“Take your time, Spaghetti Man,” Richie says. He scrubs a hand over his face, and Richie notices that he’s not wearing his ring anymore. “Sorry, I just, uh…” Eddie still isn’t looking at him.
He can’t even make a joke about Eddie’s train of thought derailing. “I need to leave my wife,” Eddie blurts out, all in a rush, and Richie is so stunned that he almost falls off the bed. But Richie wants to look at him until he memorizes this version of his face, big brown eyes and crows’ feet and dimples and freckles and frown lines. Eddie leans back and stares up at the ceiling, fingers making lazy little patterns on the comforter. Richie isn’t sure if he finds it or not, but he freezes, barely remembering to breathe, just to give him more time to look for it. “I just…” Eddie pauses, searching Richie’s face for something. “Five-nine, perfectly average height, yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” he shoots back, and Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Asshole,” Eddie says, but there’s no heat to it. “Past your bedtime, shortstack?” Richie asks. Mike and Bill fall asleep on the floor, and Bev at the foot of the bed until Ben carries her out gently, and Eddie, Eddie, Eddie -Įddie’s leaning against the headboard, letting out a yawn so big his whole tiny body curls with it, and it’s the cutest thing Richie’s ever seen in his life. "BEN! NO!" Bill laughs, and Ben turns red with laughing, covering his face with his hands.
"Do we think Stan gets pegged?" he says into the contented silence of the room once they’re gone like he's hurling a grenade. When Patty and Stan go back to their room, Richie stage whispers “they’re gonna go have sex,” and Stan lets out a long-suffering sigh, and Patty just winks with her whole face, overly dramatic, and Richie loves her for it. They don’t come back slowly, or all at once it’s more like they’ve been in their heads the whole time, covered with a sheet, and now the sheet is gone, and they can see what’s underneath, if they just think to look. They can’t stop throwing memories around, now that they’ve got them back. Each other.Įveryone’s sitting around Richie’s room, sleepover style, leaning against each other for warmth. Not the homophobia or the racism or the bullying.
But it’s also the place where they all met each other, and there’s something to the idea that that’s the thing that wins out. And that’s objectively crazy, Richie wants to say, because this dumbfuck murder town is ground zero for the worst newly-remembered traumas of their entire lives. ← Previous Work Part 2 of the more light series Stats: Published: Words: 24711 Chapters: 1/1 Comments: 141 Kudos: 1551 Bookmarks: 408 Hits: 12268Įveryone lingers.
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