He didn't say so, but when it came time to leave for his tour, he'd been scared as hell. The idea of losing his memories of Eddie again was absolutely terrifying.
The thing was, he spent twenty-seven years in a haze, not ever fully grasping why he never felt like a complete person. He'd always felt like something was missing and during the stretch of years when he'd been famous enough to have his pick, Richie tried to fill the empty spaces with women and, when that yielded exactly nothing and, in fact, tended to make things feel even worse, with men. That had taken longer; Richie spent a lot of years carefully curating an incredibly heterosexual image of himself for public consumption. Maybe some guys in Hollywood could feel comfortable coming out but Richie wasn't raised to be comfortable or accepting of himself like these goddamn millennials were. It was harder.
Finding his memories of Eddie, and as some of them still continue to slowly trickle in even now, after all those years, Richie finally understood that incomplete feeling he'd suffered most of his life. There had been an Eddie-shaped piece of him missing for all that time and the prospect of the empty space coming back again was a special brand of scary that Richie hadn't wanted to risk facing alone.
But he'd gone; it's his job and Richie does love it, so he'd put on a smile and tossed out a casual Your Mom joke as per standard practice, and he'd gone. He kept a photo of Eddie on his phone labeled with Eddie's name and the relationship he has to Richie via the text editor on Instagram Stories and then saved down rather than posted for the rest of the world to see, just to be on the safe side, and he set an alarm reminding himself to look at it at least once a day. If he had a say in it, he wasn't going to forget again.
It had felt like coming home for the first time in his life when he'd gotten off the plane. Normally, "home" was just a place to lay his head between gigs. After nearly losing Eddie in Well House that day, he'd forced himself to be honest, at least with himself and with Eddie, and he'd come out to his best friend. The road to get where they are now had been long and, for Richie, fucking excruciating, but now he's finally got the one thing he's wanted for almost his entire life.
He wakes up in a tangle of sheets and limbs and the sun isn't shining through the window across the room for the first time all week. The steady thrum of rain against the glass suggests he'll have to come up with something else for them to do today. Not that Richie's a morning person — because holy shit, no — but once he's up, he's up, and once he puts his glasses on and spies the tall, bright green digital numbers on the clock and flops back down on the pillow, groaning as he takes a moment to stare up at the ceiling. What kind of fucking maniac wakes up unprompted at 7:48 a.m. when he doesn't have anywhere to go? This fucking maniac, evidently.
After several minutes of simply lying there beside Eddie, watching the other man's peaceful face as he sleeps; ghosting affectionate fingertips over Eddie's chest and allowing himself the luxury of just appreciating how it feels to be this close, Richie gently extricates himself. He stops to pull on a pair of boxer shorts before padding out to the kitchen, putting on a pot of coffee and turning on some music. Finally, once he pours himself a cup of morning mojo, Richie wanders out to the sunroom — which is sad and dark when the sun isn't shining into it, go figure — and slumps comfortably into a chair to caffeinate himself and mull over the possibilities for what they can do now that the rain shafted their plans.
It's just shy of half an hour — and a few sips into his second cup of joe — when he hears Eddie calling out. "Out back," he calls, but rather than making Eddie wind his way through the beach house to find him, Richie gets up and moves to meet him halfway.
Richie's glasses are the only part of him that looks put together this early in the morning. His face is in dire need of a shave, hair disheveled, and deep wrinkles in the boxer shorts that might or might not actually be clean. As he comes into view, one hand raising the mug to his lips while the other scratches idly at his bare stomach, softer than he'd like, but nowhere near as bulged as it would have every right to be after so many years of trying to drink his loneliness away when sinking his dick into whoever might've caught his fancy on any given day didn't seem to do the job. His smile is lopsided and tired and Richie still can't believe that he belongs to this man after all these years. Moreover, he still can't believe his man belongs to him.
"Morning," he says and it comes out kind of a croak, his throat still dry and voice choked with sleepiness that still clings to him and probably will for another hour or so. "Looks like shit outside," he adds and only realizes after he's said it that Eddie's probably plenty aware of that by now.
♥ ♥ ♥
The thing was, he spent twenty-seven years in a haze, not ever fully grasping why he never felt like a complete person. He'd always felt like something was missing and during the stretch of years when he'd been famous enough to have his pick, Richie tried to fill the empty spaces with women and, when that yielded exactly nothing and, in fact, tended to make things feel even worse, with men. That had taken longer; Richie spent a lot of years carefully curating an incredibly heterosexual image of himself for public consumption. Maybe some guys in Hollywood could feel comfortable coming out but Richie wasn't raised to be comfortable or accepting of himself like these goddamn millennials were. It was harder.
Finding his memories of Eddie, and as some of them still continue to slowly trickle in even now, after all those years, Richie finally understood that incomplete feeling he'd suffered most of his life. There had been an Eddie-shaped piece of him missing for all that time and the prospect of the empty space coming back again was a special brand of scary that Richie hadn't wanted to risk facing alone.
But he'd gone; it's his job and Richie does love it, so he'd put on a smile and tossed out a casual Your Mom joke as per standard practice, and he'd gone. He kept a photo of Eddie on his phone labeled with Eddie's name and the relationship he has to Richie via the text editor on Instagram Stories and then saved down rather than posted for the rest of the world to see, just to be on the safe side, and he set an alarm reminding himself to look at it at least once a day. If he had a say in it, he wasn't going to forget again.
It had felt like coming home for the first time in his life when he'd gotten off the plane. Normally, "home" was just a place to lay his head between gigs. After nearly losing Eddie in Well House that day, he'd forced himself to be honest, at least with himself and with Eddie, and he'd come out to his best friend. The road to get where they are now had been long and, for Richie, fucking excruciating, but now he's finally got the one thing he's wanted for almost his entire life.
He wakes up in a tangle of sheets and limbs and the sun isn't shining through the window across the room for the first time all week. The steady thrum of rain against the glass suggests he'll have to come up with something else for them to do today. Not that Richie's a morning person — because holy shit, no — but once he's up, he's up, and once he puts his glasses on and spies the tall, bright green digital numbers on the clock and flops back down on the pillow, groaning as he takes a moment to stare up at the ceiling. What kind of fucking maniac wakes up unprompted at 7:48 a.m. when he doesn't have anywhere to go? This fucking maniac, evidently.
After several minutes of simply lying there beside Eddie, watching the other man's peaceful face as he sleeps; ghosting affectionate fingertips over Eddie's chest and allowing himself the luxury of just appreciating how it feels to be this close, Richie gently extricates himself. He stops to pull on a pair of boxer shorts before padding out to the kitchen, putting on a pot of coffee and turning on some music. Finally, once he pours himself a cup of morning mojo, Richie wanders out to the sunroom — which is sad and dark when the sun isn't shining into it, go figure — and slumps comfortably into a chair to caffeinate himself and mull over the possibilities for what they can do now that the rain shafted their plans.
It's just shy of half an hour — and a few sips into his second cup of joe — when he hears Eddie calling out. "Out back," he calls, but rather than making Eddie wind his way through the beach house to find him, Richie gets up and moves to meet him halfway.
Richie's glasses are the only part of him that looks put together this early in the morning. His face is in dire need of a shave, hair disheveled, and deep wrinkles in the boxer shorts that might or might not actually be clean. As he comes into view, one hand raising the mug to his lips while the other scratches idly at his bare stomach, softer than he'd like, but nowhere near as bulged as it would have every right to be after so many years of trying to drink his loneliness away when sinking his dick into whoever might've caught his fancy on any given day didn't seem to do the job. His smile is lopsided and tired and Richie still can't believe that he belongs to this man after all these years. Moreover, he still can't believe his man belongs to him.
"Morning," he says and it comes out kind of a croak, his throat still dry and voice choked with sleepiness that still clings to him and probably will for another hour or so. "Looks like shit outside," he adds and only realizes after he's said it that Eddie's probably plenty aware of that by now.