𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐡.

𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 | 𝐞 & 𝐫

While the actions and conversations that transpired after Richie's words won't be shared, it is definite that the car ride back to the cabin possessed a deafening silence.

Eddie was silent, simply looking out of the window. The scenery outside wasn't anything to stare so intently about - the trees were flourishing quite nicely as the Maine summer was progressing, coming closer and closer each day. The casual shade that they provided and how they dimmed the lights while Richie drove down the ever winding road back to the cabin was almost nice. The blaring heat was dulled by such trees, which seemed to almost be looming like persistent rain clouds that would not cease in humid, almost sticky late summers. The tar on the road, which had turned to a cracked, dark grey appearance over time, certainly had seen better days. While not unbearable, there were potholes and cracks in the road that made Richie's anxious nausea mixed with a sudden wave of car sickness make him want to jump out of the car and leave the world all alone at first. Soon, Richie didn't mind it, or rather, mind anything.

The window was hot, almost sizzling, which to Richie's dismay, he discovered when he accidentally reached for the seatbelt and felt just how painfully oppressive the hotness felt upon his bruised knuckles.

He wondered how Eddie could even bear to rest his head on the window, not wincing from any pain from temperature, but merely effortlessly gazing at what looked to be nothing. Based on the view, Richie could tell Eddie was not looking at the scenery and spring-blooming outdoors, but rather through it. It was sort of the equivalent to what Richie himself was doing, he was driving, but he wasn't paying attention to the road, a thing to which driving instructors would likely scold him for.

He was on autopilot.

His stream of conscience was like a lazy river, flowing carelessly, sometimes guiding along the occasion leaf or branch that had made its way down into the opaque, absent-minded waters. For one of the first times in the past few days he'd spent with Eddie, he wasn't thinking.

He thought this was what he had wanted - to be free from the shackles of his own mental judgement, holding him captive by the chains of every thought or every word he'd wanted to escape from the opening of his lips. The things he knew he couldn't say but yearned so badly, so impossibly, to just speak aloud. The shackles were free and the chains seemingly were as well, but not in the untroubled and freewheeling way he'd truly hoped for. His state of mind wasn't peaceful. It was ignoring the problems - well, no, not ignoring them, but having a strong disconnect with them. It was almost as if nothing was real - everything looked glazed over, painted over. The sky looked like a two dimensional flat plain painted with streaks of a gradient-like light azure or sapphire shade, the likes of which Richie had never seen before. The clouds were merely white blobs that held no power or no definite position, and the sun, despite the temperature still reaching Richie, was just a distant, infrared orb, floating in the sky aimlessly.

Normally, Richie would have been panicked by the sudden flashes between reality and some cartoon universe his mind had conjured up, but all he could do was drive. He was fixated on driving. One task after another. Like Eddie said, if he kept himself busy, he wouldn't have to think about the larger picture.

The only other thing Richie's mind could be tasked with was occasionally glancing back at Eddie, wondering if he were the one who died. While this may seem like a joke in rather poor taste, Richie genuinely wondered while Eddie sat next to him and would close his eyes or stop making those casual twitches or sudden jerks in movement he'd sometimes make due to the car jolting him, likely waking him from his attempted slumber, if his heart did in fact stop beating - (How would I know? I've never been close to you long enough to hear it to pick up on any particular rhythmic values and patterns that it would repeat without you pulling away, or without us getting into some meaningless fight).

Richie would, much to his relief, get his answer when he saw Eddie's eyes open for just a moment, looking all crystalline and honey glazed in the sunlight as they did. Or when he'd see his tender and outrageously smooth hands methodically fiddle with the seatbelt around him in the slightest way. Or when he'd draw in a short, yet harsh breath, which almost directly felt like his own way of signaling 'Yes, I am alive. No, I do not care if you are.' Did Eddie know he was speaking volumes in his inhales, or is that all they were, inhales?

Eddie's head on the window felt scorching, him practically feeling his hair frantically crying for help with the ocean salted sweat that dripped from it down the sides of his face like his tears from a few nights ago. Both cries for help, neither received by anyone.

Almost anyone.

Eddie obsessively stared through the window, making the sight that was nothing to make much ado about look like the most interesting scene anyone's pure eyes had ever set their glances upon. The heat was extreme, seeming to be the hottest day of the year, especially at the particular point of spring Maine had reached. It was a time full of light and new birth, yet every time he looked at his only painful light of his life besides the sun, he felt something shrivel up and die inside himself.

Looking at Richie or the sun was not his main source of pain as they'd usually been. It was the actual death that was upon his mind, lurking and searching for just the right moment, just the right entrance to the deeply emotional part of his soul that was guarded twenty four seven by marksmen and soldiers with firearms, guarding in like the entrance to a wall, or a temple with something valuable inside. Eddie's concern was that if the feelings crept their way into his soul, he wouldn't feel as bad as he should feel.

As bad as he should feel.

As bad as he should feel.

He didn't want to feel pain stricken by the loss, but part of him yearned for a touch of that reality to reach into his soul so that he'd see how he'd react. Would he be angry? Would he be depressed? Would he be disturbed? Would he be upset?

Would he only feel that way because he was supposed to?

The games his own mind was playing on him was worse than the mind games he and Richie would play. At least those had some feeling of enjoyment. Arousal. Satisfaction. Lust, maybe. These recurring feelings Eddie was feeling everytime Richie's words "He's dead" echoed through his hollowed out mind held none of those feelings. Eddie couldn't even describe the feelings. The pain would be too much to bear if he even tried to connect with them, more or less started to resonate with him.

More than he could take.