What happens next...

How this works:

* Give me an object, a setting, even a vague imagining in my Asks. If you want a specific pairing as opposed to Character A and Character B, please tell me.

*  The more familiar I am with the fandom or characters the more specific I can make it. If you need me to know something that would be outside of the typical please include it. (i.e. Character A is deathly afraid of pickles in my writing.)

This is a fic-ish for @ull-float-too. I promised him fluff. There is fluff. 

Pairing: Richie/Eddie (TW: Suicide) (TW: Death)

Unlike some of the other Losers - namely Bill and Bev - Richie doesn’t like to acknowledge his nightmares. He tries not to call for help, doesn’t talk to some goddamn therapist or any of his friends. The images Richie has in his head, he figures are his penance.

The water is up to his chest, sticky and slick, the stench of it drowning him. Richie is lost in the sewers. The cold circle of the stone walls seemed to drag Richie deeper and deeper, the passageways stretching before him seemingly with no end. 

In the distance, he can hear Eddie, calling to him. Screaming for help. It’s Eddie’s voice as it once had been, a thousand years ago, a whole other lifetime ago. His best friend and the first person he’d ever fallen in love with. Nobody outside of Derry had ever even held a candle to Eddie, to what he had been. To what he was now.

Childhood Eddie was shouting out for him. And Richie, the adult him, the gangly body he’d poisoned with alcohol and drugs and self-loathing, he was pushing through the muck in a desperate attempt to reach him.

But he never did.

Richie never wanted to let Eddie know about any of this shit. So when he bolted awake, shivering, reaching out desperately to thin air, Richie just blamed too much to drink or too little to drink. He would bolt to the bathroom, splash cold water on his face, and refuse to meet his own eyes in the mirror.

The sound of a carnival is somewhere behind him in the dark. Richie, all of fourteen, can smell the popcorn and the fried everythings, the greasepaint and sawdust. He’s walking towards the big Ferris wheel, pushing through the crowd. From the corner of his eyes he keeps catching sight of someone, an impossibly tall figure, white face and red eyes gleaming hungrily. 

A feeling of dread sinks into Richie’s stomach. It was a living thing, coiling through his veins, making every move staggeringly slow. Like he could barely put one foot in front of the other.

Richie glances down, vaguely realizing his feet are in clown shoes. It doesn’t make sense, but for some reason he just accepts this.

Another flicker of movement. That unearthly pale skin, drawn on red smile, it was coming closer.

Richie just kept trudging along, too scared to stop. Too unsure.

One thing he knew for sure, one thing certain, was that he was utterly alone. Though his rational mind insisted there should be other people there, his shield and sword, his heart and his soul, his light and his guiding path, there was no one. 

Why? Why was he alone?

No answer came, just trudging feet. The next glance down and Richie sees that his clothes are now a jovial outfit, white with red trim, the faint twinkle of bells accompanying his movements. This also is odd, but again, he can’t seem to do anything about it.

The Ferris wheel is just as far away now as when he’d started. But it didn’t matter anymore. The figure on the edges of his vision lumbers closer. Closer. Richie turns to confront--

A mirror. He smiles his yellow, jagged smile, eyes red and skin painted white. With a happy dance, limbs dangling and bells jangling, Richie grins.

And grins.

And grins.

When he wakes, he chokes back the screams, like a sour coating at the back of his throat. He makes excuses as to the sweat soaked sheets, he claims that he was working to explain the dark bags under his eyes. Because fuck knows that after one of those nightmares, he wasn’t sleeping for the rest of the night.

No one could know. Richie couldn’t bring himself to admit that level of weakness. Not to mention the content of his dreams . . . his failures. His fears. Why the fuck would he ever confess those? Nobody would look at him the same ever again.

The night is pitch black. Richie isn’t sure which direction the screams are coming from, but there’s certainty in his mind he’s running away from them. He stumbles over a log, going sprawling with a soft sob in his throat. 

It’s coming. That one thought was pulsing in his brain over and over.

It’s coming.

Richie.

A voice curled around him like smoke, like something smothering and hot. Poison dripping in thick plops onto his skin. 

Richie struggled to his feet and took off running again.

Riiiiichie.

Stumbling over his own feet, Richie ran headlong into a sign.

Welcome to Derry Population: 0

He screamed and fell back. Right into the dark, into the swirl of fog and death.

I’m coming, Richie. I’m coming for you.

His screams never mattered. No one heard. No one came. The shouts had died down and the world was empty. 

All except for him. 

And It.

It was always coming back.

Richie slept on the couch. He gagged himself so the whimpers of terror would not wake anyone else. 

Comfort wasn’t something Richie deserved. He knew that.

“Daddy!” The little girl’s foot stomped against the floor, her tiny fists pressed to her hips. Richie had to school his face to not give away how hilariously cute he found this whole situation. Eddie had already given him that look twice this week when he burst out laughing at their daughter’s tantrums.

Their daughter. Olivia. The Princess, their heart, all wrapped up in messy brown curls and Eddie’s eyes. Shit. Three years in and Richie still hadn’t figured out how to wrap his brain around that.

He crouched down in front of her, lips twitching as she gave him a glare, a perfect mirror image of Eddie’s. “How can I help you, princess?”

“Daddy, you’re suppos’t take me to papa now.” Her little face scrunched up as she tried to be stern. “For dinner.”

Richie’s eyes went to the clock over his desk. Shit. “You’re right, little one. I got busy with work and playing with you, didn’t I?”

She nodded, a grin bursting out across her face, sunshine and glory all at once. “Yeah! But we made castle.”

Enough imagination and joy and giggles made stacks of pillows into a fairy castle. Worked every time.

“Sure did.” Richie lifted Olivia up, spinning her around just to hear her laugh. That full-belly laugh that made Richie feel like he could fucking do anything. He spent his whole life trying to make people laugh, and now the only thing that mattered to him was this little girl’s smile. “You hungry?”

Olivia nodded, which made sense. He was already a half hour late for leaving, and Eddie was definitely going to kill him for that. “Well, let’s call papa and let him know we’re on our way.”

“I do it!” Olivia held out a chubby hand for Richie’s phone. She was probably more proficient on the damn thing than he was, but Richie held it back.

“How about I put him on speaker while we get your shoes on, huh?”

He set Olivia down, putting the phone next to them on the couch while he knelt to get on her sneakers. Eddie’s phone rang barely twice before his irritated voice came through the speaker. “You’re going to be late, aren’t you? Damn it, Richie, I--”

“You’re on speaker, babe,” Richie called out, again doing everything he could to hold back laughter. “Ollie here wanted to say hi.”

“Papa!” Olivia shrieked, grabbing the phone and kissing it. “Hi!”

“I’m putting her shoes on right now,” Richie assured his husband, fighting with the velcro. Stupid stuff stuck everywhere.

Eddie’s voice had changed immediately to that soft croon he got whenever he talked to their daughter. He was happily chatting with her about their day, about how daddy and her had played and now they were all going out to dinner. Richie shoved his feet into his boots and scooped up the kid, the diaper bag, and the phone before heading out the door.

“Babe, why don’t we just meet you at the restaurant?” 

Eddie hesitated before sighing. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Sorry, just--” He trailed off, but Richie knew what was going on.

“Look, you’re going to crush that presentation tomorrow. I promise. You’re ready, Eds.”

A pause and Richie knew exactly the face Eddie was making. The You don’t know what you’re talking about and you’re just saying nice things because you have to face. But he waited it out, until finally Eddie agreed, “You’re right, I can’t do any more prep now. It’s either going to go or not.”

“Meet us at the restaurant. Get us a table and order me a whisk--” Shit. Richie cleared his throat and shook his head. “A coke.”

“Okay, sweetheart. Love your face.”

“Love your face, too.”

Richie hung up so he could get Olivia strapped into her car seat. It wasn’t too far of a drive to get to their favorite restaurant. Not Chinese food had been their one requirement when looking for someplace they could go to regularly. Neither one of them ever wanted to go to a Chinese restaurant again, thanks. But this cute Italian place that did killer lasagna and great pizza was perfect. They’d celebrated their anniversary there, their anniversary of the first time they kissed, they’d had their first bathroom fuck there, celebrated the success of the insemination of their surrogate, Olivia’s birth, and spent numerous birthdays and bad days and makeup sex days there. It was theirs. A routine.

Something Richie never once thought he’d want.

Until Eddie. Until they’d gotten a second chance - well, technically they were on their third chance - and Richie had finally gotten the balls to actually express an emotion. Five years ago, hip deep in sewage and Evil Clown juice, Richie couldn’t have imagined he’d be in a family. A real, stable, every day family.

They got to the restaurant, Eddie waiting for them out front. “I thought you were going to get us a--” Richie almost got all of the words out before Eddie was kissing him. Grinning against Eddie’s lips, Richie wrapped his free arm around Eddie’s waist, pulling him in.

“I didn’t want to wait a second longer to say hi to my two best loves.” 

Olivia giggled, diving from Richie’s hold to Eddie’s arms. Eddie and Olivia had their own little language, their own little world, and Richie loved that. Loved how much they loved each other.

His family. The two pieces of his heart that lived outside his body, that gave meaning to his every damn breath. 

God. He’d kill a thousand more fucking clowns to have five minutes of this.

“Should we go in, sweetheart?” Eddie was looking up at Richie with those big, beautiful eyes. The ones he saw so clearly in Olivia’s.

Richie grinned, kissing Eddie again, then pressing his lips to Olivia’s forehead. “Yeah. Let’s go, babe.”

Are you asking me who would win in a battle between trained soldier and killer Barry Berkman and noted klutz who barely made it safely down the stairs of a hotel carrying a bag Richie Tozier?

I mean. Is it a sexiness battle? 

Barry.

A physical altercation?

Barry.

Is this being judged by Eddie?

Richie is, of course, completely sloppy.. He’s eaten half his candy before Eddie gives him the frosting, and his roof has a suspicious hole where he may or may not have bitten it. He pretends to not understand how things like frosting or construction of small bakery based housing so that Stan and Eddie have to be close to him. He’s so much taller that he stands behind them, blanketing their backs with his stupid long arms fitting so neatly beside theirs. 

The ruse fools no one but they all go along with it. Because when Richie laughs they feel that rumble in his chest against them, when he smiles his lips brush against the curve of their necks, when his long fingers hold theirs they feel like he’s anchored and settled.

Stan has all of the frostings arranged by color, already pre-portioned into piping bags. Despite Richie’s immediate demand that someone paint his dick with frosting and lick it off - which was unsanitary and could lead to a yeast infection, Stan informed him - he efficiently passed out bowls of candy and necessary supplies before starting on his own.

Richie and Eddie take turns moving Stan’s supplies slightly, mixing the color order up or stealing all of the red M&Ms from his bowl when he went to get more marshmallows for snowmen. There was an adorable thing Stan did with his eyebrows when he was yelling at them for being immature and agents of chaos. Eddie even got daring on his second White Russian and kissed Stan deeply while Richie, giggling, stole all of his candy canes. Because hearing Stan laugh, hard, was like a revelation. Warmth in the middle of a winter storm, a fire that burned in the hearth and called them all home.

Eddie piped the frosting onto the gingerbread house with single-minded focus. His tongue poked out from between his teeth as he concentrated on making every line straight, every curve exactly as it should be. He’d even brought up pictures of gingerbread houses on his phone so he knew what the correct way to decorate would be.

Stan strikes first, lightly nudging Eddie so one line goes slightly askew. When Eddie starts to panic, trying to erase it, Stan comments lightly that he likes it better that way. Richie comes over and kisses Eddie’s neck while he works, nibbling on his ear and rumbling dirty things, which of course makes Eddie’s curves and swirls made so delicately tremble as he piped them out. But Richie grins and compliments every shaky line. Until Eddie saw all three of them in that house, not just some impersonal copy of a magazine photo.

Their hands together, fingers laced together so that it was hard to see whose was whose, they piped the last bit on their houses. To make them perfect.

So, it’s called... tick tock? Like a clock?

No, babe, it’s tik-tok.

So... wait. Is there a clock? What’s funny about a clock?

No, Stan... Look, it’s just... do you remember Vine?

Are you talking about gardening now?

Jesus, no, Eddie. Okay, look! Look at my phone. It’s like... short videos where you can say something or do memes.

Okay, wait, I remember memes! That’s like that cat with a cheeseburger thing.

Literally, Stan, you are the most uncool person in the world. 

Not true. I am considered hip and happening in the office.

I wish I was dead. Honestly. God, okay, guys, Twitter. You all know Twitter. So, look, this is a great guy I follow, he’s hilarious.

The handle says he’s Donald Trump’s hair.

Yeah, Eds. That’s the joke.

Donald Trump is a horrible racist. He’s not funny.

I know! I know that, that’s the fucking joke! It’s like... his hair is being satirical about... Forget it. Just, never mind. It’s not funny when I have to explain it.

Aw, Richie, don’t pout. How about you tick my tock? ;)

Yeah, Richie. Come tweet at me. ;)

Eddie never really liked the whole sports thing. Or beer. God, beer was so gross, who the hell would choose to drink that?

Richie is, of course, more of a straight alcohol kind of guy, but that’s a whole different thing. The first time Eddie had a Long Island Iced Tea was a revelation. Now his boyfriend - boyfriend thank you, fuck ever dealing with a girl again - ordered them two fingers of whiskey straight and a Long Island Iced Tea, keep ‘em coming.

Also, Eddie is now aware of things like puzzle clubs. They get together once a month, drink good coffee and bad tea, and do a different kind of puzzle each time. Either all coming together to work on a five thousand piece puzzle of shades of blue, or trying to solve a mystery escape box, it was an evening with a group of people who liked the same things as he did. No judgement. No hiding. And when they hosted, Richie even served them the sandwiches they’d put together earlier (or, rather, Eddie put together while Richie loomed and kissed his neck and whined when Eddie smacked his hand away from the turkey).

The first time they went shopping together and Eddie could actually get into it, not just hold a purse and hum vague agreement, he lit up. He informed Richie he was throwing away all of his shirts and dressed up his boyfriend so he didn’t look like a homeless man. Also he could really have conversations about shoes all he wanted. Could lust after the latest pair of Louboutin, and find a whole community of people who accepted that. 

The game was never on in their house. Richie introduced him to HGTV and they spent their nights debating wainscoting or if they should install a water feature. He felt free to do things like facials or pedicures, knowing that while Richie would tease him, no one outside would think twice about a gay man doing a little manscaping.

He was gay. He was gay, not bi, not straight, nothing in between. Eddie Kasprak was gay, had always been gay, but now? Now Eddie Kasprak (hopefully soon to be Kasprak-Tozier) was living. For the first time in twenty-seven years. Maybe in a lifetime.

Now, Richie is not going to be one of those over-the-top, spandex wearing, superhero types. He kind of wishes he could go invisible because those could be the ultimate pranks, not to mention the dirty shit he could get up to. But god knows that Richie Trashmouth Tozier doesn’t have that kind of luck.

The first time he realized he had a mutation, he was running pell-mell down the alley between the general store and the butcher shop, desperately trying to get away from the Buttface Bowers. Sadly, Richie’s mutation also is not super speed. So he got caught. Like always.

No, no, Bowers! Wait! Wait just a second! The words tumble out as Bowers shoves Richie back against the rough brick wall, one meaty hand spread across Richie’s scrawny chest to hold him in place, the other in a fist aimed right for Richie’s face. Wait! Richie was scrambling, trying to figure how to talk his way out of this.

His hand grabbed Bowers’ wrist. You know, one day, we’ll all laugh about this.

And Bowers... did. He started to laugh, right then, grinning. A chuckle turned into a full on guffaw and then a belly laugh that had Bowers bent over, holding his stomach. Richie slipped away from Bowers, eyes huge behind those oversized glasses.  

He’d said laugh and Bowers had. He wasn’t stopping, either. Now Bowers was rolling on the ground, his grin in some kind of rictus grimace. The laughs had turned painful, forced, but it was like Bowers couldn’t stop.

I did that. Richie just knew. Right then. He’d just forced Bowers into laughs, with a touch. Richie watched Bowers squirm at his feet, laughter so far from gleeful. Bowers was starting to find it hard to breathe in between the strained cackles, the corners of his mouth dripping blood as his muscles forced the grin wider. Bowers’ face contorted into some gruesome mask, a morbid parody of happy laughter.

Richie stood there in the dirty alley and watched Bowers die. Of laughter.

LISTEN HERE U BRAT

I’m going to indulge your very subtle push, but only cause I love the pants off of you.

Okay, so, basic premise is this. Both Logan Howlett and Sherlock Holmes were conceivably in England at the same time. This was the lead-up to World War I, and there was no way Victor wasn’t smelling blood in the water.

Take that, add in younger Logan trying to win Victor’s approval, add in the assumption that of course Victor and Logan were banging it out, and bam you’ve got a case where bored Victor was definitely causing chaos for his own amusement. Who would investigate that?

Sherlock mother fuckin’ Holmes, that’s who.

Logan sees him, gets obsessed, follows him around, Sherlock of course knows this because Logan is about as subtle as a tornado. Sherlock probably confronts Logan, Logan panics because he’s an idiot and takes him back to Victor and his cabin. 

Cue attraction and Stockholm syndrome and sexy times.

Logan convinces Victor to leave, John Watson finds Sherlock tied to a bed and insisting that he had everything under control and was only still there because he was taking his bloody time, stop fussing, Watson. 

From there, Lock and I have made many paths. Sometimes Logan tries to come back to him, sometimes not. Sometimes they fall in love here, sometimes it’s more of an obsession, etc. But that’s the start of it all.

Richie likes to hunt when the night is tipping forward into that early morning birdsong. That’s when the drunks and the party goers and the walks of shame are going, that’s when Richie could pick off easy prey. When the still darkness would hide any struggle and he could leave the body behind a dumpster without fear of discovery. At least, not until the rest of the world had woken up, and by then Richie was long gone.

But Richie was bored with easy. Bored with safe and usual. So he stayed out later and later, watching the dawn start to creep up, hunting.

It didn’t take too long until he stumbled on Eddie Kaspbrak’s morning jog route. 

At first it was just idle contemplation as Richie looked for a target. Perhaps this man. Perhaps that one. It was all the roll of the dice, really.

But then, one day, Eddie stumbled. Richie, taking advantage of the situation, was there lightning fast to offer his hand. And he got a good smell of Eddie, the sweat and the musk of him tangling together into something that nearly made Richie loose any control right then. Eddie smelled like the earth after a rain and cinnamon and a little bitter turn. It was purely intoxicating.

You’re still holding my hand, Eddie was saying. Thank you, but I need my hand.

And Richie was just standing there, looming over him, blocking the sun and studying Eddie closely. Then there was that jovial grin that Richie used to hide and he backed up with some banal sorry, man, spaced out or something, a laugh, whatever. Eddie took off running again and Richie watched him, eyes glowing.

For the first time Richie could remember, he didn’t want to rip his prey apart. He didn’t want to feast and revel and leave a corpse behind for the normal herd to find.

He wanted to take. To possess. To own. 

Richie wasn’t going to kill Eddie. No, that would be a waste. Richie was going to turn him.

So Richie got familiar with the timing. Eddie was a dear, so predictable, he passed the same bend in the sidewalk at the same time every day.

And one day, as the birds overhead twittered and called out to the newly rising sun, Eddie never made it past that bend. Richie was waiting for him and he’d barely managed to wait until he’d drug Eddie to the cab of his truck before it was lips and teeth and eager hands. 

Eddie would come around, Richie was sure. It felt too good for him not to.

And once the change took hold, well.

Derry would tremble in fear. Two wolves would haunt the woods and streets, leaving bodies like calling cards. 

He and Eddie would fuck next to their kills, bodies slick with sweat and blood, howls shaking the night stillness.

Eddie:

It isn’t that Eddie had low self esteem.

Or, rather, it isn’t just because of the low self esteem.

It was seeing Richie on stage. Glorious. Fully in control. Bathed in light, animated, face glowing as he used his hands and body and voice to convey an exaggerated view of the stories he was telling. More than that, even, more than seeing Richie in his element, it was seeing him take an audience of strangers and make them laugh.

Richie had always been the funny one, of course. Eddie remembered (now he remembered, of course, but there were nearly three decades where the sound of laughter had made him ache and he never understood why) days spent in stitches, safe in the clubhouse, swinging in the hammock and nearly crying from laughing. Richie could always make them laugh. But to take hundreds, sometimes thousands, of strangers and hold them right in the palm of his hand? To guide them through stories and one liners and bring them into the light with him? To enchant and distract and entertain until Eddie’s ears were ringing with laughter? That wasn’t talent. That was magic.

Richie was magic.

And Eddie was... Eddie. A little (only a little, really, he felt he was very reasonable most of the time) neurotic about health and safety. Mostly the straight man for Richie’s puns, or flinging back insults to make sure Richie’s head didn’t expand so large it blocked the sun. He was just a man. Just a man who looked at insurance policies all day and spent hours in meetings thinking of anything and everything that might go wrong.

For some people, that would be enough, Eddie reckoned. A normal man would be enough. But not Richie. 

You see, Richie is magic.

And Eddie... Eddie is the guy trying desperately to hide the fact he wasn’t good enough for him. Eddie is the one who holds his breath every night when Richie comes home just a little late, sure that if he’s not in the door the second the kitchen clock says six that Richie has snuck out the back window of their little lives and vanished. Eddie is the one who worships Richie and hides it under retorts and banter.

Because Richie is magic.

Eddie just hopes his next trick isn’t to disappear completely.

------

Richie:

There were certain things that Richie knew for absolute certain.

One: Clowns were fucking terrifying as shit and should be outlawed immediately. Anyone seen applying greasepaint should be executed on sight. No explanation needed there.

Two: Every morning at five am, an alarm would chirp exactly three times before Eddie’s hand emerged from a mountain of blankets and slapped it off. Soon after, one half of their bed would be empty as Richie lay there, watching Eddie bustle about all business-like, getting ready for the day.

Three: He loved Eddie Kaspbrak. Again, no further explanation was, he felt, needed.

Four: One day, Eddie was going to look over at him, maybe from over the top of his paper as he ate his oatmeal in the morning, or maybe at night he’d open his eyes suddenly in the dark, and tell Richie he needed to go. That Eddie would see him, see all the broken pieces of Richie that he tried desperately to hold together, and tell Richie that it was over. 

Richie wasn’t sure when this day would come. So every time Eddie looked at him, there was a little part of Richie that was terrified. Because this could be the one. The time when the rose-colored glasses the love of his life was wearing shattered and he actually realized who Richie was.

Richie was trash.

There was no reason to deny it. He’d been trash from the day he’d been born and he’d die trash, alone and forgotten in some shitty apartment, probably. Surrounded by cheese puffs because if he was gonna die, by god, it’d be in his underwear, eating cheese puffs.

So Richie horded little moments. Memories of the way Eddie laughed, the way his eye lit up when something good happened, how his lips felt, what he tasted like. How happy he was. How much he loved Eddie. Richie kept them all locked up in a special box in his mind, so that when the inevitable happened he’d at least have those.

Because Richie was trash. And Trashmouth Tozier never was gonna wind up with someone this handsome and beautiful, witty and wise, funny and soft and perfect. That wasn’t how the story ended.