Chapter Text
The clubhouse looked like shit. It was an observation a blind man would have tripped over.
Richie made a face as he stepped off the ladder and ducked down into the dugout. The silvery edges of snack wrappers glittered in the sunlight from the hatch-door. Battered issues of magazines and comic books hung off the table and spilled onto the floor. A fine layer of dust lay atop the cassette player, and as he passed it, a spider scurried back into the hole of a tape. He shook out the hammock, sending a little pile of empty soda cans crashing to the floor in a clatter of dull noise, and then with an oath muttered under his breath, flounced into the hammock and closed his eyes.
Coming here had been a mistake.
It had made sense in his head. He was sad and wanted to mourn, and the clubhouse would be a warm blanket to curl up in. But he hadn't known the state of it. It was like an old toy in the attic, once beloved and now coated in dust and half-forgotten, and as lonely as he was, he took no comfort in that. The endless summer days spent in the Barrens were a thing of childhood, which seemed to Richie to be rapidly slipping away from him, along with every friend he'd ever had.
Bev had been first, not long after That Summer. The last time he saw her, she'd been sitting on her knees in the backseat of her aunt's Lincoln Continental, her freckled face framed in the rear window. She had been happy to leave because, like all the Losers, she hated Derry. Bev especially was escaping abuse none of them could really fathom, so it should have been joy on her face. Relief in escape. But there had been tears in her eyes as she pulled away from them. He and the other Losers had watched her as long as they could, long after her face had faded into a blur and the boxy red car became a blip on the horizon. He remembered his arms and legs twitching like he wanted to hit something. He hadn't cried, but he'd wanted to. Ben had. Quietly and to himself, before stalking off somewhere to be alone. Richie hadn't realised then. They'd only been friends a short while. He hadn't felt the hollow of Bev's absence until later, later, later. It was months before he understood what you don't know what you got til it's gone meant. But Ben had known.
Ben had been next. That was your life, when you had a mom who travelled for work. Perpetual new kid. He was used to it. He'd told Richie once that in fourteen years he'd never lived anywhere longer than a few months before, and Derry was the only place he'd ever felt right at. When Richie had scoffed at that ("This fucking hellhole? What the shit, Hanscom?") Ben had shrugged his round shoulders. "At least I got to meet you guys. I've never had friends before." Always with that earnest face Richie secretly admired. He wished he could be serious like Ben, sometimes. When his traitor mouth ran off in the opposite direction from what he wanted to say, so often that it made him feel crazy… Times like that, he really wished he had Ben's steadfastness. Not that he would ever, ever, tell the other boy that. Ben had given Richie a copy of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy before he left, and made Richie promise to read it. He still hadn't. The battered copy sat on his bedside table, neighbor to his alarm clock and within immediate reach, but he couldn't bring himself to read it.
Bill had left only a handful of months ago. Many excuses were made, but the one Bill stuck on was that he'd be busier in Bangor. Too busy to dwell on things. Georgie things, Richie had thought. But then Bill let slip his mother was going to Connecticut to stay with her sister. His parents were separating. Bill sounded sympathetic as he explained that it was just too hard for his parents; losing a child. And sure it was. But Richie thought it was still a hell of a thing to do to their other kid, like Bill's mom didn't even remember she had an elder son, or that Bill's dad would rather be at work than deal with his failing marriage, or his dead son, or his living miserable one. And poor Bill, standing there and making excuses because even if he fuck snapped and shouted down the house how yeah you're hurting but so am I they wouldn't hear him… Bill's leaving cut Richie the worst, because at least Bev and Ben were going to places with people who would look after them. But Bill had always only ever had himself if he didn't have the Losers, and now, he wouldn't even have them.
Mike was still around, but he might as well have been gone for all Richie had seen of him. His free time was pretty limited, working on a farm like he was. The last time he'd seen him was about six weeks after Bill had gone. He'd come down to find Mike sitting in the swing, gently rocking himself to and fro. His head had been down, and a solemn frown had sat on his face. Richie didn't like it. Mike was always the sunny one of them; he wasn't supposed to look like he knew how the Invisible Man might feel. Asking him about it hadn't done any good, because Mike couldn't explain why he felt that way. "Just feels like one day I'm gonna be the only one here," he'd said. Richie had slumped back into the hammock. "You can't get rid of us, Mikey. You know what Bill would say if he were here. 'L-L-Losers stick t-t-together.'" Mike had laughed, and Richie had felt happy that his friend was smiling. That had been almost three months ago.
And now...
Now...
Everything was changing, and it fucking sucked.
His dad, usually a source of comfort in trying times, had clapped him on the shoulder with a sympathetic look when he bitched to him about it. "Sorry bud, but you're gonna have to get used to that. That's adulthood for you. The only thing that never changes is that everything always does." He knew his dad was trying to be helpful, but shit like that went unappreciated and unvalued by a fourteen-year-old boy, out of principle. That wasn't the sort of thing he wanted to acknowledge or accept. Growing up? If it meant losing pieces of who he was, then fuck it. He wanted no part of it.
Maybe that's why he was down here. He could pretend for a little bit that he was still a kid. He could pretend he was waiting for Bill and the others. He could pretend that his heart wasn't breaking into jagged pieces. It was the first time his heart had done that. One day, in his adulthood, he would reflect that things could and would grow to become so much worse; that heartbreak was a visitor to adults much in the way curiosity was to children. The adult Rich Tozier would weather heartbreaks larger than this one, but only because in the final days of summer in 1990 this first one split him right down his middle, leaving Richie in a kind of pain he'd never known, a pain that made him sick to his stomach.
Because Eddie Kaspbrak was moving away too.
Eddie had told him yesterday. He'd obviously been hanging onto it for a while. They'd been walking their bikes together home from the Barrens, and had stopped on the street corner to say good night. Eddie's mom had gotten really bitchy lately about who Eddie hung out with, having it in for Richie in particular, so they tried not to be seen together by her-- or by Ms. Masters, the dusty old gossip who lived next door to the Kaspbraks. There hadn't been any confirmation as to why Sonia the Hutt hated him so much (though Richie had a pretty good idea) and Eddie refused to repeat the things his mother said about him behind closed doors, but he could tell from the turmoil on Eds' face that it was nasty. To save him the lecture, Richie had consented to splitting off at the corner and watching him walk down the street alone. This they could get away with, because by dusk Ms. Masters was usually in bed (the old bat was nearly ninety) but more importantly, Mrs. K was never on the porch. As if she could ever be coaxed away from her TV and her snacks, especially when she was already so sure her Eddie-bear was following her rules devoutly!
Richie couldn't help the resentment against Eddie's mother. He hadn't anything nice to say about the lady before this, for reasons Eddie would never hear; but he especially hated her when watching Eddie's lonely twilit silhouette slide home under the trees that lined his street. He wanted (God, how he wanted) to walk at his side; better still, to take him by the hand as he did. He didn't know why it was such a big deal to him. It wasn't like he'd never held Eddie's hand before; arm wrestling, or helping him climb out of the dugout. Besides, he had imagined other things, things that made his face go hot, things that he shamefully played out in detail behind clamped-shut eyes in the dark of his bedroom when he was supposed to be going to sleep, things that he had gotten hard for, almost against his will.
But to walk him home, right to his door, palm to palm, where his mother might see... He couldn't explain it. He just wanted it.
He had been thinking about that. The words on his tongue, working up the courage to ask. Eds, let me walk you all the way today. Fuck your mom. They'd reached the corner, he'd looked up, his mouth had opened.
Eddie's voice arrived first.
"I'm moving to New York."
That wasn't what I was gonna say, was legitimately the first thing Richie had thought.
It felt like he'd socked him in the gut. All the air in his lungs went stale. Eddie hadn't looked at him; his eyes just kept roaming over Richie's shirt, never going above his collarbone. But Richie couldn't take his eyes off him. He'd just stared, uncomprehending, as the other boy laid it out for him. It all came tumbling out in one breath, as he was wont to do. How his mother had wanted better schools for him and sprung it on him a few weeks ago. House in Queens already bought and their house here already listed. It was a done deal, with the only thing left being to move; they had been living out of boxes for over a week because the house was already packed up. And he hadn't told Richie earlier because...
Because...
"I just wanted us to be normal until I had to go."
"What the fuck does that mean?" Anger started bubbling beneath his skin when Eddie started to talk; he'd come to a slow simmer by the time Eddie let him speak. His hands were tingling again. Hit something.
Eddie had shrugged, rolled his eyes. Still never actually looked at him. "You know, Rich. I didn't wanna watch you mope around like you did with Ben and Bill before they left."
"I didn't mope--" Hit hit hit kick something Eds look at me--
"Uh, you totally did--"
"And I wouldn't have moped if you'd told me you were fucking leaving, because I don't give a shit!"
Eddie's eyes had snapped up, just for a moment, to Richie's. There had been a flash of hurt, maybe (direct hit) before his brows had furrowed.
"Yeah fucking right. You're going to be a miserable sack of shit without me around. Like how you've been since Bill left, but like, ten times worse."
"If I'm such a sack of shit, why do you keep hanging out with me?"
"Beats me."
"Maybe it's because you don't have any fucking friends. You ever think about that, dickhead?"
Eddie's face had collapsed into disgust, his pale cheeks reddening with anger. "Fuck you, Richie." His bike rattled as he yanked it and started walking. Target destroyed.
"Fuck you," he'd shot back. "You and your mom."
Eddie hadn't looked back, just raised one hand and flipped him off. Richie had stood there and watched him go. Right down the street and up the steps into his house. He'd stood there, breathing hard, his ears burning and his throat tight, as the last band of orange faded in the west, and heavy twilight descended on Derry. He couldn't move. He needed to go home; it was already so dark. His mother was going to be pissed if she got home from work and he wasn't there.
But he didn't want to.
He wanted to go down the street, right up to Eddie's door. Knock. He hadn't had to knock on Eddie's door since he was eight years old. But he'd knock. And when Eddie opened the door, he'd...
(apologize hold him kiss him)
Fuck.
His feet started moving on their own. Not down Eddie's street, but towards home. That, kissing Eds, was not something he was supposed to think about. The vagrant idea had invaded his thoughts and it only got stronger the more he thought about it. Sometimes he didn't even hear what Eddie was saying because his traitor brain had fucked off to wonder how soft Eddie's mouth was and whether or not his lips were warm. That, like holding his hand, became a solid daydream that Richie held onto like some kind of (fag) girl, and it was fucking stupid.
Stupid!
It had boiled in his head all the way home. How could Eddie not have told him? Didn't he know Richie needed time? He had to know. (He couldn't know. God, how would he look at him? If he knew?) He wanted to go back. Part of him was still standing on that corner, standing on his doorstep, knocking on his door, waiting for Eddie to come out. He wanted to see his face. He always wanted to see Eddie. He hated leaving at the end of every day. (When was he leaving? He hadn't asked. Why hadn't he asked?)
He came up onto the lawn and dropped his bike. His dad hated it when he did that, but his hands were shaking so much he couldn't hold onto it anymore. Everything was shaking; his hands, his lip, his vision. The shapes of the world fell into a hot blur and before he could stop them, tears were burning down his cheeks. He sank down onto the front step, pushed his hands up under his glasses, and sobbed.
He knew. He knew because it had been a year since Bev had gone. Nine months since Ben. Five since Bill.
And none of them ever wrote, or called.
He knew, when Eddie left, he was never going to see him again.
And that sucked.
That was why he was here, in the clubhouse. It felt more like home than his own bedroom, the empty house his parents were so proud of. It was dark and filthy, but it had been full once. Full of dumb jokes and cigarette smoke and comics and bird books and games and puzzles and music. It had none of those things now. It was a graveyard. But it was where he wanted to be. Where else did you go to mourn?
He'd swung there, hugging himself in the hammock and drowsy with misery, for probably the longest time he'd ever been quiet in fourteen years. He was imagining what the others might say. (Trashmouth's been dead silent for over an hour? It's not Richie, it's a pod person! Kill it! Kill it! Maybe a game would've broken out. Nerf guns at high noon--) when he heard someone coming.
Footsteps crunched through the sun-dried undergrowth outside. A shadow fluttered through the slats in the roof. Process of elimination told him who it was well before he saw the tidy sneakers and pressed shorts descending the ladder. There were only three people it could be, and only one was likely.
So when Stan turned, his eyes adjusting to the shapes in the dark, Richie lifted two fingers in a half-hearted wave.
"Oh. Hey, Richie."
His voice was soft, almost sad. Maybe he had heard. But then, Stan usually sounded like that. He had gotten more melancholy after Bill left, but it was just as likely he was thinking about birds as he was lonely. He padded over to the swing and sank into it.
"Heard about Eddie." Richie nodded. "You okay?"
"Fucking fantastic."
"Yeah. Sorry. Dumb question." He rocked himself, his mouth pursed. "It's not like you're never gonna see him again, though."
Richie's head swivelled to glare at him. "Yeah? Like how we see Bev every never or two? Like all those letters we don't get from Ben? All those missed calls from Bill? Shut the fuck up, Stanley."
Stan's eyes darkened with irritation. He shook his head. "Not now. Not even soon. You'll be older. You and Eddie. Ben. Bev. Bill. Mike." His voice drifted away, sounding almost dream-like but still sure. "You guys will get to see each other again. Drinking and laughing, just like we do now."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
Stan had been… somewhere else. As distant as his voice, until Richie's tone snapped him back. He pulled his gaze from Alpha Centauri, or wherever he'd been staring, back into Maine, Derry, the Barrens, the clubhouse, right back to Richie's bewildered face. Two bright spots of red colored his cheeks. He shook his head.
"Nothing."
"Didn't sound like nothing."
Stan didn't speak. He closed his fingers onto the rope, his thumbnail scratching at the pattern purposefully, but without destructive intent. More like he was doing it for the sensation, like clicking a pen or drumming his foot. Richie watched him with a laser focus. He knew anxiety when he saw it; both Stan and Eddie did shit like this all the time.
"Stan."
The other boy looked up. There was something in his eyes. Something none of the Losers spoke of. A thing, the thing, that haunted them both. Just looking at Stan's eyes froze Richie's blood. He wanted to back away from it. Let it go. But he couldn't. Like so much of what happened That Summer, it was a matter of life and death. He needed to hear what Stanley had to say, even as a part of him demanded fucking why?! He hadn't wanted to talk about it even when it was happening; why did he feel this urgency now? This morbid curiosity?
The deaths, the missings, the hellish nightmare they had faced in the sewers-- all of that shit was too close, too scary. They'd all had their reasons for going along with Bill's vengeful investigation, but Richie's had always been because he's my friend. It was probably the only edict in him that was stronger than I don't want to die. Was that it now? Pushing him, past the bitterness on the back of his tongue, to ask about that pale terror in Stan's eyes?
He sat up, the hammock fighting him as he shifted, and threw his legs over the side. His heart was in his throat. "What are you talking about, drinking and laughing? Bev said she saw us in the cistern."
Stan's lips parted, but no sound came out. Shame burned on his face and he shook his head vigorously. Richie cleared his throat.
"Did you see something too? Like… like Bev did? But different?"
Richie knew he'd nailed it even before Stan nodded.
"Recently?"
Stan swallowed. "N-No," he gulped out. "Last year."
Richie relaxed, but only a little. It still felt like that fucking clown's fingers were curling over his shoulders; he knew Stan was feeling it too, because he shuddered at the same time Richie reached up to rub at the back of his neck.
"When? You never looked at the deadlights, did you?”
Tears filled Stan’s eyes. His chin wobbled. “When… When It…” A little sound, like a sob, bubbled up and out of his mouth.
“When It bit me.”
Bit was an understatement. They’d found Stan with his face halfway down Its throat. The memory was burned into Richie's eyes forever: that hideous Painted Woman, with a mouth unlike any creature he’d ever seen before, clamped down on his best friend’s head like Stan was a ripe juicy apple. His hands started to tingle and he shook them, resisting the urge to flee for sanity.
But the story lined up with what Bev had told them. That Pennywise had opened its mouth, with its many rows of jagged teeth, and she had seen the deadlights swirling in the back of its maw. Even if Stan hadn’t been put in a trance, like Bev had, he must’ve seen something.
Richie could barely believe it. A frisson crackled like lightning through his veins-- though whether he was more scared (the clown the fucking clown It It It was gonna come back It was in the room now) or excited (future the future he had a future with Eddie in it) he couldn't tell.
"What did you see? Us in the future but something else? Something Bev didn't see?"
Stan shook his head. He choked, as if something wanted to burst from his throat but he wouldn't let it. He shook his head again.
"Rich, I can't--"
"You brought it up, man! How come you never said anything about it? What the fuck?"
"Nobody wanted to talk about it," Stan cried. A tear slipped down his cheek. "Not until Bev brought us all together, and I didn't... I couldn't--"
His eyes were wild. Richie had only ever seen Stan look like that once in all the years he'd known him.
You left me! You took me into Neibolt! You're not my friends!
"Okay, okay… Shit, Stanley.”
Richie swiped a hand through his hair. Exhilaration bled out of him, subsumed by guilt. It was true they’d never spoken of it. Bev had called them together to warn them of what she’d seen in the deadlights, not to hash out their feelings about the horror of what had happened to them in the sewers. What good would it have done? It wasn’t like a well-timed ice cream cone sorted that shit out. It had seemed more important to get back to normal as soon as possible, as if there was any way it ever would be again.
He remembered the sensation, visceral and raw, as they made their way into the daylight at the end of a long nightmare; the sensation of being both shattered and whole, at home with the six people he loved best in all the world, and looking into their faces and knowing that feeling was mutual. None of their parents ever noticed anything different after that sweltering August day, but he knew they were changed by it. Perhaps in ways they didn’t even know, yet.
The muffled chorus of cicadas beyond the clubhouse walls snapped him out of his thoughts before Stan's cries did. He sat, unmoving on the swing in the sultry air, with his head down as tears dripped off his long nose onto his knees. Richie went to his feet and bent forward to loop his arms around Stan's narrow shoulders. The other boy accepted the hug shamelessly, his thin hands clenching fists into Richie's boxy Hawaiian shirt and his cheek mushed into Richie's chest.
Several minutes passed before he had calmed down enough that Richie felt like a joke would fly.
"Jesus, Stanley. It's a shirt, not a towel."
Stan laughed wetly, and gave a long clogged sniff as he pulled away. Richie's hand lingered on Stan's shoulder until he'd wiped his eyes and taken a shaky breath. As he stepped back he spotted a palm-sized rubber ball by the support strut the swing hung from. On impulse he scooped it from where it lay and tossed it against the wall. It bounced back with a hollow thwack and he caught it neatly.
Him and Eds, in twenty-seven years… Well, twenty-six now. Drinking and laughing. Didn't sound like what Bev saw. He threw the ball again. Thwack - catch. Was there a different future, then? Or had Stan merely seen a separate scene of the same cursed vision? Thwack - catch. What would he be like as a grown-up? He couldn't even begin to imagine Eddie as a man. For some reason, the adult Eddie in Richie's head had a moustache; possibly because Eddie had a vague line of peach fuzz coming in on his upper lip. He wouldn't be tall. No way. Eds was too cute to be tall someday.
Someday. The formless, foggy blur that was someday. Might as well be never to a fourteen-year-old.
In twenty-six years, they'd be... fuck, they'd be forty. Richie had a hard time seeing what eighteen looked like in his head, much less... forty. The brief little pulse of happiness at the thought of being reunited with Eddie faded away. He sighed, a broken sound that got caught on every organ on the way out of his chest, and turned away, stamping emotion down. It wasn't like Stan would make fun of him for it, even if he hadn't just been blubbering all over him. It just wasn't Richie's way.
But whoever those forty-year-old men were, he and Eddie would never be here, together as boys, ever again. And he mourned that.
"Thanks for telling me," he said, pinching his eyes. "I uh... Dunno if it helps, but... thanks anyway."
Over his shoulder the other boy conceded this with a nod.
Silence ruled, as it often did with Stan. There was only the creak of the ropes of the swing as he pushed himself at a lazy pace, and the steady thwack of the ball as Richie pelted it at the wall.
"Do you think we can change the future?"
Richie turned, his brows knit behind his glasses. He and Stan had been friends for almost as long as he and Bill had been, and he had always been the quietest of them. Had to be, because he had such deep, sad little nuggets running around that head of his. Shit like can we change the future.
"I don't fucking know. Maybe?" Thwack-- he caught the ball again. "If we follow Doc Brown's logic, the future hasn't been written yet."
"Life's not a movie, Rich."
"That's all it is," he replied. "Haven't you read Shakespeare? 'All the world's a stage.'"
Stan rolled his eyes. "I just mean... If we die, we die. It's not like bombs stop with one second left in real life. Kids die. Grown-ups die. And life goes on. Dramatic confessions at exactly the right moment won't save anybody's life. Right?"
Richie looked up and met Stan's eyes. It felt like he was staring straight through him at something deeper, the part of himself that Richie kept hidden. That idea sent gooseflesh down Richie's arms; he folded his free arm and rubbed the other vigorously.
"I guess not."
Stan seemed disappointed by this answer. Richie frowned. What had he wanted him to say, a flat no? Richie didn't believe that. The right words, at the right time, could be more than speech. It could be hope, or solace. It wouldn't spool your blood back up into your body or heal fatal wounds; it wouldn't bring the dead back to life. But he'd lost count of how many times the right song at the right moment had quenched some thirst in him, or a bit of encouragement from the right person had bandaged something broken in him.
Maybe it could save a life.
All the same, saying yes made him sound like a little boy. That sort of fairytale horseshit was for whimsical dorks like Bill Denbrough.
Stan's eyes smoldered with emotion. He fidgeted, agitated, then shook it off. In a brusque tone, he began, "I guess it's as good a time to tell you as any. My parents are thinking about moving too."
It was as unexpected as Eddie's announcement. And it cut as deep as any of the others. Richie felt it hit him slowly, breaking like a wave over a rocky shore.
"Of course they are," he spat. "The only people who want to stay in this hellhole are fucking looney tunes."
Stan was watching him again. Annoying. It was that scrutinising frown he always wore, like he was privy to secret knowledge. Thirteen going on thirty; that's what adults called it. Really it just made him look like a smartass brat.
"What?" Richie demanded.
"It's not the same with me, is it?" he said. "Me leaving. You can sit in here and be miserable, like you miss Bill and Bev. You can even pretend you're gonna miss me. But it's not the same as with Eddie, is it?"
Richie's throat closed up. An alarm, more of a ringing than coherent thought, wailed from the recesses of his mind. No shut up he doesn't know because there's nothing to know and when Richie finally found his voice, it sounded hollow.
"I do miss Bill and Bev. Ben, too."
"It's not the same, though."
"Course it is. You guys're my best friends--"
"We're not Eddie though," Stan said, forcefully, aggravated. "I know the difference. I'm not an idiot."
Richie wanted to laugh. To play it off. Stan, you dweeb, shut up.
But he also wanted to shout What difference? What is it that makes me different from Bill and Ben and you and Mike? If you can see it if you know then tell me what I'm doing wrong tell me how to be normal because he sure as fuck didn't want to feel like this for the rest of his life. Read as easily as a book, even by strangers. Discounted as defective because of something he didn't fully understand. Henry Bowers, Greta Keene, Eddie's mom, countless others, could all see something dirty in him and God how he wanted to be somebody else. He tried so hard to keep it inside, keep it secret, hidden beneath masks. But somehow, it kept spilling out and out and out.
There had been so many times he had wanted to tell them. Late nights when Bev or Ben had almost coaxed it out of him. Times in the quiet comfort with Mike or Bill or Stan when he felt like he could blurt it out and nothing would change. Times when he thought, maybe, just maybe, Eddie knew; knew and felt the same way.
And always, the only thing that held him back was the terror that one of them might look at him the way Mrs. K did. That his safety was false, or that it could be destroyed.
Who knew why Ben and Bev and Bill never wrote or called? Maybe it was already in pieces.
Stan didn't look like that now. If anything he looked desperate for relief, his face open, not only inviting but demanding. I'm right here. Just talk to me.
But Richie's stomach was eating itself and he couldn't make it stop. When he spoke again, the words were thick, fighting past his gag reflex.
"So?"
"So why can't you just admit it?" Stan asked.
"Admit it?" Richie swallowed hard. "You can't even fucking say it!" The words railed out of his throat. They felt like gravel. "It's so bad you won't even say it out loud and you want me to-- like saying it's gonna make it better? Like I'll stop getting my ass kicked at school? Like Mrs. K'll stop looking at me like I'm something she scraped off her ass? Is that what you think?! That just because you don't care that I'm a fag that nobody else will?! You think that matters compared to the rest of it? I mean, what the fuck do you want from me, Stanley?!"
The anger faded to embers as quickly as it had flashed out. When Richie could feel again, his sunburnt nerves were curling away from the fire that had exploded out of him. His chest hurt. His temples throbbed and his eyes stung. There was acid on the back of his tongue. Stan was a sort of blur in front of him, and as Richie got a grip back on himself, his chest heaving, he saw the invitation on Stan's face had shattered. He was watching Richie the way he imagined he'd be watching a burning building: his eyes squinting like they hurt, leaving no room for tears. They dripped down his face as they came into being, in two unbroken streams.
Fuck fuck fuck-- he never let any of them see this, and this was why; it was ugly. And the worst part was, as his own words echoed in his ears, he realised he'd said something very true. Stan didn't care. Not that Richie was a fag, anyway. His face had said that loud and clear.
And he'd slapped it.
Anger flared up again. He shouldn'tve said, Stan shouldn'tve pushed-- how dare he, like Richie hadn't purposefully kept this inside for a reason, and then cry like a child because he hadn't expected it to be like this.
"Fuck off! What do you have to cry about? I'm the one who--" His breath hitched. "--who has to live with this shit everyday! You act like it's so easy, like we live in a town where I could just tell Eddie-- like that wouldn't be painting a fucking target on him too! I mean, Jesus fucking Christ-- you think maybe I don't want anyone to know for good reason!?"
Stan's cheeks blistered red. "I didn't think me and Eddie and Mike counted as anyone ! I'm your best friend, you jackass! We're supposed to be able to tell each other anything!"
His words shot a little too close to his heart. Why hadn't Ben called? Bev written? Bill visited? Richie's irrefutable truth of Last Summer (these are the people who love you) had been damaged in the year since, and he didn't know how to repair it. There was the glimmer of hope that their truth was still there somewhere, even when half of them weren't (where are you guys) and he could hear it in Stan's angry, hurt voice. Why...
Why was he asking so much?
His mouth trembled. "No. There's some stuff that's secret. Always."
Something changed in Stan. He didn't move, didn't blink, but somehow Richie could tell he had crumpled on a structural level. A tiny flicker in his eyes, nostrils flaring, a relaxing of his shoulders; these were the only signs of the hairline cracks spider-webbing through his soul. Richie felt a surge of guilt; resentment smashed it aside. It's his own fault for pushing why'd he ask if he didn't want to know-- but all the same, everything (the acid the nerves the tears) collapsed on that one point: something was broken between them now.
The silence was icy and numb. He was too tall for the clubhouse suddenly and the hot air was stifling.
"M'going home," he murmured, cutting around Stan, who was still standing there, motionless. Distantly he felt the rubber ball dangling from his fingers. He flung it into a vacant corner, not caring as it ricocheted into the clutter, and stomped up the ladder, as much as one could stomp.
He emerged out of the earth and into the sunlight. The heat didn't feel right on his skin. Prickly, like bugs scampering up the backs of his arms and over his chest and up his neck into his hair. Fucking spiders, probably. He shook his hair out.
"Rich," came Stan's voice, soft but insistent.
He stopped. He didn't want to, but he did. He looked over his shoulder and down into the hatch, watching as Stan came out of the shadows. He didn't follow him up the ladder. Instead he stood there, his shoulders sagging, his mouth set in a deep frown. His eyes were red-rimmed and hollow.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I just… I didn't want you to make the same mistake I did."
He didn't care. Really. He wanted to go home. But…
"What mistake?"
One corner of Stan's mouth twitched, like a smile he smashed down because it tasted wrong. His voice was plaintive and so quiet.
"Letting Bill leave."
Bill?
Richie stared at his friend. But he'd thought… maybe Bev…
Was it really Bill? When he saw them in his mind's eye, the way Stan looked at him or the way he talked about him; how he'd grown sadder after Bill left…
Was that why?
He shook his head. No. He couldn't. He couldn't just be okay with feeling like that. Stan was ridiculously childish sometimes. He didn't get it. Didn't understand what it meant, feeling like this about another guy. What it said about you. He wouldn't admit it if he knew.
Maybe he was fucking with him.
And there was that prickly feeling again, right up the back of his neck. Asshole. What a shitty friend... A fucking shitty loser friend he was.
Stan had reached out, not even caring how disgusting Richie was and he couldn't even extend the same courtesy back? All he could think was how naïve and stupid Stan Uris was.
He was trash. Complete trash.
Richie gulped past the hard lump in his throat. Then he shook his head.
"Grow up," he spat. "You didn't let him do anything. We can't change the world, Stanley. It is what it is and it sucks, and you better learn that now before it bites you in the ass."
He left him there, standing in a hole in the ground, watching him with those miserable hollow eyes. It didn't feel good, or right; more than anything else, Richie felt crazy and sick. He could barely see as he stomped through the Barrens, his brain screaming at him at an uncomfortable volume.
Fucking loser-- flaming faggot ass--
Don't deserve-- can't even-- apologize--
Ugly--
Trash--
Eddie was right.
He was a miserable sack of shit.
He clambered up the hill onto the road, coming out of the woods by the bridge. Seeing it pulled him short, like a choke collar. Right there, carved into the railing there, was a piece of him he'd been… maybe not proud, but happy about. He'd felt ordinary for the first time in his worthless fucking life. He was just like all these other saps in Derry. There hadn't been anything depraved or wrong about him, in that moment.
Besides, disgust had never been the first feeling. That came after, a bitter aftertaste when he thought about how Eds would look at him if he knew.
That first feeling, that bounce in the pit of his stomach, the ache in his chest, the way a smile came to his face without even needing to reach for it…
That had always, always been worth every second of being… like this.
The thought of how ashamed of him Eddie would be when he found out what he'd said to Stan curdled his insides.
He could never tell him. Didn't deserve to.
Besides, it wasn't like it would change anything.
He couldn't keep Eddie just because he wanted to.