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The first time Richie Tozier realizes he likes boys more than he’s supposed to, he’s eight years old.
He sat in front of the television after a long day of third grade on his parents shag carpet. There’s a glass of orange juice and a chocolate chip cookie in his hands that Mrs. Denbrough had sent home with him the last time he was at their house. He sat with the television tuned, against strict household policy, to MTV. His parents hated when he watched this channel, they thought it was noisy and boasting, which they get enough of with Richie running around.
David Bowie appears on the television, bathed in bright lights, standing out against the colourful contrasts of MTV. He smiles, saying ‘Turn it on, leave it on. America, see the music you want to see!’ in his almost addictive accent. Richie’s breath catches, his chest tight and skin on fire. He thinks he might be in love.
It’s something he’d never felt before, something he can’t quite name yet. He doesn’t understand why, but he wants to keep watching this forever, completely enthralled with Bowie.
Richie’s older sister, Margaret, flops down on the couch behind him, startling the boy. She flips open a copy of this month’s Tiger Beat and throws her feet up on the coffee table.
“You know what dad says, Rich. MTV is for fags” Margaret declares, crossing her arms.
“It is not” He argues, not looking away from the television.
“Is too” Margaret answers, as if she knew all the answers of the world. “Cyndi Lauper is such a dyke, Boy George is a fag and that David Bowie is the biggest queer I’ve ever seen”
Richie pouts at this, a sinking feeling weighing in his chest. He liked Cyndi Lauper, he liked Boy George and he sure as hell liked Bowie. Even if they were gay, Richie didn’t see why it mattered. They still made good music.
“I like Bowie,” Richie says, hurt. “I like him a lot, he’s bitchin’, Mags!”
Margaret laughs at that. “Now you sound like a queer”
Richie’s stomach turns uncomfortably at her words. He’d heard nothing good about homosexuals. He knew they existed, he’d heard stuff from the older kids on the school bus about them, and one time he had overheard Stan’s mother crying over the phone line to his own mother that she was scared Stan might turn out to be one.
Margaret’s laugh echoes in Richie’s ears. Queer, she’d said like it was a curse.
“I think he’s cool,” Richie mumbles, uncomfortably.
Margaret snorts at that. “‘Cool’?” She repeats, giggling. “You’re never going to make it when you get to middle school”
When Richie is thirteen years old, Molly Simmons throws a crumpled up ball of paper onto his desk in the middle of English when the teacher has his back turned, writing messily on the chalkboard.
He looks in the direction of where the paper came from, furrowing his brows in confusion, when he locks eyes with her.
Molly was pretty, Richie supposed. Or what he thought pretty was supposed to be, he didn’t spend much time thinking about girls, especially not whether they were pretty or not. He’d rather spend his time with his friends, especially Eddie. Lately, he and Eddie had been laughing until tears brimmed their eyes as they prank called their principal from the payphone outside the arcade.
She had curly dirty blonde hair, hazel eyes and thick eyebrows. She had crooked front teeth but in an endearing way. She always wore a colourful watch that Richie had always secretly envied. When he locked eyes with her, she smiled and blushed profusely before looking away.
Richie unrolled the ball of paper, flattening it out. Along with a bad drawing of a cat, written in slightly smudged blue ink was:
Be my boyfriend?
Circle one!
Yes/No
Richie stared down at the note, horrified. It wasn’t that Molly was gross or annoying or anything like that, in fact, Richie actually liked her. She’d given him the answers to the science homework once when he was looking particularly anxious while Mr. Miller collected their sheets. She was nice and all, but she was just… a girl. He didn’t feel anything towards her.
He looks back at the paper, hands trembling as he lifts his pen. He can feel her secretly stealing glances while pretending to flip through her syllabus. If it was anyone else, they’d probably say yes. They’d be excited and giggly and walk through the halls holding hands, and maybe even they’d kiss behind the school by the soccer field.
Thinking about it made Richie’s stomach twist, and not in the good way like when he makes Eddie laugh so hard he can’t breathe, or when he and Eddie accidentally brushed hands that time on their way back from the quarry. This was something different. This was panic.
With a shaky hand, he circles. Underneath he writes “Sorry :( you’re cool though”.
He folded it back into a messy ball and threw it back over to her when the teacher wasn’t looking.
Richie tried not to look, but he couldn’t help himself. He watched as her face fell a little when he read the words. She nodded gently and gave him a little smile, like she appreciated the honesty.
He tells his friends later, and they don’t believe him.
“Y-You didn’t say yes?!” Bill stutters out, appalled.
“Richie! Why wouldn’t you say yes? She’s cute, and she likes you! That doesn’t happen every day” Stan asks.
Eddie scoffs. “What are you? Gay?”
Stan nudges Eddie at that. “Eddie, come on”
The word hangs in the air. Richie tenses a bit like the words physically stung him. His heart sank as he looked at the expression that crossed Eddie’s face. Something crossed between disgust and disbelief. Richie feels like he’s been slapped.
“That’s the opportunity of a lifetime! Who would miss out on that?” Eddie exclaims, waving around his arms in disbelief.
Richie wants to scream it didn’t feel right. He swallows it down and forces a laugh.
“I dunno, guess I’m a freak” Richie jokes, voice tight.
The others laugh, kind of. Bill laughs the hardest, but it’s obviously fake. Stan studies Richie, letting out a soft chuckle as he does so. Eddie doesn’t even laugh, he just looks at Richie like he was from another planet. Richie feels wrong.
They drop it and the conversation shifts to which movies they were going to rent from the video store Richie’s older sister worked at for their sleepover this weekend. Bill suggests Stand By Me, Stan suggests The Legend of Billie Jean, Eddie suggests They Live. They talk about their options as if nothing had happened.
Richie wished he could feel something– anything– when he looked at Molly Simmons. He wished he could want to kiss her, he wished he could feel the twinge in his gut, the kind that his mom described as the feeling of “being in love”, but he just can’t no matter how hard he tries.
He thinks there’s something wrong with him. Richie’s always kind of thought there was something wrong with him. He never was like other kids his age, with his boisterous demeanour and vulgar language. He always felt like he wasn’t welcome, he was too much for everyone. His teachers rolled their eyes when he spoke, sometimes Eddie too (but Richie found it endearing when Eddie rolled his eyes, in fact, he would purposely try to make him do so). This feels different though.
It hits him at fifteen.
Fuck, he’s gay.
He and Bev are sitting in the basement of the Tozier house smoking cigarettes in nothing but their underwear. It’s hot, the kind of hot that makes you feel sticky just to think about. They’re smoking Newports, of course, even though Richie hates Newports. He prefers Winston’s but Bev can only reach the Newports when she lifts cigarettes from Keene’s pharmacy.
Richie opened the windows as soon as Bev called him to say she’d be over in ten. He’d also stuffed a damp towel under the basement door and told Bev to bring her cheap perfume to cover the smell.
They have their feet kicked up on the coffee table, The Outsiders playing hazily on the VHS. Richie finds himself watching– more like studying– Dally Winston. His eyes fall to the grip he has on the steering wheel as he drives, the look on his face. All of the sudden the words fall from his mouth.
“Matt Dillon is fucking sexy” Richie blurts out.
Bev doesn’t answer. She blows out a wisp of smoke before looking over to Richie. “Straight boys don’t typically say they think men are ‘fucking sexy’, Rich” She points with a laugh.
Richie’s cheeks burn red with embarrassment. He hasn’t been this embarrassed since he puked all over Sharon Denbrough’s white blouse when he stumbled into Bill’s house drunk last weekend after a party. Richie tends to embarrass himself often and he was trying to go as long as he could without acting like a fool. There goes his streak.
“I-I-” He stammers, trying to come up with something witty to say to divert this conversation.
“Do you like boys, Richie?” Bev asks casually, like this question isn’t suffocating him.
He thinks about it for a second, before taking a drag of his cigarette. He knew the answer, this wasn’t even something he had to consider. He just didn’t want to break, he didn’t want to admit it, to say it out loud. That makes it real.
The smoke burns down his throat, and suddenly he feels like throwing up. “I don’t want to, but yeah. I think” He says quietest that Richie Tozier had ever been in his entire life.
His confession lingers in the air, weighted.
“You don’t have to be okay with it right now” Bev tells him. “But, I hope you know that I don’t see you or love you any different”
“Oh, come on, Red,” Richie scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Give it to me, beat me up! Call me a fag! You know you want to”
Bev stubs out her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray on the arm of the couch. “I would never, and you know it! Gay is okay now, Tozier”
“‘Gay is okay’?” Richie mocks, leaning over her to stub out his own cigarette.
“There’s so many gays out there!” Bev exclaims. “Elton John? Freddie Mercury? I even heard that George Michael was getting it on with dudes in New York”
Richie snorts at that. “You’re reading too much Us Weekly”
“And you say that like it’s a bad thing”
She pinky promises that she’s not going to tell anyone. She owes him three packs of cigarettes if she does. If she mentions it to Eddie, it’s five.
Richie doesn’t know why, but he feels particularly mortified at the idea of Eddie finding out he’s a queer. When he pictures the look of disgust on Eddie’s face, he wants to curl up and die from shame. He tries to convince himself it’s because he’s known him for so long, but he’s known Stan and Bill longer and he felt like he could live with their revolt towards him. Not Eddie though. Eddie hated anything and everything was gross, and if Eddie thought he was gross, Richie would hate himself.
A week later, he’s sitting in the cafeteria, waiting for his friends to trickle in from their classes. They’d gotten separated this year, all of them having classes on three different floors of their school, only Richie and Ben having gym together and Eddie and Stan having calculus together.
Bev is sitting across from him folding origami out of Richie’s math homework. Every few seconds she swings her feet and kicks Richie’s shin with her beat up combat boots. Richie doesn’t even notice, he’s too focused on scribbling out Henry Bowers face in the yearbook. The two sit in comfortable silence before being startled by the sound of a tray slamming against the table.
Richie nearly jumps out of his skin, drawing a line of permanent marker on his favourite jeans when he jolts. He looks up to see Stan dropping his tray down next to Bev. Eddie slides in and makes himself comfortable, smushed up against Richie’s side.
“If it isn’t Cutie Kaspbrak” Richie teases, not even thinking about the marker on his jeans anymore. He leans over and pinches Eddie’s cheek. Eddie rolls his eyes and swats his hand away.
“You’ll never believe what Stan overheard,” Eddie exclaims, nudging Richie excitedly.
Richie quirks a brow. “Did Henry and Patrick finally get caught blowing each other?”
“No, but-”
“Connor Bowers was caught making out with Joey Dorsey at a party on the weekend!”
Richie blinks. “Henry’s cousin?”
Stan nods, prodding at butterscotch pudding on his lunch tray. “Apparently they were ‘wasted and playing Truth or Dare’, as if!”
Bev lets out a low whistle. “Joey is kind of cute though, I get it”
Richie snorts, nodding. “If Henry’s a garbage fire, Connor is the leftover smoke”
Eddie nods eagerly. “Maybe it runs in the family”
“Suppressed homosexual thoughts is such a cool family heirloom”
Bev watches Richie out of the corner of her eye, but she doesn’t say anything, just studies him. She puts her origami of a perfectly folded crane on Stan’s tray.
“I heard that Henry had a go at him in the locker room, apparently he’s going ballistic” Stan added.
Richie feels his heart drop. His smile falters. “Jesus”
“Makes you think,” Eddie says, soft, almost inaudible.
Richie’s eyes drop back down to the yearbook, to Henry’s face. He presses the tip of the marker down on Henry’s face, watching the ink bleed through the page as he watches the boy become unrecognizable on the page.
Richie heads out to the quarry that evening. It’s August and Maine is in the middle of a heat wave and he felt like he was melting like a popsicle. He could be at home right now, watching Law & Order in the air conditioned house but his parents were out of town for the night and Margaret had her boyfriend over. Richie would rather twiddle his thumbs walking around Derry than hear what he heard last time his parents were out of town.
He’d already called Eddie and asked to hang out, but he said no. His mom had refused because he came home past curfew last night (she also thinks Richie is a bad influence and corrupting her son, but Eddie would never tell Richie that). He called Bev, who also said no because of her dad, and Bill who just didn’t answer. Ben was out of town and Mike had chores around the farm. Stan had a fundraiser at his synagogue for orphans or something Richie didn’t particularly care about. So, with no other choice but to go to the quarry, he heads out with his cigarettes and his Walkman.
He sits on the ground, dirt staining his jeans. His headphones are playing More Than A Feeling while he lights his cigarette. He’s humming along to Time After Time when he lays down, rocks digging uncomfortably into his back, eyes closed. He’s listening to I Want To Know What Love Is when he opens his eyes and sees Connor Bowers standing over him.
“Jesus, are you trying to give me a heart attack?” Richie yelps, scrambling to sit up and rip his headphones off.
“What are you doing here so late?” Connor questions, looking at him like Richie was a wild animal.
Richie shrugs, flicking ash off the end of his cigarette. “Could ask you the same thing, Bowers”
Connor sits down beside Richie, patting down the pockets of his flannel for his cigarettes. He pulls one out and sticks it in between his teeth, in a way that sort of drives Richie crazy. He lights it and takes a drag before speaking.
“Didn’t feel like going home, you know?” He asks, blowing out a cloud of smoke.
Richie nods.
“I heard you talking about me today,” Connor tells him. “In the cafeteria. About me and Joey”
“And you’re here to kick my ass for it?” Richie assumes, rolling his eyes.
Connor shakes his head. “No, you’d be a shit fight anyway”
“I’d bite,” Richie scoffs.
“You seem the type” Connor says in a tone that makes Richie’s heart thunder out of his chest.
A looming silence grows between them before Richie clears his throat.
“Did they find out? Your parents, I mean”
He shrugs lazily in response. “No, but I’m sure it’ll get to them sooner or later. Henry has a big mouth”
Say something, Richie, he screams at himself.
“I–Only Bev knows… about me” Richie blurts.
“Wait, you’re…” Connor trails off.
“No!” Richie exclaims, throwing the end of his cigarette off of the edge of the quarry. “No, I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not for sure or anything”
Connor does the same, watching the lit cigarette fall, before looking back to Richie. He meets his eyes, his gaze filled with something Richie has never seen before, something wanting. Connor’s eyes land on Richie’s lips, and Richie feels his stomach flip.
“Would you hate me if I kissed you?” He asks.
Richie shakes his head. “You have a reputation, Bowers”
He doesn’t say anything, just leans in, not much, just enough for Richie to know he’s serious. He closes the gap between them, kissing Richie softly, like he’s made of glass. It’s when Richie’s hand finds Connor’s hip does he deepen the kiss. Connor’s hands are roaming Richie’s hair. He sinks his teeth into Richie’s bottom lip and Richie gasps.
They fit together so well. There’s a feeling in Richie’s chest, a feeling of excitement at becoming putty in Connor’s hands. This is who he is, this is where he’s supposed to be.
“You what?!” Bev yells.
The fire escape is hot underneath them as the sun goes down. Bev’s dad had started going out to drink with the guys from work more often so Richie and the Losers could come around her apartment later. Richie has been spending most of his summer evenings on this fire escape with Bev.
Richie’s waiting for Eddie to come swing by and pick him up. Richie decided that he hadn’t had enough Eddie Time this week, he’s been too busy kissing Connor Bowers, Bev had teased. He called Eddie from his favourite payphone, the one outside the arcade, and invited him over for a sleepover. Eddie happily agreed, promising Richie he’d help paint his nails later with a dark purple Sally Hasen nail polish stolen from the pharmacy (Eddie always had a steadier hand than Richie).
“Shh! Bev, quiet down!” Richie screeches, covering her mouth. He looks around, seeing an old lady walking by, glaring at the two and their obnoxiousness. Richie spares her a wave before letting go of his best friend.
“I don’t believe it!” She whispers. “You kissed Connor Bowers?”
“Not just kiss, Beaverly. Made out with” Richie corrects.
“Holy shit! Richie, this is huge!” Bev shrieks, grabbing onto Richie and shaking him with excitement. “Are you going to ask him out?”
Richie shrugs. “I don’t know, why would I?”
“Well, you like him! Don’t you?” Bev says with a look.
He awkwardly picks a thread off of his cutoff jean shorts, not daring to meet her eyes. “I mean.. I guess, maybe. It’s just- people are already whispering about him and Joey, if they find out about us it’ll be worse”
Bev scoffs at that. “You’ve been crushing on boys for how long now? Don’t act like this doesn’t mean anything to you”
Richie scrubs at his face, groaning. “God, I’m so obvious”
“Richie and Connor sittin’ in a tree–” Bev sings, nudging him teasingly.
“Shut up, Bev!” He says with a punctuating roll of his eyes.
He and Connor start having clandestine meetings. First, they begin to meet under the Kissing Bridge every night at nine. Richie makes a habit of climbing out of his window and shimmying down the eavestrough. After almost getting caught one night, they start going up to the water tower hill that looks over all of Derry. There, they lay in the tall grass, passing a cigarette while the crickets chirp around them, kissing while bathed in the moonlight.
They don’t talk. They climb up the hill in silence, they fool around, they leave. It’s the routine they’re accompanied to. The two of them aren’t boyfriends or anything, Richie thinks he’d rather date his fat balding math teacher who doesn’t talk about anything but Star Trek than date a Bowers. Richie shudders at the thought of marrying into the Bowers family.
The first time they kiss at school, they risk everything. They’re sat under the bleachers, sharing a joint Connor had stolen from Henry. It’s sloppy and reckless, Richie’s heart thundering against his ribs. He doesn’t know if that’s from the weed or Connor. Kissing here, where anyone could stumble upon them feels wrong. They’re high and it’s just a force of habit, but Richie doesn’t pull away.
His absences and odd behaviour go unnoticed for almost two months before his friends find him out. Eddie was the first to notice Richie has been off recently. Not like when he first was prescribed his ADHD medication and it made him feel like a zombie for a week. He’s been out of reach.
“Richie has a secret” Eddie told Ben while the two of them were hunched over piles of glue sticks and scattered paper scraps. They were knee deep in updating Eddie’s scrapbook since Richie had finally gotten the pictures developed that Eddie had been (not so) patiently waiting weeks for.
“And so what? If he has a secret I don’t think it’s any of our business” Ben says with a shrug.
Eddie always envied people like Ben who could keep their noses out of other people’s business. Eddie had to know everything he could about everyone, if he didn’t, it’d eat him alive. He had a chronic curiosity problem wrapped in serious trust issues that he desperately needed to work through. Secrets drove him crazy. And Richie having one? That was almost unbearable.
“He’s been acting weird lately” Eddie replies, ignoring Ben’s suggestion. “Have you noticed?”
“No, I haven’t noticed anything different about Richie”
“Well, maybe you aren’t looking hard enough”
“Maybe you’re looking too hard”
Eddie doesn’t like what that insinuates.
He could never utter it aloud—not to Ben, not to anyone— but Eddie thinks he’s going insane.
It’s not just that Richie is acting distant, it’s the way Eddie notices. The way he always fucking notices.
He always notices when Richie is wearing a new shirt that he got from the thrift store. He notices the look in his eyes when he’s high. He notices how it feels like a bruise when Richie isn’t sitting next to him anymore.
And yes, Eddie Kaspbrak has always been anxious and high strung, but this is different. This is personal.
Eddie will feel his stomach sink when he can’t stop staring, when his gaze wanders. Eddie will feel tears well up in his eyes when he comes home at night and finds a strand of raven hair on his shirt.
He’s just worried about his friend, it’s fine.
But when Richie leans in close to whisper a joke, low and warm, Eddie will feel his heart flutter behind his ribs. This is not fine. This is not simple. This is not straight.
It hurts that Richie is backing away, but Eddie can’t say that.
“Richie will come to us when he’s ready”
Richie’s first breakup happens in the winter of 1992, shortly after his sixteenth birthday.
After seven months of secretly hooking up with Connor Bowers, Richie gets dumped. Connor was nice about it. He had invited him over, they drank beer and passed a Gameboy back and forth while making small talk before Connor told Richie that he thinks they should just be friends.
“And here I thought we were going to make it to homecoming” Richie jokes within a pout, before taking another sip of his beer.
Connor doesn’t laugh. Richie does, wildly.
Richie leaves not long after, but not before he flicks him a salute on the way out. “Catch you later, loverboy” He says over his shoulder, not bothering to shut the door behind him.
He walks home in the snow that night, Walkman whirring in his pocket, playing Love Will Tear Us Apart. He didn’t think about Connor Bowers on the walk home. He didn’t want to.
By the time he had climbed into bed that night, the whole thing was already a punchline in his head. His Bowers Boy phase. Classic Richie. What had he expected? A declaration of love from someone who flinched whenever their hands touched for too long.
He told himself he didn’t care.
With his newfound time, he starts bugging Eddie again. He walks the boy home after school, kicking rocks and poking fun at him. He invites him over for sleepovers more often, and he begins sneaking in his window at night like he did for a few months when Eddie was having bad nightmares.
They’re attached at the hip. Eddie changes all of his classes in the new semester to match Richie’s. When Richie gets his driver's permit, he takes Eddie out in Margaret’s car to the diner on the edge of town. They record each other's cassettes and at some point, somehow, a picture of Eddie ends up in Richie’s wallet.
“W-What’s going o-on with you two?” Bill stammers, sitting cross legged on Richie’s floor. There’s clothes strewn everywhere. Bill and Stan came over unexpectedly after dinner and decided they needed Richie to give them a makeover.
“I’m not sure what you mean, Big Bill” Richie quips, pushing hangers aside in his closet.
“With you and Eddie” Stan clarifies.
Richie whips around to look at his friends with a face of confusion.
“Me and Eddie?” He echoes, brows raised. “What about me and Eddie? Last I checked, I wasn’t knocked up”
Bill snorts, Stan just rolls his eyes. Stan watches Richie closely, like he’s trying to read in between the lines.
“T-There’s something d-different with you guys” Bill points out. “You’re acting d-different”
“Less annoying, which is saying something” Stan adds, picking lint off of a black button up he found on Richie’s floor.
“Okay, rude” Richie scoffs, turning back to the closet.
Bill leans forward, the floorboards creaking underneath the shift of his weight. “You like him, don’t you?”
He says it without stuttering, it makes Richie’s stomach flip. He stares at a jacket in his closet, suddenly the air is thick and heavy with something unanswered.
“I like all of you” He answers, finally. “You’re all my boys, my platonic soulmates. Y’know?”
“Richie,” Stan says, stern and serious. “We’re not idiots”
He whips around with a dry laugh. “Debatable”
“No one is g-going to care, R-Rich” Bill assures.
Richie runs a hand through his hair. “It’s whatever, okay. Even if I did, Eddie wouldn’t like me like that”
“You don’t know that,” Stan says.
Richie shrugs. “I’d rather be his friend than make things weird”
He opens his mouth to speak again but there’s a knock at the door downstairs.
“Speak of the germaphobic devil” Richie chirps. “Do I look like someone who hasn’t been crying over a Gameboy hookup breakup?”
Bill and Stan exchange a look of confusion.
It takes a few months of hanging out with Richie for it to click. Eddie comes down with a nasty flu for the first time since he was seven years old, Richie skips school to come and take care of him.
He pushes the sweaty hair off of Eddie’s forehead and holds it back while he throws up the Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and flat ginger ale that he brought. Richie also brings along some of his tapes for them to watch. Richie brings Ferris Bueller because he ‘thought Eddie was faking’, Eddie proves he wasn’t by throwing up in his lap.
“Eddie, you dick” Richie scolds in between laughs. “These are my favourite jeans! Always my favourite jeans!”
Richie laughs so hard tears brim his eyes while he’s shimmying his jeans off in Eddie’s bedroom. He rushes to the bathroom in nothing but his boxers, ready to scrub the puke out of his denim. Eddie laughs too. Warmth blooms through his chest and he realizes that there is nowhere he’d rather be in the entire world. Eddie just wanted Richie. He didn’t want a girlfriend or a boyfriend or anything but Richie.
Oh fuck, he thinks.
It all makes sense now. Why he was so jealous when Richie wasn’t telling him something, why he would get irritated when Richie was talking to anyone else, why Richie would be the first thing he thought of when the sun streamed through his blinds and the last thing he thought of when his head hit the pillow.
He feels sick, he feels angry. Nausea curls up in his gut as his face begins to heat, the icy hot feeling of frustration in his veins, it looms there like a storm cloud. Right there and then he realizes how hard it’s going to be. This is going to be something he has to live with for the rest of his life. He will miss opportunities in life because he loves another boy, he will not be taken seriously because he loves another boy, he will not be loved because he loves another boy.
Tears well in his eyes, it almost hurts. It shouldn’t hurt to love someone, he thinks.
It soaks into his skin like red wine on a white dress, he thinks about how he knows it’s wrong, and it’s going to follow him for the rest of his life but he can’t stop. He thinks of the warmth and happiness he feels around Richie. He feels something he doesn’t feel anywhere else, he feels safe. With Richie, his mother doesn’t matter, the kids at school don’t matter, the germs don’t matter. Eddie Kaspbrak loves Richie Tozier, and if loving someone was a sin, then maybe Eddie was okay to secure his spot in hell.
“Cut the shit, Tozier” Bev snaps, standing over Richie like she was his mother. “You know you like Eddie, so get off your ass and do something about it”
Richie groans and scrubs at his face with his hands. He wants to sink into his basement couch and die. “Ugh, Bev! It’s not that easy”
Bev flops down next to him on the couch, tucking her left leg under her right, leaning over and getting all in Richie’s face just like she always does. She drops a hand on his shoulder, her cracked painted fingernails stark against his pale complexion.
“Yes it is, the kid is enamoured with you. Tell him you like him” Bev assures.
Richie groans and tugs at his hair. “What if it goes awful and he never talks to me again, Bev?”
“Then the little bitch can burn” Bev spits. “You know we will rally behind you, Rich. Besides, it isn’t going to happen because he totally likes you too”
Sometimes, Bev wished that Eddie and Richie could just see their relationship from The Loser’s perspective. The seven of them are all friends, but Richie and Eddie are each other's everythings. There was something the two of them had that the others failed to. Something untouchable.
It happens in the comfort of one of their sleepovers. They’re smushed up against each other on the couch, limbs tangled and Eddie keeps nodding off. Richie keeps watching him close his eyes and fall forward a bit before jolting awake. He thinks that Richie doesn’t notice, but Richie does and he thinks it’s cute.
Eddie wanted another impromptu sleepover and who was Richie to say no?
The VCR was sputtering through Married To It, they weren’t even halfway through but it’s what they always do. As much as Richie was enjoying watching Eddie, he was getting tired watching him and he was tired of torturing poor Eddie.
“Ed’s, c’mon. Time to hit the hay, Sleeping Beauty” Richie declares, nudging the boy off of him gently. Eddie falls back over, slinging his arms around Richie’s frame and snuggling into his lap.
Richie looks down at the sleeping boy in his lap and his heart thunders out of his chest. The gentle brown curls and the stillness of his face makes Richie want to kiss him, and not in the way he kissed Connor Bowers. He wanted to kiss Eddie with love and lust.
Instead, he shakes him awake again gently before he gets too settled. “Bed time, Kaspbrak”
Eddie sits up far enough for Richie to slide out from underneath him at a weird angle. When he looks back, Eddie is curled up on the couch cushions, dead asleep. Richie looks around before finding a quilt and wrapping it around Eddie.
Richie lays down and gets comfortable in the sleeping bag splayed in front of the couch. He turns over on his side before he hears Eddie wrestling above him.
“Rich?” He hears the boy mumble.
Richie shoots up to look at Eddie, to make sure he’s okay. He’s sat up, hair messed up, eyes drooping with exhaustion when he smiles at Richie loosely.
“You okay?” Richie asks, studying Eddie.
“I just wanted to say goodnight” Eddie says simply, before leaning in and kissing Richie gently.
Richie freezes. It takes him a second to realize what’s happening before he kisses back. And just like that it’s over.
“Uh– goodnight” Richie says with an awkward clear of his throat.
Eddie blinks at him for a second before pouting. “That was the worst reaction to a kiss in history. So disappointing”
“Well, forgive me Casanova, I wasn’t expecting you to plant one on me like that, you sleepy bastard! You just were curled up like a hedgehog and now you’re locking lips with me!” Richie argues.
Eddie just rolls his eyes, but there’s a gentle smile curled up in the corner of his mouth. “So, you didn’t hate it?”
“Hate it?” Richie parrots. “Please, Ed’s. I think my soul left my body”
Eddie’s smile softens. “Okay, cool. Good. Just making sure”
There’s a pause, it’s not awkward and uncomfortable like one would expect, it’s soft and warm. Richie can hear the ruffle of the quilt wrapped around Eddie and the tick of his wristwatch.
“You can do it again if you want” Richie says, voice lower.
Eddie doesn’t need to be told twice. He leans in slower this time, more sure, and Richie meets him halfway. Their lips press together again, still gentle but it’s different this time, longer and lingering. Richie’s hand instinctively finds the side of Eddie’s face as he brushes his thumb over his cheek.
When they pull apart, Eddie’s breath brushes Richie’s lips as he whispers “That one is for goodnight too”
Eddie moves over and Richie climbs up onto the couch. They intertwined again, Eddie stretched across the couch, Richie under him, head on his chest listening to his heartbeat. Richie has never felt more at home than in this moment.
“I’m going to be up all night now, thanks” Richie mumbles, dipping his head into the crook of Eddie’s neck.
Eddie smirks and kisses the top of his head. “You’ll survive, Trashmouth”