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Richie finds absolution or something like it, sick and twisted, on the highway with his windows rolled down all the way because the a/c has never worked in his car and it's hot hot hot, blasting his playlist that goes like this: My Sweet Lord by George Harrison, Gloria by Laura Branigan, Right In Time by Lucinda Williams, and so on in that vein, in that order- something about God on it, take off my watch and my earrings, his hair continually flying into his eyes and stinging them more dry, even dryer than the highway winds and the air sucked of moisture-
He feels that Eddie feeling, that I’m nobody my body is too big for my soul will he stay over tonight a 24/7 brainfreeze roadkill feeling, about his lover and his preteeny-Id “boyfriend,” big big brown eyes and hidden freckles by good honey tan, lips perfectly bitten and pristinely moisturized by the fanciest, most correct best ever only chapstick, you know that chapstick you’re using has alcohol in it, they’re drying out your lips so that you keep coming back for more, Richie-
Eddie had graduated two years earlier and Richie had dropped out heart in his throat, but uncaring, in his first semester, dedicated every dollar and Modern Lovers song very smartly, he thought, because it was his only option and way he knew to live, off part time grocery store overnight stock and full-time writing jokes on paper stolen from the break room and stuffed into his pockets of his thrift store jeans along with receipt paper of the same from when he got called up to man the register.
Eddie had said he was “gaunt,” and started buying all their groceries because of his paid internship and how he would probably end up on Wall Street someday, fucking forcing Richie to eat storebought muffins for breakfast every day because neither of them could bake.
But, Richie finds absolution, somewhere on the drive back after the overnight shift, 7am, bright early summer sun/sin exacerbating his sunburn/mortal sins from the beach two days ago, and his dark not-so-hidden freckles on just pale skin, never tanning golden and good and warm just cold and capricorn-y, giving Eddie plenty to investigate skin cancer-wise in bed against white sheets.
Richie finds absolution- firstly, he is just a little high, joint carelessly about to fall from between his fingers at the wheel, hair in his eyes, vintage Rolling Stones shirt stolen from his father (box in his parents garage) pushed up over his sunburnt shoulders, twenty-five and suicidal at the wheel but living oh-so-hard with Eddie asleep at home soon he would get up for work and he wouldn’t be groggy like Richie gets, three cups of coffee before he is alive and functional and fuckable, he sees God, maybe, on that highway, it smells like heat and carseat and gasoline and leather through the open windows, he breathes it in through his sweaty nose of which his glasses are falling down, wipes the sweat from under his eyes where it is dripping and the skin is thin with freckles and hot hot sunburn.
The sun is hitting the pavement in a certain way, is the thing, and it makes him feel crazy, tugs on the back of his mind as if he should be remembering something, a familiar feeling he knows intimately and rubs against in his old clunky head like a worry stone, like the shape of Eddie’s knee in his palm. Every feeling he has ever felt is familiar, he has never taken a risk yet, stagnant and finally stopped growing upwards.
Richie finds absolution because he has been thinking, maybe I am bad, or maybe I am bad, or maybe I am bad. Like, maybe I am the piece of shit I keep telling myself I am, there’s no saving me, no wiping this noxious slate clean, no goodness left in this shitbrain, nothing but big feet and big hands and tiny tiny ankles that make me look like a fucking duck, maybe if I brushed my hair- and other stuff like I have got Eddie fooled, huh, how do we even know each other, from school, when we were kids, real kids, and now we have rent to pay and I pay a third and he pays two-thirds because I’m such a shithead I can’t get my fucking act together-, and other more secret things like my dick is ugly, I’m ugly, I’m hairy and weird and tall and looming, too skinny, how could he like me when my nose is like this, when my eyes are so bad and I look like a fly landed on his bed just blinking, blinking, like a freak-, things Eddie would smack him affrontedly on the shoulder for and get that sexy-cute stormy look in his eyes like I can’t believe you just said that about your big dick which I love to suck, or where do you get off, fishing for compliments like that but then would take Richie up in his arms like a crazy person and hold him until he stopped thinking it forever. And Richie doesn’t even want that, wants to keep his secret mean thoughts that give him a thrill because he doesn’t think that he seems like the kind of person that hates himself, he is too loud, too present, forcing others to witness his personality and big face that he despises, but oh, he does, who would have guessed…
But yes, on the highway in the morning with the blasting sun into his bad eyes and smudged glasses, high, maybe almost home into the city away from work and its clogged linoleum smell, canned food smell, and Enya behind the register whose name is certainly not Enya but it’s how Richie calls her because it makes her laugh and she reminds him of Enya, dark brows and silken short brown hair.
Away from all that and all them and his coworkers who do coke in the back room at 4am when it gets weird and psychedelic if you haven’t gotten used to being up so late/early yet, and home to Eddie who Richie now thinks might be off work today, still in bed, yawning and warm and good nice elbows and biceps and thighs. The best thighs, he finds some kind of forgiveness for all of it, the hating himself, the secret from Eddie who at least should maybe hear that he feels these bad feelings sometimes about how he just can’t get it together.
It’s the part of the playlist: In the Light, Into The Light, Beginning To See The Light, where Richie merges off the highway and makes his way to his block. There are four units in their house and he and Eddie live on the second floor. He feels a weird mixture of panic and calm, like something is about to change, like he’s finally sick of the overnight shift and maybe he should just try to get a job that like, applies to him and what he’s actually good at, like, the radio or maybe he should really try at comedy, like every night he can, like, Eddie would be so proud of him, probably,
He parks on the street and slams his door as hard as he can otherwise it won’t close, drags his feet up the stairs to their door, slumps against it as he unlocks it. Straightens up again. Eddie always gets on him about his posture and he’s doing pretty well with it now, if he does say so himself-
Opens the door to a dark apartment, Eddie still in bed, then, alone in their pink sheets Eddie picked, so-and-so thread count, a real mid-twenties purchase for a twink who is earning more than he knows what to do with, and Richie, ever aware of all he is expected to do and doesn’t mind doing, showers before crawling in beside him, sweet warm Eddie who sleeps in until 8:30 when he has a day off and it’s 7:25 now. Eddie- sweet warm Eddie, warm and full of sunlight even after sleeping his whole seven full hours on a workday, and now inching to eight maybe even nine, if Richie is lucky, they had drunk a little last night before Richie went in and Eddie always sleeps so hard drunk. Rolling Stones No Expectations kind of sleep, passing through here again and again and again and again, drawling slow sleep, blinking over and over when Richie wakes him up, drool on the side of his face up by his eye, the kind of deep sleep where he might take Richie’s hand in both his own and curl around it absentmindedly. Achingly.
Richie falls asleep too, high and warm from his shower and Eddie in bed. He wakes up with the day off and Eddie’s day off too, two hours later (not enough sleep!- he knows) when Eddie is gripping his wrist as he wakes up too at the same time. Synced up. Romantic kind of sleep-waking. The kind where you come at the same time but really you just drag yourself towards waking from a drowsy false holy land- forgiveness from your sinning daytime and your lonely nighttime.
“Y’re home?”
Richie nods into Eddie’s chest, the worn t-shirt Richie remembers from somewhere but he is not sure where (many years later when he remembers it all, more famous and more married, maybe, to Eddie, both of them unremembering somehow, he will realize one rainy morning when Eddie is wearing the same very shirt after everything calms down and everything is in its place. That one day in senior year Eddie had worn that shirt and Richie had kissed him, just on the edge of his lips, and then Eddie had pulled him in to kiss him full on the mouth, something Richie had not been much expecting in his self-hatred, to the soundtrack of the Talking Heads Making Flippy Floppy, like we are born without sin, and our mama protects us from the cold and the rain, but he does not remember this now and he will not for many years- decades, really). But it makes him think of that song, tryin’ to do my best, Eddie curls around him warm and gooder than Richie is, lock the door, we kill the beast- Kill it!
Richie pulls him up to kiss him then, full and hard. Eddie is half-asleep kissing him back, then pulls away to stuff his face in the pillow again. Richie looks at him in the bright room, bright now because the sun is shining at the shuttered blinds, yellow glow of morning not sharp sun in his eyes but diffuse and all over.
“Eds,” he says. His throat is dry and sore, crackling, and he rubs his eyes. Eddie’s chest rises and falls, a lovingly reminder that he is alive and in their shared bed. Wow! Eddie nods, opens his right eye to see Richie.
“Yeah,” he grumbles.
“Sometimes, like, I want to die. Not like die, but explode, I guess. Into a million pieces. Like I can’t keep myself together and I keep almost blasting apart, or, or something.”
Eddie sits up, brows furrowed. His face is sweet and young in the morning. He slept in late. He is giving Richie permission to continue, knowing he will if he just sits and listens.
“But. Pretty sure I’m done with that. Like, as of this morning,” Richie says. Eddie looks him up and down for a second, then nods matter-of-factly. He takes Richie’s arms and pulls them as he turns, his back to him, positions him to be holding him.
“Good. Let’s sleep in more.”
Richie laughs, grips Eddie’s nice hips, his soft t-shirt, his perfect elbows.