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Richie Tozier painted his nails black, and Eddie has never felt more gay in his entire life.
They're nineteen years old, sitting on the floor, and Richie is listening to Pretty Hate Machine on vinyl and sorting through his inherited collection of cassettes that he hasn't looked at in three years, long fingers flicking through boxes upon boxes of music. Eddie doesn't even realize he's staring until Richie holds up a cassette right in front of his nose, a polished fingernail tapping a dulcet staccato on the case.
"You remember this one, don't you?"
"Get it out of my face, fuckwad, and maybe I can actually read it."
Richie pulls the tape back and turns it so he can thoughtfully stare at the words scrawled on the cover. He used to smile every time Eddie called him a name or glared at him or spoke to him at all, but Richie doesn't smile all that much these days. Eddie thinks it has to do with the foreclosure notice nailed to the Toziers' front door.
Maggie and Wentworth are not bad parents by any means. Sure, they're gone a lot, but that's only because they're always working. Eddie can appreciate working parents, especially ones that do it so their children won't have to see a bank take their house away.
Sometimes working hard isn't enough.
Sometimes you need luck, and if one family was ever unlucky, it would be the Toziers.
Richie doesn't smile very often, but that's probably the least noticeable change he has undergone. They were fifteen when Richie's mother had a baby girl and suddenly it was like a switch was flipped: Richie suddenly had a job at the Aladdin and listened to Gorilla Biscuits and wore leather jackets and got little ringlets stabbed into his eyebrow (two piercings on the left, just off center). He smiled less and rarely said the word "fuck" and sometimes he calls Eddie "Eddie" instead of "Eds" and it's terrifying because Eddie never realized he'd miss it.
The scariest part is that even though all the things that he thought made Richie himself are gone, he's still the same. And Eddie is still in love with him.
Richie blows a bubble with the massive wad of gum in his mouth. It pops, and he says, "Huh. This was a golden mixtape, dude."
Eddie leans over to look at the cassette and his best friend's arm is flung around his shoulders, just like old times. "I remember this one. 'Vegan Beats,'" he reads, squinting at the title. "That doesn't even make sense. I remember saying that to you."
"I remember you saying that to me too." Richie pops the tape into his Walkman and turns the volume up enough that they can both hear the sounds coming from Richie's headphones on the floor.
The first song that plays is "Eddie My Love," and every mix Richie has ever made for Eddie includes that song, but this one felt different.
Richie's arm stays around Eddie's shoulders. "Why'd you give this one back to me?"
"I don't think I did. I left it here on accident after I fell asleep listening to it."
Eddie had been given the tape for his sixteenth birthday. They were alone in the clubhouse and Richie was hogging the hammock like he always was and it wouldn't have been a problem because they usually just share, but Eddie decided that sixteen was the age where he wasn't going to take shit from Richie.
He had climbed into the hammock and straddled Richie's lap and stared directly down into his eyes. "I'm going to have to fight you for this fucking hammock for the rest of our lives," he had said, "but I am fully prepared to do that."
It was a fight that ended on the floor, but that was usually where they ended up anyway.
Richie breathes in deeply, bringing Eddie back down to Earth. "Are either of us ever gonna get out of this shit town?"
It's something they've discussed before, mostly late at night when nothing matters and they can talk about running away together without rationale taking over. They haven't actually talked about it realistically.
"I don't want to stop being friends with you," Richie tacks on, most likely because the world likes watching Eddie suffer.
Eddie turns so their noses brush. "I don't want to think about that right now," he tries to say, but it's weakened to a whisper.
Richie smiles. It's mellow and close-mouthed, but it's blinding nonetheless.
"You know what I've been thinking about?"
The sunlight catches the dark eyes behind his thick-lensed glasses, and Eddie just bites his own bottom lip.
"Fucking your mom."
It's so stupid and simple and basically the least interesting joke Richie has ever made, but he hasn't said something like that to Eddie in months, maybe a year.
"All Apologies" starts playing and a laugh startles out of Eddie's mouth. He is at a loss for words. Richie is still smiling and looking him directly in the eyes, and as Kurt Cobain sings that "everyone is gay," Eddie thinks that maybe Richie might also be kind of gay, and then he's kissing his best friend.
It's a faint peck, not anything come-in-pants-worthy but enough for Eddie to know just how soft Richie's lips are and exactly how well their mouths fit together.
Richie grins as soon as Eddie pulls away.
"That was quite the show, my good chap," he says in the only voice he seems to be able to do (yet he is somehow still awful at, even with all his practice). "Will there be an encore performance?"
Eddie blushes and looks away. "I dunno. Do you want one?"
There aren't many things in this world that Eddie loves more than Richie's annoying humor, but if he had to name a few—clarity and specificity. What Richie says next is neither clear nor specific.
"Well, my good friend, I am delighted to help you practice. Whatever girl comes your way will surely be a lucky one." He's still doing the voice.
Eddie hopes his shrinking confidence isn't visible. He laughs weakly. "Yeah."
But Richie is still smiling, and suddenly everything feels okay again. Like they're back to normal for the first time in four years.
When Eddie leaves that night, Richie gives him the leather jacket he was wearing. He puts it on over his sweater (because Eddie has changed since they were kids too) and bikes home with an intoxicating fullness in his heart.
▻▻▻▻▻▻
It's gradual at first. So gradual that anyone who wasn't there when it started wouldn't even notice.
But Richie tapers off the leather jackets until he just doesn't wear them at all, and for a while he just wears his white undershirts and Eddie cannot believe how much torture he is being forced to endure. Eventually, though, Richie is back to the Hawaiians and cargo pants and Eddie is pretty sure he sees Richie's vinyl collection slowly make its way to the used section of the record store.
Not that he's checking.
Richie still wears his piercings and even has a new ringlet on the left side of his bottom lip, but now he talks about Eddie's mom and swears like a very immature sailor and gets straight As again. He still paints his nails, but now they're a deep sea green color and he chews them to bits like he used to.
They're twenty and they go to college together and Eddie feels like this is how it was supposed to be all along.
Richie's personality makes it kind of easy to forget that he is basically a genius. He acts like a twelve-year-old who just discovered the wonders of mom jokes, but he can count the number of times he's failed a test with one finger (it was the day after his mom came home with the baby. Richie had been up all night, and if he hadn't fallen asleep during the test, he would have aced it).
But despite Eddie's resulting inferiority complex, Richie still applied to all of the same colleges as him and declared immediately after Eddie did. He tries not to think about it because, although the feeling is nice, the warmth that floods his entire body and flushes his cheeks pink is Richie's favorite thing to make fun of.
They're roommates, obviously, and most days will find them on Richie's mattress, slouched against the wall to flip through Eddie's comic collection together. That's how they are now, except Eddie can't seem to concentrate on anything but the slope of Richie's nose and the way his tongue pokes at his lip ring.
It's very difficult to hide the fact that he's blatantly staring when he has no excuse to be looking anywhere near Richie's face, so when Richie looks over at him and flashes his stupid smile, Eddie feels like he's been caught red-handed.
"What's with the look, Eds? If Sonia looked at me like that, she'd be—"
Eddie reaches up and presses two fingers against Richie's lips, and then he's wondering why the fuck he would do that. There are millions of germs in and around the human mouth, and Eddie is very disease-prone.
As usual, Richie is the first to break. He laughs, eyes falling shut as the sound fills the room.
Eddie pulls his hand away and wrinkles his nose. "You slobbered all over me."
"You shoved your hand at my mouth!" Richie says, exasperated.
"You could have pushed it away!"
"I wanted to show you what this trashmouth can do, Eds."
"Do you have to say every thought that comes into your head?" Eddie spits. It's part of their usual banter—at least, he thought so.
But now Richie is grimacing and glancing back down at the comic in his hands. "Jesus Christ, dude."
Eddie's stomach churns, the warmth draining from his fingers like it always does when he feels sick. He shifts so he's facing Richie completely.
It's never really been in their nature to apologize to each other, but Eddie figures he can make an exception.
"You know I didn't mean it like that. I'm sorry."
He is met with a shrug and the turn of Richie's comic book page.
Eddie glares and grabs the book, yanking it out of Richie's hands. "Pay attention to me or I'm going to die."
Richie looks shocked at first, but then a smirk spreads across his face as he leans up to grab his comic. "Okay, Twinkerbell."
That, combined with the sudden immeasurable closeness of Richie's face, catches Eddie off guard enough that the seventy-fifth issue of Superman is snatched right from his grip.
Richie doesn't move away; he just stays in Eddie's space, grinning like a maniac.
"What the fuck is a 'twinkerbell'?"
His best friend practically cackles as he falls back onto the mattress, tossing Superman's death scene facedown on the floor.
"Seriously," Eddie whines, leaning over Richie to try and meet his eyes. "It's not funny!"
"It's hilarious," Richie sighs before pulling Eddie down on top of him.
With a yelp, Eddie narrowly misses elbowing his friend in the clavicle. "Shit, watch it!" he hisses, but he settles down because Richie is calm now and that is a very rare occurrence.
Richie shushes him and closes his eyes, and that is that.
▻▻▻▻▻▻
Eddie is twenty-one and he can't believe he ever thought Richie was cool.
He is so clearly the opposite of cool with his giant glasses and beaver teeth and basically every other thing about him that someone would use to describe The Essence Of Richie, but he passes himself off as cool so well that one has no choice but to believe him. It's almost like Richie has managed to convince himself that he's cool, so everyone around him also chooses to believe that it's true.
The day is March seventh, and Richie is drinking his first glass of wine.
"You are literally the worst punk kid I've ever met," Stan deadpans, making a face at the strawberry Arbor Mist in the birthday boy's hand.
Richie scoffs. "I am not punk. We've established this. I'm a lesbian."
"You can't be a lesbian if you're not a girl," Bev points out, and Richie lets out a braying syllable of laughter.
"You're hilarious, my darling Beverly."
"I'm still stuck on that random emo phase you went through," Stan reroutes. "What even was that?"
Richie takes a little sip of his wine. "A mistake."
The four of them are sitting in the kitchen of Bev and Ben's apartment, watching the last of them to turn twenty-one have his first drink. Eddie can't fathom why Richie Tozier, of all people, decided to wait until the legal age to drink, especially when he invited himself to many a college party.
Eddie, despite being legal for just over six months, has yet to consume an alcoholic beverage and possesses no intention to do so at any point in his lifetime. He's spent years persuading Richie to do the same, and he thinks that might have something to do with his choice of drink.
"So, you guys up for some Nightmare On Elm Street or what?" Richie proposes, finishing his glass and setting it on the table.
He's being oddly gentle. Eddie notes his suspicion.
"You're lucky I'm in too much debt to switch to a DVD player." Bev heads to the living room to pop in the VHS. "I heard it's on the rise."
Richie and Stan follow, arguing about the convenience of DVDs versus the reliability of VHS. It's a conversation that Eddie neither follows nor cares too deeply about.
They get through half of the movie before Stan is falling in and out of sleep and Bev goes into the other room to call Ben, who couldn't make it home from work in time to celebrate Richie's birthday with them. It ends up working out, though, because Stan decides it's too late to drive back to campus and makes himself at home in Ben's bedroom.
That leaves Richie in the middle of the couch and Eddie on the far right side. The space between them had previously been occupied by Bev, but now that it's empty...
"Why are you sitting so far away?" Richie asks innocently, smile not giving anything away.
Eddie's face heats up despite his best efforts. "Do you want me to..?"
He scoots closer and Richie does the same, legs pulled up underneath him as he motions for Eddie to follow suit.
"I'm going to try something," Richie says quietly. "Tell me to stop at any point if you want, okay?"
Immediately cautious, Eddie narrows his eyes and nods.
After a deep breath, Richie leans in. It's painfully slow, but Eddie still barely has enough time to register what's happening before Richie is kissing him and it's like they do this all the time.
Eddie immediately reciprocates, parting his lips and letting Richie push him back against the couch. They stay like that for a moment before Eddie's brain slowly clicks back on and the alarms go off.
He tilts his head back, breaking the kiss. Richie's eyes are wide and bright when Eddie meets them, and he immediately feels guilty.
"Can I—"
"I have to go," Eddie interrupts before scrambling to his feet and bolting out the door.
▻▻▻▻▻▻
Richie is ten minutes older than when he kissed Eddie, and he's still just as confused.
He's not really surprised that Eddie's response to fear was to run away—even though Eddie is a brave motherfucker, he still has trouble with the little things sometimes—but he is surprised that Eddie's response to Richie kissing him was fear. He had been so sure that Eddie liked him back, but now...
"Ben said to tell you happy birthday," Bev says as she reenters the room. She stops just inside the doorway, though, taking in the sight of Richie's lonesome self. "What did you do?"
Richie sighs and sinks back into the couch. "I kissed him."
A brief pause. "Okay, and?"
He looks up at her. "He ran off."
"So why aren't you going after him?"
Richie flounders, throwing a hand out to gesture vaguely. "He ran away! Clearly he doesn't want me to."
Bev rolls her eyes and grabs his arm, yanking him to his feet. "Don't be stupid; he so obviously likes you. Now go after him!"
She practically shoves Richie out the door, but he turns to say one last thing: "Thank you for scaring me into confessing my undying love, Miss Marsh. I'll see you in Hell after Eddie inevitably murders me."
He's met with a wry smile. "Just get out."
"Will do."
She closes the door behind him and is turning to head to bed when there is a knock. With a sigh, Bev opens the door.
"Would you be able to tell Ben thanks?" Richie asks. "Earlier you said he wished me a happy birthday and I didn't want—"
"Just go!" she shouts, and Richie is taking off down the hall.
▻▻▻▻▻▻
Richie was Eddie's ride, so he has to walk home. Their dorm is only about a twenty minute walk from Bev's apartment, so it's not really like it's a big deal, except he's kind of freaking out about what just happened.
He just kissed Richie Tozier, his best friend of over a decade. Richie Tozier just kissed him.
Speaking of, the devil himself rolls up in a rusty old pickup truck, and Eddie walks faster. He knows Richie's stupid, gangly, long legs will render his getaway attempts useless, but he may as well communicate that he's trying.
"Eds, wait!" Richie calls as he hops out of the truck he parked in the middle of the street (moron). "Wait!"
He sounds out of breath as he manages to catch up to Eddie, who has to remark about it because resisting the temptation is like not taking a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk.
"You jogged, like, twelve feet, dude. How out-of-shape are you?"
Richie laughs. It echoes off the buildings. "Not at all. This isn't out-of-shape exhaustion; it's hyping-myself-up-in-the-car-so-much-I'm-out-of-breath exhaustion."
Eddie rolls his eyes and folds his arms, continuing to not look at Richie. "Why were you hyping yourself up?"
"Can you stop for a second?" Richie pleads, reaching out and gingerly tugging Eddie's sleeve.
He halts and spins around to stare up at Richie's eyes. "What?"
"Look, I—" Richie puffs out a breath, fiddling with his glasses and glancing away. "I get it if you're mad at me or if what I did wasn't cool. You could have just talked to me or something—"
"No, no, it's not you at all," Eddie interrupts. He bites his lip thoughtfully, staring up at the sky for a moment before returning his gaze to his best friend's face. "I just promised myself I wouldn't get involved with boys that just want to 'experiment' for the hell of it, and I literally can't believe I let you—that I kissed you back. I just—I got ahead of myself."
Richie snorts. "'Experiment'? Dude, are you serious? What I was gonna say before you ran off—I was going to say 'Can I be your boyfriend?' because I'm kind of in love with you."
The admittance would be almost comical if Eddie weren't the one on the receiving end. He opens his mouth, closes it, swallows, and opens it again: "Why didn't you drink?" he asks slowly, brow furrowed.
"I wanted to be sober for when I told you how I felt." Richie smiles lopsidedly. "And 'cause it's important to you that I don't touch the hard stuff. I know you're right, since alcoholism runs in my family, and you've said that there's a higher percentage of a chance that I—"
Eddie cuts him off with a kiss. He can feel Richie's massive glasses poking into his cheekbone, but it doesn't make it awkward—just very Richie (which is, arguably, synonymous with 'awkward'). He pulls away as soon as Richie begins to open his mouth, much to the whiney noodle's dismay.
"The answer is yes, by the way. You can be my boyfriend."
Richie beams. "Holy shit, really? That's fucking awesome!"
"But you don't get another kiss until you tell me what a 'twinkerbell' is."
"Done and done, Eddie my love."
And as the decades pass, Eddie learns to be thankful for every stupid nickname Richie gives him. Even when they involve twinks and attention-seeking fictional fairies.