Chapter Text
“It wasn’t that bad.”
Eddie raises an incredulous brow. “‘Wasn’t that bad?’ I’m sorry, were we even at the same party? Richie, Bev punched a guy. Their alcohol was shitty, and you smoked weed with some old weirdo—who I’m pretty sure has killed at least one person in their life. I think Stan was throwing up in the bathroom before the police came and shut it down.”
“Again, I’ve been to worse parties,” Richie replies, sending an acorn tumbling down the asphalt as he kicks it. “At least the cops didn’t catch us, no thanks to you. Stood there like a deer in headlights.”
Eddie stops for a moment to collect himself, taking in a deep breath of the early autumn air before he loses it and screeches at Richie in the middle of the suburbs at one in the morning. It’s probably not a good idea to stop, since they’re walking down the middle of the road, but it’s not like they were being safe in the first place. Besides, it’s Derry. No one else is out this late.
“Excuse me for being scared about the fucking police catching me at a party riddled with underage drinking and other illegal activities.”
“That’s half the fun!”
Eddie rolls his eyes and continues forward, so fueled by frustration that his short legs carry him ahead of Richie. Then again, Richie is pretty fucking gone and walking in zig zags. “Now I have to walk in the freezing cold all the way back to my house, where there's a possibility my mom is waiting up to kill me for sneaking out.”
“It’s not that cold.”
Eddie looks back to where Richie’s casually strolling, dressed in jean shorts and a god-awful patterned shirt that looked like they could be the sheets on Chuck-e-Cheese’s death bed.
“It’s the middle of the night—in fucking September dipshit!” Eddie snaps, flailing his arms before shoving them back into his cozy cardigan as soon as his hands feel the chill. “Maybe if you weren’t so fucking blind you could tell that my breath is literally visible.”
“I guess not all of us could be blessed with being so hot and sexy that it keeps us warm,” Richie quips, skipping clumsily until he’s caught up to Eddie. The fucking bastard winks at him once he plants both of his feet on the ground with a resounding slap against the pavement.
Eddie flushes slightly but ignores it and continues his ranting. “On top of all that, I’m covered in sticky alcohol. Thanks for spilling your drink on me, by the way.”
He says it sarcastically, but Richie just grins, the way he does when he’s gonna make some idiotic sexual joke. Which means it’s the expression he wears 80% of the time. “My pleasure. I was sort of hoping it would get you out of them, but alas, fate is a cruel mistress.”
“Shut up Trashmouth,” Eddie grumbles and shoves him to the side lightly, but the combination of Richie’s lanky legs and the fact that they were weighed down by two beers, four shots of vodka, and whatever was rolled up in that murder tainted joint causes him to fall on his ass.
Instead of being pissed, Richie lets out a booming laugh and reaches out for Eddie with an outstretched hand. “Help me up, Eddie Baby?”
Eddie casts him a glance, Richie pouting up at him, puppy dog eyes and all.
“Don’t really feel like it,” Eddie finally answers and keeps walking, the orange autumn leaves crunching satisfyingly under his feet.
Richie stumbles a bit as he pops back up and says, “Ungrateful. I’m escorting you back home and this is how you repay me?”
Eddie whips around. “Escorting me? No, you wouldn’t let me drive your car to the party!”
“I may be irresponsible, but I’m not gonna let you drink and drive.” Richie shakes his head, catching up to Eddie using his long, lanky legs. “You’re already a chaotic enough driver.”
“I’m a safe driver!”
“The Johnson’s mailbox disagrees.”
“Whatever,” Eddie scoffs, stomping on one of the leaves, “I didn’t even get drunk. I took that one shot with all of you and that was it.”
“Ugh, c’mon! You were supposed to let loose! It’s our last year of high school.” Richie throws his arm around Eddie, pulling him closer. “Our last hurrah together in the shithole that is Derry, Maine. Live a little, Eds.”
The comment is innocent, but it strikes deep into Eddie’s chest. School just started a few weeks ago, so it might not feel like it, but in a handful of months they’ll graduate. And who knows what’ll be next for them. If they’ll ever see each other again.
Eddie dares to look up at Richie, who grins back at him. He watches the way the moonlight glares off Richie’s huge glasses and the brown bloodshot eyes underneath them, droopy from being high and the stress of working late on AP Calculus projects. How the frames slide down the curve of his nose and the freckles that call it home. Eddie would never admit it, but he has become an expert on all things Richie over the years, mapping out every dip and crevice across his skin, to the contents of his very soul.
So, the thought of Richie, and all the things that make him who he is, disappearing from Eddie’s life in just a matter of months? It terrifies Eddie.
Obviously, he can’t say this, so he does the only logical thing—violently wriggles out from underneath Richie’s warm grasp and continues their verbal sparring match.
“I am living a little, thank you very much. I don’t need to get fucked up to have a good time.”
“Yeah, you need to just get fucked.”
Eddie scoffs, though it’s partially towards himself for setting up such an obvious Richie joke without realizing it.
“Whatever, at least I don’t have a shit ton of unchecked sexually transmitted diseases,” he says.
“As if your mom would let me dick her down every night without being clean.”
“Oh my god, beep fucking beep , Trashmouth.”
Richie howls with laughter, throwing his head back. The weed and liquor in his system make him so delirious that his laughs become silent, tears forming at the edge of his eyes. Eddie looks around nervously to see if anyone is going to burst out of their house and yell at them to shut up.
Once Richie calms down, a comfortable silence falls over the pair, chirping cicadas and the sound of a distant owl the only sign of life for miles. Eddie cranes his neck up to look up at the stars twinkling above them, though his gaze is ripped away as he watches Richie try to walk along the yellow dotted lines. He moves over a bit so Richie can spread his arms out to keep balanced. It’s a miserable attempt because he’s inebriated.
He looks so stupid, and he’s being so stupid, so Eddie tries to focus on his sneakers, but then Richie giggles to himself, and the sound brings his senses right back to the taller boy.
Eddie’s so distracted that it takes him a minute or two to realize they’ve passed Richie’s street.
“Hey,” Eddie tries to get Richie’s attention, but the other boy is too in his own head. He smacks the outstretched hand that’s closest to him, “Hey, Rich.”
Richie lazily turns his head towards him. “What’s up Eduardo?”
“That’s not my name. You missed your turn back to your house,” he points out, nodding back a couple streets and slowing to a stop.
Richie pauses and lowers his arms, standing across from him. The streetlight behind him shines a yellow glow over his frame, almost angelic.
“Oh, come on Eds.” Richie smiles, taking a small step forward. “We do this too often for you to play dumb.”
Eddie’s cheeks turn as red as the solo cups that had littered the lawn of the house party.
Richie referring to sneaking into Eddie’s room late at night as a ‘this’ unfurled the knot of fondness in his stomach that had been twisting up all night. He knows there’s no intentional underlying meaning to Richie’s words, he’s intoxicated and just trying to tease Eddie. Besides, Richie climbing through the window and under his covers has become commonplace at this point. It didn’t mean anything.
Yet, he struggles to find a response, Richie’s eyes glimmering with mischief and staring at him. A gust of wind picks up and sends the leaves rustling underneath their feet, blowing down the street. The chill brings him back long enough to let him return to their carefully crafted script, retorting with a weak, “Don’t call me Eds.”
Richie snorts. “See, you do know our routine! My feet are getting tired from all this walking though. You think when we get to yours, your mom can give ‘em a massage?”
This is familiar. This is good. As good as Richie joking about his mom for the tenth time that night can be, at least. In fact, his brain gets working well enough to supply a thousand angry responses waiting to be spat out. But it’s still too much. It’s too hard for him right now to be truly pissed at Richie, and he can’t get wrapped up in another conversation with him. They’ll just end up at something else that leaves Eddie blushing.
“Just shut up until we get to my room, idiot.”
Surprisingly, Richie listens and lets the conversation drop once more. He hums softly to himself as they stroll side by side. Eddie tries to place the tune Richie’s repeating but fails, figuring it’s some of his weird obscure hipster bullshit. Richie keeps accidentally walking into Eddie from time to time, giggling and bracing himself on Eddie’s shoulder, the pads of his fingers barely brushing Eddie’s neck as he steadies himself.
Finally, they make it to his house, the front lawn littered with red and orange leaves. He can see that the living room light is on and tenses up, but his mom often falls asleep watching evening game shows and soaps so he prays that’s the case.
He motions Richie to stay put until he checks that the coast is clear, so Richie plops himself on the curb, resting his elbows atop his knees and tapping his feet impatiently.
Eddie carefully opens the side gate to the backyard, patting himself on the back for remembering to sweep before he snuck out so they wouldn’t crunch underneath his steps. He slowly opens the door off the kitchen, peeking his head in to see that his mom had, in fact, fallen asleep in her recliner, her grating snores and laugh tracks filling the house.
Doubling back, Eddie finds that Richie’s been keeping himself busy by doing the productive work of ripping apart his mom’s favorite flowers, and Eddie pokes his leg with his shoe to get his attention. Richie’s head snaps up to Eddie’s and he throws the shredded petals unceremoniously on the ground before following.
The door creaks the second time around, and Eddie cringes, watching in horror as his mom shifts slightly. Richie places a hand on Eddie’s shoulder and leans forward to catch a peek. A moment later, the loud snores begin again, and Eddie allows himself to let out a breath of relief before closing the door.
There’s some commercial for a sex hotline playing on the television, and Richie turns to Eddie with a wide grin and waggles his eyebrows suggestively, opening his mouth to say something stupid. Eddie puts a finger to his lips to shush him, hoping that his own intensely furrowed brows convey the severity of the situation. Richie frowns childishly before continuing their slow journey up the stairs and into his room.
Once they arrive, Eddie flicks the lights on, and Richie strolls in behind him, looking severely out of place in the neat and cozy bedroom. He moves past Eddie and flops onto the bed, immediately mussing up all the sheets. Eddie lets out a sigh as he plugs in his string lights and fishes out some pajamas out of his closet. He grabs Richie’s own spare pajamas out of its usual spot and tosses them over, hitting him in the face.
“I’m going to take a shower. Try to behave and be quiet,” Eddie warns as he picks up a towel.
Richie takes the clothes off his face to reveal a smirk. “Or what?”
“I’ll fucking smother you in your sleep, asshole,” he deadpans, leaving his door slightly ajar as he pads over to the bathroom to the sound of Richie’s laughter.
He shuts the door behind him and turns on the shower, listening to the pipes rattle and screech as the water warms. After shedding off his alcohol covered clothes, he brushes his teeth and combs through his hair, which has grown curlier over the years. His mother has given up on trying to make him keep it slicked back and neat, though he can tell it still annoys her. Good.
He steps in the shower, enjoying the way the droplets melt away the tension in his back and wash off the lingering anxiety of the night.
Eddie hates parties, not that he’s been to very many. They’re too chaotic, full of so many things that could go wrong and loud drunken teenagers. People his age are already awful when they’re sober and expected to behave decently at school. At least people are less inclined to push him around, now that Bowers and his friends have graduated, but he hears the whispers and feels the dirty looks. Sometimes, the absence of any sort of interaction is louder than anything else.
He really doesn’t have any other friends than The Losers, and they’re all still each other’s closest friends, but they’re… better at socializing. Better at letting go of all their anxieties and going with the flow. Eddie can’t do that. But he also doesn’t want to hold his friends back while he’s being a socially inept coward, so he encourages them to go dance and drink and have fun.
That night, he watched as Bill, Mike, Bev, and Stan played beer pong, cheering them on. It was fun, but then Ben whisked away Bev. He knew how much Ben liked Beverly and had the suspicion she returned his feelings, so he wasn’t going to interrupt them. And he definitely didn’t dare go into the mass of sweaty teenagers grinding and making out that the other three boys had disappeared into.
Sometime after grabbing a soda from the kitchen, he found himself inadvertently trailing after Richie. First, the taller boy just kept passing through the spot where Eddie claimed a part of the wall to lean on. He watched as Richie chugged a beer with some junior or passionately sang along to whatever song was playing on the speakers, entertaining the small crowd that had formed.
Later, the heat of the party became suffocating, and Eddie needed to step away from all the noise, so he found himself wandering out back, where Richie was standing around with the skater stoner kids.
Richie had caught Eddie’s eye and smiled softly, sending him a quick wink before he took a pull from a joint. Eddie now flushes in the shower as he thinks embarrassedly at how that had knocked him off kilter, how he had rushed back inside and ignored Richie’s nod of invitation to join the group.
Of course, Richie ran into him again, when Eddie serendipitously found a chair to rest at. Richie tried to sit on the arm but lost his balance and spilled the rest of his beer all over Eddie. Reasonably, Eddie had screeched at him and then made his way to the bathroom, where Stan was throwing up and hadn’t quite closed the door all the way, Mike rubbing his back soothingly.
At his own back, Richie was trying to apologize for spilling his drink all over Eddie, but then they heard shouts that the police showed up. Eddie panicked and froze, so Richie grabbed his hand and dragged him through the house and out the back gate.
They’d ran a block before Eddie realized they were still holding hands. And that Ben, who was the DD and supposed to take everyone home in Bill’s car, was gone and not picking up his phone. Thus, walking back home in the biting autumn chill.
Eddie finishes up his shower quickly, not trusting Richie to be alone in his state. He tugs on some shorts and his favorite hoodie—technically, it’s Richie’s that once found home on Eddie’s floor after a sleepover. It’s from one of the science camps Richie was sent off to the summers in between middle school. The edges of the sleeves are worn from Eddie always tugging it on, because it was big and warm, and because it reminds him of late nights spent laughing in his bed and dozing until early afternoon. Because, though he wouldn’t admit it, it reminds him of Richie, and makes him feel like the other boy is right there even when he’s not.
He grabs Richie’s spare toothbrush, which is an awful shade of fluorescent green. There’s no way Richie will remember to do it himself right now, or even want to. Eddie puts some minty fresh toothpaste on the bristles, extremely worn down and frayed from how furiously Richie brushed. Ironic, since his father is a dentist. Though, Richie would be the type to do it just to get a rise out of him. Either way, next time he went to the store to pick up meds he’d have to remember to buy a new one.
Walking back into his room, Eddie finds that his distrust in Richie was not misplaced. He had changed into the shirt Eddie had thrown at him but decided to just wear some boxers instead of the sweats. Beside him is an empty bag of sour gummy bears, the leftover sugar falling out onto the blankets.
“Heathen,” Eddie chastises, walking over and handing Richie his toothbrush.
Richie gives him a shit-eating grin, a piece of red gummy stuck between his teeth.
Eddie gags. “Ugh! Gross!”
Richie shrugs and rolls off the bed before brushing his teeth as he paces around the room. Sure enough, the boy is way too aggressive, taking ‘killing germs’ to a whole new meaning. Although, Eddie wasn’t sure Richie was cleaning his teeth well—it’s way too erratic and he ends up with half of the toothpaste outside his mouth, making it look like he has rabies.
Richie checks his reflection in the mirror near Eddie’s door and looks back to him, catching him watching. A smirk grows on his face. “Naughty, naughty mind, Eddie.”
Eddie raises a confused brow before realizing that Richie thought he was thinking of something else, something entirely inappropriate. In response he picks up one of Richie’s sneakers, which are this close to completely falling apart, and lobs it at him, eliciting a cocky laugh from Richie as he rushes out the room to spit out his toothpaste. Eddie instantly regrets touching it though, remembering how gross and stinky Richie is, and immediately squirts on some hand sanitizer.
He cleans up the bed and settles under the large pile of warm and fuzzy blankets, his back up against the wall. A few moments later Richie returns, turning off the lights, leaving only the moonlight to illuminate the bedroom.
Richie slides in beside him, taking off his glasses and setting them on the end table. It’s silent for a moment, and then Eddie feels Richie’s toes poke his own feet.
“Thanks,” Richie whispers, shifting so that they’re facing each other, “for letting me stay.”
Eddie nods, shimmying further under the covers so half his face is hidden. Almost every time the lights turn off and they cram in the shitty twin bed, Richie seems to become a different person. Maybe not different, per say, but the stupid jokes and teasing die down, the guard of nonchalance dropping. Eddie feels lucky to see this side of Richie, soft and caring—vulnerable. It’s not like he hates the other side of Richie, he secretly enjoys their constant banter and his dumb jokes. No, it’s that this side is rare, and it’s something beautiful. Here, safe in the soft flannel sheets, it feels like they are the only two souls for miles, and they can be themselves, and that is terrifying and reassuring all at once.
“I’m gonna miss this. When we go off to college,” Richie admits, the weight behind his words telling Eddie he felt the same about their shared nights.
“Yeah,” Eddie agrees softly, “me too.”
Richie smiles. “Maybe not the fact that you hog all the fucking blankets, but yeah. I’ll miss it.”
“It’s my bed!” Eddie argues, but there’s nothing angry in his tone.
“And you snore.”
“Shut the fuck up, no I don’t.”
Richie props his head up with his hand and scoots an inch closer. “Yes you do. But it’s a cute little snore.”
He uses his other hand to boop Eddie lightly on the nose, and it scrunches up at the contact. Eddie’s glad half of his face is covered by the blankets, because he can feel his cheeks burning up.
“So cute.” Richie grins.
God, Richie must be more gone off the weed and alcohol than Eddie had originally thought.
“Yeah, well, you’re always hitting me with your fucking octopus limbs in the middle of the night.”
“Octopus?”
Eddie nods. “You’re always moving around in your sleep and wrapping your arms and legs around me.”
There’s a beat, as a sly smile spreads over Richie’s face, and then suddenly, the little space left between them on the twin bed is crossed by Richie as he leans forward and lies on top of Eddie.
“Get off, dickhead!” Eddie struggles to say, the weight of Richie on his body cutting off his air. He closes his eyes and tries to push him off.
Richie laughs hysterically and narrowly avoids Eddie kneeing him. He obliges, and at the loss of contact Eddie opens his eyes to see Richie hovering over him, a hand braced on the headboard. Eddie tries to catch his breath, and so does Richie from laughing so hard. It’s hard though, for a different reason, when he’s hyper aware of how their legs are entangled, the way Richie’s other hand rests on top of the skin where Eddie’s hoodie had ridden up as they moved around. Time feels suspended as Eddie watches the way Richie’s pinkish lips hang slightly open before returning to meet the gaze of brown eyes.
Somehow, it’s both far too long and far too short, but Richie grabs a fistful of blankets and rolls off Eddie, settling back to his side.
“Night Eds.”
Eddie blinks back at him, his brain still trying to process the moment they just shared. Was it even a moment? Whatever transpired, it made Eddie feel both anxious and good at the same time, like staring down the edge of the cliff at the quarry before jumping off into the cool water and letting it wash over him. He’s unsure what to do with the weight in his chest, and the fact that his brain is going too slow and too fast at the same time. It’s exhaustion. The party and walking home and being around Richie. It was too much and he just needed to go the fuck to sleep.
“Night Richie.”