No One But You ✔️ Reddie

Eight

Richie loved opening his front door to see Eddie there. Backlit by the sun, he was an ethereal silhouette. Even though he was still shorter than Richie, he was lean and toned, with gorgeous locks of brown hair that swept across his head. He raked his hands through it and hurried himself inside, checking over his shoulder as though someone might be spying on him.

Richie's face dropped. He followed Eddie up the stairs to his bedroom. As soon as the door was closed, Eddie wrapped his hand around Richie's neck and drew him into a deep kiss. 'Hi,' he said afterwards.

'Hi,' Richie greeted. 'Where'd you tell your mom you were going?' he asked with a sigh.

'To the movies with Bill.' Eddie said. He raised his eyebrows at Richie, proud of himself for swindling this. When Richie didn't smile, his face dropped. 'What?'

Richie puffed out his cheeks as he flopped down on his bedcovers. 'I don't know.' He frowned. 'I'm getting a little bored of the lying.'

'You? Bored of lying?' Eddie chuckled. 'Then how aren't you bored of saying you fucked my mom?'

'Oh, because that's not a lie,' Richie vowed, a sparkle of his usual personality filtering through his sudden melancholy. Then it vanished, 'It's different. All these lies just make me think of all the things I want to do with you, but I can't.'

'What do you mean?' Eddie said, climbing onto the bed next to him. He lay down so that his head was in line with Richie's and looked down to see how Richie's feet hung over the edge when his barely reached the bedposts.

Richie looked at him, his eyes darting between each pupil, unsure of where to settle. 'It'd be so fucking nice to go to the movies with you. I'd love to go and meet you there and I buy your ticket and you get the popcorn.'

'I don't understand. We've done that at the movies before.' Eddie furrowed his brow.

'But we don't do that now.' Richie pressed, but Eddie said nothing. 'Come on, don't make me sound like a fucking sap. You know what I mean.' But Eddie clearly didn't. Richie groaned, before he admitted, 'It'd be nice to be like the couples at the movie theatre, for once. It'd be nice to be like the couples fucking anywhere.'

Eddie's heart pounded. He didn't like it when Richie used words like 'couple'. It was too direct in comparison to something else, something that was so similar and yet so strikingly different to what they were. Something that behaves alike but doesn't quite look alike. Unsettling, the uncanny valley.

Richie went on, 'All these times we're out together and we can't even sit next to each other in a fucking diner. I can't hold your hand when we walk down the street. I can't kiss you goodbye at the end of the day. Jesus Christ, I can't even fucking talk about you. Not even with my best friends.'

Eddie had no idea that Richie felt this way. He had no desire to share his and Richie's relationship with anyone else, lest it be tainted by the haunted Derry air, the malicious Derry population. This pocket of happiness glowed like a beacon, he didn't want it sullied. He tried his hardest not to let its light leak into any other aspect of his life.

Richie, on the other hand, felt like he was keeping a light inside a Swiss cheese, and found himself constantly darting to block another hole. 'Mike tells me about some girl in our class who wants me to ask her out and I have to find some other shitty excuse. Stan always goes straight to Bill for relationship advice because obviously I can't know a thing about it. Ben asks me if I've ever felt about someone the way that he felt about Bev and I have to lie and say only his mom.'

'You could just say no,' Eddie suggested, trying to make him laugh. He didn't like seeing Richie so subdued.

'Eddie, I'm just saying I wish we didn't have to hide quite so fucking much.' Richie finished. 'It's starting to feel so,' he clenched his jaw, 'claustrophobic.'

Claustrophobia: the fear of small spaces. Coulrophobia: the fear of clowns. The words sounded so similar. Richie shuddered.

Eddie gently stroked downwards on the lightly freckled skin of Richie's arm. It was hard seeing him so frustrated, and yet he felt completely incapable of alleviating that frustration. He didn't feel the same claustrophobia. He felt safe, protected, guarded.

Eddie said, 'At least you don't have to hide from me anymore. At least I don't have to hide from you. I'm not saying that's everything but maybe it can be enough.'

Richie thought about the time that he'd knelt in front of the wooden planks of the kissing bridge and carved the R+E. He'd thought that about the time that he'd kissed Eddie's cheek, how back then he'd believed it would be the only kiss they'd ever share, and how that could be enough, could be everything.

'Maybe.' Richie hummed.

He looked at Eddie now. Older, gentler, as bright and clean as he'd ever been, somehow more afraid of his relationship with Richie than he had ever been of a killer clown. The boy he had kissed more times than he could remember.

Back when he carved into the bridge, he knew he was lying to himself. He'd known that one kiss wouldn't be enough forever. Even if he had to keep telling lies to the world, he wasn't going to keep telling lies to himself or to Eddie.

'For now.' Richie added solemnly.

Eddie kissed him. 'Enough talking,' he whispered, then kissed him again, hand dragging back up Richie's body.

It was hard to say no to Eddie when he kissed like this. Richie sank into the moment, drawing Eddie closer to his body, running his hands up his back, clutching at the soft hairs on the back of his head. He felt himself growing hot as Eddie's breathing grew more ragged.

Eddie dotted kisses down Richie's neck, careful not to leave any marks which could betray their liaison. He pulled Richie on top of him, straddling his narrow hips.

Richie hesitated for a moment, then he grabbed at the collar at the back of his neck and pulled the shirt off over his head. His dark curls bounced haphazardly; he pushed them away from his face. 'Is this okay?' he asked tentatively.

Eddie stared at Richie's bare skin and nodded. Propped up on his elbows, he bit his lower lip and scanned up the boy's body, at the downy hairs spreading across his chest and trickling down from his bellybutton. Then he swiftly removed his own shirt.

'Jesus Christ, Eds,' Richie gaped, seeing the tone of Eddie's abdomen. His skin was buffed and smooth as marble, of the rich olive colour that dappled his cheeks.

Eddie wrapped his arms around Richie's waist and kissed his shoulders, kissed his arms, kissed down his throat, dragging his lips along his breastbone.

Richie pushed Eddie back down flat and pressed their lips together, hard and heated. Gently, he pulled at Eddie's lip with his teeth, letting it snap back into place. His hands moved over the new torso before him, surprisingly lithe and athletic. His thumbs traced at the waistband of Eddie's jeans.

Eddie's hands moved down to meet Richie's and slowly guided them back up his body. 'One step at a time,' he mumbled.

Richie had known he was pushing his luck and happily agreed. He could wait until Eddie was ready before they did anything more. What he wasn't sure of was how long he could stay in the closet. He needed Eddie to be ready for that, but he was scared that he never would be. One thing was certain, he couldn't do it alone.