Notes: Part two of SWTF (though I imagine it takes place before). Because God help anyone who interrupts naptime.
Cracky? You bet it is.
"Ploy Dead"
K+ (starring... Richie?)
Richie smirked, a self-satisfied smirk of it-was-only-a-matter-of-time.
"Why you lookin' so guilty there, Stripes?"
Hands wringing nervously, Pennywise's nearest eye glanced mutely over his shoulder by way of response. The other remained fixed on the prone form before him.
Peering around, Richie's formidable smirk fell into a frown. Against his better judgment, he grabbed the clown by the arm.
"Hey, is he still alive?"
"He's breaThing..." Pennywise squeaked, a miserable peep of a noise that did not sound natural, even for him. "I thinK?"
Alarmed, Richie elbowed the creature aside, took one look down, balked, and spun around.
"Back up! Bill! Back up is needed!" Like he was fleeing some inane, nonexistent shootout between gangbangers and law enforcement, Richie sprinted out of the room. His smoking shadow was all but left behind. "We need back up in here!"
Not that his former-well house hadn't ever been the scene of past wrongdoings, but now, Pennywise was beyond convinced he had made the biggest mistake of his entire existence, there and then. Leaving Georgie alone during naptime, when Bill had specifically asked him not to. He had only been gone for a moment, watching the car pulling a suspicious U-turn at the end of his street.
To come back to this...
A little whine of dismay escaped him, and he bit one of his knuckles. He was as good as hosed.
The slumbering boy looked peaceful enough. Avoiding the indignity that was a rat-chewed mattress, he reclined atop his polyester sleeping bag, his head resting on a pillow made of his own arms. He lay at an angle, back rising and falling with gentle, even breaths. Nothing was outwardly wrong with him.
Or inwardly.
Actually panicking, Pennywise dropped to all fours, then all the way down, flat against the floor, prodding first at Georgie's shoulder, then his nuzzling helplessly at his face. The seven-year-old's thought patterns had all but slipped under his guardian's proverbial radar. It was like pawing through a stack of copier papers, one sheet as blank as the next. No hints as to what was going on between synapses.
Outwardly, his face was just as unreadable.
Pounding feet rushed back up the stairs, echoing like gunshots through the empty hallway.
Richie's frantically explaining voice accompanied them. "...I was only gone for three minutes, max. Came back, and he hasn't - "
Bill, to the contrary, took one look at the scene and promptly burst out laughing.
"He's just napping, Richie."
"Napping the braindead sleep of those who can't even be brought back by love's first kiss." Before a bemused Pennywise could ask, Richie jabbed a finger between the clown's crossed eyes. "Don't try that."
Then he made the mistake of accepting the most impossible of challenges.
"I'll wake him up."
He started off gentle.
"Georgie! Nap time's over."
Nothing.
"Squirt, you hear me? This ain't funny."
Down on his knees, Richie grabbed young Denbrough by the shoulders.
"I know you can hear me."
"Billy, it isn't woRking."
"See? You've even got the Drama Diva convinced you're worse than ever."
"GeorgIe!"
Richie started shaking him.
Insert zany dialogue montage here.
Ten minutes later...
"WAKE UP! Live, LIVE again! I beseech you in the name of our Lord and our Savior! Rise!"
Tozier didn't know what he was saying anymore.
Somewhere along the way, Pennywise had slowly crawled backwards on his hands and knees, away from Georgie, out of the 'preacher's' field of view. There was something vaguely intimidating about the sight.
Arms dropping to his sides, Richie sat back on his knees, ankles numb. He felt something like the world's most ineffective exorcist. His insides felt like half-melted jelly, slowly leeching down into his limbs.
He was actually starting to sweat. Or were those tears of frustration leaking down his face?
Eyes still shut, Georgie finally put an end to the fracas.
He smiled.
And apparently that was his co-conspirator's cue.
Richie's heart stopped.
Vaguely, he heard ringing bells, quickly drawing close. Like a cat about to pounce.
"What's the f- urg!" Not caring who was in the way, he flailed and bucked uselessly as he was grabbed, pulled down, and promptly trapped in the arms of a walking, talking, laughing cosmic insanity. Just as well, they had worn him down before springing this surprise on him. "No! Quit it! Release me!"
Was this what Death's embrace was supposed to feel like?
Or Death's drooling, fifty-third great-great something-something-something cousin? Twice removed?
Pennywise was an idiot. Plain and simple. He somehow thought bearhugging his victims to death was a preferable alternative to being hypnotized, mauled, dismembered, disemboweled, or all of the above, at the same time.
He cackled the whole way through. Even more agitating, the entity was never short on breath to laugh with, either.
"You've seen your faCe. We had you goIng good!"
Somewhere in the background were the muddled voices of Bill and Georgie. Where those nimrods congratulating each other?
"Err, let go! I mean it, stop!"
Richie scowled, eyes squeezed shut. An oversized hand ruffled his already-disheveled hair. "Who's the guilty oNe now?"
"You still are, you overcompensating, dumba- ow! Stop! Too tight!" Tozier struggled for a solid five minutes. Or so it felt. It was like trying to break out of a duct-taped straightjacket sculpted from granite marble.
With a grunt, Richie finally managed to pry his face out from behind the clown's forearm. His glasses were askew, nosepads forced down on the bridge of his nose like a pinching clothespin.
Or was than another unseen poltergeist gnawing at his face?
"Errr... Not nice, Stripes. Not- urph - not nice. In any sense of the word!"
Caught up in their own round of hysterics, the hugging Denbrough boys collapsed on the overcrowded sleeping bag behind them.
With Richie still pinned against his chest, Pennywise fell over and kept on laughing.
"Evil. Evil plan. All of you."