"I know it isn't," Richie said -- because he did. It wasn't the point. The point was Eddie felt bad for growing up sheltered and weird, because he'd let his mother and then, presumably, his wife take control of everything that was his. Richie got it. But there wasn't really anything to be done about it right now other than to shovel it into the mounting pile of Personal Issues that they both had going. They knew. Now they had to move on and up.
One of these days they both might even have the mental capacity to really talk about it.
"What's wrong with my forehead?" He asked, eyebrows raising in innocent questioning even as he flipped Eddie off. He'd missed this part of them -- the easy teasing, the fake annoyance. Like little boys, really. But it suited them. And to be fair, there were some parts of Richie's boyhood personality that he'd never really grown out of. And it was nice because it made it all lead easily into the next part. "Yeah. Steve. He's a good guy. Not very good at being the welcoming committee though. Petition to rename it Retrospective Welcoming Committee. Anyway. Yeah, no that's -- we should stick together. It's safer that way." Or.... whatever Richie had to tell himself to make it through the day. Still, there was some part of him that was relieved over Eddie agreeing to the invite without any complaint, and Richie grinned over his whiskey. "We'll be picking out curtains in no time at all."
But god. Joking was only going to get him so far, particularly when there was no way that Richie could imbue humor into Eddie's line of questioning. If anything, the way he asked -- like it was an important thing, sure, but like it just wasn't the huge thing that it'd turned out to be? It made Richie feel a little queazy, the backs of his eyes hurting like he might just burst out crying again if he didn't play this right.
Which he probably wouldn't. Because there was no right way to play it. Rich swallowed back half of his new drink in one go, tried to get his leg to stop bouncing with nervous energy under the table, and didn't really succeed. "Yeah," he said after an awkwardly long beat, where he failed in composing himself. "It worked. Your aim was great. Don't worry, you didn't need to try kissing me." And fuck if Richie's voice didn't break at the end there, and he had to snatch his glasses off of his face and pretend to clean them just so he could look down at his own lap, so he wouldn't have to focus on Eddie there in front of him.