Archive of Our Own ^beta

“STOP BLOW-DRYING YOUR HAIR! COME ON! HURRY UP, MIKE!”

“SHUT UP, RICHIE! I’M COMING! HOLD ON!”

"For fuck's sake..." Richie mumbled with an intense (and rather uncharacteristic) eye-roll. It was usually the other way around— Mike was usually ready on time and Richie was usually the one running ridiculously late. It's funny how things have changed.

Jesus.

Richie waited for his brother not-so-patiently, sat on the stairs, scuffing his sneakers on the hardwood distractedly. He could hear the hair-dryer still running. Cheek lent on his palm, he waited. “Eleven won’t give two shits about your stupid-ass hair…” he grumbled to himself. Stupid hair-dryer. Stupid brother.

Nancy had already left, that lucky bastard. Jonathan had come around in his shitty Ford LTD (Joyce was taking Will, for whatever reason) about an hour before so that they could be there early to help the decorating committee set everything up. As Richie sat on the stairs, pissed the-hell off, he could already picture it— streamers, streamers, streamers. He had skipped out on the last Snowball Dance for explicit, familial reasons, but he had been roped into this one by his brother and his friends. Eddie had also been very insistent, but that certainly wasn't the reason that he had agreed to come... right?

The thing was, he and Eddie had come to a strict agreement to meet by the front doors at 5:25. It was currently running dangerously close to 5:20 (they still had to drive there, which took 15 minutes at the very least) and Mike was still blow-drying his damn hair like the self-centered bastard that he was.

"Where's your brother?" Richie's head snapped up like an airborne bullet, his heart nearly leaping out of his chest. His mother stood there before him, her angular face pinched and taut with confusion. The family camera was clutched in her manicured hands.

"He's blow-drying his hair..." he answered simply. Then, in a more whiny voice in hope that it would appeal to her bias, he went on, "I'm supposed to meet Eddie in five minutes, Ma. We're gonna be so late because of Mike. He's really not helping my mojo here. Really."

"I thought the dance started at 6."

"Eddie wanted to meet early so that we could have some cookies and punch before they're all gone. I promised him, Ma, and now we're gonna be late. I bet that Mrs. K'll find out and she'll be mad. You don't want her to be even madder if we're even later, right?"

The latter fact seemed to be enough to convince Mrs. Wheeler of his dilemma, for she stepped around him and began to climb the stairs, two at a time, a look of determination taking over her face. She marched to the bathroom, balled her hand into a fist, and pounded harshly on the door. "MICHAEL! GET OUT HERE RIGHT NOW!"

His brother’s voice came from inside over the sound of the hair-dryer. “HOLD ON, MA! I’M ALMOST FINISHED! ONE SECOND!” Richie loomed behind his mother, waiting at the top of the stairs. The look on his face was ridiculously smug. Mike was in deep shit for once. As stated many times before, it was usually the other way around.

Mrs. Wheeler was apparently not at all satisfied with his response. In one swift motion, she turned the door-handle and pushed it open.  Mike stood there in front of the bathroom mirror, his tie knotted loosely around his neck, the hair-dryer poised in the air. Hair products, combs, and tissues were strewn all over the bathroom.

A beat of realization passed, then…

Richie let out a raucous shriek of laughter.

Mike had obviously over-done it with whole ‘blow-drying his hair’ thing. It had been under the heat and combed down for so long that it was practically stick-straight. He had it parted awkwardly down one side, the rest swooped over. His hair was usually pretty fluffy, but now it sat flat and limp on his head.

"Good Lord, Michael!" His mother exclaimed, and rushed forward quickly. She took the blow-dryer and comb out of his hands and started messing with his hair, fussing all the while. Richie, watching from the sidelines, was having the time of his goddamn life. Actual tears burned in his eyes, he had been laughing so hard. He could barely control himself anymore.

Mike couldn't stand when Richie broke out his rare hyena-laugh, especially when it was directed at him. "Shut it, Richie!" he shouted at his brother, the look on his face positively mutinous. "Stop laughing!"

That only seemed to set Richie off even more. God, he should've known.

"Stop it!"

Somehow, Richie was able to control himself enough to manage, "What the heck did you even do? I mean, that's—"

His ma, however, cut him off. Mike and Richie had been bickering non-stop since they were in the womb, it seemed, so she could definitely say that she had some experience with it. She somewhat knew how to handle it. "Richard, leave your brother alone. Go wait in the car," she demanded in a harsh tone of which would’ve easily scared anyone else.

Richie took one look at Mike's beet-red face and knew exactly what to say next: "But Maaaaaaa, I thought that you wanted to take pictures of us!" Mike was sure to flip his tits. Sweet revenge.

Richie was right, apparently. Mike looked as if steam would start furling out of his ears. "RICHIE!" he screamed, positively mortified. If Mike hated anything more than the Demogorgon and his brother (sometimes... most times), it was taking pictures. His mother always showed the pictures to their stupid, gossipy friends and they always commented something along these lines: 'Oh, your boys are so cute! Look how much they've grown! Those outfits are precious!' Jesus, ladies, we get it!

His mother bobbed her head half-attentively. Mike visibly winced as she pulled a knot in his hair. "You're right. Go wait by the door with the camera."

And with one last look at Mike's not-so-picture-perfect hair, Richie turned on his heels and stalked off.

That was totally worth it.

The camera had flashed so many times, Mike was sure that he would see those three spots every time he closed his eyes for the rest of his life.

It was about the sixth attempt at the 'perfect' picture (at least by his mother's standards), and Richie was still enthusiastically beaming into the camera. Mike, however, could care less about how the pictures turned out. Thankfully, his mother had been able to salvage his hair and had restored it to its fluffy normalcy, but it wasn't anything like he had originally wanted it.

By the time the seventh Polaroid fell out of the camera, Mike was at his wits-end. "All right, that's enough!" he insisted.

He and Richie had been forced to stand at the bottom of the staircase for their pictures. There was a strand of garland coiled around the wooden railing, topped off with red Christmas bows. Richie had his arm casually slung over one of Mike's shoulders. He was moving his damn arm so much that it was pushing around the shoulder-pads that Mrs. Wheeler had forced Mike to wear. He was probably doing it on purpose, that dick.

Mrs. Wheeler went on as if she hadn't heard him, "You two look so handsome!" 

"MA!" Mike whined in annoyance.

"C'mon, Mike! Smile!"

He cracked the smallest of smiles. The camera flashed and the Polaroid fell out.

"There! Are we done yet?" Mike didn't wait for an answer, he shoved Richie's arm off his shoulder. Mrs. Wheeler appeared to agree (reluctantly, at that), and set the camera and the pictures down on the side table near the front door.

The clock over the mantle read 5:43. Eddie, Richie could practically sense it, was gonna be beyond pissed at him. At least they'd be on time for the dance.

They weren't on time.

Mrs. Wheeler had forced Richie to put on different shoes (what was wrong with sneakers, anyway?) and finding them had shaved about 8 minutes off of their time because Richie had them lodged into the back of his closet, so they rolled into the Hawkins Middle School parking-lot at roughly 6:11, over 45 minutes later than what Richie had promised Eddie.

Richie and Mike were out of the car practically before it had even stopped moving. Mrs. Wheeler barely had enough time to shout her usual "Have fun, boys!" as they sprinted toward the double-doors, their dress shoes slapping loudly against the jagged concrete. Richie shoved one open and Mike slipped in behind him, both settling on fast-walking over to Mr. Clarke, who was checking the tickets. Mike fished two out of his coat pocket and handed them over to Mr. Clarke with a canned smile.

Their teacher commented on how nicely they had cleaned up, and Mike thanked him. He went on to rip their tickets, and as they waited, they shuffled their feet distractedly. As Mike watched Mr. Clarke, Richie looked around idly. After a moment, his searching eyes snagged on Nancy, who was standing by the door, divvying out punch. He elbowed Mike to catch his attention, and cocked his head toward her. Mr. Clarke handed them back their tickets (they shoved them deep into their pockets only to be forgotten and probably sent through the wash), and, after they both thanked him briefly, they slipped into the decked-out gym and ambled over to Nancy.

An upbeat, poppy Cindy Lauper song that neither Richie nor Mike knew was blaring through the speakers, infiltrating their very thoughts. There were shiny, blue streamers, some with crepe paper and others with plastic coating, everywhere just as Richie had predicted. "Nance!" Richie exclaimed excitedly. "How's the punch?"

She addressed him with a raised brow. "Not spiked, if that's what you're asking. I've been personally selected to make sure no one slips anything into it..." Lord, if Richie knew anything about his older sister, it was that she was practically dying to slip something into it and see how all these middle school punks would react to it. She was too much of a teacher's pet— too much of a rule-follower— to actually do it. Maybe if the terms were different.

"Damn, well that's no fun..." he said.

She nodded, but then chose better of it. "You know, Rich, Eddie was looking all over for you earlier. At first, he seemed pissed. Then, I guess, he was worried. Not sure where he is now, though. He's probably wallowing in his own tears, searching far and wide for a replacement daaaaaaaate."

"Richie!" A familiar voice shouted from somewhere behind them. Ignoring Nancy's remark, Richie whirled around on his heels, and after a moment of searching, his eyes settled upon (speak of the 'devil') Eddie Kaspbrak, in the flesh. He had his hair slicked over nicely in his signature quiff hairdo (though a bit more tamed than usual, not a single strand out of place). A red bow-tie complimented his navy blue sweater and blazer. He had on black slacks with a belt to match. He wore an expression that Richie had seen on him a thousand times before, though, this time, there was something else underneath it of which he couldn't quite decipher. "Where the fuck have you been? You're almost an hour late!"

Richie did his best to look innocent. Meaning: he pushed the blame onto Mike. "It was Mike's fault, I'm telling you! That little prissy was fucking with his hair for, like, ever."

Mike scoffed and shook his head. "Your damn shoes made us even later! If you'd put on church shoes like a normal person, then maybe we—"

"It was mostly Mike's fault, all right?" Richie went on as if he hadn't heard him, attesting for his case. "I was ready at 5 o'clock. I wasn't gonna be late, I promise!"

"You were ready at, like, 5:20! You did nothing until Ma forced you to change your shoes! I mean, you can't wear sneakers to a dance!"

"Yes, you can! Are you cr-azy?! What are you, like 50 years old?!"

"I'm not—"

"STOP IT! JESUS!" Eddie shouted over them, wild-eyed. Thankfully, it put an end to their incessant bickering and both shut their mouths obediently. Eddie had that kind of power over people.

Nancy looked over at him with a kind of wonderful admiration. She had always liked how Eddie wasn't afraid of yelling at them— risking hurting their feelings— to make them shut their traps for once. "I don't care that you're late— not anymore," he admitted. He then took Richie by his wrist and pulled him over to where Lucas, Max, and Will were all sat around a table. Mike stared after them for a moment, then went on to talk to Nancy for a few more minutes, his arms crossed securely over his chest.

"You and Mike have to stop fighting like that all the fucking time..." Eddie remarked as they crossed the makeshift dance floor. "I mean, it's a serious problem. You guys never used to fight this much."

"Mike makes me madder than anyone else. We can't help that we wanna rip each other's throats out," Richie insisted with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders.

"Jesus!"

"It's the charm of the profession," Richie mused, ramming his hands into the pockets of his brown corduroy slacks. "You don't have a brother like Mike, so you wouldn't understand that."

"Mike isn't so bad, all right?" Eddie admitted, and when Richie tried to protest, he went on quickly, "And I know what it feels like to want to rip someone's throat out. Usually, I get the feeling around you."

"You don't really mean that, do you Eds?"

A beat of silence went by between them, before... "Don't call me that."

"Jeezum-CROW!" Richie cried in mock horror, clutching his chest dramatically. His raucous volume earned weird looks from several people nearby. "You do!" And, after a moment, the smile was back on his freckled face— as crooked and as buck-toothed as ever. Unconsciously, he flattened down his hair as he and Eddie approached the table that their friends were sat.

Max saw them before the others did. The very first thing that she noticed was Richie's outfit and, before she could so much as help herself, she burst out laughing. "SHIT, Richie!" she exclaimed. "Your clothes actually match!" Lucas and Will, who had previously been in a deep conversation about E.T.'s cinematography, followed her gaze and, after a moment, started laughing along with her.

In return, Richie struck three ridiculous model poses, showing off his matching outfit even further.

In this outfit, he looked more like Mike than he ever had before. He too had on cords, but his were tan. He also wore a knitted sweater over his shirt and tie, but his was solid and blue while Mike's was patterned. Thankfully, his mother hadn't been able to force him into the blazer. He would've pitched quite the fit.

"Thank you! Thank you!" he proclaimed dramatically. "This is truuuuly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! I'm thankful you're here to share it with me!" He ended with a dramatic spin, his church shoes squealing shrilly against the polished floor.

In this outfit, he looked more like Mike than he ever had before. He too had on cords, but his were tan. He also wore a knitted sweater over his shirt and tie, but his was light blue. Thankfully, his mother hadn't been able to force him into that ugly-ass blazer.

Eddie suppressed a full-body wince at the sound of Richie's shoes. Nevertheless, he went on to retort, "Be sure to tell Mrs. Wheeler thanks for actually knowing how to put outfits together. You could really learn something from her."

"If he wanted to, he could probably learn something from Mike," Will pointed out.

"Hey, my fashion sense is one-of-a-kind!" Richie protested with conviction. "Mike looks into his closet every day and thinks 'Hmm, what would make that weird, wrinkly old lady down the street invite me as her plus-one to BINGO next Tuesday? Maybe she'll even take me out for ice cream afterward!'"

"What about you, Rich?" A voice rose from somewhere behind him— clearly distinguishable as Mike's. "You look into your closet every day and think 'Hmm, what do I have to wear to make anyone fall over and die from sensory-overload via color?'"

Richie whirled around, "Well, you dress like you belong in Granny Wheeler's wet-dreams!"

A collective wince rippled down the line (sans for Max, however, who looked rather amused, to say the least).

"UGH! JESUS! Eat shit and die!" Mike snarled with such ferocity that it rivaled Max in her worst bout of fury.

Just then, Richie opened his mouth to say something else, but closed it promptly when he realized that everyone else was staring at something over his shoulder— not paying even the slightest bit of attention to him. He whirled around just in time to see Dustin in the process of some weird sort of spin, showing himself off (or, more specifically, his new Steve-esque hairstyle). That fucking stud! 

After a short double-take to which Richie inspected Dustin's new hairdo with closer scrutiny, he cried, (at the same time was Mike, mind you), "Holy shit, what happened to you?!"

It took a moment (and five pairs of eyes) for them to realize what had happened. Richie and Mike shared a look of furrowed brows, parted lips, and wide-eyes. This whole speaking-at-the-same-time thing had happened before, but never with actual full-blown sentences. Their voices had sounded so uncannily similar and different at the same time, that it was thoroughly mind-boggling. Peculiarly, they had even spoken in the same rhythm.

Mike cleared his throat, feeling weirdly heavy underneath such scrutiny, and went on as if nothing had happened in the first place, "What happened to your hair?!"

Dustin tried to answer, but Lucas spoke over him, "I mean, is there a bird nesting in there or something?!" Snickering, he tried to touch Dustin's new slicked-back hair and search it for any birds and/or bird eggs, only for his hands to be slapped away.

By this time, the others were laughing along with them, personally choosing to partake in Picking-On-Dustin hour.

"What do you mean?! There's no bird nesting in here, asshole!" Dustin proclaimed defensively. "This is the real shit, all right? Stop messing with me! I worked hard on this thing!"

"God, you look like Steve!" Eddie exclaimed. All this talk about hair had caused him to remember his own, and he found himself trying to smooth it down to ensure that it all still in place. However, before anyone could say anything further, Time After Time by Cindy-fucking-Lauper (more Cindy Lauper?! Jesus! Who was playing this stuff?! Richie thought dully) started blaring from the speakers. As if led by Cindy Lauper's spirit herself, couples started to formulate for the very first 'slow song' of the evening.

After a breath to assemble what courage that he did have (which was not much and, by the way, that breath-of-courage didn't work at all), Lucas turned to Max with a crooked smile. "Hey, it's nice, right? The music?" She sent him a look of furrowed brows, her lips drawn into a thin line. He ventured on, however, fumbling terribly, "Do you maybe wanna... You wanna like, you know? Like, you and me...?" Richie had to bite down on his tongue, really hard, to suppress the upcoming word-vomit and subsequent gibe at Lucas' technique.

This time, however, Max seemed to have been able to decipher some of Lucas' fumbled request. "Are you trying to ask me to dance, Stalker?"

Lucas, unsure of how she felt about it, tried to take back what he had said before. To be fair, her emotions were ridiculously hard to read. "No, of course not. Unless..." he paused briefly, checking her reaction once more. Still, he found no indicator of anything. "You want to?"

Max chuckled, "Very smooth..." She went on to take his wrist and pull him onto the dance floor. Lucas, wide-eyed with surprise, simply let Max lead him. He looked back only once, at Mike. He smirked in what could only be translated to: I can do it, too! Mike raised his eyebrows, shaking his head.

Time After Time was both all-encompassing and mind-numbing. Now that Lucas and Max were out of ear-shot, Richie almost said something clever about how difficult that was to watch, but his eyes snagged on Dustin's face and the words died on his tongue. He looked so... regretful. Will seemed to have noticed it too, and almost said something about it, but once more, someone cut someone else off.

"Hey, Zombie-Boy, do you wanna dance?"

The voice was that of a small girl from their grade. Her dark brown hair swished as she shifted from foot-to-foot, obviously rather nervous to have broken the whole boy-asks-the-girl rule. She had freckles of which practically glowed in the artificial light. Will could admit that she was pretty, but he still somehow found himself skeptical as to whether or not he should definitively answer her. He didn't want to be rude, but he was also... confused.

"Uh, I mean. Uh..." he stammered uncertainly. Richie elbowed him. "I mean, uh. Yeah, I guess."

She beamed. Her dimples flashed.

His stomach sank. He followed her onto the dance floor, his feet moving on auto-pilot, his mind on overdrive. As he went, he and Eddie shared a look of which said it all: What am I doing? This isn't right. And then, they started to dance. All Will could do was focus on trying not to stomp on her feet (she was wearing flats, and he was terrified of making her upset with him).

Meanwhile, on the sidelines, Dustin broke the silence (at least that of their rapidly-thinning group). "Wish me luck, boys," he said, and any remnants of his previous envy had simply... vanished. "I'm goin' in." He winked at them over-dramatically as he moved across the dance floor, headed straight toward a cluster of girls from their grade.

Seeing that among them were probably the cruelest, bitchiest people in all of Hawkins, Richie let out a low whistle. "Damn... he's gonna be killed."

Mike bobbed his head. "Eaten alive," he added.

"Burned at the stake," Eddie went on. His admittedly morbid suggestion had earned curious looks from both Mike and Richie, brows raised. "What?” he asked, shrugging his shoulders. “Why're you guys looking at me like that?” 

“I think Eddie’s gonna be a serial killer one day, don't you, Mike?” Richie turned to his brother with a raised brow.

Mike nodded his curt agreement. “The worst. More so than the Zodiac Killer, I think…” Richie and Mike had watched a documentary/movie on the Zodiac Killer two nights prior (Richie had rented the movie from the rental store downtown with, of course, no parental permission). It was thoroughly embarrassing on behalf of the both of them, but they had been too scared to sleep in their own rooms that night, knowing that there was a very high chance that the Zodiac Killer was still out there. Eventually, only minutes before the sun came up, they had fallen asleep in the basement, huddled deep in their sleeping bags.

Richie shot Mike a look that translated to: Beep-beep. Richie was usually on the other end of that look.

Eddie shook his head slowly, “Mike’s the one that said ‘eaten alive’! Does that make him a cannibal?”

“It makes those girls cannibals,” Richie insisted. “They’re Man-eaters. Daryl Hall and John Oates would’ve told you so.” A self-satisfied smirk had made its way onto his face, unfaltering. Har-de-har-har-har.

“Gee-wiz, Rich. You’re a real crack-up…” Mike deadpanned.

“More like crackhead,” Eddie added with a shrug.

Richie, however, showed no indication of hearing the remark at all. It seemed that he had been too busy staring across the makeshift dance floor. With further inspection, it appeared that Richie had been staring at Dustin, who was…

Hold on.

Wait… WHAT?

Dustin was not dancing with whichever of those 'man-eating' girls that he had presumably asked, but with...

Richie elbowed Mike swiftly, and when Mike looked over at him, brows furrowed, he cocked his head toward Dustin and his slow-dancing partner. Eddie too had noticed the pair dancing innocently— platonically. In an instant, he knew that Mike and Richie would go absolutely berserk over this.

“What the fuck?” Mike choked out. “What even—?” 

Before he could even finish, Richie cut in with his own thoughts on the matter. "What about Steve?! Or... Jonathan?!" It might've made him a terrible little brother, but he had no fucking clue who his sister was dating now.

"He's not trying to date your sister, guys," Eddie tried to explain, but they couldn't see it the way that he was. They only saw what they wanted to— and that was one of their friends slow-dancing with their sister. To them, it was thoroughly mortifying.

"I can't believe he'd do that to us!" Richie exclaimed.

Mike, at a loss for words, bobbed his head in agreement.

"GODDAMMIT!" Eddie exclaimed because 1) he was this-close of losing his marbles, 2) he was tired of not being heard, and 3) it was the only way to get through to them. For a moment, they had been impenetrable walls. This seemed to have proved useful, however, for Richie and Mike finally stopped bitching and looked over at him to see what he wanted. "You're both over-dramatic, insensitive BABIES! She's only trying to make him feel better after he was REJECTED! You guys are fucking heartless!"

"I don't—I mean—She's our—" Mike fumbled over his words, unsure of how to explain it to Eddie when he'd never had a sister before... or even a sibling, for that matter. He almost went on to try and explain what it felt like, seeing the two of them slow-dancing, but something snagged his attention from across the dance floor, and his mind was suddenly wiped blank.

The song had changed, Richie realized. Another slow-song was blaring through the shitty, under-budget speakers now: Every Breath You Take by The Police. He actually really liked his song (which was surprising in itself because he was known for being pretty picky when it came to his music), but, to be honest, he thought that it was weird as hell and was undoubtedly about a stalker. He had always pictured this song playing unironically during an intense horror movie scene where the protagonist is being chased around their own house by a knife-wielding creep. He couldn't help but think of that potential horror movie now, seeing all these people slow-dancing to it.

When Mike suddenly stopped talking, Eddie and Richie looked over him to see what was the matter. His attention was, of course, elsewhere. They weren't surprised to see that Mike had been staring at Eleven, who stood by the doors in her pretty purple dress. Fucking saps.

Mike left them without a word, in some sort of love-induced trance (GAG! Richie thought). He and Eleven met in the middle of the dance floor and, after an exchange of words of which Richie could only assume to be Mike asking her if she wanted to dance, they began slowly swaying to the music (as creepy as it was).

"Disgusting! Repulsive! Nauseating!" Richie exclaimed, and, from context clues, Eddie was left to assume that he had been describing Mike and Eleven, probably just listing off synonyms for the word 'gross' from the Thesaurus in his head.

Eddie, of course, disagreed. "What are you talking about? I think they're sweet!"

"I think Eleven deserves better than Mike. That poor sucker was roped in by the Wheeler Charm."

"So, you think she deserves you?" Eddie said skeptically. Truth be told, imagining Eleven with Richie instead of Mike made Eddie feel nauseous and... strange. It felt wrong.

"Woah-woah-woah, Eds!" Richie held his hands out in a 'slow-down' motion. "Did you just say that you liked me better than Mike?"

Eddie blinked, speechless. He thought that he had made it obvious. He and Richie had been friends first.

Way back when, it had not been Richie and Mike as it is now, but RichieandMike. One word. If you were friends with Mike, you were friends with Richie. If you were friends with Richie, you were friends with Mike. That's just the way that it had been. Eddie had been friends with Richie first, and that friendship had, of course, stemmed off to Mike. There were moments, as there are now, where Eddie thought about how different it would be if Richie and Mike hadn't been twins. "You should know that by now. I'm not best friends with Mike. I'm best friends with you."

The title of 'best friend' was perhaps the only one that Eddie didn't share between Richie and Mike, but with Richie alone. Even Eddie's ma, who was perhaps the cruelest, ugliest, meanest old woman for miles, knew of Mike and Richie's package-deal situation. From the first time that she had met them, she had chosen her favorite. She saw Mike exactly how she wanted to see him, which was, unsurprisingly, saintlike. She saw him as well-behaved and polite. Richie, on the other hand, she saw as ill-mannered and rude and she said that there was a special place in hell for dirty boys like Richie who didn't say 'please' and 'thank-you' after every sentence.

"I..." Richie didn't know what to say, which was an event that seldom occurred. He couldn't think of anything— not a single thing— to say in return. He redirected his attention to the middle-schoolers on the makeshift dance floor, dancing as if the song that they were moving to wasn't about a complete and total psychopathic stalker. There was something about that concerned look on Eddie's face that made Richie unable to produce coherent thoughts (not in a bad way, but in a weird, confusing way), and as he broke their stare, his words started to form again. "I think I need to step out. It's hot and stuffy in here and I can't even think straight."

"R-Right..." Eddie said, and nodded. It sounded as if he had been broken out of a trance, his voice had come out so abruptly. "Do you... Do you want...?" he fumbled. If Richie left him, he'd be alone in here and he didn't want to seem like that much of a loser, to be honest. Everyone else was preoccupied or, in other words, slow-dancing. If Richie wanted privacy, he'd let him have it, but he'd never known Richie to be one that preferred being alone to being with someone. It had always been that way.

"You can come if you want, Eds. You ain't botherin' no one." Richie insisted in an unusual Voice that Eddie couldn't recall the name of (Eddie would rather die than admit it, but he paid attention to the names Richie called his peculiar Voices). "C'mon," he said, and led Eddie around to the double-doors toward the back of the gymnasium, away from Mr. Clarke and the other adult chaperones. Eddie followed without a word, simply letting the instrumental notes of The Police's Every Breath You Take overcome his senses. He found it ironic seeing as he was an asthmatic, and he usually took breaths much faster than the average person.

Richie paused at the double-doors, turned around, and scanned the room to see if there was anyone with the power to divvy out detentions or make phone calls home was watching them. No one was. He shouldered open the door and quickly slipped out of it, Eddie directly behind him. The door clicked shut and they both let out an involuntary sigh of relief. If Richie's mother found out that he had skipped the dance, there would be hell to pay.

Why can't you be like your brother, Richie?! He's so well-behaved!

Richie shivered— not because of the cold. In fact, the cool, brisk December air was nothing but inviting. His thoughts, however, were harrowing.

He had grown to hate the word 'well-behaved' with every morsel of his being. What did it even mean anyway? People had their own definitions of it: appropriateness. Some people didn't like cursing and found it inappropriate. Richie thought differently. Cursing was colorful like... adjectives. Well-behaved, Richie thought, was the worst word in the whole, entire dictionary.

If Mrs. K found out that Eddie had skipped the dance, she would be concerned as to what in the world Eddie was doing. He would eventually have to tell her who was skipping the dance with, and that would lead to more questions that Eddie had no desire to answer. So Eddie, hoping that no one would find them out here underneath the cover of dark, lent his back against the brick walls of Hawkins Middle School and sighed.

Richie came over and stood beside him, desperately wishing that he could've smuggled his cigarettes in. On the other hand, his mother probably would've found them, flipped her tits, and sent him straight off to reform school without even his brother to keep him company. Maybe forgetting them was for the best. Eddie probably wouldn't have let him smoke them anyway.

Richie was suddenly struck with an idea. He proposed it in such an abrupt way and tone-of-voice that Eddie nearly yelped in surprise. "Let's go to the library!"

"What? Since when have you voluntarily gone to the library?" Eddie looked confused in earnest. Mike might've been the kind of kid to hide in the library during the school dance, not Richie. The idea was so far-fetched coming from his mouth that Eddie almost wanted to ask him if he was feeling all right. So maybe he was being over-dramatic, but still. This was weird.

"Since now. No one will find us there. We won't get caught," Richie insisted, and when Eddie looked over at him skeptically, he pulled that dreaded face. That pleading look could convince Eddie to do anything. Like jump off the quarry or... Okay, that wasn't the best example. There was something about that tilt of his head, that watery look in his eyes that made Eddie completely and utterly willing.

Geez, Kaspbrak, you fucking sap! Goddammit!

"Fine! If we're caught, though, I'll be the one telling you 'I told you so' as our moms run our asses into the ground."

"I promise that we won't get caught. All right?"

Promise. 

Curse Mike. Curse Richie. Curse that fucking word.

As kids, that word had been used as a sort of reassurance that you weren't being lied to because friends never told lies. It was something that you couldn't break. Ever.

"C'mon!" Richie whisper-shouted, and it was only then that Eddie realized how far away he sounded. Richie was already half-way across the schoolyard, excitedly beckoning for him to follow. Eddie scrambled to catch up with him, cursing underneath his breath.

Richie led him around the sides of the school, his back pressed against the brick as if he were a secret-spy in some sort of obscure action movie. Eddie did the same thing, playing along with it, mimicking Richie's cautious movements. Eventually, they came to another set of double-doors near the front of the school. There was no one in sight. Their only accompaniment was the water tower off in the distance, shining like a beacon in the night. Eddie almost said something about it, but bit it back down when he realized that Richie had opened the door and was waiting for Eddie to slip inside. He did so without a word.

The door clicked shut behind him, and there was only silence.

Richie moved forward slowly, straightening his glasses. His church shoes thudded on the cross-patterned floor. The library, he realized, looked eerily different under the cover of night. He hadn't been in here very many times, but he knew that it was usually basked in the sunlight of which spilled from the windows toward the back, due east. Under the cover of dark, however, the whole place was cold and dreary. In a Voice that he had only recently learned, that of Shaggy from the Scooby-Doo Saturday cartoons he and Mike had watched when they were kids, he exclaimed, "Like, Scoob! This is really starting to sCARE ME!"

The Voice had been so weirdly spot-on that it left Eddie shocked. He looked over at Richie with raised brows and a small smile. "You know, that Voice was actually pretty good," he admitted honestly. "Not terrible for once."

"For once?" Richie echoed.

"Yeah, sure. You see what I did was compliment you. I understand that you might be unfamiliar with the term, but—" Eddie said as slowly and as articulately as he would when explaining something to a toddler.

"Jesus, Eds! That one stung!" Richie exclaimed in mock hurt, clutching his chest over-dramatically. "Ole Spaghed-head Gets Off A Good One!" The comment obviously hadn't fazed him too much. Sometimes, Eddie's sarcastic wise-cracks were all Richie could coax out of him.

They wandered down the aisles aimlessly, running their fingers along the spines of captivating novels. Row after row was full to the brim with books, faced-outward, arranged meticulously. There was a such a variety, it seemed. Some sections were full of ancient tales of heroes and heroines and their dragon-fighting cohorts, while others were saturated with cold, hard facts. The dust, to be honest, didn't both Eddie too much, so long as he didn't think about it. "'Spaghed-head' is your worst nickname by far," he admitted as they turned a corner and started down another aisle.

"What about 'Pussy Destroyer'? When I was 11, I thought that name was ingenious. Regretting that now."

Eddie winced, "A close second then?"

They settled onto a velvet couch near the end of their row, positioned underneath a directory label that said 'Non-Fiction A-H' with an arrow pointing to the left. They fell onto it clumsily, somehow becoming a mound of entangled limbs. After a moment and many complaints of digging elbows and knees, they shifted themselves into a more comfortable position, though Richie still had his legs draped over Eddie's, his back lent against the armrest.

"I wonder how many people fucked on this thing," Richie shrugged nonchalantly. "I bet a lot. The library's usually empty anyway."

"Jesus!" Eddie exclaimed. He seriously debated shoving Richie off of him so that he could get as far away from this disease-infested piece of shit as possible. Richie seemed to read his mind, and stuck out his arm so that Eddie wouldn't leave.

"I'm just kidding!"

"You weren't kidding! I bet at least someone has had sex on this thing."

"You know, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that your ma and I—"

"Shut up! That's repulsive— you're repulsive!"

A beat of silence passed, then: "Tell me a secret, Spaghed-head." Richie was known to switch the topic of conversation quickly and without warning. His thoughts were unique and had always run faster than those of a normal person.

Eddie battled to need to reprimand Richie for the stupid nickname. He shook it away reluctantly. "A secret?"

"Yeah, you know, like something you've never told anybody before. I've gotta say, I'm surprised that you don't know what that means. Like, seriously, it's—"

"I know what a secret is, dumbass! I'm not stupid!" Eddie snapped defensively.

"So tell me one," Richie said as if it were that easy. "And not something boring like 'I cheated on a math test once in the third grade' but something interesting."

Eddie, however, wasted not a moment in replying. He surprised them both by admitting what had been nipping away at his mind for the last few days. It was extremely personal, and he'd never told a soul about this. Nevertheless, he admitted to Richie, "I sometimes wonder what my life would've been like if my dad hadn't died."

For a moment, Richie only blinked.

He was... surprised that Eddie had actually taken his request seriously, admitting something profound and trusting him to respond to it. He wasn't complaining, though. In fact, he was actually feeling kind of touched. His shock with Eddie's confession, however, out-weighted everything else, and he found himself unable to form words for a solid fifteen seconds.

Eddie's dad.

Eddie didn't talk about his father very often. In fact, Richie was pretty sure that they'd spoken about Mr. Kaspbrak a grand total of three times in their whole eight years of knowing each other. It was one of those things that they didn't really talk about. Sure, they talked constantly about Mrs. K's suffocating overbearing-ness, but not very often about Frank Kaspbrak and his death. Eddie was three when cancer took over his father, four when Death did the deed.

"Shit, Eds, I said secret not deep secret."

He knew in an instant that he had fucked up.

Eddie went berserk. "SHUT UP! YOU INSOLENT ASS!"

He could be intimidating if he wanted to be.

Richie winced, and not only because of the content of Eddie's words. He had made sure to reassure Eddie that they defiantly wouldn't get caught in the library after-hours, but if Eddie kept screeching like this, they were sure to be found.

Sometimes, when Richie was scared enough, he started speaking in Spanish. It was shoddy, but decent. The reason behind it was Señora Keck, his Spanish teacher. He was terrified of her and he hated her class. He had tried everything in his power to convince his mother to let him drop that stupid Spanish class, but she had insisted that he would need it in the future. You see, Señora Keck was that kind of foreign-language teacher that forced everyone to talk in the language of which they were studying. Little-to-no English was allowed in her class. Richie was reprimanded quite often for talking (not in Spanish, of course), so he knew the words 'lo siento' like the back of his hand. "Lo siento, eso fue muy estúpido." Which translated roughly to: I'm sorry, that was very stupid.

"Goddammit..." Eddie knew all about his whole Spanish-speaking defense mechanism. He took the same class as Richie.

Richie went on (in English) as if nothing had happened. He tried to mask his Spanish-speaking hysteria as another Voice. "Your dad... what do you think your life would've been like with him?"

Eddie could only blink for a moment. Richie had shown interest. It was a promising sign. "I wonder if my ma would've been the same way she is now. I mean, I only remember my life a little before my dad died, but I know that my ma wasn't as crazy as she is now. I think that my dad dying is what made her insane. I think that, because he had cancer, my ma started to freak out about my health."

Richie nodded to show that he understood. It made sense, he reasoned. "Do you think your life would've been normal? Or... you know, as normal as it could've been?"

"I don't know. I'm thinking that if... God, this sounds horrible... that if my ma was the one that died instead of my dad, I wouldn't have had to deal with taking about twenty daily medications and visit the doctor's office about ten times every month."

"How much do you remember about your dad? Has your ma said anything about the kind of person he was?"

He had talked to Richie about to the death of his father before, but only briefly. It wasn't the kind of thing that they usually talked about. Others things usually came up. Besides, Eddie's father had died so early in his life that he didn't remember much about him, so there really weren't any cool stories to tell. "Not much. My ma avoids talking about him at all costs. I brought him up a lot when I was younger— I was curious about him because everyone told stories about their dads at school and I didn't even have one— but she'd always deflect and start warning me about something else. I usually just dropped it."

"But what if your dad turned into how your ma is now? What if she was the one with cancer? I mean, it might be hard to see why, but your dad married your ma for a reason."

Eddie nodded his head slowly. He knew that his mother had been different when she was much younger (God, isn't everyone?)— he had seen pictures hidden away in boxes stuffed in the attic of her at concerts, beaming into the camera, looking about two-hundred pounds lighter.

People changed, he supposed, and death was the best way to speed that process up.

Sometimes, he imagined his father looking down on him from heaven. Would he be proud? Eddie didn't know. He didn't know his father. He wished that he did. He knew now more than he had ever before that his life would've been better if his father was still alive. "What about your secret?" he asked after a moment. His thoughts were becoming too much. For once, he wished Richie would talk.

"You want a deep one?" Richie asked idly. He rubbed his eyes from underneath his coke-bottle glasses.

"It's only fair. I poured my heart and soul out to you."

"I guess that you did..."

Richie took a moment to accumulate his thoughts— to compress them all into one easy statement. He too had been having some serious familial quandaries, and not just with Mike. Sure, he had been involved, and they'd been almost constantly at odds with each other over the last few weeks, but not to that much of an extent. "Well, there's really no easy way to say this, but—"

Eddie cut him off, "Lord, please don't make this one of your stupid-ass jokes."

"I won't. Really," Richie said, and meant it (for once). He took a breath and ventured on. Eddie had told him a deep secret (well... a festering thought), so he'd tell one of his own. While Richie's nipping thoughts were usually of the sexuality sense (constantly, incessantly), he chose one of the familial kind. He was suddenly conscious of the fact that his legs were still draped over Eddie's. "I... well... I think that my parents are gonna get divorced."

"Good... SHIT! I meant good that it wasn't you joking around again. Not good about the whole... divorce thing. I'm sorry about that." Eddie winced. What the fuck was that? Way to be total dick!

"Jesus, Eds—"

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean it like that! I..." After a moment of fumbling, Eddie sighed tiredly, choosing to abandon his previous sentiment. He hoped that if he went on as if nothing had happened, Richie would let it be. "What makes you think that?"

Richie was quick to explain, "Everything makes me think that. They despise each other. It's a constant war-zone in my house now."

"You fighting with Mike all the time isn't necessarily helping that problem," Eddie pointed out reasonably.

"Ted likes Mike more than any of us, and he'll take Mike's side every-single-time without fail. My ma is more neutral about it, but I can tell she likes Mike more. Every bad thing he did earlier this year when he was acting out and trying to be 'badass' was all blamed on me. Little fucker."

"That's bullshit, Rich, and you—"

"But it's not! The thing is, if they do divorce, Ted will probably be forced by someone to take custody of at least one of us. Mike's the one that he likes the most. He'll fight for Mike if he has to, and—"

"They won't do that! They can't! They can't separate twins! I mean, that ridiculous!"

But Richie didn't respond to that. It seemed that deep-down, he didn't believe Eddie. Deep-down, he thought that Mike could be taken away at any minute. "I hate that word: twins." He frowned. "It makes us sound like clones. Robots. Doing everything in sync. One fucking person."

"You guys are the farthest thing from doing everything in sync," Eddie admitted, and almost laughed. Those two were basically polar opposites. Some days, the only thing that they had in common were their faces. "Actually, you do the opposite of what Mike does and vice versa. I'd bet you both do that on purpose."

"We're not completely different. I mean, we like some of the same things."

"I just think that it's weird that you think your dad can do that— take Mike away. He can't."

"I don't want any of my family to be taken away. Well, minus Ted because he can fuck himself for all I care—"

"Jesus—"

"And I think... I think that my parents never really loved each other. Yours probably did, but mine didn't."

This was the first time that Richie had ever admitted it out loud. His parents didn't love each other. It appeared that saying it straight-out was exactly what he needed to make himself feel better. His mother and father needed to have that divorce for everyone's well-being. He didn't think he could stand another night of hearing them yell at each other, trying and failing to muffle their shouts with his pillow. He had a strong feeling that Mike did the same thing (it wasn't twin-telepathy or anything, just an assumption from having known Mike for so long). Still, there was the fear that he and Mike could be separated. 

A nuclear family. Nancy had called them that once when she had been shouting at her mother. 'I want out of this nuclear family!' she had screamed. Richie remembered how the whole house had rattled as she slammed her bedroom door shut.

"Well, they must've married for some reason," Eddie said, back in the present. "They might hate each other, but there's always a reason for that kind of thing. Marriage, I mean." He tied it back Richie's words from earlier. At one point, there had been a reason behind their marriage. Now, it might be unclear as to what that reason was, but it was there at one point.

Richie nodded. "Maybe there was. I mean, my ma met my dad when she was fresh out of high school. He was older, but he had money and came from a well-respected family. It all went downhill from there. Nancy, Mike and I, and Holly. All my parents fucking care about is their image... It's infuriating!" Richie exclaimed. His fists were clenched, and his fingernails, though bit down to the quick, dug pink crescent moons into his palms.

Eddie didn't know what to say. He reasoned that he didn't need to. Richie was connecting the dots, and Eddie simply watched as the wheels turned.

"I think the reason behind it all was money and an image..." He said slowly, nodding. There was no humor in his voice (no anger, either), just reality. "My dad didn't wanna be unmarried— to be a failure with only his money to keep him company. My ma wanted to make her image. She wanted friends and she wanted to be better than everyone else." He had come to terms with this before— his parents would try anything to climb the social ladder.

"You don't hate your parents, do you? I mean, your dad might suck, but... you don't hate them, right?"

"I don't think that I hate them. I don't know..." he trailed off. In a more 'Richie' Voice (in other words, a voice with a more humorous twinge to it), he commented lightly, "We're wrecks. Our secrets were too deep."

Eddie nodded. "What a heart-to-heart."

"We're a mushy-gushy couple of saps. Who knew we actually had feelings?"

"Who knew you had feelings, you mean. Hard-ass."

"Okay, Mister I-Punched-Troy-In-The-Face-And-Then-Cried..." Richie drawled dubiously.

"That was forever ago!" It wasn't. It was last September. "It doesn't even matter anymore, anyway." The story behind it, though more condensed, went like this:

Ever since that whole incident with Mike and the quarry, Troy hadn't been bothering them as much. He seemed almost... scared. For some reason, on that cold day in September, however, he woke thirsty for nerd-blood. It was before school started and they had all been standing in the courtyard waiting for the first bell. Troy had come up to them with some pretty weak insults. When he moved over to Will, he didn't call him 'Zombie-Boy' like most people did, but he used a nasty word that he'd learned from some of the older kids, and Eddie snapped. He'd cranked his fist back and let it fly, slamming Troy square in the nose and sending him sprawling onto the concrete.

It all happened so fast.

Troy lay back flat on his ass, his hands cupped underneath his bleeding nose (Mike had this weird look on his face). Curses flew from his muffled mouth, but he didn't actually move to fight back. Eddie had taken a step away, heaved in a breath, and had broken down into tears. His knuckles were bruised and purple. There would be hell to pay with his mother.

There was, of course. She went absolutely berserk over it, but he thankfully wasn't taken out of school like she had once threatened to do. His mother had weaseled him out of a suspension, but he had stayed home for the rest of the week anyway. She had been convinced that there was something wrong with him (mentally, that is). Every day that week she had forced him into the pews at church to talk to God about what had happened. Richie had told him later that Troy had come to school the following day with an enormous, white splint over his nose. It matched the scowl that he wore on his face.

Back in the present, Richie exclaimed, "Yeah, it does! It'll always matter! It was fucking cool until you started—"

"Richie!"

"All right, I'm sorry. Beep-beep, me." Richie mimed zipping his lips, exaggeratedly chucking the key across the library as if he'd been played fetch with an over-excited dog. He looked back over at Eddie when he'd finished, smiling innocently.

Eddie rolled his eyes.

A beat of silence, then: "You know, this—" Richie started to speak. It appeared that he had already forgotten about his resolute promise, not moments before, to keep his mouth shut.

"Shut up!"

"Woah, I'm sorry, Eds—" Richie held his arms out in surrender.

"No, dickwad! Listen!"

Richie shut up.

Faintly, there was the sound of synth. Drums. Guitars. Bass. Vocals. It could be heard all the way from the dance.

It was soft, melodic, and almost indiscernible. It took Richie several moments of wracking his brain before he realized exactly what song was playing. "Oh my, God. It's fucking True..."

"What?" Eddie furrowed. "What's true?"

"True. You know, the song. Spandau Ballet," Richie explained, nodding slowly.

"Jesus Christ..." Eddie had heard the song before, but only once or twice. It wasn't the kind of song that they played on the radio (at least the station that Eddie listened to)— it was too slow for his liking. Honestly, he was surprised when Richie had recognized it so quickly; the name of the band and all. He was usually the one that preferred more fast-paced music with cool guitars.

Richie opened his mouth without thinking (what was new?). Perhaps he had been divinely inspired by the spirit of Spandau Ballet, just as his classmates had once been inspired by the spirit of Cindy Lauper. Had Gary Kemp wrote the song for school dances? "You wanna dance?"

"What?" Eddie could only blink.

"Do you wanna dance?" Richie repeated himself. His stomach did back-flips. His tongue suddenly felt very heavy— a hundred pounds, no, a thousand.

"I..." Eddie fumbled breathlessly. "O-Okay."

Richie pulled himself off of Eddie, untangling their legs, stumbling somewhat as he planted his feet back on the ground. Once he had regained his footing and made sure that his legs wouldn't give out on him, he grinned toothily down at Eddie, who rolled his eyes as he too pushed himself back onto his feet. 

Timidly, they started to dance. Tony Hadley crooned off in the distance. The words were barely discernible. They swayed.

"Why am I the girl?" Richie whined after a moment. Eddie had his hands set firmly on Richie's hips as they swayed, and he seemed so tense about it.

"It doesn't matter..." Eddie mumbled absently. He seemed more focused on actually moving than the position of their hands. It was all wrong, he realized.

"If it really doesn't matter, then you be the girl."

"Goddamn..." Eddie plucked Richie's arms off of his shoulders and, for a brief moment, Richie was certain that Eddie was going to back away and stop dancing, but then he moved Richie's hands down to rest of his own hips and brought his arms up to loop securely around Richie's neck.

And it clicked. This was right.

Why do I find it hard to write the next line?
Oh, I want the truth to be said

Their eyes locked— blue on brown. This was so much better.

Richie was suddenly overcome with the realization of how dainty Eddie was. It was like seeing him, really seeing him, for the first time (as cliché as that sounds). He was just so... Richie's thoughts trailed away.

I know this much is true
I know this much is true

"How do you even know this song?" Eddie sounded breathy. It was probably a side effect of his asthma, Richie reasoned.

"MTV," he replied absently. "Mike wanted to see the video. He says he likes British music more than American. I think they sound the same."

"I should've known."

Richie nodded, chuckling, "You should've."

They swayed on as the second verse ended and the saxophone came blaring in. The song in itself was speeding up rapidly, and they found themselves unable to keep a beat to save their lives, so they simply swayed at their own pace— which was slow and deliberate.

As the next verse came in, Richie had switched from mumbling to full-on singing the lyrics. His voice was raspy, sure, but not fall-flat-on-your-ass amazing. He didn't look like he was trying too hard. He was smiling as his eyes bore into Eddie's, unwavering. Eddie started to laugh softly as Richie made an over-exaggerated expression to mimic the long-drawn high note.

This much is true
This much is true

"You know, this is so much better than the dance..." Eddie admitted after a moment.

Richie bobbed his head once. "I think so, too. This is much better than having to see Mike and Eleven at it like a couple of monkeys."

"What? That— Ugh!" Eddie winced.

"Well not, like, at it, at it..." Richie elaborated helpfully. "Mike said that they smooched last year before she... you know... but I don't believe him. He thinks he's so much cooler than I am. I'm the one dancing with the coolest kid in all of Hawkins. I'm way luckier."

"Oh my, God..." Eddie could feel the heat in his cheeks. He willed them to cool down, but to no such avail. He was tomato-red.

"What? You're so cool, Spaghed-head. And cute. That much is true." A smile made its way onto his freckled face. His blue eyes sparkled even in the semi-darkness. His head was tilted side-ways.

"Oh my, God..." Eddie repeated himself, rolling his eyes. He was sure that his whole body was red now.

"What? It's true!" Once more, he alluded to the damn song.

True was fading out.

"You're a dick, Dick!"

Richie shrugged innocently, "It's true."

"STOP!" Eddie exclaimed, trying and ultimately failing to sound thoroughly pissed-off. He wasn't, though. He was laughing— grinning dopily.