Chapter Text
August, 1981
The summer before high school, on the precipice of an already life altering course, Richie’s parents decide to move them halfway across the country. To be fair, it wasn’t as if Richie couldn’t see the move coming — his parents lacked a subtly discussing such life altering events and he had overheard them discussing the move weeks before they had finally sat him down and told him officially.
Before the sudden implosion of the only life he had ever known, they had made it almost as a sort of game of it; preparing for the move without actually telling him they were moving.
It started with a deep clean of every room in the house, something Richie had loathed right at the start of summer vacation. He had his gripes, made his snarky comments but in the end the house was cleansed of any impurities that his parents deemed unworthy of their new lives. Any spare comics were marked for donation, clothes that didn’t fit to the thrift in bulging black garbage bags, and any other unnecessary junk sold for cheap at their garage sale the following week.
In the aftermath of it all he himself had felt lighter, cleansed. Realistically, he supposes, it was probably the fact that now he had free time to actually go and spend time with his friends before the upheaval of everything he had ever known.
“Two weeks.” He works his jaw, his fingers pushing the sliding glasses up his nose only to find them already in place, a nervous gesture. “Maybe less.” He adds. He can’t bear to look at Eddie, to gauge his reaction, to see the rage and heartbreak rolled into one. At the same time, he yearns for it, the familiarity of it in the midst of such unfathomable change. He doesn’t know when he’ll see it again.
“Fuck. Fuck. You’re not messing with me.”
Oh I wish.
Richie snorts, shaking his head. He hadn’t eased Eddie into the information — had plopped down next to him, bumping his shoulder into his and conversationally unloaded the secret he had been carrying with him for the better part of the summer. He had raged, rightfully so, had pointed an accusatory finger into his chest huffing a “That’s not funny ‘Chee what the fuck is wrong with you.”
He had stayed silent, enduring, and that’s when Eddie had begun to realize the gravity of it all, the reality; joining him on the precipice.
“You — you know what happens when you go Richie.”
His voice is warbling, reedy, and Richie knows that any second now he’ll go fumbling for his inhaler, old habits dying hard. He doesn’t want to look, that maybe if he keeps his gaze down that Eddie will turn away, or maybe that he’ll disappear all together so that he isn’t privy to the pain etched into his face but — the heavy stare doesn’t go away, and when he looks up he’s met with wide, watery brown eyes.
“Ah Ed’s,” he breathes out, chest crumpling a little at the sight, heart caving in, “You don’t have to cry over little ol’ me.” He reaches up, wiping at a stray tear that had fallen.
“Fuck you—“ Eddie turns away from his grasp, batting at the hand. “You waited months—“
“Ed’s—“
“Months!” He emphasizes, smacking at his shoulder, “you waited months to tell me and now you’re telling me—“ his breath catches, hitching, “not to cry when you’re— you’re going to—“
This moves Richie into action. He turns, gripping at Eddie's shoulders. The sun is hanging low on the horizon and he knows this means that they’ll have to head back soon. Sonia Kaspbrak is strict on curfew, stricter still on her son despite the rebellious streak he’s had ever since that summer. The air is warm, sticky with the leftover summer heat of the day. Guilt is heavy in his heart at the distraught appearance Eddie pulls, face twisted between righteous anger and despair. In truth, he had held this life altering news close to his heart for the better part of the last two months because, selfishly, he didn’t want to taint what little time they had left with the lenses of sadness.
A breeze filters through the air, ruffling at their clothes and briefly Richie thinks that if this was any other day, he would appreciate the golden hue over the barrens and how it casts everything in a warmth that it hasn’t provided in a long time.
Nothing gold can stay.
The thought swirls in his head as he moves his hands to hold Eddie’s face, grounding him.
“Ed’s I won’t forget you.” He swears, brushing his thumbs underneath his eyes, wiping never-ending tears. Eddie was always a bit of a crybaby, the first to begin to hiccup back then when everything seemed uncertain and death had all but loomed over them. He’s grown more, and Richie supposes that they’ve all grown in some way or another but it’s noticeable more in their youngest member. Watching him now, wide brown eyes rimmed red with tears, it reminds him just a bit of how they’re just kids after all in the end.
“You can’t promise that. Look at Stan. Look at Bill, Bev, and even Ben! They all said the same thing and we haven’t heard from them not once! Nothing!”
“Eddie—“
“No! You’re going to forget me and Mike and — and —“
He surges forward. He knows what Eddie is most worried about, why he’s so scared of Richie leaving. Though he would never admit it, the feelings too raw, so ingrained within him that the thought of forgetting doesn’t even begin to exist in his mind.
The kiss is a bumbling thing, awkward, but endearing nonetheless. His glasses are pressed uncomfortably between them and their lips are off kilter but it gets his message across better than any words he could’ve come up with.
“I won’t forget you.” He relays again, serious. His forehead is pressed against Eddie’s, his hands still holding his face. “I won’t forget this. I can’t forget this Ed’s you’re—“ he pauses and swallows, face heating, embarrassed. “You’re everything.”
Eddie smiles, watery, face flushed almost the same red as his own as his hands reach up to cup Richie’s, still holding his face, still wiping away the few stray tears.
“You’re my everything too.”
It’s the closest they’ll get to ‘I love you,’ and thinking back, Richie can’t fathom why they never said it to each other. Not that day, not the day he packed up whatever little life he had left in Derry, saying his goodbyes to Mike and Eddie, holding them both just a little tighter, a little longer. He knows he’s said it before, to the group, the whole lot of them — had dragged them close and said it in the most raw way after defeating It, had tossed it out casually and teasing, sincere in the aftermath.
He just can’t think of a singular moment where he had looked at Eddie properly, eyes shining and breath catching and telling him truly that he loved him. More than a friend, more than a lover, something akin to a soulmate.
Richie won’t know until later that out of the group, out of the six that left, he was the one that had held on the longest to Derry. Mike supposes that it might’ve had something to do with Eddie. Not that he could ever prove it indefinitely but the truth was hard to hide in the looks that the two had given each other over time.
When they see each other again in some distant future, standing too close to an edge and waiting to fall over, he mentions the peculiarity of it all; that he was the one to preserve in the end. He had shrugged, pushed his glasses in that nervous way of his and made a one off about mental fortitude or some other bullshit to deflect but — Mike had caught the way he had looked at Eddie, the softened gaze, and had decided not to push further.
In the now of it all, when Eddie finally moves away, a year after Richie, the letters all but dry up — and then there was Mike, alone with his memories of what had happened that terrifying summer in Derry.