Archive of Our Own ^beta

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness.”

— Endymion,
John Keats.

Thursday
31 December 2020
New York, USA

Careful footsteps echoed around the staircase of a dim apartment building. A man walked with graceful ease and tucked a small paper bag into his coat.

Edward Kaspbrak, of striking complexion and the physical age of thirty-one, pushed against a door and stepped out into the frigid air of New York City. He was of average height—maybe shorter—with brown hair combed neatly to the side, and an old scar evermore etched into his cheek.

His current alias: Edward Kingsley. 

True date of birth: 2 November 1923. 

It was the first time in decades that he’d allowed himself to live under his real given first name: a small allowance of comfort. Still, he lived quietly and with carefully planned movements ever since that rainy night in 1967 when he’d fled Maine forever.

_____________________

Each lock clicked in turn and the seventh allowed the door to Eddie’s apartment to open. They were surely unnecessary now, but they eased the anxiety; the parasite. They made him feel safe. 

Eddie stepped through and shrugged off his brown coat, welcoming the change in temperature, and then slipped the paper bag out of the pocket.

His apartment was comfortable, medium sized, large enough to fit all the belongings he’d collected over the years. A bookshelf stood against the wall, lined with classics and multiple medical books of all ages. A desk with a typewriter, against the far window. Photographs in brass frames stood on the surface of a decorative table, and some paintings and posters hung framed on the walls. A wooden turntable—circa 1959—sat in the corner and showed a quaint dog with his nose to the gramophone: “His Master’s Voice.” An outsider may look in and claim the interior to be vintage by choice, when truly it was all a physical collection of Eddie’s life.

Over the past month the apartment had gradually become scattered with cardboard boxes and trunks. Eddie’s move was planned for mid-March; the reason being that he had been in New York now long enough that people may start to notice. They could notice that he was not looking to be his claimed age. And, thus, another cycle would begin; another life where he would take on a false name, find a job, and become acquainted with people he would eventually have to leave. The lack of solidity in his life was exhausting and infuriating, but he’d began to grow numb to it. A constant ache now settled in Eddie’s bones, and he awoke to it daily; some might call it loneliness, but he had no other choice. He’d vowed to never tell another person about his state.

Eddie was frozen at age thirty; he knew that. The only part of him that seemed to grow with each passing year was an increase in loneliness—deeply rooted and grating—and a feeling of having grown wiser. He was eternally alone with no future—ironic as all he had ahead of him was time.

Eddie walked to one of the living room couches, paper bag in hand. He sat down next to his white cat Ferdy—one of the many white cats he’d had in his life.

He opened up the paper bag and took out the contents: a new passport with a false name, and other forms of identification.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Surname

ANDERSON

Given Names

HENRY

Nationality

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Date of birth

01 Sept 1985

Place of birth

ARIZONA, U.S.A.

Date of Issue

04 Feb 2019

Date of expiration

04 Feb 2029

Ferdy sat up, and Eddie ran his hand along the cat’s back.

“Another round, hey,” he said. And then, quieter: “Another chunk of years to hide in.”

_____________________

August 1948

Maine, USA

Edward Francis Kaspbrak was twenty-five years old when he married Myra Smithson. To him, it seemed a marriage of convenience; it was expected, so he obliged. He and Myra got along well enough, and he was able to live with reason to avoid his mother. Yet, it turned out he had moved himself into a new life with someone who resembled the traits he had been so eager to leave. Maybe he had done it to himself, subconsciously. 

Eddie’s mother had lied to him his entire life, and convinced him he was ill. However, the illnesses that she had created were different to those that Eddie believed himself to truly have: dejection, for one; anger, too. Another arose in the back of his mind when he thought of the type of person he could love. That person was not Myra.

When he looked at her he felt suffocated. He would think: what have I done to myself?

Myra had knowledge of Eddie’s past, but it had all come from the mouth of his mother. There was no way he would have chosen to provide her with information of his retched childhood. 

Eddie knew, down to the lonely depths of his soul, that he had no home.

_____________________

February 1955

Maine, USA

“Don’t you love me?” Myra asked one night. She stood in the kitchen, tending to a roast. “I slaved away over dinner, and you’re telling me you have somewhere else to be?”

Eddie stood rigid in the doorway, already wearing his winter coat. He’d stopped saying he loved her years ago. “I can’t cancel my plans.”

She stared at him, coldly. “Go then,” she said. “You’re so awful to me.”

Eddie left with no further words. His eyes stung at he walked to his car.

_____________________

Later that night, as Eddie sat at a bar in the next town over whilst sulking over his third Old Fashioned, a man approached him. 

It was the same man that had caught his eye when he’d walked in, and he’d tried desperately to ignore the itching under his skin. After the alcohol invaded his system, it became harder, and their eyes caught multiple times. 

The man began to talk, and a feeling pushed forward in Eddie’s mind. A thought. Something inside that he tried so hard to pretend didn’t exist.

The man invited him back to his place, and Eddie accepted. He was led out into the dark lot, a hand on his lower back and laughter filling the air. Then Eddie noticed three other men at the end of the lot. With a twitch of fear, he thought Fuck.

His thoughts were blurry and disjointed, and he swivelled away from the man. “I must be going—I have somewhere to be. I forgot, I—”

The man grasped his arm and Eddie felt anger flare up inside of him. “Hey, not so fast. I have some friends I want you to meet.”

The men were walking closer, cackling and calling out words that Eddie couldn’t make out. His pulse was thumping in his ears. Was this a ritual for them? A pastime? Were they serial killers? Hunting down people like … people like—

“Get your fucking hands off of me,” Eddie spat.

The man yanked Eddie in closer. “You weren’t so eager to leave five minutes ago, were you?" The low tone of his voice churned Eddie’s stomach.

Eddie shoved the man backward, then turned and ran.

He didn’t make it far. A hand caught the back of his coat and hauled him down. His head smacked the damp concrete. It was all Eddie could do to shield his face as the kicking started; deep, hard blows to his stomach, his legs, his chest. A hand that wore rings connected with Eddie’s cheek.

Derogatory remarks were thrown at him, and he lay there feeling a horrific pain and shame for finding himself in that situation. Stupid. Fucking stupid. You did this. You’re so ill and they know it.

A gunshot tore through the frigid air.

“Hey, you! Stop!”

“Oh, fuck.”

After one last blow to his side, Eddie heard the sounds of wet footsteps on the road as the men tore out of the lot.

He couldn’t get up. His entire body ached.

“Sir!” Someone yelled. Then, closer to him. “Sir, are you all right? Dear God!”

Embarrassing. A disgrace.

Eddie attempted to push himself up. The bruising was already starting. A hand appeared in front of him and he grasped it.

“Thanks,” Eddie said. He started coughing; his windpipe felt crushed

“You should go to the hospital.”

You need to go to the hospital, Eddie. Your sickness has worsened. Listen to me, please.

“No, I’m—” Eddie’s voice rasped, and he spat blood onto the ground. “I’m fine. Goodnight.”

“But, sir—”

Eddie waved a hand, dismissing the man, and began to walk towards his car. He opened the door, slipped in behind the steering wheel, and waited for the kind stranger to go back inside. Then he crumbled. The sharp cry scared him. His eyes pricked and swam, and he couldn’t hold back the sobs that racked his body.

The entirety of his mind pounded with a realisation, and it may have been there all along: he did not love Myra. He didn’t love her in the way he was supposed to, and he began to realise that maybe he couldn’t love any woman in that way.

A sickness.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, unable to stop crying, but he knew he’d never forget that rip inside of him. It was almost an ache for something else, a longing that shoved itself inside his rib cage and swore to never leave. Maybe his soul—whatever it was—had its arms reached far forward to a time that Eddie couldn’t place.

There’s no happiness here. I’m trapped inside a life I don’t want. I’m lost, yet I couldn’t wander if I tried. 

I’ve wasting away.

After a while, his awareness cleared. Distraught and hurting, Eddie drove that long hour home, tortured by the secret he now knew, one that weighed on his shoulders and shrunk him down.

He thought I must keep this locked away forever. No good can come of this. It won’t bring me happiness. No goodness at all.

_____________________

Eddie pulled into their driveway, slammed the door, and walked up the steps. He was vexed to find Myra sitting in the armchair, her pale face lit up by lamplight.

He closed the door—careful to hide his face—and dumped his keys on the hall table, then shrugged off his coat.

Myra’s stiff voice broke the silence. “Why are you home so late?”

“Lost track of time.” 

Eddie closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then turned around.

Myra shrieked. “Eddie, your face! What the devil happened?” She shot out of the chair and began crossing the hall.

“Nothing.” He walked past her toward their bedroom. 

She followed him.

Eddie walked through to the bathroom and flicked on the light. He flinched when he saw his face in the mirror. Bruising lined his right cheekbone, and angry red cuts were scattered across his face. The wide scar along his left cheek—a keepsake from his childhood—blended in, faded white and dim.

Myra stood in the doorway. “You’re lying to me. Again.”

Eddie ignored her and took a washcloth from the cabinet. He soaked it, dabbed at the cut on his lip and hissed.

“Don’t you care for this marriage at all?” He tone was accusatory, sorrowful, inviting anguish from Eddie.

You’re so awful to me.

Eddie looked over at his wife and felt nothing. His despair filled him to the brim. “You ask me that, but you should be asking yourself too.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We aren’t happy,” Eddie said. He looked back at his reflection. “We never have been.”

“Excuse me?”

Eddie dropped the washcloth in the sink and brushed past Myra. He sat on the bed and began untying his shoes. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.” He didn’t know if he was admitting it to her or himself.

Myra gaped. “What?” She was closer now. Eddie looked up and saw that for once she was taller than him. “What would people say? What would my family say? Or the Church? Eddie—”

“Do I look like I fucking give a damn?” he cut in. Anger. He was tipping. 

Her hand connected with his cheek.

Myra was crying. “You’re so sick, Eddie.” She whimpered. “Your mother knew, and I know it too. There’s something wrong with you. And, who’s going to take care of you? Who’s going to fix you?”

I know something is wrong with me.

Pain throbbed in Eddie’s cheek, and his eyes stung. He was seething. “You don’t need to fix me!”

“I don’t know what to do!”

Eddie grabbed his pyjamas and pillow. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

He slammed the door shut behind him.

_____________________

That night as Eddie lay on that awful floral couch, and the moonlight fell on him through the gap in the curtains, the rip inside of him grew. Something clicked and turned; unexplainable. He was a boat that capsized.

Eddie shot up—his eyes landed on the glass cabinet filled with Myra’s infinite amount of cat statues—and began to inwardly scan himself. Something was wrong. So very wrong. His stomach filled with dread and his heart began to beat much too fast.

Eddie swung his legs off the couch and the blanket tangled between them. The beats were too fast, and then odd and uneven. He knew what a panic attack felt like—he’d had them often enough—but this felt like more. Maybe those men had kicked him too hard, or pushed something inside of him to where it wasn’t supposed to be. 

Eddie braced his hands on his knees and dry heaved. His head felt hot, burning. All the blood seemed to be rushing away, leaving him in a cold chill. His body was defying him.

“Myra,” Eddie croaked out. He rested his elbows on his knees and held his head. “Myra!”

He’d called out to her, simultaneously not wanting to be anywhere near her, but with the goal of needing another person, because he had the distinct feeling that his body was about to give up on him.

“Edward?” Myra’s voice was muffled from the other room. He heard the telltale whack of their bedroom door hitting the wall and then feet pounding down the hallway. 

Eddie groaned. His heart was thumping rapidly. He could hear it in his ears, beating from his neck. He breathed harsh and fast, and hissed, “Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Eddie, what’s wrong?” Myra demanded, the end of her sentence rising in pitch.

A thin layer of sweat had begun to moisten Eddie’s skin, dampening his shirt. He looked up at Myra and realised that he’d began to cry. She stood blurry in the entryway to the living room, and Eddie wiped his eyes.

Myra gasped. “Oh, my word—”

“Something’s wrong,” Eddie said. “Fuck, I need—I need—”

“Do you need to go to the hospital?” Myra asked, rushing over to Eddie. She laid a hand on his forehead and he flinched away. “You’re burning up, Eddie!”

No hospital. Dear God, please no, no, no—

Then the pounding slowed. 

Eddie’s clarity of thought began to crawl, dragging itself through mud. The entire room stuttered to a silence that forced the prolonged beats of Eddie’s heart to become horribly apparent. He had a sinking feeling that he was fading.

“What’s happening?” Myra demanded. “I have to call—I’ll call—”

He tried to stand up, with no intention of where he was going—maybe he wanted to run from life—when his feet gave way and he went from standing to collapsed on the thick pile carpet with a hand clutching the coffee table.

“I think I’m dying,” Eddie tried to say, but his mouth moved slow and uncooperative, producing garbled nonsense.

Myra was kneeling in front of him, her eyes wide and scared, but he couldn’t hold his gaze on her; his lids were drooping. He could no longer feel the hard grip on the table beside him.

Myra’s voice echoed around Eddie, indistinct, as if he was under water. Any nerves that were left to feeling told him that his face could feel the carpet. The soft wool caressed his cheeks and then, he knew no more.

_____________________

When Eddie awoke, before opening his eyes, he noticed the smell of antiseptic. His mind automatically associated that smell with hospitals and sickness and his mother. His childhood rushed through his mind: sitting in waiting rooms, visiting doctors, receiving injections, being told over and over that he had too many sicknesses to count. And, being afraid.

He opened his eyelids and they struggled against drowsiness. A blue wall stretched across the other side of the room and was lined with beds of a metal frame—some empty and some holding people in hospital gowns with white sheets pulled up to their chest. Nurses in dresses with caps on their heads tended to some of the patients. Eddie watched all of this from his own metal bed frame, and over the long lump made by his legs under the white sheet. He was sure it had to be a nightmare.

“Edward?”

With a slow turn of his head—that being all he could manage—Eddie saw Myra sitting on a chair beside the bedside table. Her countenance was dull and unsympathetic. He didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want her there, but he wanted answers. He felt nervous and twitchy and on the verge of panicking, because he didn’t know how he’d gotten there.

“How do you feel?” Myra asked.

A very large lump was growing and pressing up against the walls of Eddie’s throat. “What happened?” he managed, strained.

“You collapsed,” she said. “And you lied to me.”

“What?” Eddie asked. “Myra, what the fuck happened—”

“They told me you had wounds from a beating. I said, ‘he never told me this. I saw the marks on his face and he never told me.’”

Eddie stared at her, frustrated and bewildered.

Then it all rushed back: him sitting on the couch and feeling his life slowly etch away from him. He’d collapsed on the floor, gripped the table, and his heart—

“What happened after I was out cold? Was I dying?” Eddie demanded. He pushed at the bed to sit up, expecting to feel pain but none arose. “Fucking—tell me what happened.”

“Language,” Myra snapped, her eyes gleaming. She rubbed her nose. “They don’t know why it happened. Your wounds were nothing serious.” Then she looked out the window behind Eddie’s headboard and said, “your heart stopped beating, Eddie.”

What he felt then mirrored the exact motions his body would take when his mother had told him he had a new illness: his stomach lurched and his head swam.

“They arrived at our house,” Myra continued tightly. “They said you were dead, but they tried to help.” She waved her hand, pulled a handkerchief from her dress pocket and dabbed her eyes. “I stood in the corner, wailing and helpless. And then”—she locked eyes with Eddie, almost accusingly—“you spluttered and began breathing again.”

He sat in the bed, shrinking away from her. The lump in his throat was stifling, and he let out an unwanted shuttering breath. Tears suddenly welled up in his eyes.

They said you were dead.

“They don’t know why …” He trailed off.

“You scared me half to death,” Myra said.

Hot, angry tears spilled down Eddie’s cheeks. “I died,” he gritted out. “And you’re talking about how you feel.”

Myra wasn’t crying anymore. Her face was bitter and resentful. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

He turned his head and screwed his eyes shut.

“I’ll go and get the nurse.”

Eddie didn’t turn back until he heard Myra’s shoes clacking quietly at the end of the room. He covered his mouth and breathed sparsely, feeling the wetness on his cheeks.

What terrified him the most was how things could occur in the human body that they couldn’t understand. The body experienced situations and reacted in certain ways that humans were clueless to. Eddie’s heart had stopped beating and the ‘experts’ did not know why. He worked in medicine, he studied it, and it frightened him daily. He’d been drawn to his work merely for the control he’d never had as a child. He wanted to help others, and he wanted to give them the answers that he never got. He’d make sure parents never lied to their children.

Myra stood with a nurse by the furthest bed and both their eyes landed on him. He felt small. How had he managed to build such a dreadful life for himself? Your life surely grew from your childhood, and Eddie’s was no good seed.

He prayed to a God he wasn’t sure he believed in, for any decency he could find in his life. He didn’t know how much longer he could take it.

_____________________

May 1967

Maine, USA

Eddie had worked in the medical field his entire life, so he knew something was wrong. He wasn’t ageing—he was sure of it.

Sickness.

All the research he did gave him no answers. He had nothing. He was forty-three, yet he looked thirty.

Was it not ironic that he had this sickness that made him physically well? Too well?

There’s something wrong with you, Myra had once said, years ago when they had been together. And God, he knew it.

A tear slid down Eddie’s cheek as he pulled at his taut skin; the same skin he’d seen in the mirror ten years ago; the same clear brown eyes; the same scar on his cheek.

What am I to do?

He went over every experience he’d had, and his mind always grasped on that one night thirteen years ago where his heart had stopped.

Did it hold meaning? And if so, how had this happened?

He remembered how that night he’d ached like never before. That night he’d realised what he wanted and knew he’d never have. Surely that was just pain and shame. Then his health had rapidly declined into an abyss and yet he’d somehow recovered to the point of no illnesses. 

Still, Eddie had never forgotten that feeling where a switch flicked on and an arm reached forward, desperately informing him that life right then was not enough, and that what he truly desired was out of reach.

_____________________

People noticed.

I exercise and I have a healthy diet, he claimed. Fruit and vegetables! Fresh air! Vitamin D!

A policeman noticed and looked at his date of birth. “You need to come down to the station, sir.”

_____________________

Eddie fled.

No friends, no family. Just him.

_____________________

They found him. 

A near miss. A narrow escape. He could have been an experiment, a specimen.

No shoes and drenched to the core, his socked feet slapped at puddles as he ran down a dark street.

_____________________

Eddie swore he’d never tell another soul of his illness. He’d keep running, always changing his identity, outrunning those who could hurt him, and outrunning his own fears. He didn’t want to be picked apart on an operating table. He was a doctor—he knew what curiosities they would dig for.

Have I been doomed to an eternity alone? Do I deserve this?

_____________________

The nightmare had started years before, consistent and unsettling, and it was just a clock.

A tall grandfather clock made of mahogany wood stood at the end of a dark hallway; the browns swirled together like marble. The top curved in two golden circles, matching the gold face and emphasised by the elegant black numerals and hands. A moon peeked through the top, promising to hide and give room to the sun when the time came. A long glass door in the body showed its heart hanging down among chains.

Eddie always knew that something was wrong, but he couldn’t figure out what. He opened up the back and examined the cogs—they were clean and moving, spinning and connecting with each other. It was all in working order. It was clean, it lookedright, but he could sense an error.

Then Eddie realised, with a crushing agony, that the pendulum had stopped swinging.

_____________________

Thursday

31 December 2020

New York, USA

“You’re still coming tonight right?”

“Yes, Bev,” Eddie said, tucking his phone between his cheek and shoulder. A smile pulled at his lips. “You can be sure of it.”

“Good.” Beverly’s voice crackled through the phone. “I wouldn’t want to be stood up by my date.”

Eddie rolled his eyes and looked through his carefully rolled ties. “We both know you’re dying to see Mr. Handsome—”

“Hanscom.”

“Mr. Hanscom, then.”

Beverly gave a mock gasped. “Eddie, how dare you!”

“Scandalous,” Eddie deadpanned. He held up a tie in front of his dress shirt. Navy or black?

“Yeah, well—” Beverly laughed. “And please call him ‘Ben.’ You’re too formal.”

“Me?” Eddie asked. “Fucking formal? Sure.”

Black tie. Black suit. White shirt. Classic.

“When you’re not cursing like a fucking sailor, yes, formal.”

“Like you’re no better.”

Beverly scoffed.

“I’m going to get dressed now, Bev. I’ll be by your place at nine o’clock.”

“See you then, honey.”

“See you soon.”

_____________________

The party was lavish. Every surface gleamed as if just polished, and waiters walked around with trays of bubbling champagne. Everyone was dressed to the nines; strapping suits, elegant gowns, black dress shoes and heels.

Eddie stepped out of the elevator with Beverly’s hand touched lightly to his forearm.

I’ve been here before.

“Oh my God, it’s gorgeous,” she said, her eyes gazing around.

“It certainly is something.”

Beverly turned to face Eddie and placed her other hand on his arm. “We’re going to have a fabulous night, okay? No moping.”

Eddie narrowed his eyes. “I don’t fucking mope.” 

Beverly raised her eyebrows. 

“Fine—yes, a wonderful night.”

Beverly smiled brightly. Her red hair was pulled back and elegantly flowed down the bare back of her glimmering forest green dress. She looked stunning, and Eddie adored her.

They began to walk down the hallway, and with every step memories began pushing through Eddie’s mind …

It was the hotel’s opening night. Everyone on the medical board had been invited. Champagne and dancing. Music and laughter. Alcohol and a complete and bursting happiness that filled Eddie up from his head to his toes. He’d been surprised in his being invited, having only been on the board for four months. They insisted, and he couldn’t refuse. Everyone was so kind, so sweet. The clock had struck midnight and a roaring cheer rose from the crowd of people. Eddie laughed and cheered. Then his eyes had been set out the window; the fireworks exploding in sky—white, pink, gold, glowing like the sun—had him captivated. Myra wasn’t there that night. It’s not healthy, she said. You shouldn’t be staying up until midnight. He’d laughed at the pure freedom he’d felt. Tears pricked his eyes at the thought of returning home to that cage, but he ignored it for that one moment of bliss.

I was happy then. Not in life, but in that moment.

Eddie realised Beverly was talking beside him and he hadn’t heard a word.

“Bev, I’m sorry, I honestly didn’t hear a word you—”

Eddie’s eyes caught a black and white framed photograph on the wall. Three men and two women sat around a table, champagne flutes raised in the air, radiant smiles on their face. One of the women sat on one man’s lap, the other was curtsying, and the two men sat close in mid-laugh. The golden plaque underneath said: Opening Night Celebrations! 1950.

Eddie was staring right at himself.

“Eddie? Are you—?”

Eddie whirled around and attempted to smile, but it felt more like a grimace. He knew his eyes were damp.

“What’s the matter?” Beverly asked, raising her hand to Eddie’s cheek. In those heels she was almost his height. She tried to peek around Eddie, but he moved and took her attention away from the wall.

Eddie shook his head. “Nothing Bev,” he said softly. “Just having a moment. I’m fine.”

Beverly looked concerned. “I wish you would talk to me,” she said, softly. “I don’t know what it is, but something bothers you, and—” She took in his expression. “And you’re not going to tell me, are you?”

Eddie hesitated over his next words. If I were to tell anyone, I think it would be you. “I’m okay. Don’t worry.” He smiled.

Beverly smiled back, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

A waiter walked past with a tray of champagne flutes and Eddie swiped two of them. He held one out, and Beverly took it.

Eddie looked her in the eye, determined not to ruin the evening, and raised his glass. “To a wonderful night.”

“To a spectacular night.”

They tapped their glasses together and a crystal-clear chime rang out.

_____________________

“I wish people still held balls these days,” Eddie said. He was attempting not to visibly sulk over the lip of his third champagne and failing. At least the alcohol numbed his permanent agitation.

His head always felt tight, full of worry and stress that pushed down against his eyebrows. There was a perpetual frown on his face, causing him to seem bitter and resentful of life, breaking only when caught by surprise. It became so tight, such a distinct ache, that he often wanted to just break down and cry. It was exhausting, and he never asked for it. To the outsider he must seem an angry person, but it wasn’t that. He was just exhausted; he was tired of having lived his entire life behind a wall.

Where is my freedom?

“Isn’t this a ball?” Beverly asked, swirling around the liquid in her glass.

“Not hardly,” Eddie muttered. “It needs more dancing. And better music.”

They were standing by a cocktail table. Beverly had insisted on being able to watch the pianist as he played; a tall, thin man in a black suit with short brown curls.

Beverly swayed in time and hummed, sipping from her glass. “Like in an Austen novel?”

“Sure.”

“Who would you want to dance with?”

Eddie stilled, and then sank into his thoughts.

Sometimes, he’d allow himself to dream … A strong hand holding his. A hand on his waist, and his own on theirs. A man looking at him with affection and comfort; someone to share his life with. He used to watch couples dance and long for that. He’d danced with women, but it didn’t fill his heart. If he had one wish—not including to start living again—he’d wish for that type of love he could dance with, hand in hand.

That dream would fade in a puff of smoke, as one single thought barrelled through: I can’t have that.

“No one,” Eddie said. “I wouldn’t dance with anyone.”

_____________________

Friday

01 January 2021

New York, USA

“There’s Ben.”

Eddie nodded across the room, beyond the round tables laid with plates and glasses, surrounded by people cheering and laughing. Happy New Year was being called out to others, and hugs were exchanged. The sounds of exploding fireworks came from outside.

Ben was tall and generously built. He was mid-conversation with two other men that Eddie didn’t recognise. The taller man had his hand on the shorter man’s back.

“Those must be his friends,” Beverly said. “Mike and Bill, I think?” She was smiling and her cheeks dimpled.

One of the men nodded toward Eddie and Beverly, and Ben turned around. His gaze landed on Beverly and a welcoming smile bloomed.

Hi, Ben mouthed.

Beverly giggled and mouthed Hi back.

Eddie rolled his eyes and drank from his glass, hiding his growing smile.

Then, another man with dark brown hair walked up to Ben and his friends and slapped Ben’s back. He spoke and the others began to laugh. Eddie couldn’t see his face. 

Then the man turned.

And the world around Eddie stilled to silence. He was paralysed. He could do nothing else but look.

 The man was tall, his legs impossibly long. He wore black glasses and had unruly dark hair—which looked as though he’d attempted to comb it back. He wore a navy suit with a purple tie and matching pocket square. And he was handsome.

Eddie couldn’t breathe. 

Why have you shocked me? I’ve been on this planet for almost an entire century. I’ve seen so many people through so many ages and nobody has shocked me.

The man’s eyes locked on Eddie’s.

But you’re dazzling.

Eddie knew his face was showing a vulnerability he couldn’t hide. His chest lit up with an old feeling; one he’d almost forgotten. Hope.

The man smiled and warmth flooded Eddie’s veins.

Then, a woman strolled over and lay her hand on the tall man’s arm. She kissed his cheek, and his attention was torn away from Eddie to bathe over her.

Reality came rushing back to Eddie in an instant, and he looked down. 

Eddie touched Beverly’s back. “Hey, Bev. I’m going to go find a window and watch the fireworks. You can talk to Ben.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes,” he assured her. “I’ll come find you soon.”

_____________________

A large window framed with white curtains gave a magnificent view of the sky. The explosions captivated Eddie; sparkles of red and green and gold. Ethereal.

Not all life is bad.

“Hey.”

Eddie jumped. He was surprised to find the man with glasses standing behind him, smiling crookedly.

“Hello,” Eddie responded.

“Happy New Year,” the man said.

“Happy New Year,” Eddie said. His stomach seemed to tumble, and that familiar warmth came alive in his veins. “Why aren’t you with your friends?”

The man walked over to the window. “Couldn’t see the fireworks.” He stood next to Eddie and leaned against the ledge. He was taller than Eddie. “Pretty incredible, huh?”

“Yes.”

Eddie was being watched—too closely—and he could do nothing to stop it. An unbidden blush crept over his cheeks and down his neck. He turned his attention back to the fireworks.

“I’m Richie,” the man said, “Tozier.”

Eddie looked back at him, hesitantly. “Edward Kingsley,” he said, and then held out his hand.

Richie smiled, large and bright. They shook hands and electric currents shot up Eddie’s arm. “Nice to meet you, Eddie. Do people call you that?”

“My friends do.”

“What about ‘Eds’?”

Eddie frowned. “Nobody has ever called me that, and I’m not starting it now.”

Richie laughed, deep and hearty, and Eddie looked away. He couldn’t understand why he felt so nervous.

Please go away. I don’t need this.

“Why’d you leave the party?”

Eddie let out an irritated sigh. “I wanted to watch the fireworks. Don’t you have a date to get back to?”

Richie laughed. “What?”

“The woman you were with.” Eddie kept his eyes on the sky. He felt hot under his collar. “Dark hair.”

“Oh, Patty?” Richie laughed. “No, no—that’s Stan’s wife, and one of my best friends.”

Eddie looked at Richie’s glowing face and bit his lip. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“No worries.” Richie smiled. “Gorgeous, isn’t she?”

Eddie’s pulse battered under his skin. “Very.”

Silence enveloped the two men, and for just a moment Eddie allowed himself to imagine that they were two old friends sharing the view of the sky.

“Are you here with Beverly Marsh?” Richie surprised Eddie by asking.

“Yes,” Eddie replied slowly. “Do you know her?”

“I’m friends with Ben Hanscom,” Richie explained.

“Ah,” Eddie said. “Does he talk about her often?”

“He never shuts up. Dude’s head over heels,” Richie said, grinning. “Don’t tell him I said that.”

Eddie found himself smiling. “I wouldn’t dare. What’s he like?”

“Kind,” Richie said. He tapped the frame of his glasses. “Smart. Funny. Hard working—”

Perfect, Eddie thought.

“—Honestly, one of the most caring people I know.” Richie looked proud.

“He sounds lovely,” Eddie said. “Beverly deserves that. I love her with all my heart.”

Richie was then resting against the wall with his eyes locked on Eddie. A fondness in his eyes that Eddie found himself being enveloped by. He felt a warmth shining on him, one that he’d rarely experienced in his life. He blamed the champagne.

“How long have you known each other?” Richie asked.

“Oh, I’d say three years now.”

A loud cheer echoed from the main room and Eddie looked back down the hall. The tight feeling that sat often in the forefront of his skull became apparent once more.

Eddie stepped away from the window. “I’m sorry, but I was going to head home soon. It was nice speaking with you—”

“Are you going to find Beverly?”

“Yes,” Eddie said at length, “I was.”

“She’s with Ben. Here, I’ll come with you.”

Eddie hesitated. 

“Come on,” Richie said, motioning with a small wave.

“All right.”

The two men began walking down the hallway in silence. The piano had ceased, and a song with a beat now flowed through the air. He looked at Richie and took in his sharp jaw and freshly shaved face. They were closer now, and the man somehow seemed taller.

They were approaching the wall with the old party photo from earlier, and sudden panic filled Eddie in thinking of Richie seeing it.

“I like your tie,” Eddie blurted. “Purple. It looks well.”

Richie smiled over at him. They passed the picture frame and Eddie relaxed.

“Thanks,” Richie said, straightening his tie. “It was either this or a black suit with a bright pink shirt.”

Eddie laughed, somewhat small and hesitant. “Wouldn’t that have been too garish, Danny Zuko?”

Richie laughed. “One hundred percent. That’s why I’d wear it,” he said. “That’s what Stan told me too. But Grease is a classic.” He whistled. “I must have a great sense of style to unconsciously channel a T-Bird.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Eddie said. “Danny Zuko was pretty fucking cool.”

Richie chuckled and fixed Eddie with a look. “Maybe I’m cooler.” 

They stopped at the door to the main room and Eddie looked away, desperate to escape Richie’s intense gaze. He scanned the room for Beverly and saw her with Ben Hanscom. She was laughing, positively glowing.

“There they all are,” Richie said. “Come on.” He patted the back of Eddie’s shoulder and walked in the room. Eddie followed him and tried not to think of how he could still feel the ghost of Richie’s hand on his back.

Beverly and Ben weren’t alone. They stood with the two men from earlier, and now the pianist and the women who Richie had called Patty.

“Eddie!” Beverly called and waved him over.

Eddie walked over, back straight and head tall. “Hey,” he said, and then to the others, “Happy New Year.”

“Happy New Year,” they all chorused.

“This is my friend Eddie Kingsley,” Beverly said, “Eddie, this is Stanley and Patricia Uris, and Mike and Bill Denbrough.”

Eddie’s eyes instantly flicked down to Mike and Bill’s hands and he saw matching gold bands wrapped around their left-hand ring fingers. It pulled at Eddie’s heart.

He’d been overjoyed when the law had passed. It had been a privilege, one of the very few, of his living through the decades. He’d seen gradual change, and it was beautiful. He wasn’t as afraid as he once was—lying on the damp asphalt of a bar lot, in pain and agony—of being threatened for who he desired. The social norms of the decade of his formative years hardly hung over him. He wasn’t afraid to seek out affection anymore, and God knew he’d had his fair share of hidden nights, but he restricted himself to that only. He could never give anyone a promise of the future, and he had honestly never felt compelled to even try. It was an empty longing for love that took the shape of a silhouette, hidden and unnamed.

Seeing the two married men in front of him made Eddie—not envy them, but more long for that type of companionship. 

“How do you do?” he said. “It’s very nice to meet you all.”

He earned respective responses and kind smiles from the others.

“I see you’ve met Richie,” Ben said. 

“Eds and I were watching the fireworks.”

Eddie scowled, and he saw Beverly bite her lip to hide a smile.

“Bev, this is Richie Tozier,” Ben said.

“Delighted,” Richie said. He took Beverly’s outstretched hand and kissed her knuckles. The action pulled at long ago memories in the back of Eddie’s mind.

Beverly laughed and took back her hand. Stanley—the pianist with a head of curls in a clean-cut suit—sighed loudly; long and suffering. 

“Fuck off, Stan,” Richie said brightly. “I’m charming.”

“You’re irritating,” Stanley replied. Patricia placed her hand on Stanley’s arm and smiled—amused.

Richie gave Stanley the bird and the other man narrowed his eyes. Eddie could see that both their actions were backed with affection, no matter how hidden.

“Eds here thinks I’m sick as a fucking T-Bird, and that I could’ve pulled of that suit—”

“Oh, fucking hell, not that suit—”

“That’s not my name,” Eddie said, curtly. “And honestly, I never said—”

“It was a great idea,” Richie cut in.

“Terrible,” said Stan. “A terrible idea—”

Richie began laughing again.

“So,” Bill said, raising his eyebrows at Richie and then settling his gaze on Eddie. “What do you do, Eddie?”

He took in Bill Denbrough’s face and pondered his name. Recognition flashed across his mind. “I work in a Medical lab, and occasionally in Emergency. I’m sorry, are you an author? William Denbrough?” He was glad of the opportunity to take the attention away from himself.

Bill’s cheeks coloured, and he smiled. “Yes, that’s me.” 

Mike, who had been watching Eddie intently, looked at Bill with admiration and moved a hand to Bill’s back.

“I’ve read a few of your books,” Eddie said. “I enjoyed them, really.”

“Thank you,” Bill said, seeming touched. “Do you read a lot?”

“Yes, I love to.”

“And you like horror?”

“I read just about everything,” Eddie said. 

He often sat in his favourite armchair—the one of a deep velvet green—and had read an incredible number of books in it over the decades. Books took you to another place; they gave you an escape. It was the closest Eddie had found to an almost complete peace of mind, away from the tension he felt in his head.

“I love that,” Bill said.

Mike looked at Eddie. “Do you read any history?”

“Not, really,” Eddie said. “The books I read that aren’t stories are mostly—ah, mostly Medical,” Eddie said, fiddling with his cuff links. His demeanour faltered as he recalled the reason he’d started reading up on anything that involved Medical diagnosis and conditions of the human body. “I do have a soft spot for history, though.”

Mike’s stare had now become searching and Eddie forced himself not to squirm. “Have we met before?”

An icy chill surged slowly up Eddie’s spine. “I don’t think so, no—”

“Not at the library?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Huh,” Mike said, and then seemed to drop the thought. He smiled kindly. “Ignore me, then. You must look like someone I’ve met before.”

“Yes, perhaps.” Eddie’s pulse thumped distractingly in his neck.

“Losing your touch, Mikey?” Richie asked.

“You’re a laugh, Trashmouth.”

“Eddie,” Ben began. “How did you and Bev meet?”

“Oh,” Eddie said. He glanced at Beverly. “We met at her store, when I went to have a fitting.”

That wasn’t an outright lie. They had become friends during that fitting, but they had met two times prior, and both were in the emergency room. Beverly had come in late at night with wounds clearly from abuse. Eddie had tried to give advice, but there was only so much he could say without crossing a line. The suit fitting had given air to casual conversation, and although Eddie generally shied away from forming relationships, there was something about Beverly that wouldn’t allow it. She had left her husband a year later, and Eddie had never felt prouder. Now she walked with her head held high, determined to leave the past behind.

Beverly smiled at Eddie—a thank you for only him to see. 

Of course, he nodded back.

“Oh, wow,” Ben said, smiling down at Beverly. “I haven’t seen your shop yet.”

“I can show you soon,” Beverly said. She looked up at him with warmth.

“Aren’t they the cutest?” Richie stage whispered to Eddie.

“Richie—” Ben started, but Richie was laughing.

He raised his hands. “I’m being supportive!”

Eddie marvelled at how the people surrounding him seemed to fit together with comforting ease. Their chatter blended in with the music and joyful sounds that arose from the room, paired with fond looks and friendly touches. It was one of those rare moments in life where you witnessed such a large group of people who all held such tender affection for each other. He watched it all from behind a glass wall; a refusal of allowing himself to even entertain the thought that he could take part.

Finding a spare moment in between conversation, Eddie said: “If you’ll all excuse me, I really must be going.”

“Are you getting a cab again?” Beverly asked.

“I was going to walk actually, since my place isn’t far.”

“We were all just talking about leaving too, Eddie,” Ben said.

“Besides us,” Mike said. “Bill and I have some more people we need to catch up with.”

“Our hotel isn’t far,” Patricia said. “We can walk too.”

“And me,” Richie said. “I’ll head off too.”

Eddie was stunned by the genuine kindness simply being offered up. He caught Richie’s eyes—which were full of soft intrigue—and looked away.

“Lovely,” Beverly said, smiling. “Let’s go then.”

_____________________

The wind billowed around them, and Eddie hugged his arms around his grey double-breasted coat. Richie walked beside him in a navy one. The lamp-lit sidewalk glistened orange, damp from the rain earlier, a beautiful display of light against a dim landscape.

After retrieving their coats, the group of six had stepped out onto the sidewalk and fell into pairs. Eddie and Richie walked at the back. Music and voices from parties yet to finish drifted out of buildings around them, offering friendship to their own chatter. A few people milled around the streets, cabs drove by, but most people seemed to be inside sheltering from the cold.

“I could never do what you do, man,” Richie said, wrinkling his nose. “My hat goes off to you. Blood makes me squeamish.”

“You get used to it,” Eddie said.

“I don’t think I could ever. How long have you been in New York?”

“Almost ten years.” Eddie had been answering Richie’s questions shortly and with hesitance the entire walk, but the other man didn’t seem to mind.

“Shit, and we’ve never met?”

Eddie shrugged his shoulders.

“That’s fucked, man,” Richie said. “I would’ve noticed you. How have we not seen each other?”

“I don’t go out much,” Eddie replied. “Besides work.”

“Hm.” Richie was silent for a moment. “I’m glad you went out tonight.”

Eddie’s skin started to burn and he kept his eyes trained on the wet pavement below. A cab sped by, rushing with the sound of tyres through water. Patricia’s laugh rang out from up ahead like bells. 

Eddie could feel Richie’s eyes on him.

“Where’d you grow up?” Richie asked.

“Maine.”

“… Town?”

“Derry—”

“Mother fucker!”

Eddie looked up, startled. “What?” 

Richie was gaping and had stopped walking. “I grew up in Derry too,” he said. “Now, I’m calling it bullshit we never crossed paths.”

Fuck.

Eddie continued walking. He was taken aback, internally cursing at himself to Watch what you fucking say.

Richie caught up and fell into step beside Eddie.

“I, uh—I left pretty young,” Eddie explained. “We moved states. I must have lived on the other side of town to you.”

“It’s a pretty small town, Eds. When did you leave?”

Eddie frowned. “When I was seven,” he lied, and then said far too abruptly: “Tell me about your job.”

Is this too close? Is this too close a call?

Richie laughed. “Okay, I’ll stop quizzing you—”

“Eddie!” Patricia called cheerfully from the front of the group. “Are we getting closer to your street?”

Eddie looked at the nearest street sign. “Two more blocks.”

“Our hotel is on the next one.” Patricia spun back around and leaned into Stanley with a grin on her face. She compelled so much energy and attention without asking for it. A woman of class and confidence—that’s how Eddie would have described her.

“My work’s pretty much the polar opposite to yours.”

“Hm?” Eddie looked up at Richie. The tip of the taller man’s nose was rosy. “How so?”

“It’s in the creative field,” Richie said, and then smiled bashfully. “Doesn’t seem as important when you think of what’s done in hospitals. I mean—you all save lives. I’m just attempting to make movies.”

That grabbed Eddie’s attention.

“Are you an actor?”

“Nah, man,” Richie said. “I—well—I’m a cinematographer, mainly.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I’ve worked on some things I’m pretty proud of, and we have some good shit coming. I—”

“Are you fucking kidding?” Eddie’s eyes were blown wide. “A film-maker?”

An author and a fucking film-maker, Eddie thought. I’ve seen it all tonight.

Richie was blushing. “Um, yeah—”

 “That’s just as important as medicine,” Eddie insisted.

“Well—”

Eddie waved his hands, dismissively. “On a different scale of course. But people still need an escape from life. They need—fucking—experiences.”

Eddie adored movies, and he wished he had anything close to a mind that could come up with what he lost himself in. He read and he visited the movie theatre religiously, and once VCRs came around, well, Eddie was hooked.

“I—yeah.” Richie seemed genuinely surprised. “That’s exactly what I think.”

Eddie stared at Richie, a deep feeling suddenly arresting him and promising that he was nowhere near close to being done here with this man, or his life, or the people he’d been surrounded by tonight. It was terrifying and alluring in the same instance.

He instinctively felt the urge to run from it.

Who is this man? Who are you, Richie?

“I interrupted you, I’m sorry,” Eddie said, hugging his coat closer. “Please continue. How’d you come to be in that industry?”

“Oh, fuck, I could go on forever.” Richie laughed and pushed his glasses up nose. “I was always into movies when I was younger. Then when we got a camera, and a film one, I was always fucking using them. Photography then became a big part of my life. I studied it with film at college, and also started attempting to make small movies—little videos. It was fun. I fucking loved it.” There was an excited glow in his eyes. 

Passion. So endearing.

“Bill and I grew up together, and we both came to New York for college. He wanted to write books, and I wanted to make movies. We kind of had this plan that we’d try and turn one of his books into a movie, and well, it worked—Fuck, I’m rambling.” Richie’s cheeks tinted and matched his nose.

Eddie’s heart lurched. “No, it’s interesting.” He felt the desperate need to reassure the other man. “I like listening.  Why do you want to make movies?”

Richie breathed out in a whoosh and laughed. “Oh man, where do I fucking start?”

Eddie realised he’d just been staring at Richie, not watching where he was going, when he almost collided into Beverly’s back. Eddie halted quickly, stumbling, and Richie caught his arm to steady him, then he dropped it.

The four ahead had stopped walking and were exchanging hugs and farewells.

“This is our street,” Stanley said to Richie, and then to Eddie: “It was nice to meet you, Eddie.”

Patricia walked up to Eddie and held his shoulders. Her smile was radiant. “We all have to get together again.” She hugged Eddie and then spoke quietly into his ear: “I think you’re going to fit in well with us.”

If only you knew.

Eddie gave her a small smile as she pulled back. “Thank you. Your very kind, Patricia.”

 “Please, call me Patty.” She winked. 

Patricia and Stanley hugged Richie and Ben and said farewells, then wished Eddie and Beverly the likes of seeing them soon. Eddie agreed, while truly knowing he intended to avoid them.

“Don’t be a stranger!” Patty called to him as Stanley led her across the road, hand on her back, dress billowing out under her coat in the wind.

Eddie watched, stock-still, as deprivation gnawed at his stomach.

“She’s so sweet,” Beverly said, and then quieter to Eddie as he watched: “I like them. I think we might’ve found new friends.”

Yes, you may have.

Beverly was hopeful and beaming. 

“They’re great,” he said. 

“I’ll let you continue your conversation,” Beverly said and winked. 

Eddie’s brows furrowed as she made her way back over to Ben and continued down the sidewalk.

“You coming?” Richie asked. He seemed to glow against the backdrop of the dark buildings.

“Yes,” Eddie said, and fell into step beside Richie. Half the energy he’d held before had been sucked out of him.

“What were we talking about?” Richie asked.

“I wanted to know why you decided to make movies,” Eddie replied. Only he really didn’t want to know because he felt as though he was teetering on the edge of a cliff and anything Richie said was bound to tip him over.

“Right. Well …” Richie’s eyes focussed on the ground, surely mulling over his thoughts. He fixed his glasses again and looked at Eddie.

God, help me.

“When I figured out what I wanted to do, it was because I wanted to be able to give back to people what I loved getting myself. I think it’s amazing how people have the power to create things that can make others feel so much.” Richie was talking excitedly; the type of speech that’s captivating to listen to. “Films can have a huge impact on people—stories can. You’re able to get messages across—like … the truth—about life, through fiction. We make a lot of comedy; it’s my best area, and I love it because it’s kind of like—” Richie laughed. “Like tricking people too. You get them to come and see this movie—to see a story they were drawn to, and then you can unload this whole experience on them. The serious shit can sneak up on them while they’re laughing. There’s some quote—” He waved his hand. “Somewhere about art being at its best when it’s voicing the shit people would prefer not to talk about.” He took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck, I just—I love all of it so much.”

And, well … what was Eddie to say to that? He was standing on that cliff edge and the ground was crumbling beneath his feet.

“Jesus,” Eddie muttered, looking down.

“My fucking mouth just runs itself off sometimes. That was a rant, I—”

“No,” Eddie interrupted quietly. “It’s really god damn incredible, Richie.”

Eddie knew it then, that Richie was made up of energy and gold and a passion to just exist and be. Richie possessed an excitement for life that Eddie never had. Richie had a purpose.

Eddie continued as Richie watched him intently, “you don’t meet a lot of people who see life like that. You chased your passion—you were brave enough—and that’s honestly pretty rare.”

“Hey … thanks.”

Eddie nodded.

Beverly and Ben’s indistinct chatter drifted down in the cold night air. Eddie couldn’t help thinking that something was being shoved forward to him, something he couldn’t want, and it caused him anguish more than anything else.

“Are you happy with your job?” Richie asked.

Eddie was knocked; the question was innocuous, but too bold. Richie had offered up personal information—all that he had said about why he created—but Eddie never did that. It wasn’t something that he volunteered to do, because the answers would never be appealing.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Is it what you want to be doing?” Richie pushed.

No, not entirely, Eddie thought, but I don’t have a fucking choice. I can’t chase new paths; I have to lay low.

He was so ahead of himself always, and so careful. But he ended up operating in a circle and repeating everything. Nothing was new, and the loneliness and dejection were buried deep within his bones.

I have no fucking choice.

“I like helping people,” Eddie said, deftly avoiding the question. His eyes flitted to the buildings ahead and relief washed over him as he realised he was home. “This is me,” he said loudly.

Beverly’s eyes flicked up to the grey apartment building and she smiled. She’d never seen where Eddie lived. He never invited her. His home encompassed his secret.

Eddie hugged Beverly and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you for tonight.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied, smiling. “Still on for coffee on Saturday?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “I’ll see you then.”

He shook Ben’s hand, wishing him well, and then finally turned to Richie.

To look at that tall man with kind eyes behind thick black frames was so much, as though a low roar was building up somewhere far back in Eddie’s psyche.

“It was nice to meet you,” Eddie said.

Richie smiled. “Like wise.” He seemed to want to say more, but didn’t.

“I’ll see you around, Richie.”

Eddie turned and walked up the grey steps, fishing his keys out of his coat. He unlocked the door.

“Hey, uh—Eddie,” Richie said, and by the high tone toward the end of the sentence, Eddie could tell he was going to ask him something he wasn’t prepared to hear.

Eddie turned around and saw that again the look of having more to say was present on Richie’s face.

Leave. Retreat. Don’t welcome anything new that could come to know your truth.

“Goodnight, Richie,” he said and shut the door.

_____________________

When Eddie stepped inside the warmth of his apartment—second floor—the first thing he did, before even taking off his coat, was to cross the living room to the window by his typewriter. He carefully pulled back the beige curtain and looked out into the lamp-lit street.

Ben and Beverly were walking away from Eddie’s building with Richie trailing behind.

Eddie had been rude—so fucking rude—and it had felt entirely wrong to cast Richie’s kindness away, but what could he do? He watched as the tall man walked away from his building. But then he halted and looked up. Their eyes locked and Eddie took in a sharp breath and dropped the curtain. He shook his head.

Enough.

_____________________

That night, Eddie lay in bed, thick bed sheets and quilt pulled up to his chin, hands covering his eyes. Ferdy lay as a weight by his feet. Eddie pressed his fingertips into his forehead and tried to squeeze out the pressure, but it didn’t work; tightness that came with having to second-guess his every step and word.

Images of Richie—glasses and a smile that scrunched up the corner of his eyes—flowed through Eddie’s mind. A laugh. A hand on Eddie’s shoulder.

He rolled onto his side and pulled the covers over his head.

_____________________

Eddie woke up with a gasp and wrenched his damp eyes open. His heart pounded in his chest and unsettling images of a clock that wouldn’t work pressed down on him. He gritted his teeth and scrunched the sheets beside him in his fists. 

Silent screams.

 He reached for the lamp and switched it on; the room became bathed in a dim yellow glow and lit up the black and white framed photographs and ornaments on the dresser across the bedroom. Ferdy blinked with wide golden eyes, as Eddie sat up against the headboard.

He pressed two fingers to his wrist, chasing the pulse. It thumped fast and finally began to steady as his breathing calmed. It had become a reassuring act to feel that his heart was still beating and keeping him alive. It might have made more sense if Eddie welcomed the final pounding beat of his heart, but in all honesty he was terrified of death. It didn’t feel right. At least, not then.

He pushed his hands into his hair and rested his elbows on his legs.

“Fuck.”

The pressure of small feet padded up the bed until Ferdy was pressing his soft head into the back of Eddie’s hands. Eddie looked up through heavy eyelids at the white cat in front of him who was purring. Ferdy let out a short, high-pitched sound.

“Hello, my sweet,” Eddie said softly, running his hand over fur. Ferdy closed his eyes and pushed into Eddie’s palm. “Just nightmares. That’s all.”

As he sat there, his heart ached for a life he could not have.

_____________________

Saturday

02 January 2021

New York, USA

The morning sun warmed Eddie as he walked through the park beside Beverly. A few families milled around, others reading on benches or the grass, all making the most of the clear sky, no matter how cold the air. The paper cup was a hot comfort in Eddie’s palm and the coffee scalded his tongue.

“The party is at Bill and Mike’s, tomorrow,” Beverly was saying. “Well, it’s more of a dinner. Patty and Stan are still in town, and Ben invited me and I asked if I could invite you, and, well—” Beverly smiled and raised her brows at Eddie. “I don’t really want to go alone.”

“Why can’t you go without me?” Eddie asked, aimlessly fixing the lid on his cup. “They’re all nice enough.”

“I know, but I still don’t know them all that well.” Beverly’s voice turned soft. “I’d feel better if I had a friend there.”

Eddie looked up into her eyes, and they were soft and pleading. He felt his resolve giving. “I don’t want to intrude …”

“Eddie. You wouldn’t be,” Beverly insisted. Her face lit up. “They all loved you.”

He forced a smile and shrugged.

“Especially Richie,” Beverly added.

Then Eddie scowled. “Excuse me?”

“I’m just saying—” Beverly drank from her cup. “He seemed very invested in your conversation, and I saw the way he looked at you at the party. Also, don’t think for a second that I couldn’t hear you both as we walked down the street—”

“Beverly Marsh, I am begging you to hold your tongue.”

She tilted her head and gave Eddie a knowing look, which then caused him to flush.

“I think he was interested,” she said softly.

Eddie felt his scowl faltering and chewed the inside of his cheek. “Did he mention anything?”

“No, but I could tell.”

Eddie scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Oh, you could just fucking tell. Right.”

“Yes!” Beverly’s voice rose. “I could fucking tell. The same way that I could see you were too but were hesitant—”

“Bev—”

“Hey,” Beverly said, nudging Eddie with her shoulder. 

He frowned at his coffee. 

“You were holding back from him. And from the others. You do it sometimes, and I don’t know why.”

“I like my solitude,” Eddie said, trying to force honestly into his voice but failing. “I’m fine.”

“Eddie … I don’t think you are. Who are your other friends besides me?”

Eddie looked at her incredulously. “Oh heavens, Beverly! Are you honestly informing me that I’m not good with people? I fucking know, all right? I lucked out with you, but others I just—” A man sitting on the bench they passed looked up, and Eddie huffed.

“Eddie,” Beverly said, softer. “I’m not saying that.”

“It’s just that—well—” He felt helpless. “I don’t have much to give.”

Beverly looked at him, reassuring. “Just you, Eddie,” she said. “You don’t need to give anything else.”

He nodded and his heart panged as he took in Beverly’s lively blue eyes and flaming hair and a smile that never failed to make Eddie smile too. Odd moments hit him when he was with her that he remembered one day he would have to cease contact with her. His move was in March, and then they’d still keep in touch. Maybe she’d visit—with Eddie being careful they didn’t run into anyone who knew him as his new identity—or he would visit her. But eventually he’d have to stop seeing her … She’d age and he wouldn’t. He could keep in contact, but not see her. Or anonymously inform her of his inevitable passing on—

Eddie’s eyes stung and he looked to his right at a cluster of trees, away from Beverly, forcing his train of thought in another direction.

“So, will you come?” Beverly asked.

Eddie sighed. “All right.”

“Thank you!” Beverly said. “You’ll enjoy it.”

“Sure.”

“You are good with people too, you know,” Beverly said. “I mean, you’re sharp sometimes, but I love you.” 

Eddie laughed softly. “Thanks, Bev.”

“I just want you to be happy,” she insisted, “and to not cut yourself off from the world.”

“I am happy,” he said.

Beverly halted on the stone path. She raised a hand to Eddie’s shoulder. “Honey,” she said. “I can see right through you.” Then she squeezed Eddie’s shoulder and continued walking through the chilled air as the sunlight glinted off her hair.

Eddie blinked, feeling truly seen and vulnerable, and then walked forward.

As Beverly launched into a story about a customer she’d been fitting, Eddie passively listened and nodded, all the while thinking of that blatant lie that clawed at the inside of his chest.

I am happy.

_____________________

Sunday

03 January 2021

New York, USA

Otis’s voice crooned from the old crackling speakers of the turntable, through to the kitchen as Eddie pottered around in the hazy morning light.

“That’s a lover’s question, I’d like to know-ow, oh man, I got to know …”

One of the first aspects to the apartment that drew Eddie in was the instant love he felt for the kitchen. The fading yellow cabinets and wooden doorknobs enforced a comforting feeling of a time long ago. He adored the quaint little paintings of flowers and fruit baskets that decorated odd wall tiles, and the patterned curtains that hung over the kitchen window. Faint green shutters cut the opposite kitchen bench in half to reveal the dining room when pulled open.

Eddie hummed and poured steaming water from the kettle into a mug with a tea bag. The music was infectious and itching under his skin, and he couldn’t help it as his shoulders moved to the beat, and then his hips.

“Do you feel just—what I feel—and how am I to know you are really real … Baby, tell me where …”

Eddie clasped his mug in one hand, and a bowl of oatmeal and berries in the other, and moved into the living room.

Not all life is bad.

Some days—not as often as he wished—were lit with a certain joy, a gratitude for experiencing life, and that Sunday was one of them. Maybe it had something to do with the sunshine, and the trick his antique surroundings and classic music played on his mind.

The small red radio with a large dial and silver antennae sat on the coffee table, and Eddie placed his bowl down to switch it on. As he waited, he ate. Then a crackly voice leaped out of the speaker and began to inform the casual listener of the weather for the day. 

“… we’ll be feeling a high of only forty-eight degrees, with clear skies in the morning, and clouds will begin to creep in later this afternoon. We’re looking at some rain later on…”

His cell phone pinged on the table—the phone he barely used besides text messaging and phone calls—and he reached for it.

Beverly Marsh [7:21am]

Ben said he can drive us to Bill and Mike’s tonight

We’ll pick you up at 7! Xx

Edward Kingsley [7:21am]

Thanks Bev. Will see you then. Do I need to bring anything?

Beverly Marsh [7:22am]

Nope, just yourself honey!

It’ll be fun xx

Edward Kingsley [7:23am]

Ok. 7pm. See you soon. & Enjoy your day. Xx

Eddie placed his bowl down and stared absently at the radio. Then he switched it off. Otis continued to sing deeply in the background, but Eddie no longer felt as tightly gripped in the music. 

He knew he was being absurd by attending the dinner. Surely just this once it would be okay. He was moving in March anyway. 

The clock in the kitchen ticked loudly with each passing second.

Just one dinner. It won’t matter; they won’t care for me. I’m just going for Beverly.

_____________________

Eddie’s favourite bookshop was conveniently two blocks from his house, and it sold both new and extremely old copies. The smell of dust and old paper lingered the further you walked back into the store, just as the spines of books degraded in quality and faded in colour. When he stood in the isles around those books, a warm wrap of nostalgia engulfed him, but always with a tinge of sadness. Was it not bittersweet, that feeling of remembering a wondrous time you experienced long ago, yet with the underlying knowledge that it had come and gone, as all things do?

On that late Sunday morning, Eddie trailed his finger along the spines of books as he browsed the shelves, hoping that something he hadn’t read before—unlikely—would call to him. He had the freedom of the entire day ahead before dinner.

Robbers by William Denbrough caught Eddie’s eye, and he found himself smiling unbidden as he plucked it off the shelf. It had been published in the year prior.

A Bonnie and Clyde tale of crime, mystery, and romance. The love between two men becomes unbearably threatened as they run from the law, while simultaneously attempting to live.

His brows rose as he read the blurb, and the hands of his heart were reaching out to clutch the book closer to his chest.

A must read one review claimed, and Eddie thought yes, it seems so as he gripped the book tightly, then drifted down the aisle continuing to browse.

Not long after, a deep and familiar voice spoke and brought him out from his thoughts. “Eddie?”

He looked to his right, and sure enough a familiar face with glasses and a light stubble was smiling at him crookedly down the aisle. He had on a shirt with some cartoon Eddie couldn’t make out on it, a thick green tartan coat, and a navy umbrella in hand. Eddie blinked, because of course. Of course he would run into the stranger from the other night who had tugged and moved something deep inside him and he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it since. Was it not enough that he would be seeing the said stranger later that night?

Surprising me again, he thought. Two points to you.

“It’s me—Richie?” He motioned to his chest and then hesitated, losing brightness. “From New Years?”

Eddie nodded; voice caught in his throat. “Yes,” he managed, “yes, of course I remember you.”

Richie seemed to relax—entirely visible in his eyes—and he took a few steps toward Eddie. A few steps only because his legs were so incredibly long—

“How are you?” Richie asked. He fiddled with a book on the shelf in front of him, pulling it out slightly and slotting it back in.

“Fine,” Eddie replied. “And yourself?”

Richie nodded. “I’m good, good.” He tilted his head as he took in the book in Eddie’s hands. “Hey, Billy’s book!”

“Oh,” Eddie said, looking down. He turned the book over in his hands. “Yeah, it caught my interest. Is it good?”

“That one’s fantastic,” Richie said, a wide smile pulling at his lips. “Bill’s been known to write some pretty shit endings—”

Eddie laughed and it caught him by surprise. He covered his mouth.

“—But Robbers is a work of art through and through.”

Eddie bit his lip, unable to ignore the growing feeling of wanting to keep Richie talking.

“What’s it like?” he asked. “Is it sad?”

“It’s …” Richie ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek and looked up. “It’s captivating. Action packed.” He tapped the rim of his glasses. “Necessary, I think. And”—Richie caught Eddie’s eye—“romantic.”

Eddie’s cheeks felt warm and he looked down. “It sounds like a book I would enjoy,” he said. His eyes flitted over to the register desk, turning over and over in his mind the thought of Should I leave? Should I be talking to him? Is this not building a connection?

Richie smiled at Eddie. “I think you would. We’re actually filming it in a few months.”

“Oh?” Eddie’s eyes widened, almost comical. “It’s being turned into a film?”

“Yeah! Pretty exciting.”

“Are you filming it?”

“Yep,” Richie replied. “Camera work will be directed by yours truly.” A bashful smile graced his face. 

“That’s unreal,” Eddie said, unable to hold back a smile. “Pretty damn cool, Richie.” 

Richie laughed. “Thanks, Eds.”

He frowned and muttered not eds, and then his eyes landed on the register again. “I should probably get going …”

“Oh, sure.”

“But, um—” Eddie fidgeted with the book. “I’m actually going to Bill and Mike’s for dinner. Tonight. With Beverly.”

Richie’s eyes lit up then, almost as though he had been given a gift, or maybe won something.

Won what? Eddie thought.

“Well, hey,” he said, “I’ll be there too.”

“I gathered,” Eddie replied, rubbing an anxious finger over the book cover. “I ought to get going. I’ll see you tonight, though.”

“Were you going to buy that?” Richie asked, motioning to the book in Eddie’s hands.

“Uh—” Eddie looked down at the book. “Yes.”

“Here—let me get it for you.” He spoke softly, with eyes kind and a genuine smile, and it was all Eddie could do to shove the scattered feelings of electricity that seemed to be floating from his chest and up his throat.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to, Eddie,” Richie insisted. “Consider it a gift.”

Eddie was frowning and he couldn’t help it. His mind raced faster and became less intelligible. Surely, he couldn’t allow such an act of kindness.

“Please?” Richie’s eyebrows had risen behind his glasses and he smiled, pleading.

Hesitant, Eddie nodded. “Okay.”

He followed Richie to the counter and then placed the book down. Richie pressed his card to the machine and the women slid the book and receipt into a paper bag. He picked it up and walked toward the door, looking over his shoulder for Eddie to follow him.

At some point in the unknown amount of time that Eddie had been in the bookstore, grey clouds had pushed their way across the sky, blocking the once warm sunshine from tumbling down and causing a chilling breeze to pick up.

Eddie shivered and buttoned up his coat instantly. He looked at Richie’s neglected open coat. “Are you not cold?”

Richie smiled. “Nah, I run hot.” He held the packaged book out to Eddie, and then his voice took on a distinct English tilt. “For you, good sir.”

“Thank you,” Eddie said and took the book. “You really didn’t have to do that.”

“Hey,” Richie said, “it was my pleasure, really.”

Eddie twitched his mouth to the side, and just as he began to say, “I really ought to go—” a cold drop of rain splattered into his nose. He blinked, startled, and looked up to the sky.

The clouds directly above them were an angry, threatening grey, and as more drops began to fall, a deep rumble of thunder sounded in the distance.

“Oh, just my blasted luck,” Eddie mumbled.

Then Richie lifted up the dark blue umbrella in his hand and popped it open. The rain coloured the grey pavement around them with darker spots, making spattered sounds on the material, and the two men remained protected. Sheepish, Richie smiled at Eddie.

Please don’t say it, for the love of God—

“Want to shelter under here and I’ll walk you home?”

Again, Eddie thought. You’d be walking me home, again.

“All right.”

_____________________

The rain began pelting down against the umbrella above the two men’s heads as they walked the busy streets of New York City. With Richie being the height that he was, Eddie had to walk closer to his side to avoid the rain and his hand brushed the material of the other man’s coat.

Eddie was in trouble. He knew he was in trouble. The walk down the two blocks to his house had been filled with conversation that enraptured him. Richie always seemed to have something to say and Eddie felt compelled to respond. He couldn’t help but notice that it made him feel … happy. It felt like a magnet was pulling him toward Richie, and that feeling only grew and became more intense the more he heard Richie’s voice and laugh and jokes—stupid fucking jokes—and gazed up at his jaw covered in slight stubble and eyes that were so bright and full of life. He made it feel as though gold was spreading through his bones. Richie was golden.

Eddie wasn’t allowed golden. He couldn’t give forever; he could only give short bursts of himself—if that. And something in Richie’s eyes was giving off the idea that he wanted to know Eddie, and Eddie didn’t know what to do about that. He knew what he should do … but that was different to what the voice buried inside told him he wanted.

Do I ignore what I want? Do I chase it?

They had been talking about careers and work, and Eddie had been nowhere close to meeting Richie’s animated demeanour. 

“I’m getting the feeling you need more fun in your life,” Richie said, smirking.

Eddie huffed. “Fuck off. My job is—”

A woman rushed past, shoes slapping against the wet concrete, and Eddie had no choice but to jolt out of her way. He felt Richie’s hand grasp his waist and pull him, and his back pressed against the taller man’s chest. Eddie was pulled out of any sense of clarity the moment Richie’s body touched his, even though it was through multiple layers of clothing.

Eddie blinked and shook his head, pulling out of Richie’s grasp to take up his previous stance. He tugged at his coat, avoiding Richie’s eyes. “People are—everybody’s wanting to escape this weather,” he said, flustered.

Richie hummed a response and fell into step beside Eddie, moving closer again to hold the umbrella above their heads. “Some people forgot their fucking umbrella’s I guess.”

Eddie whipped a scowl at Richie who was pressing his lips together and holding in laughter. “You’re really beginning to get on my nerves.”

Richie grinned. “It’s an honour. Now, back to what we were saying—”

“My job is fine,” Eddie continued. “And I like living a quieter life. I have fun—”

Richie made a hmph noise. “You live in New York City, dude. What do you mean you like quiet?”

“Can you leave my fucking lifestyle choices out of this? I hardly know you. Jesus fucking—”

“Hey! I’m just saying!” Richie raised both arms and the umbrella pulled sidewards letting rain prickle Eddie’s cheeks. He huffed and reluctantly moved closer to Richie and wiped at his cheeks. “You should have a little more fun. I feel like you’d be happier.”

There it was again, that stupid fucking state of life that he lied about.

Honey, I can see right through you.

When the lie came out—“I’m perfectly happy”—it tasted sour on his tongue. 

“Okay,” Richie said, smiling. “I’ll make sure you have fun tonight.”

“Oh, you’ll make sure?”

Richie laughed. “Yeah. Me and the others. You have no idea what you’re walking into, but I swear to fucking—Saturn—you won’t regret it.”

Eddie scowled.

Richie halted and Eddie looked up only to realise they’d made it to his apartment. They were stood facing each other, and under the close confines of the umbrella their chests were very close. Eddie felt a nervous thrumming in his veins.

“Your humble dwelling,” Richie said—the British tilt was back. 

Eddie let an amused smile pull on his lips and raised his eyebrows. 

“What?” Richie asked, smiling too.

Eddie shook his head. “You’re very … odd.”

“Odd, huh?” Richie mused. “That’s one way people would describe me.”

Chewing on his lip, Eddie fished his keys out of his coat pocket. “Well, thank you—for sharing your umbrella with me. And for the book. You’re very kind.”

“No sweat, Eds,” Richie said. “I’ll see you later tonight.”

Eddie jogged up the steps to the complex front door—rain speckled his skin and coat. He fiddled with his keys until he found the correct one, and looked over his shoulder at Richie. The man leaned against the rail at the bottom of the step—no doubt soaking a thick stripe of water into his coat—navy umbrella propped up above him, and grey drops of rain falling all around. He was smiling. It almost seemed that a smile was his default expression.

“Eds is not my name.”

Richie’s smile only grew. “But, do you really hate it?”

No, Eddie thought. Not when it comes from you.

“See you in a few hours, Richie.”

As he turned back and unlocked the door, opened it and disappeared inside, Richie’s laugh travelled up and soaked into Eddie’s skin. He felt warm the entire way up to his own apartment and couldn’t help as his lips tugged upward.

_____________________

Eddie was waiting in the lobby. He’d settled on wearing navy dress pants, a white button-down shirt, a tie, and his chequered red and navy sport coat that he’d had since the sixties. He wore his winter coat over the top, unbuttoned.

Ben’s grey car stopped at the curb and Eddie pulled open the building door and rushed out into the cold air. He climbed into the car and shut the door behind him. The car lights dimmed until the inside was lit only by the flow of streetlight, muted through the tinted windows. The leather seats were soft, and the internal air was a warm kiss to Eddie’s skin; instant calm.

“Hey handsome,” Beverly sang, her red painted lips pulled up in a smile. She was dolled up, elegant and eye catching, the blue coat accentuating her eyes. “You look lovely.”

Eddie smiled, small and accepting. “Hello. And, thank you.”

That night, as he’d flicked through his coat rack and pondered on colour schemes, Eddie had felt the strongest need to look well, more so than he had in a very long time. He didn’t want to think too hard on the reason why, but he knew it had something to do with the tall broad shouldered man with glasses that had frequented his thoughts all day. 

He straightened his coat and pulled on his seatbelt. “And you, Ben,” he said, “thank you for picking me up.”

“Anytime, Eddie!” Ben said, pulling out into the busy street.

Beverly was still turned around in her seat, eyeing Eddie with a curious glint. She grinned and said, “Eddie, honestly, your clothes stun me every time. You have better taste than me.”

Eddie laughed. “Almost. I highly doubt anyone has better taste than you.”

“Agreed,” Ben added, eyes flicking to the rear-view mirror.

Beverly rolled her eyes. “Thank you so much, both of you. But I think you have an intrinsic eye for fashion.”

“Maybe I’m just observant.”

“Observant of the past. You pull out trends I haven’t seen since old films or fashion magazines.”

He felt that tightening of his skin, his scalp almost shrinking and building up a low pressure. “Sure,” he mumbled.

“Hey,” Beverly said, and Eddie looked up. “You look great, and I think everyone will notice.” She winked. “Everyone.”

Heat began to burn the skin of Eddie’s cheeks and neck, and he scowled and widened his eyes in a silent plea of please shut up, Bev. He discretely tilted his head, motioning to Ben, and then felt instantly furious with himself for acting as if there was anything to be secretive about. He didn’t need to look great for anyone. That wasn’t what he did.

Then why is my chest swelling in the most distracting way, yearning for—something … something I have rarely allowed myself?

Beverly’s eyes lit up in amusement and she mimed zipping her lips.

“What?” Ben asked as he stopped in traffic. “Am I missing out on something here.”

“No,” Beverly said. She winked one last time at Eddie before turning back around in her seat. “Not a thing, honey.” She patted Ben’s shoulder, and Eddie was not oblivious to the way her hand lingered.

He smiled and looked out the window at a picture of red glowing car lights on damp sidewalks, and warmly clothed people hurrying by.

_____________________

Small tadpoles of water ran along the tinted glass, and wind whipped by and changed their shapes.

Eyes cast out the window, Eddie said, “I bumped into Richie today.”

Beverly spoke, voice glazed with intrigue: “Oh? Did you talk?”

“Yes,” Eddie said. His breath misted over the frigid glass in front of him. “It was pouring. He had an umbrella and walked me home.”

And bought me a book.

He didn’t look to see Beverly’s expression—he already knew what it would be.

_____________________

Ben parked the car, and Eddie followed him and Bev as they walked across the sidewalk, light speckling the concrete through tree leaves, toward the town house that Eddie assumed belonged to Bill and Mike.

A smooth brown-bricked townhouse stood tall, slightly sunken further back than the two buildings that it touched on either side. It clearly had four floors, and the architecture resembled a restored late nineteenth century style. Eddie just knew it stretched on back further than he could see. The highest floor had a balcony with potted plants hanging over, and all the windows had Victorian looking barbed fences on the ledges. 

Ben unlatched the little black gate and the others two let him go first. He walked through and started up the old concrete steps to the second floor. Green leaves weaved in and out of the black railing on either side. 

Eddie looked up to see two potted plants set on either side of the grand, looming wooden doors that curved into an arch at the top, and light filtered through patterns of stained glass. Music drifted faintly through the door, alongside indistinct voices and laughter.

“Is this whole building their home?” Eddie asked quietly. He was beginning to feel a light twitch of nerves building under his skin, and the back of his throat, thinking of new people and of Richie.

“Yeah,” Ben said. He rapped his knuckles on the wood. “Isn’t the architecture incredible? I notice something new every time I’m here.”

From behind the door, a muffled voice called out, “coming!” and a silhouette approached, visible through the stained glass. Each side of the large door was pulled open in the middle to reveal Mike’s grinning face.

“Welcome, welcome!” he said cheerily, stepping aside to let them through. An unfamiliar song was playing from another room—resembling something from the nineteen-twenties until it joined with a modern twist as a man began singing. “You’re all the last to arrive.”

Delicious smells and warm air instantly wafted outside as Mike hugged Ben and Beverly.

Ben asked, “We’re not late, are we?”

“No, no, you’re on time. Dinner’s still cooking, and we’ve been having drinks,” Mike said. He shook Eddie’s outstretched hand and smiled as he spoke to Eddie and Beverly: “It’s great to have you both here.” He shut the door once they’d all stepped in. “You can hang your coats on this rack.” He motioning to a wooden stand. Eddie recognised a specific navy coat.

The hallway was wide and a deep teal colour, with multiple different shaped frames of pictures and drawings and paintings fitted all over.

“Richie, Stan, and Patty are in the living room,” Mike said, leading them down the expansive hallway. The music became louder. “Bill and I are just finishing off in the kitchen. Help yourself to the bar!”

He stopped at the doorway and the living room came into view. It was another intriguingly decorated room—warm and comforting and interesting—not at all like the boring modern styles Eddie so detested of the current age. It was a lively picture of laughter and joy; a room of armchairs and red walls and Patty dancing in the centre of the carpet.

“This is absolutely the Charleston, Stanley!” Her voice was a vivid song of high notes and sweetness, loud over the music. “Please remember which one of us did the Roaring Twenties Returns shows six years ago, hm?”

“She’s a jazz singer,” Mike said to Eddie. “I wasn’t sure if you knew.”

Eddie shook his head. “No, I didn’t. Wow.”

She was throwing her feet forward and back, twisting them, and her hands were held out to the side as she moved. It was undeniably the Charleston, and Eddie was struck.

She laughed, clear like bells. “I was front and centre, baby! You know I’m right.”

Stanley was sat on the stool in front of a grand piano. He watched Patty with one arm resting back on the fallboard and the other hand holding a short Winston glass. He was laughing loudly, eyes lit in utter joy—a shocking contrast to his serious demeanour on New Year.

Mike laughed and ushered them in before he turned and left. Eddie hesitantly followed behind Beverly and Ben, and as more of the room came into view, he saw that Richie was sat on a long orange sofa that curved around the back of the room. 

“You’re a fucking gift to this world, Pats,” Richie said, laughing and raising his glass in a toast.

Eddie felt something swell deep inside his rib cage and he stilled. 

“There you all are!” Patty called out. She hurried forward to hug each of them in turn. 

Richie looked over, and when he locked eyes with Eddie, a smile broke out on his face. Patty hugged Eddie and leaned up to kiss his cheek. “I’m glad you could make it.” 

Eddie felt overcome by his affection for this woman and her sweet words.

Stanley stood and patted Ben on the back. “We somehow got onto Gatsby, which is why Pats is dancing in the middle of the living room.”

“I love this song,” said Patty.

As they all launched into friendly conversation, Eddie followed Ben and Beverly to the small bar on the side of the room. Once he had a glass of bourbon in his hands—slipping down his throat and burning in a stinging but comforting way—Eddie’s nerves started to settle. It was easy to be around these people, he found, as they all seemed to fit and relate seamlessly. He listened intently to Ben and Beverly and forced himself not to turn around and seek out Richie’s eye.

Then, Eddie felt a tap on his shoulder and turned. Richie stood behind him, tall as ever, and gave a small wave.

“Hey, stranger,” Richie said with a grin, “long time, no see.”

“Hello,” Eddie said. He forced a smile and tried to push down the nerves and voice inside him that only seemed to become louder, insisting You shouldn’t be here.

“I heard you two ran into each other today,” Beverly said, smiling innocently at Richie.

“You heard correct,” Richie said, and then his eyes flicked to Eddie. “Right place at the right time.”

Eddie blushed and looked down at his glass.

Richie talked lightly and easily with Beverly and Ben, until Beverly announced a reason to leave the conversation and walked away while smiling at Eddie from behind the glass raised to her lips.

Richie talked to Eddie about anything and everything one could think of, and Eddie found himself becoming embedded in listening to Richie and all he had to say. He was finding out small details and snippets of Richie’s life that he couldn’t help but string up in his mind, mapping out who the man was. He avoided questions about himself with seamless ease, still managing to maintain conversation and hide in plain sight. But Richie was always looking.

Bill and Mike had joined them all in the living room, and Eddie stood talking with them and Richie. The fire crackled and warmed Eddie’s legs, and softer music hummed in the background.

Holding his second glass of bourbon, Eddie said to Bill, “I bought one of your books today.”

The writer smiled broadly and almost bashful. “Which one?”

Eddie looked at Richie with a quizzical glance. “… Robbers?”

Richie nodded.

“Oh, great!” Bill said. “That’s honestly the book I might be most proud of.”

“That book destroyed me,” Mike added, making Bill smile. “And, I’ll say no more. Did Richie mention it’s being made into a movie?”

Eddie nodded. “Yeah, he told me. That’s incredible.”

At that moment, Beverly strolled up to the group as Ben was talking to Patty and Stan.

“I’m sorry for interrupting,” she said, “but, Mike—the view really is beautiful.”

“Isn’t it?” Mike asked, and then looked to Eddie as if struck by an idea. “Oh—Eddie! You have to see the view from the balcony upstairs. We’re situated on this hill just right, so you can see downward. There are hundreds of lights.”

“Rich,” Bill said, “show Eddie upstairs. Dinner will be ready in soon—I’m about to go check.”

“Hell yeah.” Richie placed a hand on Eddie’s upper back. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

His palm burned a hole through Eddie’s coat and Eddie swallowed, allowing himself to be led out of the room and up the two flights of stairs.

_____________________

The city hummed with life around them—car engines thrumming, laughter drifting up from the busy streets, the faint sound of bass from a party. To his left, Richie leaned forward against the thick concrete ledge as Eddie stood beside him, both with drinks in their hands.

As Eddie’s mind was drifting, captivated by the view, Richie spoke: “Can I ask you a question?”

Eddie felt a twitch of unease, far off and not as distinct as it once was when asked with such an air of mystery. He hummed and drank from his glass, eyes cast out across the scattered lights below. “That depends on the question.”

There was a moment of silence, and through his peripheral Eddie saw Richie’s hand raise slightly and then jarred to a halt back down on the ledge. “Where’d you get that scar?”

Eddie felt relief washed over him. “Oh.” He looked over at Richie and was met with eyes a picture of scrupulous intent. Eddie brought his fingers up to brush along the raised scar tissue. Richie’s eyes followed. “When I was a child,” Eddie began, “I was running and tripped; a branch caught my cheek and ripped into it.”

It wasn’t a lie. He had the vision of the event in his head playing out like a short film. He wasn’t sure if it was purely memory or just what he’d pieced together and created as he grew up.

Richie flinched. “Fuck,” he said, “did you have a lot of stitches?”

He was seven years old, sprinting through the forest with other children from the neighbourhood. The excitement and energy of such freedom of being out in the world and away from his mother made him soar like a kite. The children were laughing and calling out to each other. Come on Eddie! Run faster! He’d cast his eyes backward for one moment and lost his footing. When he whipped his head around, he saw he was falling straight into a tree. Arms pushed out, he braced himself, but a small strongbroken branch stuck out and struck his cheek, pushing through the skin and into his mouth. It tore the flesh on a diagonal, and he fell to the ground.

There was white blinding pain, a metallic taste gushing in his mouth, and the wailing and piercing voice of his mother: You’re so fragile, Edward! You can’t be running through forests, and near sewers! Look what’s happened because of your carelessness!

There was the doctor’s office with the sterile cold metal table and white cloth bed. He’d been lifted up to sit, and the doctor had spoken to him with a monotone voice: Just sit still, Edward, and it will be over before you know it. It won’t hurt. When the needle pierced his skin, he’d screamed. His cheek was numb, and he’d continued to whine and cry—as much as he could—while he felt a numb tugging in his cheek as thread was pulled through. His voice was hoarse the next day from crying so hard.

Eddie drank deeply from his glass. “Yes, I had stitches, and now I have this scar forever.” He gave a faint laugh.

“Well,” Richie said, “it makes you look kind of bad ass. So, don’t worry about it.”

Eddie really laughed then—jarring and true. “What if I don’t want to look bad ass?” he quipped.

Richie smiled. “Then it gives you a story,” he said. He pursed his lips and looked out across the city. “You’ll always remember you’ve been through something.”

A group of loud voices echoed from the street below, and Eddie responded after maybe too much hesitance. “I guess so.”

He leaned forward against the concrete ledge; a mirror image of Richie.

After a moment, Richie chuckled next to him. “Were you a handful as a kid, Kingsley?” he asked. “Running amuck and getting yourself into trouble?”

“No.” Eddie’s hands were wet from the condensation and he rubbed them along his sleeves. “My mother was sort of … protective.”

“I’m getting the feeling that’s not in good context.”

“No,” he said, voice far away, “it’s not.”

There was a beat of silence. 

“Do you still see your mum?” Richie asked. His voice had taken on that specific softness that Eddie was becoming familiar with.

“She died,” he said, “years ago.”

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.”

Eddie nodded wordlessly as his mind partially slipped down into memories of his mother that he didn’t opt to recall. “It is what it is.”

_____________________

The dinner was an unexpected blanket of comfort; a scene of laughter and chatter and radiance. Toasts were made and teasing was thrown around, memories and stories were shared, a thick and soothing feeling of love for each and every person in the room glittered the air.

Richie told a story and Eddie found himself laughing—giddy and unable to stop—and his eyes caught Beverly’s. She smiled and he just knew what she was thinking.

We belong here, her eyes said. Doesn’t it feel good?

Eddie felt warm as he smiled, and although he was chained with a heavy feeling of forced distance toward people, he couldn’t deny the feeling that those people gave him. The feeling was home. He’d given Beverly a look that she too understood. It does feel good, Bev. And internally he thought, I don’t want it to end; but my state demands endings.

He buried the thought, like a lump under a carpet: it was still clearly present, and barely out of sight. 

_____________________

They were all sat lazily around in the living room, coupled off together, having hushed conversations. Piano notes danced in the air as Stanley played a slow version of a song Eddie had heard for the first time so long ago.

Patty sang softly—shoulder to shoulder with Stanley, “I wanna be loved by you, just you …”

The orange couch was soft beneath Eddie, and he was once again mirroring Richie’s position: knee lay on the couch, foot tucked under his leg, arm over the back of the couch—holding a glass—and looking at the other.

Toward the end of the night, Eddie had found it increasingly harder to leave Richie’s side. He was ignoring that ever-present voice in his mind that called for distance. The comfort—the human connection was something so big that he couldn’t push it away. And, he didn’t want to.

It was entirely obvious that something was there flickering in the air between them. As the minutes and hours of the night ticked by, it had been cleaned and polished and pushed out in to the open for them both to see it. It felt almost cemented in the moment that their hands had brushed by, when Richie had reached for the door handle to leave the balcony and Eddie had done the same. He’d pulled back quickly, but not quick enough for unspoken words to not pass between their eyes.

Eddie could’ve sworn that he was being pushed along a path, following a route, knowing himself that he shouldn’t be there, yet another force had a different opinion.

The music had ceased—as Stanley now sat facing Mike and Bill near the piano—and Patty was humming and pressing keys that played a stilting and unformed melody. Eddie watched as her eyes widened and she pushed at Stanley’s arm.  

“I have an idea—Stanley, move.”

He stood with an amused expression and lay a hand on Patty’s shoulder as she sat.

Her voice was cool and silky as she hummed a melody Eddie had never heard before, and then she began to replicate it on the piano. It swept around the room in a delightful haze.

“When struck with inspiration, one must always take it,” Richie said lowly.

Eddie turned to Richie and saw him looking. He wondered if Richie had been staring at him that entire time. “She writes music?”

“Mhm,” Richie replied. “A lot of Patty’s shows are written by her, or with her friends, or Stan.”

“I’m amazed,” Eddie said, his attention on Patty once more.

“It’s pretty fucking cool.”

“You’re all so talented,” Eddie said. He brought his arm back down, both in his lap, and found interest in his drink. “You’re all—taking hold of the reins. Making the most of it.”

“We might as well,” Richie said. “We’re on this planet, spinning around in the middle of fucking nowhere. When it comes down to it, why not just live?”

“I admire you all.”

When Eddie met Richie’s eyes again, he felt confronted. It was as though Richie was trying to figure him out, or sort through pieces and find a whole picture. But Eddie never gave a whole picture, and that’s just the way it was.

“Okay,” Richie said. He cleared his throat and sat up straighter, and something about it caused Eddie’s pulse to quicken. “I’m going to be really bold here and take hold of the reins, as you said, because, why the fuck not?”

“Richie—”

“Do you want to have lunch with me?”

Eddie blinked. He hated the internal conflict that roared up inside of him. Looking upon everyone in the room that night, who were living and fighting for what they wanted, weighed on Eddie in an obvious reflection of what he wanted but never let himself have.

Richie smiled, hopeful and asking.

“Richie,” Eddie said, skin burning as he looked down. “I … I have to tell you that I’m moving.”

There was silence for a moment. 

“Oh, where to?”

“Arizona.”

“Arizona?” Richie gaped, and there was a flickering of something in his eyes. “Fuck, Eddie—that’s the other side of the country. Wow. I—”

“I’m sorry,” Eddie said. His stomach was twisting something awful. He couldn’t stand it and looked out the window. “I just thought you should know.”

“Well, yeah,” Richie said. “When are you moving?”

“March.”

“Huh,” Richie said. “But would you want to?”

“What?”

“Would you want to go out?” He asked, eyes searching. “If moving wasn’t a factor.”

Half of Richie’s face was lit with the glow outside. He was captivating. It still confused Eddie as to how he was asking him, even after the knowledge of his intended move. 

Patty’s tinkering tones of a half-complete song animated the scene in the background, and the word that Eddie believed encompassed it all was romantic.

“I—” Eddie hesitated, and then a flash of harsh honesty forced the words out of him: “Yes,” he said, “I would.”

Richie smiled. “Okay, I stand by my invitation even more. Please, have lunch with me, Eddie.”

Eddie’s thoughts were catching up to him, barrelling up behind with statements of stop and don’t do it and you need to stay silent and almost entirely alone. But he kept running, fleeing, staying one step ahead of them because for one time in his life he thought—he thought—

Maybe I deserve a real experience. 

And, maybe he does too.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go out with you.”

Make the most of it.

Richie breathed out. “Okay. Sweet. Great. I’m—yeah, that’s great.”

_____________________

When Eddie shut the door behind him that night, and turned the seven locks, he was fighting a stubborn smile. It faded not long after, as he took in his surroundings: the faded paintings and photographs that line the walls, and the ornaments that easily portrayed their age. It was all a not-so-gentle reminder of the life he was constantly hiding. He thought of the clock that plagued his dreams, and the unmoving pendulum. He thought of cogs that don’t move—rusty and ruined—and couldn’t help but feel that there was cogs inside him that were stuck and unmoving. He’d always felt that way, like he had faults inside that he couldn’t fix; too deeply dug in to find.

His phone vibrated in his pocket.

Richie Tozier [11:32pm]

hey eds, how about lunch wednesday? 

are you working?

Eddie chewed on his lip.

Edward Kingsley [11:32pm]

Hi Richie. That sounds good. Yes working. I should have lunch break at 12pm.

Richie Tozier [11:33pm]

sweet! wanna meet here?

[Attachment: 1 Image]

food is the fucking best

Edward Kingsley [11:34pm]

Okay. That’s good. Thank you. 

Richie Tozier [11:34pm]

:)

it was fun seeing you tonight. i had a great time

Eddie felt warm.

Edward Kingsley [11:35pm]

I had a good time too. You are all very kind.

Richie Tozier [11:36pm]

of course! you’re part of the gang now

okay ill let you get to bed now

catch some zzzzz…

Eddie laughed.

Edward Kingsley [11:35pm]

Thanks. Goodnight Richie.

Richie Tozier [11:34pm]

night eds

sleep well :)

The smile on his face was one he hadn’t felt in a long time. Only, it was coupled with the weighted fact that everything had an ending, and the knowledge that Eddie might not.

A crushing weight.

_____________________

Wednesday

06 January 2021

New York, USA

The week was dragging by, chilling day after chilling day, and over the couple of days until Wednesday had come, Eddie grew more wary and believing of the old thoughts that had made their home in his skull. The image of himself lying on an operating table, an open curiosity for doctors in search of new ways to extend life, had permeated his mind since the moment he realised he wasn’t aging. Laying low and quiet, an unknown face to almost the entire world, was what Eddie needed. He hated the walls he lived behind, but they kept him safe. Yet, he seemed to be feeling a week tugging to be rid of them since that night on New Year.

The café Richie had chosen was only a ten-minute walk from the Hospital where Eddie worked, and he was lucky enough to only be doing lab work that day. He was walking down the bustling sidewalk, arms hugging his torso, when he spotted Richie standing under the red and white striped awnings that lined the front of the café. Richie’s eyes lit up beneath his glasses, and he smiled at Eddie. Eddie gave a brief smile wandered over.

Richie led them inside. They sat down at a spot by the window, where the light filtered through the white lettering on the glass and onto the tablecloth. Eddie reached for a menu and began to read through as his mind hounded him with the question: What the fuck are you doing?

“So, Eds.”

Eddie looked up from behind his menu. “Are you going to keep calling me that?”

Richie grinned. “You don’t like it?”

“You know I fucking don’t,” he mumbled and looked back down at his menu. He was taking in none of the print in front of him because he just knew Richie’s eyes were on him. In the cold air, he was suddenly starting to feel warm.

Richie only chuckled and pulled off his tartan coat to drape across the seatback. “How was work today?”

“I was in the lab,” Eddie replied, monotone, and then lay the menu down brashly on the table. “What were you doing today?”

Richie had an amused look on his face, and it seemed that whenever Eddie came off as conventionally rude, Richie just bypassed it as something to smile about. It was continuingly baffling.

“Well, I had a few meetings today. A lot of talk about the new movie.”

“Were they taxing?”

“Hmm, a fucking lot of focus,” Richie said, “but honestly pretty fun. Everyone’s excited for this, and we were all just bouncing ideas off each other. A success, I’d say.”

“Was Bill there?”

“Yeah,” Richie said, “he’s got a lot to do with this one. He co-wrote the script.”

Eddie’s brows rose. “Oh, wow. I thought—I don’t know how it all works, but I thought that authors didn’t get much say in how a film comes out.”

“Not usually. It just depends. But Bills on the team, so he does.”

Eddie nodded and picked up his menu again. “I only have an hour break, Richie. We better order.”

_____________________

Eddie was hesitant to admit to himself that throughout the entire lunch he was enjoying himself. Richie’s company was comforting, and fun, and Eddie could vaguely forget about his life for brief moments enclosed in laughter and smiles. His mind was contesting thoughts of leave with just let yourself have this one.

It was a strange experience to feel as though he was simultaneously at home sitting in the company of the man opposite him, while too feeling like he was taking up a space he was never meant to obtain.

They found themselves with twenty minutes to spare and decided to walk to the park. People were gathered, alone or with others, and the buzz of voices lingered about. They walked side-by-side, feet on the pavement, the cool air brushing the skin of their cheeks and hands.

“You know, I can tell what you’re doing,” Richie said. 

Eddie’s eyes shot over and he tried to hide his panic. “What?”

Richie hitched up a brow. “Averting any questions or chances to tell me more about yourself. You’re very mysterious, Mr. Kingsley.” 

Eddie frowned. “I am not.”

Richie laughed and it only made Eddie’s frown deepen. He nudged Eddie’s arm with his elbow. “Tell me something about you,” he said, “that I don’t know.”

“I, uh—I own a cat.”

“Hey, same! What’s their name?”

“Ferdy,” Eddie said.

“Very unique.”

“Short for Ferdinand.”

“Cute.”

The sun moved out from behind the clouds and Eddie tilted his head and smiled into welcomed heat.

“Oh, that’s—” Richie said, “can I take your picture?”

Eddie turned his head, startled. “What?”

“You just look—the lighting is good right now. Sometimes you see a moment and just want to capture it—”

“What? Fuck—no,” he replied firmly. “Please, don’t.”

Richie blinked. “You sure? I have my camera here, and it would be perfect photo, I promise—”

“No, Richie,” Eddie said, pulse becoming jittery. “I don’t like having my photograph taken.”

“Okay,” Richie said, cheeks blushing. “I won’t, then.”

Then continued their pace in silence, and guilt wove its way through Eddie’s stomach. He was always so harsh, so abrupt and firm, and he didn’t know how not to be.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie said quietly, “if that came across as rude.”

“No, you’re fine Eds,” Richie replied. And then in the same quiet tone as Eddie, he asked: “Why don’t you like pictures taken?”

They might find me.

I’d be embedded into history again, and that terrifies me.

The last photograph Eddie recalled being taken was one when he worked in a specific medical group in nineteen-sixty-six.

“I just don’t,” he said, and then stopped abruptly. “I should head back now.”

Richie stopped and turned around, and Eddie witnessed a flicker of something on his face—confusion maybe, or disappointment—but it was gone as quick as it came. “Okay. Let me walk you back.”

They fell into step again.

“Thank you for lunch, Richie,” Eddie said, “but just remember that I’m moving.”

“You’re welcome,” Richie said, and then halted them both with a light touch to Eddie’s coat. “Hey, Eds. You’re not moving planets, though.”

Eddie let out a startled laugh that seemed to rid the air of the earlier tension. “What?” 

The taller man looked almost mischievous and knowing. “You’re moving to Arizona, not Mars.”

“Your point being?”

“You just seem very hesitant,” Richie said, “with me, and with the others. Like—you’re catching yourself before you get too comfortable.”

Eddie’s mouth parted. At length he replied, “It’s better like this, believe me.” He began walking again and Richie followed.

“I don’t think it is at all,” Richie said. “You’re allowed to form new relationships.”

“I’d rather not talk about the reasons for how I behave, Richie,” Eddie said. “Please, just leave it alone.”

“All right, I’ll drop it. I’m sorry.”

They had hushed, sparse chatter during the walk back to the hospital, and then they stopped out the front. Eddie hesitated, unsure of what was an appropriate farewell was because This was a date.

Richie rocked on his heels, hands in his pockets, clearly mulling over his thoughts. “You know, Eds,” he said, “if you let us—we would all be loyal friends to you. You’re really something.”

It was aching to hear that—in both a pain stricken and warming way.

Eddie wasn’t sure what he believed in. He didn’t know if there was a God out there, or some unfathomable universal presence that made up everything, or if fate and destiny even existed. He’d have liked to believe that all events happen for a reason, and that everything he’d experienced had been for some larger unknown cause, but it all hurt too much. Who would have assigned him the hell of living through so many decades, unable to hold anyone or any life close to him, in order to satisfy some big reason? He couldn’t even dream up an idea to entertain.

In that moment, things were turning inside Eddie’s mind. Richie was standing before him and speaking so fucking easilyabout a group of people that could provide a wonderful life.

Not for me, Eddie thought. It would be a waste. Am I taking what isn’t mine by entertaining the company of all these people? What is this doing to Richie? And why does it feel like I’m being pulled by a fucking thread tied to us both, even though I’m resisting?

But, as he looked up into Richie’s eyes, his dopey smile, and an expression that wrapped itself around Eddie’s heart and squeezed, he didn’t want to deny anything. 

This can’t end well, Eddie thought. Nothing for me ever has. But I think I want this. Just for now. Just for this moment.

“Thanks, Richie,” he said softly. 

The world around them hummed indistinctly and far away. Eddie’s eyes flicked down to Richie’s lips. And he knew Richie saw it.

“Have dinner with me,” Richie said in a rush. “At my place? I’ll cook something good, I promise.”

Eddie’s pulse thumped lowly in his neck—thick and distinct.

“Can you cook?” Eddie asked.

Richie’s lips twitched up at the corners. “I’d say I can.”

“And what do other people say?”

Both of their voices were hushed.

“I think they’d agree,” Richie replied. “But, maybe you should see for yourself.”

Eddie bit his lip. Fuck it all.

“Okay,” he said. “When?”

“Friday night,” Richie said, around a smile. “Seven o’clock? I’ll text you my address.”

“Okay.” Eddie was smiling, warily and small. He turned around and looked at the hospital behind him. He caught a glance of the clock through the window. “I have to get back.”

“Sure thing,” Richie said. He looked as though he hadn’t taken his eyes off of Eddie. “Bye, Eds.” 

Then Richie brought his arms up to wrap around Eddie’s back and hesitated, but Eddie didn’t move and Richie’s arms pulled him into an embrace. Eddie let out a quiet, shaky breath and rested his head on Richie’s shoulder.

“Thank you for today,” Eddie said, and pulled back. “See you on Friday, Rich.”

Eddie turned and walked through the doors and continued into the waiting room. Then, he halted and turned to look.

Richie was stood on the sidewalk, a ghost of a smile on his lips and a hand running back through his hair. His eyes were on Eddie.

Eddie gave a small wave and headed back to the lab.

_____________________

Thursday

07 January 2021

New York, USA

He was sat at the desk before the partially open curtains—a full moon and only various stars visible—landline phone cradled between ear and shoulder, rustling through paperwork with the aim to put his affairs in order. The room was awash in a warm yellow glow from the overhead bulb, and the steam from his mug twisted in tendrils.

“The apartment is empty and ready for your arrival, Mr. Anderson,” the obliging man on the other end of the connection said. “I think we’ve covered the majority of the paperwork. All that’s left is the payment process and some last identification details I’ll need for the record.”

“Wonderful,” Eddie said, leafing through documents. “I sent off the money earlier today, so that should arrive soon. I’m just trying to find the papers you mentioned.”

“No worries,” the man said. “You’ll like Phoenix. Your place is in a perfect location nearby all you need, and not too busy as well.”

“I’m grateful, thank you,” Eddie said. He pushed his chair back and made his way to the large trunk sat by the bookcase. “I’ve packed away a paper I needed. Just trying to find it.”

“Take your time.”

Eddie set the phone down on the floor and lifted up the lid. He pulled out a box wrapped in aging newspaper. In his haste of tidying the previous night, he’d put away the newer documents among older ones.

“Son of a bitch,” Eddie muttered. White papers were mixed amongst yellowing ones, showing the clear typed letters from a typewriter. Black and white photos were scattered throughout the stack. “God damn mess of—”

A photograph slipped out of the stack of papers and Eddie stopped his search. Slowly, he picked up the photograph. A mellow haze began pulling at the edges of his mind, and he heard echoes of far-gone laughter.

The photograph—void of any colour, yet making up for it in clear emotion—showed Eddie sat on a lawn chair amongst two other women, one of which had her arms curled around his neck and shoulders with a cryptic smirk, and the other sat on the grass by Eddie’s feet, head upturned to the sun in laughter. The woman wrapped around Eddie—Anthea Fellowes—had been the first true friend he’d known since childhood, and up until Beverly he’d never met anyone he loved more.

Eddie flipped the photograph over. Written on the back in winding cursive was: Keith, Ant, & Tilly. 1973. At that time, he’d been Keith Kelly.

He remembered that summer; warm air, hazy sun, bugs flitting around, and wet feet on warm grass that stuck to the soles of your feet. He remembered that wonderful house with the two most wonderful people he’d met to that date. ‘Lake House,’ it was called, as it was the only house in the area of the Lakes to have the back lawn lead down to the grand lake. Anthea was fortunate enough to have found such a beautiful place after fleeing her husband halfway across the country.

Eddie stood on the banks of the lake, feet submerged, water dripping down his body and cooling him off. Tilly was sat up on a large rock with her knees pulled to her chest. She had dark cropped hair and brown skin, and was wearing only a red bathing suit. A recent tune danced out of the radio sat nearby.

“No way!” she said. “Dream on, Keith. I am not swinging from that damned rope and cracking my skull open.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “You’re not going to hurt yourself if you jump in the water.”

“Exactly!” Tilly said, “I’ll jump way too late and hit the bank.”

At that moment, Anthea came strolling down the grass with three glasses of lemonade. Her enormous sunglasses were pushed up into her blonde hair that cascaded down her back. “What’s the buzz, baby?” she asked Tilly with her distinct southern tone, handing off a glass.

“Keith’s bugging me to use the rope.”

“It’s what it’s there for,” Eddie said, walking up the bank to take the lemonade from Anthea’s outstretched hand.

She pouted at Tilly. “You ain’t gonna give it a go?”

“No way,” Tilly said. “And you can all quit it”—she shot Eddie a teasing glare—“because I’m fine, right up here, sitting on this rock.”

Eddie settled down on an orange floral towel and lay back. “Oh Christ, I’m sorry!” he said, a sarcastic tilt to his voice. “Far be it for me to make you do something you don’t fucking want to.”

Anthea’s bright cackle rang out, followed by the sound of a kiss. “Ya’ll can watch me then.”

Eddie leaned up on his elbows, brows raised, just in time to witness Anthea chuck her sunglasses on Eddie’s towel and run toward the rope. She leaped into the air—a flurry of blonde hair and the coloured stripes of her bathing suit—and gripped the rope.

“Catch you on the flip side!”

The rope swung out above the water and she dropped with a splash. Eddie and Tilly’s laughter was loud and ringing through the thick summer air.

“Mr. Anderson? Are you still there?” The distant voice rose up from the floor and broke through Eddie’s trance. “Mr. Anderson?”

Eddie wiped at his face and found it wet. He picked up the phone. “Yes—yes, I’m sorry.” He spotted the sheet he’d been looking for and snagged it. He cleared his throat. “I found the paper. Do you want me to read out the dates?”

“Yes, thanks. Just let me bring up the document.”

_____________________

Later that night, Eddie found himself on the phone with Beverly, curled up on the couch next to Ferdy with The Misfitsplaying quietly on his television. His mood had shifted when compared to earlier—slotted downward into a flat and uncertain state—although he was never sitting any higher than acceptance and plain surrender to the life he was living.

“I feel better now that I told Ben,” Beverly was saying. “It feels like a weight off my shoulders. No secrets now.”

Eddie was staring absently at the coffee table before him. “I can imagine that would be wonderful, Bev.”

Oh, to have no secrets. What would I know of that?

“It does,” Beverly said. “He took it so well, Eddie. I never thought I’d meet someone like him, after …”

A small smile graced Eddie’s face, despite his lack of energy. “I’m so glad, really. You deserve it.”

“Thank you,” Beverly said, and Eddie could hear the smile and soothing warmth in her voice. “Now, enough about me. Have you spoken to Richie?”

 Eddie picked at a stray thread on the blanket across his lap. “We, uh—we went out for lunch yesterday.”

“Oh my God, how did I not know this? You didn’t tell me!”

Eddie laughed. “I’m telling you now,” he said quietly. “And”—he chewed his lip—“I’m going to his place for dinner tomorrow night.”

A rustle of breath whooshed through the phone. “Oh wow, yes. Yep. This is making me so unbelievably happy.”

“Don’t get too ecstatic.”

“And you’re going to his at night. Interesting.”

 “Jesus, Beverly.”

She hummed. “Just something to think about.”

“I’m not expanding on that,” he mumbled, “and, it’s nothing to be excited about because I’m leaving.”

Then there was silence, and Eddie’s mind began wandering.

“Are you okay?” Beverly asked. “You’ve sounded tired this entire phone call.”

Eddie hesitated. “I’m all right. Just—it’s nothing. I’m fine.”

“Eddie …” Beverly trailed off and sighed, and he knew what she was thinking. She’d had the conversation about his move before—could tell he truly didn’t want to go—but she’d stopped trying to change Edie’s mind when she realised he wasn’t going to budge or delve further. “Try and get some more sleep, then. I think you need it.”

No good, he thought, feeling his eyes become damp and his breathing heavy, it’s the kind of tired that sleep can’t fix.

“I will,” he said and swallowed down the lump in his throat. “I’ll let you go, Bev.”

“Okay, honey,” she said. “Sleep well. Please.”

“Goodnight.” 

The call disconnected.

On the captivating black and white screen ahead, Clark Gable—with a cowboy hat and a slight southern drawl—said to Marilyn Monroe: “What makes you so sad? I think you’re the saddest girl I ever met.”

Eddie lay his head back against the couch and cast his eyes out through the far window and into the night: an eerie feeling of inescapable events and no control haunted his mind.

What am I tied to? he thought, I feel I’m on a journey with no control. A journey with no end.

_____________________

Friday

08 January 2021

New York, USA

Eddie—clad in his winter coat, a blue sweater over a white shirt and dress pants—took the elevator up to the third floor of Richie’s apartment building. The doors opened up to well-lit landing with walls built of a dark brown brick, and three apartment doors stretched out with even spacing. He walked toward the door labelled thirty-four in tarnished brass numbers. A matching knocker hung underneath, and he lifted up the handle and gave a rhythmic thump thump thump. 

A muffled croon of a woman’s voice accompanied by mellow guitar could be heard through the door, and not long after it was pulled open to reveal a smiling Richie dressed in a berserk red patterned button up with a black t-shirt peeking out the top.

Richie’s eyes took Eddie in warmly. “Hey, Eds,” he said, “come in.”

Eddie accepted Richie’s embrace, brief and comforting. Richie smelled so distinctly like himself that Eddie couldn’t help but shut his eyes and take it in. They pulled apart and Eddie stepped past Richie into the warmth of the apartment. The same bricks as the landing made up the walls, the living room, dining, and kitchen, which were all visible in an open plan. A fireplace crackled on the far-right wall with couches set around a television above it. A deep wooden dining table sat to the left, back into the apartment by a kitchen, and beyond were a few closed doors and a hallway.

“You can hang your coat up here,” Richie said, motioning to hooks that held his own coat and other miscellaneous bags and scarfs.

Eddie shrugged out of his coat and Richie took it and hung it up. “Your apartment’s very nice.”

“Thanks. I’ve been in this one for a couple of years now,” Richie said. A sizzling noise came from the kitchen and his attention shot to it. “I’m just in the middle of cooking, Eds. Come on in.”

Eddie followed Richie further back into his apartment, traipsing along the sleek wooden floors and past a bookshelf and cabinet. Richie began pushing food around in a pan and Eddie stood by the breakfast counter that was scattered with various utensils and food scraps.

“What are you cooking?”

“It’s a surprise,” Richie said with a grin. “Top secret. Can’t tell you, but I really hope you like it.”

“Ah,” Eddie said with a smile, “if you told me, you’d have to kill me?”

Richie laughed. “Yeah, exactly that.”

Eddie then noticed movement in the shadows beyond the kitchen and a small grey and white cat began slinking past the island. It caught sight of Eddie and slowed its movements.

“Is that your cat?”

Richie turned around. “Oh, yeah!” He set the spatula beside the stove and moved to squat down beside the cat. It pushed its head into his palm, and he stroked down its back. “This is the Goose man.”

Eddie took a few steps forward, and the cat twitched its head to look up at Eddie again. “Goose?”

“Yeah, you know, like in Top Gun.”

“Oh,” Eddie said and laughed. “Great choice.”

Richie smiled up at him. “Come pet him.”

“Is he skittish? I’m not sure if he likes me.”

“Nah, he’s fine.”

Eddie kneeled down beside Richie, and Goose looked up with enormous gold eyes. 

“He’s wild sometimes,” Richie said. “ He can go from cuddly to manic in a second, but he means well.”

Eddie raised a hand slowly and let Goose sniff it. Then the cat was pushing his head into Eddie’s palm.

“Hey,” Richie said, voice fond. “See, he likes you.”

Eddie smiled as he scratched the soft fur on Goose’s head. “Hey, little one,” he said softly. The cat began making a purring and brushed himself against Eddie’s legs. He chuckled. “Oh, aren’t you a darling? Look at your pretty face.”

Richie stood and Eddie looked up to see him gazing with an affectionate smile—small and soft. Eddie felt his cheeks warming and looked back at the cat. He heard the sound of Richie washing his hands, followed by the sizzling sound of the frying pan being tended to.

_____________________

“Okay. You ready?” Richie called from the kitchen.

Eddie was sat at the dining table, and before him it was set nicely with an array of condiments, a bottle of red wine, and partially filled wine glasses. Soothing warmth had nestled in Eddie’s bones, which was only partially due to the alcohol. “As I’ll ever be,” he replied.

Richie began walking over with a black lidded serving dish. He set it on the table. “The fanciest meal you’ve ever fucking seen, because I’m just that type of a cook.”

Richie lifted the lid and Eddie burst out laughing.

In a row were six of the most gourmet and well presented—what Eddie assumed were—hot dogs. Cheese and various vegetables lay atop of sausages on thick open bread.

“Le Hot Dog,” Richie said in a convincing French accent. He was grinning, but his eyes showed slight hesitance. “Is this okay?”

“Yes,” Eddie said between the laughter. “This will definitely be the most extravagant meal I’ve ever eaten.”

Richie laughed and sat down. He reached for the wine bottle and began to pour some more into their glasses. “I was worried you’d be disappointed. Dig in.”

“I’m definitely not disappointed,” Eddie said. He used his knife and fork to serve one of the hot dogs onto his plate, and Richie picked one up with his fingers. Eddie cut through the sausage and bread and brought the fork to his mouth. The flavour was much more than he expected from the simple idea of the dish, and Eddie wondered just what else was in it that he couldn’t see. Richie obviously had the knack for cooking, and which he hadn’t let on.

“How is it?” Richie asked.

Eddie finished chewing and nodded. “Delicious.”

Richie sighed. “Thank fucking God.”

The smile on Eddie’s cheek felt like a permanent fixture. “Do you cook a lot?”

“Eh”—Richie shrugged—“a bit. Nothing too complicated. I like cooking pasta and curry and other shit. Do you?”

“I do,” Eddie said, and he took a sip from his glass. The wine was velvety on his tongue, leaving hints of fruit after he swallowed. “This wine is good too.” Eddie twisted the bottle around the read the label. “I’ll have to remember this one.”

“Mhm. It’s a favourite of mine,” Richie said. He held up the hotdog in one hand and took a bite.

The wistful voice of a man singing about dreams and loneliness played in the background, and it somehow made Eddie think of summer.

“You were going to tell me about your childhood earlier,” he said. “I’d like to hear it.”

Richie made a mph sound and finishing chewing. “Right!” he said. “Fucking—bumfuck town of Derry. You’re lucky you left so young. It was a shit hole.”

Eddie nodded wordlessly and continued cutting through his food, avoiding another lie that lay out in plain sight.

“I’m an only child. My parents are both still in Derry,” Richie said.

“Are you close with them?”

“Yeah, I guess I am,” Richie said and shrugged. “I just don’t go back a whole lot, and they never come to New York, so it’s mostly the odd phone calls and holiday visits.” Richie put his hotdog down and took a sip of wine.

“That’s understandable,” Eddie said.

“Have you been back since you were a kid?” Richie asked, so nonchalant and careless and unaware of how incorrect his idea of Eddie’s life was.

“No,” Eddie replied, looking down at the plate before him as he cut through bread, sausage, and cheese. “I don’t want to go back.”

“I know you said your mother … passed.” Richie’s voice was softer now, carefully choosing his words. “What about your father?”

“He died when I was five years old,” Eddie said. He was trying to come across as unreadable, but he just knew it was translating as rigid, and he didn’t want his bitterness for life to seep out into his time with Richie. “I don’t remember too much,” he added and looked up to meet Richie’s eyes.

The other man had his brows pinched together and eyes echoing sympathy. “How old were you when you lost your mum?”

“Uh—eighteen,” Eddie said. He picked up his wine glass. “And I’m going to request that we drop the topic of my parents and please go back to yours.” He gave a short laugh and added: “If you want to, that is.”

“Yeah—yeah, fuck, sorry,” Richie said, waving away both their prior words. “That got a bit morbid and too personal. You can just tell me to go fuck myself if I invade your privacy again, like—go for it.”

A laugh escaped Eddie, small but real. “You’re fine,” he said.

“I’m just trying to show you a good time, Eds,” Richie said. Hesitance flashed across his face, and again Eddie felt the want to reassure him.

“Hey—I am,” Eddie said, and with a split-second of internal conflict, he reached for Richie’s hand. “I am having a good time.” 

Richie smiled softly and turned his hand over to link their fingers.

After a moment, Eddie said, “Tell me more about growing up,” and Richie launched into memories and stories of a time gone by and topped up their glasses.

_____________________

Later, they sat on Richie’s couch, fireplace crackling before them, and the remnants of the red wine in their glasses. Eddie felt warmer and relaxed, and the place on his thigh where Richie’s knee touched was burning up. Soft music cooed in the background.

Richie chuckled, head resting against his hand and elbow on the couch back. “You can just imagine my parents’ reaction when I told them I wanted to make movies,” he said. “Mr. Dentist and Mrs. Banker, with not a hint of a creative bone in their bodies.”

“I like that you didn’t give up,” Eddie said. He was turned toward Richie, wine glass in hand. “When they told you to.”

Richie smiled. “I couldn’t imagine doing anything else—no fucking way. I would’ve died if I’d listened to the people around me, with their fucking upturned noses and”—his voice turned into a pointed mock tone of sophistication—“it’s not realistic.” 

Eddie laughed and Richie grinned. 

“Anyway, I just ignore anybody who says that shit now. Like—you can’t go around telling people who want to create that there’s no future in that, when those same people go home after their nine-to-fives and fucking consume any art they can get their hands on.”

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie said, and his eyebrows rose, “that’s very true.”

“Fuck yeah, it is,” Richie said, and he took a sip of wine.

“Well, look at you now,” Eddie said and nudged Richie’s foot with his own. “Anyone who doubted you back then will be drowning in their own falsehoods.” 

Richie chuckled and pushed back at Eddie’s foot. 

“You could win an Oscar, for all I know,” Eddie continued. “And, I still need to watch a movie you’ve filmed.” Eddie didn’t miss the way Richie’s cheeks coloured in the dim lighting. 

“One: I’ll show you soon enough,” Richie said, “and, two: I’m no Roger Deakins, Eds.”

“Well, you’re young yet,” Eddie said. “What is he now? Seventy? Anyway, you never know what life’s going to give you, so I don’t doubt it for a second.”

Richie’s eyes softened. “That’s—yeah, actually. You’re right.” He smiled at Eddie. “I sure as hell never saw you coming.”

Eddie was silent. He stared back at Richie and parted his lips to speak, but nothing came out. He looked down.

“I’m really glad I met you, you know,” Richie continued.

Eddie nodded. “I am too.”

Richie put his own wine glass on the coffee table in front of them and settled back on the couch. “Hey, Eds,” he began, “you know you can relax with me, right?”

Eddie twitched his lips to the side, chewing on his cheek, and looked up at Richie. He liked this man, and he was enraptured by the kindness in his smile, his loud laugh and the humour that poured out of it, and the way he saw the world and all he wanted from life. And then, the physical aspects that were, too, pulling deep inside of Eddie’s rib cage. Tall, broad, and the soft and wild hair Richie had that Eddie could run his hands through, if ever given the chance. His eyes that were such a clear blue—

Like the ocean.

“It’s just that—it’s like you’re at a constant war with yourself,” Richie said. He scrunched his eyes up and titled his head. “Fucking—sorry, again. Running my mouth—”

“Richie,” Eddie said, and Richie opened his eyes and watched Eddie. “I don’t do this often. I don’t … get to know people.” He swirled the wine in his glass and stared down into it. “It’s just better that I don’t.”

“How is that better?”

“It just is.”

“Don’t you want to know people?”

“That isn’t the point,” Eddie said. He was frowning again, and he felt that pressure beneath the skin of his forehead, far inside his skull, pressing and enforcing that lifelong feeling of lack. When he spoke again, it sounded bitter: “You know hardly anything about me, and I’d prefer it that way.”

“But I want to know you,” Richie said.

Eddie didn’t look up. 

Richie craned his head to look, and hesitatingly, Eddie met his eyes. “Why are you so scared to get close to anyone?” he asked softly.

“I’m moving,” Eddie said. “I won’t be here much longer.”

His mind was gradually dissolving up in the warmth tingling inside his body from the wine and the fire before them. The soft music swept around their silhouettes and Eddie’s attention became focussed on the slight red tint on Richie’s lips and he how wanted to kiss him. 

“I just don’t think we should expect much from this,” Eddie added. Then his eyes were pleading at Richie. “Please, don’t expect anything from me, Richie.”

A flash of concern flashed across the other man’s features, and Eddie mentally begged that he didn’t ask further questions; he couldn’t handle it.

“Okay,” Richie said, voice soft and eyes kind. “Okay, Eds. Only focusing on the present.” His arm flattened over the back of the couch to rest behind Eddie’s shoulders. “I like spending time with you,” he said, “I like you, Eddie.”

The breath that Eddie let out then—however soft—was audible in the small space between them. Richie’s words were that of those that should normally fill someone up with radiance, but instead it pulled Eddie’s heart down like a coat full of stones in a river. He shut his eyes and felt Richie shift closer beside him. “Right now, I don’t want to be so lost in my head.”

Richie’s hand softly grasped Eddie’s cheek and his thumb brushed over his scar. Eddie leaned into the touch, and when he let his eyes open, he came to see that Richie face was only inches from his own.

“You deserve to live, you know,” Richie said. 

His palm was a warm promise against Eddie’s skin. Eddie shifted closer so that their noses touched, and his gaze flicked to Richie’s lips—soft and tinted. Richie’s other hand moved to rest on Eddie’s waist. 

“You can have anything you want,” Richie whispered. “Just let go.”

Eddie's gaze flicked up to Richie’s eyes—hooded and wanting. “I want this.” 

“Okay.”

Eddie closed his eyes and pushed his lips against Richie’s and—

Oh my God.

Something similar to a realisation washed over Eddie—something about thread being tied to people and events—but he refused to acknowledge it or lose himself in his mind, so he forced all his attention on how Richie’s lips were soft and damp against his, and how his lips were parting and the kiss was deepening and Eddie could taste the wine—fruity and smooth—on Richie’s tongue.

Eddie let out a small noise and Richie’s hand moved to the back of his head. Sparks lit up under his skin where the other man’s fingers brushed and threaded through his hair. He brought both hands up to rest on Richie’s neck and cheek, and he could feel his jaw working.

“Fuck, Eds—”

Eddie turned further into Richie, bending his leg and his knee bumped the other man’s, and Richie’s hand moved from Eddie’s cheek to his hip and then he was tugging Eddie closer and Eddie followed him because he didn’t want anything else, and he lifted his leg to the other side of Richie’s thighs and he was straddling him.

Eddie pulled back to breathe and caught a glimpse of his own legs bracketing Richie’s body.

“Is this all right?” Richie asked, breathless.

Eddie nodded and leaned in to kiss him again, tasting lips and tongue and wine. Every nerve inside his body was alive and he wondered, briefly, why he ever stopped himself from getting close to people, because not only did it feel like a physical fire lighting up under his skin, but it was coupled with the knowing that it was Richie—the eyes and smile and laughter and him—who was touching his thighs and his back and pushing a hand up under his shirt—

You deserve to live, you know.

His body was moving of its own accord, chasing what he instinctively knew he wanted, and he rolled his hips against Richie’s and moaned.

“God, Eddie—” 

“Rich—”

Just for now, he thought. You can have this moment. You deserve to live—just for now.

Dancing through the air was the soft music of some love song—distant and far-reaching—and Eddie allowed himself to melt into the other man, thinking of nothing else.

All I feel is him.

Just for now.

_____________________

It was a dream pushed up behind his eyelids—unconscious and unaware in sleep—and it started with Richie.

His arm was thrown around Eddie’s shoulders, and he was laughing and positively glowing and Eddie was gazing up at him in awe. They were walking through a park by some large city river, and sparse clouds dotted the blue sky above. 

Then a wave of darkness—like a black swirl in a mug of coffee—chased the scene away, and there was that clock looming at the end of a dim hallway.

It had crept up on him, as it always did, forcing heavy unease. He felt compelled as he stepped closer to it and all its features came into focus: deep brown wood, a face of silver and gold that was decorated with details and roman numerals, a moon that alternated with a sun, and the glass door that showed the chains and pendulum hanging still and silent.

But this time, he didn’t walk forward. He didn’t move to inspect the cogs or check the time or ponder on why the pendulum wouldn’t swing. He couldn’t move as ice began to spread through his bones as he stared at the clock, because something wasn’t right and it was making his skin crawl.

Thick silver thread was wound all around the pendulum and glinting, through the chain links, up into the cogs—where he just knew it would be tangled through—and out along the clock hands. He’d never seen that thread before, but he couldn’t help but think Has that always been there, and I haven’t been able to see it?

His throat felt thick and he couldn’t breathe and he wanted to run away but his feet got tangled and he tripped. Then the floor opened up and the vast nothingness swallowed him as he fell—

_____________________

Eddie was pulled out of sleep by the sharp wrenching of his heart. His surroundings weren’t familiar, and it took a moment to force himself into reality as he remembered that he was in Richie’s bed. 

The room echoed with the sound of splattering rain on the window, and a heavy warm weight lay around Eddie’s waist. He rolled onto his back and blinked at the ceiling with damp eyes, all the while trying to catch his breath. He pressed his fingers to his pulse point and felt the sped up rhythmic thud of his heart giving him access to life.

That stupid fucking dream.

It had been different than it had for the past number of decades, and he didn’t understand why it had changed. But, it was somehow worse.

He didn’t want to attempt to fall back asleep—not into the depths of his mind where that clock lurked—so he carefully slipped out of bed and crossed the few steps of the cool floor to the window seat. Richie hadn’t pulled the curtains across last night, he’d simply been too distracted, and so the room glowed dimly in the moonlight and the city’s radiance. Richie’s black shirt lay on the velvet cushioning and Eddie pulled it on and then sat down with his legs stretched out before him.

The minutes dissolved into each other as Eddie watched the streets turn a hazy and misted white from the heavy rain and wind; a strong contrast to the warmth of Richie’s bedroom. A light pressure built behind his eyelids, but he willed them to stay open.

The rain had calmed to a light patter against the glass when Eddie heard the rustle of bed sheets. He flicked his eyes to Richie’s resting form under the quilt, bare chest visible, and his brown curls splayed on the pillow. He was watching Eddie.

Richie’s voice was thick with sleep when he asked, “are you okay?”

Eddie soaked in the sleepy state of Richie; a warm memory to hold on to. He nodded. “I have trouble sleeping sometimes.” He rubbed his eyes, relieving some of the pressure. Richie was blurry for a moment, before swimming back into focus.

“Nightmares?”

“Something like that.”

They both watched each other for a moment before Richie broke the silence and asked softly, “you wanna come back to bed?”

Eddie nodded.

Richie reached an arm from out under the blanket. “C’mere.”

Eddie dropped his legs off the seat and padded over to the bed. He pulled back the covers and collapsed back into the snug warmth. Richie pulled him close to his chest and Eddie wrapped an arm around him.

He was sure he’d never felt this comfort and bliss before. He’d been held in friend’s embraces, but they were nothing like this, and he never wanted it to end. He never wanted to let Richie go, and it felt almost like a cruel joke the universe was playing by dangling Richie and romance and intimacy in front of Eddie when he knew he couldn’t keep it forever.

“For a second there, I thought you were going to leave,” Richie said quietly.

Eddie pressed a light kiss to Richie’s chest and buried his face further into the warmth of him. “Go back to sleep.”

Eddie felt the soft pressure of Richie’s lips on his hair, and then heard a whisper of, “goodnight, Eds.”

Eddie lay there for a while with his eyes shut, feeling the rise and fall of Richie’s chest until the other man’s breathing evened out and he was asleep. 

The haunting image of that grandfather clock was persistent behind Eddie’s eyelids, but soon enough he too followed Richie and fell into a peaceful sleep.

_____________________

Saturday

09 January 2021

New York, USA

The morning sunlight streamed through the window and onto the bed. Eddie’s head was bowing forward against Richie’s side with an arm was resting at the top of his back. He lay there for a moment catching his bearings, listening to Richie’s breathing and the sounds of the busy city coming to life outside.

He pushed up on his elbow and looked at Richie. He was lying on his back, hair dishevelled with sleep, and mouth slightly parted. He looked peaceful.

God.

Eddie ran his fingers along Richie’s chest—ever so lightly—tracing them up to his collar bone, and then along his jaw. He marvelled at his memories of the night before, and how he was lucky enough to be lying next to Richie—no matter how fleeting it was. He recalled the feeling of being touched and held, of fingers running up his back and gripping his thighs and Richie’s tongue on his skin. And, then he thought of how he’d given right back to Richie all that felt so good and heavenly. If he focussed hard enough, he could imagine that he woke up to this view every day with his only worries consisting of those of everyday life that people had.

Richie’s fingers started brushing lightly against Eddie’s back, his eyes still closed.

Eddie smiled. “Good morning.”

Richie opened his eyes and squinted, nose wrinkling, lips tugging into a smile. “Morning.” His voice was raspy.

Eddie lay his palm flat on Richie’s chest. “Can you see me at all?”

“You’re blurry,” Richie admitted, softly grasping Eddie’s forearm and rubbing circles with his thumb, “but I’m squinting at the sun.”

“You didn’t close the drapes.”

It was quiet as they both gazed at each other. Eddie took in every detail of Richie with a slight pang in his chest, as an incessant voice deep in his mind told him You can’t keep him.

“Did you sleep well the rest of the night?” Richie asked. 

Eddie only nodded in response. 

“What was the dream that woke you up?”

He looked away from Richie’s eyes, down to his chest and the dark hair there. “I don’t remember.”

“Damn. I hate it when that happens.”

Eddie hummed. “Do you have plans for today?”

“Mm, later,” Richie replied, voice groggy and faraway. His eyes were closed again. “I’ve gotta go in for work stuff at, like, twelve. Do you?”

“No,” Eddie said. He sat up and the bed sheet pooled around his waist.

Richie blinked. “Is that my shirt?”

Eddie pursed his lips. “Yes.”

Richie smiled. “Looks good on you.” He reached for his glasses on the nightstand and sat up. He ran a hand through his hair, further messing it up, and said, “there. Now I can see you better.” He reached out a hand to hold Eddie’s jaw gently, brushed a thumb against his cheek, and kissed him. “Are you hungry? I can make breakfast.”

Eddie felt the longing to take every little piece of good he was given that morning, and to allow Richie his presence as they hid safely in the warmth of his apartment. Eddie could pretend.

It’s all fleeting.

He didn’t resent being in Richie’s presence—the miracle that it was. What he resented were the years that life had taken from him while simultaneously giving him more. 

 “Okay,” he said at length, “but don’t go to much trouble.”

“I can make toast and coffee? That’s not much trouble.”

He smiled. “That’s perfect.” 

Eddie pushed the sheet aside and climbed out of bed, feeling exposed in just briefs and Richie’s shirt. Richie was climbing out of bed too, clad in boxers.

“May I borrow some comfortable pants?” Eddie asked. “Just until I leave.”

“Sure,” Richie said. He pushed the large mirror door of his closet aside and it rolled on its hinges. “Sweatpants for two.”

Eddie walked around the bed and took the pair of grey sweatpants Richie was holding out. He pulled them on and they bunched heavily around his ankles. He had to pull the drawstrings tight around his waist to keep them up. Richie was now wearing black sweatpants and was pulling a green shirt over his head. It left his glasses askew.

Richie huffed a laugh. “Lookin’ good, Kingsley.”

Eddie felt a light blush colour his cheeks and rolled his eyes. “Come on. You promised me food.”

“Sure did.”

Richie pulled open the door and the cat sitting right outside started meowing incessantly.

Eddie laughed. “He’s just like Ferdy.”

Richie gave the cat an exasperated look. “Every fucking morning.” He waved at Goose and took a few steps out the door. The cat took off in a sprint. 

Eddie stepped into the hallway and watched with amusement as Richie traipsed into the kitchen. “I’m just going to use the bathroom,” he called.

“Roger that!” Richie said, and the meowing ceased with the sound of biscuits rattling against metal.

The hallway was brightly lit. Eddie could now see a few framed photographs hanging on the walls. One specifically stood out, of Richie, Bill, Mike, Stan, and Ben bunched together in a bar. The bathroom door stood ajar, and as Eddie began to walk his eyes swept over the rest of the hall. 

He stopped dead in his tracks as a bucket of ice was dumped down his back. His diaphragm was frozen. He was numb. 

Standing at the end of Richie’s hallway was the tall grandfather clock that had plagued his dreams for numerous decades.

A tall grandfather clock made of mahogany wood … the browns swirled together like marble …  a face of silver and gold and roman numerals and a sun peeking out of the top … a long glass door in the body showing its heart hanging down among chains—

He was going to throw up.

“Richie,” Eddie said, but it came out as a croak. “Richie?”

“Yeah?”

How is God’s name—

He couldn’t take his eyes off the clock.

Richie’s voice came closer from behind now. “What’s up?”

It can’t be.

“The—the clock—” 

But, it is.

“The clock?”

He ripped his gaze away and stared at Richie. “Where did you get it?”

Richie’s eyebrows were slightly raised. “It was my grandfather’s.” 

Eddie said nothing and looked back at the clock, whilst having some vague and somewhat ridiculous thought that if he turned his back on it for a second it might creep up on him. It was otherworldly looking at something you had never before seen physically in person. All the details Eddie had seen in his mind were there. They were all there and creeping their way under his skin and—

He realised the pendulum was still.

Richie took in Eddie’s silence and continued. “It was left to me when he passed—God knows why it was that specifically. But all my family got things, and I got an enormous clock.”

All the life had drained out of Eddie’s limbs. “It’s not ticking.”

“Yeah, it also doesn’t work. I remember my grandfather trying to fix it, but he never could, and he was a whiz with shit like that. My mum wouldn’t let me get rid of it—she’s sentimental.”

Eddie was silent. He felt a hand on his arm and jumped.

Richie was frowning. “Eds, you look spooked, what the fuck? You’re white as a sheet.”

Eddie blinked rapidly. “Sorry, I—I’m having déjà vu.” He looked back down the hallway and spoke quieter. “I think I’ve seen that clock before.”

It almost seemed to be staring at him, with its still hands and elaborate numbers and the eyes in the face of that carefully etched sun—

A moon peeked through the top, promising to hide and give room to the sun when the time came.

“Huh,” Richie said. “Well, it’s from Derry, so there was probably a bunch of them around and you saw one when you were a kid.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. He willed himself to float back down to the ground in the hallway and away from the clock, tetheringhimself to Richie and the comforting expression he was giving. “Yeah, probably.”

“Did your family have one, or something?”

“No, no, it’s nothing. Don’t worry.”

“Okay.” 

His head still felt heavy with unease. “Can I use your shower? I think I need to wake up more.”

“Sure,” Richie replied, still slightly frowning. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes,” Eddie said, waving a hand, “I think I’m just woozy from sleep.”

“Okay, Eds,” Richie said. “Towels are in the bathroom cupboard. I’ll put some coffee on. How do you like it?”

Eddie started walking down the hall, wary eyes fixed on the grandfather clock. “I don’t drink it. Do you have tea?”

“Yeah, what type?”

“Green.”

“Got it.”

The rhythmic plod of Richie walking back to the kitchen echoed down the hall as Eddie approached the bathroom door. It felt so odd that what he’d only dreamed was physically in front of him. 

But, then again, maybe it could be explained away by normalities. Maybe he had seen the clock in Derry. It was an old clock.

A shiver ran down Eddie’s spine as he flicked on the bathroom light and shut the door behind him.

_____________________

Sitting at Richie’s kitchen table, dressed in his clothes from the night before, the scalding liquid of his tea warmed Eddie from the inside. He’d finally started to feel somewhat calmer. He’d begun to convince himself that he must have seen an identical clock in Derry, during those morose years of his life, and had unknowingly attached some sort of sinister connotation to it.

Eddie’s eyes were fixed on nothing specific at the dining table as he bit into the toast slathered with strawberry jam.

“Earth to Eddie Spaghetti?”

Eddie snapped out of his reverie and scowled at Richie. “What did you just call me?”

“It’s cute, right?” Richie asked brightly. “Rhymes too.” He had smudges of jam on the corner of his smile, and Eddie fought against the instinct to rub it away with his thumb.

“No, not cute. Not cute at all. And you are never fucking calling me that again.”

Richie laughed, joyous and loud, and it irritated Eddie to find that his scowl was slipping into a smile. The tension in his skull burst like a bubble.

“Where was your head at anyway? Are you still thinking of the déjà vu clock?”

“No,” Eddie lied. “Are you finished reading your emails?”

“Almost.” 

Richie looked back down at the screen of his phone, reading what he’d said Bill had deemed extremely important and life changing. He moved his lips side to side, again and again, twitching his nose. 

Eddie smiled. 

Memories of a blonde woman through a black and white screen and all the events in her chaotic life flashed inside his mind.

I am a witch! A real house haunting, broom riding, caldron-stirring witch!

Eddie chuckled, and Richie looked up.

“What’s so funny?”

“You remind me of Samantha from Bewitched when you do that.”

“Who from what now? When I do what?”

Eddie felt a flash of awareness and looked back down at his toast, picking at the edges. “Bewitched. It was a television show in the—uh—the sixties. When you twitched your nose, you reminded me of it.”

Richie hummed. “Never heard of it. Are you into old movies and shows?”

Nostalgia was a feeling that Eddie was all too familiar with: its wispy tendrils were enticing and presented longing. Old entertainment—whether it was music or films or television shows or books—was so loved by him, and not only for the simple enjoyment he felt, but now for the reminiscence of a time where he’d been clueless to the length of the years that stretched before him.

 “I do,” he said, “they’re wonderful.”

A prrt came from the floor as Goose was sat by the table blinking owlishly up at them. Eddie dropped his hand and the cat walked up and brushed against it and into his palm.

“He loves you,” Richie mused.

Eddie scratched the cat on the head. “I better get going.”

Richie’s face fell, but it was quickly hidden by a teasing pout. “So soon? You can stay longer if you want.”

“I better not.” He’d stayed longer that he should have. It was ridiculous that he’d even stayed over at Richie’s. “You have work soon, anyway.”

“Yeah, I know, but”—Richie shrugged, and there was so clearly more in the gesture than he intended—“doesn’t mean you have to leave so early.”

“Richie …” Eddie said in a warning tone, “don’t expect much, remember? This can’t be—I’m moving.”

“I know,” Richie said. His countenance was soft. “Well”—he pushed his chair back, grabbed his mug, and strolled to the kitchen—“we’re still friends, and I was simply asking if you wanted to stay longer and hang out. As a friend.” Richie had a goofy smile on his face. 

Eddie couldn’t hold back his own smile creeping up. He picked up his mug and plate and walked over to the kitchen to place it on the bench. He gave Richie what he hoped was a stern look. “Well, your friend is going home. Thank you for dinner, and—and last night. I had a lovely time.”

Richie’s features softened again. “Anytime, Eds. I’d love to do this again, sometime.”

Eddie only smiled and walked away to gather his wallet and phone off the coffee table, and sat down to slip on his shoes.

Richie had paced over and stood hovering by the couch. “The gang will probably organise something soon. But, I’ll text—or I’ll call you.”

Eddie went to pull his coat off the rack and slipped into it. “Okay. See you later, Richie.” Then he hesitated but gave in and leaned up on his toes to kiss Richie on the cheek.

“See ya, Eds.”

Eddie opened the door and caught a last glimpse of the other man’s dopey smile as he pulled the door shut behind him.

_____________________

Monday

11 January 2021

New York, USA

Beverly’s apartment was quaint and brightly coloured. It suited her. Her living room was chaotic—in an organised way—with fabric lying across her coffee table and on two arch chairs. A sewing machine sat on a small table against one wall. Her walls held various framed fashion sketches, a poster with her name beside the dress, and a drawing of the Mad Hatter that she’d done herself. The heavy red curtains cut the room off from the night sky outside.

Eddie was sat on her couch, ankles crossed under the coffee table and a mug in his hands, while Beverly knelt on the other side of the table hot fixing crystals onto fabric.

“Eddie, it all sounds so sweet,” Beverly was saying. “I’ve only met the man twice, and he was loud and ridiculous, but a gorgeous man non-the-less.” She pressed the metal tip of the gun into the fabric and looked up with a smile. “I think you’re very suited.”

Eddie frowned and shook his head. “Stop that”—he pointed a finger—“we are not dating. We can’t. We slept together, and I had dinner with him, but we’re friends, Bev. Nothing more.”

“Honey, it kind of was a date,” Beverly said. “You can insist that it wasn’t—and that’s fine too—but I think you’re denying yourself a chance of some happiness while it’s sitting right in front of you.”

Eddie stared down into his mug and said nothing. The conversation seemed pointless when Beverly only had half of the context. Maybe if she knew, he thought, then she’d understand why I do the things that I do.

He does make me happy, but that doesn’t fucking matter.

His phone buzzed lengthily on the table and Eddie looked.

“Is that him?”

Eddie nodded. “I’ve been distant all day.”

“Eddie—”

“I’m not fucking answering,” he said, firmly. “Spare me it, Bev.”

The buzzing ceased and the room was silent for a moment.

“He really likes you,” Beverly insisted softly.

“He can’t,” Eddie said. His voice was a small weak thing.

“Why not, honey?”

“Because I’m moving.”

Beverly sighed. She looked down and began arranging crystals. “I know it’s no use trying to change your mind, but I really fucking hate that you’re leaving.”

“I know,” he said. He felt small and awful sitting on the couch, knowing he was going to move away from Beverly who was the first true friend he’d made in a very long time. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think you even want to,” she said, “and I know that you know I think this.” She looked back up at Eddie, eyes heavy and set. “I’m sorry, but you haven’t seemed like you want to since you told me.”

Eddie shrugged. 

Beverly stuck the gun tip back down on the fabric and barrelled on. “Don’t you like your job?”

“Sure.”

“We just met some good people, too. Some really good people, Eddie.”

“I know,” Eddie said. His throat became tight and a deep sadness settled in the pit of his stomach. “That’s not the reason. I—I have to move, okay? Just”—his voice broke—“please believe me.” 

Beverly looked up and Eddie saw his own hurting reflected in her eyes. 

He placed his mug on the floor and pressed both hands into his increasingly damp eyes. “Son of a bitch.”

He heard Beverly lay the fixing tool on the table and the sound of her standing up and padding over to the couch. A weight pressed down onto the couch beside Eddie and he felt warm arms wrap around him and was pulled into Beverly’s side. He had to screw his eyes up tight to avoid beginning to sob.

“I believe you,” she whispered, and her voice sounded slightly thick. “I believe you, honey. I know something’s going on, and you don’t have to tell me, but just know that you can. You can tell me anything, okay?” He felt her chin on his head. “Anything, and I’ll be here.”

“I know,” Eddie said and shook from a withheld cry.

“God knows, you helped me when I went through that bullshit divorce.” She rubbed a hand softly up and down his back. “I love you.”

 “I love you too.” Eddie pulled back and Beverly wiped away his tears with light brushes of her fingers.

“Sometimes,” Beverly began hesitantly, “secrets can eat us up inside. Just remember that.”

Looking back at her, Eddie he thought of how he’d never told a soul of his condition. He’d been running for decades, alone, and had always kept his secrets, but the safety he felt with Beverly seemed to shift his resolve.

Maybe, he thought. And again, if I were to tell anyone, I think it would be you. Not tonight, but some other day.

Maybe.

_____________________

Tuesday

12 January 2021

New York, USA

An array of colourful vegetables sat on the cold store shelves. Eddie plucked out carrots and put them in his shopping cart. The late afternoon shopping crowd of people buzzed around him. He tried to focus on the handwritten list clasped in his hand, but all he could think of was Richie and the calls he’d ignored, the short text he’d sent of Busy right now, Richie. Will get back to you.

Eddie was terrified. He kept thinking back to Friday night and everything he’d felt with Richie, the connection he knew was there, and he was scared. Richie was trying. Richie obviously cared, and he no doubt felt what Eddie had when they were together, but Eddie couldn’t let it grow. Maybe he could let it exist as a small friendship between the two, but nothing else. He was going to flee this life and move to the next. He could never have stability. He could never have love.

Eddie pushed his cart down past the vegetables, taking what he needed, and over into the next isle. He squeezed past a woman and an elderly man and came to a stop in front of the cereal boxes. He was reaching for the oats when a voice that was gritty with age spoke.

“Keith?”

Eddie’s arm stilled.

The voice, however ageing, still sounded distinct and memorable, and it roused up the ghost of a memory deep within Eddie.

“Keith Kelly,” the voice said, “it is you.”

Eddie slowly turned his head and his stomach plummeted. The elderly man, who stood leaning on a cane only a few feet away had his eyes fixed on Eddie with a far-off daze.

David Shaw.

He remembered him. How could he not? David’s hair was streaked grey and no longer tousled and falling across his forehead, and the way his cheeks rested and his mouth sat was so intensely the same that Eddie began to remember—

Two young men in strapping suits with their mouths exploring the others in a hidden away room. Hushed whispers and soft sounds and roaming. An illicit encounter that Eddie only allowed to satisfy his curiosity and longing to be touched.

“We won’t tell anyone,” David said, breathing harsh and fast.

“We certainly will not,” Eddie said, resting his head back against the wall. “This will only happen once.”

And it did. It only happened once.

“I—I’m sorry?” Eddie managed. His heart had begun to pick up speed.

A woman stood beside David Shaw, looking so much like him that it shocked Eddie. She pciked a tin off the shelf and placed it in her cart. She was watching the exchange.

David nodded slowly. “It’s nineteen-seventy-one and we work together. And … we’ve run into each other at the store.”

Eddie felt a desolate realisation settled into his bones. He looked to the woman and saw a sadness flash across her eyes.

“Pops,” she said softly, grasping David’s shoulder, “it’s twenty-twenty-one. You don’t know this man.”

David frowned and looked at Eddie with confusion. “But this is Keith Kelly.”

“You have me confused with somebody else,” Eddie said, “I’m sorry.”

“Your scar,” David said, voice light and dazed, “you’ve always had that odd scar …”

Eddie touched his own cheek.

“Come on, Dad. Let’s not bother this man.” The woman pushed her cart in the other direction and ushered David along. “I’m sorry,” she said to Eddie.

“No, it’s fine.”

“Goodbye, Keith,” David said absentmindedly.

They left the isle and turned out of view.

Eddie’s pulse was steadily increasing, hot and loud in his neck, thumping with fear and guilt from lying to an old man who had so clearly lost his way. He brought a shaking to the underside of his jaw and pressed two fingers against the skin. He felt the fast pulse of blood in his veins, and it was just fear—he knew it was—but he couldn’t help but think that maybe it was happening again, maybe his heart was going to give out, and that man was in the store. David Shaw from his own life as Keith Kelly was in the store and had seen that it was him and he had obviously lost clarity in his mind, but what if he hadn’t? What if he now knew?

Eddie scanned the isle and saw nobody but a woman at the far end around, so he stepped back from the cart and rushed out of the store. He weaved in between the people outside and on the sidewalk, hustling through and hugging his coat to his chest. His heartbeat only seemed to increase, to beat harder and louder in his ears and he was too hot.

He knew that one first time it happened his heart had stopped completely and he’d woken up in that hospital bed, Myra sitting beside it all cool and uncaring, but there was also the other time. That one where his heart had sped up and began pounding so hard he was sure his veins would burst. It was the only other time he’d felt such a panic that seemed entirely his body’s own choosing, just like in nineteen-fifty-five, and he’d been so sure that he was going to die. 

But then, he hadn’t. The moment had faded and he’d been fine. Thus, it was just another encounter, another instance of sheer terror to add to his lifelong list of events.

He’d been in the kitchen when it happened.

_____________________

Monday

07 March 1988

Indiana, USA

With bleary eyes and mussed up hair, Eddie stood waiting for his kettle to boil. It had just gone past five in the morning, as he attempted to wake himself up for another week of early starts and late finishes.

His name at the time was Roger Day.

He poured the boiling water into his mug and the steam weaved through the air in front of him. His bare feet padded on the cold tiles as he made to leave the kitchen, and in that instant something distant and awful pulled inside his chest. A muffled tug, almost a yank. He stopped dead still; he hadn’t felt that for thirty-three years.

A shaky breath left Eddie’s lips as he stood and focussed on the feeling that was slowly becoming more prominent, weaving around his heart and increasing in pressure, spreading to his lungs and constricting his breathing. Then something sharp and startling ripped into his chest and his mug fell to the floor outside the doorway and shattered, splashing his feet with burning pinpricks of hot liquid.

Eddie gasped and doubled over in the doorway. “Fuck!” he cried out. He felt that his heart was being tied up and wrapped through and through in something thin and promising and permanent.

“Agh—” 

Eddie gave a guttural groan as he gripped the metal doorframe behind him—cold to the touch on his skin that felt scolding—to steady himself as he slowly sank to the floor.

The pain was unbearable and he thought, I’m going to fucking die. I can’t breathe and I’m going to finally die, here on the floor with this false name and a past full of misery—

Then a voice—a knowing—unsuspecting and rising from beneath the slicing agony that was beginning to paralyse began forcing thoughts of a concept into Eddie’s head. He was confused. He didn’t understand, but it seemed to press down harder with blinding a pain and insistence that there was something being embedded in his life in that moment—long-lasting.

Hot tears slipped down Eddie’s cheeks as he tilted his head back against the doorframe, and broken cries left his mouth and echoed through his empty apartment. 

Then it all piled down in a crushing weight. The absolute agony that was threading its way through Eddie’s bones and heart and every cell of his being was promising something. 

It’s promising that this isn’t over, he thought. This isn’t over—not for a while—and I’m trapped on this earth for decades to come.

A finalising bolt of pure pain sliced through him, and he screamed, “why?” His hand gripped the doorframe behind him, and he slid to the floor and whimpered.

 It began to die down and flatten, until lingering remnants of pain fizzled under his skin as he sat there sobbing in the doorway.

This isn’t over.

He hunched over his legs and wretched, and for once he begged that his life would be taken from him without say. He wasn’t sure he could bear this loneliness for much longer.

_____________________

Tuesday

12 January 2021

New York, USA

Eddie threw his apartment door open and slammed it behind him. He paced for a moment, breathes coming short and fast, hands gripping his hair, heart pounding. He knew his heart wasn’t going to stop beating now. It didn’t feel that way. What he felt was fear and utter hopelessness, a constant string of My life is one God damn fucking joke running over and over in his head. He felt like he was falling down an unending well and was hitting the bricked sides constantly.

He had never seen someone from one of his past lives in the flesh before. He was aware they’d have aged and lived their lives—obviously—but he’d never been confronted with the reality in front of him before. He’d now seen David Shaw as an old man, and Eddie too should’ve been older. Eddie thought he should have been dead, but he was frozen. He was lucky the man seemed to have lost some memory.

Gripped by the sudden need for confirmation, Eddie rushed over to the open trunk resting across the room, with items stacked around it. He knelt down and began to rifle through the contents. He dumped out boxes of papers, photographs, and photo albums. He came to what he wanted: an aging black leather album. With shaking hands, Eddie opened the worn cover and began turning the pages. That specific album was filled with photographs and clippings that had come to exist decades apart and scraped maliciously at his heart. 

Then he was staring at the last photograph taken of him. He ran his fingers over the black and white picture trapped behind plastic. He stood among seven other researches and doctors, smiling a real smile, completely unaware to what his life was about to become. The two men in front held up the sign that read Derry Medical Institute of Research, 1966. Eddie looked exactly the same as he did in his reflection in the mirror every morning since.

He kept turned pages and found his confirmation: a clipping from a newspaper regarding the medical centre he had worked at during the seventies. A group photo was displayed among the text, but he wasn’t in it—he’d conveniently fallen ill that day—but David Shaw was. The man looked how Eddie remembered him, but so different to how he’d looked at the supermarket not an hour earlier.

Eddie closed the album, placed it back inside the trunk, and then began to cry. A meow sounded from behind, but he didn’t have the heart to turn. A soft feeling of fur then brushed against his clothed arm and he looked at Ferdy. The white cat meowed again and Eddie reached out a hand, damp from tears, and stroked the cat’s head. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. His hand was shaking. “I don’t know what I’m to do anymore. I feel I’ve lost my mind.” 

He dropped his head and covered his eyes again. He felt Ferdy curl up on the carpet beside his legs. His phone began to buzz in his pocket, and Eddie sniffed and wiped at his face, took a deep breath, and pulled out his phone. He froze upon seeing the name on the screen: Richie was calling.

Eddie blinked and swiped to answer before he could overthink.

“Hey, Eds!”

“Hi.”

“I’ve been trying to reach you. I know you’ve been busy—sorry. How are you?”

“Fine.”

“That’s—that’s good,” Richie said. “I wanted to ask if—”

Eddie sighed. “No, Richie.”

There was silence for a moment before Richie said, “what—”

“Please, don’t ask me any questions—” Eddie squeezed his eyes shut but couldn’t hold in the weak cry that left his lips.

“Eddie, are you okay?”

Eddie pressed a hand to his eyes. “I’m”—he sniffled—“fine.”

Richie’s voice was soft when he asked, “are you crying? What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” he said. This can’t happen. Richie shouldn’t be calling. He shouldn’t be trying to keep me in his life. “This—No. I’m moving and this won’t work at all.”

“Okay, okay, Eds. What’s wrong?”

His chest felt tight and he knew he was being horrible. “Richie, just—fucking—we aren’t in a relationship! Leave me alone.”

There was silence as Eddie covered his mouth and felt his own words rip through his chest.

 “Okay,” Richie replied at length. Eddie could just picture his features that usually held such a bright smile dimming to disappointment. He hated it. “I’m sorry if I’ve done anything to upset you.”

Eddie shut his eyes again.

“I just thought we had something good going on—”

“I can’t do this,” Eddie cut in and then ended the call.

There was a black web curling around his mind, wrapping itself around his skull and crushing it; the pressure was unbearable. He felt swathed in guilt and despair, and accepting that he had to continue living like that for an unknown amount of time was torturous.

_____________________

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, crying in front of his trunk, managing reedy breathes, with Ferdy sitting by his legs. When Eddie’s breathing started to calm, he felt dried up and raw, eyes hurting and throat aching.

His mind was racing around how he was living his life, and he wasn’t sure how much he could take. And he had nobody. The pulsing ache of loneliness deep in his chest only promised to grow. He seemed to be standing at a crossroad and had the choice to continue in his bitter and hidden away life, or—

An icy spark of clarity. I could tell Beverly.

Eddie’s head shot up—tear stained cheeks and wide eyes. That thought alone made his stomach twist. He was terrified further, knowing he was genuinely considering it. He knew he could trust Beverly, but he had never told anyone before. He had no script, no structure to follow, no one to look up to because nothing was normal—he wasn’t normal. How was he to begin to explain that he’d ceased aging decades ago? Would Beverly even believe him?

I can’t keep going on like this. I can’t keep doing the same things and detesting the outcome, staying stagnant and refusing to alter myself. I have to fucking tell someone.

He sat up on his knees. Ferdy meowed in protest as Eddie began to rifle through the contents of his trunk once more. He dug out a worn and aging red photo album, a navy one with a gold scrawl of “memories” written on the front, and a dark green album which he slotted the photo of him, Anthea, and Tilly back into its rightful place.

Before Eddie could second-guess himself, he pulled out his phone and brought up Beverly’s contact. 

“To hell with it,” Eddie muttered. He pressed call and raised his phone to his ear with a shaky hand.

The dial tone rang shrilly in his ear and stopped after a few seconds.

“Hey, Eddie,” Beverly said, “what’s up?”

He felt numb, terrified, entirely unsure and reckless. He’d been running for almost fifty-four years, alone—

“Eddie?”

“Hi,” he said, “hey, Bev. I—” Then his throat constricted and closed, cutting off his sentence, and he raised a hand to his mouth and covered it. Breathe from his nose rushed out and down the phone in a rustle.

“Are you all right?”

He moved his hand away from his mouth—just an inch—and said, “I—” But his eyes began to sting and well up again, and he muffled a weak sob with his hand.

“Eddie?” Beverly’s voice rose in pitch. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

He couldn’t speak.

“I’m terrified here! What the fuck’s happened? Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Eddie choked out, “it’s just that—well”—he attempted to steady his voice and wiped his eyes—“you said I could tell you anything, right?”

“Of course, honey. Of course. You’re not hurt are you?”

His heart swelled. “Can I come and see you? Right this moment?”

“Yes, I’m home—”

“Okay, I’ll leave right now.”

“Eddie, are you hurt?”

“No. But I am going to confide in you something that—it’s hard—” Eddie hung his head back as another cry threatened to break from his throat. He breathed deep through his lungs and down to his stomach.

“Okay,” Beverly said, her voice softer, “come over.”

“Thank you.”

“Eddie?”

“Yes?”

“I love you, okay? Always.”

It was a punch to the stomach, but maybe, too, a comforting embrace.

“I—I love you too, Bev. I’ll see you soon. Bye.”

He tucked the phone back into his coat and attempted to steady his breathing. There was no etiquette for this; he didn’t know how to go about disclosing such impossible information.

Eddie pushed himself up to standing, gathered up the three aging photo albums, and found a bag to dump them in. 

When he flicked off the lights and left the apartment he was drowning in the unnerving knowledge that when he entered it once more, the world as he knew it would have fallen off its axis.

_____________________

The mirror in the elevator of Beverly’s apartment building showed Eddie’s eyes to be slightly swollen and red, cheeks splotchy, and he had an all-out miserable countenance. He knew he was about to leap off a cliff.

The elevator came to a sharp halt and the doors slid open. With each step Eddie took out onto Beverly’s floor, and over to her murky green door labelled twelve, he grew sicker and sicker. He rapped on the wood and it echoed through the hall.

A hurried padding of feet came from the other side of the door, and then the lock clicked and the door handle turned and Beverly’s concerned expression was revealed. She was clad in a large sweatshirt and jeans.

“Hey,” she said. Her eyebrows turned down in melancholy as her eyes flicked across Eddie’s face. She reached up to softly hold his cheeks. “Oh, honey. What’s happened?”

Eddie looked down and shook his head. Beverly pulled him into an embrace. He felt himself wither into her arms and he hugged her back, eyes squeezed tight. She smelled of a fading sweetness from perfume after a day’s use.

“No matter what you say,” she whispered, “I’ll understand. I’m here for you.”

You aren’t expecting what I have to say. I don’t think anybody could expect this.

“Thank you.”

Beverly pulled back and waved Eddie inside her apartment. “Come on,” she said, “I’ll make tea.”

The air in her apartment was warm and soft on his skin: the heater was buzzing lowly in the far corner. Eddie lay his bag down on the floor next to the coffee table and began taking out the photo albums. He couldn’t leave it any longer or run to a new life without having even tried to lighten the crushing weight that pressed at him every day.

“What did you bring?” Beverly’s voice travelled from the kitchen doorway and made Eddie jump. 

He turned around and saw her leaning against the door frame, arms crossed.

“It’s”—he swallowed—“something I have to show you.”

The kettle dinged from the kitchen and Beverly straightened up. “Just let me make the tea and I’ll be right in.”

Beverly disappeared into the kitchen and Eddie sank down into the velvet seats of her couch. His leg was bouncing restlessly, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the albums—those precious albums always hidden away and intended for no eyes other than his own. And yet, now, he was choosing to show them to someone he might even call family. 

His pulse had become an uncomfortable and prominent thump in his chest and neck. He pictured opening up the album and showing Beverly. He pictured telling her who he truly was, and it seemed the most terrifying truth he could imagine. He trusted her—he loved her—and he knew deep down that she wouldn’t do anything reckless. Still, that fear that had haunted Eddie his entire life, hidden in every shadow in the rooms he entered and halls he walked down, that if he ever told someone they would sell him out. To be an open specimen on an operation table with doctors picking at him and examining his cells and blood—

“Here,” Beverly said.

Eddie looked up from where he’d buried his face in his hands to see her walking back into the room with a mug in each hand. She placed one in front of Eddie, just a few inches from the tattered albums. She walked around the table to settle on the couch next to him, tucked a foot under one leg, and turned toward Eddie, mug in hand. “Okay,” she said, “the floor is yours.”

Eddie looked back at the table in front of him and wrung his hands, twisting his fingers, jostling his legs. “Sorry.”

“Take all the time you need,” Beverly said softly.

Eddie nodded. “I’m scared.”

“I’m not going to judge you,” she said. “You’re my best friend and I love you. I’ll be here through whatever you tell me.”

Eddie nodded again, squeezing his eyes shut, pulse speeding up—

I’ve been living for longer than you can imagine.

He swallowed around the lump in his throat, stomach turning, and he wasn’t going to throw up but he felt ill—

I’m not who you think I am, and I don’t understand how I’m still here.

He opened his eyes and the coffee table, bearing the mug and the photo albums he’d know anywhere, blurred as his eyes grew increasingly damp—

I’ve been running for decades and I shouldn’t still be thirty years old.

When Eddie spoke, it was a whisper, and it seemed to slice through the silence like a knife: “My real name isn’t Kingsley.”

The silence was so empty and white and cutting. All that could be heard was the low humming of the heater in the corner pushing out hot air that did not seem to be warming Eddie up in the slightest.

“Okay,” Beverly said, calm and reassuring, “what’s your real name?”

“Kaspbrak,” Eddie managed. “My name is Edward Kaspbrak.” 

He hadn’t said those words for five decades.

Beverly was quiet, and when Eddie said nothing more, she asked, “why did you change your name?”

It was almost as though a chunk of iron had been planted inside of him and then it sank down into his stomach. He looked over at the red-haired woman next to him, who was looking upon him with patience and understanding. He knew he was about to climb over a fence that he was never going to be able to go back to. 

Small, quickening breathes raised Eddie’s chest up and down, and he opened his mouth to speak but said nothing. 

Beverly’s brow furrowed.

In a hitching voice, he said: “I … I’ve changed my name five times”—a deep breath—“and I’ve been running for fifty years.”

Eddie watched in real time as Beverly processed his words. She frowned in confusion, then a slight opening of her mouth, a small shake of her head and a breath of a laugh that wasn’t urged by amusement. 

“What?” she asked. “Eddie … I don’t understand.” 

Could he blame her? It was absurd—ridiculous—and he had to live with his truth. He could read the hesitance written on Beverly’s features, coupled with the knowledge that he’d never lie about such things to her.

“All right, just—here—” Eddie leaned forward and reached for the aging red album, then lay it down in front of them. He could feel Beverly’s eyes watching. 

He lifted the front cover open. 

Beverly leaned forward and put her mug on the table. “What is this?” she asked quietly.

This specific album was filled with photographs from the nineteen-fifties. Eddie remembered when Myra bought it, insistingthey needed to keep memories of their marriage. Rectangular photographs were evenly stuck in rows on the black page, and among a majority of them stood Eddie, looking just slightly younger than he did as he was sat in Beverly’s apartment.

She was silent. 

Eddie looked over and saw her brow furrowing increasingly. She looked up and met Eddie’s eyes.

“He”—she cleared her throat—“he looks just like you. A … grandfather?” 

Eddie could tell she didn’t believe that her question would hold an affirming answer. 

 “Bev.” He felt cold all over. “That’s me.”

She didn’t flinch. She didn’t gasp. She only blinked multiple times, very quickly, as her eyes began to grow damp. “No …” Beverly whispered with a shake of her head. She looked back down and yanked the album toward her, then began flicking through pages and taking in all the photographs of Eddie stood on his own, or stood beside Myra, or Eddie among friends withMyra, or without. Eddie and his mother—

“Oh my God,” Beverly said, hushed, “there’s no way. This isn’t—this can’t be—” She turned another page and halted. In the centre of the page was a larger portrait photograph of Eddie, head turned slightly and skin glistening, hair gelled and combed back to perfection. But on display, so clearly and unable to miss, was that white scar running horizontal across his left cheek. Edward, 1954, was written in white pencil upon the black card. Beverly ran her fingers across the photo and looked up at Eddie. “You aren’t kidding.”

A tear spilled over and ran down his cheek. “No,” he said, “I’m not.” He wiped at his eyes and then reached for the remaining two photo albums he’d brought and handed them over. He watched as Beverly flicked through black and white photographs of him as a child standing in his school clothes, a teenager with an appearance of melancholy, and more aging up towards his twenties. 

Eventually Beverly sat back with clarity in her damp eyes. She covered her mouth with a shaking hand and then reached out to touch Eddie’s cheek. He closed his eyes as her fingers ran along his scar. “How is this possible?”

Eddie shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Beverly dropped her hand to grasp his. “Eddie, you need to tell me everything, because this is—it’s unbelievable, and I … I don’t understand at all.” She squeezed his hand. “It almost feels like a dream.”

Eddie watched as Beverly rubbed his fingers with her own. “Believe me, it’s not a dream.”

“Start from the beginning,” she said, “please.”

“Okay,” Eddie said. He couldn’t believe what he was doing; it wasn’t a dream, but it almost could have been. In the decades that he’d been alive, he’d never put himself in this position, and it was almost as if he was floating outside of himself. Beverly’s warm touch on his skin seemed to ground him, helpfully, as his bones felt frigid and his throat felt locked. “I”—he swallowed—“I was born in nineteen-twenty-three. In a small town in Maine, called Derry.”

He heard a soft release of breath come from Beverly, but he didn’t dare look.

“I was normal as a child,” he said, “although, my mother was hard to live with. I still grew up. All things were normal until … Well, I think I stopped ageing at thirty. Thirty-one years old, I think.” He ran his tongue along the points of his teeth and felt the black weight of memory settling over him. “Just a theory.”

His feet gave way and he went from standing to collapsed on the thick pile carpet with a hand clutching the coffee table.

“I think I’m dying,” he’d tried to say, but his mouth moved slow and uncooperative, producing garbled nonsense.

Myra was kneeling in front of him, her eyes wide and scared, but he couldn’t hold his gaze on her. His lids were drooping, and he could no longer feel the hard grip on the table beside him.

“When was that?” Beverly asked. She let go of Eddie’s hands and reached for her mug. He looked up at her again and saw only reassurance and understanding in her eyes.

“Fifty-five,” he said. “But, I didn’t really notice until the sixties.” He absently reached up and rubbed at the skin of his scarred cheek. “People started commenting, and—Well,  I ran from Derry in sixty-seven and changed my name.”

“Oh, Eddie …” Beverly trailed off, and when she spoke again her voice cracked: “Why do you think you stopped ageing?”

Eddie reached for his own mug and drank from it. The liquid warmed him on its way down.

“This one night in fifty-five,” he said, “I think I had something akin to a heart attack. I collapsed, and when I woke up in the hospital, I was told my heart had stopped beating.” He was adamant not to mention Myra. At least, not yet.

Beverly gasped. “Jesus. Why?”

Eddie shrugged. “They didn’t know,” he said. “I was beaten earlier that night, but they said the wounds weren’t serious.”

“What the fuck,” Beverly said lowly, and anger flashed in her eyes. “Who attacked you?”

A hand caught the back of his coat and hauled him down. His head smacked the damp concrete. It was all Eddie could do to shield his face as the kicking started—

“I left a bar with this man,” he said, “to go home with him.”

Beverly shut her eyes.

“It turned out he was messing with me.” Eddie looked down into his mug. “He had a group of friends in the lot. They all started wailing on me.” 

“I’m sorry,” Beverly said, eyes cast to the table now, voice hushed.

Eddie shrugged again. “Shit happens.”

Beverly barked a small, sharp laugh. “But this is not just shit.” She rubbed her eyes. “You’ve been changing names every—what—ten years?” A deep sadness was settling over her features as she looked Eddie in the eyes. “Do you just leave everything behind?”

Eddie nodded, knowing what she was coming to realise.

“You’re moving in March,” she stated.

“Yes.”

“Were you—” Beverly cut herself off, looking hurt. “Were you just going to disappear? Were you never going to speak to me again?”

Eddie closed his eyes tight against tears. “No,” he forced out. “No, I couldn’t have. I was going to keep in contact with you.”

“Every time you begin to build another life, you just have to leave it,” Beverly said, and it cut right to Eddie’s heart.

“I wouldn’t say I ever built a life worth keeping,” Eddie muttered. He placed his mug on the table.

“Well, now you have!” Beverly’s insisted. “I understand now, why you’re always so hesitant. But, Eddie, we’ve met some wonderful people.” She put her mug down and grasped Eddie’s hands, looking at him insistently. “You don’t have to keep running. Why do you think you do?”

Eddie hadn’t anticipated the hurt that this conversation would cause. He’d predicted the fear and worry, but not the pain of having someone beg that he didn’t do what he needed to. He always left. Why should that change?

“Because people could catch on!” Eddie pulled his hands out of Beverly’s grasp and hid his face in his hands. His vision grew blurry as he began to cry again. “If people”—he gave a small sob that shuttered in his chest—“if people found out, they’d—” He squeezed his eyes shut.

“They’d what?” Beverly asked softly.

“They would want answers,” Eddie said, “experiments. They’d treat me like a new curiosity.” He covered his face with his hands and breathed heavy and shaking. “And I don’t even have answers. I don’t know what the fuck happened to me.” Eddie said and began wiping at his eyes. “Sorry, I keep fucking crying. I’ve never had to do this before.”

“No, no—honey, you’re fine,” Beverly said. She rubbed a hand up and down Eddie’s back. “Wait … nobody. You’ve never told anyone? Not even in the past?”

Eddie shook his head and spoke in what was almost a whisper. “No.”

“Can I ask,” Beverly began, “when you were aware of the last person who was suspicious about you?”

Eddie shrugged and slumped back against the couch. “Sixty-seven I guess.” He raised a hand and cut in over what Beverly was about to say. “But that doesn’t matter because people could become suspicious. Hell—I ran into a man today, whom I used to work with back in the seventies—”

Beverly’s brows rose. “What?”

“He had Alzheimer’s—or something—so he was caught in a daze. His daughter led him away.” Eddie held a hand to his forehead and looked at Beverly desperately. “What if he hadn’t been like that?” Eddie asked. “What if he’d had enough wits about him to do something about it and tell people?”

It was silent for a moment, and all that could be heard was the distant motions of the cars in the street and the heater buzzing on the far side of the room. Eddie’s heart had begun pounding rapidly again and he shut his eyes and focussed on breathing evenly.

He felt Beverly settle back into the couch next to him and lay a hand on his shoulder. “But he didn’t,” she said softly. “Have you ever bumped into people from your past before?”

“No,” he said, “that was the first time.” He leaned his head back against the couch and looked at Beverly. “It scared me enough that I felt I just had to tell someone, and you’re the only person who I’d tell.”

Beverly gave a small smile. “What about Richie?”

Eddie bristled. “No. He shook his head adamantly. “No.”

“But you have something pretty amazing going on,” Beverly said. “It makes me think of those ‘once in a lifetime’ connections.”

Eddie shut his eyes and heard Richie’s hurt voice speaking through the phone: “I just thought we had something good going on—”

“I spoke to him today,” he said quietly. “I was so awful to him, Bev.” A tear slipped down his cheek and his voice wobbled when he said, “I told him it wouldn’t work between us. I’m just so fucking scared—”

“Hey, hey, Eddie,” Beverly said, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pulling him in. Eddie rested his head on her shoulder. “It’s okay, you can always apologise.”

Eddie shook his head.

“All right,” Beverly began, “I’m going to give you my honest opinion here, because you’re my best friend and I want you to be happy.” She sighed. “You aren’t living.”

Eddie stilled. It was as though she’d reached right inside of him and was wrenching something out.

“I don’t think anyone would be chasing you anymore,” Beverly said. “Nobody would be suspicious. You’ve been running for long enough.”

Eddie pulled away from her shoulder and sat up. He didn’t want to hear it.

“You don’t need to keep running—”

Eddie scowled at her. “I do,” he snapped. “You don’t understand—”

“I do, Eddie,” Beverly said, “believe me. I swear I fucking do. I just want you to be happy—”

“I can’t.”

“Eddie,” Beverly said, voice stern and an expression to match. “Do you like Richie? Does he make you happy?”

Eddie thought of Richie’s blue eyes through his glasses, free and bleary in the morning light, a hand on Eddie’s waist and his own hand on Richie’s chest. Soft lips and tongue, sweet murmurings. The comfort of speaking to someone as though you could be with them forever.

Oh, Christ.

“Eddie—”

“Yes,” Eddie said, feeling deflated. “Heavens, yes, Beverly. He makes me happy, but I’m just constantly walking on eggshells when I’m with him, and”—his breathe hitched—“feeling like I—can’t allow an attachment to form, because I have to leave.”

Beverly was quiet as she watched him. “But you don’t have to,” she said quietly. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself. You aren’t happy, you’re not living, and you don’t deserve that.”

Eddie ran a hand through his hair. He wasn’t crying anymore, but his eyes weren’t giving up on remaining damp. 

“You could mend things with Richie,” Beverly said as she wiped the tears away from Eddie’s cheeks. “You could apologise and explain that you were scared—that it’s hard for you. He’s a good man, and from everything you’ve told me …” She shrugged with a smile. “He really likes you.”

Eddie’s throat felt thick. “But it’s not fair to Richie.” His shoulders shook, and he thought, how can I cry so fucking much? I’m so tired. I’m so tired of this.

 “This isn’t fair to you,” Beverly insisted. “Just apologise and see what happens. Don’t force yourself to be alone.”

She seemed to be beating down every wall Eddie had to block out the things he wanted to keep and never allowed himself to have. He was pulling out every excuse he could manage. “But there’s no future,” he said. “I can’t give him a normal life—growing old together—all I bring is heartbreak.”

Eddie caught the small change in Beverly’s eyes, gone in a second. 

She’s aware of the reality. 

“Don’t think about that now,” she said. “That’s way ahead of you. Just focus on these moments. That’s all that matters.”

When Eddie shook with a withheld cry, he found he could say nothing more. Beverly pulled him into an embrace and held him as the tears dampened her sweatshirt.

_____________________

Two hours after Eddie’s initial confession, he was sat with his legs reclined on Beverly’s couch and tangled with the legs of the woman herself. A blanket lay across them as they nursed cups of honey and camomile tea. Empty pasta bowls sat on the coffee table.

He was feeling better—exhausted, but somewhat better. One of the many bricks stacked on his shoulders had been lifted; somebody knew. He’d been honest and accepted and Beverly knew.

“You know,” she said, “it makes sense, now that you’ve told me.”

Eddie’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you’ve always been …” She pursed her lips and looked upwards. “It’s in the way you talk—the words you use. Your accent is slightly elevated and almost transatlantic, like, from an old film.” She looked back at Eddie and smiled knowingly. “The clothes you wear. It all makes sense.”

“Oh,” Eddie said, and then narrowed his eyes. “Well, if I’m that obvious—”

“Eddie—” Beverly began and laughed. She sipped from her mug, steam twisting around her nose. “Nobody would guess in a hundred years.”

“Well,” Eddie mumbled and felt bitterness seep out of his very core, “lucky I have time.”

Beverly only scowled and gave him the bird in response. 

_____________________

It had almost gone nine o’clock by the time Eddie said goodbye to Beverly, earning reassurances and insisting that he speak to Richie. She’d told Eddie that he was brave, and he’d felt entirely shocked to hear it. He always ran, he never faced his fears, yet Beverly insisted that he’d been brave enough to tell her, and he couldn’t argue with that.

“Keep a tight hold of the courage you had when you confessed to me, and take it with you to Richie,” Beverly had said. “Please stay, Eddie. You deserve to stay.”

His arms were crossed tight across his chest as he walked along beside the river, cold air whistling past him and numbing his cheeks. He looked up and took in the stars blinking above him, the constellations glittering grandly, and the moon shining light down on the pavement below.

He began thinking of how he was living within time that he was never meant to have; borrowed time. Some unexplainable law had forced him to live on; it was painful, but now he couldn’t help but think of how he’d never have met Beverly or Richie otherwise.

I like spending time with you.

Eddie took a deep breath of frigid air, and it cascaded down his throat into his lungs.

I like you, Eddie.

He pulled his phone out of the pocket deep within his coat and brought up his text conversation with Richie. 

He wanted to be brave.

Eddie Kingsley [9:14pm]

Hi Richie. Sorry I’m contacting you so late. Are you home? I wanted to talk to you. Eddie.

He continued to walk along the riverside with his phone held tight in his grip, and it wasn’t five minutes before it was buzzing with a response.

Richie Tozier [9:17pm]

yeah i’m home, come over

you okay?

Eddie Kingsley [9:17pm]

Thank you. See you soon.

He pocketed his phone and headed back to the road to hail a cab, nerves surfacing deep in his mind. He tried to force the visions of heartbreak and a future he didn’t possess out of his mind.

Don’t think about that now.

Just focus on these moments. That’s all that matters.

It was time to implement change. Otherwise, he’d keep living the same melancholy life.

_____________________

Eddie rapped on the door lightly—aware of the late time he was calling—and looked around at the familiar dark brick walls and the brass numbers before him. The door opened to reveal Richie, and it may have been all too similar to the last time Eddie had been there, if it weren’t for Richie’s lack of a smile, and the silence evident in the apartment behind him.

“Hi,” Eddie said.

“Hi,” Richie replied. “Do you want to come in?”

Eddie chewed on his cheek. “Yes, please.”

Richie stepped aside and Eddie walked in. He was once again greeted by warmth in comparison to the landing.

Richie closed the door and turned to Eddie. “Do you want something to drink?”

“No, thank you,” Eddie said. He stood there feeling nervous and jumpy and made no move to take off his coat.

Hold onto that courage. Fucking do it.

“Okay … ” Richie trailed off. He twitched his mouth. “Look, Eddie, I’m really sorry if I upset you—”

“No,” Eddie blurted, raising his hands, “you did nothing wrong, Richie.” He suddenly felt as though something had burst inside of him. “I wanted to apologise for everything I said on that phone call today—and for how I’ve acted. I—I’m truly sorry.”

Richie’s eyes had widened—an emotion there Eddie couldn’t place—as he watched.

Eddie ran a hand through his own hair. “I’m just … scared,” he said. “I’ve always avoided this. I hardly form relationships, and you—I didn’t expect it, because—” He looked up at the ceiling, breathing heavily and trying to force all the courage he could muster out into the open. “I like you, Richie,” Eddie said quietly, “I really do.”

The emotion was so raw and clear on Richie’s face, and he said softly, “Eddie—”

“The future terrifies me,” Eddie continued. He felt his throat growing thick, and he swallowed and tried to force it away.“I’m moving to the other side of the country in two months, and I don’t want to promise anything, because no one ever can.” His eyes were growing wet. “I can’t promise you the future, Richie. Everything ends—” His voice broke.

Richie’s face fell. “Eds,” he said, walking closer. “Hey, come here.” He reached out and Eddie willingly allowed himself to be pulled into Richie’s arms. He wrapped his arms around Richie’s waist, and as he rested his head on Richie’s shoulder, he realised he’d missed it. He’d missed being held by Richie, encompassed in his warmth, and to hold him back. He missed being around him. It was as though something had been missing, and now he was back in the right place. It felt important.

Eddie knew better than to attempt to fill the void inside of him—one that could only be mended by the return of his own natural law of aging—with the comfort of another person. He knew it couldn’t last forever—maybe not even a year—but he could allow Richie to be there. He could let Richie exist in his life because he really wanted him there. He could take into account what Beverly had said and believe it to be the truth, and he could allow himself some happiness. If he dared to focus on the present moment, he could push aside all thoughts of the fixed future that loomed before him.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie muttered, schooling his breathing and holding in tears.

“It’s okay,” Richie said. He rubbed a hand up and down Eddie’s back. “You’re fine. Please don’t stress.”

“Thank you,” Eddie whispered.

“I think being open about these things is important,” Richie said. “You know what they say about communication.”

“You’re very forgiving,” Eddie said. “I was an asshole.”

Richie chuckled and Eddie felt the vibration. “You were upset,” he said, “and I get the feeling you didn’t mean it all.”

“I didn’t.”

Richie pulled back slightly and Eddie looked up to meet his eyes. “Are you going to stay over for a bit?”

“Okay.”

A small smile graced Richie’s face and he brushed a thump along Eddie’s cheek. “Are you hungry?”

“No, I ate earlier.”

“Okay.” Richie stepped back and moved his hands to the buttons of Eddie’s coat and began undoing them. “How about we sit down and talk?”

Eddie shrugged out of his coat and Richie took it from him to hang up. They wandered over to the couch opposite the fireplace, and Eddie sat in the same spot as he had last time. He couldn’t help but recall what they had started there and then taken to the bedroom. He remembered Richie’s lips on his, his tongue in his mouth, and his hands—so warm and gentle—that had explored Eddie’s body as though it was something so worthy and important. Eddie felt his cheeks heating up.

Now, Richie settled down beside him, and the air was stifled with the need of a necessary conversation. To Richie, all would seem well once they’d talked it out, but Eddie would always know the truth that he just could not tell him.

Richie spoke, snapping Eddie out of his thoughts. “I meant what I said last time. That I’d focus only on the present.”  His eyes were on Eddie. “I get that you’re afraid of commitment, and the future, and I know you’re moving, but”—Richie’s eyebrows pinched together—“I want to be in your life, if you’ll let me. For now.” He gave a small smile and it pulled at the strings that tied Eddie’s heart together. “This feels good, and I … I hope you feel it too.”

Oh, my heart.

Eddie wanted to wrap his arms around Richie, and hold him, and never ever let him go. And, he cursed by the forces he didn’t understand that had led him to the situation where he’d been given the gift to meet Richie, only to have it intertwined with secrecy. He wanted to yell and scream and cry.

“But I can’t promise you anything,” Eddie said, so soft he was almost silent, “and, I hate that.”

Richie shrugged and smiled. “That’s life, Eds,” he said. “I understand.” There was something behind Richie’s words that suggested to Eddie that Richie had been heartbroken before. It filled him with a slight fury and wanting to hit every person who’d caused him pain.

“I’m moving,” Eddie said, feeling as though his arguing was pointless now. He knew he was still going to see Richie—he couldn’t not. There were hands reaching out from his heart and grasping onto the other man.

Richie shrugged again. “I’m up for the challenge. We can figure it out.” Eddie opened his mouth to speak, but Richie reached for his hand and lay his other on Eddie’s cheek and said, “but, when we get there. We’re just focussing on now.”

You don’t know—you don’t understand, Eddie thought. Then, a voice cut in and it shocked him beyond belief: You could always stay. He pushed it away, assuming he’d been encouraged by Beverly. The rules his body refused to follow clearly proved that he could not stay.

And, another voice piped up, explaining that You’ve only known this man for what? Just over a week? Is this not ridiculous?

And yes, he guessed that in hindsight it was, but he also knew that what he felt overruled blatant facts, and he couldn’t deny that the hand resting on his cheek and the thump rubbing in slight circles felt better than anything he’d known for a very long time.

“Okay,” Eddie said.

Richie’s eyes lit up and he grinned. “Okay?”

“Yes,” Eddie said, nodding, “just—no pressure.”

“None whatsoever, Eds,” Richie said. “We’re going with the flow.”

Richie leaned in, slowly, watching for any signs of hesitance from Eddie, but he didn’t give any. Eddie leaned in and closed his eyes. His lips touched Richie’s and he sighed. They deepened the kiss, lips moving and tongues brushing. Eddie’s skin lit up wherever Richie touched it, and he lay a hand on Richie’s neck and chest and leaned further in. 

Their movements were different to last time—Eddie was tired, and he could tell that Richie was too. They were kissing for the sake of it, and for the pleasure and affection it conveyed.

Richie drew back and pressed a kiss to the tip of Eddie’s nose, and the smaller man couldn’t help but smile. Then he yawned, and Richie chuckled. Eddie lowered his head to rest on Richie’s shoulder.

“Tired?” Richie asked.

“Mhm.”

“C’mere.”

Richie pulled Eddie gently and manoeuvred them to lay down on the couch. He found himself resting between Richie’s legs, with his head pillowed on his broad chest. Eddie felt Richie press a kiss to the top of his head, and he gripped the fabric of the shirt beneath him in the hand that wrapped around Richie’s waist.

“I mean it all,” Richie said. “I don’t expect anything from you that you don’t want to give. I’m still here.” His fingers brushed softly up and down Eddie’s back. “I’ll always be here, if you’ll let me,” he whispered.

Eddie screwed his eyes shut. 

But that’s the thing, he thought, you can’t, even if you want to. My forever is going to be longer than yours, and that will just inevitably lead to heartbreak.

_____________________

“I like older music,” Eddie said. He was lying down in bed, head on the pillow and facing Richie. Richie mirrored his position, and his hand traced patterns against Eddie’s hip. He’d left the drapes open again to allow for the moonlight to fall into the room. “I have a huge collection of records at home,” Eddie said, brushing his fingers against the collarbone peeking out of Richie’s collar.

Richie’s eyes were even softer without the glasses, and he’d had a smile on his face ever since Eddie and him had lay on that couch hours ago. Then they’d migrated to bed and couldn’t stop talking. Eddie had found out a lot more about who Richie was, and he’d allowed himself to part with some information about who he was too—but, of course, nothing too revealing.

“Any favourites?” Richie asked.

“Otis Redding,” Eddie said and smiled wider. “Always, Otis.”

“Ooh, good choice,” Richie said, and then snickered. “Oh, man, I—” He started laughing.

Eddie couldn’t help but laugh too. “What?”

“I used to copy Duckie’s dance to Try a Little Tenderness from Pretty in Pink and do it all the time—”

Richie was cut off by Eddie bursting out into laughter. He covered his mouth and Richie joined in laughing too. “Oh my God—”

“It’s true!” Richie said, grinning. “Bill must’ve seen me do that impression a million times.” He banged his find in the air, singing under his breathe, “gotta, gotta, try a little tenderness, yeah yeah yeah yeah.” He then did a goose movement with his hand that was so undeniably Duckie that Eddie cackled and rolled onto his back. 

“Richie, stop—my fucking stomach—” Eddie hugged his arms around his torso and a tear slipped down his cheek. He could hear Richie’s laughter, and soon enough the other man was pushing himself up onto his elbow and looking down at Eddie, a wide smile on his face. “You remind me of him, too,” Eddie said.

“Oh yeah?” Richie asked. There was a cheeky glint in his eye and a smirk on his lips. “How so?”

“Hmm, the clothes,” Eddie said, running a hand along Richie’s chest. “You have a wild fashion sense. And, you’re very bright and captivating, like him.”

“Touche,” Richie said, and Eddie began laughing again.

Richie’s eyes softened and he leaned down to press his lips to Eddie’s. Eddie reached up and cupped Richie’s face and kissed him back with all the gratitude and emotion he could muster.

“You know”—he gave another press to Eddie’s lips—“you and Mike would get along so well, I bet.  You both like old shit.”

Eddie raised his eyebrows. “Are you thinking of Mike while you’re kissing me?”

Richie laughed. “Fuck off, I’m just saying.”

“Hm, yeah, I guess.” Something about Mike being a historian put him on edge. But, Eddie had stayed out of the history books, so he was sure he was in the clear. He’d been running for long enough.

“They all adore you, you know,” Richie said. He settled back down into the sheets, and Eddie moved further over into his warmth and up against his chest. Richie’s arms wrapped around Eddie’s waist. 

He closed his eyes and felt the thin edges of drowsiness beginning to settle and make home in his mind. He made a disapproving grumble. “How d’you know?”

“They told me so,” Richie said. He sounded on the verge of falling under the same sheet of sleep that Eddie was.

“Silly,” was all Eddie replied as he gave in to the enticing comfort. He heard Richie mumble, Night, Eds, before he slipped down into a thankfully dreamless sleep, wrapped in the arms of a man he cared for, and letting that be enough.

_____________________

Eddie made a promise to himself—for himself, and for Richie—that he would allow this new life in. He avoided talk of moving; he didn’t want to think about it. He felt happier than he’d ever been before, and the new friendships he was experiencing and the relationship he had with Richie—whatever it was, as they didn’t label it—had given him a time he never thought he’d have. He was attached to Richie, and he knew exactly what he was feeling yet ignored it and pushed that word—that enormous and all-encompassing word—out of his mind and away from his tongue whenever he felt it. He couldn’t do that to Richie.

Everything was all tinged with a thin layer of dread—sheer, but noticeable. Eddie knew who he was, and he too knew that it would all catch up with him eventually. He’d been running for fifty years and stopping now wouldn’t change the fact that his cells didn’t conform to natural ageing.

He took all he was given, and for that, he was grateful.

_____________________

Saturday

16 January 2021

New York, USA

Eddie and Richie shuffled quietly into the dim cinema room, only lit by the glow of the screen. They found a free row in the middle and hurried down past the empty seats.

Eddie sat down in the velvet chair and held the popcorn bucket to his chest. He watched with amusement as the tall man attempted to sit comfortably and stretch out his legs.

“Ow, fuck,” Richie said and hissed.

“Be quiet,” Eddie whispered.

“Hit my fucking knee.”

“Oh, hush, you baby.”

“Asshole,” Richie said, but he was smirking.

A familiar beach scene flashed into life on the screen before them, along with an all-too-familiar song. “Love is a many splendid thing …”

Richie had seen a poster stating that the cinema close to him would be showing Grease and insisted he and Eddie see it.

“We should go to the beach,” Richie whispered.

“It’s forty degrees,” Eddie said, and then felt Richie’s foot kick his own and scowled.

“I meant in summer, you buzzkill.”

Eddie smiled. He felt the strangest feeling of déjà vu settle over him. He’d watched this film countless times since its release—he owned the tape—but he hadn’t seen it in a cinema since its release in seventy-eight.

Eddie leaned in close to Richie, so their arms touched, and whispered, “there were queues down the block, when this was first released—did you know?”

Richie looked down at him, his nose so close to Eddie’s. “Really?”

On the screen before them, forty years prior, Sandy said to Danny, “I’m going back to Australia, I might never see you again.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, feeling lit with joy at remembering a good memory of that time in his life. His smile widened. “Everyone was so excited and couldn’t stop talking about it. The cinemas were packed. It was incredible.” He then released how he was speaking and hastily looked back at the screen. His heart had anxiously come to life, and he cleared his throat. “I mean—I imagine that it was incredible.”

But, Richie hadn’t noticed anything: he was engrossed in the story playing out before them. “I don’t doubt it,” he whispered.

Eddie shook off the feeling of What if I was caught? and managed to enjoy the film. He’d found, lately, he could do that, forget the life he was living, if only for a moment, and enjoy the one he stumbled upon.

Richie reached over and grabbed a handful of popcorn.

“Danny, don’t spoil it,” Sandy said.

“It’s not spoiling it, Sandy. It’s only making it better.”

“Danny, is this the end?”

Danny Zuko laughed. “Of course not,” he said, “it’s only the beginning.”

_____________________

Sunday

17 January 2021

New York, USA

He stumbled back, feet twisting, and his back hit the floor; the air was knocked out of him. He was struggling to breathe as the grandfather clock loomed before him. It only seemed to be moving closer, silver thread so disgusting and awful and the entire clock seemed to promise it would crush him—

“Eddie?”

He tried to stand, to shuffle back, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t move at all, and he knew he was crying and sucking in breathes full of air that never came, so he screamed—

“Eddie, wake up!”

He jolted awake in bed and cowered over his knees. His breaths were coming short and fast, but they were there; oxygen was being sucked down into his lungs and circulating through his blood. Eddie was vaguely aware that he was covered in a sheen of sweat, his eyelashes were damp with tears, and that Richie’s hands were clutching onto both of his arms. The room was aglow with yellowing light from Richie’s beside lamp.

“Eds? Hey, you’re awake now,” Richie was saying, rubbing his hand along Eddie’s arm, grounding and soft, “you’re okay.”

Eddie held his head in his hands. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. 

Richie let him sit in silence for a few minutes and regain his breath, and then he was pulling Eddie back to sit up beside him. He tilted Eddie’s chin so they would look at each other. “You okay?” Richie asked.

Eddie nodded. “It was just a dream.”

“More like a nightmare,” Richie said, rubbing his thumb against Eddie’s bare shoulder. His face was pinched in worry, and Eddie wanted to run his fingers along the creases and smooth them out, to force Richie’s face back into the joyful demeanour he usually possessed.

Eddie laughed humourlessly. He was exhausted, and his mind felt rigid, but he didn’t want to go back to sleep yet.

“Can I ask what it was about?”

“I can’t ever—I don’t remember,” Eddie lied. He pushed two fists into his eyes and rubbed. “I just know it’s terrifying.”

“Was it the same one as that first night you stayed here?” Richie asked, eyes carefully flicking over Eddie’s face. He noticed how droopy Richie’s eyelids were. “When you were awake and sitting by the window?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, “that’s the one.” He dropped his head, and Richie’s arm wound further around to hold his back. Eddie pulled away. “Ugh—I’m disgusting, Rich. Let me get up and wash the sweat off.”

“I literally do not care,” Richie said. He was still frowning—only just—but Eddie expected him to have softened by now.

“I’m fine, okay?” Eddie said, laying his palm against the other man’s cheek. He leaned up and placed a chaste kiss to his lips. “I’ll be right back.”

He climbed out of bed, and Richie slipped his glasses on and reached for his phone. Eddie left the room and shut his eyes as he entered the hall. He moved from muscle memory to the bathroom: he did not want to look at the clock. 

He shut the bathroom door and flicked on the light. His reflection projected the same imagine it always did: dark hair, white scar, eyes too large for his face and currently giving home to dark bags pinpointing a lack of sleep. Eddie ran the tap and splashed his face with water. He grabbed a washcloth and attempted to wipe off the sweat on his chest, arms, and back, and was thankful for how it cooled him down.

Eddie had come to accept that he had no clue whatsoever why Richie owned an exact copy of the clock he so frequently saw, but he just assumed that he’d seen one in Derry. It made hardly any sense, but he had enough to worry about without including a mystery grandfather clock. It was okay to witness in daylight, but once that hallway became dark and sinister—and especially after one of his nightmares—Eddie hated to look at it.

He finished up in the bathroom and opened the door to the hallway. For a moment, he did not move, and stood so that the doorframe blocked view of that tall, mahogany ghost around the corner.

But he couldn’t help it. Eddie took one step, then two, feet cold on the wood below him, and peered around into the hallway. His breathing became shallow and tight, and he stared at the lifeless object before him, with a pendulum so still it shouldn’t still be here. It was just like the one in his dreams, and it was truly awful to see in clear reality. He was thankful that in Richie’s clock there was no silver thread. Where that had come from, Eddie didn’t know.

With every second he continued to stare, Eddie’s vision seemed to narrow in on only the clock and blacken around the edges. He remembered his feet tangling, and him falling, and then the hard strike of his back hitting the hard floor. He hated it, and he wished for uninterrupted sleep and an absence of fear and—

Something brushed against his leg.

“Jesus, fuck!”

Eddie jumped backward into the bathroom door, slamming it against the wall, and looked down. His heart was suddenly pounding in his chest.

Goose was walking in the doorway and looking up at him with wide, curious eyes. The grey and white cat brushed against the doorframe.

Eddie let out a harsh breath and growled. “Fucking cat,” he grumbled, but reached down to brush his hand tersely along the soft fur anyway.

He flicked the light switch off and walked back to Richie’s bedroom, only to see the man sitting bolt upright in bed, pulling back the covers.

“Are you okay? Why’d you yell?”

“Nothing,” Eddie said and waved a dismissing hand. “Goose gave me a fright—that’s all.” He climbed into the right side of the bed and crawled across to settle in beside Richie, tucked against his broad chest with an arm over his back.

“That cat’s a fucking menace, sometimes,” Richie said. “You’re really on edge, huh, baby?”

Eddie’s stomach swooped at the pet name. He knew his cheeks were colouring, and he was thankful Richie couldn’t see. He ducked his head down further, just to be sure.

“Yeah, I guess,” Eddie replied. “Come on, go back to sleep. I don’t want to be the cause of you being tired tomorrow.”

“Eh, I’ll be fine,” Richie said. He reached over to flick the lamp off and settled down under the covers with Eddie. “I think you’ll be the tired one. Sleep well, this time.” He dropped a kiss to Eddie’s forehead.

Eddie leaned up and kissed under his jaw, on his neck right where a purple mark was.

“Night, Rich.”

_____________________

Friday

22 January 2021

New York, USA

Richie’s laugh echoed down the teal hallway as Eddie followed Mike to his library. They turned right at the end and walked far to where the hall ended at large double doors. 

“It’s right in here,” Mike said, smiling at Eddie and then pushing the doors open.

When Eddie stepped through the doorway, he was awestruck. The entire room was lined with wooden shelves filled with more books than one could count. The style of the wooden panels and the stair and balcony rails had the same nineteenth century architecture look as the exterior of their house. Eddie thought it reminded him of every grand old library he could imagine in the world, only in miniature form.

“Mike,” Eddie said, gazing around the room, “this is incredible.” He noted the ladder that stood by the door, and the shelves that continued further up the wall. “You wouldn’t guess that your house held this inside.”

“It’s a lot bigger than it looks, I know,” Mike said. He was smiling contently, looking into the distance, and it warmed Eddie to his core. “Bill actually found this place, when we were looking for houses. He covered my eyes when he led me in here, during the tour we had.” He caught Eddie’s eye. “I took one look around and said, ‘this is it. This is the one. We have to have it.’ And, well … we did.”

Eddie was speechless. Bill and Mike’s relationship took him by surprise often, with the love and affection that flowed so freely from either of them. Eddie admired the ease and simplicity they had. He could only imagine what that felt like to have such a life of assurance, where you could build your life around each other. When he imagined that with Richie … buying a house and settling in and promising forever—

Well, it hurt too much.

“That’s beautiful,” Eddie said. He cleared his throat, aware of the sudden tension there. Mike didn’t seem to notice.

“Okay, so, look over here,” Mike said. He walked to the centre of the room and hopped up a couple of steps to a raised table. Eddie followed and the stacks of ageing books—brittle and fading—that Mike had, among others laying open, and clumps of bound papers. 

Mike worked with the New York Historical Society, and Eddie thought it had to be the most interesting work in the world. He’d feel like he was traveling back through centuries, every time he looked at new documents. 

“We’re gradually working through local documents and memories people have donated from the nineteen-twenties,” Mike said, and looked up at Eddie with a glint in his eye. “Come take a look.”

Eddie went to stand beside Mike. There were bunches and bunches of black and white photographs scattered beside the papers: people who were no longer, small events that had occurred, and lives that had been lived were all on display. Something in it made an ache break out beside Eddie’s heart. None of these adults were living anymore. These people had experienced a, hopefully, wonderful life, and then passed on, as they should.

“Oh, wow,” Eddie muttered, pushing photos aside to gaze at the ones beneath them. This was the decade that Eddie was born. He sometimes wished he could have experienced The Roaring Twenties; the parties, the passion, the nightlife. But, then again, he’d lived through enough already.

“I know,” Mike said. “It feels like a field day every time I look through all of this.” 

Eddie couldn’t take his eyes away from the photographs. 

“You can look through these books too. It won’t matter.”

“Thank you.”

“Hey, Eddie?” Mike asked. Eddie looked up, pulled out of his daze. “It’s nice to be able to share this all with you.” He smiled, and it was so genuine it caught Eddie. “Bill’s not interested by history all that much, and I don’t really have any other friends who are either—besides at work, so”—he nudged Eddie with his elbow—“I’m glad you’re here.”

For the second time in that musty library—that exuded just as much historical ambience than Eddie’s own apartment—he found himself speechless. Mike’s I’m glad you’re here, didn’t just mean in that library with him, and Eddie knew it. It meant I’m glad you’re here with us all. I’m glad you’re our friend, and I’m glad you’re with Richie. It was almost too much to bear, and he wished he could have it all. He wanted to wrap up every piece of love and hopefulness and kindness that he’d been offered by these people and hold it close to his chest where he’d never let go.

But it wasn’t that easy.

“Thank you, Mike,” Eddie said, hoping it was clear how grateful he was. “That really—” His voice had gone hoarse. He had to cough and look away, blinking multiple times. “That means a lot.”

Mike’s hand was on his shoulder. “Anytime,” he said. “You’re one of us, now.”

_____________________

Sparkles seemed to be dancing just beneath the surface of Eddie’s entire body, and as he sat at the dining table beside Richie and opposite Mike and Bill, he thought he’d never laughed so much in his life.

Eddie sipped from his wine glass. “The food’s great, you two. Really,” he said, feeling warm to the tips of his toes and fingers, “thank you.”

“Oh, no,” Bill said, “thank you, for coming!”

Then Richie was bringing up memories. “Bill, remember that—”

“Hey, Eddie,” Mike said, leaning over the table only slightly in his chair. Richie and Bill continued to talk and laugh beside them.

“Mm?” Eddie placed his glass down.

“I’m going to be receiving medical archives from the mid twentieth century soon. Should be in a couple of weeks or so. I was wondering if you wanted to take a look at them with me? I could use a medicine centred mind.”

Eddie was touched. “Really?” he asked, raising a hand to his chest. “Gee, Mike, thank you.”

“Of course,” Mike said, looking ever so happy and at home at the table with his husband and friends, “I’d love for you to help.”

“And I’d love to,” Eddie said, “thank you—for thinking of me. You’re very kind.”

Mike raised his glass in a toast to Eddie, and Eddie touched his glass and a small clink rang out at the table.

“—It’s still really fucking cold, Billiam,” Richie was saying.

“Yeah, well, it’d be colder up north,” Bill said. “Poor Stan and Patty—”

“Oh, fucking Stanley can take care of himself,” Richie said and cackled, “he’s as frosty as the damn lake that sits—ow!”

Eddie had kicked the tip of his oxford into Richie’s ankle. “You better watch your tongue, Richie, I swear to—”

“Oh my God, Eds,” Richie said, eyes wide, and then made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Please tell me more about how much you hate my foul, dirty language—”

“Okay!” Mike cut in, and Bill was laughing so hard his head was thrown back. “Bill, how are Stan and Patty doing at The Lakes? You spoke to—”

“The Lakes?” Eddie butted in, forgetting the mortifying blush that had begun to develop on his cheeks. He felt suddenly disoriented, as though he’d been yanked harshly back through time.

There was laughter in that summer by the lake, constantly alive and woven through the thick air, and it came from two women in love and Eddie, whom to them was a friend with a false name—which they weren’t aware of—and wished he could have anything similar to their affair.

“Isn’t she gorgeous?” Anthea called from the rope swing, hands clasping the thick thread. “She’s glowing!”

Tilly covered her eyes and fell back against the lawn chair. “You’re too much!” she replied. “You’ll boost my ego to the size of the Empire State Building—Keith, take my side here!”

“I can’t hear a word you’re saying,” Eddie said, standing up and the corners of his lips switched into a smile. 

“Traitor!” Tilly called.

Anthea laughed and swung into the lake.

Eddie pulled his shirt up and over his head, and walked the few metres to where the water began. It was cold on his toes—

“Yeah, baby,” Richie said, nonchalant. He was calming down from his all consuming laughter and chuckled, draping an arm over Eddie’s chair back. “That’s where Stan and Pats live.”

“Oh,” Eddie said, blinking and chasing away the decades old voices he was hearing slip through the cracks in his mind. “Right.”

“Have you been?” Bill asked.

“Once,” Eddie said. “A long time ago.”

_____________________

Sunday

24 January 2021

New York, USA

The white walls were tinged a soft orange, as the sun sank low to the horizon and threw its glow back to the earth. Shadows from the window frame were cast across the bed where the two men had found themselves.

Eddie lay with his head thrown back across the pillow, his body unable to hold still where Richie traced his lips and fingers along every patch of skin in sight. He was breathless and content, and being with Richie, in his apartment, felt comforting and solid. Whenever Eddie was alone, he felt loose with no grounding. But, Richie—Richie was ground, and Eddie could finally stand. With each kiss and touch and kind word, the other man seemed to be stitching every aching wound Eddie had gathered over the years. 

But when he was alone, it all seemed to unravel again. In times like these, he tried to forget the reality.

“God, Eds,” Richie said, panting and kissing the inside of Eddie’s thigh. “You’re so fucking perfect.”

Eddie arched his back. “Rich,” he moaned. He pushed himself up on his elbows and felt the breath stolen from him at the view: Richie’s hair was dishevelled, glasses slipping down his nose, and his lips kissed red and swollen. Eddie tried to grasp at Richie’s hands as they squeezed his thighs. “Get up here.”

Their eyes locked, and Richie smiled in his way that sent whatever sense Eddie had left into the ether.

_____________________

Friday

29 January 2021

New York, USA

“I am happy,” Eddie said, phone held to his ear, stirring the soup he was tending to on the stovetop. “I feel happy, just—not when I’m home and not distracted.”

“That’s understandable,” Beverly said through the phone.

“The fear isn’t going away,” Eddie said quietly.

“I know, honey,” she said. “But you’re letting yourself live.”

Eddie was quiet, and then spoke. “I keep thinking about March.” He’d had started to wonder if he really had to move, and that scared him.

“You know what I think about it,” Beverly said.

“I know.” He sighed. “But I have to be careful.”

_____________________

Tuesday

2 February 2021

New York, USA

They weren’t all good days. As time ticked closer to his seemingly inevitable move, Eddie sometimes found such an all-consuming pain wrap itself around his torso whilst going about mundane activities. He’d be folding clothes, lost in thought, when reality began to claw out of his chest and strangle him. In those times, it was all he could do to lie on his bed, curl up, and silently cry while tears slipped down onto the cool bed sheets.

The knowing that he had to leave was consuming Eddie from the inside.

_____________________

Saturday

6 February 2021

New York, USA

“Richie, sweetheart—stop,” Eddie scolded, the endearing name holding little to no affection. He tried to snatch the saltshaker out of the taller man’s hands, but he held it up over Eddie’s head, grinning. “You’re going to make it taste like the fucking ocean—”

“I’m seasoning, Eds,” Richie said, clearly enjoying himself.

The kitchen in Richie’s apartment smelled like the stir-fry they were cooking up: onion caramelising, sauces heating, and vegetables cooking to perfection. Eddie hated to admit it, but Richie was honestly a better cook than him, adding dashes of sauces and hints of spices to dishes that Eddie wouldn’t even think to consider.

He drew the line at salt.

“I fucking hate salt, and you know it.” Eddie reached up but Richie just raised his arm up further. Eddie scowled. “Richie.”

“Eddie.”

“Too much salt will give you high blood pressure—Rich!” And Eddie was squealing as Richie wrapped his arms around Eddie’s torso and yanked him out of the way and tapped more salt into the pan. Eddie smacked him in the chest. “You fucking child, I swear to God.”

Richie was laughing. “Yeah, that—that’s me”—he wheezed—“a thirty-one year old child.”

“Give me that,” Eddie grumbled, snagging the saltshaker out of the other man’s hand.

“Hey,” Richie said, wiping at his eyes beneath his glasses, “when’s your birthday? I don’t think I’ve asked you that.”

Eddie ran his thumb along the smooth porcelain of the shaker, not lifting his eyes. “November second, nineteen-eighty-five.”

“Ooh, a Scorpio,” Richie said. He’d taken his glasses off and was cleaning the lenses with his shirt, leaning against the counter. “Mine’s March seventh. Eighty-eight.”

Eddie’s eyes shot up to look at Richie. His throat suddenly felt like it was filled with cotton. “What?”

Richie slipped the glasses back up his nose. “March seventh, nineteen-eighty-eight,” he repeated. He kissed Eddie on the cheek, rubbed his shoulder, and walked back to the crackling fry pan. “You need your hearing checked, Eddie my love?”

He stood there blinking, elastic seeming to tighten around his scalp increasingly hard as he frowned. The memories in his mind whizzed back through the decades and came to a halt on March seventh of nineteen-eighty-eight, because Eddie remembered exactly why that date was so engrained in his memory.

He gripped the metal doorframe behind him—cold to the touch on his skin that felt scolding—to steady himself as he slowly sank to the floor.

The pain was unbearable and he thought, I’m going to fucking die. I can’t breathe and I’m going to finally die, here on the floor with this false name and a past full of misery—

Indiana. It was that morning—some godforsaken ridiculous hour—when he thought he was going to die for a second time, dropping his mug in the kitchen and falling to the floor in the doorway.

The saltshaker slipped from Eddie’s grasp and shattered on the floor; white granules spilled across the dark wood, like stars in the night sky.

“Fuck,” Eddie choked out.

“Oh, shit,” Richie said, and Eddie saw him place the wooden spoon on the counter in his peripheral. “It’s okay! Don’t stress.” 

Eddie was staring down at the floor, the sudden thumping beneath his chest forcing itself to the centre of his attention. 

A hand grasped his shoulder and he jumped.

Richie was looking down at him, brow furrowing. “You okay?”

Eddie nodded. “Yeah—yes, fine.”

“I’ll get the dustpan. One sec.” Richie retreated out of the kitchen and down the hall. He was back in a moment and began sweeping the floor by Eddie’s feet.

“When—” Eddie cleared his throat. “What time were you born?” His voice sounded ghostly, but Richie didn’t seem to notice.

“Like, five in the morning or something ridiculous like that.”

What are the chances?

“Ha,” Eddie said, drained of a reaction. 

Unease lurked beneath the surface of his thoughts as he continued about the night with Richie. He tried to push that moment away, because, surely there was no way—

It doesn’t mean a thing.

_____________________

Tuesday

9 February 2021

New York, USA

The clock on Eddie’s apartment wall ticked subtly in the distance; a low and ignored soundtrack to the scene occurring. Beverly was sat on Eddie’s couch, feet tucked beside her, mending a jacket on her lap. Ferdy slept curled up next to her, and it made Eddie smile as he sorted through records and books, and packed them into cardboard boxes.

The first time Beverly entered the apartment had been strange for Eddie; he hadn’t invited anyone to his home in decades. She’d walked through and looked around, taking in every slight detail and seeming to form more of the picture she saw of Eddie.

“Wow,” Beverly said. She stood in front of the small wooden table that gave home to five brass photo frames. “This is you?”

Eddie walked closer. The photograph she motioned to in particular was of Eddie at age twenty-one, standing among other college students. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s me.”

“So young …” Beverly said, and then turned to him and smiled kindly. “So handsome.”

Now Beverly made herself at home whenever she was over, and Eddie enjoyed the company. It was nice to have somebody who knew; he’d lived so long alone, carrying the weight of who he truly was. He’d spoken about some of his past, but not everything.

“I was married once,” he said, causing Beverly to halt her stitching. “In the nineteen-fifties.”

She frowned. “The fifties?” Then realisation washed over her features and changed into sorrow. “Oh—to a …”

“To a woman, yes,” Eddie said, voice flat. He set three more books into the box in front of him. “It wasn’t a bright time.”

“I’m sorry,” Beverly said. They were both quiet as they looked at each other, understanding embedded in their shared pasts. “How did she treat you?”

“She wasn’t—violent,” Eddie said. He dusted his hands off on his trousers as he stood up and went to sit beside Ferdy. “She was emotionally manipulative. Controlling. She resembled my mother in that way. I married because I felt I didn’t have a choice.”

“When did you separate?” Beverly had abandoned her sewing now. “Oh, God, did she realise—?”

“No,” he said. “We divorced in sixty-one. She never realised I wasn’t aging. I left Maine in sixty-seven.”

“Some great spouses we’ve had, hey,” Beverly said and gave a dull laugh. Eddie only nodded. “But, not now,” she continued. “Now, we’ve met nice men.” 

Eddie stared at her, knowing exactly where her point was headed. 

She continued. “Do you really want to leave that?”

Ferdy’s fur was soft to the touch, slipping through Eddie’s fingers. The cat began to purr.

“Bev, can we please not—”

“No,” she said, “you keep avoiding the subject, and I’m not having it anymore. You have a life here, Eddie. A good one. Why would you want to leave that?”

Eddie gave her a disbelieving look.

Beverly rolled her eyes. “Come on, honey.” She touched her hand to his arm. “Nobody would be chasing you anymore. Nobody even suspects.”

Energy seeping away from Eddie, leaving him flat and hopeless; a pit of despair. “I’ve thought about it,” he admitted, “but that doesn’t mean I should do it.”

“But you should,” Beverly insisted. She unfolded her legs and sat up straighter. “Please. For yourself. Just think more.”

He was quiet.

“Please,” she repeated.

“I’ll consider it.”

A smile broke out on Beverly’s face.

_____________________

Thursday

11 February 2021

New York, USA

“Are you asleep?”

Eddie startled awake, his head pillowed on Richie’s thighs, legs stretched out behind him on the couch. He blinked blearily at the television screen before them, and the voices of the actors swam into focus once again. “No,” he mumbled.

“Liar,” Richie said. “Wanna go to bed?”

“No,” Eddie said. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and leaned his weight against Richie’s side. His head fell to Richie’s shoulder. “I want to watch your movie.”

Richie’s hand came up to the back of Eddie’s head and he ran his fingers through his hair. He chuckled. “Your lack of consciousness would beg to differ.”

“Fuck off,” Eddie said, half hearted. “This is good, Rich. Really.” He wrapped his hand around Richie’s arm and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “Your talent amazes me.”

Richie was silent, scratching Eddie’s scalp. It felt good, and he was almost lulled into sleep again, but Richie spoke. “Aw, shucks, Eds.” 

Eddie felt a kiss to the top of his head. 

“Thank you,” Richie whispered.

Eddie smiled. 

_____________________

Thursday

11 February 2021

New York, USA

He may not have been in Richie’s apartment at all; the only world that existed for Eddie was the one that had come to life on the pages before him, spilling out between black lettering, portraying a life that wasn’t, behind his eyes.

“What the fuck,” Eddie choked, tears slipping down his cheeks. He turned the page, heartbeat thudding, eyes meticulously running along each word on the page and taking them in. 

As Eddie sat up against Richie’s headboard, alone in the bedroom, Bill Denbrough’s book was breaking him apart piece by piece. It was what he wanted, loved, and simultaneously detested from a story on paper.

As rain battered down relentlessly outside, Eddie and Richie were spending the night in Richie’s apartment. Richie was working in the living room, and Eddie was unwinding from his day, only to find himself winding back up so unbearably tight from the story he’d picked up. He was only chapters from the end. 

He gave another aggravated page turn, a sniffle, and wiped his eyes.

A Bonnie and Clyde tale of crime, mystery, and romance had been right. Toward the end of the book, the two lovers had found themselves successful in having run away from those chasing them and were six months into a new life together. Then all went to hell, and Eddie cursed Bill for having written it.

Jude attempted, one last time, to start the dishwasher, but was only given a frustrating beeping. He shoved at the square of metal and machinery, cursing it out, when the tell-tale sound of the front door opening came.

“Chris!” Jude called. “I can’t get this fucking thing to work. You have to do it, or I’m going to lose my God damn mind—” 

 “Jude.”

Standing behind Jude was a burly looking man, tall and unkempt, staggering into the kitchen with blood seeping through his jeans. Jude recognised him instantly, and he came with a sinking feeling of utter despair.

“How did you find me?” Jude asked, eyes flicking from the wound in Lux’s leg, back to his face, and then to the gun pointing straight at Jude. He wondered who’d given him that wound, and had a horrible feeling he knew.

“Don’t ask such stupid fucking questions—”

The front door smacked against the brick outside and Chris stampeded down the hallway, causing Lux to turn drastically, gun still aimed at Jude. Chris’s face was written in fury. “DON’T YOU—”

“Take one more step and I’ll fucking shoot him!” Lux bellowed.

Chris stopped, eyes wild and furious and set on Lux: a look that could kill. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

“I’ve spent long enough looking for you two, and I’m going to do what I intended to do.”

It was a realisation of horror and of the heaviest sadness one could feel; the end of the world had come, and Jude knew it. He looked at Chris—a glance that occurred in less than a second—and they shared the same fear. But it was, too, a look of love. I love you, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

Jude wasn’t going to beg, and he wasn’t going to plead that they be giving a chance; that wasn’t who he was. Every moment he’d lived, he’d never known when he’d be taken from this life.

“Just—don’t,” Chris said. “God—fucking, don’t.”

Lux gave Chris a look that Jude couldn’t see, and with the way Chris’s brows twisted and his eyes washed over with something, it threw Jude’s sanity through the roof. “No,” he said.

Lux didn’t move. “I’m going to surprise you both, today,” he said, “and listen to Christopher.”

“No—!”

Lux swung his arm around, gun in hand, and pointed it at Chris. In a split second, he’d pulled the trigger and a bullet had shot out and buried itself in Chris’s chest. Blood began to seep through the grey fabric of his shirt, right above his heart.

It had happened in a split second. Jude felt outright rage rip through his being, and he reached to the knife block on the bench and threw the largest blade toward Lux. He watched as it tore into the flesh of Lux’s neck and became concealed. The man fell back with a spluttering cough; blood dribbled out of his mouth.

Jude ran toward Chris. He was lying in the hallway with his hand clutched to his chest. He looked up at Jude.

“Jude—I love you, I love—I’m so sorry—”

“Stop,” Jude choked, clutching Chris’s cheek, placing a hand over his on his chest, and blood tinted his skin. “I love you.”

He wanted to scream and shout all the expletives he could manage, to charge over to Lux’s body and mutilate it further, but if this was Chris’s last moments—and he knew it was—

Chris blinked, damp eyelashes fluttering, and Jude watched as his partner’s focus drifted. The harsh rise and fall of the chest beneath Jude’s hand ceased, and the view he had of the world was altered forever.

Eddie choked out a sob and threw the book across the room. It landed in a flutter on the carpet beyond Richie’s bed. He covered his eyes with his hands and drew his knees to his chest. He still had an odd thirty pages left but he couldn’t have cared less. He’d spent the past week with these characters, experiencing their hardships and escapes and the life they’d finally found together, and he was going to kill Bill for taking that away.

“Fuck you, Bill,” Eddie muttered.

He dropped his hands and watched the raindrops hit the windowpane harshly, slipping down and merging with each other.

Eddie sighed and climbed off the bed to retrieve the abandoned book. Pages had been creased in the collision with the floor. He opened the bedroom door and padded out. Goose was sat by the kitchen island and gave a short mew at Eddie. Richie was sat on the couch, the glow of the laptop screen illuminating his face, and the hesitant orange light radiating out of the fireplace.

Eddie dropped the book on the kitchen table and Richie jumped. He turned around to look at Eddie over the couch back.

“What the fuck was that?” Eddie asked, voice loud.

Richie’s eyes flicked from Eddie, to the worn book on the table, then to Eddie again. “Oh,” he said, eyes widening and a sheepish smile appearing, “you finished it.”

“Almost,” Eddie said, “rather close to it, but I don’t think I fucking will—” His voice caught on the last word, and he looked up to the ceiling, eyes welling up.

“Oh, baby,” Richie said, and he heard the other man stand from the sofa.

Eddie looked furiously back at Richie approaching him. “You said the book was good, that it wasn’t—sad.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t sad,” Richie said, reaching for Eddie’s arms and holding on.

“You’ve told me how Bill writes awful endings, and I’m definitely counting that as one.”

Richie laughed. “You should tell him that.

“I fucking will,” Eddie said, “tomorrow. At lunch with him and Mike.” He pressed his forehead against Richie’s chest, which was shockingly warm from the fire. “Chris didn’t have to die.”

Richie’s arms wrapped around Eddie and he stroked his back. “Yeah, that wasn’t fun to read.” They were silent for a moment, and then Richie pulled back to look at Eddie. “But, hey, didn’t you enjoy the rest of the book?”

“Yes,” he mumbled.

“I want it to be a movie so bad because of the message the story sends,” Richie said, his eyes lighting up with a passion that Eddie was now all too familiar with. “How we should make the most of every moment—we have to live—because you never know when you’re going to go. And, yeah, it was so fucking sad at the end, but I loved reading about Chris and Jude’s relationship. It was fun to experience that for four-hundred pages, and I just know it’s going to be epic to witness on the screen.”

Eddie nodded, caught in the slight awe that he always was when Richie got this way.

Richie smiled and poked Eddie on the nose, laughing when the shorter man scrunched up his nose in protest. “You with me, Eds?”

“Yes,” Eddie said, dropping his head to Richie’s chest. “You’re right. But I still hate the ending.”

Richie’s chest shuddered with laughter that rang out brightly around the apartment. “Eds, you haven’t finished it yet.”

_____________________

Friday

12 February 2021

New York, USA

“I’m sorry,” Eddie said, sat across from Bill and next to Richie, “but … I really didn’t like how you ended it.” 

In the brightly lit café, sunlight slanted in from the windows and over the table as the three men dined for lunch. Eddie spread butter across a small bread roll as Richie began to chuckle beside him.

Eddie had officially finished Robbers later the previous night, after he’d lounged on the couch with Richie, but the rest of Bill’s writing had offered very little resolution. 

“Can’t win ‘em all, Bill,” Richie said through a full of food.

Eddie elbowed him. “Cover your mouth.”

“Sorry, Eddie,” Bill said with an apologetic smile. “I just couldn’t see it ending any other way. Jude and Chris had committed so many crimes. With the amount of people out to get them, I don’t think they would’ve gotten away with it.”

“I wanted a happy ending for them, that’s all,” Eddie said. “Anyway”—he waved a hand—“Mike really didn’t want to come out for lunch? Is he working himself too hard?”

The smallest of frowns appeared between Bill’s eyebrows. “No,” he said, cutting into his food, “he was given an huge number of archives to go through—just a couple of days ago—and he’s been distant and constantly working since.” 

“Are those the medical ones he spoke of?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Bill said. He shrugged. “He was in a mood this morning and said he couldn’t come. I can’t think of anything I’ve done wrong, but sometimes I just don’t realise.”

Eddie frowned, puzzled. “I’m sure he must be stressed, then.”

“He works hard,” Richie said. “Don’t work yourself up about it, Big Bill.”

Bill shook it off and changed the subject. As the three chattered away, Eddie wondered when Mike would call him for help with the archives.

_____________________

Sunday

14 February 2021

New York, USA

Eddie pottered around Richie’s kitchen, yawning intermittently and waiting for the kettle to boil. The shower hummed through the bricked walls as Richie showered. He and Eddie had been tangled up in bed, basking in the comfort of lazing together in the late morning.

Eddie hadn’t given more thought to Beverly’s proposal; he insistently pushed it back where it hovered sinister at the back of his mind.

He poured water into a mug, grabbed his plate of toast, and walked over to settle on the couch in the living room. In his drowsy state, he whacked his shin against the coffee table.

Eddie hissed and set his mug and plate onto the table-top with more force than necessary, and it caused the screen of Richie’s phone to light up.

Eddie’s focus was wrenched from the stabbing pain in his leg to the photograph he saw: behind the time stamp reading eight-forty-one, was a clear picture of Richie’s bedroom, the central focus being specifically his bed, and Eddie was in the centre of it. The photograph was clear and pristine, taken with the eyes of a man practiced in the art of capturing life on screen. The early morning sunlight fell through a wide slit in the curtains and across Eddie’s sleeping figure, half concealed by the bed cover. The beauty of it was jarring.

He didn’t allow pictures of himself to be taken, but this one was different; it struck Eddie, because the way he’d been captured through the screen seemed to show him just how Richie saw him, and it was pure affection.

A deep fondness swelled in Eddie’s chest. It hit him with such a force, so often, of how much he felt for Richie. He was living on a whim, and he knew it wouldn’t end in fairness. 

The bathroom door opened, and Eddie sat back against the couch, toast forgotten on the table, rubbing his shin. The heavy footfalls of Richie walking down the hall sounded behind Eddie.

“Hey, you put coffee on!” Richie said—accompanied by the creak of a cupboard door and a mug being settled on the counter. “Thanks, baby.”

Eddie hummed and stared with unfocussed eyes at the table before him. Richie waltzed into the living room and sat on the couch, thigh to thigh with Eddie and kissed him on the cheek. 

Eddie dragged his eyes out of the daze and settled them on the man beside him. 

“I’m all yours for the day, sweetheart,” Richie said. He blew on his coffee. “No work to do.”

Eddie smiled, small and pensive. “I saw the photograph on your phone.”

Richie blinked.

“Your screensaver.”

Richie winced behind his glasses, halloed by damp and messy hair, curling at the tips. “Oh, fuck. I’m sorry. I know you don’t like pictures taken, but I—”

Eddie gave a small laugh, surprised to find he felt at peace. “It’s a good photo, Richie. I like it.”

Richie’s eyes widened in surprise. “You’re not angry?” he asked.

“No,” Eddie said. “I don’t know what it is, but … I’ve never seen myself look like that before.”

A smile had crept back onto Richie’s lips. “Asleep?” he asked. He was clearly joking, but his tone fell soft.

Eddie scoffed. “No—” 

“Beautiful,” Richie supplied simply.

Eddie felt his cheeks begin to warm and looked down. “No—I don’t know …”

“Yes, beautiful.” Richie took Eddie’s chin in hand and tilted his face back to meet his eyes. “You are, you know. And, handsome. And, astounding. Should I tell you this more?”

Eddie was blushing heavily under Richie’s gaze. “Stop, Rich,” he said, shaking out of Richie’s grasp, only to earn a kiss to his temple. “You already say sweet things to me more than you should.”

“Who says there’s a limit?”

“Me,” Eddie said, “all your compliments will go straight to my head, and I won’t be able to fit out the door.”

Richie chuckled and pulled Eddie against his side, resting the coffee mug on his own knee. “So, that picture really doesn’t bother you?”

“No,” Eddie said. He rubbed the fabric of Richie’s shirt between his fingers. “It’s only for you.”

_____________________

Richie had been periodically texting throughout almost the entirety of the film—something Eddie hadn’t heard of and couldn’t find it in himself to stay focussed. He had his feet stretched out on the coffee table, as Richie stretched along the length of the couch—too long for it—with his head on Eddie’s thighs. The late afternoon sun was setting outside, and they hadn’t set foot outside the apartment all day, but Eddie felt content and happier than ever.

“You aren’t paying attention,” Eddie said. He ran his fingers through Richie’s hair, massaging his scalp.

Richie hummed. “I am,” he said, eyes still locked on the phone he was holding above his head; Eddie couldn’t see who he was talking to. “That guys about to get shot.”

“What—?” Eddie jumped as a gunshot went off on the screen and he scowled. “You’ve seen this before. You’re still not paying attention.”

“I have a reason.”

“Oh yes, and what may that be?”

Richie looked up at Eddie, a soft smile on his lips, almost nervous. Eddie felt his scowl soften, and he scratched Richie’s scalp lightly.

“What is it, Rich?”

“So, um.” Richie pushed himself back up to sit next to Eddie, and Eddie stared at him, confused and intrigued. “Patty and Stan are having a party up at the Lakes, next week, for Stan’s thirtieth. And they’ve invited us all to stay for the weekend.”

“Okay …” Eddie said, encouraging Richie to continue, slightly amused at his hesitance.

“Do you want to come with me?”

Eddie bit his lip, fighting a grin. “Why are you so nervous to ask me that?”

“I don’t know if it’s too much.”

Eddie’s chest warmed. He brushed the back of his index finger across Richie’s cheek. “It’s not,” he said. “I’ll go.”

Richie grinned. “Yeah?”

Eddie rolled his eyes and laughed. “Yeah, idiot.”

Richie leaned in and kissed him.

_____________________

Friday

19 February 2021

New York, USA

Snow had begun to fall as the two men left the city and made for the countryside. Eddie sat in the passenger seat, watching the fields covered in a layer of white. Richie sat beside him, humming along to a song playing through the speakers, oddly resembling what Eddie would equate the feeling of driving toward a wonderful time would sound like. He watched as multiple trees, barren of any leaves, whizzed past, rising up from beneath the snow.

Eddie leaned his head against the cold window and marvelled in the beauty of the surrounding landscape. He thought of how his life had so drastically changed since January, and how he’d never have seen it coming. He was riding beside a man, who he cared dearly for—hands on the wheels, lips twitched in a slight smile, orange patterned beanie pulled over his dark curls—all the way to a fine getaway with people he could call friends.

And yet, it was all tainted with the unsettling knowledge that it couldn’t last forever. 

Eddie kept pushing any thought of his planned move further and further back in his mind. He’d done nothing to cancel or postpone it, and he barely spoke of it with anyone. Richie had asked, of course, but Eddie could tell that he seemed set in the idea that they could last long distance, because of course he had no clue that Arizona held a completely life for Eddie. It hurt. But he was living in the moment, for once. He still had weeks until he had to acknowledge the repercussions.

Richie’s hand slipped onto Eddie’s thigh.

Eddie blinked slowly, eyelids begging to stay closed, and gave in to the rest his body was begging for after a week of early mornings. And, as he slipped into a restless daze sleep filled with the odd movements of the car and Richie beside him, the other man’s humming floated around him and soaked into his heart.

_____________________

“Eds, baby, we’re here.”

A large hand was rubbing Eddie’s shoulder, slowly pulling him out from under his warm blanket of sleep, out into the cold air of the car—only barely warmed by the heat that had ceased its blowing from the vents.

“Come on, sweetheart. Wake up.”

Eddie brought a hand down over his face, attempting to rub the sleep away, and looked drowsily up into blue eyes and glasses.

Richie pressed a kiss to his forehead. “We’re here.”

“Okay,” Eddie said.

Richie stepped out of the car and walked around to retrieve their bags from the trunk. Eddie looked out the windows, taking in his surroundings. The sun had set, turning the evening sky into a gradient of pink and purple. Their car was parked in front of a large, wall-like hedge, which touched an old stone wall, covered in vines, which—

Eddie couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

He threw open the car door and stumbled out, gaping at the wide expanse of house before him, and he knew it because he’dbeen there before.

The house was surrounded by what would have been greenery, now covered in snow, with trees and bushes dotted around. The house was old and tall, made of grey stone, almost resembling a cottage. It seemed an average size from the front, but Eddie knew that it stretched on further back, out to the grass and garden, and then, beyond that, the enormous lake that gave the house, and the surrounding land, its name.

After almost fifty years, Eddie was standing in front Lake House again.

The front door—heavy and wooden, sat beneath a large stone archway, beside two pillars—swung open. Patty stepped out, all smiles and welcoming waves.

Anthea all but leaped down the stone steps, blonde hair tied up and swinging behind her. She grinned at Eddie. He shut the car door behind him and laughed when his arms were filled with her, hugging him tightly as though she’d never let go.

“God, I missed you,” she said, head pressed against his neck.

He laughed. “As I’ve missed you.”

She pulled back, smiling and holding his shoulders. “Tilly’s already here.” She looked up at the sky and laughed, as though she was in on some joke. “She’s actually been here for the past few days. Sorry, Keith—”

Eddie lightly smacked her shoulder. “And here I was thinking you’d invited us both at the same time, for the first time in your new house, but no. I guess I’m not that important—”

He couldn’t continue, as they were both laughing, and, God, did it feel good to be happy again.

“Eddie!” Patty called. “Rich!” She stepped down to the driveway toward them. “You made it!”

Eddie blinked; he was torn between two time frames.

Richie sidled up beside Eddie, their two bags in hand. “Hey, Pats,” he said, reaching out one bagged hand to embrace Patty, and she wrapped both arms around Richie’s back and earned a kiss to her cheek. “Where’s the birthday boy?”

“Inside, with everyone else. You two are the last to arrive.”

“Oh, and I bet you were all just dying without our company. But now, the party can start.”

Patty laughed. “Eddie,” she said, “I’m so happy you could come.”

He ripped his eyes from the house back to her. “Hey, Patty.” He hugged her.

“You all right?” she asked when they pulled apart.

“I’m sorry. This—this house—” He looked up at it once more. “It’s just—I know of it, is all.”

“You know the stories?” she asked. Her eyes were curious and bright; an air of mystery.

Eddie nodded. Something like that.

“What stories?” Richie asked.

“The woman who lived here before us,” Patty said. “Come in.” She motioned for them to follow her into the house. “It sat empty for almost fifty years, before we bought it. The woman was wild. Left her husband, brought her girlfriend here, partied. An absolute icon, and hardly anyone knows of her.”

Patty walked up the steps, and Richie let Eddie follow first, into the house. The warmth enveloped them, and Patty shut the door to seal it in. Immediately, Eddie could hear the sounds of happy chatter and laughter coming from within the house. 

“She was a poet,” he added, and swallowed against the tightness that had surfaced in his throat.

“That’s right!” Patty said. “Anthea Fellowes. I’ve read some of her work. It’s beautiful.”

“Sounds like an incredible life,” Richie said. He dropped the bags on the floor.

“It was,” Eddie said quietly, for only himself to hear.

He was struck. Old feelings and memories were stirring in the base of Eddie’s skull, and his heart, being dredged up out into the open. He’d had some of the best times of his life here, and he missed Anthea and Tilly.

“Eds, you sure you’re okay?” Richie asked. He was standing close to Eddie and frowning.

“Yes,” Eddie said, forcing a smile. “Just a bit drowsy. I’ll wake up soon.”

Richie squeezed Eddie’s bicep, and Eddie’s smile became true.

Then, a voice called out from the end of the hallway: “I wondered where you’d gotten off to.” Stan was stood in a cable knit sweater, drying his hands on a tea towel, smiling softly at Patty. His eyes shifted to Richie and Eddie. “Look who finally decided to show up.”

“Stan the Man!” Richie said. “The big three-o! How does it feel to be ancient?”

Stan rolled his eyes and strolled down the hallway. “It’s not until Sunday, you jackass.” He pulled Richie into a hug, nonetheless, and slapped his back. “Good to see you.” When he pulled back, he smiled kindly at Eddie. “Hi, Eddie.”

“Hi, Stan,” Eddie said, accepting Stan’s hug. They pulled apart. “Thank you for inviting me.” 

“Of course,” Stan said. “How was the drive?”

“Eds slept for most of it,” Richie said. “I guess I’m just that boring—”

“Fuck off, Richie,” Eddie said, rolling his eyes.

Richie slipped an arm around Eddie’s shoulders and squeezed, laughing. Eddie didn’t miss the bemused look Patty and Stan shared.

“All right,” Patty said, “your room is up the stairs, at the end of the hall. Rich, you know the one. You can take your things up and I’ll give Eddie the tour.”

“Aye, aye, captain.” Richie heaved the bags into hand and made his way up the carpeted staircase. 

As Eddie watched him go, a memory flashed by.

“Keith.” Tilly leaned against the railing three stairs up and grinned. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Eddie opened his arms and Tilly was in them in a flash. Anthea chuckled and walked down the hall to the kitchen.

“I’m causing a scandal by being here, you know,” she whispered. “People have caught on.”

Eddie pulled back and took in her worried gaze. “To hell with them,” he said.

_____________________

I know this place inside and out was what Eddie kept thinking on an endless loop as Patty lead him through the various, stunning rooms. Memories—flashes of situations and experiences, almost like a movie—were turning over and over in his mind, every time they entered a new room, and Eddie’s thoughts went to places they hadn’t in years.

They were down the back of the house, where Patty and Stan had designated the rooms for musical purposes: teaching rooms, offices, instrument, CDs, and records galore.

In Stanley’s office, Eddie gazed around in a stupor at the wall of square shelves with as many records as he’d seen in stores.

“You have so many,” Eddie said, awestruck.

“They’re mostly Stan’s,” Patty said, leaning against a computer desk. “I’ve added a few, but they’re his pride and joy. He had so many when I met him.” A far-off smile touched her cheeks. “Next room?”

“Please.”

Patty led him into the room across the hall and Eddie was shocked to find that it looked so similar to how Eddie had seen it all those years ago. The floral wallpaper had taken on an aged discolouring, but it was still beautiful. And there, hanging above the mantle, was a large photograph of the Lake itself, and he remembered—

“Is it straight enough?” Anthea asked, hands tilting the corners of the frame.

“A little to the left,” Eddie replied.

She tilted it and Eddie grimaced.

“No, too far,” he said. “Now to the right—”

“Oh my God, Keith, come on—”

“I’m trying to help!”

“My arms are aching—”

“There!” Eddie said, holding both hands out. “Done. It’s perfect.”

Anthea walked backward to stand beside Eddie, taking in the frame. She turned to him, beaming, arms crossed. “I love it.”

“She took that herself,” Patty said.

Eddie blinked and looked at Patty in the doorway.

“The woman that lived here,” she continued. “Anthea Fellowes. She took that picture. It came with the house.”

“Oh,” Eddie said, voice small, trying not to show the feeling crawling up his throat. “It’s gorgeous. And that—that’s the Lake outside, isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” Patty said. “You can have a proper look tomorrow and wander around.”

“I’d like that.”

“This is my office, by the way.” Patty motioned to the grand piano in the far corner, strolling toward it. “Writing and what not.”

Eddie nodded, looking around. Déjà vu.

“You and Richie seem really happy,” Patty said, seizing Eddie’s attention. She smiled, sweet and glinting, and absentmindedly tapped a melody out on the keys, still standing. “Sometimes, you just see two people and know.”

Eddie stared at her.

“You two just—fit,” she continued, looking at Eddie. “You fit together really well.”

“Thank you,” Eddie said at length.

Patty stood up. She placed a soft hand on Eddie’s arm and squeezed. “I just wanted you to know that.”

Eddie watched Patty, an overwhelming feeling taking over, and he thought of Richie, out in the main room, laughing with his friends; their friends.

“Now,” Patty said, crossing to the doorway in a flurry, turning back to him and smiling, “let’s go get this party started.”

He stepped through the doorway, and then remembered, because there was that old vase, still sat on that abstract table—

A group of people spilled out of the room, throwing laughter over their shoulders, and a woman in a feather boa rubbed just too close to a vase, making it wobble, that Eddie had to reach out and steady it.

They made their way back out to the main room and were met with a view of everyone gathered around each other, basking in the company, and Richie among them, bright as ever, drawing all of Eddie’s attention. 

They were all there, and once again Eddie was seeing the room fit for entertainment in Lake House filled. It took him way, way back to nineteen-seventy-three. It was then that he realised it; finally, he had the same amount of happiness that he’d had all those years ago, and he didn’t want to give it up.

Music thumped lowly from speakers on a shelf, and Richie and Bill were dancing terribly across the room. Mike and Stan were talking, and Ben and Beverly were in the kitchen. Patty made her way over to Stan.

 Eddie ducked his head, smiling, and walked over to Beverly, who was arranging a cheeseboard.

“Hey,” Eddie said.

Beverly looked up and smiled. “Do you like the house?”

“Of course,” Eddie said. Ben began rummaging through a cupboard across the kitchen, and Eddie took the moment. He lowered his voice to a hush whisper: “I’ve been here before.”

Beverly’s brows pinched. “When?”

“The seventies,” Eddie said, “I knew the previous owner. We were …” He smiled. “We were friends.”

“Really?” Beverly asked. “Patty talked about her.”

Richie was dancing—almost shuffling—across the room with Bill now, to whatever song was playing, that once again Eddie didn’t know.

“Bev,” he said quietly, and his voice wobbled. He angled his head to look at her while shielding it from the view of the others. “I don’t want to leave. I’m so scared, but—I don’t want to go.”

Beverly reached for his hand. “You don’t have to,” she said. “Stay.”

 “Okay,” Eddie said. “Okay.”

Beverly smiled and he returned it.

The music from the speakers was suddenly increased in volume, and Eddie recognised it instantly. 

He tucked the vinyl under his arm and pulled the store door open; a bell chimed overhead. When he arrived home, he lay the plastic down on the gramophone and placed the needle on the third groove. Bass and heavenly tones launched out of the brass speaker washed over Eddie. He started to dance.

Richie had started dancing wildly and Bill was bent over and cackling. David Bowie’s voice began to fill the room. 

“Let's dance. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues …”

Eddie watched Richie, eyebrows raised, and the other man locked eyes with him and grinned.

“Like my moves?” Richie called.

Eddie shook his head, biting back a smile. “No.”

Beverly laughed beside him.

“Oh, pft, lies!” Richie called. “I know you think I’m a great dancer.” 

Eddie couldn’t help the laugh bubbling out of him. “You’re wrong!”

“Deny it all you want, Kingsley, but I’ve seen your eyes.” Richie said. He strolled over to Eddie, swaying his hips, and held his hand out. “Dance with me, Eds.”

“Let's sway. Sway through the crowd to an empty space.”

“No, Rich.”

“Come on.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Eddie said.

“Yeah, baby,” Richie said, casually, grinning. “Do you know me?”

Eddie sighed, rolling his eyes and tilting his head back. “Fine.”

Richie let out a cheer, and Eddie grabbed his outstretched hand. Laughter rang out around them as Richie pulled Eddie into the living room, holding his hands and moving them about.

Richie sang loudly, “If you should fall, into my arms, and tremble like a FLOOOOWER!” 

Eddie was laughing so hard his stomach began to ache.

_____________________

As the minutes ticked by and pushed on further into the night, the air around them all became laced with drowsiness, wine, and steady conversation. A picked at cheese board lay discarded on the table, and the group sat around on couches, so clearly finding comfort in their other halves. 

As Eddie dozed in and out of sleep, his body slackening against Richie’s side. He thought of how perfect it seemed that they were paired off in such a way.

Sometimes you just see two people and know.

He wasn’t sure of the time when he awoke with a jolt of his head and shot out a hand to steady himself on the nearest surface: Richie’s thigh. He blinked at the dimmed room around him; Mike sat at the kitchen table, glasses perched on his nose and papers in front of him, Bill asleep slumped in the armchair, and Stan cleaning up in the kitchen.

He heard a chuckle above him, and a hand carded through his sleep-mussed hair. “All right, captain,” Richie murmured, “time for bed.”

Eddie groaned, mouth clumsy with sleep. “Time?”

“Way past your bedtime.”

Eddie pushed himself back up into a sitting position—still half leaning on Richie—and blinked at the other man. “What time is it?”

Richie’s hand cupped Eddie’s jaw and he rubbed slow, lazy circles with his thumb. “Almost midnight.”

“Oh,” Eddie said, “sorry. I was asleep for a while.”

“Nothin’ to worry about, Sugar,” Richie said, smiling. “I think you needed it.”

Eddie leaned forward and pressed his lips softly against Richie’s. “Let’s go to bed.” 

He stood up, pulling Richie to his feet, and made to follow him out of the room. He caught Mike’s eyes, only for the other man to immediately looked back down at his work.

Eddie chewed on his cheek, thinking. Mike had been relatively quiet with him the entire night.

He walked over to the table.

“Hey, Mike,” Eddie said. “Are those the medical archives you mentioned?”

Mike looked up, and for a split-second Eddie saw an expression he’d never seen on that man’s face before. “Yeah,” he said slowly, “yeah, they are.”

Eddie felt twitchy, and he didn’t know why. “I don’t know if you still wanted help with them,” he said, “it’s okay if you don’t. I just—”

“Sure,” Mike said. He shook his head as if to clear it. “No, yeah, I’ve just been … distracted lately. How about we look at them tomorrow?”

Eddie nodded. “Tomorrow,” he said, “okay.”

“Tomorrow,” Mike agreed, and something in his tone seemed finite and sure. “Night, Eddie.”

Eddie wanted to frown, but he shook it off. “Goodnight, Mike.”

He walked over to Richie leaning against the kitchen doorway. He cast one glance back toward Mike and saw him frowning down at the table, but then turned to the window beside him. Snow fluttered down on the grass outside, and the frozen lake beyond, all dimly lit by the glow of the moon.

Eddie thought, tomorrow.

_____________________

They fell into bed together, within the comforting walls covered in timeless wallpaper and a room that Eddie had been in years before. Richie sat against the headboard and Eddie sunk down into his side, tiredness making its way through his bones and slowly up to his eyes. He yawned.

“Hey, Eds?”

“Mm?”

“I … I have to tell you something, and I know you probably can’t return it, but I can’t hold it in any longer,” Richie said, “I’m sorry.”

Eddie’s eyes opened and sleep ebbed away from him. He stilled, almost stopped breathing, and lay in waiting.

“I love you, Eddie,” Richie said, and he sounded strained, “I’ve fallen in love with you.”

Eddie was quiet, speechless, unable to vocalise the feeling and return it even though he didn’t want to leave, but he knew that that didn’t change the inescapable grasp the future had around him.

“You don’t have to,” Eddie said.

Richie gave a small laugh, jostling Eddie. “I will,” he said. “My choice, and I can’t help it either. I love you.” 

Eddie lay there, rubbing at the fabric of the shirt covering Richie’s soft stomach.

“You don’t have to say it back,” Richie said, quieter than he usually spoke. “I just wanted you to know.”
“I’m sorry,” Eddie whispered. He pushed up against the weight of Richie’s arm to sit up and lean on Richie’s side. 

Richie’s countenance was tired, pained maybe, yet he still fixed Eddie with a look of longing. And of love. 

“Thank you,” Eddie said.

Richie smiled and brought a hand to Eddie’s cheek. “You don’t have to thank me, sweetheart.”

“Rich?”

“Yeah?”

“Kiss me.”

Richie leaned in, and with soft lips brushing and melting against each other, they kissed.

_____________________

Sunday

10 June 1973

New York, USA

Eddie lay wilted on the couch in Anthea’s living room, the breeze from the fan on the coffee table being the only relief from the ninety-degree heat; they’d found themselves in a heatwave. 

Anthea placed two glasses on the table—ice clinking around and condensation slipping down the sides—and dropped onto the couch beside Eddie.

Eddie groaned and pushed at her arm. “Don’t fuckin’ touch me. I’m dying here.”

Anthea laughed. “Give me some of that,” she said, leaning over to angle the fan between them. She sighed. “Better.”

They sat in silence, only slightly cooler air blowing on them, until Eddie felt an elbow on his arm and looked over.

“Continuing our conversation from earlier,” Anthea said, a mischievous glint in her eyes, “we gotta find you a honey.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m fine.”

She stared at him in her classic You better listen to me way. “Someone’s gonna fall in love with you,” she said, “right down to your very core. Every bit of your handsome, tanned, freckled little self.”

Eddie stared resolutely at the fan spinning before them. “I won’t let anybody fall in love with me.”

Anthea laughed, loud and cheerful, and Eddie looked at her bewildered. “My darlin’ boy, he isn’t going to have a choice!He’ll take one look at your gorgeous face and be done for.”

Something deep down and far off inside Eddie warmed. He gave a small laugh. “Oh yeah? And what’s he going to be like?”

Anthea pursed her lips, eyes far off in thinking. “A big man,” she said. “Tall. Larger than life. Someone who’ll compliment the quiet parts of yourself—just your type.”

Eddie raised an eyebrow. “Do you think you’re psychic now?”

She smirked. “No, just observant, and a good people reader. I know what you’ll want.” She stood and stretched her arms to the sky, groaning with satisfaction. “You’ll be so in love that you’ll feel like you’re floating.” She shot a grin over her shoulder. “Trust me, I know. So, you’d better believe it.”

Eddie laughed and lay back against the couch. 

Anthea strolled out of the living room. “I’m putting on my swimsuit!” she called. “Let’s go for a dip!”

_____________________

Saturday

20 February 2021

New York, USA

Eddie pulled Richie down the stairs, hand in hand, and he laughed at the tiredness of the other man. He was yawning and bleary, rubbing his eyes under his glasses.

“Come on, old man,” Eddie said.

“Let me wake up, God,” Richie said. He stepped down the last step, into the hallway, and pulled Eddie into his side.

In the kitchen, Patty was cutting up fruit, Stan sat at the table with a steaming cup of coffee, and Bill and Mike sat opposite.

“See, Ben and Bev aren’t even down yet,” Richie said, “we’re fine.” He kissed Eddie’s temple.

“Good morning,” Eddie said.

A chorus of good morning’s came from the group, and Eddie and made their way over to the table and sat down. Patty asked for their drink orders and brought over two mugs. She placed a bowl of fruit in the centre of the table, a plate of toasts, and everyone began to help themselves. Ben and Beverly came down not long after, and soon enough the eight of them were laughing around the table. Eddie felt warm and peaceful.

“What’s everyone’s plans today?” Patty asked, knee in front of her and toast in hand.

“I need to go out and collect everything for the party tomorrow,” Stan said, “Ben and Bill said they’d come along and help.”

“I have some work to do,” Beverly added.

“So do I,” Mike said, eyes down on his plate.

“I’d like to take a walk around the lake, later,” Eddie said. He looked outside; it was powdery and white, visible from the dining room window, trees lining the edge as far as he could see.

_____________________

In the early afternoon, they all went off to their respective ways in Lake House, or to Stan’s car and drove off to the store. Eddie trudged through the snow-covered lawn with Richie in tow, beanies pulled down low over their heads and thick jackets zipped up to their chins. With a gloved hand, Richie took Eddie’s in his own, and Eddie smiled up at him. They walked down to where the edge of the bank met the lake and began to walk. Eddie remembered it all from that summer, back when the grass and water were swathed in a scorching heat, and Eddie had found himself able to bear it for the friends he had.

“Thank you for coming this weekend,” Richie said—his breath came out in white puffs.  “It means a lot.”

“Of course,” Eddie said. He squeezed Richie’s hand. “I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else.”

Richie stopped walking and grasped Eddie’s arm. Eddie looked up at him, taking in the flakes off snow dotted on the other man’s hair, on the tip of his nose, and on his cheeks, and he ached.

Richie leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to Eddie’s lips, pulling away with a smile. He hadn’t said anything more about his confession last night, and Eddie hadn’t asked.

“All right, handsome,” Richie said, stepping back into stride beside Eddie and swinging their hands, “tell me about this house, and this woman. I want to know the stories.”

Eddie nodded. He took a deep breath and old air shot down to his lungs. “I’ve, um, read a lot about her,” he said, “so, that’s is how I know all of this.”

Richie hummed in response.

“Anthea Fellows lived in that house in the nineteen-seventies,” he began. “She was a poet—a marvellous one. She lived in Texas, got married, but her husband was a brute. A rich one, at that. She ended up fleeing from him to New York, and she took a lot of money. But it was her own, legally, so they couldn’t fight it.”

“What’s your name?” she said loudly, barely audible over the roar in the bar.

“Keith,” Eddie replied. He downed the remnants of his drink.

“Anthea,” she replied, holding out a hand for Eddie to shake. 

He looked at her hand hesitantly but grasped it with his own, after consideration that he didn’t much care for how his night was going. 

“Nursing some wounds?” she asked.

“Something like that,” Eddie replied. He waved the bartender over.

“Well, next rounds on me,” she said, and grinned at him. “Isn’t life the pits?”

Eddie pondered over his sudden and vague like for the woman sitting before him and smiled. “Sure is.”

Eddie looked over at Richie, not knowing what he expected, but was met with Richie looking ahead and deep in thought. Snow had fallen on his dark eyelashes. Behind them, Lake House was becoming concealed by trees; a white wonderland; an astounding painting.

“Keep going, Eds,” he said. “I’m invested now.”

They stepped up over a cluster of rocks and down onto more of the snowy bank.

“She bought Lake House a year after the move, I believe,” he said. A smile tugged at his lips, warm memories returning. “She met her girlfriend … Matilda. They partied here, in the summer.”

“Good for her.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said. “The people in this area weren’t nice to her, though.” He frowned. “The neighbours ignored her. They—they were cruel”—he caught himself at the blatant emotion in his tone—“well, so I’ve read. They caught on that her and Tilly weren’t just friends.”

“Tilly?”

“Matilda, sorry.” 

Eddie knew Richie was looking at him; his expression had changed, but he wouldn’t look. 

“What else happened?” Richie asked.

The taxi waited by the curb. 

Eddie hugged Anthea close, holding tight, breathing in. “I’ll miss you so God damn much,” he whispered.

“I know,” she replied, “I’ll miss you too. So much.” Anthea pulled back and her eyes were damp, but she only moved to wipe Eddie’s eyes. “But it’s not so far. We’ll see each other, soon enough.”

Eddie swallowed against the lump in his throat.

“Come visit us,” she insisted, “you’ll adore Paris.”

He only nodded, knowing that he couldn’t. He’d be living a new life.

A twig snapped below Eddie’s foot, as they trudged through the snow. He cast his eyes out across frozen lake—a barren spread of white that seemed to go on forever.

“She moved to France,” Eddie said. “They both did.” He looked down. “Anthea fell ill a few years later. She passed away in nineteen-seventy-nine … I believe.”

He clutched the letter with shaking hands, alone in his apartment, only half unpacked with boxes strewn about. He was alone. Tears blurred his vision and dripped down his cheeks.

It always happened to those who didn’t deserve it.

Eddie blinked hard, eyes stinging. He stopped in his tracks and ran a hand over his face. “Sorry. It makes me sad.”

He felt Richie’s hand on back. “That’s heartbreaking.”

Eddie could’ve had more years with them, but he’d ran. He’d fled the only true friends he’d known and then followed the future that promised him emptiness. 

He didn’t want to do that again.

Eddie turned into Richie and the other man’s arm wound around his waist. Richie gazed down at him, a slight crease in his brow.

“At least she enjoyed the life she had,” Eddie said. “I think that’s something to admire.” He gripped Richie’s arm, another hand on his chest, and leaned up to kiss him.

_____________________

They ran up the steps, snow falling in a flurry, and stumbled through the door. They were laughing, shaking their beanies free of snow, and Eddie looked up at Richie. Eyes pinched, smile wide, and with glasses slipping down his nose he stooped to press a soft kiss to Eddie’s lips.

“Howdy.”

Eddie pulled away, with a jolt. He hadn’t noticed Beverly sitting on the couch with Patty, mugs before them, both smiling in a smug way that forced a searing blush upon Eddie’s skin. 

“Perfect timing,” Patty said, “I don’t think the snow’s letting up anytime soon.”

“It’s fucking freezing out there,” Richie said. He squeezed Eddie’s hip and strolled to the kitchen, throwing the beanies on the counter. “Are you both good for drinks?”

“Yep.”

“Yes.”

“Eds?” Richie asked, filling the kettle from the tap. “Tea?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Rich,” he said, and turned to Patty and Bev. “Do you know where Mike is?”

“Working,” Patty said, “in his and Bill’s room.”

“I’ll go see him now,” Eddie said.

Beverly and Patty continued their chatter, and Richie moseyed around in the kitchen, snow melting on his jacket and his boots still on. Eddie left the room, walking past the elegantly decorated walls and possessions dotted around that made Lake House so distinctly Stan and Patty’s now.

The second door down the hall was ajar, and Eddie could hear the rustling of paper. He rapped on the door.

“Hello?” he said. “Mike?”

“Hey, Eddie!” Mike’s voice came from the other side of the door. “Come in.”

Eddie pushed open the door. There were papers scattered over the bed and on the dresser where Mike stood, hunched over, with his glasses on.

Mike looked up, and for a moment he was quiet. “Sorry, it’s a mess in here,” he said, distracted. “I haven’t been able to focus on anything else.”

“No, it’s fine,” Eddie said. He walked in hesitatingly and gazed at the papers lying on the bed in seemingly organised chaos. “May I?”

“Of course,” Mike said, gesturing, “go ahead.”

Eddie picked up a booklet of browning paper and his eyes almost bulged out of his head. “God, these are incredible,” he said, turning the page with care. “I haven’t seen archives like this in … well—years. Ever, maybe.”

“They’re astounding, all right,” Mike said. He was preoccupied by the documents before him on the dresser. 

Mike’s demeanour was odd, it was almost unnerving, but Eddie placed it down to the overwhelming feat of work surrounding him. He seemed to stop, a page in front of him, pondering, staring.

“Uh, Eddie,” Mike began, “come over here. There’s some I’d like to show you.”

Eddie returned the paper to the bed and walked over to Mike, curiosity sparking up inside him.

“This one,” Mike said. He handed a bundle of papers to Eddie, attached with yellowing tape. “Have a look through.”

It was an article encompassing medical research in the sixties. Eddie scanned the lines, astounded with the age of the information, and with all that had been discovered in the years since. 

He turned the page and read further and further down, until he came to one specific heading that shot ice up his spine.

Derry Medical Institute of Research.

Mike was watching him.

No—

There’d be images down the page that he didn’t want to look at, he didn’t, but—

No, please God, please just, no—

There, centred between the black lines of print, looking as though it had been there for decades—because it had—was a photograph that Eddie was all too familiar with. He gripped the page with hysteria bubbling up beneath his skin, winding around his skull, and he wanted to knock himself over the head with how he hadn’t noticed Mike’s intention, and how he should have noticed.

In the photograph, Eddie stood among those seven other researches and doctors he’d known so well, right before his life had changed forever, back in nineteen-sixty-six. It was undeniably him with that God damn fucking scar—

“Eddie?”

He was convinced he was unwinding. All that he’d done to make sure nobody ever found out, it had seemed to have come undone because Mike found the picture. Mike had figured it out, all on his own, because Eddie had been so careless and hadn’t thought. He hadn’t planned this, and if Mike had figured it out, then who else could?

“Eddie?” Mike’s voice burst through his head, yet it was so quiet. “Is that you?”

Eddie opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. A tear slipped to his bottom lip and he jumped. “No,” he managed, “no, no—that’s my father. You see—”

“Eddie.”

 Eddie looked up into Mike’s eyes and he could see that Mike knew. Somehow Mike had discovered the truth.

Eddie didn’t want to speak. He didn’t want to say it. This was so different to telling Beverly; he’d elected to do that.

“I know that’s you,” Mike said. He was clearly trying to be kind. “I don’t know how—and I don’t understand it—but that’s you in that photograph.” His eyes were boring into Eddie’s, looking for answers, asking to understand.

Eddie felt another tear slide down his cheek, and he wiped his eyes and looked down. “I was so careful,” he whispered. He dropped the pages on the dresser and took a step back. “You weren’t meant to find that—nobody was.”

“I’m not going to let anyone else see it.”

His eyes shot up to Mike’s. “What?”

“I won’t show anyone,” Mike insisted. “I don’t understand this, but I’m not going to let anyone else see. I was sure you wouldn’t want that,” Mike said. His eyes were compassionate and kind once again. “You’re my friend, Eddie.”

He held Mike’s gaze, sifting through the words in his mind and pulling out the ones he wanted. “Mike,” Eddie said, voice stilted, “I don’t understand what’s happened to me. But because of it, I’m always running.” He brought a hand to his hair and ran it through, pulling at the roots. “I’ve been so careful to cover my tracks so that nobody knows, but you found this photograph”—he took a sharp breath—“and if you found this, then who else could?”

Eddie’s heartbeat picked up in his chest. He felt it, thumping beneath his skin, pounding in his ears, and he dropped his head.

“Eddie, nobody will know,” Mike said. His voice came distant as Eddie focussed on his breathing and the harsh beating of his heart. “Nobody you don’t want to know.”

“You found that photograph,” Eddie said, and it came out like a hiss of breath.

“Only because I was the first person who happened to know you that found it.”

People could know, Eddie thought, others could have stumbled across it. They could make plans to experiment and dig deep, to—

“I’ve been so stupid,” Eddie said. He pushed his hair back—an aggressive motion—and then gestured to the papers on the dresser. How could I think it would all be over? How could I think I could just settle into a new and permanent life? “This is why I run. There are pieces of me all over the country, and I can’t wipe every one of them. I don’t know who could find this out and—” Eddie wrenched his eyes shut, tight, lashes wet and cheeks damp. “I have to go.”

“No, you don’t,” Mike said, “just listen to me—”

“No.” Eddie glared at Mike, who looked startled. He swiped the document off the table and fled to the door.

“Eddie!”

Eddie threw the door open and wiped at his cheeks. He rushed down the hallway and could see the backs of Beverly and Patty’s heads on the couch, laughing and talking about their normal lives, and Richie was standing beside them, mug in hand. His eyes landed on Eddie.

“Hey, Eds!” Richie said. “Tea?”

It took all of a second for Richie’s smile to morph into a look of concern, and for Eddie’s heart to tear itself in two as he looked at the man with glasses and damp hair.

He looked away and rushed for the stairs, paper flapping in his hands.

“Excuse me for a second, ladies,” he heard Richie say.

“Eddie!” Mike called.

He froze, hand on the banister, and listened.

“What happened?” Richie asked.

“I—uh—I don’t know. He’s upset. He—”

“I’ll go see.”

Eddie fled up the stairs, down the hall into their bedroom and shut the door behind him. He brought his hands to his head and gripped. He was falling apart at the seams. He brought the paper up in front of his eyes and looked at the photo.

Jesus. Fuck—

It was him and anyone could have found it—or already had—and the photograph was blurring in front of his eyes and his hands shook—

“Eddie?” The door behind him opened, and Richie stood there, frowning. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Go away.” Eddie’s voice cracked.

Richie’s expression fell. “Why are you crying?”

“Just leave me alone, please,” Eddie said helplessly, begging and wishing Richie would do what he was asked. Richie’s eyes flicked to the paper in Eddie’s hand and his stomach dropped. He couldn’t see it; he wouldn’t let him. “I have to go.”

“What?”

Eddie grabbed his bag off the armchair and dumped it on the bed. He shoved the paper in the bag, moved to the dresser, and began to collect his things.

“What the fuck is going on?” Richie asked. He came to stand by the dresser. “What’s wrong, Eddie?”

Eddie continued packing.

“Hey!” Richie grabbed Eddie’s wrist. “Why are you packing?”

Eddie finally lay his eyes on him. “I’m moving next month—”

Richie looked at him incredulously. “I know, but why are you upset? What just happened?”

Eddie gathered the items off the dresser into his arms and turned to dump them into his bag. He pulled out the paper to make room.

“Did Mike say something to you?”

The archives fell to the floor. Richie was quick to grab them, and he held them up when Eddie tried to snatch them.

“Is this why you’re upset?” Richie asked, eyes wide and looking for answers. “What did Mike show you?”

“Give them back,” Eddie said. His voice was dangerously low.

Sharp confusion washed over Richie’s face. “What’s in these?” he asked carefully.

“Please give them back, Richie,” Eddie whispered.

Richie took a step back as he lowered the paper in front of his eyes, pushing his glasses up his nose. 

Eddie felt the world ending around him.

Richie frowned. “It’s just medical research.”

Eddie watched, paled, as Richie’s expression changed when his eyes skimmed to the group photograph. 

He glanced up at Eddie and then back down to the page. “Hey, this looks like …”

Eddie was going to be sick. He grabbed his bag and snagged Richie’s keys off the dresser and tore out of the room.

“Eddie!” Richie called.

His feet hit every step, framed photographs on the wall of the stairs flying by, and he made for the door. The thumping of Richie running after him echoed down the stairs. Eddie crossed the stone drive, white with snow, and unlocked the car. He threw his bag in the trunk and the front door opened.

Richie stood in the doorway, eyes wide behind his glasses. He looked on in fear, finally succumbing to the realisation that Eddie really was leaving. 

“Wait, Eddie!” Richie yelled. He turned his head, stepping out of the doorway. “Mike, what the fuck just happened?”

Eddie climbed into the driver’s side and locked the car doors. He heard a muffled yelling of his name as he turned the key in the ignition.

He reversed and tore out of the driveway, looking through stinging eyes at the scene behind him. Richie ran after the car, through the heavy snowfall, and Mike jogged down the stairs. Beverly stood beside Patty in the doorway, with a hand to her mouth.

Eddie choked out a sob as he left them all behind.

_____________________

The radio hummed an unknown tune, as the sky grew darker and the snow fell heavier. Eddie’s eyes were swollen red from the extensive tears he’d shed. With every mile the car drove, away from The Lakes and from the family he’d found, he felt as though he was tearing away all he’d built; it was agony.

His phone had been intermittently buzzing on the passenger seat with calls from Richie, Mike, Beverly, and Patty. He cried for them, and he cried because he was leaving again. He’d ran and left a whole life behind so many times, and they all flashed before his eyes. 

Eddie saw images of tears on his cheeks, a new name on a passport, and a flight toward an unfamiliar and unwanted life. He saw the fleeting affairs he’d had—physical with no connection, because he’d never allowed that. He saw Anthea and Tilly, and the letter he’d held in his hands when it felt like he was being crushed, gradually, and regret filled his body for all the time he’d let go by. He saw himself crying in his past apartments, alone, wishing for something to change and not know how to facilitate it.

And, he saw Richie. He remembered the eye contact from across the ballroom and feeling like something lay before him. He remembered Richie’s hand on his shoulder and saw them walking home in the cold, Richie’s kind eyes on him and the jokes and laughter that spilled from his lips. He saw them lying in bed, remembered heated touches, and kisses that had sewn his whole being back together.

He saw the friends he’d found. He saw Beverly walking into his office with bruising on her cheeks, and the later laughter they shared once they’d become friends. He saw her sitting in his apartment holding onto the secret he’d shared and promising never to drop it. He saw Patty and Stan and the music that made up their lives, and Bill and Mike and their love that inspired him. And he saw the smiles Beverly shared with Ben, the bond she’d always deserved, and that Eddie was so glad she’d found.

His mind filled with each small memory that made up the bigger picture he wanted his life to be. 

Then, instantly, he knew he loved Richie. He’d never met a man like him, and he was sure he never would again.

He’d had enough.

Eddie reached for his phone. His eyes flicked from the road to the lock screen, and then to Richie’s contact that he clicked. The phone rang in his ear, and his heart pounded as he watched the snow-covered road ahead of him and steered the car carefully.

A familiar song—Death’s Door—began to play from the speakers.

Richie’s voice came frantic and static through the phone. “Eddie?”

Eddie gasped. “Richie,” he said, “I’m so sorry.”

“Are you alright?” Richie asked. Eddie could tell he was trying to calm his voice but was failing. “You shouldn’t have left. What—?”

“I know,” Eddie said, focusing on the white speckling of the scene before him. He tucked the phone between his chin and the crook of his elbow and wiped the tears that had started up once more. “I’m so sorry,” he sobbed, “about everything.”

“It’s okay—you’re fine,” Richie said, “where are you?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie said. He peered over the steering wheel at the dark road. “I’m still driving.”

“We left to find you,” Richie said. “Mike, Bev, and I. So, I don’t think we’d be far behind.”

“I’ll find a place to turn around,” Eddie said, a set decision burning itself into his bones.

“Good,” Richie said, “we can work this out. I’m here for you. I don’t know what—I don’t know why you were upset, but I’m here.”

Eddie bit his lip and blinked away more tears. The car bumped and bustled over rocks in the road and he gripped the steering wheel. “I love you,” he whispered. “I love you, Richie.” In a sudden surge, love and joy and freedom came to life under his skin, bubbling up and spreading through each limb, and Eddie smiled through his tears. It was the truth, and it felt right, and he’d been waiting his entire life to find what he had now.

“Oh fuck, Eddie,” Richie said. “I love you—”

“I waited so long to tell you,” Eddie said, “I’ve felt it all along. I’ve wasted so much time not living, and I can’t do that anymore—”

A sharp piercing in his chest stopped his speech.

Oh, God.

“Just turn back,” Richie said, “we can go back to Lake House and talk. Eds, please drive carefully.”

Eddie breathed in and out harshly, trying to hold control over the familiar but so far away feeling crawling out of the depths of his chest.

Two times in his life, he’d felt it. This made it a third.

Not now, please—

“Richie,” Eddie said, throat tight, “something’s wrong.” His heart began to thump.

“What? Eddie—”

“My heart’s going,” Eddie said. Fear was an ice hand crawling up his spine. He choked on a breathe. “I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack.”

“What?” Richie cried

The pain ripped through Eddie and he yelled and clutched the phone and steering wheel tighter. “Not again—Jesus, fuck!”

“Eddie, pull over! Pull over now—Mike, drive faster!”

Eddie couldn’t focus on anything apart from the immense agony, and the gradual numbness seeping out of his bones and down his limbs to his extremities. He seemed to be freezing over like ice on a lake.

“I love you,” Eddie whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, fuck, Eddie—” Richie was clearly crying. “I love you, pull over, please. It’s going to—”

Richie’s voice faded away as the numbness consumed Eddie’s body. He felt the phone slip from his hand and he lost grip on the steering wheel. He watched, paralysed, as the world fell off its axis, and he could do nothing about it.

Eddie felt the tyres jolt over the snow gathered at the edge of the road, and a numb sense of horror sank in. The car peeled off the road and smashed into a rock on the edge of the ravine, and in an instant Eddie’s body jolted. The view around him flipped violently.

As Eddie’s body was enveloped in pain and his ears were filled with the crunching of metal, the sight that flashed before his eyes was Richie.

Time was bleary.

Eddie was only half aware that he was lying in the freezing snow. He could hear Richie’s faint cries from his phone. He began to fade away, as Depeche Mode crooned from the car speakers out into the dark February night.

“I’m knocking on Death’s door. Will I take my rest, in my Sunday best? Mother are you anxious? Father are you gracious? I’m coming home.”

_____________________

On the white grass bank—a destination vaguely betwixt The Lakes and New York City—a black car lay overturned and ruptured in the frigid air. Under smatterings of snow, smoke drifted to the sky, and only a few feet away a man lay as still and silent as his unmoving heart.

It was at that moment, on February twentieth in two-thousand and twenty-one, that Edward Kaspbrak’s heart had stopped beating for the first time since nineteen-fifty-five. And, for the second time in his life, he was undeniably dead.

Two women stood by the road and looked down on the wreck; one held a phone—having had rang for an ambulance minutes prior. They turned around as headlights approached, becoming brighter and brighter until a car stopped.

Inside the car sat two men and a woman, all with equal looks of distress. One of the men—tall, dishevelled hair, glasses—was quick to throw open the door and rush down the bank. With damp eyes, he yelled a name, and once he was looking down upon the lifeless body, bleeding and bruised, he uttered a cry. He pressed his fingers to the pulse point in Edward Kaspbrak’s neck and the began performing chest compressions. Blood was again pumping around the unconscious man’s body. The distressed man breathed air into Edward Kaspbrak’s lungs.

Not one minute later, an ambulance pulled up. The paramedics hurried down the bank and urged the man in glasses to step aside. They busied themselves and took out two defibrillator paddles and placed them on Edward Kaspbrak’s chest.

The man in glasses stood by, crying and watching in the company of his companions.

The paramedics pressed a button and seven hundred and fifty volts of electricity was administered to Edward Kaspbrak’s body. His chest arched upward.

All on-lookers watched with bated breath, hoping that by some miracle the man’s life wouldn’t be taken before them.

Then, in a rasping gasp, he took his first breath in minutes, and his eyes fluttered open.

Another cry came from the tall man and his companions held him back tightly. He watched as the man lying in the snow hazily took in the sight above him before readily shutting his eyes.

Inside Edward Kaspbrak’s ribcage, blessing him with life, his heart was pounding once again.

_____________________

Sunday

21 February 2021

New York, USA

A steady beeping was what Eddie heard when he came to. The smell surrounding him was familiar, clean, and sterile.

Work? 

No. A hospital.

He hadn’t been in a one since the fifties, and the memory pained him.

Eddie tried to open his eyes, but he was forcing them against a heavy weight. He was disoriented; his body weighted and sunk into the soft sheets below him, and his back was slumped against pillows.

Eddie forced his eyes open.

Glass doors closed off the room against the bustling outside. He gave a long blinked and continued to take in doctors and nurses in uniform, the equipment sat on the edges of the room, and it felt so strange to be on the other side of what he was used to.

The clock on the wall showed the time to be just past one, and with the darkness behind the blinds, Eddie guessed it was one in the morning.

His body ached distantly. He looked down, intending to take in the damage, and found himself surprised to see a mess of dark hair. The fondest feeling in his core swelled.

Richie was sat in a chair pulled right beside the bed, slumped forward against the mattress, head pillowed, hidden in his arms, and resting against Eddie’s hips. Eddie lifted his hand and carded it slowly through Richie’s hair.

He began to remember. That numbness that sank through his limbs and paralysed him to the point that he dropped his phone and lost hold of steering wheel. There was that awful turn, the loud crash, and then he’d been freezing. He knew his heart had slowed, and he’d been sure he was going to die. He couldn’t remember much more besides Richie’s distressed face looking down at him, among Mike and Beverly and paramedics.

He was tired, and his limbs ached, but he felt okay. It surprised him to find that he felt fine. 

Eddie scratched lightly at Richie’s scalp, feeling drowsy and half asleep. The urge to cry clawed at his throat.

I love him.

“Richie,” Eddie said.

Richie stirred and raised his head—face free of glasses—and Eddie’s hand slipped to one of Richie’s arms resting on the bed. He blinked and Eddie watched as relief sank in.

“Oh, God,” Richie said. He lay a hand over Eddie’s and held on. “Eddie. You’re okay—you’re—”

“Hi.”

“You’re awake”—Richie’s voice wavered—“Jesus Christ, thank God—”

“I’m here—”

“I thought—when I saw you, I—” Richie screwed his eyes shut and dropped his head; his shoulders shook.

Eddie’s heart ached. He reached for Richie’s cheek. “I’m okay, now,” he whispered. “It’s all right.” 

Richie leaned into his touch and then slipped his glasses back on. He pulled Eddie into a hug.

“I’m sorry, Rich,” Eddie whispered, “I’m so sorry.” He began to cry. “I love you.”

I have to tell him.

“I love you too,” Richie said. He pulled back and searched Eddie. They both leaned forward—pulled to each other—and kissed with a love that said I’m so happy you’re here. They leaned away and Richie wiped at his eyes. “I have to go get the doctor”—he sniffed and stood—“She said to let her know when you’re awake.”

 “No, not yet,” Eddie rushed. I have to tell him. He reached for Richie. “Please—just, wait. I feel fine, I swear it.”

Richie frowned. “Eds, you’re pretty banged up. You sure?”

“Yeah, Rich. I, uh”—he swallowed—“I have to tell you something.”

“What is it? Is this going to explain why you left last night?”

Eddie nodded. “How long have I been in here?”

Richie sat down and looked at the clock. “Around six hours.”

“Okay.” 

Eddie watched Richie and how he looked at Eddie with waiting and confusion. He chewed his cheek and his stomach twisted. This felt bigger than telling Beverly. He loved Beverly, but he loved Richie in a way that felt unexplainable. He felt tied to him in an unbreakable way; it felt the strongest in that moment than it ever had before. Death had almost taken Eddie again, and this time he had something he couldn’t lose; he had a life now, and he was going to do all he could to hold on. He couldn’t change the unnatural laws that clung to his body, but he could make the most of the time he had with the people around him.

He couldn’t lose Richie, and he didn’t know how he was going to react but there was no avoiding it any longer.

“Eddie?”

Nerves pricked his skin. The heart monitor’s beeping sped up slightly; Eddie waved it away. “I’m nervous.”

Richie pulled the chair close and reached for Eddie’s hand; it was so large it enveloped his. His eyes were wide and red. “What’s going on, Eds?”

“What I’m about to tell you—Beverly already knows,” Eddie said. “And Mike found out, and he told me before I left.”

Richie nodded. “Mike wouldn’t explain anything when you left.”

Eddie looked down. “Do you remember that photograph you saw in those archives? The ones you took off of me?”

“What? That old black and white one?”

“Yes.” Eddie gripped the blanket over his legs in his fist and looked up. “You said it looked like me.”

Richie tilted his head and frowned. “What are you getting at?”

“That was me,” Eddie said.

A long second passed as Richie looked on in confusion. “That photo is old,” he said. “Eddie, it’s from the—like—”

“It’s from nineteen-fifty-five.”

Richie stared.

“That photograph was taken in fifty-five,” Eddie said, “when I was working with a team at the Derry Medical Institute of Research.”

Richie looked completely at a loss, and Eddie could see he was torn in what to believe and didn’t blame him.

“That’s not possible,” Richie said quietly. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know,” Eddie said, voice strained. “My name isn’t Edward Kingsley. It’s Edward Kaspbrak.” He took a shaking breath in. 

Richie sat back in his chair and didn’t take his eyes off Eddie. “What are you saying?” 

“Richie,” Eddie said, his voice thick and his eyes beginning to water. Please believe me. “I stopped aging in the nineteen-sixties.”

Richie leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and let out a breath. Complete comprehension began to settle on Richie’s face, and Eddie couldn’t believe he was witnessing it; he’d told him.

Eddie leaned back against the pillows and looked at the ceiling. “I don’t have any photographs with me, so this is hard to explain, but”—Eddie’s voice cracked, and his eyes began to swim—“I’m fucking telling the truth, Richie. I swear to God—” 

Richie grasped Eddie’s his wrists, and Eddie looked down to see his concerned face. “Eddie—”

Eddie barrelled on through his thick, wavering voice and the tears cascading down his cheeks. “I was born in nineteen-twenty-three, and I stopped ageing around thirty and I don’t know why. My heart stopped—like a heart attack—”

“What?” Richie looked frantic. 

“I had to flee Derry because the police caught on,” Eddie said. “I ran because they would’ve tried experiments or—” He shook his head. “I’ve changed my name five times—five identities. I’m always moving—”

“Arizona.” Richie said it like a declaration. “That’s why you’ve been so adamant on leaving. This is all real, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Holy fuck, Eddie,” Richie breathed out, and he reached for Eddie’s cheek, moving impossibly closer.

Eddie found a weight slowly unwinding from his chest.

“I can show you pictures later,” Eddie said. He brought a hand up to lay over Richie’s. “Beverly and Mike know.”

“Okay,” Richie said. “This is unbelievable, but—okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah, Eds,” Richie said, and he sniffed. “I believe you.”

Eddie he let out a wet laugh and looked down. His body shook and Richie’s hands moved to his arms.

Eddie wiped his eyes. “I’ve been running for fifty years, Rich, and I don’t want to do that anymore.”

Richie looked down. “God,” he said. “I’m replaying everything you’ve ever said to me in my head, right now.” His eyes drew back up to Eddie’s. “You were telling me not to get attached—not to take this too seriously—this is all why.”

Eddie nodded again.

“You leave everything behind? Every—what—”

“Ten years,” Eddie said.

“Ten years! Eddie—” Richie’s voice broke.

“I can’t give you a normal future,” Eddie whispered, and his breath caught. “I don’t understand what happened to me, and it’s not fair to other people to put that upon them.”

Richie sniffed and shook his head.

“Everyone is always worried about running out of time,” Eddie said, “and me—I’m always worried about the people aroundme running out of time, because I”—he squeezed his eyes tight—“I have too much of it.” He felt his tears hit the hospital gown. “Forever isn’t always ideal, in the end,” he said quietly. “We aren’t meant to be here for longer than one life—it’s not right—and I’ve spent fifty years at the same age and—.”

Richie grasped Eddie’s hands and squeezed.

“Nobody wants to live forever,” Eddie continued. “I can promise you that. We live through something, it comes and goes, and we remember. I wish I could give you that, but I don’t know what my future holds.” He took a shaking breath. “Or, when it will stop.”

The beeping of the heart monitor behind Eddie echoed around the room. Eddie and Richie sat in silence, watching their linked hands.

“I want to give you a life you can really live,” Richie said.

Eddie looked up and was met with Richie’s eyes begging and pleading and asking him to give over what he’d never given before.

“Please,” Richie said, “at least let me give you that.”

Eddie let out a breathy sob; love coursed through his veins and bathed his chest. “I don’t want to drag you into this—”

“You’re not,” Richie insisted. His eyes were red. “God, Eddie, I love you, and I want to be with you. I’m not going anywhere.”

Eddie let his head fall as he cried, and for the first time in his life, he was enveloped by a hope that he believed.

“C’mere,” Richie murmured, and he pulled Eddie into his arms once again, holding on just as tightly as Richie was. “Everyone’s waiting out in the waiting room, by the way. They’ve probably all fallen asleep. They didn’t want to leave.”

Eddie cried and wondered how he’d gotten so lucky. He wondered how he’d managed to live through so many dragging years of misery until he’d found these people. He could see a life stretching out that beckoned to him, and it finally looked different than any life he’d ever planned before. He couldn’t predict what was coming, and he welcomed it. He’d take every day as it came—he’d soak in every moment he had with those he loved that surrounded him.

“Hey.” 

Eddie looked over at the door and saw Beverly standing there. 

She smiled. “You’re awake.”

Eddie nodded and pulled out of Richie’s arms, leaving one clasped hand. “I’m okay.”

Richie wiped his eyes and looked from Beverly to Eddie.

Eddie bit his lip. “Come in.”

Beverly walked in, shadows beneath her eyes, and pulled up the chair beside Richie. 

“Bev,” Eddie said, and he locked eyes with Richie and smiled.

“Yeah?”

“He knows.”

Beverly’s mouth parted. “What?”

“I told him.” Eddie nodded at Richie. “I told him everything.”

Beverly looked to Richie and he smiled, and she let out a laugh and covered her mouth. “He told you?”

“Yeah,” Richie said. “It’s wild, but it’s the truth, hey?”

Beverly nodded and her eyes welled up. “It’s the truth.” She stood up immediately and reached over the bed to hug Eddie. He felt the urge to cry again push on his throat. “I’m so proud of you,” she whispered.

_____________________

Sunday

07 March 2021

New York, USA

“Happy birthday,” Eddie said, kissing just below his lover’s eyes who was blinking blearily with his head lain on the pillow.

“Thanks, baby,” Richie said, voice hoarse from sleep. He gripped the back of Eddie’s shirt and pulled him in and up onto his chest. Eddie’s legs rested between his. “How are you feeling?”

Eddie pressed a kiss to Richie’s jaw. “Good.”

“No pain?”

“None.”

Richie kissed him softly on his lips. “Mm, I’m glad.”

Eddie smiled against Richie’s mouth. “What time are we going to Ben’s?”

“Later,” Richie replied, working a hand up under Eddie’s shirt.

Eddie shivered and opened his mouth, allowing Richie’s tongue in. “Rich, what time?”

“We have to be there for twelve.” He looked over at the clock on his bedside table. “We have a few hours.” He rubbed the skin of Eddie’s back. 

Eddie sighed. “Okay. Good.” He pulled the glasses off of Richie’s nose and kissed him.

No longer did he dwell on what the day had once held all those years ago.

_____________________

Saturday

24 April 2021

New York, USA

“Where do you want this box, Rich?” Ben called from the living room.

“Well, what room’s written on it?”

“It just says ‘Random Shit.’”

Eddie snorted and dropped a cardboard box by Richie’s bedroom cupboard. Ferdy was asleep on the bed with a foot of space between him and Goose; they’d finally decided to tolerate each other enough to sleep in the same space.

“Fuck, I don’t know. Just leave it in the living room.”

“Richie labelled that one!” Eddie called out and walked back out to the living room.

Richie looked up and grinned. He was kneeling by an open box next to the kitchen island. “I’m a great help.”

“Uh huh, sure.” Eddie walked over to the boxes Bill was piling by the door. Mike was visible out on the landing, his arms strung with bags, and Patty and Bev were rummaging through a container of possessions Eddie wasn’t sure about keeping, having asked them to help sort through it. He picked up another box labelled Bathroom in Richie’s messy scrawl and heaved it up to walk back down the hall.

“Need help, Spaghetti?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Eddie dropped the box in front of the bathroom door. He was about to twist the knob when a deep and metallic tick tock tick tock caught his attention.

Eddie slowly turned toward the grandfather clock at the end the hall; it was working. The pendulum inside was swingingagain.

“Richie?” Eddie croaked out.

“Yeah, baby?” Richie called.

“Come here.”

He stared resolutely at the hand that ticked over into the next minute, the sun peering out atop of the clock, and the golden pendulum swinging in time with the tick tock among chains, trapped behind the glass door.

“What’s up, Eds?” Richie’s voice was closer, and then a hand touched Eddie’s shoulder.

Eddie kept his eyes on the clock. “When did that start working again?”

“Huh?” Richie asked. “Oh, shit! It’s working!”

Eddie whipped his face around to stare at Richie. “You didn’t get it fixed?”

“No,” Richie said, beaming behind his glasses. “Nobody’s touched it. What the fuck?”

Eddie looked back at the clock, baffled, but felt an insistent pressing that he wasn’t afraid when he looked at the clock anymore. He hadn’t dreamed about it for months, not since before the accident.

“Okay,” he said.

“It’s a moving in present to you from the universe,” Richie said and laughed. He kissed the top of Eddie’s head and then wandered back down the hall.

Eddie stared at the moving pendulum and couldn’t help but feel that something had slotted back into place. 

_____________________

Monday

28 June 2021

New York, USA

Richie was lying on the couch, the large white fluff of Ferdy curled up on his chest was visible to Eddie from the kitchen. Goose was wandering around the kitchen, intermittently meowing and brushing against Eddie’s legs as he unloaded the dishwasher.

He’d been getting a lot better lately at knowing he had a lifetime with Richie, forcing the unknown factors away and into the future where they’d be dealt with. He would look at Richie and realise that they belonged to each other, and a very distinct idea bloomed in his mind every time he did.

He’d ask Richie. Not yet, but soon.

Richie turned his head and smiled at Eddie. “All right, bub?”

Eddie smiled. “Perfect.”

_____________________

Thursday

22 July 2021

New York, USA

The sun beat down on the grass and the glistening lake behind Stan and Patty’s home. Eddie had his head tilted up; a red haze glowed beneath his eyelids. He rested back against Richie’s chest, long legs bracketing him.

The past five months had brought a lot of change to Eddie’s life—both internal and external—and he could never have imagined it. He’d foreseen the New Year to hold pain for ripping away his current life and stitching in a new one, but he’d ended up building and allowing his life to flower into something real.

Richie had accepted Eddie’s reality better than Eddie ever thought possible. He’d been so concerned with Eddie’s happiness, and wanting him to be able to live a full life. With each passing day, he saw Richie love him more, and he too fell deeper in love.

Eddie smiled against the heat radiating from the sky. Richie’s breath was warm against his ear, and the air was filled with the laughter and chatter from the six other people up near the house.

I want everything with him.

“The heat is so nice,” Richie said, voice dragging.

Eddie hummed. 

“We should get Stan and Pats to tie a rope in that tree again. You can show me how you went wild in the seventies.”

Eddie laughed. “Fuck off.” He opened his eyes and looked out at the large oak tree overhanging the water. His mind was flooded with memories of laughter and him and two women swinging from a rope and into the cool water.

Now, he was making new memories.

“Hey, Rich?”

“Yeah?”

Eddie twisted around to see the face of the man he loved. “You know what I think?” Eddie asked. “I think that on that night in the fifties—when my heart stopped and started again—I think a string was tied around me and to who you were going to be. Like that red thread legend.”

Richie gazed at Eddie.

“I think I was always meant to end up here, with you,” Eddie continued. “I was pulled to you, even though I didn’t know it. And, it might sound ridiculous, but I stopped … ageing, so.”

Richie’s eyes were wet. “Eds—” he started, but cut himself off and looked down.

Eddie turned around completely and Richie’s hands travelled to hold his waist. Eddie brought a hand to Richie’s cheek and angled it so he’d look at him.

“If my body had decided to follow the real laws of nature,” Eddie said softly, “I wouldn’t be here—”

“Don’t—”

“But I am, Rich,” Eddie said. He brushed his thumb against Richie’s cheek. “I’m somehow still fucking here, and I’m not leaving.”

Richie leaned forward and kissed Eddie. A tear ran down to his lips and Eddie tasted salt, licking along his top lip.

Richie pulled back with a gasping breath. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Eddie touched his forehead to Richie’s. “Hey, Rich.”

“Mm, baby?”

“Will you marry me?”

Richie pulled back. “What?”

Eddie only smiled.

“Eds,” Richie said, his voice small. “Are you serious?”

 “I want to make this my life. You’re everything to me,” he said. “I could have a real name again, too. I could take yours.”

Richie was speechless.

Eddie pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “Do you like that idea?”

Richie nodded and closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said, voice thick. “Yes, I want to marry you.”

_____________________

Monday

02 August 2021

New York, USA

“You don’t think you’ll tell anyone else?” Beverly asked. She was sat on the armchair in Richie and Eddie’s apartment, cross legged, with a bowl of ice-cream in her lap.

Eddie sat down on the couch beside Mike, handing off a bowl to him and resting one on his legs. “I don’t think so,” Eddie said. He bit his lip. “At least, not yet.”

“That’s okay,” Mike said. Him and Eddie had grown closer over the months since he’d found out, and Eddie felt grateful every day for his understanding and comfort. Beverly, Mike, and him often spent time together, feeling that an invisible bond connected them now.

“You don’t really need to tell anyone else,” Beverly said, “it won’t make a difference, right now at least. Richie knows, we know, and now you’re settling into a life you want.” She smiled. “I’m so proud of you.”

Mike was smiling at him. “Me too.”

Eddie blushed. “Thank you,” he said, “and, thank you both for coming over tonight.”

“Of course”—Beverly spoke around the spoon in her mouth—“What else would we do while the guys are away? Well, both of yours at least.”

Mike chuckled. “They’re really enjoying it,” he said. “Bill was texting me earlier. I think this is a project he’s been waiting for, for a long time.”

“Richie, too,” Eddie said, smiling at the memory of Richie beaming as he chattered away to Eddie about filming. “He’s so passionate about this story. It makes me happy to see him like that.”

“Don’t worry love birds, they’ll be back in a week,” Beverly said.

_____________________

Monday

28 August 2021

Venice, ITALY

When he awoke, one of the first thoughts Eddie had was I finally have a real name again, for the first time in fifty years.

Sun filtered in through the sheer curtains, fluttering in the breeze of the open door, and Eddie’s eyes fell on the man lying beside him. His heart filled to the brim with love.

Richie’s hand rested on the pillow beside him and the gold band on his finger glinted. Eddie brought his own hand up, marvelling at the matching band, and then trailed his fingers along his lover’s bare back; the sheet concealed them from the waist down.

Richie’s eyes blinked open and lay on Eddie. A soft smile appeared. “Mornin’ Mr. Tozier.”

Eddie smiled and inched closer to Richie. He rested his head on Richie’s pillow and the other man’s hand moved to brush up and down his arm. “Good morning,” he said.

The sound of water lapping in the canal was accompanied by voices and laughter. Eddie thought there was no bliss more wonderful than what he had right at that moment.

“What a way to wake up, hey?”

Eddie hummed. “It’s beautiful.”

Richie brought his hand to Eddie’s cheek and leaned in to press a soft kiss to his lips. “Very beautiful.”

_____________________

Tuesday

21 September 2021

New York, USA

Waking up in Richie’s arms always came with feeling grateful that he’d been gifted the life he now had. He’d wake up on soft sheets, wrapped up in the man he loved, and remnants of hazy dreams at the edge of his mind.

He hadn’t dreamed of a still pendulum in seven months; it was now a distant memory.

_____________________

One year later

Saturday

05 November 2022

New York, USA

Eddie stood in front of the bedroom mirror and threaded the black fabric over his white collar and into an even bow. Richie wandered in, looking strapping and stunning in his navy velvet suit with black lapels. The Robbers film premiere was that night.

Richie locked eyes with Eddie and his brows rose before a smile overtook his face. He covered his mouth and stared. “God,” he said, “you look so fucking handsome.”

Eddie felt his cheeks flush and he smiled. “Thank you.”

Rich walked over and wrapped his arms around Eddie’s waist and tucked his chin over his shoulder. We look well together, Eddie thought. 

Sometimes, you just see two people and know.

“As do you,” Eddie said quietly. “Love you, Rich.”

Richie kissed Eddie’s cheek. “Love you too, baby,” he said, “so much.”

Eddie leaned his head back and closed his eyes. They stood like that for a minute, and he basked in the warmth of Richie all around him and the peace he felt. The laughter of his friends trailed up the hall and into their bedroom.

Eddie was content. He lived every day as its own life—worries snuck up on him from time to time, but he was working on it—and he’d finally worked his way through telling all of their friends. His circle of family held no secrets, and it was the most freedom Eddie had ever felt.

“Are you excited?” Eddie asked, eyes still closed.

Richie turned his face into Eddie’s, and Eddie felt him smile. “Yes,” he said, sounding shy, “I can’t wait for everyone to see it.”

“Everyone will love it.”

Richie ducked his head and stepped back from Eddie, but Eddie only turned around to face him. 

Richie smiled and rubbed Eddie’s arms. “Now, Mr. Tozier,” he said, putting on some news reporter’s voice, “can you tell me who you’re wearing tonight?”

Eddie scoffed and rolled his eyes. “There’s no way anyone can answer that question without sounding like an asshole.”

“Pft,” Richie said, “they do it all the time.”

“Pretentious film stars.”

Richie laughed. “You’re so full of shit, sweetheart,” he said, “I know you’re loving all of this.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Alright, enough. I have to fix my hair.”

Richie chuckled and began to fix his tie.

Eddie walked down the hall, smiling at the music that was his friends’ chatter, and pushed the bathroom door open. He flicked the switch that bathed the room in a white glow and then grabbed his comb and tin of pomade. 

He ran the comb over the front of his hair and saw something glint in the bathroom light—thin and almost imperceptible. He stilled.

The deep tick tock tick tock in the hall became more apparent.

Eddie reached with two fingers to the glinting in his hair and plucked. He held up the hair in front of his eyes; one single, silver thread of hope glinted at him, and he rolled it between his thumb and forefinger.

One single, silver thread of hope attached to his body—that wasn’t there before—which could only mean one thing—

He looked up at his reflection and brought his other hand to his face, running his fingers along freshly shaved skin and pinched his cheek and lip. He stared with wide eyes. There was a slight difference that only a person would notice if they’d been in the same unchanging skin for decades.

He could feel it too; some train running back on the rails it had fallen from. He cursed himself out because he should have noticed it, all those months ago, last year when he’d awoken in that hospital bed and saw Richie sitting there and felt so full and alive—

“Richie,” he said, as loud as he could with a throat that felt weak. He looked at the silver hair once more.

“What’s up my main—” Richie stopped in the doorway and Eddie met his eyes in the mirror. Richie looked at the hair Eddie was holding up. “What’s going on, Eds?” he asked quietly.

Eddie turned around and Richie was looking at him with such open and raw vulnerability. “Richie—” Eddie’s voice broke.

Richie stepped closer and grasped Eddie’s wrist softly. He brought it closer to his eyes and looked at the silver hair held up between them. “Is that—?”

Eddie’s eyes were watering. “I think so.”

Beneath his glasses, Richie met Eddie’s eyes. “Oh, my God,” he croaked.

“Richie, fuck—” Eddie covered his mouth with his free hand.

It could only mean one thing.

Eddie whimpered and Richie wrapped him in his arms and crushed him to his chest. He felt the other man shake and heard uneven breaths in his ear.

Eddie clutched onto the silver hair, determined not to let it go.

It hit him, like a huge crushing weight, that this was a gift. The universe had given him the gift to finally live his life wholly and truthfully. He was going to be able to live and age and watch the lives of Richie and him and everyone around him grow and flourish.

Mortality promises you a life that holds an unknown amount of time, and Eddie wasn’t scared. He wanted to make every moment count, because his own pendulum was swinging again. After all those years frozen in time, he was finally able to live.

Eddie pulled back—Richie’s eyes were as red as his own must have been—and he saw a future reflected in his husband’s eyes.