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It was a joke. It was meant to be a joke. Not only that, it was meant to be a joke that Richie was playing on other people. It was not meant to turn out like this.
He could have lived his entire life without knowing what Eddie looked like on his knees in cut off jeans with a microphone, fanning himself, belting, “Your dad could use a guy like me.”
Richie was going to die. This was it, this was how he died, and his tombstone would read So Embarrassingly Horny For His Best Friend That He Couldn’t Even Take His Own Joke.
Eddie sang, in a voice that he certainly hadn’t had the last time they’d all tried to sing happy birthday to Bev, “I know it might be bad, but I’m in love with Richie’s dad,” and Richie slid slowly from the couch to land on the floor, and covered his face with his hands. He could feel his burning cheeks and wondered vaguely if his head was literally going to explode, but even from the floor he couldn’t stop watching through his fingers.
This was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
His crush on Eddie was— okay, not going well, but it was fine, he was managing, he’d been in love with him for about ten years, and he’d had crazy wet dreams about him for at least five, it was under control. He knew how to handle it, at least, because it had been forever, and honestly being in love with Eddie and having to strategically wear a sweatshirt tied around his waist every time Eddie showed up to the quarry in his stupid tiny red shorts that he never seemed to grow out of was just something that existed in the back of his mind, a low hum of interest that he could acknowledge without letting it consume his entire life.
Eddie was a weird little gremlin who had loud— and often wrong— opinions about germs and comic books and also about everything else on the planet that he could get his aggressively sanitized hands on, he was short and had round cheeks like a chipmunk even though they were almost seniors, he still kicked and bit and hair-pulled when they were play-fighting, because he was a monster who hated losing almost as much as he hated the idea of other people winning. Apparently, that was Richie’s type, and that was okay, he’d accepted that.
He’d even allowed himself to have other crushes, nurtured other tiny bursts of fondness, gone on a handful of mostly screwing around under the cover of darkness dates with the half dozen other gay guys in the surrounding counties, but every time, he came back home to find Eddie climbing through his window and crashing in his bed, or waiting on his porch to drag him off to go running with him— as if Richie had ever voluntarily run a day in his life— screeching about the health benefits all the way, or wandering around the singular street of downtown Derry, all the better to snag an innocent, unsuspecting Richie by the arm as he wgalked past and shove him into the ice cream parlor or the movie theater.
Richie was happy for things to stay like that. He didn’t expect Eddie to like him back— he wasn’t even sure that Eddie was interested in people, let alone interested in guys, or in Richie in particular. He liked being Eddie’s best friend, and he knew that Eddie loved him, even if it wasn’t quite the way that Richie loved him back. He knew that they were going to head off to different colleges, because Eddie wanted to stay on the east coast for some accounting program that Stan was also interested in, and Richie had his heart set on Chicago, to break into the improv scene there.
He had the vague suspicion, in the back of his mind, that it might be good for them to have some space, to give him some time to have a real relationship with someone who wasn’t closeted and living in a tiny backwoods town like he was, to give him some time to get to know people without falling back on Eddie, Eddie, Eddie the minute he left their sight. He thought that his love, as deep and unshakeable as it felt, might one day mellow out into the same soft, sweet friendship that they’d shared as children, that he might be able to meet Eddie on the same level one day, and tell him all about how obsessed with him he’d been in high school. Maybe they’d get to laugh about it.
Eddie locked eyes with him, and crooned, “I’m all grown up, now, daddy can’t you see?”
This was not helping his dream. This was doing the opposite of helping. He could see all of the potential relationships he could have had with hot singles in the Chicago improv scene going up in smoke. This was killing every hope he had of a future where he wasn’t awkwardly, uncomfortably enamored with his best friend.
He couldn’t even blame Eddie for ruining his life, he had no idea what he was doing, what he looked like when he looked up at Richie with those big eyes and said, “Richie, it’s not you, I’m just kinda into dudes,” because these were Richie’s lyrics that he’d made up, and Eddie was just mocking his own attempts at being provocative. It wasn’t his fault that he was a thousand times better at it than Richie would ever be in a million years.
The rest of his friends, though, were going to pay. He was going to come up with such terrible things to do to them all, as soon as his higher brain functions returned.
Bev winked at him over the cymbal in her drum set, and he decided, through the haze of lust and blind terror that he was marinating in, that she would be the first to face his wrath.
It had started innocently enough. He’d recently transitioned from making nonstop Eddie’s Mom jokes to peppering his routine with Eddie’s (Dead) Dad jokes, partly because all of his friends knew that he was gay now, which meant that the mom jokes were getting a bit stale, and also because Eddie was having more problems with Sonia as the end of their high school career drew nearer, and he didn’t like the tense lines that formed in the corner of Eddie’s eyes whenever he brought her up. At least with the dad jokes, Eddie could howl at him about respect for the dead, and then give a horrified laugh when Richie grinned as lasciviously as he could and said, “But that’s what I’m trying to do, Eddie darling.”
“Stacy’s Mom” was released a few months into Richie’s new dad joke crusade, which was tragic, because it could have been such good joke fodder, particularly because Eddie and Stacy scanned perfectly in both beat and rhyme. Naturally, he’d decided to flip the pronouns in the song, and then the rest of the lyrics fell into place. It was fun, and made him wonder if he had a future in writing parodies, even if his voice was as smooth as a rusty chainsaw. It added to the charm, in his opinion. He’d debuted it to much acclaim and many boos at their first day of summer group hang out, downing half a bottle of terrible vodka for courage and then getting up on the table to perform, dancing as badly as he sang, dodging crumpled up pieces of paper that his friends chucked his way. The rest of the night was a blur, but he considered it a resounding success.
After the party, they’d all gone their separate ways to do the boring almost-adult shit they had lined up for their last high school summer, and he’d promptly forgotten about his promising musical career in favor of working as many hours as he could at the movie theater so that he could save up money for the move that his parents definitely didn’t approve of, and definitely wouldn’t help pay for. There was a pleasant sort of anonymity to being an attendant at the movie theater. No one looked at him funny, or even looked at him at all. As a scrawny, little, distinctly queer kid in the arcade, he’d been knocked around endlessly, but when he put on the uniform he blended seamlessly into the walls of the place. Not to mention, no one cared if he wrote jokes during the down time in his shifts as long as he scooped the popcorn when he had to, and it meant he could sneak his friends in for free as many times a week as they wanted, because his manager was a bored college student who spent most of his time in the back office, napping on the desk.
In any case, he’d completely forgotten about his objectively terrible performance, and also about the fact that Ben had a memory like a steel trap for cheesy song lyrics, until they got together for their last party of the summer. The seven of them gathered at Bev’s house because her aunt was endlessly out of town on long weekends and business trips, and after they were all assembled, everyone else disappeared into the basement without a word, which was mostly suspicious because if there was one thing every single one of his friends loved doing, it was talking. Trashmouth Tozier indeed, like he was an exception instead of the rule.
When he followed them down, he noticed that someone had stashed a whole bunch of instruments in the corner of the room, but he didn’t think much of it, because Bev’s aunt was always chucking weird shit into corners of the basement, and as long as they didn’t fuck with it too much it didn’t matter.
His friends, his best friends, his favorite people on earth, all beamed at him from a loose semi-circle in front of the instruments, and gestured grandly for him to sit on the nearly broken couch that Ben and Mike had dragged down the stairs from a yard sale two years before.
He sat gingerly, because he did love and trust his friends implicitly, but also he’d spent way too many years with them and their god awful plans and senses of humor not to be a bit concerned when all six of them were smiling at him like that. He met Ben’s eyes, because Ben couldn’t lie worth shit and had a bleeding heart the size of the state of Maine, probably to make up for the fact that the rest of them had no heart at all, but even Ben was smiling like he’d just won the lottery, so clearly there was no help coming from any quarter.
As soon as nothing blew up in his face, or pantsed him, or poured flour on his head and tried to light his hair on fire— the parties in sophomore year had gotten weird— he relaxed, and as if that was the signal, they all turned to the instruments. He realized that this section of the room had been turned into something almost like a stage, with him, on his terrible sagging couch, as the sole audience member.
There were three guitars, handed out indiscriminately between Mike, Stan, and Ben, which was interesting, because up to this point he’d have bet a lot of money that none of them had ever touched a guitar in their lives. Even Ben, who was definitely a soulful sort of guy, was more into poetry and candlelit dinners than spontaneous serenades.
Bill went to the piano, which made more sense, because Richie definitely could remember a few tortured years of piano lessons before his parents let him quit, and Bev took the drumsticks, which made the most sense of all, because Beverly Marsh was born to hit things with sticks, and she reveled in it.
Eddie took the mic, which in hindsight should have definitely been the point where Richie ran screaming out of the room.
Unfortunately, he loved his no good bastard friends, or at least he had until this very moment, and so he stayed, and then he continued to stay, because he couldn’t have moved if he tried.
The worst part about all of it was that they were good. The music was probably pretty simple, if they could all stick to their parts well enough, but they also had a decent sense of rhythm, and the background vocals weren’t nearly as heinous as they should have been.
Eddie was a fucking revelation, but what else was new.
Where he’d gotten a voice like that, Richie couldn’t even begin to comprehend, but he felt vaguely cheated, not knowing that his best friend and most beloved person could sound like something other than a dying cat. Could sound incredible, in fact.
On the other hand, if he’d known, he might never have fully recovered. Eddie made Richie’s terrible goddamn lyrics sound like some sort of genius, wildly hot come-ons, and Richie had written them himself, so he knew they weren’t actually that good. He’d rhymed “lawn” with “apron on,” for fuck’s sake. He’d written out, “Hi hungry, I’m dad,” which wasn’t even a good dad joke, let alone a decent lyric, and Eddie was making it sound like sex on a plate.
He was never going to recover.
Eddie finished his last, “I’m in love with Richie’s dad,” on his knees again, with his arms spread wide, as if waiting for a standing ovation from a crowd of thousands. He deserved it, for that performance, but unfortunately all he got was Richie, wheezing his way to what was either a panic attack or legitimately the first time someone died of Too Horny Disease.
When the final chords from the guitars petered out, and the only sound in the room was Richie, trying and failing to remember how to breathe, Eddie dropped his arms and looked over at him, in a ball in front of the couch, with a frown.
“Rich, you okay?”
He was getting up and coming over, looking concerned, and the others were hurriedly putting their instruments down and stepping out of their positions as quickly as they could without kicking over any of the amps, and Richie had no idea how he was meant to face any of them, when someone had taken his dearest wish and made it into a joke just in time for the end of their last summer all together.
He wasn’t even sure if they had any idea how cruel it was. Eddie certainly didn’t, because he wouldn’t have done it if he had, and also if he’d known about how Richie actually felt he probably would have backed away a long time ago. Ben and Mike were good enough people that he didn’t think they would do it if they’d known. Bill was way too wrapped up in his own world to have noticed Richie’s debilitating infatuation, let alone put the pieces together and come up with this particular method of torture.
Stan and Bev, though, had both witnessed him drunk and weepy about his Unnamed Boy Problems one too many times— he was handling it, but he was also seventeen, he wasn’t handling it well all the time— and they were both just enough of the kind of asshole that might do this whole charade with the full understanding of what it would mean to him.
He didn’t actually think that they were doing it to hurt him, particularly not with the alarmed glances they were exchanging now, as the room collapsed in on itself in a tunnel of panic, but they were both the self-assured kind of person that always recommended that he just tell his mysterious crush how he felt and get it over with, because anyone who put up with him for this long— and here they would always exchange long-suffering glances, if they were with him together, or just raise their eyes to the ceiling, if they were with him alone— would probably take it better than he thought.
He appreciated the encouragement, but also it was complete bullshit, obviously. Bev was gorgeous, always had been, of course, and puberty had been wildly unfair to Stan in that it made him shoot up and bulk out, and suddenly people were smiling at him in the hallways and calling his big eyes and messy curls “charming” and “mysterious.” No one would turn them down. He’s pretty sure they could even pull a straight person if they wanted to try their hands at it.
Richie, on the other hand, was wearing the same glasses that he’d owned since third grade, and had a face many people referred to as, “You want to be a comedian? Oh! Good!” He’d kept growing up and he’d yet to grow out, and also he was a gay boy in an occasionally violently homophobic town, and in love with his best friend who he couldn’t bear to think about losing, even by the inches of distance that would come from him confessing and Eddie gently, politely, firmly turning him down.
His tunneling vision was suddenly full of Eddie as he crouched over him, looking all at once nothing like the confident, crazy sexy guy who’d been giving him bedroom eyes over a microphone, but his small, scared best friend, who’d spent twelve years equating panic attacks with life-threatening asthma attacks, and who thought that they didn’t all know that he still carried an inhaler in his backpack even if he had given up on the fanny pack emergency kit.
“Hey, hey, Richie, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Eddie sat down on the floor in front of him, instead of towering over him like Eddie was never supposed to be able to do, and took his hands gently away from his face. Richie breathed in, in a sharp, painful gasp, and Eddie took one look at him and snapped to the others, “Go upstairs. I’ve got this. It’s fine, we’ll be okay, he just needs some space.”
They filed out of the basement, shooting anxious looks over their shoulders, and Richie could almost breathe again without all of their eyes on him.
Eddie was right, and Richie loved him for that, and then he loved him even more when he hesitated as they left, and turned back to face Richie, and said, “If you want Bev to stay instead, or Ben, he’s good in a panic attack, or Mike can talk you through it, that’s okay, I just didn’t want them all hovering.”
Eddie was the source of his panic, of course, but he was also, always and forever, the most comforting person that Richie could imagine. “No,” he choked out. “Stay,” and Eddie’s worried little face crumpled with such obvious relief that Richie’s next heaving breath almost felt like a laugh.
“Alright,” Eddie said, and then, “Breathe with me, Rich. You know how this works. You’ve done it enough times for me.” He placed a hand on Richie’s chest, and pressed Richie’s hand to his own, and breathed in and out with exaggerated slowness while Richie tried to match his pace.
Slowly, Richie’s breathing evened, and Eddie let go of his wrist, sitting back on his heels and laughing a little shakily. “That was unexpected,” he said with a small, tight smile. He wiped a bit at his eyes, which Richie politely pretended not to see, because he was a good friend and also because Eddie just talked him down from a panic attack that he’d had over his own song, so he wasn’t really up for throwing stones in glass houses at the moment. “What was that, Rich?” Richie opened his mouth, but Eddie was already backpedaling, waving his hands a little frantically. “Not that you have to tell me! Your panic attack, your business, I just want to make sure that whatever I did, I never do it again.”
He looked so nervous and yet so determined, as if he was already committing to memory everything that had happened since Richie started shaking, and swearing it all off at once. Richie wouldn’t be surprised if he was, in fact, doing exactly that. Eddie did tend to be an all-or-nothing kind of person, and he took care of his friends as best he could, in his own manic, slightly unhinged way. Richie couldn’t help but to reassure him, even as the dark spots were still receding from his vision.
“No, no, Eds, you’re fine,” he said, hoarse like he’d just spent an hour screaming instead of ten minutes frantically remembering how basic bodily functions worked on the floor of his friend’s basement. “It was an overreaction.”
Eddie’s eyes narrowed. “Panic attacks are a legitimate form of emotional expression,” he said, in a tone that suggested that if Richie argued with him there would be a pamphlet and a much longer lecture in his future. “They aren’t an overreaction, and you have a right to not have to deal with whatever set you off.”
Eddie’s stint with the school psychologist in freshman year of high school, when someone finally realized that there was probably too much rage trying to fit inside his tiny little body and had scheduled him appointments that lasted through the entire year, had done a lot of good in a lot of ways, but occasionally Richie wished that he was just a bit less well-versed in mental health practices, and a bit less committed to calling people out on their bullshit.
“The song just— hit a bit close to home, that’s all,” Richie managed, and Eddie’s eyes widened, and then narrowed again.
“Shit,” he muttered. “I knew it had something to do with—”
“You guys sounded really good!” Richie interrupted, because they had, and he hadn’t been a good audience member, hadn’t gotten to tell them that they’d blown him out of the water even while he was in the midst of a full emotional meltdown, and Eddie particularly should get to know that he’d been amazing, though Richie would never tell him exactly how amazing he’d found him. “You did so much better with it than I could have done, it was crazy impressive. I didn’t know any of you knew how to play, I didn’t even know you could sing!”
Eddie coughed, and rubbed the back of his head, looking away in embarrassment. “I couldn’t, until this summer,” he admitted. “None of them could, actually, except for Bill, and he wasn’t very good at all.”
“Yeah, I remember his terrible piano teacher, I don’t think he ever got past Twinkle Twinkle,” Richie said, and Eddie snorted.
“God, yeah, he sucked,” he said with a grimace that turned into a reluctant smile halfway through. “We all thought that the song you came up with was hilarious, though, and so I— we thought it would be fun to do, as an end-of-summer surprise.” He shifted slightly, staring fixedly down at his knees. Richie tried valiantly not to stare at Eddie’s knees too, which was a battle that he lost. Eddie had very cute knees. “Bev’s aunt was dating some musician guy, and he left a bunch of stuff in her house, and you were so busy at the theater that we figured we might as well pull something together.”
“Well, it was great,” Richie said firmly.
“It gave you a panic attack,” Eddie pointed out, dry as dust, and Richie rolled his eyes.
“If we had to get rid of everything that made me freak out, the whole state of Maine would be gone,” he said, aiming for lighthearted and settling somewhere around tired.
The corners of Eddie’s mouth drew tight, and he sighed. “I know. One more year, though, right?”
“Yeah,” Richie said, staring at his face and wondering how on earth he was going to manage without him, in just one more year’s time, “One more year.”
Eddie gave him a little smile, and then frowned, slow and considering. “Wait, what did you mean, the song hit close to home?”
Richie felt something painful jolt in his stomach. “Nothing,” he said, way too quickly, but it was about ten years to late to bluff his way out of anything in this particular friendship, and Eddie was staring him down now.
“You wrote the song, Rich,” Eddie said.
Richie interjected desperately, “I know!” in such a painfully false bright tone that Eddie was immediately on guard.
“I know those lyrics, literally by heart,” he stressed. “They’re nonsense, and I was singing them about your dad, Rich, what on earth about that hit so close to home?” He stopped for a moment, then, and looked stricken. “Is there something wrong with your dad? Did you get into an argument? Did you talk about Chicago?” His hands were moving again, frantically running across Richie’s arms and chest as though he would find evidence of some horrible blow-out fight with Wentworth Tozier, a man so passionless even his patients sometimes went to sleep with his hands still in their mouths.
Richie batted his hands away. “I’m fine, Eds, it wasn’t that. Trust me, my dad had very little to do with it.”
Eddie sat back, frustrated. “Then what was it, Richie? That freaked me out! I don’t want to do that to you, ever again, and if it happened because of a surprise I made just for you, I want to know what I did wrong!”
He was close to crying again, his bright eyes full of angry tears, because Eddie never did anything by halves. He had been a crier since the first day they’d met on the playground and he’d gotten so mad that he’d burst into tears and kicked Richie in the shins. It had truly been love at first sight.
Even though he’d seen it happen endlessly over the last ten years, Eddie crying was still something that Richie had no defense for. When Eddie cried, Richie was suddenly brave enough to pour soda on bullies, or angry enough to throw rocks at the scariest gang of kids in town, or desperately, recklessly, horribly sad enough to run all the way to the kissing bridge and carve their initials in broad daylight, where anyone could have seen him. Richie did stupid things when Eddie cried, because when Richie did stupid things, Eddie usually stopped crying long enough to laugh, or to yell at him, or to help him throw rocks, and that was worth any amount of pain or terror or embarrassment Richie might face otherwise.
Hopelessly, helplessly, Richie said, “You know what those lyrics meant, right, Eds? You didn’t just memorize them, you actually read them?”
Eddie stared at him in bewilderment, tears held at bay for now, though not for long, because Richie had definitely seen him cry in confusion before. Fifth grade social science, Eddie had panicked over a problem to the point of tears, and Richie had told filthy jokes in a loud enough voice that he’d gotten suspended for a day. It had been worth it.
“Yeah, I know what the lyrics meant, Richie, I can read, you know,” Eddie snapped.
“Right,” Richie said, and then decided to hell with it. What was one year of a little distance, after all? It would just be good preparation for the next year, when they’d be halfway across the country from one another anyway. “You realize you were singing about being into dudes, right?”
Eddie was looking at him like he was worried Richie might have actually damaged something during his freak out. “Yes?”
“And so, you just sang a whole song about being gay?” Richie pressed, beginning to get a bit annoyed with how obtuse Eddie was being.
“Yes, Richie,” Eddie said, now sounding slightly annoyed as well.
“Well, that was just a bit upsetting to me!” Richie finally said, because clearly this line of questioning was getting them nowhere.
“Why?” Eddie sank back on his heels, looking genuinely puzzled, and a bit hurt as well. Richie thought he knew him better than that.
“Because you’re straight, and—“ Richie started, but Eddie cut him off.
“Who said I was straight?” He sounded taken aback, and when Richie looked up into his face he found nothing but honest confusion.
“You’re not?”
Eddie was staring at him, completely baffled. He opened and closed his hands in front of him, gesturing at nothing, and then let them drop, and said, with a slow, strained sort of patience, “No. I’m gay. I told everyone at the beginning of the summer. You were there, Richie!”
“I was?” Every piece of Richie’s life from the past summer was rapidly rearranging itself in his mind: the radio silence for the first few weeks, followed by unusually aggressive attempts to spend time with him, even if it meant waking him up at ungodly hours to force him to go for a run. The number of times Eddie had brought up his dating habits during their impromptu sleepovers, with Richie lying on an air mattress even though it was his room, because he wanted Eddie to be in his bed more than he wanted a good night's sleep, and then waited patiently for him to respond, only to seem disappointed when he brushed him off with a laugh and changed the subject. The ice cream parlor and the movie theater and the arcade that Eddie kept bringing him along to, just the two of them, because he said it would be nice to talk, as if they’d ever needed an excuse, as if they had something bigger to share other than their usual summer friendship.
“You— You don’t remember?” Eddie seemed oddly defeated. His shoulders dropped down, and Richie couldn’t even begin to parse the look on his face— distant eyes, bitten lip, small frown lines on his forehead even though he wasn’t doing his usual ferocious, exaggerated scowl.
“No,” Richie said honestly, and Eddie shifted backwards as if Richie had just dealt him an unexpected blow. Before he could get up and walk away entirely, however, Richie reached out and grabbed his hands. Eddie blinked in surprise. “I would have— Eds, I would have been so much better this summer, if I’d known. Supportive as fuck, dude.” He grinned at him, with a lightness in his stomach he hardly knew what to do with. “I can’t believe you thought I knew, and wasn’t going to be obnoxious as all fuck, man. I would have decorated your entire room rainbow. Put glitter absolutely fucking everywhere.” Richie laughed, as the lightness spread to his chest, his arms, his head. He felt dizzy with it, with the relief that he wasn’t alone, even if Eddie wasn’t flinging himself into his arms as he might have fantasized. He was a realistic dreamer, even if no one else believed it, and just the thought that Eddie might not be offended by the idea of Richie being into him, even if he didn’t return it, was more than he could have ever hoped for.
Eddie was smiling now too, a smaller, more cautious one than Richie had, but it was at least still a smile. “You’ll remember this time, then?”
“Well, I haven’t had anything to drink, and I definitely got wasted at that first party, so that’s a step in the right direction.”
“You did? I didn’t notice.” Eddie was watching him intently, and Richie shrugged.
“I had to be, to get up there and do that whole song. That was a lot for me.”
“Oh!” Eddie sounded distinctly surprised. “I would never have guessed it.”
“Not all of us are born gifted, Eds,” Richie said, and Eddie shoved at him, blushing.
“Is that why it was so hard to hear this time?” Eddie asked, because he was never good at letting things go, and Richie didn’t even mind.
Eddie wouldn’t hate him, Eddie was gay too, so even if he didn’t love him he wouldn’t hate him, and that was enough for Richie. Maybe Bev and Stan were right, and he just had to get it off of his chest, and they could go on living as friends without secrets between them, and the world wouldn’t implode. He threw caution to the wind, because Eddie always made him brave. “Nah, it’s because you sounded a whole lot like you were singing to me,” he said blithely, and when Eddie tilted his head and opened his mouth to respond, he went on, because now that he’d started he didn’t think he could stop. “And, you know, it freaked me out a bit, because I’ve been in love with you for like ten years.”
Eddie’s mouth closed with a snap. Richie, floating on a cloud of endorphins in a world where consequences didn’t exist, wondered vaguely if he’d ever been so successfully shut up before in his life. Maybe he’d also found one of the six gay guys in the surrounding counties to make out with, and they’d kissed him quiet. He couldn’t even work up the energy to feel jealous about that, because he was still buzzing over the fact that that was a possibility at all. Seven! Now there were seven gay guys in the surrounding counties!
Eddie was staring at him again. He stared back, because he’d said his piece and he didn’t actually know where else to go with this, so he was perfectly happy to let Eddie take the lead.
Abruptly, Eddie leaned forward, nearly overbalancing into Richie’s lap, and when Richie reached out to grab his waist to steady him, Eddie took his face in both of his hands.
“You’re a fucking moron,” he told Richie, and then he kissed him.
As kisses went, it was a bit messy. Their teeth clacked together, and it was immediately obvious that whatever Eddie had or had not been doing with the other gay guys in the surrounding counties, he certainly hadn’t been learning to kiss from them. That was okay, Richie had, and he was perfectly happy to play teacher.
As first kisses with the boy Richie loved more than anything else in the world went, it was transcendent.
Eddie pulled back after a moment just long enough to glare at him. “I can’t believe you thought I was straight while I spent the entire summer practicing a song about fucking your dad. I went on my knees and told you I wasn’t a little slugger anymore, and then I called you daddy, what the fuck, Rich?”
Richie said, “Uh huh,” completely and utterly blissed out, and dragged him back in.