Richie gets braces at 14 and Eddie suffers a major crisis of identity because he discovers he STILL wants to kiss him even when he’s got food stuck in there. Eddie’s torn because he kinda loves Richie’s goofy buck teeth but he knows he gets shit for it from other kids, and because Richie told him if he didn’t get the braces now, they’d have to break his jaw later to realign everything again and that sounds so horrendous Eddie has a nightmare about it. So he starts carrying around toothpicks in case of errant food scraps, and one day Maggie waves him upstairs to find Richie frustrated and near to tears because he can’t get the little rubber band things to hook properly, they keep snapping and they hurt, Eds, this fucking sucks, so Eddie helps him with them and neither of them mention he’s got his literal fingers in Richie’s literal mouth and it’s all very weird in Richie’s upstairs bathroom for a few minutes, and Richie never asks for help with them again. The bands suck because they basically clamp his jaw shut and it’s hard to use his instrument of choice; all Richie’s Voices take a real hit for a while, except for the Donald Duck one which actually improves quite a bit, funnily enough. it’s all the extra drool
anyway he gets them removed a month after his 18th birthday and Eddie spends all summer reminding him to wear his retainer, and trying desperately not to kiss his new, straightened, unencumbered dazzler of a grin, even though the only thing stopping Eddie now is his own fear
22 years later Richie has an overbite again, because when he left for college there was no one to remind him to wear his retainer, and honestly? Eddie’s kinda relieved. He finally gets to kiss the buck teeth
