"Hey, Eds." Richie spoke up, causing the other boy to be taken out of the daze he was so often in and look up.
"Yeah, Richie?"
"You know how Timothy Kail was bragging about how he'd uhm... y'know, with like, ten girls?" He fiddled with his thumbs awkwardly, and Eddie tensed up from the question.
"Um,—" he coughed. "yeah, why?" He replied, face hearing up dramatically.
"Er, well, have you— um, ever... you know'd, with anyone?" Richie asked, surprising himself as the thought of someone else being with Eddie in such an intimate way made him frown, but he quickly wiped it off his face.
Eddie shook his head immediately. "No! No, uhm, no I haven't..."
There was an awkward pause, and Richie was trying to think of the right way to put his question.
"Have you ever t-touched yourself?" Richie asked suddenly.
Eddie responded by raising his hand and slapping it down on his own thigh. "Yeah, silly. What do you mean?" He grinned.
Flushing immensely, Richie fretted. "No, I mean, like, uhm," unsure of how to say it, he gestured down to his own crotch and pressed his hand on it.
Understanding, finally, Eddie's perfectly-arched brows rose in surprise. He opened his mouth to reply, but all that managed to come out was a croak as he stared at what Richie's palm was covering, and for some discoverable reason, Eddie really wanted Richie to remove his hand.
And his pants.
And his boxers.
Okay, maybe Eddie just wanted Richie naked but that was totally, completely, 100% besides the point. A question had been asked of him and he hadn't replied.
Swallowing the nerves, he shook his head. "Oh." He muttered. "Uhm, n-no. I haven't— have, um, have you?"
Richie shook his head.
And that was the end of the conversation. Eddie's mom came home and the two boys out an end to whatever they had been talking about to race downstairs for dinner.
But then, it came up again. That day, the girls had had a 'girl talk' and the boys a 'boy talk'. Richie and Eddie didn't know what happened in the girl talk, but in the boy talk, they'd talked about something called 'masturbation' and 'ejaculation'. It was described quite vividly and both Richie and Eddie found themselves salivating, but confused when the teacher told them 'this usually happens to a boy when he sees a girl he likes', because neither of them had ever seen a girl like that.
So, when they were at Richie's house and the old-lady babysitter, Mrs. Velérian, has fallen asleep on the couch downstairs, Richie and Eddie were upstairs in Richie's locked bedroom, laying on his bed in the dark— after taking out the babysitter's hearing aid, of course.
It was silent for a while, both boys content but with the same sort of thoughts in their head.
"Eddie?" Richie whispered.
"Yeah, Richie?"
"Do you... you know how we talked about, uhm," he tried to think of the word to continue his sentence. "masturbation, a little while ago?"
