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Richie Tozier was a hopeless romantic. He would never admit it to his friends (even though they already knew), but he’d been eagerly counting down the days until his 16th birthday since he was old enough to understand what a soulmate was. He woke up that morning on only a few hours of sleep feeling his heart beating in his throat, and checked his shaking left hand with a mixture of excitement and fear.
5 perfect blue strings on his pinky. Two already pulled tight, indicating that he was more than ready to find his platonic soulmates. But his real focus was on his ring finger, where a single red string was tied neatly and hanging slack, trailing off into the distance. Richie grinned in the golden light of sunrise, knowing that someone incredible must be on the other end.
Richie found his way to Stan and Bill that day, who were thrilled to find their blue strings firmly attached, pulling the three of their hands together into a tangled high five.
“Two soulmates in one day? This is the best birthday present ever!”
But in inspecting the strings, they could tell the math didn’t make sense. The Losers must be soulmates, obviously, so why did Richie only have 3 blue strings left?
He hadn’t turned 16 yet, but everyone agreed one must be attached to Eddie, who was always by Richie’s side with a snort of laughter or a witty comeback. Richie nudged him with a smile and Eddie shot him an affectionate but exasperated eye roll.
Beverly, Ben, and Mike all made it clear that no matter where the strings led, they would still hold their friendship with Richie to the same level as soulmates. They pulled Richie into another hug, and Mike showed that smile that never failed to make his friends feel safe. “I’ll dye some dental floss blue if I have to, Rich. You’re all soulmates to me, string or not.” He waved his hand where he and Ben were tied with a blue thread. They were drawn together in the library, when they both went for the same old poetry book and found their hands pulled tight together. Ben grinned; He always seemed like he was glowing when they talked about that day.
“God, you corny fuckin’ losers… You guys are the best,” Richie said with a huge smile, “But I gotta admit, I’m really excited to find the future Mrs. Tozier! So long as she won’t beat me at video games of course, I do have a reputation y’know.”
Eddie scoffed, “Yeah, a reputation for hogging the Street Fighter machine at the arcade maybe. Besides, it’s your soulmate! What if she does beat you Richie? What will you do then?”
“If she challenges my high scores? I’m breaking this string myself!”
A few months later, Richie felt something – someone - pull on his red thread.
It was the middle of the night when he felt the tug, saw the movement, and Richie couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. He came to school sleep-deprived with his head full of stories about high school sweethearts drawn together in class, in the halls, even in through cracks in the stall doors of school bathrooms. The morning sky was dusted grey, and the crisp autumn air chilled his nose and twitchy fingertips. As his string pulled tighter and tighter, Richie tried to track down all his friends as quickly as he could, but he could only find Bill and Stan, chatting outside on the steps before class as usual. He ran at them, nearly barreling Bill over, frantically waving his left hand with its taut red string in the air.
“Oh my god! Guys what do I do? Holy fuck! It’s happening it’s totally happening!”
“Richie, l-look! It’s moving!” Sure enough, Richie felt a hard tug on his thread, somehow making his hands shake more, if that was even possible.
Even Stan couldn’t help but break out smiling for his friend. “Don’t move! Maybe they’re coming to you.”
Richie felt like his heart was going to break through his ribs. Another tug, and he wasn’t sure if he was excited or having a panic attack. Another tug, and Bill and Stan grabbed hold of his jittery free hand to steady him. Another tug,
and Richie Tozier’s string goes slack.
Richie feels something twist in his gut as the string hangs loose again. This never happened in the stories. This wasn’t how his story was supposed to go. He shook Bill and Stan off his right hand and started pulling at the thread, reeling it in like bright red fishing line, but the string stays slack. He’s getting desperate now, pulling hand over hand, cursing under his breath. Bill reaches out to touch Richie’s shoulder and he flinches and shakes him off.
“Come on, pull back damn it.” Richie whispers to he doesn’t quite know who.
“Richie, I’m really sorry… I know this means a lot to you-“
“Shut up, Stan!” Richie snaps. Stan shrinks back a bit and shoots Bill a nervous glance. “I don’t need your fucking pity. She’s gonna pull back alright?” Richie doesn’t even notice he’s started crying until he tastes the salt running into his mouth. “Any second now she’s gonna pull back. Pull back god damn it! Pull back! Please, fuck!”
Richie keeps pulling and begging to no one, chewing on the inside of his lip until he tastes stinging iron mixed with tears, and Bill spots it first. It draws closer and closer, until finally it dangles in Richie’s white-knuckled grip.
The frayed tail of a red thread flutters to the grass at Richie’s feet, and he collapses in shuddering sobs on top of it with his friends holding his cold hands.
Richie kept his hands in his pockets as much as he could that day. Despite his best efforts, most people managed to sneak peeks of his trailing broken thread, and he hated it. In his story, he was supposed to be half of the cutest couple around, with a taut red string connecting him to some pretty girl who loved his taste in music, his dumb jokes, and his coke bottle glasses. Now he was just the kid with the dead soulmate.
Richie’s hands shook too badly to even light a cigarette after school, but of course Beverly was there to help. Her warm, steady hands easily flicked the wheel of Richie’s zippo and Richie thanked her, finally able to take a long drag of his “cancer stick” (as Eddie called them). Beverly admired the sturdy lighter for a moment before slipping it back into Richie’s jacket.
Bev sighed. “Alright, spill. What’s wrong?”
“Well shit, is really it that obvious Bevvy?” Richie scoffed.
“You look like a corpse, hun. And I think I’m the only one in the school at this point who has no clue why.” Bev punctuated her words with a sympathetic smile and blew some smoke at the sky. If there was one thing Beverly knew all too well, it’s that rumors spread fast in Derry.
Richie hesitated for a moment, and slowly pulled his left hand out of his pocket that was still clutching the end of his thread. Beverly’s smile fell. She gasped softly and looked back up at Richie.
“God, that’s awful… You’ve been looking forward to finding your soulmate forever…” Slowly, she reached over to hold Richie’s left hand in her own and stroked his tense knuckles with her thumb. She felt his grip loosen just a little under her comforting touch, and she smiled again.
But just as Richie’s hand loosened, there was a new tightness in the grip as a blue string wrapped firmly around their fingers, connecting them for a moment before loosening again. Richie could feel tears welling in his eyes as they met Bev’s, who pulled him into a safe hug.
“Look, Richie,” She murmured gently, resting her chin on his shoulder, “Something good did come out of today.”
Eddie Kaspbrak knew he liked boys. He knew he looked at other guys the way normal boys shouldn’t. He knew people like him got heckled in the streets, got killed, got sick. He knew, and nobody else could. Eddie dreaded the day that his little red string would appear, because he knew in his heart he’d find a man at the other end, and if anybody found out he would be ruined.
Eddie couldn’t sleep the night of his 16th birthday. He spent all night praying to whatever is out there that there would be no red thread, or even, god forbid, a broken thread. So, when midnight struck, he was awake to see the magical strings curl around his fingers. One, two, three, four, five of blue. Then a pause. It couldn’t have been more than half a second, but it felt like an eternity, like something wasn’t quite sure.
A vibrant red sixth string snaked around his finger, and Eddie buried his face in his pillow and sobbed.
At the very least, Eddie found comfort in his string being loose. His red string anyway. Immediately, he was tied to Stan and Bill. A third blue string came about a month later when Eddie was sick, actually sick for once, not just his hypochondria. Ben came by and brought some of his favorite teas, and even went through the trouble of brewing Eddie a cup. As he tried to pass the cup to Eddie, their blue strings pulled together, and they comically had to avoid spilling the hot tea locked between their hands by the thread.
He tried his best to ignore the red one until one day he couldn’t anymore. As he woke up for school, he noticed his string pulled tighter than usual, and his chest tightened as well. He shoved down his gut feeling and dismissed the tightness as a fluke. It was too early for this, he was sure of it. He had at least another year before he was deemed ready to find his soulmate. Plenty of time to think of a creative way to get out of it.
As Eddie got in the car to head to school, a wave of nausea hit him. He cracked the window to breathe in the fresh air like ice water filling up his lungs. Despite bundling up in a sweater, Eddie shivered the whole drive. The string was still pulling him forward, toward the school.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and brushed past Stan and Bill on the steps, mumbling that he didn’t feel well and hurrying to hide his thread from prying eyes. Locking himself in the cleanest stall available, he stared at the cord persistently yanking at his pale hand, taking quick heaving gulps of air. He attempted to grab his inhaler, but his hands were too tight to get a grip on the frustratingly tiny zipper of his fanny pack. The world was spinning around him, the walls of the bathroom stall were closing in, the sickly clinical smell of cleaning products made him dizzy, and the string just wouldn’t stop fucking pulling him toward his worst nightmare.
This fucking string. Eddie would do anything just to get rid of this fucking string. Fuck red threads of fate. Fuck soulmates. He just wanted to stay alive and stop having panic attacks every other day about what Bowers would do to a guy like him. What his mother would do. Eddie didn’t even realize what he was doing until he focused back in on the world outside his own head and felt the string between his teeth and his hands locked around the end tugging it desperately away from whatever was on the other end.
Without a second thought, Eddie pulled roughly at the length of string in his mouth and snapped it. He watched the other frayed end slip out the bathroom door into nothing. Holding himself up against the wall, he dug his nails into his palms and felt the hot tears running down his cheeks.
Eddie spent a week by himself after that, even avoiding his friends at school, just contemplating his new life without a soulmate and wondering what he would say when the other Losers noticed. Every now and then he’d feel a concerned tug on one of his blue strings. He would flinch, but tug back in an “I’m alright” gesture to whichever friend was on the other side. When he finally showed up to movie night at Bill’s house with his short, snapped string, nobody asked, but he received a few apologetic looks and nods. Richie teared up a bit and put a comforting arm around Eddie’s shoulders, and as usual he leaned into Richie’s warm touch.
Eddie settled down into bed that night feeling safe for the first time in days. The love from his friends recharged him, and the ride stopped spinning so fast for a moment. As he leaned over to set his alarm clock, he jumped at a sudden tapping noise coming from his windowpane. Across his room in the window, Richie was waving nervously, motioning for Eddie to let him in. Eddie rushed to jump out of bed and open the window, grabbing Richie’s arm to help pull him in.
As Eddie settled back down on his bed, Richie dusted himself off and picked some leaves out of his hair. “Sorry about that, Eds. I just wanted to talk about some stuff.”
“What is so important to talk about that you had to break into my room in the middle of the night? And could you not get dirt all over my rug? We just vacuumed for fuck’s sake and now you’re tracking in like 30 different allergens.”
Richie sighed at Eddie’s complaining and sat on the edge of his bed. Might as well get to the point. “Look, I know all the soulmate stuff was never your thing…” Eddie flinched slightly and shifted away, but Richie’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. “Sorry, I know it’s probably touchy for you. But listen,” Richie held out his frayed bit of thread and Eddie inhaled sharply. “My soulmate is… is gone too, Eds. So I guess I just wanted to let you know you can talk to me and stuff…”
Eddie furrowed his eyebrows in an expression that, if it weren’t for the heavy atmosphere in the room, would’ve made Richie laugh at how scrunched up he looked. “I appreciate it Richie, but there’s nothing to talk about, alright? Shit happens. Don’t worry about it.”
Richie huffed. “Come on man. Don’t bullshit me like that. I know something’s up. You fucking disappeared for what? A week? I can’t just not worry about you!”
“There is nothing to talk about.” Eddie repeated, sharper this time, “If there was something to talk about, I probably still wouldn’t want to talk about it, because it’s my business and nobody else’s! Now,” Eddie stood up and grabbed Richie’s wrist, pulling him to his feet as well. “Can you please get out of my room so I can sleep before my mom finds out about this?”
Richie reaches out to grab Eddie’s hand, broken thread and all, and holds it tight. The angle is awkward, but Richie doesn’t care. “Eddie, please. You can be honest with me. I-I know I can be a dipshit but I really do want to help you out here.”
The look in Richie’s eyes is so tender and confused, Eddie can’t bear to look at him anymore. He can’t watch Richie hurt like this. Stomach twisting, Eddie frantically pulled his hand away.
Except, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t.
Almost desperately pulling the boys together, a red thread tangled around their hands and wrists, in between their fingers, twisting itself in knots and bows, and as if a switch was flipped, tears start flowing freely down Richie’s face. Words fall out of his mouth in an uneven stuttering staccato, his natural rasp emphasized by the lump in his throat.
“Eds, holy shit was it- was it really you the whole time? This- this is amazing! I’m not gonna be alone I’m gonna be with you! I’m gonna be with Eddie! My soulmate! My best friend! My soulmate Eddie Kaspbrak! This is incredible, Eds!” Richie looks up from their tangled hands to Eddie, and suddenly his smile falls.
Never in his life had Richie Tozier seen Eddie Kaspbrak so completely terrified. His face was drained of color. Tears welled in his eyes but refused to fall. He had a painful, bruising grip on his own wrist trying to wrench it out of the knots, choking out “No, no, no!” over and over again.
Eddie begged to the string like it could hear him. He screamed his pleas out into the universe and prayed for it all to be a nightmare. Why did it have to be this? Why did it have to be them? Why couldn’t it just be some nice, clean, Christian girl? Some quiet, reserved family friend like his mom tried to set him up with so many times? Out of all the people in the world, why did it have to be his best fucking friend?
Richie stopped, and for a moment, while the world was rushing by for Eddie, time slowed for Richie. Eddie didn’t want this. He looked like hurt animal, tied up and abandoned on the street, helpless and struggling to free himself. Richie couldn’t just watch Eddie fall apart like this.
“Eddie? Eddie, look at me okay? Look at me.” Richie’s gentle tone was a ray of sun cutting through Eddie’s mental hurricane. Catching his breath, he looked up to meet Richie’s eyes, and it felt like a stab in the gut. Richie smiled with a hint of bittersweetness, and raised Eddie’s cold, tangled hand to his lips, gently kissing the back of it.
Then, in one quick move, Richie snatched a bit of string between his teeth and broke it.
He drew their hands out of the unraveling thread and smiled through the tightness in his throat. “No worries Eds; I brushed my teeth first.”
Eddie stared down at the clump of thread in his hand, trying and failing to process what just happened. Richie had waited all his life for this moment. He’d been rambling about who his soulmate could be for as long as they had known each other. When they were 13, they would sit outside on hot summer afternoons and watch the people pass by. With a mouthful of sour candies, Richie would point out the pretty girls passing by saying “I hope she’s my soulmate. Or her. Or her.” and Eddie would elbow him in the ribs and tell him they’re all out of his league.
While Eddie was scrubbing his hands until they were raw, Richie doodled blue and red rings on his fingers with Sharpie. While Eddie threw himself into schoolwork when he thought too much about romance, Richie scribbled the lyrics to love songs in the margins of his geometry textbook. When Eddie was hiding himself for days from a soulmate-obsessed world, Richie was pacing around his room trying to think of how to get through to his best friend.
And Eddie thought back to all the times he should have known. All the times he did know, but filed it away in his mind, never to be acknowledged again. The way Richie went red and cracked a nervous joke when Eddie wiped a stray drop of melted ice cream off his face in the summer. The way he scanned Richie’s jawline when he blew smoke out Stan’s window. The way they melted into each other when they sit on Bill’s couch and the chatter of their friends became white noise to the sound of each other’s breathing.
All that time, all those years of his life waiting, and Richie was willing to give it all up in a second if it meant Eddie would stop living in fear.
Eddie mumbles something about being a fucking idiot and he really isn’t sure if he’s talking about Richie or himself. How did they end up here? His best friend - his soulmate - sitting in front of him, smiling through the sobs he couldn’t manage to hold back. He places the hand with the red clump over Richie’s white-knuckled grip on the bedsheets. He can feel himself drawn to melt into safety just like all those late movie nights and study sessions over all those years when he wasn’t ready to look at himself.
He’s ready now.
And as he tastes the bitter salt of mingling tears on Richie’s chapped lips, a thought plants itself in Eddie’s mind where apprehension once was. There are worse people to be stuck with.