f2020 | {Hazy sunshine over the hill

Richie wastes no time in calling Diego back, having tried not to freak out over this to no avail. He can’t freak out on Eddie. He just cannot. Eddie will also panic and it’ll just be a terrible feedback loop of screaming, so Diego it is, even though Richie’s pretty sure Diego doesn’t actually know what Richie’s plight is like.

“What if the wedding photographer backs off?” he says with no preamble. “Who the fuck are we going to get if the photographer has to back out? I’m sure she won’t but I said that about the singer and look what the fuck happened there.”

Diego puts a hand over his mouth, trying not to laugh the second Richie launches into his newest panic piece. “Richie, anybody can take pictures. I mean— maybe not as well as an actual photographer, maybe not with a lot of the artsy shots and all but— it’ll be commemorated either way, dude.”

“A professional photographer’ll take a picture of me and Eddie that looks like something I can hang on the wall,” hisses Richie. “If I ask anybody else to take it they’re gonna take the ones where I stand like a fucking creep. You’ve seen them!”

Yeah, he does have that unfortunate tendency. No, he has no idea how to fix it, either.

“Jesus, Diego, how the fuck did you and Lila manage your wedding?” This, he says, right before remembering: oh, right. They eloped.

Diego sighs, but it's a sound that's not quite so full of exasperation as it is fondness. Honestly, how did Richie become his best friend, again? "Is there something, specific and not just your panic-brain creating falsehoods, that's made you worry the photographer is gonna back out?" He's learned ages ago that he has to put a specific reminder in the way like a blockade to all the panic trying to rule him for Richie to pull himself out of his own head-- and it doesn't necessarily always work either; he's an expert at hurdling right over logic when he's in a real state.

"We didn't," he says rather flatly, still an amused note hidden somewhere in the back of it, "you know, that's still an option for you guys... elope and skip the panic?" Not that it'll happen. Even if Richie, for ten seconds, might entertain the idea, Diego already knows he won't go through with it; he wouldn't do that to Eddie.

Richie stops, because—yeah, that is true, since the wedding planning kicked into high gear he's been more prone to panicking over what's ultimately nothing in the long run. He's used to things going wrong, used to taking a lot of shit and keeping on going, and sometimes it feels like he's just waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something to go horribly wrong again.

"...just the post-singer fiasco panic brain," he says, sounding a little calmer now that he's had a couple minutes to think about it. And sure enough: "Fuck no, I'm not doing that to Eddie. He wants everyone we know there."

"Thought so," he responds easily, leaning back in his place on his couch and considering it for a long moment. He chuckles a little at the emphatic response, "Yeah, I figured as much on that one, too."

There's a moment of consideration before he drops the next thought that filtered across his mind. He knows how Richie's mind works, he knows at least a few of the various potential paths his so-called 'panic-brain' thought patterns might try to travel. It's just a matter of deciding when it is, and isn't, worth mentioning something that might touch one of those roads.

"He's not gonna leave you hanging at the altar, you know." He drops it lightly into the phone, like he didn't just say every groom's worst fear with all the casual air of mentioning it might rain tomorrow. "There's no anvil waiting to drop on your head, in this."

God. That scenario. That's the one that keeps running through Richie's brain, despite all the evidence he has that Eddie would never do that to him, because—well, at some point, he's going to figure it out, right? That Richie's too much, too loud and too foul-mouthed and too scared sometimes to be his forever. The panic-brain never did completely leave Derry behind, the nebulous, all-consuming fear that so characterized Richie's life on his own world.

"I just think," he starts, then stops. Sighs. "What if I tricked him into this somehow, and he's gonna come to his senses at the fucking altar? Like," and here he imitates Eddie's voice, "oh, shit, what the fuck am I doing marrying this fucker? Coulda had my pick of anyone else."

He laughs, a little tired, tinged with a self-deprecating note. "I know he won't. I know that, but fuck, sometimes I wonder how long it's gonna be till the other shoe drops."

Diego gets it. Some days, he’s still not sure why Lila wants anything to do with him. But she does ans he’s learned over the last theee years, to stop questioning it and just accept that she does want to be with him.

He sighs softly, part frustration, part something fond. “Richie, I love you, man, but you’re not so charming so as to trick someone into a marriage, okay? Eddie loves you... and he’s not that impulsive. He’s thought it through. He knows what he’s signing up for and he still said yes. And he’s gonna say ‘I do’, too.”

He tilts his head back against the couch. “I know it’s hard not to do that— I got that too, with Lila, with everything we have here on Krakoa... I’ve never had anything this good in my life before, and I came from an abusive home. I mean— you live waiting for the next shoe to drop in a place like that, and I don’t think once that’s really engrained in you, it ever fully goes away. But you gotta learn how to make that part of your brain shut up, tell it it’s wrong.” There’s a beat and the smirk he’s wearing is easily heard in his voice. “Or you have a best friend to tell you, instead.”

{Hazy sunshine over the hill

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