Chapter Text
There was something about silence that made Richies skin crawl. Getting stalked by a killer clown he could handle, his parents constantly yelling he could deal with, and even biking over to one of the losers house in the middle of the night to bring them from the brink of a full-on breakdown would be preferable to just sitting here waiting. At least when he was moving, he could forget about the nothingness that seemed to take over.
He wasn't depressed, nevermind what the school counselor said; he was just tired. It was Stan who pointed it out first; he was always far more perceptive than the others had been. He had cornered Richie midway through the first semester of the last year and asked if Richie had been getting nightmares. Richie knew that none of the losers would laugh at him, but at that point, he couldn’t bring himself to say anything. Even when Stan pointed out the bags under his eyes, he just lied and said that American history was kicking his ass and he had stayed up late studying. He knew Stan saw right through it. Richie had not studied a day in his life, but Stan also knew him well enough to just drop it.
The next to bring it up was Eddie. It was par for the course, honestly, with the amount of time the boys had begun to spend together. Eddie had been much less gentle than Stan and slammed his way into Richie’s house brightly on a Saturday morning, swearing that if Richie “didn’t tell him what had crawled up his ass, then Eddie would take all of his X-Men comics and burn them." Richie thought about lying to Eddie as well, but he knew that none of the losers would believe that he was 100% fine, so instead Richie settled for the partial truth.
Now this wasn’t the first time that Richie had told someone the truth about his family; the first time was in seventh grade at a sleepover at Bill’s house when Bill’s parents had made them a home-cooked meal and then went to read Georgie a bedtime story while Bill, Richie, and Stan set up camp in Bill's bedroom. It must have been almost two a.m., and Richie had thought that the other boys were asleep. Richie tried to sleep too, but he just couldn't stop thinking about how long it had been since his mother had made him a meal or since his father was home long enough to even say goodnight to him. He was so deep in this loop of thoughts that he didn't even notice that he was crying until Stan pulled him into a hug and asked what was wrong. It was in that dark bedroom that he told Stan for the first time that his father hadn't been home in weeks and that his mother was drinking more wine than most people did water. Richie had sobbed into Stan's shoulder for much more time than he would like to admit, but the younger boy didn't seem to mind and asked Richie if there was anything that he could do. He said that Richie was always welcome at his house and even offered to tell an adult. That last idea was one that Richie quickly shut down, and he made Stan swear that he wouldn't even tell Bill. Stan had reluctantly agreed, and in the morning Richie was back to his usual self-cracking jokes about everything that came to mind, but he could see that there was something different in Stan's eyes when he looked at Richie. It was then and there that Richie swore that he would pretend as best as he could that he lived in a perfectly normal house.
That promise that he made, however, came crumbling down quite quickly as he stared into Eddie’s insistent eyes. The words had started pouring out of Richie's mouth before he could stop them, and even as he saw sadness well up in Eddie's eyes, he couldn't stop. He told Eddie more than he had told Stan; he told Eddie about the cruel words that his mother said when she was drunk; he told Eddie about the plates that his father had hurled at the wall when he found out that Richie's mother had been drinking his “good alcohol"; and finally, he told Eddie about the yellow-purple bruise that he had gotten when he had woken his father up in the middle of the night when Richie had been screaming from a nightmare. At first, Richie wasn’t going to admit how bad the nightmares had gotten, but he thought that it honestly might sound worse to say that his father had shoved him violently into his desk for no reason. At least with the screaming, Richie's father had a valid reason for why he had been angry.
Eddie had insisted that he look at Richie's bruises to make sure that he wasn't going to die from some strange disease. It had been while he sat in his bathroom with Eddie poking and the prodigy at his back that Richie almost admitted the real reason that he had been isolating himself. He couldn't stop thinking about what it would be like if instead of laying alone at night, he was laying next to Eddie, holding him. He hadn’t even been thinking anything dirty; regardless of how foul his mouth was, he didn't really need any of that shit; he just wanted to hold Eddie's hand, but somehow that made him feel even more dirty. He knew it was wrong; he had been told his whole life that there was nothing worse he could be than a queer, but at the same time, Richie knew that there was nothing he could do to change that about himself, or at least nothing he had tried so far had changed anything. He almost told Eddie that the reason he was failing chemistry was that the girls in the class had begun laughing at him whenever he walked by and that when he had tried to talk to his lab partner, the boy had loudly announced that Richie was trying to flirt with him. Richie almost told Eddie about the last time he got bruises from his father when Richie had been listening to a Queen tape and his father walked in and dragged Richie downstairs to berate him in front of his mother about how much of a disappointment he was becoming and that he was turning into a queer. Ricie hadn’t even minded so much when his father shoved him into the kitchen table because at least his physical punishment had meant that he would shut up and Richie didn’t have to listen anymore. He almost told Eddioe all of this, but he knew that he wouldn't be able to handle the disgust on the other boy's face as Richie told him all of this. Richie knew there was no way that Eddie would touch him like this if he knew, so instead, Richie just let himself savor the small touches from his friend.
One thing Eddie did was convince Richie that he should tell the other losers the truth. As much as Richie did not want to, he knew that this would be a good excuse for his weird behavior, and he had been right; the losers were understanding because, of course, they were, and they even started spending more time at his house so that it wouldn’t be so quiet. It was now in the first week of August that Richie thought once more about calling up the losers to see if they would be willing to have a group sleepover, but he knew the answer. Stan was at some fancy dinner with a bunch of his dad's friends, and Bill's parents went out of town to see some fancy grief counselor who they hoped could fix all their problems. Bev’s mother was sick again, and Richie knew that, as much as Bev hated her mom’s indifference towards her abuse, she would never leave her mom's side when she was this sick. Ben had gotten a job working at a summer camp for science or some other nerdy shit like that, and as much as Richie made fun of him, he was glad that Ben looked truly happy. Mike had already gotten in enough trouble when his grandfather found out that he snuck out last time, and Richie wasn't willing to ask again. Eddie was also locked in his home by the new lock system that his mother had installed when Eddie fell while trying to sneak out his window. So with all the losers busy, Richie lay in bed alone, longing for the next night to come quicker when he knew that the losers would be coming over to spend the afternoon at Richie's house.
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As much as Richie thought that the hours couldn't go any slower, eventually Friday did turn into Saturday, and before he knew it, the front door had burst open and a group of frazzled teenagers poured into the Toziers living room.
“You really need to start locking this door, Richie; we could have been burglars,” Stan exclaimed as soon as he got past the front door.
“Any burglar that is that loud is clearly not very good, and I could probably take them,” Richie retorted.
Stop kidding yourself, Rich; you couldn't win a fight against a fly, '' Beverly said, pushing past Richie into the living room. Richie could see the bags under her eyes and gave her shoulder a squeeze as she passed, hoping to convey that he knew she was struggling and that he was there for her.
The rest of the losers piled through the door and onto the Toziers couch and floor. This had become a near weekly tradition of Saturday nights where they piled into Richie's house and watched whatever movie he had rented while eating as much junk food as they could afford. They had picked Richie's house because of the lack of adult supervision, and it was the only time in a long while that Richie could say that his house really felt much like home to him.
Everyone had groaned when Richie realized that he had rented yet another horror movie, but Rich had been waiting to watch Pet Sematary for over a year, and he had just gotten his hands on it. Honestly, it was a miracle that the tiny video rental store had the movie in the first place, so Richie wasn't passing up the chance to get the shit scared out of him in a controlled setting. The losers could bitch all they wanted, but it was Richie's night to choose, so soon enough, the movie was booted up, and the losers settled in to begin snacking on the mountain of snacks that Bill had somehow gotten them.
They were nearly halfway through the movie, and they were all scared enough that they were pressed shoulder to shoulder when there was a knock on the door. The losers all jumped, and Richie couldn’t help but feel a pang of hurt. Eddie quickly moved from where he had been gripping onto Richie's arm. The authority in the brief knocked the losers in, quickly pausing the movie and hopping up to see who was there. Ricie's heart was pounding, but as the knock came again, he knew he had to open the door.
The door had been locked at Stan's insistence, but once he got the lock undone, Richie sung the door open to eat two police officers at the door wearing grim looks.
“Are you Richard Tozier?” the one closest to the door asked, and it struck Richie that he had never seen the cops of this town actually doing anything useful. Richie was quickly shaken out of this thought, though, as the officer cleared his throat.
“Uh yeah, I am '' Richie answered nervously, “If you are looking for my parents, they aren't home yet...
"Well, about that son,” the officer cut him off. “I have some terrible news. Your parents were driving home tonight, and they got into a wreck. Your father was driving, and his blood alcohol was 0.16%. I don't know how to tell you this, but both of your parents have passed away.”
It was like a bucket of ice had been poured over Richie. His ears started ringing, and he could only faintly hear that the officer had continued talking. He felt his knees buckle, and someone, presumably one of the losers, caught him. The warm hands on him shocked Richie back into the moment. He looked up and saw that it was Mike who had caught him. Richie must have stumbled back because he was no longer standing in the doorway. Richie could hear Eddie arguing with the officer, who seemed to be insistent that they had to take Richie down to the station. Eddie must have lost the argument, though, because soon enough, Richie was being helped into the back seat of a cop car, and his friends were making him promise to call as soon as he could. Richie wanted to crack a joke—maybe tell Eddie to let his mom know not to wait up for him—but he couldn't muster up the strength to say anything other than a half-hearted “aww shucks, don't worry about me” in a goofy voice.
Richie couldn’t help but feel like a criminal as he was driven away from his home, and as he looked over at the loser, he couldn't help but feel a sense of finality. Something was ending, and Richie didn’t know what yet, but he had a sinking feeling that these next few weeks wouldn't be easy.