#hanbrak

Eddie: What makes you think I’m not already in therapy?

Mike:

Richie: Yeah, no offense, Eddie, but you mom is horrible.

Eddie: *sarcastically* How could I be offended by that?

Mike: Can we just try to figure something out?

Richie: What if Eddie’s mom had a little... accident?

Eddie: What?

Richie: *smirking ominously* My uncle...?

Mike: We’re not paying your uncle to hurt Eddie’s mom.

The grave is, conveniently for them, behind Mike’s house in an area that gets shady when the sun's at its highest. It's marked by a sturdy, makeshift cross, which initially had been stuck there in the drying dirt by Mike's grandpa, back when he understood a bit more why Mike gets sad over dead animals.

Eddie always places a freshly picked dandelion stem on top of the grave, one that’s already had a wish stolen from it. And Mike, as they lean back on their elbows to watch the clouds and point out birds that they think Stan would know the names of (all of them - they point out all the birds), always softly pats the ground above Mr. Chips and tells him a quiet hello.

Eddie never got to meet Mr. Chips, but he hears that he was the best dog ever, before Bowers got to him. He believes it, too.

They talk about a future that they think they’d like, sometimes for themselves and sometimes for each other, just to dream a little. Mike knows exactly what he wants, and it smells like oranges and reads like odd stories in the news. He tells it to Eddie with the widest grin. If anything, the way he laughs and speaks and smiles is so sincere that it makes Eddie want to give it all to him, the whole life, immediately and in any way that he can.

But Eddie knows he can't. Not when, as it appears one day, there's a gleam in Mike’s eyes that accompanies his laughter, and it’s scared and filled with inexperienced regret, like he already knows something won't be right. Eddie doesn’t ask, mostly because Mike looks like he doesn’t have an answer yet. He reaches for Mike's hand anyway, and he locks their pinkies gently together. Eddie thinks this moment, right here, might be a promise he’ll break by accident.

He tries to say, I hope I don’t. I hope I don’t break it.

3/6!! Mike and Eddie are my sunflower babies. Click for better quality 🌻

Bill | Bev | Mike | Stan | Ben

Everything! He's my little baby bunny rabbit and everything about him is amazing.

Do you guys know why I call him that? Because if anyone knows anything about rabbits they're super adorable, all tiny and fluffy with big dark eyes, but they're also really powerful little animals. They have to be, of course, so they can jump as high and as far as they do. Did you know that rabbits can jump vertically as high as 9ft? They're also incredibly energetic, as most people know.

I think Eddie is just such an admirable example of somebody who hasn't let society's expectations of them affect who they are. It's especially important in men nowadays to fight against the stereotypes of toxic masculinity, and Eddie does that better than anyone I know. Even since we were young, he would wear whatever he wanted, his favorite color has always been pink, he has always styled his hair a certain way, he has never been afraid to cry or to admit when he's scared or feeling sad or when he doesn't understand something.

In this family I would say we all fight against those stereotypes and that toxicity in different ways, but Eddie has been at the forefront leading the way for us for a long time. And I would say that the freedom, as a man, to open up about your feelings and wear what you want, and have stereotypically 'feminine' hobbies, is such a relief and opens your eyes to a lot of important things men should know but probably usually don't.

He's an inspiration to me.