#i wasn’t so keen on this one tuh be honest

[webism]

runs my hand down ur face…. hey….. that was a great start to a great month…. im so ready 😋

i hope you washed that hand first…….🤨

[skeletonscribbles]

Everything Stays

as promised, an Adventure Time AU! I’ve loved doing this so much.

Pairing: Reddie (as Bubbline/GumLee, for AT folk)

Rating: T

Warnings: breakup discussion, Stan as the Lumpy Space Prince

Other: this is, again, an Adventure Time AU, so if something doesn’t make sense, it’s probably on purpose.

Songs Included: I’m Just Your Problem Slow Dance With You Everything Stays (referenced, but not sung)

Read on Ao3

Tag List: @imrichie​ @mirandonsky​ @lilgeorgie​ @aizeninlefox​ @astronauticallygay​ @callme-eds​ @reddie-boi​  (image from AT comics - Spooktacular 2017)

Being undead was boring as shit.

Richie Tozier had been a vampire for a solid millenium - and heir to the vampire throne, at that; a king of the domain, and as such, he thought it was pretty safe to say that he’d done just about everything there was to do at this point.

In fact, most of the stuff that was happening around him he’d already seen happen, once upon a time. Kingdoms fell what felt like every damn day, adventures came and went. Human travelers passed through the land of Ooo thinking they’d be heroes, and some of them were. Bowers stayed up to his Ice King tricks, and his penguin Patrick, nee Orgalorg, pretended to give a shit. The Candy Kingdom continued to grow, and Lumpy Space continued to be the most bizarre realm in a world full of bizarre realms, and Richie’s father came and went from the Nightosphere intermittently, and for the most part, Richie was left alone to play music in his little cottage and reflect on the fact that his day-to-day felt like a series of re-runs rather than new episodes.

It was...lonely as shit, if Richie was being really honest with himself (not that he was in the business of doing that, but still) and he really had no fucking idea how to make do - especially given that he was overly aware of the fact that everyone he talked to was going to die before he was.

(Well. There were exceptions to that, but…that didn’t bear thinking about.)

(Most of the exceptions left after a while, too - just...differently, in a way that hurt more because it was a choice.)

(But again - that didn’t bear thinking about.)

In spite of all that, he’d managed to connect pretty well with the human hero of the moment. The kid’s name was Bill, and Richie liked his hair, and his tenacity, and how scared of Richie he was sometimes. It was good when the heroes were a little scared of him. The ones that weren’t were usually stupid.

He’d blown down around to Bill’s treehouse on this particular day because he didn’t have anywhere else to be, like most days, and because he was kind of trying to avoid thinking about his dad, like most days...but mostly because he had somewhere else to potentially be that night that was making him a little nervous. (That part wasn’t like most days, but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before so he could pretend to pass it off as mundane.) He’d quietly been hoping that Bill would be planning some great adventure that Richie could hitch on to, because that was what Bill was usually doing, but today, Bill was inside on the couch playing video games with his magical dog, Ben. Ben’s Rainicorn girlfriend, Beverly, was coiled at the foot of the couch, and their game system MiKE (Richie assumed that was an acronym of some kind, but he really didn’t care enough to find out what the letters stood for) was patiently leaning up against the television with two controllers plugged in where his arms usually were.

It would be easy for Richie to leave; to fuck off and jam with some of the nastier creatures out on the outskirts of Ooo, or cause trouble for some Princess or Kingdom or something. It would be easy to leave these mortal kids alone - to not get attached to them and instead laugh from a distance as they tripped their way through video game levels and quests and idiot romances until they died.

Unfortunately, he’d outgrown easy centuries ago.

“Hey dudes,” he greeted, floating in through a window that Bill had carelessly left half-open. “Suh Bevvie.”

Bill and Ben jumped, obviously caught off guard by Richie’s sudden entrance. It was a miracle that no monster had crept up on them and killed them yet - they had little by way of sensory instincts. Bev, on the other hand, knew that Richie was coming - she lifted her head slightly and made unimpressed eye contact with him, which meant that she was the first one he approached.

“Missed you, baby,” he said, and found that he meant it. Bev was a pretty unique little Rainicorn, and she and Richie had known each other for long enough that they’d seen each other through some pretty tough shit. The two of them had a similar way of going about things, which was cool - except that now she’d gone and done the whole relationship thing and he was...not about that life, anymore.

She responded with a cheeky joke about his mother in her native Rainicorn language, and he chuckled, settling down on the couch next to Ben.

“Tell me what it m-means,” he could hear Bill hissing - the idiot kid still hadn’t picked up any Rainicorn, in spite of the fact that Bev was always around.

“I will not,” Ben whispered back gleefully.

“So is this what we’re doing today?” Richie interrupted, gesturing to MiKE, who was wiggling the controller wires around. They were getting crazy tangled, which was kind of awesome.

“I mean,” Bill shrugged, scooting forward on the couch so he could look at Richie properly. His hat had slid down and was almost covering his eyes - Richie could see a little bit of his red hair falling out of the back of it, near the nape of his neck. “No one’s c-called for help, and all the Princes and P-p-princesses seem fine, so. I think the Ice K-king isn’t due to strike until like, tuh-two days from now. Usually takes him about that l-l-long to put together a stupid p-plan.”

“Yeah, that does seem about right.” Richie stretched himself out on the couch so that his legs were over Ben’s lap. Ben shoved at him uselessly, and Richie thought about moving, but the only other option for his legs was to stick them on top of Beverly or levitate them, and he wasn’t keen on either of those options so...Ben was going to have to deal. “Still pretty lame, though.”

Richie had expected Bill to react to that - to jump up and declare that he wasn’t lame, and instigate some quest or whatever, but instead, Bill slumped further down into the couch. “L-lame, huh?”

“Yeah. Lame.” Richie crossed his arms over his chest incredulously. ��What the fuck is going on with you, man?”

Robotically, Bill slid off of the couch and stood up, abandoning his controller on the floor. MiKE immediately started banging it against the wall. “Do any of you wuh-want ice c-cream? Rich, I don’t think we have stuh-strawberry, but I can ch-ch-check.”

Richie rolled his eyes. No way a little pint of strawberry ice cream could quell even a little bit of his hunger - he’d have to suck the red out of something way bigger than that for it to be noticeable to his body. Luckily, he’d eaten before he came.

“I’m good, don’t worry.”

Bill gave a semi-satisfied little nod and headed towards the kitchen.

Ben turned himself on the couch to face Richie. His expression was skeptical. “Are you good, though? You’re weird today, dude.”

Richie made a show of rolling his eyes. “I’m always weird. It runs in my family.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ben swatted at Richie’s leg. At Richie’s feet, Bev had turned herself around, and was watching the two of them with interest. “Blah blah blah Nightosphere, blah blah Wentworth Tozier. Is he why you’re trying to get us to do something crazy?”

“Nah. Went’s not gonna be around for a while. Nightosphere’s a pretty crazy place to be in charge of. Got his hands way full.”

In fact, Richie had been approached by his father rather recently to potentially take over the Nightosphere biz, but Richie’d shut that down pretty immediately. Ooo was his home - it always had been, and it always would be. The Nightosphere sucked. Demons were dumb and super shitty.

“Did Ashlee come back?” Bev asked in Rainicorn, eyes wide with concern.

“NO. Glob, no. Ashlee knows better than to show her dumb face around here,” Richie scoffed, shuddering a little bit at the mention of his ex-girlfriend. He’d made a metric fuckton of mistakes over the course of his life - he was 1000 years old, after all - and Ashlee still qualified as one of the worst. Fucking bitch.

“Did you not get invited to the ball at the Candy Kingdom tonight?” Ben asked quietly.

If any of them noticed the way that Richie tensed at that, none of them said anything.

“Yeah, no, I got invited,” Richie finally said, tugging at the hem of his plaid flannel. “I’m fine. What’s up with Bill, though? He’s all up in his ice cream sads, huh?”

Bev and Ben let out simultaneous loud groans, and Mike giggled chirpily, wiggling his wire arms as best he could given how tangled they now were.

“You know Audra Phillips?” Bev asked, the natural cheeriness of the Rainicorn language undercut with annoyance. “Flame Princess?”

“Yeah, and you also know how Bill’s a sucker for royalty? Like, major heart-eyes?” Ben added, voice flat. “Well. Fill in the blanks.”

Richie was very capable of connecting the dots with this one, namely that Bill had probably asked Audra to the Candy Kingdom Ball and been rejected (and even if she did like him, he shouldn’t have expected her to go to that, given the relatively low melting points for most types of candy), but that wasn’t the part of Ben’s series of questions that stuck with him.

“Bill’s never had heart-eyes for me,” Richie pointed out sourly. “I’m the Vampire King, remember? Fuck all those useless Princesses.”

“And Princes,” Bev reminded him pointedly.

Richie sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. “And...Princes. Whatever. What gives, Ben?”

Ben’s horrified expression was nothing short of hilarious. “Do you….do you like Bill?”

Richie’s howling laugh at that could probably be heard from kingdoms away. Surprisingly (or really...not, knowing Bill), Bill didn’t so much as pop his head back in from the kitchen.

“Oh my fucking glob. NO, Ben, that’s the craziest idea you’ve ever had.” Richie shook his head vigorously, entirely bemused. His curls were in his eyes, now, but he didn’t really care. “Nah, I’m not about that...I just felt left out of Bill’s whole schtick, ya know? You know me - dramatic as shit, as per usual.”

Ben stared at him for another long moment, and after a while, Richie felt rather than saw Bev’s head turn towards him too. He swallowed hard and looked at MiKE...and was not heartened to see that Mike was facing his general direction. Not that there was any way to tell if MiKE was really actually looking at you, but facing front was bad enough.

“Listen--” Richie began, but Ben cut him off.

“Have you ever been in love, Richie?” Ben asked, eyes searching Richie’s face in a way that felt borderline invasive.

The question was enough to get Richie up and out of his seat. He levitated away from the couch a little bit, reeling - where did that come from?

“Why?” Richie asked, defensive.

“Just thinking about it,” Ben said, shrugging. “You talk a big game, but I’ve never seen you with anyone. Meanwhile, Bill’s got like...his royal family member significant other of the week.”

Richie flipped himself a little bit in the air, shielding his face so he wouldn’t give himself away as he thought about whether or not to actually tell Ben the truth.

On the one hand, what of the truth could Ben possibly understand? Ben was a savvy creature, but mortals didn’t know dip about what it meant to see important people rise and fall and die and die and die, and even the savviest creatures were, ultimately, mortal. Ben also wasn’t half demon, hadn’t been bitten by a Vampire King, hadn’t survived nuclear craziness, didn’t have the people around him leaving or losing their goddamn minds all the frigging time. No part of Richie’s story was relatable to Ben at all.

Well. Well, actually.

If Richie went with the simplest possible answer...that would probably be relatable to Ben.

“Once,” Richie said slowly, turning lazily over so that he was completely upside-down. “I was in love once.”

The answer seemed to surprise Ben. It didn’t surprise Bev at all - and Richie had a feeling it wouldn’t, given all of the things that Bev knew about him. MiKE remained neutral, as far as Richie could tell.

“Oh,” Ben finally said. “Dude. What happened? Did she die?”

“Nah.” Richie slid his hands into his pockets and concentrated on keeping a straight face.”I just wasn’t good enough for ‘em, I think, when all was said and done.”

Ben’s expression darkened. “Richie, no--”

“That sounds like how Bill used to feel sometimes,” Bev chimed in. There was a dark, knowing look in her eyes, and Richie narrowed his eyes in immediate distrust. “About the Candy Prince.”

The last two words of Bev’s sentence echoed around in Richie’s brain like bells, and he ran his tongue over his fangs in an attempt to stave off the ugly feeling curling up in his chest. Candy Prince, Candy Prince, Candy Prince….

“Bill and the Candy Prince, huh?” he choked out, forcing a smile on to his face. “Eds did always have terrible taste in men.”

Richie regretted his giant mouth immediately after finishing his sentence. He knew what word Ben would zero in on. That one syllable had some eight hundred years of history jam packed into it, there was no way that no one was going to say anything--

“Eds?” Ben asked, realization lighting up his face, and it was all Richie could do not to groan.

“I’m not going to the Ball tonight,” Richie said loudly, glaring pointedly between Bev and Ben. “He invites me every time, but I never go. I can’t go.”

“Richie,” Ben began sadly, at the same time that Bev sighed out a “Honey, it’s been three hundred years, for Glob’s sake.” Both of them were cut off, however, by Bill’s abrupt return to the room. He was holding two ice cream bowls in front of him and looking more than a little lost.

“Oh. Uh. Wh-what’s up, f-f-folks?” he asked warily, looking between all of them. Only MiKE smiled back up at him.

To Richie’s relief, Ben didn’t seem to be in the business of tattling or telling stories. “Is that for me?” Ben asked without missing a beat, pointing to the second bowl of ice cream in Bill’s hand.

“Oh. Yeah.” Bill offered him the ice cream absently. “And for Bev too, if she wants.”

“Thanks, bud.” Ben grabbed his bowl appreciatively and slid down to sit next to Bev. Bill had forgotten to give them two spoons, but that didn’t seem to be a problem - Bev immediately began licking at the bowl.

They sat in silence for a moment. MiKE began trying to disentangle his controller wire arms, but he was clearly only making the problem worse.

“So Flame Kingdom,” Richie tried, but fortunately, he didn’t have to continue down that weak conversational path. He was interrupted by a loud knock at the door.

“Who is it?” Bill called loudly, setting his ice cream down on an end table and picking up his sword from where it lay sheathed by the door.

“It’s me,” a voice outside snapped, and there was no mistaking that cadence. Richie brightened and floated towards the door. “Open the flip up, I need to ask you something.”

Bill sighed and reached for the doorknob, but Richie beat him to it. He flung open the door, and was delighted to find that he’d smacked poor Prince Stanley right in the face with it.

“If it isn’t the Prince of Lumpy Space,” Richie greeted, cackling quietly as Stan muttered curses whilst dusting himself off. “What’s good, Stanny?”

“Nothing,” Stan spat. “I came here to show you all my outfit and now it’s DIRTY.”

“You came all the way from Lumpy Space to show us the same outfit that you always wear to parties?” Richie asked, feeling light for the first time since he’d gotten the invitation to that stupid ball in the mail. “Nerd.”

Stan yelled something incomprehensible back at him - Richie was pretty sure he heard the words “glob” and “flip” at least five times each and the phrase “your mom” at least once - and Richie gave one final shrieking laugh before folding himself up into his bat form and taking off into the trees.

It didn’t matter that he hadn’t said goodbye. He wasn’t good at that...and they were just mortals, anyway, it was no big thing whether they were mad at him or not.

Besides, he’d been left by choice before. He’d bled all of the hurt out of that particular Bad Thing, hadn’t he?

...hadn’t he?

---

Richie hadn’t had a heartbeat in centuries, but he could have sworn that he felt phantom pressure in his ears and chest and arms when he got home. His whole house felt too big, somehow, like it was gonna swallow him whole.

He knew why. He knew why and he was pissed.

Why had he said all that shit to Ben and Bev?

He let out a frustrated groan and kicked open the door to his little cottage, floating straight across the front room to where he’d tossed his bass the night before after a long and ultimately fruitless jam session with himself. It was always fruitless when he was by himself. He just got stuck on the same words and chords over and over...and wasn’t that just his life?

Frowning, he strummed loosely at the strings. His E string was a little bit out of tune, but he wasn’t in the mood to fuss around and fix it. It seemed fitting that everything would be a little bit off today, anyway.

His hands began to move of their own accord - muscle memory was strong, and Richie’s hands had wanted to play the same damn love song for the past three hundred years or so. It wasn’t the song that Richie’s brain wanted to play, but that had never stopped his traitor hands - no, they slipped back into the same stupid sappy chord progression every time.

Cursing under his breath, Richie adjusted and tried to put the muscle memory song out of mind. He chose harsher, angrier chords, and began to play.

“Well I shouldn’t have to justify things I do,” he sang loudly, spiteful as he flipped over and around erratically, “and I shouldn’t have to prove anything to you…”

If he showed up to the ball tonight, the whole Candy Kingdom would probably have a fucking heart attack. The goddamn Banana Guards would be on his ass in seconds, kicking him right the fuck out, even though he was technically invited because royalty or politeness or whatever lame-ass excuse Eds was using this time.

Well...no. Not Eds, but rather - His Majesty Prince Edward K. Bubblegum. Eds was someone else’s name - the name of someone Richie had loved a long time ago.

Edward K. Bubblegum was a stranger.

Heck, Bubblegum would probably be leading the mob against him if he showed at the party, all things considered. The Candy Prince hated when things got out of control, and Richie was the epitome of wild and free. Never mind that there was no precedent - never mind that Richie hadn’t wrecked a Candy Kingdom ball before because he knew how important they were to the Prince, never mind any of that. Bubblegum would be on the warpath the minute Richie materialized, no matter what.

“I’m sorry that I exist, I forget what landed me on your blacklist…” Richie continued, scowling as he spiraled further and further into his thoughts. It was true - he didn’t know what he had done to make Bubblegum so hostile. He didn’t remember doing anything at all.

Most of what he remembered from the drawn out period in which it all fell apart was the feeling of it - the despair, the return to crushing loneliness. He’d been left before at that point, but everyone else that had ditched him had reasons that Richie could understand: Bowers had lost his mind, his dad had always been more attached to the Nightosphere than to anything in Ooo, Richie included, and all his mortal friends were, well...mortal.

Eds was different. He never gave a reason for drifting away, and there was no obvious answer to why things were changing so rapidly. It felt like one day, Richie had gone to bed with his Eds - his brave, smart, funny, caring Eds, and the next, he awoke to find Bubblegum, who he didn’t know and didn’t care for. It was Bubblegum that bid Richie adieu, finally, with a brisk sweep of his arm and an excuse or twelve about the kingdom; it was Bubblegum that now sent Richie invitations to events because the two of them were supposedly “amicable” and then balked when Richie actually showed up.

Richie had his suspicions about what had happened to transform Eddie. Virtually all of said suspicions involved Richie being at fault or lacking in some way. Needless to say, the whole thing - the whole relationship process, the whole breakup -  hadn’t been awesome for his ego.

“And I shouldn’t have to be the one that makes up with you,” Richie sang angrily, closing his eyes and sinking to the ground. The breakup hadn’t been awesome for his ego, it hadn’t been awesome for any part of him at all, it had sucked, sucked, sucked - and it STILL sucked, right up to this very minute. Just because his heart didn’t beat didn’t mean that it didn’t work, on some fucked up level.

And yet…

“So why do I want to?” Richie’s hands were back to those soft, shitty muscle memory chords, and his voice was almost a whisper.

Glob, he hated feelings.

“Why do I want to…”

The pathetic post-breakup song his hands had been itching to play was bursting out of him, now. He gave up on his anger and let the sadness pour out. It was a day for moping. Bill was moping - Richie could mope, too.

“Slow dance with you, I just wanna--”

He was interrupted by a brisk knock on his door. Frowning, he set his bass down and floated over to a window, trying to parse out who it was. Had Bill and Ben come after him? Had Stan followed him to yell some more? Or maybe it was some groupie that had hunted down his house after last night’s show. He hoped it was the last option. He wasn’t above draining red from groupies, and he could use a snack - it had been a couple of hours since his last meal.

He couldn’t tell who it was from the window. They were too small, or possibly standing too close to the door, or both. Sighing, he reluctantly made his way over to open the door.

“What the fuck do you want?” he asked glumly, swinging the door open and fully expecting to be greeted with Ben, Bill, and Bev’s exasperated faces.

Instead, he found himself staring blankly out at the Candy Prince himself.

“Oh,” Richie said, “it’s you.”

Bubblegum was looking very...Bubblegum on this particular outing. He was decked head to toe in royal formal wear (all pink, of course, save for his small golden crown) and his mouth was drawn into a tight little line. His soft hair was slicked fiercely back into a little pompadour, and the overall effect was very princely - not very Eds.

The stranger with Eddie’s eyes held out a pint of strawberry ice cream towards Richie.

“Bill and Ben asked me to deliver this to you,” he said flatly, looking at the item without any interest. “They said you’d forgotten it at their treehouse, and that it was urgent.”

Richie couldn’t help but roll his eyes. This was absolutely Ben’s idea. Ben loved to meddle.

“And you agreed to do it?” Richie couldn’t help but bait the Prince a little bit. He was so easy to piss off - and that had been true even before he was Bubblegum, back when he had been Eds and able to laugh at himself a little. “What are you, their messenger boy? Don’t you have a ball to prepare for?”

Bubblegum flushed pink. “I always have time to do a favor for a friend.”

“Oh, and you and Bill are really good friends now, huh?” Richie knew he was toeing the line with his next set of comments, but it was all just kind of falling out of his mouth - Glob only knew where his filter had gone, or if he’d ever really had a filter at all. “You’d have to be, in order for him to convince you to come find me. You wouldn’t be caught dead here otherwise.”

“That’s not true,” Bubblegum lied, eyes narrowing. “Don’t assume things about me, Richie. There’s a lot you don’t know now.”

“And whose fault is that?” Richie asked cooly, crossing his arms over his chest and hovering a little bit so that Bubblegum would have to crane his neck to look up at him. He had quite a bit of height on the Prince as it was, so the extra few inches he gave himself by floating meant that he pretty literally had the upper hand on the situation, so to speak.

Bubblegum didn’t seem to have an answer to that question. In fact, his shoulders deflated a little bit, and he looked down at his shiny pink boots instead of up at Richie’s face.

“Ben said that you’d asked for me, that you had something to tell me,” Bubblegum said, and even his voice was lacking in Bubblegum quality now. It was quiet, and had fallen out of its usual princely cadence. “That’s why I’m here. You’re right. I probably wouldn’t have gone if it was just to give you this stupid ice cream that I know you don’t even want.”

Richie slowly sank back down to the ground - not because he was ceding anything to the Prince, but rather to make sure that he was firmly attached to something, because if he wasn’t, even he wasn’t sure what he might do or say.

“I like strawberry,” he offered carefully.

“Yeah, I know. It’s your favorite. ‘Just enough red’, you used to say.”

When the Prince finally lifted his eyes to meet Richie’s, there was so little of Bubblegum in them that Richie almost felt nauseous. It had been so many years since he’d seen Eddie’s face for real that he’d almost forgotten what it looked like.

“Yeah, you never forget anything, do you,” Richie said, twisting his mouth halfway up into a smile he wasn’t sure he wanted to give. “Eds.”

Eddie flinched, but to his credit, maintained eye contact.

“That was never my name, Richie, and you know it.”

They stood in abject silence for a solid minute and a half, just looking at each other. Richie wasn’t big on silence, usually, but he had nothing with which to break this one. He did and didn’t want Eddie to leave in equal parts, which meant that no matter what he said or what option Eddie chose to take, Richie was going to lose.

Finally, Eddie spoke back up - or Bubblegum, maybe, Richie couldn’t tell exactly which personality the Prince was choosing to adopt in that moment.

“Well, if you don’t actually have anything to tell me, I’ll just put this in the freezer and go. Can I come in for a second? You didn’t move the fridge, right?” Eddie peered around Richie and wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Glob, you haven’t moved anything since the last time I was here, have you? Not even your old clothes! It’s been….how long has it been?”

“Three hundred and twenty three years, four-ish hours and some-odd minutes,” Richie responded neatly. “Also, you’re supposed to wait until I invite you in, your Majesty.”

“Majesty is for Kings, Highness is for Princes, Richie, you are the only one in all of Ooo that forgets that, I swear to Glob. And I’m not a vampire, not all of us are vampires, so…” Eddie (he was pretty sure it was still Eddie) pushed past Richie and into his front room, hunting for the fridge. “It is disgusting as fuck in here, Richie, seriously.”

Richie rolled his eyes and situated himself on the couch to watch Eddie’s frantic search. “Language, Bubblegum Boy. You talk to your subjects with that mouth?”

“Where the fuck is your fridge, Richie?” Eddie snapped, glaring at him with all the venom he could muster (which had never been much).

“It’s not here,” Richie admitted, “you’re wasting your time. I donated it to Bill and Ben’s treehouse. Didn’t really need it for myself, so.”

Eddie responded by throwing the pint of ice cream directly at him. It was melted enough that the lid came off midway through its airborne arc, and as such, most of the ice cream ended up spilling down Richie’s front.

Richie knew that he should be mad about that, but instead, he just felt...tired.

Eddie, for his part, looked like he’d frozen solid. His eyes were glued to the ice cream dripping down Richie’s red flannel, and his horrified expression seemed to be etched in stone across his face.

“I’m so sorry,” Eddie said, and his voice was small and Bubblegum-less again.

It’s whatever, Richie wanted to say, it’s fine, it’s not like we haven’t made a mess before, it’s not like we aren’t a mess now, no matter how much you’ve been trying to pretend that you have no messes there’s always gonna be me--

“What did you think I was gonna tell you?” he heard himself ask instead. “When Ben said I wanted to say something to you...what did you think I had in mind? Obviously you were hoping for something in coming over here. You’d have skipped out if you thought I was gonna be a dick.”

“You’re always a dick,” Eddie countered, and the banter was so familiar it just about stung, but then Eddie’s shoulders were slumping again, and he was crossing over to sit next to Richie on the couch. “But. I….dunno. Something about the Ball, maybe.”

Richie made a face at Eddie and reached for a nearby article of clothing to begin wiping the ice cream off of himself. It was a little bit embarrassing that it so happened that he’d picked up his black bat boxers, but that was the way this day was gonna go, it seemed.

“You don’t want me at your stupid Ball.”

Eddie turned quickly towards Richie, and Richie almost laughed at the genuine surprise on Eddie’s face. It was equal parts hilarious and adorable, and -

No, no. Adorable was a dangerous path. Best not to start with that.

“Why would I invite you if I didn’t want you to come?”

“Politeness,” Richie guessed, counting off different excuses on his fingers. “Propriety, or whatever the fuck. Some misplaced sense of duty, maybe.”

Eddie shook his head in amazement. “No. I invite you to things because I want to see you. That’s all.”

Richie knew that Eddie was trying to make him feel better, but the whole thing felt forced, and Richie wasn’t falling for it. “You don’t want to see me, Kid Kaspbrak. If you wanted to see me, you wouldn’t have left.”

Eddie groaned softly and curled up on himself on the couch. “The citizens of the Candy Kingdom still don’t know what the K. in Edward K. Bubblegum stands for. They’d be so disappointed to find out that it’s just a bizarro jumble of letters. Most of them think it stands for ‘king’ or ‘cupcake’ or something.”

“Cupcake starts with a ‘c’,” Richie pointed out.

Eddie smiled thinly. “The Candy citizens aren’t always the brightest bunch. I can’t complain, though. I made ‘em.”

“Your mom made them,” Richie corrected, re-examining his shirt for remaining ice cream globs. “Miss her, by the way. She’ll always be my number one gal.”

The mention of his mom had shaken Eddie a little bit. When Richie looked back over, he was sitting ramrod straight on the couch - more Bubblegum than Eddie once again.

“I don’t rule the way my mom did,” Eddie said stiffly.

“I know,” Richie assured him. “You’re a great ruler, idiot. It’s the only thing you love, so I guess you have to be.”

The word ‘love’ brought Eddie back down into himself.

“What?”

Richie shrugged, trying to feign disinterest. He’d been waiting so fucking long to have this conversation - he didn’t want to blow it by losing his temper, even though he was so sorely tempted to yell that he could...well, yell. Instead, he focused his energy on getting up from the couch and trying to locate a shirt to change into. The flannel was going to stink of sour dairy sooner rather than later.

“I said that ruling’s what you love, sweetheart. It’s what you do best - it’s literally what you were formed to do, what your mom made you for. It’s a good fucking thing she made you to be better than her, too - best thing she ever did, in my humble opinion-”

“My mom made me to rule, yeah,” Eddie said, and he was doing a way worse job of keeping his cool than Richie was; his face was hot pink and his fists were clenched. Richie kind of wanted to gloat about that, but the moment wasn’t right, so he kept his mouth shut. “But I’m not just the thing she created, Richie, you know that. Or...I thought you knew that. That’s why I…”

He ducked his head back down into his chest, unable to finish the sentence. For an awful moment, Richie was absolutely sure that he was going to go full Bubblegum, march out, and not speak to Richie again for another three hundred years, but he didn’t move. He just stayed that way - folded over on the couch.

“That’s why you snuck me into your room when your mom wasn’t looking, yeah?” Richie asked, taking pains to keep malice out of his voice for once in his damn life. He located a clean-ish t-shirt and slowly lifted it up into his hands. “That’s why you used me to rebel against her, because you knew I saw you differently, right? And then you left once you got what you needed.”

“I didn’t want you because I was rebelling,” Eddie said into his hands. “I was rebelling because I wanted you.”

For once, Richie found himself without a snappy retort. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, but nothing would come out - he had honestly not ever expected to hear Eddie say those words.

“I left you,” Eddie continued, stretching out his words like they were immensely difficult to say, “because my mom was dying, and I needed to be a better ruler than she was, and I couldn’t do that when the whole kingdom was sore over my mom’s dealings with the Nightosphere and I was in love with the son of the guy that ran the damn place.”

Richie found himself grateful that his heart didn’t beat any more, because if it were still ticking, he was sure it would have stopped and killed him outright upon hearing the word ‘love’ pass through Eddie Kaspbrak Bubblegum’s lips.

“You loved that dumbass, huh?” he asked, floating over to where Eddie was sitting on the couch. Eddie didn’t look at Richie’s face right away, but instead settled his eyes on the t-shirt in his hands.

Richie was surprised to see a little smile make its way into the corners of Eddie’s mouth.

“I love that dumbass,” Eddie corrected softly, reaching out to touch the t-shirt. “I’ve tried to stop loving that dumbass, but I can’t, because he does stuff like...he sings love songs at his concerts and takes good care of Bill and keeps the shirts I got him and….” Eddie finally met Richie’s gaze, and his eyes were softer than they’d been in centuries. “You see what I’m saying.”

Richie looked down at the shirt and noticed for the first time that it was a concert tee from one of his early dates with Eddie. He’d snuck Eddie away from his mother and out to the forest, where they’d danced and shouted and swayed to the music of some knockoff demon band with the rest of the woodland spirits.

That Eddie was back in front of him now, but it didn’t seem right to ignore what had happened in between.

“Why haven’t we talked about this before now?” Richie asked slowly, sliding a hand up to cover Eddie’s on top of the shirt. “Why didn’t you explain this shit to me instead of just peacing out? It’s been a garbage couple of centuries trying to deal with the aftermath of all our stuff, and now I’m finding out that you could have just explained the situation right away? I mean, fuck, Eds, I thought there was a problem with me.”

“Yeah I, um,” Eddie laughed nervously, twisting the shirt a little in his hand. “I don’t have a good excuse for that. I really don’t. I thought...I don’t know what I thought you’d do. Undermine me or something, maybe. My mom was still so in my head, then...and I was hurting, too, and maybe I thought it would be easier to just...go? I don’t know. I made up a lot of stuff in that time. I still don’t know how much of it is real.”

“The Prince Bubblegum thing,” Richie told him, “that’s not real at all.”

Eddie nodded. “I know.”

“So why have you been pulling that fake shit with me?” Richie was full of questions, apparently - and Eddie was not being good about providing answers. Glob, he could have had things so nice and neat and tidy - Eddie had literally told him that he still loved him, for fuck’s sake -  and here he was, fucking around and ruining the whole thing. This was the kind of behavior that had kept his dad away all of those years, he was sure of it--

“You mean being mean to you when we’re with Bill and Ben?” Eddie was asking, and Richie was only half cognizant of his own responding nod. “I don’t really know about that either, Rich. It’s been my method of self-defense for a really long time. I just...I don’t...I’m really surprised you haven’t kicked me out yet. I’m so stupid. I should go.”

And just like that, Eddie was up off of the couch, brushing past Richie and rolling his shoulders back into their Bubblegum position.

“Probably don’t come tonight,” Eddie said, audibly burying the hurt in his own voice. “Sorry again about the ice cream.”

“Please don’t go again,” Richie cut in. He hadn’t meant to sound desperate, but he supposed that it wasn’t the most embarrassing thing that had happened to him that day. “Eddie, I...I don’t forgive you, not yet, anyway, and I know that’s probably a dick thing to say, but I mean it, so there it is. But. I also still love you, so.” Richie turned his eyes up towards the ceiling, mortified at his own bluntness and general stupidity. “Can I at least maybe go to your party tonight.”

Eddie stared back at him. “I won’t be allowed to dance with you in front of people.”

“It’s allowed if you say it’s allowed,” Richie said, silently begging Eddie to really, really hear him. “You know that, right?”

He could see that Eddie was fighting back the impulse to close off again, and he floated over to him, gripping him by the shoulders.

“Eds.”

“It starts at eight,” Eddie whispered, and then he was backing through the door and disappearing into the forest until he was just a dot of pink against blacks and blues.

Richie took a deep breath and looked again at the shirt in his hands.

He hoped he still owned formal wear.

----

It was a little weird for Richie to be feeling like he was doing something for the first time, but as he approached the ball, he found that he had no memory of ever doing something quite like this. In his whole thousand year existence, he’d never accepted an invitation from a Prince to a ball...let alone accepted an invitation from a Prince with whom he had romantic history.

It was kind of cool, all things considered. Sneaking into Stan’s parties in Lumpy Space had nothing on this. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so...not bored.

Maybe he still had some shit to experience, after all. Even if it was kind of also the same shit for a second time.

“Some things never change,” Bev had sighed when Richie had met her at the palace gates and filled her in on the day’s excitement.

“They change,” Richie had countered, fidgeting with the collar of the stuffy shirt he’d managed to dig out of his floor pile. “But they also stay the same, you know? Like when you leave something somewhere and it’s still there when you go back, but like - it’s melted or faded or something. Things can be both.”

They’d walked inside at that moment, and their presence was informally announced by the slam of the gigantic wooden palace doors behind them.

When the inhabitants of the Candy Kingdom got their first good look at Richie, they didn’t panic, much to Richie’s surprise. They just stood there, limp and wary, waiting for some crazy catastrophe to befall them. They were used to it, probably - Ooo had a new catastrophe every fucking day.

Eddie must have had his hands super full, Richie thought. Would there have been a place for me with him while he dealt with all that shit? Or would I have just gotten bored?

He could so easily imagine himself drifting away from the early Candy Kingdom - there had been so many problems and so much paperwork back then.

He found himself a little less angry about Eddie’s decision upon realizing that.

“It’s chill,” Richie called out to the Candy citizens, raising his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I don’t talk to my dad and I don’t vibe with demons. I just play music and crush on your Prince, that’s all. Carry on.”

Surprisingly, they did. As soon as Richie had finished his announcement, the Candy citizens were shrugging and mumbling and laughing to each other, and then the music was back on, and then it was like he wasn’t there at all - like he was just a normal dude that came to these parties all the time.

“So they’re okay with me having a crush on their Prince?” Richie asked Bev incredulously.

Bev laughed. “Yeah, because they all have a crush on him, too.”

“And they don’t care about the--” Richie began, and bared his fangs to indicate that he was referring to his father.

Bev clicked her tongue thoughtfully. “I think most of them have forgotten about how shitty things used to be with Sonia, honestly. Eddie’s paranoid about it still, but these guys aren’t exactly known for their terrific memories or brains in general. No one’s afraid of the Nightosphere anymore.”

Richie let out a long, obnoxious groan.

“Eddie,” he called, kicking himself off the ground and floating as fast as he could through the mazelike palace. “Eds, are you serious? We could have been - fuck, Eds, you have to be here, right, where--”

“I don’t know if he’ll come,” Richie heard Eddie’s voice - not Bubblegum’s voice, much to his delight, but Eddie’s -  say from around a corner, and he abruptly stopped in his tracks, wanting to hear out the rest of whatever this conversation was.

“Why w-wouldn’t he c-c-come?” The next voice that spoke was unmistakably Bill’s. There was no stutter quite like his anywhere else in Ooo.

Somebody sighed - Eddie, probably, or Ben if he was there, and then Eddie was mumbling. Richie thought he caught the words “complicated” and “history”, but he couldn’t be sure…

“They were in love, Bill,” Ben said loudly, and Eddie let out a loud shriek. Richie cackled quietly to himself, and decided to get a closer look at the situation. He screwed his eyes shut and concentrated, and was soon rewarded with a familiar cold water-esque sensation - he was turning invisible.

He floated out into the hallway and perched himself a little ways behind Eddie, who was clustered up against the wall with Ben, Bill, and MiKE (who looked very cute in a small, ill-fitting tuxedo), and clearly trying to keep things low profile.

“How did thuh-that happen?” Bill asked, bewildered. Eddie blushed a deep pink and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Richie’s dad and my mom used to do business, back in the day. Whenever Went Tozier was around, Richie would always be hovering somewhere, hoping that Went would come talk to him. Went never did...but I wanted to, I really wanted to, so one day…”

“One day I decided to pity the kid with the puppy dog eyes that was following me around and say hey to him. The rest of it, as they say, is ancient Ooo history.” Richie swooped in behind Eddie and materialized to tell his part of the story. Ben and Bill both almost fell backwards at his sudden appearance. Eddie didn’t flinch, but his shoulders were drawn tight.

“Ancient indeed,” he agreed, not turning to look at Richie at all. “I was what, four hundred? And you were five hundred?”

“Six hundred,” Richie corrected. “Had that radical age advantage.”

“Anyways,” Eddie continued, “I seem to remember you being really excited to meet me because, and I quote, ‘there aren’t that many people that don’t die around here, let alone cute people that don’t die’.”

“Like I said, ancient Ooo history,” Richie told Ben and Bill, who were listening with wide eyes. “But tonight is a new era, isn’t it, Eds?”

Eddie turned his head slowly up to look at Richie’s face, as if he needed to determine whether Richie was speaking in earnest. “You’ve seen the Candy People? They’re not afraid of you?”

“They don’t give a single shit,” Richie confirmed. “They trust that you’re gonna keep them safe, and, well, you invited me. So.”

“So,” Eddie repeated, jerking his head back down and twisting his lurid pink cape in his fingers.

“So we dance!” MiKE suggested, and Richie could have sworn that little guy hadn’t been paying attention at all, but he was all there now, and all smiles.

Who were they to begrudge him?

“So we dance,” Richie agreed, shooting Eddie a soft little smile. Eddie returned it gratefully, and Richie felt his chest twist a little at how new it was and also how familiar it was. Things had changed, but they were also the same.

“Dance with me?” Eddie asked, holding out his hand to Richie.

There was still a lot the two of them needed to talk about, but…

“Let’s tear it up, sweet thing,” Richie replied, feeling less dead than he had in a long, long time.