Chapter Text
It had only been a few days since school had ended for the year, and it seemed like all of Derry was celebrating. The sun seemed to shine brighter than it had during classes a few days prior, the air seemed to be a little bit more crisp, the gentle touch of the breeze a perfect accent to the pleasantly warm weather. Even the grass seemed to be more happy, it’s bright green hue a perfect complement to the blue, cloudless sky.
For Eddie Kaspbrak, much of this had gone unnoticed. Instead, the air that he breathed stuck at home seemed heavier, almost suffocatingly so; the pleasantly cool breeze was rarely given the chance to kiss his skin, as the windows at the Kaspbrak house remained tightly sealed shut. His mother insisted it was for his allergies, although he would be the first to admit he had no idea what he was actually allergic to. When he was younger he’d started to think that he was allergic to the sun, or maybe to having fun. He’d grown out of that, of course, but it still felt as though his mother tried to keep him from both equally.
He was standing in front of the window in his bedroom, hands resting on the windowsill as he gazed outside. He hadn’t taken much time to look outside in the past few days, as his mother had insisted on him staying in bed or by her side nearly every moment. She cited some sort of sickness he had to get over, or needing to rest to recover from stress of school, or his allergies yet again. It was more than just stifling; it was suffocating, and Eddie needed out.
That was why when, earlier that day, Eddie had been more than delighted to receive a call from Bill Denbrough asking where he’d been and if he wanted to meet up with the rest of the Losers at the Barrens that afternoon. It was lucky that he’d picked up the phone when it had rang rather than his mother; she insisted that his friends were a “bad influence on you, Eddiekins! You’re much safer here with Mommy.”
Eddie rolled his eyes. As if his friends were the problem, and not the fact that his mother thought he was a breakable toy she could dress up and move around like a fragile doll.
Three days of that had been more than enough for Eddie, which was how he’d found himself standing in front of his bedroom window an hour after lunch, staring at the outside world. He was fully dressed; he even had his sneakers on and his fanny pack clipped around his waist. He could hardly wait to get out of the house - the only thing holding him in front of the window was the sure knowledge that if his mother saw him ready to leave, she would want to know where he was going. If Eddie lied, she would want to come along. If he told the truth, she would find some excuse to keep him in the house.
His only chance was to wait until she had fallen asleep. She always took a nap after lunch, slumped down in her chair in front of the running television.
Eddie glanced at his watch, fingers tapping an impatient beat on the windowsill. It had been nearly thirty minutes since he had rushed through helping his mother clean up from lunch and he was getting antsy to leave. She could say whatever she wanted about allergies; Eddie wanted nothing more than to be outside in the fresh air, not breathing the same stuffy, recycled air he’d been stuck in for the past three days.
Still, he didn’t want to get caught. It was a close call at this point - he estimated that there was a 75 percent chance his mom was already asleep.
With a huff, Eddie turned away from the window; he would take those odds.
He grabbed the note he’d written off of his desk and folded it in half as he walked towards his bedroom door. It didn’t contain any exact details, just enough to say that he was fine and was with his friends and hadn’t been kidnapped and yes, he did have his aspirator and his pills.
He didn’t want her to know exactly where he was going - he was sure she would simply show up and demand he come home if she knew - but he’d learned the hard way that if he snuck out, not only would he come back to a very angry Sonia Kaspbrak, but also very likely the police. Eddie got the feeling even the officers felt badly for him; the last time he’d come home to them talking to his frantic mother (“He’s fragile, I’m telling you! My poor sweet Eddie baby is missing, oh he must be so terrified, and his allergies—!”) they had seemed reluctant to be there, and all they’d done was tell him not to scare his mother like that. They’d spent far longer trying to express to her that she couldn’t assume he was seriously missing every time he went to meet up with his friends.
She hadn’t been pleased with that. In addition to keeping Eddie practically locked to her side for a week, she also took up the hobby of complaining about how “disrespectful” the local police were.
The memory made Eddie shake his head, exasperated, as he crept down the stairs. He carefully weighed each step so as to avoid making any excess noise, the note crinkling in his fist as he held the handrail.
He made it to the bottom of the stairs and stopped, straining to listen for any signs of movement. All he could hear was the quiet drone of the television, which didn’t mean much.
One deep breath later, Eddie continued to move down the short hallway towards the kitchen. He made it there successfully - still no signs of his mother being awake. He unfolded the note, placing it on the table and smoothing it with the palm of his hand. His hands hovered briefly over the now flat paper before he picked it up and folded it in half again, set it down, and then thought better once more and unfolded it for a second time.
Okay, so maybe he was putting off seeing if his mother was actually awake, but could you blame him? He didn’t want to consider the possibility of having to bail on his friends and spend another day trapped in his house, and as long as he didn’t actually check, he could perpetually be about to go have fun.
A quick glance at the bright outside world through the window reminded Eddie why exactly he was about to brave the living room doorway and he sighed, nervousness beginning to form a pit in his stomach. He knew if he stayed and thought about it any longer he might end up just getting too nervous - or even worse and more likely, his mother might wake up and see him, if she was already asleep. With that in mind, Eddie steeled himself and began to shuffle slowly towards the doorway that connected the kitchen to the living room.
The living room came into view bit by bit: the edge of the wall, the bookshelf, the painting on the wall—
Eddie stopped, his hands begging to itch for his aspirator. One more little step forward and be would know if he was about to be free, or if he was doomed to another day stuck here.
He squeezed his eyes shut and, after a lame attempt at a deep breath that nearly resulted in him actually needing his aspirator, stepped forward. Eddie held his breath as he stood with his eyes closed for a moment, waiting, and was greeted with the sound of—
Nothing. Absolute silence, other than the drone of the TV.
He opened his eyes, grinning, and was greeted with the sight of his mother soundly asleep in her chair in the glow of the television. He silently thanked whatever was up there watching over him for that small blessing, only looking at her for another second before moving away. Things were all working out - he didn’t want to miss his chance.
He turned away from the living room quickly and moved towards the door, throwing one last look over his shoulder at his sleeping mother as he twisted the doorknob to let himself out. There was a brief flash of guilt for leaving like this, without telling or asking her. Eddie knew his mother did everything - every smothering, suffocating thing - out of love for him, as she told him nearly every day. Still, he reasoned, he wouldn’t have to sneak out if she would just let him do things that every normal kid did. And like that, the guilt was gone.
Eddie gently cracked open the door and squeezed out between the wooden doorframe and the wall behind him, stepping out into the pleasantly warm fresh air. Not stopping to celebrate just yet, he turned around and carefully guided the door closed, making sure to keep the doorknob twisted until after he had pulled the door shut in order to keep the internal mechanism from clicking loudly shut.
As soon as it was closed, he turned and carefully ran down the few off of the porch, skipping the bottom step in favor of a gleeful jump down the the sidewalk. He stopped at the bottom to take in the fact that he was actually outside again; it felt like it had been three years rather than three days. Eddie didn’t consider himself outdoorsy by any means - in fact, he knew the novelty of being outside would probably wear off soon enough - but he was absolutely grateful for it in that moment. He swore that the fresh air had never tasted better, the wind had never ruffled his hair in a more pleasing fashion that right then on that fresh summer day.
After taking that moment to appreciate his newly obtained freedom, Eddie scrambled around to the side of the house. His bike was right where he left it, leaning up against the siding, obscured by some bushes from the road. He turned it around clumsily, hitting the bushes as he attempted to get the bike facing the right direction. When he finally had it pointing towards the street, he walked it over to the street (no need to be risky with it, a nice bike was a rare commodity for kids his age).
A moment later he had hopped up onto the seat, and a moment after that he was starting to pedal away from his house and its stuffy air and his sleeping mother inside who was currently none the wiser.
Starting up was always nerve wracking - it had taken some prodding for Eddie’s mother even to let him get on a bike, and her paranoia had instilled a more than healthy sense of fear in him. It was always the same: he hopped up on the bike, removed his feet from the ground and placed them on the pedals, and started to push. The bike would wobble for just a second and he would be so sure that he was about to topple to the ground, that this would be the time he tipped over and broke a wrist or an ankle and proved his mother right. And then every time without fail, the bike caught up to itself and his balance centered and it was like there had never even been that moment of uncertainty, of panic.
Once the initial fear passed, Eddie actually loved riding his bike. His mother didn’t like him to be too physically active (“You’re too fragile, Eddiebear! And your asthma—you just couldn’t possibly play sports, and gym class is out of the question!”), so riding his bike was just about the only chance he got to really move. Again, he wouldn’t consider himself athletic by any stretch, but he did enjoy riding his bike: the feeling of flying down the road, his legs pumping on the pedals, the wind whipping against his face, rippling his hair, his clothes. It was a moment of freedom, away from his mother’s insistence that he was too sickly and breakable, away from his own residual fears of the same.
He biked without thinking much of it, his legs working away at the pedals while he pivoted his wrists to adjust the front wheel with a practiced ease in spite of his three days trapped inside. Eddie didn’t need to think about where he was going; the bike ride to the Barrens was as familiar to him as the pills that rattled in his fanny pack with each cycle of his feet on the pedals. Up and down, up and down, clack clack clack.
By the time Eddie reached the wooded area where the path to the Barrens was located - which, admittedly, didn’t take an exceptionally long time - he was slightly out of breath. He slowed down as he approached, squeezing the brake down bit by bit as he rolled to a stop. The end of his ride always brought him back to reality, and with it cane his usual level of nervousness: he was always afraid that if he braked too hard, he would get carried by momentum and flip right over the handlebars, and he was in rush to teat that theory.
Once his bike had stopped he slid off, swinging his leg over the bars in the center of the bike frame to stand next to it. One hand on the handlebars, he unzipped his pack and took out his aspirator to soothe the effects of his bike ride. He didn’t always need it, but he’d been rushing on his way there. The thrill of being outside and on his bike again combined with the excitement of seeing his friends again had had him pedaling just a little bit harder every time he might usually just coast, and he could feel it in his lungs.
The bitter taste of his medicine still in his throat, Eddie carefully replaced his aspirator and zipped up his fanny pack. He would walk his bike the rest of the way, as it was an uneven path with a plethora tree roots, rocks, plants, and other natural obstacles that Eddie had no desire to meet head on while trying to balance on his bike.
It was a relatively short walk from the road down the path to the Barrens, and Eddie sometimes hated it - there were bugs around that probably had all sorta of diseases, and probably poison ivy, and weird mushrooms and rotting wood and all sorts of things that you find in the woods that are crawling with germs. Sometimes he enjoyed it though, as he found he was just then. The sun was hitting the trees just right, so the ground had little patches of sunlight that shifted and rippled like water as the wind blew the leaves on the trees above. The breeze felt perfectly cool on his skin, which was very slightly damp with sweat from his all-out bike ride to get there. He could hear birds up in the trees, and it was good.
After a minute or two of walking like that, Eddie began to hear the murmur of distant voices through the trees. He sped up slightly, grinning at the prospect of seeing his friends. The voices began to get clearer, more distinct, as he got nearer. Suddenly, the trees opened up onto the Barrens and he could hear Richie’s voice clearly as he rambled
“—all I’m saying is, if they could contain the ghosts and shit, why wouldn’t people be grateful! It’s all bullshi—Eds!”
Richie stopped talking about whatever it was he was rambling about and broke into a grin, waving as he saw Eddie appear in the clearing.
The other Losers that were there caught on as soon as Richie called out his name; there was Bev, sitting on a tree branch, Ben and Bill sitting under the tree so they could look up and talk to her. Richie was standing a few feet away, and had been rambling to a bored looking Stan before Eddie had arrived.
Bev gave him a little wave from the tree, and then Bill and Richie both started talking at once.
“Huh-hey, Eddie.”
“Where the hell have you been?”
Eddie rolled his bike out of the forest to the side of the clearing and dropped it there, rolling his eyes.
“My mom’s been keeping me stuck inside, said I had to recover from school,” Eddie said, placing emphasis on the last three words to indicate that he thought his mother was overreacting. As an afterthought, he added, “Hi, Bill.”
Bill looked like he was about to say something more, but Richie - ever the chatterbox - cut him off.
“Oh, so is that why your mom wouldn’t let me come over? Damn, Eds, I’ve been missing out.” He looked around then to see if his joke would land: Stan shook his head, exasperated; Bill and Bev had a small grin on their faces from the familiarity of it all, and Eddie rolled his eyes and huffed out a mumbled “Yeah, whatever”. So, the response was about as good as usual. Richie didn’t mind at all.
Eddie had made his way over to the group by then, standing between the tree where Bev, Ben, and Bill sat and the area occupied by Stan and Richie.
“Where’s Mike?” he asked, looking to Bill for an answer (as so many of them often did).
“Couldn’t muh-make it out,” Bill answered, shrugging. “Something on the fuh-farm.”
“Too bad,” Eddie said, sitting down cross legged in the grass across from Stan. It tickled his bare legs and he though briefly of allergies and disease carrying insects and illness—but then banished the thoughts as Richie sat down next to him.
It felt like it had been a lifetime since he’s gotten to see his friends - hell, he’d even almost missed Richie’s dumb jokes about his mother. It was nice to sit with them again, to be away from the oppressive energy of his house and instead be surrounded by people he cared about.
The three by the tree had drifted back into their own quiet conversation, and even Richie was strangely quiet. It was a strange occurrence, but as much as Eddie told Richie to shut up, he found he didn’t actually like it when he did.
“Do you guys wanna go to the quarry tomorrow?” Eddie threw out in an attempt to break the weird silence.
Unfortunately, the silence only got weirder. Bill and Bev exchanged a meaningful glance, and Stan averted his eyes. Even Richie was giving off a weird energy next to Eddie, scratching the back of his neck in an uncharacteristically awkward way.
Eddie felt out of the loop. It felt like when you walk in on your parents or your friends planning you a surprise party for your birthday, like everyone else knew something you didn’t and they didn’t want to share. Eddie assumed this was similar to that, anyways, because he’d never had a surprise party; his mother insisted they would be too much for his fragile nerves.
“C’mon guys, what’s going on?” Eddie finally insisted, looking at each of his friends in turn. It was Bill who actually replied to him after a stretching moment of awkwardness.
“I mean, we cuh-could, but Richie leaves for his camp t-t-tomorrow morning,” he said, shrugging his shoulders in a what-can-you-do sort of way. “We were gonna muh-meet up to say bye.”
Eddie blinked dumbly at Bill, and then it sunk in exactly what he was saying. He tipped backwards onto the grass as he realized, not caring about any potentially dangerous threats hiding in it.
“I can’t believe my mom kept me stuck inside so that I totally missed our chances to hang out before he left,” Eddie groaned, speaking the way he often did when he was angry, like a computer without a spacebar. And he was angry - it was already starting to get later in the afternoon, and Richie would be leaving tomorrow morning. His mom’s insistence that he was sick and fragile and needed to stay home had cost him the few days they’d had as a group before Richie left for a month.
Eddie could feel a hot anger pooling in his gut; he usually didn’t get upset with his mother for being overbearing, but he hadn’t even realized that he’d been missing out on this chance to hang out with Richie while ago all but forced him to stay inside. To hang out with the whole group, really, because it just wasn’t the same when they weren’t all there. He was seething, glaring angrily up at the sky, thinking about—
“Awh, why ah do say, sir, is it that you’ll miss little ole me?”
Richie had suddenly appeared in Eddie’s line of sight, doing a terrible voice that sounded like a mix between a southern belle and a poorly done british coal baron. He leaned down over Eddie and fluttered his lashes at him, hand’s clasped in front of him.
Eddie’s anger simmered down almost immediately. Suppressing a smile, he reached up to gently shove Richie’s shoulder. “Shut up.”
Richie responded by tumbling dramatically over and flinging a hand over his forehead like helpless maiden in some medieval drama. “Oh, but you have wounded me so sir, ah do say!”
Eddie could see Stan roll his eyes, but Eddie couldn’t help but find it endearing. Richie’s voices weren’t good by any means, but it was so familiar to him, and so quintessentially Richie, that he couldn’t help feeling a sense of fondness for his best friend’s bad impressions. He was hit with a sudden pang of sadness, tinged with a residual spark of anger, when he remembered that Richie was about to be gone for an entire month. None of his voices, or stupid comments about Eddie’s mom, or his eyes, huge behind his coke bottle glasses, glancing around to see how well his joke landed. Eddie knew he would miss all of it, even as much as he loved to tell Richie to can it.
“We could go to the qwuh-qwuh-quarry later on,” Bill offered.
Eddie shrugged; he didn’t particularly care about going to the quarry. He’d only suggested it to break the weird tension - the one he now knew was because all of his friends were also thinking about the fact that they would be missing the loudest member of the Losers Club for a month.
“Maybe,” he said noncommittally. “It’s no big deal,” he added, not wanting to stress Bill put trying to make plans.
The group lapsed back into a momentary silence. Now that Eddie knew its cause, he could feel the solidarity between his friends - all of them knowing they would miss Richie, in all of his annoying glory. It didn’t do any good to just sit there and miss him when he was right there, Eddie reasoned. He knew he, at least, didn’t want to waste a second now that he knew this was the last time he would really get to hang around with Richie for a while.
“We should do something,” he said quickly, breaking the silence. “Like, lets go the Aladdin or get ice cream or something. Y’know, something sorta special maybe?” He thought he sounded stupid and began to think of casual ways to take it back, but someone interrupted before he could.
“Oh, my good chap, don’t tell me this fuss is on my behalf!” Richie was doing his best british accent now, which was, admittedly, still not very good. “I’m just right tickled that you care, my dear,” he added, tipping an imaginary top hat.
“Yeah, care about you leaving! We should do something to celebrate that you’ll be going, not that you’re still here,” Eddie shot back, slipping as easily as ever into the snippish banter he often dished back to Richie.
Richie grinned at him. Then, back in his normal voice, he said, “My boy Eddie Spaghetti has a point here.” He leaned over from where he had sat down and hooked an arm around Eddie’s shoulders. “Let’s live it up! The one and only Richie Tozier is gonna be gone, snaggin’ babes and getting even more talented, for a month. I’m a hot commodity,” he added, throwing Eddie a wink.
Eddie shook his head and shoved Richie’s arm off of him, standing up. He brushed his hands on his shorts as Ben began to speak from under the tree
“I’d be in for ice cream.”
“Me too,” Bill said, offering Bev a hand to get down from the tree. She smiled at him but deigned not to take it, leaping down from the tree on her own instead.
“I’d love to,” she said, “but I’ve still got chores. My dad’ll be pissed if they’re not done when be gets home,” she added apologetically, a slight shadow passing over her face.
Bill and Ben both looked disappointed, but Bill recovered faster.
“I can ruh-ride home with you, Bev,” he stuttered. “I mean, I can ride with you until w-w-we go different wuh-ways,” he added, a light pink blooming across his cheeks.
“I can too!” Ben tacked on quickly. “I have to get home and uh, finish...something,” he concluded lamely. “We live on the same side of town anyways. Sort of...” he trailed off, making awkward eye contact with Bill. Eddie hoped the two of them could continue to get along in spite of their obvious conflicting - or should he say shared? - interest.
Bev, either oblivious to the strangeness between the two boys, simply shrugged. “Sure,” she said, smiling slightly. “That would be nice.”
At some point during this interaction Richie and Stan had both stood up, and Bev walked over to where the two of them and Eddie stood.
“I can’t make it out of the house tomorrow morning to say goodbye, but have fun at camp, Rich!”
“You know it, baby,” Richie shot back, grinning as he threw up finger guns.
She laughed, then began to walk towards the spot on the edge of the clearing she’d left her bike. Ben and Bill trailed behind her, each breaking off to grab their own bikes. After a moment to pick them up, the three of them wheeled their bikes towards the pathway out of the Barrens.
“Enjoy the ice cream for me!” Bev yelled, tossing a wave and a smile over her shoulder at Eddie, Richie, and Stan.
Richie waved back, and then the three of them disappeared between the trees.
Then it was just the three of them. Richie turned back to face Eddie and Stan, hands stuck in his pockets.
“So,” he said, drawing out the vowel sound. “You chumps wanna get some ice cream or what?”
“I really oughta get back home,” Stan said apologetically. “My dad wanted to talk to me about something and I sorta blew him off to be here, but I’m really not looking to tick him off any more by skipping out on him for ice cream.”
“Oh,” Eddie said, suddenly realizing just how quickly his group of friends had come apart.
“Sorry,” Stan repeated, awkwardly fiddling with the hem of his shirt.
He waited another awkward beat and then walked away towards his bike. Eddie suddenly came back to reality, blinking heavily.
“Hold on! Richie and I can just ride with you - y’know, the ice cream place is practically on the way to your house, we’ll just go that way together.” He wasn’t ready for their group to have come entirely undone just yet and besides, sometimes when Stan was in the right mood he and Eddie would team up to make fun of Richie’s crappy jokes and voices.
“Yeah, okay,” Stan said, waiting by his bike.
“C’mon,” Eddie said, gesturing for Richie to follow him to their bikes. Eddie had dumped his next to Richie’s without thinking about it, so the two of them headed off to the same spot to grab their bikes and wheel them over to an impatient Stan.
“Alright my good chaps, off we go!” Richie yelled, pushing between Eddie and Stan. He had none of Eddie’s paranoia or Stan’s common sense, so he hopped up unto his bike once he’d picked up some speed, slamming his feet down against the pedals. It didn’t take long for him to get his rhythm, and soon he was zooming away from the other two.
“You’re gonna fall off!” Eddie yelled after him, doing an awkward half jog down the path as he wheeled his bike. “You like, have no idea what’s on that path, and y’know what, I won’t feel bad when you fall and crack your skull open!” Eddie yelled uselessly, knowing Richie was already out of earshot. He also knew it wasn’t true. Not the part about Richie falling, which probably would be true, but the part about not being bothered by Richie getting hurt. He knew that not only would he be extremely grossed out and almost certainly have an asthma attack, he would also feel extremely bad. Even the thought of Richie getting hurt on his bike made Eddie feel queasy - the image of flipping over the handlebars came back from earlier and Eddie picked up the pace.
Stan followed suit, and Eddie could sense his exasperation.
“Y’know, I almost hope he does fall. Not enough to be seriously hurt or anything, just enough to prove us right,” he mumbled, kicking at a rock as he passed it.
Eddie shrugged noncommittally. After a moment of relatively silent walking, he struck up a conversation about the birds they could hear in the trees; Stan was their resident bird enthusiast, and Eddie knew that getting him to talk about them was a surefire way to improve Stan’s mood.
It worked; by the time they got back out to the road, Stan was practically happier than Eddie had seen him so far that day. They’d stopped a few times amid the trees to listen to a birdsong or to stop and examine one that Stan spotted in the trees, so it had taken them a bit longer than usual to get back.
Richie was pedaling back and forth impatiently on his bike when they reached the road. Eddie wasn’t surprised; he was never capable of staying still for very long.
“What the hell took you guys so long? Get lost or something?”
“You know my sense of direction is better than yours,” Eddie quipped, settling himself up on his bike. Stan did the same.
“Good thing I don’t need to be a master navigator to find my way to your mom’s bedroom,” Richie shot back, turning his bike in a small loop around Eddie. “Amiright, Stan the Man?”
“Richie, I’m this close to shoving you off of that bike,” Stan scoffed.
“As if you could catch me!” Richie said cheerfully, beginning to pedal down the road. “C’mon boys, lets roll!”
Eddie moved his feet from the ground to the pedals and began to move, that same moment of panic as earlier grasping at him until he caught his balance and was rolling smoothly down the road, like he always did.
He and Stan had to pedal harder to catch up to Richie’s head start, but they eventually did. They settled into an easy rhythm the three of them, pedaling in relatively synced up silence. They reached the intersection where Stan had to peel off towards his house without much fanfare.
“I might have temple tomorrow morning, so in case I don't see you, have fun at camp. Don’t do anything stupid,” he added as an afterthought, turning at the corner.
"I’m sure I will!” Richie replied with a grin, turning over his shoulder towards Stan as he said it. He continued to pedal as he did, keeping pace as he and Eddie continued on down the street. They were soon too far away to see Stan, so Richie turned back to the front.
“So, just you and me now, huh, Eds?” he asked, standing up on his bike pedals.
“You’re gonna break something,” Eddie snapped. In response, Richie pumped his legs faster and swerved in a quick circle around Eddie, one hand holding the handlebar in place, the other waving gloatingly at him.
“Show off,” Eddie grumbled, grateful when Richie sat back down on his bike safely.
It didn’t take much longer for them to arrive at the ice cream place. Richie jumped off his bike while it was still in motion; Eddie came to a gradual stop next to him. They both dumped their bikes in the alleyway next to the shop, the two metal frames clattering on top of one another on the pavement.
“Eddie, my love, go get that bench for us,” Richie said, gesturing lazily to the closest bench in the park across the way. Eddie rolled his eyes at Richie’s choice of words - it was nothing new; Richie was always calling him stupid pet names and nicknames, much to his chagrin.
“Fine. Here, lemme get out some—“
“Money? No need, monsyur, eet is my treat, my pleasure,” Richie interrupted in a horrible French waiter voice. He did a mock bow, then pointed back to the park. “Zee bench, my good sir, zee bench!”
Eddie turned away, shaking his head, and headed over towards the bench. He could hear the faint clang of the bell as Richie walked into the ice cream shop behind him.
The sun was beginning to sink lower in the sky; it was no longer burning directly above the town as it had been earlier that day. Now, as Eddie walked to the bench, it shined down at an angle. His shadow was stretches long in front if him as he walked, warped like a stretched piece of taffy. He wasn’t particularly fond of the image that the shadow put in his mind: a version of himself that was taller, as he had often wished, but in a nightmarish, unnaturally stretched way.
Eddie shook his head as he sat down on the bench as if to dispel the thought from his mind. There was no reason to get himself all freaked out over nothing, not when the afternoon was still sunny and warm and he was still free from his oppressive house and he was getting ice cream with his best friend. He tried not to think about the fact that said best friend would be gone for a month starting tomorrow, because he knew it would just make him vaguely sad for the rest of the afternoon.
He was startled out of his thoughts by Richie, who had seemingly materialized in front of him.
“You cone, sir,” he said, using his normal voice but handing it over with a flourish.
“Thanks,” Eddie said simply, grabbing it from his hand. “Vanilla is my favorite.”
“I know,” Richie said candidly, and Eddie felt like there was a layer of meaning behind the words that he couldn’t quite pick up on. Richie sat down next to Eddie and swung one arm over the back of the bench so his hand hung lazily near Eddie’s shoulder, the length of his arms barely brushing against Eddie’s back.
They sat like that for a few minutes just eating their ice cream, watching the motion of the trees and the people around them. Richie was being uncharacteristically quiet, and like earlier, Eddie found it sort of unnerved him. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Richie could be serious, or that he thought Richie never had complex thoughts and feelings, because Eddie knew better than anyone that he did. It was just that he didn’t often see a Richie that wasn’t doing a silly voice or making a comment about sleeping with Eddie’s mother, or otherwise filling the silence.
Eddie guessed it was his turn to try to fill the silence.
“So are you...nervous for camp?” he tried, hoping that Richie night want to talk about it if that was the case.
“Me? Oh, no way, Eds. I’m gonna be great, totally amazing, blowing them all away with ny fantastic voices and killer looks. Gonna be absolutely swimming in babes,” he said, but it felt more like a scripted bit than a genuine response.
Eddie didn’t know exactly what camp would be like for Richie - he could neither confirm or deny his claim about the babes, but he was leaning towards the latter. He did know that it was some sort of comedy acting camp, and that it was a more than an hour away. And, of course, that it lasted for a month.
Of course Richie was nervous, Eddie mused, mentally hitting himself for even asking. He felt like he’d missed his shot at this particular vein of questioning. More realistically, he realized that Richie probably didn’t want to talk about being nervous.
That was one fundamental difference between Richie and Eddie: Eddie showed when he was nervous, which was often, and when he was he wanted a calming word, a grounding hand, anything supportive to help pull him back to reality. He didn’t try to hide it because he couldn’t; being nervous triggered his asthma, and he wouldn’t claim that he was never dramatic when he became overwhelmed. Richie, on the other hand, didn’t like to let on that he was feeling anything other than “chuckalicious” and totally in control. He didn’t want you to point it out if you managed to pick up on it, as Eddie sometimes did. He wanted a distraction, a laugh, something to pull the attention off of whatever the problem was and to let him push it back out of the way.
He and Eddie spent enough time together that this wasn’t something Eddie had to think particularly hard about; it was just something he knew, like he knew his mother would be angry at him when he got home, like he knew Bill had a stutter, or that he himself had asthma.
So he tried again, catering his next attempt more towards a distraction than an invitation to talk about the problem.
“What flavor of ice cream did you get?”
Richie blinked, seemingly being pulled out of some pressing thought. He looked down at his hand as if surprised to see the ice dream cone gripped in it, noticing the drips that had ran down has hand for the first time.
“Oh, uh, rocky road,” he said. He switched the hand that held his ice cream and licked off the drips that had run down the cone, much to Eddie’s disgust.
“Are you serious? When was the last time you even washed your hands? I mean, we were in the Barrens, and you were touching your bike, and — no, y’know, don’t even tell me, I’m sure it’ll make me sick,” Eddie rambled, watching as Richie licked the last chocolatey drip off of his hand, his nose scrunched up in disapproval. “Just know that when you get sick, its because you just ate like, the dirt off of peoples’ shoes and animal shit particles and oh my god do not touch me!” Eddie yelped, leaning away from Richie’s grasp. Richie laughed, wiping his hand on his shorts before switching the cone back to his other hand.
Eddie watched him do this and, without thinking much, blurted out “Can I try some?”
Richie seemed caught off guard.
“What?”
“Your ice cream,” Eddie said, feeling as though his face had gone up three degrees in temperature.
Richie turned to examine Eddie, as if afraid an imposter had take his place.
“You’re sure not too scared of all my icky germs?” Richie cooed, taunting Eddie by shaking the cone in his face.
“Just let me try it,” Eddie said with a scowl. He didn’t have time to dig into whether or not he was bothered by the germs before Richie shoved the cone directly into his face.
Eddie took an experimental lick and made a face at the flavor, causing Richie to laugh.
“What?” he asked.
“It’s just, you didn’t like it, right? I could tell because you made this face like someone took a dump in your cereal or some shit,” Richie laughed, imitating Eddie’s own expression: scrunched up nose, eyebrows furrowed, mouth turned in a downward quirk. He burst out laughing as Eddie huffed, crossing his arms.
“I’m just not a chocolate person I guess, alright! I’ll stick with my safe and trusty vanilla, thank you,” he mumbling, pretending to be annoyed by Richie’s laughter. Secretly he was glad he’d managed to make Richie laugh; he’d been getting worried there for a bit.
Eddie took a bite out of his cone as Richie continued to laugh at him, eating his own cone as he did.
“So, Eddie, was it worth it?” He asked, taking a large lick of his cone. “Because you know, you technically got all that - what did you say, dirt and animal shit? - plus all the germs that are already in my mouth.”
Eddie didn’t like thinking of that; it made his chest tighten, like it was suddenly harder to breathe. He didn’t know what had possessed him to ask for a taste in the first place - it certainly hadn’t looked all that enticing, as he wasn’t a huge chocolate fan, and watching Richie lick drips off of his fingers had turned his stomach just enough to be noticeable. Whatever the reason was, he suddenly felt like he could feel the bacteria and the dirt and all the other crap he was now imagining on his tongue.
“Beep beep, Richie,” he muttered, shoving the last bite of his cone into his mouth.
Richie finished off his own cone soon after, making sure to lick his fingers again for the sole purpose of ticking Eddie off (“Gotta make sure they’re all clean, Eds!”). Not long after, Richie broke the short silence.
“I still have a couple things to pack, so...” he trailed off, lacking any of his usual comedic dramatics. “We should probably get going.”
“Guess so,” Eddie said, standing up. He liked that Richie had said “we” rather than “I”; they didn’t need an awkward stilted conversation to establish that they were intending to ride their bikes together, at least until they had to split up.
They made their way back to they alleyway where they’d left their bikes, picking them up in relative silence. The sense of melancholy was back again, and Eddie hoped that Richie was actually excited about going to camp. He would hate to know that Richie, for all his joking and bravado, was actually dreading being away for a month.
They got up onto their bikes and Richie, usually aware of the fact that Eddie took a moment to get his bearings on his bike, took off out of the alleyway.
Eddie hopped up on his bike and slammed his feet to the pedals.
“Richie,” he said, pedaling fast to catch up with him.
Richie turned his head in response, letting his bike coast so Eddie could catch up.
“Going too fast for you, Eds?” he asked jokingly, but it sounded a little tired, a little worn.
“You wish,” Eddie retorted out of habit, then softened. The two of them fell comfortably into sync as they rolled down the street, and Eddie opened his mouth without an exact plan about what he was gonna say next.
“You’re gonna be fine at your camp.”
That wasn’t what he’d been expecting to come out of his mouth; Richie seemed just as surprised as Eddie. They rarely did the whole being genuine thing - prickly banter and back and forth quipping was more their speed, but Eddie didn’t wanna send Richie home to finish getting ready with him still in an obviously less than stellar mood.
“Of course I’ll be fine! I mean, just look at me; I’ll be more than fine,” Richie said after a moment, puffing out his chest. “I might miss your mom, though.” He added, grinning.
“Shut up, asshole! I’m trying to be nice or whatever,” Eddie grumbled, wishing he hadn’t started the conversation.
Still, Richie seemed to realize Eddie was being honest, so he dutifully shut up about Eddie’s mother and waited for Eddie to say more.
“You’ve been all quiet and nervous and shit and I know you don’t think people notice as long as you’re making stupid jokes but gotta say, being nervous is my thing,” Eddie said, trying to be funny, but Richie didn’t laugh.
“Alright fine, so obviously jokes aren’t my thing, they’re yours! So like, you’re gonna be fine at you camp and we’ll miss you and whatever but you’re gonna have fun and annoy a whole group of people.” Eddie was rambling and he knew it, his words coming out faster and faster as he went. He felt awkward trying to be genuine, and Richie’s silence still unnerved him. He continued on anyways, unable to stop himself.
“Don’t go in the showers barefoot though, do you have any idea how gross that is? Like, there’s all kinds of molds and fungus and they might have to like, cut off your foot. My mom told me about this guy she knew who used a public shower and then got all kinds of gross infections, and, um...” He stopped abruptly, knowing he was losing his train of thought. “Don’t like, get bitten by a disease carrying mosquito or anything. Or get your foot so infected they have to cut it off. Yeah.”
Eddie was mentally kicking himself - he wished he’d never even started this conversation, since it had practically been a useless, rambling mess from the start. It wasn’t that he’d said anything that wasn’t true; he just felt suddenly embarrassed by how much he’d babbled. He wondered if this was how Richie felt when one of his bits fell completely flat: a little regretful, a lot embarrassed, and generally wishing he hadn’t said anything at all.
Richie didn’t seem to feel the same way Eddie did about the whole affair. In fact, he had a small smile on his face when he finally replied, glancing over at Eddie with an endearing shake of his head.
“Whatever you say, Eddie Spaghetti. Y’know, it’s cute that you’re so worried about me, really, it is!”
“Y’know what? Fine! Go get your foot cut off then,” Eddie replied, all mock anger. He was happy they’d found their way back to their usual energy. For good measure, he added, “And don’t call me that!”
Richie just grinned at him lazily. The lingering melancholy seemed to have lifted a little, for which Eddie was grateful. They bantered casually for the next few minutes as they rode down the street, enjoying a few extra minutes of each other’s company before they inevitably had to go opposite directions.
Richie stopped at the street corner where they’d have to go their separate ways, and Eddie rolled to a stop next to him.
“Hey, Eddie,” Richie began, voice hesitant. “Do you think you could...” he trailed off slightly, looking down at the concrete sidewalk.
“Maybe ride around the block a few times before you go home? I really wanna get in some quality time with Mrs. K before I leave,” he said, his sincere facade crumbling into laughter. “Y’know, since I’ll be gone and all—“
“Beep beep, Richie!” Eddie said, but he couldn't stop himself from cracking a smile too. The two boys stood on the street corner, Richie trying to continue the bit through his laughter, which only made Eddie laugh more as Richie tried and failed to compose himself. After several minutes of escalating the bit (“Yknow actually maybe you could go spend the night at—at Bill’s house,” Richie choked out between fits of laughter, barely clinging to his serious facade at all by this point.), their laughter eventually died down.
The realization that there would be none of this - the riffing back and forth and picking on each other and laughing like that - for a month seemed to dawn on them both at the same time, and they sobered slightly.
“Anyways, uh, thanks for the pep talk before, old chum,” Richie said, slipping into a bad sort of gruff admiral impression. “Duly noted!” He did a mocking salute as punctuation to his statement, flicking his right hand up above his eyebrow.
“I see a new journey on the horizon, I do!” he continued, miming holding a telescope. Eddie could sense him falling into the voice as a way of distancing himself from the seriousness of the conversation. He didn’t mind; it was just how Richie dealt with things.
“Right,” Eddie said, indulging Richie with an eye roll and a lackluster salute back.
The two of them dropped their hands then from their respective gesture, and Eddie could see the persona slide off of Richie as he got back up on the seat of his bike. It wasn’t a huge shift, but Eddie could pick ip on the little giveaways: the difference in the way Richie held himself as a voice versus when he was just himself, the way that he widened his already large eyes behind his glasses when he was doing a bit. A little bit of the bravado slipped away, replaced by that same slight nervous sadness from earlier that Eddie wasn’t used to feeling from Richie.
“I dunno if I’ll see you tomorrow,” Eddie said at the same time Richie said, “I guess I should get going.
“Sorry—“
“Oh, okay—“
Eddie snapped his mouth closed in order to avoid speaking at the same time as Richie again. When he could tell Richie was done, he got what he’d been saying out all in one breath.
“If my mom woke up while I was gone she’ll be pissed so there’s no way she’ll let me go out tomorrow, at least not in the morning. She thinks my allergies are worse in the morning for some reason, or like, if I ride my bike to earlier in the day I’ll fall asleep while I’m on it and crash and break my arm or something,” Eddie said without pause. “So, uh, I’ll see you when you get home.”
“Oh, right.”
For a second, Eddie thought Richie was at a loss for words. The moment passed then, as Richie flashed him a bright smile and hopped up on his pedals.
“Don’t cry too much while I’m gone, Eds! And give your mom a kiss goodbye for me,” he shouted, tossing a wink over his shoulder as he began to pedal down the street.
“Don’t call me that!” Eddie yelled back, and he could see Richie’s shoulders shake with laughter as he moved further and further away. Eddie stood on the corner and watched until Richie turned down a side street and disappeared from his view. It was weird to think that they wouldn’t be hanging out together tomorrow - not really, even if Eddie could manage to get over there somehow before Richie left.
He tried to shrug it off, settling onto his bike and starting to pedal home. It wasn’t like all of his friends were leaving, or like Richie was never coming back - they would still have more than a month of summer left by the time he got back to cram in hours and hours more of screwing around and making fun of each other, with all their friends, too.
Still, Eddie knew it would be weird. Richie was his best friend; of course he loved all the other Losers, too, but they weren’t Richie. They’d been friends since early on in elementary school, and had always gotten along perfectly. No one else, in the Losers Club or otherwise, got Eddie like Richie, which he supposed was why they were best friends. No one else dished it out and took the same sniping remarks back in stride as Richie did, something Eddie found that he really valued.
Before he knew it, Eddie was back to his house. He barely remembered the ride there; he didn’t even recall passing the creepy and, in Eddie’s opinion, disgusting Neibolt House, which usually caused him to pedal a bit faster.
He slowed to a stop in front of his house and dismounted his bike, stashing it back alongside the house where he’d gotten it from earlier.
He stopped outside of the door, not wanting to go in and face the very real possibility of his mother being awake and angry at him. Eddie tried to remind himself that at least there no cop cars sitting outside as he climbed the steps up to the front door, only stopping briefly to take a deep breath before opening the door.
He could see his mother sitting in her chair when he squeezed inside; she was certainly awake, but didn’t look frantic. Not in the mood to deal with her yet, and remembering his anger from earlier at being kept from those few precious days of hanging out as a complete group, he carefully shut the door behind him and pulled off his shoes. Making as little noise as possible, he crept through the kitchen and turned down the hall. He took the stairs two at a time, stretching when he needed to skip the ones he knew would squeak if he stepped on them.
It wasn’t that he thought she didn’t know he’d been gone, but at least this way he could play a little bit with exactly how long he’d been gone for, and it gave him time to think of the best plan for dealing with her later.
He pulled open his bedroom door and snuck through, shutting it silently behind him. He let out a breath then, grateful that he hadn’t been caught coming back in and had to face the full brunt of his mother’s smothering anger right away.
He flopped onto his bed and stared at the ceiling, glad that he hadn’t been stuck there all day.
It wasn’t until later, when he was recounting the day to himself so as to plan what to tell his mother, that he realized he had entirely forgotten to be afraid of tipping his bike on the way home. He’d been too busy thinking about Richie leaving for there to be any space for that moment of panic, something Eddie couldn’t particularly remember happening before.