Chapter Text
He doesn't remember what he saw in the deadlights.
He remembers what it felt like. The gut-wrenching terror that made him feel like he was slowly sliding off the surface of the world. And an agony like his brain was trying to bust the popsicle stand that was his skull. His body had been cold and heavy, as if immersed in a freezing brine, and the chill was stark against the fever of his red-hot gray matter.
He remembers the pain stopping like a blown lightbulb. He remembers the unearthly shrieking of It.
But more than anything else, he remembers Eddie's voice carving through the lingering ache and shaking him back to the fucked-up hellscape that was Its cavern.
"--chie! Rich! Hey, wake up!"
Consciousness slipped over his brain like butter sliding across a hot pan. With bleary eyes, Richie found Eddie’s face in the flicker of the deadlights, triumphant and awash with relief.
"Yea, there he is buddy! Hey Rich, I think I got him, man! I think I killed it--"
No. Really? No, something felt wrong. He'd seen something. Something in the deadlights, blood and horror-- what was it--
And then whatever he'd seen didn't matter anymore, because there was a fucking spike sticking out of Eddie's chest, and blood streaming in sticky cords from his mouth, and the bottom of Richie's stomach dropped out.
"Richie…"
He remembers a plea. For comfort, for rescue, for nothing Richie could give because he couldn't move a muscle.
He remembers laying there while a monster slaughtered--
"Eddie… Eddie!"
--
His own screams reverberate off the inside of his head, but Richie doesn't startle awake. His eyes simply open in the darkness, as if in resignation to this fate of watching Eds die again and again. He swallows hard, palms away the tears on his cheeks.
Then he lies there.
He doesn't have anywhere to be.
He can just lie here.
He'd cancelled the rest of his tour when he got back, citing a death in the family. His manager had only protested the cancellation of the later dates, the ones six months away, because surely Rich would be up for work by then?
All it took was one look to know Richie was done.
Not just with the tour, but with… everything.
The show's never felt like his. He practiced the physicality in the mirror, knew the jokes like the back of his dick; it was the jalopy that had careened along the highway of success with smoke pouring out of its hood, but it'd got him there in one piece. He's not sure he can get back in it though, not without driving it off a fucking cliff. The words are false. They always have been but now it bothers him that they are. It's disrespectful to Eds somehow.
It had all started coming back to him after Mike's call, like a fucking Celine Dion ballad. The tiny, cute kid with the freckles and the fanny pack. He’d never had words for what Eddie was to him. Stan had been his best friend, Bill had been his partner in crime, and Eddie had been… both, and more, and also neither. He’d been the first person Richie thought about in the morning (I wonder what Eddie wants to do today) and the last person he thought about before he fell asleep (always abstract; his smile or his fluff of hair or that indignant look he got when Richie was being intolerable.)
As a man, those feelings, long-lost since his boyhood, had seemed faraway and faded, like a blurry Polaroid. He could do without all the rest of the Derry bullshit bulldozing into his head, but Bill and Stan, Bev, Ben, Mike, and Eddie best of all... Richie had remembered them, at least, with a warm and fond glow.
And then, in one cut-glass moment, crystal clear and razor sharp, they weren't faraway anymore.
Hey, look at these guys!
He was taller. Older. More world-weary. But his eyes were the same, and so was that smile, even if it sat in his jaw differently. His voice was deeper but still had notes reminiscent of the skinny little boy Richie had (loved) been so close to.
All of it came back, and brought friends: the fresh hell of falling head over heels with the handsome man across the table; the reticence of having to hold back because people were watching (they’re his best friends it’s okay they can know it’s okay) but it was too much, too fast and it was Eds, for fuck's sake-- and at some point during the dinner, actually between taking off his jacket and sitting down, he had realised it always had been.
It's always been, and he can't go on pretending it's not, like Eddie had never existed.
Especially now that… he doesn't.
Richie's vision goes hot again. He closes his eyes, buries his face into his pillow, and bites back the grief bubbling up in his chest like volcanic ash. He's done screaming out his rage, his pain. Done it since Bev and Bill and Mike and Ben dragged him out of Neibolt. Done it til his voice went. But it's still there and he doesn't know how to make it stop.
It doesn’t help to remind himself he hadn’t spoken to the man in twenty-six years. That actually makes it worse. He should have. He should’ve told Eddie a long, long time ago. Maybe Eddie hadn’t felt the same way and maybe that would have sucked, but he couldn’t believe that it could suck more than burying the most crucial tenet of himself so deep inside while Eddie went off and married somebody else, never knowing that Richie would’ve died for him.
Christ, if only.
He thinks about it every day. If only he’d pulled him away. If only he’d thrown Eddie under him. If only. He’d be the one they left buried under Derry, but Eddie would be alive, and that was worth everything.
All he has now is this hole in his chest. No spike running through him. Just the pieces of his heart, struggling to function in their normal capacity. Oh, they pump, just as they’re meant to. Only they don’t pump blood; it’s regret that runs through his veins now, bubbling up around the edges of his ribs, seizing his lungs in its prickly grip and squeezing.
It’s oddly reminiscent of fear. Fitting, because regret is the bastard son of fear and inaction. Fear, one of Richie’s mentors had told him, way back when he was first starting out at the comedy clubs, was useless if it didn’t motivate you to get your ass in gear.
Do the work. Put in the time. Kick fear in its teeth.
You’ll regret it if you don’t, Tozier.
Ain’t that the fucking truth.