Chapter Text
Richie knows the facts. He knows he’s loud, and obnoxious, he knows that the sky is blue and the Earth travels around the Sun- that’s right, fuck you Ptolemy- and he knows that he likes Eddie Kaspbrak. He knows it, his parents know it, his friends know it, majority of the whole fucking world knows it. But the city of Derry, Maine doesn’t know it, and that’s where things get complicated.
It’s almost three in the morning. Richie has slept an entire thirty minutes. Thirty fucking minutes. There’s something stuck in the nerves behind his eyes and the stem of his brain and the gray matter bursting in his skull. He can’t stop thinking about the curve of Eddie’s lips, the way his teeth glint when he talks, the way his eyes shine honey in the sun. It’s distracting.
So distracting, in fact, that Richie snatches his phone off of the night stand and unplugs it. 3:14 blinks back at him, and he can feel the ache in his eyes burn at the sight. He has twenty text notifications from his group chat with Ben, Beverly and Stan, ten snapchat notifications from their group chat on there, and fifty-five on their Twitter group chat. Why do they need so many group chats, you ask? He’s got no fucking clue, but they just kept multiplying and now his battery dies in twelve minutes.
The call rings three times before it clicks through. Eddie’s voice is groggy and raspy with sleep when he says, “You better be dying.”
“I am, Spaghetti!” Richie sounds too awake. He sounds like an absolute lunatic, and he probably fucking looks like one with purple hair sticking to different spots on his face and dark circles under his big eyes. “Dying with my affection for you. Please put me out of my misery.”
“I’m considering it,” Eddie replies. “Explain why you’re calling me without being an asshat.”
Richie grins. Maybe, somewhere in his tiny brain where Stanley sits in a leather chair with a glass of Brandy and a book full of poetry about how birds are a metaphor for love or something, Richie has the capability to think. Because he planned for this question. Planned so hard, in fact, that he’s already got a bag packed. “I’m coming to see you.”
“Wonderful,” Eddie says. It sounds like he’s turned on a lamp and suddenly his voice is a bit clearer when he says, “why did you have to call me at three in the morning and tell me this? Everyone else in the world wakes up at seven.”
“No, I mean I’m coming to see you now! I packed a bag and everything, brought a toothbrush- and my own toothpaste because I know you hate when other people’s bristles touch your paste- and some underwear… I have Candyland if you want it, I don’t know how you feel about it but I like looking at the little characters.”
“You’re coming to see me. At three nineteen in the morning.”
“If you’re okay with that?” Richie asks, and the Stan in his brain laughs because he didn’t think about Eddie saying no. That’s the thing: Richie thinks, does it all the time- like should he offend that lady with the bob and the soccer mom van, or should he offend the old white man wearing a baseball t-shirt from approximately nine hundred years ago when people still watched baseball?- but he doesn’t think about the useful stuff.
Eddie doesn’t reply but Richie thinks he might hear a sigh or some sort of what the fuck have I gotten myself into? sound that he hears often enough he’s almost used to it.
“Sorry I just sprung this on you. I couldn’t sleep and if I make coffee my mom’ll wake up because she’s been trained to wake up when she smells coffee, back when Pavlov was still around, and I was thinking about you. Usually at three in the morning I think about something normal like the possibility of there being other solar systems exactly like ours but where I’m Stan and he’s me and I like birds and he wears holes in his jeans instead of those fucking black slacks he always wears. I mean, you would think that he just doesn’t wash them and wears them everyday, but he has twelve pairs hanging up in his closet it’s stressful to look at and-”
“If you say one more word,” Eddie says, and Richie’s out of breath when he stops talking to listen, “I’m going to bust out your kneecaps when you get here.”
Richie grins, and he throws his backpack over his shoulder, heavy with a change of clothes and his toiletries and a few different board games. “Is that a yes I hear?”
“A very hesitant yes.”
“Good enough for me. What’s your address?”
Eddie giggles but he’s almost shy when he replies “I’ll text it to you. Just… remember that I’m a mechanic, okay? I don’t make six figures so my house is a little, uh, modest.”
Richie eyes his bedroom, the king bed and twelve drawer dresser, the walk in closet, the bathroom with a tub and a shower and two sinks, his extra space where him and Bev take turns trying to cartwheel every Friday night, and he shuts off his light. “Can’t wait to see it. Send the address, honeybunch.”
“Only if you promise to never call me that again.”
“Absolutely not,” Richie says. He sets the little note he wrote for his parents on the counter, right by the coffee machine so he knows for sure they’ll see it before he leaves.
Richie knocks three times. He considers ringing the doorbell but he looks behind him, up at the sky where the moon and stars wink down at him, and decides it’s not the best option for Eddie’s neighbors.
Eddie pulls his door open almost immediately, as if he was waiting by the door for Richie, and the hinges squeak obnoxiously loud in the soft quiet of the night. Eddie’s dressed in fluffy pajamas and his blond hair is wavy on top of his head like he hasn’t had time to brush it out, but his eyes are warm and bright.
“Aren’t you gonna hug me?” Eddie asks, and he laughs when Richie scrambles to wrap his extremely awkward limbs around Eddie’s waist.
Richie shoves his nose into Eddie’s hair and closes his eyes to breathe him in. “Missed you, Eds.”
Eddie squeezes Richie a little tighter. They’re on Eddie’s front porch, where anyone could drive by and see them- but really, who in their right mind would be up at this hour?- and Richie realizes he could care less. He’d probably give Eddie a big, wet kiss right in the middle of their eleven o’clock church service as long as they got to go home together afterwards. “Missed you too, puppy. I made some coffee, if you want to come into my house instead of stinking up my front porch.”
The moment is gone and Richie frowns as he follows Eddie into his house. “Stinking up? This is the first time I’ve worn these pajamas this week.”
“I’m so concerned for you,” Eddie replies. He runs his fingers along the walls of his house while he walks his white slippers slapping softly on the tile floors.
Eddie’s house is nice, tidy and cleaned spotlessly. It smells faintly of lemon and maybe lavender- Richie thinks that every flower smells like lavender and really doesn’t understand why people feel the need to romanticize a plant- if he sniffs real hard. It’s quiet, the late hour tucking a warm blanket around the sleepy city of Derry, and Richie can see that Eddie is feeling the affects of the late (early? learly? eate?) hour.
“I like it,” Richie says and Eddie glances at him quickly like he’d forgotten Richie was there, taking up a small bit of space in the small bit of living room. “You’d hate how my room looks; I haven’t vacuumed since 2004.”
Eddie smiles, his teeth shining something like pearl in the low lights of his living room and hallway, although there’s a small bit of disgust in the curl of his lips when he registers Richie’s second sentence. “That’s disgusting. You’re the nastiest human being I think I’ve ever met.”
“Funny, I was just thinking the same about you,” Richie replies, gesturing to Eddie’s extremely full bookcase tucked beside Eddie’s small leather couch. They’re both leaning against the wall, but Richie really wants to fling himself onto the couch and curl up in the throw blankets Eddie has strewn about. “I can’t believe you own every single book in the Fifty Shades of Grey series.”
Eddie’s a mind reader, is the only thing Richie thinks when Eddie grabs Richie’s hand from where it had been awkwardly dangling down by his side and tugs the two of them to the couch. “I only appreciate it for the sex. Honestly, Ana was just insecure and inexperienced and Christian saw that and- initially- used her for that.”
“Sounds like you’ve written at least three essays over it,” Richie says. He slips off his (extremely real, extremely hideous) Gucci slides before settling his feet beneath him on the couch, criss cross applesauce so that his knee touches Eddie’s thigh. “I watched the movies once when I was drunk with Bev.”
“And?”
“Woke up the next morning with the worst hangover I’ve ever had and a suspicious blank spot in my memory, so it seems my brain took care of the trauma for me.”
Eddie scoffs, but he moves his leg and their knees are pressed fully against one another. It’s childish, and makes Richie feel like he’s seven-and-a-half years old, but his tummy swells with butterflies and he brushes his fingers along the seam of Eddie’s pajama pants. “I missed you, you know.”
“I do know,” Richie nods, “which is why I showed up. My Eddie senses were tingling.”
“That’s absolutely one of the worst things you’ve ever said to me,” Eddie responds, and there’s a bright little smile on his face that tells otherwise. He intertwines his fingers with Richie’s and holds both of their hands on top of his lap. “What are your Eddie senses saying now?”
Richie pretends like he’s thinking, but really he knows he’s going to voice the only thing he’s been able to think about since he showed up at Eddie’s. “That you want to kiss me,” he decides on finally.
“What if I say you’re wrong?” Eddie asks. His eyes are so deep, so dark in the low light, that Richie can barely tell what he’s thinking. It’s intoxicating trying to guess.
Richie’s glasses slip a bit down his nose when he leans forward to get a better look at Eddie and he leaves them to balance precariously on the crook of his nose so that he can count the freckles under Eddie’s eyes. “Then I’ll say that I want to kiss you.”
Eddie uses his free hand to gently tug the glasses from Richie’s face, setting them onto the coffee table like they are some precious China his mom has sworn him to never damage or else. “And if I say that you’re right?”
“Can I kiss you?” Richie asks, because he’s tired of playing and because Eddie keeps licking at his bottom lip and it’s far too intoxicating. They’re only three or four inches apart and Richie can see the exact second Eddie’s skin spreads into red like watercolor.
Eddie nods and closes his eyes, and leans forward and Richie closes his eyes and they’re kissing. Every time feels like the first time and it’s sweet and soft and gentle and Richie’s throat fills with honey and red hot fondness. He doesn’t love Eddie- couldn’t possibly, yet- but he’s grown so fond, so in like that it’s nearly painful.
Their fingers manage to find each other over the bump of Richie’s knee and their palms press together. Richie feels hot prickles of electricity running across the skin of his arms and he’s sure that if he opened his eyes to look there’d be blue sparks crawling up his veins.
Richie pulls away so that they can both take in needy breaths against each others lips. It’s quiet and romantic and almost too much. They’re dangling right on the edge of becoming something more and just being there to have a good time with each other. When Richie thinks real hard, which is a strange feat in itself, he realizes that him and Eddie have been on this edge since the first time they met. This is just the perfect time for Richie to make a decision and so, with his heart in his throat, he stares right into Eddie’s soft brown eyes the color of chocolate and potato skin and whatever else and he says-
“I want to have intercourse with you.”
Eddie blinks twice before he pulls away, his eyelashes tangling with Richie’s for a second just so soft and barely there. “You want to- why do you have to say it like that?”
“It’s just a synonym for sex,” Richie responds. He got Eddie to smile, though, and that’s usually all that matters to him. “Listen, if you don’t wanna that’s all you gotta say, no need to insult my vocabulary. That’s an eleven letter word, I’ll have you know. 63 points in a game of Scrabble.”
“Why do you know that?”
Richie shrugs, and the hand pressed against his starts to feel a little damp with sweat. He can’t tell if it’s his or Eddie’s, but he knows that one or both of them are nervous out of their goddamned minds. “I like Scrabble. I meant what I said, though.”
Eddie opens his mouth to reply before he shuts it. He leans even further away from Richie, as if the close proximity is clouding his mind, and he looks at Richie. Like really looks at him, his teeth clamped on his lip and his eyes running along the lines of his body in a way that isn’t sexual but is rather curious. “I want it too.”
Richie pushes out a heavy sigh, “Thank fuck, all that silence was really starting to get to my head.”
“What’ll we be after that, then? Is it just going to be a one time thing that we just forget about, or is there going to be… like, after sex cuddles?”
“I want what you want,” Richie replies. “But I also really want to be your boyfriend. There’s just something we have to do before the sex stuff.”
“You’re the one that brought up the sex stuff,” Eddie mumbles. He looks a little bit disappointed, like he actually wanted to have sex with Richie- that’s a goddamn miracle- but he smiles a bit. “I wanna be your boyfriend, too.”
“Cool, okay, put on some shoes,” Richie says, and his words are a bit rushed because his brain is on some fucking tredmile contraption in his head and catapulting around his skull. “I was going to take you out on a date sometime soon so that I could actually ask you with some fucking picnic and chocolate covered strawberries, but I guess this’ll have to do.”
Eddie’s cheeks look warm, especially when Richie presses his lips against the corner of Eddie’s mouth sweetly. “You better still get me chocolate strawberries. They’re going to be all I think about.”
“I promise you’ll get your fucking strawberries. Do you have a blanket we can bring, too? Maybe some pillows, if we want to lie down.”
“What do you have planned, Chee?”
Richie shakes his head, standing and tugging Eddie up with him. Eddie’s a few inches shorter than him, enough to where Richie’s lips can press up against the tip of Eddie’s nose without him having to bend down. He does this, and Eddie’s cheeks fill with red- even in the low light, Richie can see how intoxicating it looks. “You’ll see, Eddie love.”
“Do you ever wish you could take a mental picture of something?” Eddie asks, his eyes trained on the spread out sky above them. Stars dot the sky like pin pricks in the universe, and with their heads pressed completely against the windshield of Richie’s car the sky is all that they can see.
Richie glances over at Eddie beside him, his eyes lingering on Eddie’s soft bottom lip, and watches the moonlight dance along Eddie’s skin. “Sometimes. Usually whenever I’m looking in the mirror. Or watching the Bachelor.”
“That’s really fucking annoying of you,” Eddie responds, but there’s a grin tugging at his lips. “I’m being serious, though.”
The stars are reflecting in the dark circles of Eddie’s eyes, sparkly and silver and mesmerizing. Richie looks until his eyes burn from not blinking, and then he stares a little more. “Yes. Right now, I think.”
They’re wrapped in a bubble of soft feelings and warm fingers and pretty smiles. Richie’s stomach is fluttering with butterflies like he’s back in eighth grade again, watching Jessica Johnson twirl around him in a frilly pink dress- but instead he’s watching Eddie with fluffy pajama pants and soft hair blink over at him.
“Less annoying of you,” Eddie says. He tugs his green blanket up to his chin, his fingers clenched tightly in the soft fabric. “Is this our first date?”
“That was the plan. Unless you’d rather I take you somewhere fancy; I just figured you’d want something special, just the two of us.”
Eddie looks so small like this, and Richie just wants to wrap his arms around Eddie and hold onto him until the sky explodes around them in ten billion years. “You’re right. It’s beautiful out here.”
Richie smiles at the awe that drips from Eddie’s words like he’s never seen the Derry night sky before. “I actually got the idea on that first night we met.”
Eddie turns on his side, giving his full attention to Richie. His big brown eyes make Richie a little nervous to speak, make the top of his mouth gummy and sticky on his tongue, but Richie keeps his eyes on the swirling shades of silver and black and purple and blue on top of them.
“I called you to fix my truck and I sat in the front seat and counted the stars until you showed up. And then after, when you left and my dick was all tingly, I looked up at the sky and I was thinking… those stars just saw you destroy my penis- those are our fucking stars now, you know?”
It’s silent for a moment, almost like Richie’s words cast a blanket of quiet over the area, sweet and soft, before Eddie giggles into his hand and douses Richie’s silence-blanket in gasoline and lit it on fire. “You’re so fucking strange, Richie Tozier.”
“And you like it,” Richie shoots back, finally turning to glance over at Eddie. His chest warms at the softness in Eddie’s gaze, something that says Richie is worth looking at, that his thoughts and ideas mean something in this world of everything. It’s teasing dangerously close to the ‘L’ word Richie has been actively avoiding like it has the plague or syphilis.
Eddie shuffles closer, the hood of Richie’s car protesting so loud its like a gunshot across the silence of the night, and tucks his head into the crook of Richie’s shoulder, his nose pressing warm against Richie’s skin. “Only when you’re not talking.”
Richie smiles but his eyes are closed so tight he can’t see if Eddie smiles back. It’s okay, though, because in a few minutes they’re both asleep and the stars tickle their cheeks like holographic fingers.
It should be the sun, trickling upside down into the sky in shades of red and gold and orange, that wakes them up; it’s not, and Richie really, really wishes that it was. There’s something so ominous about waking up before the sun does, especially when you were nearly awake to see it rise in the first place.
It’s different waking up to the night sky than it is falling asleep to it. Richie’s first thought is that him and Eddie slept their entire day away on the hood of Richie’s car in the middle of fucking nowhere while the moon laughs away in the corner of the sky. The second is that he really needs to change his ring tone because the shrill sounds of Katy Perry singing is not the best thing to hear first thing.
Richie clambers around in his pocket for his phone, flinching at the measly 6:30 winking back at him. His father’s face takes up the screen, and Richie feels the sudden, desperate urge to ignore the call and stay here with Eddie forever, until his phone dies and then dies again and his car freezes and they can’t sleep anymore.
“Hello?” Richie asks, his voice harsh and rough, his eyes shut tight behind his foggy glasses. His fingers are freezing and so is his phone against his face, but his mouth is warm where the words come out.
“You need to come home, Richie,” Went replies, and it’s that tone of voice that makes Richie nervous. It’s not Good Ol’ Went! calling to chat with his son at six thirty in the morning because that’s just what Good Ol’ Went!’s do. It’s Dad Went, scary Dad Went that grounded Richie on the downhill fall of his junior year because Richie smoked so much weed he painted their back garden in seventeen different shades of vomit.
Richie feels Eddie shift beside him, and suddenly it’s hard to breathe in the cold air of the morning. “Why?”
Went doesn’t sigh, because usually when Richie questions him it’s a bunch of sighs and passive aggressive words that allude to the fact that Richie needs to just do what he’s told. “Someone got a picture of you at dinner with your friends and Eddie. Can you guess who has someone’s hand down their pants in the picture?”
Richie wants to say ‘it was not down my pants, I am a gentleman’ but he knows how much his father cares about their reputation. Richie truly and honestly could care less because he has not one single shit to give to most of the people in their town- but for some reason, Richie’s father loves this town. “I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
His father hangs up for him, and Richie sets the phone down when he hears the click. He looks over at Eddie, who's blinking up at him with red-rimmed, sleepy eyes and a soft pink mouth that's tugging down in a small frown.
"Who was that?" Eddie asks, his eyes moving across Richie's face quickly, more alert and awake and observant at this point. Richie always hopes that he's magically learned how to keep his emotions off of his face, but he's constantly disappointed by his own self.
"My dad. We've gotta go, love. I'll tell you on the way home, okay?"
Eddie nods and, despite the fact that Richie might've just fucked his entire life up- possibly even his dad's career, because when Richie fucks up he likes to do it at an astronomically large size- he presses his lips against Eddie's and swears that he'll make it better.