Note: Ermmm... hello, it's been a while... I apologise greatly. Indeed, as an astute Guest pointed out, it has in fact been over a year :o It's been a very intense hectic year, with a lot happening to significantly absorb any spare time I had, but mixed in with that was some very annoying writer's block. It wasn't that I didn't really know what to write, but more that this part of the fic is really important and I wanted to get it right (and you can't get it wrong if you never finish it, I suppose). I've had this first bit written for a while, so I thought maybe posting this for now would be something at least! I will do my best to get the second part finished ASAP, it's almost done but not quite yet. I'm sorry this isn't quite the part you might be waiting for, but rest assured that is super imminent! The downside of writing this so sporadically is that I may have introduced possible logic holes (I'm doing my own checking), if so please feel free to point them out so I can correct them :) Thanks to everyone who has stuck around with this fic all this time and sent the occasional reminders to finish it - your reviews were the motivation to continue working on it over time so that both you and I can finally, one day, find out how this ends! x
The hallways of the Derry Inn were deserted in their usual way (were they the only guests staying here?), but the emptiness of the time-weathered corridors somehow weighed heavier on his mind as Richie headed towards Eddie's room. The dream, well, nightmare, had stirred up memories long repressed and caused his stomach to twist in knots in a way he thought he'd taught himself not to feel a long time ago. When he left Derry, he had left that uncertain snarky kid behind and crafted a new persona, one which took all the best parts of his personality and deeply suppressed the rest.
Now, thanks to that horrid flashback, he remembered all of the confusing feelings he'd felt that day and how he had spent the rest of his childhood running from that moment. After Eddie's injury, they'd all gone their separate ways, and even though they reunited to rescue Beverly, he'd been especially careful to keep a distance between him and Eddie. Their relationship had never properly healed, not then, and not in the time since then.
Of course, it was easy to pretend he'd forgotten about all that since the reunion of the Losers in Derry because, for all intents and purposes, he basically had. Now he felt like a reset button had been pressed in his head and the thought of confronting Eddie alone made him feel decidedly anxious. But the dream also had felt like a dark omen, and the gnawing need to make sure Eddie was okay was for now outweighing the desire to run in the opposite direction, as appealing as that option sounded to him.
"God, what room was he again," Richie muttered under his breath, trying to remember where everyone had ended up. What he did remember was laughing at the others while they noted down the room numbers in their phones or on small notepads. He also vaguely recalled saying something about his amazing memory thanks to years of radio and television show hosting. Now, like most things, that lie was coming back to haunt him.
10? 01? 11? 21?
Whatever it was, he was pretty sure it had had ones in it. He decided to try rooms 10 and 11 first, since they were right next to each other and he was fairly sure it was one of them. No one answered his knock on room 10, so he went to try room 11 but it was slightly ajar which seemed promising. He hesitantly pushed it further open.
"Eddie?" He tried not to be too loud, in case he was accidentally intruding on someone else's space. But immediately, he spotted Eddie sitting on the edge of the bed, looking out the window. Eddie didn't turn to face him right away, causing his concern to grow. He entered the room, shutting the door behind.
"It's been so long since we were kids," Eddie said at last, his voice distant and a little wistful, still while facing the window with his hands in his lap.
"I still barely remember any of it," Richie lied.
"I remember a lot now," Eddie said softly. He finally turned to look at Richie, and Richie swallowed a gulp. Even though time had aged both of them (more than he cared to admit, really), Eddie's open and genuine expression made him look years younger. It reminded him of all the reasons he'd cared so much about the other in the first place. Eddie had always been the one among them to show the most vulnerability, to be the most accepting of the wide range of emotions they felt as teenagers, and Richie envied that in him both then and now.
He felt like he existed on the other end of that spectrum, perfecting the art of wearing masks and suppressing emotions so that no one could guess the turmoil really going on inside his head. Of building up a layer of protection he could control, so that he got to decide if and when he felt something. And when he'd gotten old enough to discover the ways in which alcohol and drugs could facilitate that repression, it had only amplified the degree to which he ran away from everything he ever felt.
"The day I broke my arm-" Eddie started.
"No," Richie shook his head hurriedly, stepping back and waving his hands. "Nope, we're not doing this right now."
"But Richie-"
"You realise there's a killer demon clown entity on the loose again, with its sights set firmly on us and then the rest of Derry, and, who fucking knows, maybe the rest of the world?"
Eddie got to his feet, closing the gap between them with a determined expression. There was less than a metre between them now. Richie hated that the proximity of the other made his heart start to race in his chest. He thought he'd gotten over all this years ago, pushed it to the bottom of his core so that he'd never feel as exposed as he did in that single moment leaving that god-forsaken house. But first the nightmare, and now Eddie, was taking him right back there like he never left.
Eddie reached a hand towards him, and Richie completely froze on the spot, hating himself for his weakness. Eddie's hand came to rest on his shoulder, and he was all too aware of the warmth radiating down through his shirt. He opened his mouth to say something probably witty but the words died in his throat.
And then before he could further react, suddenly Eddie closed the gap between them, and was pushing him against the wall, his mouth on Richie's as he kissed him with a passionate fervour that terrified Richie. He tried to speak, but Eddie's tongue prevented him from making more than a muffled protest, his hands holding him in place against the wall. Richie's brain suddenly felt incredibly foggy and dim, and all he could focus on was Eddie in front of him and the surreal and urgent way in which he was kissing him, as if they were both the last two people on Earth and everything was about to end.
As he began to kiss back, raising his arms to grasp Eddie's face, dim alarm bells were ringing in the back of his dulled mind. This moment was living out a fantasy from his childhood that he had long suppressed, making it all too easy to ignore the alarm bells.
But vaguely, like a faint light glowing in a heavy darkness, he felt a growing sense of concern.
This isn't like Eddie, is it?
He leaned into the kiss, heart pounding in his chest, emotions swirling within him that he hadn't felt in years. Emotions he'd refused to feel, no matter who he was with.
There's something wrong here.
He felt Eddie smile into the kiss, as the other pulled him from the wall and slowly led him in the direction of the bed, still kissing him all the while. He was running out of breath, gasping into Eddie's mouth.
This isn't real.
He happened to glance behind them at the doorway to the bathroom, catching a glimpse of their reflection as it flicked past the mirror. And stopped dead, horror filling him.
He wasn't kissing Eddie, the reflection informed him. No, it wasn't Eddie at all. It was a rotten, decaying corpse of Eddie, with dirty rags of clothing hanging off putrid greying green flesh. Suddenly, he could taste what he saw in the reflection as the corpse's tongue filled his mouth, and he screamed into it, trying to push the corpse away.
"How do you like me now, lover boy?" mocked the Eddie corpse as it pushed him roughly towards the bed. Thrown off balance, Richie stumbled backwards and fell on his back onto the bed, spitting out the taste of death and decay from his mouth, feeling like he needed to vomit urgently. He tried to get up, but the fake Eddie was there, holding him down, the blackened rotting tongue snaking out of its mouth above Richie, who slammed his own mouth violently shut and desperately tried to push the corpse off of him.
"I thought you loved me for me," rasped the corpse as it leant down to Richie's face, settling for running its slimy tongue along his cheek, leaving a trail of dark viscous substance. Richie squeezed his eyes shut and shuddered, unable to budge the corpse from holding him down on the bed. It shifted one of its skeletal arms to his neck, the wet bony fingers digging in harshly and cutting off his ability to breathe.
"Please-" he choked out, fingers grasping at the hand on his throat. He felt his energy draining and darkness was creeping in around the edges of his vision.
So this is how I die, he thought dimly, feeling ashamed and humiliated that he'd been so readily taken in by a completely out-of-character Eddie. Maybe he deserved it for being fooled that easily.
I guess I should have known better.
Pennywise knew him better than he knew himself, it would seem. The thought passing through his murky brain made him feel even more disgusted with himself, and he was somewhat sad that these were the feelings he was going to be checking out with. He wondered when the other Losers would notice he was gone.
I should have done things differently.
He heard a distant slamming noise as his vision start to fade, felt the weight on him suddenly lift and someone pulling him up from the bed, urgently shouting what he thought was his name.
He blinked open his eyes and struggled to focus them on the person with their arm under him, pulling him from the room with a panicked expression. He twisted his head slowly behind and blurrily saw the corpse on the floor growling as it rose.
Fuck. Now two of us will die.
"Richie, focus!" shouted the person next to him. "Help me get you out of here."
He blinked again, the room starting to come back into clarity. It was Eddie next to him, half pulling, half dragging him away from the bed with the Eddie corpse hissing and spitting curses as it moved towards them. Richie concentrated hard on trying to stand so that Eddie wasn't needing to carry his weight, and stumbled along with Eddie out of the room and into the hallway. His shaky feet tripped on the edge of the carpet and he sent the two of them flying forwards onto the ground, collapsing on top of Eddie who gasped at the impact.
They both turned to look behind them, breathing hard with panic and fear, but nothing followed them out of the room. The corpse, or rather, Pennywise, had apparently retreated. The only thing that drifted lazily out of the room was a blood-red balloon, floating into the hallway. Richie narrowed his eyes until he could bring the letters on the balloon into focus.
Call me anytime, lover boy.
Richie breathed out a half sob, burying his face into Eddie's shirt as he choked back the tears. He didn't know why he was crying really, seemingly a mix of having narrowly escaped death and having all the confusion of his teenage years stirred up so vividly in the process, but he was utterly exhausted from it and needed a moment to compose himself.
He stilled as he felt a warm hand gently stroking his hair, immediately pushing himself up and off of Eddie who was still lying on the floor with a hesitant expression on his face. Eddie pushed himself up on his elbows, as Richie reeled back from him.
"Are you the fucking clown again?" Richie demanded angrily, to Eddie's obvious confusion.
"No!" Eddie protested. "I was just trying to... I don't know, be comforting!"
Richie narrowed his eyes.
"Prove you're not the clown."
"How?" Eddie said weakly. "I have no idea how to do that."
"Tell me something only Eddie would know."
"Doesn't Pennywise know everything about us?"
"I don't know!"
"Richie, it's me, trust me!"
Richie breathed out slowly, still eyeing the other man suspiciously. True, he had helped him out of the room, and seemed much more like the normal Eddie. But it could also be an elaborate ploy, couldn't it? What was that saying, fool me once...
"You hid at the arcade after closing when you were eleven so you could keep playing that shooter game, to beat the high score before summer vacation ended," Eddie said softly.
"You wanted me to stay with you, but I chickened out because I thought I'd get in trouble with my mum. You took the top place already before 9pm and then snuck out again, setting off the alarm, and they could never figure out why someone broke out of the arcade without taking anything. And then you came over to my place, helped me make a pillow fort, and hung out with me until midnight."
That was a memory that Richie had forgotten, actually. He breathed out again, slowly, his heartbeat starting to settle back to its normal level.
"Okay, I believe you," he said finally, rubbing his aching neck carefully. "Thanks for... you know."
Eddie nodded mutely.
"You weren't scared at all?" Richie questioned, thinking back to the room. He hadn't expected it to be Eddie who grabbed him away from the corpse. His friend had been surprisingly dependable.
"I was terrified," Eddie confessed, with a wry laugh. "But I saw it choking you, you were passing out, and... I don't know, I just had to get you out of there."
Richie stared at Eddie, remembering how easily he'd been sucked into Pennywise's latest scam and feeling his cheeks grow hot in embarrassment.
"What, what's wrong?" Eddie asked nervously, feeling his face as if he had something on it. Richie just shook his head, unable to say anything that wouldn't incriminate him. At last, he finally thought of something else to say.
"Why that memory?"
Eddie blinked at him, his own cheeks flushing a little.
"Er... well, it was the first one that came to mind," he said hesitantly. "One that I thought Pennywise probably wouldn't focus on, if he has access to our memories at all. Don't you feel like... all the ways the clown tortures and mocks us... they're all based on our fears? I'm not sure it can access the happy memories in the same way."
Richie paused, contemplating Eddie's words. It did seem possible, but he wasn't sure thinking about it whether all of the visions they'd experienced from the clown had their basis in their fears. It seemed to him that maybe it was slightly more complex than that, but perhaps Eddie was onto something that they could use, somehow.
His brow furrowed a bit.
"That was a happy memory for you? But I was the one who got the high score."
"You spent 45 minutes recounting exactly what you went through to get that high score, in this excited but hushed voice so my mum wouldn't hear, while we were hidden in a pillow fort with my torch as the only light. You were so happy about it, I think it was contagious in some way..."
Eddie trailed off, looking awkward.
"Anyway, like I said, it was the first one that came to mind."
Richie didn't entirely know what to say in response, so he just gave Eddie a weak smile as he got to his feet, holding his hand out to help the other up.
"Thanks man, seriously," he said sombrely as he pulled Eddie up so that their faces were level again. "I thought I was a goner."
"I'm glad I got there in time," Eddie said quietly. "Sorry for leaving on my own, I just wanted to get my phone charger, and I heard you scream from the room next door... maybe we shouldn't go anywhere alone anymore."
Richie nodded.
"Yeah, I think sticking together makes sense."
He didn't offer to tell Eddie exactly what had happened in the room, and he was eternally grateful that Eddie hadn't asked. In the back of his mind, he vaguely registered that Pennywise had kindly provided him with a new source of nightmares, and hated the clown even more.
"By the way," Eddie said lightly, from in front of him. "You have zombie drool all down your cheek."
Richie gagged and hastily wiped his sleeve on his cheek.
"Get me to the nearest bathroom, as quickly as fucking possible please."
Yep... nightmares for days.
He was pretty certain of that.