Who: Richie and Open What: Sad Where: Byrn's bar When: 2 am Status: Open/Ongoing/Low but talk of death
Richie was sat at the bar, bottle of bourbon in front of him but only nursing the drink from his cup. He didn’t want to get drunk really, the hangover would be a bitch and he didn’t want to explain it to Bill, but he wanted an excuse to be there. To not be in bed. The bar seemed like the only appropriate place to be at two in the morning, and it was one of the few places he knew.
It was easy enough most of the time, to keep up appearances, to let Bill know he was probably a bit fucked but not that bad. To make the jokes and deflect and not think because if he filled his brain with words and voices there was be no more room. But when he was alone in his bed and the world around him was asleep, the silence crushed him. He’d close his eyes and see it all over and over again; the visions from the deadlights, all death and destruction and terror for years and decades and centuries, the kid (who he found out later was named Adrian Mellon and was the person he wished he could have been sometimes) handing him his own funeral card, the clown, that fucking clown, Eddie. Eddie with Richie’s shirt balled in his fists, covered in blood. Eddie with blank eyes and a fallen expression, the blood on the bandage on his cheek still red but no longer flowing. Eddie, dead, being left alone under the house on Neibolt street. Eddie, who hated the dark and that fucking sewer and everything about that place, left there. Alone. Forever.
He could have done better. He knows he could have. He shouldn’t have let Pennywise catch him, he should have made sure they were safe once Eddie saved him, he should have done more to stop the bleeding, he should have stayed with him, he should have brought him out. He should have told him.
He let out a sigh that was somewhere between pain and anger and downed the drink, pouring another. He had turned the radio on when he got in and some motown playlist (The All-Dead Band, his mind supplied, that felt like a lifetime ago) filled the air around him but even that wasn’t enough. His thoughts were too loud, the world too suffocating, and instead of screaming to fill the void...he just cried. Sobs shaking his shoulders as he slid his hand under his glasses, pushing them up on to his forehead and pressing his fingers against his eyes.