float away

stan: hey eddie what r u being for halloween

this is when all the rest of the losers find out that ben has a boat. and like, not in the rich person way, but like he Actually Knows How To Sail. richie is simultaneously Very Nonchalant and Extremely Dubious about actually being on a boat, because contradiction in terms, that’s richie tozier, but he cajoles stan about it after mike mentions seeing boats for hire and bev mentions that ben can sail (cue blushing. january fucking embers, man. richie’s never going to get over the way they look at each other.) but he doesn’t account for patty, who immediately says it sounds like fun, and stan raises his eyebrows but agrees, soft and amused, a slow and sweet smile spreading across his face, and the losers could love patty for giving stan that expression alone (but she’s also really cool, and richie told stan she was too cool for him, and stan was like, “noted”, with a grin so wide on his face that nobody even beeped richie for it). anyway they end up on the boat and eddie is Prepared, Obviously, but richie refuses to have a life jacket anywhere near him, let alone on his body (“it’s like the fucking showercaps again,” stan mutters, and richie swats him. eddie laughs, though, bright and warm and full of light, and the losers all pause for a second to soak it in). bev and mike are playing charades with bill and patty, laughing so hard they’re almost in tears, and richie catches ben looking at them and Rolls His Eyes because oh my god, ben is So In Love, but he doesn’t say anything, just this once. would love for it to be bc he decided to be tactful but in actuality, he sees a bird and stands up immediately to point it out to stan and ask if it‘s Something Exciting (it was a seagull) but before he can, Gravity Occurs (as is wont to happen, when you’re over six feet tall and suddenly stand up on the edge of a boat) and he falls overboard.

richie’s like, “mike, what the fuck, you’re moving to fucking florida, man, and you don’t know how to swim??” & bev tells him to be quiet but mike just laughs, shrugs, spreads his hands with a helpless smile, and even richie ‘the mouth’ has nothing to say to that. he’s a little in love with him in that moment, a little in love with all of them. they all are, maybe. the sun is setting and they’re walking back from the pier and they were meant to go back to the hotel and get changed out of their still-damp clothes and go to dinner, but ben had caught sight of a house with frankly unreasonable architecture (“like, this should be physically impossible,” he’s stressing, and richie’s nodding, like, “those angles don’t even… make sense??” and the rest of the losers are rolling their eyes but it’s all fond, and bev spontaneously presses kisses to both their cheeks, and eddie isn’t even trying to hide how closely he’s listening, obviously enjoying their presence and commentary) and dragged them down a side street and they’ve just been wandering through the cobbled paths. and like, they’re forty, which is objectively too old to just be meandering without a destination, but like. this is the first time in their lives where they’ve had the sheer pleasure of just being together, in the presence of those they love, with nothing and nobody demanding things from them, pushing them, hurting them. seven losers and patty, this woman their best friend loves so much that he looks at her like she hung the moon, and they’re all halfway to loving too, just moving at their own pace.