Work Text:
Though Richard’s eyes are still closed, he knows that the soft glow of the sunrise is filtering in through the hotel curtains. It’s a faint light, just whispers of it desperate to peek into the privacy of the room. Richie’s closed eyes shut everything out. He tends to shut the world out in the morning anyways, and this one feels especially important. There’s no space for anything to exist outside of them.
Him, and the boy laying next to him who Richie knows has his hair stringing over his eyes like remnants of party confetti. Whose arm is thrown lazily above his headand whose cheeks are still dusted with freckles, freckles that Richie can see clearly now, no longer shielded by a layer of dirt and grime. Looking at him now makes something tight and warm gather in Richie’s chest. It’s something he doesn’t quite have a name for yet, but he suspects that he’s been harbouring it for a while now. If Patrick’s asleep, Richie assumes he’ll look peaceful. If he’s not, then when he opens his eyes, Richie hopes he will be.
Patrick does open his eyes as soon as the thought enters Richie’s mind, and his smile comes naturally as Richie was hoping it would.
“G’morning,” Richie says. His voice is rough with the grogginess of the morning still clinging to him— and partly, he thinks, from screaming so much only last night— but Patrick doesn’t seem to care. “You look well rested.”
It’s sarcastic, and Patrick gives a crack of a smile. There are still bags under his eyes, and Richie’s pretty sure that they mirror the ones that he must have, too. Patrick’s eyes are blinking lazily to stay awake, and he looks like one of those frogs that Richie’s seen in nature documentaries. He looks as though he’s already fallen half asleep again.
“Mmfgh,” is the only reply that Richie gets as Patrick reaches up to cover his face with his hands. He allows his eyes to close dangerously.
Richie counts a few seconds in his head— five, four, three, two, one— to see if he’ll lose him to sleep again. But Patrick’s eyes flutter open, his tired, lazy smile never falling. It’s only the first morning he’s woken up next to him, but Richie is already convinced he’ll do anything Patrick ever needs. He’ll pick up the pieces where Patrick can’t go on and take it all on for him. Richie thinks that, together, they can do anything— including but not limited to surviving the government mandated death walk, which by some nature miracle, they have. Richie’s senses are reminded that he’s not at home, nor is he waking up still having to put one foot in front of the other, his body burning all the while. He breathes a deep sigh and takes in the surroundings of the Maine hotel room.
The room is in a haze of not quite being light enough, so Richie decides to take one for the team and swing his legs out of the comforter. Patrick protests weakly at the brief peeling back of the comforter, but Richie tosses it behind him as he stands and Patrick tucks himself back up like nothing happened.
Richie fumbles around for his glasses until he makes out their vague shape where he had tossed them onto the other bed the previous night. He grabs them and rests them on his nose, cringing at how dirty and scratched they are. But they still work, and he can see better with them in their broken state than without them, so he trudges over to the curtain and shoots Patrick a warning glance. They’ve already begun to speak without actually talking, which Richie thinks is probably some sort of trauma bonding, but he doesn’t want to get into all of that right now. He gently flings open the curtains and gives a dramatic hiss, like a vampire being scalded by a sun he hasn’t seen in years . Behind him, the duvet still pulled up to his nose, Patrick laughs. Richie’s joke was stupid, but Patrick still laughs, and Richie smiles.
That’s a nice sound, he thinks. Patrick’s laugh. That’s all that matters now, really. Ever.
Richie tucks the curtains into the curved rods at the top that are meant to keep them drawn back, and catches a glimpse of the sunrise. It’s gorgeous. He’s always been a morning person, but there’s usually too much on his mind for him to really focus on the colours that dance along the sky in the early hours. He idles at the window, peering out into the morning, until he hears the duvet ruffling as Patrick sits up behind him.
“Is something on fire?” he mumbles, the heel of his palm rubbing at his eyes. They’re half-closed, still sleepy.
Richie doesn’t tear his gaze from the window, giving a brief shake of his head instead.
“No,” he replies, lazily.
“Is the world ending?” Patrick asks.
“No.”
“Apocalypse?”
Richie laughs. “I’m pretty sure that counts as the world ending. But, uh, no.”
Richie can see Patrick’s eyebrows furrow in the reflection in the window, and he tears his gaze away from the sunrise to look at him when he realizes, quickly, that he loves that expression. It’s sort of childish, twisted in inquisition and a blatant look of sheer dumbfoundment. Patrick scratches at his shoulder and his legs move under the covers, his eyebrows scrunching up as his injured feet drag against the duvet.
“Come look,” Richie says.
There’s a quick pause, and then:
“You want me to crawl out of the comfort of this bed to look at a window?”
Richie just nods.
“Why?” Patrick complains, voice strained. “There better be somethin’ really cool out there.”
“There is,” Richie promises. “I think you’ll like it.”
“I don’t really like anything before eight in the morning,” Patrick mutters. He sighs, closing his eyes and idling where he sits for a moment, as though preparing himself mentally for the arduous task of standing up. Richie supposes it is arduous, with the state that Patrick’s feet are in, and he regrets asking him. But Patrick stands up anyway, and Richie’s body relaxes when he sees that the socks are still gray and they haven't been bled through. Patrick shuffles over to the window and squints at the harsh light. His hair is smushed down on one side from where his face was resting on the pillow as he slept.
“It’s a sunrise?” He says. “What am I looking at?”
“A sunrise,” Richie supplies.
“Yeah, I just said that.”
“Yeah, but then you asked what you were looking at, so—”
“What’s so special about the sun rising?” Patrick grumbles, folding his arms over his chest. He had put on a ratty old shirt supplied by the hotel. “Nobody gawks at me when I show up.”
I do, Richie says. He doesn’t say it. Instead:
“You don’t think the colours are pretty? All tye-dyed together like that?”
Patrick squints, blinks more sleep out of his eyes, and sneezes.
“I don’t know, I—” he pauses. “I can’t really see it like how you do.”
Richie tilts his head and adjusts his glasses when they begin to slide off his nose.
“What do you mean?”
“‘m colourblind.”
For some reason, that tugs on Richie’s heartstrings harder than he had expected it to.
“Oh,” is all he can bring himself to say. Then, after a moment: “That sucks.”
Patrick snorts. “Thanks, Richie, that’s really heartfelt.”
“No,” Richie says. “I mean, I feel bad, making you drag yourself out of bed for that.”
“I’m sure it’s beautiful, though. Just sorta looks like a bunch of yellows and grays to me,” Patrick says.
“It is beautiful,” Richie says. “Do you— do you want me to describe it to you?”
Patrick blinks, surprised. A slow smile curves on his mouth. “Sure.”
Richie nods. “It’s— well, the sky is kinda orange at the bottom, like where the sun’s just barely peeking through. Then it goes pink, this really pretty pink, it’s sort of like—” Richie pauses, trying to find something to compare it to that Patrick would understand. “Sort of like how it feels when you blush, maybe. If that makes sense. Then it’s purple up near the top. Soft purple. I don’t know, it just looks warm.”
Patrick hadn’t been looking at the sky while Richie spoke. He’d been looking at Richie, who only noticed when he raised his head and met his eyes.
“Sounds nice,” Patrick murmurs.
Richie’s cheeks warm. Pink. “Yeah. Well, it’s whatever.”
Patrick yawns and rubs at his eyes. “You’re weirdly poetic for someone awake at dawn.”
“I’m a man of many layers,” Richie laughs. His arm shakes, and he stops himself from snaking an arm around Patrick’s waist. “Do you—”
He pauses, searching for the right words. He bites down on the inside of his cheek. He senses Patrick look down at him again.
“Do you ever think about how lucky we are that we got to see today’s sunrise?”
Suddenly it feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room, and Richie’s heart leaps as he thinks he’s said something incredibly, incredibly wrong. Struck a nerve, he thinks. But Patrick shuffles beside him, humming under his breath.
“Yeah,” he says, the word almost cutting off at the end as he yawns. “Yeah, we are lucky.”
There’s silence for a moment. There are so many things that Richie wants to say, but all of them feel as though they’re coming far too early. I’m happy I was paired with you, is the one thing running rampant in his head, but he feels like even that’s too romantic.
“Are you hungry?” He asks, swallowing down the other things he wants to say. “Do you want to get breakfast?”
Patrick stretches, his arms rising high above his head. He lets out a soft sound, and Richie jerks his head away from where his eyes had begun to wander to where Patrick’s shirt was rising up on his hip.
“Yeah, we can,” he says. “I mean, money might be an issue.”
Almost exactly on queue, as if it had been waiting for them to say some sort of magic word, a small white envelope slides under the door. Both boys turn their heads as it makes a sharp shhhhh sound on the floor. Frowning, Richie walks over and bends down to pick it up. Patrick follows close behind.
“It’s addressed to us,” Richie says, tearing the envelope open and pulling out a sheet of paper.
“What’s it say?” Patrick asks. He’s fully awake now, Richie notices, as he glances up to look him in the eyes.
“Good morning, Walkers. We hope you have had a pleasant stay so far. You may charge any breakfast room service order to the allowance provided for your recovery period. Please take advantage of the amenities made available to you.”
Patrick blinks. “What—”
Richie shrugs, just as confused. “Apparently, breakfast is on them?”
They stand in mutual silence for a moment, and Richie holds onto the letter delicately, almost worried that it will turn into some sort of monster and lash at him. But it does no such thing, and the words don’t melt into one giant mess of ruby-red blood, and the carpeted floors don’t turn into cracked pavement, and the white noise of the pipes doesn’t turn into the crack of gunfire, so Richie thinks that it’s all okay.
“At least this means that we can finally eat something that isn’t tubed food concentrate,” Patrick says, his voice wavering as he tries to remain optimistic.
Richie’s still silent, his brow furrowing behind the rims of his glasses. But there’s the sudden feeling of a hand on his shoulder and a thumb rubbing tenderly along his skin, and when he looks up, Patrick is gently smiling down at him.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Richie says, a small smile bridging his face. It mirrors Patrick's, or at least he hopes it does, but he’s not sure he could ever mirror something so beautiful. Patrick’s eyes squint when he smiles, Richie notices. He decides that he likes the look of that. “What do you want?”
“What don’t I want?” Patrick laughs. He wanders over to the bed, lightly cringing every so often, and sits down on the edge of it. Richie folds the letter up and pushes it back into the envelope, tossing it onto the dresser.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Richie says, grinning. Walking over to the phone, he doesn’t ignore the way Patrick’s eyes seem to follow him.
“Four chocolate croissants,” Patrick starts. He’s holding out one of his hands and counting on his fingers. “Yeah, four chocolate croissants, pancakes with extra syrup, two mango smoothies, cinnamon rolls, and a banana chocolate chip muffin.”
Richie’s stunned into silence. Patrick’s grinning like an idiot, like a child, and not a teenager who’s just been ravaged by a near death experience. Richie lets out a laugh, a pure, genuine laugh, which makes Patrick double over in laughter as well.
“I’m serious!” Patrick says through a fit of giggles.
“I never said you weren’t,” Richie replies, picking up the phone. He drags his finger down the list of ‘quick numbers’ until he lands on room service. He quickly dials the number and the extension, clearing his throat as the phone rings. He leans lazily against the headboard, trying to lift any extra weight off his ankle. It had just started hurting again, a dull, throbbing pain. Enough to ignore, at least for now.
A bored-sounding woman picks up the phone, her voice crackling faintly through the line.
“Room service.”
“Uh— hello,” Richie says, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose as Patrick watches him with the fascination of someone watching a child attempt higher math. “This is room 814, we were told we could charge breakfast to our allowance?”
“Yes, Walker coverage,” the woman says. She’s suddenly much more alert and polite, but in that fragile, rehearsed way that Richie recognizes as nothing more than a veil. “What can I get for you?”
Richie inhales and shoots Patrick a warning look, to which Patrick grins back with zero shame.
“Can I have a sesame bagel, toasted, with cream cheese?”
“That’s it?” Patrick stage-whispers.
Richie swats a hand in his general direction.
“Yes,” the woman on the phone says. Through the other line, Richie can hear something being scribbled down on a pad of paper. “Anything else?”
“Uh— yeah,” Richie stutters. “Four chocolate croissants, pancakes with extra syrup, two mango smoothies, one cinnamon roll, and one banana chocolate chip muffin.”
The woman confirms it all, completely unbothered, and gives them an estimated arrival time of fifteen minutes. Richie thanks her and hangs up the phone, and when he turns around, Patrick is beaming at him.
“You are— indescribable,” Richie says through a mixture of a sigh and an exasperated chuckle.
“Well, I’m starving,” Patrick says, shrugging. “And we’re government-paid rich.”
“We’re trauma-compensation rich, Patrick,” Richie corrects. He pushes himself up from the headboard and limps over towards where Patrick sits. He sinks down carefully, letting out a soft sigh when his ankle ceases its incessant throbbing.
There’s a quiet moment between them. Richie likens it to blankets being pulled up over their heads. Before, even at this time yesterday, Richie would’ve only associated such a comfortable silence with his body being doubled over on the road, blood pooling under him and his final warning having just been called.
Patrick leans back on his hands. “So, what now?”
Richie smiles faintly. “We wait for breakfast, I guess.”
“Not that. I mean, now that we’re alive.”
The words drop between them like a rock down a gutter. Richie stares down at the carpet and picks at a loose thread that’s rising from the duvet.
“I don’t know,” he admits.
“Me neither,” Patrick says, and Richie hears the hesitation behind his words. He glances up. Patrick’s eyes are somewhere far away. Richie knows that look; he’s harboured it himself before, and he’s seen the way it appears on other people. He’s seen the way it appears on Patrick.
“You alright?” Richie asks, swallowing.
“Yeah,” Patrick sighs, shrugging. “Just—” his voice is small in a way that Richie’s never heard from him. “I didn’t really let myself think about ‘after,’ you know? I just figured that I wouldn’t need to.”
Richie nods, placing a gentle hand on Patrick’s knee.
“I joined because—” Patrick’s voice breaks. “I joined because my mom lost her job, her real job. Factory downsizing, and I thought— I thought that, if I won, maybe I could fix it. Fix everything. But, then again, I didn’t think I would actually win, so—” he laughs bitterly. “Now I don’t know what to do.”
Richie’s chest aches, and he shifts closer without even thinking about it. Their shoulders brush. Patrick doesn’t move away.
“I joined because I thought if I made it far enough, I could pay for school. Like, a really good school. I didn’t even really think about what winning actually meant. I was just thinking too far ahead, I guess.”
Patrick looks down at him, his brow furrowed. “I thought you joined to write a book about it? ‘A book from the insiders point of view’, or whatever you said out there.”
Richie chuckles. “Well, that too, I guess.”
“Well,” Patrick says, nudging him gently. “You did win, in a way. So, now you can do anything.”
Richie knows it’s meant to be reassuring, but it sounds more like a question. He huffs a small laugh.
“Anything. That’s a lot.”
“Mhm,” Patrick agrees, nodding his head. One curl falls out from where it had been tucked behind his ear. It must have tickled at his eye, because he twitches slightly. “Maybe it’s too much.”
Richie looks at him again, really looks at him. He looks at the bruising still faintly staining Patrick’s skin, at the tiny cut on his cheek, at the deep sets of his eyes– he had thought they were both bruised for the longest time. He looks at the way his curls are sticking up this way and that from sleep, but still somehow unfairly charming. He’s here and he’s beautiful, and he’s alive. He’s here, with Richie. Richie swallows, hard, and he can feel his heart speed up. It’s suddenly gotten uncomfortably hot, so he’s relieved when a sharp knock echoes throughout the room.
Patrick’s eyes go wide. “Already?”
Richie shrugs, shifting himself up and off the bed. His body calms down, returning to a more stable temperature the further he walks away from Patrick. He digs his fingernails into his palm as his ankle protests. He opens the door and its hinges creak. He’s greeted to a cart piled high with plates, the air bringing in the scent of toasted sugar and golden butter. The server wheels it inside, nods politely, and slips out again without a word, before Richie can even say thank you.
Patrick stands up from the bed almost immediately, and Richie has half a mind to snap at him to look after his feet, but Patrick is already hovering over the cart like it’s some sort of holy offering.
“Oh wow,” he breathes. “It’s real food.”
Richie can’t help but laugh. “You say that like you’ve never seen a croissant before.”
“I haven't," Patrick says, his voice still glossed over with disbelief. “Not like this, Richie. Richie, this thing is shining.”
He’s right, Richie has to agree. Buttery flakes glint in the sunlight creeping in through the blinds. Patrick looks so delighted, Richie doesn’t even have it in him to feel embarrassed for staring.
They maneuver everything over to sit on the still-unmade bed, trying to soften the covers out as much as possible. But their stomachs growl so absurdly and urgently that they end up just pushing the duvet and top sheet into a ball at one corner of the bed. They balance the plates on their laps, and Richie almost melts as he takes a bite into the sesame bagel. Patrick, meanwhile, wolfs down both the cinnamon roll and a second croissant within two minutes— he had already eaten one croissant while they fruitlessly tried to make the bed. There’s chocolate smeared at the corner of his mouth.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever had in my life,” Patrick says.
Richie can’t stop staring. “I can tell.”
Patrick blinks at him, one of those frog blinks again, and swallows. “Huh?”
“You’ve got—” Richie gestured vaguely at his own face. Patrick wipes his cheek with the back of his hand, smearing chocolate even higher. Richie snorts. “You know what, never mind.”
Patrick groans, grabbing a napkin from where they had been strewn around the bed. “Is it that bad?”
“It’s cute.”
Richie doesn’t even realize what he’s just said until he sees Patrick freeze mid-reach. “Cute?”
“Well, yeah. You’re—” He cuts himself off, deeming it all too much too soon, and forces his eyes back down to his plate. Heat crawls up and makes a home in his cheeks, while embarrassment and shame have a knock-down, drag-out fist fight in the pit of his stomach.
Across from him, with his legs sprawled out beside him, Patrick quiets down, chewing slowly now. Richie can feel him watching him, and he knows that there’s a question in his eyes that he’s not voicing. It’s driving him insane. Patrick’s eyes suddenly break from him, but they focus on something even worse.
“So,” he says, trying to sound casual. “What were you writing in that— that notebook of yours?”
Richie freezes. He had left the notebook on the bedside table last night, tossing it out of his backpack when he had been digging in it to find his extra pair of socks. He had completely forgotten about leaving it there until just now, with it being out in the open for Patrick to see.
“Oh,” Richie says weakly. “It’s just the ideas for my book, you know, it’s nothing.”
“Nothing?” Patrick asks, raising a brow. “You were scribbling in it almost the entire time we were walking.”
Richie feels his ears go hot. “It’s nothing special. Plus, the Walk is over, I won’t be able to finish the book anyways, might as well just scrap the whole notebook.”
“So you were writing about something, though. Were you writing anything about me?”
“Well, yes, I mean—” Richie feels his heart lurch, skip a beat, and then maintain an unsettling rhythm. “I was writing about you, but it was mostly just— I don’t know. Just stuff,” Richie mumbles.
“What were you writing about me?” Patrick asks. His tone isn’t prodding, like he desperately needs to know, but something evil in Richie’s mind is working overtime to contort it that way, fumbling Patrick’s words into things that he knows he isn’t actually saying.
“I wasn’t—” Richie nibbles on a hangnail. There’s still dirt and blood under his fingernails. He curses himself internally. He thought he had gotten that all in the shower last night. “I don’t know.”
Patrick stares at him for a few long seconds, and then lunges.
Richie yelps as he scrambles backwards on the bed, but Patrick is far faster, grabbing the notebook from the nightstand. Richie tackles him instinctively, trying to pull it away. Within seconds, they’re a puddle of arms and legs, tangled in a messy heap of limbs on the mattress.
“Give it!” Richie demands, trying not to laugh or panic. Or both, he’s not entirely sure.
“Not until I see it!” Patrick chides.
They roll, kicking at each other with already-injured feet that most certainly should not be taking this amount of physical activity. Richie grabs at the notebook and Patrick twists away, once, twice, three times, until their momentum suddenly stops.
Richie’s heart leaps. Patrick is beneath him, and Richie’s hands are flat on either side of his shoulders. Their faces are merely inches apart, their breaths mingling. Patrick’s laughter dies into something softer. They freeze, and Richie finds that he can’t move. More alarmingly, he finds that Patrick doesn’t even try to.
For a long moment, suspended in thin air like two walkers on a tightrope, the world is contained within the warmth of Patrick’s body under his own. The rise and fall of his chest, the patch of skin radiating heat from where his shirt has ridden up, the faint smell of chocolate on his breath, the curls splayed out across the pillow.
Patrick laughs. It’s a small, nervous sound, and it shoots nerves through every single part of Richie’s body.
“So,” he murmurs, “are you gonna let me get up?”
Panicked, Richie scrambles backwards so fast that he nearly falls off the bed. Patrick sits up, his cheeks pink and flushed. He’s got the notebook clutched close to his chest.
“Sorry,” Richie stammers, adjusting his glasses. “I wasn’t— that wasn’t—”
“‘s okay,” Patrick smiles. It’s genuine, and a tsunami douses Richie in a wave of relief. Patrick taps the notebook with one finger. “Promise me it’s nothing bad?”
Richie wants to die on the spot. He swallows hard, his pulse pounding in his ears. “It’s not bad. I just— I don’t know, I don’t want you to judge me, that’s all.”
Patrick tilts his head. “Why would I judge you, Rich?”
“Because it’s personal,” Richie says, ignoring how the way Patrick whispered his nickname sent shivers down his spine.
Patrick’s gaze softens and he leans forward slightly. “Richie, I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Richie glances up at him through his eyelashes. He pulls in a shaking breath, and then points to the notebook. “Okay, but give me that first.”
Patrick hands it over without argument, and Richie flips it open. He scans the messy scribbles, the thoughts remaining unfinished because he suddenly had to break out into a run, the full paragraphs, the death tally— still daunting, although relatively small. All the things he felt like he couldn’t say out loud. With a few more pages flipped, Richie finds the one he had been looking for. He nervously turns it towards Patrick and dips his head, embarrassment pooling in his gut. It feels like exposing his own ribcage to a drooling dog.
“It’s this page,” Richie says quietly, not meeting Patrick’s eyes. “You asked what I wrote about you. So, here.”
Patrick leans in closer, slowly, and takes the notebook. Richie’s handwriting is slanted and uneven, ink smudged at the corners. Richie almost hopes it’s so illegible that Patrick can’t make out what any of the lines say and he ends up with no choice but to return it. Even though the penmanship is messy and the words are riddled with cross-outs, the meaning underneath it all is still unmistakable.
MAY 1ST, 8:14am, STARTING LINE
THERE’S A BOY HERE SITTING JUST BEHIND ME AND IT’S MAKING IT SO HARD TO FOCUS BECAUSE HE MUST BE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PERSON I’VE EVER SEEN. I THOUGHT I IMAGINED IT AT FIRST, BUT I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT HIM. I DON’T WANT TO TURN AROUND— NO REASON TO MAKE IT OBVIOUS.
Richie wants to sink into the mattress as he watches Patrick’s eyes widen as they dance down towards the next paragraph.
10:38am, MILE 3
I CAN’T STOP STARING AT HIM. HE’S WEARING A BLUE AND WHITE STRIPED SHIRT AND AN OFF-WHITE JACKET OVER TOP. OR IS IT A LIGHT BEIGE? I CAN’T REALLY TELL. IT LOOKS GOOD ON HIM. THE COLOUR BRINGS OUT HIS EYES. HE’S WEARING OLIVE GREEN SHORTS AND HAS A CANVAS CROSSBODY BAG. I WONDER WHAT HE’S CARRYING IN THERE. HE’S NUMBER 4. HIS NAME IS PATRICK.
4:02pm, MILE 25
HE’S READING A MAGAZINE. TOTALLY NORMAL, I’D THINK, UNTIL I HOPPED OVER THERE AND GOT A REAL GOOD LOOK AT WHAT WAS ON THOSE PAGES. HE BROUGHT A PORN MAGAZINE WITH HIM. WHO BRINGS A PORN MAGAZINE TO THE WALK? THAT IS VERY INTRIGUING TO ME. I WONDER WHAT HIS THOUGHT PROCESS WAS BEHIND THAT.
8:30pm
EVEN DURING THE WORST PARTS, HE STILL LOOKS LIKE SOMETHING WORTH STAYING ALIVE FOR.
Patrick’s breath catches on the final sentence, and Richie immediately descends into panic.
“It’s stupid,” he fumbles. “It’s stupid, I know. I know it’s weird and stalkery and too much and everything is too soon, and—”
“Rich.”
“I wasn’t trying to make things weird, I promise, I just—”
“Richie.”
“I thought that, you know, if I didn’t write it down I’d fucking explode or something, and I know it’s creepy or—-”
“Richie.”
Hands come to rest on Richie’s shoulders, and the touch is enough to break Richie away from his mumbling, stumbling trance. Richie looks up, his shoulders tight under Patrick’s ginger hold. He braces himself for humiliation, but Patrick’s expression is unreadable for a moment. His eyes are wide and his lips are parted slightly. Then, slowly, carefully, he says:
“It isn’t weird.”
Richie just stares at him. He’s pretty sure he’s shaking like a newborn fawn. “It’s not?”
Patrick shakes his head. “No, it’s not.”
There’s a quick moment where they’re simply staring at each other, and Richie watches every single movement with pinpoint accuracy as Patrick’s expression shifts.
“Do you want to know why it’s not weird?” Patrick asks.
Richie feels himself nod before he can even think to make the movement. His throat is too tight for words. Patrick lets his hands fall from Richie’s shoulders, and they land on the bed. Richie can still feel the ghosts of them linger on his skin for a moment before they fly away as Patrick opens his mouth so speak. When he does, the words almost shatter Richie into a thousand tiny pieces.
“Because I felt the same way. I still do.”
Richie stops breathing. He’s sure he’s died and gone to heaven, or perhaps even hell, because this does seem like some sort of cruel joke.
“Oh,” is all he says.
“Mhm,” Patrick hums, his smile gone shy. It’s nothing like the bright one he wore earlier, but it still rekindles the fire in Richie’s stomach. “Yeah, oh.”
There’s silence again, a bubble around them both. A cocoon.
Richie fidgets, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Is it weird that I felt like that? During everything? Seems like a real inopportune time to develop feelings like that.”
“No,” Patrick says without missing a second. “Not even a little.”
Richie bites down on his lip. “Is that because— well, you know.”
“Because I feel the same?” Patrick finishes gently.
Richie just nods.
Patrick dips his head right back.
Richie’s heart is hammering so loudly in his chest that he’s almost sure Patrick can hear it. I think I love you, he says. He doesn’t say it. But a similar thing leaves his mouth anyways.
“This is going to sound really stupid, but is it too early to kiss you?”
Patrick’s eyes soften, and Richie sees them sparkle.
“No,” he whispers. “I don’t think it is.”
Richie leans in, slowly and carefully, as if he was approaching a deer that might bolt. Patrick meets him halfway, and their lips touch almost shyly. Patrick’s hand finds the edge of Richie’s jaw, and Richie’s fingers curl into the sheets beside him. After a moment, Richie pulls back, his breath trembling. He glances at Patrick, and his smile is dazzling now, wide and real and unrestrained and beautiful. Of that, Richie’s sure. Beautiful.
Not knowing what else to say, Richie blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.
“You taste like chocolate.”
When his own words register in his brain. Richie’s mortified. Of all the things he could have said, that had to be the worst one, and the way Patrick just stared back at him made it ten times worse. But Patrick just snorts, laughing.
“At least it’s not food concentrate and old crackers.”
Richie smiles, and all his nervousness sinks into the mattress and down into the dirt the hotel’s built on. Patrick leans back on his elbows.
“So, now what?”
Richie blinks. “Now what what?”
“I mean,” Patrick gestures vaguely around them, kicking his feet from where he had shuffled them off the side of the bed. “We can’t stay in this room forever, I assume. At some point we’re going to have to live, you know.”
The idea of that is utterly terrifying. Richie glances over his shoulder at the window, the blinds still open exposing the city just behind the pane of glass. It still feels too big, too sharp-edged. Their futures— and the futures of all the remaining Walkers— are blank slates, blank slates that feel far too much like open ground, an open field with no trees or hills to hide behind.
Richie swallows. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. Before this, everything was all about the Walk, from the moment that I entered until the moment that we all got out. Now it’s like—” he pauses, scratching at the back of his hand. “What am I without it?”
Patrick nudges himself closer. Their shoulders brush, and somehow that feels far more intimate than the kiss they just shared.
“You’re you, Richie.”
“That doesn’t feel like enough.”
“It is,” Patrick says. The certainty in his voice is quiet, but it’s still there, enough for Richie to pick up on it. “We don’t have to figure out the rest of it right now anyway.”
Richie looks up at him and blinks. He searches for disbelief or sarcasm on Patrick’s face, but his expression is nothing but soft.
“We’re safe,” he continues. “We’re alive, we made it past what was technically supposed to kill us, and that’s more than enough for today, the way I see it. Hell, more than enough for this week, this month, fuck, this year.”
“Yeah,” Richie whispers, chuckling. He reaches under his glasses to wipe at the tears that had begun to spring up at the bottom of his eyes. “I guess it is.”
Patrick just nudges him again. “Plus, we’ve got time now. Time to figure things out, to breathe, and to just be.”
Richie nods. To just be. He wants to replay those words in his head for ever and ever until the end of time, wants to write them down in his notebook and in every single work he would ever create, but he knows, deep down, that they would never have the same effect as they have right now. No one could ever say those words the way Patrick does, and that’s perfectly alright. Richie’s content with that, content on having something that’s just theirs. He lets Patrick’s words settle into him, making a nest in the depths of his chest, right next to his heart, into the space behind his ribs, where fear would usually sit.
“So,” Richie says lightly. “You’re saying we just… hide out here until further notice?”
Patrick grins, flashing his canines. They’re sharp. “Yeah, sure. Why not? We’ve got each other.”
Smiling, Richie leans his head against Patrick’s shoulder. Patrick leans right back.
Outside the window, the morning light stretches higher across the sky, warm and golden and impossibly alive, just like them. Richie watches it, watches the clouds dance around each other, all the while feeling Patrick’s steady breathing beside him. For the first time in what feels like forever, Richie doesn’t feel like the world is about to collapse beneath his feet.
Patrick shifts slightly and his cheek comes to rest on Richie’s hair.
“Hey,” he murmurs.
“Hm?” Richie hums. He breathes in Patrick’s scent, and the lingering smell of the hotel shampoo from last night.
“I’m glad you wrote that,” Patrick says. “All that stuff about me?”
Richie closes his eyes, letting the warmth settle deeper in his chest.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “So am I.”