Reddie Oneshots

Richies Guitar Pt. 9

jesus christ this book is long as fuuuuuuuucckkkk
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Richie was giving himself an embolism trying to psychoanalyse Eddie. He knew it was his own fault, because he couldn't bring himself to ask the right questions, the direct questions, and kept trying to circumvent the problem by dropping hints and potential opportunities for Eddie to latch onto, which he never did.

For all intents and purposes, they acted like a couple, outside of the obvious caveat that they had to keep their liaison a secret from everyone else. Richie had thought and thought about what it was that made two people boyfriend and, well, boyfriend.

They spent time alone together, they made each other laugh, they talked constantly; but that was also true of them when they were friends. They kissed each other, aroused each other, and were intimate with each other; but that could also be true of two strangers on a first meeting.

It was the little things that made the difference. Like sharing parts of themselves that they'd never shared before, holding hands and long embraces and cheek kisses, doing things for each other, making sacrifices, working, trying, fighting and resolving, and the words, the almost words, the almost phrases that almost meant.

Yet, Eddie never called Richie his boyfriend. He never said that he loved Richie. He never even said that he liked Richie. He said that he wanted Richie, but Richie wasn't sure if that was the same. He never called Richie anything other than a friend, or a best friend. He said there was a this. There was a here. But there wasn't a label.

He felt like Eddie used to, poring over the list of chemicals in a new processed food, trying to make sense of all the little ingredients and figure out: is this going to kill me?

Richie stared at himself in the mirror, trying to work up the courage to even ask the questions out loud to himself, but he never could establish what the right wording was. Would it be better to ask Eddie to be his boyfriend, or ask if Eddie already was his boyfriend, or ask if that was something Eddie had even thought about wanting to be called or call him in return?

It could be a step too far. After all, lots of people dated for days or weeks or months before calling themselves a boyfriend, before calling it a relationship. Richie forgot what it was called in the interim period. Seeing each other. Going out. Dating. Together.

Maybe even that was too much. So then, it would be best to gauge the strength of Eddie's affections towards him first. There were so many degrees of affection, and Richie felt he knew them all like the back of his hand, because any that he'd experienced were in direct comparison to the unconditional, encompassing love he felt for Eddie.

A crush, a passing fancy, a curiosity, a pining, a yearning, an attraction, a liking, a fling, a dalliance, an awakening, a desire, a passion, an obsession, a romance, a love, a true love, a soulmate. Richie groaned. The lines between friendship and sex and love were so blurry, like the world without his glasses.

If Eddie didn't like him romantically, even if he liked him platonically and sexually, then it was a moot point, because Richie was in love with him. Unless Eddie reciprocated his feelings on an emotional level, then it wasn't enough, and Richie was going to get hurt at some point. They needed to be on the same page or get on the same page.

He rubbed his eyes. There was such a narrow window of hope, such a wide set of parameters which built the pillars of the best case scenario, that Richie felt his disappointment was all but inevitable. It would be too perfect, too lucky, for Eddie to fall in love with Richie just as Richie had fallen in love with him.