Love Will Find A Way

12

Mike Hanlon is only slightly worried that Richie hasn't come back to their shared apartment since he left to go shopping that morning. Richie does this a lot - leaves, doesn't come back, doesn't call, and then shows up a few days later and acts like nothing ever happened.

This doesn't bother Mike, not really. He knows Richie's got some stuff that he needs to get away from every once in a while. That's okay - it really is. Mike gets it.

His worry goes up by 75%, at least, when Stanley Uris calls him at 2 PM on a Tuesday. "Tozier-Hanlon residence, this is Mike Hanlon speaking," he says into the phone - a line he and Richie came up with when they first moved in with each other, a line they practiced often, and a line that only Mike uses.

"It's Stan."

Mike raises his eyebrows. "Hey, Stan. What's up?"

"It's about Eddie," he says, wasting no time in easing his way in. "Can you get over to Bill's as soon as possible?"

"Bill's?"

"Can you?"

Sighing, Mike agrees and tells Stan he'll be there in ten minutes. He can hear the relief in Stan's voice when he says goodbye.

The car ride to Bill's feels longer than it actually is. He spends it biting his nails and thinking about everything that could have happened. Stan had said it was about Eddie, which, okay. That doesn't really help Mike with anything. When Stan had sounded worried he's figured it was about Eddie, who's been MIA with all of the losers except for Richie for the last month. Mike's heard Richie and Eddie's conversation's, but they've only made him more confused. They were always brief, always the same questions: "How are you?" and "How are things with Jake?"

Mike thinks maybe Jake and Eddie got in argument and it upset Eddie. It makes sense, right? It's a reasonable explanation, the only one he was able to pull from Richie's conversations with Eddie, because Richie always walked away from the phone and pretended like nothing had happened when they were done talking.

"Was that Eddie?" Mike asks after the third phone call, eyes moving from the TV screen to where Richie stands. Richie turns to look at him with a smile, but it doesn't reach his eyes.

"Yeah," he says, leaning against the doorframe of his bedroom. "Yeah, that was m'Eds. Why?"

Mike doesn't miss the way Richie calls Eddie 'm'Eds', which is a shorter version of 'My Eds', which he also used to call Eddie, even when the smaller boy wasn't around. He thinks about asking Richie about that, instead, because it's been bothering him for years, but he sticks with his initial intention. "Is he okay?"

"Yeah," Richie responds quickly - too quickly. "He's good."

"Having relationship problems?"

Richie stops smiling at this, and looks over his shoulder at his bedroom. He doesn't look back at Mike when he says, "Something like that," and disappears into his room.

The conversations happened daily. Same questions, same occasional whispered "Eds," from Richie. Same sad Richie walking back to his room without saying a word, and not emerging until breakfast the next day. Richie had even stopped leaving to go who knows where for a day or two, in order to keep in touch with Eddie.

"You love him?" Mike asks on the eleventh day, because it has to be done.

Richie looks at him with his eyebrows pulled together. The 'who?' goes unsaid as Mike nods his head to the phone on the wall. Richie doesn't move his facial expression. Not that Mike had expected him to. "Yeah," he says quietly. "We all do, Mike."

"Yeah, but -" Mike doesn't know how to say it. "You love him."

Mike can tell Richie knows what he means, can see it in the way his eyes soften around the edges. Richie looks at his mismatched socks, and sighs. "We all do," he says again, and walks out of sight.