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If I have ever been a hangman, let the rope in hand tell tale. I’ll give you an end that you might mend the strands in me that are frail.
I was never made a highwayman, the doubt in me too strong. Until I found your length of rope and made good all things wrong.
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Richie has never said no to a dare.
It’s a stupid policy and has gotten him into plenty of shitty situations before, only this time it isn't so much shitty as life-defining. In the way that well, his life might culminate and be defined in this moment, very soon, by his death.
Spelunking isn't a new thing to Richie either. There are plenty of cave systems in New England just waiting for him and a good pair of iron toed boots, a headlamp, one climbing harness and several dozen yards of rope. Supplies that get him in and out of most places, tools and routes and challenges that enable him to satisfy his ever waxing urge to Do, to Be. To run and jump and leap and climb and howl at the sky and feel the sheen of sweat on his back tell him that he is indeed living fully, leaving a mark on the world. It’s his outlet for the cacophony of his mind and body, second only to all that talking and his precious Voices, shouted and gibbered and honed in the studio of the College AV club.
After two summers teaching wilderness exploration to kids, and a full climber’s course under his belt, Richie finds himself in the particular position of having too much knowledge, too much energy, and not half enough sense to use it wisely. But even that’s not what this is about, not why Richie has made such a cock of himself on this night.
What it’s really about this time is the fact that he'd snuck out at dusk without telling anyone and gotten himself all fucked up falling twenty feet after the cave wall spit out his support peg. All because Stan had told Richie that even he wouldn't be stupid enough to climb alone at night. It hadn’t been a dare at all, not even a full fledged challenge. Just a scoffed bitter line offered out the window at the end of a day of driving during which Richie was making an increasing nuisance of himself.
Sure he’d had a top rope, he’d clipped in, but like an idiot decided he could freehand it and hadn’t kept an eye on the slack. He’d pegged in at the top and then about every ten feet down when he should have been setting at every five feet. He’s a tall one, his reach is way above average, his grip strength is apparently, monstrous, according to the instructors at his climbing gym. Basically Richie’s a cocky spidermonkey bastard who got unlucky and missed the branch this time round.
Richie knows he shouldn't have gone it alone. Not at night, not a new unfamiliar climb. Guided only by a headlamp, intuition and a few probably outdated manuals detailing the routes of the area. No belayer, no spotter, no return eta or anyone expecting him, ready to get help if he never showed up. Complete and utter first class Tozier Idiocracy.
He’d wanted to do it, wanted to see if it would yield an unexpected result. Richie had gone because he needed to see Stan's face when he met them for breakfast at the Diner still wearing his climbing gear and with a new route all neatly plotted out for the others to follow. Something hungry in him looked forward to the group’s praise, he hoped they would be surprised by his initiative, appreciative that he’d saved them time setting up. For his part Richie predicted Stan would be sore about being proven wrong, but that he might also be...what, impressed was it?
Was that what Richie had wanted to see on his face? Richie knows he’s like a show dog. Turn a trick get a smile, give an inch take a quarter mile tumble into a hole.
He takes stock of his body, he’d caught on his rope and it slowed his outright plummet to a kind of slide down the rock face. The skin of his palm is alright thanks to his fingerless gloves but there's a line of fire across his throat where his unprotected skin wasn't so lucky. Thank God Richie had the sense to trade his glasses for contacts or they’d surely be lost in the dark and Richie might as well hang upside down like a blind bat until dead. His back feels absolutely raw and his shirt is rucked up nearly to his armpits. His ribs are definitely bruised, it hurts to breathe too sharply. His head is pounding with blood and pressure and the shock of a couple good cracks of his skull.
Wouldn’t it just be a treat for him to be concussed, to ruin everything, to have to scrap the whole weekend excursion and get taken to a fucking hospital. Richie’s harness is tight as all hell in the crotch and Richie tries to stand to alleviate the tension but his leg twinges something fierce and makes his stomach do tricks. Oh fuck, his leg definitely feels like it could be broken. That does not bode well at all for climbing back out.
The bottom of this cave is sopping wet to boot. Richie finds himself wet to the calves with about two feet of water. Lucky day! Dizzy as he is Richie knows he needs to get dry soon, he's cut up mighty fine and the water is stagnant to say the least, the wounds could go septic.
The recollection of wounds in foul water stirs something forgotten and horrible fragments, images, float just a little ways up. Who was it, who was bleeding and crying in the dark? A deep inconsolable feeling of loss, not lost yet but yes something would be, something had been planted for future reaping.
Richie can't remember, he only knows that he is quickly becoming full of bad feelings.
“Heeeere we go!” He makes it loud and distracting solely for his own benefit and pulls on his rope. It’s a good thing his arms are more or less uninjured. Like this he might just manage to hoist himself out of the cave inch by inch and actually use the fucking top rope he set up. He’ll have to abandon his pegs but that’s the price he pays for stupidity and recklessness. Always a price with him eh, for the shit his mouth says and his dumb impulses.
Moving hurts like a mother of pearl. His trolling mind catches on that like a fishnet at sea and he thinks about how much of a bitch it would be to be a clam in a pearl farm, having people stick sand in your mouth all day for weeks on end and hope you turn it into something shiny-
Baaack to the task at hand.
Yeah that would be more important, he's gotta get out of the water and take stock. Maybe Richie should be concerned with his head, it’s harder to focus than usual and that’s saying something considering he’s in a rather pressing situation. Usually when it’s fight or flight Richie’s pretty good at staying on task.
There's a lot going on physically though, pain wise it’s at about an eight. The quiet of the cave is rapidly becoming eerie. The wet dripping sound along stone rocks, the damp earth smell, what could almost be sewage if Richie wasn’t aware already that the area he’s in is known to have sulfur deposits. It’s all coming together in a sickening ball of coiled feeling, instinct memory, or something maybe from the primordial days of man. He has a distinct nearly debilitating rush of deja vu where he is rappelling down the mouth of a dark hole and all he can think in both his mind and his heart is ‘we shouldn’t be here, we shouldn’t be here, we shouldn’t be here!’
It's quiet in the cave save his labored breathing and the rhythmic plunking noise of water dripping off his clothes back into the freshwater pools. Still it is too much. The texture of the rope in his aching hands, too much, and the sting of his wounds, too much.
His body has started doing that thing where small sounds and small feelings come and crawl and perch and burrough to make it seem as if Richie’s whole entire skeleton is vibrating. Maybe it’s not his skeleton but a creature waiting to hatch like some xenomorph space monster.
Okay. No. Okay again, this is not the time. Back to focus, gotta stay grounded.
Dangling from a wire is not a good place to wig out. No dilly dallying, no going spastic and losing his grip and falling again to die at the bottom of a wet hole in the ground.
It is hard to reign in the inherently twitchy quality of his muscles, their desire to spiral out in big gestures for just that little sliver of relief from stillness and stifling quiet. But Richie takes his cues from the hundred times he's watched Eddie pull himself back under control from worse. He exhales all the breath in his lungs, inhales, and holds it for several counts. There is probably five minutes of this before Richie can safely say he’s focused enough to even put one hand in front of the other and climb.
Body time, not mind time Richie. You should be good at this.
He hoists himself up a few feet and tests out a foothold. Vsibility is okay because of the headlamp. On second thought his leg isn't as bad as he assessed. He can put weight on it so maybe it just got tenderized mighty fine on the way down. If his leg isn't shot he can climb much more quickly out of this hole he's landed himself in.
“A hallelujah! Amen I say Amen! All Is not lost, the Lord has not forsaken this here Lamb!”
His Voice echoes off the cave walls, a parody of a southern preacher this time and Richie feels a little less alone, a little less caught up in the awful suffocating familiarity of this place.
If he can get out and back to the motel to clean himself off and lick his wounds there’ll be no need for anyone to know of this little escapade. Lesson learned yessiree. No need to add humility to the pot by informing the Losers of his little spill.
It takes the better part of an hour, with much resting and dangling in the air, a moment of dizzy panic where Richie almost blacks out near the top of the climb, and a full set of his radio show repertoire for company, but Richie eventually gets out of the hole. The ride back is all white-knuckled grips on the steering wheel of Beverly’s Jeep as the offroading rattles the ever-loving-painful fuck out of Richie’s injuries. He bathes in darkness and blurry road signs and stretched out light trails from passing cars that make Richie’s world feel like one long exposure photograph. He doesn’t rightly know how he makes it back to the Motel 6 without incident but he thanks whatever unseen force is responsible and moves on.
Back at the motel it's a far cry more difficult than Richie would have hoped to get around unseen. The receptionist, not paid enough to care, but alarmed all the same by the messy picture he makes, gives Richie a hesitant look and a raised brow. Which he dismisses with a wave, and directs a cheerful smile. He tries not to limp too badly and is glad that most of his cuts are shallow and have stopped actively bleeding.
He's going to need ice though, lots of it. He can already tell by the radiating pain down his back and sides that he's going to bruise black on purple in the morning. He’d better get it now before he goes back to the room he's splitting with Eddie and Mike.
The least amount of in and out the less chance of him waking them before he’s sorted. Richie is lucky the two are heavy sleepers because Eddie would take one look at him and probably scream loud enough to wake the other six. If he was rooming with Bill and Stan he'd be caught out at the first turn of the door handle.
He could go to Ben and Bev’s room, Richie doubts they'd give him too hard of a time. But nah, let the lovers have some peace and privacy, Richie can handle it solo.
He convinces reception to lend him an extra ice bucket and hobbles gingerly down the hall to the drink and snack vending machine lineup. It's uncanny how all motels and cheap hotels have this little alcove cut into the hall, a convenient ice machine at the end of each.
Richie fishes in his pocket for some change, an ice cold Pepsi sounds mighty fine right about now, before remembering he left his wallet in the glovebox of the Jeep.
Sighing, he shuffles past to the ice machine and starts filling the personal wastebasket-sized bucket with cubes. He doesn't hear the approaching footsteps until their owner speaks.
“Of course it’s you, can't sleep?”
Richie freezes, his finger comes off the button and the ice cubes fall to silence. Richie slides his eyes over and boy, he really has the worst luck tonight doesn't he.
Stan The Man in all his late night glory. Dark red drawstring pants and a comfortable looking robe tied neat and even at the waist. His curly hair is slightly wet which means he's showered in the past hour. He's even wearing calf length socks with coordinated slippers. God he looks like the young model of a Leyendecker add stuck to the backdrop of a Motel 6. His right hand is halfway out the pocket of his robe already, holding a couple crisp dollar bills for the vending machine.
“Me neither I-” Stan starts before getting a proper look at Richie and dropping off mid sentence.
Stan’s mouth works on some half formed words before clicking shut.
Richie sees the shift in Stan’s posture the moment the dots connect. He looks from Richie’s scraped face to the irritated and ugly sloughed off patch of skin right across his jugular. His harness full of empty carabiners, his torn up gloves and red fingertips. His soaked boots and busted knee. Richie watches the realization settle over Stan's face like a cloud. His posture goes from good but relaxed, to overly stiff, his eyes darken and his lips set too tight.
Richie's body and mouth are moving before his brain can tell if it's what he wants to be doing and saying.
He's got a big grin on, feels it pulling at the broken skin of his chin, and he’s thrown out a hip-ow, his leg is indeed tender-In some dramatic canted pose. Stupid Richie. Beep-beep before you dig your own grave.
“Richie what hap-”
“Stan-o! What's crack-a-lackin? On a midnight jaunt for some ice? The soda’s kosher I’ll have you know, called ahead and had em stock it just for you,”
Stan doesn't say anything except to look at Richie again, taking in more. From Richie's sweaty face to his torn vest, to his mud streaked shins and the dirty smears he leaves transferred from his boots to the carpet.
Stan stares down at the mud for too long, Richie realizes for the first time that he has a cut on his shin. It's deep enough to be numb and yet now that he looks at it the cut begins to pulse with pain. It's bleeding a thin rivulet down his leg into his sock.
“Took a spill in the garden on my way to load the car, real nasty spill right into the flowerbed,”
Stan closes his eyes, click, heavy like the shutter of a camera. He is oh so still.
“So you took a dip in the pool too? Is that it?”
Richie winces, his grin wants to slip from his mouth but he won't let it. Stan's tone is ladled thick with an emotion Richie can’t quite place. Here he is again between a rock and a hard place, only this time he's cornered between an ice machine and Stanley Uris who might, decidedly, be colder.
“Sprinklers my dear Stanley, it's elementary of course!”
“Richie,”
This time Stanley's tone has an electric effect, like he's been tased. Richie clicks his mouth shut and turns mechanically back to the ice dispenser.
He drops his eyes and stares at the metallic silver machine. At its flat surface and rounded top sloping all the way to rest flush with the ugly off-taupe wall. The wet grill is littered with frozen ice shavings, melting and pooling into a small dark lake. Then because Richie literally can't fucking help himself, he pushes the button that kick-starts the machine and makes the frozen chunks fall loudly, so loudly at a time like this, into the bucket he's holding.
He can feel Stan’s eyes on him. Unwavering focus with a storm of emotions controlled to simmering beneath. Presence growing, filling upwards what little space there is available in the small alcove that holds the soda and ice machines.
“You went to the caves,”
Worse this time it's worse. Stan makes the tone deadpan and Richie can't get a read on him anymore, like Stan's feelings have dropped off the radar to nothing. Richie presses the button again. Again Stan waits until the racket of ice against metal is over, that crunch-clink-clink-whirr of the dispenser so overloud and grating on the ears.
“Did you take someone with you? Bill?”
Now full, Richie holds the ice bucket to his chest. Almost immediately he feels the press of cold through the cheap plastic bin and it is somewhat grounding. But then the grime, the wet, the throbbing pain of his cuts. Most of all Stan's unreadable tone, leave barely enough room to breathe in this little alcove, let alone for Richie’s voice to come out. So for once he says nothing.
“I can’t fucking believe you, you-”
Blip. Blip. Back on the radar and it's disbelief, anger, frustration.
“Okay,” Stan says. Richie hears the breath of it, the exhale and the disciplined control, preparation of more words.
“Okay,” Like Stan has made a decision.
Richie looks up and immediately wishes he hadn’t because Stan’s stare is fixed on him with those eyes that see through everything. Eyes that unpack and unravel and piece together the big picture as natural as blinking. Stan knows. He knows Richie knows he knows. Soon that angry knowledge is going to turn to disdain and dismissal. Richie’s so damn predictable with is stupidity isn’t he, these days even that is getting old.
Whatever Richie, forget it. I don't know why I bother Richie. Do what you want Richie. Hopeless, Richie.
Stan will shut down, wipe his hands of this, turn around and walk down the hall where his door will close tight. He won't talk to Richie for the rest of the trip. What's worse is that Richie will deserve it.
Instead Stan steps forward into Richie’s space and looks him dead in the eye. His tone is level, a decided thing without room for negotiation.
“Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to go to my room and you, you have two choices,”
Richie blinks, this...is not according to pattern.
“One,” Stan continues, eyes dark, back straight, voice impeccably even, “we go to our separate rooms. You fix yourself up and I won't tell the others, I won't ask a single question. We forget, we move on,”
“Two,” Here Stan steps closer still, he looks at Richie as if he's a logic puzzle long since solved that has just cropped up an irregularity. At this distance there's something black in Stan's eyes, not all of it the natural chemical shift of iris responding to hormones. Some time in the summer of 1989 Stan’s Eyes evolved a bottomlessness, only Richie can't for the life of him remember where or why. There's an earnestness now along with that...void, too.
“You follow me to my room of your own damn free will. No dragging, no needling, just you deciding to come. You're going to shower, I'm going to clean and disinfect and bandage all of this,” Stan gestures with a swift flick of the palm at the visible injuries on Richie's body,
“Then, you are going to talk to me Richie. You are going to explain to me what we both already know happened tonight, and you're going to tell me exactly why,”
Stan pauses, breathing just a little quicker than before. His eyes flick back and forth across Richie’s face.
“Are we clear?”
This time Richie finds it in himself to nod.
“Good. I'm leaving now. Follow me or don’t, just make sure you’re sure,”
Stan steps back, observes Richie for a moment longer and then he's turned and walking away. Richie can hear the even pad of his slippers on the carpeted motel floor. He's walking no slower or faster, just his normal, even, well-postured pace. Step, step, step, down the hall away from Richie.
Richie grips the ice bucket closer, feels the prolonged contact of cold begin to burn a bit at that patch on his chest. Easy, easy, it's not a trick. Stan says what he means, he doesn't fuck around with anything. Richie knows he could stay here until he hears the door to Stan and Bill’s room click, and in the morning Stan will stay true to his word. Boy Scouts honor, he’ll act as if he never saw anything at all.
The thing is, Richie has never been good at letting go. Whether it’s a punch to the face, or being urged to leave a friend behind, Richie is almost cosmically driven to do the exact opposite of what is easy nearly ten times out of ten. It’s a force outside himself, that chasing instinct, that urge to cling and fight and laughingly spit at social convention, at propriety and dignity.
Suddenly this doesn't feel like a condemnation or a dismissal. This feels like an olive branch, a hand extended and if it isn't fucking terrifying Richie guesses it wouldn't be worth the effort of reaching for. Like that next tough hold of a climb, a leap of faith when you fall and hope the rope catches you instead of coming loose.
Stan's steps are getting fainter and it's this, not the idea of explaining himself, that heralds the bad feelings rising in him again, so Richie does what comes naturally. He forgoes thought and lets his body lead the charge. His animal instinct wants to follow Stan so he does, walks out from the alcove and down the hall, limping only a little. Stan is at his door already, fingers poised but not turning on the handle. He looks up when Richie reaches him.
“You come in, we talk, Richie. No jokes, no avoiding with humor. You have to be okay with that condition,” Stan reiterates.
No jokes. God.
Richie nods, but he squeezes the ice bucket to his chest again. The cold is getting just a little more painful. Stan reaches out and takes it gently but insistently away from his grasp. There's a wet spot on Richie's thermal shirt when it comes away. Stan turns the handle and opens the door.
The room is neat as Richie expects it to be. Bill isn’t there though. Stan flicks on the lights and takes the ice bucket to the coffee machine where he fills it with one of the sealed four dollar bottles of water the hotel provides at additional charge, and turns it on sans coffee or filter. Richie is puzzled until he realizes that Stan is simply putting water to boil.
Richie stands there dumbly for a minute or two until Stan looks at him again and then motions to the bathroom. Right, shower.
He leaves the door open a crack like he always does so he can hear if the person on the other side tries to talk to him. Avoiding the mirror, Richie unbuckles his harness, shucks off his cargo pants, vest, and thermal shirt and steps under scalding hot spray. He almost blinks out his throwaway contact lenses before realizing that his glasses are back in his room and he’s blind without them. The water burns and tingles at his extremities. Only now does Richie realize that on top of the cuts and bruises, he might be suffering from a little exposure too.
Richie watches the water run brown and red with dirt and blood, when it becomes clear he soaps up and rinses again. It aches to move, he's already so stiff. He washes his hair too and checks his scalp for any cuts or bumps. There is no broken skin but there is a nasty goose egg at the base of his skull towards the left side. When he gets out of the shower there are pajamas folded neatly for him. Richie runs his fingers over the primly organized fabric slowly, something about the gesture that speaks so utterly of Stan’s concentration and care sets Richie at ease where he wasn’t before. He towels off and puts the pajama bottoms on, but slings the shirt around his neck like a gym towel for later. His back is a mess off blurry red in the fogged up mirror.
Stan beckons him to sit on the bed, where first aid supplies are unpacked from the kit in an organized sprawl. On the wood side table preemptively protected by a towel, are two mugs steeping bags of tea and one coffee pot full of plain boiled water.
Stan situates himself beside Richie on the edge of the bed and starts to clean and treat Richie’s lighter wounds in relative calm and silence. Richie, as usual, and despite the serene atmosphere Stan’s demeanor rouses, can’t stop fidgeting. He has heavy scrapes, and bruising already starting on his left leg from the inside of his knee down to the sharp bone of his ankle. There’s a gash across his shin that looks a lot worse now in the good light of the motel room than it did hidden by mud and the cover of darkness. Stan fills a plastic bag with the ice and wraps it in a thin face towel before placing it over the worst of the swelling on Richie’s knee.
“Listen see? Ere’s what we do to da Joes who’se can’t pay up, we ice em! See?” Richie tries for a Brooklyn mob boss Voice but it comes out weak, hoars. He clears his throat to try again.
“No voices either Richie,”
His mouth falls shut with a click, the urge to talk and babble and squawk out some joke is overwhelming. Instead Richie brings his thumb to his mouth and finds some loose skin around the cuticle to chew at.
Stan takes Richie’s wrist, pulling his fingers away from his mouth. He grasps firmly with his smaller, not so much shorter, but a narrower hand, and places Richie’s on the ice perched on his knee.
“Hold this here,” It’s a pointed order and Richie finds himself sitting a little straighter for it, wanting to do exactly as Stan directs. Wanting in a way, to show that he understands the exact degree to which his bad decisions have effect. Richie doesn’t know why but for all that he recognizes Stan’s actions as ones meant to put him at ease, the anxious restlessness coiling and uncoiling under his skin will not go away. Talk. Right, honest talking. Jeeze.
Stan must still be upset, he just doesn’t let his emotions cloud his actions. He’s above that, mostly. Not like Bev who lashes out like the striking of a match flaring to light, Eddie who bodily telegraphs his every mood. Or Bill who translates everything, even anger, to a weird blue sadness.
Richie wants to show that he’s sorry, that he knows already he shouldn’t have done what he did. He knows he came here to talk, to have the serious kind of talk that Richie hates to have but he does so much better with demonstrating earnestness in actions.
Richie’s forearms bear a few surface wounds, scrapes and scuffs from dragging across the rock face but nothing that requires actual bandages.
His back is the worst by far if Stan’s prolonged silence is anything to go by. The front of his neck still stings too, from the rope burn.
“This is going to hurt pretty badly,”
Richie nods in acknowledgement, his loose wet curls cling about his face and it’s a comfort to be shielded by them a little. Richie wonders if this is the subconscious reason he likes to keep his hair so long and unkempt.
It’s much worse than Richie is expecting. While he doesn't mind pain, enjoys it even, in the right circumstances, he doesn't like the way this feels at all. The antiseptic doesn't just sting in the wounds but all the way up his vertebrae, into his brain, down his arms to the tips of his fingers and from the back of his legs to the soles of his feet. He feels the lacerations anew like marks left behind by the long clawed nails of a Creature. The sting rushes him in jabbing waves and Richie digs his hands tighter and tighter into his knees to keep anchored somehow. Still, he has to keep still. Be good. Don’t fuck this up. The pain leaves him feeling cold and weak, his palms are clammy against his knees
-ichie
Richie
“Richie!”
He snaps to attention and finds Stan leaning close into his space, trying to hold Richie’s gaze with his own. Richie’s teeth are chattering and he feels the cold raise of gooseflesh on his exposed skin. He smiles at Stan, tries to anyway.
“I’m such a pussy huh?”
“You’re…”
Stan gives him a measured stare, right into his eyes and Richie feels seen down to the wire of the soul.
“You’re beyond fucked up by this aren’t you?” Stan responds softly. He turns Richie about facing him and pulls Richie down against his chest, fingers laced in his still-dripping hair. Richie doesn’t fight it, the touch feels good. The flex of Stan’s steady arms, so steady, always there to hold Richie still when he can’t do it for himself.
They are still like that for a moment, just enough of a while for Richie to stop thinking of Creature claws parting his flesh, and to stop shivering. For his heart rate to calm again and his gooseflesh to disappear. Stan keeps Richie facing him while he bandages his back, the slight compression of the dressings feel good and Richie leans into Stans’ space to smell him.
Stan furrows his brow only a little while he works, he doesn’t say anything about Richie leaning in, watching him from under heavy eyelids. Another day Richie might let himself fall asleep right on top of Stan, but in this instance Richie is focusing on a peculiar set of pale lines he just noticed, speckled up the side of Stan’s face.
Small raised marks from under his jaw, up his temple to his brow and the crown of his head where it meets his tightly wound, light brown curls.
Richie reaches his hands up, touches them, and Stan lets him. They are curious things, odd in shape and yet regularly spaced at intervals of an inch in a circular pattern. They feel old, smooth under Richie’s rock worn, nail bitten fingertips. They are familiar, the gesture too like he’s done this exact thing before, but Richie can place them in no past memory.
“Where did you get these scars,”
There is a beat where Richie think’s Stan might not have heard him. Then Stan tenses under Richie's fingers, tighter than a guitar string overturned and cranked to snap. All the air goes out of the room, the poise shatters and for a few minutes Stan says nothing at all, he looks like Richie might have just gutted him.
A fine sheen of sweat has started to form on Stan's brow and to Richie's utter bewilderment his hands, so steady but a moment ago, are set with fine tremors. He makes a sound, in the back of his throat, it is small and choked and a little like oh god to Richie’s ears but he can’t be sure.
“Tell me you remember something, tell me I'm not the only one,”
“What?” Even to his ears Richie’s voice sounds pained, a little high. A little too raw.
His eyes itch as he looks at Stan. Fear. That’s fear he sees in the dark of Stan’s own, and three glowing pinpricks deep in the black iris. Richie realizes a quiet tear has slipped down his cheek but he can't for the life of him understand why. He feels like his body remembers something too sad that his brain won’t allow to take shape.
“Stan what is it? What don’t I remember? In the caves with the water and the blood I had this feeling of deja vu like...It wasn’t a good feeling, did something...bad happen?”
Stan sags against him, his hands crush the loose end of Richie’s bandages. It’s as if all the authority and control has been exhaled out of him in one swift punch, the shaking so horrible is still there and now Richie is worried. Well and truly. It’s then that Stan starts talking, listing the names of New England Birds.
“Cardinal Cardinalis, Grey Egret, Grackles, Red Breasted Robin, Scarlet Tanager, Bluejay, Phoenix, Phoenix…”
“Right all right, the Phoenix,” Stan inhales sharply, takes the air back into the room, fills himself up with it and then just like that, like the flick of a switch that brings light to a house Stan is back. Steady and sure, eyes focused, hands not trembling. It passes so quickly Richie wonders if he didn't imagine it, but no he saw.
“Stan you-”
“Richie, it’s okay,”
The hell it is! Richie grips hard at Stan when he tries to pull back.
“Stan, Stan ‘the’ Man, you gotta tell me what it is,”
Stan smiles and shakes his head. Richie blinks, how the hell can he smile in a situation like this, two seconds ago he was on the verge of what Richie knows to identify as a panic attack.
Stan The Man, like a kaleidoscope puzzle. You think you know a guy, exactly how he’s going to act, and then he up and shakes things by smiling at all the wrong times. It would be impressive if it wasn’t so worrying.
“It's alright, never mind. That's a discussion for another time,”
“Another time? That’s Bullshit Stan. We’re talking so talk! Now’s a good time as any, tell me!”
“It’s not about me right now Rich, It’s about you and why you put yourself in reckless danger,”
Stan’s tone isn’t hard edged, but it’s still final. Unyielding as a stone. Richie chews his lip hard enough to hurt. He doesn’t like this one bit and if Stan thinks he’ll forget-
“The whole point of this trip was for us to climb and explore the caves together,”
Richie makes a grunting noise of assent, still thinking on the black fear-look in his friends eyes.
“Why’d you go in alone?”
“Awe shit Stan, I don’t know! I’m not the best at thinking before I do stuff! Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”
Richie’s irritation resurfaces, his mind realigns with impatience again, snapping back into his usual self. The one that doesn’t like to have feelings unless they are good, or talk unless it’s to make Voices and wring laughs out of people. The one that wants to get up, right now, and climb out the window to sprint away from Stan barefoot in the dark, sweat and adrenaline leaving no room for thought, to pretend he’s a wild animal in the here and now of life. Never caged, never dying, living eternal for today.
“I’ll tell you Rich, I promise. Not right now,”
Stan’s hold on his wrists tightens just a little more, pressure on the bone. Richie reluctantly settles back down. Forces himself to settle, calls the wild in his mind to heel, the animal in his bones to shift form back to human boy. He hates to give ground like this but if Stan says he’ll tell Richie, Stan will tell him. Stan doesn’t fuck around with promises. Boy scouts honor.
“Think about it, since I’m giving you the chance. Why you did it,”
This is unrealistic. Stan’s the one who thinks. He takes in and chooses how to address a situation in the most systematically logical way. Sometimes it’s not what they need, but this time Richie knows he has got to try and be more analytical, self reflective. Stan is like a net with just enough give for Richie to come crashing into, rather than a wall to run up against, to break himself on or to rikochet off.
It’s still a rough fall but it won’t kill him. Talking won’t kill him. Opening up...
“I wanted, I think…” Richie starts. God this hurts. He’s scared, honesty is just...plain terrifying.
“Wanted…”
Richie’s mind supplies the answers in a rush, like a shot too quick to process with his mouth. He feels the words as much as thinks them. What he had always as a child, and still to this day, wanted.
Approval, attention, a smile directed his way. For something interesting to happen, a change. A shift. To have an effect, to matter, in the grand scheme of things. To really matter. To be liked, to be liked, to be loved. Stupid, Richie knows he’s loved. But he wants to be the most loved. The most important. The one who can’t be replaced in the end. The one the whole mad world will stop for if he goes ahead and dies.
There’s always this hungry thing inside of Richie screaming look at me! Aren’t I funny! Look at me! Aren’t I enough to make you react! You’ll remember me when I’m gone, won’t you?
If I burn myself like a star into the essence of your life, I’ll never really die, will I?
He can’t say it. He can’t say all of that! No fucking way.
Richie slumps his head and winces, his neck is sore, the rope wound burns and pulls and folds painfully.
“Easy, this might need to be bandaged after all,” Stan says.
Richie nods, looking at the floor. Feeling, for all his height, small, on the inside, and stupid. He could have died, hell anybody can die! The world won’t stop no matter how many kids disappear. The tragedy of death is the lost potential of all that a person might yet be, the person shaped hole they leave in the lives of the ones who love them. Richie almost squandered his future, all of their futures. For all that he’s forgotten Richie still knows they are inseparably wrapped up in each other’s lives. He feels it like the heavy pulse of his blood at all the points of injury along his body, god. God. If he died, if he died! What that would do to the others, what it would do to Stan-
“I’m sorry! Stan! Really I’m sorry, I’m not good. I'm just...I'm such a fuckup,”
Stan is pressing forward into his space yet again. That is what tonight has been, Richie failing, falling . Stan pushing in and pulling away in time with Richie’s needs. Everyone says Stan is too strict, too rigid, inflexible. That’s not true at all, Stan changes more about himself than almost any of them do. Bird king, ha, beautiful wearer of a Technifeather Dreamcoat. He confronts the impossibility of the world even when it injures him to do it. For his friends Stan bends entirely against his nature and then still claws his way back to his own truth, reason, and authenticity.
Stan tightens the hold around Richie’s forearm to just under the point of intolerable pain and something about it feels like acceptance and reassurance all in one. Richie came here to talk so he tries to talk, because Stan always tries for the rest of them.
“I thought I could make something matter, do something for everyone. It was going to be cool, you would have been impressed,”
“Why this though, why does this matter to you? We were already all doing something together, we were making experiences. We’ve been friends over ten years, why the need to impress us now?”
“I just realized, after all this time...I’m only good for the laughs, the jokes. It doesn't count for anything important, I wanted to do more,”
“You’re important enough on your own Richie, God knows we all need to laugh,”
“But it’s...worthless, the laughs won’t last. I won’t be able to leave a mark,” Richie feels more than hears his voice break and he flinches.
Stan makes an urgent sound and moves closer, he puts a hand against Richie’s face and Richie feels another raised mark, long and stark and horizontal across the meat of Stan’s palm.
“You already have, you already have I promise Richie,”
“Please tell me what it means, please, ” he whispers.
Richie realizes he's shaking, jitters alight in his body. Tension in every tendon, live and restless like the buzz of power lines. He feels bad, he feels ill. It was something so godawful wasn’t it, something he had to forget. Stan tell me, please tell me. Talk to me.
Insted Stan removes his palm and Richie feels the loss of the mark like the slice of glass against his cheek.
“You need to stop moving, you're opening your wounds. Can you do that for me, stay still?”
Richie swallows thickly, tries to go still. Feels like his body might implode, that he might get up, bolt, and ruin everything again just so he can slide back into forgetting and not even knowing he doesn’t remember. Richie shakes his head. He...can't, he can't do it.
“Can you,” he loses his words, which is a bitter irony since he can rarely shut his mouth. Now Richie can only muster the focus to make a vague gesture with his chin. Down and then up, trying to indicate his body, his desires clearly with words that aren't crude come-ons.
Hold me still. Help me out. Hold me down. Make me calm. Make me better like you are. In control and smart, always thinking always with a plan, aware so aware of cause and effect.
“Talk to me Richie,”
Stan touches his neck, just above the angry blister of rope burn. Then he touches it again, something in Richie caves inward and washes away, all his last feeble attempts to keep the ocean from eroding sand castles.
“God I'm such a loser,”
“Mhmm,”
Stan hums agreement low in his throat and presses the other hand to Richie's neck, one palm on either side, fingers avoiding the wound. Richie feels the scar against his neck now, sees it in his mind’s eye, white and raised and familiar like he might have one on his palm too, but Richie can’t bear to look in case that has also been wiped from the slate-memory of his physical body.
“I want to exist, so badly,” Richie mumbles miserably.
“You exist, Richie. To me you are so real. You don’t have to impress me, I won’t forget,”
“ I’m forgetting things, we all are. Except you for some reason. Eventually I...I don’t...I don’t want to forget you Stan! I don’t want to be separate from you! Did you know Bill’s planning on transferring away? Bill! Our Big Bill! I can feel something pulling me in a different direction too. When I feel good and it’s so easy to think ‘California’ and have it just make sense. We gotta remember, we gotta stay together or I just know we’ll all get erased from each other’s lives!”
Richie’s voice is high and cracking, crumbling like chips of paint flaking from smoke yellow walls and white grease paint peeling from a hole in a skull-something about a crowbar, a baseball bat.
“ God Stan! Tell me! It’s not fair I can’t remember when you can! When I fell down there...it felt...so...fucking familiar,”
Horrible, sick, dank dark and hopeless. Death, pain and blood dug under all that sewage smelling muck. Someone crying in the dark, was it Richie? It wasn't was it. Richie almost has hold of the memory, a clear idea of who it was they lost and found and could still lose again, but like the smoke of so many cigarettes it fades and leaves him with nothing between his fingers.
All he knows for sure is that if they move they’re all going to lose it, Richie can feel it. If they split, keep going on the diverging path of their adult lives, away from Derry and each other...they’re going to lose that precious someone.
Stan shakes his head and Richie knows he’ll never in his life get Stan to tell him unless it’s what Stan wants. At that, Richie feels like he might truly break down and cry so instead he asks;
“Can you, make me still?” It comes out quiet, overly vulnerable. More than Richie ever intended, and he recoils from the sound of his own fragility admitted.
“Richie your back,”
“Hurts like a motherfucker, sure. It’s...what I need, Stan please. If you won’t tell me...please be with me,”
Stan nods solemnly, he leans over, slowly peels aside the cheap hotel coverlet and pushes Richie down until his back is flush with the mattress.
Stan lays down on Richie and brings the sheet and comforter up over their shoulders. He acts as a grounding weight pressing heavy, secure and real. Between the sting of the bandaged wounds across his spine and Stan’s steady presence, Richie thinks he might once again have found sight of the important things.
If Richie let this happen more. If he Bared himself and allowed Stan to anchor his chaotic vulnerability still like this. To look in and see Richie, to fully understand. Richie thinks he could actually stop himself from doing something terminally stupid again. And, that if he found the strength of calm to entrust himself to Stan entirely, Richie might remember it all, and really live forever.