ʀɪᴄʜɪᴇ (beepbeep) wrote in evaluation, @ 2019-11-06 10:53:00 |
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Some may wake to the soft, soothing sound of birds chirping, like, a whole damn sonata gliding on the air like bubbles. Maybe add in the warm velvet of a blanket and the heavy scent of vanilla as something meant to comfort and something gentle - it eased you into wakefulness gradually, nothing harsh. Some may wake to a face eager to see theirs, eyes wide and bright. Or maybe welcoming, outstretched arms. Or if you were Richie Tozier in a hell house, you awakened with riotous hair, crust in the corner of your eyes, fumbling for your glasses and on a bed made of smooth marzipan - maybe vanilla had been involved in its creation, but everything was just stale now and the candy funhouse was made of crushed hopes and crushed sugar. You also awakened facing a fucking clown, which came into focus once those glasses were on - six feet tall and fresh from the circus, holding a red, gently bobbing balloon. The doll grinned at him like a goddamn jack-o-lantern, and all he comprehended when he looked at its face was terror. It reminded him of a cake that had been sitting out for too long, cracked buttercream icing. “Nyyyuuuhhh!” was the sound he made, voice still gravelly from sleep and he tossed away the stupid spun-sugar blanket and the other real ones they’d hoarded, catapulting to where John was and ripping back the covers. “Scoot over, scoot over, scoot over - “ How he was going to fit in here was another haunted mansion mystery, but he did not give a fuck. With the temperatures in the house plummeting, and sugar not exactly welcoming once it got frosty and brittle, all of the scavenged blankets had been piled into beds in the vain hope that maybe retaining warmth was possible with enough layering. It… sort of worked. Vaguely. But only when also thinking very warm thoughts and being somewhere close to half-drunk when nodding off. Not his fault. Things had spiralled so far beyond anything like control that John had given up trying to keep track and was devoting most of his time to polishing off the wine cellar. He knew that wasn’t helpful, but really, what was at this point? Word games? Singing rodents? More literature references than an English professor could shake a stick at? Please. So he was vaguely hungover and altogether surprised to be woken up by a gangly comedian doing his utmost to force his way into the bed. “Th’fuck?” John rasped, squinting hopelessly upward. He did- entirely on autopilot- scoot over. It seemed like the thing to do when facing this much terrified vehemence first thing in the fucking morning. Maybe Richie should have run out of the room, but it was still a little bit cold (though granted, worlds better than yesterday - hopefully they could traverse the stairs without becoming household accident statistics) and the clown was also right at the foot of his bed. Leaving would require going past it, and it wasn’t so benign anymore - it had a weapon. Yeah, a fucking red balloon counted as a weapon in Richie’s view. Even before Pennywise, he had been scared of clowns. It made sense, right? Lots of people were. But then after all that bullshit, everything just intensified. Adrenaline was flooding his system, pumping like it was trying to escape. Much like his stampeding heart. “There’s - a fucking clown,” he managed to get out, the words gasped, and he curled arms and legs around John, his grip white-knuckled and his thigh muscles fully prepared to keep a grown man in between them because they were the jaws of life at this current time. Okay, so. True story, John was not a morning person. He had never been a morning person. Give him the option to stay up all night and just be fucking nocturnal and he’d take it (so in this way, his chosen profession had turned out to be all kinds of useful because John was a not a man capable of handling early commutes or office cubicles, but staying up all night in graveyards was totally fine and manageable). All that to say, he was not firing on all cylinders no matter how panicked Richie seemed, and mentioning clowns didn’t get him there either. John lifted his head- a haystack nest made wild in sleep- and peered around in search of… yep. Clown. Balloon. Unsettling, but not the stuff of nightmares. Not his nightmares, anyway. Richie seemed to be a different story. “Uh,” he grunted, slightly strained due to the way the other man had a koala death-grip on enough of his body to restrict movement and breathing, “Yeah. See that. Real creepy.” A pause, one hand settling on Richie’s back in what passed for a comforting pat. “Should I be doing something about it, then?” “No, don’t touch it - do not fucking move,” Richie hissed, and he was certain that’s just what the clown wanted - for them to do the wrong thing, and then it would lash out and eat them in one gulp. It was like when you were a kid, afraid to leave the safety of the bed so as not to attract the attention of the monsters lying in wait beneath. So you either peed yourself or practically walked on air to get to the damn bathroom. He didn’t want to know what this clown would do to them if they moved. “We’ll just have to stay here forever, sorry,” he apologized, lips pressed to John’s collarbone. Another slow, sleepy blink, John’s eyes studying first the clown and then the wild tangle of dark hair he could spot tucked near his chin, and he made a throaty, thoughtful noise that seemed to convey… file not found. Because what? It was early. There was a doll apparently terrorizing Richie, and John either needed coffee or another bottle of wine to deal with this properly. Probably the coffee would be more useful, but the wine bottle would double as a weapon. So there was that. “Not seein’ a whole lot of downside to this plan,” he allowed, after a suitable pause, “Except for how bedsores might eventually become a problem.” Of course, by then the house would’ve probably come up with a new plan to drive them to madness or death. “Sure you don’t want me to check? Got the fireplace poker… somewhere here.” It had been between the beds, maybe? Near to hand in case of fuckery. This did seem to qualify. Yeah, Richie was pretty sure he didn’t want John to check. What was there to even check anyway? The clown was right there. In the silence, Richie could hear its taunting - I dreamt of you, I craved you, I missed you. Fuck that thing, fuck it with a rusty spork. But then again, what else were they supposed to do? John was the moment of rest, the calm, and the clown was the gale that raged outside - but shying away from it wasn’t an option. He wasn’t some coward (he might need to throw up, sure, but he wasn’t a coward). So that was all true and yet for some reason, Richie could hear screams vibrating in his ears - familiar ones, maybe even his own - and yet he somehow forced himself to unclench and unlock the jaws of life that were his limbs. “Okay?” he huffed, trying to remember what you were supposed to do when you were having a panic attack. Sync your breathing, right - he did that, attempting to squelch the shuddering breaths and inhale the same time as John, exhaling slowly. “Fire poker. Go. But don’t actually touch the clown.” If he swung that fire poker and hurt Pennywise Jr, they’d all get sucked into a black hole. Don’t touch the clown. Right. Seemed like the best thing to do would be to pick it up and chuck it outside for somebody else to deal with, but fine, John could work with half-hearted permission to at least get up and get a closer look. To him, it seemed like a doll; creepy, yeah, and it definitely hadn’t been in the bedroom last night, so possibly it was mobile on its own terms, but. He’d seen a homicidal doll before, and it hadn’t exactly been the most intimidating thing in the world. The puppet had been marginally more disturbing, but. Puppets. Yikes. He tucked his chin down, pressing a glancing kiss to Richie’s temple, and then wiggled his way free of the bed. It landed him in a crouch, affording the opportunity to slide his hand out to find the cold steel of the fireplace poker, and John curled fingers tight around it before easing to his feet. “Right, then,” he murmured, creeping forward. So far, still unsettling as all hell… but unmoving. Not even a turn in his direction. Making it all the way around the clown in a wide arc without any hint of trouble- the only sign of movement from the way the balloon bobbed- John shrugged and returned to the bed. “Maybe someone’s playin’ a real shitty prank,” he suggested, taking a seat on the edge, fireplace poker still held out and at the ready, “Cos that thing’s not moving. Seems like nothing but a doll to me.” The fear of that stupid thing was still shackles, a knife in the gut. Richie was getting uncomfortable flashbacks of Neibolt and the paralyzing hurt and sorrow spreading through him like icy, liquid metal. Made it hard for him to leave the wreckage, or even dredge up the will to do so. Not when Eddie was still there. Not when they could save him. Looking at that doll was a reminder of all he’d lost. Stupid, maybe, but that didn’t stop the punch to the face sensation it invoked. “But the balloon’s new?” he pointed out, gripping the blankets that suddenly felt way too hot all of a sudden. “In my - when...before. There was one just like that. It was filled with blood.” “Balloon is new,” John agreed with a tilt of his head. “Floats like it’s got helium, even.” Had they seen a helium tank in the house? Not that it mattered. Maybe there had been one in the bottomless pit and it got coughed up after the thing got too full of rats, maybe. Who knew? There was no rhyme or reason here and trying to find it was only making everyone crazy. Crazier, maybe. John wouldn’t claim full sanity, himself. He was starting to get the impression this was more than one of those cases of clown-phobia, which were common enough. This was personal, or Richie wouldn’t be half-buried in the bed and stammering. “So eventually,” he said, reaching with the hand not clutching the poker to card careful fingers through the wild tangle of Richie’s hair, “You’ll probably want to explain a few things to me. Bout clowns and the like.” He quirked a thin, hopefully reassuring smile. “For now, how ‘bout I put the clown outside?” The room, obviously. They couldn’t get outside outside, or everyone would’ve run for it days ago. You’ll float too you’ll float too you’ll float too you’ll float-- “Yeah,” Richie agreed, voice a little louder than he anticipated - due to trying to drown out that beloved sewer chant in his head that sounded like funeral bells and long, clown nails down a blackboard. “It floats.” He also supposed he agreed with having to explain things. If this whatever that seemed to be simmering between them actually became anything other than ‘we’re about to die, let’s fuck’ then it might be prudent to know - even if the idea of simmering becoming a boil and then becoming something else (what was next?) was fucking terrifying; he’d never attempted anything like that with someone he was actually attracted to before. He’d forced himself into hetero-whatevero’s and was all the more unhappy for it. But, yeah, cart before the horse. “You could move it?” The statement came out like a question. “I’ll...hit it with something. If it fights back.” One of those wine bottles or, screw it, light a match and immolate the fucking thing. By no means was John suggesting he might be relationship material, here. He’d sent his last boyfriend to Hell. Literally. With the kicking and screaming and everything, and he’d done it knowingly and willingly and without (much) hesitation. In his defense, he did have second thoughts later… and he’d tried to fix it. But, like most things in John’s life, once he’d cocked it up, there was no going back. But he did find Richie attractive, and far braver than anyone in this fucked up kind of situation ought to be, so maybe they could give it a go. Or maybe they’d die messily here any moment, eaten by clowns or drowned in melting marzipan. Who really knew? “Here, then.” He presented the poker with a firm nod. “Moves at all, feel free to bash its face in with extreme prejudice. Just give me enough warning to get out of the way.” John was spry enough, but he’d rather have advance notice in the event of panicked flailing. Or stabbing. Especially the stabbing. Standing again, he brushed a hand through his hair and squared up with the doll, though he didn’t reach out until Richie was on his feet and prepared to take any and all necessary defensive action. Alright, alright. On his feet, fire poker in hand - Richie was ready. He’d just woke up like, ten seconds ago but he remained alert and...somewhat focused. His eyes were a bit bleary, cloudy blue crystal, outlook hazy - try again later. He’d stab the shit out of this fucking clown though, if it tried anything. “Okay, just - do it, go,” he insisted, unable to stop from watching that red balloon. It was tempting in that ‘scratch my mosquito bite til it bleeds’ way. “Where are you even going to put it anyway?” Just outside? It should be tossed down the stairs. “Hadn’t got any further than putting it out of the room,” John admitted, rueful. “Figured first order of business was keepin’ you from having a heart attack. Again.” Because that swooning fit the day before had nearly given John a heart attack, and he couldn’t handle Round Two this early. Or at all. Yeah, fine. He was already too attached and it was bad news and probably the clown would eat them both now, Richie first. Shaking his head, he reached out and carefully seized the doll by the shoulders. When nothing happened, he lifted it up enough to start walking it toward the door, balloon bobbing merrily along with each step. “That’s sweet of you, angelface,” Richie smirked - right, that Dave the computer fuckery was on his list of Top Ten embarrassing moments; passing out from exhaustion in the arms of someone you wanted to do the dirty with more than once (and go on a date with, if there was anyplace to go on a date in Hell Abode) wasn’t something he planned, but. He got to use his video gaming skills to bring Ava back, so, he didn’t wholly regret it. He followed along, as John walked the six-foot tall doll out of the room, eyes narrowed in a dramatic squint - just waiting for something shitty to happen. That grip on the fire poker didn’t let up either, but then once they got to the staircase he was like, fuck it. “Fuck it,” he said out loud, inner monologue corresponding, and just shoved the goddamn clown down the stairs like Scarlett O’Hara (except Richie would never do that to a woman, that was very wrong). Unfortunately, the balloon got caught on the top of the banister and burst. Glitter. A fucking storm of it, bathing him so fabulously, but also leaving him...dumbfounded. Utterly. “S’me all over,” John agreed with a tired smirk, expression creasing with what passed for amusement in this particular disaster they were stuck handling. “Sweeter than the bedsheets we just left.” He threw in a wink for good measure, though he was slightly distracted with how awkward it was to move a full-sized clown. Why did anyone need a doll this big? It wasn’t heavy, just… weird. To each his own and all that, but there were limits. Once at the staircase, John was prepared to just drop the thing down and hope for the best- as in, hope it didn’t explode in a swarm of killer bees, because that seemed about as likely as anything else at this point, but. He hadn’t reckoned on Richie stepping up to give it a solid shove. Startled, John wobbled, threw a hand out, and… Well. Now he looked like he’d been jerking off a fairy this morning. So there was that. “Fuck,” he sighed, shaking off his fingers. It was no use, of course. They were both going to be wearing glitter for days. All these sparkles, but didn’t it look fantastic on them? Richie blinked, again, once more - then he just started laughing, because they were still alive and he’d just pushed a six-foot clown doll down the stairs and was now doused with the herpes of the craft world. Great. No amount of showering together in the candied shithouse would wash off this glitter either. “You look nice,” he told John, then he just did the only thing he could think of. The fire poker hit the ground with a clank and long fingers tangled in bed-mussed blonde hair, the pad of his thumb gliding over John’s cheekbone as Richie suctioned their mouths together, his satisfied grin gleaming in the dim light of the hall. Lips pressed with bruising, relieved force, tongue shoving over his and tasting warm bitter sweetness from that wine consumed in the late hour. Breakfast of champions now. Another heartfelt sigh because, no, nope. This was stripper-levels of glitter. Disney princess levels. Those things had a weird level of overlap John had somehow never stopped to consider before, and he might have offered witty commentary on it if Richie hadn’t seized the moment- and his face- and reeled him in for a surprisingly good kiss. Glitter-dusted hands caught at the other man’s shoulders, steadying them both, and John breathed out a noise that was both startled and very pleased. “Mhm,” he mumbled, lips moving against Richie’s, “And a good morning t’you too, lamb.” His chuckle was smoke-dark and not a little smug, and he ducked into another kiss. If this was the kind of reward he got for rising early and murdering a doll, he’d do it all again. “Good morning, angelface,” Richie laughed too, around that second kiss - and he’d wanted it so badly. He’d wanted the first one too and he would have taken it yesterday but video gaming got in the way. Right now, he wasn’t about to let a fucking clown get in the way. Maybe their first kiss shouldn’t have been literally, actually tainted with glitter - but you couldn’t be too picky here. It didn’t matter anyway, when he kissed John again - deliberate, tongue swiping his bottom lip and he tasted like smoke and spice for some reason. Arms draped around his shoulders, and Richie sighed a little. “I should - so about the clown thing?” That was him going back to what John mentioned before, that he wanted to hear about...things. “Mm. About the clown thing,” John echoed, gently steering them back toward the bedroom. Serious chats should not be held near staircases. Also, though it was no longer frosty-freezing in the hallway, it wasn’t exactly balmy either, and the blankets were all still in the bedroom. This seemed like a conversation that should, for various reasons, involve some kind of security blanket. And since the wine was downstairs and Richie was, for some godforsaken reason, rationing his cigarettes now… blankets it would have to be. He settled back into bed, rearranged blankets into some kind of order, and tugged Richie’s gangly frame down too. “Let’s hear it, whatever you want to tell. No judgment here. Seen plenty of weird, fucked up things.” He’d watched a unicorn bite off a man’s nipple once… and even if he hadn’t, Gary wouldn’t shut up about it. So he’d know either way. The idea of rationing his cigarettes seemed to be the worst goddamn thing in existence right now - why had Richie agreed to that again? Dumbest. Ever. But regardless, he crawled into bed sans alcohol and cancer sticks; he was fine with the old, musty blankets and John as a security blanket too. He hooked a leg up over his bed buddy’s hip, nose nudging at his shoulder. “When I was a kid,” he started, voice crackly and somewhat unsure - since he’d never really explained this before. “There were seven of us in total, we were all friends. Outcasts. Losers. Our town was always...tainted though. Like, evil - buildings were burned down by cults, people were shot in broad daylight. The police would investigate but not really get anywhere. And sometimes, kids would disappear too...” Glitter-stained fingers flexed, his palms pressing to John’s chest. Richie could feel his heartbeats this way, the rise and fall, the flex of his ribs. It was soothing. “We figured out that the source of all these bad things was this...ancient Eldritch monster. IT, that was really what it was called, but it took the form of a clown called Pennywise - it terrorized kids, their fear was like salting its meals before it consumed them and...the seven of us, we sent it into hibernation one summer. Things were fine until twenty-seven years later when IT awakened, and we’re adults, we’ve lost that childhood innocence - so we had to go back home and kill Pennywise. Not all of us...survived.” Richie, honey. He’s dead. It echoed, endlessly. However Richie needed to tell his story, he was welcome to it. That included fidgeting, chewing his fingers or his lips, tearing little strings out of the blankets, whatever. If what he wanted was to splay a hand out wide on John’s chest to feel the steady thump of a heartbeat, that was just fine too. He took slow, measured breaths- in and out, keep it calm- and watched the ceiling as the other man spoke. It was a hell of a story. Eldritch monster in the form of a clown, purposefully terrorizing kids to make them a more delicious meal. That was, surprisingly, a new one for John; not the fear being delicious thing. That was kind of a fact for plenty of supernatural beasties. But clown monsters? Not familiar. “Lost a friend, did you?” John prompted, hushed. He’d been there. It was always gutting, never got easier. “Two,” Richie murmured, inching closer. As if he could get any closer, but it wouldn’t stop him from trying. “When you see Pennywise in his true form, it’s called the Deadlights. It’s too much to comprehend for any human, you see everything when you’re in it - you see the future. And if you’re lucky enough to get out it leaves you with...kind of a virus, I guess. Inner scars. One of my friends experienced that as a kid and she had visions of all of us dying eventually. When you leave Derry you forget your time there but regardless, the trauma of it would be too much to handle - that happened to one of us, before we could help him get through it. He committed suicide before we returned to Derry.” And then - well, talking about Eddie was going to really affect him. He could feel the fissures in his stupid heart already. “The other one - “ His fingers tightened, the tips turning white, “...we were fighting Pennywise in the caverns. I got caught in the Deadlights. He saved my life.” One hand settled on Richie’s back, tracing idle shapes that weren’t so idle. John had absolutely no juice to speak of here, no contact with any power he ought to be able to reach, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t assuage a little anxiety by tracing protective symbols down the length of Richie’s spine. He didn’t have to look to see what he was doing. It was basically a habit by now, the sort of thing he could do in his sleep. “So you’ve got a touch of the seer in you now,” he mused, thoughtful. Clairvoyance was a heavy burden. Coming at the cost of a friend’s life was worse. He made a face, fingers stuttering between the jutting wings of Richie’s shoulder blades. “This right before you ended up here?” “Oh, uh - “ Richie blinked, his lashes wet. Whatever John was doing to him, it kind of eased him into this blissful calm state, the rhythmic percussion of ocean waves on sand. But he hadn’t even thought about having ‘a touch of the seer.’ Like what the shit. “I don’t think I do,” he said, though as soon as the words left him, he wasn’t entirely convinced. What if he did? That same shit Bev had to deal with for so long, and she wasn’t even here to ask her about it? It would suck. “I wasn’t in them that long,” he mumbled, lips brushing the carved edge of John’s jawline. “But yeah, it was...right before here.” That didn’t sound like a no, really, but only time would tell. Nobody had any particular abilities here, so if Richie really was clairvoyant… he wouldn’t know. Not yet. Filing that one away for later, John made an encouraging sound and went back to tracing shapes- runes and soft whorls, symbols he usually sketched in chalk or salt reduced to unseen sensation. “M’sorry for your loss,” he said, after a beat. “And I’m sorry you haven’t really had the time to… you know, mourn. Hard to do that in the middle of all this.” John wasn’t an expert at proper grieving. He was kind of shite at it, to be honest. Mostly he shoved his own grief into a little box in the back of his brain, then tucked that box behind more boxes labeled awkward things like abandonment issues. He considered a beat before offering, quiet, “We get somewhere I can actually be useful, I’ll help you say your goodbyes. If you want.” Thinking of Eddie and Stan meant wave after wave of sadness dragging him into this abysmal darkness. Richie didn’t know how to deal with that, at least not in a productive way. Saying a proper goodbye to them - well, that was why John’s whole ghost summoning thing had piqued his interest at first. And stupidly, he’d sat in the seance hoping that maybe, just maybe, some other ghost besides the cold, unfeeling ones calling the shots in this house would come through. Maybe an accountant bird-watcher with curly hair, quiet and thoughtful, or a somewhat short risk analyst with more bravery in his pinky finger than most people had in their whole bodies. “Thank you,” he murmured, curving his lips around John’s. “Angelface.” |