Work Text:
Eddie had been frowning at the boy for about 15 minutes now. The stick he had been poking into the sandbox, drawing smiley faces, lay limp in his hand as his mother sat on a bench behind him, reading her TV Guide.
In that 15 minutes, Eddie had watched this boy fall head first off the monkey bars, fling himself off the swing at peak height, trip flat on his face - momentarily losing his glasses - as he made his way off the slide, only to circle right back to challenge the monkey bars again, falling head first once more before he even got halfway across.
And not once did the boy stop grinning.
After carelessly brushing the woodchips off his t-shirt, the boy looked around for his next trial, eyes eventually locking onto the sandbox and to Eddie. Grin widening, he began his approach, undeterred by how Eddie’s expression darkened with a frown at the impending disruption of his pleasant solitude.
Crossing his legs, the boy sat down opposite him. “Hi,” he said.
Eddie had been taught not to talk to strangers, but he was pretty sure that was only with regards to adults. He’d also been taught to be polite, after all. “Hi,” he said back, stabbing his stick a little more harshly at the sand between them. When the boy didn’t say anything else, Eddie risked a look up at him, finding himself being scrutinised. The boy’s eyes looked huge behind his coke bottle glasses, wide and curious as he tilted his head, trying to work Eddie out like a puzzle.
Two could play at that game, Eddie thought with another frown.
The boy was an absolute mess. His glasses were so smudged, Eddie couldn’t understand how he could see out of them. There were grass stains covering his shorts, bits of woodchip still clinging to his shirt and flecks of it in his hair. The palms of his hands looked grazed, rubbed raw by gravel or something similar. There were scabs on his knees and a band aid clinging on for dear life to his ankle.
And then there were the bruises.
If Eddie accidentally bumped into something, his mom was all over it in an instant, fussing and worrying over a possible blemish on his delicate skin. This boy was littered with bruises. Some fresh and dark whilst most were the fading yellow of past dalliances with danger. They covered his knees, his calves, his elbows, arms. And the boy didn’t seem to care one bit.
He looked like a walking disaster.
“You look like Pig-Pen,” Eddie muttered, eyes widening as he realised how rude that probably was.
But then the boy was grinning back at him again, eyes sparkling. “Snoopy!” Eddie’s lips twitched in a relieved smile. “I like Snoopy,” he added.
“Me too,” Eddie replied. He didn’t really like Pig-Pen but he kept that to himself. The boy stuck his finger in the sand, ready to start drawing something only to freeze at Eddie’s panicked yelp, both sets of eyes wide as they stared at each other.
“Eddie?” came his mother’s voice behind him and he could already imagine her, poised to drag him away from some potential danger.
“It’s nothing, mommy,” he said, turning around to flash her a sweet smile. He didn’t turn back around until she settled back into the bench, nose in her magazine. The boy hadn’t moved an inch when Eddie turned his attention back on him. He wasn’t even blinking.
Eddie liked playing in the sandbox. He liked drawing things and he liked the feel of the sand sifting between his fingers. His mother did not like him playing in the sandbox. She’d talk about hidden glass and needles and disease and infection lurking under its surface. She would only concede if he used a stick to poke at the sand. Just in case.
Breaking his stick in two, he handed the other boy one half and began a new doodle with his remains. When there was still no movement, Eddie glanced up again to find the boy staring at him. Eddie’s frown returned, complete with an annoyed pout as he glanced from the boy, to the stick, to the sand, huffing as he stabbed his own stick deep into the sandbox.
In a flurry of movement that caught him off guard, the boy was shuffling to sit alongside him, so close their crossed knees knocked together. The boy returned Eddie’s questioning look with a brilliant smile, as if Eddie had given him a slice of cake rather than half a twig. “What are you drawing?” he asked, nudging his own stick into the sand.
Eddie shrugged. “Nothin’.”
“I’m gonna draw a sun,” he said. “You should do a moon. Or we could do a house? Can you draw a cat? ‘Cause I can draw a dog! I’m Richie. Look, see!” he said all in one breath, hand moving in a flourish across the sand in front of them.
He continued like that for several minutes, uninterruptable and throwing out suggestions that Eddie tried in vain to keep up with. He’d start drawing a star only for Richie to change his mind, telling him to draw a snail or a sheep or they’d each try and draw a side of a car, falling into giggles when each end looked completely different and they were left with some kind of Frankenstein vehicle.
Eddie couldn’t help but notice that Richie would occasionally press one of the bruises on his thigh, almost absently. “Why do you do that?” he asked, cutting across Richie mid-sentence, knowing that would be the only way to get it out.
Richie paused. “Do what?”
Eddie pointed to the bruise he had just been touching. “Press it?”
“See if it still hurts.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah.”
Eddie stared back at him like that was the dumbest answer he could have given. “Why keep doing it then?” he asked, wrinkling his nose.
Richie shrugged completely carefree, going back to his drawing. “It’s not a big deal.”
And Eddie…Eddie believed him. But he couldn’t understand how. Eddie was so careful never to accidentally knock himself, forever worried about the mark it could leave behind. The discolouration was wrong; if it didn’t fade quick enough it could turn into something else, something bad. Bruises were bad.
Only, Richie was covered in them. And he didn’t even care. He wore them almost like a point of pride. A badge of honour. A medal of bravery.
“How did you get it?” Eddie found himself asking. Richie lit up and proceeded to spend the next several minutes waxing lyrical about his bruises as if they were battle scars. At least four were down to the monkey bars which didn’t surprise Eddie in the least. Three more were from falling off his bike. One was from bashing his knee into a table. Each tale he told with an excited smile, as if he had no regrets at his recklessness.
After working their way through all the bruises he could remember, Richie gave Eddie a quick once over. “None?”
Eddie shook his head and, ridiculously, felt embarrassed. Richie had regaled him with tales of his misadventures and, in turn, was met with the pristine skin that spoke only of protectiveness and isolation. Refusing to look at Richie, he dragged his stick through the sand, idly drawing swirls so he wouldn’t have to watch the boy walk away and find someone more interesting and adventurous to play with.
But then there was a tap on his shoulder as Richie said “look, look!”, pointing to a pair of adults sitting on the bench at the other end of the playground. Before Eddie could ask what he was meant to be seeing, Richie burst into a series of ‘wah-wah’s, emulating their voices like those of Peanuts adults and the two of them fell into each other in a burst of laughter.
Richie went through everyone in the park, giving them all silly voices, leaving Eddie wheezing yet not once even thinking about using his inhaler.
“Richard Tozier!”
Richie and Eddie’s heads snapped round to find a woman hovering behind them, hands on her hips, hair dishevelled. “Hi, mom!” Richie replied, giving her a wave.
The woman sighed, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “You said you were going for a ride around the block, Richie. That was an hour ago!”
Richie chewed on his lip, flicking sand into the air with his stick. “Sorry.”
Another sigh. “Come on, time to go.”
Richie climbed to his feet, brushing sand off his shorts. Eddie found himself standing too but unsure what to do from there. Richie seemed to contemplate him for a second, weighing something up before he just smiled at him. “See ya!”
Richie’s mom offered him a smile before dragging Richie away and Eddie realised that he’d never even told the boy his name. He desperately hoped he ran into him again. Maybe he’d have some new bruises he could tell him about.