Eddie Kaspbrak (gazeboeffect) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-09-01 14:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, ₴ inactive: richie tozier (2) |
WHO: Richie & Eddie
WHAT: A preemptive psychic check-up against the threat of clown related nonsense
WHERE: Eddie’s apartment at Morningside
WHEN: After Ronan’s warning regarding past!Eddie
WARNINGS: Not much. references to past clown related nonsense.
STATUS: Complete
So. Things were trucking along nicely, Richie supposed - Eddie was here and he was likely going to get his ass settled in some kind of office job that was similar to his previous job but not exactly like it because holy shit no, and yet it was similar enough to not wrench him too far out of his comfort zone. Confusing, right? Maybe, maybe not - but Richie seemed to understand well enough, because he spoke Kaspbrak. It was like a second language to him, even despite those memories that had been lost to a magic borne of pure evil.
It was just - when Eddie mentioned having him check on clown shit or whatever, it naturally sent Richie into a little bit of a panic. He knew, vaguely, about what had transpired with the alternate universe version of him and Eddie in terms of how other-Eddie seemingly had superpowers or something (what the shit?) and then before, adult Eddie sprang something on Richie about how there’d been some kind of psychic intervention to erase black sludge traces of Pennywise, who lingered like a stain permanently set in even after Eddie died beneath Neibolt and the remaining Losers finished IT off.
Going there, down that road, required Richie to tell Eddie about how his life had ended - and that was fucking cruel to do, especially when he was on the verge of figuring things out for himself in a new, promising place. He wouldn’t keep it from him forever - but even Trashmouth knew decorum and piling on a “oh, by the way, you’re dead and we had no choice but to leave your body in the rubble” wasn’t something either of them could handle at this juncture.
First, clown shit (again, what the fuck). He wasn’t sure what kind of seed had been planted here but he was confident enough in his abilities to be able to be sure about Eddie being in the clear in the not-too-distant future. Loaded up with his sketchpad and pencils, he shuffled the bag to his side and knocked on Eddie’s apartment door. Along with supplies for a psychic forway, he also brought two coffees, fresh and delicious with his own doctored up how he liked and with Eddie, well, Richie would use this opportunity to figure out how his best friend actually liked his coffee - there was a plastic bag with plenty of options, white sugar and brown sugar and Turbinado and cream and the kitchen sink. “Eduardo! Got some hot stuff here for you.”
***
So Eddie didn’t really feel like he had any clown bullshit lingering around in his body or psyche or wherever the hell clown bullshit was supposed to linger. He couldn’t see why he would, anyway. The only real lingering effects they had seen were in the visions Bev and Richie found themselves having, and they had both been trapped in the Deadlights. Eddie hadn’t. He might have just brushed off the thought, but then Ronan mentioned that the problems this alternate teenage self of his had stemmed from a physical wound, and suddenly he couldn’t stop thinking about the nasty little puncture low between his shoulder blades. It hurt, but it hurt in the normal way a wound should hurt. It was even healing- he dutifully changed the bandages despite the awkward placement and checked it in the mirror twice a day. It was going to be a pretty gross scar, sure, but other than that and his own knowledge of where it had come from, nothing particularly out of the ordinary. He even preferred it slightly to the more swiftly healing mark on his cheek. The back one could be hidden. The cheek one, in his mind, screamed Ask me about the time I got stabbed in the face!! to random passersby in the street.
Still, what little he’d heard about what had happened to this previous version of himself was enough to make him go to Richie as Ronan had suggested. It was the same kind of abundance of caution that drove him to the dermatologist any time he noticed a mark that may or may not have even been a new mole. Freckle? Trip to the skin doc, just in case. Clown stab wound? Time for a house call from the psychic best friend. Always in the interest of having an abundance of caution.
He was in the bathroom, staring at himself in the mirror and weighing the benefits of the various creams and scrubs he knew of that were supposed to reduce the appearance of scar tissue when the knock came to the door. He swiftly slapped a new adhesive bandage on his cheek, then headed to the apartment door to let Richie in. His eyebrows shot up when he saw how much shit Richie was carrying, and he backed up immediately, pulling the door open all the way so that he could get inside.
“Did you take the entire sweetener and creamer shelf?” He questioned after reaching out to take the plastic bag and what he correctly assumed to be his coffee owing to its placement in Richie’s non-dominant hand. He gave the bag a shake as he set down his coffee cup on the counter island, then looked up at Richie again. “Seriously, dude, there’s supposed to be enough there for all the customers.”
Dumping the contents of the bag onto the island, he snorted at just how close to the mark he’d been with that comment. There was a little of everything there, and the thoughtfulness that massive variety implied made one corner of his mouth quirk up in a half smile even as he shook his head.
“I don’t think we really have anything to worry about, y’know.” He added as he studied the array of mixings, reached automatically for the sugar free/dairy free creamer, and instead went with one packet of sugar in the raw and a creamer with hazelnut flavoring, both of which he stirred into the steaming cup before taking a sip. It was actually too sweet. The flavored creamer had obviously contained sweetener too, and he winced a little, but took a large gulp anyway. Next time he would just skip the sugar packet. “Just kind of figured Ronan was right and another look couldn’t hurt, but I don’t have any symptoms of anything, I don’t think. I don’t know what those symptoms would be, though. Maybe more bad dreams? I haven’t had any nightmares since I’ve been here.”
At this, he set his cup back down and frowned, brow furrowing. “Actually is that weird? I probably should be having nightmares. Most people would. Maybe the fact that I’m not is a bad sign.”
***
“Nah, I’m not sure it works like that,” Richie replied with a huff of a laugh - it was affectionate though, as he arranged long limbs to sit on one of the stools at the kitchen island. Coffee slid toward him (it was definitely what Eddie would classify as too sweet - pumps of caramel syrup and creamer to give it that pleasant taupe shade) and supplies at the ready - he took out the sketchpad and pencils. “You can’t go by ‘most people’ because honestly ‘most people’ can’t say what they’d do in reaction to returning to their shithole childhood town to kill an Eldritch monster because of a blood oath, without it actually happening to them. If you’re not having nightmares, I’d say congrats.”
Richie’s own nightmares had tapered off - they weren’t gone completely, of course, because sometimes he’d wake up in a fuzzy panic (glasses on the bedside table), remembering how hard he dug his heels in with wanting to run screaming to the Neibolt wreckage to get Eddie - and how Mike and Ben had to literally hold him back from doing that, all the while he was covered in dust and dirt and goo.
He still tasted it sometimes. Smelled it - rotten eggs and decomposition, lost hopes and dreams and forgotten children. But only sometimes - there was a lot to be said for actually processing your shit.
“Okay - “ Richie flipped the sketchpad to a new page. “I think if I focus on your clown issue, I should be able to see something related to that - like yes or no. Being able to tell if you’re in the clear. You are, but - I guess there really isn’t any harm in checking for sure.”
***
Eddie just nodded in response to Richie’s reassurance, because he was right. There really wasn’t a typical way someone should process the shit that they’d been through because nothing about it was typical. He also certainly didn’t think that this string of good luck he’d had so far meant that he would never have a nightmare again. He’d had them off and on ever since that summer, even though he could never remember what they were about when he woke up. Sometimes he went longer without one than others, and that was probably what was happening here. One of these days he was sure to wake up in a cold sweat again, and his mind wouldn’t be blank as to the why anymore.
Picking up his coffee for another sip, one which went down a little easier as his taste buds got used to the sweetness, he moved around the island to perch on one of the stools next to Richie, watching with unveiled interest as he started organizing his supplies. The closest thing to a psychic reading he could recall experiencing was a tarot reading at an office Christmas party back when he’d first become engaged to Myra and finally introducing her at a work get together had seemed the thing to do. It was one of a very few office parties he’d actually willingly attended, and he had absolutely hated it. Cheryl from HR telling him that she was still learning to read the cards but that she was pretty sure they were predicting his doom had been the final straw there. He entirely stopped with the parties after that one.
Watching Richie spread out an array of writing tools and paper was nothing like watching that mousey middle aged woman dramatically laying out her cards. His movements were natural, not theatrical, and that was fucking fascinating. “Can we not call it my clown problem?” He asked after a moment, nose wrinkling. “Calling it mine makes it sound like we believe it’s a thing, and we both fucking don’t, right?”
What else were they going to call it, really? But he still didn’t like that phrasing, and it showed in the way he was starting to fidget on his stool. He picked up one of those red stirring straws from the pile of coffee supplies and started to bend it into awkward knots as an outlet. He was no Richie when it came to the need to be constantly moving, but he was also hardly a stranger to nervous energy. “Do I need to do anything? Or am I supposed to just… sit here twiddling my thumbs like some massive asshole while you go poking around my psyche or soul or whatever for Pennywise leftovers?”
***
The not clown problem, then. What else to call it? “The clown...situation? That’s not yours,” Richie amended. He slurped on the coffee, wanting the caffeine fortification before he dove into this - after taking Prigany’s advice, he’d been washing his hands with mugwort soap before trying psychography, and also cleaning his writing utensils with mugwort too because, swear to Dog, they made his visions stronger. A hell of a lot stronger.
“But nah, you don’t need to do anything. I sort of like - go into the zone and I’ll draw or write what I see, like, it just comes to me.” He’d used tarot before, and he also tried other divination methods - pendulum, animal bones, tea leaves, whatever else. Those weren’t as straightforward as automatic writing and, honestly, Richie preferred just cutting to the chase and not having to interpret what the fuck the Ace of Pentacles or whatever actually meant.
(That one was good - it meant health and vitality and, by the way, the Death card didn’t actually mean death).
“Also it kinda looks weird. Just warning you in advance.” He didn’t have a mirror or anything but he’d been told what happened to his face during a scrying session. It definitely erred on the side of creepy.
***
“Just ‘the situation’. The situation formerly known as my clown problem.” He let out a sharp laugh, one that was a little too wild and absolutely tinged with nerves more than genuine amusement at his own very stupid joke. Eddie had been pretty okay with this whole idea when Ronan had brought up that there may be cause for concern, and he’d more than happily jumped on the option of asking Richie for help instead of Dan or a stranger like Ronan’s boyfriend Adam, but now that he was staring down an actual answer, the nerves were coming in strong. He felt fine. There was nothing fucking wrong with him, and all this would do was confirm that. No leftover magical taint aboard the SS Kaspbrak. Nothing to worry about.
“...Weird how?” He questioned, forcing his focus away from his own concerns and ‘what ifs’ and on to Richie’s face with a frown. “I can deal with weird, but if you’re about to go all... slack faced and blank eyed, specifically, just… make that super clear to me right the fuck now so I don’t freak out and do something stupid.”
Even with advanced warning, he wouldn’t find it fun to see that if that was the case, despite knowing that his friend would be totally fine. He hadn’t actually seen Richie’s face when he was caught in the Deadlights, just his somehow too limp and yet almost rigid body from behind, then the disoriented confusion of the immediate aftermath, but he had seen Bev’s face, and now with that particular childhood memory back in his head, it might as well have been taped to the back of his eyelids for how easy it was to summon the image.
***
Oop, well, Richie was glad he brought this up in advance - because he was definitely going to go slack-faced and blank-eyed. He’d seen Bev’s face too, when they were kids - and until Ben had snapped her out of it with the power of Twoo Wuv’s Kiss or whatever, it had been really not cool. And he’d been scared too.
Also it actually made perfect sense that Eddie hadn’t kissed him to snap him out of the Deadlights trance - he’d just shaken Richie like a ragdoll while yelling at him and, boy, wasn’t that on point?
“Yeah, you guessed it right,” he nodded, toasting with his coffee cup. “I’ll definitely be fine though. Like I said, it just looks weird. I do it pretty frequently and it’s like - a part of me now. Not the Deadlights specifically, but being psychic. Having visions.”
He’d come to accept that he was a little bit magical - and that was okay. There was nothing wrong with him, and as long as he could use this quirk (something he’d always had and just never knew or something that he’d picked up after the sewers) to help their dumbass little Outlander community here, he’d be just fine.
***
Great. Eddie definitely still wasn’t looking forward to seeing that, but at least he knew to expect it now. He would almost surely be able to resist the urge to tackle him off the stool and shake the shit out of him, and he definitely wouldn’t try to kiss him out of it even if he did wind up losing his grasp on his chill out of fear. It’s not like he believed in any way that the physical act of Ben’s kiss had really been what had woken Beverly so much as it had been Ben’s childlike belief that it would work, and that his love could save her. Thus the fact that the thought of doing the same hadn’t even come to mind back in ITs lair when he’d seen Richie caught in that horrible light. It was just a matter of believing and caring really hard, and he cared plenty. No cliched fairytale bullshit needed for that.
“Okay.” He finally said, obviously still not fully on board with this, especially with that new nagging dread of knowing how thoroughly unsettled he was probably about to feel. He’d get used to it. He knew Richie, trusted him as thoroughly as he was capable of trusting another person, and if he had accepted these abilities as a part of himself, Eddie would learn to trust them too. He didn’t have to immediately be crazy about the way they looked, though. “Just… try to make it quick. I get that you’ll be okay, but seeing that’s still…” He shuddered a little bit and didn’t finish that thought, taking a big gulp of his cooling coffee as he did, then shook his head and let out a careful breath.
“Let’s just get this over with. I’ll fucking freak for a minute and then I’ll get past it.” He was trying to sound more sure of this than he felt, but it probably didn’t quite go over.
***
Richie picked up a pencil, holding it loosely in his hand. “You got this, Eddie Spaghetti,” he reminded - they both did. The situation, the lack of clown bullshit presence, the visions - everything. If nothing else, he’d just inspire Eddie to snap out a ‘that’s not my name’ as Richie drifted off into the future and maybe that was something.
It always took him a little bit though - he couldn’t ‘see’ at the drop of a hat, and he didn’t think he’d ever be able to. Maybe some psychics could, but for most (Prigany included) it required skill and actual concentration. He usually had something to focus on - whenever he was in Prigany’s caravan it was that ticking clock, the retro cartoon cat clock that hung on the kitchen wall and told time with its darting eyes and tail. In Eddie’s apartment, he mainly just focused on his own breathing - in and out; he matched it with Eddie’s breaths too, so they were somewhat synched. That was grounding for him,it let him gain the right momentum, eyes gently closing.
Then he was wrenched into it, falling down that rabbit hole. The creepy part came into play in three, two, one...
His eyes snapped open and they’d fogged over like a witch’s cauldron, a film covering them which erased iris and pupil. Granted, his limbs didn’t exactly go loose - but that was because his hands were busy moving. The pencil flew across the sketchpad page and he was drawing, drawing, drawing - there was a combination of both sketches and words. One rough sketch of the DOA building. A room number that was probably an office number. A desk, a computer -
The name of one of the city dog parks. A coffee cup. Running shoes. All completely normal things. Nothing that indicated danger, there be a clown up ahead.
Then Richie got jolted out of it, a bumpy landing like all of his visions were when he was yeeted out of them - you couldn’t hold the future and you also couldn’t stay in it for very long before the rubber band snapped back; it was the present where they all belonged. “Shit - “ he shook his head to clear the cobwebs a little. “I’m good though. Promise.”
***
“Not my name.” Eddie did indeed mutter back, and a little bit of the tight ball of nerves in his stomach loosened up as he watched Richie get in the zone. He noticed when he began to match his breathing with Eddie’s, and this in turn helped keep Eddie aware of his own. He was paying attention to it, concentrating on it, because he was paying attention to Richie’s, and that helped keep his lungs from going haywire when that moment happened and Richie’s eyes fogged over. He managed not to yell or scream, but he tensed immediately on his seat and for several seconds just stared into those eyes while basically every inch of his skin turned to goosebumps.
With a noise that was somewhere between a choke and a gasp, he finally forced his gaze down to what Richie’s hands were busy with, and that was a lot easier to look at. Even if the source of the images was different, he could almost pretend they were back in Junior high, Richie scribbling random bullshit into his notebook that had nothing to do with what the teacher was saying, because his good grades had always been the result of his oft underestimated intelligence and not his ability to pay attention.
The things he was scrawling didn’t mean much more to Eddie than the random scribblings of a child, at least for the most part. He recognized the DOA building, and the name of that dog park. He’d seen the name when he’d glanced at a diagram of the city’s waypoints, and it was close by to Morningside. Six blocks West and three to the North, he was sure. He was less sure if seeing it there meant he should be visiting it or avoiding it. A sign that his idea to test possible allergies via dog petting was a great idea or a warning that he was going to go into anaphylactic shock if he dared try it? Bit late to worry about the latter possibility, really. He’d already put hazelnut in his coffee, and he was still breathing fine.
When Richie jerked back into the present he reached out a hand automatically to grip his shoulder, trying to steady him against any leftover disorientation. “Sure you’re good? As long as I didn’t look at your face too much that was kinda cool, man. And it looks like we were right? No clowns?” He gestured at the page as he talked. He didn’t really know how to interpret everything that Richie had jotted down. The most important thing, though, was the lack of anything outright horrifying or clownlike, right?
***
He knew what Eddie meant - in most instances as long as I didn't look at your face, we're cool should have been insulting but in this case, it definitely wasn't. Because Richie probably didn't want to look at his face either, when he was all horror movie-esque with the visions. "I'm sure," he chuckled. "And yeah - "
Turning the sketchpad this way and that, he studied the drawings. That dog park was neat, he'd been a couple times with Adora and Spirit - so he hoped that it meant Eddie was going to live his best life and pet all the pups. Maybe find one for himself, if it didn't shed on the furniture and cause him to be vacuuming twenty-four hours a day. "Looks like you're in the clear, as far as...the situation. I would have seen it."
Jesus, he was relieved. The last thing they needed was for more godawful shit to crop up to deal with - shit related to their own trauma, anyway. Vallo's crap was a whole other thing.
***
Of course it was fine. Eddie had known it was fine. Richie’d known it just as well. They had both been very clear in their insistence that they weren’t worried at all. They were also both absolutely full of shit.
Richie’s relief was as obvious as his own, which forced its way onto his face in the kind of wide grin he usually did his best to hold back for reasons he wasn’t even fully in touch with. Some weird unwillingness to show it openly when he was happy, like how he would probably never admit to liking some of his dumb nicknames. Some more than others. Eds was fine, Spaghetti was genuinely pretty terrible... even if he still kind of liked even that. He was just so damn happy that at least that shit seemed pretty well behind them that he couldn’t be bothered even trying to limit himself. He just grinned ear to fucking ear at Richie.
“Fuck the situation. Good riddance to the situation.” Releasing his grip on Richie’s shoulder, he instead held up that hand in the universal signal that he expected a high five and turned his attention to the paper again to peruse it in a little more detail without Richie’s hands covering up parts as he’d scribbled away. “So this is future shit? Not just you picking up on the crap going on in my head or something?” He’d said his powers involved things that were going to happen, but that didn’t necessarily mean that they couldn’t do both. “Is it literal or symbolic?” He chuckled and glanced back over at Richie. “If it’s symbolic what the fuck do the shoes represent?”
***
A high five, what a dork. It was the dork that Richie just absolutely loved and admired though, the bravest person in the fucking universe (no one could convince him otherwise), so he slapped that high five like his life depended on it. Good job, sport. “No, it’s not in your head,” he confirmed. “There are people here that can do that but I just stick to future stuff. And it’s mooooostly literal? Everything I’ve seen has happened, eventually.”
He hadn’t ever been wrong was the thing - the detail about visions varied, however. When he was first starting out they were really fucking vague and just fuzzy, like him trying to read the letters chart at the optometrist, without wearing glasses. Now, after he’d buckled down and actually worked at it and had Prigany and other Outlander seers like Tally to work with him too, he was a lot better. And felt like he could be helpful with them in most instances.
“Pretty sure the shoes just mean you’re gonna go running, Eds. Too bad I didn’t draw short shorts.” That would have been appropriate too - Eddie had always been into physical fitness. He probably had like, actual ripped abs and stuff.
***
“Everything? Like you’ve never even made a mistake?”
That was… actually really impressive. Not that Eddie wasn’t already impressed by the fact that Richie could glimpse the future at all, but that meant he had to be really good at it. He somehow hadn’t really expected that. Maybe because Bev had never seemed sure of hers’ in the same way? She made the things she saw sound like they would happen, but that they were very changeable- a case of what will happen if we don’t do this specific thing. We don’t face the clown, we will all die horribly. He kind of wondered what would happen if he directly rebelled against the implications of something Richie had predicted, but he didn’t wonder enough to try it.
Instead he just pushed those headache inducing thoughts aside and rolled his eyes at Richie’s comment about the shoes and the short shorts. Even if he did go just a little bit pink, which annoyed him more, because he had no reason for even mild embarrassment. So what if he actually did still favor the kind of… shorter style of athletic shorts that he had as a child and teen. Granted the ones he wore now were a bit longer, because… well, some of the shit he wore as a kid would have been borderline inappropriate on a grown man, admittedly.
“Shut the fuck up. Those shorts are fucking practical. You know what Summer is in many parts of the world, Richie? Hot. You wear shorts when you’re hot.” He crossed his arms over his chest and just glared. “Did you still insist on cargo shorts and layering the ugliest shirts you could find in LA in the summer? As a grown-ass man?”
Kid Eddie hadn’t actually thought that badly about kid Richie’s taste in clothes. Adult Eddie honestly looked back on it fondly, the same way he did his own very ugliest pair of two-toned shorts, or Stanley’s tendency to dress like a tiny middle aged man by the time he hit ten. None of this meant that he couldn’t give Richie shit for the sheer fun of it.
***
“Nah. No mistakes yet. It’s all happened eventually, even if I saw something and was like ‘what the shit was that?’ and it didn’t make any sense without context.”
And, really, Richie didn’t know what to think of that either - he supposed it was possible he could be wrong, but. He hadn’t been. Even the bullshit with ancient Vallo, he’d seen the fancy-ass palace in Civitas and then once they’d all been transported to the past it was like, oh, so that was it - kind of a hindsight is 20/20 thing, which didn’t always make his visions helpful. That was the trouble with being a Seer though - you could get too caught up in what something could mean, you just started talking in circles and didn’t make any sense at all and the warning was useless.
Mostly he aimed to not be useless with the warnings, but anyway. “No way I’m giving up my ugly shirts, Eddie Spaghetti, you know that,” he grinned and, yeah. Pry his Hawaiian shirts from his cold, dead hands - thanks very much. “But you know. Point is, you’re gonna be fine and you’re welcome.”
One less thing to worry about? Check.
***
“Yeah, thanks for taking all that time out of your busy schedule to draw me a picture, Richie. You’re a damn lifesaver.” Eddie tossed back as he hopped up from his stool and busied himself with cleaning up the mess he had created of all the coffee shit, organizing the various products by type and flavor profile and vaguely considering which kitchen drawer would be the designated junk drawer. There was the usual edge of sarcasm in his tone, but there was something genuine there too.
Richie did have a whole life here, and with all the shit he got up to, his schedule probably was legitimately busy. He had more than one job, a little sister figure he went on scheduled runs with, a coven with meetings to attend, and a still fairly new husband on which to spend his free time. He’d still found the time to be there, no hesitation, both times Eddie had needed him.
He didn’t doubt that this would always be the case, it was what best friends did. He just hadn’t had one of those in his life in way too damn long, nor the time to appreciate having it back, the way he could now, far away from Derry. So maybe the reminder that someone gave a shit about him even in the absence of horrible, life threatening danger made him feel all warm and fuzzy, and maybe he couldn’t really stop smiling even as he waved a hand at Richie’s part of the mess which still cluttered his kitchen island.
“Get your psychic shit off my counter and I’ll feed you for all that fucking labor and toil. Would you eat an Acai bowl? I saw a place on yelp I wanted to try. Should be seven blocks from here. Won’t even need a Waypoint.” He’d only seen a street view picture and glanced at the address, but he knew he was fucking right, and if Richie wouldn’t eat an Acai bowl, they could go somewhere else. He was relieved, which meant he was happy, which meant that he’d be content doing what the fuck ever if it meant having a little more blessedly stress free time with his brilliant, talented dumbass of a best friend. Even with the knowledge of the sheer size of his Hawaiian shirt collection.
***
"Yeah, yeah - " Richie wheezed a laugh, hopping off from he'd been sitting at the kitchen island. An unfolding of muppet limbs, to be exact, and he gathered up his sketchpad and pencils - they'd all be washed with the mugwort soap again later, because now that he was sure that shit worked he wasn't about to quit using the stuff. "Seven blocks, got it - " He wasn't even going to question how Eddie knew that (same as how he knew everything about how to get someplace, even someplace unfamiliar - he always had), he'd just go with it.
But wait, what the fuck was an acai bowl again?