Eddie | Richie
No. Eddie had never been sick. He was actually a perfectly healthy little boy whose mother had faked illnesses in him. He was too aware of what the children's wing in the local hospital looked like. Too familiar with picking up prescriptions at the drug store. He'd been hospitalized and bed ridden over things that had never existed in him in the first place. He didn't even need his inhaler. He could breathe easily so long as he wasn't having a panic attack. He wasn't sick but it was easier to believe he might be than to believe that his mother had made the whole thing up to keep him scared and close or that she would hurt him in anyway.
Part of thinking he was sick for liking the things he liked, the person he liked, was a sort of justification of everything he'd been through. He was sick just not in the way she expected. In other ways. Ways that couldn't be fixed by pills or doctors.
The longer he was away from her and the pills, however, the more he began to think that she was wrong. Sure, he still insisted because saying so out loud was kind of terrifying. Coming to the realization that his mother didn't have his best interests in heart and was hurting him was too scary to actually think about or come out and say to anyone. So he wouldn't. He didn't. Not even to Richie.
He liked Richie. He more than liked Richie. He like-liked Richie in a way his mother wouldn't have approved of. She would've found fault with it in spite of how right it felt. How good it felt to be around the other boy. How nice it had been to hold his hand. How clinging to him now made Eddie's heart soar while simultaneously not being quite enough. It didn't convey things enough. Not like Richie's words...
He both knew the song and didn't but that didn't matter. He understood the meaning. Nothing was going to tear them apart. There was nothing Eddie could do or say (other than something he never would do or say and, even then, it might not work) that would drive Richie away or make him turn his back and give up on Eddie. He pulled back just enough to stare into Richie's eyes and that happiness, that joy that was directed at him, caused by him. It was his breaking point.
He'd seen Bill and Bev do it once. He'd seen Ben do it too so there was no mystery about how it was done. He couldn't fuck it up. His hands moved to both sides of Richie's face again as he pushed himself onto his tiptoes and pressed his lips against the other boy's in a clumsy sort of kiss.