#trackshorts

Fucking Ted.

Richie pushes his hands up against his face, fingers bumping his glasses up and out, until he’s forced to shove them into his hair. The plastic slips a few times which takes a few awkward repeats to get it to stick. 

So feel free to punch him square in the face, because you might as well with that brick of feelings.

He figures that covering his face is the best bet because there’s no stopping the misery train - not when the brakes are gone and its barreling up from the deep depths of his Insecure Main Pain Central faster than he can feel. Too much at once. Holy shit, he’s going to puke. Is he going to puke on Ted? That would feel like a win and a loss.

“Do we have to do this now?” He sniffs; the congestion is coming for him. Looming in the distance - staring at him intently with want and need. He can feel the heat beneath his eyes, that tell that if he pursues this road... he’s gonna cry like a bitch. And, sorry, he can only fit one of those into his schedule every three never’s and one is already one too many. Richie’s tired. Every inch of him dragged through shit and, shocker, more shit. He’s too old for heartbreak and yet here he is. “Breakdowns are appointment only.”

No, Ted. Richie does not want to think about Eddie and the awkward shape to his shoulders as he stands - not quite sure of himself so much but still trying - and the soft curl of his honest smile. The honey rush of his voice, overamplified mostly by Richie’s fantasies but Eddie was always sweet even spitting hard k ‘fuck’s. The deep frown across his face when Richie says his name a few letters short with the improvision of one. A scowl when Richie pinches his cheek. A huffy laugh of pressed amusement because he’s tired of Richie’s antics but still willing to play enabler. His gusto. His fear. The shaking bravado of his voice, strengthening with the claim:

THIS IS -

Richie, to his mortification and horror, begins to cry. Just like that. Everybody suddenly tunes out of THE ALL DEAD ROCK SHOW to check out the I’M A FUCKING MESS CATCH ME SOBBING AT 1AM TO MY SECRET CRUSH’S BROTHER SHOW and Richie can’t deal with the idea of Eddie being gone. Which is a weird fucking feeling because he hadn’t even remembered Eddie. Eddie Who? But setting foot in Dipshit Derry had brought everything back in the worst kind of nostalgic way. Richie could remember Saturday mornings with vivid color and sound; full-on immersion. Some fucking -- VR shit. And spending however many hours with Eddie, relearning those feelings and going through the DING I LIKE DONG mood again sucked but it also hadn’t...

because Eddie had been there and he had been the one. 

The hole in Richie’s chest where all these tears must be coming from expands. It threatens to collapse the whole cavity and to stop it, Richie curls into himself. He loses his glasses, only thinking he heard them clatter to the floor. He can feel Ted’s awkward energy but he couldn’t give a flying fuck. Or ten! If they were to take flight right now Richie would let them by-the-fuck-pass. 

“Holy shit,” he warbles. Everything is wet and he thinks maybe if it wasn’t overused, and it was good, and if he wasn’t crying, he’d joke about it not being the fun kind of wet. “I’m so fucking sick,” he wipes his eyes but they insist on more, “of crying,” a big heave that startles him; he coughs, “and fucking ---” He doesn’t know how to express it.

His loading bar fills with bricks until it’s full. The room repeats his weeping back to him.

“I didn’t even fucking know him!” He’s really aiming to hit all those stages, huh? He didn’t need to go that hard but he’s yeeting himself right into it. “I was fine for twenty-sum fucking years! And I go back to some I fuck goats! town and have a Big Gay Crisis all over again? Over somebody I knew when I was a kid?!” Richie’s aware that he knew Ted as a kid, too, but Ted was different. Ted was a little strange and reminded Richie of cats that don’t walk properly. Weird wouldn’t be an appropriate term, because they were all weird. The whole crew of them. Ted was Ted and that was it. 

He gets that Ted was trying to have a heart to heart but fuck you, Ted! That shit is off limits! No touchie!

Richie points to himself, viciously stabbing himself in emphasis as he turns ragged eyes to his human-diary. He does it again, for more. “I was doing fine.”

His voice breaks on the word and the silence that comes after is haunting. Like a ghost, it creeps quietly into the room through the walls and reaches out its unseen hands to scoop them up. Richie is not comforted by it, or anything else. Not even Ted’s sad, red eyes resting steadily on him as if to guide him somewhere.

No, Bill thinks in differ as he takes in the lines of light that fall across Eddie’s face. He can see that the other man is tired, worn from their night. Bill can’t blame him; there’s a giant hole in his chest, he chipped a few ribs, he bled a lot. At one point in the stay, after they had dragged Eddie (uber doesn’t seem to exist in quiet little Derry) in, no news was good news.

Touch and go, a doctor had commented, cliche and old and nothing close to what Bill wanted to hear. He could have, and would have, lived without the haunting mental image of Eddie fighting on a table for the air in his lungs - something he’d fought for all his life anyway but worse. 

“Speak for yourself.” He says quietly. He looks at Eddie. Eddie looks back. The heart monitor beeps, soporific and monotonous. Something tugs behind his eyes, and in that hesitant moment he wants nothing more than to rest his head down on that bed beside him, and stay for keeps. “You’re the one who stared death in the face and said ‘fuck you’.” 

(shaking and cold to the touch, god, he’s not going to live through it but he needs to bill needs them all he already lost stanley and georgie and eddie is one too much that he’s not willing to give he’s given so much let him have something anything please not this not like this eddie deserves a death painted in old age and content not misery decay and as a punchline for a stupid fucking spider clown —)

“We wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for you.” He needs to tell him that. Eddie needs to know what he had done, even if there had been nothing physical about it. Bill knows his little group well (now that he rememebers), and he knows this: Eddie is too eager to little himself in the limelight. A brush off, a castaway, a shrug, I didn’t do much. But this was everything. Eddie saved them in reverse by proxy. Bill reaches out to squeeze his hand.

❝  -------  he  thrusts  his  fists  against  the  posts  &  still  inthists  ---   aaagghgh.   ❞   his  back  to  the  asphalt ,  he  bounces  a  baseball  off  the  brick  wall ,  his  bike  laying  in  a  heap  at  the  curb .  FALL  in  derry  seemed  to  pass  so  quickly ;  it  was  only  a  matter  of  time  before  the  cool  breezes  would  fade  into  something  more  bitter  &  cold .   he  couldn’t  really  get  a  hold  of  anyone  to  hang  out  with  him ,  but  it  was  still  too  nice  a  day  to  spend  inside . 

          the boy who waits among the overgrown foliage isn’t the same man who died blood mingling with tepid bathwater. for one, there’s no sign of age, youthful color alive in his cheeks, more alive in his eyes. what a funny word, all things considered. alive. pristine khakis, brilliantly baby blue polo. his best self, or representation of himself. clean and shinning and content within a manifestation of their own memory. perhaps the corners blur a little, edges softened. this is the barrens, home to a shared childhood. but it’s also not. the water that flows is a shimmering blue. no poison ivy or sinking mud. it’s here, stan’s ready to greet his old friend. it’s here, he’s ready to do what he can to help him.