in just four minutes | chapter four
.“That’s… Jesus, Eds, what the fuck, actually? I thought those anti vaxxers were a Internet meme.” Eddie burst out laughing, and he laughed so hard that tears welled in his eyes and fell down his cheeks. Richie Tozier reminded him everyday why he was Eddie Kaspbrak’s favourite fucking person in this world.
[or: Eddie Kaspbrak hadn’t planned on being an absolute cliche the fell in love with his college dorm mate, but ain’t that just the way. To add insult to injury, said room mate has a girlfriend … doesn’t he?]
chapter warnings: mentions of transphobia, mentions of homophobia, sonia kaspbrak’s manipulative parenting.
Richie was understandably groggy the next morning when he rolls out of Eddie’s bed. He manages only to roll from the mattress onto the ground, groaning, and curling up into a ball once more. Eddie had already been awake for an hour or so before Richie showed even the smallest hint of stirring, and he’d prepared this type of reaction. Kneeling down in front of Richie, Eddie pushed at his room mates shoulder until he rolled over, glaring up at him.
“No.” Richie said, pouting kind of adorably up at Eddie. “Whatever it is you want, no. Just leave me here to die.”
“Advil. Water.” Eddie said simply, trying to keep his voice at a reasonable volume as he held up the objects in his hands. Richie’s face light up as much as it could will he still managed to look pretty fucking miserable. He accepted the medicine and beverage from Eddie as though they were the best gifts he’d ever gotten.
Richie had finished the water and the two of them have gotten back onto the bed when Eddie turned to Richie. Richie took one look at the seriousness of Eddie’s expression and seemed to panic. “Oh, shit,” he said under his breath, starting to shake his head. “Did I say something last night? Something embarrassing? Okay, no, actually don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” Eddie raised his eyebrows but Richie’s mouth was off running before Eddie had a chance to say a damn thing. “Actually, tell me. I think I should know… except, you know, is it really bad? Do I not want to know? Eddie!! Is it bad?”
“Richie,” Eddie clapped his hands to the sides of Richie’s cheeks and forced him to meet his gaze. “You didn’t say anything bad or embarrassing, at least not after you got back here. You barely said anything at all, you passed out pretty much the second you got into the door.”
“Oh. Okay,” Richie nodded, seemingly almost too relieved. He was still rubbing his hands together anxiously and Eddie almost abandoned this whole thing right then. “Then… what? Why do you look so serious?”
“It’s… a bunch of things?” Eddie said, frowning. “It’s… I feel like we get along really well, I like to think of you of my closest friend here. I do, you’re like my best friend.” Richie beamed, letting himself lean a little bit more into where Eddie was touching him. “But it’s also…. you’ll just do something, or say something, I know you aren’t telling me stuff. You don’t have to tell me anything, obviously, but it just… it’s like you don’t think we’re friends the same way I do.”
“Eddie.” Richie said, sounding almost pained. He took hold of Eddie’s hands on his cheeks and clasped their hands together in their laps. “If Stan didn’t exist, you’d definitely be my best friend! I know what you’re talking about, the weird stuff, and I was going to explain everything, I don’t know why I… Didn’t. I guess I was just after it would ruin everything.”
“Richie…” Eddie looked at Richie’s face, scanning it slowly while Richie seemed to thinking through his words in a way that Eddie had never seen him do before. “You don’t have to tell me anything you’re not comfort-“
“Eddie, I’m trans.” Richie said quickly, squeezing his eyes shut and squeezing tightly at Eddie’s hands. Eddie blinked, letting the spat out information wash over him. He let it settle over him, shifting all the things of the past few months fall into place.
“Oh.” Eddie said, nodding now. Richie’s eyes flew open, seeming panicked. “That’s actually makes sense, yeah, I see that now.”
“Is it…” Richie cleared his throat, looking like he was trying to find the closest escape route from their shared dorm while still fighting off a killer hangover. “Is that a problem? Do you hate me?”
“What? No!” Eddie tilted his head down so it was level with Richie’s downcast eyes. “Absolutely not. Richie, you’re the exact same person you were before we had this conversation. Nothing is different.”
Richie pressed his lips together as though he was trying not to cry and tossed himself forward, wrapping his arms around Eddie’s shoulders. Eddie let out a startled little laugh, patting Richie’s back in what he hoped was a very platonic fashion. Richie pulled back, wiping at the hints of tears, and gave Eddie a smile so soft that it made Eddie’s stomach clench up.
“My name’s been Richie since like eighth grade,” Richie said, seeming unable to stop talking about it now that the door had been opened. “Stan was the first person to ever call me that, and it was just… you know?” Eddie didn’t know, but that didn’t seem to detour Richie at all, and Eddie wouldn’t have wanted to. “Kids are school were little assholes, you know. They didn’t get it, at all. Sure, we were just kids and one day I was somebody and then I started becoming somebody else. My parents wanted to move us to a different town when I started to transition, I’m not sure if it was for me or because of me.”
Eddie nodded slowly, rubbing his thumbs along the backs of Richie’s hands.
“And then one day…” A starry look came over Richie’s face. “These kids were just being their usual asshole selves, whatever, going on about how I’d ever get a girlfriend if I was trans, that I should have just been a lesbian- as if I was fucking bisexual as the colour purple-“ Eddie’s eyes widened, never having heard anything about Richie being anything other than heterosexual before, but Richie ran right past it. “And Bev comes up, she takes my hand and turns to those douchebag kids and says that I won’t need to find a girlfriend because I already had one.”
“That’s how you guys got together?” Eddie asked, forcing a smile. It was a hell of a story. Pretty fucking amazing, actually, some serious TV shit. An odd expression came over Richie’s face and he looked slightly over Eddie’s shoulder, smiling slightly to himself.
“I’m assuming…” Richie said slowly, starting to grin. “That my relationship with Bev is some of the weird stuff you’ve been noticing?” Eddie felt himself blush, and shrugged slightly. “Bev and I have never been together. For like, one second.”
Eddie opened his mouth, closed his mouth, then opened it again. “Come again?”
Richie laughed. “Bev pretending to be my girlfriend when we were thirteen was like some sort of weird armour. It didn’t stop all the bullshit transphobia, but I think it really did help. Like those straight boys could make fun of me all they wanted, but I was dating the hottest chick in school, you know? Humbled them a little bit, between the beatings.”
Eddie shook his head, wishing he couldn’t relate to that. Wishing that there wasn’t anything to relate to in the first place. Wishing it was a better world for them both. But Richie was still smiling, and Eddie didn’t want to interrupt the flow of Richie’s words.
“And so long as either of us ever found anybody we really wanted to be with, we didn’t see any reason to stop presenting ourselves as a couple. I don’t think even Mike knows we’re not really together.” Richie crinkled his brow, confused and set off course for a moment. “And up to now, we haven’t found anybody we were interested in. So.”
Eddie and Richie made eye contact for the first time since Richie had started speaking, and they both smiled in unison. Eddie squeezed their hands again and cleared his throat. “I got… I got a lot of shit in high school, too. I don’t think it’s the same of whatever you had to go through but I was gay, and you know... I seemed gay. Looked act, acted gay? People were calling me gay before I knew what gay even was, really. Then there was all the stuff with my ma.”
“What about your mom?” Richie asked, and it seemed like he must have been able to see the way Eddie started to shut down at the question. “Hey, no. You’ve like, never told me about your parents. I won’t make you, but it seems fair, don’t you think? I just-“
“My dad died when I was five. Cancer.” Eddie said with a sigh. “I feel like it broke my mother, in some terrible mental way. She was, is, fucking nuts. She had me on all these fake pills, and made think I had asthma even when I didn’t, as some sort of weird control thing? I want to say it’s because she was worried about me getting sick and dying like Dad, but I had to sneak out and illegally get my vaccinations when I was sixteen because she thought they’d cause autism.”
Richie stared at Eddie for a long moment. “That’s… Jesus, Eds, what the fuck, actually? I thought those anti vaxxers were a Internet meme.” Eddie burst out laughing, and he laughed so hard that tears welled in his eyes and fell down his cheeks. Richie Tozier reminded him everyday why he was Eddie Kaspbrak’s favourite fucking person in this world.
They both fell backwards onto Eddie’s bed, side by side, staring up at the ceiling while Eddie still let out little chuckles. “Looks like we both have some shitty origins,” Eddie said with a small wheeze.
Richie chuckled beside him. “All the best stories do.”
