InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Oh noes!"

Stan the Man (stanbyme) wrote in snapthread,
@ 2020-02-20 20:36:00

Entry tags:

richie tozier, stanley uris

WHO: Stan and Richie
WHAT: Just two guys being dudes
WHERE: Their house
WHEN: Tonight

Just when Stan felt like he'd been getting a hang on this place it went and did something to reassure him that no, he was severely mistaken he was not at all in a position to have any sort of handle on this place and that he really ought to just stop trying to pretend that he did. Which was of course where the issue was for him. Because Stan was the sort of person that liked order, he liked cleanliness, he liked to have a modicum of control over his life, it was a little bit of why he'd done what he'd done to end up here in the first place. To be the one to choose, to do it himself and not allow it to happen some other way, because he knew it would have and then his friends would have had to deal with the fall out of that.

But now he was here, and well he wasn't having thoughts that suggested maybe he needed to take drastic moves again to get away from it all, to save anyone. But he was struggling with it all, trying to figure out how to keep his legs under him and his wits about him as best he could. Which was why he stuck so close to his Losers.

Maybe he'd figure out how to change that, how to be better about it. Maybe not. It was hard to say really, but what was never hard was being around them. Stan couldn't believe he'd spent so long without them, not remembering who they'd been or how vital they had once been to him. But he had a chance now to fix that, to make it right and be better with them, and that was something to hold on to tightly now that he had it again.

"Richie," Stan groaned as he threw himself down beside him, leaning heavily into his side with a huff. "Entertain me," He pressed, not that he actually expected anything spectacular out of Richie in that moment, as much as he just wanted a little bit of his attention before he went off to bother one of the others. Maybe Eddie.

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trashmouthloser
2020-02-21 06:52 pm UTC (link)

Even having learned to build up walls -- temporary, shaky things; Dan had shown him bricks, but Richie never seemed to manage them quite right -- stuff was still slipping in. Everything felt like Jenga pieces in his head, wobbly, a piece missing here and there that he tried replacing but all it did was leave another spot open. He thought, maybe, even if his walls were good he wouldn't fully be able to block out all the thoughts and emotions going on in the Loser household.

And maybe he didn't want to, anyway. Stan seemed restless and not really in a bored sort of way so much as ... discomforted, maybe. Richie glanced up from where he'd been just zoning out on the couch, the far wall mysteriously interesting right up until Stan flopped on the couch next to him. "Entertain you?" he asked in a British huff of a Voice. "S'that all I am to you, Stanley? Entertainment on a whim?" Of course, well, he kind of was. That was what he did and always had done. What were the Losers without their comedian?

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stanbyme
2020-02-23 06:30 am UTC (link)

Stan chuckled as Richie put on one of his voices settling against him where he'd pulled him out of whatever it was he'd been doing, though by the looks of him he hadn't been all that busy. Unless of course he'd been thinking big thoughts, and knowing Richie - well he could definitely have been doing exactly that. Thinking them around and around in circles before he buried them all back down deep again before plastering on a smile for them, Stan wished he were better at that. Better at drawing that out of Richie, without always feeling like they had to sit down for a very serious talk.

At the very least he could be a distraction and around enough that maybe he could get Richie or any of the rest of them to talk if they needed it. But of course that hadn't actually been his intention just then, as much as it had been just the desire to be near to Richie again, the same way he'd have felt if it was any of them sitting there, Stan just wanted to be close to them.

"Nah, you're a pretty face too." Stan assured him reaching over to ruffle Richie's hair. "You ever feel like maybe there's gonna be more?" He asked, rather than waiting for any additional entertainment that Richie might try and scrounge up for him. "Like we're just waiting for some next thing?"

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trashmouthloser
2020-02-24 08:43 pm UTC (link)

It didn't always have to be a very serious talk. Sometimes Richie just thought about bigger shit. They were all adults now, and they'd seen some pretty horrible stuff and sometimes even Richie had to consider stuff. That wasn't really the case just now, mind. He really had just been zoning out over nothing in particular, which was about as close as he came to any sort of meditation or... whatever. It had more to do with his occasional inability to focus on shit more than anything else though.

"I mean, you're not wrong," he said, putting a hand under his chin like he was showing off his good looks. Which he kind of thought weren't actually all that great in comparison to the hotness that was all of the other Loser's all grown up. Beverly, Eddie and Stan were all stupidly hot. Ben had turned into a man that Richie would buy full calendars of. Mike too, actually. Bill was... Bill. Not the point.

He frowned over the question, admittedly a little confused. "...More?" He asked, needing maybe a little clarification. "Because, I dunno man. It sort of just sounds like you're describing how life generally works?"

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stanbyme
2020-02-25 06:11 am UTC (link)

Stan might have teased about being the hottest Loser, but in truth he was nearly positive they had all turned out to be above average attractive adults, no matter what Richie might be thinking about himself. The point was, Stan was being entirely honest about calling Richie pretty even if he was teasing him. "I know I'm not, I'm never wrong." He added just to be sure that Richie knew it and well because he wanted to tease a little bit more.

"I don't know-" He started and then huffed shaking his head when Richie suggested maybe he was just talking about life. "But it's not that either, you know. This isn't - I mean, back home it's working and bills and you know trying for a kid and office parties and things like that. And here it's..." He trailed off again and shrugged. "It's not really the way life works." At least not the way his life had worked, and he wasn't entirely sure how to make this new reality fit with some old idea of what life was meant to be.

He frowned a little trying to find the right words for it. "I don't really know that I can describe it, what I'm trying to say. If I even expect an answer, it's just kind of right there, in the back of my mind nagging at me and well - I've gotta push back at it." He admitted. This was probably one of those things that he'd just have to sit with for a little while to make some kind of peace with and figure out how to move forward from it, but right then it just left him confused and feeling like he was reaching for some answer that was just beyond his grasp.

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trashmouthloser
2020-02-27 12:22 am UTC (link)

That back home list of things weren't really how Richie's life had went, much. Beyond maybe the working part although it'd never really felt like working because, well, he loved his job. But he supposed he ...sort of got what Stan was getting at. That back home had been predictable (for Stan) in a lot of ways. Ways it certainly wasn't here. And so maybe it was sort of like waiting for the next thing, the next weird and crazy thing.

"I don't know," he said, kind of unsure exactly of what Stan was getting at, because maybe weird magic stuff happened here but so did killer space clowns back home so -- well. Maybe he didn't get what Stan was saying, after all. Because for as long as he'd been here, he'd kind of felt like his life was, oddly, far more stable than it'd ever been back home. "Stan. What the fuck, actually. Use your words better."

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stanbyme
2020-02-27 10:52 pm UTC (link)

The problem was Stan didn't really know what he was getting at either, just this sort of feeling sitting on his shoulders the longer he was here that he didn't quite know how to deal with or what to call. But it felt like the sort of thing he ought to at least tell someone about even if it didn't really make any sense, and Richie - well he was easy to talk to. For all that he was the one that could so often be relied on for a few good chucks he was pretty good at just letting you talk at him when you needed it too.

"I don't know, man." He admitted though because he didn't and shrugged as he tried to pull it together somehow. "It's just - don't you feel lost here?" he asked then because he didn't know if this was a him only sort of problem or if it was an everybody thing? Maybe he was just the messed up one, which - would be no big surprise if it turned out to be the case.

"I always had a plan before this, I mean you know after I left -" He almost said Derry but in the end skipped over it. "You know there was finishing high school, then college, then I got married, and then there was work, and then starting my firm and there's always been something. Some next thing to get me to the next point, but here there's .... I mean no one needs an accounting firm here. I'm not getting married, I will literally lose my mind if I even think about going back to school again. There's just this void out there." He stretched a hand out in front of him to some imagined future and imagined void where there was just nothing to keep his eyes trained forward.

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trashmouthloser
2020-03-01 02:49 am UTC (link)

Oh. There it was. Stan was having an existential crisis on him. Richie felt -- well. Somewhere between sympathetic and also maybe a little annoyed -- no. Mad. A little mad about it. Because between Stan offing himself and Eddie dying back home, Richie wouldn't have ever been able to get back to any kind of plan in life. Everything would have been a void. And it wouldn't have been the kind of void that opened up to new, exciting places either.

Fuck, even if they weren't talking about Richie, it was hard to focus on the fact that like ... Stan wouldn't have been alive to keep up with his life goals or whatever the fuck back home, either.

He tapped at his knee, fingers bouncing, and then his knee bouncing and he let out a little huff of a breath. "Better here than back home," he said eventually, because that was true. Because at least here he had the people he'd lost, and he had Bev even if all the Losers weren't here. And sure he didn't have his career anymore, or his house with the pool or even the opportunity to just get in his car and drive, or a place to go to shop aimlessly or whatever when he was having a bad day. But he felt like the reward was bigger than the sacrifice. "I mean, shit. I'm getting married, dude. So I guess, no. I don't feel all that lost." And then, because he was Richie, and he had no fucking filter at all, he narrowed his eyes at Stan. "Do I need to put the sharp objects away again?"

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stanbyme
2020-03-01 04:02 am UTC (link)

"Yeah," Stan agreed because well - it wasn't really about comparing here to there, well not really. Because there wasn't actually an option anymore, he'd seen to that. But it wasn't really what he was trying to say right now either, all of it was kind of strange and complex in a bad sort of way and came out even worse as he tried to make any kind of sense of it. Which was kind of the opposite of what he wanted to do when he'd sat down with Richie in the first place.

"No, no I guess that makes sense. That's good, I mean." And he wanted that to be the case for Richie too, he didn't want the rest of them to be feeling like there was nothing but a void out ahead of them. "I don't -" He started and stopped and shook his head, "No it's not like that I just am trying to figure this out. To make some kind of sense out of it. I don't want to ..." It was difficult to talk around something like this but Stan wasn't sure he could manage to talk about it either.

"I'm not going to do anything like that again, I'm just confused I guess." He sighed. "I don't know," Because that was the thing wasn't it? He'd done the deed already and there wasn't supposed to be anything else after that, but now there was and it was even more shapeless than he'd expected it to be. The afterlife was complicated.

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trashmouthloser
2020-03-05 01:47 am UTC (link)

Okay, well. At least there was that. It'd been a goddamned nightmare trying to play it cool all while stashing away any utensils sharper than a butter knife. He really didn't want to have to do it again, or make Stan feel uncomfortable for shit like that either.

But he had had to ask. That was a thing. And Richie wasn't well known for not just saying shit that was on his mind, so apparently it worked out for the both of them now. Sort of. Stan was still being weird and Richie wasn't any kind of good with stuff like that. This town needed a therapist or something.

"Okay," he decided on finally. "How do I help?"

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stanbyme
2020-03-08 10:14 pm UTC (link)

"No, I mean - I don't need you to do anything I guess I just wanted to say it out loud," He admitted with a sigh sinking down a little bit lower trying to decide what exactly had come over him and why he'd decided this was how he wanted to spend his time that afternoon rather than just poking at Richie until he managed to get enough entertainment out of him to satisfy the part of his mind that itched for something more.

"You know? Sometimes you just have to say a thing to be able to make it make sense. Not that this makes any sense, but I feel like maybe I've got a little bit more of a handle on it now than it had on me." So that was something really, better than keeping it all inside and then letting it be one more something in a pile of somethings that would overwhelm him somewhere down the line.

"Sorry," He added after a few beats, "For just letting all that out at you. Normally I'd uh - well Patty was a really good listener." He said trying to explain it a little bit.

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