(They had always both struggled on that end. Eddie had indefinitely figured Richie was just always teasing him for a reaction or was just being Richie. It had always been safer to think that than the alternative. Even now he could hear It taunting him with a blowjob, hear his mother muttering darkly about Richie Tozier's foul mouth and bad influence. Boy, if Sonia Kaspbrak knew where he was and who he was with now? She wouldn't just be rolling in her grave, she'd be downright combusting in it.

I haven't been your little boy in a long time, momma... Yet he still felt like she was breathing down his neck. After all, hadn't he been the one to chain himself to the shape of her in his wife? Eddie's quiet, his mind splitting off for a moment, and Richie's voice washes over him. He really does think he's dead, at times, and it fucked with his head, fucked with his sense of reality. He holds Richie's arm a bit more securely, digging his fingers in gently but firmly enough to feel the meat of Richie's bicep. Real, real, real. This is real, Eddie Spaghetti. He laughed briskly, abruptly, at Richie's voice offering him a calming source while Richie himself was walking right next to him. Eddie realized he'd laughed out loud out of the blue, and he snapped his mouth shut, frowning.)

Oh, yeah. (Right, yeah. Focus, Eds.) I mean it's fine...They're clean. The bed's comfortable. I kind of enjoy the polished look, but I miss my records. It feels weird being alone. I keep ummm- I keep thinking my mom's in the other room or something. (He was hardly about to fess up to how deep those issues went, but his eyes do flicker with a bit of that genuine anxiety. He'd replaced his mother immediately with Myra, after all. This felt like the furthest he'd ever actually gone from his mom.)