Chapter Text
These infinite notifications. Richie scrolls and scrolls, sips something cold and sour, scrolls some more and airs a sigh.
When did it get this boring? When did popularity become such a stale concept? When, in his endless search for validation and attention, did he surpass satisfaction and mow straight off the edge of it and plummet to an entirely different notion? To a place where, unexpectedly, the attention is deadly? He knows when the scales tipped; it was the day is feet stood on a stage and an audience cackled at his command, the very first time. But he carried on with it - laughter became a hook he couldn't function without, a delicious appetiser to the lifestyle that came after. The money, the fame, the adoration, they were the real highs, the things he grappled for. Riding the success warps reality, and all this materialism is impossible to refuse when it's constantly wheeled in on silver platters and waved under an attention addicts nose. He'd made it, alright. He's a famous comedian, the marvelled Trashmouth, and paid a bomb to be himself. What could be better than making a living from making people laugh?
Except the laughter was just a gateway drug, and the rest of it? He's in too deep to notice that it's all slowly killing him. Hypnotised by a bursting bank balance and deafened by hilarity.
He needs something to ground him, something that forces a come down. An antibody to the comedy, to the praise. So he scrolls and feeds on the hate from a faceless community.
His finger pauses on the mouse pad, he reads the tweet three times. He laughs. "That's actually pretty funny." He says to himself, and reads it again. Everything he reads after that is nothing shy of disappointing; his method of a harsh reality check seems to have been ruined by one savage tweet. Until he finds another one:
Maybe not as funny as the first, but nevertheless, Richie puffs short bursts of laughter from his mouth as though the notion of humour is his to give and not receive. An alien feeling in his mouth, one that compels him to look for more material to trigger it. How long had it been since someone gave him a taste of his own medicine? He wishes he knew.
“Good one!” He snorts, and his noise fetches the attention of his only companion, Graham. A ridiculous name for a Pomeranian (as one would expect of a full time comedian), he knows full well - but Richie’s phase of Britpop adoration back in the 90’s needed honouring. When he bought the dog home four years back, the search for a name was un-triumphant until the unnamed puppy took a piss on the lower shelf of Richie’s record collection, and ‘Leisure’ by Blur was ruined. Richie took that as an unceremonious declaration of the dog’s hatred for Britpop, and so to spite him, named him Graham after Graham Coxon. It’s a private joke, one that he’s thankful to say has not made it into his material. But then, nothing personal ever does.
Graham bounds over, leaps onto Richie’s lap and demands the attention that Richie has been giving to someone anonymous. He looks into the beady eyes of his only true friend and bites back an apology. ‘Sorry that I gave you such a weird name’, he would have said, except the apology ferments in his mind instead, and becomes totally introspective: I’m sorry that you’ve made it to 40 with only a dog called Graham to love you.
One hand now commandeered by the dog’s need for behind-the-ear scratches, the other hovers a finger over the username of the jokester that so amusingly orchestrated such a brutal Twitter take down of Richie’s career. He feels weird, knows how it should make him feel to be so ripped to shreds but - well, did he not seek it out? Did he not resort to the internet in search of slander to offer him some semblance of a reality check? Sure. That was it exactly. Except, his intentions backfired, he thinks. He’s not feeling grounded, his reality’s not in check. He’s not feeling hurt, or hated, or bitter for the life he’s chosen. He feels something he can’t fathom and, as he knocks back the last of his drink, wonders whether more liquor will help him digest this undetectable emotion with better, slicker ease. Richie’s not sure, but he thinks it might be intrigue. Intrigue at the very least and excitement at most. Something else flickers in his periphery, and that’s the disadvantage of his intoxication; it’s too far on the edges for him to decipher. There’s a fleeting dash of a moment in which his finger commits to left click the username and his vision lights up, bright white and glaring, and he recognises the outskirt-lingering feeling. He can’t be absolutely sure, nor can he understand the source of it, but he swears he feels it smack his temple so hard it could have knocked his glasses across the room. Nostalgia.
The feeling came with a name, paired with a small icon of a strangely familiar face, and a short lined, satirical bio. Eddie Kaspbrak looks from a tiny circle, doe eyed, goofy expression held, and Richie knows his face - he’s sure he does, but he just can’t work it out. The bio reads “First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me!” - so the man has good humour and good taste. Richie recognises the quote and, much like that unknown sentiment latching to the rim of his glasses and refusing to dissipate (the one that looked and felt a lot like nostalgia), only a taste of a smile rests on his lips, enough to lick away and enjoy for moments only. He doesn’t understand why he’s so impelled to delve deeper into the social media mock up version of this man’s life, and he won’t comprehend for a good while yet. For now, it’ll only do to bask in the stranger’s online assassination of Richie himself, and forgive him for feeling somewhat flattered. It’s the alcohol, and - though he’d never care to admit it - the loneliness.
This guy…!" Hand over mouth, Richie's eyes screw shut with the titter he doesn't let break through the bars that his fingers make. He can't finish the sentence because he simply doesn't know how to. There's a few variations; this guy is hilarious, this guy is an asshole, but the way the statement hangs in the air concludes it better than any finishing word would. I'm really fucking curious about this guy. He loves the heavy self depreciation, the addition of ripping himself to shreds alongside the slander of Richie's 'work' that he plasters on the sterile white Twitter feed. Richie isn't much good at translating first impressions, always takes a little while figuring people out, and by the time he’s ready, he often finds those he’s de-riddling have grown impatient and long since left. But through a crack in a wall (built around mysterious origin) somewhere at the back of his mind, jeers a thought:
First impressions of Eddie Kaspbrak? You made those 30 odd years ago!
He’s deaf to it. It’s drowned out by the clattering tap of his keyboard as he logs out and resigns as Richie Tozier for tonight.
Whilst a multitude of conflicting feelings of indifference to his public profile do constantly brew tornadoes in his head, he’s sensible enough not to flush it all down the drain in some embarrassing display of… Well, there’s the thing - display of what? He doesn’t even know what he’s risking. Would he risk anything by messaging this proclaimed hater of his? Probably not. But there’s something in him that wants to start this interaction (should it transpire) free of any presumptions. Void of this hatred that ‘Eddie Kaspbrak’ spews of him on the internet. He doesn’t want to be Richie ‘Trashmouth’ Tozier, not now. He’s just hiding behind the prospect of public humiliation, just kidding himself that his reasoning to go in under an alias is to preserve his reputation. He’ll work it out later. For now, he clicks the follow button and starts a retweet.
Graham grumbles beside him, and paws at his fraying sleeve. “What? Too perverse?” Richie asks a question that will go unanswered, not that it needs answering in the first place. “You’re right, ‘Ham. I’ve never been good at playing it cool.”
What the fuck am I trying to play cool?
His conscience begins to scratch at the backs of his eyes just as he slams the lid of his laptop shut, and restless, he stretches from his seat and pads across his apartment with it’s huge, empty windows and masculine, industrial decor. It’s never been to his taste, and he accepts with woe that it’s far too grand of a place for a lamenting bachelor and his tiny dog. He takes to his empty bed, upon which Graham cacoons against the vacant pillow, and Richie’s tired, exhausted even. His head feels like it’s run for miles with no stops, no hydration, no hope of destination. Maybe he got the come down he was searching for, after all - he just never expected the symptoms that riddle his bones and muscles now. He’d purged, sought out a destructive appointment with naked truth. He’d got something he hadn’t expected, something he hadn’t gone out looking for, and what twists his knotted mind more, is the fact that he’s not even sure what he gained. A name, a singular picture, and some masterfully sculpted insults.
Masochism powers him to reach for his phone on the nightstand beside him, and after the initial battle with the blue light shocking his eyes, he opens up Twitter. He logs out, locks Trashmouth out of the room once more, and checks himself into the domain of his alias account. A notification awaits, and his heart careers over a speedbump in his chest.
@doctor_k started following you.