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Eddie can feel his heartbeat in his hand. Throbbing, sticky, hot. It smarts like a bitch, but he isn’t one so he doesn’t mention it. He just braces his face and turns, without thinking, really, just on instinct, and throws his good arm around Richie. And, like that’s normal, like that’s just an everyday occurrence, Richie drops his chin to Eddie’s shoulder and pats his back once, twice, clutching him close. Eddie feels like his heart is leaking out of the wound in his hand, bursting out from the hollow of his chest cavity. Can Richie feel it, pushed up against his ribcage? Does he know that’s Eddie’s heart dripping out onto their sneakers?
Richie punches Eddie’s shoulder when he pulls away. And Eddie smiles at the ground, brow knitted, as he turns to leave.
He looks back once, and sees Richie still staring after him, and turns back with a slight smile. He doesn’t know why it feels bittersweet. He doesn’t.
Eddie walks home, feeling his pulse with every step, in his sticky left palm, in the radius of his right arm. He unzips his fanny pack (great, now there’s blood everywhere, and my good hand is not so good), pulling out a bottle of Tylenol and fumbling one-handedly with the lid. Behind him, the crackle of bike tyres on gravel alert him. He shoves the bottle back into his fanny pack before glancing around.
Richie rides up to him, beaming, weaving haphazardly along the path. This feels inevitable, and Eddie sighs a little, turning to look straight ahead, as if resigned to the inevitability. But his cheeks feel warm.
“Hey, what’s with everyone walking off one at a time?” shouts Richie, his voice loud and laughing. “We at a frickin’ funeral or something?”
“I dunno,” says Eddie, laughing as well.
Richie waits for something — a better comeback, maybe — before skidding to a halt. At the same moment he sweeps his arm towards the carrier, almost losing his balance in the process. “Well, Prince Edward, you chariot awaits!”
Eddie looks from Richie’s grinning face to his clean shirt, and down at his own bloody hand. He’d have to hold his broken arm around Richie’s waist and… Eddie shakes his head quickly. “I, um, kind of just want to walk.”
“Oh, OK,” says Richie, swinging forward against his handlebars. He pauses. “Can I, uh, walk with you then?”
“Sure,” says Eddie, smiling. Richie grins back and kicks at his pedals, hitting himself in the shin and cursing. Eddie tightens his lips against a laugh, dropping his eyes to the path. His hand is swelling so bad already, probably getting good and infected. Fuck, he’ll have to start an antibiotic when he gets home. What the fuck was he thinking — a filthy piece of broken glass, from off of the ground? One eye twitches thinking about how urgently he needs to clean the wound. Not to mention the niggling ache inside the cast, the sticky heat, the itch. There’s sweat on the back of his neck. He feels faint, suddenly — oh God, is he gonna faint? How much blood can a person lose anyway?
He jumps as Richie’s bike lurches and almost tips over onto him. His shoulders shoot up, hot and defenseless and sore.
“Hey, watch where you’re going, dickhead!”
Richie laughs, waving his hands around, bike swaying even worse now. “Hey, I’m walkin’ here!”
Eddie shakes his head, frowning, and makes a point of marching a little faster, even though it makes all of his aches deepen.
Richie regains control of his handlebars, and this time it doesn’t escape Eddie’s notice that he’s using the wrist of his left hand to steer. His anger cools immediately.
“Must hurt,” says Eddie, as if he doesn’t know exactly how bad it hurts, glancing at Richie with his lips pressed together.
“Oh, this?” scoffs Richie, throwing his hand up. “This is nothing! Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, Eddie Spaghetti.”
Eddie rolls his eyes. Richie laughs to himself, pedalling a bit ahead.
“So, uh — how’d your mom react to the clown puke anyway? Your cast looked like you shoved your arm up an elephant’s butt!”
“It did not, Richie, most of the puke went right into my fucking face anyway.”
Richie laughs loudly and even snorts. “Bet some got in your mouth, huh?”
“Actually, yeah, it did, and I really don’t want to talk about it, OK, asshole? It was so fucking disgusting and I just don’t want to even think about it anymore.”
Richie’s bike almost tips over again from the pace they’re going at. He drops his foot after staggering a bit, then throws his leg over the seat and walks alongside the bike instead. On the same side as Eddie.
“Your mom was OK, though?” he asks, squinting at Eddie. He needs to get his prescription checked.
“Yeah,” says Eddie quickly. He reaches for his fanny pack, then drops his hand and fists it. He shakes his head and sighs. “It was… kind of weird actually. She didn’t freak out at all. Like… I don’t know, she barely even noticed I was gone.”
Richie looks down, kicking his feet.
Staring at him, Eddie bites his lip. “It was like… when we were at your house, before going down to Neibolt again. When you told your mom you were leaving she just… she didn’t even look up. It was like we weren’t even there.”
“Yeah,” mutters Richie, glancing away.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“W-whatever,” Richie says quickly, kicking a stone. “Fucking clown magic bullshit.”
Eddie’s eyes widen. “You think it was the clown?”
“Yeah… I don’t know, maybe! I mean, it’s like all the adults went fucking bonkers the whole time all that shit was going on, right? Like, It was everywhere — I’m talking Invasion of the Body Snatchers, dude.”
“Why just the adults, though?” asks Eddie, thinking about this. Something has been troubling him, since the sewers. Something about… growing up and losing sight of… of the real scary stuff, you know? Or… learning to look the other way. Things are changing. He can feel it in the air. In the town. In himself.
He chews his bottom lip. Eventually he glances at Richie again. “Your parents go back to normal yet?”
“I dunno… I think so?”
“Oh. I hope they do soon.”
Richie winces, and mutters, “But then your mom will too.”
Eddie shakes his head, as if tossing the thought away before it can settle in his mind. They walk a little while longer, until they’re almost at the kissing bridge, and Richie has started chatting so incessantly about sci-fi tropes he almost doesn’t notice when Eddie halts.
It hurts to clench his fists, but the pain is a reminder. Eddie breathes in and out and looks at Richie as the other boy stops and glances back, eyebrows high.
“I don’t wanna go home yet,” says Eddie.
Richie throws his arms up in the air, letting his bike drop with a crash. They both pause, then burst out laughing. Shooting each other excited, nervous glances, they wander not-so sneakily to the trail behind the bridge that leads down into the barrens. Eddie takes the descent faster than he should with both hands out of action but it’s cool down there in the shade of the trees, the air clear as his mind as he watches Richie scamper down the gnarled root steps of the slope ahead of him.
“You better get a new cast either way,” says Richie, doubling back as the path widens and skipping along beside Eddie. “Now it looks like you jilled yourself off while you were on your period!”
Eddie looks down, startled, and realises there’s blood on the top of his cast.
“Asshole, this is your period!” he shouts, swinging his arm at Richie. Richie cackles, ducking out of the way. “And you got some right here,” adds Eddie with sudden vigour, pointing to Richie’s cheek.
“Huh — where?” asks Richie, raising his elbow to wipe his face. Then he clocks Eddie’s terrible poker face and shoves him, laughing, grabbing him back for a quick noogie and everything. Eddie laughs too and doesn’t bother fighting him off. When it’s just the two of them they’re allowed to be close. Down in the barrens they’re allowed to be themselves.
“What the hell was with that ritual anyway?” says Eddie, laughing. “It wasn’t Blood Brothers — none of us even shared blood!”
“Oh yeah, like this?” asks Richie, holding his bloodied hand up. Eddie brings his hand up to clasp it. They both wince as the wounds smart. Eddie holds his breath, and somewhere in the middle their eyes meet. His fingers itch for his inhaler but the problem isn’t his lungs or his throat — it’s his heart. In his hand. In Richie’s hand.
Richie stares at him, and squeezes it.
Eddie snatches it back suddenly. “Wait, what the fuck am I thinking?” Heat flushes to his face and he clutches his hand, mind whirring. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, that was so stupid, sharing blood is super dangerous, not to mention the fucking diseases—” He gasps for breath, panicking, grabbing Richie’s wrist and dragging him towards the sound of water. “What blood type are you—? I’m AB positive so I’m fine, but unless you’re AB positive too—” He gulps frantically, close to tears. “Richie — your blood — which is it?!?”
“I-I dunno, Eds, it’s probably fine! The blood’s pretty dry already.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” sobs Eddie, scrambling with his fanny pack. He still has some of the shit left over from when they stitched up Ben and now he kneels down amongst the rocks on the riverbed, laying them out in front of him. He bites his lip, glancing at the river — he can’t remember if grey water gets fed into the Kenduskeag at some point — or is it that the canal? Or is it both?? Fuck!
Richie just stands there like an dumbass, blinking down at him. Eddie grabs his wrist and yanks him down to kneeling in front of him. He scrabbles with the top of the saline bottle.
“This might hurt a little,” he says, raising apologetic eyes before wincing as he douses Richie’s palm.
Richie hisses quietly, and Eddie pats his knee. It’s hot again. Humid. The rushing water is making him dizzy. Reluctantly he lets go of Richie’s hand, soaking some gauze in the salt solution and then taking the hand again to dab gently at it. Richie was right — the blood is clotted and almost dry. Obviously he can’t tell the difference between his blood and Richie’s, though, so better to just clean the whole thing and… pray there was no cross-contamination. His eyes dart to Richie’s face every once in awhile, expecting him to start frothing at the mouth or haemorrhaging or something, but Richie just gazes down at his hands while Eddie works, and is oddly quiet the entire time.
As he’s finishing tying up the bandage, feeling fairly confident with his work, Eddie has to fight the sudden urge to give the palm of Richie’s hand a kiss, like his Mom would do for scrapes and bruises. He doesn’t know if a kiss really makes it better but — he blushes at the thought.
“OK, done,” he says, and feels a little relieved to let go of Richie’s hand, though he hadn’t noticed how embarrassing it was when he was holding it.
“What about you?” asks Richie, fixing his glasses and looking at him.
“I’ll be fine — AB positive, remember?”
“Yeah but what about, like, AIDs or whatever?”
“W-what about it?” asks Eddie.
“I mean, you mom’s friend and the hangnail…”
Eddie blinks. He didn’t think anyone was listening to him back then. He shakes his head quickly. “You can’t get AIDs from this. I mean, it’s not a dirty subway pole it’s just… your hand.”
“But what if I have AIDs?”
“How could you have AIDs! You don’t have AIDs, Richie!”
“You don’t know that,” says Richie, rolling his eyes and frowning.
“If you have AIDs then — whatever! I’ll get AIDs too! It can’t be that bad if you have it.”
Richie furrows his brow.
“If it makes you feel better I’ll let you suck the wound,” says Eddie, grinning and shoving his hand into Richie’s face. Richie laughs gleefully and pretends to chomp on it, making Eddie shriek. They chase each other around for a bit, running downriver, falling down exhausted at a better spot down the bank with more grass than rocks, and outcroppings that hide them from any possible onlookers. Eddie doesn’t notice that, not exactly. But he knows it feel private. It feels safe.
They lay down for awhile, looking at the sky. It’s hot, muggy, but something in the wind or the clouds or the sunlight says summer’s ending. Eddie’s heart is wrenched with a sudden, wavering nostalgia for the season, for childhood, which is stupid because it’s still summer and he’s still a child. But one day it won’t be and he… he has to remember what it was like to lie here on the brink of it.
He wonders if Richie feels it too.
“Wow, you really risked my life just to hold my hand,” says Richie, careening over him and gesturing wildly. “Imagine what you’d do to get to first base!”
“Fucking kill you is what I’d do,” mumbles Eddie, ripping up grass. So much for that thought. There’s nothing in Richie’s head but crudeness and teasing.
Richie laughs. “You know what first base is, right Eddie?”
“’Course I do,” says Eddie. He hopes he isn’t blushing. He doesn’t know why. All it makes him think of is the boys playing baseball out behind the Tracker house. Where Stan runs like the wind and Butch Huggins smacks balls up and over the fence with a sound that shatters through Eddie’s body like a bat to the head. Like a whack to the funny bone. Chilling. He’s never seen Richie play baseball at the Tracker house — only sees him in gym class, all limbs and lack of co-ordination — and suddenly wonders if he should invite him over there to play sometime. But it makes his stomach clench, thinking about it. It would be weird to see Richie there. Richie isn’t like those other boys, and Eddie doesn’t know how he’d feel watching him. He only ever watches, after all. Well, maybe Richie would watch too. But Richie’s pretty smart and he might say something weird. Not that it’s weird, you know, to watch the boys play baseball.
Anyway, those bases out on the field make a hell of a lot more sense to Eddie than the bases Richie was talking about. Kissing is first, he thinks (is it like a kiss on the cheek, though, or frenching?) and then home is, you know — fucking, he guesses. And then in between it’s… whatever, his mom would never let him play anyway and — and he’s only a kid, like, he’s not thinking about girls! They’re only kids, though all this seems to be changing. Soon puberty will happen and maybe that’ll change everything, maybe he will care about girls one day (although he wishes he never has to) and Eddie doesn’t even know what puberty means, exactly, except that he’ll get zits on his face and hair on his dick and Richie says he’ll have to start washing his own sheets and he doesn’t know why.
Really, he doesn’t.
Well, maybe puberty means getting crushes on girls and wanting to kiss them — it’s so obvious that Ben’s totally smitten with Bev, and Bill even kissed her in the school play (though that probably doesn’t count), and maybe even Richie likes her too, like, why wouldn’t he, he never shuts up about boobs and butts and whatever else. And Bev’s really pretty and tells dirty jokes and wears a bra, even, and Richie likes her, probably. Yeah, he probably likes her. And it’s oddly unbearable to think of Richie and Beverly, you know, dating or something. Like, that just makes no sense whatsoever, right? Bev and Bill make sense as a couple, you know? But Bev and Richie? Eddie can’t imagine it. He can’t stand it.
He can’t imagine Richie dating any girl, come to think of it.
Still. Eddie knows his friends are all going to get girlfriends before he does, but he doesn’t care about that, because he has his friends, and that’s what matters. He loves them, and no girl could ever come along to replace them. (Not even if she looked like, you know, Pamela Anderson or someone and rode a red convertible.) Even if all his friends get girlfriends and forget him — he won’t ever forget. He’ll cling on somehow. He’ll remember.
But… on the other hand it feels like maybe this is all a trap. Like, maybe it’s all a trap his mom set. It’s not up to him anyway — it’s not like he’s allowed get a girlfriend. He can’t get a girlfriend because then he would leave her, wouldn’t love her anymore, because she’s the only one he can ever love. Well — fuck her — it’s too late for that already. He loves his friends more. He does. He’d kill for them. He’d die for them. And he can’t love a girl either because he’ll always love his friends more. Always.
He knows the others won’t get it. They’ll call him a baby or tell him he’ll understand when he’s older or something. His mom told him that smaller boys are late bloomers or something, whatever that means. God, Eddie wishes they could all just see that none of that is worth shit compared to what the seven of them have. Richie might understand — or at least he might not make him feel dumb about it. He told Eddie all about wanting to become a whatchamacallit — oh my God, what the hell is it called — you know, with the puppets? Eddie thinks of asking Richie now but he doesn’t want to be the asshole who forgot the Very Important And Special Thing Richie told him in what he assumes was the strictest confidence — because Richie was so happy when he told him that, just the two of them above the garage, and it was the first time he ever heard Richie speak in what his mom would call a sincere manner. Although when she says it it sounds very serious and boring, but that day Eddie learned that sincere things can also be awesome and exciting and, well, hilarious, obviously, because it’s Richie. He never heard Richie talk like that before, not with anyone else. It made him really, really happy that Richie talked to him like that. And Eddie never teased him about it or anything. He actually thought it sounded pretty cool.
So maybe if Eddie told Richie in a sincere manner that he doesn’t care one bit about girls because he’ll never love anyone but the six of them — maybe Richie wouldn’t make fun of him. Maybe Richie would think it was cool. Hell, he might even understand! Eddie knows that makes, like, zero sense but somehow it does at the same time. It’s not like Richie ever talks about love, you know? He can’t even imagine the kind of girl Richie would fall in love with.
Eddie wrinkles his brow and tries to stop a smile. What the heck is he thinking about?
“So, uh, first base is like—” starts Eddie, interrupting himself with a nervous laugh. He looks at Richie, who was looking at him already. He had been for — Eddie doesn’t know how long.
Richie’s eyes widen. He makes a little oh sound, and then a huh?
“I mean, what exactly counts as—” tries Eddie again, feeling his cheeks grow warm and wrinkling his brow as Richie’s eyes dart from his eyes to the bottom of his face and back again. “What — do I have some period on my face or—?”
“Um,” says Richie, and then he plunges in and presses his lips to Eddie’s. Eddie’s eyes widen, then snap shut, then widen again as Richie draws back. Frozen, not even breathing, Eddie ogles him. His hand throbs. His chest aches. All the blood in his body seems to be rushing to his face.
Richie can’t meet his eyes, turning to stare at the sky instead, his face stricken. Reminding himself to inhale and exhale, Eddie sits up and looks straight ahead and tries to figure out what the fuck just happened. He rummages in his fanny pack and brings his inhaler to his mouth. Where Richie’s mouth was a second ago. He drops it again, eyes wide.
Eddie turns to stare unblinking at Richie again, who’s staring in the opposite direction. Then Richie leaps to his feet.
“Wait! Richie…”
Richie turns back, and swallows hard. He can’t look at Eddie.
Eddie tries to think of what to say. “What was that for?’ is all he comes up with.
Crossing his arms, Richie drops his head and kicks at the ground. He stiff and uncomfortable and Eddie is horrified — he’s never seen Richie like this. “I dunno! What was it for when you only hugged me… back there?”
Eddie blinks a couple of times. He hadn’t really noticed that he only hugged Richie — but looking back, it was like, yeah. He did. “I don’t know…”
Eddie bites his lip. He knows he could easily pull the ‘I asked you first’ card, but this seems like an important question, warranting a thoughtful answer. He has to think good and hard about it, scrunching his face up.
“I just felt like…. maybe things are changing and… and I thought I might not get the chance again.”
Eddie swallows, and looks at his shoes. There’s blood on them. His heartbeat pounds.
“I dunno,” he says quietly. “Maybe I just wanted to.”
He glances up to see Richie’s eyes widen slightly at the ground.
“Is that why you…” Eddie wets his lips, mouth dry, cheeks burning. “I mean… is that the same reason you…” Gosh, his heart is beating so fucking fast.
“Dunno…” says Richie again, and clears his throat. He struggles for a moment, wringing his hands, and Eddie’s surprised to see his eyes growing red. “I mean,” he croaks, “we almost fucking died, Eds.”
Eddie nods, unable to take his eyes off him. Off Richie. His friend.
Richie wipes his face with his sleeve. They don’t say anything for a long while.
Eventually Richie sighs. “You’re not gonna tell anyone, are you?”
“N-no, Jesus… I mean, I don’t want my mom to find out.”
“I don’t want anyone to find out.”
Eddie pauses. “Not even the others?”
“No.”
Brow creasing, Eddie frowns. This whole thing didn’t feel quite so awful until that moment. His stomach twists. “Well, look… I don’t care, so… so maybe they won’t either. They’re our best friends, we’ve all been through hell together, I don’t think they’d hate us just for—”
“Us?” repeats Richie.
Eddie gulps. His eyes are round. This was some wrench in his plan, huh? He never had any interest in kissing girls, that was the truth. But it had never occurred to Eddie that kissing boys was an option.
No, no, no — what the hell is he thinking — it’s not an option!
Fiddling with his inhaler, Eddie tries to breathe. It’s calming to know that whether or not his lungs work, the rest of him is alive and thrumming. He’s never been so aware of his body, not even when he broke his arm. That was just the start of it.
He puts away the inhaler, zipping it up in his fanny pack. He glances up at Richie and takes a few deep breaths. “It’s bad, huh?”
“What’s bad?” asks Richie, looking less disturbed now, watching Eddie with concern.
Eddie doesn’t even know how to put words on it. Likings boys, what the hell does that mean? How can you have a crush… on a boy? He can’t say the word kiss either, not out loud. How the hell can you kiss another boy? You can’t — except that Richie just fucking did. “What you… what we just did. It’s bad… right?”
“Um, I mean, I guess it’s pretty faggy,” says Richie, scratching his neck. He almost immediately cringes, face scrunching up.
“Uh huh,” says Eddie. In his mind, something has just slotted into place. That’s something they’ve been called hundreds of times — maybe thousands. Both of them. All of them, really, but especially the two of them. Faggot, which means flamer, which means homo — which basically just means gross, right? Eddie had always met it with a swell of anger — and a twinge of shame. He hadn’t always known exactly what it meant — what it really meant — but he knew it was a mean word directed at them — at him for a reason. He once thought homos were like ogres and trolls and shit — living under bridges, but not really, just a scary story. Finding out that they were real was like a nightmare come true. And then, always, that niggling shame.
It wasn’t a meaningless taunt.
His mom says the same about the Tracker brothers. Queers, that’s what she calls them, but it’s just another word for the same thing. But Eddie likes the Trackers, and they never once disturbed the boys playing baseball. His mom also talks shit about the people from the church on the corner of you-know-what street, but Eddie likes their singing and he knows Mike even plays the trumpet there. Mike is his friend. So if his mom can be wrong about Mike and the Trackers and his own goddamn pills then maybe his mom is wrong about everything. Maybe his mom doesn’t know shit.
Eddie fixes his gaze on Richie now, whose head is hanging low. Eddie doesn’t know why, he really doesn’t. It’s just him and Richie. No Bowers and his goons. No Mommy. No no-one. He doesn’t feel ashamed — and why should he? They haven’t done anything wrong. His cheeks are a little too warm and his heart is caked into the blood of his palm — mixed with Richie’s. His fingers are all tingly. His lips are too dry but he might go crazy if he licks them, because that’s where Richie’s lips were just a few moments ago. And then there’s his heart, which is fluttering like a hummingbird’s in his chest, and then there’s his gaze which he can’t seem to tear away from Richie’s face, and then there’s this — this weird smile. This smile that hits him out of nowhere — threatening to pinch his cheeks up and overthrow his whole face with this sudden, very delayed reaction. That he’s happy. That he liked it. That he likes, well, Richie. And — hey, guess what? — none of that feels like shame, and none of that feels anything but good — but wonderful — but fan-fucking-tastic, as Richie might say. So if that… if that kiss makes him a faggot, then maybe faggots really aren’t such a bad fucking thing as he thought.
It can’t be so bad if Richie is too.
“It didn’t feel bad,” says Eddie. Richie’s head snaps up so fast Eddie almost laughs. His lips quiver — he has to keep talking right now if he wants to get this out at all. “I-I mean, it happened so fast it almost gave me whiplash so I can’t know for sure, but…”
Richie stares at him with his mouth hanging open. “What the fresh fuck are you talking about, Eds?”
Stepping forward, Eddie grabs Richie’s wrist and yanks him down so they’re both sitting on the banks. He straightens his back and gazes intently at Richie, not letting go of his arm. Smiling a little, he says, “Don’t call me Eds.”
Richie’s eyes dart around Eddie’s face, worrying his lip with his teeth. There’s a moment’s pause, and it’s too quiet.
“Jesus, what’s with you!” shouts Eddie. “Just say something!”
“Something,” says Richie instantly.
A breath of laughter escapes Eddie, and Richie grins, his cheeks pushing his glasses up. Their eyes meet, then fall lower as the smiles quickly fade.
Eddie wants to be brave. He has to be. He leans in, trembling, and clamps his eyes shut, but not before he catches Richie’s eyes grow wider than ever, magnified a hundredfold by his glasses. Eddie hesitates, flushing hot, but next second Richie’s nose clumsily bumps his cheek and, the second after, they find each other’s lips.
At first Eddie had been all concerned about, you know, breathing through his nose and what to do with his tongue and whatever, but they just sit like that for a moment, pushing their lips chastely together, and his breath sighs out naturally as Richie’s hand fumbles into his. It takes a moment, inexperienced as they are, until Richie tilts his head for a better angle (how did he know how to do that?) and Eddie wets his lips and suddenly it feels… different. Now he’s sure they’re doing it right because their mouths slip easily together and he’s got butterflies in his tummy and, oh, here’s this smile coming on again like the clouds parting and sunlight streaming in the window. Eddie kisses more enthusiastically, more urgently until the smile wins out and all he can do is laugh, dropping his head and pressing his face to Richie’s chest, beaming. And like that’s normal, like it’s an everyday thing, Richie rests his head on Eddie’s shoulder, wraps an arm around his waist, and squeezes him tight.
Eddie’s smile soon turns to giggling as Richie’s fingers scrabble and poke at his ribs. He raises his head and they grin at each other for one bright moment, before turning away and bursting out laughing. Eddie holds his hands over his flushed face and Richie falls back into the grass, blowing a raspberry. It’s so embarrassing and yet Eddie wouldn’t change it. He wonders briefly why — why him, why Richie, why them? Was it always this way? Did the sky always feel this bright when they were together? Did his breath always feel this clean?
He turns to study Richie again, lying back in the grass with his eyes closed. He’s smiling, unable to help it, and Eddie smiles too just from looking at him. In that way it’s no different, nothing’s changed. So, yeah, this kind of makes perfect sense, really. It was always him and Richie.
Richie’s eyes squint open, catching him staring. He grins and raises his hand. “First base, baby.”
Eddie laughs and high-fives him, and they both curse and wince after using their wounded hands.
“Sorry,” says Richie, cringing. “Does it hurt?”
“What, this?” says Eddie, lying down beside him with a smile. He’s got aches in his hand, in his arm, in his head for fuck’s sake — but what’s the opposite of an ache? He doesn’t know the word, but that’s how his heart feels. He takes Richie’s bandaged hand in his broken one, as Richie grins back at him. “This is nothing.”