Work Text:
Eddie Kaspbrak has never had what might be called a strong support system. His coping mechanisms include:
- yes-dearing his wife to avoid fights;
- screaming at every single other driver and most pedestrians in New York;
- Reminding himself that he’s smarter than his idiot coworkers by outperforming them at work and shamelessly sucking up to his boss;
- Burying himself in work at his office;
- Chewing tasteless food too loudly;
- Attending work parties for the dual purposes of judging his colleagues and having an excuse to drink too much pino grigio (greej, as his cubicle neighbor Tim pronounces it, and it makes Eddie want to smash the bottle into Tim's phony Invisalign smile);
- Exercising until his whole body is heavy and aching and finally calm.
Those are the things that keep him from falling off the fine line between “I’m not having a good day” and “New York man found dead after screaming so hard his head exploded like in Scanners.” Not a lot of options here, but they function semi-effectively.
Now, here is what his life looks like when he returns from Derry:
His car is totaled so he's stuck on public transit every day unless he begs a ride off his wife. Myra won't let him yes-dear out of arguments anymore because he came home fucking stabbed and she'd like to know why, and she says his explanations sound like embarrassingly obvious lies, which they are. He can't run or lift weights because, again, fucking stabbed. Chewing too hard fucks with his cheek stitches. He's on sick leave which rapidly turns into reduced hours worked from home and a demotion from some of his cushier clients. His co-workers keep emailing him things that are bragging thinly veiled as concern ("hey pal, sorry you can't take the Pacific account anymore, but no worries! I have it on lock! ;)" He really is going to end Tim's life) but he's not dumb enough to leave a paper trail of yelling so he has to ignore them. His boss isn't hiding his displeasure at Eddie's sick time very well. His pain meds mean he couldn’t drink even if he showed up to a work function, which he won’t, because he can’t handle going to prison for murder right now.
It tracks, then, that Eddie starts to lose his fucking mind trying to find other ways to cope.
He has too much free time, is the thing. In the past he could just make himself busy. And yeah, his doctor has told him a couple times that the stress of overworking might be one of the actual health issues he needs to worry about, but it’s better than stressing over nothing, in Eddie’s opinion. Anxiety with a foundation seems easier to deal with. But now there’s nothing he can overwork himself on. He gets maybe five real hours’ worth of work in a week, and the rest of his life is spent on such tiny events. Taking his pain meds, then waiting to take the next dose when they’ve worn off a few hours later and he feels like he’s being stabbed again. Trying to respond to Myra in anything resembling a human manner, and failing. Hating himself for being so distant and odd with her just because he’s, what, lonely? Stir-crazy? Itching to do something but not knowing what? Regularly fighting the urge to just get up and leave the house and fucking run , anywhere he can?
Eventually he finds a way to get some of the energy out: masturbation, something he hasn’t attempted in months and definitely hasn’t done this frequently since he was a teenager. Jerking off jostles his stitches but it’s worth the pain if it makes his whole body stop shaking with nerves. He hates himself a little after, every time, but chalks it up to repression and an abstinence-only education. Then he realizes he's been jerking off while imagining Tim's wide fucking shoulders and he has to muffle a scream of anger right there in the shower, and lie yet again to Myra and say he bumped a bruised rib. This is a mistake, because she bustles him into her little Accord to take him to urgent care and he knows he can't scream at her because she doesn't deserve it so he just digs his fingernails hard into his thigh through the whole drive. They wait an hour for the doctor to tell him he's totally fine and to just be more careful in the shower, son, while Myra nods emphatically and Eddie shreds a pamphlet on hypoglycemia into ribbons.
He gets really into instagram, suddenly, and he vividly despises it but he's also obsessed. It's his nemesis. The white whale of social media. Everything is so transparently fake and everyone looks like they're carved out of porcelain and the filters, Jesus Christ, with the shitty names. He deletes it from his phone five times and every time it's reinstalled within hours. He just can't stop scrolling through it, though he has never made a single post of his own and isn't sure he ever will. He hatefollows a dozen celebrities in some kind of ring light-triggered fugue state. Then he adds some genuinely interesting people: famous chefs, some car modders, and eventually he even follows his friends.
Stan only has an Instagram because the other Losers have bullied him into it. At first, like Eddie, he never made posts of his own and just commented on everyone else's. But then for his last birthday Patty bought him a really high-quality camera for their bird-watching dates, and the resulting photos started to trickle onto his page. Now he posts semi-regularly, mostly birds but sometimes photos of Patty anywhere he can get her: in the sunset, climbing a tree, grinning on a park bench, sitting in their house chewing on a pencil as she solves a Sudoku puzzle. Stan is so in love with her and it shines through so clearly in his posts that Eddie can't joke about how old and lame they are. Well, he can, but he doesn’t mean it.
Bill and Ben have pretty similar approaches to Instagram: disappear for weeks, sign back in, go on a liking/commenting spree, and then spam twenty posts in a day before going offline again. Eddie gleans that they are both hopelessly addicted to coffee, but that Ben at least seems to maintain better hours than Bill does. In keeping with his reputation as a recluse, Ben's account is firmly separated from his work identity, though he can't resist posting photos of buildings he thinks are pretty. He never posts selfies, but Eddie's also noticed that he's posted less and less about his health food obsession lately. More often he talks about books he's reading, or the animals that frequent the woods outside his house. In contrast, Bill posts mainly about his writing, or lack thereof. The posts about his "process" always seem to imply that he's inches from screaming, crying, or throwing his laptop out a window. That's being an artist, Eddie supposes. Thank God he's never been a creative.
Mike's posts are completely unpredictable. On one day he'll be doing something that seems like textbook Mike: posting artsy photos of the library in the town he's passing through, maybe. But the next day he'll post a screencap of a blurry cryptid photo from Google Images and type out its entire folklore history in the caption. Or he'll write a message in some obscure code and link to an hour-long video on how to decipher it. (He has done this three times now. Eddie has solved them twice, and he hates to admit that it really was kinda fun. The third time Ben beat him to it. He's not bitter about it. He's not.) He's been traveling for weeks and weeks now, but he's more inclined to post pictures of his odometer than his surroundings. He does take travel photos, though; they just go straight to the Losers' groupchat, something shared with only them and not the wider Internet.
Bev posts things of incredible beauty, of course, on her professional page. Sparkling dresses and pantsuits that look sleek to the touch. Her personal account has a lot of less skillful photos of like, sushi and craft beer, and cool rocks she finds. She never uses the filters, just leaves her photos a little blurry and washed-out, and he's endlessly grateful. Hers are the only posts he says nice things on in comments. "Good shot composition," sometimes, as if he knows what that means. Or "that looks tasty! :)" on food they both know he's too chickenshit to ever eat. She never calls him out on it because she's the best.
Richie is not the best. Richie is a fucking menace. Richie should not legally be allowed to have an Instagram account and Eddie honestly cannot believe he hasn't accidentally ("accidentally") posted a nude yet. There's enough photos of him in his boxers and tee shirts that there is a nonzero chance of his dick making a surprise appearance. He filters the shit out of his posts and then tags them #nofilter, alongside a bunch of other irrelevant hashtags: #artistsofinstagram or #horsegirls or, in one worrying instance, #meat. Eddie comments on every single post without fail. They make him furious, but the kind that drains some of his nervous energy that has been building up more and more over the last few weeks, so it feels… weirdly healthy, almost. And Richie doesn't seem to be mad about Eddie’s constant criticisms, if the way they are always on the phone with each other at odd hours of the day is anything to go by.
That's right, he's also been calling Richie every day. Or Richie calls him, it doesn't really matter. Myra goes out to work, when she's finally convinced he'll be able to keep himself alive for eight hours unsupervised, and he tries to work for a while, and then throws something across his home office (usually a stress ball, sometimes a pen, on one notable occasion his hand moisturizer and that was a bitch and a half to clean up before Myra saw). And then he calls Richie before he shatters a window. Or Richie will wake up at noon in LA and insist on calling Eddie and chatting as he works through his "morning routine," which remains mysterious but at least Eddie has sussed out that it does not include substances. Richie has been cutting down on his drinking, he says. When it comes up during the Losers' group chat, he insists airily that it's out of solidarity with Eddie's medically enforced abstinence. But Eddie knows that on Wednesday nights Richie is at meetings, and he's been spending a lot of time with his sponsor, this guy named Bryant. Richie says Bryant is super chill, very laid back and understanding. "You'd fucking hate him," he'd told Eddie, laughing. "But he's so hard to hate, you'd go nuts."
By all accounts Bryant is exactly as kind as Richie describes him, and it does in fact make Eddie want to hate the guy. It takes a few weeks of him and Richie talking regularly for it to click why he isn't into Bryant, though. Richie talks so much about him that it takes every compassionate cell in Eddie's body (of which there are maybe six) not to tell Richie he's sick of hearing about him. Fuck Bryant. But then one night Richie casually drops the fact that Bryant and Eddie once participated in the same nationally sponsored marathon. When Eddie asks how Richie knows this, Richie says, oddly shy, "I've told him a lot about you," and Eddie suddenly feels quite a bit more charitable.
Anyway, that's Richie's life right now: he's over in LA getting help and getting healthy and taking a step back from his comedy, which he says is a big part of why he drank, and Eddie is… he's proud of Richie. He's afraid that might be patronizing so he hasn't said it yet, but he's so fucking proud of him. He didn't think it would be possible to feel this proud of somebody that he hasn't known for twenty-seven years. Especially somebody that, prior to remembering each other, Eddie had seen on a late night “comedy” show talking about vomiting onto a girl's vagina while eating her out drunk. But Richie has come so far from that it's unbelievable. Eddie hates the phrase "living your best life" and aggressively judges anyone who uses it on Instagram, but Richie really seems to be doing it, and Eddie's overwhelmingly glad.
But then again, he's Eddie Kaspbrak, a real big asshole mess of a person. And sometimes on his low days he thinks he might actually hate Richie for doing so well when he himself is fucking up so bad. It's jealousy, he knows that. It's just that he spent so many years convincing himself that he was organized and efficient and normal , and now he's finally realizing that he's been held together by zip ties and shoe polish and it's all crumbling like Ozymandias in a polo shirt. He's so jealous that it's a physical pain; when it first hit him he'd had to take a Tums because he'd thought it was acid reflux.
But then Richie will call him at 3am, and he'll sneak out of the bedroom so Myra doesn't hear, and Richie will tell him between dry-heaves that he dreamed about killing Bowers again and he really wants to drink but he can't tell Bryant why and can Eddie please, please just talk to him? He can even insult Richie or yell at him for waking him up, just stay on the line for a little while, Eds, please. And Eddie will think, I guess I have nothing to be jealous of, really, but this feels worse than the jealousy did. So he'll take a walk through the neighborhood where Myra hates him walking at night and he'll tell Richie all the things he can see, the house with the pink door that the HOA is pissed about and the bird feeder that only ever feeds squirrels, and he never ever yells at Richie for calling so late. And when Richie calms down he'll sniffle a little and say, "Thanks, Eds," and when Eddie crawls back into bed it's with the memory of telling Richie he wants him to be okay.
--
So, jerking off and Instagram and Richie. Those are the three most successful distractions in Eddie's life right now. And because he's always been so god. damned. efficient , there comes a breaking point where they all distract him at once.
It's a Monday, and Eddie does technically have work but he has absolutely nothing on the calendar today and he's ahead on the few cases he has left, so he could sleep in and no one would know. But he gets up at 7am just like always, because routine is important, something something regularity. Myra has an early shift today so he's the only one in the house. He puts on his work clothes, even the tie, because it's supposed to help you keep focused when you're working from home. All this is to say he’s very well put-together for a person who is about to spend hours scrolling through his Insta feed.
Somebody from BuzzFeed Tasty posted a recipe for curry that looks really good, so he saves it, knowing full fucking well it'll be too complicated for his basic skills and too spicy to eat anyway. One of the lesser Jenners seems to be having drama but for once he doesn't have the energy to investigate it. Bev met a cat on the street and it's got such a cute face Eddie can't even concentrate on delivering dire warnings about toxoplasmosis. And then he sees it, sandwiched between Bev's cat post and an ad for yoga pants. He sees the worst post of all time.
It's from Richie. Another one of his wretched #ootd posts. But this time…. Oh, this time . Usually his clothing photos are awkward selfies taken while he's sprawled across his couch, or in the reflection of the full length mirror on his closet door. But this is a photo clearly taken in public. There are other human beings in this photo. They exist and have to look at what Richie is wearing. That's always been a possibility, but Eddie has maintained a desperate hope that Richie takes his terrible photos and then changes before inflicting his appearance on America at large.
But nope, everyone in this coffee shop has to deal with this look: a tee shirt onto which a muscular, oiled-up chest has been screenprinted, a tattoo on the left pec reading "YOUR MOM'S NAME HERE." Puke green corduroy pants. An actual beer hat, but with two Monster energy drinks in it. Richie has both hat straws in his mouth at once and is winking at the camera. Behind him, a young barista is either marveling at seeing a celebrity or going into shock from the full force of Richie's outfit in the flesh. The photo is filtered to near incomprehensibility, the colors so saturated that he must have messed with it in Photoshop or something before posting it. The caption reads: "this #ootd was #toohot to stay inside all day 😘🤤 #skinnygirlproblems #nofilter #sorrynotsorry #winning #blessed".
Eddie blacks out a little.
He doesn't even bother to comment on the post and just skips straight to calling, hand shaking as he puts the call on speaker. It only takes three rings for Richie to pick up.
"Yello?"
"You ever read the book Silent Spring?" Eddie says.
"Uh, the one about pesticides killing all the birds? Never got around to it, why?"
"Because your outfit is the fashion equivalent of DDT. Innocent creatures will die today because of what you've done. God will punish us all for your total lack of fucking taste."
Richie giggles, honest to God giggles into the phone, and Eddie has to close his eyes and take a deep breath. "I was hoping you'd see my post!" he says, and it sounds like he's glowing. "Glad I could brighten up your morning, Eddie my love."
"You brightened my morning the way staring at the sun would. If I go blind you’re paying my medical bills.”
"You're just mad that I have better muscles than you now."
"Where did you even get that fucking shirt? I can't bring myself to believe that another human being would design that or I may have to end it all."
"Choose life, bro. This is one of a kind." There's a rustling, like Richie is settling back in a chair. "I commissioned a friend for it. I think she agrees with you vis a vis its artistic merits, but capitalism's a bitch and I'm a good tipper."
"Yeah, well." Eddie sits back himself, but has to adjust when his belt digs into his back. "At least you didn't actually get the mom thing tattooed on your chest."
"Of course not! Sonia's name is already there."
"Go fuck yourself, dude."
"Sure, but only 'cause she's not available. Hey, what are you wearing? I should get to make fun of you, it's only fair."
"It's just a suit, I'm working." He looks down at himself. He's pretty sure the fact that his outfit and Richie's both exist at the same time might be proof of the multiverse.
"Send me a picture. I wanna see the analyst hard at work on Insta."
Eddie scoffs, but he sends the picture. It's not unusual for them to send each other photos throughout the day, although Richie is more inclined to send memes than images of himself. Eddie thinks Richie must have the entire layout of Eddie's office memorized by now from how many different angles of selfie he's sent.
He hears Richie's text tone, and a whistle. "Nice," Richie says approvingly. "Very uptight, I like it." Eddie's phone vibrates: Richie has sent a selfie too, with a thumbs-up and a toothy grin. Thankfully he seems to have taken his abomination of an outfit home, because he's on his bed.
"If I ever see that shirt in person I'm burning it," Eddie says. Richie's bedroom has a big window and he always gets really good light. In this photo Richie's hair almost looks auburn, a little flattened from the beer hat but still wild.
"But Eddie, if you burn the shirt then am I supposed to pretend I have big muscles?"
"Fucking do some sit-ups if you want abs, Richie, it won't kill you."
Another photo comes in: Richie lifting up the hem of his appalling shirt to stare sadly down at his softer, hairy chest and belly. Something about it freezes Eddie for a second, so he doesn't notice at first that the trail of hair on Richie’s stomach is not leading down to green corduroy, but to white elastic.
"Wh--are you wearing fucking pants, Richie?"
"Nah, the cords were too tight on the goods. Took 'em off as soon as I got home."
It looks like he's wearing dark red boxer briefs. Usually his Instagram photos are a parade of novelty boxers. Eddie wasn't aware Richie owned any adult underwear at all. Suddenly he realizes he's been staring, like, really intensely at Richie's lower body and he drops his phone like it burned him.
"Ah, well," Richie sighs dramatically, fortunately not noticing Eddie's freakout. "Adieu, sweet dreams of having a hot bod. May flights of six-packs sing thee to thy rest. I will live out my life bereft, doomed to wander the moors as an uggo."
"Shut the fuck up, you look good," Eddie says, and immediately slams his head on the desk. There is a long silence on the phone.
"No I don't," Richie says finally. "That's part of my stage persona, you know, adds to the physical comedy."
Richie must be feeling weird if he's hiding behind the stage persona he hasn't touched in months. Eddie should just leave it, but he can't stop himself.
"Fuck the physical comedy, you're a good looking dude." Richie laughs, but Eddie talks over him. "So you're not, like, ripped, or whatever. All those dudes with hardcore muscle definition are crazy dehydrated anyway. And you're, like…. I mean, some people are into…."
"Dudes with love handles?"
"Some people might say you're huggable," Eddie says irritably, flushing red and jabbing a pen clear through his stack of post-it notes.
He's getting sick of the long silences but he's also terrified of what Richie is going to say when he does speak up. Specifically he's afraid Richie will ask, are you one of those people? Would you say I'm huggable, Eddie my love? But Richie seems to let him off the hook, because he just laughs awkwardly and says, "Well, good chat, thanks for the pep talk, Coach. Slap my ass harder next time, I'll score a touchdown or whatever. Hey, I gotta go, meeting my manager for lunch."
"Yeah, okay. Okay. Good luck with the meeting." Eddie hangs up and puts his face in his hands and screams, just a little bit. What the fuck is wrong with him? It's one thing to think Tim at work is hot, because despite being the worst human being alive, Tim has those big shoulders and he's got nicer hands than he deserves, honestly. He's a little embarrassed to have fantasized about the guy, but it's fine. However, it's totally different to get weird on Richie like that. It's not like he lied, he does think Richie looks good, but that's sort of the problem, isn't it? And now Richie's going to think Eddie's a fucking freak and he's gonna pull away and Eddie just ruined one of the only good things he's got going on his life right now--
The buzz of his phone interrupts his impending panic attack, and he unlocks it with a weak hand to check his messages. It's another photo from Richie. He clicks into the message and stops breathing.
Richie's taken the shirt off completely. He's smiling a little, crookedly, and his face is pink but his eyes are intense. The accompanying message says, simply, in case you need a hug .
Oh. Oh, Eddie is fucked.
He's so fucked, Richie looks more than just huggable, he looks… biteable? Is Eddie fucking rabid? Is there foam coming out of his mouth or is he just drooling a little over how soft Richie's chest hair looks? He wants to bury his face in Richie's stomach. Wants to press his fingers into the little bit of pudge over his waistband, and Jesus Christ, that's right, Richie's not wearing pants either. He's almost naked in this photo, and he sent it to Eddie and turned him into a babbling idiot. This must be his punishment for being such a douchebag to people. He's in hell and hell is Richie making Eddie's dick hard with a stupid selfie.
Oh. Oh, no. He's extremely dismayed to discover that that wasn't hyperbole. He is legitimately hard in his slacks. What the fuck. What the fuck. What is the protocol for this? Does he take a cold shower on company time? Does he just think about non-sexy things and wait for the problem to undo itself? Does he try to actually do his fucking work?
He can't stop thinking about any part of the photo, but Richie's eyes are what keep making his brain stutter. Blue and staring, like the most interesting thing in the world was happening on the other side of the camera. Like Richie could see it and he liked what he saw.
Oh, Christ. Eddie's dick pulses and he sits further back in his chair. His belt is still digging into his back so he pulls it out of the loops and tosses it aside. It feels like his tie wants him dead so he rips it off too, crumples it in his fist. Uptight, Richie had called his outfit. He'd said he liked it.
What if Richie was here right now? Leaning on Eddie's desk, in just those weirdly grown-up briefs and a mischievous grin, staring down at Eddie fully dressed in his suit? What would Richie say? What would he do? Would he blush more than in the photo, being so bare in the same room as Eddie? Would he press his weight back on his hands, would his arms stretch behind him just so, would the muscles move under the soft flesh as he posed? Would he bite his lip, shy? Or would he turn sleazy, nudging at Eddie's knee with his own bare one, winking and raising an eyebrow?
Eddie unbuttons his slacks.
What would Richie do if he saw that? If he knew Eddie couldn't stop himself? If he knew Eddie was getting so desperate for him from so little? Maybe Richie would know Eddie hasn't felt like this before. It’s probably obvious, from how Eddie’s eyes are half-closed, how the tiny shifts of his briefs over his cock are making him twitch and shudder. Would Richie laugh at him? Where would he look? Down where Eddie’s hands are tugging himself out of his underwear? At his neck, where he can feel a flush spreading? Or straight into Eddie’s eyes like in the photo?
Would he get hard, seeing Eddie like this?
"Fffffuuuuck." The first slide of his hand down his cock makes him burn hot with equal parts shame and pleasure. What if Richie did get hard, did get turned on from Eddie touching himself? What would he do about it? Would he just watch? What if he stroked himself too, lazy and hot, through his boxer briefs? How would he sound if he were in front of Eddie now, jacking himself off slowly, would he be quiet or would he moan or would he talk? Would he tease Eddie, tell him how out of character Eddie is being, how messy ? Or would he get lost in it, too far gone to make fun? Would he say Eddie’s name? Would he say, fuck, Eds, keep going, just like that? Would he say, Eddie, you’re so hot? Would he say, Eddie, I want you? Would he touch Eddie with his own hands? Or would he stay where he is, watching Eddie fall apart in his ergonomic chair?
Eddie closes his eyes and suddenly the fantasy gets bigger, stretches outside him and Richie to the whole room, the whole house, the whole goddamn country. He's not in his office. He's on a patio somewhere with palm trees, he's in swim trunks and sunglasses and he has a Long Beach iced tea on the little wicker table next to him, and his feet are warm and brown in the sun, and Richie is with him there wearing those red boxer briefs and a hard-on and a grin, and Eddie doesn't hate his job, he doesn't hate his life, he doesn't hate anything, he doesn't want to yell or scream except out of sheer fucking joy--
"F- fuck-- "
The bubble bursts, and he's left panting and a little sticky and with improbable tears pricking his eyes as he comes down. A glut of shame comes over him as he evaluates himself, but it can't overpower the imagined memory of it--not just of Richie, but of being in a life worth keeping. It stays with him as he breathes hard, as he steps numbly out of his slacks and walks to the bathroom in his dress shirt and underwear. It doesn't slough off of him when he tosses his briefs in the hamper or when he washes his hands. It persists.
He's never--
Well, he's never come that hard, first of all. But he also has never had jerking off take that kind of a turn past sexual desire into full-blown "in a perfect world" bliss. He's never wanted something that bad before. He's not totally sure he knows what exactly he wants, but he wants it desperately.
Maybe it could be nice, he thinks, staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, living a life that doesn't need so many coping mechanisms. Where instead of constantly trying to manage his mood swings and rage issues, he's just… happy.
Can he have that? Is it possible?
Is it possible to be happy when his whole life makes him fucking miserable and all he wants is to step out of it and find a different one? Could he do that, just decide that nope, this time around wasn't for me, I'm trading it in and getting a new model?
Jesus, is he having a mid-life crisis?
His fingers clench against the edge of the marble counter. He tries to think of which parts of his life actually make him happy--not just what's tolerable, but which actually give him a net positive. His list comes up distressingly short.
The Losers. The fact that he's healing and feels a little better every day. Making fun of Richie on Instagram. Calling Richie on the phone. Talking to Richie when one of them is feeling down. Seeing Richie's pictures whenever he sends them.
Jerking off to Ri--to men.
There's not a lot in his life worth keeping. He knows damn well that he's throwing Myra under the bus, but it's time for him to be truthful with himself. He needs to blow his whole life up.
Shit.