#more ‘mich gives her favorite characters her taste in music’ content

[neverwasreddie]

Richie doesn’t love visiting Eddie in New York right now, what with his divorce being not-quite-finalized and his house being not-quite-sold. Things between him and Myra seem amiable, at least, as far as Richie can tell, but it doesn’t mean he personally wants to spend any more time with the ghost of Sonya Kaspbrak than he has to.

But Eddie is wrapping up loose ends at work before his two-weeks’ notice is up, and he insists to Richie that he can’t fly out to LA right now, that it’s absolutely imperative that Richie keep his schedule clear to come see him, instead.

Richie plays nice and flies out to New York and even brings flowers to Myra as a peace offering, a “thanks for putting up with your almost-ex-husband’s best friend sleeping on your couch.”

Eddie will be moving out of that loveless townhouse soon enough, he figures, a thought that has absolutely nothing to do with him personally but still sends a little thrill through Richie every time he thinks of it, regardless.

Eddie meets his Uber out front, grabs him in a hug and practically throws his flowers inside the house with barely a word to Myra on his way back out. He doesn’t even give Richie a chance to step inside, just grabs his duffel bag and throws it into his own car and herds Richie into the passenger seat.

“We’re staying outside the city tonight, if that’s okay,” he says, swerving through city traffic and eventually navigating out of the city entirely. “I have something planned. Don’t hate it, alright?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Richie says with a laugh, half-nervous and half-delighted, the way he always feels around Eddie.

They check into a hotel somewhere in New Jersey just off the Turnpike, grab something to eat, and then get back in the car. Before long, they’re pulling into a crowded parking lot outside of a massive football stadium.

“Eddie, no offense, but I’m probably the wrong guy to bring to a football game.”

“It’s not even football season.” Eddie rolls his eyes good-naturedly and continues manhandling Richie, this time out of the car and up to a long security queue outside the stadium. “It’s a concert. Promise me you’re not going to hate it, all right? These tickets were expensive. You have to have fun or I’m not hanging out with you anymore.”

The fact that Eddie seems nervous weirdly calms Richie’s nerves, though his heart starts pounding as they make their way inside the stadium and up to their seats. They’re in a decent spot in the crowd — not floor seats, but not nosebleeds, either, and fairly centered in front of the stage. But Richie has been taking note of the merch tables on the way in, all the T-shirts worn by the guests around him, and he can’t stop his hands from shaking.

“Eddie,” he says, leaning in to be heard over the rising din of the crowd, “don’t tell me this is what I think it is. I’m gonna fucking die if you brought me to a Bruce Springsteen concert.”

Eddie whips his head around to stare hard at Richie. “I did. Why? Do you not like him anymore? I thought you loved him. You always used to listen to him in high school.”

Richie did always love Bruce Springsteen, and still does; that’s the problem. The amount of nights high-school Richie wished on shooting stars and called in to radio contests, praying to win Bruce tickets so he could take Eddie to a concert, to make it a real date…it’s all he ever dreamed of, and to have it now, without the deeper meaning behind it, is breaking his heart just a little.

But it’s also the best thing anyone has ever done for him, and he can’t help it if his eyes get misty and he has to throw his arms around Eddie and squeeze him tight.

“Alright, alright, I get it, enough,” Eddie laughs as the opening chords blare through the stadium. But when he pulls back, there’s something glimmering in his eyes, and he briefly rests a hand on Richie’s cheek before turning to the stage.

Halfway through the show, when the Boss is crooning about ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away, how it’s a town full of losers and he’s pulling out of here to win, Richie turns to Eddie and squeezes his hand.

“When your 2 weeks at your job are up,” he says quickly, “when your divorce is finalized. Don’t stay here. Come to Los Angeles. Come live with me.”

The final harmonica notes are fading out by the time Eddie’s incredulous frown is smoothed away into a look of disbelief and then, miraculously, a smile.

“Hell yeah,” he says quietly, then again, louder, over the booming opening chords of the next song. “Hell yeah!”

He squeezes Richie’s hand back and then keeps holding on, doesn’t let go for the whole show.

#reddie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #it chapter 2 #reddie fic #it 2019 #this is so long omg sorry #the richie tozier bruce springsteen agenda #richie tozier is a bruce springsteen stan truthers unite #literally richie as an annoying music kid who won’t shut up about springsteen is so !!!!! to me #more ‘mich gives her favorite characters her taste in music’ content #reddie bc

[neverwasreddie]

“You make me feel like ‘Layla.’”

“Who the fuck is Layla?”

Richie snorts at Eddie’s grumpy, bewildered expression — all wrinkled nose and scrunched-up eyebrows beneath a mop of sex hair — and elects not to answer. Instead, he bodily lifts his boyfriend, ignoring his yelps and indignant squirms in favor of cuddling him close to his chest like a heating pad on a stomachache.

From his perch atop Richie’s broad torso, Eddie nudges at his chin. “You gonna answer me?”

Richie just hums, eyes closing as his arms tighten.

Ever since Derry, the Losers have been regaining memories like spam mail flooding an inbox, but Richie’s are slower to return. Eddie alternates between joking that years of cocaine use must’ve fried his brain and kindly suggesting that Richie’s mind simply moves too fast to bother with trivialities from childhood. Richie suspects it has more to do with trauma and the way he repressed himself so hard he probably would’ve forgotten half his teenage years even without a clown curse.

Still, it’s irritating to watch the others collect moments in steady waves while he has to grasp at a trickle in the far corner of his brain, still unable to remember what color cummerbund Eddie wore to prom (sad) or what his first birthday present to Richie had been (tragic).

What helps the most, what comes back to Richie far sooner than concrete experiences, is music. From his dad’s records in their yellowing paper sheaths to his mom’s lovely voice humming him a lullaby, Richie gets back feelings faster when they’re connected to a song, and it helps him put the pieces back together.

This, now, lying in bed with Eddie, is bringing to mind a scene without context, but one he recognizes all the same: a humid night in June or August, maybe, summer break either about to start or end, and either way leaving Richie feeling itchy under his skin. His first car, something black and used and shitty but with cool red interior and a tape deck — the closest thing to escape he’d ever had in that hell town.

He remembers that muggy night’s restlessness, his anxiety, and he remembers driving endless circles in a seven-block loop, never daring to stop in front of Eddie’s house but driving by again and again and again with Derek and the Dominos on repeat.

It’s easier to scream along to “Layla” than it is to admit that the song’s intro sounds the way loving Eddie feels: urgent, riotous, inescapable. He’s only seventeen and nothing makes sense to him, least of all the reasons why he had to end up in love with a boy, with his best friend, of all people. Why the thought of Eddie finding out made him sick to his stomach but the thought of Eddie never knowing ached like a punch to the chest.

It was easier than to hide in the beat of the song, in a guitar solo, to duck into the melody and let the throat-scraping plea of the chorus guard against the truth of his feelings.

But here in bed with Eddie, he’s not seventeen, he’s forty-one and held and touched and loved, so loved, that sometimes it makes his head swim. And he realizes in a rush of comfort that these days, loving feels less like the intro to “Layla” and more like the outro, fond and steady and calm and endless.

Eddie yawns and nuzzles deeper into Richie’s neck. “If Layla is the name of like, your old sex doll or something, I’m kicking you out of this bed.”

A bubble of laughter surprises its way out of Richie’s chest, bursting against the top of Eddie’s head, and Richie realizes that maybe the urgent, riotous, inescapable love exists right along with the steady and calm adoration, and maybe that’s why that seven minute long song is so fucking good after all these years, maybe it all goes hand in hand like he and Eddie all along.

“Layla’s what I used to call your mom in bed,” Richie murmurs, and Eddie knees him in the groin, and Richie has never been happier.

#richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #reddie #more ‘mich gives her favorite characters her taste in music’ content #just wait til I give richie the springsteen curse