Archive of Our Own

i.

Richie Tozier’s life was like a child wading in the shallow of a public pool, unable to swim, never having been taught just how to stay above uneven water. Like a little kid told by his mama that he wasn’t allowed going into the deep end because he might drown, so he frowned and bobbed in the shallow all alone and watched his friends do flips and jumps and splash each other past the five foot mark; like all he could do was pout and watch on. 

That wasn’t to say his life was inherently miserable. He was happy most of the time, genuinely; his parents made mistakes, but they were far better than Bill’s or Stan’s or Bev’s, who all pushed too much or too little or got too mad and too loud and too angry, teeth bared like feral wolves. And his friends were pretty great too; he spent most weekends in one of their basements talking about nothing over a cheesy movie and a bucket of microwave popcorn. 

His life was good, and he didn’t have many complaints. It was just easy to feel sort of isolated from his peers sometimes. Sometimes as he’d sit on Bev Marsh’s fire escape, mouth curved around a cigarette as she went on about scholarships to artsy colleges she admired, he’d feel proud, but he’d also feel like nothing but a kid who didn’t know how to swim. Like he was watching her do backflips in the pool, and swim through the seven-foot end, and he was alone. 

There wasn’t anyone to talk to about this piece of him, this lack of depth to his world, this constant bombarding confusion that was enough to overflow his life alone and leave him gasping for air desperately, because he knew nobody else had these struggles like he did. Bill knew he wanted to be a writer, and Mike knew he wanted to travel, and Bev knew that she wanted to go to one of the seven art schools she’d probably - definitely - get a scholarship for. Everyone knew, in some way, except for Richie. 

Sometimes Richie thought he was the only person in the world who was so alone; sometimes Richie thought God was playing a trick on him. Sometimes on the weekends he stayed with Bill, they’d make him sit in church, staring up at the Pastor as he made promises he couldn’t keep, and as he tried to cling to staying awake rather than falling asleep against the wooden pews, he’d think to God: If you were so powerful, and if you cared so much, why am I so alone?

Sometimes the thoughts would climb into him through the dead of night, or grow within him like moss alongside a cottage over the months and years, and it would wrap itself around his lungs and leave him feeling fuzzy and suffocated. 

If it was too late, he’d just cry into his pillow until sleep whispered over him; but on the days where he saw the sun was just rolling over the horizon, he’d hop onto his rusty old bike and he’d ride into the woods near his house. Nobody was ever back there, and they lived on the outskirts where every noise echoed like a shout in the dead quiet of the night, and to ride his bike and feel the icy breeze over his skin made him feel free. 

He allowed himself to do so one particular night, and his stomach was ill and angry with the thoughts that had spread through him, but as his feet pedaled through the leaves and the grass and the dirt of the woods he focused on the breeze through his dark hair and the feeling of the cold handles on his palms rather than the thoughts on his mind. He tried not to be so distracted, but his head ran as fast and as passionate as his bike had through the woods; maybe this distraction is what sent him into a particularly angry branch, which twisted against the wheel of his rusty bike and left him jutting off of the seat and against a tree. 

The first thing he noticed as he fell limp against the grassy ground, the silhouette of twilit trees surrounding him, was the dull ache in his ankle, and how this pain contrasted to the searing sting that spread up his calf and tingled over his palms and his knees. His right ankle, the same one which ached deeply, was slightly mangled in the branch, and it scratched into his skin as he tried to wriggle free. 

He flinched when a crackle in front of him, distinctly tennis shoes against leaves and sticks, made him aware of the presence of another person, and before a startled shout could tear from his throat he noticed it was only a young boy. A boy who looked no older than himself, with freckled cheeks and curly hair and a pair of overalls and a fanny pack around his waist. He looked at the boy hesitantly, waiting for him to say something; it looked like he might from his parted lips and wide eyes. But after a moment passed he realized that the boy seemed to have nothing to say. “Uh, hi?” Richie had said, like a question unable to be answered, and the boy blinked at him, eyes moving from his mangled ankle to his face. 

A pause, brief, and then: “You’re hurt,” The boy had said, abnormally soft. 

Richie glanced down at his leg again, taking notice of the twist of his ankle and the scratches that decorated his pale skin, and he silently theorized that bruises would be left marking his knees tomorrow morning. “Yeah, I can tell,” Richie had said in a sarcastically drawn out tone, letting out a soft laugh that almost lacked humor, and then he turned to face the boy again. 

Another second lapsed in which Richie internally remarked how delayed the boy’s responses had been, and then he’d quickly crouched down in front of Richie, causing the latter’s eyes to widen comically behind his thick rimmed glasses. He desperately tried to scooch back, almost feeling afraid despite the fact that the boy seemed so harmless, but the dull ache in his ankle had shouted in rejection at the sharp movement. 

The boy had quickly unzipped his fanny pack, and Richie coaxed the pained squint from his face to peer down at the contents which the boy had tugged from the confines; a bandage wrap, some cream that he thought might be Neosporin, a small bottle, and cotton balls. Richie watched the boy with interest as he’d dabbed the cotton balls, soaked in some sort of alcohol that had caused Richie to yelp in pain, against his bloodied skin. 

Eddie had managed to remove Richie’s ankle from the confines of the branch, and not long after spreading the Neosporin on his calf and wrapping it, he’d moved his hands down to gently cradle his sneaker-clad ankle, almost curiously. “What are you doing?” Richie asked slowly, and however soft he’d intended it to be, it still echoed against the walls of trees around them, and Eddie slowly blinked up at him in thought. 

He glanced down at his fanny pack quietly before he said, “You need to bite down on something,” and then he’d tugged a small wrag from the bag and raised it towards Richie. Tentatively, he’d placed it between his teeth and bit, and with a quiet, “I’m sorry,” Eddie pushed harshly on his ankle, causing it to crackle sickly; the wrag muffled a wrenching sob from Richie’s lips, his fingers twisting in the soil, writhing like a wounded animal. 

Despite how quickly the ache had subsided after Eddie had snapped it, he still let out a shaky, weak sob as Eddie gingerly removed the wrag from his mouth. “What the hell was that?” Richie was afraid of how feeble his own voice had sounded, coming from his mouth as a whisper despite his intentions.

“It was dislocated,” Eddie responded easily as he shuffled his items back into his pack and zipped it shut. He was evidently trying to remain quiet, but a concerned expression was still worn on his round face, “I’ll help you home.” 

He’d helped Richie onto his feet, who wobbled a little bit but quickly regained balance, and with a nervous smile he’d had said, “By the way, my name’s Richie.” 

“Richie,” The boy had responded, meekly, and something about his voice felt like the echo of an old friend; warm and sweet and new, “I’m Eddie.” They’d walked home after that, Eddie taking care to push Richie’s bike through the branches carefully, and when they broke through to the back of Richie’s house where he leaned his bike against the fence, Richie told him he’d see him later, and Eddie smiled shyly and responded, “Yeah.” 

Richie was useless to do anything but stare on, curiously and almost wistfully, as the boy left to walk down the long street before he vanished at a turn, out of Richie’s sight. A smile still remained on his lips despite the ache in his legs as he climbed the staircase to his bedroom, sleep dazed, but happy. 

/

Richie didn’t forget about Eddie, even as two days had passed without seeing him again. Although he’d nearly convinced himself that it had been nothing but a dream, he knew the scrapes and bandages adorning his legs were evidence of the boy being real. He hadn’t kept the wrap on for long, mostly because it was uncomfortable and scratchy, and so the next afternoon he’d sat himself on the floor of his bedroom and unraveled the bandages from his leg. 

The cut wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been just the night before, and he was amazed by how quickly it seemed to have healed; with all the scrapes and scratches in the past left entirely uncared for thanks to his negligence for self-care, he noted that a well cleaned and treated cut could heal much faster. 

When he ran his fingers along the surface of the red scratch, he let out a soft wince as the sharp sting over his skin, and reluctantly pulled his hand away. He was almost tentative to throw the bandage away, as if it had been the only physical evidence of Eddie’s help, but he still gently dropped it among the plastic and the paper that filled the trash can, and he left it there without so much as a second glance. 

His mother hadn’t taken long to see the marks on his skin; the night prior Went and her were so caught up in the television that they didn’t pay a second glance when Richie had greeted them on the way to his room, sending hey honeys and good nights, but when Richie came down into the kitchen for lunch in a pair of his summer shorts, Maggie’s eyes widened and she carefully placed her mug onto the countertop. 

“What happened to your leg?” She asked in that familiar, motherly, concerned tone as she motioned to him with a polished hand, and he glanced down at his legs self consciously. As predicted, a smattering of purplish blue bruises decorated his knees and his ankle alongside the shallow scratches. He hoisted himself up on one of the stools set against the island. 

“Fell off my bike the other day,” He told her, holding a knee up to his chest, foot resting on the stool where he sat for leverage as he traced a dark bruise lightly, “Some boy helped me. Named Eddie.” 

“Looks like it hurts,” She told him, but the strength of the worry on her face subsided enough for her to bring her warm drink back up to her mouth and take another slow sip. She was drinking from the teal cup with the white #1 MOM in decorative writing on it that he’d gotten her from the school’s Secret Santa Workshop in 5th grade. 

He smiled fondly at the memory of the high school student assistant boxing it for him and handing it over carefully, and he took it tightly in his hold, being extra careful not to trip or drop it as they’d made their way back to the classroom. That’s the same year where he’d met Bev Marsh weeks earlier on the playground when he was fascinated by a ladybug but too afraid to pick it up so she carefully grabbed it in her hold and showed it to him. 

“You’re brave, for a girl!” He had told her excitedly, thick glasses sliding down his freckled nose, grin wide in astonishment as he blinked; thick lenses magnified his eyes, leaving them buggish in appearance.

She’d pouted then, rosy lower lip jutted out, turning to look at him with a mix of annoyance and slyness on her round face. “No,” She told him, jaw shifting, eyes moving back to the bug crawling on her skin, “I’m just brave.” 

He recalled how she giggled as it walked around her palm to the back of her hand before she jutted her arm out into the air almost majestically, and it had sauntered to the tip of her finger and then flew away. 

His laugh at the thought was an echo of Beverly’s as he gently touched a scab, and then moved his hand to rest at the table as he glanced back up at his mother. “It does,” He said, and he might rest his chin on his knee had it not hurt so much, “Hurt even worse then. He scared me, too - thought I might die, but then I realized he’s, like, a teenager. Looked kinda like a baby deer; all harmless and stuff.”

She grinned fondly, and he might be offended at the smile regarding his pain had he not recognized that look after being raised by her all his life. He wore that look, sometimes, when something not necessarily good was being told but he loved the way the other person spoke. Even though he could annoy people sometimes between rambling and dramaticized statements, the people closest to him still found that as something so entirely him that he wouldn’t stop if he could. 

After a brief pause, she took another sip of her drink, some of her blonde hair falling over her face where it had sprung from her ponytail. “I was thinking we could eat somewhere on Friday, just you and me, no dad?” She offered, a teasing glint to her eye that made him know it was nothing against his dad but just a want for one-on-one time, placing the mug back on the marble surface. Their house was all marble and light wood and white, clean and polished, save for Richie’s somewhat disorganized room. Even there, it wasn’t dirty - he hated foul smells - but he had some clothes sitting around and his knick knacks took up the space of every surface. 

He nodded in agreement, and she’d given him a point of her finger in acknowledgement before she turned to empty her mug in the sink. “Remind me to pick up your dad’s allergy meds from the Pharmacy then,” She told him as he focused on picking a scab on his palm, and when she turned to face him her face crinkled up in amusement mixed with annoyance. “And some bandaids.”

He grinned sheepishly and placed both of his hands on the countertop, shrugging his shoulders, feigning innocence. 

/

Richie was holding his styrofoam cup in his hand when he’d entered the pharmacy on the corner; it was practically bare, a wide little shop with rows of medical supplies and prescriptions behind the counter, and he sipped from his milkshake as he watched his mother head towards the counter to get his father’s medication. He blinked owlishly at her behind his glasses and then turned towards the aisle with the bandaids and walked. 

The shelf was oddly colorful; who knew people needed so many different sorts of bandaids? There were ones with decorative cartoon characters, ones the color of apricot, ones all sorts of colorful shades, see through ones to blend in with your skin. He tentatively stepped forward when he heard the jingle of the bell above the door opening; from here, he could only see the little golden bell chiming rather than the person who’d entered, so he moved his sight back to the bandaids and grabbed ahold of a pack with primary colored bandaids. 

The pharmacy was always abnormally bright, and something about the white, artificial lighting disoriented him; as he’d turned to head back towards his mother so she could pay, he bumped into someone, nearly spilling his milkshake. 

“Ah, sorry!” He said, adjusting his glasses on his nose, and then blinking as he tilted his head. He couldn’t fight the smile that was already spreading over his pink lips at the sight of the boy before him - “Eddie!” - and he was pleased to see the curly haired boy grinning back. 

In this light it was easier to see him; the curve of his nose and how it pointed roundly at the end, the smatter of dark freckles along his cheeks and how they’d contrasted to his tanned skin, his thick eyelashes curtaining dark brown eyes. His cheeks were flushed, and Richie thought his own might be too - his face felt warm and tingly. 

“Richie,” Eddie said, voice just as calm and collected as he’d remembered it being, “What are you doing here?” His eyes looked behind Richie, as if searching for someone else alongside him, but when he saw nobody his eyes focused back on Richie’s face. 

Awkwardly, Richie raised the pack of bandaids, his scabbed palms peering from behind it. Eddie nodded in remembrance before his eyes trailed down to Richie’s bruised knees. “You’re hurt,” He said, an echo of the other night, and Richie could remember how his expression had looked beneath the moonlight. It looked the same now, but without the shadows of the trees overhead. 

“Still bruised up, yeah,” Richie shrugged, tossing the bandaids in the air coolly; he’d meant to catch them, but they clattered to the tiles below his feet, and a blush spread over his face as he coughed and kneeled to pick up the box. Eddie’s expression was amused, but confusion tucked itself into the furrow of his eyebrows. “Give it a few days and they’ll be good as new, yeah?”

Eddie still looked a little tense at the sight of Richie’s bruised knees, but he forced a smile on his face as he looked up at him. “Yeah,” He’d said, and Richie smiled so widely that Eddie could do nothing but smile back. Something about the other boy’s grin made his heart ache in a way he refused to acknowledge. 

“What are you here for, anyway?” Richie asked, turning to the shelf to gauge what the other boy seemed to need. Awkwardly, he poked his hand out and plucked a box that held a roll of bandages from the shelf. Something about that movement seemed so awkward and cute that Richie swallowed down the harsh beating of his heart and raised an eyebrow at Eddie. The other boy said nothing in return, just waved the box of bandages and then tossed them in the air, catching it easily. 

Richie rolled his eyes at the mocking gesture but he still smiled over at him and laughed in amusement. They’d both headed towards the cash register, then, where Maggie was waiting, digging through her purse as Mr. Keene watched expectantly. “This is Eddie,” Richie told her, and she looked up at them, eyebrows knitted in confusion as if she’d forgotten who the Eddie in question was. Then, with a snap of her fingers, she repeated his name and nodded her head, turning back to the wallet which she’d pulled from her bag. 

“Here, here, I’ll pay for that for you, honey,” Maggie told Eddie, shaking her head in the fond sort of motherly way as she always had when she did something kind for a child. She was naturally generous, especially to younger kids, always aware that they might not have the best parents at home. Some might not even have parents at all. 

She gently took the bandages from Eddie’s hand while Richie put his bandaids on the counter, and Mr. Keene rang them up and read off the price. While Maggie pulled a ten from her purse, Richie turned to Eddie, smiling wide. “Did you want to come to my house?” He asked, ignoring Maggie’s glare - she hated how he always invited friends without warning her - “My house is big. And I have a cat.”

Eddie’s eyes move to the door behind Richie cautiously, and then he blinks, a slow movement, eyelashes fluttering against the freckled curves of his cheeks, and his round dark eyes shift to focus on Richie’s face. “I can’t today,” He says, fingers curling together; nails picking at the smooth skin around his fingernails.

Richie hesitates, if only for a beat, lips pressed into a tight lipped smile as he shrugs, trying not to feel too bummed. “That’s okay,” He tells him, swaying his weight from foot to foot; his shoes click into a loose piece of tile when he shifts from right to left, and he sort of memorizes the feeling of it snapping below his foot.

He can’t help but feel briefly disappointed, as if he’d missed his last chance to establish a friendship with Eddie; then, with an excited glint in his eyes like the strike of a match, “You have a phone?” 

/

Richie chews on the inside of his cheek, laying on his stomach on his thick mattress; the sheets shuffle around him, cold where they press against his bare legs. He is clad in boxers and a t-shirt that belonged to his dad before he stole it to sleep in, and he’d never bothered to give it back. The sun had already rolled behind the hills, but that did nothing for the sweat accumulating over his pasty skin. 

He holds his phone before him, a smile spreading across his lips as he reads Eddie’s newest response: a message asking him when he could meet Cookie, which is Richie’s thin cat who is littered in polka dot spots on white fur, eyes a pretty shade of blue. Richie taps out a response, asking if Eddie can come over in two days, and while he waits for the response, he rolls onto his back.

The ceiling hangs over his head, blank and white at first glance, but littered in chips and cracks. He raises his hand overhead, palm turned to his face, and his eyes trace across the cracks in the ceiling and then the crevices in his hand. He wonders if, come twenty years, as his hands start to wrinkle and scar, the ceiling will change like his own body does. 

Will more cracks break through the surface; will the white chipped paint be layered in a pink, or a blue, or a pitch black with glow-in-the-dark stars stuck across the mass? He knows that, no matter how it shifts over the years, no matter the scars and paint left behind, it’ll crack and crack until it crumbles into a pile of debris on the wounded surface of the Earth. 

He looks at his hands, and he thinks the same; he can tattoo marks across his skin, cover the flesh with wounds and scars, but no matter how it changes it’ll be the same mass of dust and bones when he’s six feet under. He wonders how far away that is; will he grow old enough to fall in love for the first time? Will he have kids? 

He doesn’t dwell on it long, because his phone chimes, and it’s enough to distract him from the tears clawing at his eyelids. 

A grin spreads wide like wildfire over Richie’s mouth when his phone screen flicks on in front of his face, tingling in the crinkles of his eyes and the curves of his brows and the scrunch of his nose; Eddie had replied with an affirmative, and it isn't long after that that he falls asleep with his phone held over his beating heart. Tomorrow he’ll meet up with Bill Denbrough and Mike Hanlon, and they’ll probably talk about Bill’s passion for writing, and Mike will talk about being his publisher.

And tomorrow Richie will probably laugh along with them, but he’ll want to cry, because they have it all figured out and they’re happy and he’s envious of that in the worst way. But right now he’s not with Mike and Bill, holding back tears; and he isn’t thinking about it either. 

He’s thinking about Eddie, and how he’s coming over in two days, and how he has a smile brighter than the surface of the sun. 

ii.

Richie’s great grandfather died when he was twelve. He wasn’t all that close with him; they usually tended to stay away from the shitty family on Wentworth’s side and the old man was grouped in with them, but he was still dragged in black to the funeral. He sat next to his dad, Maggie rubbing Went’s shoulder as he held back tears, but Richie couldn’t motivate himself but to do anything but pout, hands folded in his lap. 

There were banners hanging from the ceiling, high overhead, written names of different biblical people on the fabric; windows adorning the towering walls, made of stained glass depicting colorful and blocky images. The casket was opened, people walking up to mumble goodbyes and shed tears; he couldn’t see the body from where he sat, but he didn’t know what to imagine. 

It was old age that got him, nothing too severe, just a peaceful ending to a long life. When it was their time to rise the organ which Richie could hear playing Amazing Grace seemed to only get louder the further they walked down the aisle. 

Their shoes collectively clicked dully against the red carpet, and Richie blinked behind thick glasses, eyes buggishly large. He was able to see his great grandfather’s wrinkled face soon enough, just a few more steps forward; his hair was white and somewhat long, hairline receding significantly, gentle wrinkles curling in his cheeks and forehead. He had laugh lines, funnily enough, though Richie hadn’t remembered him laughing all that much. 

Richie wondered if he’d be old enough to have white hair and laugh lines by the time that he died. He wondered if he’d be dressed in a tux, close family sobbing around him as he lay, eyes rolled shut, jaw slack, hands folded over his chest in an old coffin placed in a church that smelled like dust. 

He didn’t remember much of the funeral; just the pastor preaching about how he was in heaven with the angels now, because he accepted Jesus in his heart. It made Richie ill to think about; he thought about some preacher saying you’ll get into heaven if you love the Lord in front of his decaying corpse, when he hadn’t been so keen on religion at all. 

Bill’s family was ultra Christian, and Stan’s passionately Jewish, but Richie’s was sort of neutral. His father was casually Christian, and Maggie was raised in a Jewish household, but Richie was free to his own beliefs. Maybe it was this religious freedom that had Richie furrowing his eyebrows at the crosses hanging on Bill’s walls as they walked towards the kitchen in his house the day after he’d talked to Eddie in the pharmacy. 

“Isn’t a little creepy to have, like, a murdered dude on your wall?” Richie asked Bill as he walked down the hall, motioning to a cross loosely with a thin finger as he’d eyed it, and he earned a glare and a light hit on the shoulder from his friend to his right. 

“It’s Jesus ,” Bill said dramatically, rolling his eyes, looking at Richie the way you would at a toddler who had just asked an inappropriate question in a crowd; a look Richie seemed to be on the receiving end for often from friends and family alike, as well as random strangers he’d managed to annoy, “You huh-have to love Jesus.”

Richie raised his eyebrows at the cross before turning his head to face Bill. “I never met the guy!” He said jokingly, picking up his pace to swing onto a stool in the kitchen next to the one where Mike had already been seated, pressed against the marble top island which was cluttered with mail, “Besides, how much should we really be trusting a guy who thinks he can walk on water?”

Mike rolls his eyes at Richie goodnaturedly, not bothering to school the shadow of an amused smile from his mouth, and Bill huffs in acknowledgement but walks towards the fridge to grab a water. When Bill turns around with a cold bottle in his hands, he pushes it towards Richie, earning a thankful grin in response as the latter grabs a hold of it to screw off the lid. 

Leaning against the surface of the countertop, Bill focuses his attention to Mike to ask, “So have you read the poem yet?” The poem in question is likely one of the many that Bill writes for the newspaper that the old women and men love to read with fond smiles on their wrinkly old faces, and they’re always sent off to Mike to make sure he enjoys them before Bill sends them to be published. Not that it matters all that much anyway, because all that reads it is old cat lady grandmas, but Bill tries to preach otherwise every time he brings it up. So he doesn’t.

Richie can’t help the annoyed groan that escapes him as he crosses his arms, pouting a bit childishly. He doesn’t care all too much that he’s being childish, because Bill and Mike know that he doesn’t like it when they talk about stuff like this all the time, but it’s still the first thing they bring up when they’re hanging out together. 

And it sucks, but he just wishes they would consider how he feels. But he’s Richie Tozier, the same Richie who makes jokes constantly and talks too fast about nothing important, so instead they just assume he’s being an asshole for no reason and choose between ignoring him or telling him off for it. Which is just why Bill rolls his eyes and makes a motion to Mike that cues him to continue their conversation. 

Richie wants to say something, and the words claw at his throat, and his eyes tingle with some raw emotion that he hates feeling; but he says nothing. He doubts they’d care about what he has to say, anyway. 

It just kinda sucks, if he’s honest. Because he spends the sad nights where he brushes hot tears away from his cheeks telling himself that his friends care, and maybe his life doesn’t have much meaning on the surface but he means something to them. But then these moments flicker like a broken flashlight, spilling tar into his chest and leaving him searing hot from head to toe.

Because as much as he tries to tell himself that they care, it shows in these fleeting moments that really, truly, they don’t. And maybe it’s an unfair claim to make, but they’ve never bothered to prove him otherwise. 

So he just sits there, listens to them drone on as Bill makes himself a mug of tea, and he thinks maybe if he doesn’t say a word as they talk they might just like him a little bit more. Eventually his mind melts into a blur of thoughts like newspaper cut out letters, and he stops listening to them so much as he starts listening to his river-swift running mind. 

/

It’s kind of a silent but well known fact in the Tozier household that Wentworth expects Richie to grow up to become a dentist, just like his dad. It’s not that he’s necessarily pushy about it, and Richie knows his dad would be proud of him all the same if he’d picked some other career, but dentistry is kind of the family business. Which is kind of weird - family businesses are usually some corner shop or working on cars - but a Tozier tradition is just that, and this one is just as expected as it is to make sweet ham for Thanksgiving day. 

With this weight on his shoulders, it’s easy for him to feel pinned where he stands. He’s forced to carry far too much on his back, of which there is nothing of interest for him there, and it weighs him down so heavily he can’t bear to take another step. Maybe this is why it’s so hard for him to guide his way to a content future; maybe this weight is enough to hold him here, in this lapse of time, forever. 

It’s like his life is a Disney Channel cliche movie, but with the rigorous anger and fear and confusion of that of a psychological thriller. Like his own mind is a labyrinth that he can’t solve, that has no real ending or beginning, and like thick chains are tied around his ankles. He’s frozen in time, like a flickering television screen set on pause, hovering. 

Waiting; but for what, he doesn’t know. He can’t be sure. 

It comes to him in dreams sometimes; ones that frighten him just as much as they restore peace somewhere in his chest where his thoughts mangle like a clump of hair weighing on his lungs. He inhales raggedly when he wakes from dreams and immediately finds that they’re gone, or shattered into fragments like broken glass. 

He can remember sometimes the scent of nature; flowers and the ocean and tangy strawberries and hazelnut. Other times he can remember a song; loud and harmonious that made him feel heavy everywhere. Sometimes he doesn’t remember anything but how it made him feel; like a flower blooming in his chest; something new, and something peaceful restored somewhere it seems to have never been.

He wakes to his own heavy breathing one morning, clothes chafing to his skin, covered in sweat. A flash of blinding yellow light subsides from beneath his eyelids to make way for the room surrounding him; his own bedroom, movie posters and doodles tacked to the walls, knick knacks decorating his desk. A shaky breath is exhaled from his lips as he looks around his room, reminding himself that he is home. 

The reminder doesn’t settle as peacefully as it should. 

He feels like he’s missing a piece of himself that he never had; like he lost the secret to the universe among the forest of thoughts in his head. A flicker of the dream comes, broken like a match in the wind; a forest and a boy and a pair of brown doe eyes. 

It’s familiar. It’s Eddie. Maybe that’s what it is — maybe he’s Richie’s home. 

He unravels his legs from the covers with a lack of grace, feet thumping against the floorboards when he’s finally free of their grasp, and a reminder pulses in his mind; Eddie’s visiting him today. It may be a little childish how it brings a smile to his tired face, hair messy from sleep and expression pale, and he rubs his eyes as he trots down the stairs still clad in his pajamas. His mother is awake as she always is, an early bird as she likes to call herself; her blonde hair is curly and loose, and she’s still in her silk nightgown. 

She sort of reminds him of a movie star; one casually rich, who doesn’t live in a mansion or wear diamond earrings, but still has a walk in closet and pricey clothes. 

They’re not all that wealthy; they still live in tiny old Derry where the houses, even the big ones, aren’t so expensive because the town has an eerie sort of aura to those who haven’t lived there their entire lives. But they still have decorations scattering painted walls, long hallways, a balcony out of the master bedroom.

It’s not much, really, but it’s more than he can say for Beverly Marsh or Mike Hanlon or even maybe Ben Hanscom. 

Cookie trots up to Richie’s ankles as he walks, staring up at him expectantly, tail wavering slowly in the air as her round green eyes watch him. He kneels to pet her, rubbing his hand at her ear and watching as she turns her head away, almost indecisive about if she wants to be pet or not. She’s a thin cat, scattered in brown and black dots, and her hair is thick but short and soft where it rubs against his skin. 

Something about the softness of her fur flashes in the corner of his mind - a dream, a something, something too far away for him to be able to grasp but he wants to, so desperately - and it’s gone as soon as it comes, like a creature in a forest hiding itself among the trees. He knows he yearns for something; depth and life and love, but he doesn’t know how to find it. Something within him must; something in his dreams, but he can’t know. He can’t be sure. 

“Do you want some tea?” Maggie asks him, tucking some of her hair behind her pierced ear, smiling warmly at him. Magazines scatter on the island, and some mail that they probably don’t need, and there’s a box of tissues and a small tube of hand sanitizer. Messy in the homely way; the way that says that they’ve been there for a while, and they know how things flow here. Messy, but still in order. If only to them. 

He nods his head, moving away from where Cookie settles on the wooden floorboards stretched out and pawing at the air, and she smiles and turns to make him a mug. The mornings always go slow, especially when school isn’t looming overhead like an angry cloud, only ready to settle more confusion over him. Not that he isn’t smart, but teachers are always pressing colleges and majors and the importance of Math or English or Science in different careers and all he can do is sit there and inhale the information fed to him. 

It’s sort of peaceful without having to worry about it, if only for a few summer months, and he spends his time joking with his mother while they drink from their mugs, and after an hour passes he settles his empty cup in the sink and bounds back up to his bedroom. She sends him a two-fingered salute as he goes. 

/

Richie finds that it’s easy to admit to himself: Eddie is beautiful. They’re in his bedroom, and Eddie is seated on his bed with his legs folded next to Richie as the latter turns on the Wii on the boxy TV. Eddie’s face is soft in a sort of way Richie had never seen before. Because he had seen beauty like Bev Marsh, who was a gorgeous girl in the brave sort of way, like an action movie character with her short hair and freckles on her red cheeks. And Mike was beautiful, but stoic, like a statue; and kind, still. Sort of like one of those large but submissive dinosaurs you’d read about in third grade. 

Eddie was beautiful in a way that felt like he held the universe within him. He moved abnormally graceful, eyes shining with curious mirth, blush staining his face all the way across the bridge of his nose and to his freckle clad cheekbones. He made Richie feel something inside his chest, an overwhelming surge of constant heat, skin tingling with it endlessly. 

He focused on turning on Mario Kart instead of the perky curve of his button nose and the long lashes which fluttered against his face like a butterfly in flight. 

“What’s the game about?” Eddie asks from his side, head tilted like a puppy dog as his eyes train to the screen; the game menu flashes there, options to play alone or online or multiplayer on the same screen, and Richie taps the multiplayer button; his Wii remote vibrates, and so does Eddie’s, who flinches and looks down at it curiously.

A fond look fights its way to Richie’s face as he looks over at his friend before he shakes his head. Eddie is so naive, yet somehow, he seems to know everything there is to know. It’s a weird balance, but it looks good on him. Richie coughs at the thought, as if Eddie might be able to hear it somehow; as if he was covering it up by being louder than it, drowning it from bubbling to the surface. 

He explains the premise of the game softly over the musical buzz of the television, rainbows glittering around the edges, and Eddie stares intently; hesitates before he glances down at the white Wii controller in his grasp and asks, “Are you any good?”

At that, Richie beams, and he tells him, “I’m the best.” 

Eddie doesn’t respond for a moment, face curiously blank at Richie’s words, and then his expression twists into determination; lips curved into a pretty pout — rosy pink, freckled cheeks puffed out. His thick eyebrows furrow, eyes training themselves to the screen: the game hasn’t even begun yet, they’re still on the menu where they have to pick their characters, but he looks like he’s prepared to charge into the battle headfirst. 

“I’m gonna win,” Eddie tells him, sparing a sideways glance in his direction, and fondness tingles on his skin at the action paired with the light of the television screen against his skin; it’s like the light of the moon kissing the surface of a shallow lake, waves pulsing against the sand. He’s the Earth, and he’s alive and breathing and his heart is beating in his chest to the rhythm of ocean waves. 

It’s the first moment, in his bedroom, staring over at Eddie that he thinks: maybe he does have something deeper in his life, if only for a moment, a brief lapse in endless time.

Eddie leaves a few hours later, the sun just beginning to set, hitting the clouds and shining against them in peachy shades of pink and yellow. The breeze that hits them is gentle; ruffles Richie’s hair and sways through the trees, birds shuffling from the branches. But, besides this, it’s peaceful.

And peaceful is the energy Eddie radiates as he stares at Richie, face glowing under the light of the hiding sun, skin edged off with melted gold. He was like a renaissance painting; beautiful, eternal, angelic. Richie held his breath for a moment as he shut the door behind him, and the click was enough to push him back to life. 

“Do you want me to walk you home?” Richie asked, squinting because the sun was peering just right through the curve of the trees and into his eyes. Eddie stared back hesitantly, eyes wavering with a nervous glint within them, colors swirling within his irises like marbles in the sunlight. 

He inhales deep, and then exhales, and as he does he says, “I’m okay.” The world hangs around them. “Thank you, though,” Eddie continues, and he lets a fond close-mouthed smile onto his lips, face warm and gentle like the smile you might give to a baby kitten mewling up at you from their confines. 

“Okay,” Richie smiles, and he tries to put the brightness of a thousand suns within the curve of his lips, just so Eddie knows he cares. Because, despite the fact that it has not even been a week since their first encounter in the woods on that late night, he cares so deeply for Eddie in a way that he could’ve hardly expected coming. Thinks, if anything harmed him, he might just wither away into dust on the ground, wisped away by the breeze. 

“I’ll see you,” Richie says as Eddie walks down the steps of the porch. And he hopes it’s true. 

iii.

It had been two weeks. Two wonderful weeks of friendship with Eddie, who blossomed into a wonderful friend like a rose blossoms from curled up petals among long jagged thorns. He shined brighter than the blaring light of the sun in the summertime, and he ran sort of like a toddler: heavy footed stomps against the ground. 

He held something magical within him, alluring in means of innocence but also of complexity, and Richie was only drawn closer as time went on. He’d told Bev about Eddie as they sat on the couch in Mike’s basement, watching her blow a silver string of smoke from her parted lips. She’d watched him as he spoke, like she usually did before she took up her own topics to rail on about; like listening to Richie was a favor. He didn’t mind so much, in the moment, because he wanted nothing more than to talk about Eddie. 

He told her about the night they met in the woods; how he’d hurt himself and Eddie helped him and then he ran into him at the pharmacy - literally - just days later. How fast and easily they’d become friends, sliding into each other’s life conveniently, like a key to a lock. How Eddie was the entire universe and more. How he was special. 

Beverly didn’t look directly at him for a moment, and then she’d said, sort of passively, “Maybe it’s fate.” And really, it was meant to be a little teasing joke at how endeared Richie was by him; how often he described the development as natural or easy, something that seemed to just happen rather than be a choice. 

But Richie’s steadily quickening heartbeat was far more distracting than logic, because he thought: Maybe it is fate. Wouldn’t that be something. 

It was two weeks after the fateful night that Richie and Eddie had met that he woke from a dream. And, for the first time in weeks; months, maybe; he remembered clearly beneath his eyelids like a projection. He remembered a forest coated in thick fog, like the night he’d fallen, legs littered in fresh scabs; he remembered his bike discarded on the ground as he walked further into the mass of trees. 

He recalled the way he’d kneeled to the mangled grass around his feet at the sight of something pale curled on the ground, hand carefully grabbing ahold of it to raise it in front of his eyes, squinting through the fog; soft against the pad of his fingers, a bird’s snow white feather. He traces the pad of his forefinger on his other hand against it curiously before he rises to his feet, dropping the feather to the ground; he hates the way it makes him feel to let it go, but as it curls away in the wind he finds himself walking further. 

It’s like he’s following a path that he hadn’t known was made. He inhaled deeply when he saw, among the woods, a mirror; a relatively old looking one, dark green paint swirling around the edges. Something deep inside him made him step forward further and further, until he was glancing at his own curious reflection.

Everything was still, for a moment. Then his own reflection moved on it’s own accord; rippled like water, a drop in a steady lake, and the mirror had projected Richie as he sobbed and cut off long strands of dark hair from his head with a pair of glinting gray scissors. His own hands reached out as if to stop himself, but the glass was a solid barrier between the physical him and the one he could see. 

His heart was pounding like a mare, eyes wide, and he wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or if the forest was getting darker as each second passed; like it was swallowing him into a void, where he felt nothing but this — fear. 

Then, another ripple curled through the reflection, and: “Eddie?” His broken voice had said, strained, like it hurt. There, in the reflection, was Eddie; cheeks pink and freckled, lips turning into a reassuring smile, one that spread warmth within Richie’s body entirely. He felt at peace. 

But it was over too soon, just seconds later, and his eyes were fluttering open to the morning sun peering from between the curtains. His breath came out of his parted lips as a shaky sigh, and he laid out a flat palm over his quick-beating heart, closing his eyes and feeling his chest deflate with an exhale. After a moment of laying still, wading in the shallow that was the memory of his dream, trying to keep it pinned into his mind; stuck like a tattoo; he sat up and pushed his thin glasses over his eyes, tugging himself out of bed. 

The dream was stuck in the base of his mind still as he paced down the stairs slowly, each step humming beneath his bare feet; memories glued there like food charred at the bottom of an ungreased pan, and he felt burnt, almost. His mother had offered him a mug of tea, which he gently agreed to, making his way to the living room rather than seating himself at the usual location on the island. 

/

“I was thinking you could meet my other friends, sometime,” Richie had offered one day as they sat in his bedroom, having recently discarded their game of Wii Sports for sitting cross-legged on the bed sharing a bowl of potato chips. Eddie had informed Richie he never had chips before - his Mama was too strict about eating habits, thought chips were too unhealthy for her little boy to consume. 

Eddie smiled warmly ( smiled like the sun, always ) and nodded his head; “Yeah, okay,” He told Richie, “Are they nice?”

“The nicest,” Richie reassured him. 

It had been days later when the opportunity for Eddie to actually meet them had arisen; the group had all decided to go to the cheap diner near Stan’s house, just like they always liked to. They rarely ate actual meals there, but they all crammed themselves in the booths in the back while eating ice cream. 

The Losers always made their presence known everywhere they went, filling every space with obnoxious jokes and loud laughter and playful shouting. A lot of the time it got them kicked out of public places or just earned glares from elderly conservatives, but Derry’s Diner was just a tiny little fragment of the Earth where they were allowed to exist; exist loudly and freely. Just, not too loudly. 

Eddie had met Richie at his house, perched on his own little bike with a helmet atop his head which he’d squeaked when Richie knocked his pale knuckles on, and when Richie had told Eddie his own bike had a flat tire he’d slowly removed his helmet ( light teal with lilac straps ) from his head and tossed his bike against Richie’s front porch lamely. 

Although excited for his closest friends to finally interact with each other, and to expose Eddie to more than just himself, a nagging whisper of fear swarmed in the back of his mind. Because maybe he was just looking too far into it, but maybe Eddie meeting more people would make him realize that other people his age weren’t so annoying.

Weren’t so filled-to-the-brim with idiotic voices and shitty jokes, weren’t always running their mouth faster than the speed of a lightning flash, weren’t all comprised of gangly limbs and crooked teeth and messy hair. Maybe he’d realize that people were better than Richie. A lot of people, in a lot of ways. 

It was selfish. Richie could acknowledge that, if only that aspect of all of it. He was selfish for wanting to keep Eddie away from his other friends just a bit, for the sole reason that he knew they were all a billion times more likable than he was. It was selfish, and that’s why he didn’t just decide to turn around, tell Eddie they should go play Mario Kart instead. 

He knew Eddie deserved more than just his messy bedroom and repetitive games on his tv all day, though. He deserved a loud group of friends, he deserved different voices to spew him different opinions when he needed advice. He deserved more love than just Richie alone could give him.

And he deserved to know that there was more to the world than just Richie Tozier; just crooked teeth and Mario Kart and a messy bedroom. 

So Richie resisted the urge to grab him by the wrist and turn them around: instead he continued steadily treading down the desolate road towards Derry’s Diner-n-Dairy, listening to the sound of his shoes crunching in the gravel. Part of him wanted to grab ahold of Eddie’s hand, for no reason other than to feel his fingers interlaced with his own. 

He didn’t.

Instead they walked to the diner in near silence, spare for quiet exchanges that had Eddie beaming over at Richie in a way he hoped could permanently scar itself in his memory. When they’d gotten there, after ordering their ice cream, they made their way to the booth in the back where the other five Losers already sat, laughing with each other. 

Eddie slotted in nicely, laughing at all of their jokes and staring at each of them as if hanging onto each word they said when they spoke to him, and Richie was reassured to find that Eddie hadn’t once left his side, and hadn’t once ignored something he said in favor of interacting with one of his friends, instead. 

And they’re still the Losers Club; obnoxious laughter and too-loud talking and glares from elderly people a couple tables down. But Eddie slots right in perfectly, and if he is bothered by how he doesn’t catch onto all of their inside jokes or has never watched some of the classic movies they discuss, he doesn’t seem to show it. 

A smile doesn’t leave Eddie’s face the entire time they’re at the diner. It’s not a coincidence that Richie doesn’t stop smiling, either. 

/ 

Afterwards they had gone to the Quarry, where the group had splashed in the murky water, feet shuffling against the slimey stones as they laughed together just the way they had only hours before. Now they laid at the warm rocks higher up, a view of the peaceful water below them, tucked back into their dry clothing. They were starting to part ways for the day; breaking away in chunks, walking or biking to their respective houses. 

Richie, Eddie, and Bill were the last left, calling out their goodbyes to Stan as he walked towards his bike, sending a gentle smile that was as warm as the summer sun over his shoulder as he left. They were beginning to rise to leave too; shuffling leftover clothing items or books into their backpacks and slinging them over their shoulders. Richie felt sort of warm deep within his chest as he watched Eddie adjust a strap on his shoulder, face highlighted by the lowering sun. 

The boys had shuffled away from the cliff together just as the sky began to fade from blue to peach, soft conversation over the chirping of birds as they made their way through the forest. It was actually kind of pretty in a frightening way to Richie; the twist of tree roots mangling from beneath the dirt and the moss, the incline of a gentle hill. He carefully stepped over a jagged rock, keeping a hand on Eddie to stabilize him.

Eddie had tripped just slightly, hardly enough to cause damage but just enough to frighten Richie, and his grip on Eddie’s forearm tightened, but the smaller boy managed to regain his footing. He sent a shy smile up at Richie, doe eyes wide and glinting from the light of the sun that just managed to peer from between the trees; hair messy and regaining its volume now that it was dry, cheeks pink from the warmth - and maybe, from something more. From something only they shared. Something that made Richie inhale deeply as his eyes trained on Eddie’s beautiful face. 

Richie was far too focused on the gentle curves and lines of Eddie’s face to notice that Bill’s foot was pressing into a particularly loose stone on the incline until it was shaking free beneath him, riling dirt and dust in its wake as it went to the ground, Bill falling with it. Richie’s eyes widened as he watched Bill stumble; it was too fast for him to regain anything of it, and he blinked owlishly and finally began speeding up towards his friend’s direction when he hit the base of the hill. 

He could tell it was bad; the hill was pretty high and the stones and tree roots were sharp, and even from far he could see that his face was beginning to bleed, and that there were red scratches on his arm and his knees.

Bill’s eyes were heavy, Richie noticed as he got closer. Like he downed a bottle of sleep medication. He looked on the brink of passing out, against the dirty bark of the oak tree in the middle of the forest. There was also a deep gash in his forehead, near his temple; crimson blood, enough to make Richie hold back a gag at the sight. 

As he got closer he could smell it; metallic, like a bucket of pennies. It only twisted his stomach further. Bile began to rise in his throat as he kneeled by his friend’s side, hand on his knee. The sight was an eerie echo from Richie falling in the woods. Except this was far worse, he could tell. He hadn’t recalled feeling tired; just afraid, and hurt. 

Everything felt like it was going in slow motion, now, but his heart was beating so fast and loud that he could hear it in his ears, louder than the chirping birds or the shuffling leaves. 

“Eddie,” Richie had called out, not bothering to turn around to look at him, mind too focused on Bill. His thoughts chanted in fear like a mantra: blood blood blood oh my god please no please. “Eddie,” he said, voice more broken around the edges, warbled, tears brimming as he toon in Bill’s closing eyes, “Help him, Eddie, you can help him.”

It’s all blurry around the edges, scratched out in dull spots like an old photograph that you could just hardly remember taking; a memory that is blurred with time but reignited. Sort of like a dream; a kind of feeling that only makes any sense when you’re asleep, out of body even if you’re watching your life play out before your eyes. It’s dark. It’s frightening in a deep way, an under-the-skin crawling sort of way. It’s fogged up with the strain of tears in his vision. He can make out the shape of Bill weakly raising his own hand to rub at his forehead; drops it down to his side and suddenly hisses in pain. A wounded animal. A memory. A dream.

After a second of no response, fingers digging into Bill’s scabbed knee, eyes blurry, Richie turned to look at Eddie. “Eddie, please!” He noted, as he blinked away tears, that Eddie looked afraid, like he was standing on a tightrope, “Help him like you helped me!”

To reassure his trembling friend, he turns to Bill; tells him, “Hey, It’s okay. He’s gonna help you like he helped me.” And when he looks over his shoulder again, Eddie is gone. There’s no trace of him left there; no evidence he’d been there in the first place, and no sound of him as he goes. Just the shuffling of windblown trees left in his wake. 

And he remembers it.

There is something familiar within the moment, seared into the back of his mind, running to the beat of his racing heart. It’s the shuffling of the trees, the sharp incline of jagged rocks, the steady approaching darkness. 

He remembers. And then, he forgets. 

/

Richie only feels a bit of the weight off of his shoulders as he manages to tug Bill, who is tucked into his side and only halfway conscious, to where the forest parts into the little town in Derry; slow cars rolling past, people walking along the sidewalk, and a sour smell of sewage and gasoline. Here he finally has reception to call Sharon Denbrough, collapsing onto one of the dirty benches that line the plaza, and when she comes to pick him up and asks, with a concerned tone, if Richie would like to tag along, he thinks about Eddie and he hesitantly, but politely, declines her offer. 

She tells Richie to pray for Bill before she leaves; says he’ll be okay, but to pray that he heals quickly. Richie doesn’t dare tell her that he won’t, but maybe they both know that he doesn’t believe enough in a God to think about them when he has bigger concerns on his hands; the door to the driver’s seat of her car slams shut, and it echoes in Richie’s ears. 

He watches as her small car rolls away towards the direction of the hospital, and he inhales deeply - gut churning with anxiety and heightened by the foul scent - and then turns on his heel, hands shoved in his pockets, and begins walking down the sidewalk.

As Richie stares ahead of him, he considers that Derry is the closest thing he knows to a ghost town. It’s not necessarily particularly quiet or lonely; cars roll past, although there’s not nearly enough to consider it traffic even as this is one of the most popular roads in Derry; people in little shops with doors propped open talk to one another in too-loud voices. 

It’s just, especially but not solely in moments like these, Derry is alone in the same way it feels to be tired when you’ve just woken up. He can’t deny that there’s people, but their exchanges are emptier, muted in his ears as he walks past. Every person is nothing but a corpse; maybe not really, not physically, but their words lack meaning. 

Derry, he thinks, is incapable of meaning anything to the rest of the world. It’s unable to be alive in a way that matters, he tells himself, walking down the brick-lined sidewalk. He makes a sudden, jerked detour to turn over to a garbage can on the side of the walkway a couple paces behind him, where he heaves what little he’s eaten today into the trash bin. 

He can sense the distasteful looks he’s receiving from bystanders as he shakily coughs one last time, stabilizing himself and swiping the back of his sleeve across his mouth; his eyes are watering like they do when you keep them open for too long, and his nose is stuffy, and he just wants to be back home in his bed underneath his covers. He feels tired.

He startles when he finds that, after turning away from the garbage can with an air of finality, Eddie is standing before him on the sidewalk looking messy and sheepish as ever. He can sense the sorrow radiating off of him, written in the concerned wrinkle between his eyebrows, knotted between his wringing hands. “Are you okay?” Eddie asks, hand motioning loosely to what Richie assumes is intended to be the garbage can behind him, and Richie nods slightly, too confused and numb all over. He hardly knows how to process the day so far; why Eddie left him earlier, why he was so afraid, how he knew Richie would be here. 

It pushes down on him like a weight on his shoulders, and he knows he should be angry - should shout at him right now, because how could Eddie leave him like that? Sure, he was afraid, but so was Richie. Still, there was something settled in Eddie’s composure that made it almost impossible for Richie to be angry. “I’m sorry,” Eddie says, broken and frayed around the edges, tears in his eyes, and something within Richie collapses. He realizes, for a wavering second, that he never wants to see Eddie sad for the rest of his life. 

“Bill’s okay,” He says, scrambling for the words, “Don’t be sorry. You were scared, I know. Bill’s okay.”

Eddie nods his head, steps forward one wavering step, and his brown eyes study Richie’s face carefully; Richie can feel him mapping out his skin, and he feels like he should say something else but he’s too raw and numb today to process what would be appropriate, so he just stays quiet and he stares. “Are you okay?” Eddie asks him, then. 

“I’ll be okay,” Richie tells him. 

Because he can’t lie; can’t guarantee he’s okay in that moment, not while he aches like a bruise deep in his chest, not while his stomach churns, not while his mind swarms like a hive. But he does know one thing, as he stares at Eddie’s gentle and understanding face in the small heart of Derry, Maine: he knows that, with time, he will be okay. 

/

Richie had never been talented in identifying his own emotions. Of course, just like anyone else, he could tell you the basics. He knew from the light feeling in his chest that he was happy, from the tears pricking his eyes that he was upset. Still, certain feelings overlapped; bled into each other, like the nauseating feeling of excitement easily confused with that of nervousness, or like how jealousy interlocks with annoyance. 

It’s easy for him to misunderstand even himself; of course, it’s even harder for him to always be so well knowledgeable on how to put these emotions into words even after he is able to sift through them. It’s always sort of been that way; even now that he’s older. He used to be worse; towering over the toilet from the sour feeling in his stomach resulted from nervousness; anymore, he can acknowledge that it’s something that his mind has caused rather than a result of illness, but he just can’t pinpoint exactly how he feels - why he feels these things. 

It twists in Richie’s gut that night, after he parts with Eddie to sit in his room in silence, staring at the cracked ceiling hanging over him, sheltering him from the storm. It’ll crumble, he knows. Maybe not now, maybe not for a hundred years, but he knows it’ll crack until it breaks, crumbles into a pile of debris on the ground. 

That’s how everything ends up. Crumbled. Broken. 

Richie closes his eyes, tired, rubbing harshly at his closed eyelids with the heel of his hand until stars and galaxies explode in his sight. The stars and the galaxies fade away into black when he lifts his hands to drop them on the sheets at either side of his body. He hasn’t even taken off his jacket, and he hates sleeping with long sleeves on because they always feel too suffocating, but his body is far too weak to attempt to remove it. 

And, underneath the exhaustion, there’s something else. 

It’s low, muted, like the sound of a song playing on a loud speaker when you’re a house over; like riled sand in the ocean it rises in the pit of his belly, stirs there, settles and leaves him feeling weighed down from the inside. He’s tugged inside of himself, almost. He can imagine this is how a blackhole feels; a pull so tight and fierce at it’s very center that it tears through the universe like a piece of notebook paper. 

It feels like the universe is held within him, swirling like a tornado and humming like a honeybee, and his skin stings; moreso at his fingertips, the end of his toes, than anywhere else. He knows there’s a word somewhere for it, a name to call the feeling of the universe in your belly, but he’s Richie Tozier, and Richie Tozier had never been any good at identifying emotions. So instead it sits there, like a stray cat, unowned and unlabeled and confused, and Richie is confused too. 

He settles an open hand on his chest over his loose t-shirt, feels his pounding heart against his palm, and he thinks of Eddie. He yearns for him. It aches. And he whispers his name, just to recall how it feels in his mouth, and as it parts from his lips he closes his eyes, and he falls asleep. 

iv.

Richie is sixteen years old, and he still isn’t sure just how he feels about the universe.

There are times where he thinks the world is cynical, and the universe is angry for being so selfish and greedy. There are times where he can almost see it, below his eyelids; a universe with bared teeth and sharp claws, thrashing and angry, like a rabid rottweiler. There are times where he’s afraid of the universe. 

And yet, at other times, he thinks the universe is full of love. He knows humanity can be just as hard on it as they are on themselves, Richie included, and it may come off as silly to sympathize with the universe - something that lacks emotion or consciousness, something that simply exists - but he does. He sometimes ( often, maybe ) wonders if the universe gets angry at itself, too. Just like the people do. 

Ever so sympathetic, empathizing with something that isn’t even alive, Richie sometimes dedicates a moment to shut his eyes and whisper to the Universe: You are good. And, I love you. Thank you. 

And maybe it’s not a lie; because there are cruel moments in life that leave him angry and upset, but there’s other moments - and there’s people - that make him think, if fleeting, that the Universe is kind. As he stares at Eddie, who is spending the night at his house tonight, wrapped in a soft blanket donated by Maggie, he thinks of it as a gift. An “I’m sorry,” from the Universe for the past few days. 

If he hadn’t known that Eddie would probably tease him, or at the very least be incredibly confused, Richie might’ve said thank you out loud through the night. Instead he opts to say nothing at all, and instead he looks at Eddie, not minding so much that the entirety of his fondness must project on his face. It’s kind of weird; life had been so confusing recently, whittled between them, something that should’ve affected their relationship with each other in some sort of way and yet…

They were the same, slotting into each other smoothly as Richie had earlier opened the door to see Eddie’s shy face staring up at him, warm like the heat of summer, clearly nervous but also clearly more safe than he’d ever been. At least, Richie hoped that’s why Eddie turned up; hoped that the safety he constantly brings Richie is returned, but he can’t do anything except hope for it and search, somewhere within his eyes. 

Richie searches a lot, for things; for hints in the universe, that he is loved or that he is good or that he means something, and sometimes he thinks he finds them burrowed in the corners and the crevices. He wonders if it’s his own mind trying to give him some hopeless self worth or if it’s the Universe, capital U, whispering to him that he deserves goodness and happiness. He thinks maybe Eddie himself is one of these hints, one of the little slivers of you-are-good crammed into Richie’s life like a rose petal between the pages of an old book. 

Yet, still, he has doubts. Because he realizes that life seems to be permanently suspended in air for him; meaningless and endless, and he remembers how Bev and Bill and Mike and probably even Eddie have some giant plans for the rest of their lives and he’s stuck. He realizes he’s never even asked Eddie about what his future is painted like, never letting it drift into the conversations they share because he’s terrified of Eddie asking the same of him and having no answer. He’s afraid of people realizing he’s so confused and stuck and afraid of growing older. 

The pair lay on their backs on Richie’s queen sized bed, overtop of the covers because the summer heat is dripping through the windows and even in their t-shirts and pajama shorts sweat is still accumulating lightly on Richie’s skin - maybe partially Eddie is at fault, because being so close to the other boy is making him nervous in a way he can’t fully find the words to explain. Richie traces the cracks in the ceiling again, a bit more distantly this time with Eddie by his side, and he rolls his head to turn to his friend to find that Eddie is already staring back. His lips are parted and his cheeks are pink like he’s amazed by Richie - or, more likely confused - or, or, a mix of both, glinting in his eyes and furrowing in his brows. 

Richie swallows, thick, when Eddie asks, “Is something on your mind?” And he turns his head back to stare at the blank ceiling. Maybe it’ll teach his mind to be just as blank, just as white, just as calm and unwavering. He inhales, deep, feels his lungs blossoming with a thousand aching roses, and he exhales just as slow and all-encompassing. Maybe the rose thorns will pierce his lungs, end him right now, right next to Eddie at age sixteen on his ratty old bed. Maybe, if there’s any way to die young that would make him content, it would be this. He thinks he was made to be one of those young statistics of teens who died too soon, too tragically, too heart shattering that when a stranger saw it in the newspaper they’d gasp and set down the paper and cover their mouth in shock. 

“It’s just,” He starts, cuts himself short, and wonders: Am I really saying this? Am I really saying all these things that I’ve never even told my closest friends to Eddie? “I just feel like everyone’s got their life figured out and I don’t because there’s nothing to figure out - like I’ll die at age 19, y’know?” He says, and he thinks: I guess I am. 

Richie rolls his head again, meets his nervous and fearful eyes to Eddie’s in the dim light of his bedroom, and he sees Eddie stare back with intentiveness; curiousness; a sliver of sadness. Part of Richie wants to tear himself apart at the idea of even accidentally bringing Eddie sadness. The other part of him is thankful that he has someone to listen to his irrational fears in the silence of the night; he doesn’t tease or tug or laugh, he just listens and stares with the prettiest, most captivating eyes that Richie has ever seen. 

“Like,” Richie continues, wobbly around the edges like a fawn that has just learned to walk, “Like, I’ll never go to college or have kids or fall in love and I’m just afraid. Like, maybe that’s why I’m so confused. Because there’s nothing for me to decide on - because I don’t have a future.” It feels like a breath of fresh air to finally admit these fears out loud, to voice them, but for a second he’s afraid this makes them all the more real. Someone knows now, and that scares him, but he’s glad that someone is Eddie. 

“Richie,” Eddie breathes, and his stare is beautiful and calm, like a steady lake in a calm forest, and Richie doesn’t notice his hand has moved across the covers until his pinky finger slowly curls around Richie’s. The contact makes Richie flinch, but not as if hurt or afraid but jolted from the sparks that fly between them. “I’ll protect you. I promise.” He tightens his finger around Richie’s, like a pinky promise, but doesn’t let go. 

A warm smile slowly curls over Richie’s mouth, and he’s drowned in an emotion that he knows - love. The feeling of safety and contentment and the overcoming of fear. It’s love, and he knows that, and he still smiles despite the tears he feels prickle in his eyes. Because Eddie only said six words but they were the right words to make Richie feel safe, to feel just as loved as the love he projects. 

“Forever and ever, Eds?” He asks, softer than he’s probably ever spoken, and he watches the small twitch of Eddie’s eyebrows and the watery, sparkling look within his brown eyes. 

“For as long as I can,” Eddie tells him. And he believes it. 

/

Richie Tozier wasn’t all that brave. He never really had been, either; back when he was younger he’d run down the hallway in the dead of the night towards the bathroom in fear of dark monsters grabbing onto him, tearing him apart maybe. On occasion his heavy footsteps would wake one of his parents, and eventually they’d gotten so tired of his late-night bathroom trips being so loud that they’d bought a nightlight for the hall. 

He was always one of the last to jump at the Quarry, too; the open mouth of the water below waiting to swallow him up pinned his heart in his throat, and he’d wait for the others to take the dive before he would. He still remembered the frantic pounding of his own heart, so hard he couldn’t speak a full minute after his body hit the water, the first time he’d jumped. 

Richie left his bedroom the next morning, parting with a glance full of admiration at Eddie; the other boy was still fast asleep, face lax and eyelashes fluttered against the curve of his cheeks. He looked sort of like those cherubs in old paintings, fast asleep on a cloud with long white wings sprouting from their backs. 

Of course, Eddie wasn’t asleep on a cloud with beautiful wings, but he was just as pretty either way. His face was edged off with the misty white of clouds, too, beneath the golden light that peered through the curtains against his warm skin. Richie never really knew what it meant to be sun-kissed until he watched Eddie glow. 

It came as no surprise that Maggie was already up and running in the kitchen, scrubbing her mug clean with a pair of rubber gloves around her pale hands as he leaned down to pet Cookie, who laid tiredly under a strip of sunlight that pressed against the floorboards next to the stairs. She looked at him with cartoonish round eyes as he rubbed beneath her chin before rising back to his feet. 

“Where’s Eddie?” Maggie had asked in place of a greeting when she finally settled her mug into the strainer to dry, slipping off her gloves and tossing them swiftly into the trash bin. She looked a little more tired than she usually did, movements slower, and Richie wondered if she was up late last night reading the new book that she bought on their last trip to the dollar store. It was some cheap horror book that wasn’t too thick and looked a little old, a little tacky, but she’d seemed interested in the description on the back and had bought it anyway. 

He swallowed nervously and shifted his jaw, looking at her like a deer in headlights only at the mention of Eddie. “He’s still asleep,” Richie tells her, soft, and she gives him a sort of half-squint that stares deep through his eyes and into his pounding heart, and it pounds harder when he wonders if he should just bite the bullet and say it. 

Tell her he likes boys. Tell her he likes Eddie. 

Richie Tozier has never been all that brave. But maybe today would be a good day to start. And maybe brave didn’t mean reckless, or unafraid. It just meant passionate enough to confront what it was that was so scary. “Were you up late last night playing video games?” Maggie asks. Richie thinks about when he was younger, when he would run down the hallways to the bathroom even though he was afraid, and he thinks even then he was brave. 

“I’m in love with Eddie,” Richie says breathily, and then exhales sharply as if he was punched in the stomach. His eyes are round and large, magnified behind the glasses, and his skin feels hot and prickly on his face and at the tips of his fingers. Nervousness twists deep in his gut, sick and angry, and he ignores it and pushes past like one might rough their way through a busy street. As an afterthought, he adds, “And no, we weren’t.”

Maggie laughs in a shocked sort of way, raises her eyebrows at him, and shrugs her shoulders. “That’s sweet,” She tells him, “I’m proud of you.” It’s light and swift, hardly thought over, yet something about it is so raw and pure to him that he holds his breath in his lungs and cherishes that he is lucky to have a mother like Maggie Tozier. 

“Proud that I came out or that I didn’t stay up late?” Richie asks quickly, the joke a little flat from nerves, but Maggie still laughs and shakes her head and tells him that the answer is up to him. He wonders, faintly and quickly, if she thinks he’s brave. He’s starting to believe that he just might be, himself. 

/

It’s in Richie Tozier’s bedroom when it happens. It’s a particularly warm day, and he can hear the laughter of the young children in the neighborhood faintly beneath the running of the air conditioner in his window. He’s using the house phone to call Sharon Denbrough while Eddie sits in a pair of red shorts on his bed, finishing off a cherry flavored popsicle that Maggie had given him.

“I’m glad he’s okay,” Richie tells Sharon through the microphone of the telephone; his intentions of calling were to make sure Bill was doing alright, but Sharon had answered to tell him that he wasn’t allowed to be exposed to too much noise or light. But, rest assured, he was going to be just fine with a little time at home. “I’ll see you around,” He tells her, and she says her goodbye — the phone hangs up with a click, and he exhales in relief and places it back into the holder. 

There’s a hesitant pause between him and Eddie after he sets down the phone and turns to look at him; he’s finished his popsicle and was holding nothing but the wooden stick, and a bit of red had stained his lips, and his skin was a little bit shiny with sweat from the heat. He shouldn’t look so beautiful, and yet…

Richie was in love with him. He knew that much. His knowledge was limited; he’d loved before, and like-liked before, but he’d never been in love. But, if he could learn anything from the rom-coms Maggie always left on the living room television, it was that love made you a little blind. Pushed your mind just slightly off kilter; left you dazed and your sight foggy around the edges. A little burnt. A little frayed. 

Still, it was good. 

Kind of like that adrenaline rush you get on the dip of a roller coaster, where your heart feels like it’s flying, like it’s no longer a thrumming organ but a butterfly trying to escape from the prison bars of your ribcage. Everything about Eddie was just starting to glow; sundazed and dipped in gold. 

“Bill’s okay,” Richie tells him, because he knows that it’s likely that Eddie still feels guilty for abandoning them like that. Richie doesn’t understand why he did it, not really, but he trusts him enough to know that he isn’t cruel. That he didn’t leave them just because he could - because he wanted to, or something. 

Eddie is a good person, he thinks; actually, he knows it as a fact. As something that is completely and entirely true. Just as the sun rises in the morning, and just as it sets come evening, Eddie is good. It’s in the way he moves, slow and certain and just as steady as one would be on a tightrope. And it’s the way he laughs, like he’s the entire universe, like he was carved to be the personification of perfection. And it’s the way he exists, just entirely. He is good. He’s the best. 

Eddie nods at what Richie had told him, a bit distractedly, and he leans over to toss the popsicle stick into the bin while Richie watches after him carefully. The kids are still playing outside, and he thinks he might be able to hear a sprinkler going off, but it’s mostly laughter and the tinny sound of the running air conditioner. A moment passes, and Richie’s eyes get caught somewhere over the surface of Eddie’s skin; his round face freckled brown, and Eddie tilts his head sort of like a puppy does when it hears a whistle. 

“Are you okay?” Eddie asks, and Richie stares at him for just a second before he nods, and Eddie tells him, “You don’t look like you’re okay.” 

“I’m okay,” Richie says, puffing out his cheeks sort of like a toddler pouting when their mama didn’t buy them a toy or an ice cream cone. He sits himself down on the bed next to Eddie but not too close, and sighs sharply, “It’s just,” He starts, thinks it over, tests the words on his tongue, “Have you ever been in love?” He asks.

And it’s a little too much - a little too real. 

Eddie hesitates, and he almost looks like he’s holding his breath with how he steadies his entire body. In the moment Richie briefly realizes Eddie is always sort of swaying, like a tree does in the wind, and when he is still and unmoving it’s so entirely unlike him that goosebumps prickle on Richie’s forearms as a result. “I haven’t,” Eddie tells him, “I don’t know how to, I think.”

Richie wishes he didn’t know how to be in love. Wishes he was never taught how to fall so endlessly and harshly for another human being. Wishes he never learned how another person could make your entire body feel hot and shaky and weak. He’s envious of Eddie. And yet, he’s sorry for him. He’s sorry that he’s never felt the stirring in the pit of his stomach, the smile that pulls itself naturally over his face. 

“I don’t think I’m supposed to fall in love,” Eddie shrugs, and Richie can’t fathom someone like Eddie being unable to experience the most beautiful feeling he knows. “I don’t think I have it in me.”

“Really?” Richie asks, raising his eyebrows, a little wistful and a little too serious for such a warm day. Two years ago on this day he was probably splashing around the Quarry with the losers, or sipping from a Derry’s Diner-n-Dairy milkshake while wiping sweat from his brow. A child, completely oblivious to the feelings and the people that would come. “You really think you could never fall in love?”

Eddie stares at him, unwavering. “I don’t think I’m supposed to,” Eddie says, “But I think I could.”

But I think I am, he says without saying it at all. Richie can tell it, though; can see it in the curve of his expression, hear it buried in his tone somewhere. He knows it, recognizes it in himself. 

Eddie doesn’t think he’s supposed to be in love. And yet, he is.

So Richie inhales despite how his lungs contend it; and then he leans forward, and he presses his mouth to Eddie’s. 

When their lips meet it's somehow everything and nothing like he imagined. The universe shifts, clicks into place like a key in a lock, and yet the Earth goes on; the air conditioner and the sprinkler and the laughing children. He pulls his own hand to Eddie’s cheek, presses against the flesh near his jawline like he’d always wanted and always been so afraid to. 

It’s sort of like running through the forest. Like being free, without anything to tie you down. Like the sky, and the ocean, and the earth. Like the universe is between them, passing through them, and they’re sharing one beating heart. 

Richie’s blood is rushing so harshly he can hear it in his ears, and Eddie gasps briefly against his lips, gentle in a way that Richie never really knew before. His lips are soft and sticky and they taste like the cherry popsicle; Eddie’s grip is tight on the front of his shirt, not pulling or pushing but just holding like a vice. Like maybe he’d float away, otherwise. 

Richie can’t tell if the kiss is objectively good. His consciousness is blurred, sort of like that floaty feeling you get when you’re drunk. He can’t tell if Eddie is doing what he should, or if his own method itself is proper, but he knows that his heart feels like a balloon pumped full of helium. 

Richie tilts his head a little, rubs his thumb gently against the flesh of Eddie’s rosy cheek, and then their lips part and press and then part again, this time with more of an underlying sense of finality, and he yearns to chase Eddie’s but the other boy has leaned too far away. The cold air almost stings his lips. He gasps at it, a little out of breath, and Eddie looks dazed and pretty. 

Richie wonders if you could get drunk off of a kiss. If you could, he certainly is. 

He doesn’t want to open his eyes, desperately trying to trace the kiss they shared, imprint it in his memory like a tattoo. He doubts he could forget it, though; he’d never felt more content in his life. 

“Richie,” Eddie whispers, and it’s scratched at the edges like an old photograph, the way he says Richie’s name. Like it burns on his tongue but the aftertaste is euphoric. Richie’s eyes flutter open at it. “I love you,” Eddie says, like it’s a crime. Like he’s afraid of it. Richie is still foggy-sighted, trying to blink back to life but professing far too slow. His mind is still reeling around the artificial cherry taste on his tongue and the gentle press of Eddie’s mouth. 

Eddie rises from the mattress quickly, springs squeaking in response, and his wide eyes settle on Richie’s face frantically. His lips are red and his cheeks are pink and his hands are trembling. Richie thinks back to the forest, the wide eyed stare Eddie gave him in the pitch dark. “I’m sorry,” Eddie says, stumbles backwards towards the door. His back is facing Richie when he says again, “I’m sorry.”

The door should slam behind him, make the scene all the more overwhelming and dramatic, but Eddie only gently clicks it shut as he goes. 

One second everything was amazing — one second Richie was on top of the world; and the next, his world was swiftly walking out of the bedroom with a flame of fear deep in his eyes. 

Richie manages by now to rise to his feet and bolt towards the door, but by the time he’s tugging it open ( the hinges scream in response ) Eddie is far out of his sight and even farther out of reach. 

He’s left shakily standing in the doorway; a mix of fear and the adrenaline rush that still hadn’t faded. But mostly, he felt hollowed out. Empty, without Eddie.

Richie wonders if this is how a corpse feels. After you’ve loved and laughed and lost people and things until you yourself are nothing. Carved out like a pumpkin. Left to rot until you are inseparable from the Earth beneath your feet. 

/

Everything dies eventually. 

That’s the moral of Richie’s story, it seems. He knows that death is the only really consistent aspect of his life, so common that it’s almost normalized to him. His great grandfather died when he was a preteen. When he was 13 he had a pet goldfish which passed away after two weeks. The flowers he bought Maggie for mothers’ day wilted and had to be tossed to the bin. 

Now, his very own relationship with Eddie — the person who made him feel most content — was dying right before his eyes, too. And it was his fault. 

One bold move was enough to send his most valuable relationship into flames. Like a blooming flower crushed beneath the heel of a boot, their demise was sudden and left him wilted and torn around the edges. Maybe bravery was overrated. Bravery is how people - and things - die. That’s always the resolution to a well developed character; they’re afraid, and then they’re brave, and then they’re dead. It’s supposed to be some symbolism for how they’ve grown past the fear, overlooked risks for the first time in their life, but Richie mostly just thinks it sucks. It’s safer to just be a coward. 

If he was a coward, he wouldn’t have kissed Eddie two days ago. He wouldn’t have scared him right out of the room, the house; and apparently, off the face of the earth, as he hadn’t answered any of Richie’s texts. If he was a coward, he wouldn’t have demolished his amazing friendship with Eddie. 

So, maybe the moral of his story is to be a coward. If someone read his life out of a leatherbound book on a shelf in the library, they’d learn that bold moves are how things die. He thinks, as he sits at the dinner table poking through his plate of noodles without really having the appetite to eat anything, that he’d much rather miss an opportunity over losing something he loved. 

He learned his lesson. He wouldn’t make the mistake again; not that he had anything left to lose. 

“Not hungry?” Wentworth asked; he wasn’t neglectful or absent by any means, but his job took up a lot of his time, so he wasn’t home as often as any of them liked. Richie glanced up at him briefly, sort of uncomfortable under his stare, and then refocused on the food on his plate. 

He poked at it again, stabbed through a noodle, and shifted in his seat. “Not really,” he says, but he puts the piece of pasta in his mouth anyway. It’s small and shaped sort of like a bow-tie. 

He hardly eats anything, scraping most of his food into the trash bin and quietly making his way up the stairs. Before he can duck past, Maggie stops him at the base of the steps, her blonde hair tucked in a ponytail and a kind but concerned expression on her aged face. “I don’t know what happened, but,” She puts her hand on his shoulder reassuringly, and he forces himself not to cringe away, “I love you. And I promise it’ll be okay.”

Richie put on his best smile in response, but as he walked up the stairs, he chastised her internally. It was impossible that things could ever end up okay. Because they flicker, back and forth like a light switch, from okay to not-at-all-okay, and then you’re dead. Gone. It goes without saying that being dead is not being okay. 

He hadn’t realized it until now, but Eddie has always been there when he was hurt. In the beginning, when they had first met; Richie had fallen off of his bike, skinned his knee and twisted his ankle, and Eddie had been wandering through the forest without explanation at just the right time to have helped him. 

And then, again, when Richie had been worried and alone after Bill’s fall and had thrown up into a garbage bin outside of a corner shop, stomach aching and mind reeling, Eddie had been standing there when he turned around. 

Even in his dream, where he’d wandered alone in a forest, where his reflection sobbed and cut his own hair, Eddie had appeared in his mirror to restore the peace in his mind. It seemed even his subconscious knew that Eddie was always sort of there to clean up the mess, anymore.

But this was the worst pain Richie had felt, torn inside out and abandoned, like an injured animal left on the side of the road. He yearned for Eddie’s comfort, and it was impossible for him to receive it. He was alone, now. Truly, entirely alone. The one person who he knew could understand him, who would stay beside him for eternity, had left. 

The dreams kept coming, too. Dreams where he’d get a flash of something; a chiming sound, the feeling of a handful of feathers, the sight of doves fighting before a sunrise; and then went dark and foggy and evaporated from his memory the moment he opened his eyes each morning. 

He was desperate to know just what he was missing; what would stand before him had he cleared the dreamy mist that laid between. He found he was yearning a lot these days, for things impossible for him to receive. Maybe with time they’d come, or likely never at all, but the true torture was not even knowing if there was anything to wait for. 

He’d freeze himself perfectly in time if he had to, if he knew that at some point Eddie would return to him. It was only then he realized something. 

Life didn’t have to be constantly moving. He didn’t have to find some lifelong goal to spend every waking day driving towards. Maybe finding a life worth living was finding something worth stopping time for. Finding a moment that you could stay in forever. Finding someone who is just as willing to live in a lapse of time with you. 

If he could just pause the clock, stay in a moment with Eddie for the rest of his life — any moment — he would. 

Maybe that’s what the Universe was trying to tell him all along, in all of these brief moments and vague dreams: the meaning of life is right here, Richie Tozier; don’t lose it. He wondered if he got a second chance at these sorts of things. “Thanks, anyway,” He whispers to the ceiling. 

He wonders which memory he’d choose, had he been given a chance to stay in one with Eddie forever, but he falls asleep with the light still on before he can make his decision. 

/

The dreams try to warn him before it happens. Two nights before, he wakes covered in sweat, desperately trying to trace the outline of the dream in his mind before it vanishes in the waking mist. “Wings,” He says out loud in the night, like saying it might solidify it, form its shape, “Wings, Eddie, blood, please,” He sobs, then, louder than he should at four AM. He can remember details; certain smells and sounds and sights, but they all clash in his mind, unable to fit together. As if he was given a hundred puzzle pieces, all from different puzzles, and told to make a picture. 

The next night he wakes again, not sweaty but trembling and freezing, like suddenly it was no longer summer but a freezing winter with no heat. He can’t remember it all, not by any means, but he remembers more now. Not just images or feelings but clips in his mind; some only a second long, some longer.

He remembers doves, screeching and tearing at each other with their talons; one starts to bleed, its feathers cascading towards the ground, and the other bites into its wing and injures it further, and the dove thrashes violently, desperate, before falling to the ground. He can also remember a forest, late at night, and a light chiming tune while deer trot past his line of sight. 

He remembers Eddie crying, tears pouring down his freckled cheeks as he sobs quietly; even his cries are graceful and beautiful, just as he walks and speaks, but Richie can hardly dwell on that. This is your fault. Eddie doesn’t say it, but Richie can hear it in his own head, anyway: he’s hurt, and it’s all your fault. 

He can remember, then, how the worst pain he had ever felt seared through him, like someone had amputated one of his limbs. This is how the dove felt, his dream-mind told him: and this is how Eddie felt, too. 

It wasn’t until four PM that day that he’d learned what the dreams truly meant. His parents weren’t home; Wentworth was at work and Maggie was buying some groceries, which left Richie on the couch flicking through different TV channels. One was advertising medication; the next was a dinosaur movie featuring a giant pteranodon screeching; the one after that a children’s cartoon. 

He’d been ready to flip the channel again when he heard a knock on the door, so he left the remote tossed face down on the sofa. 

Typically he got a warning from one of his friends before they showed up at the door, so he was a little reluctant as he turned the deadbolt lock, but his heart dropped when he tugged it open and was met with Eddie’s face. 

He was crying. Just like the dream. 

His hands were shaking and he was leaning forward as if a knife had been plunged through his stomach, and his skin was pale compared to how it once glew; tear tracks stained his rosy cheeks. 

Immediately, Richie took his friend into his arms, a little dazed and very confused, and Eddie wrapped his own arms around Richie’s torso like a koala, only moving to walk towards the living room. His body was shaking like a leaf in a storm. 

Richie attempted to rub Eddie’s back in a comforting way, but the smaller boy only hissed loudly and jerked away as if the touch burnt him. Richie’s concern only grew stronger, and as he moved his hand back, he asked, “What hurts?”

“Everything,” Eddie whispered, voice trembling and eyes puffy and red, and then, “My back, I need,” He reached for the hem of his shirt, and Richie understood and helped him carefully lift the top from his torso. 

His stomach wrenched painfully at the sight, and he had to still himself in fear that he might vomit at it. On Eddie’s back, in two deep parallel gashes along his shoulder blades, were deep red scars. 

Dry blood caked to his skin, and the mass of his back was inflamed. The cuts tracked down the scale of his back halfway, running on either side of his spine. They seemed to be charred, like they were ripped open by a searing hot blade. 

“Who did this to you?” Richie whispered, and it stung as the words left his mouth. It hurt to see him like this; there were also bruises scaling his back like decorations to the main event, but no other cuts but the two large ones. 

“Richie,” Eddie tells him, voice soft but still etched in pain; he was slouched forward, still as a statue— likely so that he wouldn’t make any harsh movements that could injure his back further, “There are some things I have to tell you. Things I think you already know.”  

The distress Eddie is in is clear. It radiates off of him. There’s an imbalance in the energy that he once radiated; he no longer feels all knowing, but instead like a crumpled paper ball on the floor. Not that Richie loves him any less. 

He hopes that it’ll comfort Eddie when he reaches across the sofa and grabs a hold of his hand where it’s steadied on his own knee. A hesitant pause holds between them before Eddie inhales, shutters at how the movement stings, and then speaks again: “I know you have been getting dreams.”

Richie stiffens naturally, a spark of confusion travelling through him. He hadn’t remembered mentioning the dreams at all to Eddie, too afraid they’d be off putting or make him seem clingy for turning to Eddie for affection and contentment. Eddie doesn’t seem put off now, though — just hurt and hollow. 

Eddie’s gaze, previously focused on his lap, had turned to meet Richie’s eyes. He found that, despite how afraid it made him to look in the eyes of the boy he loved, he couldn’t turn away. “I was the one giving you the dreams.”

Richie can’t help but mumble, “what?” softly under his breath. He’s even more confused now, but something in the back of his mind knows what it means. 

Eddie’s hand squeezes Richie’s. “They mean something, Richie,” He says, and then he goes to speak again but cuts himself off with a sob. Naturally, Richie jerks closer, presses into Eddie’s side in hopes it could calm him. It does, but hardly. “The doves — me crying — they cut off my wings, Richie.”

“The doves did?” Richie asks, eyebrows furrowed downward in confusion as he gazes at Eddie beside him on the sofa, but he knows it’s something else. There’s a dream somewhere in his mind which he just can’t place. 

“No,” Eddie’s eye contact steadies again, and Richie holds his breath in his lungs for a moment because the air around him is suffocating, and he’s almost cracking under the pressure of Eddie’s broken stare on his face, “Heaven.”

Richie can’t think properly. In a way, somewhere deep behind his mind, ( the dreams, maybe ) he knew it. Or, he could’ve guessed. There’s no person in the world who felt like Eddie; nobody else who seemed to hold the Universe within them. Now that he thinks about it, he hasn’t even once earned Eddie’s last name. 

Usually, he wouldn’t believe it. If anyone else looked him in the eyes and told him that they were an angel, he would laugh and deny it. But after all the dreams, all the misconceptions, all the confusing interactions, Richie found that it was the only way to explain why Eddie was who he was. Eddie’s perfect. Eddie is an angel. 

Except, now, as his mind refocuses on the long scars down his back— maybe he wasn’t such a perfect angel; at least, not in the eyes of heaven. 

“I was a bad angel,” Eddie confirms as if reading his mind, and his eyes drift off; the way his face wrinkles, it’s like he truly believes it — as if he could ever be bad. “I fell in love with the one human that I was supposed to protect.”

Richie didn’t know how he was supposed to feel. His face was rosy and hot, but his mind was reeling with all of the new information, and he felt sick to his stomach. He wished there was a guide book to how to respond here, but he doesn’t think Eddie expects him to be intelligent right now. 

“That’s why you ran out,” Richie connects it in his head and says it out loud as soon as the thought stabilizes, and Eddie nods his head and looks down at his lap as if he’s ashamed. 

“It was the moment I fell in love with the human I was supposed to guard,” Eddie says, and Richie rubs his thumb against the back of his hand gently, “They would’ve cut my wings off right there, in front of you. I couldn’t let you see that.” Richie hadn’t been very educated on Christianity, but he was almost certain that angels weren’t painted as being so cruel as Eddie had described. There’s another pause where Richie expects that Eddie might say more, but then Eddie sort of slumps into his side like a rag doll, and he whispers, “I’m tired.”

“Go to sleep,” Richie responds hoarsely, letting go of his hand to rub at his back, carefully avoiding the scars, “I’ll be here.”

He wants to kiss Eddie’s forehead as the other boy leans closer to him, but he doesn’t; he’s afraid of what might happen if he does. 

/

Richie had reluctantly cleaned Eddie’s cuts after he woke up half an hour later; closer up he could see that the skin around was covered in clumps of dry blood, and the skin at the edges was swollen and red. It hadn’t taken too long, but it felt like forever; it hurt Richie deep in his chest every time Eddie thrashed and groaned in pain. 

It was weird how easily Richie was now believing in heaven. 

He hadn’t ever been so religious, reluctant to look at Christianity from a generally serious point of view. Truthfully, Richie was afraid of it. He was afraid the investment in a religion would point out the flaws in himself — unearth new ones from within him — and he was so afraid that day by day they’d tear him up and ruin him. 

He knew what religion was made to do; it was formed to provide people an explanation for death, for the unknown, to bring comfort to it. But Richie wasn’t comfortable ingesting a book with all of his mistakes written as sins that would send him to hell. 

Yet, there was something about Eddie that made him feel safe. Richie didn’t really believe in Christianity, not even now. But he believed in Eddie; he believed in his angel. 

He believed that the Universe was good; he was certain of it. The Universe loved him, and it cared for him. Despite its mistakes it still did its best to keep him protected, no matter how angry it was. He thinks he could learn a lot from the Universe. 

He lays next to Eddie, who is newly dressed in one of Richie’s pajama shirts, and he’s still coming down from the adrenaline of his overwhelming day. Maggie was home now, but she hadn’t done anything but smile warmly at the sight of Eddie as the pair walked to his bedroom. 

The Universe was reaching out a hand; bearing a gift, telling him that it knows what it’s doing. Richie wants to take the Universe’s hand, too, but he instead does the second best thing and grasps Eddie’s hand in his own. “I love you,” he whispers, and he finds that he isn’t afraid anymore. At least, not of those words.

Eddie gently grips his hand tighter, looks over at him; the moonlight makes the tips of his face glow — his lips and his nose and his cheekbones — and he is a star, right here. “And I love you,” Eddie whispers back. 

The air is steady, sort of like a lake in a forest; unharmed and tame and quiet, save for the crickets chirping and the nightingales singing. “What will I dream of now?” Richie asks him, as he lays his head back on the pillows to stare at the ceiling. 

“Something good, I hope,” Eddie tells him. Richie doesn’t say that any dream would be good as long as Eddie is here, by his side when he wakes. 

Richie would endure a thousand nightmares if the moment he wakes up is spent with Eddie. That’s the meaning of his life; he knows it now. Life isn’t running and leaping and fighting to be heard — to be seen. He just needs someone worth holding on to. 

Richie Tozier’s life was like a child wading in the shallow of a public pool, but he didn’t need to dive into the deep end right away — or at all — as long as he had Eddie to accompany him here.