Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Eddie's life was good. He'd even venture to say it was great.

Sure, he had a partly psychopathic mother who had probably given him enough trauma to leave him going to therapy for the rest of his remaining life, and yeah, he was bullied more often than not for his weird tics and behaviors.

But Eddie had also found an amazing group of friends at a young age, ones he could spend hours with in a boring convenience store, loitering in the candy aisles to beat the summer heat. Had friends that he'd sneak into R rated movies with, smuggling in candy through their pockets and unnecessary clothing garments, giggling as fake heads exploded and movie girls screamed in horror.

He had a friend group that felt like the magic of being kids no matter how old they got, no matter what bullies came their way, no matter what difficult research essays were assigned to them in school. And even though they called themselves the Losers Club, they seem to just get cooler the older they get.

So yeah, Eddie's life was good. Emphasis on the was. Because now it most definitely was not.

It all started with the innocent murmurings of there being a new student in their grade. It was a bit of a conversational piece of gossip since that didn't happen in Derry a lot. Hell, not a lot of anything ever happened in Derry, so it was something.

Despite all of the talk about the new student, he managed to go under everyone's radar for the first few days of senior year, well at least Eddie's radar because he didn't see anyone new anywhere. He also couldn't give a fuck about a new kid, because unlike everyone else, he thought his life to be interesting enough to not need to cling to something as minuscule as someone new in their grade.

That was until the new kid got into a fight that involved Bill. He didn't fight Bill, thank god or whoever, but from the scraps of what Eddie heard at the time, the new kid was being bullied and Bill came to the rescue like the self righteous prick he was, because of course Bill has the exact moral code that results him in being the hero in every situation, whether it included him getting his ass kicked or not.

And call Eddie judgmental or whatever you want, but he did not like the new kid already. He'd not only gotten into a fight in the first week, but also roped one of his best friends into it? Yeah, Eddie wasn't going to deal with any of that shit. It was senior year, the last year the Losers had together in Derry, and the last thing Eddie wanted was for them to get roped into drama.

Of course that's when Bill decided to bring the new kid unannounced to their underground hangout, the one that was very much secret and only for the Losers. Eddie nearly screamed at the intrusion, a stranger next to Bill in their sanctuary, and he expected much of the same reaction from the others, but to his surprise, the rest of the Losers were getting up from their spots and ambling up to the new kid excitedly.

The new kid was pale, lanky, kind of awkward-looking with his gangly limbs and hunched posture, and his dark shaggy hair almost brushed his shoulders. He had thick glasses which made his eyes look big and bug-like, and they were a bit screwed up from most likely the fight earlier, but his mouth was even bigger, Eddie soon found out.

His new and unwelcome presence made Eddie glare at him suspiciously from the hammock, but the rest of the Losers' immediate infatuation with the dork just made Eddie sink down, sort of like an alligator peering from the surface of the water.

Didn't this guy just get Bill into a fight? Why was everyone laughing at the dumb joke he just made?

"What's squirrelly's name over there?" his already-arrogant voice asked after a bit of talking and getting to know the Losers. Eddie didn't want to give him the satisfaction of his name, he decided as he huffed and crossed his arms as a response.

"Oh, that's just Eddie. He's what society would call... territorial," Stan answered for him while all eyes turned to his way. Eddie felt his cheeks begin to burn under the attention.

"Squirrelly? Territorial?!" he asked incredulously, the frustration seeping out from his voice.

"Dude, you literally never let anyone else sit in that hammock," Mike answered deadpan.

"And you look like a cute little squirrel with how you're looking over the edge of the fabric," the new kid, Richie, said while squinting his eyes and holding up his hand as if he was imagining squishing Eddie's head.

"That's because it's my hammock, and I do not look like a fucking squirrel. And even so, squirrels are actually vicious animals and not in any way cute," Eddie refuted back, rolling his eyes.

"Never mind him, he's our little drama queen," Bev laughed out as they all turned their attention away, back to Richie . Eddie grit his teeth at how emasculating her words were.

Ignoring the ache already setting in his jaw, Eddie flipped back open his comic book, trying to lose himself in the adventures of the X-Men to maybe regain some sanity. He still couldn't believe Bill betrayed their trust, his trust, and brought a complete stranger to the hangout.

The next second, Eddie felt the hammock rock roughly, and before he could even comprehend what was happening, he was kicked and shoved slightly over to where there was someone else entirely in the hammock with him.

First he looked at the beat up Chuck Taylor All-Stars Converse shoes next to his head, his eyes then travelled up the loose straight blue jeans, then to the raggedy belt that looked more similar to a seatbelt than anything holding up said pants, then to the obnoxious eyesore of a Hawaiian shirt, then finally on the shit-eating grin adorning Richie's cocky face.

"Why the fuck are you in my hammock?" Eddie burst out in anger, his voice just a bit screechy. Richie's feet were near his head, and it took everything inside of Eddie to hold himself back from just kicking this prick in the head since his friends like him for some reason. He still didn't get it, why they were so readily accepting of this chump.

He chuckled, making Eddie even angrier as he felt his mouth crease into a frown. "I thought it was time you shared. Plus it looked comfy. If you really have that much of a problem with it, you could always get out, you know," Richie posed with a quirk to his eyebrow. That's it, Eddie tapped Richie's head with his shoe a tad bit aggressively.

Eddie couldn’t just get out of the hammock. It was his spot. Plus, he was there first anyway which is house rules for it being his turn. And, getting out of the hammock would be admitting defeat, and he was sure as fuck not about to do that to the four-eyed new kid.

"Fuck you," Eddie fumed, making sure to make eye contact with the other boy to establish his hatred.

"Eddie-" Ben tried to reprimand him for being rude.

"Aw, Eddie, we just met. I'm not the kind to put out on the first date," Richie said condescendingly with a demeaning tilt to his head, cutting Ben off from whatever chastisement he had prepared. Eddie hated him, he'd decided it.

The rest of the Losers laughed loudly at his dumb remark. No one ever challenged Eddie like this. Sure, Stan would say the snarky quip every now and then about him, but no one ever challenged him head on like this; no one ever antagonized him purposefully.

"I like him," Bev said audibly, to which the others agreed while Eddie remained brewing silently, turning his head as far as he could to not face Richie while still being in the hammock with him.

With pink tipped ears, Eddie decided that he hates Richie and that he'll never be his friend. And this was the beginning of his great life becoming a miserable one.

Which leads to now, Eddie pacing his room as quietly as possible to not alert his mom as he fumes. He still couldn't believe Bill brought a stranger into their friend group that they've been steadily building since Kindergarten. He thought they capped off with Mike when they were 13 when they saved him from a literal hate crime?

After all, adding another member now would only make things messy since it was senior year; it was basically time to say goodbye and go their separate ways. What? Was Richie now invited to their holiday get-togethers that they'd use to reconnect after going off for college? Adding someone new so late only complicated things; it was too vague and uncharted and made Eddie fucking uncomfortable.

Eddie's not sure how he developed his bad habit of pacing when he's angry and overthinking, which happens more often than it should be for him. So now he's just in his room, wearing away the carpet as his fingers itch for his inhaler.

He reminds himself that he doesn't fucking need that. It was a placebo after all, a word he became too familiar with in recent years. As much as he hated it, the buying of the fake pills and prescriptions and all that shit, it made his mom happy. And for some reason that's all Eddie wanted to do despite her blatant manipulation of him.

He stopped pacing for a second, losing his train of thought. Thinking about his mom always fucking did that.

Oh right, he was angrily pacing over Richie. He sort of wanted to punch something the more he thought about it. Richie not only infiltrated their underground hangout, but he also made Eddie look dumb in front of his friends. Called him cute while shoving himself into his personal space, insinuated that he was a queer, and laughed in his face.

With his face feeling hot, Eddie reached under his bed to find a spare pillow to punch since he didn't want to mess up any of his actual pillows, seeing as how he finally got the gotten to surface area ratio perfected. He could have sworn that there was at least one extra pillow under here that he'd use when going to stuff like summer camp, but all his hand clasps on is what feels like a plastic brick.

Confused, Eddie pulls the object out from under the bed, sitting down cross legged on the floor and staring at it. Oh, it was his walkie-talkie from when he was probably in third or fourth grade. Those were the days when the friend group was just him, Bill, and Stan, finding the same frequency and pretending they were on secret spy missions as they ran around in the forest. They never usually used them at home for communication since their houses were too far and the connection was too weak.

Eddie's eyebrows drew together as he stared at the relic from his childhood, extending the metal antenna and fiddling with it. Suddenly, the walkie-talkie crackled to life, causing him to jump slightly at the noise.

Impulsively, Eddie clicks on the giant button on the side. "Hello? Is anyone there?" he asks to the brick, feeling dumb.

Why was he asking if anyone was there? Of course there wasn't. Stan and Bill had probably thrown out their walkie-talkies ages ago. They never seemed to hold onto stuff as long as Eddie did.

All he got in response to his question was the same static sound, the white noise filling his room quietly. Of course no one was on the line. But that makes Eddie think; there really is no one else on the line that could possibly hear him. Clicking down on the giant side button again, Eddie sighs.

"I- I know no one is on this fucking line, which I guess means it's a good place to rant since I don't want to really weigh anyone else down with my shit," Eddie rants haphazardly into the line, shifting his position on the floor to lean on his bed.

"Well, I guess it's more like none of my friends would understand or even care about my problems. Because my problem is this fucking new kid that they all love. For some batshit crazy reason, Bill thought it'd be totally fine for him to bring a stranger to our secret hangout, as if secret isn't in the title! And it's just like, I guess I wouldn't have minded the new guy so much if Bill had talked it over with us first, but he didn't so I guess just fuck whatever I think. And oh yeah! The new guy was fucking insufferable so I guess there really was no chance for us getting along. I don't even see what everyone else thinks is so great about him," Eddie goes on, finding it surprisingly easy to rant to the static noise that greets him when he pauses and lets go of the button.

"I just... I just fucking hate change so much, so much to where I still miss using my inhaler even though I know it doesn't even work. But like, sometimes I swear I can feel my lungs failing, and I'm so sure that they need the extra help of the inhaler. But I guess that's crazy. The Losers would all laugh at me since they know all of my problems are fake anyway," Eddie fumes, his anger tapering off the more he rants.

Shifting his eyes in the silence that follows his outburst, the white noise shuffling in the air antagonistically, his eyes land on his window. It was completely dark outside, stars spattered in the sky like an abstract painting that Eddie would hate to see in an art gallery.

It reminds him of how insignificant he is for some reason, how minuscule he truly was. Sometimes the Losers felt so big that he had no idea how he could ever amount, how he could ever catch up. And now there was this new kid seeming way too ready to point out all of Eddie’s worst fears, emphasizing the way he didn’t truly fit in with his friends. Clenching his fists, he blinks away from the window and sighs.

"Well, um, I guess I better go to bed. I have to get sleep and make good grades to go to a good college. Because everyone's plan is to ditch this place, I guess. Plus I think my mom will ask me who I'm talking to if I keep going on for much longer. Umm... I guess goodbye to no one," Eddie ends sort of awkwardly, not knowing how to close off since there was no one actually there. Why the fuck was he saying formalities to the white noise?

For a moment, the static cuts out a bit, concerning Eddie as it occurs, but it quickly stops. Probably the cell tower being weird or however walkie-talkies work.

Turning off the plastic brick, Eddie slides it back under his bed before standing up from the floor, ignoring the ache in his legs or the insistent thoughts of how gross his floor probably is. He felt weirdly good considering that he didn't have to punch anything to relieve his anger. Maybe ranting to no one would be a healthy sort of coping mechanism. He did tend to have anger issues so this could possibly help.

The rant makes Eddie feel so much better that he's basically forgotten about Richie's existence entirely by the time he's biking up to school. Of course as he's parking his bike at the rack, he sees an infamous pair of beaten up Chuck Taylors approach him.

"Hello, Eddie Spaghetti," Richie says with a shit-eating grin, reaching up and trying to ruffle his hair.

Eddie dodges him quickly with a huff, knowing his mom would kill him if he came home with so much as a hair out of place.

"Don't fucking call me that, it gives away that you're mentally equal to a third grader," Eddie scowls, finally finishing up locking his bike in and walking off to the side of the school.

"Come on, it was funny," Richie laments as he follows Eddie at his heels. He reminded him of a dog. A yappy, unlikable dog.

"You might want to look up what funny means in a dictionary, moron," Eddie refutes back as he keeps walking to where he usually meets the Losers before school. He didn't want to pretend like Richie was charming the way everyone else did because he most definitely wasn’t.

"Cool, I can borrow one from you since you seem like the fun type of guy to buy the yearly encyclopedia with his allowance," Richie responds nonchalantly. Eddie's about to spout out another jab at him, but before he can even open his mouth, Richie speeds up once he sees the Losers so he gets there before him.

Eddie feels his face get red, not only because Richie got the last word in that argument, but because he just realized that he used him to find the others. Of course he was only following him to find yet another niche place where the Losers hung out, not to actually talk to him.

By the time Eddie arrives at the group, they're all giggling like crazy. Eddie feels a premature frown form on his face.

"And so I said, that's not a cow, that's Eddie's mom!" Richie suddenly exclaims as if he was in the middle of telling a joke.

The rest of the Losers burst into laughter, Beverly even going as far as to clutch onto her sides. And Stan never laughs that loud. Eddie scowls as he stares at them.

"You told them to laugh like you just told the funniest joke ever when I walked up, didn't you?" Eddie asks after the laughter dies down for a moment.

"Why do you think that? Did you ever consider that I'm just naturally funny?" Richie asks cockily, batting his eyelashes.

"There's no way you had enough time to execute a hilarious joke to everyone between the, like, five seconds it took for me to catch up," Eddie explains, his eyebrows knitting while the rest of the Losers continued to pretend that Richie's joke was funny.

"Fine you caught me, thanks for the killer performance everyone," Richie admits after a minute, congratulating everyone as if it was an Oscar-winning performance, which it was not since Eddie could tell instantly. Everyone was still giggling despite there not being an actual joke, and Eddie failed to see what could be so funny.

"Why the fuck would you even joke about my mom? You've never even met her," Eddie fumes as the giggles continue. He tries to tell himself to not get too defensive over his mom, knows it's weird, but of course Richie just had to dig where it stung whether he was aware of it or not.

"Not true, Spaghetti. Although I have only been here for a short amount of time, that has not stopped me and Mrs. Eddie's mom from having many sexual conquests," Richie jokes in a very matter-of-fact tone. This causes the rest of the group to burst out with laughter again, probably due to not being used to such lewd talk, especially of each other's moms.

"Fucking ew," Eddie says, actually disgusted from Richie's sick joke. "And it's miss, which you would know if you knew her."

"Hey, I don't ask about martial status of my lovers, I just bang," Richie defends with his hands up in a surrendering position, feigning innocence.

Hearing the rest of the Losers continue to laugh at this whole interaction, Eddie sets his lips in a line and just walks away, fed up with it all. Well, he likes to imagine that he walked away like a mature adult, but he probably stormed off like a temperamental toddler. But his face was getting redder and he didn't want to give them more of a reason to laugh.

Being the butt of the joke is not something Eddie's unfamiliar with since he's been picked on and teased for his whole life, but being the butt joke of the friend group stings different. He just didn't know why Richie took it as such a personal mission to mess with him, especially since he's known him for less than a day. Maybe he was an easy target; maybe he did it to himself.

Eddie just doesn't understand why his friends would laugh at that joke. They knew how fucked up his relationship with his mom was, knew that his dad died when he was young, why would they just... laugh at what Richie said?

He knew he was being sensitive, didn't know why this was getting him so worked up, but he couldn't help it. He tries to unclench his hands, realizing that the grip he had on his own shirt was similar to how his mom used to hold him him place.

He storms into the bathroom, taking a few deep breaths before trying to get himself together. Class was going to start in 5 minutes, and he would be made into an even worse laughing stock if the Losers knew he was actually upset and couldn't take a joke.

He wishes he could pop some fake anti-anxiety pills right now or even rant to his fucking walkie-talkie, as pathetic as that sounds, but he just shakes his head and heads back out into the school. After rewashing his hands, of course; the school bathrooms were fucking nasty. Even when he was trying to break away from his old habits, he couldn't resist all of them.

Eddie would like to say that his day got better from there, but it didn't. Richie made faces at him in every class they had, ones Eddie had no idea he was even in until he knew to watch out for him now, and none of the Losers seemed to take him seriously. He knew it was leftover giggles from the morning debacle, but it still makes him angry.

And if that's not bad enough, right as the Losers are about to sit at their usual lunch table, Richie steers them away by saying he wanted to try a new spot, which didn't make any fucking sense since he had never sat with them for lunch. But of course since his friends seemed to have been traded out for mindless sheep recently, they all follow him without question to a new table.

And look, it wasn't that bad, but the table was closer to the middle of the cafeteria than anything, so Eddie's back was to a whole number of people it used to not be to at their old table.

It just seemed like Richie already had the whole group wrapped around his finger within knowing them for hardly a day, and Eddie wasn't falling for it. He felt like the only sane one as everyone laughed along with Richie's jokes while he quietly ate his sandwich, brewing.

Needless to say, after another full day of Richie being included in the group as if he was a part of it, which he most definitely was not, Eddie storms into his room infuriated. Not only had Richie jammed himself into the hammock yet again once they went to the secret hangout after school, but he called Eddie's favorite comic series dumb. They argued about it for a solid 30 minutes, as if The Death of Superman is better than X-Force.

Eddie wants to slam the door, but he doesn't since that would get him grounded. His mom was already looking for any reason to possibly ground him to keep him home, he didn't want to actually give her a reason.

But he needed to get his anger out somehow. He was pacing the floor again, and he almost felt maniacal at this point. And then he remembers the walkie-talkie. As dumb as it is, he still finds himself reaching under his bed and pulling out the plastic brick.

Without even hesitating, he pulls out the long antenna and turns it on, hitting the button to silence the white noise. "Richie Tozier fucking sucks," he mutters angrily. Flaring his nostrils, he gets ready to vent out all of his feelings.

"He only cares about himself. And where did he even come from anyway? He thinks he can just show up and then all of the sudden he can be best friends with my friends. I already have enough shit going on in my life that I don't need to deal with his shit," Eddie keeps ranting as he paces, keeping his voice down but still exuding his anger.

Right as he's about to silence the white noise to rant some more about how absolutely dumb Richie is, he hears the same crackling from yesterday. He pauses as he listens to it, almost sounding like a voice.

"What shit is going on in your life?" A deep and garbled voice emits from the walkie-talkie. Eddie nearly screams, dropping the device and taking a step back.

Fuck, so this means that someone was listening to him during his small rant. And who knows? Maybe they heard his rant yesterday; that would be just his luck.

Of course he shouldn't have just ranted to an empty radio station, how dumb of him. He should have just written it down, or "journaled" it, as his counselor told him to do when his mother decided a few years back that he needed one.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" the garbled voice asks from the ground, making Eddie flinch a tiny bit. Fuck, so the guy was still there.

"Look, I don't know who you are, but you've got some fucking nerve to eavesdrop on my private conversations," Eddie threatens angrily after he picks up the walkie-talkie from the ground, his fear fizzling out into anger. He figures that if this guy really did hear all of his ranting, then he should keep it to himself.

"Who are you even talking to? This frequency is empty," the voice says back, and Eddie swears he hears sass in its tone.

"None of your fucking business," Eddie answers quickly, his cheeks heating up.

"Woah, language," the voice laughs now, still gravelly and weird sounding.

"Look, I don't know who you are, but you better not fucking tell anyone whatever you heard. What's your name anyway?" Eddie continues to threaten despite how this voice was already getting under his skin.

"That's a bit personal isn't it?" the voice questions back.

"Listening to my private conversation while I knew nothing about it is 'a bit personal,' isn't it?" Eddie refutes, doing air quotes with sass permeating his voice.

"Point made," the voice admits. "Here, I promise I won't tell anyone about all of your personal shit as long as you tell me your name."

"Do you even hear yourself? What kind of ass-backwards logic is that?" Eddie nearly laughs from the audacity. Emphasis on nearly.

"C'mon, just tell me your name and then I'll tell you mine. That way you can hold me accountable."

"No fucking way. Even if I have your name, I don't have any dirt on you while you have shit on me," Eddie rationalizes, giving his ceiling an exasperated look as he explains how dumb the idea is.

"Fine, if I tell you a secret about myself, then can we exchange names?" the voice says after a second. Eddie thought he might have given up in the silence for a moment.

"Sure, as long as it's a good one. A lame secret means nothing," Eddie responds after a second, thrown off by the request. Was he really trading secrets with a stranger on his walkie-talkie?

"Okay. I guess... I guess my biggest secret is that my parents hate me. I mean, they've never said it to my face, but they always ignore me, never make time for me, just stuff like that. I guess it's not that big of a deal, but it makes me feel like they regret me. Like they never wanted to have me in the first place," the garbled voice admits. Eddie blinks in shock for a few seconds, the white noise filling the space that he didn't know how to.

"Woah, that was... heavy," is all he can respond with.

"Oh whatever, now you have to tell me your name!" the voice switches almost instantly, going from somber to sounding chipper suddenly after such a depressing admittance.

"Ugh, fine. My name's Eddie," he answers begrudgingly.

"Eddie...?" the voice inquires.

"No fucking way I'm telling you my last name. Now tell me your name before I hang up," Eddie answers with frustration.

"As if you could hang up on me," the voice teases. It makes Eddie's face wind up in a disgusted scrunch. "Anyway the name's, uh, Lionel."

"Lionel? Sounds like a name for a lion in a bad cartoon," Eddie thinks out loud.

"Wow, you're such a flatterer, Eddie," the voice laughs. "I can confidently say that I've never heard that one before."

"Yeah, whatever," Eddie says into the line, finally sitting on his bed as he thinks. Why was he even talking to this random stranger again?

"Lionel, how did you find this frequency?" he asks after a moment, not sounding as accusatory as he wanted.

"Eh, my dad's a trucker so I like to use his old radio system to just see what cool radio stations I can find, but then I found you randomly ranting about something and thought it was entertaining," he admits after a moment. His honesty makes Eddie's face heat up for some reason. He's about to respond, something about that being why his dad is absent, before he's cut off.

"You never answered my question," Lionel says suddenly.

"What question?" Eddie asks, puzzled as to whatever he was talking about.

"I asked you about what shit you had going on in your life before you, ya know, freaked out," Lionel laughs out, the crackly noise making Eddie's nostrils flare.

"Like I'd tell you," he laughs humorlessly.

"C'mon dude, I told you about my whole sob story with my parents. Shed a little information for poor old Lionel, won't cha?" he pesters and persists.

Eddie bites his lip before sighing. "Ugh, fine. I just- there's just a lot of shit that goes on with my mom. It's hard to explain."

"What do you mean?" Lionel asks, his joking tone dropping and seeming more concerned now.

Eddie opens his mouth to explain, but his throat freezes. "Eddie, sweetie, are you still awake? You know being up so late on a school night makes you more susceptible to viruses. And don't even get me started on insomnia," he hears his mother fret from downstairs.

"Sorry mommy, I was just getting a glass of water. I'm going to bed now," he calls back, putting on the sweetest voice he can without groaning. It's honestly a talent how high he can make his voice considering how much it's dropped since he was a kid.

"Okay, that's a good Eddie-bear," she calls back, seeming satiated with his response. She probably just didn't want to get out of her recliner if it wasn't necessary. He lets out a sigh of relief that she's not barreling up the stairs to tuck him in right now.

Turning his attention back to his room, his walkie-talkie is crackling as Lionel's voice talks all garbled.

"Sorry if I was overstepping, you don't have to tell me if you don't-"

"I can't talk right now, sorry. Good night, Lionel," Eddie says simply, pushing the antenna back into the brick before the other guy can even respond, pushing it far back underneath his bed so his mom wouldn't find it. Maybe it's so that he won't even be able to find it tomorrow.

Even as he gets ready for bed and lays down in his sheets, Eddie still can't stop thinking about his conversation with Lionel. It was... odd to say the least. But the guy seemed nice?

Eddie wasn't dumb enough to trust him automatically, though. He could be 40 year old man for all he knew. He needed to be careful and not give too much of himself away, even if ranting to him could be nice, especially since all of his friends have seemed to abandoned him for Richie.

And sure, it seems like he's being dramatic, but Eddie becomes resolute in his disdain for Richie when he meets the Losers at the Quarry the next day only to see Richie amongst them. His face must say it all because Bill gives him a chastising look before he can even open his mouth to question the intruder.

Sure, they were quick to accept Ben, Bev, and even Mike, but that was when they were kids, when they were all bullied mercilessly by Bowers and his friends. Looking back now, they kind of came together in a need for survival. All Richie did was get Bill involved in a fist fight in his first week of being here and then spout endless horrible jokes.

"Eddie, why so frowney?" Richie asks as he comes up next to him on the side of the cliff and pinches his cheeks, causing Eddie to recoil back and smack his arm. "Is it because you couldn't get enough sleep with how loud me and your mom were banging? I tried to tell her to pipe down, but she just couldn't help herself, I guess."

The rest of the Losers break out into cacophonous laughter as Richie's face splits into a shit-eating grin. Eddie hates him, he really does. He could hardly sleep last night with how much he was agonizing over the Losers starting to see him as some kind of joke the way he always feared. And now here Richie was, giving them more and more reasons to laugh at him.

Right as Richie's about to open his mouth again, probably spout more shit about having fantasy sex with his mom, Eddie sees red as lurches forward arms-first, fully intending to push him off the cliff into the water below in a bout of rage.

Right before Richie topples over, though, he manages to clamp a vice grip on Eddie's arm before he drags him down with him, both of them falling off the ledge incidentally.

Eddie let's out a rushed "fuck!" before he's already hitting the water, shockingly cold since summer's fleeting quickly and he wasn't expecting it. He lands on his side, the clap of his body against the water being loud enough that it echos in his ears as he sinks into the lake. The rush of bubbles take over his hearing as his side aches from the impact, the wind knocked out of him. Coming back to his senses after a moment, he claws his way up to the surface for a breath of air.

Gasping, he treads the surface as he tries to reorient himself. Once he sees Richie surface as well, though, it's over.

"You fucking asshole! I'm still in my clothes!" is what Eddie finds himself screeching first.

"Um, last I checked, you were the one pushing me off of a cliff!" Richie responds, a tad bit hysterical as he holds onto his glasses and tries to whip his longer hair out of his face as he paddles too.

"You were being an ass about my mom for like the tenth time this week, and I've only known you for, like, three days!" Eddie exclaims angrily as he wades closer to Richie.

"Are you guys okay down there?" Eddie hears Mike call from above, his voice bouncing off of the cliff walls surrounding them.

"We're all good!" Richie calls up to them, the tops of the Loser's heads seeming relieved as they pull back from view.

Still angry, Eddie splashes water at Richie.

"What the fuck is your deal? You already threw me off a cliff?" Richie asks incredulously after he sputters out the lake water.

"You pulled me off a cliff! And I was fully dressed!" Eddie fumes, waving his hands around as much as he can while still keeping himself afloat.

"Jesus fucking Christ, if I knew you were as sensitive as your mom's nipples, then I wouldn't have said anything," Richie mutters to himself, a small smile still on his dumb fucking face even as he's soaked like a dog.

"Oh my fucking god, that's it," Eddie sputters before launching himself at Richie, with somewhat joking intentions to drown him. If he ended up dying, though, he wouldn't be entirely opposed.

After struggling under the water for a bit, Richie gets ahold of one of his shoulders with his giant fucking hand and pushes him under the surface. Eddie fights and struggles as they both fight to push the other one down, wriggling to escape his hold and get the upper hand, gasping every time he can find the surface.

It doesn't stop until they're physically being ripped apart by Bill, because of course Bill always has to be self-righteous and in charge of everything. He must have jumped off of the cliff and they didn't even notice in the midst of the argument.

"Eddie, stop f-f-fucking try to kill-ll Richie!" Bill sputters angrily as he pushes them apart.

"Me?!" Eddie exclaims exasperated. "Richie's the one who started it!"

"I made a joke about your mom, I didn't fucking push you off a cliff and try to drown you!" Richie bickers back.

"You pulled me off a cliff, and I wasn't trying to drown you," Eddie counters with a roll of his eyes. He knows he's being a jackass, can see that he's somewhat in the wrong in this instance, but at this point, he feels like he's stuck watching himself from a third perspective while he fucks everything up.

"Oh yeah? Then what was pushing me under the water trying to do then? Just some horseplay?" Richie counters, seeming genuinely pissed now.

"You t-two are bickering like k-k-kids!" Bill cuts them off angrily. "C-cut it out, Eddie!" Bill chastises.

Eddie opens his mouth to counter again, to defend himself even though he knows it's pointless in this case, but the rest of the Losers come jumping down before he can get a word out. Once they resurface, they're giggling and wading over.

"What are you guys yelling about?" Bev asks light-heartedly with her crooked smirk, an amused crease in her brow.

Bill looks like he's about to make some moralistic statement while Richie looks like he's about to regale how he was almost tragically murdered by Eddie's bare hands.

"Nothing," Eddie cuts them off, promptly wading off to the shore. He got water up his nose during his and Richie's fight, and his mind has been subconsciously freaking out about all of the germs now in his system ever since even though he knows it's not a big deal and that he shouldn't be freaking out about it.

He can feel the Losers, plus Richie, looking at him as he already goes to the shore for the day, but he can hardly give a fuck. It just isn't fucking fair. The Losers will let Richie say whatever he wants at Eddie's expense, laugh at him openly, but then once he's finally fed up with it, he's the bad guy?

Wading away is for the best, no matter the burning in his cheeks or chest. He knows how he gets when he's like this, and he can't control it no matter how much he wants to. He becomes hypersensitive to every remark made, to every possible germ that could harm him, and it causes him to lash out to his own horror later on when he realizes what an ass he's made out of himself.

It's usually very rare for him to get like this, especially since he's been working on unlearning all of the harmful and paranoid shit his mom's taught him growing up. But ever since Richie's showed up, he's felt like he's been in survival mode.

He doesn't even know why. In all honesty, what Richie does isn't nearly as infuriating as it makes Eddie feel, but something about him makes Eddie so angry that he wants to scream at him. The Losers were supposed to be his safe place from all the bullies, from all the condescending adults, from his own fucking mom, but now Richie's tainted that and made him into a joke. He's fucking unraveling and it's because of Richie one way or another. And that's just another reason to get upset.

He sulks on the shore for a bit while the Losers have fun. Looking at them chicken fighting in the shallow water and splashing around, it almost makes it glaringly obvious to Eddie how they don't need him. Seven is an odd number anyway, and they seem to be overjoyed at the prospect of Richie replacing him. Eddie feels his heart tighten at this realization, and it gets hard to breathe.

He wants to rip Richie away from the group by his ear, yell at him for ruining what they had going, tell him off for imposing himself, but it's really Eddie ruining it all, isn't it? He just doesn't want the Losers to fall for whatever shtick he has going, doesn't like the change that Richie's bringing so suddenly, but that just makes him look like the controlling villain.

Looking at himself in the water which ripples gently as the rest of the Losers laugh delightedly from whatever they're doing, Eddie realizes that he's just like his mom. He wants rip Richie out of the picture, wants to protect the Losers from change at all costs. So much so that he ends up screaming and being entirely too overbearing.

Eddie feels his face go red with this realization as his heart drops. When he found out that all of his medications were fake, that he was manipulated into a sense of unhealthy dependency for his whole childhood, he swore to himself that he would never let anything drive him to become like his mom. Yet here he was, pissed that his friends were having fun because it wasn't the exact way he wanted.

Ashamed, Eddie silently slips away from the scene. He was still a bit soaking from falling into the lake, his polo shirt sticking to him, his shorts dripping, and his shoes squelching as he walks through the forest all alone. His mom would kill him if he came home like this, so he resorts to walking around aimlessly in the afternoon haze to dry off.

Deep in thought, he walks through town with his hands plunged into his pockets, his head downturn. He's not even sure he's formed a cohesive thought throughout his walk despite how much his mind was racing, his thoughts just angrily brewing over his anger towards Richie and feeling guilty for it in the process. Thinking cohesively caused him to realize stuff he didn’t want to anyway.

"Hey bubble boy!" he hears a voice call out to him, though it's a nickname he hasn't been called a while. Eddie stops in his tracks and looks around for the owner of the voice, his eyes landing on Clancy Brown walking towards him quickly.

Eddie's eyebrows shoot up in a confused expression. He didn't really know Clancy, just knew of him since he was the principal's son and in his grade, but not much more. And now here he was, practically chasing him down for god-knows-why.

"Bubble boy," Clancy repeats once he's caught up to him, seemingly out of breath for no reason. "You take pills all the time right? Have a tab at the pharmacy and everything?"

Eddie feels his fists clench at the oddly invasive questions but keeps his face straight. He only went to the pharmacy every now and then and got his pills to satiate his mother, poured them out in the trashcans in the school bathrooms or even flushed them down the toilet. But to everyone except for the Losers, they thought he was the same germaphobe kid hooked on all kinds of antibiotics.

"Um, yeah, I guess. Why are you asking?" Eddie asks after a beat, already uncomfortable from Clancy's hand on his shoulder. He tries to breathe through his nose as he reminds himself that it's not that gross, that he can always wash his shirt.

"Could I buy some anxiety pills or something like that off of you? Just something to get me high," Clancy answers, keeping his voice down as his eyes dart around although no one else is on the street, much less paying them any attention.

His question shocks Eddie because Clancy is notoriously a goodie-two-shoes at school, a teacher's pet, especially since his dad's the principal. Thinking of him as a druggie just didn't really make any sense. But Eddie supposes that you can’t judge a book by its cover, if this is any proof of it.

"Dude are you crazy? No way. Just go get actual drugs or something, don't drag me into it," he responds, recoiling from his grip as his eyebrows knot on his forehead. The last thing he needs is to get involved in fucking illegal activity, with Clancy at that.

The other boy looks like he's about to say something else, maybe even plead since he looks pretty desperate. It almost reminds Eddie of himself back when he was dependent on an inhaler when he didn't really need it.

"Best of luck to you dude, or something like that," Eddie says quickly before pacing away, not wanting to be at the receiving end of Clancy's anger if it were to come from his refusal. It's usually the seemingly normal kids to be the fucking psychotic ones.

By the time he's fast-walked his entire way home, throwing a glance over his shoulder every now and then to make sure Clancy wasn't following him or some shit like that, Eddie's completely dry. He quietly enters his home, hoping his mom won't be too overjoyed that he's home sooner than usual.

When he looks into the living room, though, she's passed out with some random game show blabbering on the TV, her nails painted a new color. Plum purple. He'll have to tell her that the shade suits her whenever she wakes up.

With his head swimming, though, Eddie finds himself walking up the stairs quietly and entering his room, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. Without much further thought, he reaches for his walkie-talkie underneath his bed. His mom would only be napping for so long, and he had a good amount of thoughts that he'd like to get out.

"Lionel? Come in Lionel, are you there?" he asks the receiver after extending the antenna and turning the device on. He knew it wasn't likely that Lionel was there since the only time they talked, it was at night, and it's late afternoon now at the most, but Eddie still felt bad for how he left with no explanation yesterday.

He sits there waiting for a response, for a murmur or anything, for a while until he finally gives up, getting ready to just rant to silence. Right as he opens his mouth, though, he hears a voice come through.

"Eddie, was that you?" the garbled voice asks. Eddie laughs at that, because who else would it be?

"Yeah, it's me Lionel," Eddie answers into the receiver. "I didn't think you'd be on this channel since we talked at night yesterday."

"Oh, you know, there's not much to do when you have no friends," Lionel's crackly voice answers after a second.

Eddie opens his mouth, an invitation to hang out on his tongue, before he shuts it, remembering that Lionel could be a 40 year old serial killer for all he knows. He doesn't even know why he was so close to letting the invitation slipping out, maybe because he's desperate for a new friend in place of the Losers. He didn't want to replace them, per se, but it would feel nice to have a backup plan at least if they chose to follow through with replacing him with Richie.

"Um, Lionel, how old are you?" Eddie asks after a moment, pondering how old he could be. He didn't sound like an old man, but then again, their connection is weak so his voice sounds weird all of the time, so he could be 85 for all he knows. And what kind of name was Lionel anyway? Definitely not a normal name for his generation.

"Woah, that's a bit of an invasive question, isn't it Eddie?" Lionel laughs out. Eddie feels his face get red and he tries to defend himself, but Lionel's already talking again. "But yeah, I get it, how old is this friendless freak on the walkie-talkie? I turned 18 recently, actually."

"You- you're 18?" he asks in shock. "Do you go to Derry High then?" Eddie can't help but asking, thinking over how Lionel's apparently as old as him and in his grade.

"Uh, nope. I'm homeschooled, hence the no-friends thing," his voice crackles back after a moment.

"I have a friend who used to be homeschooled. We convinced his grandpa to let him go to public school for high school which is cool," Eddie offers conversationally, thinking back on how all of the Losers practically had to beg on their knees for Mike to be able to go to school with them. It wasn't until they convinced his grandpa that they'd defend him from all of the racist assholes that he ok'd it.

"Wow, you're making me jealous," Lionel jokes with a lighthearted tone.

"Sorry," Eddie responds sheepishly, not thinking of how it could be seen as rubbing it in his face. "Wait, I thought you said that your parents ignore you all the time? How do they homeschool you then?”

Lionel's connection cuts out a bit before he responds. "Yeah, they hired like a sort of maid lady to do that for me too so they really don't ever have to see me. It's the best,” he answers sarcastically.

"Sorry dude, that sounds awful," is all Eddie can think to say.

"Eh, it's fine. Other kids have it worse. Didn't you say you had some messed up stuff going on with your mom before you so rudely hung up on me yesterday?" Lionel quizzes, making Eddie get antsy on his bed.

"Yeah, um, I meant to say sorry for that. My mom was calling for me, and she'd kill me if she found out that I was talking to a stranger," Eddie admits after a sigh.

"I wouldn't call us strangers," Lionel interjects.

"You know what I mean, asshole," Eddie rolls his eyes at his comment.

"So, um, what shit goes on with your mom? You were about to say something about that last time," Lionel tacks on after a moment of silence. Eddie falls back onto his bed and stares up at the ceiling with the walkie-talkie practically plastered to his ear.

"Like I said before, it's hard to explain. I could give you a simple explanation or I can give you a long, detailed one that'll make you feel like shit for me," he sighs as he studies the popcorn pattern on the ceiling.

"Eh, I've got time. Give me the long and shitty one," Lionel says humorously. It causes Eddie to bite back a laugh.

"I guess the right place to start is when I was a baby? Basically when I was super young, my dad died. Soon after, I got pretty bad bronchitis, and I guess it sort of drove my mom off the edge? Like, she got so scared of losing me right after my dad. Which is understandable, but the shit she did after is what's the problem," Eddie explains, taking pauses and trying to figure out how to word it.

"What'd she do after?" Lionel asks, his voice quieter than before.

"Well, that's harder to explain. Basically, she took me to the doctor all of the time if there was so much of a hint of there being something wrong with me. Every cough, every sneeze, the list goes on. She was so convinced that I was sick, that I was so fragile that I could die from anything, and I guess she bullied my doctors into prescribing placebos," he tries to explain, rubbing his temples at some points.

"What are placebos?" Lionel asks with confusion littered in his garbled voice.

"Bullshit. They're basically fake medications that don't really do anything. Only I didn't know they were placebos for a long time, so I genuinely thought there was something incredibly wrong with me for 13 years. I even had an inhaler and everything. I took pills basically every hour, obsessed and fretted over every illness imaginable, and would have imaginary asthma attacks. All of that shit because my mom was irrationally terrified that I'd drop dead one day like my dad," Eddie explains, getting worked up once again as he thinks over all of pills he must have swallowed, how he still feels like he can't breathe sometimes without his inhaler.

"Holy shit dude, that's, like, actually mental. How'd you find out it was all bullshit?" Lionel asks, seemingly rapt in Eddie's batshit story. At least he found this story entertaining.

"The daughter of my pharmacist told me one day. I think she was telling me to be a jerk, but she helped me more than anything. It's so weird because I'll be doing so good and then something will suddenly turn me back into the hypochondriac I was when I was 13. I guess old habits die hard," Eddie chuckles humorlessly.

"Dude, you were manipulated into thinking you were seriously ill for the majority of your life. Kind of hard for that shit to just, you know, go away," Lionel rationalizes. It makes Eddie want to cry because he's never even had a conversation like this with any of the Losers, never had this kind of validation. Sure, they patted him on the back for throwing his pills away the first time, but they still liked to tease him about his uptight tendencies.

"Um, thanks for letting me talk and stuff. It helps a lot," Eddie says sheepishly after a moment.

"No problem. I'm just baffled by your wild story, dude. Definitely never met anyone with those kind of problems," Lionel answers sympathetically.

"See, I told you the long version would make you feel bad for me," Eddie laughs into the line.

"How do you deal with your mom now that you know?" Lionel asks after a moment, ignoring Eddie’s joke.

"I still get the prescriptions and act like I'm taking them for her sake. I try not to let her control me as much as she did when I was a kid. I try to just appease her when I can, you know? She's sick so I don't want to make things harder for her," Eddie answers somberly, his eyes dampening as he thinks about how his mom sometimes comes into his room and strokes his back when she thinks he's asleep, murmuring how she'd never let any harm come his way.

"You're a better man than me. I can't say I would be so fucking nice if I found out my mom did that shit to me," Lionel answers, sounding disbelieving.

"I don't know, it's just a complicated situation overall," Eddie replies, lost in thought.

"How does your mom feel about your friends? Assuming you have them, that is," Lionel asks after a moment with a chuckle.

"I have friends," Eddie says with feigned offense in his voice. "But, yeah, she hates anything that distracts me from her or puts me in danger, and my friends are in that category. One year I broke my arm because I fell into this secret underground hang out me and my friends have, and she almost locked me away for the rest of the year.

"Not to be rude, but she sounds like a control freak," his voice crackles with humor.

"That's putting it lightly," Eddie chuckles in response. "But honestly, my mom's the least of my worries right now," Eddie tacks after a second, thinking back to fucking Richie.

"What do you mean?" Lionel asks, seeming interested. Eddie wish he had the same kind of bliss as Lionel, not knowing the fucking parasite that called himself Richie Tozier.

"There's this new kid that my friends accepted into the group without my approval or any of my input. I'm not usually super judgy of new people, but my friend Bill even didn't meet the idiot until he got him into a fucking fight. Like I'm going to like someone who's only gotten my friends into dangerous situations," Eddie rolls his eyes as he recounts his reasoning.

"That's understandable," Lionel says after a moment.

"That's not even the worst of it! I'm not sure why, but it's like the douchebag has made it his personal mission to pester me and only me. But of course my friends eat that shit up because Richie's apparently the funniest person they've ever fucking met," Eddie fumes, starting to get even more worked up.

"The guy's name is Richie?" Lionel interjects.

"Yeah. What a fucking lame name, too. Sounds smarmy as all hell," Eddie continues.

"I think I might have met him at the arcade once. Does he have black hair and pale skin?" Lionel asks.

"Yup, that's him. He also has these giant fucking glasses that make his eyes look big and dumb, is lanky and creepy looking, has the weirdest haircut I've ever seen-"

"Wow, you must really hate this guy," Lionel cuts him off, his voice reverberating a light chuckle.

"I, um," Eddie fumbles for a moment. "I mean, I don't hate him, but I am saying that my life would be significantly better if he wasn't in it."

"Wow, that's a big statement," Lionel says seeming a little shocked.

"It's just, things were going so good for once, and then Richie shows up," Eddie huffs. "I feel like none of my friends take me seriously anymore with him always undermining me, and it's already bad enough since my mom treats me like a toddler, you know?"

"Hey dude, I got to go; talk tomorrow?" Lionel suddenly interjects.

"U-Um, sure. Have a good day," Eddie replies, taken a bit off guard by his abrupt exit of the conversation. He's not even sure if Lionel heard his goodbye since he doesn't get one in response.

Eddie guesses it was Lionel’s turn to leave abruptly with no reason as to why. He supposes he deserves the same treatment.

After tending to his mother for the rest of the night, Eddie collapses into sleep. He wakes up feeling like he closed his eyes for five minutes, but his clock is telling him it's 7 in the morning, which means it's time to get ready for school.

With a sigh, he slumps out of bed. He can't help himself from making his bed after brushing his teeth until his gums practically bleed, even though he supposes being neat is a good habit.

Getting ready, he chooses cargo pants that hug at his legs nicely with a plain black tee shirt. He's been trying to get away from his polo shirt and fanny pack look that’s haunted him for a while, and cargo pants tend to have a lot of pockets which he likes in place of the fanny pack.

Washing his face in the sink, he looks up to himself in the mirror and studies his features. He grew into his giant eyes, though his nose was still reasonably small for a boy's. Freckles sparsely littered his cheeks, his eyebrows were dark and somewhat hard to control, and his lips looked normal if he wasn't constantly fixing them in a line like he knows he does.

He thinks back to how short his hair was when he was younger, how he always gelled it perfectly into place the way his mom taught him how to. He's let it grow out the slightest bit now, and it turns out he has curls that he's been gelling away for who-knows-how-long. It hangs over his face a bit, but he often sweeps it to the side to be able to see.

His mom never fails to comment on missing his "nice, neat hair," though he couldn't care less. His appearance is something he's trying to take back too since his mom influenced it so much as well. He's been teased for his curly hair by the Losers a fair bit, but surprisingly Richie's made no comment of it. Maybe it's because he didn't know Eddie when he was younger, or maybe it's because he has curly hair of his own that's practically a mullet with how long it is. A "shag," Richie calls it.

Snapping out of his self-assessment, Eddie goes back into his room and gets his books and backpack ready for school. Right as he's about to head downstairs to grab a granola bar for breakfast before leaving, he hears a knock at the door. Who the fuck would be here at 7:15 in the morning?

As he's rounding down the stairs, he can't believe what his ears are hearing. Eddie practically breaks into a sprint, but he knows it's too late.

"Why hello Mrs. K, I've heard so much about you," Eddie hears Richie's dumb voice say from the doorstep.

"And who might you be?" Eddie hears his mom interrogate humorlessly, obviously not excited to see yet another seemingly reckless teenager associated with her son.

"Eddie hasn't told you about me? Ouch, that stings. I'm-"

"He's no one mommy, just a boy I'm working on a project with. He came early to make sure everything was ready for class," Eddie cuts Richie off by squeezing himself between him and his mom, shoving the other boy back a bit from his previous stance of holding his hand out for a handshake.

"Okay Eddie-bear, if you say so. You know how I feel about... long-haired boys," his mom says after a moment with a scowl, looking Richie up and down. For some weird reason, Eddie wants to defend him, wants to tell his mom that making baseless judgments like that wasn't fair, but then he remembers that Richie's the one who came to his house unannounced and opts to bite his tongue.

"What do you mean by-"

"We really should be getting to class early. Bye mommy, love you," Eddie cuts Richie off yet again, pushing him toward the street as he waves his mother goodbye.

"Wait Eddie-bear, isn't there something you're forgetting?" his mother asks expectantly, almost seeming malicious in saying it. Sighing, because of course his mom had to do this in front of Richie of all people, he walks back up to the doorstep.

He slightly raises his feet to tiptoes to give his mom a kiss on the cheek, reluctant as she smiles into it. Walking back to Richie humiliated, his mother says a final goodbye before closing the door. Once it's closed, though, Richie's composure falls as he bursts out in laughter.

"Oh my god! Mommy? Eddie-bear? Still kissing your mom on the cheek? The jokes write themselves," Richie laughs excitedly, waving his hands around as he recounts the previous encounter. It's as if he single-handedly discovered the best thing ever.

"How the fuck did you find my home address?" Eddie asks suddenly, storming up to Richie and pointing his finger in his chest as he tries to get up on his bike. Richie puts his hands up as if he's surrendering, laughter still on his lips.

"Asked around, Eddie-bear. Wanted to accompany you to school, but I didn't know that I'd get a show this morning. That kiss you gave your mom should've been R rated," Richie answers with an amused smirk on his face. Eddie wants to wipe it off, preferably with a punch.

"You're so fucking creepy! It's not enough that you constantly pester me at school and after it, you have to intrude my home too?" Eddie fumes, leaving his standoff with Richie to go get on his bike. Maybe if he peddles hard enough, he won't be able to hear whatever bullshit Richie has to say over the wind in his ears.

"It's not my fault that you make it easy," Richie calls to him, catching up on his bike as they cycle their way to school. Eddie wants to peddle until his face is red. Or maybe he just wants to punch Richie in the face.

"You sound like fucking Bowers," Eddie mutters, now just letting his bike chain whiz as he coasts. There's no point in trying to outrun Richie, he was like a parasite after all.

"Who's Bowers? Does he go to the high school?" Richie asks, trying to bike closer to him.

"Henry Bowers was a bully that tormented me and the other Losers before he got sent to the mental hospital for killing his dad," Eddie spits at him, hoping Richie will see an issue with being compared to a monster like that.

"Woah, that's... intense," Richie says after a beat of silence.

"Yeah, so maybe try not to sound like him for once, asshole," Eddie huffs as he clutches his bike bars harder.

"What'd he do?" Richie asks after a moment, his voice a bit more somber than before. Eddie fixes his lips into a line as he huffs air through his nostrils, realizing that he was going to have to explain all of this shit to Richie.

"What'd he do to us or what'd he do to his dad?” he asks rhetorically before continuing. “Well, just some highlights of what he did to us is that he tried to carve his fucking name into Ben's stomach; he's still got a scarred H to prove it. He tried to make Mike eat raw meat and almost killed him because he's a racist asshole. He used to steal Stan's kippah all of the time and toss it around like a frisbee with his friends. But you know, those are just some highlights. His dad? One day he just pressed his switchblade against his throat when he was sleeping and opened it. Blood was all over the walls from what I heard. Really just a winner of a guy," Eddie rants into the slight whooshing of the air as they make their way to school. When they're both not talking, he realizes what a quiet morning it is, the sun taking it's place in the sky as a few birds sing.

"That's so fucked," is all Richie can seem to respond with. Eddie shudders at his memories, seeing Ben nearly beaten to death and Mike about to get his head bashed in as if it were yesterday.

"Yeah, so don't bring it up around the Losers, alright? It's a touchy subject," Eddie says after a moment, the heat returning in his voice as they finally approach the school. Richie let's out a quiet yet desolate "aye aye captain" before they chain up their bikes to the rack.

Eddie trudges through the rest of the day, the morning putting a bad taste in his mouth with everything regarded. At lunch, he was gearing up for Richie to blabber his big fucking mouth about the encounter although the Losers were well aware of what Eddie's mom could be like.

Eddie was ready to fire back, ready to ask questions about Richie's parents for once, ready to argue the lunch period away, but Richie was oddly quiet for lunch. Maybe the whole Bowers story made him think over the group dynamics more, although Eddie isn't sure why that story would be the red flag to finally shut the trashmouth up.

Whatever, it wasn't his problem.

He trudges through the rest of the week as well, Richie becoming good-as-new the next day, and thus a returned pain in Eddie's ass.

The only thing that gets him through it are the sparse heartwarming moments with the Losers; Stan saving a seat for him at lunch, Ben annotating his book for him in English class, Bev affectionately messing up his hair in the underground hangout. Those moments and the now-daily conversations with Lionel are the only things that spur him to keep putting up with Richie's bullshit, as pathetic as that sounds.

One week night, Lionel asks him a random question after a lull in the conversation.

"Eddie, have you ever been bullied?" his voice crackly questioned.

Furrowing his brow, Eddie responded. "Yeah, pretty much everyone at school has made fun of me at one point or another, but I've mainly been bullied by this one group. Their leader's name was Henry Bowers." He answered the question almost robotically as he clutched onto the walkie-talkie. Being relentlessly teased is not something he really likes to recount.

"What'd he do to bully you?" Lionel pressed on after a moment. Initially, Eddie would have been weirded out by his persistence and how personal the question was, but after talking regularly for over a week, the two of them had opened up pretty quickly and talked about deep and troubling topics often. Eddie liked to think it’s because they both didn’t really have anyone else to talk to about all of their fucked up shit. He felt less ridiculous and alone that way.

With a sigh, Eddie continued. "I definitely didn't get the worst of it like my other friends did, but he liked to do little stuff to freak me out. He knew I was a germaphobe so he'd often lick his hand and rub it on my face, sometimes even just spit on me. He liked to steal my pill bottles and shake them around my head, dumb stuff like that. One time he pretended to be following me home, just enough to freak me out and get running, but when I turned around after running for a bit, he was nowhere to be found."

"Dude, considering your situation, that's still a pretty brutal way to bully you," Lionel responded, concern clear even in his crackly voice.

"Yeah, I guess," Eddie said, not really sold on that argument.

"Do you consider that Richie guy to be a bully? You complain about him basically every day," Lionel asked after an allotted silence.

Eddie furrowed his brows again, this time in thought as he bit his bottom lip. "I-I don't know. He's definitely, like, cruel to me, more than he needs to be for a laugh, you know? But I haven't actually felt bullied except for when he finds ways to turn my own friends on me. Makes me feel like I don't even fit in in the only group that accepts me," he answered, thinking hard about how to word it.

"That makes sense," is all Lionel provided as a response.

"What about you? Have you ever been bullied?" Eddie asked, turning over onto his stomach on his bed as the conversation went on.

Lionel’s laugh crackled over the receiver. "Oh yeah, I've practically been bullied since I was born."

"Really? You seem so cool, at least over the walkie-talkie. Is that why you're homeschooled?" Eddie asked in disbelief. Maybe you never got bullied only if you were the bully.

"Oh, um, yeah, that's why I'm homeschooled," Lionel responded, stuttering over his response. "But basically I'm the nerdiest looking guy you've ever seen. Not hard to bully someone like me."

"I'm sure it's not that bad," Eddie rolled his eyes at his claim.

"If I could send you a picture, I would. You'd honestly be shocked," Lionel chuckled, and Eddie laughed back. Maybe one day, when he was more comfortable, they could meet and hang out in real life.

It’s a very loose maybe, though, since his time in Derry was running out and he still wasn’t 100% sure that Lionel happened to be an 18 year old high school student like him.

Although the week seems like a year, Friday finally comes. Eddie tries not to cry tears of joy when the final bell signs off class, but he honestly thinks he tears up a bit.

Crowding into the hallway and finding the other Losers, Richie somehow also already there, they talk as they exit the building. They're planning on seeing a movie tonight, a horror movie since it was the beginning of October, and they wanted to get ready for possibly their last Halloween ever as kids. Eddie can't remember the name, although he thinks it's something dumb like Puppet Master 4 or something like that.

In the meantime, though, they hang out at the secret underground hangout, the long sleeves already breaking out as fall makes itself known. Eddie tries not to think about how this might be their last fall all together.

The conversation had been meandering along the way it usually did, Eddie just hanging in the hammock as he read a comic book, until Bev said something that made his head snap up from the page he was on.

"Yeah, I applied for FIT, but if I don't get in, I hope I can go to the Art Institute of Chicago," Bev says conversationally as she plays with her hair, laying on the ground with her legs on the wall above her.

"Chicago? Isn't that, like, far?" Eddie can't help himself from butting in on whatever conversation they were having before.

"Yeah, that's kind of the point, Eds. Why would I want to stay in this shithole?" Bev chuckles with a crooked smile, looking at Eddie practically upside down from where she is on the ground.

"I applied to the University of California in Los Angeles and to the University of Illinois in Chicago. They're, like, the best architecture schools in the country right now," Ben quietly tacks on, getting excited towards the end at the idea of it all.

"California is across the fucking country!" Eddie points out incredulously. Was he the only one who cared? If all of his friends were across the country, how were they supposed to see each other? Meet up only on the holidays? What if they couldn't even make that work?

"Eddie, I literally applied to Stanford," Stan responds with an eye roll from across the room.

"Because your name is Stan!" Richie exclaims out of nowhere, seeming entirely too proud of his dumbass joke.

"No, it's just a good law school. But now that you say that, it makes me not even want to go there since I'd probably hear that joke a million times, so that's great," Stan realizes, seemingly agonized.

"You're welcome for that revelation," Richie says with a shit-eating grin on his face.

"Wh-wh-what about you Richie? Where h-ha-have you applied?" Bill asks after a moment, returning the focus on the doofus, which is how Eddie often refers to him as in his head.

"Harvard," Richie answers without missing a beat.

Eddie bursts out laughing, not because it was a funny joke, but at the mere concept of Richie in a school like fucking Harvard. For once, he's not alone in his laughter since the Losers are giggling along.

"What? Is it so funny for me to apply to Harvard?" Richie asks defensively.

"Yes, it is so funny," Eddie says between laughs, still getting a kick out of it.

"Oh fuck you guys," Richie says while crossing his arms, seeming to be faux-peeved. "I guess you don't want to hear about how Yale is my backup school, then."

The rest of the Losers burst out laughing all over again, this time Richie joining in. As Eddie's holding his sides, he almost forgets about what an annoying prick Richie is.

"Okay, okay, enough laughing at me. Where do you even want to go big Bill?" Richie breaks into the laughter, getting up and gesturing grandly as if he's conducting the whole room.

"I a-applied to a few smaller-r colleges in New York and th-th-that area. I don't know-w what I want to do yet, b-but I do know that I want t-t-to get the fuck out of this town-n," Bill responds reasonably. Richie nodded his head to what he was saying as if he predicted it or some shit like that, which he didn’t.

"What about the young, handsome, strong, daring Mike? Where have you applied?" Richie asks, adding on more and more adjectives as he pretends to swoon. Mike merely rolls his eyes, but a smile's still on his face.

"Nowhere. Grandpa wants me to stay and work on the farm since he'll be out of commission soon. It's a good business, selling meat. This town sucks, but at least some more black people have moved in recently so I'm not alone," Mike explains, his eyebrows going up as he explains it. The other Losers seem sad at his resolution to stay in town, but they all also understand that they have a sort of privilege over Mike, all of them having at least one parent and some financial support.

"Well, that just leaves Eds. Wait, let me guess, you applied to FIT too because you secretly want to go into fashion," Richie says, feigning feminine excitement as he bounces around. The Losers snort at his act, all except for Eddie.

"Nope, guessed wrong. I'd tell you to apply there, though, but I doubt that you'd even get in," Eddie retorts, settling back into his hammock and crossing his arms.

"Oh, I got it! You're going to the college that only lets in kids with the most bangable moms in the country," Richie says as if he's figured out a mystery. Eddie screws his face up and gives him a disgusted look, the other Losers of course laughing at this.

"God, do you always have to talk about my mom? Get a new fucking joke," Eddie huffs, his lips setting in a line.

"I'm sorry, Spaghetti, I didn't mean to strike a nerve. Where are you actually going anyway?" Richie asks, an air of performance still in him even as he tries to get serious. Richie always seemed like he was acting for some reason. It's one of the main reasons why Eddie didn't trust him or like him from the beginning.

"Um, I applied to a few smaller schools like Bill, and I'll probably transfer for the last two years to save money. I just can't wait to get out of this town," Eddie answers after a pause, forcing a chuckle out.

The thing is, he's lying. He has not applied to a single college, hasn't even given it a thought with all of the Richie drama added with talking to his new friend. Plus, it was the beginning of their senior year! Why were the Losers already planning on leaving?

Another lie is that he's excited to get out of this town. The truth is, no matter how awful this town is, it's where he met his best friends, where so many of their memories were attached. Hell, the town had the secret underground hangout they were in right now!

Eddie didn't actually want to leave, as dumb as it sounds, but the only thing worse than leaving is being left behind. He'd rather fucking die then be the last one to leave this town, choking on the dust of his friends who were bound to become more successful than he ever will be. He just wanted to hold onto everyone and hold them in place, none of them ever growing up but just hanging out for forever, but once again that reminds him of his mom. He has to try to not let a face of disgust appear as he broods over the fact that he’s inching closer and closer to becoming like his mom.

The conversation flows away from college as easily as it flowed onto it, allowing Eddie's chest to not feel so tight finally as he focuses back on his comic book. He'd rather not think of the end of their senior year since it just began.

Aiding to ease his mind, they all head out to go to the movie finally, having wasted away just enough of the afternoon to get snacks and be on time for the movie. Somehow he was right earlier; the movie was fucking Puppet Master 4.

Eddie's honestly not expecting much from this sequel of a sequel; crappy horror just seemed to be something the Losers bonded over. But eating popcorn all together and laughing at the bad effects was always a good night in his book.

He's sat between Bev and Mike, because he would have rather died then be between Bill and Bev or Ben and Bev or any variation of those three. The movie's gone on for a while, being a bit entertaining at least and not good in the slightest.

Right as he's reaching for the popcorn, though, a startling puppet jumps onto the screen, appearing vaguely like a clown from its makeup, outfit, and creepy voice.

Eddie feels his muscles tense up at the sight, and his eyes blink rapidly as he leans back quickly in his seat, the unnatural and emotionless face sparking fear in him for some reason. He can feel his hands shaking as he tries to stuff them in his pockets, under his armpits, under his legs, but it's no luck. He's sweating, his heart is rabbiting, and he can't get his hands to stop fucking shaking from the dumb clown-like puppet on the screen.

Before he even knows what he's doing, he's bumping his way through the row and to the outside of the theater, throwing a simple "need to piss" to the Losers. Escaping the room, though, he still feels trapped in the deep red of the theater hallways. As if on autopilot, he finds his way outside to get fresh air and rounds his way to the back of the theater.

He felt pathetic in the brisk night air, stuffing his still-shaky hands into his pockets. Why was he so scared of that dumb puppet? It was obviously just a puppet, a prop, for a crappy movie, and it wasn’t even a good one like in The Dark Crystal.

Leaning against the building, he huffs and tries not to think about how absolutely filthy the wall is likely to be. At least the air was clean. He found himself staring off into space at the dimly-lit dumpster further back in the parking lot. He clenched his hands inside his pockets to try to stop the shaking.

"What're you doing out here?" a voice suddenly asks, causing Eddie to let out a short scream before turning around, cheeks pink with embarrassment and frustration.

"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you, Spaghetti," Richie says, a self-satisfied smile on his face as he slinks up to stand beside Eddie, telling him that he actually did mean to scare him.

"Don't call me that. And I should be the one asking what the fuck you're doing out here! Are you stalking me?" Eddie rushes to say, speaking fast like how he hates when he gets worked up.

"I was just concerned. You said you were going to the bathroom, but it had been so long that I was beginning to worry that you fell in," Richie says with feigned innocence and concern.

"Oh fuck off," Eddie huffs, turning away and grumbling.

"I'm joking, obviously. Just came out here for a smoke. You want one?" Richie asks, now leaning against the building next to Eddie. He looks over to him to see a cigarette being held out to him from Richie's bony pale fingers, one already dangling from his lips which are flushed pink in the cold.

"Fuck no, that's disgusting," Eddie retorts as he takes a step away, screwing up a disgusted look on his face as if to prove the point.

"Suit yourself. Just means more for me," Richie smiles cheekily as he stuffs the extra cigarette back into his pack. Eddie doesn't even know how he got those unless he was already 18 somehow.

Seeing Richie hollow out his cheeks as he puckers the cigarette in his lips, trying to light it and suck in the air at the same time, Eddie gets the overwhelming urge to tell him all of the lung cancer facts and stories related to smoking that he knows.

"Don't you know those literally put tar in your lungs?," "those are basically cancer sticks, you know that, right?," or "my mom had friend who smoked so much that they had to put a hole in her throat, and she had to talk, eat, and do all sorts of stuff through it because she smoked so much" are all things Eddie could have said, but he bites his tongue. He's trying to shake off the hypochondriac his mom conditioned him to be, trying to shake off the control freak she made him, no matter how much Richie might actually deserve it. He sighs as he thinks this all over.

Snapping him out of his thoughts, he feels cold hands take up one of his. He pulls his hand away from Richie's grasp quickly, ready to throw insults his way for trying to hold his hand or whatever-the-fuck he was doing.

"Your hands, they're shaking," Richie says very matter-of-factly, puffing out some smoke as his dark eyebrows bunch together. "Did the movie freak you out?"

Eddie sets his lips in a line as he stares at the other boy angrily, an involuntary blush working its way up his face from embarrassment. "No," he says heatedly, but it's too late; he took too long to respond.

"Oh my fucking god, you were scared of that crappy horror movie! You're such a wuss. Have you even seen Psycho before?" Richie laughs out, practically doubling over from how funny he finds it.

"Those fucking movies don't scare me!" Eddie fumes, getting ready to full-on kick Richie in the gut. He should have given him the fucking cigarette lecture.

"Okay, okay, sure," Richie concedes condescendingly, his laughs finally dying down as he pretends to wipe a tear from his eye. "Look, I'm sorry Eddie, I didn't mean to piss you off," Richie says in a sympathetic tone once he sees Eddie turned away angrily, though even that voice sounds fake. Everything about him was just so fake.

"You're very bad at that: not pissing me off," Eddie huffs. Richie chuckles at that.

"Yeah, I think I've pissed you off every day since I met you," Richie says fondly, as if remembering teasing Eddie relentlessly in front of his only friends was a pleasant thing to look back on. Eddie feels his lips form in a line once again as he gets fed up from Richie's fake friendliness, his fake sympathy, his fake everything. He could see through it, see that it was all an act, even if his friends couldn't.

"Why'd you even move here in the first place?" Eddie asks, his voice cold as he tries to make the question jab. The chuckling from Richie stops, for once.

"None of your fucking business," Richie responds, his tone seeming serious for once instead of joking. It throws Eddie off completely, practically hits him like a ton of bricks as he turns to the other boy to see a grave expression taking over his face.

"Holy fucking shit, I was just asking a question. I swear, every time I try to give you a chance, every time I try to see that 'hey, maybe this new guy isn't a total colossal douche,' you always fucking ruin it," Eddie fumes in disbelief, pushing off the wall. He's taken enough of Richie's bullshit for the day as well as his fucking second-hand cigarette smoke.

"Eddie, I'm sorry, it's just-"

"You can save that fucking shit for my gullible friends," Eddie cuts him off with a humorless chuckle, walking off towards the direction of his house. "Fuck you," he says, throwing up a middle finger as he walks off. He doesn't even turn around to see Richie's reaction, doesn't even care enough to register it.

And if Eddie lingers at the corner just out of sight, waiting to hear the quiet "shit" Richie lets out into the autumn night air, no one's there to witness him, so there's no proof of it.