Call me J

“Shh, asshole, we’re in a library.”

Richie pointedly looked around at the empty desks and gestured a hand towards the abandoned librarian’s desk. There was nothing but them, the smell of musty old books that were in desperate need of replacing, and the golden sunlight. “Even crusty old Mrs Henderson doesn’t want to be here after the final bell. Even Ben won’t come to this library after school, man.”

“Well, that’s not the point. The point is that we’re in a library, and we’re supposed to be quiet in a library.”

“You’re being even louder than me right now!”

“I am fucking not!”

Richie winced and tapped his ears. “Wow, I think only dogs caught that frequency.”

Eddie took a deep breath through his nose and Richie sniggered.

There was an angry flush blooming across Eddie’s cheekbones and Richie felt something even warmer than the sunlight flare in his chest.

“You’re free to go too you know,” Eddie said petulantly, and only the way his eyes darted down to his page and back to Richie betrayed any contradiction between his words and how he really felt.

Richie rolled his shoulders and leaned back in his chair. “Nah. I’ve got a bet going in my head over how long it’s going to take you to try and beat up your own notebook.”

Eddie snorted a laugh and Richie wondered if he was thinking of when he’d kicked a demon clown in the face. He wondered if anyone thought about that as often as he did. It was one thing to swing a baseball bat, but another to scream in that thing’s face and kick it like he had.

“Who would win?” Eddie asked with an amused smile.

Richie snapped out of his memories and for a moment thought he meant between him and the clown. The words, “You. Every time”, nearly tripped out of his mouth before he reminded himself what they were talking about. “Uh, the notebook obviously.” Richie shrugged. “It’s made out of math questions and that’s like, your kryptonite.”

“Math is just the worst,” Eddie said with a pained sigh.

“I already offered to tell you the secret to it, don’t you wanna know?”

Eddie squinted with suspicion.

“You don’t? Okay then.”

“No wait, what’s the secret?”

Richie smiled to himself at how easy it was to goad Eddie on – but he knew the reverse was true as well and it’s why they often made stupid decisions even worse when they were together. Teachers hadn’t sat them in speaking distance in class for years.

Eddie’s big brown eyes were wide in the golden sunlight, looking directly at him, and Richie suddenly found himself fumbling for the next part of his joke. Wow, his mouth was dry. “Uh- The uh-” He cleared his throat and scribbled an equation down on his paper. “This,” he said proudly, “is the secret to math.”

Eddie leaned over, lifting himself out of his seat, took one look at what he’d written, (e=mc2), and sat back down heavily with a scowl. “Fuck you.”

Richie cackled as Eddie groaned and lay down on the table, resting his head across the arm he’d covered over the notebook. “I just don’t get it,” he mumbled as he turned away.

The sunlight was like a golden blanket across Eddie’s back; lighting up the sight of his t-shirt stretched tight over the flat plain of muscle and bone, and it cast shadows under the dip of his shoulder blades. Richie had the inexplicable urge to reach out and run his palm over his back – to feel the warmth of the soft cotton and of Eddie himself. He pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and turned away, heat that had nothing to do with the sun creeping his neck at staring at his friend like that.

He turned his attention resolutely down to his own notebook, figuring Eddie just needed to cool off. Richie would usually fill this kind of silence, but he didn’t trust his own voice to speak without making his affection too obvious.

Math was easy, he thought, as he put his pen back to his paper and scribbled, ‘EDS = ♡’. A little further down he wrote, ‘R + E’. See. Easy.

Richie sighed as he lay down on the table too. He rested his cheek on the cool paper and turned to Eddie. He’d been quiet for a long time now and his breathing sounded slow and even. In the warmth and quiet of the library it didn’t surprise Richie that he’d fallen asleep.

With his head turned Richie could only see his hair, shining copper and a deep brown, and though it looked tousled, it still somehow looked neat and tidy – the thick waves were always combed to perfection. Unlike the mess of Richie’s own hair. He wondered if it was as soft as it looked.

Richie sighed again and doodled a couple of hearts onto the table with the hand that still held his pen in front of him. With his arm outstretched like that he realised how close it was to the bare skin of Eddie’s arm. He would only need to move across just a little… just to get a better angle to draw the hearts. Richie’s arm inched over the worn wood and finally skin touched skin. Tentative. Light. But it was like an electric current had passed through where their arms met.

Eddie’s breathing remained the same.

Richie lay his whole arm out. He’d never let himself touch Eddie like this before. Playfights, sure. But then the touches were always buried under layers of performance and play and laughter. Now, he had no reason at all.

Golden sunlight still danced over them both.

It was like their own world.

Richie took a deep breath and felt heat bloom across his face. “Eds… I…” He knew Eddie was asleep, but the words still stuck in his throat. “I…” His words were barely more than a whisper. “You’re… my favourite person in the whole world. Do you know that? And I’d… do anything for you.”

He pressed their arms minutely closer together – just a tiny increase in pressure – wishing it were a hug instead. He wished he could hold him tight and run his hands down his back and touch his angry-flushed cheeks and kiss the scowl from his lips. But this was all he would get.

Could he be brave? Could he be as brave as Eddie? No. He already knew if he weren’t asleep, he would never say any of this stuff. But he wasasleep so…

“I…” Richie’s breath hitched as he tried to voice the words that he’d thought in his head so many times. He bit his lip and moved his arm down just a fraction, just to increase the contact even more.

This was all he would ever get.