They left the café shortly afterwards, when the morning was still fresh and the air was cold and bright with dawn. It was strange, walking with Richie in the pale, watery light. Eddie was so used to seeing him in the dark, it almost felt wrong to be with him under the gentle rays of the rising sun.
Almost.
This time of morning was magic, Eddie thought, though different from the lonely spell of the night. It was still peaceful, still quiet, still empty. He and Richie were still the only two people on the planet, in a dream world entirely of their own. But it felt hopeful, in a way. Excited. Full of anticipation for the day to come.
It felt alive .
***
They watched as they walked, as lights turned on and cars started, and signs were flipped from Sorry, We're Closed to Come in, We're Open . They watched as the sun grew brighter and warmer and altogether more present, and as people began appearing on the street with blurry eyes and disheveled hair and paper cups of coffee clutched in cold hands. It was oddly cathartic, seeing the world wake up around them. It made Richie feel real , in a way he so rarely did.
He had started to feel that more and more, around Eddie. When he was with him, it was like the invisible wall that separated Richie from those around him fell away. Eddie's smile cracked its foundations. His laugh crumbled it to dust. Eddie understood him, saw him . Around him, Richie didn't feel lonely, or empty, or like a puppet on a string. He felt good . He felt bulletproof.
He felt alive .
Now, he took Eddie's hand in his, just because he could. He could feel Eddie's pulse though his skin.
Eddie didn't let go.
***
It was nearly eight in the morning when Eddie finally collapsed onto his couch, the weight of the night heavy on his eyelids. He'd said a sleepy goodbye to Richie out in the hallway, and Richie had looked almost surprised before saying it back. Eddie would realise later that his surprise had been because it was the first time they'd ever actually said goodbye. They normally just smiled, if even that, as they closed the doors between them. Eddie would think later that the fact that they had used parting words this time must have meant something, somehow - though he wouldn't be able to think what.
For now, as he nestled into the blankets on the couch, he found he was too tired to think much of anything. As he drifted off, the only thought that would come to his mind was of Richie. Richie, and his curly hair and his buck toothed smile and his crooked nose and the scar on his furry eyebrow. Richie, and the way he laughed at everything and seemed to light up the night around him as if he were made of fireflies. Richie, and the way he had, in these few short months, managed to carve himself a space in Eddie's heart; a space Eddie hadn't known needed to be filled. Richie, and the fact that he had so quickly become one of Eddie's dearest friends.
He wondered if Richie was thinking of him, too.
***
(He was.)
***
He doubted it.
***
Two weeks had passed since then.
Richie now had precisely twenty three days left to finish his final project, and all he had written so far were a couple of half hearted character names. If he'd thought he'd been worried before, that was nothing to how he felt now. He was consumed with guilt and anxiety each time he so much as thought of his neglected notebook, sitting accusing and unopened on his desk.
Not for lack of trying, of course. Richie had spent countless hours at that desk, writing in lines before promptly shaking his head and scratching them out. Even now, he was sat with his glasses pushed into his hair and his hands over his face, praying to a God he didn't believe in for just one fucking idea . No matter what he wrote, it always sounded completely stupid.
He hated this project.
He shouldn't go see Eddie tonight, he thought. He should spend some more time working on this fucking play. After all, he was running out of time, and it was worth thirty percent of his final grade. He should really just stay in and write whatever he could, even if it sounded stupid, just to get something on the page.
The problem was, he really didn't want to.
So, with only a small twinge of guilt, he fixed his glasses and closed his notebook and tried not to look back as he left the room.
He could always work on it tomorrow.
When Richie opened his door, Eddie was already there, standing in his own open doorway in just a t-shirt and flannel pajama pants. He looked as surprised as Richie felt.
"Hi, said Richie, bemused.
"Hi," said Eddie.
There was a pause, during which neither of them seemed to know what to say. The silence was loud in here, Richie noticed; louder than it ever was outside. It filled the space around them, echoed off the walls. They stared at each other from across the hall. Eddie picked at a hangnail.
"It's awful outside, isn't it?"
Richie hadn't noticed. He'd been too caught up trying (and failing) to write to notice much of anything. Now that Eddie mentioned it, however, Richie could hear the howling wind outside and he remembered hearing something about a snow storm predicted tonight. "I s'pose so."
Eddie nodded, and Richie nodded back. Another pause. Then, Eddie took a deep breath, as if preparing himself, and the next words that left his mouth sounded rehearsed.
***
It was rehearsed.
Eddie had been repeating the six words over and over in his head for almost two hours. He didn't know why it felt like such a big deal to him - he and Richie were friends after all; it wasn't weird or anything. But he was Eddie Kaspbrak. Everything felt like big deal to him. Everything new, in any case.
The weather today had been entirely beautiful. Bright, cloudless, warm for December, if a little windy. It wasn't until around seven in the evening that the wind had begun to pick up and the clouds had begun to roll in, and soon enough Eddie had been looking out his window at the worst snowstorm he'd ever seen. He knew going out there would be completely idiotic. But he also knew he really wanted to see Richie.
It was a bit ridiculous. They'd gone days without seeing each other before, even multiple days in a row, and it had never bothered him. But tonight, for some reason, the thought of spending it without Richie felt... wrong. Not sad or lonely or anything like that. Just not right . As if it were going against some sort of cosmic order.
He couldn't quite explain it. Maybe he was just being clingy. He'd been like that with Bill sometimes, too, when they were kids.
Now, he shifted from foot to foot and tried to sound casual as he said:
"Do you want to come in?"
***
Eddie's apartment was odd . Or rather, being in Eddie's apartment was odd. It was exactly the same as Richie's, only backwards and - surprisingly - more cluttered. There was stuff everywhere, but it didn't seem messy. Despite just about every flat surface being covered in miscellaneous objects, it seemed organized. Like it was supposed to be that way. There was a place for everything and everything was in its place - there were just more things than places .
It was also brighter, somehow, and it smelled a lot nicer - like lavender and laundry soap.
"Are you alright?"
Richie glanced up from the depths of his mug. The two were sitting on opposite sides of Eddie's couch, each with a cup of tea in his hands. His was cold, Richie noticed with a start. Eddie had already finished his own. How long had they been sitting here?
"You're being quieter than usual," Eddie explained.
"Aw, is my little Eddie Spaghetti worried about me?"
"Don't call me that," he snapped. But he didn't say he wasn't worried.
Richie smiled. "I'm alright."
He'd always hated the phrase "a problem shared is a problem halved." It was bullshit. In Richie's experience, a problem shared was a problem doubled . He never talked about his feelings if he could avoid it. If he talked about what bothered him, then he thought about it, and if he thought about it, then he just felt worse. It didn't help anybody, especially not him. So what was the point?
Eddie was giving him strange sort of look - concerned and almost expectant. It was clear he didn't believe Richie; that he was waiting for him to say more. His tiny frown almost made Richie want to tell him. Tell him about his lack of inspiration and his inability to write anything halfway decent. About how important this project was for his final grade. About how the fact that he couldn't do this was worrisome, not just for his grades but for his future . What kind of shitty director could only write one genre? Sure, most specialized in one genre, but they were all able to work in others if they tried. Right?
"Let's make a pillow fort," he said instead, and tried to ignore the look of disappointment that flickered across Eddie's face.
***
Something was bothering Richie, Eddie knew it. He was being so quiet and he had this weird distant look on his face. Part of Eddie wanted to pry - to ask what was wrong, to see if there was anything he could say or do to help. He wanted to make him feel better. But it was clear Richie didn't want to talk about it, and Eddie didn't want to overstep.
"Sure," he said.
And from the look on Richie's face, Eddie knew there was nothing he could have said that would have made him feel any better than that did.
Eddie couldn't remember the last time he'd built a pillow fort. It must have been with Bill, seeing as he'd been Eddie's only friend until they'd met Ben and Mike when they were twelve, but it had been so long ago he wasn't sure he would even know how to make a pillow fort anymore.
It turned out he needn't have worried. As he quickly realized, building pillow forts was much like riding a bike - impossible to forget. It was practically muscle memory as they set to work - taking chairs from the kitchen, turning the coffee table onto its side, using cups and bowls as weights to keep blankets from slipping. At one point, Richie threw a pillow at Eddie's head, just because Eddie's back was turned. It missed - nearly knocked over a lamp - but that didn't mean he escaped retaliation in the form of a couch cushion straight to the face. This, of course, prompted one of the most intense pillow fights either of them had ever seen, which dwindled only when they heard footsteps down the hall and fell silent for fear of a noise complaint.
When their fort was finally built, the two stood back to admire their handiwork. It was rather sad looking - small and lopsided, with a semi-caved-in blanket roof and only the tiniest opening to get in. Richie grinned.
"Perfect."
Eddie couldn't have agreed more.
***
"What's your favourite colour?"
They were laying side by side in their fort, close enough that their arms were pressed together. Not that they had much of a choice; the fort was barely big enough for one of them, let alone two. Richie's legs were so long he had to keep them bent at the knees to keep his feet from peeking out past their blanket wall.
"Yellow," said Richie, attempting to throw yet another piece of popcorn into his mouth. It bounced off his glasses and onto the floor. Eddie kept telling him he would choke on the popcorn if it ever did make it into his mouth, but he would just grin and toss another one. "You?
"Probably green," he said. "Your turn. Ask me something."
"What's your strangest fear?"
Eddie took a bit of popcorn from the bowl, which was resting on Richie's chest. Richie could swear Eddie was blushing, though it was hard to tell in the low light. "Promise not to laugh."
"Cross my heart."
There was a pause, so long Richie wasn't sure Eddie was going to speak. Finally, he covered his face with his hands and blurted, "I'm scared of sex."
Richie blinked. That was... certainly a strange one. "Like - like porn, or...?"
Eddie was shaking his head before Richie had even finished speaking, his hands still over his face. He was definitely blushing now. "No. I mean, I've never seen porn, or read it, or anything like that, but that's not - it's more like - I don't know." He gave an embarrassed sort of laugh. "I'm just - I'm scared of having sex. My mom always told me about all these diseases I could get. How I'd get really sick, maybe even die , and how most of them couldn't be cured. And it didn't help that I was - I mean, I am - um." He seemed to shrink in on himself a little. "I'm gay. And that was always... a big thing. A scary thing. To me, anyway."
"Oh." Richie would have been lying if he'd said he was surprised. It wasn't that he'd suspected it, but now that he thought about it, he supposed he should have. It was like rereading a book and suddenly noticing that every bit of foreshadowing was glaringly obvious. There was the way he'd seemed uncomfortable the rare times Richie had mentioned girls, and how he got so flustered whenever Richie made jokes about his own looks, and -
"And some other stuff."
Richie's heart dropped into his stomach. Some other stuff . He knew now exactly what that "other stuff" must have been, and exactly how hard it must have been for Eddie to hear. To have a part of who he was, a part he couldn't change, be used as a weapon against him. To have those words thrown at him like rocks, and sting just as badly...
Richie knew. He had had the very same rocks thrown at him. It had never bothered him (very much), in part because he was so used to it, but it bothered him now. It bothered him that Eddie had had to go through that too. Imagining him living his life terrified, not just of the bullies but of himself ; of this part of himself; of somebody finding out - it broke Richie's heart.
And it pissed him off beyond measure.
He wanted to pull Eddie close and erase all the pain he'd ever had to endure. He also wanted to find every person who had ever bestowed that pain on him and snap their fucking necks. As he could do neither, he opted for the next best thing: he took Eddie's hand and held it against his own chest. Eddie jumped, but didn't move away.
"I don't think it's a big thing," Richie said. Eddie looked surprised. "I mean, no, that came out wrong, it is a big thing. It's part of who you are. That's big. I just mean I don't see you any differently because of it." He squeezed his hand gently. "You're still you. You're still Eds."
Eddie stared at their joined hands, speechless, for what felt like a million years. There were tears glistening in his eyes, and Richie was sure he had said something wrong, and shit should he apologize or - ?
Then Eddie looked up, and their eyes met, and Richie's heart skipped a beat. "Thanks," he whispered.
And then he smiled. And then the world stopped turning.
He just fucking smiled , the way he had countless times before. But instead of the warm, comfortable feeling that smile had always given him, Richie suddenly felt like he had been punched in the stomach, stealing the breath from his lungs. He felt as if he had been thrown off a ten story building and had left his heart at the top and was now plummeting in freefall. His stomach was filled with butterflies. His heart was beating a mile a minute. His fucking head was spinning. Spinning . He didn't think that even happened in real life.
All because Eddie had smiled at him. Just. Fucking. Smiled.
"Anyway," Eddie added, and his voice sent shockwaves through Richie's body. "How many times do I have to tell you not to call me Eds?"
Suddenly, everything made sense. The skipping beats, the weird protectiveness, the way he felt so stupidly good around him - it all made sense . Richie Tozier had a big, stupid crush on Eddie Kaspbrak
Oh fuck .