Work Text:
This is how the story goes: Richie Tozier looks into the deadlights, too busy running his fat mouth to heed the danger right in front of him. Eddie Kaspbrak, maybe the bravest and definitely the stupidest person Richie’s ever met, saves his sorry ass and gets himself skewered for his troubles.
It’s a tale as old as time itself. The love interest dies in the hero’s arms, the monster is defeated in exchange for a pound of flesh. Only Richie’s not much of a hero and their love story never even got off the ground, hindered by almost thirty years of distance and things they never had the nerve to say out loud.
“You should have left me down there,” he says later, after the sewers and the quarry and everything else. The others are already talking about leaving, and Richie doesn’t know how he’s supposed to go back to his old existence with this gaping hole inside of him. It isn’t anything new – he’s been carrying the same emptiness around with him for most of his adult life, but now he knows just what it is that he’s been missing all these years. Had it back for a short time before it was ripped away for good.
He’d do just about anything to forget again.
“Eddie wouldn’t have wanted you to die with him,” Ben says, all bleeding heart concern. If it was anybody else, Richie would want to punch them in the face just on principle.
“Easy for you to say, Haystack. You got the girl, you got your goddamn happy ending. What do I get, huh?”
As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he feels bad about them, because Beverly isn’t some prize to be won and neither is – was, fuck – Eddie. She’s been through hell, and so has Ben; God knows they deserve some fucking happiness at the end of all this, and Richie doesn’t want to be the asshole that resents them for that, but –
He gets the message, okay? Happy endings don’t happen for people like him. People like Adrian Mellon, who was beaten and thrown off the bridge before the clown ever got to him. Who, according to Mike, had a sharp tongue and a nasty case of asthma, who looked a little like Eddie probably had in his twenties. Richie isn’t a writer, but he thinks that Bill would appreciate the symmetry at work there.
If there was any justice in the world, he’d get a fucking reward for his services in putting that bastard clown down once and for all, but all he gets is Eddie dead and buried under so much rubble that they’ll probably never find his body again.
His head is fucking pounding, too. Whatever those lights are made of, they must have scrambled something inside his brain, which is honestly a-okay with him right now.
(Richie Tozier looked into the deadlights, and they looked right back into him.)
He drives out to the kissing bridge to say his goodbyes, stands in the place where he declared his first love for all the world to see. He’d thought it was romantic back then; he had no intention of ever actually saying anything, but the act of carving had made it real. Now, he could weep for the tragedy of it all.
He feels cold all over, despite the fact that it’s the height of –
-
- summer of 1990, and they’re pressed close in the clubhouse hammock, limbs tangled together in a futile attempt to fit. Sweat-slick and uncomfortable with barely an inch of space between them but neither willing to move away.
The others don’t come down here so often anymore; ever since Beverly moved away, it’s sort of become Their place. Somewhere they can hang out together and just be, without needing to fill the silence with their usual bullshit. They’ve all started to drift apart, just a little, since last year, but for now at least there’s still Richie and Eddie, and he takes some comfort in that.
(They have matching scars on their palms, though neither of them can remember exactly where they came from. Sometimes Richie remembers being so scared he feels sick. Sometimes he thinks Eddie feels the same thing.)
Eddie has a comic propped open against his knees, chewing the end of a pencil as he frowns down at whatever’s on the page. Richie can’t see the title, but he’d put money on it being something from the golden age of superheroes, when the good guys were good and the bad guys were always defeated in the end. Eddie’s always loved those kinds of stories; when he was really little, it was Snow White and Rapunzel, fairytales with wicked stepmothers and damsels in distress. Richie made fun of him for it, but sometimes they’d sneak off to the barrens together and he’d make up his own stories where he was the one rescuing Eddie from his ivory tower and his troll of a mother.
He knows better than that now, of course. Richie isn’t a knight in shining armor; he’s the dragon, the witch, the monster at the end of the book. Better to keep his distance before he infects Eddie with whatever sickness is brewing inside of him and proves his mother right once and for all.
Richie frowns at this maudlin train of thought, rubbing at his eyes behind the lenses of his glasses. Eddie looks up at him, a question written on his face.
“Okay, Rich?”
“It’s too fuckin’ hot,” Richie complains, flapping his hand ineffectually. It’s not a lie; the air is uncomfortably close down here, and his shirt is sticking to the small of his back, hair curling slightly with sweat. The places where they touch are the hottest, though – his calf pressed against Eddie’s thigh, Eddie’s fingers like five searing brands where they wrap loosely around his ankle.
The air feels charged with something like potential as Eddie continues to gaze at him steadily, comic forgotten. Richie finds himself wondering, as he sometimes does in moments like this, whether Eddie might be like him, whether he’s not the only one hopelessly pining after something he can never have. It’s a dumb, childish hope; he doubts there’s even another queer kid in all of Derry, let alone his best friend that he’s been crushing on for the better part of a year.
Richie still wants to kiss him, though.
Eddie’s watch beeps loudly, shattering the fragile tension like a burst balloon. Eddie jumps, letting go of Richie as though he’s been burned, cursing under his breath as he fumbles for his medication.
“Why are you still taking that shit?” Richie demands as he watches Eddie swallow two pills dry. He immediately feels bad for it when Eddie turns away from him, shamefaced.
“I know I don’t need them,” he says slowly. Richie hates the uncertainty in his voice, thinks he’d do just about anything to take it away. “But it’s like, just in case? I’ve been taking them all this time and I haven’t gotten sick, so maybe they’re doing some good, you know?”
“You realize that makes no sense, right? They’re literally just sugar pills.”
Eddie sighs like he thinks Richie is being deliberately obtuse. “Yeah, and my inhaler is just sugar and water, but it still helps when I can’t breathe. I don’t know, Richie, maybe it just works because I believe it does. That’s what “placebo” means.” He gets a slightly impish smile on his face. “Besides, my mom can’t keep me locked inside the house if she keeps sending me out to the –
-
- pharmacy with you, Eds, holy shit.” Richie whistles long and low, not sure whether to be impressed or horrified. Clearly Eddie has graduated from sugar pills in the years since they saw each other last, because he’s got an entire suitcase filled with enough prescription drugs to earn him some serious bank in West Hollywood. There’s everything from aspirin to Vicodin to fucking oxy, and that’s just the painkillers; Richie can see brand names for some seriously heavy-duty sedatives in there too, not to mention remedies for just about every ailment known to man. Benadryl and Ambien and Nyquil, oh my.
“Here,” Eddie tosses a bottle in his general direction; it hits him squarely in the chest and bounces once on the shitty hotel mattress. “That should help with the nausea.”
“Thanks.” Richie pockets it without looking at the label, trusting Eddie to know what he’s talking about and not give him a laxative by mistake. “Seriously, why do you have all this shit? You can’t possibly need it all, unless you’ve got a side hustle as a back alley medicine man.”
Eddie’s mouth presses into a thin line. “Myra’s a nurse. She likes to take care of people.”
Jesus. “Is that what you call it?” Richie mutters under his breath. Apparently not quiet enough, as Eddie fixes him with a sharp look.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Just, I always said I was going to marry your mom, but it looks like you beat me to it.”
“Beep beep,” Eddie says warningly, real threat in his voice, and Richie truly doesn’t want to fight so he backs down reluctantly, holding his hands up in mock surrender.
It’s fucking surreal, being back here. He feels like he’s skipped a couple hundred pages to the end of the book and he’s got no idea what he’s missed in the interim. Eddie is all grown up, with his boring job and his fancy car and his suitcase of prescription meds, and Richie doesn’t know how to talk to him anymore.
He’s still got the same sweet face, though, the same big doe eyes. The same manic way of talking. Same volatile temper. In all the ways that count, he’s still the same boy that Richie fell in love with twenty-seven years ago. It shouldn’t be this fucking hard.
“You know, Mike’s insane little crusade aside, it hasn’t been all bad, coming back here.”
Eddie snorts. “Yeah, it’s been a real laugh riot. The fortune cookies were a nice touch.”
Richie lets out a delighted laugh, unable to help himself. “See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I couldn’t even remember your name two days ago, but I missed the hell out of you.”
Eddie just stares at him for a long beat in which Richie wonders whether he’s revealed too much, before his shoulders slump and his expression goes soft. “Me too.”
“You missed yourself? Nice.”
“You know what I mean, dickwad.” Eddie’s scowl is undercut by the grin that’s starting to tip up one corner of his mouth. “I watched all your standup, you know. I mean, I had no idea who you were, but I caught it by accident one night and binged the rest before I even knew what I was doing. It was like I couldn’t help myself.”
“And?” Richie isn’t sure what he’s hoping for. He’s not exactly proud of the trajectory his career has taken, spitting out someone else’s jokes like a performing monkey.
Eddie purses his lips in mock thought. “It wasn’t horrible,” he concedes eventually. “It’s weird, though; I could tell it wasn’t, like, authentically you. Even though I’d never seen one of your routines before, I just knew.”
And that – that’s a fucking relief, actually, one that Richie hadn’t even known he was waiting for. Because of course Eddie gets it – Eddie knows him, right down to his soul. Even when he doesn't remember it.
“You wanna get out of here with me?” He realizes how it sounds when Eddie chokes on air, and hastens to clarify. “Not like that, Jesus, get your mind out of the gutter. I just – we don’t owe this fucking town anything, you know? Let’s just ditch, go hang out somewhere that isn’t actively trying to kill us.”
He feels guilty for saying it, but the longer he’s in this town the more he feels like they’re careening towards an ending none of them want, and he’s desperate to wrest back control before disaster strikes. They’ve already lost Stan; he doesn’t think he could bear to lose Eddie, too. Not when he’s only just got him back.
“What do you say, Eds?” he prods, because Eddie still hasn’t said anything, is just staring at him with wide, wide eyes. “You ever been to Chicago?”
Eddie licks his lips, glances down at his wedding ring before his expression shutters off. “Richie, I –
-
- fucked your mom.” Eddie laughs through a mouthful of his own blood, trying so, so hard to be brave. Richie stays by his side, holding him and whispering soothing nonsense until Eddie squeezes his hand and tells him to go help the others, it’s okay. I’ll wait here.
They kill the clown, turn Its own dirty tricks right back on It, and by the time Richie gets back, Eddie is already gone.
Eddie’s eyes are glazed, there’s blood in his mouth and on his shirt and he isn’t breathing, and they’ve done this all before. Richie would think that he was the one who died, that he’s landed in his very own circle of hell to have to relive this moment. It seems unspeakably cruel that he should have to watch Eddie die twice without being able to change any of it, but he remembers Beverly back in the town house, talking about possible futures and how they could be averted. He looked into the deadlights too (and maybe they gazed right back into him).
Another thing he remembers: Ben, full of all the conviction of a thirteen year old hopeless romantic, bringing Beverly back with a kiss. And sure, maybe Beverly didn’t have a hole in her chest, but maybe that doesn’t matter; maybe the belief is the thing.
If belief can slay the dragon, then who’s to say it can’t bring back the dead?
“Rich, what the fuck are you doing?” Somebody – Bill? – asks as he takes Eddie’s lax face in his hands, heedless of the shaking all around them, the sewers about to come crashing down on their heads.
“Fixing the ending,” he says, and Bill is staring at him like he’s lost his goddamn mind, but fuck him. He can’t write an ending to save his life.
Eddie’s lips aren’t cold yet, but he tastes like blood and dirt and his entire upper body is a gory mess barely concealed by Richie’s jacket. For a second Richie almost thinks this isn’t going to work, but he pushes the idea away before it can take root. There’s no glass coffin, no spinning wheel; just Richie and his bullheaded refusal to accept a world in which Eddie Kaspbrak doesn’t survive.
He’s going to bring Eddie out of the underworld, so long as he doesn’t look back.
“Richie, what –” Bill starts, but whatever he was going to say is cut off by a soft oh from Ben, Beverly’s quiet gasp and Mike, who’s spent an entire lifetime learning the warped internal logic of this fucking town, says, “Holy shit, he’s actually doing it.”
For a moment, nothing. Then – movement. The flutter-thump of a heart trying to resume its rhythm, the slow expansion of lungs that were always stronger than they seemed.
Come on, Eddie, Richie thinks, and imagines he’s bending the universe to his will. Live.
“Motherfuck,” Eddie says, and opens his eyes. “What’d I –
-
– miss it, or Mike will fucking flip. I’m just saying.”
Eddie is waving his hands around animatedly as he talks, backlit by the last golden rays of the sun setting over the Kenduskeag. There’s a fresh white bandage on his cheek hiding what will soon be a scar to match the one on his abdomen, nothing but raised pink flesh to indicate that he’d been holding his own guts in not twenty-four hours ago.
Richie thinks he’s never seen anything more beautiful: this weird, anxious little guy with sad eyes and a short fuse. A foul-mouthed angel straight from heaven.
“Mike can wait.” They’re supposed to be meeting the others for dinner before they all go their separate ways, but Richie wanted to make a detour first. “There’s something I want to show you.”
Eddie looks bewildered, but follows along easily enough as Richie leads him to the kissing bridge. Somewhere between the sewers and here, he’s lost his wedding ring. Richie doesn’t ask about it.
He hopes, though.
“There.” He all but shoves Eddie forwards when he finds the right spot on the railing, burying his hands in his pockets so he doesn’t have to acknowledge them shaking. Eddie has to crouch down awkwardly to read the inscription, faded as it is by time and the elements. Richie still sees the exact moment he gets it, reaching out to trail his fingers almost reverently over the letters.
R + E. The most secret, fervent desire of thirteen year old Richie Tozier, made concrete in the same spot where Adrian Mellon was thrown to his death.
“Rich, what…?”
“I carved it that summer, after Neibolt. You don’t have to say anything, I just… thought you should know.”
“I’ve seen this before,” Eddie says slowly, haltingly, as though the memory is just now coming back to him. “I used to walk by here and make up stories, pretend it was you…” He stands up suddenly, shoving an accusing finger in Richie’s face that does nothing to diminish the wonder in his eyes. “You fucking asshole, why didn’t you ever say anything?”
Why didn’t you? Even now, Richie doesn’t dare let himself hope. “I don’t know, Eds. I was a kid. I was scared. I guess I didn’t think you’d ever see me like that.”
“You’re an idiot,” Eddie says, the fondness in his voice so evident now that even Richie can’t deny it, and when he closes the distance between them he’s warm and alive. Richie leans down to meet him halfway, and it’s a proper kiss this time, none of that sleeping beauty bullshit, Eddie’s hand on his face and his lips soft and yielding against Richie’s own.
“Gotta say, that’s a lot more fun when you’re actually conscious,” he says when they part. He shouldn’t be joking about it, probably, but that’s the only way he knows how to communicate. It’s worth it when Eddie laughs in that way he always did when he was annoyed at finding Richie’s jokes funny, and how in the fuck did Richie ever forget about him anyway?
“You never did tell me how you felt about Chicago,” he points out, and Eddie stops laughing.
“You were serious about that?”
“Why not?” He tries to play it off as something super casual, something perfectly normal to suggest to your old childhood crush that you haven’t seen in nearly thirty years. “The bachelor thing’s getting kind of old, you know? We could hang out, get a dog. Not a Pomeranian, though.”
“Richie, you don’t even know me. I’m kind of a nightmare, honestly.”
Richie thinks about summers spent tangled together in the hammock at the clubhouse, about Eddie’s heart beating again just because he willed it to. “I think I know you well enough,” he says. “I’d like to get to know you a whole lot better, if that’s what you want.”
“I do,” Eddie says, and apparently realizes just what that sounds like because he flushes beet red and hastily adds, “I mean – yeah. I’ll go with you.”
“Cool,” Richie says, aware he’s probably grinning like a dork, and kisses him again.
Eddie isn’t a princess waiting to be rescued or a prize to be won at the end of a difficult trial – he’s a grown man with a fuckload of issues who still saved Richie’s ass just as much as Richie saved his. And Richie isn’t the monster – he’s not fully convinced he’s the hero yet, either, but he’s starting to think that maybe he deserves a happy ending after all.
Maybe they both do.
-
You want a better story. Who wouldn't?