❦♰❀ reddie smut ☿✿☆

57. warm me up

by: basilintime

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Eddie had always been a fan of socks. They had always felt like a way to express himself even when his job, school, life or wife had dictated for his wardrobe to be otherwise traditional. Colorful socks were easy to get away with even when you were wearing a suit for a business trip.

              Clothes were something he was reclaiming a bit now that Myra was out of the picture. It was something that Richie teased him about a bit, always in a gentle way, for his choice of muted colored shirts and jeans. It was during one of his trips to try and find a new pair of shoes that he noticed the display of socks in the women's section of the store. Ankle socks, knee socks and then ones that seemed to stretch even further.

              There was one pair that caught his eye. Eddie paused and stared at them for a long moment as he debated whether he should follow the instinct to buy them. They were like his old socks when he was younger. White with red at the top only they were long. Far longer. Thigh highs.

              "Are you thinking about a pair of those for your girlfriend for Christmas?"

              Eddie startled a bit when the voice spoke up brightly behind him and he turned to find one of the salespeople giving him a questioning smile. He felt his face grow hot as he grabbed the socks off the rack quickly and shoved them in the basket.

              "Yep, yeah. I'm good, thanks." Eddie stammered the words out before stomping away around the corner. The moment he was out of sight he pressed his back against the shelves of shoes and took a deep breath. He knew he shouldn't have reacted that way but between the immediate assumption of heteronormativity and the fact that it couldn't have been further from the truth of the situation had made him panic.

              Eddie had taken a few seconds to calm down before he finally looked down into the basket at the socks. He realized as he did that it wasn't a single pair but two that were packaged together. The inverse of each other. The white socks with red bands that had caught his eyes and a pair that was dark red with white bands at the top which felt infinitely more...something. Just more. Eddie buried the socks in the bottom of his basket with a few random selected packs of plain white socks from the shelves before moving to find himself a new pair of boots to wear for the winter weather that was setting in.

*

              Eddie took to wearing the socks when he was home alone to try them out before he let Richie see them. First, beneath his sweatpants as he moved around their small Seattle apartment while Rich was off working on auditions and shows. He had a hard time pinning down how they made him feel. Special was one way. The fabric stretching all the way up his legs, smooth and warm and a bit like a secret. There had been one day Richie got him earlier than expected and Eddie had still been wearing them under his sweats. He'd felt as if Richie was going to be able to tell and part of him had hoped that he would call him on it.

              Richie hadn't noticed though and Eddie had slipped them off in the bathroom before they'd gone to bed.

              Next, Eddie moved up to wearing the socks with just his boxer-briefs and a sweatshirt when he was home alone. This felt even more scandalous but even more like he was walking around in his own skin for the first time. He stuck to the white socks, the red ones still feeling a bit too...much. He didn't know what it was about the dark red fabric but they felt more risqué.

              Eddie liked his legs in the thigh high socks. Like the way they ended just short of the slightly over-sized sweatshirt he'd stolen from Richie's side of the closet. Richie was gone a lot right then, trying to get new material pinned down for starting a rotation of local shows as a new sort of 'debut' tour. He could tell that he was nervous about it. There had been a lot of changes for them both between moving in together in a different state, both of them making drastic changes in regards to work and coming out as a couple. The return to the stage for stand-up had been weighing on Richie a lot.