Chapter Text
When Eddie had made the difficult-but-not-as-difficult-as-it-maybe-should-have-been decision to leave his wife of twelve years, after months of lunch-break phone calls with Bev telling him over and over again that no, marriage counselling is not going to fix this, you need to get the fuck out of your mother's metaphorical house and get dicked down, or maybe dick someone down, who am I to judge , he had thought for a brief, exhilarating moment that this was it. That Hollywood moment where everything changes, the turning point, the call to action. The instrumental crescendo builds up, up, up, and the audience holds its breath, and the hero tears himself from the relative comfort of his old life and sets out to save the world, or his friends, or himself.
Eighteen months later, the hero sits in his white-walled, impersonal office on the sixth floor of a Manhattan high-rise and tabs through the same fucking spreadsheet he was looking at around the time he left Myra. He is wearing the tie he wore on his first day as a separated man, not quite single yet because a divorce takes time, unfortunately, way too much time, and instead of being a symbol of his independence it is still just a fucking tie. Navy blue with silver stripes, made of real silk, a nice tie but still a fucking tie. He didn't burn it like Bev had suggested, because it cost him forty dollars and Saheli from HR had once told him it complemented his skin tone, which he scoffed at then but has since turned over in his head a million times, carried in the palm of his hand like a fragile thing, the only compliment anyone who wasn't Bev had paid him in years. Myra's never counted because they came with the suffocating implication that no one else would ever feel that way about him, that no one ever could, whether she meant it like that or not.
The spreadsheet has taken on new dimensions in the year and a half since the summer of 2017 — an awful, humid summer that had crawled through the city like a nightmarish, slobbering creature, its breath a hot gust that smelled of garbage and melting rubber, which made Eddie's grand escape from matrimony all the more anticlimactic. What he needed then was a light summer breeze, clear skies and a sense of freedom, and what he got was pit stains and adult acne from how oily the humidity made him.
So, the spreadsheet. It is a sprawling thing, with twenty-two different sheets, and detailed diagrams he has spent maybe a little too much time on, colour-coded everything and a frankly astonishing amount of 8 point sized comments on each page. But no client has ever been mad at him for being too thorough. In fact, several returning clients have requested Mr. Kaspbrak specifically for this reason, and as much as working here makes him feel dead inside these days, he gets a little kick out of knowing he is the best at what he does.
If this was a work-related spreadsheet, whichever company he was making it for would likely request him again next time. But it's not. A work related spreadsheet, that is.
Bev calls it Ed's Declassified Midlife Crisis Guide. Eddie calls it just being thorough, thank you very much.
He would love to be able to say he is doing this on company time. Sticking it to the man, and all that — wait, is he the man? But unfortunately he isn't the kind of person to slack off at work, no matter how much he might want to. He is the kind of person who finds the idea of taking more than his usual two coffee breaks a little overwhelming, and no amount of getting divorced and throwing himself face-first into a midlife crisis can make him not be that person anymore.
So instead he is meticulously adding hyperlinks to the sheet dedicated to gay venues in New York on his lunch break. The tupperware box containing his leftover zoodles and vegetarian bolognese sauce from the night before stands half-eaten to his right, still lukewarm fifteen minutes after being blitzed to near-death in the office microwave down the hall. It's not a particularly inspiring meal; in his 'Nutrition’ section of the spreadsheet there is a little 5/10 next to the link to the recipe. He thinks he will probably keep finding bits of oregano in his teeth all day and he considers going to the bathroom to brush them, but the idea of someone walking in on that is simply too mortifying. Brushing your teeth is a bit like baring your throat — vulnerable, intimate. Not something he wants to do in the office bathroom, although he does carry a toothbrush and a small bottle of solid toothpaste tablets with him pretty much wherever he goes.
Bev told him it's a little slutty when she found out about that.
"It's not for sex! It's not a sexy toothbrush!" Eddie had shrieked. "Nothing slutty about being prepared."
She had looked at him with barely concealed amusement. "I think it's a little slutty. It will come in handy on a one-night stand."
"There will be no one-night stands."
The toothbrush is for emergencies. Anything could happen to him, especially in New York. What if he gets snowed in at work and has to stay overnight? What if he accidentally orders a garlic-heavy dish at lunch and has a meeting afterwards? What if he ends up in a hostage situation on his weekly run to the bank?
There is nothing slutty about his toothbrush. He is only being sensible.
And besides, there really aren't any one-night stands in his future. And this is not because of an inherent disdain for the concept of casual sex, it's more the fact that he is a forty year old workaholic with no social connections beyond his childhood best friend and Mrs. Nair, his elderly neighbour who keeps chickens in her apartment and invites him to dinner once a week because he reminds her of her dead son.
No, really, Eddie would love to have the toothbrush for slutty reasons. He actually wants nothing more than to say to Bev, Yes, I keep this on me because of all the dick I'm getting.
He copy and pastes a link to the website of a gay bar in Brooklyn into the spreadsheets and then saves and exits out of the document. The digital clock on his desk reads 12:53pm. He stabs at his zoodles unenthusiastically, takes another bite, and wishes he had just cooked real spaghetti.
At 12:54pm, his phone vibrates where it lies face down on the dark wood of the desk. It's the kind of vibration that is generally reserved for messages, not the quieter one he gets for all the unnecessary push notifications he is bombarded with and doesn't know how to turn off. He stares at it for a good twenty seconds. Bev is currently on a plane somewhere above Virginia on her way back from some trade fair in Atlanta, and there is really no one else who would text him at any time of the day, but particularly before 5pm.
He picks the phone up warily and turns it over in his hand, unlocks it with a touch of his fingerprint. It's a Grindr notification. He didn't know that he still had Grindr, had actually been certain that he deleted it during a late night breakdown last month, but no, the orange icon sits innocently on the second page of his home screen.
The bar at the top of his screen tells him he has one (1) new message. He thumbs across to open it, feeling more than a little suspicious.
Dick_Toze [12:54pm]
nice suit, you a wall street bro?
Eddie blinks at the message and tries to remember what pictures he uploaded on his profile. None with his face visible, that’s for sure. A gym selfie, he thinks, one that starts below the neck. He must have let Bev talk him into uploading a suit picture as well — she said it would make him look sophisticated. Eddie thinks it makes him look like he’s trying too hard.
He taps on Dick_Toze’s profile. Just one picture, no face visible but tantalisingly shirtless and unfortunately exactly the kind of guy Eddie dreams of at night. Broad-shoulders and a slight curve to his chest, a dusting of curly dark hair all the way from the sternal notch to the waistband of his shorts. Long fingers on the edge of the frame, and a veiny forearm. A soft, protruding stomach, not necessarily chubby but — something. It’s something.
He scrolls down.
Dick_Toze, 41
Online now
1.3 miles away
here for a good time, not a long time. getting laughed at professionally
Height: 6’1
Body type: Average
Position: Bottom Vers
Relationship Status: Single
Looking for: Chat, Dates, Right Now
Accept NSFW Pics: Yes Please
Meet at: My Place, Your Place, Bar
HIV Status: Negative
Eddie scrolls back up to look at the picture one more time, his gaze getting stuck on the lovely curve of the guy’s shoulder, the sharp lines of his collarbones, then he exits out of the app. Not for lack of interest, not because he’s scared but because— because he has work to do.
Yes. He has work to do.
It isn’t until that night in the quiet cold of his apartment that he thinks of the message again. He is lounging on his sofa and the living room flickers with the light of the TV, reruns of some soap he’s never seen. While he watches the colours change on his white ceiling, he strokes a lazy palm along his dick, through two layers of fabric. It’s that late-night warmth in his belly, easy enough to ignore but even easier to indulge in. He lets his thoughts wander. That isn’t something that comes natural to him unless he’s high — which he is now. Just barely, a hazy body high from half a joint smoked out of his kitchen window.
Like most good things in his life, it was Bev who first got him into weed. She taught him how to roll properly when he visited her in her college dorm in Brooklyn, just a few miles from where he lives now. Back when they were nineteen and she was studying at FIT, when he still lived with his mother, terrified to leave her. He spent a week with her that winter, squeezed into her tiny single bed and shivering through a storm, and in the daytime they stomped through the thick snow so she could show him her new home. A year later he had followed her to New York, the first thing he ever did for himself and, for a long time, the last.
He actually still gets his weed through Bev now because he finds the idea of meeting some stranger on a street corner for it very off-putting and Bev is good friends with her dealer, some woman named Leila who has eighteen piercings and makes a mean banana bread. Leila insists on calling Eddie ‘buddy’ and keeps inviting him to her monthly poker nights, and in the ten years he’s known her he has never once gone. This is probably at least part of the reason that Eddie hasn’t made a friend in twenty-five years while Bev seems to pick them up wherever she goes — his utter inability to get out of his head long enough to say yes to something ridiculous, like a poker night with his best friend’s drug dealer.
When he was still with Myra he only smoked every few months, whenever the stars aligned and he got to spend a night at Bev’s, usually when Myra was visiting her sister upstate. Now he smokes a handful of days a week, though still not excessively. It’s a habit, sure, and one he might struggle to break, but he is not a stoner by any definition of the word. It helps him unwind (god knows he needs it) and it’s something to do on nights like this, the slow and lonely ones that go on and on and on with no end in sight. Nights where all there is for him to do is put on his running gear and run down to Shore Road Park, catch his breath on a bench overlooking the bridge, to pick up speed on the way back until all he can hear is the pulsing rush of blood in his ears, the pounding of his feet on the pavement, and then to roll a joint in his dressing gown after a hot shower.
Nights like this one, where there’s only reruns on TV and in his head, a familiar spiral into some anxious abyss. Weed helps to knock him off that course, helps to settle his stomach.
It’s almost midnight now and he should really go to bed, but he is already halfway hard and so he might as well, right? He pushes his sweatpants down enough so he can get his fist around his dick and gives it a few light strokes to get it from halfway to fully there. Shifts into a more comfortable position, his neck propped up against the sofa cushion, and tries to think of vaguely sexy things, combing his brain for inspiration and getting stuck on the image of a hairy chest, broad shoulders and thick arms fresh in his memory.
He hadn’t really thought about Dick_Toze (and what the fuck is up with that name, honestly) since his lunch break, distracted by a truly annoying client file that cost him his second coffee break of the day, but now he lets himself go there. Imagines what he might look like outside the frame, thinks of hairy thighs and stubble, or a beard, maybe, a beard might be nice, thinks of the swell of his chest. His breath picks up, heat building low in his abdomen.
He abruptly feels a little creepy about it.
“Jesus,” he whispers into the quiet room, accompanied only by the low murmur of the television.
He hasn’t even messaged the guy back. Is he really so desperate that a stranger with a vaguely attractive torso expressing some form of interest in him can fuel an entire orgasm?
Probably, he concedes and reaches blindly for his phone on the coffee table. The screen is too bright in the low light of the living room and he squints as he struggles to adjust it to a less blinding level. With sweaty palms, he opens Grindr and goes onto the chat with Dick_Toze.
The little, smug message still sits there, unchanged. You a wall street bro?
Eddie types out ‘ Sort of. You into that? ’ and questions his sanity. Does he need this? Can’t he just go to one of the many gay bars he has listed in his spreadsheet and pick up some guy who actually has a face? Bev knows men! Bev even knows gay men other than him! She has offered to set him up more than once over the past year, trying to bring him around to the idea of a blind date.
But Eddie doesn’t want a blind date. Eddie doesn’t want romance. Eddie wants to have sex with some guy and never see him again, and then maybe have sex with a different guy and never see him again, either. There was a time for romance in his life and he blew it by marrying a woman, despite every fibre of his being straining against the wrongness of it.
He hits send.
Then promptly shoves his phone into the tight space between sofa cushions, squeezes his eyes shut and breathes deeply — in and out, in and out. Calming, but not calming enough.
His chest coils tight with anxiety and he allows himself to spiral as he counts down from ten. Four, three, two, one, and he gets up from the couch. His erection has flagged counterproductively, and the leftover half of his joint calls to him from its ashtray bed on the kitchen windowsill. He pulls his sweatpants back up.
He drags his feet on the way, socks on red oak floor, and hoists himself up on the kitchen counter by the sink so he can lean out of the window. He holds the joint between his lips and strikes a match, courtesy of Bev incessantly bugging him about disposable lighters being bad for the environment, and the first toke burns down his throat.
Below his window the world is wrapped in an orange glow from rows of street lamps lining the sidewalk. An old man in a ratty hoodie walks his dog, a huge beast of an animal that stops to growl at a fire hydrant, and further down a group of teenagers stand huddled together on the steps outside of one of the brownstones. The sound of their laughter drifts up through his window and settles deep in his stomach.
Over the past seventeen years, Eddie has cycled through every stage of emotion you can experience living in New York. When he first followed Bev here he was wide-eyed and overwhelmed, jumping at the screech of the subway tracks and every blaring of a horn. Back then he lived with her in the cramped, noisy apartment that was too small for six people, and all of their roommates were varying levels of unpleasant and loud, and worse yet were they people they invited over.
He nearly gave up, then. Every night his mother begged him to come home and every night he stared at the damp-mottled ceiling above, listened to the raucous voices and thump-thump of the bass coming from upstairs, downstairs, all around him, and in those first few weeks he packed and unpacked his bags countless times. He even made it as far as the Amtrak to Boston, once, but he got off at Stamford, waited an hour for the train back to New York and hated himself immensely.
It got better eventually. Bev made friends with a woman named Summer who had filthy-rich parents and owned a townhouse overlooking Prospect Park. Although Summer barely tolerated Eddie, when Bev asked sweetly about the empty rooms on the top floor of her house, she had twirled her dark hair with a wistful sigh and said, "Oh, Beverly, I guess it would be nice not to be so alone."
They moved into the brownstone in the tentative spring months of 2001. Just months later Eddie started his job at Percival & Schmidt and Bev landed her first deal with a major label. The year that the US invaded Afghanistan was the year that Eddie really arrived in New York, one of the best years of his life, with a blazing summer and a feeling of freedom so intense he found himself cutting short calls with his mother despite the guilt, smoking packs and packs of cigarettes, and letting Bev strong-arm him into buying a leather jacket.
On December 31st that year, with just minutes until midnight, he was kissed like he had never been kissed before, pressed up against the fridge in the kitchen of his house. Trevor, he was called, or maybe Travis, and Eddie felt the ghost of his beard against his chin for days and days. Eddie loved New York, then.
Fifteen months later his mother faked a heart attack and Eddie used all of his holiday allowance for the year to come back to her. He left behind his cigarettes and would never pick them up again. In October of 2003 he met Myra at the stiflingly boring birthday do of a company VP and he fell into something with her, not love, not friendship, but familiarity. It was easier to give in than it would have been to fight it.
He often thinks that if he hadn't gone home to his mother that year, he would have fought. Bev says it's not healthy to think that way, tells him to accept that he is where he is meant to be and to look to the future instead of the past. Eddie really needs to start paying her for this shit.
New York lost its magic somewhere in between his first date with Myra and his wedding day. He woke up one morning to find that the skyscrapers no longer looked like the promise of a bright future but instead lined the horizon like bars across windows. Suddenly, he could once again hear the screech of wheels against subway tracks that had long since faded into the background, and he found the noise unbearable.
He began to notice the ugly parts of the city, the dirt and grime and pollution, the piss in alleyways and drunk people vomiting on the street outside Myra's apartment — which was meant to be his apartment, too, but only ever felt like hers. He wasn't scared of the city then, but angry — at the noise and the people and the quality of air, at the rat-infested restaurants and the fucking tourists. But anger wasn't sustainable, and after a while it morphed into a miserable sort of resignation that clung to him like wet clothes.
It wasn't until that first night in Bev's guest bedroom, the walls of it lined with suitcases and boxes, that he found himself peering out of the window with something akin to fondness for the first time in a decade.
Now he feels content here. He sees New York for what it is — a city, a place, nothing more. His home, yes, but anywhere could be given enough time and the right people. He has stopped ascribing humanity to this endless cluster of buildings and streets and greenery, has stopped looking for meaning in the concrete slabs of pavements. Here is where Bev is, and his work, and the bodega he favours, here is where he knows the flow of traffic and the lines of the subway system — here is where he lives.
His phone buzzes once, twice, three times, a sound muffled by the sofa cushions. He barely hears it but a part of him had been listening out for it, though he would never admit that out loud.
With one last look at the street down below he stubs out his joint and hops off the kitchen counter. To psyche himself up he first goes to the bathroom and washes his hands thoroughly, as though Dick_Toze is going to somehow smell tobacco on his fingers through the fucking screen and what, judge him for it? Dude called him a wall street bro on Grindr, there's no way he doesn't smoke weed. Probably considers himself a radical leftist too, for going to an anti-war protest once in 2006.
Back in the living room, he fishes his phone out of the gap he shoved it into and unlocks it. Sure enough, Grindr alerts him to three (3) new messages. He swipes down and taps the notification, his heart thump-thumping in his chest like it wants to escape — he can't blame it.
Dick_Toze [12:07am]
lol that depends
Dick_Toze [12:07am]
are u keeping the tie on while we fuck?
Dick_Toze [12:08am]
because then i could be [eggplant emoji] [winky face emoji]
Eddie groans and scrubs a hand across his face. He really can't believe he is about to sext a man who uses the eggplant emoji. Furious with himself but unfortunately a little horny, he types out a reply.
EK [12:12am]
It's a choking hazard.
What the fuck? Is he trying to risk analyse this guy or fuck him?
EK [12:13am]
But I guess that's the point. So yeah, sure.
He goes on Dick_Toze's profile again, just to remind himself why he's doing this. The next message comes in while he's idly palming his dick through his sweatpants and looking at the single picture of this guy's chest.
Dick_Toze [12:14am]
ohhh, didn't know u had it in u
EK [12:14am]
What the fuck? You don't know me.
Dick_Toze [12:15am]
just making reasonable assumptions based on ur profile
Dick_Toze [12:15]
so what are u up to on this fine night?
Eddie tries to come up with an interesting answer but there is really no way to turn being somewhat high and sitting on your couch into an exhilarating story.
EK [12:16am]
Just watching TV. What about you?
Dick_Toze [12:17am]
chilling in bed. whatcha wearing?
EK [12:18am]
Wow, impressive moves.
Dick_Toze [12:18am]
dude, it's fucking grindr. what kinda moves are u expecting???
EK [12:19am]
Fair point. Sweatpants and a t-shirt. You?
Dick_Toze [12:19am]
ah, the ultimate 'i'm home alone' outfit lol
Dick_Toze [12:19am]
just in my underwear ;)
EK [12:22am]
Are you not freezing? It's like 35 degrees.
Eddie shifts to lie down on the couch, his phone in one hand. He finds himself, once again, thumbing over to the dude's profile. It makes him feel a little pathetic, but no one needs to know that he is at a point in his life where a stranger's broad shoulders and hairy chest is apparently enough to get him going.
Dick_Toze [12:22am]
believe it or not, i have a radiator. several radiators, actually!
Eddie drops his phone on his chest and takes a few deep breaths. Why the fuck is he so bad at this? He knows how to sext, in theory. It's not exactly rocket science. But something about this night, this guy, the weed he smoked fifteen minutes ago, is turning him into a robot.
EK [12:23am]
Sorry, I'm kind of high. You're hot.
Great. Amazing! That will show him.
Dick_Toze [12:23am]
hahahahahah yeah? want a pic?
EK [12:23am]
Yes.
There's a short wait that Eddie spends rubbing the length of his hardening dick and trying to remember how to act like a real person. He feels warm all over, an edge of desperation to his breathing.
Dick_Toze [12:26am]
[y194u=yDc.jpg]
It's a picture of the guy in bed, taken from the neck down. It's a strange angle but shows everything that needs to be shown, the chest that Eddie has already familiarised himself with, the curve of his stomach, dark hair disappearing into the waistband of his briefs and a broad hand cupping the enticing shape of his dick through the red fabric.
Eddie slides his hand into his sweatpants.
EK [12:27am]
You're so hot.
He cringes at himself. Again with the robot antics.
EK [12:27am]
Would love to get my mouth all over you.
Slightly better.
Dick_Toze [12:28am]
yeah? where would u start?
EK [12:28am]
Your neck, then your chest. You've got a great chest.
It's a little awkward typing with one hand but he doesn't want to stop stroking himself either so he suffers through. He pushes his sweatpants down to his thighs and considers asking the guy if he wants a picture, but then decides that's overthinking it so he just goes ahead and sends one with little fanfare. It's not particularly artistic but it's a dick with his hand wrapped around it, so hopefully it will send the right message.
EK [12:29am]
[sKxJ71Ydqg.jpg]
Dick_Toze [12:30am]
oh fuck, nice dick
Dick_Toze [12:30am]
i promise i don't say that to all the boys
EK [12:31am]
Oh, good, I was about to be so jealous.
Dick_Toze [12:31am]
hmm, nice dick AND slightly mean? i'm about to bust a nut just from that
Eddie stares at the message and dedicates a few seconds to regretting his life choices, then sighs and accepts his fate.
EK [12:32am]
I'm choosing to ignore that. Are you touching yourself?
Dick_Toze [12:32am]
yeah, hold on
Dick_Toze [12:33am]
[wH2hJXp.jgp]
The picture is not much different from the one he had sent, a pretty standard dick pic in poor lighting. The guy’s hand is wrapped around the base of his cock, and the part of the picture that Eddie gets hung up on is the dusting of hair along his knuckles, the thick shape of his fingers.
He screws his eyes shut and jerks himself off with quick movements. It’s not going to take him long to come and he considers just letting go and making quick work of it, but he reminds himself that Dick_Toze is probably expecting some sort of answer so he types another one-handed text. He tries several versions and deletes each one until settling on:
EK [12:34am]
Want to get my mouth on your dick.
It feels incredibly trite and he worries the guy will be able to tell just from that text that Eddie has never touched anyone’s dick, let alone gotten his mouth on one. But he needn’t worry.
Dick_Toze [12:34am]
yeah? bet u would be good at it, swallowing my cock
Dick_Toze [12:34am]
would u let me cum in your mouth?
EK [12:35am]
If you want.
Dick_Toze [12:35am]
Haha u don’t sound too enthusiastic
EK [12:35am]
No, I am.
EK [12:35am]
Enthusiastic.
Dick_Toze [12:36am]
shit then yeah, i want. would love to mess u up in ur fancy suit
EK [12:36am]
You’re really into this whole Wall Street thing, huh?
Dick_Toze [12:37am]
u bet ;) I just want u to bend me over the desk in ur fancy office and fuck me
Eddie is close, closer than he thought he would be after maybe three minutes of jerking off, but that thought makes him pause. That’s terrible , unprofessional, he would get fired if anyone even so much as suspected, there is no way he would get away with fucking some guy in his office. There isn’t even a lock on his door.
He considers telling Richie as much. But some annoying part of him that sounds a little like Bev says, it’s a fantasy, you absolute moron. You don’t actually have to fuck him in your office. He sighs.
EK [12:38am]
Maybe you should be wearing my tie so I could hold onto it while I fuck you.
Dick_Toze [12:38am]
holy SHIT warn a guy!
Dick_Toze [12:38am]
yes pls i’d be so good for u
EK [12:38am]
Bet you’re loud, too. You’ll have to cover your mouth so no one hears.
Dick_Toze [12:39am]
u’ll just have to gag me, baby. only way to keep me quiet while i’m bouncing on ur cock
Eddie comes with a gasp, spilling over his fist. He drops his phone on the coffee table and takes a minute to compose himself while he looks up at the ceiling, panting heavily. Having come on any part of your body always goes from kind of hot to absolutely disgusting very quickly so he wants nothing more than to rinse himself off in the shower and then go the fuck to bed, but he feels like he owes this guy an orgasm.
EK [12:41am]
Sorry, I ‘busted a nut’. Need me to keep talking?
Dick_Toze [12:41am]
Hahahahaha nah i came when u said that shit about the tie. that was hot [eggplant emoji] [sweat droplets emoji]
EK [12:41am]
Alright. I’m going to shower.
Dick_Toze [12:42am]
goodnight hot stuff
"Bev, he won't stop texting me."
Eddie stretches his legs out underneath his desk and glances up to check that his office door is definitely shut.
On the other end of the line Bev asks, "Is that a bad thing?"
"I guess not?" He crosses his ankles. "It's mainly sexting."
She laughs. "Again, is that a bad thing?"
"I think he wants to meet up," he tells her. "He keeps hinting at it."
"Kaspbrak, don't make me ask the same question again."
Eddie lets his head drop against the backrest of his ergonomic office chair and stares up at the ceiling.
"It's not a bad thing," he sighs. And then, a little quieter, "I need to get laid."
"Mhm, you need to finally make that toothbrush worth it."
"Stop going on about the fucking toothbrush, Bev," he bristles. "But anyways, maybe I'll bite next time he hints at it."
"I think you should. What's the worst that could happen?" She pauses, just long enough for him to take a deep breath in preparation, and then she says, "Actually, don't answer that, Mr. Risk Analyst."
He snaps his mouth shut.
Bev says, "Just go for it. Live a little! You think he's hot and you guys have already bumped digital uglies, what more could you want?"
"Please never call it that again," Eddie groans. He leans forward to pick at the stir fry on his desk, once again uninspiring but a little better than the zoodles from the other day — a 6/10 on his spreadsheet.
"I'm just saying. You haven't shut up about wanting to fuck a stranger since you left Myra. He's a stranger who is down to fuck. What are you twiddling your thumbs for?"
Eddie sighs. He chews on a bit of soggy bell pepper and considers it.
Finally he says, "I just worry it'll be bad."
Bev laughs. "Sex with strangers often is."
"Oh, great! That's just what I wanted to hear!"
"Shut it, baby, I'm not here to tell you what you want to hear," she scoffs. "But what I mean is: That's why it's called a one night stand. One night, and then you get the hell out of there! You never have to speak to him again. The stakes could not possibly be any lower."
"Fine," he says and stabs a piece of tofu with his fork. "I guess I'll message him."
It takes him another two days to get around to it. He's not avoiding it per se, he is just— Okay, he's avoiding it. Bev messages him several times to ask if he has a hot date set up yet and every time he responds with a thumbs up just because he knows there is nothing she hates more than a thumbs up text.
It's Thursday night and he has just had a very satisfying orgasm courtesy of Richie's sexting. He is lying spread-eagled on his bed, phone still in one hand and come drying on his stomach, and he tries to think of a way to breach the subject while he is still blissed out and mellow. They never text much afterwards and he really doesn't want it to be weird, but after a week of daily sexting he thinks that they're probably at a point where it's socially acceptable to ask. Right? Right.
EK [11:26pm]
Do you have any plans this weekend?
Dick_Toze [11:26pm]
nah. u?
EK [11:27pm]
Not yet. Want to meet up?
Like a teenager texting his crush he immediately throws his phone down the length of the bed. It comes dangerously close to bouncing off the mattress and onto the floor but he manages to stop it with his foot. He takes a minute to breathe, then he flees to the bathroom.
When he comes back after having cleaned himself up and brushed his teeth, he has three (3) new messages from Dick_Toze.
He briefly considers ignoring them until the morning, he could probably get away with pretending he fell asleep, but he isn't a fucking coward. Or at least, he isn't that much of a coward. It's just a casual hook-up. The stakes could not possibly be any lower.
He opens the app.
Dick_Toze [11:31pm]
oh yeah sure!!!!!!!!!
Dick_Toze [11:34pm]
lol was that a bit too eager? lol
Dick_Toze [11:35pm]
lemme try again: yeah, that'd be cool. i'm free whenever
Eddie grins, feeling strangely charmed.
EK [11:38pm]
Tomorrow?
He doesn't have to wait long for a reply.
Dick_Toze [11:38pm]
works for me!! [eggplant emoji] [tongue emoji]
EK [11:39pm]
Jesus Christ.
By the time he leaves work on Friday he has pretty much decided to cancel. He woke up that morning with a tight chest and his stomach in knots, and by lunch time he was bouncing off the walls and telling Bev that there is no point, he is too inexperienced, it would be terrible and then Richie would somehow contact every single gay guy in New York City and tell them to steer clear of Eddie Kaspbrak, who is a terrible fuck and can’t even get a good rhythm on a hand job, and he would have to move back to Portland and live in his dead mother's house.
Despite Bev's best efforts to talk him out of it, he spends his subway ride home drafting increasingly neurotic-sounding cancellation texts in his notes app. There's no point — he just simply isn't made for romance, or sex, or even friendship. And much as he doesn't doubt Bev's love for him is genuine, he sees her as a statistical anomaly rather than proof of his ability to form meaningful relationships.
The first thing he does when he gets home is roll a joint at his kitchen table. He opens a window so the apartment doesn't stink of weed for hours — unlike Bev and most of her friends, he finds the smell deeply unpleasant. It won't stop him from smoking but it does mean he spends more time with his windows open than not, even on a cold January day.
They're supposed to meet at 10pm in Hell's Kitchen, at a bar that Richie says is not too far from his apartment. The implications of that make him nervous all over again, despite the high dulling his anxiety, and he rubs his palms along the pilling fabric of his sweatpants. He considers calling Bev but he already spent half an hour talking to her on his lunch break and has sent her an essay's worth of texts over the course of the day. She claims to not get sick of him but sometimes he thinks that she must.
He eats dinner at seven o'clock like he does every day. Another dull meal, quinoa salad with stuffed red peppers that are soggy and burnt around the edges — a solid 6/10 for the salad, 4/10 for the peppers but he thinks that might be more his fault than that of the recipe. He sits on the couch until eight, then realises he only has half an hour to get ready if he is actually going, and he promptly goes into another panic spiral about it.
This time he does call Bev.
"I think I'm going to cancel," he tells her as soon as she picks up.
"Hello to you too, my darling, long time no speak! Yes, I'm fine, thank you for asking. My day was okay, how was yours?"
"We were on the phone like seven hours ago," he grumbles. "I know how you are."
She says, "It's called having manners."
He snorts. "Yeah, right. You're big on those. Like New Years Eve last year when—"
"Aaaaaanyways," she says loudly, cutting him off. "You're thinking of pussying out, huh?"
Eddie paces the length of his living room. "Fuck off, don't call it that."
"Not sure what else to call it," she says lightly. "Eddie, you don't have to go home with him. It won't hurt to at least meet him, and if he gives you weird vibes or you aren't feeling it you can just leave."
"It's very clearly not a date," he snaps. "We've not talked about anything but sex. I don't even know his job, or even like— hobbies! All I know about him is what his dick looks like, that he lives somewhere in Manhattan and that he doesn't have roommates."
Bev makes a dismissive noise. "So what? You can still leave. Did you sign a fucking contract or what?"
Eddie really hates it when she's right. Unfortunately for him, she tends to be right more often than not, even when he firmly believes that it should be him who is right, if the universe was fair and just. After something like twenty-seven years of friendship she knows him too well and she refuses to let him be right about anything, even when his ego desperately needs it.
"No," he concedes as though it wasn't a rhetorical question. "But I don't want to let him down."
"He is a complete stranger," Bev says impatiently. "You don't owe him shit."
Eddie sighs and goes into his bedroom. "Alright," he says. "But you have to help me pick an outfit."
"Oh, honey, there’s nothing I’d rather do."
He gets an Uber, in the end. The idea of losing his nerve on the subway surrounded by dozens of people sounds a lot less appealing than being in the back of a car and only having the driver to worry about. He is dressed in his Beverly Marsh approved outfit — slim cut jeans, a green sweater from her 2017 winter collection, and his thickest parka, the one with the fur hood because it's fucking freezing outside and he doesn't want to regret going with something more fashionable later. It's January, there's no shame in layering up.
He goes through work emails on his phone for the duration of the half hour ride there. It's mind-numbing enough to calm him down, productive enough to not feel completely pointless. Halfway there he gets a Grindr notification and he nearly drops his phone in his hurry to check it. He isn't sure what he's hoping for — a cancellation, maybe? He swipes away a weather warning push notification and opens the app.
Dick_Toze [9:38pm]
gonna send u a pic of my outfit so u recognise me lol
Dick_Toze [9:38pm]
[hd8J=xyee.jpg]
It's a mirror selfie, once again cut off just below the neck. He's wearing dark jeans, a garish button down shirt with flamingos on a blue background, and a leather jacket over it. Definitely not enough layers for this kind of weather.
EK [9:40pm]
You realise I'm going to know what your face looks like in 20 minutes, right?
Dick_Toze [9:41pm]
yeah lol i'm shy
Dick_Toze [9:41pm]
also like evidence u know?
EK [9:42pm]
Sure.
Eddie looks at the picture again. He should hate it, really. The outfit is terrible, seriously, what is up with that shirt, but the leather jacket is doing a lot for his shoulders and Eddie wants to get his hands on him more than he has let himself want something in a long time.
He makes it to the bar with five minutes to spare. He tips the driver in the app while he stands on the curb, gives him a five star rating for not making conversation beyond a mumbled 'hello', and then makes his way towards the neon sign down the street.
Outside, he stops and wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans.
There's still time to back out, he tells himself. Sure, it would be an asshole move but Eddie has never claimed to be anything but, and Richie won't struggle to find a different guy to fuck, perhaps even that night. Really, with those shoulders and that dick? He probably has countless guys on speed dial.
But Eddie wants to be one of them. Hasn't he earned this? After decades of denying himself, of trying to please everyone around him, and even now the ghost of his mother, doesn't he deserve to fuck — or to get fucked by — a hot guy?
He squares his shoulders, his jaw, squares anything he can possibly square, and goes inside.
The place is small, almost claustrophobic, with tables crammed into every conceivable empty space, but it's not as busy as he expected on a Friday night. He scans the room for a tall guy in a flamingo shirt and leather jacket, and he spots him standing at the bar with a beer in one hand and his phone in the other.
Eddie stares at him for a long moment, takes in the wave of his dark hair, the glasses (surprising, but only for a second), the stubble on his jaw. That sure is a man! A real one! In the flesh!
He swallows dryly.
The closer Eddie gets to the edge of the bar the more familiar this guy looks. He can't quite place him, but wonders if he's seen him at some sort of work event before, or maybe he just has one of those faces — the kind you can't help but know instinctively.
He sidles up to him and tries not to be weird about it. His heart jumps in his throat.
"Richie?"
The guy yelps and nearly drops his phone.
"Jesus," he says and then laughs like he can't help himself. He looks him up and down, a textbook once-over that makes Eddie feel hot under his skin. "Shit, hey! Eddie?"
"Uh, hello," Eddie says and sounds incredibly stilted, even to his own ears. Up close, he still can't place Richie at all though he looks just as familiar as he did from a distance.
He clears his throat, undoes the zip on his parka and puts his elbow on the bar, hoping that it will make him look like he knows what he's doing. He tries to channel the energy of a man who has met plenty of strangers at bars.
Richie grins at him widely, his eyes squinting behind his thick glasses, and he lifts up his beer bottle. "What's your poison?" he asks, like they're in a fucking movie. Do people say that shit in real life?
Eddie peers at the selection of spirits at the back of the bar, then at the beer bottles lined up inside the fridges. He really doesn't want to be too adventurous with it, the last thing he needs right now is heartburn, but he feels a childish urge to impress Richie.
He cycles through a few options in his head, drinks that cool people might order at a bar, anything that will say to Richie, I've done this before, you do not scare me, I'm not fucking scared of you!
"Bloody Mary," he blurts, after perhaps a second too long. He falters.
What the fuck? He hates tomato juice, he hates tabasco, he hates celery. Come to think of it, Worcestershire sauce isn't even fucking vegetarian.
"Huh, really?" Richie says, still grinning, and he raises a hand to get the bartender's attention.
Eddie feels like a fucking idiot when he says, "No, uh, I meant beer. Can I get— Just whatever you're having."
So much for showing Richie this is familiar territory for him. At this rate the guy's going to think he's never set foot into a bar before, or better yet, that he's never set foot outside of his apartment.
"Two very different drinks!" Richie laughs and leans against the bar, all casual nonchalance. Like he actually has done this plenty of times. Like he feels at home here. "I respect that. You contain multitudes."
Eddie wants to go home.
It doesn't get much better, at least not for Eddie. He hoped that he would remember how to behave like a human being at some point, going so far as to google 'how to act on a pre-hookup hangout' under the table when Richie goes to get himself another beer. The results aren't particularly helpful.
Richie for one seems to be having an okay time, cracking jokes and laughing at them himself regardless of whether they're funny or not. He talks enough for the two of them, says he does stand-up (that tracks), that he lives nearby, tells him that he wanted to be a ventriloquist when he was a kid but he was terrible at it, and spends ten minutes talking about his best friend Stan who is an accountant but somehow the coolest person he's ever met. Eddie wonders sardonically if maybe Richie would rather be going home with Stan tonight.
Eddie goes to the bathroom three times in an hour, and each time he considers escaping through the tiny window in the second cubicle, texts Bev to tell her Richie hasn't killed him yet but he might die of mortification, and then washes his hands for longer than strictly necessary.
Perhaps the worst part of the night is that he still wants to fuck this guy. Desperately so.
When he comes back from the bathroom for the third time, Richie almost looks surprised to see him. He is in the middle of peeling off the label on his beer bottle, bits of it already scattered across the table in wet clumps, and when Eddie sits down across from him he says, "I was sure you actually left this time," and then he laughs louder than necessary, high-pitched in a way that feels almost familiar by now.
For the first time in the hour they've been there, Eddie thinks that Richie might be nervous, too.
He takes a swig of his beer, that last, warm sip that is more spit than beer, and then he sets the bottle down on the table with a loud clunk.
"So you don't live far from here?" he asks, emboldened by Richie's nerves.
Richie stares at him with wide eyes and his voice cracks when he says, "Just a few blocks away."
And Eddie feels like he has some semblance of an upper hand for the first time since walking into this place.
He gestures towards the door. "It's getting kind of late."
Richie nods wordlessly and his tongue flicks out to wet his lips, a flash of pink.
Eddie takes his coat off the back of his chair, collects both their empty bottles to drop them off at the bar, and he gets up. Richie follows suit, uncharacteristically quiet.
The walk is only about ten minutes but it's freezing cold so it feels longer. It’s snowing outside, tiny flakes swirling through the air. It should be peaceful, but Hell’s Kitchen is bursting with life around them, traffic and people and loud music drifting from bars and apartment blocks they pass.
Somewhere on the corner between 50th and 52nd Street, Richie regains his voice and Eddie loses his confidence.
As Richie babbles about some movie he watched last week, something about The Rock climbing a skyscraper, maybe, Eddie sinks deeper into the safety of his coat and tries not to get overwhelmed. For all his posturing over text, he actually doesn't know what the fuck he's doing when it comes to sex. Myra was different, not just because she was a woman but because she didn't give a shit about sex. She considered it to be a once a month, fifteen minute affair in the darkness of their bedroom. They didn't even have sex on their wedding night because Myra had a fight with her sister about the buffet and cried herself to sleep while he sat in the hotel lobby and read The Caves of Steel .
Back then Eddie thought he didn't care about sex, either. It felt more like an obligation than anything else, not an obligation to Myra but an obligation to the gods of holy matrimony, and he imagines Myra felt the same. It was only in the privacy of the shower, or the rare times that he was home and his wife wasn't, that he let himself imagine something else — hairy chests, large hands, the feeling of stubble rough on his jaw, his neck, his thighs.
It's been a long eighteen months of allowing himself to figure out what he wants, and how, and who with. It took him a year to even get around to kissing another man, some guy named Mark who Bev set him up with, who kissed with too much tongue and tasted of the whiskey he had guzzled at dinner. Much to his embarrassment, Mark had been the one to ghost him even though Eddie was already gearing up to let him down gently. His ego still hasn't fully recovered.
"This is me," Richie says and gestures at the dark green door of an apartment block, red-bricked and six floors high, with vines snaking up the front alongside a black iron fire escape.
They stop just outside. Eddie weighs his options, considers making up an excuse for why he absolutely has to leave right this second, but then Richie puts a hand on the small of his back and it’s like he's been tased. He could swear that he can feel the warmth of his palm through the thick material of his coat.
"Alright," he says, more to himself than to Richie, and he steps up to the door.
Richie's apartment is on the fifth floor and the elevator looks like it might fall apart if it has to carry the weight of two people so by the time they make it to the front door Eddie is a little winded and Richie is panting like he's just run a marathon.
Eddie asks, "You don't exercise much?"
Richie throws him an incredulous look over his shoulder as he unlocks the door and struggles against the weight of it, its un-oiled hinges squeaking with every inch.
"Nah, but people don't usually point it out."
“Daily exercise prevents heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and arthritis,” Eddie tells him.
"Thanks, WebMD,” Richie laughs and holds the door open for him. “So are you some sort of gym freak?"
Eddie snorts, steps inside and toes off his shoes, then bends down to place them neatly on the shoe rack.
"I run, mainly," he says. Shrugs off his coat and hangs it on a hook on the wall. He tugs at the hem of his sweater nervously, smoothing out some of the wrinkles. "Not a huge fan of the gym. They have signs up saying that you have to disinfect equipment after using it but no one actually fucking does it, I'm always cleaning up after people. It's so gross, and most gyms aren't very well ventilated either so..."
He trails off and scowls when he catches sight of Richie's wide smile.
"Cute," Richie says. "A real germaphobe. What the hell are you doing in New York, man?"
"Shut the fuck up," Eddie snaps. And then, as a peace offering: "My hand sanitiser bill is through the roof."
Richie’s laugh seems even louder now in the quiet space of his apartment.
They end up on the yellow corner sofa in the living room, sitting at an appropriate distance away from each other. The apartment is nice, if a little cluttered. The floors are a warm teak wood and there are plants dotted along the windowsills and shelves, Eddie recognises the succulents and the parlor palm, thinks that the glossy-leaved plant next to the flat screen TV might be a Japanese aralia.
The light from the floor lamp in the corner bathes the room in a warm orange. The walls are covered in movie posters and other random bits, like vinyl sleeves, a yellow street sign saying '60TH ST', a watercolour painting of a seaside town, the framed cover of a Bill Denbrough book. Richie has a record player on a side table next to the sofa and an impressive collection of records on a shelf across the room.
If Eddie weren't so tightly wound, he might feel at home here.
Richie brings him a beer from the fridge even though Eddie doesn't really want one and for a moment the silence is crushingly awkward.
Then Richie says, "So, uh, you do this a lot?"
Eddie takes a sip from the can to buy himself some time. Lying might lead to false expectations, the truth might lead to Richie thinking he's a loser.
He hedges his bets and says, "Not really. You?"
There seems to be some joke there that only Richie is in on. As he laughs, Eddie watches him intently, if a little bewildered. He has a nice jaw, the strong shape of it enticing. His teeth are a little crooked and he has an overbite which might be unattractive on anyone else but looks kind of cute on him.
Jesus, he thinks. He doesn't even like the guy that much, actually finds him kind of annoying with how much he talks and how little he asks, like no one has ever taught him how to have a conversation. But he remembers the nervous shake of Richie's fingers as he peeled off bits of the label on his bottle, the startled relief that flashed across his face when Eddie came back from the bathroom, and he thinks that maybe the Richie he is seeing tonight is as much a nervous version of himself as Eddie is.
"No, I don't," Richie finally says and raises his bottle at him in a toast. "Absolutely fucking not. Sorry if I gave off the impression that I do."
Eddie grins and clinks his bottle against Richie's. "My fault for making assumptions."
He feels more at ease now than he had at the bar, some of his nervous energy draining into the soft cushions of Richie's couch, but he is still nowhere near as relaxed as he would like to be. His head is swimming with questions and no answers, like what he should do if Richie kisses him, or if he should make the first move himself, and why is this so weird when they have spent the past week jerking off to pictures of each other?
Richie sets his beer down on the coffee table with a loud noise that cuts through the mellow silence of the room. He says, "I'm gonna put on some music," and gets up.
"You got a preference?" he asks Eddie, looking over his shoulder as he thumbs through his records.
Eddie shrugs and says, "Nothing shit."
"I don't own any shit records."
"You literally have a Bruno Mars album framed on your wall," Eddie says dryly.
Richie takes a vinyl out of its sleeve, places it on the record player, and says "I repeat: I don't own any shit records."
Eddie snorts.
Richie lowers the tonearm and the player comes to life with a crackling noise. The opening drums of Fleetwood Mac's Dreams float through the room. Richie turns around and stretches out his arms as if to say, Ta-da!
"Hm," says Eddie. "Better than Bruno Mars."
"Better than— better than fucking Bruno Mars?" Richie guffaws. "I guess that's one way to describe the spiritual journey that is listening to Fleetwood Mac . "
"It's a factually correct statement."
Richie flops back down on the couch, his long legs stretched out in front of him, and Eddie wants badly to put his hand on his thigh, feel the shape of it through the denim of his jeans. He takes a sip of his beer. Condensation drips down his fingers where he holds it, still cold from the fridge, and the air around him feels thick. It chokes him, a palpable tension.
"I guess," Richie huffs. "If you want to be pedantic."
Oh, thunder only happens when it's raining
Players only love you when they're playing
Eddie bobs his head in time with the music, a small movement. He stares down at his thumb, the side of it glistening wet, and his body is tense like he is poised for a fight.
Say women they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean, you'll know, you'll know
"You ever done any acting, like in a fucking yoghurt advert or something?" Eddie asks and flicks his gaze over to Richie. It might be the booze talking, but he thinks that the garish flamingo shirt actually suits him quite a lot, the blue of it complementing his skin tone and his eyes.
Richie stares at him. "Huh?" he says intelligently.
"You look familiar but I have no idea why."
"Uh, I— I do stand-up."
Eddie frowns. "I've never been to a stand-up show."
Richie clears his throat. "Do you have Netflix?"
"Uh, yes. Who the hell doesn't have Netflix these days?"
"Might have seen me around, then."
"On Netflix?! What— What the fuck," Eddie sputters.
"I do stand-up," Richie repeats. "I did a Netflix special last year. 'Trashmouth Tozier: My Girlfriend’s Mom is Hotter Than Her’ ?"
Eddie gapes at him, completely blindsided. "Jesus Christ, you're famous,” he says. “And that’s such a shit title.”
Richie scratches the back of his head sheepishly. "Don't, uh, please don't watch it. Ever."
Eddie raises his eyebrows. "Why? Does it suck? Is it really offensive?"
"I don't write my own material," Richie tells him, his nose scrunched up in embarrassment. "My persona is very much 'schlubby straight guy who makes jokes about cheating on his hot girlfriend'."
"Fucking shit," Eddie groans. He's not just going to have sex with a famous comedian, he is going to have sex with a bad famous comedian. Provided they ever actually get to that part of the evening, that is. His life really can't get any worse.
"Sorry," Richie says and sounds like he means it. "Did I just ruin my chances? Did that kill your boner?"
Eddie takes a moment to lament the fact that not even Richie saying the words 'did that kill your boner' can actually kill his boner.
"No," he sighs. "Unfortunately not."
"Oh, man," Richie laughs and nudges Eddie's ankle with his foot. "So you just have bad taste?"
Eddie bristles. "Shut the fuck up, you're hot."
"That would be the bad taste." As Stevie Nicks croons that you don't know what it means to win, Richie drapes his arm across the back of the sofa like an invitation. "You wanna come here?"
If Eddie's heart jumps in his chest like his crush has just asked him to the prom then that's between him and God. He sets his beer down on the coffee table and tries not to seem too eager as he shifts closer to him until he is pressed up against Richie's side.
It's intimate, being so close to what is effectively a stranger. Eddie breathes through the tightness in his stomach and relaxes marginally into the touch.
Richie tilts his head to look at him and slides his arm around Eddie's shoulders. The weight of it should be comforting, instead it feels crushing. Energy thrums underneath Eddie’s skin and his hands tremble in his lap, too warm now without the cool bottle to hold on to.
"Can I, uh," Richie starts, and it's so surprisingly polite of him that Eddie doesn't let him finish.
He surges forward but misjudges the momentum and doesn't give Richie enough warning, so it's an uncomfortable press of lips at first, too hard and unforgiving. Then Richie eases him back a fraction and cradles his neck with one warm, broad hand, and suddenly it's better, if not perfect.
Eddie didn't know it was possible to be bad at kissing until Whiskey Mark, having never bothered to examine his kissing technique with Myra because theirs were largely just pecks, and now he realises that he might just suck at it, inherently. He isn't sure what to do with his lips, his hands, wonders if it’s too soon for tongue. What is an acceptable amount of time before you go for some tongue? He considers excusing himself to the bathroom so he can google it.
His hands are still curled uselessly in his lap. This doesn’t feel instinctive at all, Eddie is stiff and ungainly, and Richie is doing all the heavy lifting. Determined to level the playing field and to convince Richie this isn't his first fucking kiss, he angles his body to get closer and reaches up to cup the side of Richie's face, his stubble rough against his palms.
Richie makes a quiet sound into the kiss, which must mean he is doing something right. Emboldened, he parts his lips, a question, and Richie answers it by flicking his tongue out to meet Eddie's. An urgent hunger flares up in the pit of his stomach. As Richie licks into his mouth, Eddie grips at his stupid flamingo shirt and undoes the first button he can find with slippery fingers.
Richie moves his arm from Eddie's shoulder to his waist and tries to pull him into some sort of position, but Eddie has no idea what position that might be so he fumbles, unsure of what direction he is meant to be moving in. He ends up kneeling by Richie's side and feeling out of his depth, while Richie keeps tugging at him like he's an oversized doll.
Eddie pulls back and snaps, "Stop fucking manhandling me and just tell me where to go."
"Oh, uh," Richie stutters, his face flushed red. "In my lap?" He sounds uncertain.
"Right." Eddie climbs on top of him with all the grace of a baby elephant and Richie puts his arms around him again, one hand coming to rest on his ass, which is good progress. That, at least, is somewhere in the general vicinity of second base.
When they kiss again Eddie tries to pay close attention to his technique, considering the angle of his head and the way his tongue drags across Richie's lower lip, but the more he thinks about it the deeper into his head he goes. He can practically feel himself clam up, a whole-body reaction. His knees ache where they're bent on either side, his spine is stiff, and he finds himself acutely aware of the way his dick is pressed into Richie's stomach, which should feel good but instead just makes him self-conscious.
Is it weird that he's hard? He can't figure out if Richie is, tries to wiggle his hips to find out but to no avail, so he has no idea if he is just being a horny, desperate bastard or if this is normal. They have only been kissing for something like five minutes, or the length of one and a half Fleetwood Mac songs. Is that too short a time to get a boner? What if Richie is just fully flaccid, what the fuck is he going to do then? He doesn't want to face the reality that he might be way more into this than Richie, enough so that he is rock hard from a few minutes of clumsy kissing.
In an effort to bring his attention back to the task at hand, Eddie tries to lick along Richie's upper lip at the exact time that Richie opens his mouth wider which means he ends up licking the front of his teeth. Richie makes a confused noise. Eddie's face burns with embarrassment but he powers through and course corrects, managing to actually get his lip this time.
He jolts in shock when Richie squeezes his ass, and it's not unpleasant, he just wasn't expecting it, but it clearly sends the wrong message.
Richie pulls back to say, "Oh, sorry, I—"
"No, it's fine, just— I wasn't—" Instead of completing whatever the fuck he was trying to say Eddie presses a strange, wet kiss to the corner of Richie's mouth, then bends down to hide his burning face in the crook of Richie's neck.
He wonders if leaving hickeys is something you do to a casual hook-up. Too uncertain to commit to it, he instead noses along the line of his throat and pushes his shirt to the side so he can kiss his collarbone.
Richie hums above him and he sounds pleased, thank fucking god, he might not be a lost cause yet. His free hand not on Eddie's ass slides underneath his sweater, then underneath the shirt below the sweater, and then underneath the undershirt below that shirt.
"What the hell are you wearing so many layers for?" Richie asks, his laugh a hot gust against the crown of Eddie's hair.
"It's fucking January," Eddie bristles and when he pulls back so he can glower at him, he accidentally knocks Richie's jaw with his head.
"Ow, shit," Richie hisses and his face is scrunched up in pain.
"Fuck, sorry." Eddie's hand flits uselessly along his jaw, apologetic touches with his fingertips.
"'s fine." Richie sticks his tongue out at him. "Jus' bi' my thongue."
Eddie examines it for blood but there isn't any. He doesn’t know what he would have done if there was — probably would have left via the fire escape.
"Sorry," he says again. He wants to crawl out of his fucking skin. He wants to go home, cursing the day he decided to download Grindr, cursing Bev for encouraging this, cursing the shape of the fucking closet he knows so intimately, the thing that brought him here now. A forty year old with the sexual competence of a middle schooler.
Richie grins at him dopily, his tongue back in his mouth where it belongs. "Do you wanna take this to the bedroom?"
Eddie stares at him. "What the shit," he says. "Really?!"
The expression on Richie's face falters. "Uh, I mean, we don't have to?"
"No, fuck, sure, I just," Eddie stammers. "I don't know. Never mind, let's go."
This is the gift horse they tell you not to look at too closely, you stupid idiot , he thinks as he follows Richie to the bedroom. For some reason this guy wants to have sex with him despite the fact that Eddie has no idea what he's doing and just nearly knocked him out. He has never believed in miracles but this might be enough to sway him.
Richie opens the door to the bedroom. It's a decent size, not quite spacious but not the kind of prison cell bedroom you might get in some New York City apartments. There are more plants here, a fern underneath the window, a few more succulents dotted around, and it looks like someone tidied the room in a hurry — a single stray sock lies forgotten on the floor, there is a stack of books has clearly been shoved under the bed, the edges peeking out.
Richie makes a sweeping gesture. "This is where the magic happens."
"You really just say this kind of shit, huh?" Eddie crosses his arms. “'What’s your poison?' 'This is where the magic happens?' Like a wind-up toy.”
“What? Those are normal things to say!”
Eddie scoffs. “No, they’re not.”
“Jesus, you’re hard to please,” Richie laments and takes his wrist to pull him close.
"I'm really not," Eddie says though he knows it's a lie. He goes along with it until he is right up against him and then, with all the confidence he can muster, he puts his arms around Richie's waist.
Richie cradles the back of his head with one hand, and the way his fingernails scrape his scalp makes Eddie feel light-headed. He doesn't quite have to get on his tiptoes to kiss Richie but it's close, and that is just another thing for him to obsess about for the next few months when he looks back on this. The fact that Richie is taller is extremely sexy to him, though he would never admit it out loud.
The kiss goes smoothly this time, except for when Richie bites Eddie's lower lip way too hard as if to get him back for the head-butt and Eddie pulls back to curse him out for it. They eventually make it to the bed and Eddie sheds some clothes along the way, so by the time the back of his knees hit the mattress and buckle underneath him he is only left with his jeans and sleeveless undershirt.
He fumbles with the buckle of Richie's belt, the sound of clinking metal cutting through the relative silence in the room.
"Do you, uh," Eddie starts as he undoes the button of Richie's jeans, and he feels himself go red. He tries to remember what it said on Richie’s Grindr profile. "Do you have a preference?"
“You mean top or bottom?" Richie asks, his brows knitted together.
He is still standing between Eddie's legs and looks down at him now, imposingly tall. Like this, Eddie is getting a great view of his stomach and chest, and since they're hopefully about to do a lot more than just this he feels brave enough to feel him up. He pushes Richie's shirt up so he can touch the hairy skin of his stomach, can run his palm upwards until he gets a handful of his chest.
"Yeah," he says, several beats too late.
Richie cards his fingers through Eddie's hair, which Eddie doesn't feel great about. He doesn't like his hair getting messy, actually spends a lot of time on making sure it stays neat, but he thinks that if he complains about that now Richie might genuinely pull the cord and kick him out.
"I'm fine either way," Richie tells him and bends down to press a kiss to Eddie’s cheekbone. It’s strangely intimate, could almost be affectionate if they were anything but strangers. “But I like getting fucked.”
Eddie makes a strangled noise. His stomach is in knots and sweat prickles in his armpits and on the back of his neck for no fucking reason at all, but that was the answer he was hoping for, somewhere deep down. He has tried fingering himself before, even went so far as to order a toy that sits unused in a drawer in his bedroom, but the thought of Richie going anywhere near his asshole right now makes him want to flee the country and start a new life as a potato farmer in Novosibirsk.
But he can do this. He has done research (watched porn), he has done a lot of soul searching (masturbated), he knows what he wants, or at least has a vague idea. And, he reminds himself once again, the stakes could not be any lower. There is no Yelp for sexual partners. If it goes terribly, he never has to see Richie again. If it goes well, he probably won’t see him again regardless.
With a determined set of his jaw, he takes hold of Richie's waist and pulls him down. Richie goes willingly until he is kneeling above him, propped up on his forearms, and all Eddie can think about then is how broad he is, how solid, how it would feel to be hugged by him.
Fucking hell, Kaspbrak. Are you ill?
"Take off your shirt," he says, tugging Richie's collar. "Uh, please."
"Aw, it’s cute that you’re trying to be polite about it," Richie laughs but he does as he was told. He bunches the shirt up and throws it into some dark corner of the room.
"Hope you own an iron," Eddie says nonsensically, taken by the sight of Richie's bare chest.
He has become intimately familiar with it over the past week, having looked at that picture on his Grindr profile more often that is probably socially acceptable, but somehow that hasn't prepared him for being up close and personal with it. Like a fucking freak, he puts both hands flat on Richie's chest and squeezes.
"Uh," Richie says, looking down at him with wide eyes. "You having fun there?"
Eddie flushes from the tips of his ears down to his belly. He drops his hands so they lie uselessly on the bed, unsure of how to proceed without embarrassing himself further, because if there is one thing he can't stand it's being embarrassed.
He has imagined this, touching Richie all over, has said several times how badly he wanted to get his hands and mouth on him, felt feverish at the very idea, but faced with the reality it all seems so intimidating.
Upon failing to come up with a plan of action, he props himself up on his elbows and goes back to kissing. He sort of knows what he is doing there, and it might buy him enough time to figure out what to do with his hands, his body, what to say — really, what can you say in bed without immediately sounding like a C-list porn star.
Richie kisses him back enthusiastically and he seems to have more of an idea about what to do, one hand finding the hem of Eddie's shirt and pushing it up so he can run his palm along his abs. The touch momentarily distracts Eddie from his panicked spiralling, long enough so that he finds the courage to reach up and thread his fingers through Richie's hair like he has wanted to all night. It's soft, despite the fact it looks like he has never used conditioner in his life, and he gives it a gentle tug.
Richie inhales sharply, nips at his lower lip, and Eddie feels that in the pit of his stomach. Thrumming with a frantic energy unfamiliar to him, Eddie bucks his hips upwards, against Richie's thigh, and he groans low in his throat when Richie gives back, grinds down against him just as eagerly.
Maybe this won't be so bad, after all. The 'sex' section of his spreadsheet, filled with lists and commentary on things that he knows he likes, might want to try, definitely wants to try, or would sooner jump out of a moving car than try, all those needlessly thorough hours he spent thinking about this, picturing this, maybe they have all been worth it.
And then Richie attempts to shift position and knees Eddie in the dick, hard , and the moment is gone. It's fucking dead, only identifiable by its teeth, not appropriate for an open-casket funeral.
Eddie tries to be dignified about his response, but unfortunately it's hard to be dignified while curling up into a fetal position and gasping, "Fucking shit asshole fuck," with Richie clearly trying not to laugh through his apology above him.
"I'm gonna—" Eddie rolls out from underneath Richie and gets up. "I'm going to piss. Try not to pull a muscle laughing while I'm gone."
"Aw, do you need to go and lick your wounds?" Richie coos, a shit-eating grin still plastered across his face.
Eddie flips him off and says, "Isn't that your job?"
"Ooh, I will if you want me to, babe." Richie waggles his eyebrows.
Eddie doesn't gratify that with a response.
The bathroom is easy enough to find, given that it's the only room aside from the kitchen that he hasn't been in yet. Like the rest of the apartment, it is a little cluttered and filled with plants. While he tries to will his erection down so he can pee, Eddie wonders how the hell someone as scattered as Richie keeps track of watering two dozen plants. Does he get someone in to do it for him? He is famous after all.
Oh Christ, he's famous.
He sits down on the edge of the bathtub and looks up Richie Tojer', then tries 'Richie Tosher', at which point Google helpfully suggests did you mean 'Richie Tozier'?
Hundreds of image results shows him that yes, he did mean Richie Tozier. It's strange to look at these pictures of him, varying from magazine headshots to paparazzi photos and spanning at least a decade. The Richie in these pictures looks nothing like the Richie next door. Or well, he does, of course he does, it's him after all, but stamped across each photo is a clear vision of what the world believes him to be, some funnyman, some idea of a straight guy, like a grotesque distortion of the man he is.
But he supposes that comes with being a celebrity. And in truth, that comes with existing in this world, celebrity or not. To be perceived by strangers, by colleagues, by friends, and to be judged by them. Eddie has always been conscious of the version of himself he presents to others, and knows that it is different from the unabridged truth of him. Eddie Kaspbrak, risk analyst, straight-laced, boring, and clinically humourless, a hard worker and not someone you want to be friends with. He feels comfortable in that illusion. It means no one can be disappointed by the reality, if they were ever to get close enough to see it.
He finally manages to pee, then. Nothing gets a boner down quicker than a bit of grappling with the perception of the self. He washes his hands with rigour, a good minute and a half. Richie’s soap smells of cedar wood and coffee. Maybe he isn’t ready to have sex? The paint in the upper right corner by the window is peeling and he wants to fix it, why hasn’t Richie fixed it? Who just leaves paint to peel in their home? It will only get worse over time if nothing is done about it. It’s practically begging for damp.
Eddie shouldn’t have sex with someone who doesn’t look after their space. It’s a bad sign, like an omen.
He considers texting Bev. He considers climbing out of the window. He considers jerking himself off for a bit just to get to a point where he is horny enough that the reasonable part of his brain shuts off.
In the end, he does none of those things. By the time he gets back to the bedroom, what must be at least ten minutes later, Richie is sitting on the edge of the mattress, still shirtless and with his belt buckle undone, and he is watching something on his phone, potentially The Simpsons if Eddie isn’t getting his pop culture wires crossed completely.
He looks up when Eddie comes in, pauses the video, and raises his eyebrows at him.
“You good?” he asks.
“Yes,” Eddie says tersely.
“Did you have to nurse Little Eddie back to health?”
“Don’t fucking call my penis ‘Little Eddie’, you cretin,” Eddie snaps and crosses the room in quick strides. In a fit of bravery, he pulls off his undershirt when he comes to stand in front of Richie. Like he is offering himself up, he thinks wryly.
“Oh, you have abs,” Richie says, eyes wide, and he loops an arm around Eddie’s waist to pull him closer. He presses a kiss to his solar plexus, and Eddie feels it in the ripple of goosebumps along his arms and thighs. It is strange to be touched like this, to be looked at.
“You knew that. I’ve sent you shirtless pictures.” Eddie runs his hands along Richie’s shoulders, his upper back, feeling the curve and knots of muscles, the jut of his shoulder blades. Richie has hair all along his back, too, and Eddie thinks that it should be unattractive but it just reminds him that Richie is a man, that Richie is exactly what he wants.
“Yeah,” Richie hums and noses along his happy trail. One hand comes up to undo the button of Eddie’s jeans. “But it’s different up close.” Echoing what Eddie had thought earlier.
The brief sound of the zipper going down hangs in the air. Eddie breathes in and out, in and out, shallow breaths so as to not give away anything embarrassing, like the way his dick is already half hard again just from this, or the way he wants to cradle Richie against his chest and kiss the crown of his head.
Eddie has never considered himself to be an affectionate person. Not physically, not emotionally. It simply isn’t part of his shtick. When Bev gives, he gives back, hugging her and holding her hand when they’re both drunk, kissing her on the cheek and her knuckles, combing her hair when she gets overwhelmed, but he has always reasoned that it is simply what she needs. He hasn’t considered himself to be someone who might need this, too.
But maybe this is why Whiskey Mark was the one to ghost him, and not the other way around. For all that Eddie now thinks back on their kiss outside the restaurant with amused disgust, in that moment he had leaned into the touch like a flower angling itself towards the sun. Had felt the ghost of an arm around his waist for days and days.
He would never ask for it, though. His mother bangs her drum at the back of his head and he shrinks away from the noise into the skinny shape of boyhood, and she says, sickly sweet, Eddie-bear, won’t you give Mommy a kiss? You know how sad I get.
When he tells Bev about this tomorrow he wonders how he is going to explain the bit where he thought about his dead mother while Richie undressed him. There are psychologists out there who would pay to get him under their metaphorical microscope, he is sure of it.
In an effort to shake himself out of this stupid, melancholy haze he digs blunt fingernails into the flesh of Richie’s shoulder, grounding himself. Richie tilts his head back to look up at him and hooks his fingers in the belt loops of his jeans, tugging them down slightly.
“Do you want to, uh,” he starts, the corner of his mouth twisted into uncertainty. “Fuck me?”
Eddie swallows and nods wordlessly before he can lose his nerve again. He lets Richie pull off his jeans and breathes through the vulnerable feeling of being almost naked in front of this almost stranger. When Richie’s eyes sweep across his body from the column of his throat all the way down to his feet he wonders what he sees. Is he Richie’s type? Do people have ‘types’, these days? Eddie certainly does, given the way that all it took was one look at Richie’s bare chest for him to be possessed by some sort of demon, or a very horny ghost.
He pushes Richie down on his back, gentle but firm, and crawls on top of him, a reverse of their earlier position. Without much fanfare he guides Richie’s hips up so he can pull his jeans down as well, and he sits back on his heels to fold them into something that could be considered neat if you squint.
When he looks down at Richie, shirtless and lying beneath him, Eddie’s heart thumps nervously against his ribcage. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands now that he is here, but Richie solves this for him by pulling him back down so Eddie has no choice but to prop himself up on his elbows. They kiss and it feels almost easy, familiar. Richie takes hold of Eddie’s hips and rocks into him so their cocks slide together through the thin fabric of their briefs.
Eddie moans softly and for a moment he is distracted from everything he is unsure about by the heat low in his belly, the trembling of his legs on either side of Richie. He licks into Richie’s mouth with a confidence he only found in the last few minutes, curls his fingers into his dark hair and tugs him back for a better angle. Richie’s groan rumbles low in his chest, Eddie feels it in his bones.
They find a rhythm that grows increasingly frantic, grinding against each other and kissing sloppily. It’s simple, this. He doesn’t need to think, or focus on anything but the slide of his dick against Richie’s, the way blood is rushing in his ears like he is on a late-night run to the Hudson. Given enough time and effort he might come like this, without even taking off his underwear, but he couldn't live with the embarrassment.
He kisses down Richie's neck and his collarbones, his chest as far as he can reach. Richie squirms and gasps underneath him when he bites very gently at his nipple, so he does it again, once, twice more, and Richie rakes blunt nails down his back in return. Eddie wonders if he should be talking, thinks that it might be hot if Richie did, actually, why is he being so silent? Isn't he chatty? Earlier in the evening he couldn't shut the fuck up, and now that Eddie might want him to speak he has suddenly decided to be quiet?
He decides then that if he wants Richie to talk, he has to make him, somehow. He moves back down to Richie's chest and takes his nipple into his mouth, licking and sucking lightly. Richie lets out a shaky breath and arches his back up, giving Eddie better access. Their rhythm stutters for a moment, a distracted fumble, but then Richie cants his hips just so and it's good again, overwhelmingly so. Eddie makes a needy, high-pitched sound and he has never felt more like a fucking virgin than he does now, not even when he still was one.
"You like that, baby?" Richie asks, voice lower than expected, and Eddie would roll his eyes at how fucking corny it is if not for the fact that it makes his stomach swoop and his cheeks flush.
"Yeah," he says, intensely embarrassed, and he noses along Richie’s throat so he doesn't have to look at him when he asks, "Do you— Can I fuck you now?"
He can feel Richie's nod more than he can see it, but hears him when he breathes, "Yeah, yes, fuck."
Eddie leans up to press a kiss to his jaw and sits up. He shifts until he is straddling Richie's thighs, then hooks his fingers in the waistband of his briefs and gives a questioning tug.
"Yeah, c'mon, we don't have all night," Richie says, his eyes glinting.
Eddie pulls at the waistband and then lets go so it snaps against Richie's skin. "Fuck off," he huffs but he slides the briefs down to Richie's thighs anyways.
Much like the rest of Richie's body, seeing his dick in the flesh is something of a shock. Eddie licks his lips as he stares down at it, flushed red and hard, a bead of precum sitting on the head like a dew drop. It's not... pretty, per se, but Eddie still finds himself looking for longer than strictly necessary.
"You gonna stare at it all night or...?" Richie asks, the asshole, and Eddie pinches his thigh childishly in response.
"Jesus, you're annoying."
"So I've been told."
Eddie rolls his eyes and climbs off him so he can pull his underwear off all the way. Richie unhelpfully kicks his legs, nearly getting tangled in the process, and Eddie hisses at him to fucking stop moving, dude, I swear to God.
They end up naked, the both of them, and kneeling in front of each other on the bed. Eddie has lost all of the confidence he somehow gained during their five minutes of dry-humping, overwhelmed by the possibilities that Richie's naked body offers, and he crosses his arms for lack of a better idea of what to do with them.
Richie fully laughs at him.
"Stop, fuck you, stop laughing!"
"Why do you look like you're going to scold me for doodling in the margins, man?" Richie giggles, reaching out to grasp Eddie's forearms to try and pull them apart. "What's with this?"
"I'm fucking inexperienced, alright?" Eddie snaps and slaps away Richie's hands.
"Oh, dude, I know," Richie grins.
Eddie wants to fucking die.
"It's fine, though," Richie continues, clearly trying to placate him. "I am, too! We're just doing our best!"
"This isn't a fucking elementary school project," Eddie snaps. " Doing our best? I'm trying to fuck you, not get a gold star for my finger painting."
Richie laughs again, but at least this time it's at Eddie's joke and not at Eddie. He moves closer and for a moment Eddie considers running away, but he thinks that if he takes another bathroom break Richie might just kick him to the curb. So he stays still when Richie puts an arm around him, slowly as though Eddie is a skittish deer, and then wraps his hand around Eddie's dick.
Eddie inhales sharply.
"This okay?" Richie asks gently, and oh, Eddie hates that, hates being babied, but he knows that he only brought this on to himself.
"Yes," he says through gritted teeth. "Fine."
Richie's laugh vibrates through him, a warm sound, and he slowly starts jerking him off. "You don't have to sound too happy about it."
Eddie doesn't dignify that with a response. He drops his head on Richie's shoulder in something akin to surrender and focuses on the warm pleasure, the joy of having your dick touched by someone other than yourself.
"We can just do this," Richie says softly, his breath hot in Eddie's hair. "You don't have to fuck me. I could blow you?"
"Fuck," Eddie breathes and squeezes his eyes shut. That might be nice. He wouldn't have to worry about technique, about lube and fingering and like, finding Richie's prostate.
But who knows when he will get the chance again? The only reason he is even here now is Richie's persistent texting and Bev's exasperated reassurance. He might not ever find someone who wants to have sex with him again.
"No," he says after a moment of silence, save for the slick slide of Richie's hand. "I want to, I— I want to fuck you."
Richie makes a soft sound in the back of his throat, something like a whine, and his rhythm is thrown off briefly. He regains it and uses his free hand to grasp Eddie's nape, to pull him back gently so he can kiss him.
Eddie bucks his hips into Richie's fist and lets himself be kissed, deeply. Some of the tension he has carried with him all night bleeds away, like Richie is taking it with every swipe of his tongue, and Eddie finally gets his shit together long enough to start jerking Richie off in return.
"Fuck," Richie sighs into the kiss and Eddie, encouraged by it, runs his hand down his back and cups his ass. He gives a tentative squeeze, then dips the tips of his fingers in between his cheeks.
Richie pulls back and leans his forehead against Eddie's. His face is flushed and his lips are wet with spit, his glasses sit awkwardly on the bridge of his nose. He looks good like that. Really good. If there were no social rules preventing him from it, Eddie would sit and stare at him for hours.
"Where do you want me?" Richie asks, his thumb rubbing circles into the side of Eddie's neck.
"Uh, on your knees?" Eddie swallows dryly. "If you want."
Richie nods frantically and presses a quick kiss to Eddie's mouth. Then he lets go, turns around with a bit of ungainly shuffling, and gets on his knees as Eddie asked, the side of his face pressed into the pillow and his arms crossed underneath it, his hips in the air.
Heat throbs through Eddie's veins at the sight of him. He reaches out to trace the shape of Richie's lower back, his ass, his hairy thighs, and wills himself to not say or do anything embarrassing.
"Oh, shit, lube and condoms are in the top bedside drawer. By the way," Richie says, his voice hoarse. "But no rush, amigo. Take your time."
"Can you please not call me 'amigo' when I'm about to put my fingers in your ass?"
"I can't promise that."
Eddie sighs and crawls over to the side of the bed. He digs through the drawer until he finds a box of condoms and a bottle of lube and returns to where Richie is still kneeling patiently. Eddie's hands shake as he uncaps the lube and squeezes some onto his fingers.
For a moment he just sits there and stares at Richie's ass, hairy and pale as it is. Intimidating, somehow. Eddie has never been this close to someone else's ass. Myra would probably rather have walked into oncoming traffic than let him anywhere near hers, and he just hasn't gotten the chance since the separation.
"Are you waiting for a sign from God there, buddy?"
Eddie resists the urge to smack him on one of his pasty cheeks. They probably haven't reached the spanking stage of this one night stand yet.
"Fuck you. And don't call me buddy, for fuck’s sake."
Richie laughs and it shakes his whole body. "Hm, you kiss your mother with that mouth?"
"My mother is dead," Eddie says.
"Jesus Christ," Richie giggles and he cranes his neck to look at Eddie. "Can we move on to the bit where you finger me now?"
"I'm fucking— I'm working up to it, okay? Give me a fucking second."
Richie buries his face in the pillow and wiggles his hips. "Whenever you're ready, I guess," he says, voice muffled.
Eddie takes a deep breath. You've got this, babe.
Great. Apparently he needs a pep talk for this shit now. And why did that sound like Bev? He doesn't want her to be involved in this.
When he moves a little closer and hesitantly prods the tight ring of muscle between Richie's cheeks, Richie makes a quiet noise of surprise.
Eddie bites his lower lip in concentration and pushes the tip of his finger into the tight heat of him. It's weird as fuck, irritatingly different from doing it to himself.
"Is that okay?" Eddie asks, annoyed at how nervous he sounds, how needy.
"I might look like one but I'm not actually a virgin," Richie says lightly. "You don’t have to treat me like one.”
Eddie doesn't want to tell him that this is definitely not for his sake so he stays quiet and slides his finger in all the way. It goes easily enough, thanks to the lube.
The sheer terror he feels at somehow fucking this up, the performance anxiety, means that Eddie is nowhere near hard anymore. This isn't even sexy, it's clinical. He is reminded, with startling intensity, of his annual prostate exam.
He crooks his finger a little, just to see if anything will happen. Richie exhales sharply and pushes his hips back, as if asking for more. Eddie breathes through the anxiety coiled tightly in his chest and pulls his finger out so he can add a second.
He resists the urge to ask Richie if it's okay again, desperate for some sort of validation. Maybe he should have let him top, at least that way he wouldn't be responsible for this part. He could just lie there and make Richie do all the work.
"C'mon, dude," Richie whines when Eddie takes a little too long to do anything, his hand hovering awkwardly near his hole.
"Fucking hell, fine," Eddie snaps and pushes two fingers in with a little too much force.
Richie moans into the pillow. Encouraged, Eddie fucks his fingers into him all the way and for a moment it's actually kind of hot, the way his back arches, the tight heat that makes Eddie wonder what it would feel like on his dick.
If he could get it up again, that is. Fuck.
He scissors his fingers inside of Richie and feels a little less like Dr Haines doing his eighth prostate exam of the day and thinking about what he wants for dinner. Eddie flushes right down to his chest and his dick twitches in something akin to interest.
"Fuck, that's good," Richie breathes, turning his head so that his cheek is squished against the pillow.
Eddie can see now that Richie's hands are clutching at the navy blue sheets, white-knuckled, which means he must be doing something right, even if it doesn't feel like it.
"Yeah?" he asks and immediately feels like a fucking asshole for it. What is he, some kind of macho man? Yeah, you like that, baby? You like the way I fuck you?
His face burns red hot, and the back of his neck prickles with sweat. He fucks his fingers in and out of Richie with more confidence than he thought he could muster right now. When he angles them just so, Richie jerks beneath him and lets out a shaky moan.
"Right there," he gasps. "Please."
Eddie obliges. He tries to focus on Richie's reactions, the way he breathes in and out loudly, like he is running, and the way his body jerks and moves in response. It's good, then. He gets lost in it for a moment, gets out of his head so he can try to give Richie what he wants, even if he feels incompetent and virginal.
He adds a third finger when Richie asks, practically begs him to and he tentatively wraps his free hand around his own cock.
"Can you— Do you want to fuck me?" Richie asks, looking at him over his shoulder. "Please?"
His face is flushed and his lips spit-red, his glasses have left red indents on the bridge of his nose where the pillow pressed them into the skin. He looks hot, frankly, and Eddie would like to crawl up to kiss him senseless but he thinks that might take him out of whatever tentatively horny mood he has gotten himself back into so instead he pushes his fingers back into Richie once, twice, making him moan on them, and then pulls back.
"Okay," he says, breathless. "Yes."
With slippery fingers Eddie tries to open the condom wrapper. It takes him so embarrassingly long that when he finally manages to tear the foil he has to resist the urge to say “thank fuck” out loud. He gives himself a few strokes, as if to psych himself up, and then rolls the condom onto his dick.
"I might need to—" Richie starts and gestures vaguely towards his legs. "Move. I'm old and I don't exercise, y'know?"
"You should be stretching daily at your age," Eddie says.
Richie laughs as he rolls over onto his back. "What am I, eighty? We're the same age, grandpa."
"I know that! That's why I stretch daily," Eddie bristles and grips the meat of Richie's thighs, blunt fingernails leaving crescent shapes in the skin there.
"Alright, Doctor K. Want to stop giving me medical advice and get your dick inside of me?"
Eddie scowls at him, mostly to hide the way fear shoots through him like lighting. What if he fucks this up? What if his dick isn't the right shape? The right size? What if he can't find a good rhythm?
Oh God, what if he comes within a few seconds? It might just be too much for him to handle. What if he has a fucking heart attack?
"You okay there, dude?" Richie asks, one eyebrow quirked. "You've gone a bit, uh, pale."
"I'm fine," Eddie says, too quickly to be believable. "I'm fine. Do you need like, a pillow? For your ass?"
He read in a blog post about anal sex that it can help with the angle but he isn't about to tell Richie that is where he got that info from.
"Hm, maybe," Richie nods and he drags one of the pillows piled at the top of the bed underneath his hips. He wriggles to get comfortable, then puts his fleet flat on the mattress so his knees are bent. "Now give it to me, baby."
Eddie grimaces. "Don't— Don't say that."
"Hm," Richie grins. "Fuck me hard, daddy? Do me, hunk?"
"Neither of those." Eddie moves closer and holds Richie by the hips. He lines his cock up with Richie's hole so the head is nudging in between his cheeks. "Uh, okay. I'm gonna—"
"Just do it, man," Richie says lightly. "I'll tell you if it sucks."
Fuck, it's going to suck, isn't it? Eddie screws his eyes shut and takes a deep breath, then realises he needs them open if he wants to actually get inside of him so he reluctantly looks down.
"Okay," he says again and the embarrassment is almost too much for him to handle. He grasps the base of his dick and pushes in a tiny bit, no more than half an inch.
When he looks up to check if Richie is still happy about this, the guy is staring at him with wide eyes, his forehead glistening with sweat.
"You good?" Eddie asks, fearing the worst.
"Oh my god," Richie groans. "The tip of your dick isn't going to fucking break me, dude. Can you please fuck me?"
Eddie bristles at his tone and rocks his hips forwards in defiance, somewhat accidentally sliding halfway into him.
"Oh, fuck," Richie gasps and his hands fly to clutch the sheets again.
"Oh." Eddie breathes in and out, in and out, and he repeats the motion until he bottoms out. It's overwhelming, the tight heat of him, and he doesn't know how to proceed. For a moment he just stares down at Richie's body, his hairy thighs, his flushed and leaking cock, his soft stomach, and he tries to remember how sex works. This part should be easy, not much different from having sex with Myra, except he was never actually very good at that either, largely due to a complete lack of enthusiasm on both sides.
He moves eventually if only to save himself from more of Richie's bitchy commentary, and he feels every clench of muscle around him at the bottom of his spine. His grip on Richie's hips is bruising, must be painful, and strands of his hair stick to his sweaty forehead. Beneath him, Richie grips the bedsheets and gasps every time Eddie fucks back into him.
"Oh shit, Eds," Richie groans when Eddie changes the angle slightly.
"Not my name," Eddie pants. "You dickhead."
When Richie laughs it unfortunately means that he clenches around him right as Eddie rocks his hips into him and Eddie nearly fucking comes then and there.
"Shit," he hisses and stills. "Give me— Fuck, give me a second."
Richie stares up at him incredulously. "Dude, come on. I'm dying here."
"I know, me too, just let me—"
To take some pressure off his knees, because not even daily stretches can make up for the impact running has on his joints, he pushes himself forwards until he is covering Richie's body with his own, his elbows on either side of his face. Richie brings his leg up and hooks it around Eddie’s waist for a better angle, and Eddie loses his mind about how unassumingly sexy that is.
The intimacy of the new position nearly makes him want to go back to where he was before, to put some distance between them, but Richie wraps an arm around him so he has no choice but to stay.
Tentatively, with trembling thighs, he starts moving again. Slow at first because he worries he is going to come within seconds if he doesn't pace himself, but he picks up speed after a moment because every part of him is practically begging for it. His throat is dry and he feels feverish. Despite the hot pleasure of it, his chest still feels tight with worry — now mainly about the fact he might come too quickly and make an ass of himself even more so than he already has.
With a stifled whine, Richie arches upwards so his dick rubs against Eddie's stomach. Eddie takes the hint and reaches between them to wrap one hand around him. The angle is awkward, his arm wedged between their bodies, but Richie moans with every stilted stroke.
Eddie knows with every fibre of his being that it has been something like three minutes and he cannot come yet, Richie is going to fucking hate him, maybe there is a Yelp for sex after all and he just doesnt know about it because he doesn’t know enough gay men, but with every thrust it becomes harder to hold on to reason.
In a desperate effort to distract himself from the building pressure in his abdomen he tilts his head down to kiss Richie, but he underestimated how good that would feel, too. Richie licks into his mouth eagerly and makes breathy, soft sounds, little fucked out ‘ah, ah, ah’s, and then he bites Eddie’s lower lip and it’s all fucking over.
Eddie’s hips stutter as he comes, hard and sudden, with a shocked moan against Richie's lips. His vision whites out for a moment and his hand stills awkwardly on Richie's dick, wedged in between their sweaty bodies.
The high of the orgasm is instantly replaced by crushing shame. He buries his face in the crook of Richie's shoulder and allows himself to hide there for a brief moment, his eyes screwed shut and his chest heaving.
"Are you... good?" Richie asks, sounding as out of breath as Eddie. From what? The five minutes he spent lying on his back?
"I'm— Yeah, fine. Sorry."
Richie pats him on the back which doesn't help to alleviate Eddie's humiliation in the slightest.
He is still inside Richie somehow, and it's starting to become a little uncomfortable so he pushes himself up on his elbows and pulls out. The motion makes him grimace, his dick too overstimulated for it to be anything but too much.
He doesn't look at Richie as he shifts back onto his knees and pulls the pink condom off. He ties a knot at the base, then looks around for somewhere to put it.
"Here," Richie says and reaches over the edge of the bed to pick a bin up off the floor.
Eddie feels the childish urge to throw it and see if he can get it in from four feet away but he thinks that if he misses he will have to leave the country. The potato farmer life in Novosibirsk is starting to sound more appealing by the minute. Instead, he crawls over to the edge and carefully drops the condom in it, not leaving any room for error.
Then he sits back on his heels and finally, finally looks at Richie, but only after reminding himself he never has to see him again after tonight. He could get dressed and leave right now, his home is only a thirty minute Uber drive away. This is fine.
Unexpectedly, Richie looks content. His cheeks are pink and his lips dark, there's a hickey on his collarbone that Eddie doesn't remember putting there, and his glasses are pushed up into his hair so his eyes are unfocused, glazed over. His cock is still hard, darker than the rest of him, and it's laying against his stomach and dripping precum into the hair below his navel.
Just as Eddie looks over, Richie slides his glasses back down on his nose and licks his lips. He gives Eddie a shy, hopeful look, like he actually wants something from him after that performance, what the shit , and he says, "Can I come on your stomach?"
"What?" Eddie asks, dumbfounded.
Richie clears his throat and says, "Uh, it's just— You have abs and I think it would be hot? Maybe?"
"Oh." Eddie blinks. "Yes."
"Yeah?"
"Sure, how do you— where should I—?"
"If you just lay down, I could kneel. Above you, I mean." Richie sits up and wipes his forehead, sweeping his curls out of his face in the process, a nervous gesture.
Eddie would honestly do anything to convince Richie he isn't a terrible fuck at this point so he is on his back faster than he can think.
"Huh," Richie says with a throaty laugh. "Eager."
"Fuck off," Eddie snaps though the effect is somewhat diminished by the imbalanced dynamic of the position.
Richie shuffles until he is kneeling besides him and he runs a hand down Eddie's chest, circling each of his nipples with his thumb, tracing the faint outline of his ribs, the shape of his abs. Eddie wants to shy away from the touch, wants to curl up on his side and lie there until it's the morning and Richie has hopefully left for work or something — whatever it is famous stand-up comedians do on a Saturday.
It's too much to be touched like this when he isn't hazy with arousal anymore. It feels like worship, and Eddie can't stand it.
But he stays still because written across Richie's face is want, is awe, and all he has to do is let him take it. So he bites his lip and watches as Richie takes his cock in his hand and starts jerking himself off in quick, practiced movements, all the while his fingers flit across Eddie's upper body, his pecs, his arms, until finally cupping the side of his face. Eddie almost jerks away, skittish as he feels, but the blissed out look on Richie's face makes him stop.
"Fuck, you're so hot," Richie gasps and his thumb comes to rest on Eddie's lower lip. "Look at you."
Eddie doesn't feel particularly hot, feels a little more like a sweaty naked mole-rat than anything resembling the definition of the word, but he isn't about to fight Richie on it. Almost instinctively, he parts his lips to take Richie's thumb into his mouth, possessed by some primal urge.
"Oh my god," Richie moans and he looks completely wrecked. "'m not gonna last, fuck, holy shit."
Eddie tries to somehow convey the concept of dirty talk with his eyes while he sucks on Richie's thumb, grateful that he has an excuse not to speak because he cannot for the life of him come up with anything sufficiently seductive to say in response.
"Shit, oh fuck, fuck, Eddie, shit," Richie gasps, his hips jerking helplessly, and Eddie likes that Richie says his name as though he can take any credit for this orgasm. "I'm gonna— Shit, oh, you're so—"
And then he comes in hot spurts across Eddie's stomach with a breathless moan. His thumb slips out of Eddie's mouth and he strokes himself through the aftershocks before collapsing onto the bed next to him.
"Jesus Christ," Richie says.
Eddie stares at the ceiling above, the smooth, white paint.
Richie continues, "That was good."
With an incredulous laugh, Eddie pushes himself up onto his forearms and looks over at him. "Was it?"
"Huh?" Richie frowns at him, looking as adorable as a forty year old man can look. "Wasn't it?"
"I don't need the ego boost, dude, it's fine," Eddie sighs and scrubs a hand across his face. Come is drying on his stomach and he really wants to take a fucking shower, but he can do that at home.
"I'm not— Why would I lie?" Richie gives him a playful shove. "C'mon, get the hell out of whatever post-sex crisis you're in right now and let's get you cleaned up so we can cuddle."
Eddie can't resist shoving him back, like a fucking child. Like he is pigtail pulling on the playground.
"I'm not staying the night," he tells him plainly. "I'm going to get cleaned up and go home."
He doesn't miss the flash of hurt on Richie's face before he schools it into something more neutral, but Eddie refuses to feel bad. He has to go home. This is a one night stand. If he stays, he might do something stupid like ask to see him again.
"Dude, it's like 2am," Richie says. "Just stay. We don't need to cuddle."
Eddie sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. The wooden floor is cool beneath his feet.
"I'm going to the bathroom," he says quietly and gets up.
He picks up his clothes along the way, his underwear and his good Marsh sweater, his jeans, and he resolutely does not look at Richie. There is no reason for the guy to be hurt by this. They don't know each other and the boundaries of this hook-up were clear — or so Eddie thought. Is he committing some sort of faux pas by leaving? Surely not. This is standard one night stand behaviour: You meet, you fuck, you leave.
He digs through Richie's bathroom shelf for some wet wipes and cleans the drying come off his stomach. The longer he stays, the harder it will be not to think of this as more than it is. He knows himself, knows that his imagination tends to get away from him, knows the way he gets caught up in gestures and subtext, the reason that he still thinks about the compliment Saheli in HR paid him two years ago.
With a sigh he runs the tap, splashes his face with cold water, and washes his hands thoroughly.
In the distance, he hears police sirens. He looks out of the small bathroom window, and it's so high that he can only see the night sky. It's really snowing now, nothing like the light flurry from earlier. Unsurprising given the temperatures, but the ferocity of it makes him pause. He remembers the weather warning he swiped away earlier, in the back of the Uber, and he wonders what it said. Perhaps a wind chill warning? He has his three layers, plus a thick parka, and he can wait up here until the Uber comes so he doesn't have to stand in the cold.
He uses some of Richie's mouthwash and wonders if that is crossing some sort of line. His Sex Yelp review is looking worse by the minute. Once he feels adequately cleaned up, or at least enough so that he can face the ride home without having a panic attack, he gets dressed and finger-combs his hair into submission in front of the mirror.
There is a faint mark on the side of his throat, not quite a hickey but close enough. If it isn't gone by Monday, he will have to wear a scarf to work. Maybe he could tell people it's a rash? Not that anyone would give enough of a shit to ask. His colleagues barely make small talk with him about the weather, let alone about weekend sexual exploits. Jesus.
Richie is on the couch in the living room, dressed in shorts and a ratty old Hawkeye t-shirt that is one size too small and rides up around his midriff. He looks like a twenty-something stoner. He looks like every single guy Eddie ever had an ill-advised, undefined crush on in college.
The infomercial channel is playing on TV, advertising something that might be a blender or a futuristic toilet brush.
"I'm going," Eddie says, standing in the doorway to the room.
Richie turns the volume down and nods at him. He looks— he looks lonely. The couch is too big for just him, his shoulders are hunched.
Eddie swallows around the guilt lodged in his throat.
"Alright, man," Richie says.
Eddie fishes his phone out of his back pocket and goes on the Uber app to order a ride. Once requested, he absently swipes down and sees the WEA weather warning from earlier still sitting in his recent notifications.
[Emergency alert: Extreme Blizzard Warning this area until 6:00PM EDT Monday. Avoid travel. Check media.]
"Oh, shit." Eddie stares down at the notification with wide eyes.
From the couch, Richie asks, "What?"
Eddie switches back to the Uber app. Still searching, no nearby drivers. He swipes back to the notification, sees another one at the top.
[Emergency Alert: All non-emergency vehicles must be off all roads in NYC by 2AM until further notice.]
It's 1:53am. There is no way a driver will accept his request. Eddie feels like he's been pushed into a lake in the depth of winter.
"It's just—"
Can he walk it? He thumbs over to Maps, enables his location and puts in his address. It's a four hour walk. For a brief, hysterical moment Eddie considers undertaking it. His brain helpfully supplies the vision of some poor mailman finding his frozen corpse under a bridge somewhere in Cobble Hill in the morning, so he shakes off the idea.
"There's a blizzard," he says and finally looks up at Richie. "Did you know there's a blizzard? In New York City?”
Richie stares at him. "Huh?"
"Huh?!" Eddie repeats, his voice shrill. "There's a blizzard! Right now!"
"Right, okay."
"'All non-emergency vehicles must be off all roads in NYC by 2AM'," he reads out. "Fuck!"
"Dude, I already said you should stay. Wait it out here and you can go home tomorrow."
"Yes, but I—" I don't want to. He doesn't say it. Thinks it might be cruel, if he did. "The warning is in effect until Monday."
Richie blinks at him blearily. "So stay until Monday. Whatever."
"What the fuck, I can't just—"
"I'll take the couch if you don't want to share. It's one of those, uh," he gestures vaguely. "Pull out sofa beds?"
Eddie frowns at him. His mind races but physically he is exhausted, so tired that he feels it in his bones. He wants desperately to be in bed, his bed, not the reminder of his four minute attempt at fucking a guy in the room next door. In an ideal world he would be high out of his mind in forty-five minutes. He would call Bev so they can laugh about this together, and then he would to rub some diluted lavender oil on the inside of his wrists and go the fuck to sleep.
In an ideal world.
He is too tired to argue. Here is this man, this ridiculous stranger, who wants him to stay, and outside; a blizzard. Richie’s apartment is warm and homely, it welcomes him. And what choice does he have? Bev is spending the weekend with her new girlfriend — are they official yet? He can’t keep track — in New Rochelle, and even if he had a spare key to her loft, walking any amount of time in a blizzard at 2am sounds like hell, let alone two and a half hours to Bushwick. Eddie can’t think of anyone he knows in Manhattan who would let him stay the weekend, or even just the night.
Richie is still looking at him, a hesitant smile on his face.
So Eddie says, “Fine. Do you have clean sheets?”