Stan and Ben talk excitedly by the ticket booth, the two boys spiraling out on dead-end conversations about the geometrics of the library and how beautifully precise all of the measurements are.
Richie stands behind Stan, carrying the boy's messenger bag while keeping track of the fourth member of today's party.
Eddie is perched at the concessions stand, leaning against the counter in a way that requires him standing on his tiptoes. The boy smiles as he talks to the employee, his face lighting up as he nods. Richie is too far away, but he knows the routine of the movies well enough to know that Eddie was accepting butter on the popcorn.
"Right, Richie?" Stan then asks.
Richie snaps out of it, bringing his eyes over to the two he's currently with. What were they talking about again? Just nod and say yeah, that's all they want to hear.
Richie nods, "Yeah."
Stan agrees once more before bringing up another point in his case. Ben listens intently, much more attentively than Richie. As if he's dismissed from the conversation, Richie's eyes immediately float back to where Eddie is at, the small boy struggling to balance two large popcorns in his toothpick arms.
Richie moves quickly, coming over to rescue the boy from a buttery meltdown. Eddie looks up in relief, smiling at Richie and adjusting his fannypack, his arms thankful to be free. Richie holds them easily, although his fingers begin to slip at the sight of Eddie's smile.
"You ready to get your mind blown, freak?" Eddie asks with glee in his tone.
"You wish, Kaspbrak," Richie rolls his eyes fondly.
When Richie Tozier woke up this morning, he wanted nothing more than to be with someone. Anyone. Even Henry The Fucking Asshole would have sufficed.
He called Bill first, feeling significantly closer to the boy after their truth session at the quarry. Bill declined though as he has a speech therapy appointment later today. Then, Richie called Mike, but once again he was shot down. Mike has to prepare the animals and the crops for wintertime, and he rattles off a chore list longer than Richie's lanky limbs. So, as his safe bet, Richie called Stan and finally sighed in relief when someone accepted. But then...
Richie looks back down at Eddie Kaspbrak, his heart bending and tugging at the seams. How did Eddie end up being invited? Who let this happen? Was it Stan? Was Stan being evil?
Stan doesn't have it in him to be evil, dipshit.
"I'm glad you're here," Richie says first, his eyes fixated on not moving from one spot in time.
Eddie looks up with a shocked expression, and then quickly averts his gaze elsewhere when he feels himself burning up. "Whatever. Idiot."
Eddie walks away quickly, his shoulders hunched up and tense. Richie sighs, kicking his boot against his ankle until he can feel the skin tingle with numbness. He keeps doing this as punishment for being stupid until Ben looks over and summons Richie to follow them to the box office.
The horror film that they choose to see is absolutely terrible. The effects are cheesy, the acting is subpar, and the soundtrack is the worst disco imaginable. Stan jumps at every scare, burying his face into Richie's shoulder and trying to avoid the haunted scenes. Richie pays the bare minimum of attention, mainly just rubbing Stan's shoulder and whispering promises of safety into the boy's curly hair.
"It's okay, Stan. It's just a movie, love. Ghosts aren't real, okay? You're safe with me," he whispers quietly in an attempt to build some kind of safety for his new best friend. He wants to be that comfortable place where people run to, and for Stan, he wants to be that place where the boy sees birds in every corner of his life.
The seat next to Ben's squeaks loudly through the silent theater as Eddie stands to his feet. Richie lifts his head off of Stan's hair to watch the dainty silhouette of the boy make his way down the aisle to escape the row. Eddie's features brighten up like a lightbulb when he turns to face the screen, and Richie can catch a glimpse of the wet streaks down the boy's freckled cheeks.
"Haystack, where'd Shortstack go?" Richie reaches his long arm over to nudge Ben behind Stan's back.
Ben looks over as if he genuinely didn't notice Eddie's departure, then shrugs in confusion. Stan lifts his head, looks at Eddie's seat, then asks Richie "Did the ghosts get him?"
"No, dipshit," Richie scoffs, stroking Stan's hair softly. Comfort him. Be his safe place. He's your best friend, protect him. "Probably just went to the bathroom I guess."
After ten minutes, Richie grows worried. He decides to give it another ten minutes, but then the first movie ends and the second film of the double feature boots up. Richie knows that Eddie is out there, possibly crying, and he knows he's sitting here doing nothing to stop it. Richie is so busy being Stan's emotional guardian that he's not even trying to shelter the one person who actually really matters.
"I'll be back, Stan. I gotta take a leak," Richie announces loudly, to which Stan looks up with wide eyes and shakes his head.
"No, don't leave, Rich," Stan's hand clasps down over Richie's wrist, but the tall boy shakes free.
"Ben's here, he'll protect you. Won't you, chubs?" Richie looks over to Ben, who is once again completely clueless.
Stan gives Richie one last pleading look, but Richie pulls away and stands up from his seat much more quietly than Eddie's noisy exit.
The lobby of the theater is empty, as well as the concessions stand, albeit two customers that are certainly not Eddie. Next, Richie pushes the door to the bathroom open, hoping to find the small boy and not some man trying to do his business in peace.
"Eds?" Richie calls out, turning the corner to eye the stalls and urinals. He passes by the sinks, catching a glimpse of his reflection and feeling repulsed. Richie shakes his head and says "Sorry. I meant Eddie."
The last stall in the lineup unlocks, the door to the handicapped vacancy slowly creaking open. Richie sighs in relief, taking a few steps forward to push the door open the rest of the way. Eddie is standing on the other end, his arms crossed, eyes glaring.
"Hey," Richie feels himself bursting into a smile. My sunflower asthmatic boy. "You waitin' for me, babycakes? You're missing the movie, dude-"
"Fuck you, Richie," Eddie spits out, his arms coming down to his sides in exasperated motions, his fists clenched tightly. "You're a fucking asshole."
"Woah, woah. The fuck did I do?" Richie puts his arms up in self defense. He tilts his head to the side and tries to figure out what he said in the past three hours to piss Eddie off so badly.
"God, that is so like you. You don't even know what you did!" Eddie approaches him in the stall, cornering Richie and pushing his tiny hands into the boy's chest with much aggression. "You arrogant, self-serving, hypersexual, sociopathic, apathetic freak."
Richie falls silent, unable to respond to any of the words being shot at him like arrows. He can feel the daggers cutting into his skin, the sharp blades carving the insults into his flesh for all to see. He stares at Eddie with no expression, his eyes dulling down as the boy hurls more insults at him. As Eddie punches his chest, his subconscious is validated, and every bad thought he's ever had suddenly becomes correct statements.
"You're such a dick! You're a prick! You're an egocentric, impotent, feces-collecting, ill-bred heathen!" Eddie slaps his hand against Richie's chest one more time, only for it to be one too many.
Richie's reflexes move quickly, his hand coming up to grab Eddie's as its suspended in midair. He holds the boy's wrist tightly, staring down at the other one with no expression on his face.
"Talk to me," Richie says as calmly as he can despite his inner walls crumbling. "Now."
Eddie loses some of his edge, the boy's entire demeanor shifting from furious to just upset, his shoulders dropping down as he shrinks in on himself. His eyes get even impossibly bigger, shifting in tiny movements from Richie's left eye to his right.
"I-I-" Eddie stutters out, at a loss for words. Then, he frowns as he remembers the anger, and the vocabulary suddenly seems to form itself. "What makes you think you've got the right to just use people however you want? Does it make you feel good to know that you're hurting innocent people? People who just want the best for you? Does it make you feel like more of a tough man when you break hearts, Richie?"
Richie told Eddie that he had the fire in him and he should speak his mind more clearly. Now, Richie is feeling the wrath of those flames.
Richie stares at him in scrutinized confusion, completely thrown off guard by the word's new string of insults. "Excuse me?" he asks.
"God, what don't you get?" Eddie asks. He yanks his arm out of Richie's grasp, backing away to let the boy breathe. "What, I reject you so now you have to go and steal love from Stan, too? Could you be any more self absorbed? Jesus, Richie. Are you going to hop around the whole fucking group? Gonna turn us all into little heartbroken Henrys?"
The words sting like lemons being squirted into wounds. The salt that Eddie rubs in only adds bitter flavor.
"It's just a little fucked up, dude. That's all I'm saying. I wouldn't date you so now you've got to take my best friend from me?" Eddie shakes, his words crumbling down as his eyes fill with tears. He frowns deeper, shaking his head and wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands. "No. No, no, no. I am not crying."
"What, so I can't possibly ever find love? You don't want me, you're not gay, but I can't ever date another boy? How the fuck is that fair?" Richie snaps, taking a step towards Eddie.
"I didn't-" Eddie shakes his head, frowning more deeply. "I didn't mean that. And don't- don't- don't say that. Don't say I'm not gay."
"Even if you were, you wouldn't date me. You just said it yourself, I'm fucking arrogant," Richie scoffs. "You think so lowly of me, don't you? And you expect me to just, what, sit around hopelessly dreaming about you like some lovesick pup? To never move on or find someone who reciprocates? Yet I'm the selfish one?"
"I reciprocate!" Eddie shouts, moving closer to glare at Richie. He shoves the boy's chest again, growling the words "You fucking dumbass! Are you seriously that stupid!? I fucking reciprocate, you asshole!"
Richie falls silent, taking a step back and letting his body flatten out against the stall wall. Is Eddie lying to him? No, no, that doesn't seem like him. Besides, if Eddie were lying, he wouldn't be producing fake tears this easily. Eddie's telling the truth.
"Oh," Richie says.
"But you didn't- you don't- you don't care about me. If you did, you wouldn't be draping yourself all over my best friend. You don't even want to hang out with me anymore! What is wrong with you!? God, you didn't even try, Richie. You didn't even wait a single day. You just- You went and took Stan from me as well. Do you like him now? Is he your boyfriend?"
"We're just friends, Eds," Richie looks away with a guilty face.
"Right. Like you and I are 'just friends'. Do you hold Stan's hand too? Do you crawl through his windows? Do you make him mixtapes? Are you just friends, Richie?" Eddie asks. "God, this is what you do to people, isn't it? You make them fall in love with you and just move onto someone new because you decided you don't want them anymore? And to think that I fucking believed your sad, tortured soul delusion. I felt bad for you! But you aren't sad or tortured at all, you're just a fucking apathetic robot with no regards for others."
"What do you want from me? Do you want me to never talk to Stan again? Are you just jealous that you aren't the center of my fucking universe?" Richie says, his words biting through the air.
"I want you to fucking tell me the truth!" Eddie shouts, his voice echoing in the bathroom. "I'm tired of playing this stupid game with you, Richie! You either like me, or you don't. You can't tell me that I'm the one and then turn around and kiss Stan's neck in movie theaters!"
Richie burns in embarrassment, not realizing that Eddie had seen that. He opens his mouth to respond, but the boy still has more to say.
"I don't want to be fucking played around with. If you're going to come along and make me care, then you should fucking care too! I don't want to sit around and wait for you, Richie. I have other choices," Eddie shouts, his cheeks red and eyes filled with tears. He's an emotional cryer, the type of person who's eyes brim with water with each flash of anger that they feel.
"Who, Greta Bowie?" Richie laughs sarcastically, leaning against the stall door and saying "Eds, you're a fuckin' comedian."
"Will," Eddie frowns. His anger only grows the more he's laughed at, so the venom in his voice spreads through the following words, "Will Byers."
"Excuse me?" Richie straightens up, his whole body and demeanor stiffening at the mention of another male's name. "Who the fuck is that?"
"Someone who doesn't fucking date my best friends the day after confessing he likes me!" Eddie shouts.
"If you love Will Byers so fucking much, why don't you go marry him, you fucking prick," Richie's self esteem begins to collapse, his legs weakening beneath him as his mind whirls.
There's a silence that comes over the pair, Richie's eyes avoidant and focused on the checkered floor tile as he begins to hate himself overwhelmingly. Eddie stares at his profile, the curve of his nose, the soft cheeks hidden beneath his thick glasses, Eddie's body seething in anger. Both boys tremble, but for different reasons.
Eddie finally breaks the silence, his voice shaking and full of weakness. He murmurs, "Because he's not you, idiot."
Eddie pushes past Richie to exit the stall, and Richie doesn't do anything to stop him from leaving. He listens as the door opens and closes, then the silence that follows. His mind feels sick with insults, the toxins leaking in through his ears and poisoning his brain. Richie feels as if he's inhaled fumes, his body deprived of all oxygen.
Then, in a burst of complete fury, he turns and punches the wall of the bathroom stall. He punches and punches, keeps punching, until his knuckles bleed and leave streaks on the dented wall. After his hand goes numb and his forearm deals with all the damage, he loses feeling in his fingertips. Not just his fingertips; everything. It's a miracle how he's still standing.
Eventually, Richie somehow finds it in himself to go back to the theater. He takes his seat next to Stan again, trying so very hard not to even glance in Eddie's general direction whatsoever. Stan gratefully hides under Richie's jacket as the monsters appear on the screen, but Richie doesn't hold him like he was earlier. He stares forward, his body empty and merely a shell of everything that was once there.
If Richie did look, however, if he did manage to gather the courage to turn his eyes to the left, he would see Eddie staring right at him. Eddie's eyes catch onto the bloody knuckles and he feels the yearn to clean the split wounds. Eddie wants things to be normal again, for Richie to not sit next to Stan but want to sit with Eddie in the back row. Eddie wants things to go back to how they were, when Richie would promise him that he wouldn't die alone.
But after everything that was just said in a fit of frantic emotions, neither of the boys are sure if things will ever return to how they once were.