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SEPTEMBER, 2003.
“We are not calling it Dirty Mike’s Fuck House.”
Richie’s mouth hung open in shock. “ Why!? ”
This conversation had been going on for three days by the time Bev reached this conclusion, and for a moment, he had been so caught up in the euphoria of having finally picked out a name for the frat house (their perfect, perfect fraternity house), that he had forgotten one simple thing.
“Because his name is actually Mike!” Bev swung her arm over in Mike’s direction to point at him, and suddenly, all eyes were on him. He had hardly been paying attention, instead keeping his eyes on his shiny new GameBoy Advance. Looking up and around at the others, he shook his head, both his eyebrows knitting together.
“You don’t really want it to be called that, do you, Rich?”
Once again, eyes were on Richie, just like he wanted. He threw his hands up in the air and searched the room looking for support, any kind of support, but had fallen on deaf ears. His audience was composed of people he held closest to his heart — Ben and Stan sat closely together on their purple loveseat, their knees touching as they both yelled out their objections and additions to a conversation that should have been old news by that point, but they enjoyed the thrill of watching a throwdown. Mike had chosen the fat, dusty armchair that loitered in the corner of the living room and spread out to all his might, hoping to catch a break and retire there for the rest of the night. Bev had been lounging on the couch until Richie barged in with his idea that she found less than stellar, coming in from an optometrist appointment and bubbling out —
“Dirty Mike’s Fuck House is a terrible fucking name.”
“Oh my fucking god, he speaks.”
Richie turned to look at Eddie Kaspbrak, a self-proclaimed “well-behaved Virgo” on his application sheet - fresh meat. As the newest pledge to their fraternity, he had barely been around for a week and a half when the words came out of his mouth, and almost immediately, he regretted it. Now, all eyes were on him. Uncomfortable as ever, a pale pink blush quickly spread across his lightly freckled cheeks and rushed down the back of his neck before he could even swallow.
“Sorry, I meant that— “
“Okay, but you’re right,” Bev noted, taking another step forward toward Richie. Just in her socks, she hardly reached the middle of his chest, and yet she still poked her index finger into him like it was her turn to play bad cop . “End of story. All Bed, No Breakfast is clearly the best name.”
“W… What was it called before you guys moved in?” Bill Denbrough piped up, sitting up straighter from where he stood in the kitchen and looked into the open living room. A pot of coffee always seemed to be brewing when he was around, and now was no different. The distinct smell filled the air between them all, and Mike looked up from his game again.
“The Annex, which I think is still a fine name…”
“Yeah, if you’re 100 years old, maybe,” Richie huffed out. At some point, he had lost the will to commit to the bit and had allowed the energy to all but spill out his ears. “That name is way too old school. It’s 2003, not 1990.”
“My vote is still on Menace to Sobriety,” Stan leaned forward and held his hand up in the air as if he were being called on in class. “I think that’s the best so far. And… not just because it was my idea.”
“Stanley, you know, you act like a fuckin’ old man. You don’t really get a say here.”
“Oh, leave him alone, Richie!” Bev rolled her eyes, to which Richie did the same in an effort to make fun of her. Eddie was sure he was going to get whiplash from his eyes moving back and forth between them, as if he were watching a tennis match or a game of Pong (his favorite). They shared a look, then after a moment, shared a laugh. Bev reached out to lightly smack him on the stomach with the back of her hand before she moved out of the way and into the kitchen, reaching up to open the cupboard and grabbing a mug. “You have terrible ideas.”
“All in a day’s work, my dear,” Richie turned around and squarely situated himself in between Stan and Ben, making it glaringly obvious that there was no room for him in the first place. “Seriously, it’s like you guys want me to piss you off with my shitty opinions. You make it so fucking easy.”
Ben stood now after patting Richie on the thigh and sighed. He’d been uncharacteristically quiet during the entire debacle, watching it like a television drama. “If it makes you feel any better, Rich, I liked your name a lot.”
“Really?”
“... no.”
JULY, 2003.
Eddie called that summer "before" - he thought his life was relatively hum-drum before he went off to school, before he had any fun, before he could finally put a finger on who he really was. He was 23 when he started rushing — a little older than the others who seemed to be in the same spot as him, but working hard nonetheless. He was unfamiliar with the term and the process, but others who were younger than him showed themselves to be more knowledgeable where he fell flat. As far as he was concerned, his biggest fear was hazing, but he had soon been proven wrong in believing that myth. Thank god, he thought. Would he survive? Debatable. Of course, he would tag along with some of the guys he had met through his English class who were obsessed with the idea of Greek life, whereas he simply found it fascinating in a sort of way that he could only describe as wanting to fit in. It was as easy as that. Rushing was a lot like speed dating in more ways than one, which surprised him. Eddie found himself all but flirting with the other men in a laid-back party type setting thrown by the biggest house on the block of their college town.
Now, in his dorm room, Bill had been sat behind Eddie for the past hour while he cycled through the same two outfits, debating if the red shirt made him look tan or just like an idiot (they decided neither), and occasionally snacking on the weirdly intricate charcuterie board Eddie’s mom had sent with him before he left home the day before.
Bill had found it typically easy to be around Eddie, despite any sort of thistle he had worked so hard to keep up. The two of them were similarly stern in nature, which Eddie had always found refreshing. They had found that most of their days had been spent together, but they’d been waiting for this one — to one, it felt like a destiny, to the other, it felt like just a Tuesday. Today was the day they were heading to their last frat rush, but after doing their fair share of research and mingling, now they felt like they were no strangers to this kind of show. It was a game they were forced to learn, full of intricate strategies and specific ways of holding themselves, but to anyone else, they might look like they were trying a little too hard.
“Why is their place called Neibolt House?”
“Because… every good frat house is named after the street it’s on. A… and they’re on Neibolt street.”
Eddie smacked his palm to his forehead. “Okay, well, I know that .”
“You knew that? Then… what do you want me to say?” Bill reached over to grab a piece of cheese and watched Eddie in the mirror from his bed before the other turned to face him. “We’re gonna have… fun.”
“Just tell me I look good. Okay?”
Bill stood now, reaching out to pat Eddie on the shoulder. His smile, always polite, made the tension that Eddie was holding in his shoulders all but disappear. “You’re… seriously going to kill it.”
A half-smile. For a second, Eddie thinks he’s his best friend. “Great.”
The two of them, riddled with high standards, had definitely envisioned something a little less… fraternity , and a little more classy. It was an event that seemed typical to those who attended, but at the end of the day, Eddie would call it what it was: a block party. To his left sat a three story home with intricate decorations hung from the balconies and a clean yard. People mingled on the stoop and below a shady tree, sipping beer from cans and chatting with people who had set up shop to help with the application process. To his right, he laid his eyes on a “ house ”. The lone balcony was all but falling apart and the paint was barely holding on. The front doors hung open for a steady flow of people coming and going, but trash had accumulated in the driveway and they had a table sitting outside, manned by only a few people.
“We’re fucking overdressed,” Eddie hissed into Bill’s ear and grabbed him by the bicep, pulling him back toward the door as soon as they stepped into the yard of the clean house with a large, illuminated sign hanging above the front door that read PI ETA DELTA. “I’m not fucking going in there.”
Confidently stepping forward, Bill puffed his chest out just enough for Eddie to notice and to give him a chance to roll his eyes. The two of them walked with the kind of faux confidence that only Bill Denbrough could muster and waded through what was seemingly a sea of men flirting with each other - at least, that was how it looked. Overhearing bits and pieces of various copy and pastes of typical pickup lines being repeated was getting old — “you look like you work out a lot how could anyone not want to hang out with you well I mean if you haven’t seen it then we should totally watch it together haha here’s my number if you want it” was something Eddie could only hear so many times in sixty seconds before it became grating to his ears.
“Be cool, okay?” Bill gently moved Eddie’s hand away from his arm and instead patted him on the shoulder to instill whatever confidence he could muster. “We can leave w… whenever you want. We can do this… together.”
To Eddie, comfort felt like something that came and went, few and far apart. A fleeting feeling of butterflies in his stomach before it turned over and filled him to the brim with love, he was well aware of his sense of sentiment, but now he wasn’t alone, and with that, the comfort came back home to him.
Cut to: broad shoulders sitting alone at a makeshift booth in the front yard opposite the one Eddie had been standing in, unruly hair hiding a pair of thick glasses and a hairy, curled up fist lightly pounding against the surface it rested on. The “sign” sitting in front of him was made of a large piece of canvas and had big letters scribbled across it — THETA SIGMA GAMMA. Beside the seemingly aggravated poster child sat someone who looked to be the complete opposite, wearing thin reading glasses and an unbuttoned cardigan with a neatly pressed button-up shirt under it. Now, he could see a fit blond filling out paperwork for the two of them in hopes of being accepted, but from the looks of it, neither of them were impressed. As soon as he caught himself staring for a little too long, he was caught by an unfamiliar gaze, this time with no curly hair in his eyes. Eddie cleared his throat, but challenged him for a second, staring harder. Without a hesitation and from across the yard, Eddie could hear him laughing from next door, unapologetic.
Wait. Bill .
They’d only been there for fifteen minutes and he’d already lost him, which wasn’t unlike the two of them. Typically, it was Eddie who turned up on the wrong side of the sidewalk or the other side of the room without hardly being noticed. It seemed to Eddie that this whole thing was window shopping, and as he spun to look for the other, he found him doing just that. There he sat, pulled up in front of a folding table and chair, surrounded by three men who were doing something that looked a lot like an interrogation. The three of them stood on all sides of Bill and stared down at him, one of them pushing a clipboard into his chest. Unsure of how to proceed, he timidly approached all four of them and lightly pushed at the back of Bill’s shoulder.
“We should get out of here,” he boldly piped up, then looked at the others. “All these frats suck.”
Bill, always one to hold his own, hadn’t even broken a sweat from the pressure. “Eddie…” He gestured upward and stared at him. “T… this is Henry.”
The shortest of the three, stocky and with a crease in his brow, didn’t offer his hand out for Eddie to shake. Instead, in an attempt to size him up, he took one step closer and spoke over the murmur of other voices around them. “Henry Bowers. This is Patrick and Belch. Don’t call him Tommy.”
“Only the dean gets to call me that,” the one who Eddie assumed was Belch chimed in, now crossing his arms over his broad chest. “And my mom.”
They were all dressed in athletic fit polo shirts neatly tucked into khaki pants, but at the same time, they didn’t quite fit the bill. The aggression came off of them like a dark aura or a stench that hung in the air between them all like heavy tension. The third stood behind Henry and didn’t offer any sort of hello or even a nod of the head in his direction, instead opting into pushing his long, black hair back and tucking it behind his ears. To Eddie, he had no doubts here; these three were biters in elementary school. Henry pushed Belch’s hand, still holding the clipboard, back toward him and now turned to look at Bill again.
“Don’t get crazy, boys. We don’t want to scare the kid,” A smirk, then a pat on Bill’s shoulder. “Just think about it. You know, we’re the most prestigious fraternity in the state. Our house got built in 1980 and my old man kept it up before I stepped in. So it’s new . We pull hard. Good grades. Great fucking sports performance. Some of us have senate seats in the committee.”
“There’s fifteen of us,” the one in the back leaned in and dropped that piece of knowledge like it was supposed to seal the deal. Bill blinked up at him.
“Where are my manners?” Henry clapped a firm onto his back and pulled him in closer to their space. “Gentlemen, this is Patrick. He does the numbers.”
“What’s your GPA?” Patrick’s eyes burned into Eddie’s, and it was only half a second before Eddie spoke up, almost confused.
“3.3. It would have been better if my dad didn’t get really sick so that kind of screwed up my plans but 3.3 isn’t really that bad considering and if you think about it from a bigger standpoint —”
Henry held his hand up and stopped him. “We are not ‘ just a frat’ . This is our life. This was our dads’ lives. You’re with us for life . We bring the money, and... Everyone else brings the booze.”
Bill looked up at him before he awkwardly got to his feet and took the piece of paper from the clipboard, then folded it and tucked it into his back pocket. “Thanks.” Politeness was his downfall. If Eddie were in his shoes, maybe he would call this guy a pretentious asshole or some dumb fuck .
“Like I said,” Henry took one step back, and once he did, the other two made note of it and did the same. “Think about it.”
Now, Eddie grabbed Bill by the back of his shirt and gripped his shoulder, pulling him away and putting his hand out. “Give me that. You are so not applying for that place.”
For a second, Bill hesitated, then shrugged. “I had a 4.2 gpa last semester. I think I…”
“You don’t have a chance. There’s no way those guys would let you in. They would fucking eat you alive.”
“He just said to think about it. So I’m going to think about it. There’s nothing wrong with just thinking about it. Right?”
“Wrong,” Eddie spat out, then he sighed. “That kind of place isn’t right for you.”
“Then what is?”
A valid question, one that Eddie wasn’t sure he could answer in just a few words. “Look, you’re my friend. I just don’t think it’s a good idea. We should just look somewhere else.”
Now, they stood just next door to a rousing game of beer pong going on at the falling apart frat house, a combination of boos and cheering echoing against the walls of the garage and amplifying itself. The one who had previously been manning the table outside was now chugging from a blue solo cup, beer and tears of laughter streaming down his cheeks. Eventually, he gave up and spat it out in front of him, and they all went nuts — much to his approval, now with a smile so wide, it was impossible to ignore.
Once the ruckus had come to a steady rumble, Eddie looked back to the front yard and to his surprise, a girl had now been sitting at the table and filing an application for someone else. Her hair was short, red and pulled back into a small ponytail, with blue coveralls on over a shirt that matched her brown shoes. Eddie elbowed Bill in the side to get his attention, but he was already looking.
“Let’s go,” he spoke up, elbowing Eddie back and nodding toward her. “They look like they’re… having a lot of fun. Could be us.”
“If I hate it over there, I’m going to be so fucking pissed off at you.”
“If you hate it over there, you can tell me how much you hate it all the way back to campus..”
Crossing over felt like the trek of a lifetime. The entire block had been shut off by cones and was instead chock-full of tables instead of cars, each of them being watched by someone different. The closer they got, the more they could agree that yeah, it did look pretty fun. With a dinky table sitting in the front yard and a green couch in the driveway, it was hard to put a finger on the kind of place this was supposed to be. Maybe that was part of the mystery. By the time they had made it next door and timidly stood behind someone else at the table, Eddie had gotten distracted by a circle of a few others not too far from where they had been standing, all relaxing in the sun under a large tree that draped over the yard. One of its leaves fell slowly down in front of him, and for a moment, he wanted to reach out and take it. He didn’t.
“So I say to the guy, Fiddler on the roof ? I hardly know 'er!”
There he was, the star of the show. The broad shouldered, curly haired beer pong expert was standing while everyone else sat, sharing a laugh in what seemed to be a desperate attempt to rush . He turned around and looked at Eddie for just a second, but as he turned back around, he looked back almost immediately to look him over again. The two of them, only a few feet away from each other, shared an awkward smile. Suddenly, a tug on his elbow and he had been yanked back in line. Before he knew it, he was holding a clipboard and being handed a pen by the redhead they’d noticed before. A smile stretched onto her face, and she lifted the sunglasses that sat atop her pointed nose.
“You guys look like you just came from a business lecture.”
Eddie’s cheeks flushed deep red. He wasn’t looking, but he knew Bill’s were, too. Only Eddie spoke up. “We were next door.”
“Yeah, we saw. Those guys are a bunch of dicks,” There’s a pause, and she quickly corrects herself. “You’re not trying to get in there, are you? Henry Bowers and his goons are just… hard to get along with.”
“No. No way in hell,” Eddie swallowed, and Bill shook his head. He looked down at the application in front of him and skimmed over it, finding the questions mundane and monotonous, but overall short and sweet. Describe yourself in three words. Are you a morning person? Do you play sports?
“Good,” Bev sighed. She pushed a stack of bright and colorful papers on the table in their direction. “We have our rules and code of conduct in the zine here. It’s pretty cool. Stan Uris is our president, Mike does the books...” She shrugged. “I’m Bev. Over there… I guess in the garage, that’s Richie. Ben is inside. It’s just us in this big old house.”
“I’m Bill. That’s Eddie,” Bill nodded over in Eddie’s direction and looked his own outfit over, now a little self-conscious of being overdressed like Eddie had been afraid of. Bev’s smile was friendly, but as soon as she offered it to them, a loud CRASH! came from the garage. Almost immediately, the front door flung open and someone quickly scurried out of the house with a hammer — the one holding it had curly hair that was being blown out of his face by his speed and a neatly tucked in shirt, but he was a little too quick to join the scene of the crime for either of them to tell much more.
“Wait, sorry,” Bill held his hand up. “Are you the frat sweetheart?”
“The frat sweetheart?” Bev raised her eyebrows. “No. I’m a brother. Initiated and everything. How about you?” The silence was heavy for a second before she laughed and lowered her sunglasses to look Bill in the eye. “Think about it. We’ll be here all week.”
The offer was tempting — at least, it was to Eddie. He had picked up the zine from the table in front of him and opened it, revealing photos of the inside of the house and all of the housemates together, smiling and promising a good time for any and all. The Annex , they called it, was disguised as a two story home with New Years streamers strung across the roof and hanging off the windows well into September. The photos made it look a lot more glamorous than it was in person, with a browning lawn and leaves piled up on the street, but honestly, it gave the place a little character. Bev sat back down in her plastic lawn chair and eyed Eddie as he flipped through the pages, pushing her sunglasses back up her nose.
“Do you like to have a good time?”
“No,” Eddie piped up reflexively, then shook his head. “Sorry, I mean, yes. Uh, do you have that under control?”
Bev looked him over and almost let out a laugh, judging by the corners of her lips turning upward and a glint in her eye that was hard to miss. The commotion in the garage had settled down by the time she turned to look back at the wide open door. “I dunno, it looks like Stan knows what he’s doing.”
“Does he actually know first aid?”
“Yeah, he’s the best.”
Eddie blinked. “Actually, I mean, I have certifications in first aid and CPR, and honestly it’s better to have more than one person who knows what they’re doing because what if they get hurt and someone needs to do first aid on them huh what then?”
Now, Bev stared at him, clearly amused. “I really think that you should fill out that application.”
Bill reached forward to grab an application for himself while Eddie glanced at his own. “Do you have a pen?” This is supposed to be a team effort , he wanted to drill into Eddie’s head, don’t do this, come on, don’t do this again. Doing without thinking seemed to be an Eddie Kaspbrak Exclusive, but from the look of determination on his face, the crease in his eyebrow as he thought — maybe he wasn’t too far off from doing something good for the both of them. Bev reached over and fished a black pen out of the red solo cup sitting off to the side of her and handed it to Eddie, now smirking.
“You won’t regret it. You’ll be the new kids on the block.”
“I fucking hate that band,” Eddie, still focused on the application in his hands, rolled his eyes. “They’re so 80’s.”
“I… I like NSYNC,” Bill folded his application and tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans along with the other he had stored there. “The Backstreet Boys were kinda overrated.”
Bev feigned shock. “Those are some fighting words.”
With every word Eddie scribbled down, the less he could hear from the other two as he all but flew through the vague questionnaire, until a softer voice piped up from behind Bev and touched her on the shoulder.
“Whoa, he lives!” Bev turned her head to look up and find that minute’s hero, the same one who had rushed into the garage as a first responder. She beamed up at him and he did the same, a long curl falling into his face as he did. Now that Bill could get a good look at him, he cleared his throat and shot his hand out for the other to shake.
“I’m Bill,” he breathed out, and the stranger gave his hand a light shake. “That’s Eddie.”
“Stan,” the other tightened his grip on his hand, with Eddie catching the tail end of a squeeze shared between them. After a second, he reached out for Eddie’s hand, to which he politely declined. Stan nodded politely before turning his attention back to Bev, pushing a curl out of the way of his glasses. “Richie was talking to those freshmen until he went back to the beer pong tournament. He was supposed to be telling them about our events.”
Stan and Bev shared an eye roll, then she gave him a light pat on the arm. “Let him be free, he’ll find his way back.”
“Okay… but someone definitely has a fractured hand.”
Eddie looked between the two of them before he raised his free hand up. “I know first aid if it’s not too bad, but they should probably go to the emergency room.”
“Right, Eddie has certifications.” Bev nodded, and for a second, Eddie couldn’t tell if she was making fun of him, until he realized he couldn’t find an ounce of sarcasm or even the hint of a smile on her face.
“No, they should absolutely go to the fucking hospital,” Bill shot Eddie a look before he nudged him in the ribs, giving him the faint idea that maybe new friends didn’t want to be talked to like that, and that he should maybe turn it down from an 11 to maybe a 7. The features on his face softened then, now giving Bev and Stan what looked a lot like a smile, but was still a little rough around the edges. “That guy that was playing beer pong. What did you say his name was?”
Stan sighed. “Richie. He’s been here as long as I have. He’s been trying to get people to join all afternoon, but…”
“He’s not the biggest charmer,” Bev chimed in. “I love him, but sometimes, he can really turn someone off.”
“He looks okay,” Eddie’s voice was quiet and clear, offered with a shrug of his shoulders. “If he asked me to join, I’d do it.”
“If all your friends were jumping off a bridge, would you do that, too?”
“ Yes” was Eddie’s quick and swift answer, stated with the strength that only his heart could offer. It was true, maybe he would; his mom could never find out, but he would do it without another thought in his mind. The friendships that he had found as a teenager had all but fizzled out and fallen through his fingers like water from the drain, so in an attempt to sound like a good friend, he actually might have sounded a bit more desperate than intended. Bev looked over at him from across the table and beamed at him — yeah, these guys are the ones. Giving them another once-over, she quickly looked past them and laid eyes on the one, the only Richie approaching them from where he had been in the garage behind them.
“Hey, we have rushers insurance, right? Because I think that guy is going to sue us —” Richie stopped dead in his sandals and socks as he looked over at Bill and Eddie, already extending a hand the size of a dinner plate to shake Bill’s. “Richie Tozier. I see you already met my lovely assistants, Beverly and Stanley,” Now, he shook Eddie’s hand. “They do all the work while I stick around to look good.”
“You’re really funny,” Eddie blurted out, giving Richie’s hand an unplanned squeeze. A pause. “Sorry. I heard you talking to those guys earlier.”
Richie’s smile stretched across his face, and what a sight to see. Eyes that creased at the edges were met and matched with the ends of his bright smile, showcasing a chipped front tooth and introducing the laugh that Eddie swore he could run away with. Richie squeezed his hand back.
“Oh, man... you’re going to fit in great here.”
“What does that mean?”
“You look like you have trouble with simple tasks.”
“What the fuck does that mean? You don’t even know me, that’s like saying you think —” Richie was already laughing, Eddie quickly noticed in the middle of his sentence, and he could feel a familiar heat creep up the back of his neck and pepper his cheeks. “ What? ”
Richie reached out to pat Eddie’s arm, almost condescendingly, and for a second, he held his hand in place before he dropped it to his side and shoved both his hands in his pockets. They looked at each other, then away, then again once more. Rinse and repeat.
To Eddie, it was different. A complete stranger; someone he had known his entire life.
B ACK TO — SEPTEMBER, 2003.
Only a month since Eddie and Bill had moved themselves in, and Eddie wasn’t sure where their high standards went. Mike had told Eddie that they had been planning their block party since June, but now that the fall chill was threatening to roll in, they had to move it or lose it. It was easy enough to plan, with the other two houses on the street chipping in for booze and food to grill. Not necessarily a tradition, just fun . This year, however, Henry Bowers from next door had already egged their house twice, then continuing to place the blame on the sorority next door. Eddie was sure that a place that called itself the Hive was capable of such evils.
For the most part, Eddie was a house boy, left with doing the chores that no one else wanted to touch. He had gotten great at folding laundry and touching food in the sink without gagging, but if it had to be done, it had to be done. His daily routine went a little like this: 7am, the alarm clock goes off and he takes a scalding hot shower, only sometimes interrupted by Mike’s knocking to get in, but it wasn’t Eddie’s fault that 7am was Mike’s unofficial bedtime and that they were destined to cross paths. Moving on from that, around 8am, he’d unload the dishwasher and pick up the random bits and books in the kitchen, doing a choreographed dance around Bill, who had woken up at the same time and started making breakfast by choice. 10am means everyone but Richie and Mike are awake and fed, keeping themselves busy by doing homework or flicking through the basic television channels.
On a weekend without class, around 2 or 3 is when Eddie would pick up around the three bathrooms and spray down all the surfaces he could reach — (“Eds, how are you gonna get on top of the fridge when you can’t even reach? Eds, don’t you think you should leave that to someone with longer arms? Just saying! Eds, maybe you should ask for arm extension surgery for your birthday this year,”) — during all of this, still, Richie was in his head.
It had seemed that Bill was getting the good side of this deal. His time had been spent helping with homework and trying to bang out a book in the beginning of their first semester, basking in compliments from Stan and Mike. The three of them had been dubbed the quietest of the house by people who had come in and out, but it was seemingly hard to explain that Stan could drink the rest of them under the table, or that Mike had intricate daydreams that he would rattle on about for hours at a time. Putting the three of them in a room together had almost guaranteed a friendship to last the ages — until the summer blowout party where Bev had ceremoniously “knighted” Eddie and Bill with a bottle of champagne. After Bill and Eddie had paper crowns placed on the top of their heads, Mike had told Bill that his was cute . And Eddie’s wasn’t? Maybe cute wasn’t the word he had used, it was more along the lines of telling him it really suits you, you look like a prince and — they were caught kissing in the basement by Bev not more than an hour after that.
Now, Eddie watched them with a scowl. He could be happy like that. Sure. No problem.
Smack!
The feeling of a handful of clothes being pushed into his chest almost knocked the wind out of him. Before he looked up, he knew by the sound of a seagull — no, a laugh, that the culprit was none other than his own Richie Tozier.
His own?
The hallway was practically desolate at this time of night — half past midnight, when everybody else had retreated into their caves — but the two of them found solace in the silence. Now, Eddie rolled his eyes and grabbed the clothes from him, hugging them close to him. “Will you please stop terrorizing me?”
“No way, dude, your eyes get super big when I scare you like that. It’s cute as hell.”
For the half-second Eddie had blinked, he remembered putting his hands on Richie when he had the chance. A touch on the arm turned to a hand on the back turned to a kiss in the bathroom at 7 in the morning, before the others had woken up. Just two weeks ago, and Richie had since refused to say a word about it. That was fine. Eddie was fine with that.
“What am I doing with these?”
“Oh, that’s my underwear,” Richie grinned at him, and Eddie promptly dropped the laundry to the floor. “I was gonna take it to the dry cleaners and get it like, specially pressed and shit. Never know what’s gonna happen at the block party, right?”
Eddie nodded, then leaned over and shoved the pile of laundry with his foot. “Is this seriously your underwear.” Very matter-of-fact. A statement, not a question.
“No way, dude. Unless you want it to be.”
The heat was back, surprising Eddie this time. His demeanor softened.
“Do people bring dates to this kind of thing?”
“Well… they could.”
The air was heavy for a second until Eddie exhaled, and it seemed to dissipate between the two of them.
“Saturday, right?”
“Don’t fucking be late, dude.”
“I live with you, asshole. I can’t be late to my own fucking party. Besides, my mom told me that there’s no such thing as being too early , so.”
Richie looked him over, and for a second, he was quiet. “Saturday.”
They stood for a moment, and Eddie almost thought about reaching out for the other. The rush a few months prior had been just that to him — a rush . It had never been about doing Richie’s laundry or eating the same thing for breakfast and thinking it was kinda cute or, or, or…
Eddie stammered. He was nervous, of course he was nervous, anyone in their right mind would be nervous if they were alone in what, to him, was the smallest room known to man, or maybe that was just him, and god, did it just get hot in here or is it just him?
Opposite of him, Richie had clenched his fists and shoved them into the pockets of his sweat shorts, then looked down in an attempt to hide the pink hue that had peppered his cheeks. If Eddie could read minds , he thought, I’d be fucked. “Right?”
“Yes , sorry, I was… Thinking about…”
Now, Eddie looked at him, and it was like the first time. Now or never.
He wasn’t sure if it was an act of bravery or an act of I need you , but either way, Eddie found himself making up for lost time in the way he leaned up on his socked toes just enough to press his lips against Richie’s for a kiss. Richie, taken off-guard, took both hands out of his pocket and held them up in surprise in less time than it would take for his heart to skip that beat and reached up for Eddie’s wrist. He couldn’t stop him — he didn’t want him to. Instead, he curled his lean fingers around the other and leaned in against him, a heavy breath coming out through his nose. A sigh of relief.
The first kiss, they had almost missed each other’s mouths. The second felt a little easier, like they had done it before. Eddie taking his time in finding Richie’s mouth against him. The third had Eddie’s head spinning and his hands grabbing Richie by the bottom of his shirt to pull him closer, closer, closest. Too much to think about. His heart was pounding through his chest, and he knew Richie could notice. How embarrassing. With a fourth, it didn’t matter when he had a handful of t-shirt and a mouthful of Richie Tozier.
For a second, they stopped, and Eddie could feel Richie’s hot breath against his cheek. He looked up at him, and he was sure that nothing else mattered to him.
“All this because you want to take me to the party? Wow, Eds, didn’t know you had me in you.”
Eddie, in response, rolled his eyes and leaned up for another kiss that seemed more desperate than the last few. Richie’s bedroom door that they had once leaned against shifted underneath Richie’s weight before he reached for the doorknob, experimentally opening it just a crack.
“I like you so fucking much,” Eddie had found himself blurting out, his eyes closed and his hand still knotted in Richie’s t-shirt. “I like you so fucking much, Rich.”
If Eddie was sure of anything, it was that he wanted to wrap himself up in Richie for the rest of his life. With every kiss, he couldn’t regret telling him that even if he tried.
“You don’t wanna get into that.” Richie tightened his fist around the doorknob and swallowed thickly. Self-deprecation in the heat of the moment was the new thing , it seemed.
“Shut up , I know what I want.” was all that came out, albeit a little more aggressive than he had intended. A second passed. Two. Three. They felt like days.
“Kiss me.”
Say no more. It was then that Eddie moved forward to back Richie into his own bedroom, sighing with relief at the sound of his door clicking behind them. It was messy chic, he would decide later, but not when he had practically tripped over a shoe and down onto the edge of Richie’s bed. Right then, instead, he would focus on the subject at hand - Richie awkwardly positioning himself on Eddie’s hips, seemingly forgetting the difference in size between the two of them.
“You’re too big —” Eddie started, squirming underneath his weight and attempting to prop himself up on his elbows.
“That’s what your mom said,” Richie muttered, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
Eddie looked up beneath his long eyelashes and furrowed his brow before he let out a clipped laugh – low and without humor, a little strained, and slid his hand up Richie’s chest. “Fuck you, dude,” He leaned up and moved his free hand to the middle of Richie’s thigh, mouth trailing the side of his neck. “You sound like a fucking idiot if I talked as much as you did right now it would actually ruin the fucking moment and please don’t bring up my mom because you are so — ”
“Oh my god, you’re talking so much, it’s actually fucking turning me on.” Richie’s hands were at the waist of Eddie’s shorts now, not yet removing anything, and still looked good not doing it. To him, it was catharsis; seeing Richie that way and being able to touch his skin felt the same as if somebody had cut him open and let the blood drain from his body, leaving him with moments of beautiful clarity. Oh, this isn’t so bad.
SATURDAY.
The music was playing too loud, and the smell of badly burnt hot dogs was hanging onto everyone’s clothes like a bad cologne. Before the storm , Mike would come to fondly say about their second annual informal, and Eddie would almost be inclined to agree with him. The block party to kick off the year was officially on .
Bev had spent the first hour or so patrolling, as she would say, with Richie trailing by her side for alcoholic quality control, and Eddie had come to realize that together, they would be hard to find. Today, on the last day of the sun, Bill and Mike hardly showed their faces, only resurfacing to fill their blue solo cups to the brim with watery beer. Eddie and Ben sat on their front porch, both of their cheeks red from the sun and the shot they had been dared to take by Stan, who had been stuck with manning the keg. Next door, the WASP kids ran amuck, trading in their khakis for khaki shorts, a bold move. From the front step, they watched as Henry Bowers and his goons did what they could only assume was schmoozing, patting people on their backs with heavy, sweaty palms.
Their homely street was now crowded with the people everyone would consider to be their friends and their classmates, with a few handfuls of strangers stirred into the pot. The Hive, otherwise known as Omega Theta and the sorority next door, had a front yard that was littered with people that Eddie had never even seen before — all girls.
“It is so not okay that you came back from being gone for a fucking week and now you’re plying me with alcohol,” Eddie started after chugging his beer, grimacing and shaking his head. Stan offered him a knowing smirk in return. “You fucking asshole.”
“Do you know the girls in the Hive?” Stan raised his eyebrows over his sunglasses and turned to direct his gaze at the house in question. “You can blame Patty for that.”
Ben smiled up at Stan, then looked over at Eddie. He, fortunately, had been in the know, but it seemed that Eddie was usually out of the loop in that sense.
“What? Oh my god. You are literally so disgusting. You were gone for like, four days. You disgust me.”
“He was busy!” Ben leaned in to bump his shoulder against Eddie’s. “We all get busy… right?”
“I went on a blind date, what’s so disgusting about that?” One edge of Stan’s lips turned up once he looked back over at them, reaching out for Eddie’s cup to refill. “Richie set us up, and… we both realized that we hated dating and going out on dates and the whole… you know?”
“Four days.” Eddie was stern now, despite his failed attempt to sit up straight.
“We went hiking. I showed her my favorite spot to watch birds from, and she showed me where she climbs trees.”
Ben was seemingly impressed, but Eddie rolled his eyes again. From there, he could see a blond he would assume to be the famous Patty Blum waving over at them from her yard. Stan waved back, and without looking away from her, offered the hose from the keg out to Ben. “Will you hold this?”
Always dutiful, Ben obliged, and Stan quickly made his way across the street, through the sea of drunk twenty-somethings. Before Eddie could speak up, he could hear a loud CLANG! coming from the second story of the Neibolt House — the culprit, who Eddie remembered as Belch, could be seen from the window, but it took him longer to register that a sofa was being shoved out of the house. As it fell to the soft grass, it was like a record had scratched and the music was quickly overpowered by an unfamiliar voice screaming WHAT THE FUCK?!
Like ants under a microscope, the crowd scattered. For the first time in an hour, Eddie scrambled to his feet and grabbed Ben by the arm, quickly maneuvering himself behind him as others from their yard ran past them to see the commotion.
“Is that Bill? ” Ben shouted, gripping Eddie’s wrist, but persisting against his will and moving forward toward the chaos. It was, indeed, Bill Denbrough standing right underneath the windowsill and was swearing up at the empty room from the ground with an overflowing red solo cup in his hand, the beer sloshing over the brim and onto the grass. Eddie immediately retreated and loosened himself from Ben’s grasp, shaking his head and stumbling back onto their front porch, but Ben didn’t seem to notice as he left him behind.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” Eddie scooted back on the porch until his back pressed against their front door, but the exclamation didn’t come from him, instead from the mouth of Bev. Belch had fled the scene of the couch in the yard, but Bev had caught up to him before he could get any farther. “You could have killed someone!”
From where Eddie sat, frozen, he could hear her words slurring together. The horror in him rose as she grabbed Belch by the arm and ripped his sleeve in an attempt to pull him over the fence like it was tug-of-war. Belch quickly pulled away from her, his face twisting in anger.
“You’re gonna get someone killed!”
The commotion on the street had only grown louder, but seemingly, the guys from next door had kept their cool. If Eddie was keeping time, that thirty seconds would have passed like slow motion, but in real time, it flashed before he could even get up. Eddie could hear glass breaking in the middle of the street and doors slamming, but those sounds were quickly drowned out by the sound of blood rushing in his ears. Finally, he got to his feet just for Stan to rush past him and swing the front door open.
“Can’t talk, gotta call the cops —” was all he heard, fading into the kitchen and up the stairs along with the sound of Stan’s sneakers pounding against the old wood.
Eddie’s legs felt like gelatin underneath his own weight. He had never considered himself to be someone who did well under pressure, god forbid he add fear into the mix. It took his entire being to push his feet and dart through the crowd in the street, bumping full on into Richie like a brick wall. Richie haphazardly grabbed Eddie by the shoulders and looked out to their front yard, now showcasing a very calm Henry Bowers in the middle of it all, leaning against the white picket fence that divided the two yards. Neither of them could quite make out the words he cooly spewed, but they could see the shine of a silver knife being pulled out of his pocket. Again, Eddie froze, but to his comfort, so did Richie.
From above, if they were looking, Stan was peering out of the second floor window of their house with the phone receiver pressed to his ear and cheek. In the midst of watching their friends — their family — fighting what seemed to be a good fight, Eddie’s legs trembled just enough to get him to bolt. Bolt past Bev, who had now been swept up into Ben’s arms in an effort to pull her away from Belch across the fence, still kicking her legs. Bolt past Bill, who drunkenly swung his arms at Bowers while he showed off his blade. Past Mike, who couldn’t get a good enough hold on Bill’s flannel shirt to pull him away. Instead, Eddie found himself bounding up the front porch steps of Neibolt House and through the open door.
It was uglier inside than he expected, but that was for another time.
The attic door hung open and shards of glass littered the hardwood flooring, leaving the rest looking like an active crime scene. Eddie took his time and used his better judgement crossing the attic, swallowing thickly as the glass crunched below his shoes. From the open window, he could hear the others still yelling over bad music; nothing new. Maybe this could be his moment of silence, a split second of peace. He would blink, and everything would be over. Peeking out into the yard, Bowers’ attitude seemingly changed from arrogant to annoyed , but he was no longer brandishing his knife.
The sound of glass below another’s shoe was what had alerted him. Eddie quickly turned on his heel, and to his surprise, faced the one person he hadn’t seen throughout the entire day - Patrick Hockstetter, who was now holding Bowers’ knife with a fisted hand by his side. Bev would later look back on this and call it Eddie’s luck taking charge, but he would disagree. As he had turned, Eddie just as quickly lost his footing and slipped on the scattered glass shards, bumping against the windowsill and before he knew it, he was falling.
Holy fuck, I’m about to die.
It wasn’t what he expected, no — his idea of death had always been the same. Eddie had always been terrified that it would end painfully, in a harsh way that would leave him mangled and difficult to identify. In his mind, he would simply get scraped off the ground and the coroner would move on to the next poor bastard who suffered a fate worse than his, not that he thought that was possible. His funeral would be rushed and with a sparse audience, just like he preferred. Instead, a prickly bush was what broke his fall, landing on his left arm instead of his head. This is not fucking luck . The pain that seared in his shoulder had replaced the blinding pain in his forearm, which… was not good.
“ Eddie! ”
Richie’s broad shoulders blocked the sunlight in his eyes, and for a heartbeat, Eddie didn’t even know that he had been screaming in agony until Richie dropped to his knees and took his dislocated arm into both of his hands. “Holy shit, okay, holy shit… ”
He didn’t want to look. Eddie knew that it would be bad, and he didn’t do well with broken bones or blood or vomit or anything . He slowly blinked his eyes open and looked up at Richie, his hair falling into his face and panic spreading across his features, and all he wanted to do was kiss him . The pain faded from his mind and, in knowing that Richie was supposedly there to help him, a sense of relief washed over him in a way that felt difficult to describe; clarity?
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, man, don’t you have, like, certifications?!”
The moment of clarity faded as soon as it came. Bev had seemingly wiggled out of Ben’s arms and all but sprinted into the yard, tumbling to her knees in front of Eddie and grabbing his arm. He didn’t quite notice.
“I just broke my fucking arm and you want me to fix it for you are you fucking serious Rich I just fell out of a window and that’s your first instinct oh let’s just get Eddie to snap his own arm into place right after he falls to his death —”
CRACK. Eddie screamed, and everything else went white.
When somebody wakes up from passing out in the movies, they never say how bad their head hurts afterward.
Eddie opened his eyes and, very typically, everybody was leaning over him. He had been moved back into the house and onto the couch that took him in like quicksand. The commotion outside had stopped, and everyone above him had been shocked into sobering up.
“Richie…”
Richie, the only one who hadn’t been crowding his space, sat up from the armchair where he had been sitting since they took him inside. His ears all but perked up, but he didn’t move. The look on his face was hard to place, leaving the others unsure of just how distressed he was. “He speaks.”
Sitting up, Eddie looked down at his arm and winced. For the time being, it had been splinted with a 2x4 that was cut in half and wrapped in bandages. “Did I just fucking die?”
Everyone took a few steps back, and with that, came a collective sigh of relief.
The following four days dragged by as he proudly wore his cast and sling as a badge of honor, mostly to himself. Richie had humored him, insisting that he could have beaten those guys if they didn’t shove him out the window like that. It was cute. He was cute.
I want to kiss you so fucking badly. I need you to kiss me again. You have to kiss me. If I don’t put my hands on you, I will boil alive in my love for you.
When they were alone, to him, it felt like they didn’t exist to anybody else. What was their business, stayed their business. What were their inside jokes, stayed their inside jokes. They never had to worry about being on anyone’s time but their own, and to Eddie, he thought that still wasn’t enough.
On the fifth day of his arm being in a sling, Eddie caught Richie in the garage doing his laundry. The clock read a crisp 1:59 am by the time the garage door clicked behind him.
“He’s alive… He’s aliiiive! ” Richie put his arms out in front of him and went slack-jawed in his best Frankensteinien nature after he shut the washing machine lid, and Eddie actually laughed. That was the fuel, Richie realized, that he had been missing his entire life without ever realizing it.
“Shut up,” Eddie almost teased, shaking his head. “You’re actually an idiot for doing your laundry right now. You should be asleep.”
“Says who? It’s the only time I can get my delicates in. You know how Ben is about his lingerie . It’s like, get a move on, we all have frilly underwear.” Swing and a miss — Eddie just rolled his eyes.
“I never got to say thanks. For making sure I was okay the other day.”
Now, Richie took a few aimless steps forward, putting his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants. “Oh, dude, it’s… nothing. I just wanted to make sure you didn’t die.”
Richie didn’t look at him, but Eddie had the feeling of not being able to look away.
“I literally could have fucking died. That would be on your conscience forever.”
“Don’t say that shit, man. No one wants you to die, especially… not me. That’s bad press for the house, we can’t afford another lawsuit!”
“... thanks, Rich. I owe you one.”
“Yeah, I mean… no problem.”
A pause. Finally, they looked at each other again.
“You remember my second week here, and we both woke up super early because we both wanted to make breakfast but you were using up all the hot water in the shower before anyone else was even up and I got so fucking mad at you?”
Richie nodded, and he smiled. Fond memories. “Yeah. Your face got all twisty and you told me that you would make my murder look like an accident.”
“And I kissed you.”
Richie had fallen uncharacteristically non-hyperverbal, instead staring at the cast Eddie had since been fitted for. “Hey, I never signed that thing. You got a pen?”
“You know, Rich, I could love you if you just... let me.”
The two of them stood for a moment as the color rushed to Richie’s face, and he took in a heavy breath. “Come on, man... I let you break your arm.”
“Okay, well, I think I would have broken my arm anyway as long as I’m here.”
“What if you break the other arm? Legally, I don’t really think I can be held responsible for that one.”
Be brave. Be bold. One more step, and the toe of Eddie’s shoe had grazed against Richie’s, untied. “Shut up, Richie.” It was then that he raised himself up on the tips of his toes to finally kiss him, to finally feel the heat radiating off his cheeks and onto his own. It wasn’t graceful or pretty by any means, almost missing Richie’s top lip entirely and getting a cheekful of the remnants of a shaved scratchy beard.
“I don’t think I ever want to leave this place,” Eddie’s words were soft, but came out firm. He was telling the truth, but wasn’t sure if he meant the garage or the personal space of another. Looking up, he found the eyes of someone who had been looking for something like that for a long time — a five mile stare, lost at sea. The redness had drained from Richie’s cheeks, now instead replaced with what Eddie could only assume were cartoon hearts floating above his head, screaming LOVE ME! LOVE ME! LOVE ME! “But if I fall out another fucking window again, I think I’m going to go insane.”
Richie swallowed hard and broke away from the haze he had found himself in. They could be happy if he let them.