.: I Wish, I Wish, I Wish ~:||:~ Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier :.

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Some people say love is fire. It burns furiously through your heart, and I'll be damned if it doesn't hurt, but it's still worth the pain because love is love. Love makes you who you are and your love helps make other people who they are.

Love, as the boy sitting by his window and looking out at the stars would soon come to find out, was merciless. It would tear at his heart and twist it and stab it in every single reachable place until there was nothing left than a scrap. It would poke, and prod, and apply just enough pressure that it was a little more than uncomfortable, and it wouldn't let go.

The only time it would change was if it started to hurt more.

The boy would soon come to think that once it hurt more, it couldn't go back.

Once your heart goes beyond it's comfort zone, there is no return, and it is going to hurt forever. Because people may split apart, there may be tears shed, and hearts broken, but no matter how many times people say they're over all their old partners, or silly little crushes, nobody ever really is.

Nobody ever gets over the illness called love.

They just find someone who they love more than they loved the last person.

That's why the boy was afraid. He knew he was sick, sick with this horrible disease, and he understood better than anyone else that it wasn't one you could recover from. He was going to spend his life trying to shake this illness and all that would do was make it stronger. Love was an incurable condition to him, and when he finally fell, for the first time in his life, he fell harder than he had thought possible.

The boy with neatly styled brown hair and bright, doe-like brown eyes, his face speckled with freckles, would fall harder than anyone in the world.

He would be seeing stars before he even hit the bottom, screaming up into the infinity, screaming, I wish, I wish, I wish, but what?

What did he wish? That he would be loved back?

That surely wasn't possible. Of course not. No way in heaven or hell would he be loved back.

After all, who would love a boy who couldn't even keep his bones from being broken? Who would love a boy who couldn't even outrun a bully because of asthma he didn't have? Who would love a boy who clung to his aspirator like it was a lifeline even though he knew in the bottom of his heart that he didn't need it? Who would love a boy who, the one time they really needed him, couldn't even lead them out of the fucking sewers?

Who would love a boy like that?

Nobody, not a single person, not even

(him)

the person that he wanted to be loved by, not even the boy with the lowest standards in the world would want him. Not even that boy, the player, the one who will get down and dirty with anyone who looks at him would want to be with this brown-haired boy of thirteen years old.

How did he know?

Why, because Richie Tozier was not gay, of course. It was as simple as that. Richie Tozier, the boy's best friend, the clown of the group who never knew when to shut his fucking mouth was definitely not gay. The boy knew because almost every day he saw Richie with another girl, making out under the stairwell. He never saw him there with a boy, so that automatically meant, Richie was not gay. Period.

But Eddie could hope, couldn't he? He could certainly wish.

So that's what he did. Eddie Kaspbrak wished.