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Self-consciousness creeps into Richie’s thoughts as he pedals his bike. He was coming back from a particularly heated Street Fight match that he did not want to think of. It was an absolute bloodbath, one where all of his recent training got defeated by some fourth grader who wanted to ‘try the game out.’ And even though he reaffirmed to himself that the kid just got lucky, the embarrassment still had him fleeing.
He had gotten slightly used to the alone time he’d gotten, if not mostly because of the anger he still felt. Bill decided to become a trader, one who convinced him to go into the freaky clown house in the first place. Sure, Bill had been one of his oldest and closest friends. But Richie couldn’t wrap his head around why a friend would disregard everything for a little brother that had obviously and depressingly dead as dirt. As soon as Eddie’s arm snapped like uncooked spaghetti while Ben’s stomach vomited itself out, Richie couldn’t think of a single excuse to keep affirming Bill’s delusions.
But while the new ‘ignoring Bill’ section of his summer schedule proceeds fantasticly, the ‘all I need is me, myself, and I’ aspect comes a bit harder to find. When Richie initially biked over to the arcade, he’d seen Mike, Stan, and Ben talking across from him on the downtown street. They walked happily, and laughter erupted from their group that only served to taunt Richie. He could always just walk over, keep that laughter alive and pal around like he always had. And despite the fact that they’d have happily accepted his appearance after a few jabs, he just couldn’t go over. His stomach dropped at the thought of being with just one of them. But two of them? Three of them? All of them? The more Losers he let himself be around, the feeling of urgency for something just increased. Bad luck gushes from the idea, and even worse, he couldn’t be the one to give in and rejoin.
Technically speaking, trying to hang out with Eddie did not counteract Richie’s point. The idea had lingered in the brain ever since that day on Neibolt, and he’d found at least some justification for the thought. No one else had really been able to see the boy, as his mother practically chained him to his room. Richie doubted any of the other Losers would dare defy the all powerful eyes of Sonia Kaspbrak, so it’s not like Eddie had been living it up with any other friends. Plus, Eddie hadn’t even seen him and Bill duke it out, so it’s not like he could call him out on folding so quickly.
Richie makes it over to the house after what felt like hours, but in reality spans about 13 minutes. His legs ache from pedaling, not too dissimilar to the growing pains he’d also been experiencing with gaining his height. The bike halts a few houses down from Eddie’s, and large, bespectacled eyes investigate the front lawn. A familiar teal car stood stiffly in the driveway, so they had to be home. He could guess that Mrs. K lays sleeping in her recliner, but that also just remains a favorite activity of hers in between actively mistreating her son.
Once Richie moves over to the inconsistently-watered plants in Eddie’s front lawn, he lets his bicycle fall back into the grass. Eddie resides in the rearmost room of the first floor, which proves helpful for situations like this. Sure, Richie figures he could’ve still climbed his way over to the room if it lies on the second floor. But it is in the same way he figured no one from Derry could beat him in Street Fighter. Needless to say, Richie is lucky he never had to find out like he did at the arcade.
Right beside the window, Richie hesitates to immediately smack at the glass like he dearly wants to. Sonia might be asleep like he thought, but she could also likely be awake and as aware as ever. One accidentally-harsh knock on the window could give her an aneurism, and Richie would have a front row seat to her tirade. Truthfully, it does not really matter to him that his actions piss her off. On the contrary, seeing that woman annoyed beyond measure and focusing all her stupid anger on himself brought Richie a sense of pride. But if a fight with Eddie’s mom is what he wanted, he would’ve been banging on the front door instead of playing hide and seek with a window.
Fuck it.
After the brief pause, Richie let his head abruptly peak into the room. Behind the netted cover and glass, Eddie’s space appears, as always, suffocatingly organized and dormant of much activity. The shelves were lined with a mix of curated knick knacks and baseball memorabilia that clashed entirely with the colorful posters of Thunder Cats. Directly across from the window is an occupied oak desk that sat beside the neatly made bed. The muted, striped wallpaper pointed towards the small boy in his chair, faced away with his good elbow to propped onto the desk. He didn’t particularly seem to be doing anything, his small body sitting still.
As steadily as possible, Richie grazes his fingertips onto the window. After a beat, he let his fingernails rhythmically poke through the netting at the glass. tap, tap, ta-tap tap. The sound manages to cut through the buzzing cicadas surrounding the house, and Eddie’s head whips over almost immediately. His eyes were wide, first looking over blankly. But as soon as Richie comes into view, brows furrowed deep down into themselves. The boy motions his arm to cease the quiet tapping, and Richie feels the rigid footsteps vibrate through the glass. Richie can’t help but be amused by his seriousness, especially with how sternly Eddie’s lips flatline and pull at his cheeks. It feels good to know he is still feeling like his overly-anxious self after the arm incident.
“What are you doing here?” Eddie asks in a faux-whisper as he pushes the glass aside. He speaks louder than any tapping could have been, but doesn’t realize.
“Jeesh Eds, I’m happy to see you, too.” Richie teases, hand still fidgeting with the netting. His eyes graze along Eddie’s hairline, noting the little curls that wanted free from the gel he used. Richie also looks over the teal polo Eddie wore, one from the millions of polos that infected his entire dresser. If Richie were honest with himself, he’d say Eddie looks nice. “Ya’ look like you saw somebody get murdered.”
“I’m the one who’s gonna’ get murdered if you don’t shut up!” Eddie spits out, unintentionally and ironically louder than Richie had been. Despite the previous energy, his eyes soften relatively quickly as he lets out a sigh. “Seriously, what the fuck are you doing here?”
“Just seeing if you’re still alive. You’ve been, like, jailed here for a few months, so I didn’t know if your mom ate you or something.” If the screen was not between them, Richie knew his shoulder would’ve been lightly punched.
“It’s been like 2 weeks, first of all. And secondly, that’s not fucking funny. She could’ve heard that, dick.” Eddie’s brows knitted a bit further before being released, not fully committed to the bickering. A small smile threatened to crawl onto his lips, but he didn't let it linger. It is unusual for him to relax so quickly, especially given Richie’s usual crudeness. But it must have just been nice to hear a voice that isn’t his mothers. “But it’s good to see you. I guess.”
The sun shines bright all afternoon, and Richie decides that is the culprit for why his body starts to feel like jelly. Isn’t it obvious? Newly formed sweat on his temple? The sun! Cheeks becoming pink and flushed? Duh, the sun! Heart pounding rapidly enough for him to pass out, despite standing perfectly still? The sun! And maybe heatstroke. He hadn’t really felt the heat on his way to and from the arcade, but Richie often finds himself lost in intelligible thought. It wouldn't be a surprise it simply went unrealized until talking with Eddie.
“I guess.” Richie mocks, making his voice significantly higher, but still slightly lower than Eddie’s usual tone. Before any protests, he switches to a voice he’s been workshopping of a wispy Southern Belle. “Why, you really know how to make a gal’ blush.” He blinks furiously to mime batting his eyelashes while his hand fanned at himself.
“God, Rich, why do all your voices suck?” Eddie stares, brows doing heavy lifting in conveying his annoyance. But despite this, giggles force themselves out of his throat. Richie felt his heart flip at the nickname, but just continued on to hide the excitement.
“Oh heavens, why, I can not bu-lea-uv these dastardly accusay-shuns.” Richie adds back before catching Eddie’s case of the giggles. He knew Eddie had a point, the voice needed some fine tuning. But that doesn’t stop Richie from wanting to hear the laughs he’d missed in the last weeks. He couldn’t help but inspect the boy’s face, subconsciously burying the image of Eddie’s involuntary chuckling deep into his brain. Being able to get Eddie into a giggle fit makes it all worth it for him, especially when he smiles so hard that his dimples pop into his face.
Richie’s friendship with Eddie remains a complicated one in his mind. He wouldn’t necessarily say Eddie is his best friend, at least not in the usual sense. He would’ve considered Bill his best friend, since they had known each other from when they were practically babies. But their dynamic has obviously hit some speed bumps on account of Bill being a selfless little asshole, and even before their latest fight, Richie had begun to confide more often to Stan. His honesty is much needed for a boy who lacked a filter, and Richie knew he could tell Stan anything and have it be a-ok. But with Eddie, for one reason or another, he felt like they just fit. The two were a pair, and even if they spent more time with other friends, they locked into each other any time they were in a room. Whether Eddie riles himself up about a particularly annoying comment, or happily chiming in to Richie’s current bit with his own riffing, Richie knew existing around him made him feel whole. Despite his own reservations, Richie knew deep down that there is a certain fondness he held for Eddie that just felt special. Different.
“Hey, how’s your arm?” Richie asks abruptly after the minute of laughter, and the reminder of the events sucks the air out of the atmosphere.
“Not great. I can’t do anything with this thing.” Eddie raises his shoulder, showing off his new, pearly-white cast. The arm rests on the windowsill, and Richie pushes his fingers against the net to feel the gauze. He doesn’t let himself touch it too long, quickly dropping it by his side and attempting to look less interested. “Don’t worry, you’re going to have all summer to look at it.”
“That’s if you’re allowed out again.”
“That’s hardly a fucking joke. Do you think she’s planning on letting me out anytime soon?” Eddie snaps, letting his good arm motion with his words. “Like, it’s not a joke, man. Every. Fucking. Time. You drag me out to do some dumb shit where I get sick, and then you’re surprised she won’t let me out.” Richie scoffs, unable to take Eddie’s health anxieties too seriously. A clown almost tore him to shreds, and the only Eddie can think of is the reactionary lies his mother had been feeding him.
“Dude, getting sick is not your issue. You’re not here cause your fucking sick. It’s not like you got the fucking clown flu. No ‘sickness’ made your arm look insane.” Eddie motions his cast away. “I’ve never even seen you be sick, Eds. You’re good.”
“Well I'm feeling pretty awful now, jackass. And it’s mostly because of you trying to play doctor. Imagine how much less painful this would be if you hadn’t put it into place wrong!”
“Imagine how your arm would look if I didn’t!” Richie finds himself irritated for a moment, forgetting where his remarks were leading. “But that’s not the point, dude. All I’m saying is, maybe try getting knee-pads or something instead of snagging up the whole pharmacy.”
Despite the simplicity of the joke and how bothered Eddie’s personality could be, he busts out laughing. It felt as though Richie presented his masterpiece; his joke of the century. Eddie’s freckled face radiates jovialness as expected from the sounds, but lingering between the laughter site a strange sense of animosity. The previous immature giggles were closer to knowing snickers, and for the first time in the conversation, Richie could feel no warmth in the joyfully venomous tone. Instead of laughing with Richie, Eddie finds humor from something entirely in his own head.
“You know, from what I’ve heard, you would need them more.” Eddie stares expectantly at Richie, biting his lip attempting to stiffen the almost-fake sounding laughter. It sounds jarringly cunning, way too pointed for someone normally so anxiously apprehensive. “I don’t spend time on my knees.” Eddie spits it out, and seems to keep stopping himself from laughing directly in Richie’s face. His eyes drill into Richie’s for any sign of a reaction, grinning ear-to-ear like he had delivered his magnum opus. The stare remains charged.
“Ha ha. Very funny.” Richie groans out a fake-laugh, which happens all too often for the two when one gets on the other’s nerves.
Gay jokes were never off the table for them, especially considering the attitudes around Derry. As a boy obsessed with all the current comedy, Richie would hear those kinds of easy jokes constantly from all the greats. And if his current comedy idol Eddie Murphy is saying it, chances are that Richie Tozier repeated the exact same bits back to the Losers like they were his own. So gay jokes were not only the typical go-to for teasing another dude friend, but also a big aspect of the media he’d consumed since infancy. Of course, a pang of hurt embedded itself in these jokes in a way he started to understand more in the last year. But a joke made by Eddie, even if rude, usually doesn’t have the ability to sting like this. He could especially be stubborn when it comes to Richie, but stubbornness did not describe it well. A cruelty emits through the laughter, one that Richie could never have expected Eddie to wield at him. Eddie’s hand covers his mouth to hold the chuckles, but his face is still strangely cold in its smile. Richie had already felt humiliated enough for one day by the Arcade visit, but Eddie’s vision now only serves to make him feel nauseous. Eyes relax a bit as the laughing briskly halts.
“You do, don’t you?” Eddie asks, and his voice further highlights his intention to mock Richie. He sounds overly chipper, talking as though his joke hadn’t been understood. Richie meets with Eddie’s eyes, and he tries his best to not break his nondescript expression. “That’s why my mom says you’ll get me sick, you know. Everybody knows how gross you are, dude. You’re living with the worst infection of all and you don’t even realize. Everything about you is sick.” Eddie stares, his tone a strange juxtaposition of being casual, yet empty.
“What the fuck, man?” Richie attempts to stabilize his voice, but it trembles on the last word.
“You can dish it, but you can’t take it, huh?” Clear intention laces the words, unlike the usual defensive babbling he typically adds after a jab that went too far. He openly enjoys the new shortness of Richie’s breath, leaning as close into the netting as he could. “Don’t you realize how pathetic you are? Following me around like a dog? Everyone sees that, Rich. Everyone knows what you are, Rich.” His tone shifts to cockily lecturing, his skin now more than ever appearing gaunt.
As Richie gapes back, biting his tongue to prevent the floods from opening, he notices the way Eddie turns sickly in front of his eyes. His skin glows muted almost grey, with new scabs appearing around his body by the second. His ever-expressive eyes turn almost animalistic in how they inspect Richie, irises glowing out beyond his face. As Eddie smirks wider, his bottom lip glistens wet. A set of pale, knobby fingers threaten to break free from the window cover. Sickness manifests into his entire being; hollow-cheeked, rotted, and completely happy in his own filth.
“You came here to infect me, didn’t you? Just like ma said.” Eddie interrogates further, before his face lights up even further.
Richie sits stunned as the chuckles force themselves out. Eddie’s throat sounds broken, with violent coughs adorning the laughs. The sounds come out wet and husky. Two conflicting thoughts battle in Richie’s mind: Eddie is having an intense asthma attack caused by a disgust towards himself, or this isn’t Eddie at all. The signs of something unnatural were everywhere, but Richie internalizes the aspects of truth in what Eddie said. For a boy so hyperactive, he freezes in place. If it were anything else, Hell, anyone else, no hesitation would be used.
As the coughs erupt harder out of Eddie, a small droplet of blood trickles down his bottom lip. Suddenly, it spills down Eddie’s face, slowly covering his pale chin in a gloopy, disgusting maroon. His head leans hard on the net, blood jetting through onto Richie’s shirt. Eddie looks all too familiar with his appearance in Neibolt, beaming grotesquely in his mockery. His pupils roll behind the lids quickly, scleras appearing pink and pained.
As his body catches up his mind, Richie shoves a hole into the screen and slams the window shut. The force of the window smacks at where Eddie’s head leans, a loud whack pushing his body to the floor. The room erupts with the sounds of falling trinkets as Richie trips onto his ass trying to move over. His hands grip the grass as he retreads the events.
Richie’s body floods momentarily with relief, but the doubt takes over rather quickly.
‘Maybe, just maybe that IS Eddie. It could’ve been Eds in the flesh. What if he’s just been possessed? Puppeteered? Internal bleeding from that ol’ Neibolt body trauma? Prank? There isn't a clown, maybe it’s not even clown related. Oh God, it could be a prank.’
“Eddie?” Richie’s voice comes out meek, asking more to himself.
All of Richie’s instincts tell him to run, but his body instead stands and staggers cautiously to the window. He focuses first on the calendar directly across from the wall, not wanting to immediately look at the body. His fingers push his glasses up as he lets his eyes fall down to the desk underneath it. Inch by inch, his vision crawls past the chair to the carpet. Eddie’s arm is the only thing in sight with how high the window is, cast now speckled in red. Before Richie thinks to open the window again, he spots the arm snake into his blind spot, fast as ever.
‘That’s not Eddie.’
Richie instinctively moves his body to the side of the window, unknowing that ‘Eddie’ would use his head like a battering ram to break the window open. Glass loudly cracked over the lawn, with a few shards attaching to Richie’s calf. It burns into his flesh and runs red. He looks over to the hunched neck, noting the large pieces lodged directly into ‘Eddie’s’ throat. The creature's petite frame lay still, but both of its hands brutally kept a hold of Richie’s right arm. He thrashes it around, but is unable to run under the increasing weight. The hand pulled cruelly, attempting to drag the boy closer and closer into the fragments of the broken pane.
After a particularly hard tug, Richie scans down and terrifiedly spots a pair of grimey, white gloves that now adorned ‘Eddie’s’ unyielding grip.
“You’re gonna get me killed, Rich~ you’re going to get all of us killed~ ” A boisterous voice erupted from the body. It sounded far too unhinged for a boy so oriented. “Wanna know why?”
The creature's neck snapped up painfully, and Richie had a clear view of ‘Eddie’s’ face. His face doused in blood from the nose down. The scarlet drips thickly onto the impaled points protruding from his neck. Two particular pieces also adorn his forehead on opposite sides. As the monster locks into Richie’s gaze, the pieces bleed single solid streaks onto his eyes. It immediately mimics the makeup of the clown, blood unnaturally seeming to form the upper brow’s line down to the cheek. He grins up at Richie and exposes the sharp edges of his teeth. The scared boy continues flailing his arm, focusing all his attention on the underdeveloped muscle in his forearm.
“Because you’re a pathetic little fairy boy~ Go ahead and laugh now! Laugh!” The creature spits his words out brutally. Sing-songy insults jingle out, but roar louder after each word. His face has become so covered and morphed that Eddie disappears completely in its clown shape. “You’re just one big laugh! Isn’t that right, Richie~?”
Richie lets out an ear-piercing shout as he continues yanking his hand with all his might. He manages to break free from the monster’s growing claws and stumbles to the ground. Loud shrieks are heard behind him, but he focuses his attention on escape. He lurches himself unsteadily over to his bike, skewed thigh stinging as he attempts to mount it. His hands shakily grip around the handles, because his life really did depend on it. Richie is now understanding the plight of Eddie’s asthma as his lungs faltered like punctured balloons. The screeching of giggles only intensify and become unbearable behind him. As his feet launch down at the pedals, he allows himself to fearfully gander back.
Eddie remains nowhere to be seen. Instead, in his place stands a fully formed, cheerfully malevolent clown that so dearly wants to take a bite out of Richie. The smile expands uncannily wide, opening shakily with gargled laughs. The same shards of glass still painfully pierce and bleed on the makeup-white skin, but at no point does the expression leave its spiteful elation. In only a second, the sight is unnervingly overwhelming.
As fast as ever, Richie turns his head and propels his bike across the road. He rides ungainly and alarmed, but manages to reach the end of the neighborhood quite hastily. Just as the weight of the encounter sinks into his head, Richie finds himself distracted again by the emergence of a fast-moving teal car in the distance. That same teal car that appeared in front of the house before. But when Richie risks another glance back, it becomes clear that he had been fooled completely by the limitless power of the clown.
The car slows similarly to how the citizens leisurely observe nearby car crashes, and Richie is quick to realize why. The stern face of Sonia Kaspbrak appears to be in the middle of ranting to the back seat, but stops and glares forward once she notices Richie about to pass. She honks as though Richie’s bike blocks her side of the road, which just serves to raise his heart rate further. The car does not overstay its welcome, but time stops as another set of wide eyes fixate on his frame. The real Eddie transfixes on him, already rife with annoyance before shock sets into his face. Richie notices how he inspects the red trickling from his thigh and onto the bike.
And just like that, Eddie had passed him by, only getting to see each other as Richie brims with fear. He realizes too late now that tears were definitely running down his face. The wetness makes itself apparent as he wipes his cheek.
‘Today fucking sucks.’