodle,” came out of Eddie’s mouth in a sigh. They both froze until Eddie jolted back and clapped his hands to his mouth.

Richie sat up so fast his glasses finally gave up and fell off, and he scrambled to put them on so quickly that he nearly stabbed himself in the eye. When he finally slammed them back on his face he could see – in full clarity – the pink creeping up Eddie’s neck and blooming through the scattered freckles on his nose.

“Eddie-”

“No. No, that was a mistake. Forget I said that.”

“Matching nicknames, Eddie-”

“Nope. No matching nicknames. That was just a slip of the tongue.”

“We can be” – Richie snorted loudly – “Spaghetti and Noodle.”

Eddie flapped his hands in a frantic shushing motion. “Shh, man. My mom’s downstairs.”

But he was smiling.

And that was worth any amount of climbing through windows.

Once Richie had calmed himself down Eddie held out his hand again, and this time he reached up and grabbed onto it firmly. And immediately wished he hadn’t because he suddenly realised that they were basically holding hands and that he was doomed to think about this moment for the next week at least.

Eddie’s hand was small in his.

If they linked fingers his tiny hand would just slot right into place.

As soon as he was on his feet Eddie let go, and Richie had to pretend that there wasn’t a canine whine curling in his chest at the loss of contact that he would rather gargle rocks than let out.

“You know…” Richie said in a light tone, clearing his throat a little. “None of this would even be a problem if you just moved to the student dorms like everybody else.” The, with me, he wanted to add was left unsaid. He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and hoped that he was feigning a casual enough attitude that Eddie wouldn’t be able to see any of the genuine sincerity behind the words.

Eddie sighed. “Not this again, Richie. I told you, I can’t leave my mom.”

“I’m not saying to like, kick her out of town, I’m just saying she could live here, and you could live… not here.”

Eddie ran a hand through his wavy hair. “The bargain for me going to college in the first place was that I stayed with her instead of staying in dorms. I was supposed to stay close to home, but the bursary Derry College offered was too good to pass up. Then instead of saying no, she packed everything up and moved us across the state just so she could make sure I was okay.” The, and look after me, that he implied was also left unsaid.

Richie let out an angry snort through his nose and his ears pulled back in disgust. The money. Of course a town full of monsters is going to offer bursaries to human college students to bring them in. And it was a system that fucking worked. When some of the human students went missing it was fine, because something about them being in the town made their families and friends outside the Derry limits forget about them. It meant that ironically, Sonia moving with Eddie was probably the only thing keeping him completely off-limits. Until they thought of a plan to get rid of them both, he supposed grimly. Richie just didn’t know what to do about that.

“She needs me,” Eddie pressed, but even he didn’t sound convinced.

Richie bit his lip as the need to continue arguing his case bubbled inside his chest and worry gnawed at his stomach, but for the first time that day he knew when to keep his mouth shut, and he only replied with an unconvinced hum. He didn’t want a fight. Especially one they’d already had and didn’t look like they were any nearer to coming to an agreement on.

Instead, Richie finally freed the slipper from his back pocket. “Love the teddies, by the way, very ‘this season’.”

Eddie grabbed it and put it straight on. “They were a Christmas present from my mom last year asshole,” he snapped. He looked down at Richie’s feet. “And take your gross shoes off in my room.”

“That’s cool, but these socks haven’t been washed in at least a week. Just so you know.”

“You’re bluffing. Not even you would be that disgusting.”

Richie tilted his head with a smirk, then bent down slowly towards his shoes.

He reached for his laces.

Eddie groaned loudly. “Fine. Fuck. Keep them on.”

Richie laughed with a snort, struggling to keep his volume down, and straightened up to his full height again. Eddie’s eyes followed his movements and glanced away.

The height difference between them wasn’t huge, but it was noticeable. Richie had always been tall and gangly as a young teenager and while he had retained his height, he had at least filled out a little now he was finally reaching his twenties, while Eddie looked like he had always been waiting for his growth spurt, and then realised it was never going to happen.

He’d probably have to tilt Eddie’s head up to kiss him-

“At least the imprint of your slippers will look good on the back of my skull,” Richie practically squeaked, trying desperately not to think of kisses and tiptoes. He scrubbed his fingers through his messy hair and willed that train of thought away.

Eddie winced, but it smoothed out quickly. “I already apologised for that. It was the only thing I had to hand to get your attention with. I actually didn’t expect to hit you.”

“Wow, well you have got a freakishly good throwing arm.”

“I just wanted to get your attention...” Eddie continued slowly, “because, it’s so weird… before I threw the slipper, it kind of looked like you were talking to someone. But there was nobody there.”

Richie felt the pit of his stomach drop away and his wolf ears flattened down completely. His throat was dry, but he managed to force out a single dry laugh. “Oh?”

“Yeah, it looked like you were having a conversation…” Eddie’s huge dark eyes locked onto his own, and it felt like he could see right down to his soul. Richie felt the full force of both wanting to grab him and kiss him and of wanting to launch himself back out the window.

“Nope,” Richie said, popping the ‘p’, “just me, as you saw.” He tore his eyes away before he confessed to every single dark secret Derry was hiding.

He occupied himself with looking around at Eddie’s tiny room – even smaller than Richie’s room at the Derry College Student Dorms. There was a tidy pile of books on his desk, which he was glad Eddie hadn’t used to throw at him or he really would have a concussion. The titles were stuff like, ‘Business and Statistics’, ‘Analysing Profit’, and ‘Risks Beyond Profit Margins’, and just reading the titles was enough to make Richie stifle a yawn. There was also a narrow wardrobe, probably full of polo-shirts and shorts, and a perfectly made single bed – which Richie would not be focusing on.

The whole room was made up of beige and cream colours that made it look so impersonal and unlived in. He could use the excuse that they’d only been there a year, but Richie had had his current dorm room for the same amount of time, and it was completely covered in posters and flyers. (He already knew how much of a pain it was going to be to take all of it down when he graduated.)

“So, what’s with getting me to climb up here anyway, Eds?” Richie asked, shaking himself out of his head and changing the subject.

Eddie looked momentarily confused, as if he hadn’t thrown a slipper at him to get his attention and then asked him to climb through his bedroom window. Or maybe that was just a normal request to him.

Admittedly, they did do this more often than Richie supposed should be considered normal.

But when Eddie was locked inside his own house it was sometimes the only way they could hang out. (Which was ridiculous because he was nineteen and should be allowed to see whoever he wanted whenever he wanted.)

It was just unfortunate that Sonia Kaspbrak hated him so much. She didn’t even know that he was a werewolf! He expected that any sensible parent would want to keep a werewolf away from their child, but since she didn’t know, he just couldn’t understand what her problem was.

Eddie looked suddenly sheepish and fiddled with the buttons on his polo-shirt. “I just, uh, I wanted to know what to wear later. For the Full Moon Fair,” he clarified, as if it weren’t the deadline looming on Richie’s horizon all day. “I don’t want to look stupid – fucking overdressed or underdressed or whatever.”

Oh, fuck.

“What sort of thing does everyone wear?”

“Oh, y’know,” Richie said vaguely, “just the normal kind of stuff. Whatever you want to wear is fine.” He walked over to Eddie’s desk and perched on the end, trying to look as casual as possible, even though he knew Eddie had no reason to suspect that he had absolutely no idea because he’d never been.

Eddie went straight over and tugged at his unbuttoned shirt to pull him off the desk, and Richie allowed himself to be moved with no resistance. “Don’t put your ass on the place I do all my work,” Eddie groused.

“Then get, like, a sofa or something.”

“There’s a perfectly good bed right there!”

Richie’s mind screeched to such a sudden halt that he barely heard the nervous bark of a laugh that bubbled out of him without his permission. But Eddie had already walked away.

The bed springs creaked as he sat down.

(Which Richie’s sensitive wolf ears magnified and made horrifically louder.)

Eddie sat on his boring beige bed quilt and glared at him with his chin angled up defiantly, as if he were waiting for him to make a joke and had a retort ready for it. But for once Richie was completely speechless. He heard his own throat click as he swallowed loudly – frozen to the spot. He was doomed. He was nineteen years old and he had a crisis over being helped up because he’d never even held someone’s hand and now Eddie had just invited him to do nothing more than sit on his bed with him and his palms were sweating. He was so fucking bad at this. How was he going to cope with a whole evening at the fair with him? And that was only if Ben could successfully make the potion. God, he hoped Ben could make the potion.

“I’m not sure your dinky dollhouse bed deserves to be referred to as ‘perfectly good’,” eventually came out of his mouth.

Eddie threw him a withering look. “Just sit down, asshole.”

“Aye aye, cap’n.” Richie took a few paces back, stretched out his legs, and crouched down low into the starting position of a professional runner. He rubbed his hands together and placed his fingertips to the ground while he tried not to laugh at the increasingly panicked, “Richie, Richie don’t even think about jumping on here. Richie!”, that he could hear coming from Eddie. He propelled himself forwards and was about to only mime jumping when Eddie leaped up with a shriek and brought his hands to his chest to stop him.

Which he hadn’t expected.

Their torsos crashed together and they both fell to the mattress – Eddie onto his back and Richie with his hands placed either side of Eddie’s head, that he’d thrown out just in time to prevent him from crushing his friend.

Eddie’s eyes were wide beneath him.

This close he could nearly count his freckles.

Make it a joke, Richie thought desperately, make it a joke and play it off as funny. Think of something funny! But he couldn’t think over the static of how desperately he wanted to close the gap between them, and his mouth opened uselessly with no sound.

“Eddie-Bear! I heard noises, are you okay?” The thin voice of Sonia Kaspbrak cut through the tension like a knife and Richie leaped backwards with so much force that he tripped over his own frayed shoelaces and crashed down to Eddie’s carpet.

“What was that?” she demanded. “I heard a bang.”

“Nothing, ma!” Eddie yelled through his door, but his voice was pitched higher than usual and it caught strangely on his first word. He jumped to his feet. “I’m fine! I just dropped my – uh – my book.” He glanced over at Richie. “A big stack of books.”

Richie rubbed vigorously at the base of his tail, wincing with the pain shooting up from where he’d fallen.

“I heard voices,” Sonia accused, her voice somewhat muffled by the door.

Richie prayed she didn’t open it.

“Uh… That was just me listening to the radio,” Eddie explained as he reached over and hovered his hand above the doorknob, ready to keep the door closed. Of course he didn’t have a lock.

“Okay Eddie-Bear. But you’re supposed to be getting some rest, not listening to the radio and reading. Or if you’re feeling better you could come down and get dinner prepared.”

“No!” Eddie burst out. He cringed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I mean, I still feel really sick. The radio was just- just to distract me, because I feel so bad.”

“Have you gotten worse? Do you need me to take your temperature? Are you feeling feverish? I should just take you to the hospital.” Sonia’s sickly-sweet voice made Richie’s ears flatten to his head. 

“No, ma, I’m feeling better. I don’t need the hospital. But I’m still really contagious, everything I touch up here will be contaminated. You should stay away so you don’t catch it. I’m probably just going to sleep for the rest of the evening anyway, so uh- don’t check on me,” he rambled.

“Okay then, but make sure you turn the radio off and put those books down. You need rest, not silly distractions. If you’re no better by the morning I’m taking you to the hospital.” Richie heard her back away and realised that if he hadn’t been so caught up in trying not to freak out before he’d have heard her come to the door in the first place.

Sonia trudged back down the stairs and he heard the sofa groan as she deposited herself back onto it.

Eddie let out a long breath and sat heavily back onto the bed. After a moment of silence Richie opened his mouth to say something, and Eddie fixed him with a stern look.

“Beep beep Richie. Whatever you’re going to say, just fucking don’t. Okay?”

Richie’s wolf ears immediately flattened to his head, but he managed to keep the matching expression from flashing across his face. (He tried not to think about it too deeply that his humanity was much better at masking his feelings than any parts of him that were the wolf.) He heaved himself up to his feet and wondered slowly over to the bed, sitting down just as heavily beside Eddie – staring at his hands in his lap. He curled his tail away from him.

“Sorry,” Eddie mumbled. “I just… Sorry.”

“Are you really not feeling well? Because if any of that was the truth you don’t have to come later,” Richie said softly, trying not to feel the ache in his chest that that thought provoked.

Eddie looked up; his big brown eyes were wide with his apology. “No. None of it’s true. I’m totally fine, really. I just know that she won’t let me…” He groaned and ran a hand through his wavy hair. “’Won’t let me’ sounds so fucking stupid, right?”

Richie possessed the rare insight to keep his mouth shut this time. But he still shook his head.

“You know what she’s like about me being out after dark,” Eddie continued, “so I knew she’d never let me go to the fair. I told her I’d got the stomach flu. Highly contagious. Because it’s the only thing that’ll keep her from checking up on me later. I figured I’d just sneak out and sneak back in and have a miraculous recovery in the morning and she’d never know.”

Richie had little experience in being the kind of person to comfort someone or being confided in. But for Eddie he was willing to try.

“Why don’t you just tell her? Explain that you’ll be at a fair with lots of other people, and of course, I’ll be there as your knight in shining armour to protect your virtue and innocence.”

Eddie scoffed and looked up at him from beneath his eyelashes. “Are you kidding? She’d lock me up. She knows you’re a bad influence on me, Tozier.”

Richie felt the echoes of his last name in Eddie’s voice reverberating through him right down to his toes. “Me? I think you’re the bad influence, Kaspbrak.”

Eddie’s playful grin twitched up the corners of his lips.

“Anyway, you’re old enough to be making your own decisions about where and when you go places. And who with.”

“I know,” Eddie sighed. “She just wants to…”

Manipulate you… Smother you…

“…keep me safe.”

“Hm.” Richie knew he sounded unconvinced, but it hurt him to see Eddie stifled like that and buying into all her lies and twisted love. If it was love at all. “Hey, if you can use the stomach flu as such a good excuse why don’t you use it more often?”

“Yeah, trust me, that doesn’t work. I figured out in high school that if I use it more than a couple of times a year, I end up in the hospital for a check up and then I’m confined to the house for a week anyway while I ‘rest up’, because she doesn’t trust the hospital’s assessment of my clean bill of health.”

“Yikes,” Richie burst out. He expected a comment from Eddie, but he just sighed again. “Wait,” he said slowly as he realised something, “if you’re using that excuse for tonight though, that means you’re like, playing the ace from up your sleeve. You win the hand, but that’s it. The ace is gone.” He gasped. “This is your get out of jail free card, Eds.”

“Well yeah. I mean, the fair sounds like fun. I’ve been wanting to go to one of these since we moved here. My mom was never going to come with me, or let me go, so I’ve had to improvise.” He shrugged, but he sounded a little sheepish. “And, it’ll be cool that you can show me round.”

Images of Ben not being able to make the potion and having to let him down flashed through Richie’s mind. No pressure.

“And… I’ve never actually been to a real fair before,” Eddie added.

“Me neither,” Richie replied, still caught up thoughts of what he was going to do if Ben couldn’t make the potion.

“What?”

“Uh- I mean- me neither, until I moved here too.”

Eddie leaned over and knocked his shoulder into Richie’s. “I know. I’m a loser. You don’t have to pretend you’re just as lame as me.”

“Oh good, I think I’m allergic to deep conversations, I’m starting to itch.” Richie scratched his bare arms and shivered.

“That was a deep conversation to you? You only went a couple of minutes before referencing monopoly,” Eddie said.

Richie flashed a grin at him, unable to contain the affection and the happiness he got from being together with him like this and he swore he saw pink bloom across his freckled nose. “You know this means we need to have a monopoly game night with the other losers now. That’s what my sub-conscious was trying to tell me.”

Eddie frowned. “What the fuck, please do not tell me you just referred to our friends as the other losers.”

“Sorry, you’re right,” Richie cleared his throat and put on a British accent, “the other losers and us.”

“I’m not even going to ask.”

“It’s something Stan said, and then something Ben said, and then what you just said.”

“About being a loser?”

“Yeah. That’s what we all are. Losers together.” Richie tilted his head to one side as if deep in thought. “Now we’ve got a gang name I feel like we need to seal it with some kind of handshake.” His ears perked up as he opened his eyes wide. “Blood pact-”

“Nope. No no. No. No blood pacts. Jesus.” The bed springs creaked as Eddie curled himself up and gagged.

“Okay, we can just spit in our hands and shake on it. No biggie.”

Eddie made a disgusted sound and swatted at Richie. “Oh my god- no! That’s just as bad!”

As Richie bent over in a fit of uncontrollable giggles Eddie leaned back over and swatted playfully at him again, but his hand flicked over one of Richie’s wolf ears. Richie jolted upright, his heart hammering in his chest. Every hair on his tail felt like it was standing up as if he’d been struck with an electric charge, and he could still feel the ghost of a touch on the soft skin of his ear. Fear constricted his throat, and he knew he’d made a mistake by reacting so abruptly and dramatically. Shit!

Eddie blinked at him in confusion as he watched Richie’s reaction and slowly sat upright himself. He looked down at his hand and then his gaze slid up to somewhere just above Richie’s head. His brows were intensely furrowed, and Richie could almost hear his mind struggling to make sense of the contradiction between sight and touch. The enchantment over Derry worked on the mind – erasing and compensating for anything that didn’t look human, but it did nothing for the other senses. The human mind amazed Richie because it was so good at explaining away something it didn’t see, but he’d always suspected that Eddie’s natural desire to understand and ground everything in fact would make him harder to convince if he ever suspected something was off.

Nervous laughter bubbled out of Richie’s mouth. “What?”

“‘What’ back to you – what happened?”

Richie pushed all thoughts of his bristling tail and ears out of his mind – all Eddie could see was his expression, and he kept it schooled into a calm mask he was familiar with. “You caught one of my curls and it tugged. I’m being a big baby about it, and I jumped.” His voice was casual, and he thought he was doing a surprisingly good job of not looking like he was about to puke.

Eddie’s eyes narrowed and he looked down at his hand again. “I thought I felt…”

Richie swallowed down the nausea and laughed, pleased that the sound of it was more natural than before. “My hair’s even messier than usual today, okay I get it, geez, thanks for pointing it out. I’ll have a shower before we go to the fair, alright.” Richie shook his head like a dog for emphasis – shaking out his curls.

His tail was still bristling uncontrollably, and he longed to smooth the fur down flat.

Then a loud growling, gurgling sound filled the room and for a horrible second Richie wondered if he really was about to throw up, but both of Eddie’s hands flew to his stomach.

“Holy shit, was that your stomach!?”

Eddie leaned away and groaned. “I’m fucking hungry okay.”

Any residual tension was finally released as Richie laughed loudly and Eddie laughed alongside him even through his reminders to shush and be quiet because his mom was still downstairs.

“Your stomach-” Richie wheezed “-sounds like an angry bear.”

Eddie looked like he was trying to pout, but because of his smile it just made him look like he was in pain. “Thank you, asshole. I’m starving to death and you find it funny.”

“We could record that sound and put it on a nature documentary, dude.”

He managed a glare. “Fuck you. I’ve been pretending to have stomach flu, it’s not like my mom was going to bring me anything to eat, and it’s not like I can go down and eat anything or she’ll know I’m faking it. Or think I’ve had a miraculous recovery or something.”

“Your stomach sounds even angrier and more feral than you-”

“I’m not angry or feral,” Eddie said.

Richie pulled up his glasses and wiped tears from the corners of his eyes. “It sounds like it’s saying-” he pinched his nose and spoke in a nasally voice “-Eddie, why are you treating me this way? Where is our sustenance?”

Eddie snorted and gestured a hand wildly. “What is that? My stomach wouldn’t sound like that. You just said it sounded like a bear. Yours would sound like that.” Eddie pinched his nose and tried to copy Richie’s voice as he said, “Richard, please, we need fruit, vegetables, vitamins…”

Richie nearly lost it. He was nearly crying now and having to stifle the sound of his snorts of laughter behind his hand. Eddie joined in and it was like all the tension had been forgotten. “I eat vegetables,” Richie protested between laughter, “y’know, like, that pointy orange one.”

“Jesus, you know what a carrot is, you loser.”

“Sure, those things you pick out the ground and just-” Richie jumped to his feet and mimed pulling a carrot from the ground as if he’d picked it up and crunched his teeth straight into it.

“But you wash it first, right?” Eddie cut in, laughter fading.

Richie continued to mime eating his imaginary carrot and made satisfied humming sounds to accompany his pantomime.

“Richie. You wash it first? Please tell me you wash your fruit and vegetables.”

Richie mimed swallowing it down and licked his fingers, enjoying the wince of disgust Eddie threw him, and winked. “If you wash it first you don’t get the crunchy surprise gritty treats.”

The sound of Eddie gagging made him fall back into uncontrollable fits of laughter again.

“You- You can get all sorts of nasty shit from not washing fruit and vegetables. Oh my god. Have you not heard of e-coli? It’s- It’s a scientific fact – fact, Richie – that you can get fucking- all sorts of fucking germs from them. You could get salmonella or listeria- food poisoning!” Eddie accompanied each of his broken sentences with a hand gesture. His brows were low over his dark eyes and his nostrils flared with each of his dire warnings.

Richie loved it.

Richie loved him.

He smiled as Eddie calmed down enough to realise that Richie had played him. “Fuck off,” he said petulantly, making Richie grin. “I’ll kick you back out the window.”

“Nah, you wouldn’t do that. Statistically I could fall and break my back or fall onto my ankles and never walk again.”

Eddie giggled despite himself. “Well at least now I know you’re passively absorbing all this information even if you’re not actually paying attention.”

“I always pay attention to you,” came out of Richie’s mouth before he realised how sincere it sounded. Was that a weird thing to say to your friend?

“Anyway,” Eddie continued in an odd voice, staring intensely at the bed quilt he was sitting on, “since you seem determined to give me a heart attack before I even hit my twenties, you owe me – I don’t suppose you’ve got any food on you?”

If Richie had he would already have handed it over, but when the full force of Eddie’s huge, dark eyes snapped up to him he would have given him the clothes from his back if they were edible.

“Sorry, man. I got nothing.” Richie perked up. “No wait! I have this!” He rummaged into his pocket and brought out a pack of gum.

“Gum?”

“It’s not food but chewing it will make you a little less hungry. I think. Probably.”

“Maybe,” Eddie said.

Richie unwrapped it and offered him a stick. “I’ve been saving it for a special occasion, but you can have one.”

“Thanks, Richie.”

Richie felt his heart squeeze at Eddie’s tone and the way he popped the gum straight into his mouth. For all his bitching and moaning about food poising he didn’t hesitate to have a piece of gum from the pack he produced from his pocket. He shook himself out of his thoughts and realised he’d been staring and was about to make a joke or excuse for it, but Eddie’s gaze was fixed just above his head again. And it was like he felt his hand brush over his sensitive wolf ear all over again. Richie shivered at the phantom sensation. If this was his reaction to him accidentally catching his hand on it, he shivered even harder at the thought of how it would feel to have him actually touch them on purpose…

But that was a stupid thought that he squashed immediately. Eddie could never know.

Richie looked at his wrist (he wasn’t even wearing a watch) and flourished it to Eddie. “Well, would ya look at the time? I’ve got to go and grab that shower and make myself presentable for tonight. I’ll buy us a truck load of junk food while we’re there-”

Eddie jumped to his feet. “No, you don’t have to-”

“-Yes I do! My treat, Spaghetti.”

Richie retreated to the window and felt his back bump into the sill. “You should probably put like, a bundle of clothes under the quilt later to make it look like you’re sleeping, just in case your mom checks in on you.”

“Yeah,” Eddie agreed, his voice quieter and softer than Richie was used to.

Neither of them moved.

Richie took a deep breath and threw a leg over the windowsill. “Right. Time to bail. I’ll see you later.” He really needed to stop acting like it was a certainty that he’d be there. God, what a mess he’d gotten into. “Meet me at the entrance to the fair at seven. You know where it is right? Okay, good. I’ll see you then.”

He couldn’t bear the sight of Eddie’s sad eyes anymore, so Richie saluted, said, “Farewell, Eddie my love,” in a high-pitched voice, then threw himself over the ledge to lower himself back down the way he had come.

If he turned his affections into a joke, he figured it would keep Eddie from suspecting anything. He wouldn’t joke about it if his feelings were real, right?

Once his sneakers touched the ground again Richie dragged the trashcan back to its place by the side of the Kaspbrak house and walked away without looking back. He wanted to see if Eddie was in the window so badly, but then he’d want to go back. Best to keep going.

He’d spent a while at Eddie’s, but he didn’t think he’d been gone long enough to go back to Ben’s yet – he didn’t want to disturb him.

Richie took in a deep inhale, focusing on the familiar scents of Derry – dust, grass, the nearby quarry, and a touch of magic – and kept moving forward. He’d see what tonight would bring, but his heart still felt like it was trying to process too many emotions at once and the lead weight of his worry sat heavy in his gut. He needed some help processing this shit.

Chapter Text

The preparations for the Full Moon Fair were already well under way.

Richie stood with his hands clutched over the bars of an iron gate that separated him from the field ahead – where he could see machinery and workers setting up the fair. A cluster of red balloons were tied to the gate next to him that swayed in the breeze.

Mike had told him that his family had been providing the use of some their disused farmland at the edge of town for years, and that the fair was a Derry tradition tracing back generations. The field itself was bordered by thick, dense forest, allowed to grow wild, and it was usually where Richie found himself most months – ironically never too far away from the very thing he was excluded from.

He felt his head clear as he took in a deep breath of the more rural air. He could smell the bitter oily machinery working on setting up the fair nearby, but underneath that was the sweet scent of leaves and leafy undergrowth drifting across from the forest. He drew in another lungful and felt his nerves calm. Being in town on the day of the full moon made him feel itchy and claustrophobic, and he increasingly longed for grass and trees and wind as the day wore on.

Richie scrunched his eyes shut and tried not to focus on his increasing queasiness and the feeling that something was ‘off’ – like he didn’t fit into his skin. It would only get worse as the moon approached.

A symphony of beeps, whirrs and clangs broke into Richie’s thoughts as trucks settled the rides and stalls into place and a group of volunteers yelled at each other to connect and check them over. The noise hurt Richie’s ears. He rubbed at one absentmindedly and realised it was the same one that Eddie accidentally brushed. Heat crept up the back of his neck as he felt the phantom echoes of the touch and he snatched his hand back to his side.

He focused on the shouts he could hear over the machinery:

“Hot dog stall goes next to the popcorn stand!”

“Hey, I need another power cable for the ferris wheel!”

“Can I get some more red balloons over here please?”

The commotion was exhausting to hear all at once, but it was kind of exciting too.

Richie had spent a whole year in Derry already, and every month he would stand in the same spot and watch the set-up, knowing he wasn’t going to ever get to go. He wasn’t sure why he bothered, because it only ever left him feeling miserable and jealous. Sometimes when he was a wolf, he would hear everyone having fun, and the human part of him would long to join in, while the wolf knew to steer clear and stick to the forest.

But this month was different.

(He hoped.)

Butterflies flapped so violently in his stomach he felt like he might throw up a bunch of them, and he recognised it as the same kind of nervous excitement he had before he performed on stage in the student bar – except then he had a script to fall back on and his nerves disappeared when the audience laughed at his jokes.

Richie wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans.  

He perked up when he caught sight of Mike in the distance, wearing a reflective yellow vest, instructing people from the clipboard in his hands. The workers consisted of mostly magical creatures and monsters, but there were a few humans there too – who all had no idea what sort of ‘people’ they were working alongside.

 (Thinking about how the enchantment worked made Richie’s head hurt sometimes.)

He sighed and turned to go, but Mike suddenly whipped his head up and caught sight of him. He waved a cheery hand in greeting as their gazes locked and Richie hesitantly waved back. He said something to a man nearby, but Richie was too far away and there was too much noise to hear what he was saying, and the man nodded as Mike pointed in a couple of places, then passed over his clipboard. He leaped gracefully over exposed power cables that snaked across the field and picked his way with ease between abandoned tools and bits of scaffolding to make his way over.

He was barely out of breath when he arrived. Afternoon sunlight shined off the large, coiled ram’s horns on either side of his head that curved over and around his pointed ears. The horns were both scattered with tiny yellow flowers and strings of green vine that glowed slightly when he smiled. It created an effect that always made Richie want to smile back.

“Hey Rich! Thought I sensed you there.”

“Hi, Mikey. You know one of these days I’ll actually sneak away before you realise that I’m here.”

“Sorry, man,” he said warmly, “can’t sneak around near me.”

Richie sighed dramatically. “And that’s why we’ll never be able to play hide-and-seek.”

“It’s not that we’re too old to be playing hide-and-seek?”

“Nope. It’s the using your powers to cheat thing.”

Mike chuckled. “I guess it would put me at an unfair advantage.”

It used to bother Richie that Mike’s dryad powers worked on him too; he could sense when he was close, like he could with all animals, even when he was in his human form. It was a disappointing reminder that despite his mostly human appearance (besides the ears and tail) it didn’t change what he was inside.

He always appreciated that Mike never treated him any differently than their other friends though.

“I actually wasn’t gonna stay long, but I got caught up admiring your simply marvellous vest,” Richie trilled, putting on the ‘fashion designer’ voice he used to annoy Bev with.

“Brings out the colour of my horns, right?” Mike flashed him a playful grin and Richie felt some of his worries fade under the warmth of Mike’s smile.

He knew that Eddie spent a lot of time with Mike, and Richie felt like that was good for him.

“Makes you look divine, darling. But let’s be fair – you look good in every colour. Even neon yellow.”

Mike smiled bashfully. “You say that like you don’t own shirts even brighter and louder than this.”

“Damn you’re right.” Richie laughed and put a hand to his chin. “Maybe a vest like that is the final step up for me. Commit to the evolution from bright colours to actual florescent. Hey, I could wear it in the summer with nothing else underneath and it’ll keep me cool.” He held up his hands to his chest. “You think there’d be too much side-boob on show though? Don’t want to look like a builder themed stripper. I could get Bev to sew me a modesty panel or something, so it doesn’t drive Eddie’s mom wild for me.”

Mike gave a hearty laugh. “I don’t know, I’m pretty sure Bev would make the vest straps even thinner if the words ‘builder themed stripper’ were involved in any way.”

“Shit, you’re right – she’d consider it a crime to fashion to add a modesty panel to anything. I fucking love that Miss Marsh.”

Mike shook his head fondly with a smile. “And that’s as deep as I’m willing to go into your vest fantasy. Stan would tell me off for humouring you this much.”

“Ah, he can complain all he wants and roll his eyes until they get stuck like that, but he loves us and our weirdness really.”

“We all do,” Mike said. “But you know, you should really stop making jokes about Eddie’s mom – you know he doesn’t like it.”

“Michael,” Richie whined, letting just a tiny edge of canine cadence pitch it even higher, “that’s why I do it! When Eddie stops scrunching his nose and telling me I’m disgusting, then I’ll stop the jokes.”

“You’re both as bad as each other.”

“I’m taking that as a compliment.”

There was a bang from somewhere amongst the construction and Mike turned instantly at the sound. A piece of one of the stalls had fallen over, but nobody seemed hurt, and a group of people began lifting it back into place. The man that Mike had given the clipboard to ran over to the commotion and pointed as he waved the clipboard in the air.

“Grandpa put me in charge of supervising the set-up and clean-up this month,” Mike confessed as he turned back, pride deepening his voice, “so I need it to go perfectly to show him I’m ready for more responsibility.”

“What, seriously? Congrats on your promotion, dude!” Richie held up a hand for a high-five, but Mike grabbed it and pulled him in for a tight hug instead.

“Thank you!”

“But I thought you hated Derry,” Richie said as they pulled apart, then realised how mean it sounded just after Mike had been so proud. “Fuck, that came out wrong.”

Mike laughed. “No, it’s fine. You’re right, I do.” He glanced back at the rapidly emerging fair and flurry of activity behind him. “There’s something dark about this town. Something wrong. But it’s a place where we can all live out in the open without hiding and living in fear of being discovered – the enchantment on this town means everyone can walk down the street, and nobody bats an eyelid.” Mike gave a half smile and Richie knew he was thinking of the hassle they all got as a group when they went around town sometimes. “Well, mostly everyone. But I think that’s what the Full Moon Fair is. A celebration of that whole philosophy. A pinpoint of light in the dark. All of us and the humans here… once a month we just all have fun, and it doesn’t matter what you are.” He smiled again and the flowers on his horns glowed even brighter. “If I can be a part of that, I’m happy. I just want to show everyone that this is what it can be like all month – we don’t have to only be this united at the fair.”

Richie gave an amused, affectionate little huff. Mike was so full of light and goodness. “When you run for mayor one day, you’ll have my vote.” And he was surprised by how much he meant it. There was so much Mike could do to change Derry. Keep the humans safe…

“Hm, Mayor Hanlon. I like the sound of that.”

“I feel like your speeches might get a little wordy though,” Richie said with a shrug. “You could give them to me, and I’ll trim them down – inject a bit of humour. Nothing us magical creature folk love more than a bit of humour, right?”

“Oh yeah,” Mike chuckled, “that’s absolutely what we’re all known for. Our good sense of humour.” He glanced over at the organised chaos at the sound of another particularly loud clang. “Maybe it’s just something werewolves have.”

“Nah, I was hilarious even before I got bit.”

“I can believe that actually. I’ve been to your shows. Talent like that, you don’t just learn overnight.”

“Aw shucks,” Richie crooned, “flattery will get you everywhere. Keep it comin’ Mikey.”

Mike laughed again, a deep and melodic sound, and then his expression grew shrewd. “I should probably save some for Eddie to give to you later though.” At Richie’s look of shock Mike gave him a couple of congratulatory claps on his shoulder. “I’m proud of you, man. When I told Eddie that I thought it was a good idea to ask you to the fair I wasn’t sure he was going to do it. And then even if he did, I didn’t think you’d agree-”

“-What the actual fuck!” Richie threw his hands in the air. “Either one of you losers has figured out how to get cell service in this town or you’ve all got fucking cans on a string hidden somewhere.” His voice cracked at intervals again and his wolf ears flattened to his head in his distress.

“Bill came to see me a little while ago,” Mike said gently, clearly surprised at Richie’s reaction. “Said you were acting strange and asked to see if I knew about it. When he said you were outside Eddie’s house… I just put two and two together and figured he’d asked you to go. I won’t tell anyone though, if you’re worried about that. I promise.”

“Yeah, you’d be the first!”

Mike looked at him sadly and the yellow flowers on his horns dulled and closed. “Richie…”

“Shit. Sorry. I shouldn’t take it out on you, I just… God, I’m so nervous and it feels like there’s so much added pressure with all of you knowing I’m going on a date-”

“So it is a date?” Mike burst out, as all the flowers on his horns opened and glowed at once.

“Shit,” Richie hissed. “Wait, did Eddie say it was?”

Mike shook his head. “Not in those words. Just that he wanted to invite you to go with him to the fair to show him around, but he was nervous you’d say no.”

“What? Why the fuck would he think I’d say no?”

“Didn’t say, and I didn’t want to pry. I just said if he wanted to ask you and you didn’t want to go, then you just wouldn’t go, and nothing would change. I told him it was a good idea to do something that he wants to for a change. Guess he took my advice.”

“Yeah, but now I’ve agreed to show him around a fair I’ve never even been to! On a full moon!” Richie scrubbed both hands through his messy hair. “Fuck. I’m such an idiot.”

More yelling and clanging came from the preparations behind Mike, but he didn’t even flinch, and he didn’t turn around. He locked eyes with Richie, while the sun reflected strongly off his shiny horns and vest – lending an almost ethereal strength to his words. “No, you’re not. I’ve seen the way you look at him, and I can’t speak for Eddie, but I’ve seen the way he looks at you too.”

Richie felt his heartbeat pick up and colour crept into his cheeks. “Y-Yeah?” he squeaked.

“Yes. There’s something between you both that runs deep, whether it’s romantic or not. I feel that there’s a special connection between you two.” Mike’s expression softened. “That’s why I’m so glad you’re going to tell him about being a werewolf.”

“Huh?” Richie felt like someone had plunged his brain into ice. It took him a moment before he could fully process what Mike had said, and then he shook his head wildly. “No. No no no. Fuck, no. You thought that’s what… No way.”

Mike pulled a face. “What do you mean?... There’s a full moon and the fair starts just after sunset… You’ve got to be planning to tell him – you can’t actually go.” He spoke quietly, like saying it softly would soften the blow of the words.

“Trust me. I’ve found a way… if it works.”

Mike’s wary expression grew. “Bill said you sounded like you’d been up to something. I hoped it was just because you were nervous about telling Eddie the truth. But what have you done now?”

Richie opened his eyes wide, flattened his ears and swished his tail. “When have I ever been ‘up to something’?”

Mike folded his arms and levelled him a look that Stan would be proud of.

“What the fuck’s the point of being part canine if these puppy-dog-eyes don’t work on anyone?” Richie sighed. “Okay, fine. So, I uh- I might have asked Ben for a bit of a favor? But before you say anything, you saw what he could do for Stan! I just thought he could rustle up something similar for me. Except less of the walking in sunshine and more of the not sprouting fur and walking on four legs.”

Richie expected an immediate lecture on how irresponsible it was to mess with his powers like that and for dragging Ben into his scheme too, but Mike only regarded him with such a guarded expression that he had no idea what he was thinking. It was almost unbearable. Richie’s fingers tapped rapidly against his thigh.

Mike finally hummed thoughtfully. “You think it’ll work? Is it even possible?”

“Honestly?” Richie shrugged and let out a relieved breath at the break of tension. “I’ve got no idea. But Ben seemed pretty confident. He didn’t like the idea at first, but I think he was enjoying the challenge by the time I left…”

“So, you take Ben’s potion, it stops you transforming, and you go to the fair?”

“That’s the plan!”

“To go on a date with Eddie?”

“Breaking it down like that makes it sound kinda dumb, but yeah. I don’t want to transform into a wolf so I can spend one night at the fair I’ve always wanted to go to with someone I’ve always wanted to go to it with.” Richie spoke with more emotion than he expected. He took in another deep breath, letting the scent of the forest nearby ground him. (God, if he started crying in front of Mike he’d probably just die on the spot). “And I’m pretty sure I saw a ‘no dogs allowed’ sign outside the fair last month, so it’s this or nothing…”

“I’m not criticising,” Mike clarified quickly, “I’m just trying to wrap my head around this.” He looked up at the sky and sighed. “You’re not going to like this, but I still think you should tell him.”

“Mikey, you know I love you,” Richie shot back in a strained voice, “but you do remember that little inconvenience of there being a punishment for finding out about all this, right?” Richie mimed a finger cutting across his throat. “For him and for anyone involved. So that would include me, and Ben, probably Bill, and now you.”

“So, he keeps it a secret,” Mike replied easily.

“Oh yeah, so he just casually accepts that I’m a werewolf and all his other friends are creatures he’s used to seeing in the fucking movies, and he keeps it a big secret and we all just carry on like before?” He hadn’t meant for a bitter edge to sharpen his words so much, but he was voicing a pain and worry that had lodged itself into his chest for so long. “And you know once he finds out about us, the spell over the town won’t work on him either. He’d see everyone for what they really are. What if he’s… not ready for that?”

Richie felt the heat drain out of him and realised he’d been pacing, his tail swishing agitatedly behind him with every step.

That felt an awful lot like making the decision for him – not letting Eddie have a say in whether he’d want to stick with the illusion or whether he’d want to see the truth about Derry and the monsters that lived in it. It was bad enough knowing that the town you lived in was full of the shittiest kinds of bullies and creeps, but it was another to know that they could tear your throat out with their teeth or claws if they wanted to. The laws in Derry for murder were flimsy at best. The only rule that was strictly held was the secret. Because humans could leave and take the secret with them…

“Look, I know that’s a scary thought,” Mike continued, “and yeah, I think Eddie will need time to adjust, but do you really think anyone is better living a comfortable lie than living with a harder truth?”

“Yes!” Richie’s voice cracked on the single word. “Comfortable lies are always better!”

“Richie…”

“Ugh,” Richie groaned and rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. “Don’t say my name like that. You’ve got that ‘I’m not angry, just disappointed’ tone.”

“Well, I am. I know you’re scared, man, but I think you just don’t want to tell him for you, not him. If you respected him, you’d tell him the truth.” His expression softened. “I’m sorry, I know this is hard to hear… But I think he needs to know.”

“Sometimes lying is just- lying is easier, okay?” Richie burst out. “Then everyone is happy.”

Mike looked so sad that Richie struggled to hold it together. They both knew he was kidding himself.

“I know it’s probably easy for me to say these things when I’ve never been in a situation like this…” Mike said gently. “Heck, maybe in your shoes I’d have done exactly the same thing. But I do know that these kinds of things never stay a secret forever. I think it would be better if you got a chance to explain, don’t you?”

“But what if he…” Hates me, can’t look at me, can’t touch me…

“You know Eddie better than anyone. How do you really feel he’ll react to being told the truth?”

Richie toed the dirt beneath his scruffy sneakers. He thought of all the lies Eddie’s mom had told and how much he hated it. He thought of Eddie accidentally giving him a nickname and throwing his teddy bear slipper at him to get his attention, and of all the times they would wait outside of each other’s classroom on campus, just so they could have a bit more time to hang out between classes. He thought of that glint in Eddie’s eyes when Richie dared him to do something stupid. He’d always do it. Even if he bitched about it the whole time. He really was a lot braver than anyone gave him credit for… And he didn’t deserve to be lied to by his mother and his best friend and everyone in the town he lived in all at once.

“I want to tell him,” Richie whispered suddenly, surprising himself, “but I just… I can’t… not yet. Not tonight.”

Mike reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “Okay. That’s okay.”

Richie clenched his palms almost painfully tightly by his sides, fighting with his warring emotions.

“This isn’t what I imagined I’d be saying to you before you first date,” Mike continued, “I’m sorry.”

“Excuse you- First date?” Richie squeaked. He adjusted his glasses and gestured to himself. “I’ll have you know that all of this is irresistible. I have been on plenty of dates, Michael. Plenty. Who wouldn’t want to go on a date and come away with wolf hair all over their clothes?”

Mike chuckled and Richie found some comfort in leaning back into his sense of humour and making people laugh. But he still felt just as bad as when he’d first left Eddie’s. If anything, he had even more on his mind now.

He’d have probably coped better with a chewing out from Bill or Stan than undergoing Mike’s soul searching.

Another clang rang out from the construction of the fair and someone called loudly for Mike. He turned and waved. “Sorry, I’ll be there in a minute!” he yelled.

“No, you should go, it looks like they need you,” Richie said. “They need their leader to hold them all together.”

Mike smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” Richie replied, with far more certainty than he felt. “Scout’s honour.”

“Look, I’m- I’m just worried about the potion. I’m not sure you should be messing with the natural order like this…” Mike sighed. “But I don’t think there’s anything anyone can say that will change your mind, is there?”

“Nope.”

Someone yelled Mike’s name again, but he waved them away. “But if you want me to come with you to Ben’s just say the word and I’ll hand over this vest right now and we can go together.”

Richie felt a lump form in his throat as tears prickled into his eyes. Sometimes he wondered how he’d got so lucky to have friends that cared about him so much. He managed to hold himself together long enough to shake his head, and he flicked one of Mike’s curved horns. It made a satisfying clink. “Get back to setting up that fair, man! I’m serious.”

Mike continued to look at him with concern, but Richie grinned and turned away with a little wave.

“Richie!” Mike called after him.

“Yeah?”

“See you later.”

“I’ll be the one standing on two legs!”

Richie heard Mike’s laughter as he went, but he’d only taken a few more steps before he heard a thin, wobbly excuse for a howl ring out from somewhere behind him. His wolf ears swivelled automatically at the sound, while Richie made sure not to turn around and give those assholes the satisfaction of seeing him react. It was joined by a chorus of other reedy howls and raucous laughter and Richie had to hastily shove down the instinctual impulse to join in – even if he knew the howl wasn’t real. He took a deep breath and kept walking.

He’d had enough practice to ignore this kind of shit by now.

The laughter and howling ended abruptly, and Richie chanced a glance at them, in time to see a group of the non-human workers scramble back to work at Mike’s approach – his horns glowing a vivid red.

Richie huffed out a breath in appreciation as he continued to leave, but he got to the edge of the field and instead of stepping onto the road, he stopped dead. His tail lashed behind him and he span on his heels. He was already so far away from the fair that he couldn’t see much other than the indistinct grey blobs of the rides and machinery in the distance and the spots of moving florescent yellow, but he knew they’d all hear him.

Richie inhaled as much air as he could, cupped both hands around his mouth, and let out a howl that came from somewhere deep within his chest and soul. One long, long haunting note rose into the air and climbed in intensity and volume until it was all he could hear and feel thrumming through his entire body. He held it as long as he could and trembled with the effort by the time he finally ran out of breath. Even as it faded Richie could still hear his own howl ringing in his ears.

He knew he was the only one who would be able to interpret the meaning of ‘fuck you’  that he’d threaded into the note, but he felt like the intention was pretty clear, and that made him feel better. He got some satisfaction from the flocks of birds that took to the skies from the surrounding forest, squawking an indignant chorus as they fled the sound. Richie heaved air into his burning lungs and smiled.

Fuck it, he was going back to Ben’s.

Chapter Text

Richie skirted the edges of town on his way back to Ben’s. He knew his howl had been powerful enough to have rang out through the whole of Derry, and he wasn’t in the right kind of headspace to deal with the whispers and barking from the townsfolk he passed on top of everything else.

Classic Richie Tozier, he thought bitterly as he trudged through fields of tall grasses, should learn to keep his mouth shut.

But the walk was longer than he anticipated, and he started to wish he’d gone through town after all.

He was getting pretty fucking sick of his brain refusing to do much else than loop over different, but all equally as terrible, scenarios of Eddie telling him over and over that he never wanted to see him again.

Having an overactive imagination was great for coming up with comedy sets, but not so great for trying not to dwell on thoughts of how your best friend would react to finding out you’re a werewolf. Sometimes, in his self-destructive scenarios, it was the lying that hurt Eddie the most, sometimes it was the turning into a wolf that disgusted him too much to even look at him, and sometimes it was just the ears and tail that freaked him out and had him calling him a monster.

Richie’s heart broke in every scenario.

Eddie was the kind of person who glared at students on campus who whispered as they went by, even though he had no idea what they were whispering about, and someone who Richie had had to physically hold back a few times from going to leap on Bowers when he would shove his shoulder into them if they passed him in town. He was the sort of person who had a meltdown over having to perform a presentation to his class, because he worried about getting too worked up by speaking in front of that many people and having an asthma attack in front of them all. But then he was always celebrating with Richie about it going well afterwards, because he wasn’t someone who was stopped by his fears. Maybe sometimes he was held up by them, a little like a deer in the headlights, but he would power through and he wouldn’t let the small stumbles stop him. Richie loved to see those moments when his brown eyes would blaze, and he’d do something stupid even though he was scared, usually just because Richie had dared him to, or because he was doing something stupid, and he would join in even though he’d bitch and moan about it the whole time.

Richie had witnessed his biggest act of bravery so far – lying to his mother, the one person who seemed to have a chokehold over Eddie’s whole life. He’d started pushing the boundaries of his curfew recently, but that was the first time Richie had seen him tell such an elaborate lie and plan to fucking sneak out. It was like seeing someone take the first step towards freedom, even if it was in a small secret way. And if that wasn’t its own kind of bravery, Richie didn’t know what was.

But as brave as Eddie was, he was also the one that gagged when Richie ate with his mouth open on purpose, carried two bottles of hand sanitiser, plasters of various sizes, pain killers, an inhaler, and disinfectant wipes in his fanny pack (that he always carried on him when he left the house), and he could recite a fully memorised description of basically any kind of disease or bacteria whenever prompted.

Eddie had to be held back from leaping on the biggest psycho in town, but he’d seen him hang his head in shame and mutter ‘sorry, ma’ when his mother demanded to know why he was home fifteen minutes later than his curfew. (It hadn’t helped that Richie always walked him home when he was late, for the moral support, because that was probably when his mother had decided that he was a bad influence.)

Eddie Kaspbrak made no sense and Richie loved him all the same.

Richie nearly stumbled with the force of that revelation on his poor overworked nerves, but he smiled privately and carried on, crunching through dry grass, and swatting away disturbed insects.

He only stopped when he realised that he had made it to the ‘Kissing Bridge’. He looked around nervously, knowing this was a favourite spot of couples looking to carve their initials into the old wood bordering the bridge. Romance was pretty dead for the older creatures in town, but he knew a lot of college students would brag about carving their names on the fence and then making out on the bridge to like, seal in the magic or some shit. He didn’t really believe there was any real enchantment on the fence, but the number of names carved into it proved that it was a popular local legend. Oddly, for Derry, it was something harmless and sweet. Richie wondered how it would feel to go there with someone you loved, believing in the dumb magic of the Kissing Bridge…

His fingers itched by his side.

He glanced around again, but there was nobody there but him, so he scanned the old wood for a small gap and dove down to his knees, not caring about the scuff of gravel on his jeans. His dorm room keys were in his pocket. A weird buzzing started in Richie’s ears that he tried to ignore as he shakily carved out R + E with his key, cursing when it slipped out of his sweaty hands a few times.

What was he doing?

His heart thumped furiously in his chest, but as he stood back and admired the tiny carving Richie felt a glow of something warm too. His feelings were as real as the grooves he’d made into the wood. No matter what happened or how Eddie felt about him, his truth was the tiny wobbly R + E he’d carved onto the fucking Kissing Bridge.

Richie walked hastily away and let out a deep sigh as he left the bridge behind.

Somehow that had made him feel both better and worse.

Eventually the ground sloped downwards, and Richie came to the edge of a creek. He sloshed straight ahead through the water, since his sneakers were beaten up and worn already, so what was a bit of water going to do? But when he got to the middle of the creek he paused. Beside him was a yawning shadowed hole where the water was running steadily out from, and Richie realised it was the end of a huge sewer pipe. A freezing, dank wind blew from inside like an animal letting out a long breath. It licked the skin on Richie’s arms, and slid over him like cold, slippery fingers. The fur along his tail spiked up at the gross sensation and it nearly dragged a growl from his throat.

He’d never been this way to get to Ben’s before, and he certainly wouldn’t again.

Richie shook himself all over like a dog shaking off water, and he pushed on.

The sun was much lower in the sky, and his shoes had fully dried out, by the time he made it to Ben’s.

The little cottage was so inconspicuous from the outside – nobody would ever know how deep down it went and that it was filled with so many books about magic and monsters.

Richie tried to stop feeling so nervous as he approached, but the butterflies that had been present in his stomach all day just flapped harder and he swallowed thickly to try and quell his growing nausea at the impending full moon.

He hadn’t even noticed anyone was sat on the roof until he heard a sultry voice ring out, “Hey Puppy, why so sad? You lost? Need some help finding your way home?”

“Why, honey-pie, are you offering?” Richie shot back playfully, shielding his eyes from the low sun’s glare as he grinned up at Beverly, sitting with her legs dangling over the edge of Ben’s roof. Even with his eyes shielded, he could only make out her silhouette.

“Why don’t you come up here, Puppy, and I’ll point you in the right direction?”

“Well now, that’s an offer I can’t refuse,” Richie said in the same voice, then added an enthusiastic, “I’ll be with you lickety-split.”

Bev laughed; a sound that trilled out musically from the roof before it ended in a snort. “Actually, I changed my mind! Anyone that says lickety-split can stay down there.”

“Too late!” he shouted. “I’m coming up!” Richie was about to try and consider how he was going to climb up his second house of the day when the silhouette of Bev waved at him and pointed across the roof.

“There’s a ladder, you doofus. Please don’t break your neck trying to scale the house – Eddie would kill me.”

Richie let out a grateful breath and made his way to the other side of the building, where a wooden ladder had been attached to the wall that ran all the way from the ground to the roof. He didn’t have to question why Ben had built a ladder onto the side of his house – they all knew Bev liked to sit in high places, so if he wanted to join her up there, he’d need a reliable way of getting up and down.

Cute.

It was so much easier to climb up Ben’s house than it was Eddie’s – each rung of the ladder felt sturdy as he climbed, and the wood was polished smooth under his palms. He needed Ben to build one of these onto the side of Eddie’s house. They could disguise it as an ivy trellis or something. His mom would never know.

Richie finally heaved himself up onto the roof and came face to face with a smiling Beverly Marsh. The evening sunlight glinted off the flame red feathers of the short wings on her arms and caught on the copper-coloured speckles that dotted them, like sparks crackling out from a fire. More feathers were threaded through her red hair that rustled as she moved and tiny feathers were scattered just below her eyes amongst her freckles, that sparkled in the dying light. He’d told her once that he thought she had phoenix blood in her and she’d scoffed. But it was hard to believe she wasn’t one sometimes, whether she saw it or not.

Harpies were almost as rare as werewolves, so Richie had felt a certain kind of kinship to Bev immediately, and then her sense of humour had completely won him over.

Bev offered a clawed hand to him and he gratefully accepted the help to his feet. Despite the scales, like the ones on a bird’s legs, her hands were softer than they appeared, and Richie remembered being surprised the first time he’d held her hand. The talons she had for feet, just like her hands, clicked as the claws hit the stone roof when she stepped back. Her scales faded into regular human skin just below her knees and just after her wrists. She appraised him for a moment and then gestured a winged arm at him. “You look like shit, are you okay?”

Richie sighed. “I’m so glad we’re comfortable enough in our friendship for you to be honest with me in this beautiful way.”

Bev’s lips pulled into a wicked grin. “You know I’ll always tell you how it is, Tozier.”

“Thanks. I’m just gonna go jump off here to find someone who really loves me.”

“Hey, come here, I’m sorry,” Bev cooed, opening her winged arms wide. “Really, are you okay?”

Richie allowed himself to be pulled into her feathery embrace and let out a sigh. “No,” he muttered into her soft hair, then rested his chin on the top of her head. Bev was the shortest in their group of friends, though only a little shorter than Eddie, but she made up for the lack of height in her hugs with the enthusiasm of them. Her arms encircled his waist, and she leaned her head into his chest – her feathery hair tickled his chin.

Richie smiled and gave her a squeeze while his tail wagged gently behind him. “Thanks Bev,” he sighed.

She let go and pulled back enough to peer up at him. “You really do look pale though… Is it wolf stuff?”

Richie pulled his glasses up and rubbed at his eyes. “Mostly.”

Bev placed her clawed hand carefully to Richie’s forehead, sweeping under the curls of his fringe. He really needed to get his hair cut soon. “You do feel a little hot.”

Richie smirked and opened his mouth, but her claws came down and pressed onto his lips before he could say anything.

“That was too easy even for you.”

He let out an amused huff. “Damn. You know me too well, Marsh.”

“Oh, I know you’ll take a shot at any low hanging fruit you can, Trashmouth.” Bev took a step back and shook her head as if she were disappointed in him, but her lips were pulled into her trademark lopsided smile. “I can already see you wanting to make a joke out of that too,” she accused, with a jab of a claw to his chest.

“Would I? You have such low expectations from my comedy! I’ll have you know; I am a true connoisseur of classy mom-jokes and only the highest of high-brow material. Just ask Eddie!”

“I’d pay to see Eddie’s reaction to a question about what your comedy is like.”

Richie smiled fondly, imagining Eddie’s sharp intake of breath and hands swishing through the air while he absolutely roasted the shit out of Richie’s sense of humour. But he could complain all he wanted – he was the person who laughed the hardest whenever Richie landed a good joke. 

After a pause, the concern returned to Bev’s expression and she tilted her head like a bird. “Y’know, I’ve never seen you this close to the full moon before.”

Richie let his good humour fade as he sighed again. “No.” He looked across at the sunset and felt the fur along his tail prickle. The light was fading fast and setting the sky ablaze with a red that caught on all of Bev’s feathers and made her look as if she were on fire. It was beautiful, but the dread that gnawed his stomach and added to his nausea only grew with every reminder that time was running out. He needed to see if Ben had finished the potion.

“I’m usually deep into the forest on the other side of town by now,” Richie continued sadly. “Ready to alternate between throwing up and shivering and getting ready to strip out of my clothes so I don’t get stuck in them when I transform. It’s a great time.”

Bev whistled. “Sounds rough,” she said softly. She reached across and held his hands between her talons. “Please tell me there’s a story behind you knowing you can get stuck in your clothes if you don’t take them off.”

Richie laughed so suddenly it came out as a bark. “Duh!”

“But you’re not going to tell me?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to throw myself off the roof.”

Bev looked as if she was considering it.

“Fuck off Marsh!” Richie let go of her talons and swatted at them as she giggled.

“The moon being close to rising – is that why you’re so hot-” she rolled her eyes “-have such a high temperature?”

“Yep. It’s basically my body going, what the fuck, we’re doing this again?”

Bev flapped her arms towards him, and all the feathers stirred up a delightful breeze that Richie closed his eyes and leaned into – feeling a bit like a dog leaning out of a car window. It felt good on his clammy forehead.

“Better?”

He nodded.

“That’s good,” Bev said, “but, why aren’t you in the forest now?”

“Hm?” Richie tried to bring his thought process back from feels nice don’t stop.

“If you’re this close to the full moon, what are you doing here?”

He opened his eyes and his ears perked up high in his head in his surprise. “Wait… you don’t know about later?”

“Know what?”

“Holy shit, I just assumed all of you losers knew by this point!”

“Oh,” she began innocently, “you mean later – your date with Eddie at the fair and the potion Ben is making for you to be able to go?”

Richie placed his head in his hands. “What the actual fuck! I’m never telling you little shits anything ever again!”

“Oh, Rich, I’m sorry, I really am.” Bev snorted and clapped her talons over her mouth. “I couldn’t resist!”

“Who told you?” Richie groaned. “Was it Bill?”

“Nah, it was Ben.”

“Ben?!”

“Well, he didn’t actually mean to tell me – I knocked on the door and he opened it all sweaty and nervous and said that he was sorry, but he couldn’t see any visitors right now. Which is very… un-Ben. I got worried and I asked if he was okay, but he just said he was working on a delicate potion,” Bev explained. “Which I thought was fair enough because I know how he gets when he’s making potions. But when I asked him what the potion was, he freaked out and said that it definitely wasn’t for Richie.”

“Oh Jesus.”

Bev smiled fondly. “I asked him why he would be making you a potion on the night of the full moon, and he got even more flustered and said that the anti-full moon potion wasn’t even for you at all. By that point I think he knew what he’d done, so I told him I wasn’t leaving until he told me what was going on.” She threw him an apologetic look. “Sorry, Rich.”

“It’s fine,” he said with an air of defeat. “Everyone else knows so why not.”

“He said he’d come fetch me when it was ready, and I was going to fly out to find you if you hadn’t already come back. But here you are.”

“Here I am,” Richie echoed. He brightened for a moment. “Oh man, I’d have loved to see you fly down to get me. Coming down from the sky like a beautiful scaly angel.”

Bev flipped him off. “Next time I’ll just tell him to use a dog whistle.”

Richie grinned, though it lacked his usual energy, and it faded as he looked up at the bleeding sky again. “I know deep down that it’s not really a problem that you all know… about me and Eddie I mean.” Richie thought of how supportive all his friends had been. “But the potion I could have lived with staying a secret. Makes me feel a bit pathetic.”

“Pathetic? No. Too in love to make rational decisions? Yes.”

“That makes it sound worse.” Richie groaned and his ears flattened down. “I just… want to go on a date with my best friend… Is that weird? I feel like that should be weird.”

“There’s nothing wrong about falling for your best friend, Rich,” Bev huffed good-naturedly. “I get it. It’s scary. But at least you know that if it doesn’t work out you can just go back to being friends, because that’s how you were before anyway.”

For a moment Richie was taken back to a similar conversation he’d had with Ben. The whole group had already guessed about Ben’s crush on Bev, because he wasn’t exactly very subtle about it, but could she also…

“Bev, do you-”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” she interrupted, “or we can, but then I’ll have to push you off the roof.” She echoed his words from earlier and Richie huffed in amusement.

“Oh, okay, I see how it is! We all have an opinion on Richie’s love life, but does Richie get to know about anyone else’s? Stan’s probably got a secret girlfriend or something. Turns out Mikey is secretly married to a tree. But I plan one date – which might not even be a date for Eddie – and you all know about it!”

Bev looked entirely unapologetic. “We both know you would have told me about later anyway. You can’t keep a secret to save your life.”

“Neither can all of you apparently!”

“Richie,” she sang, “I love you, but don’t be such a big baby about this, you’d have told us all eventually.”

“Okay, maybe,” Richie conceded. “Probably. Alright, yeah, I’d have definitely blurted out my big dumb crush on my highly strung human best friend to you eventually. But I just… I don’t know what to do about it. And now there’s so much added pressure because you all know, and he doesn’t. Mike thinks I should tell him about me. The whole werewolf thing…”

“Maybe you should! Eddie is definitely someone who can keep a secret.”

“Not you too. I need some backup on this. I can’t tell him something he could get killed for, Bev. And I don’t want him to look at me like I’m a…”

Monster.

“Well either way,” Bev said more gently, giving him a supportive smile, “like I said, you can always go back to being friends if it doesn’t work out.”

“But I… I don’t want it to not work out Bev. I don’t know how I could hang around him and pretend that I don’t feel the way I feel. It’s hard enough already. I don’t think I could know what it’s like to date him and then go back. I’d go crazy.” Richie’s voice was low and raw with his honesty and he raked his hands through his curls. Damn, he sure was getting good at talking about his feelings now that he’d had to do it so many times in one day.

Bev’s arms suddenly wrapped strongly around his waist and pulled him into another hug. He held onto her smaller frame with a tight grip and tried not to cry again. At some point he knew he was going to break.

The low sun cast their combined shadow as a long line across Ben’s roof. Each passing minute brought Richie closer to the time it would set. His stomach still felt uneasy and fluttery, preparing itself for the change that it knew was coming, and his temperature was still high – so along with his achy muscles it felt like he’d got the flu. He knew he was running out of time because his skin was itchy with the impending covering of fur that awaited it, but he knew scratching at it didn’t soothe it, he would just be left with deep red scratches and no relief.

“Baby,” Bev sang again, much softer, with an added note of magic that threaded through the words that made Richie feel a little calmer, “baby, you’ll be fine.”

They clung onto each other and Richie sighed again in her hair. Then one of Bev’s hands migrated up from his waist. A claw had barely even touched the sensitive fur on one of his ears, but he jumped back like he’d been shocked and swatted at her talons. He gasped dramatically and put on a high-pitched voice that properly conveyed the exaggerated levels of disgust he was going for when he screeched, “Well I never! Here we are sharing a tender moment and you go and try to cop a feel of my poor ol’ ears while I’m feeling vulnerable! For shame Miss Beverly!”

Bev let him go and giggled, holding her hands up like she’d been caught. “What can I say? I can’t resist. I saw my opportunity and took it. I’ll scratch those things one day, I swear. But it’s your fault they’re so fluffy.” She smiled warmly. “But at least I got you to smile properly again.”

Richie shook his head like a dog and ruffled his hands over his ears. They were feeling twitchy because of the full moon anyway, but they were always sensitive, and he didn’t want anyone to touch them. But he thought of Eddie accidentally brushing one was a sense memory that made him blush, and as if she could read his thoughts Bev said slyly, “I bet you’d let Eddie touch them.”

But before Richie could process something to say there was a loud bang beneath them as the front door to Ben’s house flew open so fast it slammed against the wall.

“Bev!” Ben cried with excitement. “Bev! You’ve got to get Richie – I did it!”

“He’s right here!” Bev yelled back. She moved to the edge of the roof and pointed behind her, where Richie stood safely away from falling without the added security of wings. He leaned forward a little and waved.

“Oh!” Ben squeaked. “Well, that’s great news! Hi Richie! Oh yeah, you need to come down to the basement, the potion’s ready and there isn’t much time left!”

Richie heard Ben’s footsteps retreat inside with a patter.

He shared one hopeful look with Bev before he made to go to the ladder – but she reached out and grabbed his arm to stop him.

“Get on,” she said, pointing to her back with a clawed thumb, “it’ll be faster.”

“What the fuck, seriously?”

“Yeah, but now you owe me a scratch of those fluffy ears, Tozier.”

“Dude, deal.”

Bev waved her arms in the air and the small layer of feathers hanging from them, that would never be able to lift anyone into actual flight, grew down rapidly into a pair of wings that almost touched the floor. She shook them out and they fluffed up into a shape that more closely resembled real bird wings – pointing past her hands to make a wingspan large enough to carry a person. (Plus one lanky werewolf if they were just gliding to the ground.)

Richie hopped onto her back (with an apology as she grunted at his weight), hooked his ankles around her waist, and held onto her shoulders as she shook out her feathery wings again and leapt from the roof. Richie whooped as they went; gliding down quickly but gently to the ground as air captured under her wings and slowed their descent.

As soon as Bev’s clawed feet touched the floor Richie hopped off her back and she shook her arms to make the feathers retreat again.

“That was awesome. We have got to do that off the ledge at the quarry sometime!”

“You know what I’ll want in return,” Bev countered with a wink, as the feathers returned to the length they were before.

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Richie conceded. “Does that uh- wing thing, hurt?”

“Nah. It’s like… You ever seen those window blinds that are on a roller? My arms are like that. The feathers can come down and then when I’m done, they just roll back up inside… I’ve got really thin hollow bones for flight, so there’s lots of room in there.”

“Oh, shit,” Richie laughed, knowing Eddie would be gagging by now.

They made their way inside.

Richie himself was in no place to comment on it being gross because he’d never actually seen his transformation, but he couldn’t imagine it was a pretty sight to see someone physically turn into a wolf. He’d heard – and felt – the snapping of bones often enough between his own screams to know that he would definitely be able to beat Bev’s arms on a scale of grossness.

They both walked quickly down the long corridor that made up the centre of Ben’s house, then descended into his basement, just as he had done earlier that day. The large gothic wooden door was already ajar.

When he pushed inside Richie expected to see a scene similar to last time – but he was unprepared for just how much messier it was; dozens of bunsen burners and glass beakers bubbling with various liquids were strewn across Ben’s desks, there were more notes than ever, and discarded petals and herbs were scattered over them. The two cauldrons were also bubbling loudly above their fires and letting off a sweet sickly scent that turned Richie’s already sensitive stomach.

Ben’s witch hat and cloak had been abandoned over a chair, leaving him in just his bright purple undershirt. His cheeks and pointed ears were brightly flushed when he turned excitedly to Richie as they entered, and it was clear to see that his fringe was spiky with sweat – pushed to one side like he’d been wiping there frequently with the back of his arm.

Ben held up a test tube proudly, a cork stopper in the top holding in the bright blue liquid, and his smile lit up his whole face as he held it out to Richie. “Here.”

“That’s it?” Richie asked before he could stop himself.

Bev tapped him on the nose like she was scolding a naughty puppy and Richie hastened to backtrack with a hurried, “No, I didn’t mean it like that!”, as Ben’s expression fell. “I just- I thought there’d be a whole cauldron of it or something, and then I could… y’know, use some every month…”

Ben pulled the potion bottle back and cradled it to his chest with a kind of reverential care. “Richie… I said I couldn’t do anything about your transformations permanently. I’m sorry. This is all I could make. Getting the ingredients to balance out was almost impossible.”

Richie really looked around at the chaos then, and took in just how hard Ben must have worked to make what he’d originally said wasn’t possible. There were pages and pages of notes, spilling over from the desk to the floor; some screwed up into balls, some with charred corners, some bound together with string – all in a language Richie couldn’t even read. There were also scattered bottles everywhere, all filled with murky brown liquids. Failed potions, he realised.

Richie knew he was sounding ungrateful about it. He’d just… deep down he’d secretly hoped this could be a kind of cure…

He pushed a smile to his face. “Thank you, Haystack, I really mean it. You did amazing! Proof that you are the king witch of potion making. Potion Master Ben!” he cheered.

Ben brightened immediately and a bright blush settled again into his round cheeks. “I don’t know about that… It took a lot of trial and error,” he murmured bashfully.

“I’m so proud of you for sticking with it though,” Bev said with a clap of her talons.

Ben’s blush deepened and he ducked his head down as he passed Richie the potion bottle again. “Th-Thanks, Bev.”

Richie pulled the cork stopper out with his teeth, spat it across the room, clenched his eyes shut, and tipped the glass bottle to his lips – swallowing it in a couple of gulps with his head tilted back like a shot. It slipped down his throat smoothly. He pulled the bottle away, wiped his lips with the back of his hand and coughed a little at the extremely cool minty taste that burned down into his chest. It had a kick to it.

When he looked back to Ben, he had such a horrified expression that Richie blinked owlishly in surprise. “What?”

“Did you- just… drink that whole thing in one go?”

“Uh- yeah- shit, was I not supposed to?”

Bev cackled and bent double with the force of her laughter. “Shit, Tozier.”

Ben paled as all the pink in his cheeks seemed to drain away at once. “I… um… I can’t believe you just did that. What if there were some special instructions to taking it? Oh… I can’t believe you just downed it without knowing what it does.”

Richie swallowed hard (damn that stuff was still burning) and casually asked, “But were there any special instructions?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Exactly! Down the hatch and it’s done!”

Ben wiped his forehead with the back of his hand again, mussing his fringe further into disarray. “Okay well, please never do that again. But how do you feel?”

Richie paused and held his breath. How did he feel?

“I’m not sure… I don’t feel sick anymore. I don’t feel…” Richie turned his hands over and stared at them in wonder. “I don’t feel itchy.”

Ben snatched up a thick notebook from nearby and scribbled into it with a quill, scratching it rapidly across the page. “Anything else?”

“Actually… yeah, my ears feel a little… numb.” Richie reached up and touched one, but although he could feel the fur beneath his fingertips, he felt nothing from the ear itself. “Shit,” he hissed, “my ears are numb.” He reached around and grabbed at his fluffy tail, feeling the dense fur and the soft undercoat as he sunk his fingers in. “Can’t feel anything in my tail either.”

Ben nodded as he wrote and then looked up apologetically. “Sorry. I thought that might happen. I should have warned you.”

“No, don’t take responsibility for that,” Bev put in quickly, “Richie should have let you tell him the possible side effects before he downed the potion.”

“Okay, okay, maybe drink first, ask questions later wasn’t one of my finest ideas,” Richie groaned.

“How about in yourself?” Ben continued kindly. “You said you don’t feel nauseous anymore, right? But do you feel any different?”

“Not really. Should I?”

“I don’t know… this is a real first for me. Anything you can tell me would be really helpful. Otherwise… I can’t say for sure if it’ll even work.” Ben dipped his head down into his book, nearly pressing his button nose into the pages. “We actually won’t have any way of knowing if the potion will stop your full transformation until the moon rises,” he admitted.

“Woah, hold up. I told Eddie I’d meet him at seven. That’s before the moon’s come up!”

Bev sighed. “What the fuck, Richie, why’d you tell him a time before the moon rises?”

“I panicked okay! I was having a big dumb crush crisis and I panicked!”

“Well, I know you’re not going to like this, but I really think you should stay here until the moon rises,” Ben said softly. “If it works then I’m sure Eddie will understand when you get there – we can come up with a good excuse for why you’re late.”

Richie started shaking his head even before Ben had finished talking. “I can’t. Imagine Eds standing there thinking I’ve stood him up or some shit.” Richie spoke with a casual air that didn’t match the stab of hurt that thought produced.

If the potion didn’t work and he never went at all he’d have to send Bev or Ben to go and tell Eddie that he wasn’t coming, but what excuse could he possibly come up with that would make it okay to blow him off like that?

He remembered Mike saying that Eddie had been worried about asking him in the first place because he thought he’d say no – standing him up like that would kill Richie.

He’d rather take the gamble.

“Fuck that,” Richie said with a snort. “I’m going. Right now, these things are totally numb-” he had to concentrate hard to make his ears wiggle and his tail flick, not able to feel the movement in the limbs themselves “-so I know that if the feeling in them comes back online that’s a bad sign, and I’ll make my escape before I transform.”

“I don’t know Richie, it still seems a bit risky…”

“Dude, there’s a forest literally right next to the fair. I’ll just dive in. Easy.”

“‘Easy’, he says,” Bev repeated with a lopsided smile.

“Well either way, I took it, I’m going, I’ve got just enough time to race over – I believe in your work Ben,” Richie added enthusiastically, with both thumbs up.

“You’re not even going to change your outfit?” Bev still had a slightly amused air to her, that was visible in the way her feathers were fluffed up playfully, like this was all exactly as she imagined the lead up to any date involving Richie to go.

Richie glanced at his wrist again. (He still wasn’t wearing a watch.) “No time.” He shook his head like a wet dog to make his curls bounce and pulled his glasses off to wipe them with the corner of his yellow dog-bone print shirt. “There we go.”

Bev rolled her eyes. “Ben, do you have a tie?”

Ben jumped as his attention snapped back to them both and Richie realised that he’d been deep in thought. “W-What? A tie? Sure, I do.”

“Can Richie borrow it for tonight?”

“Y-Yeah, of course!” Ben raced out of the room.

Bev had a gentle look on her face as she smiled at the doorway that Ben stumbled out through in his haste to get Richie a tie for his date.

“Hey, maybe you two should come to the fair too. We can double date.” Richie let his eyebrows dance up and down and he clicked his tongue.

Bev scoffed but her feathers fluffed up even more. “You can try to change the subject, but tonight’s all about you, baby.”

Richie laughed. “We can just add this to the pile of times that Richie-Tozier-has-fucked-up-but-his-friends-are-there-to-save-him.”

“And we always will be,” Bev promised. “And just so you know, I would do the same thing if I were you.”

“Really?”

“If I fell in love with a human?” Bev held out her talons and flexed them, the scaly skin and her large claws shining in the light from the fire beneath the cauldrons. “I wouldn’t be able to touch them, you know. The enchantment would show me as a human, but it can’t trick sensations. I wouldn’t even be able to hold their hand.” She flicked her pale eyes towards the door to the basement. “I’m lucky,” she said softly, “so if there’s a way that you get to experience that? Then you should do it. I really hope you have an amazing time, whether it’s the first date of many or just hanging out with your best friend, okay?”

Richie felt the backs of his eyes sting and tried to swallow past the lump in his throat. “Oh my god babe, you’re gonna make me cry and all my mascara will run, and I’ll look like some kind of tragic clown,” he whined in an extremely high pitch as he fanned his eyes.

Bev cackled and ruffled a talon in his hair.

“Hey, I just shook that out.”

“Well now you have the tousled look. Eddie will want to run his hands straight through it, trust me.”

Richie choked and felt heat crawl up the back of his neck.

“I’m back!” Ben exclaimed as he burst back through the doorway.

Bless Ben and his perfect timing, Richie thought with affection.

Ben offered out a white tie, that Richie took gratefully and tied around his neck over his black undershirt, and then he held up a leather jacket that he’d had slung over his arm. “My dad sent me this a few years ago for my birthday, but it’s- uh- not really my style, so I’ve never worn it. I mean, I know it’ll be a bit big, but…”

Bev huffed and snagged it from Ben before Richie could. “Good thing I’m here,” she said with a grin. She managed to find an empty corner of one of Ben’s desks and laid the jacket out flat, then plucked a small feather from her cheek with a little wince. Richie watched in fascination as she used a claw to rip down the back of the leather, licked the tip of the feather, and looked up at Ben expectantly. “I need some string.”

Ben jumped into action immediately, racing around to a pile of objects underneath one of the desks, and pulled out the same red string that Richie recognised from the walls. “How about this?”

“Perfect.”

With a care that Richie didn’t realise Bev’s claws were capable of, she pushed the tip of the feather through the string and began to sew. The feather glided effortlessly through the leather – obviously sharper than even a needle. She went fast but Richie was still conscious of the time. He tried not to let his agitation show, but his leg began to bounce of its own accord and Bev looked up at him sharply – her pale eyes shot a glare at him that stilled his leg immediately.

Finally, she pulled the thread tightly and broke it off with her teeth, creating a satisfying snap. She held the jacket up with satisfaction and Richie gasped. The seam she’d made was almost invisible.

“Holy shit, Bev. I knew you liked to sew, but this is on another level.”

Bev almost blushed as she handed it over. “It’s just something I really enjoy. Harpy feathers are perfect travelling sewing needles.”

Richie put it on and smiled. The arms were still a little long, but somehow the torso fit perfectly. “How does it fit this well? What kind of magic is this?”

“Just the magic of a good seamstress’s eye,” Bev giggled. She appraised him up and down and he did a little twirl. “I have to say, you really pull off this look, Tozier. With this you’ll basically be irresistible. Go get ‘im!”

Richie jumped forward and kissed her forehead, then jumped over to Ben and kissed his forehead too. “Thank you both! I really fucking mean it. I love you and I owe you big time. Anything you need, I am there.”

Richie felt an odd twinge of apprehension when he realised that his tail was wagging with his happiness, but he just couldn’t feel it. It was like trying to shake his arm when he slept on it funny and it went numb – he knew he was shaking it, but he couldn’t feel the motion.

Ben smiled, but it didn’t squeeze up his cheeks like it normally would. “Just have a good night.” After a small pause his smile faltered. “And please remember that if you feel like it’s not working, head into the forest.”

“Sure thing, Haystack.”

“Richie!” Bev shouted after him just as he was about to leave.

“Yeah?”

“I want you back here before your curfew, young man, and I want you to stay respectful to that sweet Kaspbrak boy,” she joked. “No funny business.”

Richie threw his head back and laughed. “I’ll be staying out all night, sorry. I’m gonna soak up every last bit of that full moon light that I can. And I can’t promise anything with Eddie either.” He winked at her as he ducked out through the door, but he had to wipe his palms on his jeans as he jogged back through Ben’s house. He talked a good game, but he’d be lucky to get through the night without crying or stress-puking or making a fool out of himself with a combination of both.

Richie looked up at the darkening sky and jogged towards the fair, ironically almost wishing he had four legs to run on.

But, for once, the full moon wasn’t going to be about being a werewolf. It was just Richie Tozier, at the full moon fair at last, on a date (maybe) with his best friend.

And he wasn’t going to let anything ruin it.

Chapter Text

The path leading to the fair’s entrance was lined with glowing lamps and helium filled red balloons, swaying slightly in the breeze. For some reason it didn’t seem all that welcoming to Richie. Maybe it was the colour. They were so shiny; the red just reminded him of blood.

Richie was stood in the deep shadows that all the lights had made, hanging back just a little way from the beginning of the path. He watched as monsters and creatures of all kinds and species walked through the balloons, alongside totally unaware humans.

They all looked… kind of happy.

It was odd for a town like Derry. The only time he usually saw residents of the town smiling was because of someone else’s misfortune or unhappiness. And yet, here they all were smiling and joking with each other.

From the fair itself he could hear a cacophony of noise; fairground rides whirring, screams of fun and terror, energetic music from the stalls, laughter, chatter… Everything seemed so… normal.

It reminded Richie of what Mike had said about the fair being a light in the darkness.

He’d never seen Derry like this.

He watched everyone walking down the path to the entrance and noticed a couple of human students from his drama course talking animatedly to a girl their age with grey skin, stringy dark purple hair, and long black claws. She flashed a mouthful of needle-like teeth whenever she laughed, but the humans both laughed along with her. A human mother was holding the hand of her human child, chatting amicably with a woman whose skin was rough and broken like the bark on a tree, with moss and mushrooms growing from her head, holding the hand of a child with leaves instead of hair and smooth pale bark instead of skin.

Everywhere Richie looked he could see humans and monsters talking and laughing together, shoulder-to-shoulder as they made their way to the fair.

It surprised him because humans in Derry were usually treated like second-class citizens. And even as a monster, the more human-like you were the more you were treated just like them, which is why the members of the Losers Club were treated so badly. And that was fine with him. If Eddie was going to be shunned by the town, then Richie was happy to go right down beside him.

Afterall, he’d been human once too.

Richie glanced up at the sky – a deep navy colour – and inhaled a deep, steadying breath before he made his way to join with the steady stream of Derry residents walking down the path.

As soon as Richie’s foot hit the gravel, he felt a slight shift in the atmosphere. Almost imperceptible.  But he had always been particularly good at scenting magic, and he could detect it faintly as he walked – a pleasant smell; earthy and natural, like the scent of a forest after rain, and not at all like the bitterness he was used to in town. Was there some kind of enchantment on the fair? Nobody else looked like they noticed anything unusual as they walked, so Richie put the thought to the back of his mind.

He knew by the colour of the sky that it was nearing the time he said he’d meet Eddie. He looked excitedly beside the entrance arch just ahead – with the words ‘Welcome to Derry’s Full Moon Fair’ painted in red onto it, and a little green turtle painted beside that – but there was nobody there.

Maybe he was a little early?

Richie stepped off the path and moved to the side of entrance, out of the way of the people still walking under the arch. He’d be able to see Eddie as soon as he approached from where he stood.

He tried not to think about how weird it was to not be able to feel his ears and tail. Usually even the tiniest shift in air was enough to stir the sensitive fur just inside his ears, but now he couldn’t feel anything in them. His tail was always flicking or wagging or moving, mostly of its own accord since it was all subconscious, but now he couldn’t feel any of it at all. He knew it was still moving like it always did, because he could see it, but he couldn’t feel it. He concentrated hard and made his tail flick up sharply, but he could only faintly feel the movement in the base of his spine.

But all the itching and other symptoms he associated with the full moon were all gone. Between that and the lack of awareness of his ears and tail, he almost felt… human again.

Richie hadn’t been waiting long before he got thrown his first odd look. A pale man covered in orange veins gave him a long stare as he walked past, which was made more unnerving by the unblinking orange eye in the centre of his forehead, glowing ominously. Richie only just resisted the urge to tell him to take a photo. He needed to be on his best behaviour for when Eddie got there.

If he ever turned up.

Richie tried to ignore the slow increase of his heart and the return of the fluttering butterflies in his stomach that he knew had nothing to do with the rising of the moon.

What if all of this was for nothing?

The thought made Richie take a few deep breaths to try and quell the instant burst of nausea that threatened to have him expel the contents of his stomach right next to the fair entrance arch. And it had nothing to do with the full moon this time.

He folded his arms, unfolded them, tapped his foot, bit his fingernails… but still no Eddie.

While he was waiting, he noticed a few of the monstrous residents of Derry whispered as they passed him by. They moved widely around him as if he were going to explode into a wolf right there and pounce on them. One ghoul stared at him for so long he was tempted to jump at her and bark, just to see how she’d react. Best behaviour, he reminded himself, as he again resisted.

He’d expected it, of course, being the only werewolf in Derry. It wasn’t every night that the only werewolf in town was at the event that specifically took place on the night of the full moon – the one night they were certain to be busy, conspicuously un-furred and definitely-not-a-wolf.

But he had to admit that he was enjoying their puzzled expressions.

Richie huffed with amusement and peeked around the arch into the fair, just for something to take his mind off the wait. He caught a glimpse of Mike nearby, his horns reflecting the flashing multi-coloured lights around the fair, focused on talking into a walkie-talkie. But his posture seemed relaxed, and everything seemed to be going well. Richie was happy for him.

“Richie fucking Tozier,” spat a voice that severed through Richie’s good mood. (He knew his tail fur would be bristling, even if he couldn’t feel it.)

“Fuck off Bowers,” Richie snapped back before he could stop himself.

Bowers and his three sidekicks had veered over from the steadily moving line while Richie been distracted, but their sour, rotting stink practically rolled off them as they neared, and he shuddered from his ears to his toes. It was difficult to have an enhanced sense of smell at a fair because he could barely distinguish anything out of the combination of all the residents, the cooking food, and the oily fairground rides, but now they were close enough, their smell was almost overwhelming, and it stuck in the back of his throat so thickly he struggled not to gag.

All four of them had greying flesh hanging from them in patches and milky white eyes. Hockstetter had most of a cheek missing, revealing blackened teeth when he smiled; Victor had a deep slash across his throat, that bubbled out black blood as he laughed; Belch had a dark crater where his nose should have been, and sticky scabs around his mouth; and most of Bowers’ skin was peeling, scabbed, or torn away in chunks to reveal dull looking bone beneath.

They chuckled collectively at his obvious discomfort and Hockstetter pushed back some of his lanky stringy hair to mutter something into Victor’s ear, then pointed down to Richie’s tail.

Richie had to bite his tongue to stop from growling, but he could feel it curling in his chest.

Bowers looked up at the sky and back down pointedly. His bones grated and snapped against each other with every movement, and it felt like nails down a chalkboard to Richie’s sensitive hearing.

“Shouldn’t you be running around in the woods by now?” Bowers sneered. His voice came out grating and guttural from his rotting vocal cords. (But Richie did at least get the satisfaction of knowing he was confused about how he could possibly be here.) “You think playing pretend is gonna make you any less of a freak? Get the fuck out of here, mutt.”

“Shouldn’t you all be in someone’s compost heap by now?” Richie replied without missing a beat. “You’re all way past your expiry dates. Man, the necromancer who raised you must have been so disappointed after you all came out your graves the same as you went in. It’s not like death can kill off braincells that weren’t there to begin with, right?”

As usual he couldn’t stop his mouth from running, even when he knew that he had nothing to back it up with – four against one weren’t odds he should be letting his mouth lead him into. He’d been punched by bullies a lot when he was a kid for the same reason.

“Time to finally put you down, you fucking dog.” Bowers took a threatening step forwards and snapped his jaws open and closed hard enough to produce a chattering snapping sound. The three zombies behind him mirrored his actions.

In some other universe, maybe behind a screen if he were watching it in a movie, Richie would have found the action amusing – but the sound of their snapping jaws and grating bones rattled straight through him and touched on an instinctual fear. Wrong, wrong, wrong, his body screamed, as the living corpses locked their milky white eyes on him, the chattering increased in intensity, and the gang continued to advance towards him.

But another part of him rose to the challenge and refused to shrink away, and Richie recognised it immediately as the wolf. “Fine,” he said, though it came out more as the growl he’d been trying to supress, “attack me just outside the Full Moon Fair. Night of peace. Do it. Right in front of all these witnesses – see how fast you get put back in your graves.”

Bowers stilled, his eyes narrowed in hatred and disgust, and he rattled out a low breath. “I can’t wait to tear you up,” he hissed, “and bury you in pieces out in your precious woods. Looks like the fair saved you tonight. But what’s going to save you after that? You think anyone’s gonna care if the local stray goes missing?” He snapped his jaws one more time and spat a glob of black goo at the ground at Richie’s feet.

The others behind him hissed out laughter.

They shoved past Richie as they went by him and their flesh squished into his shoulder uncomfortably, the smell almost overwhelming him.

But they didn’t go back towards the entrance arch, instead they shuffled away into the woods nearby. Richie didn’t want to think about what they’d be doing in there.

“Richie? Hey are you okay? Was that-?”

Richie held up a hand to Mike and turned around to dry heave.

“Oh, fuck,” Richie said in a wobbly voice eventually, thankfully having kept the contents of his stomach where they should be. He wondered what would happen if he threw up the potion but squashed that thought before he could finish it.

“Richie?” Mike prompted again.

“Hey Mikey, yeah. Shit. I’m fine. Just some pest problems around here.”

Mike glared over at the shadows the group of zombies had disappeared into. The flowers on his horns glowed a deep red. “They try to sneak in every year, and every year they get kicked out. They know they’re banned for life. Did they do anything to… oh my god- Richie! You made it! You’re here, man!” The flowers and vines on Mikes horns rapidly blinked into a green glow, and even the horns themselves lit up brightly.

Richie chuckled. “I made it! Just, waiting for Eddie.” He tried not to sound as uncertain as he felt, but he knew his voice had gotten quiet at the end.

Mike gave him an encouraging smile. “He’ll show. I know he will. Just be patient.” He clapped him hard on the back and Richie wheezed with the force of it. “It’s so great to see you. I can’t wait for you to see the fair.”

“Are you kidding? It’s killing me not to jump straight in there – all I can smell is the best kinds of junk foods I can think of, and everyone sounds like they’re having a blast.”

Mike smiled even wider. “Oh, you’ll love it. Look, I’ve got to get back, but don’t worry, he’ll show,” he repeated, with so much certainty that Richie almost believed him.

“Thanks, man.”

Mike bustled away with his walkie-talkie and disappeared back into the fair.

Richie sighed.

The queue of people had all filed inside now and he could hear most of Derry enjoying themselves. The red balloons lining the path were floating and bobbing gently in the evening breeze, now that all the people had gone, and Richie had the sudden urge to pop them all.

He waited.

“How much is that doggy in the window,” he sang softly to himself, “the one with the waggly tail.” Richie closed his eyes, almost able to hear his mom’s voice in his mind. She would hold him every morning after the full moon, after he transformed back, and just sing. It always felt stupid for a teenage boy to hold onto his mom and cry while she sang nursery rhymes to him, but those were treasured memories of a distressing time for them all, and maybe he needed the comfort right now.

“How much is that doggy in the window,” he tried again, hating the way his voice was wobbling and betraying him. “I do hope that doggy’s for sale… Fuck.”

He tried not to focus on the weight of something horribly aching and cold crushing down on him. God, he was stupid. He really thought that Eddie would want to go to the fair with him… And now he’d done all this for nothing…

Richie let out another sigh and sat down heavily on the dirt, crossing his sneakers beneath him. He was going to stay here all night if he had to. He wasn’t going to go to the fair at all if it wasn’t with Eddie.

Despite folding his arms and staring ahead at the empty path, it wasn’t long before his hands itched to move and he started plucking clumps of dry grass from beside his feet, depositing them into a little pile next to him. He reached over again and again and ripped out grass with more force than was necessary. But it was making him feel a little better at least. “Sorry grass,” he said, about to tear off more, when he realised there was a soft, white kind of light on his hands that wasn’t coming from the coloured lights of the fair. He abandoned the grass and turned his palms over.

Moonlight.

Holy shit…

He hadn’t even noticed. His eyes widened as he looked up at the perfectly round, full moon, shining brightly in a clear Derry night sky.

It was the first time his human eyes had seen a full moon since he was barely thirteen years old.

Tears immediately sprang to Richie’s eyes, but he couldn’t stop staring. Even as the tears ran down his cheeks. So, this is what finally breaks me, he thought, knowing how hard he’d been fighting to hold it together all day.

Eventually he had to look away, realising he’d burned a purple circle into his vision, and he laughed wetly as he removed his glasses to rub his eyes.

The full moon…

Then Richie heard something else. There was a distant sound of feet pounding on dry dirt and crunchy grass, ragged breathing, and a constant streaming mumble of, “I’m late, I’m so late, shit, I’m so late…”. Richie didn’t even dare to hope, but his wolf ears picked up the sound so perfectly he knew they’d angled themselves towards the noise, even if he hadn’t felt them swivel.

He knew that voice.

He replaced his glasses to see Eddie Kaspbrak running across the field, nearly stumbling when his feet touched the gravel path and the stones shifted dramatically with his speed. He skidded and righted himself practically mid-step, so his pace never even faltered. And then he was pounding down the path so fast that the balloons danced wildly in the air he left as he went.

Richie jumped to his feet, and he could feel in a twinge in his spine that was his only indication that his tail was wagging furiously, but he didn’t care. Edward Kaspbrak was running to him. To him! At the Full Moon Fair!

Eddie skidded to a sudden stop so fast he nearly tripped over and crashed straight into Richie – he put his arms out to steady himself and Richie grabbed onto them to help with his balance. He was breathing heavily, but it was the normal kind of heavy breathing after a run like that, not the kind of gasping he’d be doing if he really did have asthma like he’d claimed when they first met.

Eddie shook his head and continued to breathe until he could get enough air to form words. “Sorry – I’m so late,” he managed eventually. His usually perfectly neat and sweepy hair was in disarray and his cheeks were flushed a deep red, while his big brown eyes practically sparkled in the combined silver of the full moon and the coloured lights from the fair nearby. The moonlight was dusted across his freckles and even the tip of his nose was red from running in the cool night air. Fuck, he was beautiful.

They were still gripping onto each other’s arms and Richie still hadn’t said anything. His poor overworked brain was trying to assimilate too many good things at once and it just wasn’t used to it. He couldn’t believe this was really happening.

The potion had worked.

Eddie was here.

“Hey, Rich, are you okay? Have you been crying?” Eddie’s voice was so soft, now that he’d gotten control of his breathing, and he looked at Richie with a gentle concern that shook him to his core. It took every scrap of self-control he had to not pull him into his arms and crash them together in a hug. (And start crying again.)

“What, this? Nah, I did the most epic yawn just before you got here – made my eyes all watery. You took so long to get here that I thought I was going to fade away and become one with the field.”

Eddie swatted at his arms and Richie chuckled as they let go of each other, even if he felt a twinge of loss at the contact.

“You jackass,” Eddie said irritably, “I said I was sorry, didn’t I?”

Guilt always made him spiky – like a little guilty hedgehog.

After a beat, his expression pinched, and he looked down at the ground. “My mom nearly caught me leaving.”

“Oh, shit.”

“The window got stuck while I was trying to open it – don’t laugh – and it slammed when it got free. Of course, she heard, so she came up and asked me if I was okay, and I told her I’d fallen out of bed – oh my god stop laughing, I panicked – so I waited until she went back down to make my escape, but she just didn’t move. Stood there for ages. I think she was waiting for me to fall back to sleep, or maybe she suspected something was going on- I don’t know.” Eddie raked a hand through his thick hair.

“Then by the time she finally went, I already knew I was so fucking late. But I got so far down the side of the house – it’s a lot harder to climb down than I thought actually – and I realised that there was nothing for me to climb onto because someone moved the trashcan back, so I just had to drop down the rest of the way, and I’m surprised I didn’t break anything, honestly. And you wouldn’t believe how long I sat there crouched by the side of my own house just in case she’d heard me drop and came to see what the noise was. And then she’d catch her only son sneaking out when he’s supposed to be in bed with the stomach flu.” Eddie somehow managed to make most of his rant sound like one long run-on word, and he heaved a deep breath once he was done. He accompanied some of it with the jerky hand movements that Richie usually loved, but he was clearly in distress, so it didn’t have quite the same effect it normally did. “And now I can’t stop thinking, what if she decides to check up on me for real and I’m not there?”

Richie’s own hands twitched by his side with the desire to follow up on his instinct from earlier and pull Eddie into a hug – but they were already riding such a thin line between friends doing something fun together and friends going on a date together, that Richie just stood paralysed by the fear that it would be a misstep and ruin the whole night.

In the end he went for a classic Tozier move and threw an arm over Eddie’s shoulders. Safe. Eddie groaned but Richie thought it felt like he leaned into the touch.

“You’re wound up tighter than spaghetti on a fork, Spagheds. Y’see how I tied your nickname into my metaphor?”

Eddie sighed but he turned his head to look up a little at Richie, still with his arm over his shoulders, and there was a small smile on his lips.

If he’d struggled not to hug him before, Richie had to summon willpower from another dimension not to lean down and kiss him.

He smelt amazing and his lips were right fucking there.

He cleared his throat and used his arm to guide Eddie towards the entrance arch to the fair. “That sounds like a tomorrow problem. We’ve got all night to just enjoy the fair. Besides, you know I have my ways of talking to your mom that can get you out of trouble – I can be very persuasive with her.”

Eddie gagged. “Beep beep, Richie.”

Was it petty to make disgusting jokes about Eddie’s mom that she would hate? Sure. But did it make Richie feel better? Absolutely.

Richie laughed so hard it came out as a snort, and he could feel the base of his spine aching with the force of his wagging tail. He needed to cool it, just in case Eddie felt the brush of fur against his legs, but it was much harder to control without being able to feel it. How was he supposed to keep tabs on a numb limb?

Richie gave his shoulder a squeeze and then parted them, just to be sure.

They walked through the entrance and Richie couldn’t hold in his gasp.

There were lights strung up everywhere, music was assaulting him from all directions from speakers at various stalls and rides (not a single song was the same), laughter and screams were accompanied by the woosh and mechanical clacking of rides, and food sizzled loudly in oil. It was everything Richie imagined it would be.

“Wow,” Eddie breathed.

And he was here with Eddie!

“Welcome to the Full Moon Fair!” Richie said grandly, trying to cover his sudden attack of nerves with theatrics.

Every noise and smell clashed with each other, and some kids nearly bumped into their legs as they scampered past – screaming and dragging bright red balloons behind them. It was perfect.

A young woman with bright red hair and white and red clown makeup attempted to give them both a red balloon as they moved inside and Richie shook his head violently, feeling his curls whip around his cheeks, as he veered away from her. She smiled widely after them and waved, and it gave Richie the creeps, even if she’d smelt totally human.

“I’m surprised you resisted coming inside, considering I was so late,” Eddie said, clearly trying for casual, but missing it by a mile with the nervous glance he threw him from under his lashes.

“Duh. I wasn’t gonna go in without you. I’d have waited for you all night, you know that.”

Eddie let out a little relieved breath. “Thanks, Rich.” He bit his lip and his big brown eyes looked sad as he softly added, “You didn’t think I wasn’t going to come, did you?”

Richie’s heart gave a mighty thump. Of course, Eddie had seen right through his flimsy lie about yawning. He felt kind of embarrassed that he’d clearly looked like he had been crying, but he’d been hoping that he’d thrown enough layers of joking over the top of it that Eddie wouldn’t really register it, and it wouldn’t come back up again.

Everyone else saw Richie joking around and thought that everything must be fine if he was smiling and cracking jokes about it, but Eddie somehow always saw through his smoke and mirrors and knew when something had really hurt him.

It’s why he was always terrified that he would catch on to him lying about his true identity.

“I… thought you might have changed your mind,” he admitted honestly, before he could stop himself.

“No way- I would never-” Eddie bit his lip and looked away. “I just… froze. When I thought she’d catch me… I just froze. I’m such a coward.”

“Eddie.” Richie locked eyes with him and tried to sound as earnest as possible. “You know, you’re braver than you think.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yeah, you really fucking are, man! I have to stop you from leaping at Bowers at least once a week-”

“Only ‘cause he deserves it.”

“-And you’re always doing stuff that makes you scared, but you do it anyway. I wish I was like that.”

“You’re an idiot,” Eddie huffed. “You are like that.”

Richie felt a swirl of guilt pool into his stomach. He didn’t know how much of coward he really was, or he’d have told him his secret by now. “Well, I never,” he cried, in a croaky high-pitched voice, “here I am giving you compliments and you’re calling me names.”

Eddie smiled and a giggle escaped his lips. “Oh, ew, do not do that voice again, you sound like my grandma.”

“This voice?” Richie made wet kissing sounds. “Come give your grandma a kiss, Eddie!”

Eddie shrieked and leaped away, and Richie snorted laughter at another one of his favourite sounds.

(He found it equal parts funny and sad that he did actually want a kiss.)

Eddie flipped him off from where he stood a few paces away and a human woman glared at him as she covered over her young son’s eyes as they passed by. Richie clapped his hands and Eddie’s uncontrollable giggles erupted out of him again.

“I told you that you were a bad influence on me,” he accused as he came back.

“Me? Moi? Don’t tell me you didn’t make rude gestures at all your friends when you lived in New York, because I won’t believe you.” Richie placed his hands on his hips, waiting for Eddie to make a funny remark back, but instead he looked away and his eyebrows drew down sadly.

Oh, Richie realised with a jolt, don’t tell me…

He never spoke about his time in New York, before he moved to Derry, and whenever Richie asked, he always changed the subject. Richie thought that was just because he didn’t like the city, so he never pressed the point and he didn’t usually bring it up, but today he was suffering with putting-his-foot-in-his-mouth even worse than usual, so of course he’d just accidentally pressed on the exact reason why Eddie never spoke about his old home.

Good start, Trashmouth.

“Y’know what, I just realised I’m wasting all our fair time running my mouth! Let’s get in there! Where d’you want to go first?”

Eddie brightened and made an uncertain humming sound. “Well, shouldn’t we get tokens first?”

“Tokens?”

“Yeah, so that we can do stuff. The fair doesn’t take money.” Eddie pointed over to a booth with a small queue of people lined up in front of it. A board next to the booth stated that the fair only dealt with tokens and listed the prices of how much money they would cost for a bundle. It also said that the tokens were non-refundable. Which probably wasn’t a problem if you could save your leftovers for the next month’s fair, but was more of a problem when Richie knew he wasn’t actually going to have a ‘next month’s fair’.

“Oh yeah! Yeah! Tokens! Totally forgot about them.”

They joined the queue and Richie realised Eddie was giving him one of his narrow-eyed stares.

“You forgot about the tokens?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.” A pause and then, “How many do you normally get?”

“About twenty dollars,” Richie lied, plucking an amount from the top of his head, and trying not to cringe.

Eddie was still looking at him strangely, but he pulled a note from his pocket and paid for his tokens when he got to the front of the queue. Richie did the same.

He was given a small bag of tokens that clinked when he lifted them up, and he took one out with curiosity as he walked away from the booth – it looked like a small silver coin with the words, ‘NO CASH VALUE’ stamped onto it. He placed it back inside the bag and tried to squeeze it into his pocket, with little success, as he approached where Eddie had stopped to wait for him.

“Come here,” Eddie said impatiently, presenting his hand and holding open his ever-present fanny pack. His small token bag was already inside, nestled next to his hand sanitiser, and Richie noticed the conspicuous absence of his inhaler. He stuffed Richie’s bag in there too and zipped it up with a sharp tug.

When he lifted his head, he seemed to do a double take at Richie’s torso. “Wait, are you wearing the same shirt as earlier?”

“Uh, no, there’s clearly a jacket over the top. Makes it totally different.”

“I get changed and made an effort and you, what, just threw a jacket on?”

Richie nearly choked with how much he wished he knew just how much of an effort he’d made for tonight. Instead, he sighed. “Yeah, yeah, I’m lazy, tell me something else that’s new. But you’re still wearing a blue polo shirt, dude, it’s just a different shade.”

“Polo shirts are easy to wear and easy to iron. If you’d ever ironed a piece of clothing in your entire life, asshat, you would appreciate clothes that are easy to take care of.”

“You do such a good job of it, too,” Richie remarked playfully, poking at Eddie’s collar. The uneven ironing on his collar always made him smile. He knew that Eddie did a lot of the chores around the house (sometimes he thought that’s why his mom wanted him around more than anything) but it’s like she never taught him how to do any of them, so he just kind of picked them up. It was funny to think that Eddie could cook, clean, wash and iron, while Richie still relied on takeout for most of his meals and sprayed his clothes with a can of fabric cleaner to freshen them up.

“Fuck off,” Eddie grumbled, humour dancing in his eyes. “I’d like to see you do better.”

“Challenge accepted Spaghetti. Bring me your precious polo shirts!” Richie yelled the last part and a young couple covered in scales and holding hotdogs threw them both odd looks as they passed.

“Are you kidding? No way am I letting you near any of my clothes.”

Richie slowly reached out a hand towards Eddie’s shoulder and he slapped it away.

“Oh my god, do you have, like, an instant impulse to do something if someone tells you not to?”

“No.” Richie reached out his hand again.

Eddie laughed as he grabbed it and held it still. “I’m holding onto this until you can control yourself and we can actually go enjoy the fair.”

“Okay,” Richie squeaked.

Eddie was holding his hand!

(He’d have preferred it to be not to stop him from being annoying, but he’d take what he could get.)

Eddie’s hand was warm and small and, Jesus, he had a strong grip. Richie could feel his palm sweating, but he wasn’t about to let go and wipe it.

“So- uh- where to first?” Eddie asked, looking everywhere but at him.

Maybe he could feel his hand sweating.  

Richie cleared his throat. “Well, I promised you food, didn’t I? Gotta calm that bear in your stomach.”

Eddie finally met his eyes, a frown tugging on the corners of his lips. “You’re never going to let me live that one down are you.”

Richie didn’t even reply – he just clicked his tongue and winked.

“Okay fine, lead the way, I’m too hungry to argue.”

Richie lunged forwards and tugged – feeling a thrill jolt through him at being able to pull Eddie along because they were still holding hands.

“Do you even know where you’re going?” Eddie asked above the noise of the stalls they passed.

“Of course,” Richie replied smoothly, “they put this stuff in the same place every year.”

He had no idea if that was true or not, but he knew the food he was looking for, and his nose would lead him there. His ears and tail were numb, but his sensitive sense of smell was still online, so he would just have to trust himself to pick the scent out of the chaos around him and follow it without sticking his nose in the air like a bloodhound catching onto a trail.

Eddie didn’t let go, and Richie was glad of it because the fair was even busier than he’d expected, and they’d have probably lost each other in the crowds if they weren’t linked together.

“See?” Richie said smugly. “Told you I knew where I was going.”

“Hotdogs?”

“Yes, hotdogs. They’re hot and meaty and they get served in stodgy white bread that’ll fill you up.”

“They’re lukewarm,” Eddie shot back, with a crinkle of his nose at the stall. “And made up from all the scraps of pig they didn’t want in everything else. In soggy buns.”

“Where’s your imagination, Eds! This is the real food of a fair.”

“They- they never keep these things at a safe temperature. You know when bacteria start multiplying in food? When it’s not kept hot. Or even worse! If- if it is kept hot, but then it cools down, and then they heat it up again. You think a little stall like this is going to regulate the temperature well?”

Richie could feel Eddie’s hand tug a little on his, as if twitching with the desire to make the sharp gestures that always accompanied those kinds of rants.

“I’m right here, I can hear you,” the woman behind the stall interrupted with a tight-lipped frown. She had long sandy coloured rabbit ears that stood up high on her head, with two sharply pronged antlers in front of them that were covered in lavender flowers. Richie could just about scent the lavender over the smell of the hotdogs, but it made him feel both relaxed and alert at the same time – like it was affecting the human and the wolf differently, but all at once. It made him feel a little dizzy. The woman smiled, revealing two long canine fangs, and her red eyes flashed with amusement. “Peckish?” she asked Eddie.

Eddie nodded and Richie looked at him sharply – his pupils were blown wide.

“Me too,” she went on as she prepared two hotdogs, “but I can’t eat while I’m working. How sad.” She took another look at Richie. “Hey, aren’t you the wer-”

“Don’t put anything on the one, but put a bit of everything on the other,” Richie interrupted.

She looked between him and Eddie and smiled again, her fangs flashing in the low light. “Ah,” she said, as she placed the hotdogs down and Richie gave her the tokens. “I’m kidding anyway. I’m not hungry on fair nights.”

She winked at them both while Richie gave her a scowl and he nudged Eddie until he picked up his hotdog.

“Thanks,” Eddie slurred.

Richie led him away quickly and the scent of lavender faded completely, and then he blinked and seemed to come back to himself. “I can’t believe I agreed to this,” Eddie said, as if nothing had happened. He finally let go of Richie’s hand to eat.

“I got yours plain, because I know how much you like boring food.”

“Fu’ off,” Eddie mumbled around his mouthful of hotdog. He swallowed and looked surprised. “Actually… I take it back… this tastes good. Thanks, Richie.”

“No problem, man. I promised, didn’t I? A hungry Eddie is a cranky Eddie.”

Eddie flipped him off as he took another large bite.

“Crankier,” Richie amended.  

They were stood off to one side, out of the way of the hustle and bustle, near some stalls with games on them – stuff like throwing rings onto the necks of bottles and knocking coconuts off sticks. He watched as groups of people took it in turns to pay the attendee and do their best to win a prize. The shouts of triumph and groans of disappointment set off Richie’s competitive nature.

He shoved the last portion of hotdog into his mouth all at once and chewed vigorously, trying not to laugh and choke at the utterly disgusted expression Eddie was giving him.

He swallowed hard and pointed at the stalls. “Eds. Eddie Spaghetti. We have got to win something cool.”

Eddie took another reasonable sized bite of his own hotdog. “I thought that shit was rigged.”

Richie raised his eyebrows and wiggled them. He could see Eddie coming to the same conclusion as him: What was better than winning something that was supposed to be rigged to be unwinnable?

Eddie made a show of sighing, but there was excitement in his expression as he shoved in the last of his hotdog too and pointed as if to say, ‘let’s go’, as he chewed.

Richie immediately almost went to grab his hand back, but what excuse could he have for it? What if Eddie shook him off and asked him what he was doing? He always took the joke too far – it would be just like him to do it again. Instead, he pumped both fists into the air. “Time to win stuff. Dream team coming through!”

Eddie kept pace with him the whole way to the stalls and Richie gestured at them. “Okay, game plan?”

Eddie looked at them critically. “I think we try them all, see which ones seem the least rigged, or we can figure out how they’ve fixed it in their favour, and then go back to the one we think we have the best shot of winning at. We’ve both got a bunch of tokens left. We just double down on the one we think we can win at.” His voice was clipped and focused, like he was laying out a battle plan, not a way to win a cheesy prize at a fair. It was kind of hot.

“Yessir.”

At the first stall they visited there was a row of three wooden clown faces on sticks, with tiny red balloons in place of their noses. A line of three small red balls sat on the counter a few paces in front of them, and a naga stood next to the stall, though Richie noticed he had legs instead of the usual snake-like bottom half. His skin was covered entirely in bright green scales that rippled as he moved, and a forked tongue darted out at Eddie and Richie’s approach. (It still blew Richie’s mind to think Eddie wouldn’t be able to see any of it.)

“Fancy your luck… boys?” he hissed, with a smile that was unnaturally wide.

He pointedly looked at Richie, and he resisted the urge to growl in response. The fair had put everyone in a good mood, but it didn’t make them any less judgemental towards werewolves apparently. It just made them nicer about it.

“Only three tokens for three throws – and if you can pop all three balloons you win a prize,” the naga explained in another hiss.

Eddie examined the clowns with a critical eye and looked down at the three balls lined up on the wooden counter.

Richie squinted his eyes and gestured a hand towards the clowns. “What the fuck, how are you supposed to pop those tiny balloons with these tiny balls?”

He snorted a laugh and Eddie sighed.

“Do not tell me you just laughed because you said tiny balls.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you.”

Eddie rolled his eyes and placed his tokens on the counter.

“Good choice. Good luck.” The naga slammed a scaled hand onto the tokens and slid them over the worn wood, staring unblinkingly at them the whole time – like a snake, Richie realised with a shudder.

Eddie remained oblivious as he stretched out his arms and shook them.

“Oh,” Richie chirped, “I forgot you have a freakishly good throwing arm, Eds. This one should be a cinch.” He moved behind Eddie and squeezed his shoulders enthusiastically, putting on a voice as he said, “Okay, champ. Time for the big leagues. I know you can do it.”

“Okay, okay,” Eddie laughed. “I get it, you can do a good sports coach impression. I’m impressed- now stop that- it tickles!”

Richie moved his hands to squeeze right in the dips between Eddie’s neck and his shoulders while he laughed and tried to squirm away. “It what?” he yelled. “Sorry, the fair’s too loud, I can’t hear you.”

“Ri-Richie st-stop-” Eddie could barely speak through his laughter and he tapped feebly on Richie’s hands as he lost himself to his waves of uncontrollable giggles.

Richie eventually let go and Eddie could barely catch his breath – not in the same way that he’d seen when he had a panic attack, or even when he’d ran to him at the entrance – it was the unique kind of breathlessness that happened when you’d been tickled relentlessly by your annoying best friend. When he turned around Richie felt a glow of satisfaction that radiated strongly through his chest at Eddie’s red face of adorable fury, with maximum nose scrunch and a deep line between his tightly drawn eyebrows.

“You’re such an asshole,” he wheezed, only adding to Richie’s sense of achievement.

“Takes one to know one,” Richie chimed back, matching his wide smile.

(Extremely sensitive where his neck meets his shoulders, Richie thought, as Eddie muttered angrily.)

(He filed that revelation away for another time.)

His tail was wagging so vigorously that he was glad it was numb – he wouldn’t be able to feel the muscles ache.

The naga cleared his throat and they both jumped. Richie was worried that Eddie was going to be embarrassed, but he met the naga’s eyes with a defensive tilt of his chin and all the good humour and fun looked like it had shuttered instantly behind a defensive wall. As if he was saying, ‘so what?’ with just a look.

“Get them right in their dumb gross noses!” Richie yelled, interrupting Eddie’s glowering, and trying to slap humour over the sudden doubt that gnawed at him that said he was giving out too much PDA for friends-at-a-fair-together. He handed over the first ball, careful to keep his distance this time.

“You don’t like clowns?” Eddie asked with amusement, as he accepted the ball with a smile. His big brown eyes were soft again, and Richie felt like he could feel every beat of his heart in his chest as he looked at him.

It was an impressive talent that he was able to switch effortlessly between feral asshole and affectionate asshole. (Richie loved them both).

“Clowns?” Richie repeated with a shudder. “Yeah, I don’t like anyone who… tries to be… funnier than… me…”

Eddie threw the ball up in the air. He caught it, weighed it in his palm for a moment, and then threw it up again. And again.

Richie was entranced.

Oh no.

Throw. Catch.

Throw.

Catch.

When Eddie finally seemed satisfied at the weight, he threw it at the first clown and Richie nearly lunged after it.

He breathed deeply in through his nose and out of his mouth and was so focused on remembering that he was human as well as a wolf, that he hadn’t even noticed the ball had hit its target until Eddie turned around with a satisfied grin. Richie immediately broke into a strained smile and whooped, looking over in disbelief at the remnants of the popped balloon sagging down the first clown’s face.

He chanced a glance over at the naga, but his arms were folded, and his tongue forked out again. “Beginner’s luck,” he hissed petulantly.

Eddie picked up another ball and threw it up in the air again a few times.

Richie continued to breathe deeply through his nose.

“Different weight,” Eddie whispered to Richie. “That must be how they rig it – once you’ve got a feel for how hard you needed to throw the first one, the other two balls will react differently to the same force.” He hummed and weighed it in his hand before he threw it up again and again, trying to get a handle on how hard he would need to throw it.

But Richie barely heard him.

Throw. Catch. Throw. Catch.

Ball. Ball. Ball.

“Please, for the love of God, Eds- please throw the ball-”

“Impatient much,” Eddie sighed, completely unaware of Richie’s internal torture.

He finally pulled back his arm and threw it.

Richie had to turn around, grit his teeth, and shove his hands into his armpits to stop himself from leaping over the counter after it.

“Two for two,” the naga hissed, looking over at Richie with barely concealed amusement. “Can you manage a third?”

Richie knew the question was aimed just at him and he narrowed his eyes in place of a growl. He checked his tail and saw that it was bristling all over, even though he couldn’t feel it. He felt ridiculous for having a meltdown over a fucking ball. But wolves were just large canines, right?

As for the answer to his question… no, Richie knew that he couldn’t manage a third. He would absolutely throw himself over the counter if he had to suffer through Eddie throwing the ball up and down again. He jolted forwards just as Eddie was preparing to pick up the final ball, snatched it from the counter, and threw it with an alarming force at the remaining clown’s balloon. It slammed into the back wall of the stall with a bang, completely missing its target.

“Hey!” Eddie yelped. “What the fuck Richie?! I was about to win!”

The naga chuckled. “Aw, bad luck boys. Want to try again?”

“No- no way, this shit is rigged. Let’s go, Eddie.” Richie didn’t wait for a reply before he stalked away.

“What do you mean, I was literally about to beat the game- Did you see that? I can’t believe I was popping those balloons, man! I don’t think the stall guy could believe I was popping them! What’s your deal?” Eddie’s voice was high pitched and whiny as he walked quickly to catch up.

“I just- uh- really wanted a go,” Richie lied quickly. “Sorry.” He glanced at Eddie, keeping his eyes wide, and pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

Eddie’s eyes locked onto his and finally his expression softened. “Yeah, well, you could at least ask me next time, dickwad. And you owe me a go at whatever the next game is.”

Richie hid his relieved smile. Maybe his puppy-dog eyes worked on someone after all…

The next stall they came to already had a group of other people playing. They were using a water gun to shoot at targets that were swaying back and forth on a wooden mechanism, and by the groans and yelling he could assume they weren’t doing very well. They both agreed to move onto the next stall – where there was a basketball hoop with a net underneath it and a line of five balls set up across the counter.

Richie wasn’t sure he could handle another ball-based challenge, but he had a sudden idea.

“Eds, I know I said you could have a go at the next game, but you’ve got to distract the attendee as soon as I give him my tokens.”

The guy manning the stall had dark skin and two small purple horns above his yellow eyes. Behind his back sat small purple wings that twitched and folded in and out. He blew out the smoke of a cigarette that he crunched under a boot as they approached.  

“Five tokens a play,” he rasped. “If you get all the balls through the hoop, you can choose a prize.”

Eddie threw Richie a sceptical raise of one eyebrow and he grinned in reply. “Trust me. I have a plan. If we win, you get to choose the prize, how about that?”

“Okay, fine.” He leaned in close so that only Richie would hear, and he tried not to look visibly startled as his breath tickled the skin of his cheek. “How am I supposed to distract him?”

“I don’t know- be creative.” Richie cleared his throat as he turned to the imp. “I’ll play a round please.” He placed his tokens on the counter and picked up a ball, then gave Eddie a secret thumbs up.

Eddie gave one deep breath and walked over to the attendee, stopping at an angle that meant he had to turn away from the stall to talk to him.

Perfect!

“So, um, have you ever played this game yourself?” Eddie asked, in a small quiet voice that made Richie blink in surprise.

The imp turned away from Richie and tilted his head at Eddie. “A few times, yeah.”

“Oh, it’s just… well… I just wondered if you were any good at it, because your arms seem like they’d be perfect at these kinds of throwing games.”

Richie’s entire thought process ground to a halt as Eddie’s voice took on a sugary sweet kind of cadence. Was he… no, he couldn’t be…

Eddie held up his arm and flexed. “See? I’m always bad at these kinds of games, because I’ve got such weak arms. But yours…”

The imp took the bait and held up his arm to flex. Eddie gasped.

“I don’t even work out,” the imp rasped, still flexing his arm.

While he was occupied Eddie flashed Richie a scowl and gestured with his hand for him to get on with it. The imp nearly turned around and Eddie gripped his bicep, bringing his attention back to him. “You don’t even work out?” he squeaked.

Richie tried to tune out the odd buzzing in his ears as he scooped the balls into his arms, rolled over the counter, dunked them all into the net, and then vaulted back over. “Hey I did it!”

“What?” The imp turned around and his leathery purple wings flared behind his back. “Impossible!”

“Read ‘em and weep,” Richie declared, gesturing to the balls sitting in the net below the hoop.

Eddie looked like he was trying desperately not to laugh, and Richie was struggling to hold it together himself. He absolutely could not look at Eddie or he’d lose it. “I get a prize now, right?”

The imp looked between them both and his wings opened and closed a few more times as if he was trying to work out what had happened. In the end he narrowed his yellow eyes at them and gestured to the wall at the back of the stall, where various plastic and plush toys were hanging. “Fine,” he huffed, “pick one.”

“Eds,” Richie said, just barely managing to hold in his laughter. “Up to you.” He had to turn away and take a deep breath, so he didn’t see what Eddie chose, he just heard the clipping sound of it being untied.

“Thank you,” Eddie just about managed. “Great game.”

Richie walked away and sniggered as they left the stall behind them, and Eddie appeared at his elbow after a few steps, breaking into giggles.

“Holy shit,” Richie said breathlessly, as he turned around and nearly draped himself over Eddie in a combination of relief at not getting caught and his utter amusement that they got away with it. “I can’t believe you flirted so hard with that guy, man.”

Eddie rolled his eyes and held his hands behind his back, hiding his prize. “You said be creative.”

“I just, can’t believe how strong you came onto him. He was ready to take you home and meet his parents.”

“Wait, are you jealous?”

“No!” Richie rubbed his palms on his jeans. “Fuck off, I’m just surprised you could flirt like that. You just surprised me.”

“You say that like you don’t flirt with Bev all the time,” Eddie huffed. “Anyway, that felt gross, and I never want to do that again.” He shuddered.

“Wha- I don’t flirt with Bev! Okay- okay- yep. Maybe we do. But that’s just our thing, we don’t mean anything by it. I’m not her type. And I love her, but she’s not mine either, trust me.”

“What is Richie Tozier’s type then?” Eddie asked. His voice was level, and his expression was so neutral – neither gave anything away.

Richie panicked that a heartfelt and pained, ‘you are!’, nearly squeezed out of his mouth, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from saying it anyway. Instead, he hummed and said, “I don’t know, Eds. How would you describe your mom?”

Eddie took a huge inhale through his nose and scowled. “Fuck you.”

Richie snorted.

“I don’t think you deserve this prize anymore.”

“What? It’s for me?”

“It was going to be, but now I think I’ll keep it.”

“No, Eds, Spaghetti, light of my life. I’m sorry!” Richie let a tiny note of canine whine carry into his words to make it sound extra pathetic.

Eddie’s lips twitched into a grin. “Oh my god, stop. I’m kidding – I got this for you, so it’s yours, even with all your dumb mom jokes.”

“Now I know you don’t mean that, because all my ‘your mom’ jokes are golden, and-”

Eddie brought his hands around to reveal a plush toy of a fluffy black dog. “He reminded me of you,” he said softly.

“He did?” Richie squeaked, his voice cracking horribly.

Eddie looked down at the dog in his arms and then back up at Richie. “Yeah, because I know how much you like dogs.”

“Wh-who said I like dogs?”

“Well, you’re always wearing shirts with dog bones and stuff on them,” Eddie pointed out, as if it were obvious. “And I’ve heard some of the assholes in town bark at you as we go by. I don’t think it’s right that they tease you just for- for being a dog person or whatever. If you want to wear stuff with dog bones on them, or paw prints- or- whatever, then they don’t get to judge you for it. I’d like to see their reaction if someone made fun of them for something they liked. Assholes,” he added again, as if this was something that had been on his mind.

Richie took the small plush that Eddie offered him and held it close. The black fur was soft and fluffy, and his eyes were two black beads. Two little pointed ears sat on top of his head, he had a stitched on black nose, and a long fluffy tail. He didn’t look far off how Richie looked as a wolf. It was fucking eerie.

“He’s kind of cute though, so I did nearly keep him,” Eddie admitted with a chuckle. “Can’t believe I touched that guy’s bicep for this, Jesus.” He unzipped his fanny pack and pulled out his hand sanitiser, violently rubbing some between his hands.

Richie swallowed past a particularly large lump in his throat. “Thanks, Eds. I love him.” He smoothed down the fur on his little double’s tail.

“He also reminded me of you because he needs a good brush,” Eddie said.

“What?” Richie had to fight the impulse to check if his tail was wagging – panic lancing through him that Eddie could see it.

But he gestured at his head.

“Your curls are always a mess.”

Richie let out a relieved breath. “Oh aha, yeah, my hair. I will have you know that I have it on good authority that this is not messy – it’s tousled.”

“There’s no difference!” Eddie swiped a hand through the air, but he was still smiling.

“Uh yeah, tousled hair looks way sexier… holy shit, are you blushing because I said ‘sexier’?”

“Just give the poor dog a name, Richie,” Eddie groused, rubbing at his pink nose.

The fair bustled around them and Richie looked up at the bright, perfectly round, full moon, hanging over them. He felt so lucky right now, that he wanted to bottle the moment up forever. His chest felt so warm, and his heart felt so full. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve this, but he was so thankful for it, that he thought he might cry again.

“I’m calling him Scrappy-Doo.”

“No you are fucking not.”

Richie guffawed at Eddie’s horrified expression. “He looks like a Scrappy-Doo.”

“Please tell me you did not like Scrappy-Doo when you were a kid.”

“He was my favourite character!”

“Why does that explain so much?” Eddie pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Don’t listen to him, Scrappy.”

“Okay, how about we call him Scraps for short, and then I don’t feel like I’m going to enter fight or flight mode every time you say his name.”

“Done.”

“Good boy, Scraps. That’s a name you’ll like better, huh?”

Eddie reached over and petted the dog’s head and Richie had a weird out of body experience for a moment. He had to physically hold himself back from holding his own head down for the same.

Shit.

Richie passed off the sudden and almost irresistible urge by forcing out a laugh that he hoped didn’t sound as strained as he felt. “Let’s go get some popcorn!”

Eddie let go of the plush and straightened up. “I don’t know, popcorn can get stuck between your teeth, and if there’s any kernels in there that haven’t popped, and you accidentally bite down hard on them you can chip a tooth – or even break it.”

“You sound like my dad,” Richie said, and blew a raspberry as he walked towards the fresh smell of popcorn. He held Scraps in the crook of his arm.

“He must have sounded very wise, then.”

“Nah, he’s just a dentist.”

They manoeuvred through the crowd together and Richie jumped when he felt Eddie suddenly hold onto his hand from behind him. He gave it a squeeze but didn’t turn around.

They sat on a little bench, in a quieter spot of the fair, with a bucket of popcorn between them and Scraps leaning against the bucket. Richie threw a piece into the air and caught it with his mouth, then wiggled his eyebrows at Eddie. He frowned and tried to do the same, but the popcorn bounced off his cheek and fell onto the bench. Richie picked it straight up and ate it, laughing at Eddie’s disgusted expression.

Eddie picked a piece from the bucket and aimed at Richie’s face, so he bent down slightly and opened his mouth – understanding what he was doing. He threw it and the popcorn bounced off his glasses with a tiny plink against the glass. It fell through a gap of the bench onto the ground and when Richie bent down to pick it up Eddie slapped at his hand.

“Ew, no- don’t you fucking dare, oh my god, you have a whole bucket right here, do you know how many germs that thing will have from the dirt – people have been sitting here all night – that’s where people’s shoes have been!”

Richie laughed so hard he bent over double and dabbed at his eyes with one of Scraps’ paws.

There were still screams and laughter and music and machinery whirring from the fair, but it felt like they were in their own quiet bubble on the bench together.

Richie sighed contentedly.  He was so happy. He was so glad he’d gone to Ben. His ears and tail were still totally numb – (Richie had had to physically move his tail behind himself so that he wasn’t sitting on it as they sat down on the bench) – so the potion was still working. It was the best full moon night he’d had in nearly six years.

“Do you like dogs?” Richie asked suddenly.

Eddie seemed to think about his answer for a moment, as if the question had caught him off guard. “I mean, I guess so. I’ve not really had a lot to do with them, since I’m allergic.”

Richie nearly choked on a piece of popcorn. “I’m sorry, what?”

“My mom said that’s why I could never have pets. Because I’m allergic to animal fur.”

“That is absolutely a complete load of bullshit,” Richie said flatly. He had a set of fluffy ears and a tail that begged to differ. Eddie was around a lot of animal fur whenever they were together, and he had never reacted.

“That wouldn’t surprise me,” Eddie admitted after a pause. “But how can you be sure?”

“Uh- because I’ve nearly always got dog fur on me. There’s a dog that lives nearby to me and if I see him, I’ll always pet him, and you’ve never reacted when we’ve hung out after.”

Eddie hummed and popped another piece of popcorn in his mouth. “Maybe you can introduce me then, next time we finish lectures at the same time. If I’m not allergic, that would be fun.”

“Sure,” Richie lied. It festered in his gut, cold and heavy. He bit his lip and clenched his eyes shut. Should he…? Could he…? “Listen, Eds… I have… something really important to tell you, but you have to promise not to freak out.”

“Okay… Rich, are you alright? You look pale. Do you need to lie down? Should I get some water?” Eddie’s voice was high with worry and his big eyes were wide with concern.

“No. I mean, yes. Yeah. I’m fine. Really. I just… You have to promise me first.”

“I promise,” Eddie said solemnly.

Richie took a deep breath. “Alright. See… the thing is, that I…”

Chapter Text

“I… uh…”

Richie had never felt this nervous in his entire life. He could feel sweat prickling at the back of his neck.

Eddie looked increasingly concerned as the silence dragged on, but Richie just couldn’t get the words out that he wanted.

I’m a werewolf.

Just three words… and even for someone who’s nickname was Trashmouth, because he literally wouldn’t shut up, he couldn’t even say them.

“I…” Richie clenched his fists, took a deep breath and yelled, “I’ve never been to the fair before!”

“I fucking knew it!” Eddie crowed as he jumped off his seat and pointed a finger at him like he’d caught him red-handed. “I fucking knew it!”

Richie felt a cold wave of disappointment wash through his veins. He could barely hear what Eddie was saying through the guilt and shame that was pooling in his gut. God, he was such a coward.

What was he doing? That had been his best chance. They were safe and far away in a secluded spot from anyone else at the fair. He’d promised he wouldn’t freak out (though Richie suspected that would have been very quickly broken). He could have explained.

Richie zoned back in on Eddie, who was still talking so rapidly that he’d have had a hard time keeping up with him even if his brain hadn’t been replaced by white noise and pudding.

“…and that’s when I knew for sure that you’d never been,” Eddie said, finally pausing for a breath. “I was going to mention it before we left anyway, but here you are finally admitting it anyway. I mean, I could tell that there’s been something on your mind all night – so it wasn’t difficult to guess with all the other signs. When will you learn that you can’t hide things from me, Tozier?”

Richie nodded numbly and forced out a pathetic laugh. “Yeah… yeah you caught me.”

“Hey, hey, are you okay?” Eddie returned to his seat on the bench and his expression softened. “Look, I’m not mad. I mean, I’m a little pissed off that you thought you’d be able to pretend all night, and that you didn’t tell me in the first place, but Jesus, you’ve tried to tell worse lies than this before. You’re still so pale.” His hand lifted to Richie’s face as if he were about to cup his cheek, but his fingers barely ghosted over the skin before he drew his hand back to his lap hastily.

Richie realised he’d been holding his breath and let it out shakily. “Uh, yeah, sorry man, sorry, I- guess I was thrown off by how well you know me.”

“Duh. You’re my best friend.”

Tell him! Richie thought desperately, trying not to cry. Tell him now!

Eddie reached up again but this time he placed a hand gently between Richie’s shoulder blades and added a bit of pressure to his palm so that he leaned forwards under his touch. He let himself be moved.

“You look like you’re about to faint, so you need to put your head between your knees to encourage the blood flow to your head and increase the circulation in the brain. It’ll help, trust me.”

Richie did as he was told.

Eddie’s hand remained still for a moment and then began to slowly rotate in a small circle as he rubbed gently between his shoulder blades. “Take deep breaths,” he said.

Richie again did as he was told and sucked in a deep breath.

He still couldn’t feel his ears and tail, and instead of being a comfort it just added to his anguish. He hated them sometimes, but right now he just wanted to feel like himself again, and he wanted the comfort of his wolf limbs back. He could feel his tail curled protectively against his legs, but he longed to smooth down the fur and feel it in the tail itself. He was sure his ears would be flat against his head.

Richie tried to ground himself in the feeling of Eddie’s hand rubbing on his back, but it was so gentle that he could barely feel it through the leather jacket, and suddenly all Richie longed to do was throw it off so that he could feel it on his skin. He wanted Eddie’s hands on his back because he was pushing them up through his shirt while they were kissing. He wanted him to run his hands through his curls and brush over his ears. He wanted to be free of this burden of lying about who he is so he could confess to his feelings and feel something real with him.

He wanted.

He wanted so much.

But he’d rather take the pain of every transformation he’s ever had than fucking tell him.

“Any better?” Eddie asked after Richie had taken a few more breaths.

“Yeah,” he croaked in reply, still with his head between his knees, “this is reminding me of some of the positions I get into with your mom.”

Eddie gagged from somewhere he couldn’t see, and it twitched a smile onto Richie’s lips.

“Really? A mom joke? Right now? You are actually unbelievable, you know that?” Eddie sighed, but his hand didn’t stop rubbing the circles on Richie’s back. “At least I know that means you’re feeling more yourself again.”

It was a choice of words that rang through Richie’s head like a bell, and he almost laughed aloud at how poignant it really was.

“Let’s see if your colour is any better now,” Eddie said after a few more minutes of silence.

He removed his hand from Richie’s back, which under normal circumstances would have upset him anyway, but in his current state of distress the removal of contact felt devastating, and Richie couldn’t check himself in time before a small, reedy canine whine unfurled from his chest – that he immediately tried to disguise a cough as he shot up.

“Not so fast!” Eddie chided.

(Richie hoped he was distracted enough to not have noticed his slip-up.)

“What’s your diagnosis, doc,” Richie wheezed, “am I going to live?”

Eddie’s eyebrows scrunched low over his eyes as he moved closer to stare at Richie’s face. His big brown eyes were narrowed in concentration and he hummed in thought.

Richie could count his freckles. Maybe he needed to put his head back between his knees.

Eventually Eddie pressed both hands to Richie’s cheeks and squeezed hard once before he let go. “Yes,” he declared, “you’re alive!”

Richie chuckled and leaned back heavily against the wooden bench. “Sorry for the freak out there, Doctor K.”

“It is a bit of a role reversal to have you freaking out and me being the one to calm you down. That’s a new one.”

“Yeah, felt like a bit of a change of pace to let you be the sane one for a change.”

“Hey!”

Richie looked over at the strings of lights and balloons decorating the fair, and focused on the sounds of chatter, screams and laughter that he could still hear from everyone having fun not too far away from them… though it might as well be worlds away.

He was aware that if he hadn’t told Eddie his secret, and he was fine with Richie lying about having come to the fair before, then he was dragging down the mood of their fun night at the fair for no reason. If tonight really wasn’t the night to tell him, then he should let them get back to the fun that they were having before and save the heartbreak for another day.

Richie picked up Scraps from between them and held him on his lap. It still felt weird to look at him for too long – like looking in some bizarre funhouse mirror. He played with his pointy black ears as he said, “I am sorry though, for lying to you. I was so nervous that you’d find out, that telling you was like getting a weight off my chest.”

It hurt him deeply that he was still only half telling a half-truth.

“I was lucky that Doctor K sorted me out,” Richie continued, as he passed Scraps over to Eddie.

Eddie held the little dog close and something deep within Richie ached to be held like that.

“Why’d you lie about it anyway?” Eddie’s voice wasn’t angry, simply curious.

Richie laughed a little. “I thought you wouldn’t want to come with me if you knew that I hadn’t been before. And you kept saying you were excited for me to show you around and I… guess I didn’t want to disappoint you. I’m sorry, I was a terrible tour guide, give me a one-star rating on my website, I’m too broke to give you a refund, please don’t sue me.” He sighed dramatically and draped an arm over his eyes.

“You’re such an idiot,” Eddie huffed.

But his words tingled up Richie’s spine – his voice was thick with affection and amusement – and anything Richie had ever said about favourite sounds was swept away in an instant, because he could listen to Eddie calling him an idiot in that voice forever and never get over it.

“Okay, I’m done being pathetic now, let’s get back to having fun.”

“It’s not pathetic to feel things, Richie.”

“I know, I know… it’s just… it’s been a weird day, and honestly, I’m more than ready to just have a good time with you again, if you want to – I know it won’t be the same now that I’m not pretending that I know where I’m going.”

“Find me a cotton candy stall and we’ll say nothing else about it.”

Richie jumped from the bench. “Are my ears deceiving me? We’ve just finished eating popcorn and Edward Kaspbrak just asked me to find him even more junk food?”

Eddie got up and handed Scraps back to him. “Why did you say my full name like that? Yes. We’re doing fair things. I want the full experience. I can eat as much junk food as I want to.”

“I think I might actually have passed out back there, you’re going to have to pinch me- ow! What the fuck, man, you took like, no persuading to do that.”

Eddie laughed and Richie smiled back.

The moment to tell the truth seemed to have passed. That was fine. It was better this way.

They fell into step with each other as they moved back into the thick of the fair; the noise getting louder and the smells getting stronger. Richie bumped Eddie with a shoulder. “So, Eds, tell me, how come you’re not studying to be a doctor?”

“What?”

“You were insanely good back there. You always are with shit like that. You stay calm and you know exactly what people should do when they’re not well and stuff.”

Eddie shifted uncomfortably. “I actually used to want to be a doctor, but… my mom told me I couldn’t. She said I wouldn’t be able to cope.”

“That’s bullshit!”

“Rich.”

“No, I mean it! You should be able to do what you want! She lived her life, she doesn’t get to live yours too. You would be fucking amazing at it! Not able to cope? Does she even know you? I’ll tell her that you saved my life! I’ll go to Derry College right now and tell them you want to swap courses – just give me the word and I’ll do it!”

At first Richie wanted to kick himself for potentially ruining the good mood they’d just returned to, but Eddie was smiling a small, precious smile. “Thanks, Rich.”

“You’re welcome, Doctor Spaghetti.”

“I’ve changed my mind, I’m going home.”

“No,” Richie giggled, grabbing his arm as he turned on the spot, “I’m sorry, I meant Doctor Eddie Spaghetti, of course.”

Eddie swatted at his hand and giggled. “Fuck off, oh my god.”

By the time they found the cotton candy stall Richie was glad of it, because all the stress of his funny turn earlier had made him need the sugar boost. He bought them both a portion of sticky cloudy sugary mess, despite Eddie’s protests to pay with his own tokens this time, and they suitably got a good portion of it around their mouths and on their faces. Eddie only complained about the effect it was going to have on his teeth once.

Richie begged him to get his face painted when they walked by a stall with a line of kids waiting to be painted. The kid currently getting painted was halfway through being made up to look like one of the teenage mutant ninja turtles and Richie made a scene trying to convince Eddie he would make a great looking ninja turtle too. He was dragged away quickly.

They played a game where you had to hook a plastic turtle on the end of a fishing line from a small inflatable pool, and if there was a sticker underneath you won a prize. Richie played it four times with each of his turtles not being a winner, before he let Eddie try and he won on the first go. Richie yelled at him for it being a fix and told the attendee he only let Eddie win because he’s cute. Eddie rolled his eyes and told him it was sad that he couldn’t handle not having the skillset to win at fair games, then picked a pair of star shaped sunglasses that he put on Scraps.

They saw Mike a few times as they roamed the fair, always looking busy, but he still waved at them when he noticed them. Richie wondered if he didn’t come over because he was deliberately letting them have their time together, and he made a mental note to thank him for it another time.

The ‘house of mirrors’ had a deceptively long queue because it was very underwhelming when they went inside. But they still made the most of it. When they stopped in front of a mirror that was warped in the middle to make a person’s reflection look much shorter than they should be, Richie gasped that Eddie’s reflection was so short that he couldn’t even see him anymore. It wasn’t one of his better short jokes, but it still made Eddie scrunch his nose with irritation, so Richie considered it a success anyway. They stopped in front of one that made their reflections look like they had a big head and Eddie said the mirror wasn’t large enough to fit Richie’s on it. He snorted laughter and enjoyed the smile Eddie flashed him at making him laugh.

They managed to find themselves near the entrance again at one point and the clown handing out balloons was still there. Her red hair shined like the balloons in her hand – looking like floating droplets of blood. Her white makeup was stark in contrast and there was something about her that unsettled Richie to his core. He visibly recoiled when she leaned over to try and pass him a balloon, while Eddie moved in front of him like he was a human shield. He glared at her and moved them on quickly, and Richie almost felt sorry for her receiving the full strength of Eddie’s glare, when she probably had no idea what she’d done, but when he glanced back at her she was still smiling widely at them both.

The only ride they went on was the teacups, only because Eddie complained that the larger ones would set off his motion sickness. Richie wasn’t allowed in charge of the wheel that could spin their teacup as they went around, and Eddie kept it to a light turn every so often – until the attendee looking after the ride told them there was a prize for the teacup that could spin the quickest. Eddie took one look at Richie before he leaned forward to grab the wheel at the same time he did. They both spun it so fast that they were pressed together against the plastic seat from the force and Richie was quite willing to pass away there and then because the entire side of Eddie’s body was plastered to his. He was glad he’d pushed his tail to the other side when they’d first sat down.

When they got off the teacups neither of them could walk in a straight line and they collapsed onto the nearest bench in fits of giggles – their newest prize was a glowstick in the shape of a bracelet that Richie made a big show of sliding onto Eddie’s wrist, proclaiming him to be the king of spinning things. Eddie laughed and then held up a hand to his mouth as he took a few deep breaths.

Turns out the motion sickness was one thing his mom hadn’t made up.

Richie had nearly used up all his tokens by the time he realised most of the much younger residents of Derry had already left the fair. He hadn’t even noticed how late it was getting. The full moon still hung high in the sky – brightly shining down on them – and he wasn’t ready for the evening to come to an end yet, but the stall attendees were already starting to pack away and even the noise of the fair wasn’t as loud as before.

“Looks like everyone’s going home,” Eddie said quietly, as if reading Richie’s thoughts.

“But I’ve still got tokens left…”

“Save them for next month?” Eddie suggested. He blinked as if realising what he’d just said. “I mean- if you go again next month. It doesn’t have to be with me.”

Richie huffed out a sad laugh.

“Eds, this has been the best night of my life. You think I wouldn’t want to do this every single month with you?” Richie wanted it to come out as a bit of a joke, but even he could hear the sincerity in his voice, and it made him cringe. Well, he wasn’t lying at least, because God, he wished he could.

Eddie’s bright smile matched his bright eyes, shining with the reflections of all the multi-coloured lights around them, and Richie stared for longer than he knew he should. His gaze slid down to Eddie’s lips and when they shot back up to his eyes, they were even wider.

Richie cleared his throat and swept his arms grandly in the direction of the ferris wheel that they’d seen towering over the whole fair all night. “C’mon. We’ve still got just enough time.”

The moment passed.

“The ferris wheel? I don’t know… It doesn’t look very sturdy.” Eddie squinted. “I can see rust on it from here.”

Richie laughed so hard and so suddenly that Eddie jumped. “Never change, Eds.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Ferris wheel,” Richie chanted, “ferris wheel, ferris wheel. Hurry up, they’re going to close it soon!” Richie reached out for Eddie’s hand, his heart hammering in his ears, but Eddie just rolled his eyes and accepted it.

The two of them added themselves onto the end of a small queue of people in twos, who had obviously thought to end their night with the same thing Richie did – a view of the whole fair with his best friend.

Up close Richie could admit that the ferris wheel did look a little old and in need of some maintenance; the paint was peeling in places, revealing small patches of rust (though he didn’t admit to seeing them to Eddie), the seats were scuffed, and the mechanism whirred quite loudly as the wheel turned. It had obviously been running for many years, but Richie suspected it was the kind of machine that would run for many years yet too.

Eddie didn’t look so sure.

He scrunched his nose up at the wheel as they moved closer to the front of the queue. “It doesn’t look safe,” he declared.

“Well, people have been riding on it all night, so it would be pretty bad luck if it collapsed just as we get on.”

Eddie scowled and Richie stifled a chuckle at his reaction. He pitched his voice as high as it would go as he cried, “Eddie-Bear! I never told you that you were allergic to ferris wheels!”

“Shut up, my mom does not sound like that.”

“Oh, trust me, I know exactly what Mrs K sounds like.” Richie wiggled his eyebrows and guffawed as Eddie gagged.

“Jesus, you’re fucking disgusting, do you ever stop, do you ever hear yourself, do you-”

“Two please!” Richie chirped happily to the attendee as they finally reached the front. He tipped his tokens into the attendee’s outstretched hand for them both, glad to be able to use up nearly all of his remaining tokens, and he grinned at Eddie as he leaped into his seat in their carriage. He placed Scraps next to him and enthusiastically patted the plastic seat opposite.

Eddie hesitated and sighed loudly as he marched into the carriage and took the seat.

The attendee closed the little gate to keep them inside, with a loud squeak, and leaned over to press the button to make the mechanism work.

The carriage was so small, clearly made so that it wouldn’t be too big for kids, and Richie’s legs were so long, that their knees were touching between them. Richie was about to move, but then he considered that Eddie hadn’t moved either. And he’d never made a fuss about them touching before. So he stayed where he was.

At least he didn’t have to worry about his tail wagging and hitting him when they were sat opposite each other.

The wheel turned slowly with a creak and a whirr and Richie could see Eddie’s fists curled beside him, knuckles white with how hard he was clenching them. The creaking and clunking continued as the carriage rose into the air and Eddie’s fists remained clenched by his sides. Richie was about to make a comment when he noticed the fair below them. He turned away and gasped as he looked out over the fair, twinkling and shining, as the carriage rose higher and higher.

He could see all the Hanlon family farms, and Derry in the distance. He could see the university and the campus grounds – he was sure he could even see his apartment building!

“Woah, you’ve got to see this,” Richie said, giddy with the childlike wonder that always seemed to accompany seeing things from high up.

When he didn’t get an answer, he looked over at Eddie, but he was still staring resolutely at Richie, his jaw clenched and his breathing fast.

“Oh, shit, Eds, I was only kidding before about it collapsing. Are you okay?”

Eddie shook his head. “Heights,” was all he said, through his shallow, quick breaths. All the pink had drained out of his cheeks, making his freckles stand out harshly, and his breathing was so rapid that his chest was heaving with the effort.

“Holy fuck, why didn’t you say something? I didn’t realise- I thought- I didn’t-” Richie took a deep breath himself and placed both hands on Eddie’s knees. “Eds,” he said firmly. “Where’s your inhaler?” He hadn’t seen it in his fanny pack earlier, but he hoped he’d just got it in a pocket.

Eddie shook his head again. “Didn’t… bring… it.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“I don’t… have… asthma,” Eddie wheezed, a bitter smile twisting onto his lips. “I don’t… need… it.”

Eddie had panic attacks. But he’d told Richie that it was asthma when they’d first met, and he was adamant about it. He said his mom had told him he’d inherited his dad’s weak lungs.

Not long after they became friends Eddie had a meltdown over finding a hair in a pastry that he’d already mostly eaten, and he’d panicked Richie by choking out shallow, wheezing breaths that admittedly did look like an asthma attack. He’d whipped out his inhaler, took a deep puff of it, and then marched over to the desk to complain in a rant that Richie could still hear if he thought about it hard enough.

Richie realised that Eddie took the inhaler everywhere with him after that, and never questioned it. Until he noticed that he could run like an athlete, and he never seemed to get any more winded than anyone else, and when their playfights had devolved into wrestling Eddie could laugh and laugh and Richie’s sensitive hearing never picked up any problems with his breathing – it never rattled or wheezed like it would if he really had a problem with his lungs.

It hadn’t been difficult to connect the dots of when Eddie needed his inhaler, and how quickly it ‘worked’ on him after he’d taken it.

“You already… knew… didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I kinda figured it out. But it’s fine, I get it – asthma is easier to explain.”

“No,” Eddie wheezed, “I really… believed her… but now I… know. I don’t… need… it,” he repeated in a wheeze. “I’m sick… of… being… scared. Relying on… lies.”

“C’mon, don’t try and talk so much, just breathe. Don’t worry about all that other stuff right now.”

Richie could imagine Eddie preparing for the fair and deliberately not putting his inhaler in his fanny pack, stuffing his bed to make it look like someone was in there, slamming open his window and freezing in fear, and then still climbing out anyway.

Richie’s grip on Eddie’s knees tightened as he felt his chest almost squeeze with the love he felt.

“Okay, so you don’t have your inhaler, but that’s okay, because you know you don’t need it,” Richie rambled. “Physically, you’re fine. It’s all up here.” Richie pointed to Eddie’s head. “So, the bad news is that your brain hates you, but the good news is that your lungs work perfectly.”

“Don’t… make me laugh… asshole,” Eddie wheezed with a pained smile. He still looked pale, and he coughed as he tried to take another breath and failed.

The ferris wheel clunked as it carried them over the top and began its descent.

“We’re on our way down! This is the home straight. You just need to breathe with me, so I don’t have to carry you out the carriage. You know I’ve got no strength in these limp noodles, right?”

Eddie gave a tiny, breathy laugh and scowled at him, his eyebrows scrunching down low.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t make you laugh. Not my fault you’re up here with a comedian. Just breathe with me,” Richie said again. He loosened his grip and laid his palms flat on Eddie’s legs, just above his knees. He locked his gaze with Eddie’s wide, dark eyes, and took in a slow, loud breath. As he let the breath out, he let his hands run up the tops of Eddie’s thighs – stopping before he got too high. He breathed in deeply and slid them back down to his knees. The fabric of his jeans sounded loud between them as he slid his palms up again with another deep breath, held it there for a second, and then dragged them back again to his knees. He did this a few more times before realised Eddie’s scared eyes never once broke contact with his, and his breathing sounded a little easier.

He was perfectly breathing in a rhythm with Richie by the time they’d nearly reached the ground again and he smiled encouragingly. “Nearly on solid ground, Eds, you’ve done so well.” He was about to remove his hands, but Eddie gripped his wrists and kept them there.

“Richie, I-”

Their carriage clunked loudly as it swung into place at the base of the ferris wheel and the attendee opened their gate with another loud screech of hinges clearly in need of oiling.

They both stood quickly, and Richie realised Eddie still had a hold on one of his wrists as they departed the wheel. “C’mon, I know a quiet place,” he said. By now there were very few people walking around, and the stalls were nearly all packed away.

Richie led them out to the edge of the fair, to the bench they’d been sat on before. He was grateful not to bump into Mike or any of the other volunteers and hoped that this far out nobody would notice that they were still here, and that even if Mike sensed him there, he wouldn’t bother them yet. All the stalls that they passed were empty, and most of the multicoloured lights had been turned off this far out, but the moon was so full that it provided more than enough light on its own – a silvery whitewashed kind of light that brought them back down from the fantastical atmosphere of the fair. It felt more real.

Richie sat Eddie down and passed Scraps over to him. He immediately hugged him tight.

“Eddie? Hey man, you okay? Feeling any better?” Richie asked gently. “I don’t think Derry can handle us both having a breakdown in one night, and it was my turn tonight.”

Eddie chuckled and the sound was normal – if a little strained. “Sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be, what the fuck! If you’re scared of heights, that’s like, a real thing.” Richie sat down heavily on the bench beside him.

“Yeah, but I still… shouldn’t have freaked out like that.” Eddie buried his head in the fluffy fur on Scraps’ head and groaned. “Thanks for what you did back there. I mean it. That was the first time I’ve had a panic attack like that and not used my inhaler. I even know that it’s a placebo! It’s complete bullshit! But I get so into my head- I just get so panicked, and then I can’t breathe, and I panic more, and then it gets worse. When I was a kid, I believed everything my mom ever told me, and even though I’m starting to find out just how much of it was bullshit and lies, I just can’t get what she said out my head. And that stupid fucking inhaler always worked. It’s so hard to stop leaning on that.”

Richie felt the cold stirrings of his guilt in his stomach again. Eddie had been lied to so badly. He didn’t deserve any more.

Richie reached over for Eddie’s hand and gripped it tightly. He ran his thumb over his knuckles so tenderly, like he’d always wanted to do, that he could feel a lump form in his throat that was hard to swallow around.

Eddie peeked up at him with surprise.

Even if he hated him, he had to know the truth.

“This is pretty bad timing, considering what you just went through… but bad timing is just classic Trashmouth at this point, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise really.”

“Richie? What…”

The pink had returned to Eddie’s cheeks at least, that was good.

“I’ve had… the best night ever. Really. I fuckin’ – I really wanted to come here tonight with you, so bad. And I… I didn’t think I’d be able to- because I can never go usually. But this time, I did something crazy and it paid off, for once. I know I pull some crazy shit, Eds, but when I tell you this is the craziest, oh man, you are not gonna believe any of this, but you just need to listen, because I swear this is the truth.” Richie was aware that he was rambling so badly that he was cutting himself up and not really making much sense.

He sighed raggedly and ran his free hand through his curls. But a finger caught against one of his wolf ears and he visibly flinched in shock.

He still couldn’t feel anything in the ear itself, but it felt… hot. He pressed a cautious finger against the base of the ear, aware that Eddie would be able to see what he was doing, but the ear was burning hot against his fingertip.

What the fuck?

Richie slowly reached down and placed a shaking hand discreetly onto his tail, pushing his fingers through the fur to feel the skin beneath. It felt like it was on fire from the inside.

He thought he heard Eddie say his name, but it was difficult to tell over the thin wailing ringing sound in his ears.

“…chie? Richie? Are you- oh, shit, your nose is bleeding!”

Richie felt like he was moving through sand as he dabbed underneath his nose and his fingers came back red. “Oh,” he said.

Eddie reached down into his fanny pack and Richie thought he heard him say, “I’ve got some tissues”, but the ringing sound was getting louder.

Richie rubbed his nose with the sleeve of the leather jacket and looked at the smear of red left there as if it belonged to someone else.

His ears felt hot.

His tail was burning.

He could feel them.

Richie nearly choked with the force of the pain that stabbed into his chest. He could feel his heartbeat speed up rapidly in a rhythm that physically hurt him with every beat. He doubled over and groaned as pain lanced through his stomach, and he felt a wave of nausea so strong he worried he was going to throw up right there on the bench.

Fuck.

Fuckfuckfuckfuck.

“Not now,” Richie groaned through gritted teeth. “It’s not supposed to be happening tonight.”

He thought he heard Eddie say his name a few more times in a voice that was borderline hysterical, but Richie knew he had to go, and he had to go now.

“I’m gonna hurl,” he said through the pain, “so don’t- ow, fuck- don’t follow me, okay? Too much junk food… it won’t be pretty.” Richie stood up from the bench, still hunched over, and stumbled towards the forest. It wasn’t far. He could make it. “Don’t follow me,” he repeated, worried that his voice was already grating into something more like a growl. “Please. Just go home. I’m sorry. I’m so- I’m so fucking sorry.”

Richie could barely see through the blur of pain and tears, but he didn’t miss the sheer panic and confusion on Eddie’s face as Richie turned and sprinted for the trees. He had to make it into the forest before he couldn’t use his legs anymore.

He ran and whimpered as waves of pain crashed through his body, but he knew the forest like the back of his hand, and even without being able to see he ducked under branches and leaped over tree roots.

He had to get far enough in.

Richie fell to the ground and felt cool dirt and leaves press against his cheek as he writhed in pain on the forest floor.

He was out of time. He just had to hope he was far enough away that Eddie wouldn’t find him even if he’d ignored him and followed.

He cried out, but the sound carried higher and higher and turned into a howl.

Chapter Text

Eddie could feel his heart pounding in his chest as Richie groaned in pain on the bench. His voice came out high and panicked when he leaned across and said, “Richie? What’s not supposed to be happening tonight? What’s wrong? Talk to me!”

But Richie didn’t even acknowledge that he’d said anything. His eyes were glazed over with pain as he winced and cringed.

“I’m gonna hurl,” Richie gritted out, his voice scratchy and raw, “so don’t- ow, fuck- don’t follow me, okay? Too much junk food… it won’t be pretty.” Sweat shone on his forehead and some of his curly fringe was already plastered to the skin there. His blue and brown eyes seemed to shine even more vividly than usual against the pale pallor of his skin.

“What the fuck, what’s going on? Are you okay?” Eddie could hear the note of hysteria in his voice, but he was on the cusp of losing it – one minute Richie was calming him down from the stupid panic attack he’d had on the ferris wheel, and then the next he was saying he had something to confess, his nose started bleeding, and then he looked like he was- he looked like he was about to fucking die or something!

Richie didn’t reply, he just struggled to get to his feet, still stooped low with his hands clutching his stomach, and started stumbling forwards towards the trees. “Don’t follow me,” he said as he hobbled away, but his voice was even lower and scratchier than before and Eddie could hardly understand when he added a pained, “Please. Just go home. I’m sorry. I’m so- I’m so fucking sorry.”

Then he lurched into a dash, disappeared into the shadows of the trees, and Eddie was alone.

“Rich…” Eddie whispered, his breath coming in hard and fast while his heartbeat still pounded a deafening rhythm in his ears. “What…”

It took him the longest feeling few seconds of his life to get his shit together, take a deep breath into his burning lungs, and leap up from the bench. His feet pounded the ground as he flew forwards to follow Richie, diving into the trees without faltering.

“Who cares-” Eddie wheezed as he slapped branches aside and stumbled over roots and foliage that he couldn’t see in the deepening shadows of the forest “-who fucking cares if it’s not pretty you asshole – someone’s gotta stop you – fucking branches – from choking on your own vomit, idiot!”

How had Richie gone so far when he’d only had a few seconds head start?! What was he doing?!

“Richie!” Eddie tried to yell, but he was struggling to catch his breath through the panic and the running, so it came out as a pitiful whisper.

Moonlight filtered through the leaves of the forest as Eddie got further in, and he was grateful for the large full moon for providing a source of light bright enough to keep him from running straight into any of the tree trunks. When he looked down, he could barely see the forest floor, so there was no point looking out for tree roots – he continued to stub his sneakers against them or trip over them when his foot got caught.

Eddie slapped away another low branch from his face, but he was so distracted that he didn’t notice the clump of shrubs at his feet until it snagged against his ankle. He yelped and threw his hands out in front of him just as he hit the floor and felt something sharp dig into the palm of his left hand. He hissed and sat on his knees, clutching his hand to his chest. This was how he was going to fucking die wasn’t it? Infected from a cut with all the germs and God only knew what from the dirty floor of Derry’s Forest. Nobody was going to find him, Richie was probably already dead, and- and-

Eddie sucked in quick, shallow gulps of air, but he could feel his head swimming.

Then he heard a howl.

It was thin and shaky, but unmistakably a howl. And it sounded close.

But… it couldn’t have been made by a… wolf… There were no wolves in Maine.

What else was with him in the forest?

The sound of it seemed to echo in his ears as Eddie sat frozen to the spot on the forest floor.

He was shaking, he was cold and dirty, and he was probably going to get sepsis from the cut on his hand, but Richie was still in the forest too somewhere. And something had made that howl – even if it was impossible to be a wolf. Right now, he was the only one that knew Richie was in the forest. He thought of the panic he’d seen on his face when he wiped the blood from his nose and stared down at the red smear on his jacket with a mounting horror. Eddie didn’t know what was going on, and he was going to kill him himself if this really was just a case of too much junk food and excitement, but he’d looked… he’d looked scared. Terrified… In so much pain... And he’d never seen him look like that before.

Eddie took a deep breath into his lungs and exhaled it all out shakily. He thought of Richie helping him out of his panic attack on the ferris wheel – and felt a deep well of shame and regret gnaw at him inside. They’d been having such a great time, and Eddie had felt so proud of himself for being able to help Richie calm down after he’d been panicking earlier, and then he just had to go and get into an even worse state himself. Why couldn’t he have just held his shit together and they’d have had a nice end to their (date) night out together.

It was ridiculous to think that whatever happened to Richie was his fault, because he was clearly sick or something, so it was out of his control, but that didn’t stop his traitorous thoughts from telling him that if he hadn’t been freaking out, he’d have been more help, and then maybe Richie wouldn’t have had chance to run off into the trees without him reacting for long enough to get lost in there.

And he couldn’t help but think about what else had Richie been about to say to him just before that? He’d been so nervous to tell him… Wait. Had he figured out that Eddie thought of their night out as a date? Had he discovered Eddie’s feelings for him? Maybe he’d been about to let him down gently? Oh, fuck. He probably was. That’s why he’d been so nervous! He’d even- he’d held his hand so sweetly and Eddie had nearly burst into tears because it’s all he’d ever wanted. But it had been to soften the blow, hadn’t it? Because he didn’t want to send him back into a spiral, but he had to tell him just before they left, so he didn’t go home with the wrong idea or anything.

Eddie tried to even his breathing out again, but it came out as another gasping wheeze.  

He was just going to have to live with the sense memory of Richie’s large hands sliding up and down his thighs forever and be happy that it was all he was ever going to get. He’d been pushing down his feelings for a while, so he could keep doing it as long as they got to stay friends.

Eddie tried not to think of Richie locking eyes with him and rubbing his hands over his legs to time his breaths, because it seemed wrong somehow right now, but he immediately began to remember the timing he’d made. In. Out. In. Out.

His breathing slowed and eased.

He’d been there for him when he’d needed him. He hadn’t thought about anything else other than helping Eddie, and he’d managed to talk him down from a panic attack without the use of his inhaler – something he’d never thought possible.

There had been so much tenderness in his expression, that for one minute he had been able to kid himself that he felt the same way about him that he felt for Richie.

Stupid.

“You’re braver than you think,” Eddie whispered to himself, hearing it in his Richie’s voice in his mind. “You’re braver than you think,” he repeated, again and again like a mantra as he unzipped his fanny pack and pulled out some tissues, then wrapped them as best he could one-handedly around his cut. He tried not to think of infections and blood poisoning. Or that the scent of blood might attract whatever creature had howled.

He hadn’t broken anything, and the cut was stinging, but wasn’t too painful. So, he was okay. Richie had said that his panic attacks were all in his mind, so he was going to show his mind who was fucking boss.

His mother was wrong.

Everything she’d made him believe was wrong.

He could do things. He was brave. He was going to help his best friend. Even if that’s all they’d ever be.

Eddie took another breath.

He’d had the best night that he’d ever had in his entire miserable life, and he’d been with his best friend in the whole world – his first friend – and he was going to find him and tell him that he was an idiot to run into the forest and they were going to laugh about it and Eddie was going to panic about his cut and Richie would make a joke about him being a hypochondriac and Eddie was never ever going to confess his feelings and hope that Richie thought he’d made a mistake and that he really did think they were just friends and nothing would change between them.

Eddie laughed to himself, but it came out as more of a distressed wheeze.

God, what was wrong with him?

(Besides everything.)

He took one more breath and placed his good hand on the ground, careful to place it in a spot clear of the shrubs, but pulled back sharply with another yelp as he touched something cold and hard. His brows furrowed in confusion. Plastic?

Tentatively Eddie reached back down and closed his hand around an object he knew so well he didn’t even have to bring it up into a small shaft of moonlight to know what it was – Richie’s glasses.

“Richie!” he yelled, able to raise his volume now. “Richie, where the fuck are you!?” Eddie held the glasses so tightly the plastic dug into his palm.

He rose to his feet and shivered. “Rich?”

It felt like he was being watched.

-----------------***-----------------

Eddie had never been on a date before. He’d never even been out with someone on something that he could pretend was a date. In fact, he’d never really been anywhere with just one person before.

He’d never even had any friends.

He tried not to be ashamed of himself, because that would be like admitting the fault was his all along and that the common factor between these situations was that they required someone to spend any amount of time with him, and nobody he’d ever met had wanted to do that. At a certain point in his life, he’d realised that things like friendships – human relationships of any kind really – were not for him. He talked too fast. He was neurotic and suffered with hypochondria. He had panic attacks that he pretended were asthma attacks, just so that he wouldn’t have to explain why using an empty inhaler stopped them. He was rude and abrasive and stubborn and a coward.

He thought that the only person in the entire world that could ever stand to be around him was his mother, which was why it had hurt so much when he’d started to realise just how badly she’d been lying to him. She’d been telling him lies that had taken root and grown into something poisonous and twisted that became too late to cut away, and he’d always thought that all the sicknesses she’d told him that he suffered with had simply become a part of him, whether he liked it or not. His ‘asthma’. Intolerances. The pills he needed to take. A weak immune system. A weak body.

She’d always told him that he was special, but only to her, and eventually he’d started to believe that too. She was all he would ever have. And he would have to be okay with that.

Not happy.

Never happy.

But okay.

But did friendless, dateless, cowardly Eddie Kaspbrak deserve happiness anyway?

He’d been in the bathroom of his high school, sobbing and hyperventilating his way through a panic attack in one of the stalls, when he decided that no, he didn’t. He’d stupidly thought that even though nobody had asked him to their graduation prom, he would go and try – in one last ditch effort – to socialise like a normal person and maybe ask someone to dance. But he’d only made it a few steps into the hall before he’d seen a group of girls whispering, pointing at him, and laughing. The attention increased and the giggles of the girls got louder as Eddie flattened himself against the wall nearby and decided that it had been a stupid idea to come. But when he went to leave, some of the boys from his class blocked the exit, and one of the girls approached him and asked if he wanted to dance with her friend, then pointed to one of the boys on the dancefloor. The others around her erupted into fits of laughter and he had to push through the group blocking the doors as he fled the hall. He knew they were yelling abusive names at him, but he’d been crying too hard to really hear them.

Looking back, it hurt so much because it was something about himself that he hadn’t understood or even processed yet, but the kids in his class who didn’t even pay attention to him had all figured it out. Even if they were just teasing him about his sexuality to be cruel – it turned out they’d been right.

When he’d decided to go to college, he’d only sent off one application to New York University. He didn’t see the point of going anywhere far, because his plan was to stay with his mother while he studied anyway, but then the invitation to study at Derry arrived. His mom always opened his mail, so she was the one who suggested that he studied there, and he was surprised until he saw the bursary that they’d offered him if he accepted. His grades had never been particularly good, so he couldn’t figure out why they would have sent an invitation to him, with a bursary included, but when he googled Derry, he found a curiously small amount of hits back and all he could find out was that it was a tiny town in Maine. So he just figured that they were desperate for students from out of state, and he wasn’t about to pass up the chance of free money if his mother was in support of it too.

Not that she didn’t make a fuss out of moving. He often wanted to remind her that she was the one who suggested he accepted the invitation in the first place, but he just bit his tongue and apologised for the inconvenience of it all.

She didn’t get a job in Derry, so the whole of his bursary went toward the rent for their new house. She kept telling him she would get a job soon, but he never even saw her looking.

But if she was the only person in the whole world who could stand to be around him, then he didn’t mind. Any attention was better than none at all.

He had spent his whole life without friendship, and he hadn’t been looking for it when he started his classes, so it was unsurprising when the other students avoided him, or whispered about him, and wanted nothing to do with him. That’s how his whole life had been, and he wasn’t expecting anything different, just because he’d moved. Though he had to admit that it still hurt a little that these people who had no past with him, and knew nothing about him, never even tried to approach him. A voice inside sometimes considered that maybe he should be the one to initiate a conversation, but then he’d remember how he went out on a limb to prom, and how badly that had worked out for him, and decided that he was okay with staying far away from everyone if they stayed far away from him.

Not happy.

Never happy.

But okay.

Then one Richard Tozier had appeared into his life.

He was only a little way through his first year when he joined the Derry University Debate Society. He would inadvertently start a lot of debates in his classes when he simply refused to back down on his own opinion, and he’d been doing it so often that one of his professors stopped him after class to suggest joining. He knew that he’d only suggested it so that he could get the arguments out of his system and leave the class alone, but he didn’t care – the back and forth always got his heart racing and for once the idea of voluntarily being around a group of people appealed to him, because they would all be there for the same thing.

That’s how Eddie found himself joining the debate society.

It just so happened that was the exact same night that Richie decided he wanted to join the university’s drama club.

Eddie was sat at the edge of the room watching the others set up the debate podiums, when someone stumbled into the room, apologised loudly for being late, dumped his jacket and bag on an empty desk, pulled out a bag of chips, popped the bag open, and hopped up onto the desk next to him, crunching loudly on the chips. His curls still looked damp, and he pulled his large, thick rimmed glasses off to wipe away condensation, then perched them back onto his nose. The buttoned shirt he wore was bright pink with green dog bones printed on it, left open to show off the green t-shirt underneath, and the look was finished off with bright blue shorts and pink socks showing over his dirty sneakers, that he’d crossed under himself to sit cross-legged on the desk. The shorts only drew attention to how long his legs were, and he pushed some of his stray curls from his face with long elegant fingers. He had high, prominent cheekbones and long lashes beneath his glasses, that seemed to be a particularly high strength because they magnified his eyes – one dark brown, almost black, and one bright blue. It was kind of pretty.

The effect was ruined when he popped more chips in his mouth and crunched them loudly, then asked, “What?”, to the room, with his mouth still full.

Eddie’s nose scrunched with distaste. The guy looked like he’d dressed himself in the dark and he clearly had no manners. In Eddie’s defence he hadn’t realised he’d said any of that out loud until the new guy turned to him with surprise and grinned – and even worse – winked obnoxiously.

Eddie had never felt so immediately annoyed by anyone in his life.

(Even if he did have pretty eyes.)

The society leader was a third-year student who hadn’t stopped scowling at the intruder since he first walked in. “Can we help you, Richie?” he asked, in an icy tone of voice that made his contempt clear.

“Uh, yeah- I’m here for the drama club?” he drawled, but then took an actual look around at who he was sat with and understanding slowly dawned on his face like a sunrise. He placed a hand on his chin and said slowly, “This is the wrong room.”

“Y’think?” slipped out of Eddie’s mouth before he could stop it, alongside a violent sweeping gesture of his hand at the two podiums set up at the front of the classroom.

Richie snorted in amusement and it shocked Eddie to feel a stirring of warmth in his chest at the realisation that he’d made someone laugh.

He’d never made anyone laugh before.

“No, you’re right, I should have noticed the stink of nasal spray and superiority when I first walked in.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie snapped immediately. He wondered why he cared what this total stranger thought, but it bothered him that he would lump them all together when Eddie had also had the same first impression as him. They all seemed pompous and arrogant and for some reason he didn’t want Richie to think he was like that too. It’s not like they’d exactly given him a warm welcome either.

“Woah, you kiss you mother with that mouth?” Richie said with a flash of a smile from his perch on the desk beside him. He wiggled his eyebrows. “Because I do.” He wiggled his eyebrows even harder, and it started to move his forehead up and down too. (It was weirdly endearing.) “Kiss your mother, I mean. With my mouth.”

Eddie nearly gagged and felt his eyebrows scrunch together angrily. “Don’t make jokes about my mother,” he hissed, “you don’t even know her.”

“Oh, but I do…” Richie hesitated and looked at him expectantly.

“Are you- is this you asking me for my name? After you just made a joke about my mom?”

“Okay, fine, I’ll just have to call you Cute Angry Short Guy,” Richie said with a soft sigh. He had turned to face Eddie fully and placed his chin in his hands as he rested his elbows on his knees.

Eddie had never been called ‘cute’ in his entire life, but it hit a nerve. The sounds of laughter ghosted to him in a memory of his high school prom, and he scowled, fearing that he was being made fun of again. “Don’t call me cute.”

“But angry and short are both still viable? Noted.”

He smiled at him, just a soft twitching up at the corners of his lips, and Eddie was struck with the realisation that he was being sincere. The force of his full attention and smile, and the earnestness beneath the jokes, threw him completely off balance.

On a normal day he would never have given his name to someone who was annoying him this much, but it slipped right out as a clipped, “Oh for- My name’s Eddie.”

“Eduardo-”

“Not my name.”

“Eds-”

Eddie sucked in a deep breath and twisted in his seat to face Richie fully, trying to match his energy. His heart was racing like he was in a debate, and judging by the way Richie’s grin had widened, it looked like he was enjoying the back-and-forth too. “Can you just get out and let us get back to what we were doing? We can have someone escort you to the room you’re supposed to be in, because you obviously struggle with basic things like navigating through buildings, and we wouldn’t want you to get lost again,” he ranted, speaking quickly and waving his hand violently in the air, “I’m sure everyone, wherever you were headed, will be happy to have you and your chip crumbs and your talking with your mouth full and your lounging over the desks like they’re seats because you also lack any basic kind of politeness. And who says your mom jokes at college anyway, what are you, like, twelve?”

Richie doubled over with raucous laughter and again a strange warmth tingled up through Eddie’s spine and settled in his chest. He’d never had anyone react like that when he was that rude or kept up with him when he was speaking that quickly.

When he’d wiped his eyes, Richie leant back and folded his arms and Eddie realised how broad his shoulders were too.

He may have broad shoulders and pretty eyes and an infectious laugh and a nice smile, but he was still annoying.

“I’m only leaving if you promise to escort me out, Eds.”

“Again, not my name- and if you think I-”

“Both of you get out!”

When the door slammed shut, leaving both Eddie and Richie alone in the corridor outside the room, Eddie whipped to face him and jabbed a finger at his chest. “This is your fault,” he hissed. “I can’t believe you got me kicked out, you asshole.”

Richie held up his hands like he was surrendering. “Me? I di’n’t do nothin’ mister,” he cried, in what Eddie thought was supposed to be an impression of a Dickensian orphan.

“You were provoking me on purpose! And what- what even- what kind of voice is that supposed to be?”

“You don’t know?” Richie pitched his voice high when he said, “Please, sir, I want some more.” He fell to his knees and held up his hands as if he were holding a bowl, and Eddie swatted at them. It made him grin and laugh. “See how I had to kneel down to be shorter than you.”

“Fuck you,” Eddie said again, with a scowl, but it only made Richie smile wider. “Well, it wasn’t a very good impression,” he huffed, even though he’d guessed it right, “and get up off the floor – you’re wearing shorts and I don’t think anyone has ever vacuumed this carpet.”

Richie unfolded himself back to his full height and Eddie tried not to watch him. He rubbed at his knees and tapped them a few times. “I think you’re right, my knees are kind of sticky now – feel ‘em.”

“I’m not feeling your knees!”

“No, look, there’s something weird on them! They’re sticky!”

“Stop pointing your knees at me!” Eddie shrieked.

“They’re pointy knees, dude, they can’t help it!”

“You’re- you’re literally hopping on one leg and trying to poke your knee at me, you asshole!”

The door flew open, and they both nearly tripped over each other in their haste to run away. Whatever was yelled after them was drowned out by the sound of their laughter.

When they were outside Eddie finally calmed himself down and realised that he was smiling. Is that what having fun felt like?

“Richie Tozier,” Richie said, holding out a hand for Eddie to shake.

Richie’s eyes squinted when he smiled, still large behind his glasses. He was kind of rude and obnoxious, and his fashion sense was awful, he probably needed a haircut to try and tame his messy curls, and he had the air of an excitable puppy about him or something, but there was something else about him that seemed to draw Eddie in. He couldn’t explain it.

Eddie stared at his hand, thinking of the statistics of how much bacteria lived on hands, and how many people didn’t wash after going to the bathroom, and how he had an extreme aversion to touching people, but found himself gripping this stranger’s hand anyway. “Eddie Kaspbrak,” he replied, “Eddie Kaspbrak. Not Eds. Or anything else you want to come up with. Just Eddie.”

They unclasped hands and Eddie realised that had been the first time he’d willingly touched anyone other than his mother for longer than he could remember. His palm felt warm.

He unzipped his fanny pack and squirted a large amount of sanitiser into his hands and rubbed them rapidly together.

Richie laughed. “Fuck you, Just Eddie, I wash my hands!” He licked them one at a time, slowly dragging his tongue over the palms, while Eddie gagged. “See? Clean.” He held them back out again for him to shake, and chased after a shrieking Eddie while he laughed.

Eddie had never had a friend, so at first, he didn’t realise that’s what Richie was. For a while they just bumped into each other around campus sometimes – and Richie would yell some variation of his name at him, and he would always reply that that wasn’t his name. No matter how mean Eddie thought he was being, Richie always took it in his stride – if anything, he seemed to find it amusing. Eddie didn’t mean to be so prickly, but he was confused by the feeling of someone wanting to be around him, and seeking him out, and his self-destructive defence to that was to push people away before they could push him away.

But it didn’t work on Richie, and it wasn’t long before he realised that he didn’t want it to.

Richie began to meet him after his classes sometimes, and one time he appeared outside his classroom with two coffees in hand, but when Eddie went to explain that he could only drink decaf, he handed him a cup with the words ‘pretend coffee’ on the side in his scruffy handwriting. He explained that he didn’t seem like the type anyone should give caffeine to, and Eddie had pretended to be insulted, but he’d been so touched. Just the idea that he had brought him something as a treat, and not expected anything in return, and knew him well enough to guess that he didn’t have caffeine, fired up a warmth in his chest and an embarrassing feeling of tears in his eyes.

Their friendship only strengthened and grew. The first time Richie had called him his best friend Eddie had opened his eyes wide and thought, ‘yeah, that’s what we are’. He just wanted to be around him all the time, and know that he was happy and see him smile and laugh at his jokes and hold his hand and kiss him-

He’d been working on controlling his dumb crush on his best friend for a while, but Richie made it extremely hard to not have romantic feelings for him when he smiled at him, or laughed at his stupid jokes, or casually touched him (just because they were friends and that’s what friends do) but instead of getting disgusted Eddie would think more.

But he’d never been able to shake the idea that he’d lived with his whole life – that nobody would ever want to be around him except his mother.

He was trying but… those thoughts ran so deep he feared he’d never be free of them.

But Eddie had finally gone out on a limb and asked someone to spend time with just him, and he’d agreed to go to the fair with him, and they’d had the best night of Eddie’s life.

He was happy.

So happy.

And finally, more than okay.

-----------------***-----------------

Eddie gripped the glasses tightly to his chest and looked around. But the forest was still mostly in shadow, and moonlight only filtered in scattered shafts of silver through the leaves.

The tree trunks stood like looming dark shapes around him.

He was definitely being watched.

“Richie? Is that you?” he whispered. When no answer came Eddie reached down to his feet with his good hand, holding the glasses with his bad one, and picked up a stick. He brandished it in front of himself like some kind of pathetic imitation of a sword.

“If you’ve done something to my friend…” Eddie started, not entirely sure how he was going to finish the sentence. He’d fight someone, or whatever creature made the howl, with a stick, sure. For Richie. He took a tentative step forward, as if to back up his words with any kind of action was going to make him seem braver than he really was, and a twig snapped to his left as something moved.

Eddie threw his stick like a spear, out of pure instinct, and like everything else he’d thrown, it hit its target perfectly.

A canine whine burst out of the shadows.

Eddie felt his whole body freeze like he’d been paralysed.

Oh shit. Oh shit.

Maybe there really were wolves in Maine!

Had it already got Richie?

The thought boldened him, and he scooped another stick from the ground as he inched closer. “What did you do with my friend?” Eddie asked, in a voice that was a lot stronger than he felt it should sound.

A strong breeze rustled the leaves of the trees and shifted the canopy enough for a shaft of light to illuminate a large, dark furred shape crouched nearby. A quiet whine escaped it again as it rubbed a large paw over one side of its face over and over.

Eddie stopped suddenly and his sneakers crunched down onto dry leaves loudly in the silence that the wind had left behind.

The shape froze and two large, pointed ears perked up high.

Eddie could see it now.

A black wolf.

It put its paw back on the ground but kept the eye closed – Eddie could see a small trickle of blood run from a cut just above it, presumably from the stick he’d thrown. The one still open – a dark brown canine eye – stared at him widely, like Eddie was pointing a gun at him instead of another stick. Its ears flattened down as it sank to the forest floor and it pressed its whole body down flat, as if it could somehow hide, even though Eddie was looking right at it. He could see its body shaking. It looked terrified. It whined again, low, and pitiful.

Which was odd only because this thing was a wolf that looked like it came up taller than Eddie’s waist standing on all-fours, but would clearly be even taller than him if it stood on its hind-legs. He should be being ripped to pieces right now.

It looked up at him from where its head was placed between its paws – huge black paws with claws visible even from where Eddie stood. Its snout was long and ended in a black nose that shined wetly in the moonlight, and a great fluffy tail was curled around its body. Its fur coat was thick and even a little curly around its neck, where it seemed the densest, and its one eye continued to regard him sadly, the other still closed even though the blood had stopped, thanks to its fur.

Eddie had never seen a wolf in real life before, but he was sure this wasn’t how they were supposed to act.

He found himself feeling increasingly less scared, and he didn’t even know why. It was still a wild animal – it could just be looking sorry for itself because of its injury and at the closest opportunity snap his arm off or something, but there was something about the way it gazed up at him. It looked so incredibly sad.

Despite his better judgement Eddie took another wary step closer, though he still brandished his new stick in front of himself.

The wolf flattened itself even further to the ground, like it was trying to sink into the earth itself, and it shuffled backwards slightly, belly fur rustling the leaves on the forest floor.

It seemed unbelievable but the huge wolf… it feared him. Eddie could practically hear alarm sirens ringing in his head as he put the stick in the back pocket of his pants, in easy reach if he needed it, though he wasn’t sure what help it would be against something that big, and held up his now empty hand – as if it could understand what that meant anyway. “You didn’t eat my friend Richie, did you? Because he loves dogs, and he would definitely try to pet you.”

The wolf’s eye opened marginally wider as it looked back up at him and its ears perked up again on its head.

“Yeah, he’d definitely try to pet you. You’re kind of cute. You’d probably bite his arm off if he tried though, right? You’ve probably got fleas or something anyway. Or ticks. You haven’t got rabies have you?” Eddie said nearly all on one breath.

He had to control his breathing and not let himself go into another panic attack.

The wolf’s tail wagged a little, so Eddie kept talking – maybe the sound of his voice was calming it down?

“I need to find him, because he looked really sick, and I think there’s something wrong with him, and he needs help. Like, professional, hospital-level help. So, like a fucking idiot, I rushed into this forest without thinking and now I don’t know the way out even if I do find him. Everything’s going wrong. You know what these are?” Eddie asked the wolf, holding out Richie’s glasses. “These are his glasses. And he’s basically blind without them. So now I’m thinking, someone’s got him, and they fell off – but who else would be in the forest this late at night? Or you’ve eaten him and you’re just pretending to be a cute puppy, so I let me guard down and you eat me too. Or he tripped, like I did, and he’s passed out somewhere, but it’s too dark and the forest is too big, and I’ll never find him. Fuck, what if he’s- Oh, god, I don’t know what to do.”

Eddie took another big gulp of air and pressed the glasses back to his chest. The plastic dug into his injured hand through the tissues, but he didn’t care.

The wolf continued to stare with its one eye, and another whine floated into the air between them. Almost like it understood.

“Or… maybe he was never sick at all. He got a nosebleed right before he ran off, and maybe… maybe that was just a good excuse to pretend he was feeling sick so he could leave. He spent all night with me. Nobody ever spends that long with me. Except my mom. And I’m… I’m sometimes kind of mean to him.” He could feel a lump at the back of his throat and his eyes burned with unshed tears. “I don’t mean the things I say to him to be cruel – I mean them, like, affectionately. It sounds stupid, but I’m not like that with anyone else. But maybe I… go too far or something. I’ve never had a friend before- I know, not hard to believe, right? So, all of this is just, new to me.” Eddie took a deep breath, and felt it slide in and out of his chest easily. “I just love the way we bicker. He’s the first person who’s ever kept up with me like that. He’s- I- I love him. He’s my best friend,” Eddie added quickly, unable to admit his true feelings even to himself yet, so especially not some random wild wolf that may yet eat him. “So go on then, fucking kill me and get one with it if you have to, but if not, I need to go. I’ve got to at least try to find him, even if he doesn’t want me to.”

The wolf whined and whined, long and loud, and Eddie jumped in surprise, nearly reaching for his stick. It rose to its paws in one fluid movement, and he realised he’d been right about how large the animal was. He resisted the urge to step backwards, thinking that staying still was probably the better option – but he couldn’t remember if that was something you were supposed to do for wolves, or if it was something he’d seen on a documentary about sharks, or maybe he’d seen it on Jurassic Park… Wolves, sharks, and dinosaurs were similar enough though, right?

The wolf’s tail was curled between its back legs, and its head hung down with its shoulders hunched up high. It looked like it was trying to be as unthreatening as possible, and once again Eddie stared in total confusion. This thing could kill him in the blink of an eye, he was already injured (the wolf must be able to smell the blood), and he was armed with nothing but a stick. Although apparently, he could still do some damage with even just that.

“Sorry about your eyebrow,” Eddie said on an impulse, seeing the bright red cut he’d made there, above the eye it still kept closed.

The wolf huffed out a breath through its nose like it was amused.

Which was ridiculous.

It took a tentative step towards him, and Eddie continued to stay perfectly still.

The wolf lifted its head up as it came closer, and its nose was in line with Eddie’s stomach, but it also became clearer to see that even though it was tall, it was still quite skinny for something that large. Maybe it was hungry, after all.

Well, the joke was on the wolf, because Eddie wasn’t going to be much of a snack.

He internally groaned at knowing Richie would laugh at him making a short joke about himself.

If the wolf came a little closer, he could try to throw the stick like a toy and then run while it was distracted? But it would be able to find him with its sense of smell. He was pretty sure that a punch in the nose was definitely from the shark documentary. Not for wolves.

Eddie held his breath as the wolf’s nose came closer to the glasses, still clutched to his chest. He could hear it take a few good sniffs and then it backed away slowly and sat on its haunches. It bowed its head low and whined again, then perked its ears up and pointed its snout towards a gap between a set of tree trunks.

“What?” Eddie let out the air in his lungs in one relieved whoosh, realising he’d been thinking the wolf was finally going to bite him. But… it looked like… it was pointing him in a direction.

What the fuck was going on?

“You can take me to Richie?”

He was asking the wolf questions now. Of course he was asking the wolf questions.

The wolf barked a quiet little yip and his tail wagged slightly, and Eddie finally did take a step backwards as he felt his balance shift under the impossible realisation that the wolf could understand him.

Impossible! Not fucking-

“Was that a, yes?” he asked in a strained voice.

The wolf barked again, a little louder and Eddie let himself crouch down low enough to put his head between his knees. “What the fuck. What the actual fuck.”

The wolf whined.

“Wolves can’t- you shouldn’t- what the fuck!” Eddie repeated, standing up and pointing an accusatory finger at him.

The wolf lowered its head and flattened its ears. Even on something that big the effect was kind of cute and sad.

If the ability to understand human speech hadn’t robbed the animal of all its threat, the image of it doing its best to look like a giant puppy definitely did.

The wolf eventually pointed its snout in the same direction again and huffed out another breath through its nose. Like it was telling him to get a move on.

“Maybe I passed out on the ferris wheel,” Eddie suggested to himself as he walked slowly towards the wolf that could somehow understand him. “And I’ll wake up in the hospital and none of this has really happened at all.”

The wolf stood up again and moved forwards ahead of Eddie, glancing back occasionally to check that he was still following, but it had the advantage of perfect night vision and four legs to navigate over the undergrowth, so Eddie was much slower. The wolf slowed its pace down and its fluffy tail swayed behind it as it walked. Eddie had to try and squash the weird impulse to touch it and see if it was as fluffy as it looked. He was distracted and didn’t take enough care stepping over an exposed tree root, and felt his foot catch underneath it as he yelped and pitched forwards. He clenched his eyes shut and gripped Richie’s glasses tightly to protect them from his fall, but instead of forest floor, he fell on something solid and soft and warm that grunted at his impact, and he realised the wolf had crouched down in front of him to break his fall. The fur was coarser than he expected, but as he pushed himself off his fingers sank down into softer fur under the rougher topcoat.

“Sorry,” Eddie said quickly, as he regained his balance.

The wolf moved away and shook itself all over.

But before Eddie followed him, he noticed something in the moonlight – he recognised a patch of bright red mushrooms on a nearby tree. He’d passed it on his way through. The roots below him – he’d tripped on them when he went over them the first time. And the leafy canopy of the trees was thinning out as they got closer to the edge of the forest.

“No!” Eddie yelled, stepping back. “You’re leading me the wrong way – this is the way out! I need to find my friend Richie. I need to go back in!”

The wolf turned and looked at him with its one eye and its tail flicked, whether through guilt or surprise at getting caught Eddie didn’t know. Or maybe it had never understood him after all, and he was just so tired and panicked that he was projecting an intelligence onto it that it had never had in the first place.

Or it wasn’t even real.

“I’m not leaving without him, even if I have to search this whole forest.” Eddie started walking backwards and tripped over another root but managed to keep his balance this time.

The wolf’s tail flicked harder, and it huffed loudly again. It shook its head from side to side and whined.

“I don’t care if you help me or not- holy shit, I don’t even know if you’re really real.” Eddie laughed and he could hear it come out with a note of something high and frightening. He ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe I finally cracked, and this is all in my head, I don’t know. But right now, I do know that these feel real,” he said in a broken voice, holding out Richie’s glasses again, “and that’s real enough for me.”

Eddie turned around and began to move back into the forest, but he stopped suddenly as something tugged on his shirt. When he looked back in alarm the wolf had the corner of the material in its teeth.

“What are you- hey!”

The wolf let go and with almost impossible speed took the glasses gently right out of Eddie’s hand with its mouth, then placed them gently on the floor at its paws. It let out a deep, deep sigh through its nose as it sat down.

Eddie watched with growing confusion.

The moonlight was stronger through the thinner canopy above them, so Eddie was able to see the way it was clenching its jaws together through the subtle shifts in the muscles on its muzzle and the crease in the fur between its eyes as its eyebrows drew together in an almost human-like show of expression. It looked intensely sad.

A quiet howl escaped its throat as the wolf lifted its head up towards the moon.

When it brought its head back down, both eyes were closed, but it slowly opened them, and Eddie gasped as recognition hit him so powerfully it felt like a physical blow.

One brown, almost black.

One bright blue.

It gazed at Eddie intensely, and he felt like he’d taken root the floor as firmly as the trees around him.

It never took its eyes off Eddie as it touched its nose to the pair of glasses in front of it, then lifted a large paw, licked the pad with a bright pink tongue slowly, and held up its paw towards him like he was asking him to shake.

Eddie opened his mouth, then closed it again, and finally a single sound squeezed out of his throat as he croaked, “Richie?”

Chapter Text

“Nope. Nuh-uh. No. No way.” Eddie waved his hands furiously in the air. “It’s fucking impossible! God, now I know I’m dreaming, or I’m already dead or some shit.” He could feel his breath catching in his throat, and his poor overworked lungs began to burn again.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

The wolf’s ears turned down low to its head.

It seemed impossible, but even with the canine anatomy and features every expression it made reminded him so much of the Richie he knew.

“Fuck off,” he snapped, slicing his hand through the air.

He couldn’t think… he needed to think… it just wasn’t possible.

The wolf whined loudly, making him jump, as it lay down and pushed its nose against the glasses in front of it. It looked up at him sadly and rested its muzzle dejectedly on its paws. It looked fucking miserable.

“Sorry,” Eddie croaked, as he sucked in another rattling breath.

The wolf barked, and it faded into another whine.

“It’s just… You can’t be-”

The wolf looked up at him with its big, sad, wolf eyes (one brown, one blue) (Richie’s eyes) while its muzzle remained pressed down on its paws.

Eddie dug his fingers into his temples and rubbed furiously. “This can’t be happening,” he muttered, “this can’t be happening. People don’t just turn into wolves.”

It sat up a little and lifted its muzzle straight up into the air to let out a tiny howl, then looked back almost expectantly at Eddie.

The sound ran a shudder down his spine, but he shook it off as the wolf was still looking at him brightly, like it was supposed to mean something. Eddie squinted his eyes and shook his head. “What?”

The wolf – that may or may not be his best friend – huffed loudly through its nose and pushed itself to his paws. Eddie tried not to flinch, but God that thing was big. For something that big it surprised Eddie that he could barely hear its paws on the forest floor as it padded a few paces in almost complete silence, then it stood in a patch of moonlight and lifted its nose.

Pointing up?

“The… trees?” Eddie guessed.

It shook its head and pointed up more enthusiastically.

“The sky?”

The wolf looked over at him and huffed again – a short sharp puff of air out of its nose.

“Hey, so it’s actually really hard to play charades when you’re playing with someone who doesn’t have hands, just saying, and…” Eddie stopped mid-rant as the realisation hit him. “The moon... Shit, it’s the full moon! That’s it, isn’t it?” Eddie laughed but it came out high pitched and breathy. “Sure. Okay. Full moon. Wolf. I know what that means.”

The wolf barked and hung its head down. Its tail was so low it brushed the dead leaves as it gave one solitary, sad wag of confirmation.

“Holy shit,” Eddie breathed. He backed up until his back hit a tree trunk with a bump, and he slid down to the ground, for once not caring about what he could be sitting on. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his injured hand and hissed as the movement agitated the cut. He shook it while he took a deep breath and replaced it with his good hand, pinching hard. “You’re a…”

The wolf – Richie – WolfRichie – whined.

“Shit…” he said again, trying not to stare at the wolf, but unable to look away.

“I think I always knew there was something going on. I just never thought it would be anything like this. Stuff like the barking…” Eddie muttered, almost to himself, “I mean, everyone always barks at you, and I thought it was because you really liked dogs and maybe everyone in Derry had a thing against them or something- I mean- there are a lot of farms around here and I assumed- maybe dogs had historically eaten the chickens or something- or they’d had problems with wolves- or like, everyone’s just really into cats, y’know?” Eddie ranted, so quickly he could barely keep up with himself. “I don’t know, man. I never figured it out, but I didn’t want to ask, ‘cause you always laughed it off or pretended you hadn’t heard them when we were together, but I know when you’re pretending, and I know when you’re hurting, and I didn’t want to draw attention to it, so I just pretended not to hear. And you know I’ve got weak arms, you know I wouldn’t have been able to take anyone in a real fight, especially fucking Bowers, but god I’ve never wanted to punch someone so badly in my whole life as when they’re laughing at you and barking at you and making you feel bad, even when I didn’t know why.”

Eddie sucked in a deep breath, as everything tumbled out of him all at once, and he knew his eyebrows were pressing a tight line between them.

“So, wait, if the people in Derry are so mean to you, does that mean the whole town knows? Do our friends know? Am I- am I the only one who doesn’t know?”

WolfRichie whined so loudly and urgently it was almost a howl and he shook his head from side to side vigorously.

“You…” Eddie bit back the tears that were forming a lump in his throat. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time?”

The whines increased in volume and pitch and Eddie swallowed thickly around the urge to cry. This was an impossible conversation to have when he couldn’t get any explanation back.

“And then,” he laughed wetly, “I knew there was something weird going on tonight – I fucking knew it! There were times when you just seemed so out of it. Like, when you said you had something to tell me- is this… is this what it was? Holy fucking shit,” he added, with another press onto the bridge of his nose.

WolfRichie was still looking at him with his wide heterochromatic eyes and Eddie remembered how scared human Richie had looked when he said he’d got something to tell him, and that he’d never believe him. Just like that.

Jesus, he’d even just straight up asked him if he liked dogs earlier!

Things were starting to make sense. He felt like it shouldn’t, because he was a practical person and people turning into wolves on the night of the full moon was the stuff of fiction – but everything was starting to click into place. The way Richie behaved in certain circumstances was a little odd sometimes, and Eddie could never quite grasp why, or sometimes he’d say something that felt like it was loaded with another meaning that he didn’t understand. And now he knew. The small, odd moments never seemed significant enough to take note of on their own, but when he thought of them all together and it actually… explained a lot.

Eddie’s breathing calmed and the tightness in his chest eased as he pieced more and more together in his mind. He rested his head back against the tree behind him with a thump and pulled his gaze up to the patch of bright full moon visible through the canopy.

Richie… WolfRichie… hadn’t moved a muscle the whole time – standing on his four big paws, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight that tipped the edges of his black fur with silver. He looked otherworldly, and Eddie realised that’s exactly what he’d stumbled into. Another world where… werewolves exist.

Eddie let out a breath as he slowly got to his feet, and the wolf watched him carefully. He still looked terrified and that seemed to fill him with more confidence.

What was he scared of? It was ridiculous to think he feared anything he could possibly do, because Eddie was powerless compared to him. Did he think he was going to run away screaming? Wasn’t he the one who told him that he was braver than he thought in the first place?

A sting of betrayal and a calm understanding were at war with each other in his mind. He had been lied to enough by his own mother that finding out Richie had been lying to him too was hurting him so deeply that he wanted to scream. But was it really a lie if he’d never denied being a werewolf, or outright said that he was a human? Was a lie of omission still a lie? In his shoes, if he had to admit to being a fucking werewolf to someone – even his best friend – wouldn’t he have kept it a secret too?

WolfRichie stared at the ground and hunched his shoulders, and Eddie suddenly couldn’t help but imagine the normal human shaped Richie that he knew, with the same expression and posture.

He looked like he was about to throw up or bolt.

Oh my god, it’s really him.

Eddie slowly approached Richie’s glasses, still on the ground where they’d been left, and bent down to pick them up, keeping his gaze secured on the wolf the whole time. He took a few cautious steps towards him. “Don’t bite me,” he said, “or move. At all. Uh- stay.”

WolfRichie blinked, and his ears swivelled back and forth in his confusion.

Eddie held up the glasses towards his nose slowly. He didn’t know how much of this was still a dream, or how much of Richie was in the wolf – he didn’t know how any of this worked. But he knew one thing-

“Richie,” Eddie whispered. “It’s okay. I know it’s you. Don’t be scared.”

The brown and blue magnified through the glasses were Richie’s eyes. Eddie had looked over at them more times than he wanted to acknowledge, always looking away before he was spotted. And here they were. They were locked on his own, shining in the silvery light, and Eddie got the impression that if they could cry tears, they would. Instead, he heard a whine that seemed to come from somewhere deep, with a note so long and shaky that it pierced his chest and brought tears to his own eyes. It was such a heartbreakingly sad and lonely sound.

He was so close that he could feel each warm breath the wolf expelled from his nose. The black fur around his face was short and velvety looking, and his fluffy ears were pinned down as low as they could go. The denser fur around his neck curled slightly and reminded him of his hair. “Richie,” Eddie said again.

WolfRichie – Richie – closed his eyes slowly and dipped his head.

Eddie removed the glasses from his nose. “Shit! I am going to need one hell of an explanation for all of this. I mean” – he gestured violently at Richie – “what the fuck!” He took a deep breath. “What the actual fuck! You’re a fucking werewolf?”

Richie opened one eye as if he couldn’t bear to see his reaction all at once, and then gave a small, quiet bark.

“Okay. Sorry, this is… this is really weird.” He’d asked the question, but he hadn’t been expecting an almost-answer in reply!

Richie hunched even lower, and it looked even more like he was about to hurl. Not that he knew what a wolf about to throw up looked like – he could just tell.

“I’m not saying you’re weird!” Eddie corrected quickly. “Unless we’re talking about the whole turning into a wolf thing in general, then, yeah, that is kind of weird. But I’m not freaked out because of you – I’m just, generally freaked out. I just found out werewolves exist and that my best friend is one. That’s pretty fucked up in one go.” Eddie groaned in frustration. “I just wish I could talk about all this with you.”

Richie sat up a bit straighter and let out a long sigh through his nose, like he agreed.

“Wait- you can’t… you can’t talk, can you? I mean, I know you haven’t said anything yet, but that’s not a revelation you’re holding onto for later, is it?”

Eddie held his breath as Richie tilted his head at his question. He locked gazes with him, opened his jaws (flashes of moonlight reflected off the rows of sharp fangs inside his mouth) and stayed perfectly still for a few seconds before he barked again.

“You asshole!” Eddie breathed, nearly sagging back down to the ground. “For a second there I really thought- Jesus, I thought you were going to speak, and I’d have died on the spot if you’d have started talking to me like a Disney character.”

Richie’s fluffy tail lifted and wagged slightly, and his expression brightened a little.

“This must be longest you ever go without saying anything,” Eddie mused, trying to push down the sensation of having an out-of-body experience as he carefully put Richie’s glasses in his pocket.

A flurry of barks replied to him, accompanied by a more violent tail wagging.

“Okay, okay, I get your point – not quiet when you’re like this either.” Eddie’s smile widened and he could visibly see some of the tension in Richie’s shoulders almost melt away; his posture changed, and his ears stopped looking like they were being pinned back to his head all the time. He sighed again, but it came out as a cute whuff.

The leaves around them rustled loudly at another gust of wind, and even more moonlight flooded the space between them.

Eddie’s foot crunched loudly on dead leaves as he took another step towards the wolf that was also his best friend. “And it’s still just you?” he asked quietly. “I mean, you’re not going to be overtaken by the savage urge to eat me or anything?” He knew it sounded ridiculous, but he had to check. If he went with what he knew from the movies then werewolves were just mindless beasts who craved blood and violence and fresh meat, but all he’d seen so far from Richie was his best impression of a kicked puppy.

Richie sneezed and shook his head.

“Was that a no? Or just a sneeze? Because I really need some concrete confirmation here that this isn’t like, a moment of clarity thing- or at the stroke of midnight you forget who you are and turn into a real wolf or something.”

Richie made a surprised yipping sound before he walked in a slow circle, making a point of picking up each leg in turn like a show pony, then barked once loudly and wagged his tail when he was facing Eddie again.

He wondered if it was difficult to walk with four legs.

“Oh, you are a real wolf?” Eddie guessed, folding his arms. “Yeah, I don’t think real wolves are this tall, Rich. Or understand English. Or spend most of the month on two legs. Although I have to admit, you nearly had me fooled earlier with your wild wolf act.”

Richie grew sheepish again at the mention of his attempt to keep his identity a secret.

“I knew there was something different about you though. A real wolf wouldn’t have been that docile,” Eddie said matter-of-factly. “Didn’t think you’d end up being my best friend but…” He suddenly remembered how he’d said he loved him, even just as a friend, and he immediately wanted to hide behind the nearest tree. “At least I found you,” he went on, trying to ignore the heat crawling up his neck. “You scared me so badly when you took off like that. I thought you were having a heart attack or something, and you know that the most important thing with a cardiac arrest is to get CPR as soon as possible, and it’s not like there are any defibrillators out here,” Eddie rambled, almost to himself, with a flick of his wrist towards Richie. “I’m getting off topic again, because it, y’know, clearly wasn’t a heart attack.”

Richie looked down at himself, picked up a paw and examined it closely, then swept his tail around so that he could peer at that too. He barked like he was shocked.

“Oh my god, even your shitty sense of humour is the same.” Eddie could almost imagine Richie’s wide grin to that. As a wolf his jaws opened into something resembling a smile and his tongue lolled out again. Eddie laughed with him. “Yeah, that’s not something to be proud of.”

Eddie shivered at another breeze and wondered how long they’d been in the forest and how late it had gotten. He imagined the fair was completely abandoned and empty by now. It felt like a lifetime ago.

“So uh, how does it work anyway? You were with me all night and the moon was out the whole time – does it only work at a certain time or something?”

Richie let out a quiet flurry of barks, and then sneezed again.

“Okay, I deserved that.” Eddie sighed. “No point asking questions when you can’t answer them. On top of that, the amount of dust and dead leaf particles and shit in here that we’re breathing in must be really high-” he turned away and struggled not to gag.

When he turned back Richie’s tail was wagging back and forth energetically, and his long pink tongue licked up to swipe over his own nose.

“That’s disgusting and so not funny, asshole.”

His tail wagged faster.

“I’m checking ‘dangerous’ off my list of werewolf attributes,” Eddie groused.

Richie growled, baring his teeth, but cut off with a surprised yelp as Eddie pushed his muzzle gently with his hand. (The fur there was as soft as it looked.) “Look, I just saw you lick your own fucking snot-covered nose. You don’t get to pretend you’re a fearsome predator now.”

His tail wagged even harder, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth. Eddie had taken that to be his version of laughter.

“I’m not scared of you,” he added, almost conversationally, before he stopped dead with the sudden realisation that it was the truth.

Oh, he really meant it.

He wasn’t scared.

He couldn’t be scared of Richie, no matter what or who he was.

Richie’s eyes were wide and shiny, which again made them look like they would shed tears if they could.

Eddie sighed deeply. “I just wish you’d told me… that’s all. I’ve had enough of people lying to me.”

Richie whined a thin and shaky sound, that pierced straight into Eddie’s heart, and he could almost hear the apology in it. He sounded so incredibly sad and sorry.

“Okay, we’re shelving this for when you can apologise with words, because you can’t look at me like that and sound that sorry for yourself at the same time without me wanting to instantly forgive you,” Eddie huffed.

The look of sheer confusion on Richie’s wolf face echoed how he would emote it as a human so perfectly that Eddie had a strange moment of feeling like his vision was nearly overlaying the two together. He’d never seen an animal look that confused in his life, and he snorted out amused laughter at the sight of such a complex emotion on a wolf’s face.

(He was cute as a wolf. That wasn’t fair.)

“Have you not looked in a mirror while you’re like this before?”

Richie tilted his head and perked his ears up.

Did he not know he was cute?

“Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, I’m just glad I don’t really have fur allergies. And- oh! Wait, that stall earlier… with the ball… that’s why you took the last one off me, isn’t it? I thought that was weird,” Eddie said with a chuckle. “You wanted to play fetch?”

A small rumbling growl came from Richie as he turned his head away and pawed at the ground.

“Oh my god, you’re embarrassed!”

Richie’s growl faded into a small whine and Eddie waved his hands. “Okay, sorry, I’ll stop. Won’t even mention that time I had to pull the neighbour’s cat off you before it clawed you to pieces. Or the time we got caught in the rain on the way to our classes and you shook your hair like a wet dog when we got inside.”

Richie’s growling started again, and he raised a paw to cover over his eyes like Eddie had seen a dog do on a video once.

Eddie laughed again, and realised his smiles were coming easier now. “It’s all making sense now – it seems so obvious I can’t believe I didn’t realise sooner.” His voice softened as he added, “But now I know, it’s like I can tell that it’s you. Is that weird?”

Eddie could reach his arm out and touch him, he was so close. And he almost did, but he just couldn’t quite bring himself to. His indecision must have shown on his face though because Richie moved so that he was sat up ramrod straight, to put his nose level with Eddie’s. As if he was giving him permission to look.

“You don’t have fleas, do you?” Eddie asked, trying to cover his sudden awkwardness.

Richie brought up one of his back paws and scratched vigorously at his neck. His big velvety paw and long shiny claws drew Eddie’s attention immediately, and he caught a glimpse of the paw pad underneath as he scratched. His tongue lolled out of his mouth as soon as he stopped.

“Very funny.” Eddie wiggled his fingers. “But I bet you miss not having these.”

The swishing sound from Richie’s tail wagging in the leaves behind him came back full force and Eddie realised that although it felt weird not hearing Richie’s comebacks to any of the things he was saying, it was like he was still replying to him in the ways that he could.

“Having a tail once a month must be so weird.”

Richie’s tongue lolled out of his mouth again.

“What? What’s funny about that?” Eddie placed his hands on his hips and winced at the pain that shot up from his injured hand. He hissed and cradled it in his good one. The tissue was still wrapped around it, though it was starting to disintegrate and unravel now, and he could see red on it in the moonlight. He hadn’t even realised that Richie had moved before his wet nose bumped against his hand gently and a whine squeezed out of his throat.

“Oh yeah, I fell earlier, and I don’t know what I cut it on. Probably a dirty rock or something,” Eddie mused, “so I’ll probably get sepsis or something after all of this anyway.”

It was amazing how werewolves existing had pushed away the panic from his injury, like his brain only had the capacity for one crisis at a time.

Richie whined louder and his pink tongue only emerged a fraction out of his mouth before Eddie shrieked and pushed his nose away with his good hand. “Fuck no! There’s no way I’m letting you lick it!” But his hand slipped from his nose and smoothed down his muzzle towards his eyes. Richie froze.

Eddie was about to pull away with an apology when he realised that he’d probably frozen in the first place because he thought that’s exactly what he would do. When Richie had caught him earlier, when he was leading him out of the forest, he’d distanced himself straight away, and since then he’d made no efforts to initiate contact – other than to express concern at his injury and pretend to want to lick him.

But Richie had always been incredibly comfortable with contact, and he was always so tactile with the way he threw his arm around him while they were joking around. He’d even helped him out of his panic attack on the ferris wheel by grounding him with his touch.

“I was serious when I said I wasn’t scared,” Eddie murmured gently, carefully following the direction of the fur on his muzzle with his good hand, starting at his nose and smoothing his palm up towards his eyes.

Both of his eyes were edged with a thick black that looked like fancy eyeliner or something. The colour of his irises went from edge to edge with no whites on show, just his bright blue and dark brown, and the blue looked especially shocking against the black. The moonlight caught on an irregularity above the blue eye – a shining red line in his eyebrow – and Eddie leaned in closer. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, remembering the wound his stick had made earlier. “I didn’t know it was you.”

Richie whined, closed his eyes, and leaned into Eddie’s touch, making him move his hand further up towards his ears. He petted the fur there gently and Richie leaned harder against him so that his fingers dug down to the softer fur beneath the wiry top layer. He was soft and warm. And very real.

Any last remnants of belief that it could be a dream disappeared under the very real feeling wolf beneath his hand.

The sound of a tail swishing rapidly across the leaves was the only thing breaking the silence, and Eddie realised he was barely even breathing. He was just about to scratch at the base of a large fluffy ear when he pulled away sharply and Richie looked at him in alarm. His tail stopped wagging instantly.

What was he doing?

When Richie changed back how was he going to explain this?

He wasn’t a real wolf, even if he looked like one, and he certainly wasn’t a dog. But what if he was more prone to those sorts of feelings and behaviours when he was like this, and Eddie was almost taking advantage.

Richie’s ears flattened and he sank back down to the ground, looking up at him with something like confusion in his wide mismatched eyes.

Eddie clutched his hands to his chest and turned away. “Sorry, I…”

But before he could try to explain, Richie bolted upright suddenly, and his ears moved around rapidly.

“What? What is it?”

He stood and growled lowly, moving towards a gap in between two trees, as if he were shielding Eddie.

“Is somebody there? What the fuck, should we hide?”

Richie lifted his nose up and scented the air, his ears still moving around in different directions, and then just as suddenly, he sat back down to his haunches and relaxed.

A few minutes later Eddie could hear the distant crunching of leaves and somebody muttering to themselves. Richie barked.

“Richie?” somebody yelled. “Is that you?”

Another bark.

“Hold on, I’m coming to you!”

That voice sounded like…

Twigs and leaves crunched and snapped loudly, announcing the arrival of Ben just before he stumbled into the small moonlit clearing that they were in.

“There you are!”

Eddie felt his stomach drop and his blood run cold as he looked across at Richie in a panic. Why wasn’t he hiding?

Or did Ben already know…

His cloak snagged in some branches, and he tugged it free sharply before he gave a little wave as he came closer. “Richie, I’m so glad I found- Eddie! Wh-what are you doing here?”

Chapter Text

“What am I doing here? What are you doing here?”

Ben laughed nervously. He sounded out of breath. “I’m uh- I’m… I’m just out for a late-night stroll through the forest.”

“Really? Could have sworn I heard you say Richie’s name.”

The laughter increased in volume and pitch. “I was- um- I was sneezing. Ih-chee!” Ben pretended to sneeze into his hands. “See?”

Richie’s tail wagged and his tongue lolled out of his jaws.

“Sorry, Ben,” Eddie said eventually with an apologetic smile. “I’m just messing with you. I know this is Richie.”

“You know?” he squeaked, eyes flicking between Eddie and the wolf.

“Well, I don’t really know what I know that I know,” Eddie said, completely seriously, “because it’s not like I’ve had any kind of explanation for all of this. But I do know that…” He squinted and moved a little closer to Ben. “Hey, what’s wrong with your ears?”

“What’s wrong with them- oh! You mean-” Ben slammed his hands on both sides of his head and hissed a quiet ‘ow’. “Nothing, they’re fine.”

“No, no – I definitely saw them. They were… oh my god,” Eddie said in a clipped voice, taking a deep breath through his nose, “please don’t tell me you’re like, an elf or something.”

“What? No, of course not, elves don’t exist,” Ben said with a breathy laugh.

Eddie narrowed his eyes, drew his eyebrows together and gestured broadly at the large black wolf in front of him.

“Point taken,” Ben conceded, lowering his hands from his pointed ears. “But I’m not an elf, really I’m not. We’re quite easy to get confused in the daylight, but their ears are pointier, and their skin is bioluminescent in the dark. It’s actually really interesting how they’ve evolved to live in the darkest forests and caves, and the darker you go the brighter the…”

Eddie pinched the bridge of his nose tightly as he tried to breathe evenly, fearing another panic attack.

“Oh, right, sorry Eddie- you’re right, totally not the time.”

Eddie tried to breathe in and out as slowly as he could, wishing more than ever that he could just take a deep puff from his inhaler. His fingers itched to feel the cool plastic and he could almost taste the bitter air on his tongue.

Ben turned to Richie while Eddie was distracted. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, voice cracking with emotion, “I’m so so sorry. I thought it would work, I was so sure it would. But I shouldn’t have let you take it without testing it first. I’m sorry. I let you down.”

Richie shook his head rapidly and bumped his shoulder with his nose, but Ben sniffled pathetically, and Eddie was surprised to see shiny tears sliding down his rosy cheeks. Richie whined and licked a stripe up the side of Ben’s face, making him giggle, and he reached across to lick across the other side too.

Something sharp and hot jolted in Eddie’s chest as he watched them. Was he… jealous?

No fucking way did he want wolf drool on him, he reasoned, as he watched Ben wipe his face with the sleeve of his robes through his giggles.

But it was Richie…

Eddie took a deep breath and pushed away thoughts of his inhaler and whatever weirdness was going on with him (because he absolutely wasn’t jealous). “Bad news Ben, since you’re the only other one here who has a human shaped voice box – it’s time for you to give me some answers.”

Ben wiped his face again and nodded solemnly, his smile fading. “Well, it’s safe to say that you can See everything now, so I’ll tell you what I can. But the more you know, the more danger you’re going to be in,” he cautioned.

“Tell me anyway.”

Richie’s ears perked up high on his head and Eddie wondered what he was thinking. He still wasn’t used to not being able to read his expression like he normally would. Richie was always such an open book to him, that it felt weird not to know this face of his well enough yet.

Ben gazed into the trees for a moment, as if choosing his words carefully and deciding where to start, before he said slowly, “Derry is… a special kind of town.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured that much,” Eddie snapped with a wave of his hand, even though he hadn’t intended it to come out so sharp. “Does that mean everyone is like this? Like- monsters and stuff?”

Richie almost instantly seemed to shut down, like a flame fizzling out, as his ears flattened, and his tail curled around his paws. Eddie scrunched his eyebrows together in concern. Was he in pain?

“Monsters? Well, I guess you could call some of the residents in Derry that,” Ben contemplated, with an uneasy glance at Richie, “but most of us prefer the name of our species. Technically Richie’s a werewolf and I’m a witch.”

“Werewolves and witches then,” Eddie clarified distantly, growing increasingly worried about Richie. He was staring at the ground at his paws. “Wait, you’re a… witch?” His attention snapped back to Ben and couldn’t help the way his eyebrows shot up in surprise. It made sense with the pointy ears and the wizard-looking black robes he was wearing, and it wasn’t the strangest thing Eddie had learned tonight, but it still wasn’t exactly what he was expecting. “Aren’t witches supposed to be…”

“Ah, the idea that witches are all female is a human misconception,” Ben explained with a small knowing smile. “We can be any gender, or no gender at all. Anything goes. You’ll find that with a lot of magical species.”

Eddie nodded along as if that made sense, but he just wasn’t up for a Ben-style launch into the history of gender politics in this secret world he’d accidentally stumbled into. If someone had told him that morning that he would learn that Richie Tozier was a werewolf and Ben Hanscom was a witch and probably the whole of Derry was hiding the same kinds of secrets he’d have scoffed and called bullshit.

Another breeze ruffled through the leaves and Eddie wished he’d brought a jacket. He wondered where Richie’s had gone – though he imagined it had either been ruined in his transformation or abandoned somewhere in the forest like his glasses had been.

He wasn’t sure if the goosebumps along his arms were because of the cold or not anyway.

“Derry is a home to a lot of different magical species,” Ben went on, “and we all live alongside the humans here.”

“And nobody notices?”

“Well, you didn’t notice, did you?”

“No… I guess not.”

“There’s a strong enchantment over Derry that stops humans from being able to see anything supernatural. Your brain simply replaces the elements that aren’t human with something else that is, or erases them entirely – it’s amazing, really. I wish I knew how it worked. The only problem is that it only works on sight and smell, since they’re both connected to the brain, you see, but it doesn’t work on touch,” Ben explained. “So, the magical residents steer clear of the humans for the most part. They don’t want the secret being discovered. But over time that’s made a real kind of disconnect between everyone, in a kind of ‘them and us’ thing, and now humans are treated pretty badly, actually.” He sighed and wrung his hands together agitatedly.

Eddie nodded along. “Okay, sure, I guess.”

“But once you’ve seen something from our world, the enchantment breaks forever, and you can See how everything really is, and what everyone really looks like.”

Richie gave a low whine and turned away sharply, as if he let it out accidentally.

Worry gnawed at the pit of Eddie’s stomach, simply adding to the rest of the chaos inside, at the realisation that Richie hadn’t looked at him in a long time. He almost called out to see if he was okay, but Ben started talking again.

“And if anyone discovers you’re not under the enchantment anymore… um… well… that’s the dangerous part.”

“Dangerous how?” Eddie frowned. “Honestly, Ben, I’d rather it was dangerous and know the truth than be lied to by my friends forever.” As soon as the words left his mouth Eddie wanted to take them back. He didn’t mean it to come out like that, but he was stressed and overwhelmed and worried about Richie, and it was a bad combination.

Ben’s expression fell, and Richie continued to stare at the forest floor, ears low, and tail curled almost protectively around himself.

Well, he was really fucking this up, wasn’t he?

“Sorry,” Eddie breathed, as he ran his good hand through his hair. “I’m having a weird night.”

“It’s understandable, Eddie, don’t worry. This probably all sounds like something out a human mov- sorry, a movie to you, right?”

Eddie nodded, still staring at Richie. “It’s been really fucking weird.”

Why won’t he look at me?

He was about to say something, when Richie fluidly rose to his paws and bounded soundlessly into the undergrowth in one graceful movement, before Eddie could even move or react. He gasped as he caught one last glimpse of Richie’s large fluffy tail, catching the moonlight with a silvery flash, before he blended in with the shadows and was gone.

“Hey- Richie!”

Eddie made to follow him, but Ben placed a gentle hand on his arm and shook his head. “Probably better to leave him for now. He looks as emotionally exhausted as you do. He’ll come back. He probably just needs to switch off for a little while.”

“Switch off?” Eddie asked, mainly as a distraction from the incredible urge to take off after him – in a strange sense of déjà vu from when he’d dashed off from the fair.

“He told me earlier that thinking like a human while he’s like this is hard.”

“Thinking in general for Richie is hard,” Eddie replied automatically, as if Richie were there to laugh and ruffle his hair and proudly tell him he’d ‘got off a good one’. Even though he’d set himself up for it. He was the only one who ever laughed at his jokes anyway.

Ben looked like he didn’t know how to respond to that, and Eddie sighed.

He should probably explain it was just a joke (that Richie would have found funny) and that he wasn’t just insulting his best friend, but everyone always thought he was mean no matter what he did in the end, so it’s not like it mattered.

“But he’s just been himself since I…” (hit him with a stick) “…found him,” Eddie continued with a touch of distress and regret, “he should have, well it’s not like he could say anything, but he could have- I don’t know- been more wolfy for a while? Could have just left me…” Eddie was surprised at how easily he would have suggested that Richie leave him if it was hurting him.

“You really think Richie would leave you alone in the forest? Even if it was hard for him?”

No. He wouldn’t.

Ben didn’t wait for a vocal answer, which was good because Eddie wasn’t going to give him one, before he continued gently, “He knows this forest like the back of his hand. Or paw, I suppose. He’ll be fine.”

Eddie clenched his hands and winced at the shooting pain from his injured one. He had to physically stop himself from running blindly into a forest he’d already got lost in once tonight, because Ben was right.

He let out a deep breath and felt some of the tension drain away. He was getting good at that.

Ben shrugged out of his robes, so he was just wearing a plain purple shirt, and flapped it up in the air before placing it gently on the forest floor. He gestured towards it and sat down on the ground next to the material, crossing his legs underneath him. “I know you don’t like the dirt,” he said.

“Oh, thanks… I’m probably covered in dirt and leaves anyway though, since I’ve been on the floor a couple of times already, but it’s too dark to tell, so I can save that particular freak-out for later.”

But he wasn’t going to say no to the offer, so he carefully removed Richie’s glasses and the stick from his back pocket and crossed his legs as he sat down on the edge of Ben’s robes, gesturing for Ben to share with him. “Come on, there’s enough room.”

Ben shuffled over and took a seat next to him with a wide smile. “Thanks.”

For a moment they sat in a companiable silence, listening to the occasional rustling of the leaves, their shoulders almost touching but not quite, until Eddie looked over at where Richie had disappeared and said, “So you, uh, you know a lot about… werewolves?”

“Oh no, not at all,” Ben chirped brightly, “I actually thought they were extinct before Richie moved to town. But I’m going to be writing a book about them, with Richie’s help, of course.”

“Wow, shit, okay.”

“All I know so far is what he told me earlier, sorry. You’ll need to ask him any questions you’ve got, but I think it’s for the best that he tells you anyway. The only problem is that he seems… kind of secretive about his condition? Even to those of us who already know about him. I think he’s… hm, oh, forget I said anything, it’s really not my place to speculate.”

“You can tell me. Please.”

“Well… I could be wrong but… it’s almost like, he’s ashamed?”

Eddie’s eyebrows crashed together in the flash of protective anger that surged through him at the thought of anyone being ashamed of Richie – even if it was Richie himself. “Seriously? What the fuck! But if that’s just how he is, then it doesn’t matter! What’s he got to be ashamed of anyway? A bit of dog fur once a month? I don’t care – I’m not even allergic!” Eddie blinked at the odd confession that had tumbled out of his mouth. “He’s just… he’s just the guy who wanted to be friends with the weirdo he’d just met, in a club that he just got them both kicked out of. He’s just, Richie.” Eddie chuckled at the memory of when he introduced himself as Just Eddie when they first met, but it came out as a hollow sound that betrayed how upset he was. “Just Richie,” he whispered with a sad smile.

Ben wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands and sniffed loudly. “He was so nervous about tonight, and you should have seen how scared he was when he was asking me to make the potion, it was the first time I’d ever seen him ask for something without a punchline or joke, and he even said please. I wish it had worked, but I’m kind of glad you got to see the real him, is that selfish of me?”

“No, it’s… wait, what potion?”

Ben’s eyes widened and a pink blush bloomed across his face and the tips of his ears so brightly that Eddie could see it clearly in the dim moonlight they could see by. “The uh… the um… the potion that he asked me to make. To try and stop him from transforming? So that he could go to the Full Moon Fair with you. That he probably wouldn’t want me to tell you about, so please forget I said anything,” he squeaked. “I really don’t think you should ask me anymore questions until you can talk to Richie about all this.”

“He had you make, a magic potion?”

“Potions are my specialty!” Ben announced proudly. “Except, it was supposed to block out the effect the full moon light has on his cells, but obviously it didn’t work…”

“That’s why I kept catching him looking at the moon like he was a starving man looking at food for the first time,” Eddie said rapidly with a slap of his knee, “and I thought it was weird that a werewolf would randomly transform in the middle of the night for no reason, not that I know anything about werewolves, and earlier when his nose started bleeding, god, that was probably his brain exploding or some shit because he’d tried to block whatever happens when the moon rises.”

Was he serious? Why go to all that trouble?  

“Just to go to the fair with me?”

“He really wanted to go with you,” Ben confessed, more easily now. “I tried to warn him about messing with nature, but he said you’d asked him to go, and that you were excited about it, and he didn’t want to let you down, and he wasn’t ready to reveal his secret yet, because I think he was worried that you’d think he’s a- oh no… I really can’t say.”

“Can’t say what? Thought I’d think what?”

Ben shook his head in distress and glanced over at where Richie had disappeared into the trees. “You’ll have to ask him. But as well as his own secret I know he wanted to keep you safe too – from being able to See.”

“Keep me safe? You mentioned danger before… what kind of danger?”

“The, um, death kind?”

Eddie took a breath, before he replied with a screeched, “What?”

Ben picked at his robes sheepishly. “Y-You can’t tell anyone that you know about Derry, because if anyone finds out that you know… well… you’ll be executed. And the ones who let the secret out get the same treatment too. Because humans can leave towns like this, but magical folk can’t. So, it’s how the mayor of Derry keeps the secret.”

“He kills the people that find out?”

“I don’t like it either! I think in other towns like Derry they usually just use memory spells, but here it’s… not like that.”

“What the fuck? That’s so messed up!”

Ben shrugged helplessly.

“But they invite humans here – I got a bursary for studying here! Why risk it?”

“Look,” Ben shuffled closer again and lowered his voice, even though they were the only ones in the forest (besides Richie who was who knew where), “this is all just a theory but… this town is full of concentrated magic, and I think it has something to do with why they invite humans to move here. The magic is so concentrated that I think if your senses were good enough you could probably smell it in the air! That makes it a lucrative place to live for those of us magical folk, because it amplifies all our natural magic. I mean, my magic potions have been twice as easy to brew and- sorry, I know, not the time, it’s just really interesting. Anyway…” Ben trailed off and looked around.

Eddie moved closer.

“The humans in this town… some of them go missing sometimes. But I’ve heard that it’s as if everything about that person just vanishes from the memories and lives from everyone outside the town, so it’s like, poof, they never even existed. That’s why nobody has ever come to investigate the disappearances. And every time I’ve documented a disappearance, the magic feels a little bit stronger. And I think,” Ben whispered, even quieter, “the mayor’s got something to do with it.”

“Well, fuck,” Eddie said after a moment of trying to process what he’d just heard. “I got invited to study at the magical murder town. I can’t believe it.”

Ben hovered a hand above his shoulder as if he was going to pat it, then pulled it back and nodded instead. “Sorry, Eddie. It’s been really hard for everyone not to tell you all of this, especially Richie, but we all just wanted to protect you for as long as we could. Like I say, the more you know, the more danger you’re in. But if nobody finds out, you’ll be okay.”

“At least I’m good at keeping secrets,” Eddie conceded.  

Ben looked at him with open concern and Eddie gave him a rueful smile. He matched it. “Listen, about Richie… I just know that he was willing to risk a lot to keep his secret and keep you in his life,” Ben said softly.

Eddie said nothing, but he reached across for Richie’s glasses and gripped them tightly in his good hand.

Another silence descended on them both until Ben stood up from the robes and dusted himself down. “I think we should both go back to my house for now. I can make us some coffee and I can explain a bit more about Derry there. I even have an investigation board you can look at.”

Eddie joined him and pocketed the glasses and his stick as he stepped off the robes. “But what about Richie?”

“He’ll be okay, he’ll come back when he needs to. It’s not too long until sunrise anyway.” Ben flapped the robes in the air to shake off the leaves and moss and then swirled it around his shoulders, fastening it around his neck.

He really did look like a witch. He just need the hat and it would really complete the look. Eddie wondered if he owned one.

“But” – Eddie bit his lip, remembering how quickly Richie had vanished into the trees and how distant he’d seemed – “I really think we should try and find him first. And if the sun rises soon and he’s still out here, he won’t even have any clothes to change into…” The moment the words left his mouth Eddie shut down his imagination from wandering.

Not the time!

“Okay, how about I get his clothes, and we leave them in a pile here, for if he comes back?” Ben suggested with a smile.

Eddie wouldn’t leave without him, but at least going on a quest to find his clothes would keep Ben distracted for long enough for Richie came back. “Sure.”

Ben pulled one of his sleeves up to reveal a shiny black beaded bracelet with one white bead at the top of his wrist. He shook his wrist, closed his eyes, and held the bead to his forehead for a moment until it shone bright purple. “Aha! Got them!”

“Uh…”

“The white bead contains a few drops of a locator potion. You shake it and think of what you want to find, and it gets warmer or colder depending on how close you are. That’s how I knew where Richie was when I found you both. Usually, the potion has to be in a bottle to be effective, and it’s kind of a pain to carry it around, but I found a way to concentrate it into a tiny volume and make it travel size for convenience and- sorry, I’ll go get his clothes.” Ben’s blush returned.

“That’s so cool,” slipped out of Eddie’s mouth.

“Really? Thanks, Eddie.” Ben’s blush intensified. “I think you should stay here, though, in case Richie comes back. The bead is warm already, so I don’t think I’ll be long. Will you be okay?”

“Yes, I’ll be fine standing in one spot for five minutes,” Eddie agreed stiffly, trying not to bristle and snap. He knew Ben didn’t mean it condescendingly.

“Great, I won’t be long!”

Eddie watched Ben hold out his arm in front of him and turn side to side as he moved forwards through the trees, until he too was swallowed by the shadows.

Alone again.

Despite what he’d said to Ben, and how defensive he’d got about it, as soon as he was alone, Eddie realised he wasn’t alright. He missed the company, and he was still feeling overwhelmed and jittery.

He hadn’t even realised he was taking deep, calming breaths in time with his finger twitching until he heard a distant crack, and it broke him out of his trance.

“Richie?” Eddie asked aloud.

There were more sounds of twigs breaking and leaves crunching, and Eddie became wary, as Richie was mostly silent when he moved through the forest.

“Ben?” he tried again, though it was even quieter than before with the increasing feeling that something wasn’t right.

Then he heard voices. Plural. Getting closer.

Eddie searched around the tiny clearing for something to hide behind, but other than the trees, there was only thick undergrowth here and there. Eddie sucked in a deep breath and dove down behind the nearest bush he could see that might conceal him, tucking himself into the branches of it, despite how they clawed at his face and clothes, and tried to stay still.

The voices sounded even louder as the cracking and rustling of leaves and twigs increased, as if the owners of the voices didn’t care how much noise they made.

“Stop your complaining for once in your fucking lives! I know I heard that howl. That dog is out here somewhere with his boyfriend, and I don’t care if we search this whole forest, we’re going to find them and kill them for breaking the secret. I’m getting that mutt put down, but I’m going to do it myself. And I’m going to fucking enjoy it.”

Eddie shivered as he recognised the voice. Henry Bowers. Though it was deeper and scratchier than he was used to hearing – almost a rumbling, guttural growl.

The sound of shuffling footsteps approached his hiding place and Eddie stiffened. A smell wafted over him that was so powerful he had to hold his nose and mouth to stop himself from gagging – it was like something rotten and dead and putrid had crawled into his nasal passages. He shifted just enough to be able to see through the branches and leaves, but the only things he could make out were skulking shadows of figures in the darkness. Until they shuffled into a patch of moonlight. Eddie was glad that his hand was already clamped over his nose and mouth because the scream that wanted to burst out of him was captured and died in his throat.

His stomach recoiled at the sight of them.

They were monsters.

All four of them were like something out of Eddie’s worst nightmares; black blood oozed from the missing patches of skin, blistered boils were shining wetly in the darkness, and any hair they had left was greasy and stringy. Their milky eyes roamed the shadows, nearly glowing, and Eddie kept himself as still as he could in his hiding place.

“That disgusting half-breed mutt doesn’t belong in this town,” Bowers growled and gnashed his teeth with a sickening click.  

What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck.

The last time he’d seen them they’d all looked like regular people, and now- now they looked like- like they’d climbed out of grave recently! Is this what Ben was talking about – with being able to see?

Is this what they really looked like?

Eddie felt tears burn in his eyes as he tried desperately to hold his breath against the rotten smell – growing stronger as they got closer. He remembered what Ben had said, and knew that if they found him, they’d kill him. It didn’t matter if he was with Richie or not, they’d kill him anyway.

Shit.

Shit.

But they didn’t look very fast… He could probably outrun them... But if he couldn’t see in the darkness how long could he run without tripping over a tree root, even if he was faster?

With the tiniest of movements Eddie brought his hand to his pocket and gripped the stick he’d put back there. If he could throw the stick away from himself, that could distract them long enough for him to get a good enough head start. He gripped the stick so tightly that he feared it was going to splinter before he had a chance to throw it, but the shuffling, dragging footsteps were right next to the undergrowth he was hiding in, and he was running out of time.

He heard one of them take a wet sounding inhale, then snort and spit something to the ground with a thud.

Eddie twitched and took a deep breath through his mouth.

“Wait,” a gurgling voice said, “I smell something-”

He had to throw the stick now or they were going to find him!

Eddie tensed and drew back his arm just as a distant howl rose into the night. It was loud and clear from deeper into the forest, echoing with the distance, and it made the hairs stand up on the back of Eddie’s neck. One unbroken deep note.

As soon as it faded, the footsteps began to shamble in the direction it had come from.

“I knew I heard that fucking howl earlier. Move it! Hurry the fuck up!”

Eddie’s eyes widened as he heard a gun clicking – ready to fire.

Richie!

The footsteps continued to follow the direction of the howl, and Eddie finally let out a wheezy breath as he unfolded himself. His limbs were on fire, and he heard pops in his joints as he stood straight, holding his stick out in front of him like he was going to use it if they changed their minds and came back. But overriding his fear for himself was the icy cold realisation that the howl was definitely Richie’s and Bowers was out to shoot him. No no no no. He knew that Henry Bowers was a bully and he’d always looked at them with violence and hatred in his eyes, but he felt sick knowing that he really wanted to kill him. Just for being a werewolf.

He had to warn him. He had to try and fight them off and warn him.

In some small, more rational part of Eddie’s mind (the part that he’d had to disengage to be able to allow him to accept the existence of werewolves, witches, and zombies) he realised that he’d never make it to where he thought the howl had come from before Bowers and his gang did. He’d probably get lost on the way. Or they’d shoot him too first.

Did he have time to try and find Ben first?

Just as Eddie turned to run in the direction Ben had disappeared to, a shadowy shape burst of the trees. He didn’t even have time to react before something large and fluffy was pushing its wet nose up at his face and torso and arms, alongside a loud and frantic whining.

“Richie?” Eddie breathed.

Richie pulled back long enough for Eddie to recognise the blue and brown eyes, wide with concern, before he threw the stick to the ground and wrapped his arms around his neck. His coat was wiry on top, but Eddie buried his face into the thick fur there and felt the softness underneath. Richie was trembling beneath him. Eddie nuzzled his nose in further, whispering his name and confirmations that he was okay into his neck fur, but he could still feel a rapid pulse under his cheek and the trembling continued. He clung to him like he was the only thing keeping him upright (he was) and felt his fears fading away under the solid feeling of the wolf in his arms, and the strange realisation that he still smelt like Richie.

Eddie’s fingers felt like they were tingling, and his chest felt like it might burst open with the intensity of the feelings that were pulsing out in waves through his body.

“They wanted to shoot you,” Eddie murmured into Richie’s neck. “But I wasn’t going to let them.”

Richie growled a rumbling that Eddie could feel vibrating through his whole body, but he squeezed Eddie’s shoulder tighter beneath his chin and pulled him in even closer.

 Then he understood what had happened.

“You distracted them,” he whispered, “didn’t you? That’s why you howled so far away from here. How’d you know?”

Richie let go of his shoulder and pulled back enough to look him in the eyes. He pushed his wet nose to Eddie’s chest. Then sneezed.

“Oh, gross, thank you.” Eddie wiped his hand over his shirt, but he was smiling, still feeling something warm and bright running through his whole body. Richie’s tail wagged furiously behind him. Eddie lunged forwards and wiped the same hand onto his head and laughed as Richie’s tongue lolled out of his mouth and his tail picked up speed.

“Really though, thanks, Richie,” Eddie said warmly, with a final pat of his soft head.

But as he pulled away Richie’s pink tongue darted out and licked Eddie’s hand tentatively. Eddie jumped in surprise and Richie pulled back so sharply he nearly tripped over his own back paws, reminding him of the human Richie so strongly that it was almost like seeing double again – the wolf and the human overlayed with each other, tripping over their gangly limbs.

And just like that, the light, warm feeling he’d been filled with made sense.

Eddie knew that he felt deeply about their relationship, but he thought that he could convince himself it was because they were best friends. Best best friends. And they were – of course they were – but, oh. He fucking loved him. He thought of every one of his laughs at Richie’s dumb jokes, or the way he’d enjoy their bickering back and forth in their weird arguments for fun, and every glance that he’d let linger too long.

He loved it when Richie used his nicknames and wore tacky shirts and did silly voices and was unapologetically him. He loved Richie. Whether he was a werewolf or not. Human or not. It didn’t matter.

Eddie’s breath hitched as he grasped the magnitude of what he’d realised.

He was in love with his best friend.

His best friend who was also a werewolf.

Eddie could no longer resist, and he sank his good hand into the fur at the base of one of Richie’s ears, scratching deeply through the thick pile.

Richie instantly leaned heavily into the touch and his tail resumed its frantic wagging.

“Sorry I took so long I found the- sorry, should I come back later?” Ben asked with a sincerity that made heat rise into Eddie’s cheeks and a scowl form on his face.

It didn’t help that they sprang immediately apart.

Eddie cleared his throat. “And I found Richie.”

“Great, the gangs all here, let’s get back to my house before the sunrise.”

The word gang reminded Eddie of Bowers and he had to shake his head to clear it of his life-changing epiphany from a moment ago enough to warn Ben seriously about the danger lurking in the forest.

Ben nodded. “Let’s go quickly then.”

Eddie kept a hand on Richie’s shoulder the whole walk back.

---------

Ben’s house wasn’t too far from the forest after they’d cut through to the other side, keeping away from where Richie had led Bowers. The wolf with perfect night vision led the way.

Eddie tried not to look at his clothes or his hand when they emerged into the moonlight. He’d rather save that revelation for when he was feeling emotionally capable of dealing with it, and when he could take a scalding hot shower that could rid him of every possible known germ and microbe immediately afterwards.

He needed to apply a bandage to his hand too. And empty a bottle of antiseptic onto it.

He noticed Richie glancing at him from time to time and when he caught his eyes once he gave a shy smile, trying not to let on that everything inside him was screaming, I love him. I love him. Holy shit.

He wasn’t sure how successful he was because Richie looked away immediately.

The sky was beginning to pale as they made it to Ben’s front door. Eddie hadn’t been to Ben’s house before, but it looked kind of cute from the outside.

It wasn’t as cute when they began to descend into a stone-walled basement.

Richie’s claws clicked against the stone as they walked, and Eddie once again found his poor, overworked mind wondering if it was difficult to coordinate four limbs to walk when you only had two for the rest of the month.

Maybe he’d ask him when he turned back.

As if the thought had summoned the sun itself, Richie whined as they reached a large wooden door and Eddie realised that the sunrise must be imminent. Ben looked down at a watch that Eddie could have sworn wasn’t on his wrist the last time he’d looked.

“Sunrise,” he commented, as he pulled a large key out of his robes.

The door creaked ominously as it swung, and Eddie nearly rolled his eyes.

Richie sprang inside, but when Eddie and Ben tried to enter, he growled.

Ben leaned inside the room and deposited the bundle of clothes to the floor, then stood back as if he was nervous. Richie’s ears were flat against his head and his tail was whipping back and forth agitatedly. To anyone who hadn’t seen the same wolf acting like a puppy all night, he supposed it might be a fearsome sight – a huge black wolf, hackles raised, and fangs bared – but it was just Richie, and Eddie wasn’t scared.  

Eddie reached around Ben and carefully placed Richie’s glasses, that he’d kept safe, on top of the clothes. “I’ll see you soon,” he said, as he pulled back too.

Richie pointed his muzzle at the ceiling, then whined again. He looked down and locked his brown and blue eyes on Eddie, then he growled and snapped his jaws at the open door.

“Sorry, you can have some privacy,” Ben muttered as he pushed the door closed again.

As soon as the door slammed shut, Eddie felt a spike in his anxiety. Oh, God. What was he going to say to him when he opened the door? He’d practically thrown himself on him in the forest. And he’d petted his head and scratched behind his ears like he was a dog, even though he’d told himself he wouldn’t do that.

And he’d realised that he’s in love with him!

Fuck.

There was no way he’d like Eddie back.

How was he supposed to act now?

What if Richie had figured out his feelings and was waiting for a voice-box to let him down gently? What if Eddie had been misreading him all night and he’d wanted privacy all along?

And he’d found out his biggest secret. Maybe he’d never wanted Eddie to know for a different reason?

Eddie took a wheezing, gasping breath, but no air seemed to inflate his lungs. He clutched his chest and thought he heard Ben asking him if he was okay, but there was a loud ringing in his ears that cut out the sound.

“I need to go home,” he muttered, “I need to-”

---------

---------

---------

Richie dry heaved and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. There was nothing in his stomach to bring up anyway, but boy did it try. His whole body felt like he’d been run over by a train, then that same train had reversed back over. Then gone forwards again.

“Shit,” he groaned, his voice coming out strained and croaky.

His wolf ears and tail were still burning, and every muscle in his body ached with waves of pain. There was so much he needed to unpack. So fucking much. But right now, the most important thing was that he had to see Eddie, and he had to see him now.

Richie pushed himself to his human legs and wobbled as he stood up, then stumbled as he tried to make it to the pile of clothes Ben had left him.

He caught himself on a desk and pushed himself forwards on weak, shaky legs.

His glasses that Eddie had kept safe were right there, and Richie felt a warmth soothe his aching muscles as he picked them up and placed them on, resting them onto the bridge of his nose and blinking at the sudden clarification of the world.

He was still doing up his pants when he shoved the door open and burst into the stone corridor.

“Eds, I-”

But Ben was there alone, tears rolling down his rosy cheeks. “I’m sorry, I tried to stop him.”

Eddie was gone.

Chapter Text

With bones that felt like paper straws and tired muscles that protested through every movement, Richie managed to stumble back into Ben’s secret underground room. Then he promptly threw up into a small trashcan full of screwed up pieces of parchment.

“Shit, man, I’m sorry,” Richie croaked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Ben hovered in the doorway with a stricken expression and tears still shining on his rosy cheeks. “Don’t worry about that! Are you… are you okay?” He cursed harshly to himself under his breath and shook his head. “What am I saying, of course you’re not okay. I just… I don’t know what to say. I’m sure that Eddie-”

“I’ll be fine,” Richie interrupted quickly. The almost physical pain at hearing Eddie’s name was a surprise, and Richie clenched his eyes shut as he scrubbed his hands under his glasses. “I’ll be ay-okay,” he mumbled almost incoherently, “I just need sleep. And Tylenol. And like, three hamburgers and sides. Maybe four. With a pitcher of water. Maybe a deep tissue massage. And a time machine to reverse the last twenty-four hours. Not necessarily in that order.”

It wasn’t like Richie hadn’t expected the rejection, but he’d started to believe – stupidly – God, he’d been so stupid – that Eddie had accepted him. Or had at last started to come to terms with the idea that although he was a werewolf, he was still the same Richie as before. Eddie had said he wasn’t scared, hadn’t he? That must have been a lie.

Richie even stupidly thought they would be able to continue to be friends after all of this, and had wondered if maybe his feelings of love weren’t as one-sided as he thought…

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Richie threw up in the trashcan again.

He groaned as he finally succumbed to the exhaustion screaming through his body and lowered himself onto the cold stone floor, careful not to sit on his tail. He scrubbed at his mouth with his shirt and startled when something appeared in front of his face.

Ben held out a handkerchief. “It’s clean,” he said, as if that was the most pressing concern right now.

“Thanks.” Richie managed a weak smile as he took the handkerchief and wiped his mouth and around his face.

When he pulled it away there was a small smear of red. Richie placed a hesitant fingertip to his eyebrow and winced at the sharp stab of pain. The transformation must have reopened the wound Eddie had made with the stick. Richie pressed the handkerchief back to his eyebrow and dabbed it until the bleeding slowed.

His eyebrow was bleeding, his clothes were sticking to his sweaty skin, his head pounded, and his stomach growled loudly.

He felt like shit.

“I have a poultice I can make to stop that from scarring, if you want some…” Ben offered.

“I may take you up on that. I don’t think I want a permanent reminder of tonight every time I look in the mirror.”

“I’m sorry,” Ben whispered brokenly, “for not being able to make the potion right.”

Richie threw the handkerchief into the trashcan and groaned as he stood back up. He placed his hands on Ben’s shoulders. “No way. Listen, I told you before in the forest, even if I couldn’t exactly tell you in words – don’t even think that for a second. You’re the one who warned me about messing with nature, and then I practically emotionally blackmailed you into it! Trust me, Haystack, you gave me the best full moon I’ve ever had since I got bit. More than that – it was the best fucking night of my life!” His tail wagged at the memories of the fun he’d had with Eddie, even as his heart felt like it was breaking all over again.

Ben’s kind eyes crinkled with his sad smile and Richie felt his own spirits lift a little at being able to cheer up his friend. The last thing he wanted was for Ben to blame himself. It was no one’s fault but Richie’s own.

“It’s not your fault the carriage turned back into a pumpkin before I got to run off and leave my glass slipper behind.”

Ben’s smile morphed into a confused frown. “You had a carriage? At the fair? That turned into a pumpkin?”

“It’s a human thing, don’t worry about it.” He chuckled lightly as he let go of Ben and slumped heavily against a nearby desk. “I ignored all my fairy godmother’s warnings and thought I’d still get my perfect night with my prince. Fairy-tales are all bullshit anyway but…” He barked a single humourless laugh. “What was I expecting? Wolves don’t get to end up with the prince.”

“No! No, you listen to me, Richie Tozier.”

Richie jumped at Ben’s unexpected outburst. His cheeks were still ruddy, and his hair was wild from his journey through the woods to find them earlier. Tiny scraps of leaf and moss still clung to his black robes.

“I don’t know anything about pumpkins and carriages and slippers,” Ben said, with his fists balled up by his sides, “but I know you and I know Eddie, and I love him, but he’s about as much of a prince as you are a wolf. You’re a werewolf and he’s a human, sure, but you’re both just Richie and Eddie. You’re nuanced and messy creatures of this earth, just like everyone else is.”

Richie was silent for a moment, then he felt a genuine smile tug at the corners of his. “You gonna put that in your book?”

“Absolutely.”

Richie sighed and his smile widened. “Sounds like it’ll be a real page-turner. You’ll let me be the first one to read it?”

“Of course, you’re going to be its biggest contributor.” Ben’s tone left no room for argument.

“Wow, you get bossy when you’ve had no sleep – just like Ed-” Richie broke off and bit his lip.

Memories of laughing at Eddie’s shitty attitude after he’d pulled all-nighters studying flashed through his mind.

He remembered one afternoon when they’d been on a quest for some strong coffee after one of Eddie’s all-night study sessions, and a customer in the line behind him had accidentally jostled him forwards. Eddie hadn’t been able to See that he was glowering up at a demon with inky midnight blue skin and two long black horns on his head, so he wasn’t as shocked as Richie was when that was enough to pull out an apology from him. To a human!

But now Eddie would be able to see everyone exactly as they really were.

And it was his fault.

Guilt bubbled relentlessly in Richie’s stomach along with the lingering queasiness from the transformation, and he thought for a moment that he might throw up again.

“Richie?”

“Hm?” Richie looked back up into Ben’s concerned face and it grounded him back into the present. He drew in a deep breath through his nose, recognising the now familiar scents of old paper parchment, worn leather book covers and the tang of herbs. “Sorry. I’m just… I’m just tired.”

“You can borrow my shower if you like, and some fresh clothes – they won’t be your size, but they’ll be clean. Bev usually visits for breakfast, so we can all eat together – oh, but the sun’s only just risen, so that’ll probably be a few hours away, and you said you were hungry. Well, I’ve got plenty to eat, and we can always cook something else for Bev when she gets here,” Ben babbled, obviously trying to make Richie feel better.

Richie’s wolf ears flattened to his head. “No, no I need to go. I don’t want to talk to Bev about it. I just want to collapse into my bed and sleep for a week.”

“Please, Richie. You’re not in any shape to go anywhere. If you need to rest, you can use one of my spare rooms. I can… send Bev away if you don’t want to talk to her,” Ben said softly, though Richie didn’t miss the hitch in his voice when he mentioned turning Bev away.

Richie heaved himself off the desk he was still leaning on and swayed a little on his feet. “If my brain was firing on all cylinders, I’d make a joke about early birds and catching worms, but I’m pretty sure my head is just filled with soup at the moment, so I’m putting a pin in that one for another time.” Richie shook his head at Ben’s silence. “Soup-brain makes it impossible to be funny, please don’t judge me on my comedy right now.”

“I don’t get your jokes at the best of times,” Ben confessed with an apologetic smile, “but I’m more concerned that you don’t collapse somewhere out there. Please stay until you’ve rested a bit. I don’t know what kind of energy your body must use to transform your entire physical form, but I imagine it’s a considerable amount- oh, wait! You’ll have to tell me more about it over breakfast so I can make notes. You’ve got to stay and tell me about it while it’s fresh in your mind. For my book.” He looked incredibly proud of himself for thinking of a way to get Richie to stay.

He would be terrible at poker.

“Okay,” Richie sighed.

Ben brightened. “Really?”

“Yeah, I’ll stay, but only on one condition… do you have a bathtub?”

“Yes! You want a bath? Good for resting your muscles after they’ve changed shape twice in less than twenty-four hours, I suppose… it’s amazing that they work at all after you change back- sorry, of course – I can fill it up no problem.”

“Cool. That’s great. And then when I’ve had a good soak, you, me, and Bev can all have breakfast together.”

Ben brightened even more and the guilt in Richie’s stomach intensified. He tried hard not to wince.

“I’ll get it started now! You sit down here while I make the poultice for your eyebrow and fill the bath, and I’ll fetch you when they’re ready.”

“Thanks, man. You’re a great friend. I hope you know that. Just keep an eye on the temperature of the bath for me? My tail is sensitive.”

Ben looked like he was going to say something else, then told him it was no problem and raced off up the stone steps. Richie waited until his sensitive hearing picked up the sound of rushing water and then he wobbled forwards on unsteady legs, hoping he still had enough residual werewolf magic to make his heavy, tired footsteps quiet enough to sneak out through the house.

He got to the base of the steps and sucked in a steadying breath, picturing his own paw pads in his mind, and the way he moved when he was a wolf in the forest. It was the first time in many years that he’d consciously tried to tap into the wolf magic inside himself, and where he thought he’d feel something dark and feral, instead Richie felt a warm comfort that gave him a little more energy.

“Sorry Ben,” he whispered.

With each step that his sneaker landed on, his other foot was already propelling him up to the next one, and he moved so swiftly he barely made a sound. Before he knew it, he was out of Ben’s house and running in the direction of the fair.

There was something he needed to do before he could go back to his apartment and wallow in his own misery.

---------

It was strange to see the fair in the weak morning sun. When Richie approached the entrance, he could barely believe it was the same place he’d sat and waited for Eddie the night before. It felt like such a long time ago, and it looked so different; the banner with the turtle on it had already been taken down, and it was only as Richie walked inside what was left of the fair that he noticed that it didn’t even feel the same. It had been subtle, but there had been something magical in the air of the place last night – but now, there was nothing. It felt like everywhere else in Derry.

The stalls were empty and bare and some of them had even been partially dismantled already. Empty tubs of popcorn were littered along the ground, along with candy wrappers and other junk that had been dropped or discarded during all the excitement last night. The potent mix of scents that Richie had almost been overwhelmed by at times had dulled down into a faint, stale reminder of just how many humans and creatures had been having fun together.

It was almost eerie in its state of abandonment; especially without the warmer feeling he’d had from the subtle magic the night before. It was so quiet and cold without the buzz of the crowd and the cozy glow of fairy lights and fairground rides.

He passed by the empty hotdog stall, and he could see the ferris wheel towering above everything in the distance… All painful reminders of that perfect evening – before his curse had messed it all up. Richie hunched his shoulders and pressed on. He had a specific destination he needed to get to, and he would have plenty of time to be miserable about it all later.

He hurried on through the silent fair.

Except it wasn’t silent.

Richie’s ears perked up high as he caught a sound whispering to him on the gentle early morning breeze. It sounded like singing… He blinked as he realised that he recognised the voice.

“Eddie?” Richie mumbled aloud.

He raced towards the sound, as fast as his weary legs would take him, and finally emerged from between two stalls to the bench where the singing was coming from.

“Eds-” Richie stopped dead and his ears and tail drooped.

There was someone there singing softly and sweeping up popcorn, but it wasn’t Eddie.

The figure jumped as she noticed him and dropped her broom to the floor with a clatter. She looked around his age, even if the beige cardigan she wore looked like something his grandma would have owned. Short brown hair that reached her shoulders had strands of wavy damp seaweed scattered through it, and large round pink glasses perched on the end of her nose. Dark green scales flashed in patches across her pale face as she bent down to pick up the broom and webbed fingers clutched it to her chest nervously. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there, did you need something? Are you with the clean-up crew?” She had a pleasant accent that sounded vaguely British.

“No… I… uh, I heard singing and thought you were someone else.”

She giggled and winked. “I get that a lot.”

Richie pulled a face.

“Never mind,” she said lightly, “it’s an old Siren joke. Sorry for the confusion.” Her green eyes had thin pupils in them like a cat, magnified through her large glasses, and they roamed over him with concern. “Are you okay? You look upset.”

Richie sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “It feels like that’s all everyone’s been asking me for the last twenty-four hours.”

“Can’t imagine why,” she said with sarcasm laced through her voice. “You look like you’ve been beaten up, dragged through a hedge, and haven’t slept in three days.”

Richie laughed and saluted. “Wow, thank you. And I’ll have you know; I can look this good on only missing one full night’s sleep. Imagine how I’d look after another two.”

The Siren popped a webbed hand over her mouth. “Oh, sorry, that was so rude of me – I forgot last night was a full moon, wasn’t it? And what with you being a werewolf… No wonder you look so terrible.”

“Thank you again, truly,” Richie drawled, with a laugh.

“Sorry, let me start again.” She rested the broom against a trashcan nearby and offered her hand. “I’m Patricialirelyta, I’m in the environmental club at Derry University.”

Richie reached out and shook. Her skin was slightly damp, and the webbing felt odd, but she seemed nice. “Whew, that’s a bit of a mouthful.”

“Siren names often are. You should hear it in my native tongue underwater. That’s a mouthful.” Three large slashes either side of her scaled neck twitched as she laughed at her own private joke, and Richie realised that they were gills.

“How about if I just call you Patty?”

“Like a nickname? I’ve never had a nickname before.”

“I give one to everyone, even if they don’t want it, honestly,” Richie said with a rueful smile, thinking of Eddie again.

“No, that would be lovely – I really like it, thank you.”

Richie smiled. “I’m Richie, by the way.”

“I know.” At his confusion she continued brightly, “There’s only one werewolf in town. And your ears and tail are dead giveaways- oh, sorry again, you probably don’t like to be reminded of your infamy.”

Richie grinned, amused by her strange honesty. “Ah, it’s fine, I’m used to it by now. But if you know who I am, I’m just surprised you want anything to do with me. Not many people in this town like werewolves.”

“Not many people in this town like anyone except themselves,” she replied with a huff.

“That’s fair. Derry’s one-of-a-kind for sure.”

Patty looked him up and down again with scrutiny. “I don’t know much about werewolves,” she began carefully, “but isn’t it a bit early for you to be wandering around? You really do look terrible.”

“It’s a long story, trust me… I’m just here to pick up something I left here on this bench last night. I’m looking for a plush dog. About this big” – Richie held his hands apart – “with black fur, and he’s probably got some goofy looking plastic shades on him.”

As much as he’d enjoyed meeting Patty, he really needed to get what he came for and go, so he could hopefully enjoy a blissful dreamless sleep to put all this mess out of his mind for a while.

“And you left it here… last night? The night of the full moon?” Patty tilted her head like a curious cat.

Richie chuckled nervously. “Trust me Pats – I am holding on by a thread, you do not want to see me tell the story about how I was able to be here last night because I will end up falling all over you sobbing pathetically. There will be ugly crying. Snot everywhere.”

Patty giggled, but there was a sharp gleam to her eyes that told him her curiosity had been piqued and she’d find a way to find out what happened.

Well, it wouldn’t be from him. Not today.

“I’ve been here just after the sun broke over the horizon,” she said sadly, “and I’ve not seen anything like that. Just a lot of discarded popcorn and not much else, I’m afraid.”

Richie sighed deeply and put his head in his hands as he lowered himself onto the bench. He’d gone and lost Scraps on top of everything else.

The popcorn around the bench was probably from them too, from when they’d been having fun and goofing around.

But the bench had also been where he’d realised the potion was wearing off, and Richie shuddered as he felt an echo of that fear worm its way into his heart. He clenched his jaw and felt a fang pierce the inside of his lip.

He hadn’t wanted Eddie to see him as a monster, and now that’s all he’d ever see him as.

“I can leave a memo out at the entrance for the rest of the clean-up crew when they arrive, to see if they’ll look out for your cuddly toy. If you left it last night, then it must still be around here somewhere,” Patty whispered gently as she sat down beside him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Thanks, Patty,” Richie mumbled. He sat there for a moment as Patty gave his shoulder a comforting pat. “But he’s probably gone, just like…” Richie’s ears flattened as he felt a canine whine curling in his chest. He swallowed thickly and held his breath. He wasn’t about to fucking embarrass himself in front of someone he’d just met on top of everything else.

“Is this something to do with who you heard singing earlier?”

Richie was going to dodge the question, but he looked up and nodded instead. “Yeah,” he admitted quietly. “Like I said, long story, but the abridged version is that I fucked up and now I’ve probably lost the first person I’ve ever…” He trailed off again and his sad voice seemed to linger in the cool air between them in the silence that he left.

“You know, people think that Sirens don’t understand love, but the stories aren’t true for us all. I know we’ve only just met, but you can talk to me about it if you want to. I’m a good listener, and I know more about love than dragging sailors to their watery graves, like everyone thinks.”

“No, no, that’s not it, trust me – I’m friends with a whole bunch of creatures who don’t fit their stereotype. I just don’t want to talk about. Period. It just, hurts so much. It hurts.” Richie’s voice shifted into a whine on his final word, and he ripped off his glasses so he could press his hands over his eyes. “Fuck.”

He felt Patty rub his shoulder and he hated the way it calmed him down as the wolf felt the comfort from the contact.

Before Eddie had come to town, he’d been fine with the rejection from the other townspeople, because he’d got his friends. The other Losers in town. He’d come to terms with feeling like he was put through a meat grinder each month just to hunt rabbits and prowl through the forest. He didn’t like it, but he’d come to accept it. At least in Derry he’d been able to go to college and could walk around town during the day – even if he did get shit from the residents sometimes. Whatever. That was his life, and it was better than having to hide in his room permanently when he’d been in the human world, in case anyone saw his ears and tail. It was better than knowing how much trouble he was for his mom, when all she ever did was her best for him.

Then he’d gone and walked into the wrong room that day and destiny had thrown him and Eddie together. Eddie’s prickly attitude and sense of humour had attracted him immediately, and his attraction only grew as he’d gotten to know him better.

He’d gone and found himself a life that was bearable, then fallen in love with a human and fucked it up himself like he was permanently set onto a course of self-destruction.

And God, he loved Eddie so much.

He just wanted…

He wanted. And that was the problem.

Wolves shouldn’t want. They didn’t get nice things. They got chased out of villages with pitchforks and hung on walls as trophies.

They certainly shouldn’t fall in love with humans in a town where they tended to ‘disappear’.

Richie slid his glasses back on and touched the wound on his eyebrow.

Eddie…

With his quest to retrieve Scraps being about as successful as everything else had been over the last twenty-four hours Richie sighed and scratched harshly at the base of his wolf ears as he stood up. “I should go.”

Patty stood with him and held out her hands, as if she was going to catch him, and it was only then that he noticed how badly he was swaying on the spot.

“Wherever you’re going, please let me give you a lift. You look like a strong wind could blow you away.”

Richie shook his head and took another deep breath. “I just stood up too fast, I’ll be fine. I’m going to meet a friend anyway.” He didn’t want to admit it was because Stan’s house was closer, and he didn’t think he’d make it back to his apartment before he passed out.

Patty looked unconvinced. “You look even worse now than you did when you first got here,” she pointed out.

Her honesty made Richie laugh out loud again and he pointed two finger-guns at her. “It was nice meeting you too.”

“I’m not taking it back. You’re just being stubborn.”

“Blame it on the wolf,” Richie said with a shrug, moving away from her. “Oh, and if you find Scraps, the toy dog I’m looking for, I’ll be at my friend Stan’s house. He’s the-”

“Vampire!” Patty interrupted with wide eyes. “Stan as in, Stanley Uris, the only vampire in town?”

“The one and only!” Richie shouted as he continued walking further away.

“You do keep some strange company for a werewolf!” Patty shouted back with amusement.

Richie waved and turned to make his way back through the fair. He thought it would be harder to dip into the last crumbs of werewolf magic lingering in his system from last night, but the more he did it the easier it seemed to become, regardless of how long ago his transformation was. He felt the tiniest warmth of energy seep into his exhausted limbs. It would be enough to get to Stan’s.

He hoped.

---------

Alone with his thoughts on the way to Stan’s house, Richie wasn’t surprised that he lingered on the memories of his time in the forest. Thinking about stuff that happened while he was transformed was always a little harder to recall, like watching it back on an old TV, but he’d stayed alert the whole time, so it was easier than usual. He’d been more Richie than the wolf all night, which had been a struggle, and had left his head pounding, but he hadn’t wanted to scare Eddie.

Obviously, that hadn’t worked anyway.

He hadn’t wanted to reveal himself at all and had intended to just watch from the shadows and make sure that Eddie made it out the forest okay, but he’d just kept going further in instead of turning back like Richie expected. Then Eddie had been panicking so badly, and his breathing was worrying him, and he’d smelt the blood and he’d got sloppy and stepped on a stick he hadn’t noticed.

Pain had exploded above his eye, and he hadn’t even known that it was Eddie that had hurt him until he approached.

Pretending to be a regular wolf wasn’t his smartest plan, but he figured if he could get Eddie out of the forest without revealing his identity everything would be fine. But the stubborn asshole wouldn’t leave without him.

Richie remembered fondly how angry Eddie been when he realised that the wolf he’d just met and found out could understand him was leading him the wrong way. The fact that Eddie had been spiralling so badly that he was willing to accept that a giant wolf could understand English was both amusing and sad.

He’d been so scared.

But Richie had seen Eddie shove aside his own fears, just like he knew that he could. Richie had told him himself that he was braver than he thought, and he meant it. He’d seen Eddie’s deep well of courage in action.

Richie stumbled slightly as he walked across the Hanlon fields to get back to town, so deep in his thoughts that he wasn’t paying attention to where he put his feet. His tail swung out behind him to keep his balance and he continued.

He’d only revealed his identity when it was clear that Eddie would be staying the entire night in the forest and possibly killing himself by tripping over a hidden tree root unless Richie did something, and it had taken every scrap of nerve to do it.

He’d been terrified of Eddie’s reaction.

But at times it almost seemed like Eddie was going to be okay with it – especially when his hands were carding through his fur. Warmth snaked up Richie’s spine and he shuddered with it when he remembered Eddie’s bold touch.

“Shit,” he whispered under his breath as he struggled not to linger on the memories that hurt him so much.

He just wanted the chance to explain and apologise, even if Eddie told him he never wanted to see him again.

It’s not like Richie had been deliberately keeping secrets; he’d just found it easier to pretend everything was normal whenever they were together, and he’d gotten too wrapped up in the pretence.

It’s why monsters and humans didn’t interact much in Derry, and definitely why they didn’t fall in love.

---------

Derry was finally waking up by the time Richie made it to Stan’s house. The sun was higher in the sky, and some of the townspeople were beginning to go about their business and head off to work. He had a few odd looks as he all but stumbled through town, barely clinging onto consciousness, and trying hard not to trip over his own feet. But he’d made it.

Stan’s house was set back from the others slightly, with boarded up windows and large flat roof. Richie could hear the coo of Stan’s pigeons from their coops up there as he approached.

He sagged against Stan’s doorframe gratefully and lifted a fist to knock, then fell forwards as the door swung open. He hit carpet hard with a yelp and turned over to look up into the disapproving face of Stan hovering above him in the shadows, his brown eyes glowing faintly in the gloom.

“Stan my man,” Richie wheezed, watching his friend’s face swim through his hazy vision that was rapidly growing dark and fuzzy at the edges as he finally lost his battle with remaining conscious. “You order one werewolf… with a… broken heart? No? Well, we… don’t take… refunds.”

Chapter Text

In his dream Richie was a wolf again. He was desperately trying to catch up to someone. He knew that if he just ran a little faster, pushed himself a little harder, he could make it. Despite his speed he barely made a sound through the undergrowth as his paws swiftly propelled him through the forest he knew so well – weaving between trees like a shadow. Adrenaline fuelled each stretch of his muscles, and he barely felt the burn of them as he pushed himself even harder. He had to be faster. He had to make it.

Richie finally burst into a moonlit clearing.

He was human again.

He collapsed onto his now human knees as he stared in horror at Henry Bowers and his gang who were circled around Eddie’s lifeless body at their feet.

“No,” Richie croaked, realising he was too late.

Blood was smeared across Eddie’s clothes and face. His pretty brown eyes, usually sparkling with life and squinting at him playfully, were staring widely ahead – dull and empty.

The zombies around him laughed as Richie cried out his name.

“You know this is your fault,” Bowers gurgled, spitting black blood to the floor as he laughed again.

Richie nearly choked on the force of his sobbing. The corpse didn’t move. He tried to yell Eddie’s name again, but he couldn’t stop crying long enough to get a sound out.

A growl rumbled beside him.

Richie jumped as he realised there was a wolf there.

The huge black wolf had one brown eye and one blue eye, staring straight ahead with a burning hatred towards the group of zombies. Its whole body was trembling, hackles raised and spiked, with its ears drawn back and its lips curled up in a snarl of rage.

“You could have saved me,” Eddie whispered.

Richie’s head whipped back around to see Eddie had sat up, even though he was still covered in blood, and was staring at him with lifeless milky eyes.

“You could have stayed away from me,” Eddie continued, in a rattling hiss. It reminded Richie of when he needed his inhaler.

The denial Richie wanted to scream was stuck in his throat, but beside him the wolf growled again.

“It’s because of you that this happened!” Bowers crowed. His gang all laughed.

“Because of you!” they chanted as one. “You! You! You… you… coo… coo…”

Coo?

---------

Richie woke to the sound of Stan’s pigeons cooing noisily from the roof. His dream had felt so real that he was left a little disorientated, and for a second, he almost forgot why he was at Stan’s house at all.

Then it all came crashing back.

Richie sat up so fast he went momentarily dizzy. He rubbed at his face as he waited for the world to stop spinning and flinched when he realised his cheeks were soaking wet.

“Sleep-crying,” Richie mumbled, wiping his face on the bedsheets of Stan’s spare bed, “the more embarrassing second cousin of sleep-talking.”

He sighed and reached over for his glasses, sitting neatly on the side table beside him. He’d stayed in Stan’s spare room a few times since they’d known each other, and each time he’d found it funny that Stan should have a spare room in the first place, since vampires didn’t need to sleep. Richie inhaled the sweet scent of fabric conditioner, still lingering in the freshly washed sheets, and he tried not to sneeze as it tickled his sensitive nose.

Even though Stan didn’t sleep, so he didn’t have to use either of the beds, they were always kept fresh. The whole house was always scrupulously clean and tidy. Richie figured that his level of cleanliness was bordering on unhealthy, but at least all the housework gave him something to do during the day while he was housebound from the sun.

Eddie had been in a state of disbelief when he’d first visited Stan’s house, asking how Richie could have a friend as tidy as this and yet live in such a mess back at the student dorms. Richie had gasped in mock hurt while Stan had shaken Eddie’s hand in approval, and he’d pretended to be horrified that the two of them were ganging up on him.

In reality, Richie had just been so pleased that his friends had all been so accepting of his addition of Eddie to the group, even though he was a human.

It had been easy to explain why Stan’s windows were boarded up and why they were visiting after the sun had already gone down – as Eddie had accepted an allergy to the sun surprisingly easily, with a knowing nod of his head. The enchantment over the town handily erased any existence of the vampire fangs that might have made him more suspicious.

Guilt washed over Richie once again at the thought of the enchantment no longer working on Eddie.

(“You could have saved me,” Eddie’s voice whispered in his mind, “you could have stayed away from me.”)

Richie groaned and realised his hands were shaking. He could really do without his own imagination betraying him right now.

“Sounds like you’re awake,” Stan said from the roof, loud enough for Richie’s sensitive hearing to pick out, even if it was a little muffled.

Richie’s ears perked up. “Yeah, despite my better judgement,” he replied in the same way, knowing Stan would be able to hear him too. “Not that things were any better while I was dreaming, honestly.”

He was suddenly very tempted to crawl back into the bed, throw the sheets back over his head, and stay there, but his stomach growled loudly, and he owed Stan a thank you for taking him in on such short notice. (The short notice being him passing out on his floor.)

Richie sighed deeply and threw off the bed sheets.

Hundreds of beady bird eyes seemed to be looking at him as he climbed reluctantly out of the bed. Paintings of birds of all kinds of size and species filled nearly all the available wall space. It was nice that Stan had found a hobby other than cleaning, but it was still a little disconcerting to feel watched as he stretched his arms high above his head and stretched out his tail behind him with a groan, hearing clicks in his stiff joints. It was no surprise that he’d been stripped of his sweaty clothes before being placed in Stan’s spare bed – especially since they’d probably still got bits of undergrowth on them from their time on the forest floor – but he was surprised Stan hadn’t thrown his unconscious ass in the bathtub before putting him in the bed too. Richie didn’t need to have an enhanced sense of smell to know that hadn’t been the case.

“The shower is ready for you,” Stan continued, in the same gentle voice as before, then as if he’d heard Richie’s thoughts he added, “You smell awful, so I suggest you use it.”

“You can’t say such terrible things in such a pleasant voice, Stanny. It could hurt someone’s feelings,” Richie threw back with a chuckle.

There was a glass of water on the table his glasses had been sat on, and Richie downed the whole glass in a few frenzied gulps that left him feeling a bit sick. But at least he wasn’t thirsty anymore.

He had no idea what time it was, since there were no clocks in the house, but Stan was on the roof so the sun must have set again. He’d asked about the no clocks thing once and Stan had replied that time had no meaning to him, as he only cared about the rising and setting of the sun. Poetic for sure, but not very convenient.

Richie took another deep breath as the horror from his nightmare faded away with every waking moment.

If nothing else Dream Eddie was going to get his wish now – Richie would stay away from him. He wouldn’t even look at him. Richie figured he could ask Ben to make sure that Eddie was okay with pretending he was still under the enchantment (since his life depends on it, Richie thought with a fresh pang of guilt) and maybe walk him around town or something to acclimatise him to the way Derry really looked.

While he stayed out of Eddie’s life for good.

“Fuck,” Richie whispered hoarsely, missing him intensely at just the thought. There was a burning lump at the back of his throat, but Richie gritted his teeth and moved to the bathroom before he let himself cry again.

He shivered a little at the feeling of the cooler room and the smooth tiles under his feet, wishing Stan would put on some heating when he had living house guests.

The fur on his tail was fluffed up as a reaction to the cold and Richie swung it around to smooth it down with his hands, but he paused in surprise as something familiar caught his eye. He recognised the small canvas bag sitting beside the doorway.

A long copper coloured feather sat on top of it.

Bev.

Richie reached down and twirled the feather between his fingers with a sad smile. He hoped that her delivery meant there were no hard feelings for him ditching Ben, but he was ready for the chewing out he was going to get from her at some point about it.  

He didn’t want to dwell on the thought of his friends discussing his major fuck up while he was unconscious, but at least that meant he wouldn’t have to explain what happened to Stan.

Inside the bag was a neat pile of his own clothes from his dorm room, the special shampoo he used on his ears and tail, his soap, a can of deodorant, and some underwear. He should probably learn to lock his window one of these days, but Bev had earned herself a hug and his infinite gratitude. And maybe a ruffle of his ears.

The shower itself was lukewarm, but it felt so good to scrub off the remnants of the night that Richie didn’t care at all. It was the best shower he’d ever had, and he was finally feeling more himself again afterwards.

He’d slept off any of the residual werewolf magic left over from his transformation, but he had this strange feeling of it being closer to the surface than before, even though the full moon had passed. A shiver crawled up Richie’s spine as he changed into the clothes from the bag Bev had brought him. He hadn’t got enough headspace to deal with the possibility that he’d done something to his own curse because he’d reached into himself to use the magic willingly for the first time since he was a kid.

A flash of memory brought back the image of the wolf (himself?) from his nightmare – and how despite its anger Richie had felt like he was in the presence of an old friend.

“No time to unpack that,” Richie grumbled, as he ran his hand through his still damp curls and replaced his glasses onto his nose.

“If you’re going to unpack, there’s some spare space you can use in the closet.” Stan’s voice was muffled with the cooing of pigeons, but Richie could still hear him.

“Not that kind of unpacking,” Richie replied with a chuckle, “but thanks, man. I’m on my way up now, anyway.”

“The offer still stands. And I’ve got food up here too, since I can hear your stomach from here.”

“Clean sheets, a shower, closet space and food? Careful Stanny, I might have to marry you and never leave.”

“Who says I’d say yes?”

Richie only laughed in reply as he made his way to the staircase leading to the roof. He pushed on the heavy metal door at the top of the stairs with a satisfying clank and emerged into the night with a wide gesture of his arms. “Stan, will you do me the honour of being my dutiful vampire husband for the rest of my li-” He had dropped to his knees in what was supposed to be an overdramatic proposal, but it felt so much like crashing to his knees in despair from his nightmare that it drew him up short and he froze.

Stan was beside him in an instant – crossing the roof in the time it took Richie to blink.

“Don’t ask me if I’m okay,” Richie continued in a deflated tone. “Please.” He pushed himself to his feet without any assistance, not that Stan overtly offered any, and brushed the dust from the knees of his jeans.

“I can clearly see that you aren’t okay – you passed out in my doorway and slept for twenty-four hours straight, why in the Seven Hells would I ask a redundant question like that?” Stan stated with a huff.

His matter-of-fact tone brought a startled bark of laughter out of Richie. “Yikes,” he said dryly. “Thank you for that brutally honest recap. There’s someone I met yesterday that I think you’d like.”

Stan said nothing and crossed his arms.

It felt like being assessed by a schoolteacher. Stan’s curls might be back in fashion but his clothing always betrayed his age, even though he only appeared to be just a little older than Richie in his features. A brown knitted cardigan over his dark plaid shirt and sensible brown slacks gave him the appearance of someone with an old soul. Which is exactly what he had.

“Someone you met yesterday, hm? Well, I bet you met a lot of people at the Full Moon Fair.” Stan raised his eyebrows and let his statement hang in the air between them.

Waiting for an explanation.

Richie nearly choked as his ears flattened to his head and a nervous chuckle escaped him. “Uh, do we really need to talk about that right now?” He moved over to one of the spacious pigeon coops and wiggled his fingers on the mesh towards the softly cooing birds inside. There were a few coops on the flat roof – all beautifully crafted and carved, with intricate swirls running through the wood.

“Richie. What were you thinking?”

Richie bent closer to the mesh and sighed as the pigeons grew agitated at his presence. “Man, these guys live in better conditions than I do in my student apartment. Sorry to disappoint you Stan, but it looks like we can’t get married because I’m moving in with my new best friends instead.”

Stan threw him a flat look. “Don’t deflect.”

Richie gritted his teeth together, and felt a fang pierce the inside of his lip. “Fine!” he yelled in a cracked and broken voice. He moved away from the birds and threw his arms wide. “Okay, what do you want to know? How I fucked up my own happiness? How I fucked up Eddie’s life in town? How I’ve put him in danger? How about when he called me a monster? Or how he ran away as soon as the sun rose?”

“What did you think was going to happen?” Stan shot back, with a tired sigh.

“Not fucking this!”

“I can’t believe you got Ben to make a potion like that in the first place. You’re a werewolf, Richie, you can’t just not be a werewolf whenever it suits you.”

“He made you that Daywalking potion!”

“To stop my skin from combusting in the sunlight for an hour. It’s not the same and you know it.”

“How so? Don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy going out in the sun and ‘not being a vampire’, because I’ll know that’s a big fat fucking lie!” There was a hint of a defensive growl underlying Richie’s voice and the pigeons around him flapped their wings inside their coops with alarm. “I- We didn’t ask for any of this! We didn’t ask to be monsters! It’s not fair!”

All the fight seemed to drain out of Stan as his expression darkened with a sadness that spanned centuries. He sighed and walked calmly to the coops where he made gentle shushing sounds at the birds and spoke soft reassuring words to them until they calmed down.

Richie’s anger faded as quickly as it had flared, and his shoulders sagged as he breathed out a deflated sigh. “I know it was stupid. I know. But I really thought it’d work.”

“It isn’t fair, what happens to people like us who were once human,” Stan eventually agreed, “but we can’t run away from what we are.” He turned back to Richie. “I did enjoy the potion, you’re right. Feeling sunlight on my skin for the first time in… a long time… was something I’ll never forget. But we need to be true to ourselves and be brave enough to endure it. Be proud of who you are. You’re surrounded by friends who love you for you. Those are the sorts of people you should keep in your life. Be honest with Eddie and you might be sur-”

Richie shook his head rapidly. “Be honest with him? I’m never… Like I’m ever going to see him again! And I tried being honest – well, I mean, I tried being honest only after I tried being dishonest, but it still counts. My transformation stopped me. Then I suppose I did try lying again when I pretended to be a real wolf after I transformed… But then I told the truth. And it didn’t work. And now he hates me.”

Stan blinked like he’d struggled to keep up. “He doesn’t hate you.”

“He clearly fucking does. He ran off as soon as the sun rose. I didn’t even get the chance to explain…”

“Maybe you should go and grab that chance for yourself then,” Stan suggested, as if it was all that easy. “If you already think it’s all over between you two, then you’ve got nothing to lose by trying to get him to hear you out. If you think he’s worth fighting for, don’t let him go.”

Stan spoke so softly, but his words cut through Richie like a knife.

Richie’s tail swished agitatedly behind him while he thought.

He knew he could climb up to Eddie’s window, but it would get a bit awkward if Eddie screamed or pushed him down. (At least he knew not to fall onto his feet, Richie thought, with a secret sad smile at the memory of their conversation from only the day before.)

He wasn’t sure if his heart could handle a second rejection. Or how he would feel if Eddie looked at him with a cold expression. Could he put himself through that?

Stan disappeared into a small wooden shed while Richie grappled with what to do, and emerged a moment later with a brown paper bag.

“I promised you food,” Stan said brightly, throwing the bag over.

Richie brightened at the mention of food and caught the bag with a loud crinkle. He rummaged inside and brought out a wrapped-up sandwich. His stomach rumbled at the smell.

“The meat is raw,” Stan continued, “because I thought you’d need the energy.”

Richie had barely ripped off the plastic wrap before he’d bitten into it heartily and moaned with an intensity that was borderline pornographic.

“I’ve changed my mind again,” Richie managed, around his mouthful of sandwich, “the wedding is back on as long as you promise to make me food like this for the rest of our marriage.”

Stan rolled his eyes. “It’s a sandwich. I didn’t even have to cook anything.”

“It’s heaven,” Richie sang, as he sat down cross-legged on the roof. He took another bite as movement caught his eye and he looked up to see the beady eyes of Stan’s pigeons looking at him. “Stannie, tell your weird chickens to stop looking at me.”

Stan chuckled and Richie felt a familiar glow warm him at making one of his friends laugh.

“They know I’m eating their buddy,” Richie continued with a whine, “and it’s making me feel bad.”

“They don’t know. They’re just pigeons.” Stan disappeared back into the shed and re-emerged with a glass full of a bright red liquid. “Now we’re both guilty, does that make you feel better?”

Richie nodded as he chewed – his mouth too full to answer.

He could stomach raw or cooked meat at any time of the month. He only preferred cooked food because it felt more ‘normal’.

But he did especially enjoy Stan’s pigeons as a treat.

He must have looked truly pathetic to have prompted Stan into giving him one of his birds.

“Don’t you ever feel bad though? Drinking it right in front of them like that?” Richie asked, once he’d swallowed his final mouthful, crumpling the paper bag into a ball.

Stan took a sip from the glass and pushed his tongue into the corners of his lips to lick away the traces of red lingering there. “Like I said, it’s not as if they know. And I only take a small amount of blood from each of them - not enough to kill them, and just enough to keep my hunger under control. I only kill them when they get old or injured.” His gaze swept over the birds. “We have a good life together.” He gestured at his glass and the bag in his Richie’s hands. “Eliza was too old and weak to fly much anymore, so she’s given her life to sustain us both.”

Richie smiled. “I will never get over the old-fashioned names you give these birds.”

“They’re not old-fashioned to me,” Stan pointed out, smiling back at him, his vampire fangs glinting in the moonlight.

A gentler atmosphere settled over them both.

Richie hugged his knees to his chest and rested his cheek across them. “D’you ever… wish you were still human?” he whispered, so quietly that anyone with regular hearing wouldn’t have heard him.

“No. I’d have died about a hundred years ago if I were.”

“Ha-ha. You know what I mean.”

Stan took a moment to think before he replied, taking another sip from his glass before he finally said, “There are times when I miss it. But I was always scared of so much when I was a human. I lived my whole life afraid of things. And now that fear is mostly gone. It feels like a background hum compared to the deafening roar that it used to be.”

“So, you’d recommend vampirism?” Richie asked with a curious tilt of his head.

“I never said that. It comes with a long list of drawbacks.”

“I’m with you there.” Richie scratched the base of one his wolf ears. “I didn’t get the chance to read the terms and conditions, either. Then again, I don’t think anyone would sign on the dotted line to become anything like us if they were shown the small-print first.”

“At least we got to experience what it was like to be human at all,” Stan pointed out. “We have humanity in our hearts. Even if mine isn’t beating. And even if…” Stan touched his neck lightly, resting his fingertips over the two red scars there. “Even if I’m starting to forget my memories of what it was like.”

Richie’s eyes widened in alarm. “Like Bill?”

Stan nodded sadly.

“Fuck,” Richie hissed.

Silence hung between them, and Richie was highly aware of the sound of his beating heart thumping a lonely rhythm amongst the soft coos of Stan’s pigeons.

Richie was cursed with his ears and tail, and with undergoing a horrifically painful transformation each month, but otherwise – while he lived in Derry – he was able to go to college and live out a normal life. It’s why he chose to move to Derry in the first place, even if he was treated badly and would never amount to much. (It’s not like there were hugely lucrative career options in the small town.)

But living with the limitations Stan and Bill did… maybe it was a kindness to forget their time as humans?

Stan closed his eyes and drained the rest of the blood in his glass in one go, gripping the glass tightly.

“You okay there, Stan the Man?”

“Yeah, it’s just… Trying to remember being human always brings back memories of… her. I feel like I can still hear her playing that flute.” Stan’s brown eyes flashed as he pushed against the marks on his neck with so much force the skin went even whiter.

“Fuck her! Well, hey, at least those are memories you’ll be glad to forget, right?” Richie tried for a smile, but it came out weaker than he intended. “And you told me yourself that there’s no way she’d ever know you moved to Derry. You’ll never have to hear that flute again.”

Stan nodded and removed his hand.

Richie heaved himself to his feet with a groan and rested a confident hand on Stan’s shoulder. “Besides, if she ever showed up here, she’d last all of two seconds with all of us hunting her down. She’d be thrown in a bath of holy water and force-fed garlic until she exploded into dust or turned into stone or whatever it is that vampires do when they die.”

Stan smiled warmly at him, some of the tension leaving the rigidity of his posture, and his smile turned wry. “So eager to give advice, and yet so terrible at taking it.”

“Are you saying I’m a giver not a receiver? Because I’ll have you know, Stanny, that I am more than willing to do both – just ask Eddie’s mo-” Richie slammed his jaw shut so fast it made an audible clicking noise and both his wolf ears flattened down low.

He really had to stop making those kinds of jokes.

Stan sighed loudly. “Just talk to him.”

“I thought we were still talking about your trauma, not mine,” Richie said with more bravado than he felt.

He felt like a wrung-out dishcloth.

Stan folded his arms.

“Okay,” Richie sighed, “I’ll think about it. Happy?”

Stan looked unconvinced, which was fair because Richie was totally lying. “I know you. I know your first inclination will be to run away from Eddie and keep your distance, but I really don’t think that’s going to help anyone. You need to talk to him and clear the air.”

“I don’t run away…”

“You always run away.”

“Alright, maybe.”

“If nothing else you just need to make sure he keeps it a secret that he can See.”

Richie dragged his foot over the cold concrete roof, realising how cold his feet were getting in just his socks and wishing he’d put on his sneakers. “Yeah, I know. I thought the same earlier. I was… going to see if Ben would talk to him about it for me.”

Stan threw him another look.

“I know! Running away. I know.” Riche sighed heavily and shook out his tail. “I’ll wait outside Eddie’s classroom tomorrow and see if I can get him to listen to me long enough to warn him before he grabs a pitchfork,” he said morosely. “Then he never has to have anything to do with me ever again.”

“You really think that’s what he wants?”

Richie didn’t reply, he just looked up at the stars. They shined brightly in Derry.

“I’m proud of you, in any case. It won’t be easy. But no matter what happens you’ve always got me, and the rest of your friends – you know that right? We’re all losers, but we’re losers together. And we always will be.”

“Thanks, Stan.”

---------

Richie was packing his bag and making sure the spare room he’d been sleeping in was neat and tidy before he left (even though he knew Stan would re-clean and re-tidy anyway) when he heard a knock at the door and voices from Stan’s doorway.

That sounded like…

“Patty?” Richie called as he walked down the stairs.

Patty waved brightly to him from behind Stan as he approached, her green scales and eyes flashing in the darkness of the night.

“You two already know each other?” Stan asked with raised eyebrows.

“Stan, this is my fishy angel, Patty. Don’t ask her to say her full name, it sounds like a sneeze.”

Stan frowned. “I think sirens have beautifully constructed names.”

Patty’s green scales across her face flushed an interesting shade of pink as she blinked in surprise.

“You probably already guessed this smooth-talking vampire here is Stan-” Richie started with a playful grin.

“Oh yes, I realised straight away that this must be a vampire – the scarred bite marks on your neck are the biggest giveaway,” Patty said conversationally, her British accent even stronger than before, “and of course there’s the trademark fangs and the impossibly pale skin.” She looked between them and pushed her pink glasses further up the bridge of her nose at the following awkward silence. “Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have said all of that aloud.”

“No, your observations are correct. Those are the traits of a vampire,” Stan said, after clearing his throat.

Richie’s tail flicked back and forth with enjoyment as he watched the two of them. Interesting.

Patty turned back to Richie and her bright smile faded. “I wanted to tell you that I had no luck finding out what happened to your cuddly dog. I asked all the workers on the site, and I did a thorough investigation of the area around that bench, but there was no sign. I remembered you saying you were going to your friend’s house, so I thought that you might still be here. I’m so sorry.”

“Oh,” Richie said. “That’s okay. Thanks for looking anyway.”

“A plush dog?” Stan asked, looking between them both. “From the Fair?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s a long story.”

“It’s to do with who he heard when he heard me singing,” Patty said matter-of-factly, then clapped her hands immediately over her mouth.

Richie groaned while Patty apologised, and Stan’s expression turned sad. “You heard Eddie’s voice in a siren song?”

“Yeah…” Richie did what he did best – channelled his embarrassment into humour and an accompanying grin. “I should have known it wasn’t really him – he can’t hold a note to save his life.”

Stan pulled Richie into a hug, that surprised him because Stan hated contact even more than Eddie did. “Talk to him,” he said as he pulled away, straightening his clothes as if nothing had happened.

---------

Richie went back to his dorm room.

He threw himself face first onto his own bed as soon as he walked inside.

He would talk to Eddie. He’d wait by his classroom all day if he had to. He had to make sure he knew how important it was that nobody found out that he had learned Derry’s secret. If they couldn’t be together – if they couldn’t be friends – then at least this much Richie could do. He could keep Eddie safe.

Whisps of the memories of his nightmare floated through his mind as he fell asleep, face down on top of his bed.

“Thanks, Stan,” Richie mumbled as he felt himself drift off, grateful his friend had given him the talking to that he’d needed.

---------

Eddie didn’t show up to his class.

Richie waited in the corridor beside the door to his first class, but he didn’t see Eddie go past him. Just in case he’d missed him, Richie stayed there until the students all filed out again, but there was still no sign of Eddie.

He knew Eddie’s schedule as well as he knew his own, so he went to all the classrooms he should have been in that day – but had the same result at each one.

Nothing.

Richie wasn’t overly concerned at first, because if Eddie wanted to take a day or two from his classes, then he didn’t blame him. He’d been through a lot. But by the end of the fifth day, Richie was worried that something was wrong.

There was no way Eddie Kaspbrak would skip five days of lessons. Even if he’d had a life-changing traumatic experience that had shaken the foundation of how he knew the world to be.

Not five whole days of lessons.

Richie watched the students of Eddie’s final class of the week file out of the room and peeked inside to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone. The professor looked at him strangely, but he was the only person left in the class.

Richie swore and kicked the doorframe on his way out.

There was something terribly wrong.

His blood felt like it had turned cold as he walked quickly out of the building and into the evening air. What if someone had already found out that Eddie could See? What if he’d already been taken to wherever they took humans to when they made them ‘disappear’?

Richie sprinted through campus, back in the direction of his dorm room.

He was going to Eddie’s house check he was okay, whether he liked it or not.

But he had to go back to his room first and leave a note explaining where he’d gone and why. Because if he had to find the place that they took the humans to, he would. He wasn’t going to stop until he found Eddie. Hopefully he’d just be at home, skipping classes because he couldn’t face Derry anymore – that would be fine, because at least he’d be alive.

But if he had to find out what they did with the humans that went missing, that’s what he’d do, and he needed a way to tell his friends if… if he went missing too.

Richie slowed down as he neared his building, took out his keys with shaking hands, and had barely thrown the door open before he was taking the stairs up to his hallway two at a time. He stumbled over the last step as he got to the top and broke into another jog as he went down the corridor. His hands were still shaking as he flicked to a different key and pushed open his room door, cold sweat starting to gather at the back of his neck.

But Richie froze as soon as he’d taken his first step into the room.

The one window in the room was thrown wide open, letting in a fresh late breeze, while the glow of the golden setting sun silhouetted a figure in front of it.

He really needed to start locking that window one day.

“Hi, Richie,” a voice croaked.

“E- Eds?”

Chapter Text

Richie immediately shoved both hands over his wolf ears – hiding them flat to his head – and tucked his tail up behind his back as he slammed the door shut behind him with his foot.

A cold jolt of panic and shame clawed through Richie’s stomach alongside the relief singing through his heart.

Eddie was alive!

But he could See…

For a moment neither of them moved (Richie wasn’t entirely sure he was even breathing), then Eddie suddenly held up his hands in front of him and swiped them through the air with jerky movements as he croaked out, “I’m so sorry. I’m so- I’m so fucking sorry, Richie. I- oh, fuck, I told myself I wouldn’t cry.” He roughly wiped his eyes. “I- I don’t know what else to say. I know that I can’t undo what I did.”

A long stretch of silence hung between them as Richie tried to process the fact that Eddie was alive and here in his room, after he’d been so convinced that he was being pulled apart in a lab beneath the town or something.

“Say something please- even if it’s to tell me that you never want to see me again and then I promise that I’ll go and I’ll leave you alone,” Eddie whispered hoarsely.

Richie blinked in confusion, finally finding his voice again, even though it cracked terribly in places. “What you did? Eddie, you didn’t do anything. I- I though you never wanted to see me again! I’m the one that’s sorry – man, I don’t blame you for running away. Your friend turned into a- into a fucking monster. The fact that you stayed with me for as long as you did was more than I-”

“Wait. Wait.” Eddie jolted a few steps forwards, away from the open window and the fading sunlight that had silhouetted him, and he came more clearly into focus. Richie drew in a breath. He had dark purple bags beneath his eyes, shining wetly with fresh tears, and there was no colour to his cheeks at all. Each of his freckles stood out in dark stark contrast to his pale skin. Even his usually neatly combed hair was a mess.

Eddie frowned. “You… think you’re a monster?”.

“Well, yeah. And I thought… that’s what… you thought?” Richie said lamely, his eyes searching Eddie’s face for the fear and resentment that he thought he should find, but it wasn’t there. “You said it yourself back in the forest… But look, none of that matters right now – what the fuck happened to you?”

“Oh,” Eddie breathed, scrunching his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose, “I did say that, didn’t I? Shit. I’m so sorry, I barely even remember saying it. I mean, my brain wasn’t really processing much, and I’d just been thinking of monster movies, so that’s just how it came out. I would never think that about you- never.”

“You… wait, you don’t think I’m a monster?”

“Dude. Of fucking course not! You’re my best friend!”

“Seriously?” slipped out of Richie before he could stop himself. The sheer relief and hope that washed over him brought tears stinging to his eyes. “You do remember meeting the giant wolf, right?”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Sorry to break it to you, Trashmouth, but you’re already weird enough that being a werewolf actually makes sense for you.”

Richie’s tears threatened to spill over as he saw the truth in Eddie’s open expression.

Was this for real?

“C’mon Richie,” Eddie continued with a single fond chuckle, when it was clear Richie wasn’t going to speak, “you’re ruining my apology. You’re the funniest, most loyal person I know. Trust me, you’re no monster.”

After another short pause while Richie’s brain tried to catch up with what was happening, he tilted his head with exaggerated innocence and whispered, “You think I’m funny? I knew it.”

(Was humour an appropriate emotional crutch to use in their current situation? Probably not. But Richie fell back into its familiarity like sinking into a warm bath.)

Eddie folded his arms with a huff, but the twitch of his lips betrayed his amusement. “I’m here opening up to you, and that’s what you’re choosing to focus on? I’ve never said that you aren’t.”

“Uh, you tell me I’m not funny all the time.”

“Only when you joke about my height, or my m-” Eddie cut himself off sharply and bit his lip.

Richie immediately barrelled on, wanting to keep the lighter atmosphere they’d made for as long as possible. “That’s because it’s easy picking, Eds. Those jokes just write themselves, and I am physically unable to prevent the material from coming out. It’s like diarrhea. Except it’s out of my mouth. And it’s jokes instead of shi-”

“Nope. Ew. Nope. Nu-uh, I’m stopping you there.” Eddie’s frown intensified as closed his eyes and took a deep breath in and out, while one of his thick eyebrows twitched. He looked on the verge of heaving. “Asshole,” he said eventually, cracking his eyes open and smiling like he couldn’t help it. “That’s so fucking disgusting.” After a pause he spoke more softly when he added, “I’m uh- I’m lying, you know. When I say you’re not funny. It’s just me playing around. I just… wanted you to know.”

“That’s good,” Richie said gently, filled with a giddy warmth and not really registering what he was saying, “that’s good. Because it’s all for you anyway.”

His unfiltered honesty was rewarded with Eddie’s eyes going wide and a hint of pink blooming over his pale cheekbones. It was the cutest thing Richie had ever seen.

But Eddie’s expression quickly crumpled, and the pink faded like it had never been there as sighed raggedly and ran a hand through his already messed up hair. “I feel like shit for running away back there. I didn’t even let you explain. And… back in the forest when I- with my hands- I mean, I treated you like a- I shouldn’t have-” he stumbled over his words and made a frustrated sound.

Richie blinked in confusion. What is he talking about?

“Listen. You can be honest with me. I know I should say that you don’t have to tell me everything, but fuck that – I’m not going to lie anymore. I want to know. You had your chance to kick me out earlier, but now it’s too late and I’m not leaving without you spilling everything.” Eddie gestured back towards the window. “Ben told me about some, uh, enchantment or something over Derry? It meant that I couldn’t see everything the way it really is, and how everyone basically hates humans – and how some of them disappear? I don’t know, it was all a jumble of stuff that barely made sense and I was already losing my mind over everything else, so I didn’t really take much of it in – it’s mostly a blur. Not that it really matters much, because I don’t care about the rest of the town. But he wouldn’t tell me anything about you.”

Eddie’s intense gaze locked onto him, and Richie opened his mouth uselessly, not knowing what to say. Where did he start?

It didn’t help that his tail ached at being held up behind his back, and his ears burned under his hands, still clamped to his head in an unnatural position. He’d concealed them in a knee-jerk reaction to wanting to keep his wolf features hidden, but now he didn’t know how to reveal them without making it a big deal. Once he let Eddie really see that he wasn’t human, even if he didn’t consider him as a monster, there would be no going back.

Eddie clearly noticed Richie’s discomfort, because his eyes flicked up to the top of his head and he sighed.

Richie cringed inwardly at how awkward he’d made this. What was he supposed to do now, lift his hands up and yell ‘surprise’?

Eddie turned towards the still open window behind him, letting in the last of the sunlight, and reached up to grab the catch. The glass rattled down its wooden frame noisily as he pulled, until it clicked closed into place, then he drew the curtains and flicked on Richie’s desk lamp, as if he did this all the time.

The low light made the dark circles under Eddie’s eyes look even more pronounced.

Richie was caught between an increasing sense of dread in the inevitability of having to remove his hands, and discomfort in seeing the result of whatever the hell had happened to Eddie in the past week. (That he continually dodged explaining.)

“We’re alone,” Eddie said gently, “so you can take your hands away now.”

Richie’s eyes widened and he shook his head rapidly, wincing at the pain the movement caused shooting through his ears into his skull.

“Richie, please,” Eddie said, even softer, almost in a whisper. “I know there’s something under your hands. Can I see?”

Richie wanted to die of embarrassment when a tiny canine whine unfurled out of his throat in place of an answer. He pushed his hands down tighter, even though it hurt so much.

It was ridiculous because Eddie had already seen him as a full wolf, but for some reason this felt so much worse. His ears and tail were unnatural and very obviously not-human on the regular human-shaped Richie. The human-shaped Richie that Eddie would never see again.

“I’m not scared.” Eddie closed the gap between them and placed his hands gently over Richie’s. He didn’t apply any pressure – just rested them on top. It was a show of support and solidarity rather than an attempt to make him move. “Rich, unless you’ve got like, spider legs growing out of your head, I think I can handle it.”

Richie snorted a sudden laugh despite himself. “Spider legs would be pretty freaky, huh?” He locked eyes with Eddie, now so close to him, searching for a hint of fear or trepidation, and found himself captivated once again by the pretty brown colour, shadowed under the stubborn set of his eyebrows. “Okay…”

Richie gritted his teeth and lifted his hands. Eddie’s came with him, shifting his grip but never letting go.

“Oh. Wow,” Eddie whispered.

Richie stared down resolutely at their joined hands, and forced his wolf ears to stay up high, despite how badly he could feel them trying to flatten down again in his distress.

“Ta-da…” Richie said weakly, barely able to hear himself over the sound of the hammering of his own heart. “And for my next trick I will be attempting to get the ground to open up beneath me.” He tried to let go of Eddie’s hands, but they gripped on fiercely and Richie finally looked back up in alarm.

A smug smile stretched across Eddie’s face. “I knew I felt them the other day – when we were in my bedroom before the fair. I fucking knew it! For a second it was almost like I could see something, but then I blinked, and they were gone. I thought it was the stress of planning to sneak out that was making me imagine things- didn’t know why stress would be making me hallucinate cat ears on your head, but…”

“Wait, hold on, cat ears? Cat ears?”

“That’s what you’re taking away from that?”

Richie wanted to grab Eddie and his stupid beautiful smug face and kiss him right there and then. The need was almost overpowering. He didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or cry. He wanted to pick him up and spin him around the room.

It was not at all the reaction from Eddie that Richie had been expecting, but the relief of it made him feel like he was floating or like his limbs had all turned to jelly. One or the other. Maybe both.

“Imagine though,” Richie said through snorts of giddy laughter, “if stress really did make you see everyone as like, fucking anime cat girls or whatever.”

Eddie rolled his eyes and squeezed Richie’s hands. “It should have made sense when I found out you were a werewolf, but I think even then it seemed kind of impossible. They’re so realistic…”

“Uh, yeah, ‘cause they’re real?”

“Funny. I mean they’re, well, they’re moving.”

Richie groaned. “That can get kind of annoying,” he admitted softly, “’cause they mostly do it on their own, reacting to my mood and stuff.”

Eddie stared transfixed at Richie’s ears and a wave of self-consciousness made them flatten before Richie could stop it.

Eddie’s whole expression lit up. “Just like my neighbour’s cat,” he said excitedly.

“You’ve got to stop comparing me to a cat or I’ll get a complex, Eds.” Richie swallowed. “I’m a wolf.”

If Eddie had any knowledge of how difficult that had been to say aloud and that the words had nearly stuck in his throat, he made no indication of it. But he felt another squeeze and realised his hands had been shaking.

The action calmed him immediately.

Eddie’s gaze shifted lower. “Oh. Oh, holy shit, you have a tail-”

Only then did Richie realise it had been wagging behind him and it immediately froze. “Fuck. Uh, surprise? Please don’t laugh, I don’t think I can take it, my nerves are completely shot. I will just simply cease existing and fade away.”

“Why would I laugh?”

“Because it’s weird?”

A deep crease formed between Eddie’s eyebrows as he looked between the tail and his ears. “Are you serious? They’re fucking adorable.”

Richie nearly choked. “You’re messing with me.”

“Does it look like I’m joking?”

“No… but, dude, it’s just that you’re just taking all this pretty well in your stride considering you’re Edward Kaspbrak, king of freaking out. I’m not sure if you’re real or if I’m dreaming.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. They suit you. And that night at the fair has already set fire to everything I thought was real and not, so I’m learning to roll with it.”

“Who are you and what have you done with Eds?”

“I’m braver than you think apparently.”

Richie scoffed at hearing his own words thrown back at him. “Fuck off, you can’t be braver than I think, you’d literally not have any fear.”

At some point Richie had completely forgotten they were still holding hands, and they’d moved so close together that their hands were clasped between them in the small gap they’d left. Richie had to look down slightly at Eddie. He could see all the freckles splashed across his pale nose. His gaze flicked to Eddie’s lips, half frowning, half smirking, and Richie’s heart galloped in his chest at how badly he wanted to press his own there to feel that expression.

“And you’ve had these this whole time?” Eddie asked, attention returning to his ears and tail, oblivious of the turmoil going on in Richie’s mind. “I just haven’t been able to see them?”

Richie cleared his throat. “The whole time yeah.”

Eddie peered up at his ears again and Richie tried not to fidget. Were his hands getting sweaty? That would be gross if his hands started to sweat. Would it look weird if he let go, wiped them, and then held hands again?

“So, where’d your human ears go? Wait, do not tell me you have two sets of ears.”

“Nah, my human ears shrivelled up and fell off.”

Eddie turned his face away and gagged.

Richie laughed so hard it came out as a wheeze. “I’m kidding! I’m kidding! Oh, Eds, you never disappoint. Just couldn’t help myself.”

“You asshole!” Eddie scowled at him, but after a moment his expression softened. “Can I see?”

Richie’s laughter died immediately as he swallowed loudly, and he was glad Eddie didn’t have the enhanced senses to hear it like he did. “Uh,” was all he managed, before he choked out, “sure,” with an embarrassing crack in his voice. He finally let go of Eddie’s hands to sweep back the curls that framed either side of his face, revealing the thick fur covering where his human ears used to be, where his new wolf ears started, running either side of his head into the two large pointed black ears sitting on top.

Eddie’s eyes widened.

“The ears and tail were there after my first transformation,” Richie explained, trying not to feel too weird and panicked about sharing this with Eddie. He could trust him not to freak out and run, he knew it. “I changed back after my very first full moon and there they were.” He let go of his hair and shook his head violently to get the curls back into their place. “Which, y’know, kinda sucked at the time, since that meant I couldn’t leave the house anymore, but in the long run, can you imagine growing and un-growing these things on top of everything else every month?” Richie waved his fluffy tail behind him to punctuate his point. “I’d definitely choose not to transform back.”

“Shit… wait… choose to…?”

“Hm, yeah, it’s weird, it’s like- I can’t really describe it well, but every month I just know that if I wanted to, I could stay like that. Be a wolf for the rest of my life. Or maybe forever? I don’t know, I have no idea how it works.” Richie adjusted his glasses and shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “I’ve never met another werewolf to ask. But every month when the sun starts to rise, I know I could make the choice.” Despite trying to seem unaffected, Richie shuddered as he remembered the strange feeling that washed over him just before he would transform back. Maybe he’d be nothing more than an animal, or maybe he’d still be himself as a wolf? Would he have the lifespan of a wolf or a human? Or maybe he’d be immortal? It was all a mystery, and it terrified him.

But… it would mean no more painful transformations, no more ears or tail on the wrong body, no more hassle from the community he was supposed to be a part of…

“But you won’t, right?” Eddie cut in, interrupting his thoughts with a voice that left no room for arguments.

“I don’t know, it sounds like a pretty sweet deal… you could take me out for walks and feed me and take care of me.”

But Eddie didn’t look even faintly amused – his lips were set into a tight thin line and the crease between his eyebrows was even more pronounced than ever.

“I’m kidding,” Richie clarified, realising this was one of the times he’d taken a joke too far. “I’ll always transform back. I don’t want to be a wolf. I want to keep being Richie.”

Some of the tension seemed to ease from Eddie as he let out a huff. “Don’t joke about that. But uh, I know I don’t know much about it but… I thought… aren’t you both a wolf and Richie? I just kind of assumed you were both at the same time now. Is that not how it works?”

Richie was so startled that he felt like his whole body jolted – like he’d missed a step coming down the stairs, or like his heart had skipped a beat.

It was the simple truth that he’d had been desperately running away from ever since he’d been bitten. Voiced in a few simple sentences by the person he loved more than anything in the world. Just like that. It sounded so simple when it came out of Eddie’s mouth – of course Richie and the wolf were the same. But he’d never wanted to admit it for fear of realising that it was admitting once and for all to no longer being a human, and then he couldn’t even pretend anymore.

Richie tried to hide his existential crisis by folding his arms tight, even while he was wishing he could reach out and hold Eddie’s hands again. He was surprised by the thought that Eddie might not mind if he did.

Richie could barely swallow past the lump in his throat, willing himself not to cry, as he finally said, “Okay, how about this, I’ll tell you all about being a werewolf if you tell me what happened to you. Because, let me tell you Eds, you look fucking awful.”

“Oh, thanks, asshole.”

“C’mon, let’s sit down.” Richie motioned towards his bed, suddenly remembering the afternoon when he’d visited Eddie just before the Full Moon Fair, and how badly he’d freaked out about sitting on Eddie’s bed with him. It seemed like that had happened to two different people now.

They both sank down onto the edge of the mattress with matching sighs. They were close together on the single bed, side by side, but there was a sliver of empty space between them that just kept them from touching.

Richie kept his tail off to the other side from where Eddie sat.

“So?” Richie prompted, at the silence. “Rough day?”

Eddie chuckled and bumped his shoulder against Richie’s – bridging the gap for just a moment before the space between them returned. “Rough fucking week actually.”

“I feel ya. But I’m here to listen and I’m all ears.”

“Pun intended?”

Richie snorted and threw him weak finger guns, wiggling his ears for added effect. “No, but now yes.”

Having Eddie mention his ears openly made Richie’s skin feel too tight and twitchy, but he supposed he’d get used to it. Probably. Hopefully.

Eddie sighed heavily and looked down at his open palm – at an angry scabbed over wound that ran jaggedly across it. “You were saying that you thought you were a monster before, but I know who the real monsters are.”

“Eds, please tell me what happened to you, because you look terrible and that was cryptic as hell. Did someone hurt you?”

“Not exactly.” Eddie shook his head. “Okay. First, I need to get this off my chest. I need to tell you why I left.”

“You don’t have to-”

“No, I do.” Eddie swiped a hand through the air. “I want to try and explain. It had been a long night and I was so overwhelmed by the time we got back to Ben’s, and I know it’s no excuse for being such a shitty friend when you needed me, but I just couldn’t stay. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know what I was going to say, and I- well, I did what I do best and I fucking panicked.”

“That is one of your best talents,” slipped out of Richie’s mouth out of habit from their back-and-forths, despite it not really being the best time to joke around.

Eddie flipped him off and narrowed his eyes playfully, and Richie felt affection bloom in his chest. He’d been so worried that he’d never see that expression again.

“I just had to get out of there,” Eddie continued firmly. His big eyes glanced up at Richie. “When I got outside of Ben’s I threw up in the plant pot next to his door. Don’t tell him, he might not notice.”

Richie laughed so hard he had to wipe his eyes under his glasses. “You can’t be this serious and say shit like that, Eds, you’ll kill me.”

“It’s not- it’s not fucking funny! I thought the sepsis had started to set in from the cut on my hand and I was about to drop down dead.”

“Sorry, sorry – do go on,” Richie said soberly, as he readjusted his glasses, though the grin on his face lessened the effect he was going for.

Eddie flipped him off again and looked up at the ceiling almost as if he could see himself as he spoke. “So, I started running. I didn’t even really think beyond the panic and the urge to get home and shower and clean the wound, so I just… ran. I don’t think I’ve ever let myself run like that – I didn’t think about my lungs, or the damage to my knees – I just kept one foot going in front of the other. I only stopped when I realised that I was at the entrance to the fair.”

“The fair?”

“I know. I hadn’t meant to, but there I was,” Eddie said with a small shake of his head. “It was fucking eerie without all the people though – it felt different. At first, I was going to keep going, but while I was getting my breath back, I started thinking about those last few minutes when we were sitting on that bench together… and for some reason the only thing I could think about was that we’d left Scraps behind.”

“Right!? I know! I remembered too! I went back for him later, but he wasn’t there.”

“Well yeah, because I’d already picked him up.”

Richie spluttered something that was supposed to be ‘what!?’ but it came out as more noise than words.

“He’s literally been on the bed this whole time and you didn’t notice?” Eddie asked, with a quirk of his eyebrows. He pointed behind them and Richie spun around to see the black plush dog nestled against his black pillows. He was almost invisible except for his bright eyes.

Richie leaped across Eddie to reach for Scraps and held him in a tight hug as soon as he sat back to his original position. “Scraps! My boy! I thought I’d never see you again!”

Eddie chuckled in delight. “Wow, I didn’t know you were that attached to him.”

“He was a gift from you,” Richie explained sheepishly. “It basically broke my heart when I thought he’d abandoned me too.”

Too late Richie realised what he’d said.

Fuck! Stupid! Stupid!

He practically felt Eddie’s whole body stiffen and tense beside him on the bed while he immediately wished he could take it back.

“Shit, Eds, wait. I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean it like you’d-”

“No. No that’s what I knew all along. It’s okay.”

“But I-”

“Rich. Please. It’s okay. I fucked up big time. It’s fine if you’re angry with me.”

“I’m not angry- I’m-”

“I shouldn’t have left like that, I know – I’m sorry, I-”

Richie placed Scraps aside and threw his arms around Eddie. He was warm and solid, and his scent flooded Richie’s senses as he closed his eyes and held on tighter.

For a second Eddie seemed too shocked to respond and Richie wondered if he should let go, but then his arms clasped firmly around Richie’s neck, and they held onto each other tightly. Even though the angle of both being on the bed next to each other made the position a little awkward, Eddie’s slightly smaller frame fit into his embrace so perfectly that it was like he was made to be there.

Richie could hear Eddie’s sniffles occasionally, muffled by his shoulder, and felt his shirt getting damp. Not that he cared. Richie knew there were tears running down his own cheeks – like a release of emotional pressure – and it only made him hold on tighter. Eddie’s breath sounded a little wheezy against his shoulder, and Richie was reminded of his panic attack in the woods and how he’d managed to calm himself down from it.

“It’s okay,” Richie whispered, rubbing a hand up and down Eddie’s back. “I’ve been trying to tell you, and maybe now you’ll listen to me – I’m not angry. I don’t blame you. I’d have been scared shitless seeing what you did all at once. I’d have been out of there like a shot.”

“No. You’re wrong,” Eddie croaked into his shoulder. “I know you. I know if it was the other way around, you’d have stayed for me. That’s what cuts me up the most. I couldn’t do for you what I know you’d have done for me.”

Richie squeezed tighter and nuzzled his nose into Eddie’s hair. “Shut the fuck up, you don’t know that.”

“Fuck off, I do.” Eddie’s hands balled into fists in the back of his shirt. “I hate the thought of you thinking I was avoiding you on purpose for a week – that you thought I saw you as a monster, and that’s why I left. I left because of me – because deep down I’m always a coward, and I couldn’t hold it together. But I know you’d have fought through that and stayed by my side no matter what. You’ve always been like that.” Eddie took another wheezy shuddering breath. “I know that I’ve never been very good with feelings, and people have always said I’m mean and abrasive – and I don’t want to be – especially not with you – but I always liked that you never made me try to pretend I’m something I’m not. You always just… got me.” He took a deeper, steadier breath. “When I said I didn’t care that you’re a werewolf, I meant it. You could tell me you’re anything, and I’d still…” Eddie trailed off into silence.

Some students were yelling and whooping outside, but Eddie had shut the rest of the world out and they sounded muffled and far away through the closed window. It felt like nothing could intrude on this space they’d made together.

Richie continued to rub Eddie’s back gently. “Everyone gets scared. You think I just strolled into Derry no problem? I didn’t leave my apartment for two whole weeks. I was lucky I hadn’t started my classes yet. I stupidly thought that I could be myself and not have to hide anymore, but I didn’t know how much the rest of the magical creatures around here hate werewolves, or how scary it was going to be suddenly surrounded by them all. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that you, Eddie Kaspbrak, are not weak. And besides, I’m the one who tried to take the cowards way out and pretended to be a real wolf instead of just owning up to my real identity until I had to. I lied about everything.”

Eddie loosened his grip and pulled back, wiping his eyes fiercely with the back of his arm. “I thought about that a lot on my way home, after I’d picked up Scraps. I remembered how you’d tried to tell me a couple of times during the night, and how scared you looked each time. And that you only kept it a secret in the first place to protect me.”

“I wish I’d have been able to explain while I still, y’know, had a working voice box, and everything might have gone so much smoother.”

Eddie shook his head. “In a crazy way, it’s probably better that it happened like this.”

“No way.”

“Come on. You know me – I would have called bullshit and never believed you if you’d have just told me, but it was hard to deny that it was all the truth when I could see you right in front of me.”

“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d have been waiting for a punchline, if I’d managed to explain at the fair,” Richie said with a small smile. “But, seriously, I really, really hated telling you like that. Not that there was any actual ‘telling’ involved… More like it was the weirdest game of charades I’ve ever played.”

Eddie scoffed loudly and both his eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me? The weirdest game of charades that you’ve ever played? I was trying to guess what head motions and dog barks meant.”

“Oh, ow. Dog barks. I see how it is. You come face to face with a real werewolf and you tell him the noises he makes are dog barks. And I think I did pretty well considering that I was the one doing charades with no arms.”

Eddie chuckled and a warm, bright smile lit up his face that made Richie want to pull him back in for another hug. It made his heart soar to know that that Genuine Eddie Kaspbrak Smile was just for him, and that he’d managed to cheer him up enough to cause it.

Richie could feel his cheeks aching and knew he was returning Eddie’s expression. The swish swish sound of his tail wagging across the bed sounded loud in the silence, and he had to remind himself that it was okay for Eddie to hear it now, instead of having to stifle the movement in case he found out his secret. That didn’t do much to curb his embarrassment though.

Eddie’s smile widened further.

Heat bloomed across Richie’s cheeks and the back of his neck, and he forced his tail to stop through sheer willpower, which only succeeded in making Eddie chuckle.

“Don’t stop on my account,” Eddie said playfully, “it’s cute.”

“Don’t,” Richie groaned, hearing the swishing again.

“Oh no, I think I just found a new game.”

“Don’t you fucking dare. Anyway, you’re changing the subject again,” Richie pointed out, desperate to steer the conversation away from his wagging tail and find out what happened to Eddie once and for all.

“It’s just hard to talk about,” Eddie sighed. “I meant to come back to you the next day, you know,” he confessed as his smile faded. “I was going to sneak back home, tidy myself up, pretend I’d had a miraculous recovery to my mom, and then go back to Ben’s. But…”

The mood sobered and Richie felt his smile dissolve into a sad frown. “I waited for you after all your classes, but you never showed all week.”

“Sorry.” Eddie winced. “See, when I finally got home from the fair my mom was waiting in the doorway.”

“Oh, fuck!” Richie tried to imagine how Eddie would have felt seeing his mom waiting up for him after the night he’d just had, and he felt his stomach drop.

“As soon as I got close enough, she started yelling at me that I’d disappointed her by sneaking out like a disobedient child, that she thought she’d raised me better than that, and that I could have given her a stroke or a heart attack with all the stress. She demanded to know how I could do that to my own mother… while I just stood there dumbstruck.” Eddie looked back down at his wounded hand. “Because of my mistake climbing out the window she actually went to check on me, but of course, I wasn’t there.”

Richie remembered Eddie telling him that he’d messed up sneaking out of the house and made a noise, though he’d been certain at the time that she hadn’t found out. She must have gone back later in the night, though whether it really was to check up on him through genuine concern, or to check he hadn’t gone anywhere – Richie could guess which one it was.  

“She sobbed through the whole thing,” Eddie continued in a bitter voice, “so hard she was heaving with the effort, telling me I was going to send her into an early grave with my thoughtless behaviour.” Eddie laughed once humourlessly. “But you know what? There were no tears on her cheeks. I was so apologetic, grovelling so hard, I didn’t even notice.” Eddie leaned back and cradled his injured hand in the other. “She screamed when I walked into the house and she finally got a close-up look at me, with leaves and dirt clinging to my clothes, and the blood all over my hand.

“But I was so overwhelmed with everything, that I let her drag me into the kitchen and scrub at my hand, I let her strip me off and push me into the bathtub, and I let her scream and wail and tell me how awful I was. She said she was going to take care of me, and I let her. I just went through the motions and accepted it all. It was easier than having to process anything. But the worst thing is that she gave me some ‘vitamins’ to help with the infection, and I stupidly took them without question… and then I don’t really remember much after that.”

“Holy shit…” Richie was so horrified that he didn’t really know what to say.

“God only fucking knows what she was giving to me. Tranquiliser? I have no idea. What I do know is that I lost a few days. I barely ate or slept properly – just tripping out on whatever she was using to keep me out of it,” Eddie explained, with a voice so cold it made Richie flinch.

Richie stared in silent horror at Eddie’s appearance, taking in the dark bags under his eyes and the pale pallor of his skin, his untidy hair, and the angry wound in his palm. She let him get like that? She was the reason he’d suffered to become like that?

Richie hadn’t even realised he was growling until Eddie’s uninjured hand reached over and firmly linked fingers with his. It shocked him enough to realise the low rumble he’d been hearing was coming from his own chest.

“I came back to awareness one afternoon while she was napping in front of the tv. She’d obviously missed giving me a dose of whatever she was keeping me on, because I felt like I was waking up from a deep dream and I barely knew where I was. I slipped out of the room and sat shivering on the bathroom floor for a couple of hours, trying not to hyperventilate too hard in case it woke her up. It took me a long time to piece myself back together, and even now most of those few days are still a blur, but what really brought me back was you. I just kept on thinking about how I’d never been able to get back to you and explain, and I wanted to see you so badly.” Eddie stared down resolutely at their linked hands.

“I was so fucking angry at her,” he continued after a moment, “and I wanted to get straight out of there, but I was so weak I could barely pull myself up off the floor, so I knew I wasn’t going anywhere until I’d got my strength back. On top of all of that, she hadn’t even been looking after my hand – the wound had gone yellow and swollen and sticky and- anyway, I was close to it being infected, if it wasn’t already.

“So, I pretended to take her pills, but for the next few days I ate what I could every night and bathed my hand in salt water and antiseptic, and I finally felt better enough to go. I told her that I was leaving, and I was expecting a huge fight, but she just seemed so shocked to see me lucid. She must have had no idea that I’d stopped taking the pills and now I wasn’t falling for her bullshit anymore. She tried to tell me I was too weak to leave and that staying with her taking care of me was the only way I’d survive in the world, but I told her that she was the only one who had ever made me weak. I grabbed Scraps, shoved past her… and I went. And here I am.”

“You are so fucking strong, Eds. What the fuck. You should have punched her in the face,” Richie said through gritted teeth.

Eddie shook his head and took another wheezy breath. “No, I shouldn’t have even walked back into that house with her.”

“You didn’t know what was gonna happen! You’ve been drugged, Eds. You didn’t ask for that. You went home because you needed something safe and familiar, and that’s what you got instead? If I ever see her again, she’ll know what a werewolf bite feels like, full moon or not.” Richie’s ears angled back in his anger, but he kept another growl down.

“Now I know you’re mad, because normally you’d have followed that up with a joke on how biting my mom is kinky or some shit.”

“She doesn’t deserve my jokes. From this day forward I’m swearing off jokes about your mom.”

Eddie flashed a small, tired smile as his breathing finally eased and the rattling wheezing sound in his chest faded. “Finally. Took long enough. But seriously, I never want to think about her ever again. I don’t want anything to do with her.” In a tiny, almost imperceptible movement, Eddie rubbed his thumb over Richie’s – on the hand where their fingers were still linked. “Safe and familiar? I should have gone straight back to you.”

Richie’s ears flicked up in his surprise as a shiver ran down his spine. He could hear his own racing heartbeat. Did Eddie mean to do that? Did he know what he was saying? Richie tried to squash down his romantic feelings, because Eddie had already been through enough, and now wasn’t the time, but it was difficult when they were sat on the bed together, fingers linked, and Eddie was saying stuff like that to him.

Richie’s heart ached with the intensity of the love he felt, with no way of showing it, and no way of having it returned. He knew that. This was just Eddie looking for comfort.

“I ran straight here,” Eddie said, “and I didn’t… look too closely at anyone on my way, but I know I passed a lot of people who weren’t human. I told myself not to look, I just knew I had to get to your apartment. I knocked on your door a bunch of times, but you weren’t here, so I had to go outside and climb through the window-”

“Not as easy as it looks, is it?” Richie shot back, pushing his feelings aside.

“I’m just lucky you don’t ever lock it. But seriously, who leaves their window unlocked these days?”

“People who live on the first floor and would have to have some seriously dedicated burglars to get in, that’s who.”

“Well,” Eddie said rapidly, “I got in no problem, and nobody even saw me, so I really think you should revise your risk assessment on that.”

Richie chuckled and after a moment squeezed Eddie’s hand. “I’m so sorry about what happened to you. Really. You didn’t deserve that.”

Eddie let out a ragged breath full of emotion. “She drugged me. Her only son. Who does that?”

It caused an almost physical ache within Richie to see the anguish that darkened Eddie’s expression and observe first-hand the sorry state his own mother had let him become. Eddie should be scowling at him for making an inappropriate joke, or ranting about something he’d grossed him out with, or smiling at something they were laughing at together – he shouldn’t look this haunted.

Richie gritted his teeth together and felt his tail lash in anger on the bed. “Fuck her- don’t even think about her! You never ever have to go back there! You can stay here.”

“Really?”

“I said what I said. Stay here, with me,” Richie’s voice grew quieter as he realised just what he was saying, and he adjusted his glasses self-consciously with his free hand. “Uh, if you want to.”

“You don’t mind?”

“You’re homeless now, Eds. And I can’t bear to think of you sitting in a cardboard box outside a shop, rattling a paper cup for pennies, with a sign that says, ‘free to a good home’, around your neck.”

“Gee, thanks, Richie.” Eddie rolled his eyes, but he seemed less troubled than before.

“Any time,” Richie said, hoping he was achieving the casual air he was aiming for, and that Eddie wouldn’t notice any of the cracks in voice. “It’ll be, uh, a little cosy, since these student rooms aren’t really equipped for housing two people, but I can take the floor and you can have my bed.”

Eddie poked a surprisingly strong finger into the centre of Richie’s chest. “I’m not stealing your bed off you. You have the bed.”

“Eds, I regularly sleep on the forest floor once a month. I can handle sleeping on carpet with some blankets. That’s practically a luxury upgrade. I don’t care if you agree or not, I’ll be sleeping on the floor later anyway, so if you don’t take the bed then we’ll both just be sleeping on the floor like idiots.”

A surprisingly light laugh escaped Eddie and Richie’s wolf ears perked up at catching the wonderful sound. “That sounds about right for us,” Eddie pointed out with a wry smile.

Richie grinned. “Are you implying we’re both idiots?”

“Maybe. I will say that it’s a good thing I’m not actually allergic to animal fur,” Eddie said slyly, “no wonder you knew that I wasn’t.”

Richie hissed in a noisy breath between his teeth. “Yeah… that was a pretty bad attempt at lying to cover my own slip up. Yikes. But uh, seriously, if it bothers you, I have like, a million lint rollers in my closet that you can use.”

“It doesn’t bother me.”

Richie felt strangely pleased. “Oh. Well, that’s good.”

Eddie’s attention returned to his tail on the bed. “Okay, you’ve got to know that I have so many questions for you. You’ve got to tell me all about being a werewolf because that was part of the deal.”

“Nope,” Richie said, popping the ‘p’. “We’re going to get something to bandage up your hand with, and I’m gonna get you some food and water. You look like that orphan out of Oliver that goes, ‘please, sir, can I ‘ave some more?’”

“Fuck off.” Eddie bumped shoulders with him again and an amused smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “And I’m glad you can joke about how terrible I look. I know I look like shit.”

“Ah, I can only do that because I look worse every month.”

“That’s fair.”

Richie grinned as another wave of something warm and fluttery shot through him. (God, I love him so much.) He shivered as he allowed himself to indulge in his feelings just this once, letting all the love he felt pulse out from his aching heart. He needed to be serious. Richie locked eyes with Eddie and took a tiny breath to steel himself and not turn it into another joke to make himself feel more comfortable. Opening himself up was scary, and jokes made it easier to deal with, but this time he needed to brave.

Eddie’s eyes went wide at the sudden shift in atmosphere between them, and Richie found himself nearly losing his nerve looking into them.

By now the sun had well and truly gone down, and they were both only barely illuminated by the lamp on the desk. The lowlight made it easier to be honest.

“If I’d have known what was happening to you, I’d have been there like a shot and got you out of there, you know that right? I wish I’d have had the courage to check on you when you didn’t show for your classes, but I thought I was just giving you space and that you didn’t want to see me… I just want you to know I care about you… a lot… and I… it hurts me to see you like this and not be able to do anything.

“I promise you; I don’t blame you for leaving – I said it before, but I mean it, the fact that you stayed with me for as long as you did means so much to me. You saw a giant wolf understand English and you rolled with it. You found out that wolf was your best friend, and you didn’t bail. When I think of what your mom did to you… I just wish I could do more.”

Eddie blinked in surprise, a hint of pink dusting his cheeks. The springs on the mattress creaked as he shifted his weight and finally closed the gap between them on the bed, leaning the side of his body against Richie’s and laying his head on his shoulder, their linked hands resting across their legs. “But you are doing something. You’re here for me right now and that’s all that matters.”

Richie’s heart felt like it was stuttering as he leaned his own head against Eddie’s, taking another inhale of his familiar scent. He swallowed thickly around the lump in his throat and smiled. Eddie’s head was a warm weight on his shoulder, his body pressed against his side, and it all just felt right. “Before I get you some food, there’s just one thing I want to know – when you figured out that I was a werewolf. What finally convinced you?”

“It was pretty obvious by that point, I know, but what finally did it was your eyes. One blue, one brown.”

“Thought so,” Richie breathed. “I tried to keep my blue eye shut, ‘cause I figured it would be what gave away my identity while I was trying to keep it a secret.”

“Have you always had eyes like that? Or is that a werewolf thing?”

Richie gave a little sigh. “It’s a weird werewolf thing. Put a hat on me to hide my ears, tuck my tail away, and you can still tell I’m a werewolf. It’s like we’re designed to stand out just enough not to be able to pass as a regular human, but not enough to fit in with the magical folk either. My eyes used to both be brown.”

“Hm, yeah, I can imagine you with brown eyes... I can imagine you with blue too, actually,” Eddie said with a chuckle, “I think both would suit you.”

“Good thing I’ve got both at once then. It helped that the eyebrow above it got sliced open,” Richie said wryly, with a shrug that moved Eddie’s head slightly, “so I closed my blue eye before you even saw me.”

Eddie suddenly lifted his head from Richie’s shoulder and leaned over to peer up at his eyebrow with a concerned frown. “It looks angry, Rich. Did you even clean it?”

Richie thought of going to the fair that morning, passing out at Stan’s, spending a whole day in bed, and then hanging around Eddie’s classrooms for a week. “I had showers? That counts as cleaning it, right?”

Eddie scowled at him. “No, it does not. It needs antiseptic and looking after – maybe it could have even done with some stitches. Have you seen what an infected cut looks like?” He held up his injured hand. “Heard of sepsis?”

The branch that Eddie had thrown had sliced straight through Richie’s eyebrow in a clean line, right above his eye – and looked likely to scar, just as Ben had warned him it would, but even so Richie couldn’t help but grin. “Yes sir, Doctor K.”

“You think that’s funny?” Eddie asked accusatorily, but there was a smile in his tone.

“Well, we’re here having this conversation about werewolves and magic and you’re there chewing me out for not taking care of the cut on my eyebrow.”

“Fuck off. Someone’s got to.” Eddie reached up and hesitantly, oh-so-gently, touched the very edge of the healing cut in Richie’s eyebrow. “I hurt you,” he said softly, “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

Richie had the most extreme flashback to when they were both in the forest that he almost had to pat himself to make sure he was still in his human shape, and they weren’t still there and none of this had ever happened.

“It’s okay,” Richie replied, just as softly, itching with the impulse to kiss Eddie’s wrist, that was hovering tantalisingly just in front of his mouth. “Eyebrow scars look badass.”

Eddie moved his hand away and laughed so loudly and enthusiastically that Richie jumped with surprise.

“You are such an ass,” Eddie eventually said through giggles. “I love you- for that. I love you for that. For just, being yourself.”

The heat that sprang to Richie’s face was intense and prickled along the back of his neck.

Did he just nearly say…?

They were so close on the bed, with Eddie still pressed against Richie’s side, that it felt like everywhere they made contact was on fire, and he was sure he’d heard the way that Eddie had just stumbled through his words.

Richie remembered telling himself earlier that he wasn’t going to linger on his romantic feelings, because he was sure that Eddie had been through enough already and he didn’t need Richie’s feelings to be a burden on top of everything else. But… maybe… maybe he wanted to indulge in the way he felt, and maybe he’d find out Eddie felt the same way? And even if he didn’t, and Richie was shot down in flames, maybe Eddie would find it flattering to know his best friend was also in love with him?

Or maybe he’d find it horrifying.

Richie wanted to groan aloud in his frustration. He was so bad at this. Once he made a move it’s not like he could unmake it, and what if Eddie hadn’t been giving out the signals that Richie thought he was, and he’d misread the entire dynamic between them, and he made it so awkward that Eddie didn’t feel like he could stay with him and went to Ben’s or something.

Richie felt like he should say something at least, because they’d both been silent for a while, and it was getting awkward, wasn’t it?

But what should he-

“Can-I-touch-your-ears?” Eddie said so quickly, all in one breath, that it almost came out as one singular word.

The sudden question jolted Richie out of his thoughts, and he found his head had gone surprisingly empty as he processed what Eddie had asked. “Uh,” was all he managed in reply.

Eddie placed his head in his hands. “Fuck, that was so rude. Shit. Forget I said anything! Please. It’s just that they were moving around a lot while you were thinking, and that just slipped out before I could stop it.”

“Oh. Yeah. No, it’s fine. I forget they do that, honestly. You, uh, you can touch them though, if you want. You really want to?” Richie’s voice cracked in places again and he cleared his throat. His thoughts had morphed into something like white noise, backed by the dull thump of his racing heartbeat.

Eddie peeked through his fingers at Richie. “Well yeah, but I really didn’t mean that to come out, so don’t worry about it. I didn’t mean to be weird.”

“It’s fine, seriously.” Richie distantly remembered Bev accusing him of not letting her touch his ears when he’d let Eddie. And she was absolutely correct. He was secretly a little pleased that Eddie was curious, and that he wasn’t just revolted by his inhuman parts. “It’s just that they’re um, sensitive? So just,” Richie continued hesitantly, as he cleared his throat again, “be gentle.”

“Ugh, don’t make fun of me – I’m so embarrassed I asked that out loud.”

“I’m not making fun of you! I’m telling the truth! My ears and tail are sensitive to touch and heat. I think my human brain still struggles to deal with how to process sensations from them even this many years later.”

“Hm, I guess that makes sense. How long have you been a werewolf?”

Richie guessed that Eddie was trying to change the subject, and he felt a strange pang of disappointment at the realisation that he’d both missed his chance to confess his feelings and have Eddie touch his ears.

Richie reluctantly removed himself from Eddie’s side and stood up, with a loud groan of protest from the old bed springs. “You can have my whole wolfy backstory as soon as I get you some food and something to drink before you fade away in front of my eyes. I think there’s a first aid kit under the kitchen sink too – there’s always something like that in student apartments somewhere.”

Eddie looked up at him with his big eyes, and Richie longed to wrap his arms back around him again.

“I bet everything in that kit is out of date,” Eddie said.

Richie barked a laugh. “How can bandages go out of date?”

“They just do, trust me, why do you think they put a date on the packet? They start to lose their integrity.”

“Would you rather have no bandage or an out of date one?”

Eddie scrunched his eyebrows together in thought.

“Why are you having to think about that!” Richie managed around his growing laughter. “There’s a pizza place a couple of minutes away, I’ll grab us one – make yourself at home while you wait, okay? My palace is your palace.” Richie tapped the back pocket of his jeans, making sure his cash was still in there, and made his way to the door.

“Wait, Richie-”

“Yeah?” Richie paused with a hand on the handle.

“… Nothing.”

“Okay, I won’t be long.”

“No, wait-”

Richie was almost through the doorway, but he turned back expectantly.

“Thank you. I mean it. And if you get pizza with pineapple on it, I will throw it out the window.”

Richie grinned and his tail wagged in happiness behind him. “Anything for you, Eds.”

Chapter Text

As soon as the apartment door clicked closed Eddie groaned and placed his head in his hands.

He sucked in a shallow breath and held it while he counted.

1…

He nearly told his best friend that he was in love with him.

2…

He’d asked to touch Richie’s wolf ears.

3…

He couldn’t stop flirting and he didn’t even mean to.

4…

He’d agreed to stay here.

5…

He’d agreed to stay here over night.

Eddie let the breath out in a wheezy whoosh.

The worst thing was that he couldn’t even bring himself to think that coming to Richie’s had been a mistake – because despite all of that, he was happy.

He’d been so scared about seeing Richie again, thinking he’d fucked up their friendship for good, and he’d been shaking so badly when Richie first entered the room. But his storm of emotions had been swept away after they’d finally been able to talk.

Eddie thought of the way that they’d held hands and of the solid warmth of Richie against his side when he’d leaned against him. He flexed his uninjured hand and felt something light and sweet pulse through his chest.

Really, holding hands shouldn’t be that much of a big deal, but Eddie had never acted on an impulse like that before – for something he wants – and his romantic feelings for Richie were still so new and precious.

If someone had asked him last year what it felt like to be in love, he would have wrinkled his nose and told them to watch a cheesy romantic movie or something.

But now…

He cringed when he thought of how he kept stumbling into flirting awkwardly before he’d even really realised that was what he was doing. But Richie was either too oblivious to notice, or he wasn’t that good at flirting. Or maybe he wouldn’t even consider that Eddie would want to flirt with him? That thought irked him for some reason. Richie deserved to know that he was hot. And that Eddie in particular found him hot.

Eddie stood up from the bed with a groan.

No no no.

That was the problem: that if he admitted to those kinds of feelings, he would be changing the dynamic of their friendship forever.

He didn’t just want the flirty banter that Bev and Richie had – he wanted the flirty banter, but with kissing.

Eddie ran his hands through his already messed up hair as he took a few paces around the room, breathing slowly, and tried to get his imagination back under control.

Stop that. Think about something else…

It had been so hard to finally talk about what had happened at Ben’s, but then Richie had told him that he didn’t blame him for running away. Even though he should. And it had felt like a huge weight had been lifted from Eddie’s shoulders when they’d finally been able to get everything out in the open.

But Eddie couldn’t help but notice how quickly Richie had taken on the sole blame for what happened.

Maybe unwavering loyalty was a werewolf thing, but he suspected that it was mostly just a Richie Tozier thing.

In the end it had felt good to tell the truth… and it got him thinking about confessing his feelings again. Afterall, he’d already presented Richie with the worst of his personal failings – his weakness, his cowardice, running away from the friend he should have been there for, hurting that friend with his poor choice of thoughtless words, and falling for his mother’s ‘love’ again. What was one more truth tonight?

Eddie didn’t realise he was practically hyperventilating until he nearly choked on a particularly rough inhale. He squeezed his eyes shut and counted slowly in his head again, thinking of Richie’s voice guiding him calmly through it.

Slow down, he heard the voice of Richie say inside his head, breath slowly.

He just… he didn’t want things to get awkward between them. And what if Richie took back his decision to let him stay?

Eddie did another lap of the small room, his indecision churning and turning over and over in his head.

He paused and sighed when he got back to Richie’s desk, momentarily distracted by wondering how often Richie sat at it to actually study. He was about to move on when a band poster above the desk caught his eye. Eddie was sure that he’d already seen this poster, the last time he’d visited Richie’s room, but before… the picture of the lead singer of the band had been a woman with messy hair screaming into a microphone, but now… the same woman’s wild hairstyle was a mass of snakes instead.

Eddie blinked in surprise, but the image stayed the same. He lifted a finger to the picture and tentatively touched the snakes, as if they could leap out of the paper and bite him. It made sense that the weird, messed up magic in Derry had even affected his perception of images and photos, but it was bizarre to see the difference so starkly right in front of him.

Some small, distant voice in Eddie’s mind told him that it should freak him out that the woman he was looking at had snakes instead of hair, but it was easily drowned out by his more pressing concerns of his feelings for Richie and what he was going to do about them. If she had snakes for hair, well, good for her. There were more important things going on in his life right now.

The snakes somehow suited her anyway.

Like Richie’s ears and tail…

The reminder brought Eddie’s thoughts circling back to how he’d embarrassingly asked to touch them. It clearly wasn’t just curiosity in general, since he couldn’t imagine wanting to touch that woman’s snake-hair if she were in the room with him, so it must be because it was Richie specifically. Richie’s ears. Richie’s tail. Not as weird as it should be, and no matter how many times he told himself not to entertain the idea he always found himself coming back to it. Maybe he had a problem. Eddie tried to push that train of thought away, determined not to have Richie think it was because he was treating him like a dog to pet.

He turned to look at the other posters around the room to occupy his traitorous mind. Most of the posters had people in them who were all inhuman in some way, with band names he didn’t recognise, but there were a few human bands dotted around that he knew, and he felt affection tug a smile onto his lips. A lot of their early conversations when they didn’t really know each other had been about their favourite movies and music, and they’d bonded quickly over having a similar taste.

Richie liked human movies, and human bands, and the person he hung around the most with was even a human too – no wonder the other magical people (magical creatures?) (however they referred to themselves) had always treated him like he didn’t belong.

Eddie never wanted Richie to feel like that when they were together.

He had to make sure he knew that even if it was just them against the world that was fine.

Four legs or two – didn’t matter to him.

It was almost a shame that he wasn’t going to be able to see wolf Richie again for another few weeks. Eddie was certain that Richie would be against him being around at the full moon, but there was no way Eddie was going to miss it and leave him alone again. He’d been so cute as a wolf.

Earlier when he’d blurted out his request to touch Richie’s ears, he’d immediately regretted it and he’d been desperate not to have Richie think he was treating him like an animal, but now he wondered if doing it would finally prove to him that he really had no problem with him being a werewolf. Eddie tried to imagine how he was going to ask again and felt warmth slide down the back of his neck. Maybe he’d just see if it came up again naturally in the conversation somehow.

Eddie moved back to the bed and ran a hand over the sheets where they’d both been sitting, smoothing them out and neatening the creases. He noticed Scraps, off to the side where Richie had tossed him before pulling Eddie into a tight hug, and he smiled warmly to himself. He picked up the plush dog and nestled him back between the pillows. He looked comfy. Eddie yawned widely and felt exhaustion settling into his bones, still not completely recovered from his ordeal with his mother.

They’d been talking for such a long time – he felt as emotionally exhausted as he was physically tired. He wasn’t quite ready to sleep yet, but it would be nice to get into something comfy.

He could put on his pyjamas while Richie was out –

“Shit,” Eddie hissed aloud, realising he’d forgotten to bring the bag he’d packed in secret. He’d just grabbed Scraps in the heat of the moment and gone. Which meant that he had none of his clothes, none of his skincare products, nothing for a shower, none of his allergy medication, and no clean underwear. Distantly he realised that he didn’t need any of that stuff. (Except maybe the underwear. Just the thought of wearing it for more than one day had him fighting off a shudder.)

Eddie sighed and a new thought occurred to him. He moved slowly over to the closet. “I’m sure Richie won’t mind if I borrow something to sleep in, will he Scraps?”

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when he opened the doors, but an array of different coloured, gaudy and bright button-down shirts assaulted his senses and he laughed at the pulse of warm affection that ran through him. It was so Richie. Eddie ran a gentle hand over the selection of shirts, picturing Richie wearing them and noticing the ones he liked the best, until his hand came to a smaller selection of t-shirts – that Richie wore underneath his button-downs – and he picked one at random.

Eddie folded his polo shirt carefully and placed it on top of the chest of drawers besides the closet. Student rooms were always pretty small, but the ones in this building seemed particularly cosy, with only just enough space for the bed, the desk, the closet and the drawers. Sleeping on the floor wasn’t going to be too comfortable for Richie, with so little space for someone so tall and gangly.

There weren’t even private bathrooms for each room – every floor had a couple of bathrooms and shower rooms at the end of the corridor that the students on that floor all shared. It made Eddie’s skin crawl to think of sharing a bathroom with strangers, but if he was staying here, thanks to Richie’s generous offer, then he would have to get over it.

Eddie pulled Richie’s shirt over his head and patted it down into position. It was big, and it made him feel a little silly until he looked in the mirror on the closet door. A pawprint filled with a rainbow galaxy design took up most of his chest, and it contrasted well with the black material. It looked good. It looked good on him. He hadn’t expected to feel any particular way about wearing Richie’s clothes, but seeing the shirt on his smaller frame, and remembering the times he’d seen Richie wear it, was making heat pool low in his stomach. It was soft too, and it smelt so strongly of Richie. Eddie resisted bringing the fabric back up to his nose, not wanting to make things weirder than they already were.

He scrubbed his hands through his already-messy hair, hoping to tame it, but that only served to make it messier, and he gave it up as a lost cause.

The hunt for something to wear as sleeping shorts was thankfully short-lived, as the first draw Eddie opened contained a small pile of cotton knee-length shorts, which was good because he wasn’t sure how he felt about either of them being half-naked with each other right now.

He folded up his jeans and placed them next to his polo shirt, then pulled on a pair of black shorts. They were also too big for him, but they had a drawstring that he pulled and tied to make them stay up on his slim hips.

Perfect. Much comfier.

Eddie had only sat back down on the bed for a few more moments alone before the apartment door swung open and Richie triumphantly announced his return. He had a couple of pizza boxes balanced in one hand, a glass of water in the other, and a bright green first-aid kit wedged under his armpit.

“Alright, I got all the goods and-”

Eddie had jumped up to help, but stopped mid-step as Richie caught sight of him and froze. His blue and brown eyes widened, his glasses making them look comically large, and his wolf ears perked up high on his head. At first Eddie didn’t know what was going on, but then he remembered the clothes he was wearing.

“Oh, uh,” Eddie started, with a nervous tug at the hem of his stolen shirt, “I forgot to bring the bag I packed, so I’ve got nothing with me. I didn’t think you’d mind, but I should have waited to ask. I can put them back?”

Richie blinked and said nothing in reply.

After a moment of pure silence, he brought the glass of water to his lips and downed the whole thing in a few long, continuous gulps. He pulled the empty glass away and sucked in a breath. “No- No, that’s fine. Fine. Yep. Good. It’s fine. Yeah, no, totally, you can- you can borrow all- any! Any of my clothes. If you need ‘em. And they look- they look on you- I mean, they look good. On you.” He cleared his throat and waved the empty glass in the air. “Oh, this was supposed to be for you. I’ll uh- I’ll get you another glass of water.”

He didn’t move.

Eddie felt a nervous fluttering in his chest for some reason. “Sure. Thanks.” Was- was Richie flustered? Eddie looked down and gave another self-conscious tug on the shirt. “I know I look kind of dumb because they’re both too big for me. You can say it – I know there’s always a short joke rattling around in there.”

But Richie said nothing.

When Eddie looked up beneath his lashes, Richie’s throat bobbed with a visible swallow. Then something else caught Eddie’s attention.

“Rich, is your tail wag-”

“Glass of water!” Richie announced suddenly, turning back to the door. “I was going to get you another one! I’ll be right back.”

“Wait!”

Richie stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Y-Yeah?”

“The pizza? The kit? You can leave them here.”

“Oh. Right, of course. Sure. Here you go.” Richie laughed loudly and moved to the desk to the put them down. Then he all but ran out the door.

Eddie wasn’t sure what all that was about until he looked back at his reflection in the mirror in confusion and let out an amused snort. Oh. Richie’s baggy shirt hung off one shoulder slightly, his eyes were wide and apologetic, and his hair was still all mussed up. God, it looked like he was trying to seduce him. Which was not what he was trying to do. (Was it?) “Guess he likes me in his clothes even more than I do,” Eddie murmured to his reflection, a bright smile lighting up his face that he wasn’t used to seeing.

It wasn’t an expression that he disliked.

After a few more minutes Richie returned, looking more himself again. He had the refilled glass of water in one hand and a bowl of soapy water in the other. A fluffy white towel hung over his arm. “I figured I’d get you something to wash your hand in before we put a clean bandage on it,” he explained as he put them all down on the desk too. “Something that doesn’t involve you having to leave the apartment until you’re ready.” He grinned. “Then pizza.”

Eddie nodded and took a sip of the water, touched at the thought. He held up the packet of the clean bandage he’d picked out from the kit while Richie had been gone. “They’re all in date. I’m impressed.”

“More luck than judgement, honestly,” Richie said. “I had to pull this baby out of the depths of the cupboard under the sink – had to fight off hoards of mutant spiders that had used it as part of their nest, blow off the centuries of dust…”

“Centuries of dust,” he repeated with a shake of his head, “sounds about right.”

“No out-of-date-bandage-diseases are getting you today.”

Eddie couldn’t help the bubble of laughter that came out of him at Richie’s exaggeration, and it made Richie join in. It was something special when they made each other laugh with their shared, weird sense of humour – Eddie often caught Richie looking over to see if he was laughing whenever he made a joke when they were with their other friends, like he was checking to see if Eddie specifically found him funny. Which of course he always did.

“You know what, I’m gonna find out why they put a use by date on bandages next time I’m at the pharmacy and then I’ll be able to say I told you so,” Eddie huffed eventually.

“Bet the pharmacist goes ‘there’s a date on them?’, because Edward Kaspbrak is the only person in the world who checks for dates on everything.”

“No way asshole, if they work in a pharmacy they’re going to know about that sort of thing – they’d have to check it as part of their job – it’s not like they could sell out of date bandages, and- yeah okay, I don’t know exactly why- but I bet it’s because they like- disintegrate or some shit.” Eddie hadn’t even noticed that he’d started gesturing wildly in the air with his hand while he spoke until he stopped talking to take a breath and paused.

Richie’s grin had widened and the flash of black behind him, back and forth, was clearly his tail.

Eddie sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “One day you’ll get sick of pulling me into these rants, Tozier.”

“Never.” Richie had only said one word, but it came out so gentle and sincere. His expression was so open, and the grin had softened into a small, sweet smile.

“Yeah, yeah.” Eddie finally moved to the desk – as a distraction from hearing Richie’s soft voice repeating over and over in his head – and took a seat. He lowered his injured hand into the warm, foamy water with a wince.

“Hey, uh,” Richie’s voice came from behind him, “would you be okay if I change my clothes while you wash your hand?”

“S-Sure. Of course, it’s your room.” Eddie cursed his surprise for making him trip over his reply.

“But hey,” Richie trilled in a silly sing-song voice, “you gotta promise no peeking.”

Eddie didn’t turn around as he flicked bubbles over his shoulder. A shriek made him smile at knowing he’d hit his target.

The sound of Richie moving to the closet and then shuffling away shouldn’t have been as distracting as it was, but now all Eddie could think of was that he was getting undressed.

He focused on bathing his injury.

Eventually Richie returned to the desk, now wearing a burgundy t-shirt and grey shorts, and leaned against it with his hip. They looked better on Richie. His posture seemed relaxed, but his ears were still perked up high. Now that there was a whole other set of limbs for Eddie to watch and make note of, he couldn’t help but see how they emoted differently to the rest of him, and how he’d been missing a whole dimension of Richie’s character before.

Richie laid the towel down next to the bowl.

“Thanks.”

Eddie lifted his hand out of the water and shook it off gently before patting it dry with the towel. When he placed his hand down flat onto the desk, ready to bandage, he noticed how angry the wound still looked, and he hoped it wasn’t infected already.  If he was lucky, he’d be able to fight it off before it got too bad, and he wouldn’t need to find out what the medical care was like for humans in Derry. He assumed it wouldn’t be good. Eddie sighed and picked the bandage up in his good hand, but when he tried to wrap it around his bad one, he couldn’t get the tension tight enough and it slipped down uselessly.

He scowled and tried again, finding the same results, until a second pair of hands appeared and gripped the clean bandage tightly. Eddie gasped and turned around in his seat. He’d been so focused that he hadn’t even noticed Richie move. He was stood behind the chair Eddie was sat in, with his arms reaching around him, bracketing him in and holding the bandage steady. They were so close. Eddie immediately whipped back around.

If there wasn’t the chair between them, he’d be able to feel Richie’s chest against his back.

“Can I help?” Richie asked gently after a second of hesitation.

Eddie nodded. “Th-Thanks, yeah.”

Eddie talked him through how to hold the bandage so that he could wrap it around tightly and he helped him to tie it neatly. But his hands lingered.

“I had a wound on my hand like this one when I got bit,” Richie said softly, almost breathing it into Eddie’s ear. He’d crouched down behind him a little. “Well, sort of. Didn’t need the bandage.”

“By the werewolf that turned you?”

For a few breathless seconds Eddie didn’t think Richie was going to reply. He’d said that he was going to tell him everything, but suddenly Eddie realised the enormity of what that meant – he was going to be telling him everything about the one thing he’d tried so hard to keep a secret.

“Yeah, right on my hand too. See?” Richie’s tone was strained and low, confirming what Eddie had assumed. This was hard for him.

Richie turned his left palm upwards on the desk, but Eddie couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Eddie gently lifted Richie’s hand and brought it closer to his face to inspect, tilting it slightly until he caught a silvery flash of faded scar tissue that looked more like a slice than the teeth marks that he was expecting.

“Once he bit me I kinda yanked my hand back,” Richie explained. “Blood everywhere, man, I thought I was going to bleed out. Surprised I never lost a finger, honestly.”

Eddie figured that maybe Richie was finding it easier to talk when he was hidden behind his back.

“What happened?”

Richie took a tiny breath, as if steeling himself. “I got bit when I was thirteen. I went on a school field trip to some local forest because we were learning about trees or whatever. But the problem was that I was a little shit when I was a kid-”

“-Yeah, I bet,” Eddie snorted, still holding onto Richie’s hand.

“-Fuck you,” Richie said with a smile in his voice. “Anyway, I caught a glimpse of an animal between the trees, and I managed to slip away from the group to have a look. I thought I’d be able to tell everyone a story about finding something cool when I got back and they’d, I don’t know, think I was cool or something. Ugh, it’s so stupid, but I was like, the most picked on kid in school and I’d have done anything for some positive attention.”

Eddie tried to imagine a boy with dorky, thick glasses that magnified his eyes, a strange fashion sense, and the beginning of awkward-teenage-too-long limbs. Poor kid probably got picked on as much as Eddie did himself. It was strange to know that out there had been two lonely thirteen-year-old boys who didn’t fit in, and Eddie wished they’d have met when they were kids – he knew they’d have clicked even then and been friends. Those two outcasts could have had each other.

Well, they had each other now.

Eddie gripped tighter onto Richie’s warm hand, offering wordless support to continue with his story.

“I found a wolf. Dark brown fluffy thing, one blue eye, one green-”

“Green and blue?” Eddie hadn’t meant to interrupt, but he couldn’t help himself. “And, wait, didn’t you say you were in a field trip? This wasn’t on a full moon?”

“His original eye colour must have been green, but he got one of these nifty little blue numbers to go along with it, like I did. And yeah, you remember me saying that I could choose not to transform back if I wanted to, when the sun comes up? That’s obviously what he did one full moon. I’ll never know if he was himself or just a wolf. Did he bite me on purpose? Did he bite me on instinct? Fuck if I know.”

It bothered Eddie to know that Richie could decide not to transform back into his human form every month. He was just so thankful that he’d always chosen to change back this whole time, or they might never have met.

“So, the wolf’s just sitting in a clearing, looking for all the world like a cute puppy. Which was basically like a red flag to a bull because then I had the stupid idea that I could pet him and take some fur with me, and then that would be an even better story to tell. I got closer and the wolf didn’t move. I was so convinced it looked like a dog that my stupid brain didn’t even tell me not to go closer – you know how you’re supposed to have the danger this is a predator sense? Nope, I just walked on over and I reached out my dumb hand, and quicker than anything the thing opens its jaws and clamps down.

“I screamed and pulled back, cradling my blood-soaked hand against my chest, fully freaking out, but when I looked back up… the wolf had gone. By the time I ran back to my class there was blood all me, and all over my clothes, and I was crying in hysterics about being bitten. One of the teachers calmed me down enough to look at my hand, but instead of the wound I was expecting, there was just a scar that already looked like it was years old.”

Richie took another breath, much deeper and slower, as if telling the story had been physically demanding.

“Werewolf bites heal completely after just a few minutes, isn’t that neat? Nothing left besides the faded scar. My whole class watched me absolutely lose my shit and scream about a wolf biting me, my clothes all covered in blood, but no bites, and I must have looked insane.” Richie gave a single dark chuckle. “Which obviously wasn’t the worst part, since I was a werewolf now to top it all off. That first full moon was…”

Richie took such a long pause that Eddie wasn’t sure he was going to continue. He traced the small silvery scar on Richie’s palm with a gentle touch and Richie let out a breath.

“My parents had already started home-schooling me to get me away from the other kids and the even worse bullying, before I’d even had my first transformation, so it wasn’t like it was difficult to keep me out of sight once I’d grown in my ears and tail. And, you know what- actually, I have to hand it to them because they adjusted pretty damn well to their only child sprouting fur and fangs every month. They were willing to take me as I came, you know? Life goes on and all that shit, while I… well I had a fucking crisis is what I did, and I think I deserved one. After I woke up when I changed back for the first time, and I had the ears and tail, I pretty much knew that was it for me. No more going out in public. No more life.”

Eddie swallowed, but there was a lump in his throat that made it difficult. “Shit, Richie. That must have been so-” he felt a wave of sadness so sharp that it felt like a blunt blow to his chest “-so fucking scary for you.”

“It was. Those next few years were… rough. When I finally got the invite letter to Derry I jumped at the chance to go – no hesitations. I didn’t even think about what I would do if it was some kind of fucked up elaborate scam. I was off to college to a town full of weirdos like me, except they weren’t like me at all and none of them wanted anything to do with me. Oh, except the other outcasts in town.” Richie clicked his tongue as if he was proud of pulling off a particularly clever joke.

“I just… I don’t even have the words-”

“Oh-ho, I managed to make talk-a-mile-a-minute-Kaspbrak speechless? Somebody call the papers!”

Despite the joking, Eddie could hear the sadness in Richie’s voice, and it only made the pain sharper to be able to hear how close to the edge of tears he was. Because that’s what Richie did – he joked, and he deflected, all in the effort to keep anyone from being able to see his true emotions.

Without thinking, only knowing he had to tell Richie somehow that he was here for him, and that he didn’t need to hide his feelings, Eddie brought Richie’s scarred palm to his lips and ghosted a kiss across the faint bite mark.

God, he loved him. He loved this idiot who had tried to pet a werewolf to impress his classmates and instead got himself turned into one for the trouble.

Richie’s hand was warm, maybe a little sweaty, and the scar was a thin raised bump under Eddie’s sensitive lips. He imagined that his own scar would look similar once his hand had healed.

Finally, Eddie pulled away and the reality of what he’d done crashed down on him all at once. He let go.

Did friends gently kiss hands?

Shit.

The silence was somehow deafening.

“Eds-”

“Sorry, that was weird. Didn’t mean to be weird after you just told me all that. We should – uh – we should probably eat the pizza before it gets cold.”

“Yeah, yeah of course, totally. Pizza.”

Richie retreated from the back of Eddie’s chair, his arms pulling away from where they had bracketed him on either side, and Eddie lamented the loss of closeness immediately.

“Oh, and thanks, for telling me,” Eddie added quickly, finally looking up at Richie as he moved towards the bed. “I mean it. It means a lot that you’d trust me with this.”

Richie tried to discreetly wipe his eyes under his glasses with his arm, and when he sat down on the bed it was clear from the redness that he’d been crying. “No problem, dude,” he said with a shrug, in a tone that was obviously meant to come off as casual, but came out strained and croaky. “It’s kinda the most boring monster origin story ever though, sorry.”

Eddie frowned as he picked up the pizza boxes and sat down heavily on the bed beside Richie, handing one to him and keeping the other one on his lap. “Don’t say it like that.”

Richie had already taken a huge bite of a slice of pizza when he tilted his head to one side and tried to say what Eddie assumed was, ‘say what?’, with his mouth full – making his words come out as a mumbled mess.

“Ew. Swallow your food first, Jesus.”

Richie made a huge show of gulping down what was still only probably half-chewed pizza. “Say what?”

“Y’know…” Eddie picked up a slice of pizza and looked down at it, feeling guilt churning in his gut. He wouldn’t say it again to Richie, no matter the context. Never ever again.

“Origin story?” Richie asked with an innocent blink of his mismatched eyes. Eddie’s frown intensified and Richie’s wolf ears flattened down. “Oh, you mean, monster. Well, I mean, that’s kinda just what I am so…”

“I don’t care what anyone in this shitty town has ever said to you, I don’t care what you’ve ever told yourself, I don’t even care what shit I said in the past- you’re a- a- freaking overgrown puppy.” Eddie punctuated his statement with jabbing his pizza slice threateningly in the air towards Richie. “You didn’t deserve this, and if I have to remind you of that every day I will.”

Richie seemed struck completely mute for a moment while Eddie finally bit (a little violently) into his pizza. The silence was broken by a rhythmic swishing sound on the bed and Richie practically lunged backwards to slam his hand down on his tail.

Eddie nearly choked on his pizza.

“Can we never mention this?” Richie asked, voice cracking a little.

Affection warmed Eddie head to toe as he smiled in amusement at the cringe on Richie’s face.

All those times that they had had fun together or laughed together, was his tail wagging then? It was an interesting thought, now that Eddie could see the extra limb, and knew that it had simply been hidden to him this whole time. He wondered if it had been wagging at the fair? All those times they’d sat next to each other… had he ever nearly sat on it before? And that time in his bedroom when he’d accidentally touched Richie’s ears – was that the first near-miss? Or had he come close to discovering them before?

The whole town was about to reveal its secrets to him, and everyone he’d ever met could secretly have been something else this whole time. Were any of his college lecturers even human? Judging by how little Derry valued humans, it seemed unlikely.

“Eds?”

Eddie shook his head. “Sorry, lost in my thoughts there.”

“The tail’s freaky I get it – it moves on its own, it’s weird. Wolf stuff, y’know? I’ll try and uh- keep it under control.”

Eddie scowled, picked up his pizza box from his lap, stacked it on top of Richie’s, and took them both over to the desk. He placed them down with a soft thump.

Richie looked confused but didn’t stop him.

When Eddie got back to the bed he stood in front of Richie, a step away from his knees, and moved both hands to hover just above his wolf ears. “Can I…?” The softly spoken question hung in the air for a moment while a myriad of emotions crossed Richie’s face. “I won’t if you say no. But I really want to.”

Again, a silence descended over them both. Richie opened and closed his mouth a few times, his blue and brown eyes flicking across Eddie’s face as if he was trying to find something, but Eddie looked back at him steadily.

Finally, Richie nodded, closed his eyes, and whispered, “Please.”

Eddie let his fingertips gently reach down across that final tiny gap to the ears and almost jumped back in surprise. They were so soft! They felt… just like they had when he was a wolf, and suddenly memories of that night in the forest came flooding back – the fear, the confusion, the unexpected feeling of comfort and being protected… Eddie hadn’t even realised he’d been smoothing down the soft black fur over and over until he felt Richie lean into his touch and practically melt into it.

Richie’s knees were still together in front of him from where he’d been balancing the pizza box on his lap, but as soon as Eddie pressed down a little harder and rubbed small circles into the soft velvety fur, his knees opened, and Eddie moved instantly into the gap he’d made – stepping forwards to get even closer.

Eddie pushed his hands down into Richie’s wild mess of black waves and curls and scratched at the base of the ears, losing himself to his curiosity and how nice it all felt. Even Richie’s hair was softer than it looked.

Richie gasped as the swishing sound of his tail on the bed resumed, while his hands were gripping the bed beside him so tightly that his knuckles were white.

It belatedly drifted into Eddie’s mind that this was definitely not something that friends did. But he realised that he’d stopped caring entirely what friends did or didn’t do. Whatever he had with Richie – this felt right.

“I don’t know how else I can tell you that I don’t mind your ears and tail,” Eddie whispered. “I kind of like them. I kind of like them a lot.” Eddie took a deep, shuddering breath. “I kind of… like you a lot.”

A soft, barely audible whine escaped Richie’s throat and the swishing sound increased in intensity as his tail wagged faster behind him.

Eddie tried to control his pulse and his breathing, focusing on the soft fur instead of his impending panic attack, but he couldn’t believe his confession had finally just come tumbling out of him like that. No big speech, no grand gestures…

He just- he just- did he really just-

Richie’s hands finally moved from their death-grip on the bed as he wrapped his arms around Eddie’s back and pulled him even closer, so that Richie buried his nose in the fabric just below his chest. The height difference of Eddie standing and Richie still sitting meant that Eddie was much higher (for once) so when Richie pushed his face into Eddie’s borrowed shirt, he still had a good angle on petting the soft and adorable wolf ears.

Eddie was sure the front of his shirt was starting to feel damp, and then he heard Richie give a great big sniffle. He was about to lean back and take Richie’s glasses so that at least he wouldn’t hurt the bridge of his nose, but the tied-up bandage on Eddie’s hand snagged roughly across one of Richie’s ears as he pulled away. “Shit, sorry, did I hurt you?” Despite his spiralling thoughts, and teetering on the edge of a panic attack, the thought of hurting Richie speared through it all. The ears seemed to be particularly sensitive.

Richie shook his head and finally loosened his hold, leaning away to look up at him. There were tears shining in his eyes again. “You could never hurt me, Eds.”

“Not true,” Eddie whispered, gently touching the scar on Richie’s eyebrow.

“I can’t believe you’re still beating yourself up over giving me a sexy eyebrow scar,” Richie whispered back, bringing down Eddie’s hand and kissing the palm, right over the bandage. Just like Eddie had done to his hand earlier.

Eddie snorted a laugh. “Asshole,” he murmured, gently moving to cup Richie’s cheek.

Eddie leaned down as he tilted Richie’s face up and before he could overthink it – before he could think about anything – they were kissing.

There wasn’t much thinking involved during the kiss either.

Blissful static was humming throughout Eddie’s body, leaving his usually-racing thoughts silent for once. Instead, he was filled with a joy he could barely contain, focused only on the sensations and feelings and just how good right perfect it finally felt to have Richie’s lips moving against his own.

Richie’s hands were on his hips and Eddie tightened his grip on the side of his face as they tilted deeper into the kiss.

“Richie…” Eddie breathed out, while his other hand pushed deep into Richie’s hair and slid up to the base of a wolf ear. He leaned in close to it as he repeated his name breathily, into the fur tickling his nose, “Richie…”

“Holy shit, Eds,” Richie choked out, pulling back a little for a deep breath and sounding wrecked already. He dove back in for another kiss, until he suddenly stopped again. “Wait,” Richie said against Eddie’s lips.

Eddie immediately pulled back.

“Wait, wait, wait. Just wait a second,” Richie mumbled as he jumped up, ran to the jeans he’d been wearing earlier, fished around in the pockets, and pulled out a crumpled packet of gum. He tipped out a piece of small white gum and chewed on it rapidly.

“What…” Eddie managed, completely dumbfounded by the current turn of events. “What are you-”

“I’ve been saving these for so long. So long. I don’t even wanna admit to how long, man. As soon as I figured out that I wanted to kiss you so bad,” Richie said rapidly, around his rapid chewing and mouthful of gum, “I got it into my head that if ever this happened – and trust me I never thought it would – I would have minty fresh breath because I thought you’d like it better.”

“You- you thought I’d-” Eddie took a deep, incredulous breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know whether to laugh or kiss you again.” He sliced a hand through the air as he spoke, intense heat sliding up his neck and blooming in his cheeks.

Richie took a couple of long strides back across the room, clearly not looking for a trashcan, just as Eddie realised where that gum was going. “Oh no. Nope, no- don’t even think about it. Do not swallow that gum. Do you know how bad that shit is for you- Richie I’m serious, don’t even fucking think about it-”

Richie swallowed loudly and with an exaggerated wince as he gripped Eddie’s shoulders.

Eddie pulled a face. “Completely unrelated to you being a werewolf, you know you’re so fucking weird right?”

The answering grin that Richie gave him was so wide his sharp canine teeth caught the lamplight. It was a grin so bright and full of joy that Eddie felt his frown lift immediately to match.

“But I guess I’m just as weird, so it’s fine,” Eddie continued, still smiling.

“And I happen to also like you a lot. A lot,” Richie said, echoing Eddie’s phrasing from before. His voice caught a little on the words and cracked at the end, but he was gazing down at Eddie with such sincerity and adoration that it was almost overwhelming, and Eddie found his breathing speeding up again. “You have to know how much I like you, Eds. I mean it, I’m- I think I- I don’t wanna scare you off, but I’m- I love you- so fucking much-”

Anything else Richie was going to say was cut off as Eddie crashed their lips back together, producing another whine out of Richie that Eddie captured with his mouth. Now that they were both on their feet their heights were reversed, and this time it was Eddie who was leaning up. He pushed up to his tiptoes as he deepened the kiss, his hands going back into Richie’s hair, and he rubbed small circles into the fur where his wolf ears joined his skull. Richie whined again and let himself be moved as Eddie, without breaking contact, manoeuvred them both back to the bed, pushing back on Richie as his legs hit the mattress. He fell back and Eddie followed him down, knees and arms holding him up over him.

For a while they kissed and only broke apart to catch their breath. Richie trailed his hands up Eddie’s arms, bracketing over him, and Eddie felt his skin tingling at the contact.

Eddie lost himself in the moment and felt the tip of his tongue briefly dip into Richie’s mouth, surprised for a second at the wonderfully fresh minty taste and how he would never admit to enjoying it. Richie made a surprised squeak and his grip moved to the back of Eddie’s head to hold him there.

But a repetitive sound started to break through the wonderful haze and Eddie could feel his lips smiling, despite the situation, with a laugh building in his chest.

Swish swish swish swish.

Despite doing his best to suppress it, a giggle finally bubbled out of Eddie and he leaned back to slap a hand over his mouth before he could let the laugh truly free.

Richie grabbed his own tail, and pinned it to the bed once more. “I can cut it off,” he said breathlessly, looking up at Eddie with wide blue and brown eyes, his glasses askew from where their noses had bumped together. His hair framed his face on the bed and Eddie couldn’t believe how lucky he was that after all the worrying and panicking and nearly getting killed by zombies and nearly getting killed by his own mother (he still wasn’t sure which was worse) – he got to have this.

Richie loved him.

Richie loved him and they were kissing.

Richie loved him and they were kissing and Eddie loved him too.

Oh – he should probably say that.

Eddie was still smiling when he leaned back down and whispered, “I love you too, by the way,” against Richie’s lips.

Swish swish swish swish.

Eddie couldn’t help it – he sat back up and laughed hard enough that he was shaking with it.

Richie rolled out from underneath him and bounced to his feet. “Okay, where’s some scissors. A knife. A rusty spoon. I don’t care. This thing’s got to go.”

“Richie, come back,” Eddie managed around his giggles.

“My own tail is cockblocking me, this is true betrayal.”

Eddie twisted around until he was sat on the edge of the bed, reached out for Richie’s hands, and tugged him back until they were sat side by side once again. “You’re not allowed to be mean to your tail. I like it.” In a bold move that brought heat to his cheeks Eddie reached across to Richie’s tail and smoothed a hand down its whole soft length, marvelling at how deep the fur was.

Richie flinched so hard he nearly fell off the bed.

“Sorry, did that feel weird?”

Richie cleared his throat and squeaked out, “No.”

Eddie let himself stroke down the tail once more, noting the way that Richie stopped breathing for a second and tucked that observation away for the future.

“It’s probably a good thing to stop anyway,” Eddie said reluctantly, placing his hands into his lap. “We’ve got pizza to eat, and I’m still a bit weak.”

Richie’s attention immediately snapped over to Eddie’s face, concern tugging down his eyebrows. He lifted a hand, stopped the motion midway, then resumed it again, as if remembering he was allowed to touch him now. He gently smoothed a thumb across Eddie’s cheek. “Oh shit, are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah, just low blood sugar probably.”

“Hm.”

“What?”

“It’s just… all your blood probably went somewhere else low. Left you lightheaded.”

Eddie scrunched his nose, but affection bloomed in his chest. “Really? We just had a moment and two seconds later you’re making dick jokes?”

“Yeah, that was one low-hanging fruit honestly.” Richie winked and clicked his tongue. “Low-hanging fruit, that was a good one.”

“We’re never kissing again.”

“No, wait. Eds. Please. Eds. I’m sorry.” A real canine whine rang beneath Richie’s words and Eddie wondered just how often that had happened in the past without him being able to hear it.

Eddie rolled his eyes and gave him a quick peck on the lips – chaste and sweet – just to show that he was kidding, but it still left Richie wide eyed. Eddie gave him a reassuring smile and ran a hand down over his wolf ears, just because he could now, getting a kick out of how much Richie leaned into even the tiniest of his touches.

“So, we uh- should probably talk about…” Eddie took a shaky breath, his chest suddenly feeling tight. They needed the Talk didn’t they? About where they stood and what their relationship was now. They’d easily officially crossed over the border of friendship, but did that mean they were officially boyfriends? Eddie felt himself hoping for that outcome. But did Richie? He’d said that he loved him, and had for a long time, but did that mean he was ready for a Relationship? “We should talk about- about us, and about, uh…” He heaved another shallow breath and only realised that there was black fizzing at the edges of his vision when Richie had both his hands on his face, telling him to breathe slowly, and his concerned expression came swimming back into focus.

“We don’t have to talk about anything yet. Have a drink, and here’s your pizza, okay? Gotta get that blood sugar back.” Richie jumped up, handed Eddie the glass of water from the desk, took it away after he’d gulped some down, and then brought the pizza boxes back over. They were cold by now, but that had never bothered Eddie, he quite liked cold pizza.

“Thanks, Rich,” Eddie said sincerely, before he took a big bite.

“We don’t have to talk about anything right now,” Richie continued, “it’s enough that you’re here and that I finally got to tell you how I feel. And you’re not, like, scared away running to the hills by all of – well – this.”

Eddie could see how difficult it would be to get Richie to truly believe what he was saying, and it hurt that he’d obviously always struggled with his self-worth and opinion of himself. But he would prove those internal doubts wrong. He would make sure that Richie never felt unworthy of love or anything that Eddie could give him. Eddie swallowed his bite of pizza and tried to put enough conviction into his words that Richie would believe him. “Never. Not if I’m with you. I got to tell you how I feel too. I meant it. It wasn’t just a heat of the moment thing. I love you.”

Richie ducked his head down, but the tell-tale swishing sound of his tail wagging across the bed gave away his happiness.

They chatted while they ate but kept the topic lighter for a while, falling back on their shared love of movies and music that had brought them closer together in the first place, and after eating most of his pizza and having something to drink Eddie was feeling much better. (Richie ate his own pizza and the few slices that Eddie had left.)

A few times Eddie caught himself simply staring at Richie as he spoke, watching the way his wolf ears moved around depending on what he was talking about, or the way his tail would flick and twitch when he got really into a subject, his blue and brown eyes narrowing in pleasure as he smiled and talked.

How had he ever managed to push these feelings down when letting himself experience them felt so right and wonderful.

It was while they were getting ready for bed, and Richie was laying out his extra blankets on the floor, that Eddie had the urge to tell him not to bother and just join him in the bed. But he didn’t want Richie to think that he was suggesting something else when he was too tired to do anything and didn’t want to disappoint him by admitting it. Asking him to cuddle in the bed with him was probably too forward anyway, Eddie reasoned, as he watched Richie stand back with his hands on his hips to admire his pile of blankets.

“Do you have some toothpaste I can borrow?” Eddie asked, trying hard not to let his eyes just rove up and down Richie as he stood there. “My toothbrush was in the bag that I forgot to bring, but I can swish some toothpaste around my mouth for one night until I can buy one tomorrow.”

Richie threw him a confused look. “Yeah, of course. But you can just borrow mine.”

The way Eddie’s expression instantly crumpled into one of absolute disgust must have been amusing from an outside perspective, because Richie was suddenly doubled over laughing, with his hands pressed over his stomach.

“Oh okay,” Richie wheezed, “I see how it is, so you’ll stick your tongue in my mouth, but sharing my toothbrush is a step too far for you?”

“Yes. That’s disgusting.”

Richie laughed again and shook his head. “Eds, you never fail to amaze me in so many new ways.”

Eddie rolled his eyes as he folded his arms across his chest while he watched Richie rummage in another one his drawers. He pulled out a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste with a flourish.

“I’ll come with you to the bathroom,” Richie said gently, adding quickly as Eddie opened his mouth in indignation, “because if we bump into any of my flatmates, I don’t want you to freak out. Just don’t look at them and I can deflect.”

Eddie blinked in surprise, his brief flare of irritation extinguished immediately, not having thought of what would happen if he crossed paths with any of the other students who lived on this floor on his way to the shared bathrooms. “Okay, yeah.”

He wasn’t ready to deal with any unexpected magical people on top of everything else right now, and it wasn’t like they wouldn’t immediately notice him and his reaction – being human made him extremely inconspicuous.

Their short walk down the corridor to the bathrooms was blessedly uninterrupted, and they stood side by side in front of the little row of sinks and mirrors. The white light of the bathroom was harsh compared to the lamplight they’d just come from, and even Eddie’s regular human hearing could pick up the buzzing coming from the bare bulbs above them. He noticed Richie’s ears flick a little from time to time as if trying to flick away a fly.

They didn’t need to use the same sink, but there was something comforting about leaning against each other, and feeling the warmth of Richie’s body against his side made Eddie unwilling to move to a different one. He’d swished some toothpaste around his mouth while Richie cleaned his teeth with the toothbrush and after he’d spat out into the sink Richie held up the small piece of plastic with his eyebrows high.

“You sure?”

Eddie closed his eyes, took a breath, and plucked the toothbrush from Richie’s fingers. He held it out for the toothpaste and Richie lit up with amusement and joy as he dutifully squeezed the tube to the end of the toothbrush. Eddie stuck it into his mouth, trying hard not to gag, until he could put the strange thought out of his mind and went through the motions of counting 30 seconds along each stretch of teeth that he brushed.

Since he’d already come to terms with other places that he’d like to put his mouth on Richie, he would have to make peace with this too.

Once they were both done with the bathrooms and had made it back to Richie’s room, again without incident, Eddie blew out a tired sigh of relief.

He was ready to crash.

Richie locked his room door behind them both and flicked off the light, then chuckled at Eddie’s noise of protest. He turned it back on. “Sorry,” he said in a tone that dripped with sarcasm and amusement, “forgot about weak human eyes not having night vision.”

Despite his teasing tone, Eddie knew that it was a big deal that Richie was making jokes about the differences between them.

Eddie stuck his tongue out as he made his way over to the bed, just before Richie flicked the switch again, plunging the room into darkness except the light from the moon filtering through his thin student-budget curtains. When Eddie looked back over to make another comment, he saw that Richie had taken off his glasses, and he gasped when Richie’s eyes flashed brightly where the moonlight caught them at just the right angle, but the effect was gone as he moved towards the blankets.

“You okay?” Richie asked gently in the dark.

“I-It’s nothing. Just your eyes. They’re uh- they’re pretty cool. The way they shine like that in the dark.”

Richie’s steps froze. “The way they what?”

“You didn’t know?” Eddie managed around a soft laugh. “Most nocturnal predators have eyeshine. It’s literally how you can see in the dark.”

“You should be helping Ben write his book,” Richie said, a smile clear in his voice even if Eddie couldn’t see it.

“Maybe I will. Werewolves are pretty interesting.”

Eddie had to imagine the way Richie’s smile would widen at that.

There was a moment, while they were getting into their respective beds, that Eddie again thought to invite Richie up with him, but he couldn’t find the words, and instead they both settled down silently except for the rustle of the blankets.

“G’night, Eds,” Richie murmured.

“Goodnight, Richie.”

Eddie frowned at the dark ceiling above him, unable to relax, despite how weary he felt. He hadn’t even kissed Richie goodnight. That shouldn’t be bothering him as much as it was – he’d never kissed Richie goodnight before. But now that he could it felt simply wrong not to.

Eddie tried to push the thought away and let a deep breath in and out.

It worked for a few minutes before he couldn’t take it anymore and said in a rush, “Richie, can you please get up here?”

“Oh, thank fuck, I thought you weren’t going to ask.”

Eddie scooted across the bed as Richie climbed under the blankets with him. He could barely make out his features in the dark, even with the bit of moonlight from the window and with their faces only a few inches away. The bed wasn’t really big enough for two people, but it was… cosy, and Eddie found himself enjoying the proximity.

Richie sighed happily. “This is nice.”

Eddie smiled in the darkness and reached forwards with his lips, hoping to kiss in the right place, but missed and hit Richie’s cheek instead.

Richie guided his face, with a hand on his jaw. “Here,” he said, before he touched their lips together gently.

It made Eddie’s stomach swoop with excitement just as much as it did earlier. He wondered if he’d ever get used to that.

“You and your cool cat eyes showing me up,” Eddie huffed.

Richie chuckled and let his hand linger along Eddie’s jaw, smoothing down to his neck and sliding up into his short hair. “Yeah, doesn’t help me with my glasses off though. You’re a bright blur instead of a dark one. And they’re wolf eyes, Eds.”

“A very important distinction, sorry,” Eddie said, closing his eyes at Richie’s touch. He didn’t want to kill the mood, but he suddenly became curious. “So, uh, besides night vision, turning into a wolf every month, and the ears and tail, what other powers do you have?”

“Powers?” Richie echoed with a snort.

Eddie sighed, feeling a little silly for asking. “Yeah, you know, cool stuff that only werewolves can do.”

“Well…” Richie hummed with thought, tracing a finger in a swirling motion on Eddie’s shoulder. “That’s about it. I can hear well, and smell well, but my eyesight is still shit – hence the glasses – and like, I didn’t even get super strength or anything like that. I figured out that I have a freaky amount of speed and stamina recently. Turns out I’d been subconsciously suppressing it or something.”

“Freaky amount of speed and stamina, he says innocently,” Eddie pointed out with a roll of his eyes and a smile.

Richie made an offended noise as the finger swirling on Eddie’s shoulder froze. “Eds, I am shocked and appalled that your mind went to the gutter that quickly. Shocked and appalled.”

Eddie laughed with him in the dark and felt affection warm every inch of his body.

Richie tentatively reached around his waist and pulled Eddie in close, pressing them together so that Eddie was nestled against him, his head tucked under Richie’s chin.

They were cuddling.

“Is this okay?” Richie whispered.

“Yes. Definitely. Absolutely.”

“Okay, good, because it feels great.”

And it did. Richie was warm and his solid presence was such a comfort after the stress Eddie had endured recently. He closed his eyes and snuggled further into Richie’s embrace.

 After a few minutes of comfortable silence Eddie asked tentatively, “Hey, Richie?”

“Hm?”

“Do you… uh… I mean, do you… even like… being a werewolf?”

The silence that followed was less comfortable because Eddie could feel the way that Richie’s whole body tensed up.

“You don’t have to answer that, Jesus that was kinda a rude question out of nowhere like that, sorry.”

“No… it’s… it’s fine, it’s just… I honestly don’t really know. Sometimes I think I do, and then other times I hate it with the intensity of all the circles of hell.” Richie pushed his nose into Eddie’s hair and inhaled deeply. “Having a great sense of smell is neat. You smell amazing to me. And it’s not the worst thing in the world once I’ve actually transformed into a wolf to get to run around the forest and feel that kind of speed and power. I switch off my brain and just enjoy it,” he whispered into the darkness as if he was confessing a great secret.

“It’s okay to like what you are, you know.”

“I guess…”

“Just wondered because I want you to make me a werewolf next month and I’d like to know what I’m signing up for first.”

Richie choked and jumped so intensely that he nearly fell backwards out of the bed. His arms tightened around Eddie. “W-What the fuck, Eds? No fucking way! No. No. No.”

“I’m not asking, Rich. I want you to bite me. Derry’s only dangerous for humans, right? So, if I’m not a human, I’ll be fine.” Eddie was almost surprised at how calm he was. It just made sense. He’d expected to spin into another panic at the idea of giving up his humanity, but this was a decision he was so certain about that he had no doubts and no fear. “We could be together as wolves on each full moon,” he pressed. He paused at the strangeness of the sentence he’d just said, but he was still certain of his decision. His mother meant nothing to him now and there was nobody waiting for him outside of Derry’s walls.

Everything for Eddie was inside this town – Richie and his friends and this new life that he wanted. He could get used to being a wolf once a month. He could definitely get used to the ears and tail. He’d… work on the whole hunting small animals thing.

“Don’t. Don’t-” Richie whispered brokenly. “I know I need to say no – I should say no. I don’t want you to be like me. But I’m a weak, weak man and you’ve just described one of my favourite fantasy dreams out loud and I won’t be able to say no if you ask me again.”

“Then say yes,” Eddie said, trying desperately to make out Richie’s expression in the dark, “make me a werewolf, Richie. Please.”

Richie whined and leaned down to press his lips firmly against Eddie’s, still encircled in his arms, moving their mouths together with a new fervour.

They broke apart to breathe and Eddie placed a gentle kiss on the curve of Richie’s neck. “I’ve never been surer of anything, I promise.”

The sound of Richie’s tail wagging furiously beneath the blankets was loud in the silence, and this time he didn’t try to stop it.

Despite Eddie being able to hear his happiness Richie still groaned in indecision and frustration. “I can’t do this to you…”

“Okay, fine, I’ll get something else to bite me and turn me into whatever they are, I’ll go find a vampire or something-”

“No! Nobody else can bite you,” Richie said in a choked voice. After a small pause he cleared his throat, almost like he was surprised at his own reaction. “You’re serious about this.”

Eddie nodded and looked at the indistinct shadowy shape that was Richie’s face, knowing that he would be able to see even if Eddie couldn’t. Richie would be able to see his determination. “Richie, listen to me, I really want this. I want to stay here and not be looking over my shoulder constantly. I want to stay here with you. I want to share this with you.”

Richie pressed their foreheads together and inhaled deeply. “I told you, Eds. I’m a weak man. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve imagined us together like that. And I mean, come on, we both know that whatever you ask me to do, I’ll always end up doing it anyway.” He breathed in again. “Okay. Okay, you win. But you can’t be with me while I transform, because you’ll want to back the fuck out of that decision immediately, trust me. Or maybe it’d be better if you did so you can see the whole shitshow before you sign up for it.”

Eddie huffed out a laugh. “Oh thanks, okay I’m having second thoughts already now.”

“Wait, really?”

“No, asshole,” Eddie said with more laughter. He felt almost giddy on how sure he was. He kind of couldn’t wait. They could be together and they wouldn’t have to worry about anyone or anything. And he had Richie to guide him through everything that being a werewolf entailed. For the first time he wasn’t worried about anything. This felt right. “I want this.”

“In the morning we’ll go to Ben’s house, and we’ll get everyone together so you can meet them, y’know, again. But properly.” Richie sounded almost breathless with excitement, his tail still wagging loudly. “And we can talk about it some more.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. I’ve made up my mind.”

“You’re such a stubborn little gremlin.”

“At this point I shouldn’t need to ask, but gremlins are… real?”

“Of course.”

“Of course,” Eddie repeated with a smile.

“Eds, you won’t believe what’s real in this town.”

“But I’ll have you to show me, right?”

“Of course,” Richie said again, this time the words thick with affection and love.

Eddie tucked himself deeper into Richie’s embrace, snuggling into his arms and the blankets over them both. “And then we’ll both be skipping out on the Full Moon Fair every month,” he pointed out with a yawn. “We’ll both be busy in the forest. Frolicking and hunting and whatever else werewolves do on the full moon together.”

Richie’s tail swished furiously under the blankets and Eddie felt the way his breath caught. “Okay, now you’re just doing this on purpose.”

Eddie smiled, his whole body warm with joy and love. His breathing evened out and he could feel sleep nudging at his consciousness, but the last thing he thought about before he finally sank into the pleasant darkness was that he couldn’t believe how different this year’s Full Moon Fair was going to be, and how different they were going to be for the rest of his life. He wondered what his friends were going to look like, and how they’d react to his decision. But he knew what he wanted – and that everything was right here, holding him in his arms.