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Richie lays in bed, hands under his head, and studies the textured finish of the ceiling. His room is painted a bland, beige sort of colour but his ceiling is stark white. He studies the paint, the bumps and imperfections in the texture, looking for shapes or pictures as he tries not to think about the dread that’s taken a home in the pit of his stomach.
He’s thinking about the future again.
He feels, a little bit, like he might be sick.
Eddie’s sitting on the floor next to the bed. He’s cross legged, bundled up in a school sweatshirt he’d stolen from Richie, so big on him he’d needed to roll the sleeves up. Every so often, he curses quietly to himself. He’s filling out university applications. It makes Richie’s chest constrict so tightly that for a second, he can’t breathe.
Richie isn’t going to university. He’s been on the fence about it for months, since the very end of junior year, but he’s certain now. Last night he’d finally stopped kidding himself and admitted, to the darkness of the room, to Eddie, sleeping soundly against his chest, that he isn’t going to university.
He hasn’t told Eddie yet. Eddie already knows exactly what he wants to do after high school. He’s going to med school. He’s going to be a surgeon.
Richie doesn’t know what it means for their future. He doesn’t know if they have a future, is the thing, and thinking about it, staring up at the ceiling, is making him sick.
Obviously, they’d known it was coming. As high school students, it’s inevitable that one day they wouldn’t be in high school anymore. They just don’t really talk about it, and Richie usually does his best not to think about it, but it’s looming now, it’s so close, and he can’t get it off of his mind despite his best attempts.
Because the end of the school year might be the end of them. They’ll have the summer together, at least, but then what? Eddie’s applying to schools across the country, ready to get the hell out of dodge. Not that Richie can blame him - he isn’t going to school, but he’s leaving, too. He wants to move to Los Angeles. He wants to actually try and make a name for himself as a comedian. He just doesn’t know what that means for him and Eddie.
He doesn’t know if Eddie will want to move across the country with him. He doesn’t even really know if Eddie’s gonna wanna stay with him at all. They talk about forever, they talk about their future together, but what if it’s all just talk? They’re still kids, at the core of it. They’ve been together almost five years, but they’re still only eighteen. What if Eddie wants a fresh start after high school? What if five years is their expiry date?
He swallows thickly. “I’m not going to college,” he tells the ceiling.
From his peripheral, he can see Eddie startle, looking up at him from the floor. “Oh,” he says.
Richie doesn’t look at him. “I’m moving to L.A.”
“Oh,” he repeats. This time, he sounds a little bit like the wind’s been knocked out of him. Richie doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. Silence lapses between them for just a moment. “That’s far.”
Eddie lives with Richie and his parents. He’d moved in the summer after middle school, just after they’d started dating, just after Richie figured out that the weird, warm way Eddie always made him feel wasn’t remotely platonic. Eddie’s been within arms reach of him for years. “As far from Derry as I can get.”
He can feel Eddie looking at him, but he doesn’t say anything. Richie doesn’t either, for a minute, but the silence is so tense now it only worsens the weight of unease that’s sitting in his chest. “I have an apartment lined up,” he continues, still looking at the ceiling. “It’s shitty but it’s cheap.”
“Oh,” Eddie says. He doesn’t say anything else.
The silence is starting to make Richie’s skin crawl, so he adds, “and I have a job waiting for me. Two of them, actually. Which is shit, y’know, but it’ll pay the rent.”
Eddie’s quiet, so Richie finally turns his head, propping himself up on his elbow to look at him. He’s looking away, applications forgotten as he stares down into his lap. “How,” Richie starts, and clears his throat. “How do you feel about that?”
Eddie lifts his head slowly. He looks crestfallen, and it makes Richie’s heart sink. “Not great,” he says, and he doesn’t sound like he’s crying but he sounds like he might be on his way there. “This is the first responsible thing you’ve ever done and you’re only doing it to get the hell away from me.”
“I’ve been responsible before,” Richie protests. He isn’t sure why that’s what he says.
It must catch Eddie off guard, too, because he suddenly looks less like he might cry. His eyebrows draw together in the middle. “Wha - no you fucking haven’t, man.”
“Fuck you,” Richie says. “I have.”
“When?” Eddie asks. “Name one time you’ve ever been responsible.”
“I’ve been responsible plenty of times,” he insists.
“You can’t think of a specific example because you’ve never fucking been responsible,” he says. “This is the first time. Fuck you, dude.”
“For being responsible?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Eddie asks. “For leaving! You just told me you didn’t know what you wanted to do after graduation and now you have a fucking apartment in L.A.?”
“I want you to come with me,” Richie says. He says it quickly, hurrying to get the words out before he loses his nerve. He doesn’t really know what Eddie wants after high school, at the core of it. He doesn’t know what he wants his life to look like or if he wants Richie to be in it. But Richie knows what he wants, and what he wants is Eddie. It’s always been Eddie.
Eddie, who looks like a little bit like he might be in shock. “What?”
“I want you to move to L.A. with me,” he says. “I’m like, almost sure there’s med schools out there. And I know you wanna get out of here too. You can’t get any farther than California.”
“Oh,” he says. He sounds winded.
“And I want,” Richie starts, and his voice cracks. His heart is beating so hard against the inside of ribcage that he thinks he can hear it. “I want to marry you,” he says. “I really like it and I want to put a ring on it. I wanna start a life with you in L.A. and I wanna do it as your husband.”
Eddie’s quiet for a long time. He looks away, at the college applications he has strewn around him, and Richie watches him, unsure of what else to say. This is the part he was afraid of - not of Eddie not wanting to be with him, really, but them both wanting different things. They’d try the long distance thing, sure, but Richie can’t imagine it’d take much time before Eddie met somebody at school, somebody better looking and smarter and with a better future than Richie.
He swallows thickly, watching Eddie pick at a loose thread at the end of his sleeve. “Are you asking me to marry you?” He doesn’t look up.
“I - “ Richie starts, and cuts himself off. He is, is the thing. “Yeah. I am, yeah.”
Eddie finally lifts his head. “This is kind of a shitty proposal.”
“Fuck you,” Richie says immediately, but some of the crushing weight of dread lifts off of him. “I did everything right.”
“You didn’t even get me a ring,” Eddie says.
“Oh, dude,” Richie says. He climbs from the bed, walking around Eddie to the desk pushed up against the far wall. His backpack is sitting in the chair, and he unzips it to rifle through gum wrappers and loose leaf. It takes him a minute to find the ring, but after a second, he does - a thin, sort of plain silver band.
He sits on the floor in front of Eddie, and he doesn’t have time to say anything else before he breathes, “holy shit, you have a ring.”
Richie’s grin is sheepish. “It’s like, my mom’s dad’s or something,” he says. “I’ve had it for a few weeks.”
“A few weeks,” he repeats.
It isn’t a question, but Richie nods. “I wasn’t - I don’t know. It’s a long story, kind of.”
Eddie raises his eyebrows. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Richie huffs softly, pushing his glasses up his nose. “It’s just - you’ve been doing a lot of this, y’know?” He says, gesturing vaguely to the college applications between them. “You’ve been, like, reading about universities and filling out applications and applying for scholarships and all of this other shit. And it’s made me think a lot about the future and that’s - it scares the shit out of me. Because I know we’ve, like, talked about getting married and what we’re gonna do when we’re old but that’s - it - it’s real now, y’know?”
“What?” Eddie asks.
Richie waves a hand uselessly between them. “You’re going to fucking med school, dude, but what about me? D’you know what I mean? We haven’t really talked about what we’re gonna do after graduation. We haven’t really needed to, I guess, but now you’re applying for schools and it’s got me thinking that we’re fucking graduating at the end of this year. And I finally know what I want after I graduate, but it’s got me thinking that I don’t really know what you want. Like, I know you want to study medicine, but what else do you want? Do you want me to come along and shack up with you? Or do you wanna be single when you start school? Maybe you wanna be a little more sexually adventurous than you got to be in high school ‘cause you had a shitty boyfriend the whole time, I don’t know.”
Eddie makes a face, opening his mouth, so Richie continues, “that’s rhetorical. Anyway, I was crying to my mom about it a few weeks ago, and she kinda let me cry it out but hearing myself say it out loud, I sound like an idiot. But anyway, she kinda says ‘whatever, what do you want,’ and, like.”
He takes a deep breath. “I want to be a comedian. I know you don’t think I’m funny, but I’m pretty sure I’m funny and I’ve wanted to do it for so long I might as fucking well, y’know? And I want to move as far away from Maine as I can get. And I want to move somewhere warm, somewhere the weather’s better, so L.A.
“And I want my Eds,” he says, reaching out to put a hand on his knee. “Y’know? I want to keep coming home to him, I want to keep waking up next to him, I don’t want to hold any other hand for the rest of my life. And like, she laughed at me,” he concluded. “But she gave me this. Not to, like, get me to propose, but so I had it when I was ready, y’know? I think she was thinking a couple years down the line. I don’t think she thought it would be a couple weeks after she gave me the fucking thing but like, I didn’t, either, so there’s that. It just seemed like a good time, y’know? With the L.A. thing. And I want - I want to marry you as soon as you’ll let me. I really want to marry you before L.A., just ‘cause I really want to start my life there with you as my husband, but I’ll wait if you wanna wait. Or, you can say no, obviously. You don’t have to.”
Eddie’s quiet for a hearbeat. “That’s it?”
“What?” Richie asks. “I just said a whole bunch of shit.”
“You didn’t even ask,” Eddie says. “You’re waiting for an answer and you didn’t even fucking ask me, dick.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Richie asks. “I just asked you.”
“No,” Eddie deadpans, “you didn’t. You told me a whole story about why you’re proposing to me but you didn’t fucking ask. And part of your story was you thinking I was gonna break up with you ‘cause I wanted my college years to be slutty or something. Who says shit like that during a proposal?”
“I’d understand if you wanted that,” Richie says.
“Why would I want that?”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
Richie holds up the ring. “Do you wanna marry me?”
Just like that, Eddie breaks into a grin that nearly knocks him over. “Of course I want to marry you, asshole.”
Richie grins so widely it makes something in his jaw ache. “Really?”
Eddie laughs, and takes his face in his hands to kiss the stupid smile right off his face. “Yeah,” he says.
“And you’ll come to L.A. with me?” He asks.
“I’d go with you anywhere,” he answers easily, and the feeling in Richie’s chest is so overwhelming pleasant that he almost can’t believe he ever thought it was dread. “I don’t think I have any schools from California on my list, though, so I’m gonna have to start from fucking scratch. Fuck you for that.”
“Sorry,” Richie says, but he isn’t, because Eddie’s coming with him and that’s the only thing that matters. “I love you. You’re the love of my life.”
“I love you so much,” Eddie tells him, and then kisses him again. He only pulls back to say, “now put my fucking ring on, you dick.”
Richie kisses him again as he slides the ring onto his finger, and it’s easily the best moment of his entire fucking life.