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Tweak says, "Hello, Clarence"

Richie Trashmouth Tozier (trashmouthloser) wrote in snapthread,
@ 2019-09-28 20:05:00

Entry tags:

eddie kaspbrak, richie tozier

Who: Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak
What: Making sure they both exist.
Where: Pancho’s Bar.
When: September 27th.

I know you feel like you are breaking down.
I know that it gets so hard sometimes.
Be calm.

Eddie was dead.

D-E-A-D.

All caps or no caps made zero difference at all because dead was dead and there was no coming back from something like that. Richie was an absolute wreck about it. He’d cried terrible ugly tears for the loss of his best friend, who he’d only just remembered so many important things about, in front of the other Losers, and then had somehow wound up here later that same night and it’d only been worse since then. This place was distracting and terrible and horrifying, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t spent an entire night camped out in the bathtub of his new and completely empty house kind of losing his shit about it all over again.

And look, this place was fucked. He’d made one poorly thought out your mom joke and goth, teenaged, David Copperfield had shown up and done some real magic or some shit and had pretty spectacularly beat the shit out of him. Richie wasn’t even embarrassed that he’d lost that fight, that he had bruises at the side of his mouth, neck and fucked up ribs for his trouble. It’d sucked, but it’d been a pretty nice distraction from what had really been on his mind.

But now this place was fucking with him all over again and Figment-of-his-imagination-Eddie or It or Ghost Eddie was posting things on the dumb Void Message Board that only Real Eddie would know and say and it was…

Richie really couldn’t take any more of this. He couldn’t. He’d just gotten the blood out of his glasses.

But here he was anyway, standing outside the only place in this godforsaken town that could have possibly been the bar. Hope wasn’t really something Richie thought he could have again, but there was something in his chest that was tight, something in his jaw that wouldn’t relax and he knew himself well enough to know that he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he didn’t show up just to know.

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ekaspbrak
2019-10-06 03:31 am UTC (link)

This was a Second Chance kind of world. Maybe it wasn't perfect but there was so much absent here that had been holding them back. They were no longer in Derry. They wouldn't have had to worry about the occasionally violent hatred of small town folks. It was dead and, presumably, not here. They didn't have to worry about being lured away and killed. Myra wasn't there and his mother was long since dead. Eddie was free. Single. They could start over. Have a second chance at something. One of them just had to take that step.

Unfortunately neither man was that brave. So they drank.

They drank in silence, casting occasional glances across the table and just trying to drown their misery or themselves in alcohol. Eventually, the thing they were using to cope and not talk ran out. Eddie hardly noticed the pain in his face anymore. It was still there, sure, but the burn of alcohol in an open wound had become normal enough that he could deal with it. There were other things to worry about. Worst pains to concern himself with.

He looked up when Richie spoke again. Even if it meant that he was confirming (maybe without meaning to) that Eddie hadn't survived the encounter. His friends had managed to kill it once and for all and Eddie... well, he'd been brave. He didn't feel brave. He'd thrown the fence rod turned spear, he'd save Richie and died in the process... but he hadn't told the person he loved the most how he felt. He still couldn't.

"I... yeah, okay." He said. He'd agreed to stay with Richie. He should probably know where he was living. That way he could check it out. Make sure it was someplace he could live without the entire thing falling down on him. He'd hate to wind up buried beneath the ruins of one of some abandoned house. He stood up, feeling his knees go kind of wobbly thanks to just how much he drank. He used both hands to keep himself upright but dared to let go of his seat long enough to flip the other off.

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trashmouthloser
2019-10-06 04:38 am UTC (link)

Even though they were both hurting in ways that words would never be able to really get to the bottom of, at least there was this. The stupid, overly ridiculous way that they could banter - Richie's inability to stop himself from making a joke about Eddie's mom, and Eddie immediately telling him off for it. And maybe for the first time since everything had gone down, Richie wasn't fixated on I fucked your mom! Instead, he threw his head back and cackled loud and pleased and absolutely fell over, a tumbling mess of gangly limbs until he picked himself back up to a wobbling sort of tall.

"Fuck you," he agreed, and it was almost cheerful instead of sad or hopeful or whatever the fuck it was that might have come out of him at some other point.

And only then, after he'd made a stupid joke, and they were drunk as anything, did he reach out to lean up against Eddie so they could stumble their way back to the place he'd picked out.

He only got a little lost, which was a plus. Probably more of a plus than the fact that he slept alone and uncomfortable on the bathroom floor after realizing just how much whiskey he'd drank and how poorly it wanted to settle in his stomach.

Still. At least he'd slept at all.

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