It was like being stuck in an elevator... with a minibar and the most attractive man Richie had ever met. They did end up playing I Spy. It quickly devolved into Punch Buggy, and there were a lot more punches than buggies. The police still hadn't arrived by the time Richie called uncle.
After that, they played Twenty Questions, or Eddie asked twenty questions, and Richie played along.
"Have you ever thought about marriage?"
"Nah, man. I'm so deep in the closet the only guy I could marry is that nymph from Narnia. James McCavoy is hot, but he's not, like, marriage material."
Richie kept waiting for the panic attack to hit. He was short of breath, and his heart was beating so fast, it was like he had his own personal drum roll (something Richie had always dreamed of, actually), but it had nothing to do with adrenaline. He once researched the neurochemical effects of love (in a drunken attempt to replicate them with actual chemicals), and if he remembered correctly, it was dopamine, norepinephrine, and oxytocin turning his brain into an emotional Slip 'N Slide.
"No, I mean…" Eddie blushed. "Like a…"
"What? A beard?"
Eddie shrugged. The conversation seemed to make him more uncomfortable than their low-speed car chase, but he had introduced the topic. Richie was just shaking the topic's hand, and making awkward small talk with it.
"Nah, I can't pull off a beard." He joked. "Besides, I just couldn't do that to a woman. Even if she was in on it. I would feel guilty for— for holding her back, you know?"
Eddie smiled, but he didn't look happy about it.
"Eds?"
"Don't call me that." He sighed again. Either that, or he had asthma.
"Are you okay?" asked Richie. Maybe Eddie was having a panic attack. That was stupid. Why would—
"I'm married."
"Yeah, I noticed the ring," said Richie, because he was an idiot, and now Eddie would know he'd been checking for a—
"I'm gay," said Eddie. "I think. I didn't know. I guess it was, like, repression?" His voice had gone small and soft, but it wasn't as cute as it should have been, because it had also gone sad.
"Compulsive heterosexuality," said Richie. "It'll get you every time. Like running."
"Like..." At least he didn't look sad anymore, even if he did look mildly concerned for Richie's sanity. "Richie, gay people run. I run."
"Well, yeah, but you just admitted to being a victim of comphet," said Richie.
"I'm also a victim of gaslighting," said Eddie. He sounded surprised, and Richie wondered if he was usually less honest too.
"Is that like when you're a kid, and the local bully tries to set you on fire, because you're a 'flaming' gay?"
"Wh— No. Where did you grow up?"
"Derry," said Richie.
"Who?"
He laughed. "Not who. Where. I grew up in Derry, Maine. It's a small town, 'bout halfway between Bangor and Bucksport."
"So did I."
"Wait. What? Wait," said Richie. "What?"
"I grew up in Derry."
"Two seconds ago you thought I was talking about a person."
"I forgot."
"Lucky you," he said, but Eddie's doe-eyes had become impossibly bigger. "Hey, what's wrong? So a small town was forgettable. Hell, I couldn't have sworn to knowing its name until you asked. There's nothing scary about Derry, apart from Henry B—"
"—Bowers," Eddie finished.
Richie whistled. "Man, he got around."
"We must have gone to the same school. Why can't I remember you?" Eddie glared at him, as if it was Richie's fault for not being memorable enough.
He made the 'I dunno'' noise. "I don't remember much of my childhood, but I just figured that was the drugs. Oh, quit looking at me like that. It was just weed. Oprah smokes weed."
"Does she?"
Richie made the noise again, but with extra emphasis on the uh. "Like, probably? Can you imagine how stressful it is to be Oprah? Celebrity's a fickle friend."
"How would you know?" Eddie was still glaring, eyes narrowed like looks could kill and he was focusing his scope.
"So if you were such a goody two-shoes, why don't you remember me?"
Eddie's look lost its focus but not its intensity. "My mom didn't let me out much. She told me I was sick. Gave me placebos." There was an unusual emphasis on 'placebos', like he'd said it so much the word had lost its meaning.
Richie frowned. "Like the Sixth Sense?"
"No, that's Munchhausen's by Proxy. My mom didn't actually make me sick."
"Mental health is important too," said Richie. "Or so I've been told."
Eddie's intensity focused back on him. Richie tried not to like it. "Are you okay?"
"I'm peachy," said Richie. "Haven't you ever heard of Millennial humor?"
"You're not a Millennial."
"Well…" Richie half-shrugged. "I'm okay enough."
It was supposed to be easier, admitting things to strangers, but not when you were famous, and anyway, Eddie didn't feel like a stranger. Everything about him was familiar, down to the furrow between his possibly sentient eyebrows.
"Do you still do weed?"
"Lookin' to score, Eds?" The furrow didn't go away, so Richie reached out a thumb to smooth it down.
"Don't call me that," said Eddie, but nothing about the thumb, which Richie had belatedly realized was pretty fucking creepy. So of course, he did it again. "There were rumors you did coke."
"Not for a while."
"Why?" asked Eddie.
"Why'd I quit or start?"
"Start."
"It just felt like there was this…"
"Hole," Eddie finished his sentence. "That nothing could fill."
"Yeah," Richie agreed. Then, "Insert obligatory sex joke."
"They're not actually obligatory, you know."
Eddie didn't feel like a stranger, but that did nothing to explain why his fingers encircling Richie's wrist felt like Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth, and when had that happened?
Richie hadn't been this honest since his last for-stakes game of Truth or Dare, which… he couldn't actually remember. Not the truths, or the dares, or the other players. Just the stakes. Shower caps. They were playing for shower caps.
"Do you wanna' play Truth or Dare?" he asked Eddie.
"Okay," said Eddie, but his hand was still on Richie's chest, and when had that happened? "I'll go first. I pick dare."
"That sounds like a dare," said Richie.
"Well?" It was difficult to tell with such dark irises, but Eddie's pupils looked blown. "Are you chicken?"
"No," Richie lied. Tin cans on a string could have picked up the signals Eddie was giving off, but Richie's brain was a news ticker of: It's dark in the limo. He was reaching for the door again. He was just being polite. Limo drivers were trained in etiquette, right? Not just insanely sexy action movie stunt driving.
"I am," said Eddie. "All the time. About everything. Germs, small talk, speeches, eye contact, viruses, driving, flying, being sung to, doors that aren't explicitly labeled Push or Pull. But not about you."
"I dare you to kiss me," said Richie.
Eddie smiled like he was proud, and that smile was still on his lips when he pressed them to Richie's. It was perfect. Richie's third shrink kept telling him that perfection was just a way to ruin something good, but she had obviously never met Eddie—
"Kaspbrak!"
The word was muffled, but Eddie did the sensible thing and stopped kissing him before speaking.
"What?"
"You're Eddie Kaspbrak. Eds. You're Eds. You wore two fanny packs, and your mother was Sonia Kaspbrak, or maybe Jabba the Hutt. That part's still a little fuzzy. Oh! Oh! You called them gazebos!"
"You do know me!" Eddie pointed at him, all j'accuse.
"I've loved you forever," said Richie. "Except for a thirty year period where I never thought about you."
"Oh..." Eddie pressed his palm harder to Richie's chest, as if deciphering the morse code of his heartbeats. "Beep, beep, Richie."
This time, Richie kissed him.