tw: su*cide mention

After Derry, Eddie realises why an old interview Richie gave never sat right with him: in it, a 32-ish Richie joked that if he ever were to k*ll himself, he'd do so on April 1st as a last joke no one would laugh at; on April 1st 2017, Eddie knocks on his door

Richie doesn't even remember the interview; of course Eddie doesn't explain anything. He just spends the day with him, having crossed the country to do so, knowing on one hand that Richie wasn't /going to/, especially not now that things were looking up again, but worrying still

They'd seen each other recently for Richie's bday, 3 weeks or so earlier, so he doesn't seem to understand why Eddie was there. He remembered him mentioning work, and sick days, and how he couldn't leave for long stretches of time, especially not out of the blue like that summer;

yet there he is, in Richie's home, inexplicably. He didn't mind, of course, but after a day spent just buddying around without any real goal to his visit besides from spending the day together, Richie had to ask, curiosity getting the best of him
Eddie told him; Richie understood

"I'm not babysitting you," Eddie says.
"I know," Richie replies, taking his hand.
"Were you ever…?"
"Maybe, years ago." Richie thinks of what the clown said, of the memorial fliers that crumbled to dust once It was dead. "But not now. Not anymore."
"Wish I'd been there for you."

"You were, in a way. All of you. I always thought it was just more Voices," Richie laughs, making a spot on impression of Stan calling him an asshole. "I'm fine now. Or, I will be. Therapy, baby!"
"Still," Eddie says, voice down to a mournful whisper.
"I know."
"If you had…"

"I know."
They don't add much. There isn't much to tell, after all. But they're still holding hands long after they're done speaking, and when Richie asks when is Eddie going back home, his ears turn pink and he says, "Uh. Actually. Myra said not to bother going back if I left."

Richie blinks.
"So, like, it's fine, it's whatever. Maybe she'll agree to a divorce now. But yeah, I can stay a bit longer."
"Eddie, you don't even have any luggage!"
"So??"
"So!! Did you just leave with an overnight bag, threatened by your wife, for me?"
"And my boss."
"What?"

"I never asked for days off, so like. I'm probably out of a job, too."
"For /me/," Richie says with something akin to wonder in his voice.
"Yes. Shut the fuck up, don't let it go to your head, it was bound to happen!"
Richie squeezes his hand and laughs.
"Oh, your mom was right!"

"Richie, I swear t—"
"That /boy/! He's such a bad influence on you, Eddie-bear, I hate that you hang out with him! Couldn't he be as conscientious as that Jewish friend of yours?" he says in a Voice.
"I swear to god I'm going to bite your tongue off!"
"Ooh, kinky," Richie laughs;

Eddie flips him off
"I always ran from my mom to hang out with you, did I not? My wife & my boss are just another kind of mother so this isn't news!"
"I love when you get all defensive"
"I honestly don't even know why I care anymore!"
"Cause I'm your best friend!"
"Yes, you are."

"Oh, baby, that's sad!"
Eddie punches him in the arm, and Richie laughs again and takes this hand in his own, again.
"I yield, I yield!"
"Yeah, you better! Asshole," he mumbles, but then does something that hasn't happened in decades: he slumps against Richie in a sideways hug -

that makes his insides melt. Richie wraps his arms around Eddie and just holds him there.
"But I'm your asshole?" he asks quietly, his cheek resting against the top of Eddie's head.
"Yeah," Eddie replies, looking up at him. "Guess you are."

They don't talk much about it afterwards. Eddie has to go buy more clothes because he can't live with just five pairs of boxers, two polo shirts, two pairs of trousers, a set of pajamas and the shoes he was wearing when he left NY. Richie is more than surprised when he returns -

with a bag full of the most colorful clothes he's ever seen aside from his most hideous patterned shirts.
"I needed a change anyways," Eddie keeps saying, even though he's still there after ten days, then thirty, then two months. Richie thinks he's just afraid of going back home.

Truth is, Eddie feels more at home with Richie than he ever did with Myra, and he's just stalling because… If they never talk about it Richie will never ask him to leave, right? Never mind that he feels guilty about imposing like this on Richie (he's been clear he doesn't mind).

Eventually, they do talk about it. One night, after Eddie has cooked dinner without asking for permission first, like he lives here rather than just being a guest, Richie just asks jokingly, "How did you move in without me noticing?"
"I've always lived here," Eddie quips back,

and damn, he's right. He has.

A week later Eddie tells Richie that the divorce papers that were sent a month earlier have finally been signed by both parties and Richie suggests they celebrate. They don't, not really. They just sit to watch a movie with a few beers and gravitate

closer and closer to one another, but that's everyday stuff.

Eddie eventually settles. He just lives there now, and Richie is so used to his presence, it doesn't feel weird anymore to think of his guest room as occupied, he doesn't tense up whenever he hears noises from his once empty house.
It should be weird, shouldn't it? But it isn't.

It feels normal, like Eddie belongs there. He /does/ belong there.
Summer rolls around and they get Eddie even more clothes. He's barely reclaimed anything when he went back to NY, just retrieving stuff of sentimental value ("what sentiment is behind those fancy shoes spagheds?")

His life in LA is as far removed from his pre-Derry life as possible, and Eddie feels the happiest he has in a long time. They see the other Losers when Mike happens by and Ben, Bev, Stan and Patty decide to spend a week in LA. That's when Eddie admits to Patty the reason he came

to LA in the first place; she understands, and asks if Richie knows.
He does, Eddie tells her.
Does he /know/, she asks.
He doesn't, he says.
Will you tell him?, she presses.
What for?, he frowns.
To hear him say it back, she smiles.
Oh, he marvels.

Eddie isn't sure how Patty knows. Maybe because they share the same worry now - mostly faded, dormant, but at the same time lingering at the back of their mind at all times - of having their loved ones suddenly ripped away from them, even without the clown still weighting on them

They become fast friends, Patty and Bev joking that they're Eddie's posse, but truth is they're each other's support group.

Which also means they bully Eddie into being more open with his feelings.

After all, it's not like Eddie doesn't sort of /know/ how Richie feels. How could he not when he had held his hand from Neibolt to the hospital, only stopping when he was brought in to get miraculous life saving surgery? How could he not when Richie picked his hand back up in LA,

moments after Eddie had barged in on him and claimed his guest room for his own like a stray cat, something Richie gave him without even having to be asked? Richie was happier with Eddie than he'd ever been before: Eddie knows because Richie told him. And because his therapist -

sent Eddie a potted plant as a thank you gift for the way he was gently bullying Richie into going regularly, something he's notoriously terrible at doing on his own, which must've meant he was also doing good there, right? Progress or whatever. Eddie needs to start going, too. -

And yes, that's all progress Richie has been doing on his own, since before Derry, but the main difference is that now when he has a bad day he has friends ready to help him. Sometimes that means that Eddie doesn't see him for a couple of days, because that's what Richie needs;

other times it means sitting next to him while he plays videogames for four hours straight, bringing him snacks and drinks and heckling him whenever he misses a combo or didn't see something lootable in the background.

That, and a million other things, let Eddie know Richie loves him.

But does any of that mean Richie's in love with him? Eddie doesn't know /that/ and it's terrifying.

The thing is, it goes both ways. Richie knows all too well Eddie loves him - he upended his whole life got him, after all, and stayed even when it was clear Richie wasn't going to do anything to himself; he even stayed despite having the means to move out and find his own place.

But that's something Stan might've done, too, or Ben. That doesn't make it mean what Richie hopes it means, no matter that of all their friends it was /Eddie/ who came all the way to him.

But surely it must account for something... Right?

Eventually, it does come out. Of course it does, it's too big to keep in. It's like trying to hold water in your hands, where it trickles down your wrists and slips between your fingers.

It's the single most important moment in their lives - or at least it feels like it is.

But at the same time it's just a normal Tuesday night. They talk shit about some thing or another, they have dinner and clean up together, they watch a dumb game show and laugh so much there's tears in his eyes.

"I've never had this before," Eddie says, wiping the tears away.

"Me neither," Richie agrees, holding his stomach like it hurts from laughing too hard. He admits, "I never thought I /could/ have it."
"Yeah. With Myra… She was far from the kind of person you could laugh with. Even back when we first got together."
"That's so…"
"Depressing?"

"Sad," Richie shrugs. "I haven't had anyone to laugh with in years, either, before you all returned in my life."

"Well," Eddie says, feeling braver than he thinks he could be. "You'll have someone to laugh with for the rest of our lives, if that's something you want."

He looks at Richie, and Richie looks back at him.
"That's a long time," he says, and Eddie smiles.
"Yeah, it better be, asshole." He takes his hand, like so many times before, and looks at him. "But if you think that means I'll laugh at your jokes…" he trails off, but Richie -

laughs anyways at the empty threat.
"I'd never ask that of you," he says with a fond grin, and Eddie puts his head on Richie's shoulder.
"Good," he says, heart hammering in his chest. "It doesn't mean I don't love you."
"Yeah," Richie whispers, choked. "I know."
"Oh." He blinks.

"I love you too," Richie says, and Eddie swallows.
"Good," he whispers back, squeezing Richie's hand.

It's life altering, and it happens in a moment - and it happened over months, at the same time.

Things change; of course they do, it's inevitable. They're always changing, even when nothing really happens, and when something this big occurs…

But the changes themselves aren't big. They're small, and they live in the small things: they're in the way they look at each other,

more openly now, without feeling the need to shy their gaze away from each other; in the way they reach out to touch one another casually, without having to make up excuses for it (something that admittedly they were already starting to do, but that now came without the attached

strings of wishfullness); in the way they laugh more freely, even when nothing funny was said or done, just because they where drunk on happiness (and by the looks of it, they would keep feeling that way for a long time).

But it's also in other things.

It's in the way their insecurities strike now, while being in each other's space, making them feel like they're running things; it's in how their rare serious arguments now make their insides shake with fear of what'll happen to them as a couple, not just as friends; it's in how-

being seen so thoroughly, so deeply, sometimes feels like too much.

It's in how they have never known true intimacy before, and in how sometimes they feel like it could overcome them, swallow them whole and spit out their bare bones. A different kind of fear.

Love doesn't fix you; love doesn't cure you. They'd known love is hard work going in, of course, but some days they don't think they're up to the task.
Not good enough, not strong enough.
Eddie picks up therapy for the first time in his life - the only medic he actually needed to

see and the one he had always avoided the most, both because he didn't want to go to the one doctor Sonia had never sent him to and because he was afraid of what he might find out about himself. But he does, for Richie and for himself, both.
It's strange. Awkward and mortifying.

Eddie didn't know what to expect, but if asked he would've said something along the lines of "lying on a couch to be dissected and then bring lectured about Freud or some shit". He doesn't think it'll be that useful, because he has a pretty good idea of where his issues stem from

and because he can't exactly be open about It.
But he's open about Bowers, about Derry, about his father and his mother, eventually, and about his wife and medicines. He's open about Richie, and his feelings.
The doctor does not dissect him that day, nor the following week.

She does tell him things he knows. About anxiety and his phobias and the lingering effects of having the kind of childhood he did. About projecting and seeking familiarity even when he knew it was bad for him, the way many in his situation do. He thinks of Beverly and just nods.

But she tells him new things, too.
That it's okay to feel this way. That just because he does not it doesn't mean he always will. That it's okay not to be okay sometimes, and it's okay to cut himself some slack and just allow himself not to be fine. That it doesn't mean he's not-

in control, because he can control how he lives it.
She tells him it's okay not to always be in control, too, and to let others help.

He thinks he does that, but it turns out that as much as he is learning to go with the flow when it comes to things being his control, he can't -

do the same when it comes to the Losers. Not in the way his mother used to, he doesn't think, but in the way that brought him to LA, to Richie in the first place. He wonders how much what happened to Stan influenced this, but knows that it just rekindled the anxieties he felt as-

a kid, always worrying about what might happen to them.

What if Bill feel from his bike? What if a sheep bit Mike's fingers off? What if something happens to Beverly and no one's there for her? What if Richie pisses off the wrong person, like he seems so good at?

He shares each new revelation with Richie, never keeping anything from him. He'd decided right off the bat that it would've been silly not to, after all this time and all the things they'd gone through together. This was just one more of those, after all, and Richie is open -

about his own therapy sessions already so it's only /fair/, right?

It's also good, Eddie soon realises. They share their success, their achievements, acknowledge their setbacks and work together on what issues they can. It makes some things easier, and others a bit harder.

Because let's face it, showing your vulnerabilities sucks. Even to a person we love and share our lives with. We feel shame, sometimes, because we should be stronger, or because we think it's a dumb thing to have issues over.

Eddie and Richie are no exception. Even after Derry,

some things just feel like too much to share. Days where a seemingly little thing makes Richie spiral to the point he won't go out with Eddie in public, if he can avoid it, which in turn hurts Eddie; days where Eddie will need, just /need/ to go to a pharmacy and get his inhaler,

just to hold for comfort, and will growl at anyone who tries to tell him he doesn't need it, because he /knows/. Days where Richie feels like he should just quit his career and where Eddie thinks his mother was right. Days where being around each other feels like walking on glass

covered eggshells, bound to shatter and break your skin, so that it just seems easier not to move at all.

These days feel like stalemates, like no-win scenarios, because after all the years spent as victims of circumstance they're done not taking control, not moving forward, but

the only way to move forward is to open up in the most uncomfortable way, which in itself feels like being cut open as well. But it beats feeling like strangers to each other.
So, they brave themselves and each other and do just that. Open up. Talk. Defensive and hurt, sometimes,

but just as determined to get it over with and not leave the room until whatever the issue is gets resolved.

That means that some days they'll text the Losers they'll be offline for a while, and put their phones on plane mode so no one can disturb their flow, and it means hours-

spent talking, pacing, lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling because it's easier (and doesn't that explain why psychiatrists don't do that anymore) than looking into each other's eyes, pacing the one glass of whatever poison the choose so they'll stay sober but have the -

familiar comfort of the motion, which is what they need far more than the inebriation.

And that talking devolves into shouting, sometimes, the way almost every conversation they have gets too loud eventually, but it's not the bad shouting. It's cathartic, freeing, like it's the

air in their lungs that kept them down, weighing on them; like letting out all the breaths taken during that shitty day will leave room for new, lighter ones, unburdened by their sadness or frustration. Like a wet rag being wrung to the point it holds no more filthy water inside.

"It's like peeing with the door open," Richie says one day, while they're lying on the couch, backs propped up against opposite armrests.

"That makes no fucking sense whatsoever," Eddie retorts, frowning. "You're absolutely right. It is like that."