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When they were little and Sonia Kaspbrak hadn't yet decided that Richie had the devil in his heart, Eddie would sometimes bike over to spend the weekend reading comics, watching movies and sleeping next to Richie beneath sheets that had little rocket ships printed on them. Never once did Richie suggest a different arrangement, despite Eddie being an objectively terrible sleeping partner. His little feet kicked bruises into Richie's shins, and the things he'd mutter were never as funny or embarrassing as Richie wanted them to be. Sometimes Richie would wake up alone, only to nearly piss himself when he looked over to see Eddie, standing loose-limbed and glassy-eyed in the middle of his darkened bedroom.

This is the first thing he thinks about when Richie opens his eyes to a dehydration headache and a conspicuously empty mattress. The streetlamp outside bleeds past the edges of the curtain just enough for him to make out the trappings of his hotel room, and to discern that he is in fact alone. The retching sounds coming from the bathroom tell him everything else he needs to know.

For a long moment Richie considers turning over and going back to sleep, but then Eddie makes a particularly pathetic whimpering noise and Richie's traitorous heart reminds him that he'd cut his dick off for Eddie, so he fumbles for his glasses and rolls to his feet.

In the hotel entryway, Richie flicks on the sconce so Eddie isn't blinded by the bathroom overhead. "Need me to hold your hair back, Jessica?"

"Die," Eddie says with conviction, acoustics warbly through the bowl.

Beside the sink are stubby little glasses stacked on a paper lined tray. Richie silently fills one with lukewarm tap water and hands it to Eddie in the dark.

"Don't try to brush your teeth for at least another hour," Richie says. "You'll rub the acid into your enamel."

Eddie squints up at him, looking hilariously young with his pinched nose and severe bedhead. "Really?"

"Yeah, man. Wentist the Dentist, remember?"

"Huh," he says. "I wonder what he has to say about your veneers." 

"Fuck you, that's what he has to say. Are you done?"

Eddie moans, making as if to rest his forehead on the toilet seat but jerking back at the last second. "I hate throwing up, Richie," he whines. "I hate it so fucking much."

"Yeah, gotta say, when you graduated from IPAs to tequila shots I had half wondered if there was some kind of miracle hangover cure that you knew about and I didn't."

"Why are you saying so many words."

Richie snickers a little meanly, but he refills Eddie's empty glass when he holds it up to him. 

"Do you think you could get some Dramamine from my room?" Eddie asks, once he's drained the glass again and his forehead is in the cradle between his thumb and forefinger. "And an Ibuprofen. There should be some Liquid I.V. in there too."

"Right away, Mr. Kaspbrak, sir," Richie says, backing out to retrieve the room key from a console next to the TV. "Anything else? Blow? Some Skittles?"

"What time is it?"

"Uh." Richie squints. "That would be three twenty-five in the AM."

A groan, then a thunk before a flush. "My sleep pants, please. They're in the inside pocket of the main compartment."

"Of which bag? You brought three," Richie teases, pointedly drawing no conclusions from the fact that Eddie apparently wants to keep sleeping in his room.

"The big one, dickhead. Next puke is going in your shoes."

Richie fetches the requested items with the peacefulness of a saint, but forgets his own room key and has to be let back in by Eddie. 

"Thanks," Eddie mutters, brusquely scooping the load from Richie's arms and shutting himself in the bathroom. Richie internally swoons.

From 1998 to 2002, Richie performed with an improv group called The Real Chicago Experience. An important facet of improv comedy, as he was taught, was strict adherence to rules. True randomness wouldn't get funny until the 2010s; you had to draw the lines of your court before you could play pickleball. You had to establish the rules of the game, often while you were playing it, so that you could escalate the scene around them. This is where the comedy comes from.

For example.

Rule: your character has been in love with his best friend since the Reagan administration, first in a shrieking, look-at-me kind of way, and then in a beers and Far Cry twice a week, don't touch me or I'll kill myself kind of way, with almost thirty years of loaded radio silence between the two.

Rule: your character can never, ever tell him.

Heightening, in this case, might involve your character reuniting with his childhood crush, only to find him happily, heterosexually married. And when the marriage turns out to not be as happy as it seemed, it might involve your character saying we should start a podcast , instead of is there a chance this leap from a burning building could end with you being caught in my arms?  

It might involve the stupid podcast bearing real success, because your character is kind of famous and people think it's funny when his childhood crush bitches about FDA regulations, and then your character has to sit in a studio with him once a week and act like he couldn't keep talking for hours if it meant he could get him to do that thing where he tosses his head away from the microphone to keep his bark of laughter from blowing out people's eardrums.

It might involve doing a live show, which goes so well that your character's crush feels the need to celebrate by getting hammered at the hotel bar and following your character back to his room, looking happy and rumpled and touchable before crashing like a cheap kite on your character's bed.

Eddie comes out of the bathroom looking significantly smoother, a vision in navy fleece, joining Richie on the bed and glaring at whatever Comedy Central had to offer at 3:48 CT. "Screen time at this hour is so bad for you," he says.

Go back to your own room, then , Richie thinks, somewhat hysterically. The two of them are slumped against the headboard, a distance between them that is about as respectable as is possible for two adult male friends sharing a bed to achieve. Richie is scriptless, and Eddie is being a shit scene partner, giving Richie absolutely nothing with his forward stare and inward posture. Whatever rules Eddie is following, Richie is not privy to them.

"Are you gonna be like this every time we do a show?" Richie asks. "Because you might actually die before we can make it to a second season."

Eddie scoffs. "Obviously not. I was just. Excited." 

It wasn't like how you said it'd be , Eddie had told him backstage, a force in his gaze that could've knocked Richie over. That was cool. I think you might just be a pussy . 

Of course the same performance adrenaline that gave Richie vicious nausea spells would just make Eddie insane, and thus funnier. The audience loved him; Richie could relate. 

The start of an unfunny joke about college girls comes out of Richie's mouth, but Eddie thoroughly and unrepentantly steps all over it by saying "Look, Richie. I'm divorced."

"Wuh?" Richie replies, lost with no chance of rescue. "Like. What? Since when?"

Eddie glares at him something fierce, but Richie is familiar enough with Eddie's face to know that's just what it looks like sometimes, and doesn't take it personally. "I got the call this morning. That's why I wasn't at breakfast. It's done." He makes a kind of mic-drop motion, like he's physically dumping this information into Richie's lap, which is accurate to what it feels like.

"Oh my God, congratulations, man." Eddie's divorce proceedings were the one thing he didn't like talking to Richie about, but he's been around Eddie after calls with his lawyer enough times to know it was an ugly, painful experience for everyone involved. "Why didn't you tell me earlier? We could've riffed about it at the show."

"I'm not fucking—oh, yeah, I spent thousands of dollars to be single in my forties, ha ha ha everybody!" 

"I mean, I'm laughing."

"Well stop, you insensitive jerkoff, I'm trying to tell you something. Are you listening?"

"I'm—I'm listening, Eds. All ears, see?" 

Eddie rocks to his knees, a set to his brow that Richie recognizes from childhood as spelling complete disaster. A let's-rob-the-pharmacy sort of expression. His stomach clenches instinctively.

"Are you gay?" Eddie says—demands, really. Richie feels his heart drop to his ass.

"Am I—that's a question, first of all, I thought you were supposed to be telling me something."

"It's relevant , dumbass, have you never heard of a leading question?"

"No I haven't, Eddie, please enlighten me." Richie is laughing, even though Eddie isn't, even though it's not really funny, and it's coming out wrong. Loud, with too much air. Eddie, sadist that he is, lets it die on the vine, petering out into an itchy silence. "Um."

"Rich."

On the TV, a grainy home video of someone landing taint-first on a skateboard gets treated to some cartoonish foley work and an unsympathetic voiceover. The sleep-disrupting blue light makes Eddie’s eyes shine. Richie is so angry at him he could cry.

"Why, you trying to get a piece?" He says. "I'm usually pretty open, but this thing with me and your mother adds a layer I'm just not sure I'm comfortable with." 

Were they still thirteen, Richie thinks Eddie might have reacted to this obvious provocation by being obviously provoked, jumping to his feet and kicking Richie in the ribs. And maybe Eddie is also experiencing the weird nostalgia Richie is, because it is also what a forty-two year old Eddie does, tired and sick and dehydrated to the point of base urges. "You can't be this fucking stupid!" He shouts. "It's not possible!"

"Ow!" Richie cries, roly-polying defensively. "Jesus, what?"

"What happens if you express a single fucking real emotion, Richie? Do you combust? Do you melt into a fucking puddle?" He wobbles precariously and has to flail his arms to keep balance, which would be hilarious if he wasn't still attacking Richie's kidneys.

"You're right, because this is such a welcoming energy you're giving off! You should be a social worker!" A few more hits land before Richie finally darts an arm out, snagging the aggressing leg by the ankle and holding fast. The momentum needed to jerk out of the hold sends Eddie stumbling over the side of the bed and crashing to the floor.

The sound Eddie makes upon landing is worrying, but Richie still laughs as he crawls across the bed. "Y'okay, man?"

Eddie doesn't reply, but through a series of hand gestures he manages to convey it is because the wind has been knocked out of him, and not because of serious injury. 

"Wow. What even is your fucking problem," Richie says, but admiringly, like a biologist commenting on a specimen. He watches Eddie recover with his chin in his hands, legs up and kicking behind him. 

There's a knock at the door, which Richie opens to a security officer about his height but half his age. Apparently someone called in a noise complaint. 

"Aren't you that comedian guy?" The officer asks.

"Sure, man," Richie says, but he laughs as he does it, because he's not actually very good at being rude to people that aren't his friends.

When he returns from his half-hearted apologies and promises that the roughhousing will stop, Eddie is already getting to his feet, looking sheepish and haggard. "Aren't you that comedian guy?" He mocks, which he does literally every time Richie gets recognized. "Did you take a picture with him?"

"I get nervous around authority figures," Richie says, defensively. "Even baby ones. Imagine, like, a toddler with a shotgun? Worst nightmare. Where are you going?"

Lurchingly, Eddie pushes past Richie and towards the door. "The Dramamine's kicking in." 

"It's only been—how much did you take?"

Eddie waves a dismissive hand. "Whatever. I'm going back to my room."

"Uh, no ." Richie latches onto one of Eddie's bony wrists. "You do not get to peace out after asking me if I'm gay and then beating the shit out of me."

"That is a misrepresentation of what just happened." 

"Is not!"

"Is too!" Eddie says, which Richie finds unfortunately endearing and a little funny. Fuck him.

"Oh my god, just tell me what you wanted to say, you little freak."

"No! Listen," Eddie shakes his hand free and grabs Richie by the shoulders. His head hangs, and Richie gets a good view of where Eddie is balding ever so slightly, right at the crown. Richie's heart squeezes at the sight of it. "I seriously can't have this conversation right now. I've already fucked this up so bad. I just need to sleep and be normal and then we can talk. Please."

And Richie lets him go, mostly because he can't remember another time that Eddie has said please to him, and it makes him feel weird and avoidant. "Alright. I'll try to act surprised when you show me the pregnancy test. You're going to start showing soon, you know."

"You're not funny." 

Richie's intention is to catch Eddie before breakfast the next day, in what will most likely be their last moment of privacy until reaching Minneapolis. Too late he realizes that this plan requires a promptness he has never possessed in his life, and sleeps clear through his alarm. Their tour babysitter, Angela, has to wake him up, dropping a packet of Pop-Tarts on his bed and proclaiming that he has to be out the door in fifteen minutes or they're leaving him behind. He eats them stacked on top of each other, even though they're brown sugar cinnamon and taste like sweet wood pulp, and doesn't think of anything at all until he's sitting across from Eddie in the bus, holding a flat white and surrounded by their employees.

Steve and Angela are doing things on their phones—presumably their jobs—and don't pay any mind to the tense atmosphere surrounding the talent. Eddie is also on his phone, with a look of grim concentration like he's doing open heart surgery, but is most likely doing the New York Times Spelling Bee. 

"Hey," Richie says, nudging Eddie's shin with the tip of a sneaker. "How you feeling?"

"Fine," Eddie mutters. 

Richie hums. "Normal, would you say?" 

The look Eddie shoots him is so comically dark that Richie has to snort. He's about to suggest that they step outside to talk when the driver announces that they will be leaving imminently. Super duper .

"Have you ever been to Minneapolis, Eddie?" Steve asks.

In perfect unison, Eddie and Richie say, "I've been to the airport."

"Never do that again," Eddie says, jabbing a finger in Richie's direction. "You don't know where I've been."

"You've been to every airport in America, because you're rich and you hate the environment."

"I've been to eight airports. For conferences. " 

"Which you agreed to attend because you hated your wife, you told me." 

" Shut up, Richie," Eddie snaps, a little too loud, a little too hot. The bus goes a bit tense after that, alleviated slightly when Eddie mutters "But yes, I did," a few moments later.

"My grandparents live in St Cloud," Angela says, which starts a good ten minute conversation where Richie doesn't have to say anything.

So the energy on the bus kind of sucks in a confusing, squirmy way that makes Eddie avoid eye contact unless he's glaring at Richie, which in turn makes Richie do everything in his power to get Eddie to glare at him as often as possible. He only lays off when Angela chimes in with a "boys, settle down, okay?"

Through the grace of God they make it to a 7/11 in Madison without killing each other. Wordlessly, they rise to their feet at the same time, and Eddie follows Richie's determined march all the way to the men's bathroom. 

"Why are you being a dickhead," Eddie says, when the door swings shut behind them and Richie turns to look at him expectantly.

"You're freaking me the fuck out!" Richie shouts, hands curling emphatically in the air. "And I've found badgering to be the most effective emotional laxative when it comes to dealing with you."

"Jesus, you're infuriating." Eddie kneads his eye sockets with the heels of his hands. "Do you ever wonder why we can't just, like, talk about shit? Like normal people?"

Not loving the direction this is taking, Richie crosses his arms and props a hip against the sink. "What are you saying? Do people not normally express affection through acts of violence?"

Eddie doesn't take the bait, and in fact looks kind of queasy. "I didn't really hurt you, did I?"

"Uh, no, not really," Richie says, suddenly deeply uncomfortable. "Kinda seemed like you hurt yourself more than anything. How's your tailbone, by the way?"

It takes a second for Richie to recognize the strangled noise Eddie makes as a laugh. "It's, it's good, yeah. God." He laughs some more, putting his face back in his hands sort of helplessly. It's fucking weird, and not really doing anything to soothe the writhing thing in Richie's stomach. 

"Uh," Richie says.

"This is so fucking stupid." 

Something of a catchphrase of Eddie's, at least when they were kids. Tree-climbing contests, petty vandalism, X-Men debates that got a little too heated; trust Eddie K to keep things in perspective, even when he still participated and half of them were his idea to begin with. This is so fucking stupid , with the implied addendum: there's nothing else I'd rather be doing .

Then Eddie is looking at him, breathing deep and clear through strong lungs that supported his brief stint in track and field. The fastest kid in eighth grade says, "I don't think I would have left my wife if I hadn't reconnected with you."

Which is maybe the saddest thing Richie's ever heard, so he goes, "Dude."

"That's what I was going to tell you," Eddie says, and there's that look again, the son of a bitch. "I wanted to tell you after the show, but then I wimped out, so then I tried to drink for courage, and. It kind of got away from me."

"Okay." Richie blinks. "And. Your lead-in was to ask me if I'm gay?" 

"Well if you're going to tell a man you left your wife for him, it helps to know if he's even into men!"

"Oh." The thought had occurred to him, lying awake after Eddie left, but he wanted it to be true so badly that he couldn't let himself entertain the possibility. "Well, I am."

"Yeah, I figured that when you visibly shit yourself after I asked."

Richie tries very hard to make sense of this conversation, but his cognitive function is inversely proportional to how close Eddie is at any given moment, and right now Richie can see each claw of his crow's feet. "Really though, I can't imagine a world where you and Myra make it to the grave together. Unless it's a murder-suicide, in which case I can imagine it perfectly."

"Eventually, sure, there might have been a breaking point, but I could have wasted years not knowing that it was possible to watch someone pick a wedgie out of their ass and still want to—" He makes a vague but emphatic gesture, sort of like a conductor telling an orchestra to pick it up. "I never not want to be hanging out with you, is what I'm saying. You're basically my favorite person, ever. If you could say something, that'd be awesome."

Horrifyingly, Richie's swallow is extremely audible. He didn't even know that could happen. He opens his mouth.

"Not a joke," Eddie adds.

"I wasn't gonna," says Richie.

"Yes, you were, it's how you respond to every emotion. I just beat you up for it, remember?" 

Richie catches himself grinning. Something is really wrong with them. "You're not really selling this thing."

Eddie shuts his eyes and waves his hands. "Nevermind, no talking from you, just nod or shake your head. Did I read this wrong?"

Obligingly, Richie shakes his head.

"You wanna do this thing with me? Even though I'm gross and neurotic and kind of an asshole sometimes?"

"You just listed like three of my favorite things about you."

Eddie rolls his eyes. "No talking, I said. Yes or no."

Richie nods, trying not to look too much like a cartoon dog offered a ham hock.

"Are you going to kiss me or not?"

And Richie thinks about how many times he's imagined kissing Eddie's thin, unsmiling mouth, and wonders if any of those times featured a gas station restroom and bruises on his ribs. Then he decides he doesn't care.

Richie's thumb fits neatly into one of the deep creases beside Eddie's mouth, a fact that delights him greatly. His skin is baby soft but his lips are chapped, which is great, because so are Richie's. When they kiss it's like two crumpled pieces of paper pressing together. 

All of Eddie's chutzpah seems to have been spent on the speech and proposition, leaving him corpse-stiff in Richie's arms for the actual kiss. Totally dead fish. Richie feels like he stuck a fork in an electrical socket.

"What the fuck are you laughing at?" Eddie demands, jamming a knuckle into the meat of Richie's side. 

"Nothing. I'm just happy." Whoops . Way too sincere, but Eddie's whole face wobbles pretty gratifyingly.

"Oh."

Richie can't help but smile, wrapping his arms around Eddie's middle and drawing him closer. "Cute."

" Quiet . I know I'm not. Good at this."

"Mm. Yeah, you're pretty terrible," Richie mutters, dipping down for another prom-night kiss, meaning I'd kiss you if you had no teeth and a snail for a tongue, meaning I love this , meaning I love you, I loved you first, before anything else. I called dibs .

"Oh shit."

Eddie attempts to jump back, but Richie's first instinct is to grip Eddie tighter, so they end up lurching dangerously to the side before catching Steve hovering in the open door. His eyebrows are at an I wasn't expecting this right now but this makes sense height, and he starts backing up when they turn to face him. "Sorry, I'll just. Wait, no, I have to pee. Get out."

They get out. Eddie has to drag him bodily back to the tour bus because Richie can't come to the phone right now, leave a message. 

A tremendous freak-out is on the horizon for both of them, but Richie can only focus on one revelation at a time, and the blown-open closet door can wait its damn turn for once.

He just kissed Eddie Kaspbrak . The same Eddie Kaspbrak he used to have extended teenage fantasies about running away and starting a goat farm in Alberta with. Richie Tozier Kaspbrak , he wrote exactly once in the margins of a notebook, before deciding the only way to completely dispose of it was to eat the page whole—both embarrassing and tragically metaphorical.

He thinks about it as they thunder back onto the tour bus, how objectively sad his life has been versus how deliriously elated he is in this moment. He wants to reach out and grab the feeling with both hands; then he realizes the feeling is grabbing him right back—tight around his wrist as he’s hauled and shoved right where Eddie wants him, as if Richie has ever needed any encouragement to intrude Eddie’s space. Pressed shoulder to shoulder, Eddie goes back to reading Business Insider on his phone, a jut to his chin like he’s daring one of their hip millennial employees to take issue with their sudden closeness, which they obviously don't.

"Crypto's fucking tanking again," Eddie mutters. "Why did I let Myra talk me into investing? I should've just bought another dehumidifier."

Richie hopes they never get to Minneapolis.