Chapter Text
“Rich! Richie! Open the fucking door!”
Richie Tozier let out a groan from the couch in his living room, his long body sprawled across it, his face pressed into the cushions.
“Trashmouth! I’m serious, dude. Let me in, I know you’re there! Do you want me to go get Mrs Hernandez’s spare key? ‘Cause I’ll do it, I swea—”
Richie wrenched open his door with a bang, barely registering that he had even left the couch.
Fuck. I’m drunker than I thought.
“Jesus Eds, it’s 2am, shut the fuck up,” he grumbled as his friend pushed passed him into the apartment.
“There’s no one on this floor, asshole, I’m not bothering anyone.”
“Me. You’re bothering me, Kaspbrak.”
The two regarded one another, Richie still by the open door and Eddie standing in the middle of his living room, looking a mix of lost and weirdly determined.
Richie definitely did not find it adorable.
“Sorry,” Eddie murmured, not sounding in the least bit sorry.
He folded his arms across his chest, hunching his shoulders in a way that told Richie that he was more than a little pissed off, “Why did you leave early? Not like you to skip out on a party.”
It had been the second of their biannual Losers Club soirées, held in L.A. this time, to accommodate Richie who had a number of shows coming up on his new, sold-out tour, Clownin’ Around. Despite having a blast catching up with his lifelong friends, with drinks and anecdotes aplenty, Richie had excused himself shortly after dessert, to the noticeable shock of everyone else present.
The comedian shrugged, closing his front door with a snap, before shuffling over towards his kitchen, and in turn, the fridge.
He needed another beer, or seven, for this conversation.
“I’ve got rehearsal early in the morning, Eds. Can’t be a party boy all my life.”
“Bullshit.”
Richie sighed into the fridge, closing his eyes briefly, to collect himself, before snatching up two beers and shutting the door. Silently, he took several steps towards Eddie, holding out the glass bottle to him.
Eddie eyed it suspiciously.
“I thought you hated Craft beer.”
“I do.”
Eddie’s gaze narrowed, no doubt noticing the label.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s the Irish shit you love so much. Steve had it imported.”
Richie could feel a familiar heat climb up the back of his neck at that admission. He shoved the beer into his friend's hand and forced his feet towards the couch, sitting down heavily and plucking up the bottle opener from off the coffee table.
“You had your manager import beer that you once called ‘snooty hipster piss’ for me?”
Richie snorted, letting his head fall back against the couch with a heavy thump.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Eds Spageds. Bill likes it too.”
That seemed to jumpstart Eddie from where he had been rooted to the floor, he sinking into the armchair to Richie’s left with a roll of his eyes.
“Sure. For the three whole times Bill has ever been in this apartment. It’s not like I live downstairs or anything.”
He punctuated his point by popping off the bottle cap with the opener, watching as it shot across the room.
Richie blinked slowly.
“You were weirdly quiet after Stan and I talked about...you know,” Eddie spoke down to his beer, thumb beginning to peel at the label, “I—I know it can be hard for you to hear...what happened to us, after.”
Richie took a large gulp from the bottle, resolutely staring anywhere but at his childhood friend, trying to douse the bile rising in his stomach with alcohol.
“You and Stan should be allowed to talk about it, Eds. It...it was fucked up, all of it. But, it brought you back. Both of you. And that’s the main thing.”
From the corner of his eye, he could see Eddie's head bob.
“It’s...it’s good to have someone who...gets it, you know? Don’t—don’t get me wrong, Rich, you’ve...you’ve been amazing this last year. Helping me recover, supporting me through my divorce, getting me the apartment, all of it. But Stan...he came back too. He...he remembers dying, and waking up. Just like me. And I guess I can get a bit...overzealous when he’s around.”
Richie snorted out a laugh, tone dripping with sarcasm as he finally forced himself to look at him.
“No. Overzealous? You? Never.”
“Fuck you, dude.”
“Fuck youuuuuuuu.”
The friends shared a laugh before Richie sombered.
“But seriously, Eddie. I didn’t leave because I couldn’t stand hearing you and Stan talk about dying and undying. Promise.”
And it was the truth. He hadn’t left because of that. Would never begrudge his friends discussing their trauma together, even if it did cause bad memories to rise to the surface of the deepest, darkest depths of his brain.
“I believe you.”
And he did. Richie could tell.
“But come on, man. We get to see all the Losers together in one place like twice a year. Why did you skip out early?” Eddie leaned forward on his elbows, tilting his head, something indecipherable glinting in his gaze, “You have a hot date or something?”
Richie’s stomach lurched painfully.
“Ha. Funny, Eds,” he scoffed, mirroring his stance, “But you know I’m a one-woman-man. And Mrs K is just irreplace—”
Eddie’s groan of frustration drowned out the rest of his sentence.
“How the fuck do you have a sold-out standup when you’ve been telling the same ol’ ‘your mom’ jokes for thirty fucking years?!”
A smirk spread across Richie’s face.
“Because I keep those just especially for you, Eds. My first fan.”
Eddie grimaced at that.
“First fan, my ass. You drove me fuckin’ crazy. Still do.”
“Thou doth protest too much, methinks, Edward,” Richie winked with his best Shakespeare impression.
(And by best, he really meant worst. Because the look that crossed Eddie’s face at Richie’s grating voices was like crack to him.)
Eddie merely rolled his eyes at that, knee beginning to bounce up and down in that jittery way of his, as if he was a wind-up toy that had been wound just that tad too tight and now had to burn off its energy by bounding around the room.
He reminded Richie of that chimp with the cymbals, sometimes. Not that he’d ever tell him that. He valued his life.
As if somehow reading his thoughts and opting to give a demonstration, Eddie suddenly leapt up from out of the armchair, beer tilting precariously before he righted himself and began to babble, eyes darting around the room.
“You uh...you missed out on one hell of a conversation, though, I’ll tell ya that. Stan was telling me about all the weird side effects he experienced after he first woke up.”
A beat passed between them.
Richie’s eyebrows rose.
“Side effects?”
Admittedly, he and Stan didn’t speak much about any of...that, really. It was too painful for Stan to tell and too heartbreaking for Richie to hear. So, they kept their conversations purely nostalgic, lighthearted and teasing, most of the time. Or as much as Stan would let Richie away with, anyway. Though Patty did enjoy watching Stan make Richie blush with his summer camp story that entailed a nine year old Richie with a loose regard for the cannonballing rule and unfortunately for him, even looser swimming trucks.
“Yeah, so like, for three straight weeks after, he had like this...insatiable appetite. Apparently he gorged himself on everything and anything he could find in the house. Cooked, raw, frozen, didn’t matter. It was some real Dawn of the Dead type shit.”
Richie’s eyebrows continued to climb up his forehead.
Eddie was steadily becoming more and more agitated, beginning to pace back and forth with such vigor that Richie, for once in his life, found himself worried for his hardwood floor.
“Which got me talking about my side effects. Which, was only one big one, really. And...fuck, I would have given anything for it to have been just hunger. ‘Cause, Jesus, how was I supposed to know that coming back from the dead would have such fucked up caveats? It’s not like there’s a fucking manual somewhere that says, ‘Oh, by the way, with great resurrection, comes great horniness.”
Richie’s mouth dropped open.
Talk about hard wood. Fuck.
He swallowed once, twice, trying to summon sound into his throat.
“Uh,” he rasped, “when you say—”
“Oh yeah, Rich,” Eddie cut him off with a karate chop through the air, “I’m talkin’ back when you’re thirteen and just can’t fuckin’ stop touching yourself. The come-in-your-pants-at-a-light-breeze, kinda horny. Like, I legit think my dick is gonna fall off if I don’t do something, dude.”
Or someone.
Richie felt the blood drain from his face and make its way south.
“That’s...that’s why you wanted to make a dating profile.”
See, that had been when Richie decided it was his cue to leave the restaurant and get the hell outta dodge as fast as his tipsy, gangly legs could carry him. There was just no way he could summon the strength to sit through fuck knew how long of Eddie swiping right on assholes on Fuckr, Soda Meets Popcorn, Plenty of Fucks, or whatever-the-shit dating app, asking the Losers their opinions, looking for advice on getting back out there as a newly-divorced, recently-out-and-proud smokeshow.
He’d rather let Ben try and set him up again.
And last time that happened, Richie set the table on fire, so.
Eddie nodded, barely concealing a wince, “Stan apparently didn’t have this...problem, though. And even if he did, he has Patty. I don’t have a wife anymore, and let’s face it, even if I did—”
“Myra wouldn’t scratch your itch,” Richie couldn’t help but smirk. “Got it.”
Richie would never forget the shock he had felt when Eddie had first come to him, one night like this, eight months ago, with lowered eyes and small voice, asking him, When did you know you were gay, Rich?
It had been one hell of a conversation. Or rather, two conversations. The one the two friends were having on the surface, Richie lamenting about being closeted in a shithole like Derry and Eddie admitting that he had met Myra young, got married, and refused to let himself think about anything else, feel anything else, for fear of...pretty much everything. But mostly, his mother’s disapproval.
Then there was the conversation Richie had been simultaneously having with himself. The one that steadfastly told him to not, under any circumstances, tell Eddie how he felt about him. Had been feeling since before any murder clowns entered their lives. That he first knew he was gay when at twelve, he scraped his knee and Eddie bent down and cleaned his wound, gently putting a bright purple bandaid over it, and glancing up at him with a small but teasing smile that caused warmth to bloom in Richie’s stomach. Because, while he had finally felt at peace enough to come out publicly three months post-Pennywise 2.0, that did not mean that he was nearly ready enough to flay himself open for the recently-resurrected love of his life to examine.
“I’m going fucking insane, Rich,” Eddie was continuing, his voice growing higher as he continued to pace, “I—I need to meet someone. I’m gonna tear my dick off if I’m not careful. This last year has been torture, man.”
Richie could relate. In fact, he and his right hand should have been married for all the relations they had been having alone these last few years.
Turned out, you could pine for the shortassed, short-fused hypochondriac of your dreams even when you couldn’t fully remember him. Who knew?
“Hookup app seems to be the best way to go,” Eddie was rambling with a heavy sigh, raking a hand down his face, “I just...I need someone to take the edge off. Handjob, blowjob, anything, I don’t care. As long as it’s something other than my right hand, I’m golden.”
“I could help you out.”
Eddie stopped dead in his tracks, head whipping around to regard Richie, who had yet to look up from his beer bottle, but could feel his penetrating stare from across the room.
The fuck are you doing, you drunk dickwad?! And don’t think about penetrating. Fuck.
Richie could not fathom where the words that had just fallen from his lips had escaped from. But if he had to guess, he would say that the ghost of his thirteen-year-old-self, may have had something to do with it.
And the four bourbons and seven beers.
And tequila shot.
(He and Bev were celebrating his acceptance of her Man of Honour, after all.)
“Help…” Eddie trailed off, before clearing his throat, “help me out how, Rich?”
Finally, Richie raised his head.
My other Reddie fics are here if you want more grown men pining :)