Christmas Eve. Richie is sitting on his couch in a dark living room, arm slung over the back as he watches snow fall outside. Wentworth is in his office working, Maggie said she'd be home in thirty minutes (She sent that two hours ago), and Beverly is at home, probably eating. Her aunt invited him over, but he held out the hope that his family would be normal for one fucking night and declined. Now he regrets it.
Richie gets up off the couch and wanders down the hall to his dads office. "Dad," he says from the doorway. "It's almost six. Can I start on dinner?"
Wentworth continues to stare at his computer. His tie is swung over his shoulder and his hair looks gross, shiny and falling in his face in separate strands. "Dad," Richie tries again.
"Huh? Oh! Rich," Went says. He looks surprised, like he was caught off guard. "How.. What did you need?"
"Uh.. I said it's almost six. Can I start on dinner?"
Wentworth's eyebrows pull together and he leans back in his chair to look behind Richie. "Is.. Is Mag not home?"
Richie shakes his head. "Nope," he says, popping the P.
His dad lets out a confused, "huh" and sits back in his chair. "Um.. yeah, go start on dinner. I'll call your mother and ask on when she's planning on coming home."
Richie nods, slowly backs out of the doorway, then pauses. Wentworth briefly glances up at him from the computer and asks, "Needed somethin' else?"
yes, he wants to say. when was the last time you slept, dad? or showered?
But he doesn't. He shakes his head and turns to make his way down to the kitchen. As his hand finds the light switch, Richie desperately fights back the memories. To when he'd come home from biking around Derry and Maggie would be at the stove cooking meals and Wentworth would be at the table reading the paper. When did everything go to shit?
Oh right. When Went lost his job as a dentist and when Maggie lost her baby girl. Oh how could he forget?
Richie pulls open the pantry door, hoping to find a bag of potatoes or canned gravy he could easily heat up. Instead, his heart drops when his eyes land on shelves with very, very few things. "What the fuck," he mutters. Harshly pushing the door closed, he walks out of the kitchen and grabs his coat from the stand next to the garage door.
"I'm going to the store!" Richie yells down the hallway. He waits for a response, for any acknowledgement at all. But the only thing from the end of the hall is the clacking of the keyboard and the squeaks of a chair. With his jaw set, he throws up his middle fingers and walks backwards to the front door.
On his way to the nearest open store, he keeps his eyes out for Maggie's blue car. She's always talked about getting a white one, or maybe even yellow, but Wentworth said something about bad mileage or maybe it was the money. Richie doesn't remember. At one point he spotted a car identical to his moms, but if Maggie aged thirty years and got a gender change, it couldn't be her.
He arrives at the grocery store and is pleased to see the open and relatively empty parking lot, which isn't surprising at all. The fluorescent lights light up the entrance, but it barely breaks through the darkness of early winter night. Richie walks in through the automatic doors and is instantly attacked with blasting heat.
He keeps his coat on, just unzips it. Some popular song that's always on the radio plays quietly over the whole building, barely heard over squeaks of wheels and beeps of check out machines.
"Potatoes and gravy," Richie reminds himself. "Potatoes and gravy." He's never been to the store much, always leaving that job for his dad. But, like any other kid, he helped out with taking the groceries in by linking each bag up his arms.
He repeats his list in his head over and over again until he reaches the correct aisle. He throws a bag of potatoes into his cart and carries on. The store is deserted, just the occasional worker restocking shelves. With no one around, Richie feels more alone then ever tonight. Like everyone is hiding from him.
He finds packets of gravy and throws a few into the cart. A basket would've been easier with such few things, but Richie couldn't pass up the opportunity to stand on the bottom of the cart and roll down the empty aisles. On his way to the checkout, he spots the cereal and tosses a few boxes of Lucky Charms in.
There's only one dimly glowing light in the row of numbers, but Richie doesn't feel like being forced into small talk so he heads to the self checkout instead. Out of curiosity, he looks up to the open cashier.
He's facing away from Richie, but he's sitting on a stool with his legs weirdly positioned to prop up the book in his lap.
Looks kinda gay, if you ask Richie.
With Lucky Charms in one hand, Richie glances back and forth between the safety of self checkout and the boy's back.
Couldn't hurt, right?
He throws the box back into the cart, metal rattling against metal, and heads to the boy with the book.
As Richie is turning his cart into the narrow aisle lined with magazines and candy, he's internally rehearsing his lines to carry a conversation. Which wasn't too hard in theory, but when Richie's eyes connects with the boy's all of that goes out the window.
"Hey, I didn't know you worked here," he sputters out.
Eddie's staring at him with a surprised look, probably the same look Richie has. "What are you doing here, Rich?"
Richie breaths out a laugh and gestures to his small pile of food. "What does it look like? I'm shopping."
"On Christmas Eve?"
"Yeah, dude," he says with a shrug, "and you're working on Christmas Eve. What's up with that? You pull the short straw?"
Eddie closes his book and sets it under the counter, away from Richie's view. His hands fall onto the edge of the counter and his fingers curl around it. Finally, Eddie shrugs. "I asked to work tonight."
Richie snorts as he leans over to start unloading the cart. "The fuck? Why would you do that?" He asks, then it hits him. The memory of Stanley telling him and Bev about Eddie's mom in the musty library. The fights they have. "Well, you don't have to answer that. Not if you don't want to," he adds.
"No, it's okay," Eddie says. He grabs for the first item and scans it, a high and quick beep cutting through. "I took it to get away from my mom."
Bingo.
"What's uh," Richie says. He teeters on the question, debating if he should ask it or not. He wants to know, wants to know more than the simple explanation. Richie wants to know why Eddie is so upset with his mom. So, he asks, "What's with Mrs. K?"
Eddie continues scanning, never glancing up. "She's really controlling. Wouldn't even let me leave the house to leave for work tonight," he says. He puts the sack of potatoes into a bag and his hand lingers on it. "I had to go out the backdoor when she wasn't looking."
Sympathy rocks him instantly. But the powerfulness of it isn't as strong as the first hit when Richie meets Eddie's eyes. He doesn't look sad about it, probably used to it, annoyed at the most.
"That's shitty," Richie says.
"Really shitty," Eddie echoes. Richie doesn't say anything more and neither does Eddie for a moment. Richie's fingers drum against his leg as Eddie scans the last box of cereal.
"So, what are you doing here on Christmas Eve?" He asks.
Richie looks at him for a second before shrugging and throwing a hand into the air, trying to put it off like it's not too big of a deal. "Just needed a few things to make dinner with," he says.
"Well no shit," Eddie says with a smile, hand picking up the sack with the potatoes and gravy. "Were your parents too lazy to cook or something?"
Richie couldn't help but laugh a little because that's the exact opposite of what they're doing. "More like the other way around, Eds," he says only to watch Eddie's smile slowly fall into a playful scowl. "Ma and Pops are workin' tonight."
Eddie hums and hands Richie the bags. "That's unfortunate, Rich.. You having dinner with Beverly?"
"No, I wish though. Her aunt makes killer banana bread. I'll, uh, I'll have to bring you some sometime. If you want."
A smile breaks out onto Eddie's face. "Yeah," he says. "I'd like that." Richie's eyes linger for a second longer, heart fluttering and he struggles to remember how to breath in.
"Okay," he says simply and puts the bags into the cart. Eddie rings up his total, and even for a few items the cost seems suspiciously low.
But Richie doesn't comment on it. "Thank you, Eds," he says as he takes the receipt.
"Eddie."
"Eds," Richie says again, challenging him. Eddie holds the eye contact as he crosses his arms and all Richie can think is cute cute cute cute.
"It's Eddie," he repeats.
Richie grins and begins to spew out whatever comes to mind. "Okay Eds. Ed. Eddio. Eddie-Teddy... Eddie-Bear!" Too busy chuckling at his own jokes, Richie doesn't notice the sudden shift in Eddie's stance. His smile fell completely off his face and his shoulders become ridged.
"Do not call me that, Richie," he says firmly. Richie's laughs simmer down, and after he notices Eddie's frown so does his smile.
"What?" He asks, horribly clueless.
"Eddie-Bear," he repeats. "Don't call me that. Please. And it's not like the Eds thing, Richie. I'm serious."
Richie nods his head and decides to back off with the jokes for the night. "Alright," he says and puts his hands up in silent defeat. "Jokester has gone too far once again. Guess I'll go fuck myself."
Richie thinks he heard a soft snort, but not wanting to get his hopes too high up, he brushes it off. "Have a good night, Chee," Eddie says as Richie starts to reluctantly push his cart out of the aisle.
"Right back at cha', Eddie-o," Richie says with a wave. Eddie waves back, his glowing smile returned to his face, and Richie feels the warm webbed feeling back in his chest.
~~~
To his relief, Maggie's car was parked in the driveway when he got back home. He walks in and the lights in Wentworth's office are off, and same with the kitchen.
"Hello my lovely parents! Your one and only child is home!" Richie yells out.
This time he doesn't bother to wait for a response and goes into the dark kitchen. It's almost seven at this point and he's absolutely starving.
He begins on boiling water and peeling the potatoes. He gets through at least five with minimal nicks of his skin, only needing a bandaid for one specially bad cut. Maybe this is why Maggie never let him cook when he was younger.
Like clockwork, Maggie slowly comes down the stairs as Richie is setting the table. Her eyes travel around the dinner Richie has prepared and she smiles. A nice, warm smile.
"You know, Rich," she says as she takes a seat. Richie shakes the water off the spatula and sets it down, ready to listen to whatever she has to say. It'll probably be some halfassed thank you for dinner or thanks for not arguing with me, but, much to his surprise, he gets something very different.
"I don't think I've said this much but.. I'm.. I'm really proud of you." She's looking into his eyes, and he knows instantly that this is genuine. She inhales and looks down at her lap, a hand reaching into her sweater pocket. "I know it was hard for you to hear that we're not doing presents this year... money problems," she mutters. "But I found this a while ago and I just couldn't help but think of you."
She pulls out a little blue box with white ribbon and sets it on the counter. Richie's standing there with his heart in his throat, staring at the box. "What's uh," he says, then swallows through the ball and reaches out to grab the box. "What's in it?"
Maggie chuckles and motions for him to open it. "Go and find out," she says. Richie looks up at her smiling face and swears he's never seen her this youthful looking.
He pulls off the top, then pushes back the thin tissue paper lining the top. A faded cherry red bottle cap stares at him, the brand name disappearing with the years. He knows instantly what this is.
"Mom," he chokes out, then quickly recovers with a cough.
"I was um, cleaning out the attic a few months ago and found that off Mrs. Bee-Bear. I didn't think you'd want an old, musty bear anymore so I improvised," she explains, lightly laughing along with the story.
Richie picks it up out of the box and watches as a thin gold chain follows after the bottle cap. She's made it into a necklace, he realizes. "Is this..?" Richie questions and rolls the chain between his fingers.
Maggie only shrugs, yet holds a small, weary smile.
Richie puts down the box and unclasps it and lifts it around his neck. He struggles with finding the loops and Maggie watches, ready to jump in and help, but he finally catches one and the bottle cap falls right below his collar bones. "Thank you, mom," he says as he rolls it between two fingers.
"Of course, Rich. Don't tell your father," she says and Richie can't help but laugh.
"Okay," he says.
Footsteps hammering down the stairs interrupt the mood of the conversation and Wentworth appears in the kitchen doorway. "Oh, Rich, you're back," he says and peers past him to the stove. "Dinners almost done?"
Richie shrugs and picks the spatula back up and answers, "Almost." Maggie gets off the counter chairs and follows her husband to the table. Richie listens in on their whispered conversation and picks up a few words.
He doesn't know why they try and hide the fact that they drink sometimes, it's not like Richie isn't going to see the bottles in the trash or the rim of beer in the cups. But Maggie leaves for the garage fridge and Richie has no option but to drop it.
He has dinner ready and in front of his parents within the hour. Went mentions how he's been starving since lunchtime and goes in for the first bite only to be slapped on the hand by Maggie. "Grace," she says simply and offers her hand to him.
They pray, then Richie and his dad race for the first bite. Maggie watches her two boys stuff their faces and can't help but smile a little. She's missed this way too much. And by the way Richie's eyes light up when he sees his parents it seems like he had too.