Chapter Text
Eddie Kaspbrak did not want to be making a rulebook. That, in itself, felt like a personal failure.
He stared down at the open notebook on his bed, the cheap spiral kind with the blue plastic cover bent backward because Richie had sat on it earlier and claimed it “added character.” The lined paper was still mostly blank, except for the title Eddie had written at the top of the first page in careful, bold letters;
RULES FOR SURVIVING DERRY
Eddie sighed and pressed the pen harder into the paper, like it had personally offended him. “This is fucking stupid,” he muttered to himself.
The room smelled faintly like antiseptic wipes and old paper. His inhaler sat on the nightstand, exactly where it was supposed to be. Everything was where it was supposed to be. That was the point. Eddie liked things in order. He liked lists. Lists made the world manageable. Lists made things safe.
Lists didn’t usually include Richie Tozier.
Which was exactly the problem.
Eddie tapped the pen against the paper, chewing at the inside of his cheek. He could hear laughter drifting in from downstairs. Normal noise. Safe noise. The kind of sound that meant nothing was wrong in the world.
And yet his chest felt tight anyway.
Everything always started with Richie. Because of course it did.
They’d been at the quarry, all of them sprawled out on sun-warmed rocks. Richie had been louder than usual, which was saying something. He’d been making his usual jokes and poking at Eddie’s leg with a stick until Eddie snapped at him to knock it off.
Which Richie hadn’t. He never did. He’d grinned instead, unapologetic, glasses slipping down his nose as he leaned closer and said, “What’s the matter, Eddie Spaghetti? Afraid I’ll give you tetanus with my affection?”
Eddie remembered the exact way his stomach had dropped. Not because of the joke. The joke was stupid. The joke was always stupid. It was the way Richie had leaned in, too close, invading Eddie’s carefully maintained personal space like it was nothing. The way his knee had brushed Eddie’s. The way Eddie had been painfully aware of it.
Eddie had shoved him. Harder than necessary. “Get away from me,” he’d snapped, voice sharper than he’d meant it to be.
Richie had blinked, surprise flashing across his face before he covered it with a joke, hands raised in mock surrender. “Whoa, okay dude, no need to get violent.”
The others had laughed. The moment passed. It always did.
But Eddie hadn’t stopped thinking about it since. He doesn't remember when it got like this. They had always been close, since they were kids. But lately...it was different having him so close.
He flipped the page and started writing again, jaw tight.
Rules. He needed rules.
His mom always said rules are good. Grounding.
Rule One: Always stick together.
He wrote it, then paused, frowning. That one felt obvious. Also stupidly sentimental. He scratched it out.
Rule One: Always stick together.
Rule One: Don’t go anywhere alone.
Better. Practical.
Rule Two: Don’t trust clowns.
He hesitated, then added, in parentheses, especially smiling ones.
Rule Three: If something feels wrong, it probably is.
He leaned back against the headboard, reading over what he’d written. The words looked small and fragile on the page. His gaze drifted, unbidden, to the bottom of the page. There was space there. A lot of space.
Eddie knew what belonged there. “No,” he said aloud, even though no one else was listening. “That’s not a rule. That’s...that’s something else.”
Something personal. Something embarrassing.
Something that had nothing to do with monsters or Derry or survival and everything to do with the way Richie Tozier made Eddie feel like his skin didn’t fit right sometimes.
Eddie picked up the pen again anyway. He didn’t let himself think about why his hand was shaking slightly. He didn’t let himself think about the heat in his face or the memory of Richie’s stupid grin or the way his voice went softer sometimes, when he wasn’t performing for everyone else.
He just wrote.
Rule Four: Don’t kiss Richie Tozier. Ever.
He stared at the sentence.
Then, immediately, he underlined it. Hard.
Rule Four: Don’t kiss Richie Tozier. Ever.
His heart was pounding now. He told himself it was anxiety. He told himself it was his asthma. He told himself it was because writing something down made it real, and this was a stupid thing to make real.
He added another underline. “God,” he muttered. “You’re such an idiot.”
The rule wasn’t a joke. Not really. Eddie told himself it was necessary. Like washing your hands. Richie was…unpredictable. Loud. Inappropriate. He crossed boundaries like they were suggestions. If Eddie didn’t draw a line somewhere, Richie would just keep-
Eddie stopped that thought before it finished.
He flipped the page, then flipped it back. The rule was still there.
He pressed his thumb over the word kiss, and felt his face burn.
“Especially when he pisses you off,” Eddie added under his breath, and then, because apparently he was determined to make this worse, he wrote that too. Smaller, like an afterthought.
(Especially when he pisses you off.)
There. That covered it. That made sense. Anger led to bad decisions. Stress weakened the immune system. This was basic logic. He closed the notebook sharply and shoved it into his backpack, like hiding it would make it less real.
Downstairs, the laughter from the TV sounded again.
Eddie lay back on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, breathing carefully, counting each inhale and exhale like his mom had taught him.
He told himself the rule was about safety.
He told himself it was about control.
He told himself it didn’t mean anything else.
Eddie didn’t sleep.
That wasn’t unusual for him. He slept badly more often than he slept well, tangled in thin sheets that always felt either too warm or too cold, lungs tight with imagined dust and spores and whatever else his brain decided was floating invisibly through the air. Tonight, though, his thoughts refused to slow at all.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the sentence again.
Don’t kiss Richie Tozier. Ever.
The words looked ridiculous in his head. Fake. Like something Richie himself would write on a bathroom wall in permanent marker, probably misspelled.
And yet.
Eddie rolled onto his side and hugged a pillow to his chest, pressing his face into the cool cotton. He tried to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The rule existed because Richie didn’t know when to stop. That was all. Richie pushed and pushed and pushed until something snapped. Eddie had just acknowledged the possibility. That was responsible.
His backpack sat on the chair by his desk. The zipper was half open. The corner of the notebook peeked out, blue cover shining.
Eddie groaned softly and rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling again. “Stop,” he whispered to himself. “Just stop.”
But his brain, traitorous thing it was, kept replaying memories like it was flipping through a photo book.
Richie at four, sitting with Eddie on the swing set, talking about everything and nothing.
Richie at twelve, leaning over Eddie’s shoulder during math class, breath warm against his ear as he whispered a joke that made Eddie snort before he could stop himself.
Richie at fourteen, grabbing Eddie to yank him out of the street just before a car sped past, fingers tight and shaking long after the danger had passed.
Richie always touching. Always loud. Always there.
Eddie swallowed the lump in his throat.
That afternoon at the quarry hadn’t been the first time Richie had gotten too close. It hadn’t even been the worst time. It was just the first time Eddie had felt something dangerous coil up in his chest instead of panic or irritation.
That was what scared him.
A sharp knock at his bedroom door made Eddie jump.
“Edward?” his mom called, voice sharp with concern. “Honey, are you awake?”
Eddie scrubbed a hand over his face and sat up. “Yeah.”
The door creaked open. His mom peered in, squinting like she was checking for visible symptoms. “You’ve been tossing and turning. I could hear it. Do you feel short of breath?”
“No. No, I’m okay,” Eddie said quickly, reaching for his inhaler just to prove a point.
She hummed, unconvinced. “You were out in the sun all day. Dehydration can cause insomnia.”
“I drank water,” Eddie said. “A lot of it.”
“Well,” she said, stepping into the room anyway, straightening the corner of his bedsheet that didn’t need straightening, “try to get some rest. You know stress lowers immunity.”
“I know,” Eddie murmured.
Her eyes flicked to the backpack. Eddie tensed without meaning to.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“School stuff,” Eddie said immediately. Too fast. He forced himself to slow down. “Just notes.”
She nodded, satisfied enough, and leaned down to press a kiss to his forehead. “Good night, sweetheart.”
“Night, Momma."
When she left, closing the door behind her, Eddie sat frozen for a long moment, listening to her footsteps fade down the hall. Then, very carefully, he stood and crossed the room. He pulled the notebook out of his backpack again, hands steady this time. He opened it to the first page.
The rules stared back at him. Rule Four practically screamed off the paper.
Eddie traced the underline with his fingertip, then snatched his hand away like he’d been burned. “This is so dumb,” he whispered.
And yet he didn’t tear the page out. He didn’t cross it out. He didn’t rewrite it as a joke or soften the wording or add a sarcastic note in the margin. He just stared.
Somewhere deep inside his chest, something twisted. He wasn't sure what, though. However, he did know that part of him was scared.
Richie didn’t scare him. No, not even close. What scared Eddie was the thought that maybe, if he wasn’t careful, Richie could ruin him in a way no monster ever had.
He closed the notebook again, slower this time, and slid it back into his backpack.
Outside, the night in Derry pressed in close and heavy, cicadas buzzing like static. Eddie lay back down and forced his eyes shut, counting his breaths until exhaustion finally dragged him under.
He dreamed of ink soaking through paper. Of words bleeding. Of a rule that waited patiently to be broken.
Eddie woke with his sheets twisted around his legs and the faint impression of words pressed into his skin, like he’d slept on the rule itself. His first thought was I didn’t sleep at all, followed immediately by I did, which somehow made it worse. He sat up slowly, head throbbing. Sunlight flowed through the thin blinds.
The notebook was still in his backpack. That mattered for some reason.
He got dressed carefully. Clean clothes, sleeves tugged down, inhaler pocketed. He checked his reflection in the bathroom mirror longer than necessary, searching for signs of sickness or stress or something else he didn’t have a name for.
He looked the same.
Breakfast was quiet. His mom fussed over his posture and the vitamins he absolutely had to take and whether or not he’d remembered to wash his hands after feeding the cat. Eddie answered automatically, mind already somewhere else.
School loomed. He almost didn’t bring the backpack.
Almost.
But leaving it behind felt worse, like tempting fate, so he slung it over his shoulder and headed out, the weight of it heavier than it should have been.
The hallway at school smelled like floor cleaner and old lockers and too many people packed into too small a space. Eddie kept his head down, navigating by habit.
He spotted the Losers by their lockers before he heard them.
Richie’s voice cut through the noise like it always did, loud and sharp and impossible to ignore. “…and then she says, ‘Sir, you can’t bring that in here,’ and I’m like, ‘Ma’am, this is America-"
“Richie,” Bev said, exasperated, “that story is not going where you think it is.”
Eddie stopped short.
Richie was leaning back against the lockers, glasses perched on his face. He was grinning, hands moving as he talked, energy spilling out of him in every direction.
He looked…fine.
Normal.
Alive.
Richie spotted Eddie mid-sentence, his grin widening. “There he is!” Richie said, pushing off the lockers and beelining straight for Eddie. “Ladies and gentlemen, the human, the man, the legend!”
Eddie’s shoulders tightened on instinct. He forced himself not to step back. “Good morning, Richie,” he said, clipped.
Richie paused. Just for a second. Then, he laughed it off, throwing an arm around Eddie’s shoulders like he always did.
Eddie froze. Every nerve in his body screamed wrong. Too close. Too warm. Richie’s arm was heavy and solid, familiar in a way Eddie suddenly couldn’t stand.
Rule Four flared bright in his mind.
Eddie ducked out from under Richie’s arm, heart racing. “Don’t,” he snapped. “You’re sweaty.”
“I am never sweaty,” Richie said, offended. “I glisten.”
“Get away from him,” Stan said flatly. “You’re contaminating the air, dingus.”
Richie gasped. “Et tu, Stanley?”
The others laughed. The moment slid back into place, neat and familiar, like it always did.
Except Eddie couldn’t make himself laugh.
Richie glanced at him again, head tilting slightly. “You okay, Eds?”
“I’m fine,” Eddie said too quickly. “Just tired.”
Richie hummed, clearly unconvinced, but didn’t push. He shoved his hands into his pockets instead, rocking back on his heels.
Eddie noticed the space between them. He hated that he noticed.
The bell rang, sharp and jarring. They started moving, falling into their usual pattern. Richie walked beside Eddie like he always did, close enough that their elbows brushed occasionally.
Each time it happened, Eddie flinched. Not visibly. Just enough.
By the time they reached their classroom, Eddie’s nerves were shot. He slid into his seat and dropped his backpack to the floor, breathing carefully, counting again.
Richie flopped into the chair next to him, spinning it backward so he could lean over the backrest. “So,” he said, quieter than usual, “did I do something wrong?”
Eddie’s pen slipped in his fingers. "No,” he said, staring at his desk. “Why would you think that?”
Richie shrugged, a little awkward. “I don’t know. You’re just…weird today.”
Eddie forced a laugh. “I’m always weird, according to you.”
“Yeah,” Richie said softly. “But not like this.”
Eddie swallowed and finally looked at him.
Richie’s expression wasn’t joking now. His glasses were slightly lopsided, as he was tilting his head. For a split second, Eddie had the overwhelming urge to tell him everything- the rule, the fear, the way his chest still felt tight.
Instead, he snapped his textbook open. “I’m fine,” Eddie said again.
Richie held his gaze for another beat, then nodded slowly. “Okay.”
But the space stayed there.
And Eddie, sitting rigid in his chair, realized with a sick twist in his stomach that the rule hadn’t made things safer at all.
It had just made them different.