Disclaimer: "It" belongs to Stephen King and not to me. *bursts into tears* But hey, my best friend´s father knows his neighbour, so he hopefully won´t be angry with me for using his characters ^-^ The song "Cursed" doesn´t belong to me either, but to Robbie Williams *SIGH* I won NOTHING and don´t even make money with this.

Pairing: Mike / Richie

WARNING: Slash! If you´re homophobic, please don´t read. don´t want to be the reason for your heartattack. Nothing heavy though. pretty pretty mild.

A/N: I´ve ment to write something about Mike and Richie for quite some time. and FINALLY I did *Wow!* I hope you can understand everything, I think it might be a bit messy. However, just red and review, ok? ^-^

Cursed

I was sitting in some New Yorker café late Frieday night. In front of me lay a newspaper which said in some small collum "Richie Tozier, 56, famous north-eastern comidian, died of heart attack". I had bought the newspaper this morning in some drug store near Central Park. I stumbeled about the article accidently. It was 11 p.m. now and I had been sitting here for five houres , trying to figure out, what Richie Tozier had once ment to me. or still did? A tear of mine had fallen on the part of heading that was telling his age. 56. As old as me. Had he gone to College with me? No, I didn´t think so. Hm. a comidian it said. Maybe. could it be. that he was the only person I remembered, if only faguely, that could make me truly laugh?

--- "Miss Scarlet! Miss Scarlet! There comes this black boy again! good Lord, I really don´t know when the barrens has become like this.Just when I see this black haired lad, I feel like needing a mint tea. Best on the porch, where it´s a bit cooler.."

"Piep, piep, Richie." ---

*** Dig your polished nails into the dirt

Rip your skirt off, wipe the hurt off

You know it tears my heart out when you

flirt with danger or any strange ***

A childhood friend of his? Was it that? A friend from Derry? He didn´t remember, which really scared him. why couldn´t he remember? What was wrong? He looked at the black and white photo of Richie Tozier. He was still pretty good looking for 56. But something disturbed me. /Richie wore glasses./ Yes, now he remembered: Big glasses. The other kids had laughed at him because of them.

---

*** You´re not as stupid as I look

before I could read you wrote the book ***

"I don´t care if they do, Mikey. They laugh at you cause you are black, do you give a damn?"

"No. But it´s different.. you could simple buy other glasses, so."

"Hell, and live without the wonderful jokes they provoke? Mikey, Mikey, you want to drain the world of all humor, do you?"

He laughed. ---

*** Cursed since your birth dear

And your worst fears have all come true ***

"Yesterday night the popular comidian Richie Tozier died of a hear attack after one of his shows. The doctors said that it might have been the alokohol, that Tozier was known to consume, that had lead to this. However the acctual reason for the outbreak isn´t clear yet. Maybe the stress of his 125th show is to blame. Tozier was born in Derry, Maine, in 1947 and went to the univeraty of." Yes, from Derry. The name of my hometown alone gave me the heebygeebys. Richie Tozier with those enormous glasses. From Derry. The funniest person alive. No, dead. ---

*** Held my hand when I got my first tatoo

I was naked when I penetrated

Told everyone I´d slept with you

Thought you´d like it, knew you wouldn´t deny it ***

--- "Mike, Eddie is dead." He told him as he sat at the side of his bed in the hospital. "Eddie died and Eddie killed It." A tear ran down his face. Mike tried to sit up in order to hug him, but failed. he had been badly injured.

"Richie."

His friend bend down and planted a kiss on his forehead. ---

My eyes snapped open widely.

--- "I love you, Mikey." ---

Oh my GOD! How could I ever forget something like that? HOW? Richie Tozier, the one person I had ever really adored and loved! Everything came back to me. I felt like a wave of memory came over me, burring me and taking my breath. I grabbed the table plate and held on to it, as if not to faint.

---

*** St. Peter´s gotta be unfaithful

Tell god he´s got a dirty angel ***

"Hi Mikey! You shouldn´t hang out alone here, you know?" Michael rolled his eyes. "Richie, I´m ELEVEN! I can take care of myself. You start to sound like my mother." "Mister Hanlon!" he called out in his voice of the black slave girl. "How dare you insult Miss Scarlet like that! My, I´m going to tell her, how you aren´t any worthy of her generousity!" Mike giggled and played along.

"Oh, please, please, have mercy! I´m only a poor worker boy! I have no place to go! I beg you!"

"Oh, I´m too friendly, I know, but for this one time I shall spare you."

"Oh thank you! THANK you! Oh, how can I every show you just HOW grateful I am?" "How about giving me a kiss?"

Mike blinked at him. Richie did too. Finally, Richie started to laugh uneasyly.

"Just joking, pal! Boy, you should have seen your face!"

There was an awkward silence.

"I KNEW you were joking." ---

*** Cursed since your birth dear

And your worst fears have all come true

Baby you´re not the first here on earth dear

´cause I´m still here and I´m cursed too

cursed like you ***

--- All they could do, was walk home. Would they have been grown, they might have went to a pub and celebrate their victory. Their glorious victory over the evil. But they weren´t. Ironically, they were only 11-year-olds, no matter whether they had fought braver than most adults would have, or not. They were 11-year-old kids that had to be home before 6 o´clock. So they walked down the main street, making their way to their families, that didn´t even have a clue, what their children had just done. They were tired and drity and people stopped and stared at them; six boys and a girl, that looked they had fallen into an enormous sea of dirt. Stan and Eddie had to leave them first. They walked around the corner of St.Peter´s Lane. Next was Beverly. She hugged everyone and gave Bill and Ben a smal kiss on the cheek. They left shortly after. Now Richie and Mike were the only ones walking down Main Street. None of them said a word. With their great relieve had come an exhaustion of the same size. Maybe deep inside they even knew already that the war wasn´t over yet. They had only won a fight. Eventually they reached the corner of Richie´s street.

"Guess I´ll see you around, Richie."

Without thinking Richie bend down to him and kissed his friend on the mouth.

"You bet, Mikey."

He said and went away. ---

I hadn´t seen him in a long time, after that. In a very long time.

--- "Richie Tozier?" Michael threw down the reciever. It was the third time he had tried to phone Richie. From all the calles he had to make, this sure was the most difficult. What would he say? Hello Richie, this is Mike from Derry. You remember me? The last time we saw us you kissed me and promised we´d meet again and never showed up. Hello, reason for my life of a bachelor! Fuck! He dialed the number again.

"Richie Tozier?"

"Hello, this is Mike Hanlon, from Derry."

"Mike?"

"It has come back."

"But.. you sure?"

Mike turned around and found a red ballon with the words He shall die first, old fag in front of him.

"Damn sure. ..Richie, how much do you remember?"

"Hardly anything."

"But you have to come! You made ."

". a promise."

No, Mike thought to himself. TWO promises. ---

*** Hush, baby sleep now

we all love ou, we always did ***

Richie had moved two weeks after they had defeated it, I remembered. His Dad´s new job was in New York and they hadn´t told him. I knew that Bill had phoned all of us the night before Richie left and I was at his house the next morning, only to find that they were already gone.

--- "Mikey!" Mike turned around and saw his childhood friend Richie Tozier standing in the doorway of the chinese restaurant, they were to meet in. Richie rushed towards him and gave him a hug.

"Haven´t seen you in ages, pal."

"I´m glad to see you, too." ---

*** Cursed, since your birth dear

and your worst fears have all come true

baby you´re not the first here on earth dear

´cause I´m still here and I´m cursed like you ***

--- When they left the restaurant to go for a walk as Mike had told them to, Richie had insisted on accompanishing him to the libary. They walked down the road that led to the buildings that were connected with the glass channel.

"Hm.. Mike?"

"Yes?"

"Mike, I don´t remember everything, but. don´t get that wrong, but.. ahm. we never. I mean, you and I, we never had. some kind of.. hm.. relationship, did we?" "No. We were just friends." he didn´t know, why he lied, nor if it acctually WAS a lie- one kiss could hardly be counted as a relationship. "Oh. well, don´t bother. I´m just a little bit.. mixed up." "No problem." ---

And when the others left for the hotel, later, Richie had. had.

--- "You´ve always been a bad liar, Mikey."

"What do you mean?"

Richie kissed him hard on the mouth. Mike was taken abake at first, but like in reflex parted his lips and let Richie´s tongue slide in. He felt a familiar warmth inside his stomache, he hadn´t felt since he was a child.

"You ever wondered, why the two of us didn´t get married?"

Richie asked and started to plant kisses along Mike´s neck. He moaned under his touch. ---

*** Hush, baby sleep now

We all miss you, we always will ***

--- He had cursed himself for being in the habit of drifting off into sleep, after having slept with someone, because when he woke up Richie was no where near. He probably went back to the hotel. Well, he´d see him soon. Mike smiled. So he had kept both his promises. He got dressed and automatically started cleaning up the library. When suddenly he got the feeling someone was watching him. He looked into the corridor that led to the children´s library and saw a dark figure.

"R-Richie? Bill?."

Henry Browers jumped and him and hit him with his knife. ---

I had survived. but whatfore? All I was left with in the end was a broke heart.

--- "You can´t leave me like that!"

Mike´s voice was high, as he shouted at Richie.

"I can ,and you know, I must!"

"Oh, excuse me, if I´m mistaken, but I believe you told me, you´d love me, just yesterday in the hospital!"

"Please don´t, Mikey.."

"Why the hell not??? Please, I beg you, let me go with you to New York!"

"Mike."

Michael had thrown his arms around his friends head and looked him deep into the eyes.

"Please."

"No MIKEY!"

Richie broke free and stormed out of the library without even turning around or as much as a goodbye. Mike stood in the empty room and began to weep. He felt like he was a devil for what he knew. He felt guilty, because hadn´t he phoned Eddie he would still be alive. He was the one, who had cursed them all by bringing back theit memories. Of cause Richie was eager to forget it all again. And he couldn´t with him anywhere near him. How could he ever have thought anything would change. His only chance was to lern to forget himself. ---

2 a.m. I had sat in the café for three houres, remembering things that lay many many years in the past. when my vision became focused again, I saw that the newspaper was wet with tears I had cried. I had cried for Eddie. And Richie. And maybe most of all for myself. For me being cursed. Cursed forever.

I payed the waitress who gave me a puzzeled look and went out into the street. On some benche I found a newspaper whichs letters were still readable unlikely those of mine, washed away by my tears. Richie was burried here. In a New Yorker grave yard. I went there by subway.

"Open 9 a-m. - 8 p.m."

the note at the gate read. I didn´t care and entered by climbing over it. It didn´t take me long to find the grave I had been looking for. "Richie Tozier 1947-2003 may the world keep me in mind for being the stupid git I was" Mike shook his head over this. This was so like Richie. Of course he had choosen the words on his grave stone himself. Suddenly I noticed I had forgotten to bring flowers. I somehow felt like visiting a grave without laying anything onto it, would be rude, so I took out a pen and a piece of paper, the only things I took with him EVERYWHERE. And on the paper I wrote:

"Cursed, since your birth dear

and your worst fears have all come true

baby you´re not the first here on earth dear

´cause I´m still here and I´m cursed too

cursed like you "

Yes, this one fit. Nothing cheesy. Richie wouldn´t have wanted it that way. I hugged the massiv stone in front of me and lay the note on top of the roses someone had brought. Then I left. And I knew that the next day, my memories would all be replaced by sweet oblivion.