Chapter Text
Fuck, it was hot. Like, so, so hot. He wasn’t even moving and he could still feel sweat beading on the back of his neck. He was uncomfortable, lying face down on his mattress but he knew switching positions again would just make it worse. More movement, more energy, more heat.
Derry was front and center for the first heat wave of the summer and fuck was it brutal. He had heard on the radio this morning that highs were going to be up to 96. They didn’t own an air conditioner, only a couple of box and standing fans placed strategically throughout the house to increase circulation. It didn’t matter, though. Every inch of his house was sweltering.
He debated getting up going to another room. He didn’t have a box fan in his room. His parents wouldn’t give him one no matter how much he begged. He pulled out all of the stops, every voice he could do, but none of it worked. Richie, we need the more powerful fans in the halls and living room. It’s not fair to hog one up in your room all to yourself. Yeah, okay, right. So now he was stuck with a shitty standing fan oscillating in the corner of his room closest to his open window which was, in Richie’s humble opinion, completely unfair. He was practically sweating his balls off and it wasn’t even 1pm.
After a couple minutes of going back and forth about relocating to the living room he decided to just stay put. This was partially out of pure laziness and partially because he would have to put clothes on. His mom hated when he walked around the house in his boxers and that was just a fight he didn’t have the energy for. Maybe if it wasn’t fuck-all degrees outside he would be up for some back and forth with Maggie but Christ, not today.
He could feel himself dozing off. He had fully intended to go get his rocks off somewhere today. He was going to make his rounds, maybe knock on Bill’s door and get some good chucks. Grab one Miss Marsh and light a couple cigs down at the Barrens. Maybe see if good old Stan the Man wanted to whack a couple balls around down at Tractor Brother’s lot. All those plans have gone to shit. Not today, he thinks, I have all summer for that. Not today.
He’s not sure how long he lays there, in and out of sleep, gangly limbs all sprawled out on his bed. The heat crawls down his spine and rests itself in his skin. He feels heavy and tired and stuck, like he can’t move. Like he’ll never move again. He’s going to be stuck right here on his bed for all of eternity. He can’t even tell the difference between reality and his dreams when he hears a what might be knock at his door.
“Good God, Rich, it must be 100 degrees in this room. What are you doing still up here?” Maggie’s voice is faint, like someone who’s far away even though he knows she’s standing right over his mattress. He can’t even manage to lift his head, exhaustion crowding his limbs and his mind. “Come on, Richie. Get up. I brought you some iced lemonade. This should cool you down.”
He feels the bed dip on his left side, a clear indication she’s sat down next to him. His head is cloudy. His whole world feels like it has tilted off its axis. He still can’t manage to talk, so he lets out some kind of noise resembling a whine and a grumble. He hears her chuckle and set the glass on his nightstand. It’s quiet for a second, and then he feels a jolt of cold, cold, cold slide down his back. He all but flies off his bed, smacking Maggie in her upper arm on his way.
“What the fuck!” comes out of him more on autopilot than from an actual fully formed thought. Looks like he can talk after all.
When he looks at his bed, frantic and breathing hard he sees Maggie doubled over and clutching her sides. She’s laughing so hard she isn’t even making noise. There’s an ice cube melting into his sheets. That bitch.
When she’s calmed down enough to talk she says, “Come on, Richie. It’s after four and your father will be home soon. Why don’t you put on some shorts and come downstairs? It’s cooler. I won’t even rake you put a shirt on.”
“Fucking hell, Maggie, give a guy some warning, won’t ya?” He’s practically slurring, still not quite out of his sleep. Despite his rude awakening he can’t shake the heavy weights in his arms and legs.
“Richard, I did- “
“You know I hate it when you call me Richard.” His tone is biting. He knows he should ease off a little bit but he can’t get his bearings. Something isn’t right. He scans his room a couple times. Everything seems in order but there’s something settling in the pit of his stomach. This deep unease. He tries to chalk it off to being abruptly woken up by the cruel hands of his own mother.
“You know I hate it when you call me Maggie,” she quips back, not unkindly. She’s looking at him fondly, like he isn’t the world’s biggest pain in the ass son. She reaches back and grabs the lemonade, handing it to him. “Come on, Richie. Get some pants on and come downstairs. You know your father wouldn’t be pleased to know you’ve been up in your room sleeping all day.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay mom,” he rolls his eyes as he takes the glass from her hand. The glass feels like heaven in his hands. When he takes a sip he can feel the cold juice run from the base of this throat all the way into his stomach. Jesus, he must really be burning up. “God this is delicious. Hits the spot real good momsie my dear!” he says, slipping into the British Guy, “I say, I say, right good in the old tum!”
She chuckles and smiles fondly at him again. Richie can feel himself slowly ease out of whatever the fuck he was feeling a minute ago. He falls into an easy smile and begins to move around his room and dig for some shorts. When he finds what he’s looking for and turns around Maggie’s gone.
He moves to the edge of his bed and sits down, knocking the mostly melted ice off his bed and into the trash can below. He looks around his nightstand and grabs his glasses before moving either foot into his shorts and wiggling them up his gangly body. He began to shoot up like a bean stalk at 14 and now, at the ripe old age of 15 he was five foot eight inches and practically towering over his friends. You’d think with someone who’s growing as fast as Richie he would also maybe be filling out the gaps in other areas, like his thighs or his chest, but no. Richie is five foot eight inches of thin, lanky mess. Whatever, it’s not like anyone who mattered really cared if he was as tall as a stop sign and as thin as a blade of grass.
After his shorts are on and he gulps down some more of his lemonade, he sits leans back on his hands, lets his head loll back, and closes his eyes. Any feeling of dread or unease he had when he woke up was all but gone now. He didn’t feel like his world was turning off its axis and he would be the first to fall. He didn’t feel like someone was watching him, waiting. He didn’t feel the piercing need to run, run far away. Run now, before it’s too late
“Fuck, what was that all about?” he opens his eyes and looks at the ceiling, thinking out loud to himself. Maybe it was heat stroke. Maybe it was just a fucked-up dream. “But I can’t remember it all. I just remember- “
He abandons his train of thought, abruptly standing and grabbing what’s left of his lemonade. Nope, not doing this right now. He wanders out of his room and down into the kitchen, where he knows Maggie will be prepping something for dinner. She was right, it’s probably a whole ten degrees cooler on the bottom floor than it was in his room. The change in temperature feels good on his skin.
He puts his glass in the sink before settling on one of the stools by his breakfast bar. They lived in a modest, two story house. It was always clean and he always had something to eat. He spent most of his time either up in his room with his radio and comic books or down in the living room watching something on the TV. When he was in the kitchen, though, his favorite place was the breakfast bar. He would do his homework there when he was younger while Maggie or Went cooked. He couldn’t be trusted to focus long enough on his own to get it all done, so they would watch him every day and help him when he needed it. He would spend an hour or two making voices at them before dinner, trying to get through his homework. If he did he was allowed to watch a show or read a comic book. He no longer needs to do his work in the kitchen but he does sometimes, anyway.
They sit together in comfortable silence for a little while. Maggie, stirring her pots on the stove and humming some tune to herself. Richie, deep in his own thoughts. Now, not even fifteen minutes later he couldn’t remember any of his dream. He couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It’s not like this is the first time something like this has happened. He wakes up all the time in the middle of the night, sweating and heart pounding. He falls asleep almost as quick as he wakes up and by the time morning rolls around he has no idea had him so shaken. Sometimes he can remember people, ghosts almost. They drift past him, close but so far. He can never really make out who they are and if he can he can’t remember by the time he wakes up. It’s them that freak him out more than anything. They’re not mangled or broken or bloody but there’s something about them that makes him want to get as far away as he can. It’s like one of them was in his room when he woke up before.
A car door slamming brings him right back out of his thoughts. He doesn’t even need to glance at the clock on the stove to know what time it is. It’s 5:15, right on time as always. Wentworth Tozier saunters through the front door, kicks his loafers off by the mat, and sets his briefcase down on the end table by the couch. By the time he’s made his way into the kitchen his tie is loosened and the top two buttons of his dress shirt are undone. Everything is how it should be.
“Christ almighty it’s a scorcher out there!” He says before swooping in to kiss Maggie on the cheek. “Pip pip tally ho my good boy!” comes out next in a voice not at all different from how Went says everything else. God, it’s like he isn’t even trying.
“That’s gotta be the worst British accent I have ever heard,” Richie drawled out at his dad.
Yeah, everything is normal.