Archive of Our Own

Eddie could identify the exact moment his life took a turn for the best-slash-worst.

It wasn't when he'd been tested with the Ishihara Plates at the ripe old age of six, his mother's persistence in finding something wrong with his health serving him well for once and leading to the discovery of his monochromacy. It wasn't when his inability to see colors had, for some inexplicable reason, interested Beverly enough to take him under her wing and, subsequently, into the Losers' Club either.

No, it was when Richie had enough of him during an impossible art project and said, “I'll show you colors.”

Eddie should have known better, but Richie was an idiot and there had been no clue to suggest that he was about to spend the rest of his afternoon being dragged around Derry in an attempt to experience the electromagnetic spectrum.

Some would argue that the warning signs had been there, others wouldn't. He'll let you be the judge of that.

It had started strangely mundane, seeing as it wasn't even supposed to be the music room, but it just so happened that the Bowers gang had been tyrannizing the library, and since Eddie had already spent way too long on a tête-à-tête date with the increasingly distinct sensation that his patience was being scraped out of him, he'd eventually given up and followed Richie wherever he had decided they could work instead.

Which, naturally, was the music room.

The door had been propped open with a wedge of wood, and Richie had kicked it aside with the toe of one of his beat-up shoe before reassuring that they were allowed to be there. Eddie hadn't questioned him further and he suspected he was better off not knowing the answer.

Now, he sat cross-legged on the floor with a half-finished pencil sketch balanced in front of him, idle long enough for his legs to go numb. The beat-up sneakers his mother had stopped approving of a month ago and had since referred to as those disgusting things you call shoes smudged dust on his jeans due to his current position, which had already gone stiff under the powdery residue of the paint he dropped when setting up anyway.

His outfit needed to be tossed as a whole, but compared to Richie's current state, you could go as far as to say Eddie looked put together.

The bespectacled boy wasn't doing anything useful, sitting sideways on the drum throne with horrible posture, twirling a pair of drumsticks between his fingers with casual dexterity Eddie found both irritating and, against his better judgment, mildly impressive.

He was the furthest thing from neat, suspended in a dictionary as the oxymoron of picture of decorum, messy in a raffish sort of way, and Eddie hated that he looked comfortable.

Fine then, he could ignore him. He had a pencil and he had a ruler. He had the laminated assignment and watercolor paper and backup watercolor paper and backup for the backup watercolor paper. He had several brushes, a little plastic palette, a cup of water he shouldn't have placed near Richie, and enough patience to get through the evening if he would just—

The other drumstick began spinning, and Eddie took a desperate leap and pretended that was an invitation to speak. “Okay, Rich, listen up. We'll never get shit done if you keep sitting on your ass all afternoon, so I'll finish the rough sketches and you do the watercolors on your own time, capeesh?”

Richie laughed breathily and tightened his grip on the drumsticks. Shortly after, a rimshot sounded.

Ba dum tss!

"Tough crowd, that was a great joke."

Eddie stared at Richie without blinking, thinking that, surely, this must be God's way to punish him for the desecrational acts of his past life. Richie lowered the sticks but made no effort to look even slightly apologetic, which exasperated Eddie to a concerning extent. “I was being serious there! Come on, work with me for a bit."

Richie's mouth twitched, a teasing expression painting his features. “No, there's no way you're this dense.”

"No, there's no way you're this dense." Eddie's eyebrows drew together. "What other plan do you have, make the colorblind kid color? Because that's really reasonable.”

“Can't you just guess where everything goes? Maybe we'll get extra marks for being abstract.”

Eddie glanced down at the paint, longing for something he'd never experience. “I could in theory, but it won't look good and we'll fail.”

Then Richie tipped his head back and made a long, suffering noise originating somewhere around his stomach.

Eddie returned to his sketch, perfectly happy with this arrangement. Richie could complain, Eddie could tune him out, and they could finish the assignment as quickly as possible then fuck right off to march to the beats of their separate drums. There was objectively nothing wrong with this plan other than the fact that Eddie had made the mistake of assuming Richie would respect it.

"Hear me out."

"I'm hearing nothing." Eddie said without looking up, scanning his peripheral for a discardable tool he could throw at Richie if the situation called for it, to no avail since he needed everything.

"Come with me, out on an outing outside." Richie leaned across the table, peering at Eddie's piss-poor chicken scratch drawing. "We've been sitting in here for, like, forever. You're making a lousy pencil sketch, which you can do later, so we can be done for today. Come on now."

"No."

"Eds." Richie insisted. "Do you actually want to spend the rest of the afternoon drawing scenery?"

"I don't," Eddie admitted honestly, "but it's for the project."

Richie flashed Eddie a smile that told him he had already decided he was right and was now waiting for Eddie to succumb. "I've got an idea, but you've got to trust me."

"I absolutely do not, seeing as every time I let you scheme to your heart's content, you end up dead in a ditch-adjacent"

"Come on, I really gotta show you something." His voice moseyed. "I'll show you colors."

"Richie, I know what colors are, I just can't see them." Eddie rambled on. "And unless you've suddenly developed a functional set of rods and cones, I'm not sure what you think you're accomplishing."

"I'm not trying to make you see them." Richie clarified. "I'm trying to make you feel them."

He stared at him for a long moment. "What do you mean feel them? Cause I'm pretty sure It's just an excuse to leg it out of school now and have a reason to not do any work."

Eddie hadn't decided whether it was because the answer to all his previous problems had come in the form of Richie's thousand-kilowatt smile that shone so brightly it put the sun to shame, or if it was simply because Richie Tozier was the sun, but an invisible string seemed to always pull him wherever that boy went.

And as much as he hated to admit it, even to himself, he really did want to feel the damned colors.

"Follow me and find out." Richie had challenged, and so Eddie did. Looking back, he really did fold under zero pressure.

By the time they left the school, Eddie had become fairly certain that Richie had no actual destination in mind.

This wasn't surprising at all. The boy rarely appeared to have a destination in mind for anything. He simply moved through the world and expected the universe to rearrange itself around him eventually, and, irritatingly, it usually did.

Now, he was walking several paces ahead of Eddie, his glasses catching the late afternoon light whenever he turned his head. The school building had disappeared behind them some time ago, leaving the pair on one of the quieter streets winding away from the center of town. He adjusted the strap of his bag higher onto his shoulder. "Where are we going?"

"You'll see." Richie glanced over his shoulder. "Trust me, Spaghetti."

That was not a comforting answer, and Eddie opened his mouth to point this out, but Richie had already turned away again, continuing down the sidewalk with that infuriating, loose-limbed stride of his. Eddie followed because he'd shed whatever survival instinct had once prevented him from willingly accompanying Richie anywhere some time ago.

He told himself it was because he'd already invested too much of his afternoon in this ridiculous exercise; he told himself that if he went home now, Richie would inevitably show up at his house tomorrow with some new interpretation of color that made even less sense, and Eddie would spend the next forty-eight hours wondering what the hell he'd been talking about.

Mostly, though, he followed because he wanted to know. That was the part he was reluctant to admit, even to himself, having spent most of his life knowing colors as facts rather than experiences.

He knew the order of the rainbow. He knew which colors were considered warm and which were considered cool. He knew enough about color theory to pass his assignments, provided nobody asked him to actually distinguish between the things he was supposed to be painting. But knowing the vocabulary wasn't the same as knowing the thing itself, Richie seemed to think there was a difference.

They stopped at the end of the block, making Eddie frown when Richie turned to face him, strangely serious, which was unsettling in itself. His usual expression had gone slack around the edges, the corners of his mouth no longer tugged upward in anticipation of his next stupid joke. A lock of black hair had fallen across his forehead, and Eddie had the sudden inexplicable urge to push it back, which he promptly ignored.

"This is red." Richie finally announced, jolting to a stop. He rocked once onto the balls of his feet for a moment as if debating what to say next, and settled on, "Follow me.”

Richie's face split into a boyish grin, and it was the last thing Eddie saw before he took off running. He had less than half a second to process what had happened before his body made the decision for him."Richie!"

He ran after him very gracelessly. Eddie had never been particularly athletic, and there was something ironic about being expected to sprint when he'd been sitting out of phys ed his entire life.

His fanny pack bounced painfully against his side as he ran, his shoes slapped against the pavement, and his lungs let him know this was a terrible idea by swelling uncomfortably.

Richie, meanwhile, appeared to have been born specifically for the purpose of making Eddie's life difficult. He was fast, he was really fast, fast enough that Eddie had to work to keep him in sight seeing as Richie ran with the same carelessness with which he did everything else.

He glanced over his shoulder once, laughing when he saw Eddie struggling to catch up, and Eddie hated him for it. He hated him even more when he pushed himself harder.

The afternoon air scraped cold against the back of his throat. His heart began beating faster, each pulse becoming increasingly noticeable beneath his ribs. His legs felt heavy and he could feel the dull burn spreading through his thighs as he tried to maintain Richie's pace.“This just feels tiring, Rich.”

Richie laughed, slowing just enough for Eddie to hear him. “'Cause you're focused on the wrong thing!”

Eddie almost stopped, but decided to persevere at the last second, the action sending him stumbling forward another few steps before finding his rhythm again, glaring at the back of Richie's head. “I’m focusing on running in a straight line.”

"Exactly," Richie turned his head, still jogging. “You're supposed to focus on how it feels.”

There it was again. Eddie hated how easily he could make it sound like an instruction and a challenge at the same time. “This makes no fucking sense!”

He expected Richie to laugh, to find his struggle amusing, but instead, the boy faced forward again, and, for once, Eddie did what he was told.

It was difficult at first. His body kept supplying him with objections: his breathing was too fast, his heart rate was too high, his throat was dry, and he was one hundred percent going to manifest regret physically through achy thighs and sore calves.

All his concerns were perfectly reasonable observations proving completely useless when presented to someone like Richie, so Eddie stopped trying to observe them. He let himself notice instead.

He focused on the pavement passing beneath his shoes in a steady rhythm, the slight pull of the wind against his face, the warmth gathering beneath his skin despite the coolness of the air, the way breathing began to sting when he inhaled too quickly, then smoother when he managed to slow it down. His heart was still pounding, but it no longer seemed like an alarm. It was simply there, keeping time with his footsteps.

Richie's pace had settled into something easier now, and Eddie matched it, not thinking about how far they had gone or how much farther they might have to go. He was simply moving, and, gradually, he understood why Richie had called it red.

Granted, there was no logical explanation Eddie could pinpoint, but he'd come to the conclusion that red was heat. Red was blood moving faster through his veins. It was the burn in his muscles and the pressure in his lungs and the strange, almost dizzying awareness of being entirely inside his own body. It was urgency without danger, intensity without anything actually being wrong.

He couldn't see it, but for a fleeting moment, he thought he might know it.

They ran until Richie's breathing became noticeably heavier, then slowed to a jog, and finally to a walk. Richie bent forward with his hands braced against his knees, laughing between breaths.

Eddie stopped beside him and immediately mirrored his manoeuvre, though mostly because he was too exhausted to remain upright. His heart was still hammering. His face was hot. His hair was sticking unpleasantly to his forehead. He usually hated this, but to his immense irritation, he also really liked it.

Richie straightened slowly. "For someone who complains a lot, you're surprisingly good at following orders.”

"You gave me no other choice." Eddie shot him a look. "Don't flatter yourself."

Richie grinned, an awfully patronizing expression, but he bit back his tongue and they eventually picked the pace back up, finding an adequate, less rigorous pace.

Eddie didn't ask whether they'd actually experienced red correctly. He wasn't sure there was such a thing as correctly anymore. Instead, he found himself waiting for whatever came next. And that, more than the running itself, was probably the first warning sign: the strange thing about continuing after red was that Eddie didn't feel particularly tired anymore, the irritation had seeped out of it. Eddie found that he no longer needed to concentrate on keeping up. His feet simply followed the rhythm they'd found.

It was peaceful, that realization made him suspicious. Richie had always been good at making Eddie suspicious.

Leaving the more crowded streets behind, they followed a boulevard that gradually opened into a stretch of grass bordered by trees, eviscerating a good portion of the already fading natural light.

The afternoon had softened while they'd been running. Sunlight filtered through the branches overhead, breaking apart across the pavement in pale, shifting patches.

Eddie glanced sideways at Richie, who looked completely at ease, per usual. His glasses had slipped farther down his nose, and his hair was an even bigger mess than it had been when they'd left school. His cheeks were flushed from the running, and there was a smile lingering around his mouth that Eddie couldn't quite decide was smugness or genuine happiness.

Eddie wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. “So, what now?”

Richie slowed, which led to them walking shoulder to shoulder, their steps gradually falling in sync the only sound between them. He had become accustomed to Richie's constant noise, be it the jokes or the impressions or the strange observations that materialized from nowhere. Without it, Eddie became more aware of everything else.

Richie looked ahead at the field. “I’m thinking go red, orange, yellow, green, blue, pink, purple.”

Eddie cocked a brow. "Why that order?"

“Like the rainbow.”

He immediately found the problem and pointed it out with a tut.“It's blue indigo violet, not pink and purple, fuckwit.”

Richie stopped walking, and Eddie had learned by now that whenever he stopped suddenly, there was generally a reason, and that reason was rarely one Eddie would appreciate. “Sucks to your rainbow! Matter of fact, this is orange.”

Before Eddie could ask what that was supposed to mean, Richie put both hands against his shoulders and shoved hard enough to send him stumbling forward through the grass.

“What the fuck!” The ground caught him in an unfortunate manner. Eddie landed with a startled grunt, the soft grass compressing beneath his back. For several seconds, he could do nothing except stare upward, blinking at the canopy of leaves.

Then Richie dropped down beside him. “This is orange”

Eddie turned his head, glaring very intently. “What, spinal realignment?”

Richie snorted. "No, I usually save that part for your mother when we roll in the sack."

Eddie's face scrunched up at the disturbing picture Richie had painted for him."That's so not funny."

The boy in question ignored him, swiftly switching topics. "Orange is what comes after the pinnacle of something, like when you settle and realize you're actually alive”

Eddie stared at him. There was no universe in which that sentence had made sense. He pushed himself onto his elbows and voiced that thought verbatim. “There is no universe in which that makes sense."

Richie only smiled faintly. “Lay on your back and think of it for a bit longer. But don't look at the sky!”

Eddie immediately looked toward the sky, and, unsurprisingly, there was nothing particularly interesting about it. It looked the same as always, decorated with few clouds. But it was mostly hidden by the branches above them, the patches of what he was taught to be blue visible through the leaves scanty on the ground.

He looked back at Richie, and decided to just close his eyes, but apparently that was wrong too. “No, don't do that either!”

“Please, for the love of everything sacred, make up your mind.” Eddie opened his eyes on command, Richie had already begun laughing. He sat up fully, irritated, grass clinging to the back of his shirt. "You tell me not to look at something and then tell me not to close my eyes. This then that, yes then no, hot then cold. What, exactly, do you expect me to do?"

Richie flopped backward into the grass. “Just focus on how you feel, don't look anywhere in particular.

Eddie remained sitting. That was much harder than Richie seemed to understand. It was easy to focus on something specific. A road. A tree. His own hands. An unidentified color swatch on a piece of paper. Those things had edges. A feeling, on the other hand, was much less cooperative.

Still, Eddie slowly lowered himself onto the grass again. He rested his head against the ground, letting the blades press coolly against the back of his neck and trying to think about anything other than bugs until, somewhere near his elbow, a tiny insect crawled through the grass, pulling an involuntary high-pitched squeal out of him as he shot upright because even when he didn't speak of the devil, he'd find a way to doth appear.

He took a deep breath, the air smelled different around this side of town, purified by the numerous trees, patches of grass, and various different plants. The sun had warmed the ground during the peak UV times and the surface was still a pleasant temperature, but the breeze cooled his face whenever it passed.

Nothing was happening and that was the point. He could almost forget about his mother demanding to know where he had been and if he had been safe and if he had taken all his vitamins and medications.

Eddie wasn't sure whether he liked the sensation. Richie had said it came after the pinnacle, after the rush, after red. And Eddie understood, suddenly, why he had chosen the field.

There was nowhere to go. They had run until their bodies had demanded they stop, and now they were lying in the grass with the afternoon stretched lazily around them, hidden away from the majority of population save for a few lingering stragglers. Eddie could hear Richie breathing beside him, slow and unhurried.

He turned his head slightly. Richie had his eyes closed, looking less like the trashmouth who could turn anywhere into a circus and more like someone who had simply gotten tired and decided to lie down.

Eddie looked away again. He still couldn't see orange. Of course he couldn't, that wasn't what Richie was asking. Perhaps they were just things he was supposed to notice.

Eddie found himself smiling before he could stop it. He immediately frowned, as though his own face had betrayed him. Beside him, Richie spoke without opening his eyes. “Are you getting it? I know you are.”

Eddie rolled his eyes, but he didn't move. That was probably the most convincing evidence Richie could have asked for.

They stayed there for a while, long enough for the sun to shift across the leaves. Long enough for the breeze to become cooler. Long enough for the lingering ache in his legs to disappear almost completely.

He was simply comfortable because nothing needed to happen. And if that was orange, Eddie thought he might understand why Richie had wanted to show it to him.

They didn't leave the field immediately. Eddie wasn't sure if Richie had forgotten that there were other colors left or if this was simply another one of those occasions where he had decided the rules were more flexible than everyone else seemed to think. He had a tendency to treat plans as loose backup rather than actual agreements, and Eddie had learned that asking for clarification usually only encouraged him.

Eventually, though, Richie rolled onto his side and pushed himself upright. He was laughing, grinning to himself, at Eddie or with him, he'd never know. The sound followed them as they crossed the field, right up until he stopped in the middle of the grass.

"Do a flip.” Richie said, and E ddie eyed him like one might a succulent sitting on an unfurnished apartment's shelf even as he repeated. “I said do a flip”

“I can't do that.”

Richie considered him, then tsked in annoyance. “Right. Do a cartwheel then."

Eddie's mouth contorted.“...why?”

Richie spread his arms, his expression making it clear that he felt completely justified in what he was demanding.“Green is letting go.”

Eddie suspected that this entire afternoon had been an elaborate method of torturing him.“If I let go while doing a cartwheel, I will kill myself in the process”

"I'll hold you”

“No.”

“I'll hold you, Eds. Nothing to worry your pretty little head about."

Eddie took a deep breath. "First of all, don't call me that. Second of all, you'd snap in half trying to carry a stack of books, which doesn't inspire confidence on its own at all. Number two-point-five, you very obviously know jack shit about cartwheels and flips and all that pizzazz, therefore I'm a hundred and one percent sure that you'll manage to fuck up your grip on me somehow and send me flying across eight fields. Number three—"

"Sweet Jesus, Eds, shut the fuck up."

"Don't call me that." Eddie retorted on instinct. “You can fuck right off and get stuffed."

"I mean, I'd gladly stuff your mother."

"Beep beep, Richie!"

He only grinned and stepped closer, the look on his face telling Eddie it was only logical to immediately step backward in return. He, unfortunately, matched his cadence and compensated with another step of his own.

Eddie stepped backward again.“Richie.”

“Eddie-bear.” He mocked in a high-pitched, unfortunately accurate impression of his mother. “Come on, Spaghetti.”

“Absolutely not. Actually, you lose points for bringing an off-key impression of my mother into the mix and even more points for calling me that abomination of a nickname and a couple more for the crude joke from earlier."

Richie slapped a hand over Eddie's mouth and held out the other, making him stop and reflect for a moment.

It was only a cartwheel. He'd seen kids do them on playgrounds. He'd seen Beverly do one, he'd seen Ben try afterward and nearly knock himself unconscious. Eddie had never attempted one because there had never been a reason to. He had no particular desire to be upside down, and there was nothing in the world that could convince him that his body had been designed to support itself on two hands.

“I will hold you.” Richie confirmed yet another time, and Eddie sighed. He hated the tone he was using, losing the exaggerated teasing quality he'd been using all afternoon. There was something almost reassuring about it.

“This is stupid.” He opted to say instead. “I could fall.”

“I won't let you.”

“You could still drop me without meaning to. Lose your balance or something."

“I won't." Richie promised, and he meant it wholeheartedly. Eddie didn't understand how he could sound so certain. He also didn't understand why, eventually, he let their fingers interlock.

Something strange moved through him, he dismissed it immediately. Richie stepped behind him.“Ready?”

“No.”

“Great.” He caught him around the waist. Eddie made a noise somewhere between a shout and a squeak as the world abruptly tilted. For one horrible second, he was certain this was how he was going to die. His palms hit the grass. His arms shook. His legs flailed uselessly in the air.

Richie's grip tightened around his middle. Eddie could feel him laughing. “Stop laughing!”

“I’m not!” He laughed.“I'm encouraging you!”

Eddie tried to push himself upright and collapsed sideways on impact. Richie caught him before his shoulder hit the ground. “There you go.”

“I almost died!”

“You did not almost die. You can't realistically do that from less than five inches off the ground."

Eddie wanted to be angry, he really did, but the absurdity of the situation was beginning to get to him too. His heart was racing, his hair was hanging toward the ground, and Richie was standing behind him trying to keep him upright while Eddie unwillingly discovered the limits of his body through trial and error where the compensation for the latter was quick, imminent death.

He tried again. This time, he managed to get his legs over and his hands stayed planted. For a brief, impossible moment, he was upside down.

Richie caught his shoulders. "There you go! You're golden!”

Eddie straightened, breathing hard. “I don't feel anything of the green sort."

“Do one more. Do it without thinking of logistics."

“I will fall.”

“I'll cushion your fall.” There was no joke in Richie's face this time, maybe that's what gave Eddie the final push.

For one terrifying second, every instinct in his body screamed at him to stop. His brain began rapidly cataloguing all the ways this could go wrong, each possibility appearing with more horrifying clarity than the previous one.

Still, he somehow landed upright and on both feet. Richie beamed at him, his entire face lighting up as result.“See!”

Eddie's mouth twitched. “I don't fucking like this green thing."

"Oh well. Ya win some ya lose some, am I right?" Richie said in one of his abysmal southern impression voices. Eddie could still feel the strange sensation of being upside down, the brief weightlessness before his feet had found the ground again.

It wasn't very pleasant, but he had trusted Richie and Richie had come through, so he had to give him that one no matter how reluctantly. That warmed his chest beyond measure.

They stayed in the grass longer than Eddie intended to, no particular reason for it. Richie hadn't announced that orange was finished, and he hadn't asked how long they were supposed to lie there before moving on to the next color. They simply remained where they were, stretched out beneath the trees as the afternoon slowly changed around them.

Every now and then, Richie shifted beside him. Eddie had become strangely aware of him in the silence. Not in the usual way, where his presence was something loud and impossible to ignore, but in smaller details: the rhythm of his breathing, the occasional twitch of his fingers, the faint sound he made whenever he swallowed.

It was irritating; Eddie didn't know why he was noticing these things. He stared up at the branches and frowned, something was off. “Didn't we skip yellow?”

Richie, who had been lying with one arm folded beneath his head, opened one eye. “I thought I already established that your voice is yellow.”

Eddie stared at him. “You've done no such thing.”

Richie's mouth curled into a grin. There was something different about it now. Eddie had noticed that, too, which was becoming a problem.

Richie had always smiled at him. Usually it was the mocking kind of smile that meant Eddie was about to be insulted, mocked, embarrassed, or dragged into some new catastrophe. Sometimes it was simply because Richie found something funny.

None of those explanations accounted for the strange warmth that had appeared somewhere beneath his ribs when he asked.“You know what yellow is?”

Eddie looked at him, his bottom lip jutting out slightly and shaking his head no.

Richie sat up. “It's you, Eds.”

Eddie felt his stomach do something peculiar and immediately blamed the running, refusing to acknowledge the effect that measly sentence had on him. Richie leaned back on his hands, squinting slightly in the sunlight filtering through the branches. “Sing so it turns golden!”

Eddie blinked a couple times, but he failed to respond.

“Sing so it turns golden!” Richie repeated. "Come on!"

“I'm not going to sing to experience a color." Eddie stared at him sideways. "They're completely different senses, it makes no sense.”

Richie looked offended at his lack of blind trust. “You literally have a golden voice. Are we not on the same page?

“That doesn't mean anything outside the arbitrary whims you create.” It kinda felt like Richie was just making stuff up to take the piss out of him.

“It means everything!" He scooted closer, making Eddie's shoulders tense.

Surely, it wasn't because he was close, was it? That would be ridiculous. People sat close to each other all the time. The Losers did it constantly. Richie had leaned against him, stolen food from his plate, thrown his arm around Eddie's shoulders, and fallen asleep against him countless times during movies he found boring before. But none of that had ever felt like this.

Eddie's pulse skipped, his lungs suddenly feeling he need to expand past the limited space of his ribs.

“Go on." Richie encouraged. "Just one song.”

“No.”

“Come on, Spaghetti.” The don't call me that went unspoken but heard between them. Richie smiled. And it was unfair what it did to him. Unfair, there was no other word for it. His smile made something inside Eddie soften despite his best efforts, even after he had spent forever carefully maintaining a sensible distance from the things that made him nervous.

“I really hate you right now.” He said instead of pouring his heart out, but it lacked its usual bite.

Richie grinned. “No, you don't.”

Eddie looked down and sighed, his breath catching against the skin stretching past the neckline of his shirt as he confessed. "No, I don't."

“Sing something.” Richie prodded again. “How about Queen? We love Queen!”

Eddie groaned. “Absolutely not.”

"You know Don't Stop Me Now is, like, the happiest song in the world? One of those days, some scholar is going to scientifically prove it. Mark my words, trademark it or something, people make a shit ton of money from winning lawsuits." Richie stated, then immediately started singing before giving Eddie enough time to process the absolute clusterfuck of a scenario he had so easily conjured.

His voice wasn't polished and it wasn't particularly controlled, either, but it was enthusiastic, and that sure was a start.

Eddie covered his face with both hands as Richie launched with theatrical confidence that should come with way more musical ability than he possessed, praying to whoever was listening that nobody was around to witness this mess. Lyrics spilled out between laughs, his hands moving as though he were performing for an audience rather than a singular boy sitting right beside him.

Eddie tried not to smile for fear of it being taken as encouragement, but the ends of his lips curled into a faint one he tried to smother and failed.

Richie caught it and took it as an enabling sign, as expected. “There you go, Eds!”

Eddie glared at him, but he gave in eventually, letting his palms drop in a supporting beat that wasn't all that accurate even though he knew the song by heart. And sure enough, after a few lines, he stopped worrying about whether he'd sounded good and started humming the backing vocals faintly.

Richie was still doing most of the singing, and Eddie found himself supplying the quieter parts. They were going totally off-script, completely deviating from the original task of proving that Eddie's voice turned gold when he sang or whatever the fuck Richie had tried to explain.

The boy in question shifted closer, and just like that, the field had become their stage, the pair making an absurd amount of noise for two people who had supposedly gone out to experience a substantially different sense.

At some point, Eddie realized with a strange little jolt that he liked hearing Richie's voice simply because it was his, and not because it sounded good—which it didn't—and the thought filled him with a mortification so overwhelming he had to stop engaging completely.

Richie didn't seem to notice the abrupt shift in tone, happy to continue even as one song blended into the other. He circled through several tunes, butchering the lyrics and tempo so royally that Eddie couldn't confidently name any of them even with a gun to his head. He thought he heard The Who's Pictures Of Lily at some point, but it might as well have been Jailhouse Rock or even the Moonlight Sonata for all he knew.

Eventually, Richie collapsed backward into the grass, and Eddie followed, the warmth in his chest remaining even as he stared at the sky through the branches.

Yellow. He didn't know what yellow was supposed to look like, but if Richie was right, then perhaps it didn't matter. To Eddie, it was the sound of someone's voice filling the empty spaces around you until you couldn't imagine the silence being there anymore.

He turned his head, his flushing when he noticed Richie already looking at him. Neither of them moved, but Richie smiled at him and he felt that strange flutter beneath his ribs again.

“Stay gold, Ponyboy.” Richie whispered in one of his impression voices as they stared at the sunset, which was mostly hidden by trees. "Stay gold."

Eddie frowned. “What?”

"I'm trying to get you to get back to singing." Richie shrugged, still smiling. "But, like, in a philosophical way. Y'know, like Johnnycakes."

Eddie rolled his eyes at the absurdity, a strange gut feeling that told him he was lying or not telling him the whole truth curling inside of him. He could've sworn he meant to say Dammit, Richie! There's something you're not telling me and it's getting really frustrating, but it came out like "I'm not going to sing again."

It was really quite a shame. Had he mustered up the courage to get all up close and personal with Richie, he'd have several realizations that could've made his life so, so much easier.

By the time they left the field, Eddie had stopped asking where they were going, less a sign of trust than it was exhaustion.

There was a particular point at which following Richie became easier than trying to understand him, and Eddie suspected they'd crossed it somewhere between the second cartwheel and Richie declaring him golden. His body had finally stopped buzzing with the adrenaline of doing something he'd been convinced would end in injury then subsequently into a scolding from his mother, and his thoughts had settled into the same peculiar quiet he'd found lying in the grass.

They eventually reached a tiny shopping plaza near the edge of town. Eddie slowed, meanwhile Richie kept going right up until he reached the entrance, turning to look at Eddie expectantly.

He looked up and realized they were standing in front of the pharmacy. His stomach dropped upon witnessing the taunting sight, pulling him out of the happy-go-lucky trance he'd been in so abruptly it gave him whiplash.

Richie didn't say anything; that was a statement of its own. He only smiled to himself and walked in, letting the store engulf his disappearing frame.

Eddie did not walk in. He didn't know if it was supposed to be a useless protest or simply refusal to feed into Richie's increasingly deranged whims, but it proved to be fruitless anyway when he emerged from the store a couple minutes later carrying a plastic bag.

There was something peculiar about the way Richie was holding it, as though he'd successfully smuggled contraband out of the building and was waiting to see if anyone would notice.

Eddie seized it from his hold and found three identical bottles of sunscreen.“Why the hell do you have so many?"

Richie lifted the bag. “It was buy two get one at half price!”

Eddie stared at him. He couldn't decide whether he was more offended by the quantity of unnecessary shit Richie had purchased or by the speed at which he had done it.“Oh, yeah, buy the whole store and leave with the side of the curb too. How generous”

“You wound me, Spaghetti." Richie lamented, "I bought this for you, ya know? So you could feel the wavelengths biology has deprived you of without scorching that dainty skin of yours."

"What, are we going to swim or something?" Eddie inquired. “We're mid-fall, if you tried to swim anywhere, the water would freeze your balls off and I don't know about you, but i really don't fancy that happening. If I get hurt, you're reliable. And also, I've told you not to call me that a billion times so you can get bent already."

"Oh come on, Spaghetti, you know I hate to let you down gently but im already bending your—"

“Beep beep, Richie!” Eddie anticipated the crude joke.

"Okay, okay, damn." Richie stopped. He raised both hands in surrender. "Little'uns and their little ears, can't handle the cold hard truth."

Even when he shot him a look that could shrivel testicles, Richie only grinned wider, looking pleased with himself. Eddie should've known that was a bad sign and guessed that his next move was to smother every inch of exposed skin in an uncomfortably thick layer of sunscreen, obviously.

Then, he took the three bottles of sunscreen and shoved them in Eddie's fanny pack, which he decided to reign over as well and swing over his own shoulder like a purse.

He started walking again, the other boy falling into step beside him. Eddie didn't know why he'd expected anything different.

They continued toward the Quarry. The path gradually narrowed as the town gave way to scrub grass and rocky ground. The air changed as well. It smelled fresher here, carrying the faint mineral tang of the water even before Eddie could see it. The sound of the ripplings traveled, a low, continuous rush that grew louder with every step.

Eddie's stomach tightened. The cliffs of the Quarry weren't embellishingly high, at least not from every angle, but he had always regarded them with suspicion, even when the Losers convinced him to cannonball with them time after time off of those very cliffs. There were too many ways to get hurt around open water, too many things that couldn't be controlled.

Richie seemed delighted by each and every one of those ways. He walked ahead until the path opened onto a stretch of rock overlooking the water.

Eddie stopped beside him. Below, seiches rolled toward the rock face in long, restless lines. The sun had begun the early stages of its slow descent, turning the surface into shifting fragments of light. Eddie couldn't see the colors Richie claimed he saw in it, but he could see the brightness, the movement, the way the water seemed to stretch endlessly.

Richie looked over. “I know we haven't really gotten there yet, but Purple is the rush. I know some would argue it should be red, but it's my occipital lobe and therefore my rules. It's kinda like green with letting go, but it comes with higher stakes and especially when you're feeling a bit scared.”

Eddie frowned, skeptical of where this revelation was leading. “Why are you telling me this now”

Richie smiled. “Because!”

Eddie barely had time to process the word before Richie shoved him forward, sending him tumbling off of the safety of the platform.

There was a moment where his brain simply failed to understand what was happening, right up until his feet left the rocks.

The world dropped, and, apparently, so did Eddie. “What the fuck! What the fuck! What the fuck!”

He hit the water with a shriek as cold swallowed him. Eddie's entire body seized in shock as he plunged beneath the surface, water rushing over his head and filling his ears with a deafening roar. His stomach lurched violently. He kicked upward, arms flailing until his hand broke the surface.

He gasped for air, shaking his head like a dog in the rain. “You fucking scumbag bastard numpty!"

A second later, Richie jumped in after him, not even allowing Eddie to register the splash before his arms appeared around his legs and thrust him upwards, letting him fall seated onto his shoulders. He surfaced laughing, completely unbothered.

“You just pushed me off a cliff!”

“it's literally a raised floor that's less than half your height, you'll be fine."

"That is not half my height. It's like, twenty feet high! I could've just plummeted to my death and never resurfaced, why the hell would you do that? I thought you were trying to make me feel colors, not the imminent release from life that I'm absolutely not ready for." Eddie stared at the grinning boy under him, a nervous laugh escaping him. “You can get concussions from this!”

“But you didn't.” Richie said easily, tightening his grip on Eddie's thighs when he wobbled, as if to prove a point, and squeezed reassuringly.

Eddie sputtered at the affectionate gesture. “What if I will? What if I get brain damage? Some people get split open while diving, this isn't much different!”

“Okay, Spaghetti, I'm sorry.” Richie apologized in a patronizing tone that was everything but sincere,

"Don't fucking call me that." Eddie was still breathing too quickly. “And warn me next time.”

Richie nodded solemnly. “I'm warning you. This is a warning”

Eddie had just enough time to realize that he had absolutely no idea what that meant before getting pushed upward. His stomach dropped when Richie's hands hoisted him in the air and released him, sending him flying across six dimensions.

“Fuck! Jesus! Bloody hell!” He hit the water again. When he resurfaced, sputtering and furious, Richie was laughing his ass off.

“We got the whole bible present, shall we call Judas as well?”

"That doesn't even make any sense." Eddie wiped water from his face, digging his fingers into his eyes a bit too hard.

Richie laughed benignly, almost inaudible compared to the mocking guffaws he let out moments prior, and Eddie hated how much he didn't hate that sound. He was still annoyed and was absolutely going to complain about this later, but beneath the irritation was something lighter, the fear began to disappear

The water held him up, enough tension lifted that it felt less like something he needed to fight and more like something he could surrender to.

Richie swam backward a few feet. “Come on.”

Eddie hesitated but followed nonetheless, be it for lack of something better to do.

They spent the next hour doing everything Eddie had initially insisted they wouldn't. They swam. They dove. They raced each other toward the Quarry bank and back again. Richie tried to teach Eddie how to float properly and got punched in the shoulder when he told him to "just relax" because that was the universal solution to every problem in Richie's life and it annoyed Eddie beyond measure.

Eventually, they found a shallow stretch of water where the rocks were rough enough not to send them sliding off and Eddie finally laid back, letting himself drift.

The sky stretched above him. The water moved beneath him. Richie floated nearby, his wet hair plastered against his forehead, glasses clutched tightly in his right hand.

Eddie attempted to smoothly steal a glance at him to no avail, getting caught right away. Richie arched a brow at him and smiled.

Eddie's face flushed, so he turned back toward the sky to hide from Richie's knowing looks.

He wasn't sure what blue was supposed to feel like, but maybe, for him, this could be it. The absence of urgency. The sensation of being carried. The strange freedom of realizing that he could simply float.

And when Richie drifted closer until their shoulders touched beneath the surface, Eddie didn't move away. He let the water carry them both.

Richie was wearing the most insufferably pleased expression Eddie had ever seen on another human being. It wasn't even particularly smug—that would have been easier to deal with, smugness was familiar territory. Eddie could argue with smugness. He could insult it, point out its nonsensical your mom jokes, and, if absolutely necessary, throw something at it.

But what the fuck did he do when Richie looked happy? His hair was dripping down his forehead, his glasses had fogged completely, and his shirt was clinging to his chest. He looked ridiculous, and Eddie should have been furious with him.

They hadn't actually gotten to blue yet, Eddie kept telling himself. Purple had been the jump. Purple had been the fear, the sudden drop in his stomach, the horrible split second where his body had reacted before his mind could catch up. Purple, as it seemed, was the rush.

Blue, Richie had explained, or would explain once he stopped being intentionally dense, was something else. And maybe he did make all of this up, but Eddie was willing to blindly follow him, at least for the most part, so who was the greater fool in the end?

They went back in, and this time, when the water reached Eddie's chest, Richie glanced over.“Blue!”

“I thought we did that already.” Eddie sighed, having had a thought and then another unrelated thought at the same time making them skyrocket off of each other and make him say the opposite of what he was thinking.

“No, that was purple.”

“Okay so purple is homicidal, got it. It's my least favorite, for the record."

"I don't really have any more plans." Richie looked toward the water as if admitting it to the rocks instead of Eddie. Maybe it was easier, confessing to someone you knew could never say anything in return. “I was thinking swim for blue. It feels like thrill, like doing something thrilling but knowing you have somewhere to land.”

Eddie's line of sight followed Richie's until it landed further out, right on the point where the water darkened over the rock border. The seiches weren't particularly violent today, rolling toward them in long, gentle swells, not enough to rise beneath their bodies or carry them away. Eddie could feel the water shifting under his feet, the ripples tickling his legs.

He looked back at Richie. “Why are all your colors about some sort of rush?”

"Because," Richie hesitated, “because color comes from motion, like the Kodachrome or Technicolor. But it's the circumstances in which that motion comes that make it differ.”

Eddie stared at him, spotting several problems with that explanation he didn't dignify with further identification. “I'm gonna pretend I understood that”

Richie grinned.“That's the spirit.”

There was no sudden drop this time, no surprise, no sensation of falling, just the gradual swish and ripple beneath them.

Eddie kicked lazily to keep himself afloat, wishing he could just climb on top of Richie and let him do the work since he was the one that got them here in the first place.

He began to understand the distinction between the two colors. Purple had been the moment before the fall, while blue was what happened afterward. It was the difference between being thrown and choosing to jump. Between panic and anticipation. Between wondering whether you'd be caught and knowing you would.

His eyes landed on Richie, then shifted away in a hurry when his heart had started doing that thing again. He didn't know what the thing was, and he didn't want to know just yet.

“Come on!” Richie rolled onto his stomach and started swimming away.

They did it again and again and again, until Eddie was no longer thinking about whether he could swim well enough or whether the rocks were too hard or whether Richie was going to pull another stunt. He was simply doing it for the sake of the experience.

Eventually, they started looking for stones and pebbles and rocks, a task that Richie took way too seriously. To him, every shell was different, every one was apparently special.

Let him paint a picture for you:

Every time Eddie would suggest putting one back because they already had its twin, Richie would inform him that they were rescuing it. Eddie would ask from what?, and Richie would hold up a particularly tiny shell smaller than his fingernail and say, from loneliness. Eddie would roll his eyes and claim he was an idiot who cared too much about trivial things, to which Richie's smile would only grow wider as he said some bullshit excuse along the lines of maybe, but that's what life's all about baby in one of his inaccurate accents, then proceed to place the shell carefully beside the others they'd collected until there were dozens, some smooth, some ridged, some tiny enough to disappear between the folds of their fingers.

Despite everything, neither of them stopped collecting them, and by the time they finally settled on the sand, Eddie was exhausted. He lay flat on his back, staring upward without doing anything about the sand seeping into his clothes.

Richie dropped beside him, close enough for their shoulders to touch. Still, neither moved.

The water kept swishing ahead of them, and Eddie listened. The sound was different now, strangely consistent. He understood, suddenly, why Richie had wanted him to experience it. Red was movement, orange was settling, green was letting go, purple was rush, and blue, he supposed, was trust.

When he lolled his head to the side, Richie was already looking at him, beaming oh-so-brightly. Eddie felt that familiar warmth spread through his chest and whipped his head back quickly enough to get whiplash.

Pebbles and granules lay scattered around them like sand and silt, catching the last of the afternoon light. Eddie picked one up, turning it over in his fingers. “I think this one's nice.”

"All yours, Spaghetti." Something about the way he said it made Eddie look at him again, Richie's eyes were brighter than ever, boring into his soul.

He was suddenly very aware of how close they were sitting, close enough that their arms touched, close enough that he could feel the warmth of Richie's skin despite the cool breeze coming off the water, close enough to notice his lips were dried due to the salty water. Close enough that, if he killed the distance between them, they'd be—

fuck!

Eddie looked back toward the water. Whatever that thought had came from, it could retreat back right to where it was. He was here for colors, that was all.

They sat like that for a while, with Richie watching the sun set over the horizon comfortably, clueless to how the thoughts he set off in Eddie's head were preventing him from doing the same.

Around them, the wind bit, the sun hid, and the water riposted against the highwall like clockwork, clashing with the painfully human inconsistency of his thundering heart and labored breaths.

Eddie had expected to be bored. Instead, he'd found himself content to sit there and listen to Richie talk, seamlessly filling the conversational gaps Eddie had left to get lost in his head. Half the time, he wasn't saying anything of substance. He'd invented names for several of the rocks, assigned personalities to others, and at one point claimed that an ugly piece of scallop shell had been through some shit and therefore deserved a place of honor.

Eddie had laughed at that. He'd laughed a lot today, more than he usually did. And every time he did, Richie looked at him. It was beginning to make Eddie increasingly nervous.

The Quarry stretched out in a larger-than-life manner, darkening by degrees as the light faded. The water was still moving, but the day's earlier brightness had softened into a fainter glow. The air had cooled against Eddie's damp hair and bare arms, and he pulled his shirt closer around his shoulders, using it as a towel-slash-blanket thing.

He didn't know why that made his chest ache. He'd spent the entire afternoon being dragged around Derry, running until his lungs hurt, lying in grass, attempting a cartwheel, singing songs, getting shoved off cliffs, and collecting lithic material.

It had been ridiculous, but also one of the best afternoons he could remember. He didn't want it to end. He didn't want to go home. Didn't want to face his mother and have to expl ain himself, didn't want to acknowledge the feelings blooming in his chest.

He wanted to stay here, beside Richie. He wanted another hour or two. He wanted tomorrow. He wanted Richie's undivided attention.

The boy in question shifted beside him.“We've still got pink left.”

Eddie looked at him.“What's it like?"

"I dunno, pink's kinda tough." Richie sat up.He stared toward the water for a moment, considering the question more seriously than he had any of the others. “If you ask anyone, they'd probably tell you that pi nk usually represents love, and kinds of quiet and soft stuff. But I say it usually just comes without any thrill, when someone does something sweet and my heart puts its hand on its cheek and coos. Lots of other people say it's, like, love and marriage and finding your soulmate too, but I haven't felt that way much, it usually comes alongside other colors and my focus is never really on it.”

Eddie listened, something in him had gone very still, since Richie sounded different. Eddie had heard him say countless ridiculous things over the years. He'd heard him make up stories, exaggerate injuries, invent insults, imitate teachers, and say things so stupid that he sometimes wondered whether the words were formed by a completely separate person living inside his head.

This wasn't like that, Richie was trying to explain something he didn't quite understand himself.

Eddie suspected that he understood why. To Richie, colors weren't just colors. They were feelings and moments and memories and things he had noticed only because he'd been paying too much attention.

“So you'd like to feel it on its own?” The words slipped out of Eddie subconsciously.

Richie looked back. "Yeah."

Eddie's heart began beating faster, swelling in a million different ways and growing and soaring and filling with unexplainable new sensations, pumping in a hopeful cadence. “And you're aware that means love?”

Richie nodded eagerly, eyes the size of the moon, shining impossibly bright and ornate with anticipation.

Eddie could feel his pulse in his fingertips. He didn't know what possessed him to say what he did. Maybe it was the fact that Richie had spent hours teaching him how to experience things he couldn't see. Maybe it was because Richie had looked at him so many times today that Eddie had finally run out of excuses for pretending he hadn't noticed. Or maybe he just simply knew. “How do you feel about letting me show you instead?”

Richie blinked in rapid succession. “How would that work? I mean, go ahead and march to the beat of your own drum and stuff but I don't see how you could get it on your own. If you could see colors this entire time and just did this to take the piss out of me, that's really not cool of you, Eds. I was baring my soul for you there.”

Eddie stared at him. Richie's expression was genuinely confused, even though Eddie had thought the implication was obvious.

Apparently not, he felt heat rise into his face and his mouth going dry.

This was a terrible idea, probably the worst one he'd had all day. It was a catastrophe, an astronomically bad idea, a nuclearly bad idea, an idea that stemmed from Eddie being down so bad NASA would stop exploring space just to dedicate all its time to searching the depths of the ocean in order to find which abyss he'd pulled it from.

But there was something about the way Richie was looking at him that made Eddie feel his own nerves climbing higher and higher, every sensible part of his brain screaming at him to stop before he did something irreversible.

Perhaps he just had to let it happen.

“So? Shut up and kiss me so you can feel it, goddamn it! I thought the implication was obvious but now I'm starting to feel like I got all the wrong signs from today and I don't…” Eddie immediately wanted to throw himself into the ocean when he noticed Richie's eyes had widened past a normal point.

He had said it. He had put it out in the open for everyone to hear. He had said it and there was no taking it back now, it was real. He could already feel his face burning, and he looked away, suddenly fascinated by a particularly ordinary-looking stone near his knee.

Then Richie said his name and Eddie glanced at him, his expression having changed completely. Gone was the grin, gone was the teasing, gone was the smug look, and Richie looked unsure.

Eddie knew the feeling. He knew the feeling because he'd spent the entire afternoon feeling it.

He shifted closer and just like that, Eddie could feel his breath tingling his face. Usually, he'd push his palm flat against his face and tell him to chew some gum, but that instinct was long gone, eviscerated if he must.

Richie licked his lips and Eddie's eyes subconsciously fixed themselves on his mouth, watching tentatively as they curled to form a sentence that knocked all the air out of his lungs.

“Yeah, well, I think you should shut up and let me kiss you.”

Eddie froze like a deer caught in headlights, the world around them seeming to go still. Uncertainty forced an anxious laugh out of him, nervous and tinny and completely unlike the laughter he'd been giving Richie all afternoon.

The boy in question smiled at him fondly, all the joking seeping out of his expression. “Okay?”

Eddie nodded eagerly. “Okay.”

Richie leaned in slowly enough for Eddie to have plenty of time to change his mind. But he didn't. Be it the recent events or simply because it was Richie initiating the kiss, not a single bone in his body still had fight in it. Maybe later on, the next morning, a week from now, he'd regret all of this, but that timeline seemed so far away and so dull and foggy and unimportant that he didn't spare it a second though, letting it shrivel up and die beside all his doubt and hesitancy.

Their noses bumped, and Eddie pulled back instinctively. They stared at each other for a bit, but then Richie started laughing and ruined the moment.

Eddie covered his face. “This is going terribly. We nearly headbutted.”

“it's alright.” Richie said with surprising ease, his smile widening impossibly further. “Try again?”

Eddie lowered his hands, looked at him, and nodded. This time, they operated more carefully. Their lips touched, barely, it lasted less than a second.

There was no revelation, no eruption of feelings, no inward transformation, no choir of angels descending from the sky to inform Eddie that he'd solved the mystery of the electromagnetic spectrum. It just felt right. It felt so, so right. Like this was what they ought to have been doing from the very beginning. And sure, maybe it was sloppy and oh-so-very awkward, but those were overshadowed by the feeling of a jigsaw falling into place.

Eddie felt his chest tighten, and he looked down at the stones. One of them had fallen from his hand, so he busied himself with picking it up, though his fingers were trembling slightly and that made the task impossibly harder. “Is that pink?”

"Sure." Richie looked at him questioningly, but didn't correct or rectify him.“It can be whatever you want it to be.”

Eddie nodded. He looked out at the water, acutely aware of the fact that he still couldn't see it. Not the way Richie could. Not the way Bev and Stan and Bill and literally everyone else could.

But then Richie leaned forward to kill the distance between them and he didn't think that mattered anymore, now he could feel it, and that had to count for something.

Their lips met and danced around each other experimentatively until they found their cadence. At some point, Eddie shifted closer, hovering on top of Richie. At some point, the other boy trapped his lower lip between his teeth and slid his hands around his middle. At some point, Richie started mumbling incoherent sentences into Eddie's mouth, not once breaking apart for air. At some point, Eddie let his lips part invitingly and Richie seized the invitation immediately. At some point, time seemed to blur and hours could've passed with them sat just like this, drowning in each other and forgetting everything else.

When they finally parted, breathless and satiated and gasping for air, Richie nudged his shoulder and their hands ended up resting beside each other in the sand. But still, they didn't care enough to put respectable space between them, not even when Richie's pinky hooked tentatively around Eddie's, not even when they curled their fingers together and let them stay like that all the way back home.