Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Richie wasn't expecting his thirteenth birthday to be anything special. The usual for the Tozier house was balloons and typically a dessert for breakfast. For his twelfth birthday Richie muscled through an ice cream sundae, so he was hoping that this time it'd be a cake. Or maybe waffles, he loved those. But when Richie dragged his sleepy feet down the carpeted staircase to the kitchen, all his doubts faded away as he was welcomed to the morning smells of a steaming griddle and Maggie, Richie's mother, softly humming a tune while she poured some water into the thick waffle batter. He was about to say something, maybe let out a little mumble of complaint that the sink water messed with the goodness of the waffles (but was stopped by how off her happy hum sounded, at least coming from her usual quiet) when his dad piped up. 

"Hey! The birthday boy's up. How about some coffee, son?" Wentworth rose from where he was skimming over the Derry newspapers to give him a smelly, dad-cologne hug. Richie noticed the few doctor's papers Went had brushed under the usual mail before the hug, but didn't say anything. 

"He's thirteen, Went. Hardly much of a man to need coffee in the morning," Richie heard his mother murmur absently through his dad's arms covering his ears. 

Wentworth released Richie, who adjusted his askew glasses and worshipped the clear kitchen air, then ruffled Richie's already mussed head of black hair. "That's alright, Chee. We'll get her on our side soon enough." 

Richie loved that his parents called him that. Chee. It wasn't dopey enough of a nickname for him to hate it, and being thirteen after all, Richie knew he was venturing into the realm where kids thought their parents were losers who were always out to get them. They don't suck a mouth of rocks, Richie thought. They made me waffles and didn't even ask if I wanted syrup and whipped cream on top. They knew I liked it. 

"All of my other friends drink coffee," Richie said with his hands playfully crossed. He meant to say, if I had any friends, I'm sure they drink coffee. But he kept his mouth zipper shut. 

"Strawberries, too?" Richie appeared at his mother's side and let his hand rest by the soft hem of her nightdress. Her face reflected in the kitchen window looked pinched and tired. Richie held in the bowling boll of worry that rolled into his gut, because even if his mother usually stayed in bed past ten in the morning, it was his birthday, after all. It was only okay with this one exception. Richie's mother hardly got enough sleep. Or rather, she slept often but was never fully rested. It was something to do with the depression conversation that Richie had overheard one night at the foot of the stairs when he should have been in bed. It was odd to him, but his mother simply couldn't get a few good chucks from the sun that shone through the blinds like he did. Maybe she was lonely. Does it get dead boring sitting at your desk, staring out a window that you wished maybe had a few more kids in front of it, or something to see other than the neighbors and all their baby's toys in the yard? Richie wasn't stupid. He knew they were "trying" (a fancy word he also picked up, which just meant they were having sex) for more kids, but just, couldn't? But...wasn't Richie enough? It was the question that kept him up at night, when the Superman clock by his bedside often read midnight, in brilliant red. They wanted a baby girl, they didn't want you. They have another kid and you're all alone now, Richie. It was the topic of discussion that went unsaid in the Tozier household, though to Richie it was the big fat elephant in the room. An elephant with enough weight to send him spiraling under the covers when he should be sleeping, heavy enough so that his sides heaved as the pillow drowned his sobs. An elephant that sat in every corner, even if it was Richie's birthday. 

"Of course, baby," Richie's mother took her free hand and hugged the side of his face to her dress, then set the sliced strawberries on top of the whipped cream mountain. She took his plate with both hands and walked toward the table, so Richie steered around her just in time to sit down next to his dad before they broke into the familiar off-key Happy Birthday chorus. 

"Was there anything you were hoping you'd get when you turned thirteen, Chee?" His dad asked once Richie had speared a few massive amounts of waffle into his mouth. Maggie smiled politely at her messy eater and then tried to wipe the dark circles from under her watery brown eyes. But things like that didn't just go away. 

Richie slung his arm across his lips to catch the maple syrup he felt dripping down his chin then spoke in a careful voice. "I was, uh, hoping to get a bike?"

"And why would you want something like that? Walking to school is perfectly fine. Healthy, even," His dad fired back, but by the way he heard the telltale smile in his voice, Richie knew he was playing, too. Both his parents shared a knowing glance and then turned back to Richie. 

"What? You mean, you're serious?" Richie nearly spilled a glob of whipped cream from his mouth. "You guys got me a bike?" 

"Why don't you check the front porch, there's a mysterious package with your name on it," Wentworth said. 

"Oh, let him finish his breakfast first," Maggie interjected but Richie was already racing out of the kitchen to the front door, his fork still gripped in one hand. 

There, shining like a beacon among the weedy yard and creaky old porch furniture was a great lump covered in blue wrapping paper. Richie's favorite color. It was the color of the calm sea he'd seen as a toddler and blue raspberry slushies, the kind that stained your tongue neon blue and made all the hurtful words the bullies said not matter as much when you had a mouthful of sugar. Even that same royal blue of the empty baby's room next to Richie's. But he let those bowling pins stay in place for now. Richie bounded down the steps and didn't bother waiting for his parent's approval to tear through the wrapping paper. Hidden beneath the layers of paper was in fact a bike, but it wasn't one he'd ever seen before. If he had, the monster of a bike was bound to be from a pawn shop or something. The bike was old. With huge fading handles and a package carrier on the back. It even had one of those rubber horns clasped to one of the handles. Richie crouched down to stare at the wheels, where it looked as though his dad or maybe a less experienced man had tried ripping the cards once inserted between the spokes, and left a few wispy pieces of paper as a ghost of their presence. Even more odd, the word Silver was scrawled in a barely perceptible line across the slim body of the bike. Richie felt like he was touching the cool metal of the past, and loved every second spent staring at the bike when he heard his parents step out onto the porch in their house shoes. Richie turned his head and flashed an appreciative smile at the both of them. 

"What do you think?" His mother held her hands firmly to her stomach, wringing them when Richie remained silent. "We found it over by Center Street. Some fellow, Denbrough something or other was giving it away, but I had to pay him at least something-"

"I love it!" Richie flung himself up to wrap his skinny arms around his mother equally skinny waist, then buried a string of thank-yous into her nightdress. He held her tightly and hoped his words were proof enough for her to believe it. He wasn't lying, he did like the bike. But he liked knowing he could race past the houses and cars, right to school. Right past awful Henry Bowers and Victor Criss. 

"You're welcome," Wentworth and Maggie said with a high laugh. Well, his father laughed but his mother's didn't go past her lips, like maybe her mouth remembered how to be happy but the rest of her didn't. 

"You're growing up, Richie. Thirteen now, but soon you'll be twenty and never even realize it...Then you'll be having kids of your own..." Maggie trailed off, no longer meeting her son's wide eyes. 

"...Mom, you okay?" 

His father butted in once more when he noticed Richie lingering far too long on Maggie's frown. "You wanna try it out? I'm sure you've got hardly any homework to do on a Saturday."

"Can I?" Richie asked his mother, who only replied with a nod. He sure did have an ass load of school work to do, but he didn't want his mother to worry over him even more. 

"Don't be out too late, or I'll be sending the hounds on you, mister." 

"Dad, we don't have any dogs, remember? Maybe I'll ask for a puppy for Christmas! How bout that, eh?" Richie laughed, but it died when he saw the pained, fragile look in his mother's eyes. 

Went took Maggie by the shoulders and guided her into the house, where the sound of her short little cries escaped past the front door. Richie waited with his eyes shut till he couldn't hear the stifled sniffling to slip back into the house for his messenger bag in his bedroom then quietly shut the front door. He didn't want to be in the way, not after seeing how worked up she had gotten. He mounted the bike--Silver, or whatever name it was to the last kid that used it--and fastened the radio from his bag to the basket in front of him. A cool rhythm played out along the Derry streets as Richie pedaled (or tried to, as he'd only ridden one bike before maybe-Silver, when he was only five) toward his freedom. He had the whole day to himself, whether it be spent at Costello's for some candy in exchange for the loose pennies in his short pockets, or at the library for a new comic. Or, on a completely different note, on the burning asphalt because Richie had sped up too fast around a turn down Jackson with his head floating far above the clouds, leaving him jolting back awake and not nearly enough time to break. The bike swung him forward, angrily bucking like an untamed horse, and Richie slipped off the seat and into the sidewalk as the radio strung out another cheery, soulful tune. The sun-scorched mounds of rubble ground against his cheeks and Richie thinks for a second that maybe riding a bike (especially such a behemoth like this one) was such a good idea. His glasses flew off into a patch of dying grass a few feet in front of him, and when Richie found his bearings he realized he hadn't fallen along the sidewalk at all. In fact, there was no sidewalk. The road ended a mile or so back, and all that remained was a few rundown houses showcased by uneven edges of asphalt and sidelines of jagged gravel that cut into his bare knees and chin.

 I knew I should have worn pants today, Richie thought as he scrambled over on his stomach for his glasses. He blinked up for a street sign, but there weren't any of those, either. The last one he'd remembered seeing was Neibolt Street, and the realization alone made his body shiver despite the throbbing heat from the scrapes and cuts. This was exactly where his mother might pray Richie wouldn't end up. The houses on Neibolt (if someone were to really call them homes) were scattered and obviously vacant, with boarded up windows and an overall stench of mildew rot that hung over each property. Richie righted his bike and switched off the radio, worried some hobo were to peek their grimy head out from a near window if they heard the music. The closest house loomed over him, it engulfed the entire street with its dark wood-rotted panels and what seemed to be a garden, perhaps in a happier time, but had gone straight to hell. The porch was barely visible through a twisting snarl of rosebushes, the only colorful thing about that wretched house as Richie could see. Those scarlet blooms called to him, and Richie couldn't help but take a tentative step with his battered sneakers up to the chipped picket fence, staring out into the dead quiet for a sign of life inside the house. 

A flash of chestnut zoomed past one of the roses, and Richie stopped dead in his tracks. His hand was hovering above the unhinged gate for more movement, holding his breath. A bird must be caught in there. That dark brown softness hesitated behind the bush, then disappeared under the porch and what looked like into the caved in cellar. Oh my god. It's not a bird...that's someone's hair. It's a boy. 

"Wait!" Richie called out, abandoning maybe-Silver at the corner but still had his messenger bag slung across his sweaty chest. He dove toward the rosebush, his head full of wonder as to why a kid would hang around a dump like this, and not the least bit concerned for his own safety as the thorns tugged on the soft flesh of his forearms and ankles. The boy had maneuvered through the sharp pieces of the broken porch to get to the cellar, and Richie whined despite himself at the pain as he crawled on his hands and bloody knees to the shattered entrance. It was beyond dark in there, but it seemed quiet and barren to Richie so he stuck one leg into the mouth of the cellar and jumped down. Nothing seemed new, as it all sounded so ancient and tomb-like as the dust from his fall settled, the leaves definitely weren't from this season and the glass wasn't sharp to the touch of his soles. They were worn into the decaying earth of the cellar floor, like they were used to being stepped on. Richie nearly tumbled into the boy when his feet connected with the spongy spring leaves and glass shards. 

"Oh! Jeez, I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd be-" Richie started to say, but stopped himself short when what spare light flickered across the boy's face let Richie really get a good look at him. Though bathed in darkness and musty shadows, the boy looked young. Maybe thirteen, like he was. But what made Richie's heart speed up to an unsteady clang in his dry throat was the boy's face. His lips were parted, as if in awe, and as he did so a thin trickle of a black sticky something dribbled down his chin to his shirt collar. The boy only wiped it away, as if it were a pesky fly and nothing more. His fingers and hands were stained too, with that syrupy something. It couldn't be...blood? It's too dark to be blood, really. Unless it's so deep inside him that it's- God, stop it Rich. 

Richie reached out a hand to the boy. "Jesus, are you alright? What're you doing down here?" 

He couldn't really make out the words through the stream of blood or mucus passing through the boy's mouth, but he heard something along the lines of, "You can see me?" With this was the kid's hands recoiling from Richie, until he stumbled against the brickwork behind him. 

"Um...Yes?" He blinked, still staring, completely fascinated by the way the boy didn't really care about his bloody speech impediment. "Say, what's that all over your mouth? Some costume?"

"I wish," The boy hiccupped, or let out some sort of wheezy intake of breath, and more blood coursed down his front. It reminded Richie of when Ron had cursed himself in Harry Potter and began to hurl mouthfuls of slugs. Except that was a fairytale and this was actually happening. He didn't just say that he casually throws up blood. Or black loogie stuff. He couldn't have. 

"You mean that," Richie pointed to his stained lips, making him frown. "Happens all the time?" Richie gaped at him, and the other boy only looked away into the depths of the cellar with the lines of his cheeks dark in embarrassment. 

"Don't act so surprised, if you'd been through what I- Oh, never mind," He turned back to Richie and wiped his mouth. "What're you doing down here? How did you even find me?"

Richie glanced at the chips of glass by his shoes, feeling stupid. "I fell off my bike. But I saw some idiot wandering into a haunted house and wanted to make sure they weren't going to get their guts unzipped." At the last of his words the boy's brows furrowed and he was glaring with pursed, blood-stained lips. Richie couldn't help the few extra words that often times were the garnish of his sentences. It just came out. His tongue usually betrayed him like that, and these little blips in his brain were the main cause for the teasing at school. Teasing was putting it lightly, though, Richie knew. He didn't come home with black eyes and a practiced lie to his mother for some teasing. 

What'd ya say, trashmouth? How about I smash those buck teeth in for ya, faggot?

The boy considered this, his brown eyes softening in the dusty light. "Well, next time don't go chasing a stranger into someplace you don't know. And it isn't haunted." 

"I'm only a stranger because you didn't ask for my name."

"And I still haven't," He spit back. 

"It's Richie."

"Eddie." 

Richie held his hands up in defeat. He wasn't exactly an expert in the making friends department, though he wished he was. God, he did. "C'mon. I just met you and you're already mad at me. Must be a world record or something."

"I'm not mad at you. You just shouldn't be here, Richie," Eddie interrupted himself with a wicked gasp and another gush of blood glistened along his already stained shirt. "It's not safe."

"And why not? Why did you ask me if I could see you? What, are you a ghost or something?" Richie asked playfully, but Eddie's face paled. Water shuddered with a groan through the pipes, somewhere above them, making Eddie jump slightly and then wince at the blood that was caked on Richie's knees and bare arms, as if seeing it for the first time. His next words were grave and demanding, and Richie didn't feel up to debate when such a small thirteen year old kid looked so terrified of some plumbing. 

"You need to go," Eddie stated, but didn't try to push Richie away. 

"What's the matter? Afraid you won't get any hot water in your shower tonight?" His traitorous mouth spat out. 

"Go Richie! You need to get out of here!" Eddie's breath came in ragged pants, and with it more gross blood oozing like snot from between his chattering teeth. He really is scared shitless, Richie thought. 

His feet wouldn't move, only lock up in the crazed moment he remembered the glass underneath his shoes and their cool, hard presence like an old knife against his toes. The water in the pipes reached a new height, and the noise stopped directly above them, where a resonant thud pounded across the ceiling and made a few scraps of paint tumble down. Richie felt the world settle around him too, maybe for the first time in the past few minutes, and that was when he felt the weight of his messenger bag grounding him to the earth. 

"Here," Richie flipped open the front of his bag and handed Eddie an empty potato chip bag he'd left in there. He didn't know why he was handing him some week old trash, he just thought that it would help the boy's...problem. Eddie only blinked at him, incredulous, before snatching the bag with a shaky hand. 

"So you don't ruin any more shirts," Richie explained, then mimed the action of throwing up into an invisible baggie. Eddie's face got that weird pinkish tinge again, and Richie thought the boy was going to say something, or maybe giggle just a bit, but the memory of the creaking and angry pipe sounds made his soft features fall. 

"What're you still doing here? Go before it's too late!" Eddie waved his hands frantically at Richie, looking conflicted between shoving his skinny ass up and out of the cellar and perhaps curling into a ball. Maybe he can handle the loogie stuff better that way, Richie thought. He spun around and leapt for the small crag of windowpane left in the cellar, with just enough leverage to haul himself up and back underneath the porch of the house on Neibolt Street. As he half-crawled, half-staggered his way out from under the dry stench of the porch, he didn't hear any more groaning from the pipes. But if Richie stood by the rosebush and bent his head down toward the wooden skirt, he swore he heard Eddie's short sobs, much like his mother's. They were the type that didn't care if you had something to say. They raged through your lungs and out your throat with a little dash of tears to go with it. Except, among the hushed rustle of nearby rosebushes, Richie realized that Eddie's choked sobs were fearful. Like that raging something was attacking him instead. 

He found maybe-Silver perched just where he'd left it, the only breeze of reality that allowed Richie to swing his stinging knees across the seat and pedal for home. Get out before it's too late, Eddie had said. Before what? 

"What harrowing tales does Richie the Brave have for us tonight?" Wentworth asked. Richie sat across their little kitchen table, the one that collected hospital documents and angry-seeming papers with debt scrawled in red ink, and was shoveling mashed potatoes and burnt asparagus into his mouth. Richie's mother had went to bed early, her dinner going untouched next to Went's empty chair (which explained the over-cooked dinner but not the extra plate and silverware. Did he think she'd come down and inspect the house for fire once she smelled the burning chicken?). After the outburst from this morning, Richie guessed he was too scared to wake her to eat. Richie didn't blame him. 

"Oh, not much," Richie began, and made a little mashed potato ski slope as he thought over what to say. He knew it were best to leave out the creepy house on Neibolt from his daring tales, but maybe adding a new character to the story wouldn't hurt anyone. "Went to the trainyard and accidentally busted up my knees. But I made a friend on the ride back home." 

This was good, he knew. It wrapped up his fake story with enough packing peanuts that it passed as the real one, with his injuries all accounted for, and Richie even had the guts to tie a little ribbon around it and say he actually made a friend. It got Wentworth listening, which was the real bow on top. His dad grinned and pretended to pull wax from his ears. 

"A friend? That's great, son. What's he like?"

Richie stared into the mess he'd made of his dinner. He wished his mother were downstairs too, just so maybe she'd smile at how great his day had gone. He missed her smile. 

"His name's Eddie. I don't know much about him, we only talked for a few blocks before he had to turn back and see his ma, you know? But I think he's got some trouble breathing."

"Asthma?"

"Huh?" Richie looked up from his plate, sure his dad had just said ass mom. 

"Maybe your little friend's got asthma, Chee."

Richie shrugged. "Maybe. But he's got it real bad. Coughing up blood and stuff." He didn't mean for the last part to trickle out, but like Eddie's weird blood fits he fell into, it just came out. 

"Coughing up blood?"

"Yeah. Like motor oil," Richie bit his lip but still the words came. His dad only gaped at him, not looking the slightest bit convinced but all the same concerned. 

"Do Eddie's parents know about this? That doesn't sound good, Richie." 

The boy's name didn't sound right coming from his dad's mouth, and on top of that he used Richie, his full name. This was unfamiliar territory Richie had land-mined himself into. When was the last time his dad had called him by his real name? Or sounded as skeptical as he did now? 

"You think I'm making it up, aren't you?" Richie asked, not knowing where this foreign anger had come from or why it decided to pump through his veins, white-hot energy straight to his brain. Wentworth's face faltered, but he gained some composure. For the first time Richie realized how tired and strained his dad's face looked. Not just his face, but his whole body. His shoulders were curved and hunched, as if pressed down by some invisible weight, circles tracing his brown eyes, a nervous twiddle of his index finger around his wedding ring. His dad looked exhausted, and old, and Richie wasn't sure what to make of that. 

"I- Of course not, Chee. I'm just trying to get a better picture. You said your friend has asthma-"

"Can I be excused, dad? I'm not really hungry." Richie was super hungry, after all that had happened today, but wasn't liking the idea of having to conjure up more lies to string along his story. I should have just kept my goddamn mouth shut. He hardly knew why the hell Eddie was down in that disgusting well house, let alone his odd habit of throwing up blood. It all seemed too peculiar, but not fake enough for Richie to just shrug it off. It was real. He could smell those dead leaves in his nose, still feel the thorn pricks burrowing shallow nicks in his skin, the coppery stench of Eddie's body once only a few feet from him, making the stuffy cellar stink like old pennies. All because of Eddie. Eddie, with his pinched face and tiny arms. Eddie who was probably the same age as Richie was but still had a tender childlike orbit to him, even if it got swallowed up by the crippling fear he'd seen smash into those bright brown eyes-

"Richie? Are you okay?" His dad was leaning across the table now, his plate clean and pushed aside. Richie brushed his advancing hand away and gathered his own plate. 

"Sorry, yeah. Dazed off for a bit." But Wentworth was still staring fixedly at him, like maybe he'd never believed a single thing uttered from Richie's trashcan of a mouth since he'd came home. 

"Alright, well goodnight then. And happy birthday," His dad grabbed Richie's arm before he could run away (and Richie did his very best not to cry out as his dad's fingers squeezed the sore scratches) and brought him in for a side hug. He cringed out of the hug, but couldn't stop the broken-looking smile that stretched across his face. It showcased far too much teeth. 

"Thanks, dad." Richie wrinkled his nose at how strained the conversation sounded, like neither really wanted to sit down and play house while their missing piece of the puzzle wasn't there to complete them. Richie just wanted to sleep away whatever had happened between him and his mother, but the Neibolt house tugged at his consciousness through his aching muscles and tiny scabs. And that equally striking pang of worry for whatever had Eddie trapped inside its walls. 

Chapter Text

It looked as though the weather wanted to watch what Richie was up to, standing at the picket fence of the Neibolt house the following Monday. A cluster of thick moody clouds passed across the sun, making Richie shiver with cold and worry for what lay ahead. He couldn't just leave Eddie, not after what he'd seen (or hadn't seen) two days before. He'd woken up earlier than his parents, ate a silent breakfast and scrawled a biking to school note to tack on the fridge before mounting Silver-whatever and finding the courage to calm his buzzing mind. What was Eddie so afraid of? What was he doing in that creepy-ass house? And better yet: do I even ask about the weird blood thing again? The questions popped back into his head once he'd examined each boarded up window of the house and was certain enough in his stupidity to take another uneasy step closer. Tall swaths of grass swept along his ankles as he walked, something he hadn't noticed the first time, tons of little scratchy hands that their whispers on his skin left Richie flinching his legs upward out of fear something was crawling on him. 

Richie knew it was a dumb, oh yes, he knew it was a suicide mission to walk into that house again. No kid ever went by this house, and Richie was sure he'd been the first to even step foot inside the property. He'd expected another trembling of the rosebushes to announce Eddie's presence, but instead--and equally shocking to him, frozen amidst the overgrown weeds--the front door swung open with an airy squeal and a figure leapt out. A girl. A girl whose entire head was a match, bright red and bursting into a single flickering flame once she caught sight of him. Richie opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again to shout, then took a decided step backward into a tumble of thorns. The girl, whom Richie in his panic now realized was holding a severed boy's head in her arms, calmed her flames and put a finger to her scorched lips, shushing him. The texture of her face was charcoal, brittle and porous, while the rest of her body was the total opposite. Smooth, unsinged and waxy porcelain.

"I, what- your head is on fire!" Richie blubbered, feeling like that needed to be said and then pointed uselessly at the head. It was very much alive, and zombie-looking. Richie wasn't very pleased at it's defiance of nature. "And...And what the hell is that?"

She rolled her eyes and muttered, "So he can see us. And don't be rude, Richie. This," She held up the boy's head, who seemed to understand and let out a soundless laugh, "Is Stanley." 

Well "Stanley" had spider's gross, hairy limbs jutting out from his jawline. They acted as his arms and legs, Richie guessed, but also made the skin where spider and boy met a bruised, discolored patches of purple. He grimaced as Stanley wriggled out from the girl's arms and did a pathetic sort of wave with one of his front legs after scuttling up to her open shoulder. The fire didn't seem to bother the boy, much like Eddie's bloodied fingers and mouth weren't such an inconvenience. 

Richie had a thousand things to say, most of which weren't the wisest, but the first one to come out of his open mouth was, "How do you know my name?" 

"Easy. Eddie told us. You were the kid who gave him the chip bag? Yeah, thanks, now he won't stop talking about it," The girl laughed. She leaned over her shoulder and called into the house, "Eddieeeee! Where are you?"

An irritated, but familiar voice replied, "God, Bev. Don't talk like that." A soft gargling sound followed. "You sound like my mother." 

"I was just talking to your new friend. But he doesn't look very happy talking to us," Bev jabbed a disapproving finger at Richie, who didn't even attempt to refute the complete chaos that was the last three seconds. Beverly wasn't as startling as Stanley was to him. It was his foggy eyes that made a queasy string of sweat bead across the back of Richie's neck. Stanley's face, the only thing really to look at, of course, drained of blood and staring at him with that intelligent (dead) stare, where broken blood vessels shone through his shiny skin in rivulets, so that spider boy looked all the more disturbing. Richie flung his head up and around the windows of the Neibolt house, as if there was a sort of calmness there, or maybe the ravens congregating on the caved-in rooftop looked better than what was in front of him, but he was met with the same dark wood paneling he had the last time. Empty, unforgiving. This isn't real, this can't be happening. Richie couldn't even shrug the feeling that it was all painfully true in his own head, or convince himself it was only the television's doing, because in the reflections of the windowpanes a set of glowing lightbulb eyes bloomed. They were familiar, headlights in an empty car, but scared him half-dead because those eyes burned with hunger, and they looked animal. Something was up there, something wanted him. Once Eddie glanced from Bev and Stanley to Richie trembling in fear on the base step to the porch, the already faded color on the boy's cheeks dropped to an even whiter shade of unearthly. He looked sick first, but seeing Richie Eddie grew sicker. 

She took Beverly by the arm and jerked her closer to the half open door. "Don't scare him!"

"Oh, please. You aren't scared, are you Richie?"

"Uh, well," Coming closer to the steps of the porch Richie saw Beverly more clearly, and acknowledged with a curious eye dashes of freckles the color of old nutmeg on her bare shoulders and forearms. Not that Richie were interested enough in a girl like that, just a detail he stored in his brain to keep from screaming at the fact that her skin isn't burning, human flesh should not look like moonrock, it isn't melting off, why isn't it melting off, she's a wildfire. "Just a bit spooked, I guess." His hands, he knew, were shaking uncontrollably which probably didn't help to convince them he was handling everything just fine. Easy how four little letters solved all his problems. How he handled much of everything else circulating in his fishbowl, with a measly fine. But that was a crack in Richie's tank he best left patched up with some cheap band-aid for now. He kept his walls up in fear that if even a sliver of something slipped through, and left a hole there, he would drown. 

(Gonna go cry, four-eyes? What a baby.)

Eddie stopped at the post at the end of the porch and tried to gauge Richie's reaction. It was no use, when you had glasses the size of binoculars there was no hiding what you were feeling. "You came back," He murmured, trying to sound matter-of-fact but to Richie it came out perplexed. Or surprised?

"I, just um, wanted to make sure you were okay," Richie said. Beverly craned her neck closer, the flames dying down into a darker, more engaged crackle and her blue eyes stuck right out of her skull. What was she looking at? We're only talking. 

"I'm fine. Are you okay, though? This is kind of a lot to take in at once," Eddie frowned, almost guilty seeming. 

Hah! Yeah, that's not the only thing that would be hard to take in at once, one of his Voices screamed in his brain, but Richie held his itching tongue. 

"...I just need a minute to unpack all of this. So no offense," Richie gestured to all three of them. "But what the hell is going on? Who are you guys? Why, why do you all look like you're straight out of a horror movie?" 

Stanley listened and then smiled, his eyes rolling over to some undetected sound within the house, when a fourth voice chimed in. "W-W-We're dead." 

With the stuttering voice a taller, brown haired boy came through the doorway. He was just about as pale as Eddie, but had thin trickles of blood that ran lines down his face and neck, and Richie paled himself when the kid opened his lips to grin, exposing a set of teeth so sharp he could feel their phantom points along his neck. 

Eddie exhaled sharply and didn't expect the blood that chased his agitated sigh. He cut the air with one annoyed hand and struck a glare at the new boy. "I swear to god! How many times do I have to say it? 
He nearly had a heart attack seeing Bevvie and Stanley, we can all assume he'll lose it at the sight of you, Bill."

"Oh, I'm quite alright, really," It barely came out as more than a peep, but no one was listening to Richie anyway. 

"Who d-d-didn't tell m-me Eddie was on h-h-his period?" The boy, Bill said with a confident laugh, one that Stanley beamed at and tried to scoot closer. 

"Not funny."

Bill avoided Eddie's venomous stare and stepped over to Bev so he could take Stanley. "I knew half of you w-was out here," Bill smiled and set him on his shoulder. Stanley's skin flushed, maybe he was blushing (Richie wasn't good at reading people all too well) but he burrowed his nose into the open spot of Bill's neck with a soft smile. It was very...affectionate, even if Stanley was only a chopped off head to Richie. Affection was not something Richie saw in his own house between his parents, which made the shy kiss Stanley pressed into Bill's neck more uncomfortable...and confusing. It was a very adult thing coming from two kids...two boys, for that matter. Why did he do that? He's...He's a spider! Sort of, oh for fuck's sake. Do boys even... 

Richie's eyes widened and he dug his nails deeper into his sweating palms. "Half of you?" This was when the kids remembered Richie was there. Eddie fumbled through the contents of his fanny pack (was that always there? Richie squinted at the thing strapped to Eddie's small waist) to find a tissue to wipe his chin. Eddie looked up from his chest to find Richie staring at him, and an unwanted heat filled his cheeks. 

"Stan doesn't talk. Not if he needs to," Beverly explained, "Hurts to speak." 

"Would you even feel the pain if you're dead? Do you feel those flames? Or you, Bill, do those teeth make your gums bleed?" 

The three stood in silence, staring at Richie with that same awed, puzzled look Eddie had on before. It was Bill who spoke first. "Y-Y-You're thirteen or so, yeah? Dont yu-yu-you have school right now?" 

Bill was right. School was going to start soon, and if he didn't begin the ride into town now, Richie wasn't sure he'd make it on time. Richie couldn't meet the three kid's eyes, staring at him like he was the odd one. Waiting for him to say something, anything. 

Richie glanced back at maybe-Silver, to make sure his bag and school things were still in the package carrier. Just so he knew hadn't actually died somehow, which would have sucked, for sure, but then Richie would have an explanation for all the madness. He blinked while still staring at the bike, counted to three and then opened his eyes again once facing the house. The kids were all still there. His heart lurched and he cleared his throat, feeling dumb again. "Well, I guess I better get going-" 

"Promise you'll come back?" Beverly rushed to him, careful not to come too close. Richie couldn't look into her hopeful eyes, but instead focused on the flames around her head, so eager and very, very much alive. The more time he spent looking from kid to kid, the less he could convince himself it wasn't real. If it were all some dream, Richie wouldn't be able to force the smell of human skin burning from his nose, or see the glisten of sanguine blood on Eddie. Even Stanley, who lifted himself from Bill's warm neck and leaned forward on his shoulder by his many legs, asked the same question with his glassy, dead-fish eyes. Eddie remained silent, hands crossed and suddenly intrigued by a chunk of broken glass by the porch steps. 

"If I come back, will you all tell me why you're dead? And why I can see you?" 

"W-W-We can explain why we're here, b-b-but I don't th-th-think we know why you c-c-can see us," Bill said with a frown, and Richie cringed at what those razor teeth must be doing to the inside of Bill's mouth. 

"He's right," Eddie mumbled, fiddling with the zipper of his fanny pack. "No one has ever noticed us before. No living person, you know." 

No living person. That makes me some kind of medium or whatever, right? Being able to see ghosts? God, what am I saying. Richie shook his head and with heavy feet went to the bike. Bill brought Stanley closer, and with a sad smile, said softly, "S-S-See you later, R-Richie. Take c-c-care of Silver f-for me, okay?" 

Richie was adjusting the straps of the package carrier as Bill said this, and hadn't caught the last of the sentence in time. "So it is Silver!" Richie swung one leg around the bike and looked back at the Neibolt house. But the kids were gone. 

"Art is an expression of yourself," The art teacher (really the only member of the Derry Middle School faculty to get paid enough for his job) walked his rounds across the classroom, as Richie hung on his every word. "Whatever you're feeling, it's gonna show up on paper, whether we ask it to or not." Art was his favorite subject, as it was the only elective Richie begged his parents to sign him up for because it was the one class Henry Bowers and his little gang of living monsters didn't dare try to take. He wasn't so bad at it anyway, but not that it mattered. All Richie liked was that the art room--the studio, as the teacher called it--was warm with the smell of drying paints and messy in all the best ways. It was calming, but he didn't admit that to himself, only oddly surprised at how happy he felt once the class started. Like he could stop holding his breath and walk with real steps, not tiptoes. 

"With that said, let's talk about fear, hmm?" The teacher surveyed the worried eyes in the room. "Don't worry, this is just an exercise. I want you all to look at that blank sheet of paper in front of you, and think about what makes you afraid. Spiders? Bullies? Relatives coming in to visit? Well, whatever it is you're afraid of, I want you to draw that. Express it." He made his rounds once more, observing and gently prompting the kids who looked more afraid of the white paper than anything else. 

Richie nearly bore a hole into his own empty sketchbook page. The rest of the students fell silent, their timid scribbles the only sound Richie could focus on as he drew. He didn't really feel his fingers grip the pencil much anymore, or the quick, aggressive motion of the graphite he pressed deeply into the page. He only thought, and those thoughts poured out onto paper, like he had someone stir those pestering things around in his brain, mixing up that cement till it was ready to spill down his spine into his hands to draw. This happened a lot when he was in class, little bursts of time that he wasn't sure where it went, until the room was empty and Richie was left with an aching hand and his page full. He didn't really think much about the other kids around him (though the very back of the classroom had it's perks) until the time seemed to seep out from the classroom walls and the teacher was tapping Richie's shoulder. 

"That's very...interesting, Richie," He murmured, staring at his sketchbook. Richie's eyes burned as he looked at his own drawing as well. He didn't even know what he was doing as he was doing it. But all that stared back at him was a poor sketch of an empty seat at the dinner table, glowing amber eyes in a chipped window, and a set of scuttling claws that rested around a frail boy's shoulders, looking wolfish and primal. 

"What does this make you feel? What is it in this picture you're afraid of?" He asked. Richie couldn't look away from his page. 

"Losing..." (Dying). The teacher didn't say much else after that, he only asked that he keep the drawing here in the classroom ("For safekeeping," He smiled, though it didn't look too happy of a smile to him) and watch as Richie gathered his things with something like pity and the teacher frown again and again, then referred back to his drawings. Richie didn't mean to make him upset. He only drew the things that made his entire body crawl. Unknown fears. 

"It was like w-we were cursed or su-su-su-something," Bill started, being the one to answer the door when Richie stood there after school. He didn't think to knock but the doored open on it's own anyway. For a house so dead, it really did have some sort of life chugging through its fibers. The inside of the Neibolt house was just as ugly as it's outside, looking like a group of thieves (but probably just hobos) had raided it and left a sense of emptiness in there. Richie was taking nervous glances around the peeling walls, but Bill's presence next to him helped steady his mind. Bill sat cross-legged on one of the rugs in the living room, or whatever had become of the living room--it had no furniture--and prompted Richie to sit opposite him. He didn't ask where the others were. He was afraid to really ask Bill much of anything, but if Richie didn't look at him, at least not in the eyes, conversation was okay. 

"It s-s-started when my b-brother, George, d-d-died. Was m-murdered. S-S-Something pulled h-him into the s-storm gu-gu-gutter three years a-ago and tu-tore his arm off. N-Not long after t-t-that, more k-kids went m-m-missing, showing up in a-all sorts of pu-pu-places, gory and whatnot." 

"What pulled him in there? In the sewers?" Richie asked, while trying not to meet Bill's stare and instead picking at a scabby thing stained in the carpet. 

"The s-s-same thing t-t-that got a-a-all of us," Bill replied, looking grave for a boy of thirteen. Richie stopped his incessant picking and looked up at Bill. "The same thing? The same guy?" He didn't like saying that whatever had murdered these four kids was human, but it was a good start. Sort of. But it didn't even begin to resolve his questions. Why do they look so strange for a bunch of ghost kids? Did they all die in their Halloween costumes?

Bill shook his head. "I'm n-n-not gonna e-explain it right," He pointed to his mouth. "F-F-F-Fucking stutter. Let me get Eddie or Bev." 

He left Richie there on the rug, stood at the threshold between living room and kitchen, calling for the two others. A reply upstairs echoed through the house, and Beverly came, with someone's body in her arms, running down the wood steps. Beverly transferred the body over to Bill, then wiped the front of her dress. 

Richie narrowed his eyes. "Should I ask why you're holding a corpse?" 

"It's Stanley," Bill answered, and as if on cue Stan scurried down the stairs, careful not to trip, then jumped back onto Bev's shoulder where she then handed him over to Bill. He settled over his own limp body in Bill's arms, poised above his neck, then sunk the part where his neck ended directly where it used to be like settling into a good old armchair. And Stanley's arms and legs twitched to life. They held onto Bill's shoulders, and Stanley grinned. Richie inhaled sharply and tried to get the image out of his brain. It was just too damn weird. 

"Eddie's, uh, coming," Beverly stammered, making a nervous gesture to swipe a strand of fallen hair behind her ear, except the girl had no hair. Just a habit that never died with her. "But it might be a while. He's doing that thing where he forgets that blood on his arms won't be coming off and won't stop scrubbing his hands under the sink upstairs." 

"And why won't it come off?" Richie asked. It seemed so sad to him to imagine Eddie, frantically trying to clean his bloody fingers. 

Beverly sat right next to Richie, like they were best friends, and shrugged. "When we died, passed over, we changed. You don't think I was murdered by a fireplace, do you?" 

Richie blushed and shook his head quickly. "Of course not." Bill went back to his previous spot on the floor and Stanley crawled into his lap. The other boy leaned down to whisper something into his ear, then rested his fingers into Stan's curly hair. Richie didn't understand why they were so...cuddly, but he maybe had a few guesses. He'd seen a few other boys at school like them, hugging and even sharing brief kisses where no one saw, until someone did notice and start yelling that that was wrong and fags aren't allowed in this school and even I see that again and you'll get the chair. Even if it made Richie uncomfortable (or whatever that unsteady thing his heart did when he saw it) he didn't see it as something to get mad about. Boys can love...other boys, right? 

Bev smiled and bumped Richie's shoulder. He flinched at the icy contact, the impact feeling very real yet it resounded in his body like a bell's clang. Weird. "Don't look so beat up, Rich. All I'm saying is that these, uh, forms we take, didn't have much to do with how we died. We were all friends back when Bill's little brother died, and maybe his death was what brought us closer. Like we had to stick it out, you know? We had to when kids were showing up dead left and right. Anyway, it all happened the year after Georgie's death, like clockwork. Eddie was the first to go. A week after, Bill and Stan. Then me. We all woke up, or became ghosts or whatever, in this house. It was just a damn relief to have each other. I can't imagine how scary it was for Eddie to manage all this by himself for a week." 

"How did you die? Can you like, walk through walls and haunt people, like the ghosts do in movies?" He knew it was a dumb thing to ask, but at this point in his descent into insanity, anything was possible. I'm talking to ghosts, for goodness' sake. 

Bev's eyes glassed over, and her fire burned with a sort of withheld anger that made Richie scoot away just a touch. "We don't talk about It."

"What?"

Bill's fingers stopped playing in Stan's hair. "W-W-What killed us. It. And it's b-b-best you d-d-don't ask Eddie e-e-either. He's m-more sensitive about it."

"But isn't that kind of an important part of the story?" 

"S-some things a-a-are best left unsaid. It's w-w-what's b-between the l-l-lines that's g-gonna make the story." 

Richie didn't have anything to add to that, so he just watched as the air in the room lightened again and Stan's eyes closed in peace when Bill resumed his soft touches in his hair. Richie kind of wished someone would do that for him, play with his hair, seeing that plain look of happiness in Stan's eyes made his chest ache. Maggie used to let Richie lie in bed with her while she finished her reading, with a book propped on her blanketed knees while her long fingers ran through Richie's black hair. He was only eight then. 

"Well then, if I can't know what got you all, then what about my other question?" 

Bev chewed on her lip. "I guess we could go invisible and all that, if we wanted to. But I think we all like these forms the best, it makes us feel more human." 

"And you're stuck here, though? In the house? Can you move from place to place?" 

"We're not supposed to," Eddie said quietly at the doorway, hiding his arms behind his back and not meeting a single eye in the room. Eddie's shorts were level with Richie's face and he tried not to accidentally stare at them when they were so obviously right fucking there. Not that he wanted to, god no. His eyes glanced at Eddie's shorts, and his small, blood free legs the same way someone is aware of a minute detail that doesn't matter at all but it's still spinning in their brain, like a hair color or a freckle. Not that Eddie's shorts were spinning in Richie's brain. Of course not.  

Bill snorted. "Y-Y-Yeah, Stan and I t-tried going out i-into the Barrens o-o-once, to s-s-see if our o-old clubhouse was s-still there. The f-further we got from t-this house, the more s-strain it is on u-us. W-We don't r-really feel pain unless it's t-that." 

"Or if I try...to talk," Stanley whispered, in a pained, raspy voice. Richie wasn't expecting a sound from the boy, and neither was Bill because he suddenly frowned and wrapped his arms protectively around Stanley's chest and murmured something into his ear. Stanley's face gained back some color and he put that imaginary zipper back on his lips. 

"So, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you've all got some soul tie to this house, or something?" Richie gestured all around the living room and the three nodded. Eddie didn't move or say anything. "But you won't tell me why."

"You don't need to to know. Not yet anyhow," Eddie said.

Richie looked up at him, and grimaced inside at the beads of red blood on his hands where the capillaries burst. It was weird to him that, even for a ghost, his body could still manifest human things like that. But he doesn't even feel it? It's probably why he let it get so bad. 

"Is the reason why you're so connected to this monster house the same reason you freaked out about the pipes the other-"

"I said you don't have to worry about it, alright?" Eddie snapped, then vanished. Richie blinked at where Eddie's body used to be, then stared back at the floor with a shameful gaze. Bev put her hand very gently on Richie's shoulder. The rippling sensation came back when she did. 

"It's okay, Richie. That's just Eddie being Eddie. He's a little...touchy. But he'll get over it in an hour or two." 

He doesn't seem to like me very much, Richie wanted to say, but was afraid of what answer may come of it. What did it matter if Eddie liked him anyway? "I just have one more question...What about your guys' parents?"

Beverly stared, unfazed. "What about them?" 

"Did you try looking for them after it happened?" 

Bill put a hand against Stanley's cheek when he saw he was trying to talk again, in slow starts. He had to take a deep breath, it seemed, before any sound could come out. "...I did, at least...My parents left town...as soon as I...died. I think...they thought Derry was...filled with the devil." 

"Haunted," Bev added. 

"C-C-Cursed." 

"You two didn't try and find your family after?" Beverly almost laughed, and Bill shook his head. 

"I don't have any family," Beverly said quickly. 

"Mine l-l-left last week. It w-w-was in the p-papers, b-b-but you've gu-gu-got my b-b-bike, so I g-guess it's alright." 

Richie didn't want to ask, but he had to. "And...Eddie?" 

"Sonia, his mother, still lives here. But I wouldn't really call it living," Beverly said in a hushed voice. 

"And he didn't?"

"No." Bev and Bill said together. 

"You're kind of all alone then, huh?" 

"Not anymore," Bev smiled at Richie, and his gut twisted. "We've got you, right?"

Richie pondered over the water stains that decorated the ceiling to avoid those hopeful eyes around him. "Right." 

Like any other teenage boy, Richie preferred his music to be loud. His mother, in a different time, might have referred to it as concussive. But that was just Richie. When he'd made his way up the stairs of his own house that night (while his mind, full of ghosts and other horrors, conjured up little imaginary Stanley's scurrying down the stairs) he'd first frowned at the clock on his nightstand, seeming so childish (and the holder for too many late night memories, those poor plastic eyes of Superman had seen Richie the Trashmouth cry like a baby) and decidedly flipped it on it's face so the numbers wouldn't show. He instead fished for his CD player from under his many missing assignments and dirty laundry. Whatever disc had been in there before, some rock artist he'd found while in town weeks back, continued their heavy drumbeats straight into Richie's welcoming ears once he'd plugged in the battered headphones his dad let him borrow. He let the music take him wherever it pleased as he alternately pulled out his sketchbook to draw, letting his mind drift far off to places that were eventually translated onto paper. The soft curve of a jaw penciled in there, furious scribbles of dark, dark graphite here. Richie liked drawing as much as the next guy, but boy, was it hard work. Making everything look right? And real? It was a job meant for someone with talent, and Richie felt like he'd been beaten with the talent-less stick the more and more he drew. But there was a sort of peace there, smelling the acid-free paper and the way his hand would start to sweat if he'd gripped the pencil too hard. It was calming, it was transporting. His art teacher called it an outlet, whatever that was. Richie didn't know what he was really plugging in here, when it felt like all he could draw were stick figures. 

A quick tap on his knee made Richie jump and mess up the perfect line he'd done. Richie looked up from the sketchbook and there was his father, staring at him. It took a mass amount of effort to press the pause button on the music and yank his headphones down. 

"Sorry, just wanted to tell you it's light's out. Hey, why's your clock face down?" Wentworth asked, leaning forward to right the clock but Richie took his wrist. His dad blinked, shocked. He didn't want to explain himself, because if he did, just that one meager sentence wouldn't be the only thing spilling out. It would be I just thought it looked kinda babyish and then because I look at it and it makes me cry, why does it make me cry, dad, I kind of hate Superman so why couldn't we have gotten the Batman one when we went to return the baby clothes-

"It's fine, dad. I'll just go to bed." He tried to cover up his picture but his dad was already inspecting it. With that confusing frown his art teacher used, just for him. 

His voice was careful. "Is that your friend?" Richie adjusted his glasses, growing fearful of just how much of his little preteen bubble Wentworth had popped with a curious, unthinking finger. The drawing was horrible to Richie, but his dad kept on looking and looking at Eddie's bleeding face staring back at him, with worry in his pencil-drawn eyes and a dark smear of blood on his soft bottom lip. 

"Um. Yes?" Richie whispered, then flipped the sketchbook pages shut. Wentworth straightened back up but it didn't make that look in his eyes fade. Puppy dog eyes. Pitiful, sad eyes. 

"You know, if you ever need to talk I'm always here for you. You know that, right Chee?" His dad said. 

"Sure, dad." He knew this. It was the default thing adults said when they didn't know what else to say. What was there to say other than that? His brain, the part that was reckless and always at the edge of his tongue dove for home plate. Hey son, that part hissed in Richie's head, his Dad Voice, I'm really having some second thoughts getting you that bike for your birthday. All that freedom's putting thoughts into your head I'm not really liking-

But the door had shut to Richie's bedroom and the headphones were back on, sealing up the cracks again with that loud, concussive, all around sound that made Richie close his eyes for a moment and just breathe. I shouldn't have pushed Eddie today...or grabbed dad's arm...Breathe because for once in the whole day, he thought about Eddie being dead and alone, for days and days. And Eddie's own mother, alone for days and days until they merged into years. Hell, the whole bunch of those Neibolt kids, all rotting someplace they wouldn't tell him. All rotting alone. And after a while, even that need for loud in his head got a little lonely as he thought.

Chapter Text

"Alright," Eddie stood next to Richie, both facing the towering rosebush of the Neibolt house. "If you're gonna hang around here all the time, there're rules, okay?" 

Richie saluted him. "Sure thing, Eds." 

"And since when did you decide to call me that ? It's just Eddie. You haven't even been here two whole weeks and you're already acting like it's home," Eddie huffed. 

"Jeez, pump the brakes, little man. I'm just teasing you." Richie glanced at the angry-looking thorns, then at the wispy smoke trail Bev was leaving in the air. Stanley and Bill hadn't come out of the house to greet Richie once he'd biked over, but Beverly still did that excited twirl she always was partial to when she saw Richie turning on Neibolt Street. She lay on the yellowing grass a few feet away now, the undead embodiment of a fire hazard, and played solitaire with the deck of cards Richie had taken from their kitchen junk drawer that morning. 

Eddie sighed, coughed up some blood, then put his focus back on the roses. "Anyway. If I haven't told you a hundred times already, you know this house isn't safe. So, if you're on the street and want to see us, make sure a rose is sitting on the porch. Got it? That's like, your signal to come in. If there isn't one on the porch... stay away. " 

"Creepy, but okay. And I don't think a rose can sit on a porch. I think the word you're looking for is 'lying,'" Richie reached out to the bush and gripped one of the longer, more lush roses from the top. As soon as his fingers closed around the stem, a thorn sunk into his palm (well, maybe more than just one), and Richie yelped then yanked his hand back. An untraced pattern of connect-the-dots formed on his palm, tiny spots of bright red.

"You're bleeding," Eddie observed, taking Richie's hand to assess the damage without thinking. A jolt raced through Richie's fingers, up to his arm, and right into his rabbit heart, going ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum quite frantically at the contact. Eddie's skin shivered unpleasantly as it smeared against Richie's blood. Richie assumed it was just an instinct thing at first, but Eddie's eyes were so sure and went softer as he turned Richie's hand this way and that to see the minor cuts. Suddenly the front yard was silent, save for Beverly's flames softly lapping at the warm air, and both boys then glanced up from Richie's weeping palm with wide eyes. Beverly's touch didn't feel like this, this human. Cold, but almost solid. Eddie the ice cube, some new Voice chimed in, and Richie tried to keep it quiet. Beverly only bumped your shoulder, Richie, but Eddie's got his fingers laced through your hand! If a voice in Richie's head could cackle, it was. 

"... I-I didn't think I would even feel it- Sorry," Eddie drew his hand back, and the warming sensation Richie had felt course through his heart at Eddie's ghost fingers left immediately. The thorns had cut pretty deep, making his pulse stutter and burn, but it didn't compare to the feeling Richie had while standing there with his arm still outstretched as Eddie leaned up on his toes to pick the rose he'd failed to get. Something about seeing Eddie's shoes tilting up to reach that lovely rose, with tiny thorns dripping in Richie's blood, festered a thing like awe (love) to bloom inside him he didn't think he could muster the courage to care for. So instead Richie laughed and put his hand to his lips to stop the bleeding (so Eddie wouldn't see how hot his face had gotten). Eddie dropped back on his heels, rose in hand, and tried not to look at him. 

"Richie, I don't think that a little cut like that would make your cheeks turn so red,' Beverly commented, reading Richie's mind, as she re-shuffled her cards. "Awe, for me, Eddie?" 

My blood is still on his hands, Richie thought wildly while Eddie blushed and shuffled over to hand the flower to her. She grinned at him, tucked away the rose in the front pocket of her overalls, and resumed her game.

"What're you looking at?" Eddie said quickly, all worked up when he saw Richie was still dazed and staring at him. Eddie was so...cute when he got mean like that. But not in a cute-cute way, just like how a toddler pouting over no dessert before dinner was sort of cute. Richie sighed and spun around toward Beverly. She had already slid the deck of cards back into the box with an expectant smile turning the corners of her charred mouth. 

"What is it?" Richie said with a smile. 

"I've got an idea..."

Eddie rolled his eyes and coughed. "Bev-"

"How about a tour?" She asked, standing up and picking off stray pieces of grass from her overalls. From the corner of Richie's glasses the Neibolt house loomed, sleepy but not necessarily safe. The darkness from underneath the latticework of the porch, the wood panels stained black and foreboding from the last season's rain, the windows, where no light was lit from within, was no place for children. But Beverly looked so hopeful, and Richie knew that these kids understood the inner workings of the house better than anyone. So he only nodded. Bev clapped her hands together, as though it were a trip through her favorite store and not a rotting ghost house, and led Richie by the hand to the front door. Eddie groaned and dropped the blood-beaded rose on the front porch before following them inside. 

"You know," Eddie hiccuped, "Where not to show him, right Bevvie?" 

Richie had only seen the interior of the house by means of the living room, and that was nothing in comparison. Though Derry was approaching summertime, the many windows did not let in any sort of warmth, (at least the ones that weren't boarded up by tarp or wood planks) nor reflect happy thoughts of things from outside. It only passed through the sunbeams harsh and direct, as if by an afterthought the house decided to let in some reflection of life. Even birdsong was barely perceptible, though the house was peppered in holes and caved-in spaces. The stench of moldy leaves stuck with the house too, like it was part of it, as Richie remembered the smell from under the porch into the cellar that first day. A second smell lingered here too, but he couldn't quite name it. It only reminded him of the late winter the year before, spent sitting by the window of his bedroom while a storm raged outside, rot mingled so thick in the heady smell of pouring rain through the cracked window that it was very hard to miss. Like a sewer. 

"Yes, Eddie dearest. Now quit whining and go find the boys." Beverly swatted her hand in the air, the one that wasn't holding Richie in an iron grip. Maybe being dragged in here wasn't such a great idea...

Eddie swiped his fingers to catch the new flow of blood and stalked off to the staircase, muttering. Since most of the house was in ruins, the four had fashioned regular spaces into "rooms." On the bottom floor was the living room and kitchen, but a guest bedroom in the furthest corner was what Beverly considered Bill and Stanley's room. Richie wanted to ask if the two boys were sharing a room based on the lack of space in the house, or from what affection he'd seen days prior, but didn't act on it. Do ghosts even sleep? Or pretend to? I'll ask Eddie later. He only murmured his interest as Bev pushed open their room and an array of puzzling things lay before him. Richie's stomach clenched at the sight of only a ripped up twin bed, but not just at that detail alone. Stanley's body was slumped on the bed, minus well, Stanley. Whatever counter space the boys had seemed to utilize was cooped up with a collection of feathers of all lengths and colors, a waterlogged bird encyclopedia, and various strips of rain-beaten wood. 

"Stanley loved birds. Well, he still does. He just can't birdwatch much anymore because the second he's in a good spot, the birds sense him there and fly away," Beverly commented, then pointed to the window ledge, where old coins and sea glass stood in rows. "When we had that wet season a few months back, Bill stood in the flooded streets and caught a bunch of stuff that the storm blew in from the sea. Cool, huh?" 

"Very cool," Richie whispered, starting to feel sad though he didn't know why. As he drew nearer to the bed to examine the shiny blue glass, something about Stan's body rooted his feet there. His skin was that same greenish pale, but his forearms and the insides of his wrists were tattered in barcodes of scar tissue. Lines and lines of scars, not the weird color his entire body was, but a real pink, almost human. The old cuts looked... self-inflicted, and Richie shivered. But there were so many of them...ones that were puckered into thick lines, some were short deep gashes, ladder rungs that Richie didn't want to think about anymore. 

Bev put a hand on Richie's arm. "Remember what Bill said the other day about things said between the lines? This is one of those things. I wouldn't bring it up to Stan because it just makes him depressed, and Bill gets mad." 

"But...why would he want to hurt himself like that? Why did he?" Bev only shook her head and her fire flickered into a quieter, melancholy dance of embers. 

"Let's see my room, it's happier there," Beverly said. She took Richie by the hand—he minded little anymore once he got past the fleeting feeling of her skin—and turned them around the corner and up the chipped staircase. Each step groaned as though alive, and he held his breath while ascending because he thought that even an extra pound of pressure would send them crashing through the floor. Well, just Richie. They caught Eddie at the landing, who had his hands hidden behind his back, and Richie didn't need to guess why they were there. 

"Bill and Stan were in the laundry room. Don't ask me what they were doing in there because I don't even know," Eddie said, then saved a small smile for Richie. 

He glanced between them both, brows pulled low. "They weren't um...you know, uh-" 

Eddie paled, blushing madly. It almost matched the color of blood on his neck. "Oh fuck, no. I came in and Bill had Stanley's head in the dryer. But the electrical doesn't even work for the entire house, so I didn't see the point." 

Beverly laughed and grabbed Eddie's hand to tag along. "Just boys being boys." 

"How's the tour so far, huh?" Eddie asked him.

Richie shrugged. "It's kinda interesting, actually. But we haven't seen your room yet so obviously, I've got my fingers crossed." 

"Oh whatever," Eddie stammered, his face reddening. "It's a sad excuse for a room, don't get your hopes up." 

Beverly's room was next to Eddie's. She'd covered the walls in bedsheets and had stacks of weathered books and papers and even a few river stones to hold the piles in place. Bev was right, her room had a lightness to it, felt warmer, and was perhaps a bit more comforting, given the circumstances. A string of newspaper was hung across the right wall where her bed was, and Richie leaned in to see that they were dated two years ago. But they were articles about children gone missing, and ones who'd died. 

"That's uh, well, a little depressing, don't you think?" Richie said. As he spoke the brightness in her eyes was snuffed out, and replaced with the smoldering dull of gold. It made Richie take in a quick breath to see Bev's eyes change color because those yellow eyes were so likened to the ones he'd seen in the window days before. A monster's eyes.

"What were you expecting?" Bev leaned toward him, and he had to step back so his face didn't catch the butt end of her angry fire. "All sunshine and rainbows? Kittens?" 

"No," He whispered back. 

She calmed herself down and took a deep breath. Her pupils melted into that dark golden color, before shifting back to their usual blue. "Sorry. I just have to remind myself that you're still new."

Richie elbowed Eddie. "Hey, take a page out of her book once in a while, why don't you?" 

"Piss off, Richie. Do you want to see my room or not?" Some blood dribbled down his chin as he said this. Richie had been around Eddie enough to know when those bloody fits were about to start. They either were triggered by any word that came out of Richie's mouth, or whenever Eddie was angry or nervous. So basically all the time. 

Bev sat down on her bed and waved them away. "You take him. I wanna lie down for a minute." 

"How would you even do that?" Richie asked, but felt dumb as soon as he said it. Beverly was a ghost , and her raging head of flames didn't harm anything in the mortal sphere of her world. Luckily. Richie had kept a safe distance from her the second his nose smelled smoke. But why did I even smell the smoke? There were things Richie experienced that even the kids could not explain. He was just running on a different wavelength. 

"Watch." Beverly fell back against the bed, her head dangerously close to the headboard, but the wood remains untouched. She even rolled around on the sheets for effect, but all it did was make her face become a twisting cyclone of fire and that was it. No charred bed. 

"Well that's a relief," Richie sighed. "Wait, could someone like, use you as a lighter ?" 

Bev sat up, suddenly intrigued. "Do you have any cigarettes?"

Eddie rolled his eyes and flicked Richie's shoulder to get him moving. "You two are unbelievable." 

"Why do you think we never met each other while you were still all at school?" Richie was sitting on Eddie's own bed, staring at the different bundles of dead flowers he'd collected and hung all along the walls. It was a little girly, in Richie's opinion, but because it was Eddie he sort of thought that it was okay. It was just like how Stan had feathers, Bill had sea glass, and Bev had her books. Eddie had his flowers. 

"Before we all died, you mean?" Eddie answered without humor. He was sitting on the side of his bed closest to the wall and had a tiny dandelion twisting between his bloodied fingers. "I don't know...If we all went to the same school, I'm sure we must have crossed paths at least once." 

"Well that year I think I stayed home," Richie realized, and Eddie gawked at him. 

"Stayed home? How? My mother would have set the firing squad on me if I pulled that one on her." 

Richie looked for something to occupy his hands, but there was obviously nothing. He instead slipped them underneath his legs to steady his nerves. "My mom got really sick, you know? Not sick like hospital sick, though." He released one hand and tapped his temple. "Sick up here." 

Eddie blinked up at him with sad, sympathetic brown eyes. He continued, "My dad took a leave of absence from his job too, to stay home with her. She was considered 'at risk,' so she needed constant supervision. With no one to drive me to school, I usually just stayed home a few days out of the week. Did a serious number on my grades though, lemme tell you." 

"Richie, that's horrible." 

The silence thickened, and Richie put his hands back under his legs. The longer the quiet grew the easier it was to feel his pulse in his fingers beating dully against his thighs. Eddie cleared his throat with a gargle and closed his eyes. 

"It's fine, really. I got all caught up." 

He looked at him through the corners of his eyes, as if to say that isn't what I meant but still Eddie didn't speak. 

Finally he broke. "Is that from before?" Richie pointed at a dusty inhaler resting on the dresser. Eddie nodded sadly. Richie didn't even give himself time to process as he fired out another inquiry. 

"So why is it that you aren't all see-through, like a real ghost?" Richie wasn't sure if his questions stemmed from his true curiosity about it, or just the fact that he'd shed some light into his own personal life, but Eddie didn't seem bothered. 

Eddie sniggered quietly, trying to sound annoyed."You ask too many questions, Richie. Plus Bev already told you."

"Fine, fine! I just have one more, then I'm done."

"I don't believe you."

Richie glanced at the wall away from Eddie, where a cluster of white roses hung brittle and delicate. He had one question burning in his mind for ages like his brain had shoved it in there and hit power wash after releasing Richie from the wonderful Neibolt house. Circling, spinning, never-ceasing-to-torment-him. And knowing himself, he was gonna vomit the question out, quite ungracefully, either way. 

He returned his gaze back to Eddie, who was looking at him with a hesitant frown. "...What does that black stuff, uh, taste like?" He pointed to Eddie's mouth, which was slightly open in his surprise. 

"I mean, I get that it's blood and all, but it's so dark . And it's just been bugging me, like is it salty or even tangy ? Is blood tangy, Eds? Or does it sting the roof of your mouth?" Richie babbled, while in his rush to get the words out he craned his neck closer to examine the sheen of sticky blood on Eddie. When his own hand decided to reach out and touch Eddie's lips, however, Richie wasn't sure at all. He didn't ask it to. It just happened. Eddie froze, his eyes wide and locked on Richie's fingers. Richie felt a wave of heat fasten itself into his cheeks and tried to pull his hand away (Eddie's bottom lip was cold but full and even for housing a layer of blood it was so tender that it made Richie nervous) but Eddie grabbed his wrist. 

"Battery acid," Eddie whispered under his breath, eyes locked with Richie's. "It tastes like battery acid." His thumb remained on Eddie's lips, and a mix of relief and terror washed over the boy's face, and when Richie brushed it across its softness, a little sound died in Eddie's lungs. When Eddie's hand loosened on Richie's wrist, he blinked quickly for a second at the reality of what had happened, and hastily pulled his fingers away. His thumb came back coated in Eddie's blood, and Richie couldn't help but just stare at it, so he didn't have to see Eddie's cheeks and flushed neck. 

Eddie scooted further away. "Richie, I-" He was broken off by the immediate surge of blood fountaining from his mouth, so intense that he had to press his hands into the mattress to steady himself. It looked so fucked up because Eddie couldn't even stop it as it coursed down his face and all along the front of his clothes. It sounded like he was choking on his own blood. 

"Eddie, are you okay?" Richie stood up to try to help him but Eddie swatted his advances and rushed out of the room, holding his mouth. He stood there, not really knowing what to do, but for a second he remembered the blood on his fingers, and without even doubting the decision, he brought them to his lips. Richie made a face and spit out the blood. Tastes nothing like battery acid, Richie thought, though he did not know what that would have begun to taste like. The blood was so rich that it was too much, almost what he imagined the hummingbirds that used to buzz through their backyard would have drank. Sugar water. But it wasn't all that repulsive. It came only as a shock. First I can smell Bev's hair on fire, now I think Eddie's blood is sweet? Man, I'm screwed. He contemplated his blood-free fingers again in Eddie's empty bedroom with a glance of longing at the open doorway, where the sweetness was lingering in the air somehow. The sweetness of his blood. 

Somehow they had all congregated in the kitchen downstairs, sitting on the floor or the chipped tile countertops. (Also where Stan and Bill were the first to sadly inform Richie that if he was hungry, he was out of luck. The stove and refrigerator probably had not been operated since the ‘30s and there was no way a bunch of kids was gonna fuck with it. It sucked for Richie because he was starving. "When you've got ghosts for friends," Bev said but didn't finish her sentence. Maybe there wasn't a way to finish it. No one ate or slept). Eddie sat on the floor with his back to the low cupboards, while Richie went opposite him on whatever clean floor space was in sight. Bill had rushed up the stairs with Stanley to get the rest of his body and had just sauntered down with the other boy at his side, whole now--save for the spider legs sticking out of his cheeks. Beverly had been staring at the mosaic tile lining the cupboards above them, from where she sat on the ground, with a sadness in her eyes that Richie didn't have to guess that she was reminiscing. His eyes found the tile too and felt a little sad as well at that fading sign of something next to life that was emanating from those navy blue tiles. Who had set them there, with caulk and a steady hand? Who lived here? Before? Richie had started phrasing the kid's previous lives as just that-- before they died. But if there was a before, then there must be an after ...and proceeding that, the future, must be better, so Richie didn't feel as on edge from the weight of the word anymore. Until Beverly opened her mouth.

"Death isn't always peaceful," Bev tells Richie. He's so close he can almost feel the flames from across the floorboards. "It’s..."

"Agonizing?" Richie tries. 

Eddie, holding his fingers to his ever-flowing lips whispers. "It's knowing that you're done. That it's over."

(I don't want it to be done and I don't want it to be over). 

Bill didn't have any input on it, seeing how low Bev looked. He leaned against the side of the cupboard too with Stanley's back against his chest, holding one of his wrists to run an absent finger across the scars that lived there. It wasn't rough, noticeable. Bill's touch was loving and careful, and Richie again felt his insides stir (maybe his heart, but lately Richie could not tell the different organs apart. They all fought for his attention and Richie was growing tired of trying to breathe when it was really just his heart gasping for relief) at Bill's clean fingers tracing Stanley's scarred wrists as they were memories of before. 

"I can't imagine ever dying," Richie said. Stanley let out a weird little grunt of confusion while Bev and Eddie bristled. What? How stupid must I sound? He gripped his knees and spoke again, hurriedly. "Wait, sorry. I mean, well, I don't really want to die. Yeah, it's bound to happen, what a shocker, but I just know I'm gonna hate having to be alone. Alone forever in some grave plot no one will stand on and cry over." 

Eddie's eyes flickered to him, but Richie had his head on his knees and was having a hard time focusing on much of anything. All their faces were turned towards him. He'd just let his biggest fear leak out, and maybe they didn't realize it yet. Richie examined the dried blood on his palms, no bigger than a needle head, and then tried to brush it off with a shrug at all of them.

(I don't want it to be done and I don't want it to be over). 

"What?" 

The others exchanged worried glances--all except Eddie, who was still trying to get Richie to look at him--and then Bill shimmied up into a better sitting position. He cleared his throat. "W-Why don't you h-h-head home, R-R-Richie? It's g-getting dark, I'm su-sure your parents w-w-will w-worry." 

"Oh, believe me," Richie said with a nervous laugh. "They won't care. The missing kid posters stopped months back...The curfew was lifted, too." He wasn't sure why he said these things but still, he did. The four pairs of eyes followed him as he got up and turned to the open hallway where the front door stood with a pang of hurt nestled deep in his chest. Richie didn't want to leave. Sure, if he looked past the overbearing weight of his own questions about the ghost kids and their weird orphan house, being around them was okay. It was an almost-friendship. Richie laughed and listened to their stories, watched their mannerisms (both normal and not-so-normal), and at the end of each visit found himself enjoying their presence. He just hoped that they did, too. 

"Yeah, the killings stopped because of us, dickwad." Eddie replied under his breath while holding his fingernails out to see. Richie was itching to ask why but like always, the kids hushed him with their burning gazes, screaming you cannot know Richie, with their telling eyes. Someday, I'll know. It'll all come to me and finally, I won't be asking about the past anymore. Richie sort of felt that understanding, the inevitability. One way or another, a kid's gonna let up and stop saving face. He just knew it. 

"Well fine, I'll just go then." Richie did a parting wave and spun around to the door, where Bill's voice broke through the tense silence. 

"D-D-D-Don't forget, Richie. You gotta make s-sure you're r-riding Silver-"

"'And SIlver isn't riding you.' Thanks, Bill," Richie smiled then shut the door behind him. Sometimes he forgot that his bike used to belong to Bill. He knew all the tricks to make it pedal as fast as it could go without flinging the poor kid off the seat. But that bike had a mind of its own, it's wheels would at times jerk the wrong direction without Richie's arms turning it. Just tack it on to the list of fucked up things that have happened to me in the past week. Get a dead kid's bicycle. Check. Discover a (not) haunted house full of (also) dead children, all victims of a killer I don't know about. Check. Oh, the aforementioned bike, potentially demon-possessed. Checkiddy-check.

Chapter Text

Richie watched with a gut full of lead as their homeroom teacher passed out their report cards to the class. When the teacher stopped at him, he gave Richie a frown and placed the paper face down on the desk. Fuck. He knew what that meant. Last year, when things at home were Really Bad, Richie's grades had tanked and he'd spent his summer doing makeup classes instead of walking to the library, or the comic shop to escape the realities at the Tozier house. To make matters worse, Henry Bowers had siphoned what little of his projects and assignments Richie had done from him, like an ugly leech with a mullet to match. And if he knew what was good for him, Richie wasn't going to be repeating those mistakes. 

"We can discuss your grades after class, if you'd like," The teacher was saying but Richie wasn't listening. He jammed the paper into the furthest depths of his bag without looking at it. The teacher sighed--Richie cringed inside, knowing that look on his face was because of the homework extensions and late work Richie had failed to use to his benefit--and rose from Richie's desk to dismiss the class for the day. 

Richie swore under his breath as he saw Henry Bowers blocking the path to the bike locks, with Belch at his side. Henry looked especially nasty today, no doubt because of their end-of-term grade reports. Richie had taken his sweet time inside the school, slowly walking down the hallways in hopes that he didn't have to run into these two idiots once every other kid had filed out. He'd guessed wrong. 

"What's the matter, Bowers," Richie heard the voice but didn't register that it was actually him speaking, "Didn't think you'd pass this year? I bet it's hard when you've got your head in your ass." 

Henry scowled at Richie, accepting the challenge by taking an angry step closer while Belch yanked at Silver's bike chain. He reached for Richie's bag slung across his shoulder, and Richie narrowly missed his meaty hands around his windpipe. 

"Look, Henry," Belch said sharply, meaning to sound amused but there was an edge of fear to his voice. "This was...that kid with the stutter's bike, yeah?"

Henry looked away from Richie, giving him time to breathe, then examined Silver. He blinked rapidly, holding up the bike with both hands while the handle jerked to the side while still locked to the rack. 

"Yeah. Stuttering Bill," Henry said, in as close to a snarl as a grimy teen could get.

"Hey, you'll scratch it when you hold it like that!" Richie said, then bit his lip down. Hard. A stream of blood filtered into his mouth, seeped through his teeth till his tongue tasted like pennies. God Richie, shut the hell up, he screamed at himself. 

"Why do you have a dead kid's bike, Four-Eyes?" Henry demanded, snapping his head in Richie's direction. Richie wasn't even sure how to answer that. All he knew was that Went had found it at Bill's parent's garage sale...before they left town. He realized in that moment just how little of the kid's lives he truly knew, and how their negligence of information was putting the new pair of glasses he'd just gotten at stake of being smashed by Henry. But clearly that was the most minor of Richie's concerns as Henry began to appear more and more displeased with the growing silence. Richie cleared his throat but still his tongue felt dry and useless in his trembling mouth, staring at their eyes glinting with something darkly humorous. 

"I don't know.." Richie said under his breath. Henry's eyes darkened. He dropped Silver with an agonizing screech of metal and shoved Richie down to the grass. The soft green blades might as well have not even been there. His whole back shook with the sudden slam of hard earth, resonating in his bones. Richie tried to get up but Henry held his thin chest down with one dirt-encrusted combat boot. 

"I said," He leaned down, grinning an ugly sort of smile. "Where did you find a dead kid's bike, you faggot? Huh? Was he your b-b-b-boyfriend or something?" He finished it with a horrible impersonation of Bill's stutter, then spit in Richie's face. He tried to swallow down the horrible taste of bile beginning to stir in his throat, but Henry's foot pressed to his body was doing wonders to make it impossible. 

"I don't know, alright? I didn't even buy it myself!" Richie grabbed Henry's boot and tugged it this way and that, but he wouldn't budge. He only ground the soles harder into Richie's ribcage. Henry frowned and lifted his foot off Richie momentarily, and Richie thought for a half second that his prayers had been answered and he was free. But Henry looked at Belch, speaking volumes in one stare. Richie wasn't fluent in this bully language, so he was more than surprised how a single dart of Henry's eye was code for "kick him as hard as you can." Henry stomped down (with enough force to make Richie's eyes water, but not to break any bones, thank fuck) on his stomach, then dragged the rough end of his boots across Richie's legs, the jagged ruts in his soles peeling back the skin and drawing dirty blood. Belch's sneaker connected with Richie's hip bone. Again and again he slammed his shoe down, meeting his flesh with a sickening pound. He kicked Richie harder and harder until the boy saw brief spots of white dancing before his eyes, and that was when his own strangled cries were cut off. 

"The more you cry, the worse it'll get, fuck face," Belch said, his only comment on the senseless violence. Henry agreed with this threat by another sudden kick, this time to Richie's other hip.  

By the time the two had just begun the fun part of their after-school festivities, one of the faculty had picked just the right time to open the front entrance and gawk at the sight. Belch stopped immediately, his foot poised over Richie's side as if considering doing his ribs in one more time, but Henry didn't let up. The boy just kept beating his feet against Richie's thin arms and chest like a drum, drawing a symphony of painful yelps to go with it when his shoes smeared the hot dirt and blood in the wounds. Even after the staff had alerted the principal and was prying Henry off of Richie. He still flailed and fought for more. 

"Next time, answer me when I ask you a question, you disgusting little queer!" Henry screamed, being led by the forearms toward the school by the school's security. Richie stared up, unblinking, at the gentle blue above him. He ached in places he best not think about, and he lay there for a few more minutes thinking that someone else was going to come through the cool air-conditioned school and ask if he was alright. He stared up at the merciless sky for five whole minutes before coming to the conclusion that no one was going to be checking on him. 

As soon as Richie unlocked the code on Silver and took a nervous glance at his bleeding legs and knees, there was no way he was going to ride Silver without blacking out. But he didn't want to ask the front desk to call his parents, because then just a Little Hiccup with some bullies would turn into a Full Blown Conversation at dinner. And Richie wasn't very good at those. So he guided the bike by its handles down the schoolyard, past the parking lot, and across the asphalt for what felt like miles. When he crossed the intersection on Center street, he debated going into the Neibolt house, just to see if the kids were there. Of course they were, why wouldn't they be? Richie really just wanted to see what they'd think of him, all bruised and battered and looking very much like a cartoon character with his bug-eyed glasses. He parked the bike on the gravel across from the house and limped over. But, with another tug on Richie's already overworked heart, there was no rose on the porch. Richie stood, stunned at the fact, while blood continued to trickle down in cool streams across his ankles. He felt it but paid no mind. Silver was waiting, the fading metal held a sense of urgency as Richie flipped up the kickstand and walked back home. 

The pain had dulled to an achy throb all over, and Richie felt like pure, unadulterated shit once he finally set Silver down in the yard and unlocked the door to his house. Though it took Richie nearly two hours to walk home, bruised or not, he wasn't surprised that his dad's car wasn't in the driveway yet. But that was fine. It just meant he didn't need to have any Full Blown Conversation at dinner because there wouldn't be a sit-down dinner. Richie would microwave some leftovers or boil spaghetti for Maggie and bring it upstairs for her if she wasn't sleeping. But that was for later. Her bedroom door was shut and Richie had an assload of wounds to close just as such. 

He locked the front door as gently as he could and felt he could only muster the energy to crawl up the staircase. Once he got to his bedroom, a strangled sigh he didn't know he'd been holding rushed out of his lungs. He was used to getting beaten up like this, it was Bower's default to find any waking moment to torture him. But that didn't mean that the words didn't sting in a different kind of pain. Getting called a faggot or a queer reminded Richie of Bill and Stanley, but they were anything but the bad things everyone guessed them to be. And the words made him wonder...who else fell prey to their slurs. Beverly? Who did she love? Some boy or girl, still living and out looking for her blunt tumble of fiery hair, the chime of her anklet in the summer sun--something Richie only noticed Beverly wore yesterday and hoped its lightness made someone burn for her. And Richie dared himself to even consider--Eddie. His heart swelled up like an annoying balloon a kid decided to let go and wreak havoc to the sky. Or in this case, Richie's (he felt queasy at the thought) feelings.

No. Not that. 

Richie rid himself of his dirty clothes as he mulled it all over, shoving them into the very bottom of his laundry basket, and flitted around for a comfier shirt. He wished he could just dump all of those mushy little maggots feasting on his heart down there in the dirty hamper, too. But he couldn't. Not when every look made them hungrier, each word or sigh sent them crawling all over. Yuck. Feelings. He'd shut his eyes forever and hide under the bed too, if someone was reading his registry of problems yet to be solved. 

Without his shorts and button-up, adorned in blood as a memory of Henry and Belch, Richie felt considerably better. He wasn't as sad at the fact that no one was there to greet him once he'd gotten home. He didn't have to think about the hurtful words and more than hurtful kicks when he stood at the foot of his bedroom mirror and looked at the damage. He looked, but didn't see the marks of dried blood all over his legs, raw and irritated from the miles of dirt sidewalk he'd had to endure. But Richie looked and did in fact see another body occupying space in the mirror, staring with wide doe eyes filled with concern. 

"Richie, what happened to you?" 

He spun back, squinting through his glasses to make sure he'd seen this right. "What're you doing here?" Richie asked Eddie, who didn't pay his words any attention but was still fixed on Richie's skinned knees and scrapes. Richie suddenly felt self-conscious standing there in his dad's AC/DC shirt that went past his knees and his underwear that certainly did not. But what did it matter what Eddie saw? His knobbly knees? Noodle arms? Richie felt the carpet tilt up towards him, and he grabbed the bedframe to steady his racing heart. 

Eddie swatted at the air. Unimportant. "I wanted to see if I could leave the house. I could, but it took me a few hours to actually find your house. But that doesn't matter. Are you gonna tell me how the hell you got so bloody?" 

"Bowers. He's a professional in the ass-kicking department," Richie replied but winced as he shifted on his heels and it opened up a scab. Eddie nodded, then crouched down to look at the blood. 

"We knew him too. He's such a dick," Eddie didn't say much more after that, except usher Richie toward his bed so he could take a closer look at the wounds. 

"You didn't tell me you were a doctor, Eds," Richie tried to make conversation so he didn't have to think about the fact that he was obviously blushing at Eddie's little fingers wiping his knees with alcohol pads from his fanny pack. Richie couldn't help but laugh. Eddie was like a grown man trapped in a tiny, tightly wound kid's body. 

Eddie snorted. "I'm not a doctor. But when you've got a mother like mine, you're always one step ahead. First aid kits, handbooks, whatever. Hold still, Richie, you're squirming and I can't get this pebble out of your knee." Eddie grabbed Richie's leg and pried free the sharp pebble, and a new spring of blood leaked out that he patched up with a big square bandage. Richie fought to breathe and scrambled to think of things to say to fill the weird silence. But Eddie seemed to be doing the heavy lifting. 

"Alright, you used up all of my bandaids. Are you hurt anywhere else?" Eddie asked, frowning into the empty contents of his fanny pack. He retrieved a mini bottle of spray sanitizer and applied a more than generous amount on his hands and wrists. 

"Are we counting my pride? Cause that's pretty fucked as of now," Richie laughed, but it made his sides hurt so he stopped. Eddie saw his face change, and leaned closer. 

Eddie examined Richie's wavering eyes and spoke low. "Where did he hurt you?" 

"Nowhere," Richie said through his teeth. "I'm fine, Eds." Richie was nervous. Beyond nervous. He'd never felt the room grow so quickly tense...but tender. Nor had Eddie ever, ever looked so eager to help. 

"Okay, well that's a flat-out lie. I can see you're in pain right now, stupid." 

"Ugh fine! Belch was kicking me, I've got a fuckton of bruises. There. Are you satisfied now?" Richie blubbered but gripped his legs. Eddie glanced at Richie's face and arms, clearly bruise-free. 

"Well, wherever he kicked you, you're hiding it." His voice was tentative, barely a puff of air. "Can I just see, Richie? I just want to help...What if he broke one of your bones or something...?" 

"Uh, Eds, I don't think I could have walked three miles to my house with a broken leg. But, er, okay I guess.

Richie grimaced as he stood back up, and Eddie followed. He took the hem of his oversized t-shirt and tugged it up to his scrawny chest, craning his neck down to assess the damage as well. Eddie's face went a little pink as an assortment of purply bruises came into light, peeking just above the hem of Richie's boxer shorts, dark and angry-looking. All of the air got sucked from the room as Richie watched Eddie's face dip down to stare at the injuries, his brown hair only inches from his bare waist. Perhaps all of the oxygen had been used up so that this new elephant sitting quietly in the room with them could breathe. Richie didn't know this elephant like he did the one who stomped on his childhood memories. He averted his gaze from this one, because it made him feel airy and light, but also like he might puke if Eddie were to catch him staring at the freckles on the bridge of his nose. 

"He got you pretty deep...The bone could be bruised..." Eddie's eyes lost a bit of their jittery focus, taking a hand just to place his index finger on the bruised jut of Richie's pale hip bone. The touch was cold but soothing, though barely there, like a tiny icepack...with feelings. 

"Ow! Fuck, that stings," Richie whined, quickly dropping his shirt back down. Eddie flinched away, shaking his head in embarrassment. 

"Oh, sorry--! Just, uh, don't sleep on your stomach, you'll be fine," Eddie said without looking at him. He stood quickly and wiped his palms against his chest, and a dribble of blood hung from his lips. He was nervous too, Richie saw. 

"I'm so glad I got your professional opinion. I feel so much better now," Richie replied dryly but was still wiping the blush from his cheeks. He hoped that he didn't have another run-in with Bowers, so he wasn't subject to Eddie's curious fingers trying to find a way to heal Richie beyond the grave. (Or an excuse for Eddie to touch him, but Richie didn't think much about that). He was just being a good friend, that's all. Looking out for him because he didn't have (living) friends that would. 

"Wait a minute, doesn't it hurt you guys if you leave the Neibolt house?" Richie sat back on the comforter, making room for Eddie. He stared at the bed then sat next to Richie even though there was a good foot or so of extra space. But Richie didn't say anything. 

"Yeah," Eddie said. "But I've only been out for a few hours. Your house isn't that far from it anyway." 

Richie playfully rolled his eyes. "Making up excuses to see me, eh? What a rebel."

"You're the rebel! You're the one who got his ass whooped by Henry Bowers!" Eddie shot back. 

"Only because he kept fucking pestering me about Silver!"

Eddie's expression softened. "Wait, what?"

Richie sighed and looked at the ceiling as he answered. "I don't know, he just kept asking me why I had Bill's bike. What kind of answer could I have given him?"

Eddie had his dark eyes fixed on Richie's desk as he spoke. He nodded his head quietly, "And you didn't say anything. You stood your ground."

"I mean, if you want to consider getting beaten silly 'standing my ground,' then sure I guess."

"No, Richie." Eddie turned his head and offered a shy smile. "That was kind of brave, wouldn't you think so?" 

"Taking shit from Bowers? If you say so, Eds. Just know the next time he asks, I'm telling him that I pawned it off his mother or something."

Eddie snorted. "Wise thinking, smartass. You'll get sent to the E.R. with an idea like that." He had gotten considerably closer to Richie on the bed, and as he let out a gentle chuckle his shoulder bumped him. It was just a little tap, just a brief second that their shoulders touched. If Richie's entire body wasn't singing in pain, he might have felt a tingle of something at the contact. But the throb in each and every wound outnumbered the throb in his heart, so he kept quiet. Until a new thought arose in Richie's head, one that would quickly teeter the conversation into the safe zone--perhaps. 

"Hey, Eds?"

"Uh, yeah? I'm right here. You don't have to announce each time you decide to talk," Eddie retorted. 

Richie stood up and went to his desk, his hips and legs screaming as he did. He shuffled through a few art portfolios and sketchbooks until he found the papers he needed. Eddie looked skeptical when Richie had spun around with the papers hidden behind his back. 

He handed Eddie one of the drawings and stumbled over the right way to ask. "I um, think that I didn't color something right there. All of the others look fine, but well, it was just too hard to get the shapes right...Would you, uh, mind if I, maybe...drew you?" 

Eddie stared at the picture, startled. "It's...all of us. Bev and Stanley and Bill...and me." Was all that he said.  

Did he hear anything I just spelled out for him? Richie thought wildly. 

"That's right. I've been practicing drawing you guys, but see, I was really just getting your face kind of, uh, messed up in the picture, and if I maybe used the, uh, real Eddie as a reference-"

"No."

Richie blinked, standing incredibly still. "W-What?" 

Eddie's face hardened, staring at the drawing with a hint of sadness and fear that ruined his soft brown eyes, then thrust the paper back at Richie. He didn't make a move to stand, and Richie knew Eddie could leave in a breadth of time and he'd be looking at the bee-line edges of where his ghost used to be. His ghost? No no no, Richie knew it was Eddie. Just Eddie. Not Eds...Not his ghost. Just-Eddie-as-a-ghost. There. 

"Why can't I draw you?" Richie asked again. He was afraid to step closer, as if any slight movement would startle Eddie back and away forever. 

"Ice your bruises, okay Rich?" Eddie whispered, his eyes still fearful and glistening. Then he disappeared. It happened at a second's notice, a car's headlights skimming past his shuttered blinds. Gone. Back to the Neibolt House. 

"'Ice my bruises,'" Richie murmured to himself, kicking the base of the bed. Alone. 

Richie wasn't sure which bruises, emotional or physical, he should decide to tend to first. 

Chapter Text

The days came with such a blunt force of reality, of normalcy, that Richie feared the last few weeks had all been a dream. Richie had tried to visit Eddie and the others, but there was no rose on the porch that Saturday morning. Or the Sunday after that. Or Monday. Richie felt so empty staring at the wide stretch of the rotting porch, with no lovely red flower to let him inside give him some company. He'd stopped biking past Neibolt Street after a week of seeing the empty porch. Although he wouldn't admit to it, Richie worried that the real reason the kids wouldn't let him inside the Neibolt house was because of what happened last Friday with Eddie. Had Eddie told them not to let me in? He wondered. Stupid stupid stupid, it was too much to show him those drawings...God, what does he think now? I'm some obsessive little freak? 

School had been tense, if not scary after that Friday Richie had gotten his ribs pounded in by Henry Bowers. Henry passed him every day between classes, his eyes blank and cheeks puffed in anger. Or fear. But he didn't touch him, he made no move or threat. Which was beyond weird for Henry Bowers. 

Richie was sitting at the edge of the couch in their living room that next Saturday, eyes fixed on the television news broadcast, with some tired-looking newscaster in front of Derry High School's announcement board outside. Maggie, surprisingly, had plans to meet with a Ms. Kaspbrak, who--from Went's excited whispers to him as he fetched a cereal bowl--was part of an organization that met weekly and dealt with the grief of losing a child. He'd told Richie the name of the group but he'd already forgotten in his rush to get the sugary cereal before Maggie could intercept. His father had been so delighted at the news of this, though Maggie herself still looked like she could do with a few extra hours of sleep. He'd kissed her forehead, lingered there in their tense but warm embrace, then retreated to the yard, promising to drive his wife to the meeting once she was ready. Richie didn't blame her. After all that had happened in the last week, he was certain that the group would be next to overflowing with the parents of kids that had been murdered. 

"We're moving toward something big, Chee," His father had said in the kitchen when his mother was still upstairs "getting ready." Richie knew she just sat at the base of her bed with her blank eyes on the clock, wondering how she was going to get through this. He knew this because he'd passed by their cracked door each time Went tried to coax her from the house, and the same expression never failed to startle him. 

"Do you think it's even going to help? It sounds like an A.A. meeting to me," Richie replied. He'd poured too much cereal in ratio with his milk, and had to grab a bigger bowl from the cupboard to equal it out. He didn't see Wentworth's hesitant expression as his back was turned but only heard him murmur. 

"It'll be good for her. She's not alone." Richie set the bowl down a bit too forcefully and frowned. At least there's one of us, Richie thought grimly. 

Now, Richie looked back at the television, eyes wide at the headline Five Children Found Dead...Curfew Back In Place--How the Buddy System May Save Your Child's Life skimming across the ribbon at the bottom of the screen. The school's announcement board had 7:00 pm CURFEW in blocky black letters, and REPORT A MISSING PERSON planted not-so-meekly below that. 

"Is anyone seeing this?" Richie said out loud to the empty room. His father's hunched outline was visible through the screen door leading to the backyard, but Richie was sure he already knew this too. 

"...A Mr. and Mrs. Criss are added to the many devastated families subject to this child-killing tyrant. Victor Criss, who was reported missing last Friday evening, had claimed to have been alone when the murder occurred. His body was only found late yesterday night in an unmarked road leading to the dense overgrowth of the Kenduskeag," The newscaster said gravely, outlined in white from the announcement board. "Parents, please remind your children daily of the curfew and the buddy system while we race to catch this monster." Following this was a directory held by the Derry school system, listing Victor Criss as one of the five who'd been killed in just a week's span. Mourn the Losses Together, the screen said. 

The words swam before Richie's eyes and he gulped down a shaky sigh. 

He might know exactly who this monster was. 

"Hey, uh, dad? Can I ask you about something?" Richie covered his face with his forearm to protect against the sun's blare. Wentworth was digging up weeds and filling gopher holes in the backyard, and Richie thought now, while his father was distracted, seemed the best time to address at least one of the elephants in the room. 

His father rose from where he had a fistful of dandelions and sat on the backs of his legs. He wiped his brow and gave Richie a smile. "Anything, Chee." 

Richie's mind had been stewing over the things he wanted to say for far too long, while his legs had cooled in the worries considerably enough to the point that they turned to jelly once he opened his mouth. He sat down on a deck chair, cushion frayed and bleached from the sun, and his body stilled. The sun reflecting on the glass table inset made his eyes burn. 

"Is it okay, for uh, boys to like other boys? I've got some...friends, they're boys, right, my friends Bill and Stanley...But I think they're dating each other."  

He almost laughed to himself. He didn't think they were dating, he knew they were dating. Bill and Stanley held each other and kissed each other and cuddled and got protective and all of those things that swirled around in Richie's mind every time he caught Eddie staring at him. But he knew how Derry was, Richie had seen the Kissing Bridge and its lack of subtlety when it came to what the people thought about homosexuals.

Went stopped his weeding, dropping the bunch of stems. Richie's gut burned at the silence. "I suppose it's okay. I don't know a whole bunch about that sort of thing, Chee. But I don't really see anything essentially wrong with that, um, community," His father replied. He planted his palms against the front of his knees and turned to Richie. "Why, Richie? Do you feel that way about a boy? The way your friends do?" 

Richie's throat closed up. Speak, damn it. "I don't know yet." 

He rose from his place among the ripped-up grass and gently took Richie's shoulder. He squirmed at the touch, so paternal and loving. But after he let his strong hand linger there, it was oddly comforting. 

"Whether you figure it out or not, that's alright, Chee." Went smiled again, his dark hair outlined against the sun. 

"Okay, dad." Richie reached up from where he was sitting and hugged him, but only for a moment. This was, after all, what children were supposed to do, right? "When you drop mom off, would you mind letting me go to the library for a bit?" 

Went pretended to consider this, putting on his playful dad grin and scratched his chin. He checked his wristwatch and realized just how long it was taking Maggie to get ready to go, and stood. "I don't see why not. But remember Richie," He craned his neck down to stare at his son through his coke-bottle glasses, reflecting wide brown eyes. "Don't go anywhere else other than the Derry Public Library. I know this new bike of yours lets you have some freedom, and I'm all for that, Chee. I just don't want you going off into places you know you shouldn't...I wanna make sure you're safe there. Understand?" 

Richie nodded and the mood lightened. His father cuffed his shoulder affectionately, then pretended to dust off the dirt crusted on his palms all over Richie's hair. Then he twisted around to retrieve his wallet and handed over his library card, which Richie gladly pocketed. 

"Now, let's go see what your mother's up to." 

He remained there, hovering above the holes where the gophers used to live, while Went slid back the screen door and disappeared into the house. The whole time his head was singing, shrill and annoying, I don't know yet! I don't know yet! I don't know-

"Wait, dad. I'm coming too!" Richie squinted his eyes so he'd stop blushing and rushed for the screen door. 

"You'd like what sort of books, dear?" The front desk librarian asked, again, for the third time, blinking behind her glasses in an annoying way. 

Richie sighed. "Ghosts? The supernatural and all that jazz?" 

She straightened in her seat and referred to the library map on the wall. Next to the HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CHILD? posters. Seeing those kids stained in black and white from the photocopier faces forever grinning, made Richie shiver and look back to the librarian. She'd been talking but Richie had tuned her out. He'd been imagining his own face there, a cheesy smile amidst strands of sweaty black hair like he didn't want to be in the picture. He didn't want to be missing, either. 

"Go down row seven and the placards will guide you to the horror genre," She whispered, then smiled sweetly. Richie huffed. He wasn't looking for Goosebumps books or other scary-kiddie stuff. He wanted real, factual evidence about them. Sometimes, Richie thought as he took the little index card where she'd scribbled the decimal numbers for the books, you've got to get what you want by yourself. 

But it seemed as though he didn't have to. Once he'd hidden behind the adult comic books section, he overheard two kids softly arguing two shelves in front of him. Richie pressed his nose to the spine of the nearest book and listened. 

"...I told you, Ben. This here talks all about them. It's right here! Ghosts can return from the dead!" A kid whispered fervently, and Richie stepped around his current hiding place to move a shelf closer. The other boy with him sighed sadly and the sound of flipping pages soon followed. 

"What if we can't get them back, Mikey? It's been over a year. What if they're gone?" The second kid's voice wavered with emotion. "Bev, she promised she'd..."

"Don't say that, Ben. Don't you ever. They're not gone. We'll get them back."

Richie's mind buzzed with the new information. Bev? Richie was sure he'd said her name. It all sounded too striking to...the ghosts he knew, that he couldn't help but lean on to the sliver of hope that he wasn't going crazy and there was some sense to what he'd seen. He also leaned on the middle shelf of books by accident and pushed them into the next aisle while trying to listen better. 

"Fuck!" Richie swore quietly, but it was drowned out by the sudden rush of books toppling over one another next to the two boys. The first boy, Mike, jumped back from the pile and craned his neck to see into the empty shelf, where Richie's eyes blinked wildly back at him. Ben leaned down to pick up the many volumes, but they all wouldn't fit in his chubby arms. 

"Here, lemme help," Richie went to their aisle and tried to pick up the fallen books from Ben's hands. Mike frowned at him. 

"What were you doing spying on us?" Mike demanded in a furious whisper. 

Richie staggered up from the floor with his arms full of books. "I couldn't help but overhear you talking about-"

"It's none of your business," Mike said tersely and held up a hand to quiet him. Ben put the book Richie had dropped back on their corresponding shelves and crossed his arms across his bulging sweatshirt. Richie squinted at the boy, biting back a joke. It's hot as fuck outside...did he get the memo?

"But I think I can help! Beverly-" He scrambled on what to say. This was his only chance at figuring out what murdered his friends...and keeping them captive at the well house. 

"Don't talk about her! Don't....don't say her name, okay?" Ben cut him off, his face going red and patchy. Richie stood uncomfortably as he watched fat tears well up in Ben's eyes at the mention of Beverly. He must have known her...and grieved over her. 

"Maybe in a different time, you might have been able to help us," Mike brushed off a perfectly clean book, not looking at Richie. "But you can't now." 

Ben glared at Richie, wiped his tears, and took Mike's arm. "Let's just go, Mikey. There's...there's no point now. Let's go back tomorrow when we won't be interrupted."

"Hey!" Richie yell-whispered at their backs as they walked toward the exit. "That's not fair!"

But they had already left. 

Richie scanned the books Mike and Ben had almost checked out with a curious finger. The one that Mike had had in his hands was about...ghosts. It was an extremely outdated book, and Richie saw that the book itself had only been checked out less than a handful of times. He flipped open the first page, flinching back at how weathered and dirty the book's cover was. 

"Huh. Weird," Richie said softly, marveling at the thin pages with their illustrations of various depictions of ghosts and other spirits history. 
And if he squinted his eyes (despite his thick glasses, it was very hard to ascertain) long enough, he marveled at what appeared to be a coffee stain at the bottom right flyleaf page. It was in the shape of a turtle.

Something about that blobby stain meant something. Like it was there for a reason. Richie clutched the thick book closer to his chest and rushed toward the check-out desk. It was only nine...and his dad wasn't coming to pick him up until ten-thirty. He had time to do just exactly what he needed--or he hoped. 

Without Bill's bike, the walk took Richie longer than he anticipated as he hurried down the now-familiar stretch of gravel to beat the sun. The house on Neibolt street didn't greet him. It snarled with its ugly dried-out trees and rusted fence bent at odd angles. Richie suddenly felt hollow standing there looking at the rose-less porch like he'd been stumbling among some fever dream the past month. I'm such an idiot, going around talking to people who aren't there and imagining things that won't happen. He didn't know when his hand decided to grip a fistful of rocks and chuck them at one of the windows. 

"Where did you all go?" Richie screamed, setting his book on the asphalt and throwing more gravel. It smashed the only window that wasn't boarded up, and its shuddering sound of glass echoed across the street. The cracks of windowpanes were satisfying to see and hear, and they fueled Richie's anger. But he wasn't surprised that there was no reply from the quiet house. 

"Hello, shitheads!? When did you decide to drop me like some hot fucking plate, huh? I need answers!" 

"Jesus, shut up already. There's your answer." A new voice groaned from behind Richie. His blood turned to ice, and the rocks fisted in Richie's shaking hand fell to the hot road. 

Richie didn't dare speak yet. Not until he saw the face that matched the raspy, amused voice in the deadness of Neibolt Street. It sounded oddly familiar, though, as Richie spun around on his heels and was staring face to face with pale blond hair smattered in sticky blood, blood everywhere, all over him-

"V-Victor?" Richie gasped, almost jumping back and tripping over the book. 

Victor Criss rolled his eyes and the sockets bulged in their attempt to move. He scoffed and crossed his arms over the battered, ripped-out cavity that was his chest. It looked like someone had tried picking the blond-haired boy up by his front like he was the prized treasure in a demon-possessed claw machine. Richie gulped uncharacteristically and tried to keep his eyes level with Victor's face so he didn't mull over the mess of torn flesh and guts inches below that. 

"But...you're dead!" Richie squeaked. He hated how scared he sounded. "I uh, saw your body on the tv!"

Victor nodded and grinned, exposing yellowed teeth. "Glad we're acquainted, dipshit. Get the fuck out of here, how about that? You're stinking up the place." 

Richie opened his mouth to say something--probably stupid--but the footsteps crashing down on the asphalt in the distance made him hesitate. For a dull moment, he thought Eddie was coming out of the Neibolt house, fuming and flushed, like he always was, to tell Victor off. 

It wasn't Eddie. 

"What're you reading?" Another voice chimed in, coming from Richie's right. It was a small boy in a yellow rain slicker with its left sleeve torn off and left guttered and scarlet. He reached for the book next to Richie's trembling leg and Richie shooed him away with a shriek. 

"Nothing! Get away from me! What the fuck's going on?" Richie snatched the book from the boy's grip and backed away from the two figures. The young boy frowned and put his right hand to his chin. It was bloodless and tinged blue at the fingertips. Richie held in a cry. 

"Bill says not to swear, Richie." The boy said, then giggled. 

"What?" 

The kid didn't answer, he just kept laughing and whispering fuck under his breath like it was his new favorite thing in the world. 

Richie's wristwatch beeped loudly, making him jump. It read nine-fifty. He was going to be late to meet his dad back at the library...it was a twenty-minute walk back, at least. The little boy's only hand took Richie's fingers and pulled the watch down for him to see. His touch was hollow and freezing cold. 

"Eddie's got one like that! It," The boy couldn't stop laughing, "It lets him know it's time for his medicine! Ain't that silly? What medicine do you take, mister?" There was blood smeared in droplets across the boy's waterlogged cheeks and left side of his chest like it would never go away. Like how Eddie's blood would never wipe clean...or Bev's flames...Stanley's missing head. And then it clicked. Richie's heart toppled over in his ribs and died. He flung his arm back and held it to his chest like he'd been bitten. 

"What's wrong, Richie-boy?" Victor sneered, his cracked skull widening as he smiled. "You're not scared, are you?" 

The boy pointed to Richie's watch. "Beep-beep-beep! Like a car horn!"

"F---Fuck!" He spluttered in a breathless cry. Richie held the book tighter and raced in the direction of the street's intersection. The two figure's laughter died away once he'd turned away from Neibolt Street and pounded down the hot roads to the Derry Public Library, never stopping once to catch his breath. Once his aching feet met the cool unblemished brick of the front entrance Richie collapsed on the outdoor bench. His chest heaved and his mind relayed every speck of blood and gore he'd been forced to witness in a never-ending photo reel. Who was that kid with Victor? With his arm ripped off? 

"Why am I seeing this?" Richie whispered under his breath with his head between his shaking knees. A few tears dripped down from his frightened eyes and fell with a gentle tap against Richie's glasses. 

"Fuck." He repeated again under his breath. His father's car rolled up with a gentle hum of its tires on the flat road. "Double fuck."

Chapter Text

Richie's parents headed straight for the living room the second Went had parked in the driveway, abruptly clamping Richie's idea to play a board game or something together at the edge of his tongue. It was better that way if he was alone. He had more time to read the book tucked safely under his left armpit. Neither Went nor Maggie questioned the hefty volume in their son's thin arms, almost as though it weren't there at all. They unbuckled their seatbelts and floated along to the living room, murmuring softly and taking furtive glances back at Richie hovering at the staircase. 

"I'll be in my room, alright...?" Richie dared to speak into the thick quiet. Went spared a pitiful smile and took his wife's hand, leaving him there. Huh. Not like that's the weirdest thing I've seen today. 

The climb up the stairs took longer than Richie could have thought, being so skinny and carrying essentially nothing. It was the book that was weighing him down, it felt so much denser than before when he'd picked it up at the library. He had to comically throw the damned thing down on his unmade bed just so he could have feeling in his arms again. It sunk down into Richie's plush comforter, and as Richie sat next to it he scrunched his eyes at the depression it left. He could have sworn there was a title on the cover when he was at the library, but now the book's spine and cover were blank. Just worn leather. He bit his lip and used the pad of his index finger to carefully peel back the cover page. 

"Okay, what the fuck." Richie remarked, quickly turning page after page, seeing that they were all white parchment now. There were definitely words and illustrations an hour ago...The pages were all white, save for the small turtle-shaped stain now decorating each corner of the page, and as Richie's page-flipping grew frantic and worried, the coffee'd stain grew bigger and bigger until the stupid fucking turtle in its brown glory took up entire pages. He stared, startled, now at the middle of the book's contents, where below the massive turtle stain were a set of inky words indented into the paper. 

This won't help you, but I can. 

"What is that even supposed to mean?" Richie said to himself. He traced the confusing words with his fingertips with the earnest of a blind man. 

"Jack shit."

As soon as Richie heard the words fill his bedroom, an icy jolt of fear coursed through his veins and the book shuddered. The light brown stains faded into the pages. The words engraved into the page were choked up by the sudden burst of black bile that bubbled up from the spine, filling the whole page. Richie cursed and tossed the book at the wall, where the dark bloody stuff gargled from the seams of the closed cover. Books definitely did not turn into...whatever that was. 

"Are you done now?" The voice asked. Richie had forgotten there was someone--two people--in his room, looming over the base of his bed with grimy smiles. Victor stood with his arm draped lazily around Patrick Hockstetter. Richie had already seen Victor, his gutted out interior wasn't news...but Patrick's half-eaten jaw and slimy skin sent a violent chill down his spine. He remembered Patrick's face in the obituary papers ages ago, before winter break had started, but the thought passed Richie's mind the sooner it grew to Christmas. He hadn't heard a word about the missing boy since--since he now stood in the (rotted) flesh with another dead boy's arm across his visibly decaying vertebrae. Pieces of his sweaty black hair knotted through the bones of his nape and Richie felt a surge of nausea at the fly that just so happened to pick a pristine time to gutter out of Patrick's mess of scalp. 

"Hockstetter, when the fuck did you die?" Richie pointed at Patrick, whose grin turned ugly. Blank stare, pupils fogged over. A sheen film of sticky-something coating his eyelids. If Richie told himself that this wasn't real, then he was able to actually talk without screaming out obscenities at the rotting boys in front of him.

"You know how long those sewers go for?" Patrick croaked, his words barely discernible because his tongue and gnawed throat fought for the same space inside his mouth. A thin dribble of saliva coated what was left of his lips. "I've been wanderin' around for a long-ass time, fairy-boy." 

Victor laughed at this and, seeming to just torment Richie, hugged Patrick tighter and a stream of blood trickled from the missing chunks in his chest. Richie's mind filled in the blanks with the thought of Swiss cheese, only making him feel more queasy. Patrick smirked at Victor and reached into his jean pocket, soaked in shit water, for his trusty lighter. 

Patrick had that ugly grin on again and Richie's heart sped up. "Lost the can in the tunnels...but I think it'll have the same...effect."

Victor rolled his eyes. "We were only sent out here to--"

"Shut up!" Patrick howled, then took a step toward Richie. 

"Don't come any closer!" Richie said, fear edging into his voice. Patrick chuckled, spit and dirt smeared along his exposed gumline, then flicked up the lighter cap. Richie scrambled up to the bedframe and clutched the wood for dear life. He scanned his desk for something, anything, and held up a mechanical pencil. "Get away from me, you fuckers!" 

This time it was Victor who laughed. "You're cute, little fag. You know he can't do anything to you, right? He's a ghost, idiot." 

"Richie, dear? Can you come downstairs with us, please?" Maggie called from behind the door, then knocked. "Is everything alright in there...sweetie?" 

Richie didn't answer. 

Victor and Patrick's eyes widened and Patrick dropped his lighter before the two vanished. He adjusted his glasses and let his shoulders droop a bit. But his heart was still confused and sputtering for relief, so he took a lungful of air and crawled off the bed to calm himself. He reached over and checked the book again just to be safe. The pages were blank again...the turtle was still there, though. But the previous words were replaced with,

Hurry up, Richie. I'm getting too old for this. 

His eyes never left the page, but he spoke to the door. "Y-Yeah, mom. I'll be down in a second." 

Richie had only met Mr. Keene once in his entire life. He had been given a prescription for antidepressants last year and waited in the backseat of his dad's car. He could see him through the window while Went received the medication from a man with thick gold glasses and steely, cow eyes. Richie knew he was going to hate the man who smiled sickly at his father as he handed over the white paper bag then, so he was more than shocked at the same man sitting calmly in their living room. Sipping coffee from Richie's mug, in his spot on the couch. Maggie even had the nerve to scrounge up whatever of her hospitality was left and offer the stranger something to eat. The audacity!

"Uh, what's he doing here?" Richie turned to Maggie and Went. They shook their heads with a false smile and prompted Richie to sit on the loveseat opposite the couch. 

"Manners, Richie." His father corrected him with a curt nod. Richie's eyes bulged from beneath his glasses at the husk of what he thought was his father. Like he'd ever tell me to be polite to a man who doles out pills like candy. 

Richie stared at Mr. Keene with a frown. "What's going on...Mom? Dad?" 

"Hello, Richie. I believe we haven't met before, have we?" Mr. Keene said. Richie steeled his eyes from the man, he wasn't even in his uniform white button-up. He had on regular-people clothes, and Richie wasn't sure if the fact alone made the atmosphere more tense or confusing. They'd call the town pharmacist on a weekend?

"We haven't..." Richie murmured. Maggie sat on the arm of the loveseat and rested her hand on the small of Richie's back, but the action didn't soothe him in the slightest. 

"Just listen for a moment, dear," She whispered to Richie's ear but everyone in the room could hear her. It was like Keene's stage directions to begin the night's ensemble. 

Maggie, looking somber: I heard some interesting news today, Richie. At the group I went to this morning, a woman named Sonia shared a bit of her story. Her son Eddie Kaspbrak was...one of the little boys who was murdered two years ago. She passed around a photo she keeps in her purse of him. 

Mr. Keene, leaning forward in his place on the couch: And what did Eddie look like, Maggie?

Richie crosses his arms. He has no right to call her by her first name, he decides. 

Maggie's hand leaves its place on the lonely island of Richie Tozier's Back: He...he looked like the kid you're always drawing, Richie. 

Wentworth doesn't smile. Wentworth supplies folded-up pieces of paper that Richie realizes are his drawings. 

Maggie's frown deepens, and she looks fearfully into Mr. Keene's loan-shark grin: He looks just like the boy Richie draws. The one he always talks about. 

Richie begins the rumblings of an interjection in the scene: I don't talk about Eds all the time, you guys--

Mr. Keene: And, is it accurate, with this given information, to also note that things in the household have been a bit...delicate? Has Richie been feeling stressed as of late?

Richie thinks they should ask him, since he's, oh, sitting right next to them. 

Wentworth: His grades have started to drop again. He gets to bed late and usually spends his time out and about on his bike. 

Richie, under his breath: 'Out and about,' that's a five-dollar-word, Daddy-O.

Maggie's hand returns to Lonely Richie's Back to quiet him. 

Maggie, a glimmer of tears in her eyes: It's been rough. And I know it's been affecting him. 

Wentworth: Well, obviously it's been affecting him, Maggie. The boy's seeing things that aren't there--

Mr. Keene, his ass practically falling from the edge of the couch: Now, now, there is no need to jump to conclusions, although with my limited education about this...issue, I do see the early onset of something here, Mr. and Mrs. Tozier. 

Richie, wishing he had a wad of gum to crack at the moment: Who asked you to come in and play shrink?

Maggie, hissing: Really, Richie, this is serious. We're worried about you, baby. 

Richie: And why is that?

Mr. Keene: You might have something called schizophrenia. It only falls to a minor percentage of the population, but I can concur that it is happening because of stress and lack of control of his current situation. Although, this Kaspbrak boy is quite an interesting variable to add...

Richie thinks that all of this Stress and Lack of Control have more to do with the last five minutes than the last five months. Richie wanted to shove Stress and Lack of Control down Mr. Keene's eager throat till he choked on the lukewarm coffee in Richie's mug. 

Went holds up a sketch of Eddie: Do you think that this has more to do with something...cerebral than just outside stimuli? It's one thing to imagine up a person from nothing, but this boy was a real person. 

Maggie stifles a cry. Mr. Keene nods quickly, looking far too excited for a topic so uncomfortable. 

Richie doesn't have a translator for what they're saying, so he shovels down cerebr-whatever and outside stimu-your mom into the further depths of his wired brain. 

Richie: What does all of this mean?

Mr. Keene straightens a pamphlet on the coffee table, next to Richie's mug. There's a chip in the handle that wasn't there before, and Richie's blood simmers to a low boil. Upside down the pamphlet reads something about inpatient care and pros and cons. His blood fizzes over and evaporates under the hot reality of those words. 

The Fish Out of Water  Richie, standing up: Wait, no. You guys don't think I'm crazy, do you? Eddie's real. He talks and breathes--sometimes--and yells at me if I make a dirty joke--

Maggie: We know he's real to you, baby. But, Richie, Eddie's dead. He died two summers ago. So did your..."friends" Bill Denbrough and Stan Uris and Beverly Marsh. We know, Richie. You talk to yourself...you pretend they're there...but they aren't, sweetie. They're all dead. 

Mr. Keene, adjusting his glasses: I've also got some death verifications from Derry's paper from around that time, if you'd like to see for yourself, Richie. 

The show's ended, but the curtain refuses to fall. Richie towers over Mr. Keene in his mighty five-foot-five frame, and the older man only quiets a chuckle. A chuckle!

"Don't give me anything! Don't...don't give my parents anything!" Richie clenches his fist around the creases of sweat inside of his palms and glares at both of his parents. "This is what you think's gonna help me? Sending me to a crackhead house?" There are tears brimming underneath his glasses Richie swore wasn't there a millisecond before. They stung the corners of his eyes and he tore a hand across his face to catch the salty, anger-tears. He didn't want to fathom the idea of being locked up in a padded cell, completely alone. Could the Neibolt kids follow him there? Would they?

"It's for the best, Richie. I wish we could have seen this sooner. Seen the signs," Richie's father sighs and reaches for some paperwork Mr. Keene had laid so expertly on the coffee table. 

Richie leaps back as if the pen in his father's hands were a taser. "No! You--you can't take me away...because I'm leaving!" 

"Richie," Maggie cries, grabbing the air for her son but Richie lets out a shocked exhale and dashed from the room, heart pounding. 

"Richard Tozier, get back in here!"

-----

Silver's tires screamed across the pavement as Richie pedaled at breakneck speed, searching the mid-afternoon streets for the right turn. His eyes were watery--clearly from the hot breeze, not from the conversation at his house--but he'd found the familiar cut off of the sidewalk and slammed Silver's handles to the right. His heart was still hammering frantically inside of his chest, unable to believe what had truly happened. That made Richie laugh, just a bit. I've been seeing ghosts for the last month and my parents thinking I'm a schizo is what tips me over the edge. 

There isn't a rose on the porch. Richie doesn't care. He throws Silver down frantically along the front gate and clambers over the worn spikes. A few bits of rusted metal nip at his bare ankles but Richie doesn't mind that either. He needed to see for himself that the kids weren't avoiding him...and better yet, that they were not a figment of Richie's overactive imagination. Richie gazed up at the hole in the upper floor's window, from the rock he'd thrown earlier in the morning. 

Eddie's room was up there. 

That was incentive enough for Richie's legs to find the courage to trudge through weeds and dead grass up to the choppy trellis, reeking of centuries-dead flowers and the metallic sting of nails left in the sun for god knows how long. 

He gripped the latticework and climbed, mindful of the jutting nail ends and broken chunks of wood. As he ascended he thought more and more about what might await him when he tumbled through the cracked window, and he lost his footing as the diamond below his foot shattered. Splinters sunk their teeth into Richie's ankles, and he cried out pitifully at the beads of blood peppering his pale skin. There might not be an Eddie to patch him up this time, he thinks. His hands found purchase on the windowsill and Richie hauled his weeping legs over and into Eddie's room. The thump of his body landing on Eddie's dusty old mattress echoes through the empty room. Until Richie realizes the room isn't empty at all. 

Eddie stumbled off the bed and gapes up at Richie from the floor. The blood stained on his bottom lip made Richie's gut burn as he'd almost missed that dumb detail for the last few weeks. 

"They're gonna send me to a loony bin, Eds. They...they think I'm insane for seeing you all," Richie begins, not really knowing what he was telling him but it needed to be said. "Please, Eddie. Tell me I'm not crazy. Please." 

Eddie blinked, then registered the bloodied boy sitting in his bedroom and his chest began to heave. Blood routinely flew from his mouth as he spoke in wild spurts. "You're not supposed to be here! You need to go!"

"I don't have anywhere else to go, Eddie! They're trying to send me away!" 

"Go then! You're better off far away from here," Eddie stammers, and doesn't even try to clean his chin from the downpour of blood this time. His cheeks are flaming red and Richie realizes how terrified his friend looks in the light of the fading sun peeking through the ceiling. 

"No fucking way. Not after all the shit, you've dragged me through, making me think you all deserted me." Richie blushes at the last part but he didn't have the energy to care.

His ankles sang in pain, oozing out droplets of red mixed in with the wood splinters. 

"Jesus-fucking-Christ, Richie! Are you that stupid? We've been keeping you away to protect you! And now, you need to go before it's too late!"

Richie sighed. "God, Eds. What could possibly be wrong?" He glanced around the framework of dried flowers in Eddie's room, completely free of any danger. "Will one of your roses prick me again? Will I fall into a slumber of which I may never wake from?" 

Eddie was crying now, and it made Richie tense. The tears burned Eddie's skin, it looked like, they steamed off his flushed cheeks and as he wiped them he shuddered in pain and feeling. 

"Richie, please, for once won't you listen? This isn't a joke. I've lost everyone I've really cared about...and I can't go losing you too," Eddie said desperately through the blood and cries. He noticed the splotches of drying blood on Richie's legs and the crying picked up to a hysterical, defeated whine. 

Richie leaned forward on the mattress. "Wait, what're you saying, Eds?" 

Eddie looked away, face livid and bursting with color. "Richie, I--"

A low voice cackled. A sing-song tune broke out. "Well, look what my good ol' pal dragged in! Oh boy, looks like a treat for Eddie is in store, yes siree!!"

Richie would have thought he'd grown used to random voices appearing in the least likely of places (more often than not, in his own head) but this new voice caused the crosshatches of dried scabs to spring anew and dribble out fearfully. Just the sound of the voice's gravelly tenor sent the blood from Richie's body, he sat like a hollow case of himself staring at the tall figure throwing open Eddie's door and leaping inside with glee. 

Richie's mouth was plastered open at whatever horror was in front of him. In the shadows of Eddie's doorway, a single set of yellow eyes gleamed, the very same ones Richie had torn away from that first day on Neibolt Street. Those hungry eyes, that wolfish stare matching exactly the one of the man (if one were to even consider this being a man) a few feet from the boys. The figure stepped into the light, revealing a man in a white clown suit. Richie examined the man closer and from the speckles of old blood staining his taffeta sleeves and neckline, he was anything but human. Richie swallowed but his throat forgot how to function, it was too dry. His whole body was permanently immobile, a broken doll set up against Eddie's bed. 

The clown clapped his hands together and crouched down to Eddie, who tried to scoot away but he grabbed Eddie's tiny arm between his silk gloves. He clicked his tongue. 

"Oh, no no no, Eddie-dear. We don't go running away, not after we bring Pennywise such a lovely present! Oh, no!" 

Eddie squirmed under the clown's fingers, his clamped jaws seeping out the dark blood, he blew it through his lips in an awful gargled raspberry sound. Richie stared on and on at the clown's pasty makeup and smears of deepest red around his eye sockets, running down in lines until they met his painted lips. Richie stole a breath. This is It. This is "It." It killed them, It killed them, oh Jesus, is it gonna kill me--

"Don't--touch him!" Eddie writhed under the clown's touch. The clown giggled. Richie instantly hated and feared the noise when it echoed through the thin walls. 

"Touch him?" The clown pouted, tilting his head down at Eddie's streaming cheeks. "Please, Eddie-bear. Be thankful you get to watch." He turned his focus on Richie though he still had Eddie's arms in a vice grip. Richie's entire body went cold as he locked eyes with the clown. His golden eyes flickered down to Richie's legs coated in his own blood, and the clown visibly perked up. 

"...Be proud that you brought Pennywise such tasty...bloody...fear." 

At that his hands flew from Eddie's arms to wrap themselves around Richie's knees, tight and unbreakable.

"Fuck! No, do not fucking touch him!" Eddie shrieked, flinging himself to Richie's side, taking his shoulders quickly. The clown giggled again and brought his lips to Richie's ankle where the blood streamed the thickest, and the beads of fearful sweat gathered. Eddie's screams died away to a dull buzzing in Richie's head as the clown's eyes closed and his mouth sprung open. His eyes didn't just close, though--they ended on a wicked smile and rolled back into his nasty skull until the corners of the clown's lipstick cracked and his mouth widened to a jaw-breaking size. 

"You swore to us! You promised that he'd live!" Eddie was still crying and rambling but Richie didn't know to who. 

The clown's mouth kept on stretching further and further back to his ears, where rows of shark teeth jutted out from liver-colored gums. Something bristled and burned with fervency at the back of the clown's throat, something that dropped Richie's fear and cradled his consciousness as he gazed into his open mouth.

"Please! Get him out of the Deadlights! You fucking promised there was a way, you liar! You disgusting old turtle! Just this once, please---!"

 Eddie's frigid touch died away and the persistent terror of the clown licking up his wounds dulled as the three glittering somethings swirled around inside Its throat. They filled up Richie's vision until he could no longer see what was happening to his body or Eddie or the mattress or the birds outside--

I didn't think it would work out this way...but it's gonna have to, Richie. 

It's going to hurt, kid. Real bad. And I'm sorry, but she has a mind of her own sometimes, that damned spider. Just stay the course, okay? Let Eddie help you, we like him. He's a good kid. He'll give you a few good chucks after all this shit blows over, alright? 

A thunderous sigh broke Richie's eardrums...or the eardrums of his mind, whatever the fuck was going on--

He's really pulling on my leg, that one. Oh well. Here comes the fun part, Richie. 

Richie's eyes rolled back into place with the gentleness of a sledgehammer, his whole body jolted into consciousness with a shriek. He realized it was his own scream. 

"Jesus fuck! Oh, shit! No! Stop it!" Eddie was clenched around Richie's shoulders, trembling, sobbing, staring wide-eyed at the clown. Richie blinked slowly, nothing really registering just yet, the clown had its long teeth sunken deep into the belly of someone, sucking out blood by the gallon, it visibly shuddering through the clown's throat and into his stomach. That someone was Richie. The clown had its jaws fastened tight into his flesh, chewing and munching and ohgodithurts--

"Thanks for the pick-me-up, babe," The clown lifted his mouth from Richie's torn abdomen, wiping his gory face with his sleeve. He snickered and licked his lips "Eddie can clean up the mess."

In a split second the clown was gone, its presence not leaving the room any lighter. 

Richie's eyes never left his stomach, slit and guttered like a raided medicine cabinet. He couldn't register the flaps of flayed skin, or blood, or the vital organs it seemed as though Pennywise decided to leave bite marks in. It smelled like bile or vinegar and old pennies and Eddie's salty tears and oh shit Eddie is still there--

That's when it clicked. 

"Oh--! Oh my fucking God! I'm--I'm fucking DYING EDDIE! Look at--shit why don't I feel anything? Does that mean I'm already-I'm all--THOSE ARE MY GUTS--Jesus fuck! I'm gonna die! I'm gonna motherfucking DIE and I'll be all ALONE rotting in this SHIT HOLE!!" 

He didn't think he could breathe anymore but all the same Richie's chest was racked by his own sobs. Eddie's face came up off Richie's shoulder, and he sniffed loudly. Something changed in his demeanor, his cries were no longer frantic but fervent. The tears fell, but Eddie held him in a steadfast embrace, pressing his cheek to Richie's bloodied one. Eddie rocked them silently together, swaying with each word. 

"Shhhh, Richie. You're not gonna be alone."

Eddie's tears seared across Richie's pale cheek but he didn't feel a thing. 

"Yes I am Eddie! Stop saying that bullshit!"

"Richie, you're not gonna be alone. You're not." Eddie demanded though he was still crying just a little at Richie's array of intestines splayed along his thighs. 

"Hey, look at me," Eddie took Richie's face and turned it so he was no longer looking at the pool of blood they were sitting in but Eddie's tear-stained face of determination.

"Just look at me. Don't think about what's down there."

Eddie's face in front of him wavered and darkened, slowly losing focus. Those warm brown eyes melting into the black nothing that bled across Richie's vision. Each and every one of Eddie's freckles, gone. His irritated smirk. The dribble of blood. Oh god.

Richie whimpered. "I'm dead, aren't I, Eds? You wouldn't be touching me like this if I were alive--"

Eddie choked out a laugh through his tears and smiled. His cold finger brushed across Richie's closed eyelids as he felt his friend's body chug out its last bits of life and slump down in his arms. "You're an idiot, Richie Tozier."