#but then everything happened with my grandad and my aunt (who i struggle to stand) and uncle (whos actually alright) came to stay

[gaytobymeres]

okay i think my mum is going to talk to my grandma today and tell her we cant take her to the hospital every day (which I hope goes well because my mum really needs some time for herself, not to mention all her work that's been piling up), and there is also a possibility that my grandad will get moved to a hospital which is a 15 min drive away instead of an hour which is soooo much better and also my grandma would feel able to get the bus there herself which would be great. so, tentatively, things are maybe looking slightly more up than they were last night. also my mum's friend (who i really like but she's very full on) left today and for the first time in 5 weeks we have no one else coming to stay for ages. thank fucking god.

[enixamyram]

I have this headcanon that years in the future Rae and Blessing find an old home video. The footage is of their mothers’ wedding reception. But the audio is just Grandad Killian and Grandpa Rumple arguing somewhere off camera over who should get to dance with Alice first.

Yeah this turned out so much longer than I meant it to! haha! But I really enjoyed writing it too! So thanks for the short idea, Anon!

   “AH!”

   Blessing rolled her eyes, turning to find Rae cringing away from something on the floor. “What?” She asked.

   “A rat! I think I saw a rat!” Rae yelped, ducking a low hanging beam and hurrying away from the corner quickly, her long brown hair bounding behind her as she did.

   “You know, if it’s too much, we could always head back down and just tell mum we couldn’t find it...” Blessing said in an innocent sing-song like voice.

   Immediately Rae’s fear vanished and she turned unamused eyes to her little sister. “Uh, lemme think. No!”

   “Oh come on!” Blessing snapped. “This attic is full of crap! How are we supposed to find anything up here? We might as well just buy new damn decorations and be done with it.”

   They were, of course, talking about the decorations that had been used for their Christening parties. Lucy had come by, looking pretty good for a first time mum, asking if Alice and Robin still had their daughters white dress they had worn that day. It had been enchanted by great aunt Regina to not only stay perfectly presentable and clean, but also to keep the baby wearing it calm during the ceremony. And because they happened to be hanging around, Rae and Blessing had been the ones charged with going into their attic to find the box it was hidden in.

   The only problem was that the attic was a complete mess. They used it more like a large rubbish area than a storage space. Half the things had been thrown inside and so much of it lay broken, while others were just random and neither girl knew why they still had it. Like Blessing’s old doll house. The one she played with for a few months before growing bored, resulting in her painting it a mixture of sickly green and brown colours so it could be an army base instead. What was once a pretty house turned into something unrecognisable.

   “Mum flipped when she saw what I had done,” Blessing smiled, pulling the doll house out from the side and running her hand over the long since dried paint, uneven and lumpy with only some of the actual house peeking out from underneath.

   “I remember,” Rae grinned, kneeling beside her. “And mama just laughed it off and said you were being creative. She spend weeks convincing mum you were going to be an artist and one day the doll house would be worth millions!”

   Blessing snorted, pushing her short blonde hair out of her face. “Yeah, she was way off on that one.”

   “Anyway!” Rae said, before they could get too comfortable. “We’re not here to reminisce!” She slapped her knees and jumped back to her feet. “Come on! Pull all that crap out of the corner. I think I see some untitled boxes hidden in the back.”

   “Pull all that crap out of the corner.” Blessing mimicked quietly, sticking her tongue out and pulling a face. “Do this, Blessing. Do that, Blessing.”

   “You say. And yet you’re still not doing it.” Rae said, crossing her arms and scowling down at her.

   Blessing paused. “I meant for you to hear that.” She said suddenly.

   “Sure you did.” Rae turned and walked over to the room - away from where she was sure she saw the rat - and began digging through some of the piles that had been thrown on top of one another.

   For a moment they fell quiet as they began to search through the many objects in their way. They scrambled through a series of things that seemed to have no rhyme or reason as to why they were stored together - like an old copy of Alice In Wonderland, an faded black top hat, a multicoloured bracelet, a pocket watch that was ticking backwards - and other objects that had clearly been tossed up blindly if even that - like an old glasses case, a jar which seemed to contain actual dirt, an old detective badge that had their grandpa’s name on it from during one of the many curses their family had lived through.

   “This is taking forever,” Blessing moaned, standing up. “Move back.”

   “Blessing! No! Mum said-”

   “Auntie ‘Gina told me to practice.” Blessing shrugged, like that gave her immediate permission.

   “Not in closed spaces!” Rae snapped, jumping up to grab her arm.

   However, before she could, Blessing swept her arms to the side and suddenly everything lifted off the floor. In seconds all the objects they had been digging through began to spin in a cyclone around them, so fast they almost felt like they would be picked up with them. Rae shrieked in surprise and Blessing struggled to control it. In the end, it only lasted a few seconds before something shot out at random and hit Rae on the shoulder, sending her tumbling into Blessing and causing everything to crash loudly to the floor with them.

   A second later... “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON UP THERE?!”

   “Nothing mum!” Blessing said quickly, pushing Rae off her and crawling towards the trap door, looking down innocently. “Just tripped over something!”

   Robin scowled up at her. “Rae?” She called.

   Rae glared at Blessing as she crawled to her side. But just before looking down at her mother, she forced herself to smile. “Yeah, she tripped over me of all things. Sorry, mum. We’ll keep the noise down.”

   Robin continuing frowning up at them before shaking her head with as sigh, knowing they wouldn’t give each other up like they would have once when they were more naive. “Just... Find the damn box with the dress.”

   After their mother had left, the girls turned away from the trap door and breathed a sigh of relief. Blessing glanced at Rae and smiled shyly. “Thanks.”

   “Thanks nothing.” Rae groaned, standing and rubbing her soon to be bruised shoulder. “You owe me.”

   “Deal.” Blessing nodded, sitting back on her heels. Even if she was bossy, she knew she could count of Rae when she needed her.

   It was then she caught sight of something that had skid across the floor when everything fell back down. It was an old red DVD case, but it had no title or picture on the front and neither did the DVD sitting safely inside.

   “What’s this?” Blessing blinked.

   “A DVD?” Rae frowned.

   Out of all the jumble of objects sitting in the attic, this was probably the thing that stood out most. Why would they throw a DVD up here? They had a bookshelf full of them downstairs, and any they no longer wanted, they just gave away to friends and family who did.

   “Let’s watch it!” Blessing said immediately, her curiosity piqued.

   “Blessing, we have to find the dress before we can go downstairs,” Rae said strictly.

   “Who said we have to go downstairs?” Blessing grinned cheekily.

   “Are you kidding?!” Rae hissed. “After that?!”

   “Oh come on! This is just a small one and it’s easy. I’ve done it a dozen times before.” Blessing said, laying the DVD on the floor, opening the case and sitting cross legged in front of it.

   “Oh my God, Blessing! You are unbelievable!” Rae snapped.

   Ignoring her, Blessing waved her hand at the DVD. A golden yellow light lifted from the reflective material, reaching up in a single thick line before opening into a wide circle, almost like a flat flower. The circle was as big as Blessing’s head and shone brightly for a few seconds before the imagine inside cleared and the DVD began to play.

   Instantly it was clear it wasn’t a normal movie. It was a home video. One of a large crowd that had gathered, all wearing expensive and fancy looking clothing - beautiful dresses for the woman and handsome suits for the men - and there were decorations stretching all over the trees and across the ground. As the camera moved, it showed a shot of a long white table, stuffed with dishes of food and half eaten plates and a tall layered cake that had already been cut into to show a thick layer of chocolate sponge hiding beneath the white icing. And finally, the camera moved again and Blessing caught sight of a pair of familiar faces standing in the middle of it all.

   “Its mama and mum!” She gasped.

   “What?” Rae frowned, finally looking over her shoulder at her.

   “It’s their wedding video!”

   Without hesitating, Rae scrambled over towards her, sitting down by her side and looking at the glowing image. Sure enough, Alice and Robin were stood in a pair of beautiful white dresses, smiling at one another and looking just as in love as they did to this day. They were much younger, probably in their mid to late twenties, and yet somehow they had barely changed at all, except maybe that Robin’s hair was longer than it was now.

   “Oh wow. So this is where this was...” Rae mumbled. Blessing shot her a puzzled expression and she shrugged. “I heard mama asking about it a few weeks back. They must have tossed it up here accidentally.”

   “Make you wonder what else is here by accident.” Blessing mused. There were some things she noticed that genuinely seemed like they were special, yet they were thrown up here to be lost.

   They momentarily forgot their mission and sat back, watching the video in an almost silence. There was a sight buzz of conversation from the DVD but nothing clear as whoever controlled the camera walked slowly through the many people in his way. They got a shot of almost everyone. Great aunt Regina looking beautiful in a purple dress, grandma Zee in an emerald silk, Lucy in a pink frock, Henry in a navy suit with his wife dressed in blue...

   “... Don’t see how this is even up for debate!” Came a sudden sharp voice, not long after the camera man - who turned out to be Naveen - set the camera down on the table and seemingly forgot to stop the recording.

   “Is that...?” Blessing frowned.

   “Grandpa.” Rae nodded. She’d recognise his voice anywhere.

   “Because, whether you like it or not, I’m a part of her life as well.” Came a second familiar voice.

   “Gramps?” Blessing giggled, still frowning.

   “I never said you weren’t. Believe it or not, but I am happy with that. I know how much you looked after her while I couldn’t... But that doesn’t change anything!” Rogers snapped, his voice very clear now, like they were standing directly behind the camera but still out of view.

   “I think it does.” Rumple’s voice said stiffly.

   “Of course you do.”

   “What are they arguing about?” Blessing frowned.

   “No idea...” Rae mumbled. As far as she was aware, Rogers and Rumple were close friends. They always got on when everyone got together and retold stories all the time of their past adventures after they had set aside their differences from a feud neither of them really liked going into.

   “I was there for her, I think that should have some say in things.”

   “You were there because I couldn’t be! Which, I’m grateful for, but still doesn’t change anything!”

   “Well why don’t we ask Alice?”

   “No. And not because I’m worried she wouldn’t pick me but because I’m not leaving this up for debate.”

   “What are they arguing about? Come on! Give us some exposition already!” Rae demanded, leaning towards the glowing image.

   “If this were a movie they would have explained by now,” Blessing grumbled, resting her chin on her fist.

   “Fast forward it.” Rae commanded. “See how long they go at it for.”

   Waving her hand in front of the image, Blessing sped up the story for a few seconds before letting it play.

   “What are you two spitting about over here?” Came Tiana’s voice.

   “It’s nothing.” Rogers said with a heavy sigh.

   “Clearly not. So talk, what’s gotten your bowties in a twist?” Tiana asked.

   “Finally!” Rae said, rolling her eyes and sitting back.

   “Yes! Tell!” Blessing said eagerly, drumming her hands on the wooden floorboard in front of her.

   But before they could heard the answer, the camera jerked and was picked up off the table. “Oh, here it is.” Naveen’s grinning face appeared, smiling down at the lens a she began to walk away. “Woops, left it on... Better save some battery for the dances later.”

   “NO!” Rae and Blessing cried as the cheerful man switched the camera off just before they could hear Rogers fading reply.

   For a moment the girls stared at the blank screen in frustrated silence, waiting as it turned on and they were suddenly greeted with family and friends wishing the brides luck on their future. It was sweet and all, but not what either of the girls wanted to see. Blessing growled and waved her hand, causing the image and the light to disappear back into the DVD, sitting back and sulking.

   “Now we’ll never know what they were arguing about.” Rae grumbled angrily.

   “You know, you could just ask one of us.” Came a raspy voice behind them.

   The girls jumped and spun to see Rumplestiltskin pulling himself up onto the edge and sitting with his legs hanging down on top of the ladder. There was thick a sheen of sweat on his forehead and one of his hands were shaking badly as he rest it beside him, wheezing slightly as he sat back.

   “Gramps!” Blessing gasped, jumping up and running to kneel beside him. “Mama said you shouldn’t be exerting yourself.”

   “You mothers say a lot,” Rumple smirked. “I’m old. Not invalid.” He suddenly coughed hard into his shaking hand, wheezing even worse than before by the time he was done.

   “Look pretty close to invalid to me.” Rae said, shrugging.

   “Desirae!” Blessing snapped.

   “Cheeky brat,” Rumple grinned, causing Rae to giggle before she moved to sit opposite him, letting her own legs swing down the open trap door as well.

   “So what were you and Grandpa arguing about then?” Rae asked.

   Rumple chuckled again. “We were fighting over who got to dance with your mother first. I argued he got to dance with her first during the engagement party so it was my turn. Which I still think was a very valid argument.” He coughed again, groaning at the ache along his back.

   “Guessing you lost the argument?” Rae said.

   “Not quite.” Rumple said, nodding towards the DVD. Blessing took the hint and quickly waved her hand at it. The DVD light appeared, carrying over to shine in front of them and playing where it had left off. After a few directions they fast forward to the first dances and the light showed Alice, holding Rogers’ in one hand and Rumple’s in the other, pulling them both onto the dance floor. “If you had told me three centuries ago I’d be dance with the pirate at a gay wedding... Probably would have turned you into a toad and squished ya.”

   “Oh wow, that is the most awkward dance I have ever seen!” Rae laughed, watching as the two men took turns spinning Alice around and moving together on the dance floor. However Alice was the only one who didn’t look awkward. She just looked happy. Beaming up at the two men and swinging back and forth between them, laughing loudly over the music the whole time.

   “It was a good day.” Rumple said, voice wheezing slightly again before he coughed hard. Blessing put a hand on his shoulder worriedly and even Rae’s smile dimmed slightly.

   “You okay, Gramps?” Blessing asked.

   “I’m fine, girl. Don’t start acting like your mother. Bad enough I can’t even go for a walk now without her clinging to my arm the whole time like I’m gonna fall over.” Rumple said, rolling his eyes.

   “She worries.” Rae mumbled. “We do too. You shouldn’t have climbed up here on your own.”

   “Oh pack it in, the lot of you. I’m not going to be an old man who sits in a chair and whines about life as he slowly decays.” Rumple said, waving her off. “Now, where this dress your mothers sent you for?”

   “No idea.” Rae said, glancing back around them. “This whole place is a mess. There’s so much junk up here!”

   Rumple smiled at her, raising an eyebrow. “Nothing here is junk. It’s all precious to your mothers. Things Alice collected over the years during her travels or gave Robin or Robin gave her.” He coughed hard. “Why do you think they’ve stored so much? You know your ma’s sentimental.” He looked at Blessing. “Anyway, why haven’t you just poofed the damn dress into your hand already?”

   “You didn’t hear the banging from before?” Rae yelped.

   “The whole street heard that bang, dearie.” Rumple chuckled. “This is why you need a proper teacher.” He faced Blessing. “Shut your eyes. Picture the dress. Imagine it as clearly as you can... Now imagine you’re holding it...”

   Blessing jumped when a light material fluttered into her hands. She opened her eyes and looked down to find the dress sitting in her palms. “I did it!” She squealed.

   “You did.” Rumple nodded proudly. “Now, let’s get out of here. The dust is choking me.” He coughed hard enough to shake his body before he moved slowly, lowering himself down the ladder with Rae and Blessing hovering close by in case he fell.

   After he was safely back on the ground, picking up where he had leaned his cane against the wall, Rae hurried down after, copying her mother and standing close by his side, prepared for if he should stumble. He had yet to have a proper fall, but he did often shake in a way that made everyone nervous. Of course, no one had dared yet suggest a wheelchair but Rae had a feeling ma was getting close.

   “Come on, Blessing! Let’s go!” Rae said impatiently, not bothering to look back.

   “Come on, Blessing let’s go. Do as I say, Blessing, blah, blah, blah.” Blessing mimicked, folding the dress neatly in her hand before pausing and waving at the DVD. It disappeared and reappeared in her hand in a cloud of yellow smoke. Smiling she carried that and the dress back down before folding the ladder back up, pushing it into place with the help and watching the trap door automatically shutting after it.

   “Ma! Mum!” Blessing shouted, running passed her sister and Gramps. “Guess what we found!”

[eddiespaghettio]

here’s your quote! “i get scared and start to think of you. is it true, do you think of me too?”

Eddie has nightmares and thinking of Richie always helps.

TW: homophobic slurs. 

The anniversaries are the hardest.

None of them talk about it, how the nightmares comes back tenfold and with a bloodthirsty vengeance every July. They don’t have to. It’s evident in the dark circles under everyone’s eyes, how they are all exhausted but secretly too afraid to sleep. So they stay out as late as they can, until the streetlights come on, spending more time at the quarry and Mike’s Grandad’s farm than anywhere near the Barrens. Because even though they defeated It, the trauma doesn’t go away, and the nightmares have the facility to twist and warp themselves into terrors that are somehow worse than that of what they saw down in that sewer two years ago. There’s a semblance of reality to these new night terrors that seems to put them all in a chokehold, gasping for breath long into the morning hours; that seems to haunt them regardless of how many times they remind themselves that It’s gone.

They had only spoken about it once, last summer, in the questionable hours between night and dawn, bundled up in sleeping bags in Denbrough’s living room, just days before what would have been Georgie’s eighth birthday.

“I-I still have n-n-nightmares,” Bill said, staring down into his lap at his torn cuticles, where the skin around his fingernails had been picked until it was red and painful. A stillness settled around the room, a collective held breath that asked are we actually talking about this? Even beneath the yellow lights of the table lamps, Bill looked ashen and pale.

“Me too,” Beverly whispered, and a few congruous, sympathetic sounds followed.

“Henry Bowers is always in mine,” Mike said, with a sad, encouraging smile in Bill’s direction, and no one had to ask to remember what had happened between the boy and their infamous bully to know what haunted Mike’s nightmares. “And my parents, of course.”

Bill lifted up his head, “T-these new ones,” he said, staring unseeingly at the group of them, sitting in a halfhearted circle in the middle of the room, “My p-p-parents are t-there.” There’s a forlorn, faraway look in his eyes and Eddie knows that that Bill’s reliving the nightmares over again in his head. “They…they b-blame me. They t-tell me that they w-w-wish that I had…that I’d d-d-died instead,” Bill forced out, voice cracking, eyes shining with unshed tears in the lamp light.

The temporary paralysis that had seemed to befallen them all shattered then, as they all moved at once to swarm around Bill, pulling him into a suffocating group hug, murmuring reassurances in the gaps between them all. They eventually fell asleep, dried remnants of tears on their cheeks, in a grouping best describes as a dogpile, and promptly never spoke of it again. Eddie hadn’t shared that night, too afraid to bring his terrors into the light, secretly ashamed of what not-entirely-out-of-the-realm-of-possibility tinged fears he harboured.

Eddie has nightmares all year round, but they are never quite as frequent or so vivid as they seem to be around the anniversaries. He can handle the typical bad dreams; the ones where he forgets to wear pants to school or the ones where his mom catches him doing or saying “inappropriate” things and bans him from his friends again. Those are easy, a cake walk really, by comparison. They’re nothing like the anniversary dreams.  

Eddie’s imagination has never been all that spectacular, his dreams always hazy and blurry, the details undefined like he’s purposefully unfocused his eyes, everything running together like a drippy watercolor painting. But Eddie’s anniversary dreams are almost lucid. He knows he’s dreaming, that they’re not real, but they feel real, sharp and vibrant like they’re happening in real time, and that’s what makes them terrifying. Not terrifying like child eating shapeshifter clown that feeds off your fear scary, but scary in the sense that it’s all the things he worries about in the back of his mind come true. And that’s where we finds himself again tonight, terrorized by his subconscious on a stickily warm July night.

Eddie’s sitting in their usual semi-circle in the dirt surrounding the quarry, perched on a weather worn boulder. They’re all together; even Beverly is there, having returned the summer before after convincing her aunt to move to Derry from Portland, her red hair bright like lit flames under the afternoon sun. Eddie can smell the earth, the sweet scent of the wildflowers that grow in resilient little tufts out of the rocks, and the tang of the pixi stix powder on Richie’s hands beside him. He can feel the heat of the sun bearing down on them, the almost cool breeze blowing across the water on his skin. He’s been here before — in real life, undoubtedly, but also in both his dreams and nightmares. And this is a nightmare, identical in every way as it was two nights ago and a icy ball of dread forms in the pit of his stomach.

Eddie feels the words bubbling up inside him like the fizz in an over-shook soda bottle and he tries to force it down, to swallow the words once he feels them on the tip of his tongue, but he blurts it out anyways: “I’m gay.” Everyone stills around him, Mike stopping mid-sentence from recounting some interesting tale he learned from one of his books, and they stare at him with large, judging eyes. Eddie desperately tries to jerk himself awake — if he could just move a one finger — because he knows this is going to get ugly really fast.

“I’m not surprised,” says Stan, his face screwed up in a sour expression, like he sucked on a lemon, “I always knew you were a faggot.” The reactions are always the same as the time before, like these nightmare shadows of his friends are reading off a script. But it hurts every time.

“That’s disgusting,” spits Beverly, and she pushes herself up from her seat in the dirt and stalks away, only glancing back to glower at Eddie in utter revulsion. Ben follows her out without a word.

“They still execute gays, y’know,” Mike says as he turns to leave, the expression on his face a mix of hatred and something akin to pity. “Maybe the should.”  

Bill towers over him. “I’m s-s-sorry, Eddie.” Bill always apologizes, but somehow it just makes it all the more painful. “B-but we can’t be f-f-friends with a f-fag. It’s j-j-just wrong.” One by one, his friends stand up and walk away, leaving Eddie to sit alone awash in his own self-hatred.

The last one to leave is always Richie, and he stares at Eddie with a barely constrained fury in his eyes, magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses, his mouth twisted in an hideous scowl.

“How could you?” Richie demands, and Eddie flinches at the acid in his voice. “Look at me, Eddie!” Eddie didn’t even realize that he had turned to stare at his shoes. “How could you let me hug you? How could you let me sleep in your bed? When you knew all this time? How could you take advantage of me like that, your best friend? That’s so dirty, Eddie.”

Dirty. Dirty. Dirty.

The words begin to run on a loop, Richie’s voice fading in and out as the sound warps, growing more feminine, veiled with a thin veneer of forced cordiality, the sickly saccharine tone his mother always uses when something’s “for his own good.” Queers are dirty, Eddie-Bear; the words reverberate through his skull. So impure. They all go to Hell, Eddie. But we don’t have to worry about that. You’re my good boy, Eddie, you’re clean.

Eddie jolts awake, flying upright in his bed, the blankets pooling in his lap. He dry heaves over the side of his bed, the phantom of his mother’s words still ringing in his head. His face is red, cheeks wet with tears he didn’t realize he was crying. Eddie wheezes, struggling to breathe, and he scrambles to grab his inhaler off the nightstand. He knows it’s all fake, that he’s not actually asthmatic, but it always helps loosen the fist of anxiety and panic clutching his lungs. He stuffs the inhaler in his mouth, breathing in the acidic taste of the salbutamol like it’s his last lifeline.

Eddie cradles his inhaler in his hands in the fetal position, the angry and disgusted faces of his friends flashing in his mind. It’s not real, Eddie reminds himself. It’s not real. His friends wouldn’t treat him like that. They’ve been friends for so long, been through so much. Eddie racks his mind for any memories of his friends responding with that must hostility. They were probably that mean to Bower’s gang, maybe that fucking clown, but they deserved it ten fold. Eddie doesn’t deserve that sort of treatment, right?

He recalls a moment back in the spring when he and Ben came across crude signs pasted on the side of the Pharmacy, HOMO SEX IS IMMORAL, and GOD HATES FAGS, handwritten on white paper in red marker. Ben had stopped in front of the signs and frowned deeply, the corners of his mouth turning down so far it was almost comical.

“I don’t understand,” Ben had said, turning to look at Eddie who had froze beside him. Eddie tried to school his face into an expressionless mask. He probably just looked constipated.

“What do mean?” Eddie asked, and closed his eyes, almost afraid to hear what Ben said next. The words burned on the inside of his eyelids like they were a brand.

“Why does it matter? Why do people care so much?” Ben said, genuine confusion in his voice. “Why do people care if others are gay?”

Eddie exhaled in a puff, “I-I don’t know, Ben.”

Ben, the ever hopeless romantic, smiled a small smile and said, “One can’t help who they love.”

Thinking about that moment gave Eddie a small semblance of hope, flickering in his chest like a firefly, but it’s short lived;  the nagging voice in the back of his head interjected. Ben’s always been more of a follower. If everyone else walked, especially Beverly, then Ben would, too. Eddie curls in on himself a bit tighter, as if he could protect himself from his own mind if he makes himself as small as possible.

Unbidden, a voice is back, louder this time, but it’s not the voice of his friends. It’s crazed and angry, all over the place in pitch. The voice of that goddamn clown that Eddie can never seem to fully forget even though they defeated It and it’s been two years since. It bounces around in his head like an echo in a cavern. I’m every nightmare you ever had! I am your worst dream come true! I’m everything you were ever afraid of! Eddie laughs, a painful, broken sound, in the darkness of his bedroom. They may have beat Pennywise but Eddie’s still afraid. They beat It but he’s still scared. Eddie wishes he could fearless now.

Another memory pushes itself to the forefront, wielding a baseball bat. It’s Richie, from that day. In his imagination, Eddie envisions Richie beating the other thoughts away, the other memories. Eddie would never admit it, but thinking of Richie always helps — with his bad jokes and even worse impressions. Richie with his fierce loyalty, who is always there when it really matters, and even there when it really doesn’t. Eddie wants to believe that Richie wouldn’t hate him for being…that. Wants to believe that none of them would, but Richie most of all. And Eddie knows why, but he can’t even bear to voice the thought even in his own head.

“But soft what light through yonder window breaks wind.” It takes Eddie a solid ten seconds to realize that Richie’s voice wasn’t coming from inside his head. When he opens his eyes, he finds Richie crouched precariously outside his bedroom window, one outstretched arm hanging onto the roof shingles above. Richie shoves the window open from the outside and tumbles into Eddie’s bedroom.

“Richie?” Eddie asks dumbly, as though he isn’t staring at him from across the room. “What are you doing here?”

“Your window was open, Juliet,” Richie replies, pulling off his dirty sneaks and dumping them on the floor beneath the window sill. “Were you expecting me?”

“No, I was expecting the other weird teenage boy that crawls through my window,” Eddie says, and he can hear the rasp in his voice from crying. He hopes that Richie doesn’t notice.

“Hey.” Eddie can tell by the softness in Richie’s voice that he definitely did notice. Richie crosses from the window to Eddie’s bed in three long strides and then plops himself down at the foot of the bed, narrowly missing sitting on Eddie’s feet. The room is bathed in the yellow light of Eddie’s table lamp as Richie tugs on the chain. Eddie feels exposed under Richie’s searching gaze. “You’ve been crying.”

Eddie futilely scrubs his hands against his cheeks and eyes to try and rid his face of any evidence.

“Nightmare?” Richie asks, his eyes huge and warm, and impossibly soft behind his glasses.

“Yeah,” Eddie mumbles. He scoots over and Richie moves to fill the space beside him in Eddie’s tiny twin sized bed. Richie’s grown long and gangly in his few teen years, folding up beside Eddie like his limbs are too long and he doesn’t really know what to do with them.

“I have them, too,” Richie states in a surprisingly soothing tone and reaches over to straighten the collar of Eddie’s pajama top.

Eddie wonders briefly what terrorizes Richie in his nightmares. If he still is scared of werewolves like he was when they were kids, or if he’s still afraid of clowns like he was then. Somehow, maybe intuitively, Eddie feels that Richie’s probably scared of something worse, something more visceral, more nuanced. Like Bill’s nightmares of his parents wishing he had died instead. Like Eddie losing all the people he loves the most just by being true to himself.

Richie gives Eddie a small, reassuring smile that looks entirely out of place of his face.

“You do?” Eddie asks, and looks down at his inhaler still tightly gripped in his hands.

“Definitely,” Richie says, “Your mom and I break up and I can never see my Eddie Spaghetti again.”

A laugh bursts out of Eddie’s mouth before he can stop it. It’s not even funny, really, but it breaks the stiffness in the room. “I’d miss you, but I’d miss your mom’s swee-”

“Gross!” Richie just flashes Eddie a wide, crooked smile.

The lay in silence for an immeasurable amount of time ― five minutes, thirty, and hour? Eddie can’t tell ― pressed side-by-side, Richie’s bony elbow digging into Eddie’s spleen. Until Eddie can’t ignore the pressing need to just say something, the nightmare still dancing at the edges of his mind, snippets of dialogue flitting around.

“They just keep getting worse, you know?” Eddie says and it feels way too loud for the silence of the room. “The dreams, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Richie agrees. “Sometimes your mom doesn’t even give me a kiss to remember her by.” Eddie knows that Richie’s just using bad humor to evade, but he doesn’t say anything. Richie surprises him then, as though he has some sort of sixth sense and somehow knows. “We’d never leave you, y’know.”

Eddie turns and stares at Richie with wide eyes. How does he know?

“We love you, no matter what, Eds,” Richie keeps looking up at the ceiling. “I mean, unless you go all Zodiac Killer on us or somethin’.”

Richie turns and meets Eddie’s eye then, sees the questioning, half-scared look on his face.

“You talk in your sleep,” Richie explains.

“What…what do I say?”

“Uh…once you said, ‘guys, please don’t go,’ and ‘I thought we were a family.’” They’re both back to looking at the ceiling at this point. “You cried out for Bill once, during a sleepover.” Eddie remembers that night. Same nightmare, but he put up a fight then, trying to keep them all from abandoning him. Bill had awoken that night and sat up through the night with Eddie until just before daybreak. They hadn’t spoken of the dream, just sat in Bill’s living room and watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle reruns with the closed captioning on so as to not wake anyone else.

Eddie shakily exhales. Richie didn’t know. Eddie doesn’t know if he’s relieved or disappointed.

Would you still talk to me like that if you knew?

“I…I get scared and start to think of you.” Eddie blurts out, and wants to take it back as soon as he says it, embarrassment flooding his cheeks. He wishes the lamp wasn’t on so he could hide in the dark, but if he turned it off now it would be too obvious. Richie doesn’t respond for just long enough of a time for it to feel uncomfortable and Eddie debates taking it back, make a half-assed joke out of it, ‘cause your face is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen.

He opens his mouth to speak but Richie beats him to it.

“Is it true,” Richie says slowly, in this gentle, almost imploring tone that Eddie’s never heard him use before. “Do you think of me, too?”

Eddie feels like his throat is closing up, his face burning. His fingers twitch on his inhaler but he doesn’t dare lift it to his mouth. His head swims. “Yeah,” Eddie whispers. I think of you all the time, Eddie’s heart yells at him. I think of your stupid jokes and they make me feel better. Eddie refuses to say that aloud. Richie would never let it go. I always feel better with you here. What he actually says, however, is: “You…think of me?”

“Yeah.” Richie says breathily, like he’s in awe of this new information — Eddie knows the feeling — but then quickly recovers. They fall back into familiar territory like it’s a refuge. They won’t speak of any of this in the morning. “I think of this cute Spaghetti face and, poof, all better!” Eddie smacks Richie’s hands away as he tries to pinch at his pinkened cheeks. “Cute, cute, cute!”   

“Spaghetti face? Are you serious?” Richie just laughs and moves to ruffle Eddie’s hair. Eddie shoves him back as far as he can go until Richie’s back hits the wall beside the bed.

“Hey, Eds?”

“What? I hate when you call me that,” Eddie says instinctively.

“C’mere?” Richie’s turned on his side facing Eddie still, his arms spread open wide in invitation, looking hopeful. Eddie hesitates.

How could you let me hug you?

How could you let me sleep in your bed?

That little reassuring smile is back.

“I won’t bite,” Richie says, and makes grabby hands at Eddie, followed by a wink that’s a few beats too long. “Not unless you want me to.”

We’d never leave you, y’know.

We love you, no matter what, Eds.

Do you think of me, too?

Eddie takes a deep breath and decides to be selfish. He scoots across the small space between them and lets Richie wrap his gangly noodle arms around him, ignoring the fact that Richie’s still wearing the same outfit he wore the entire day before, and the way that he smells like old sweat and cigarette smoke.

If — when he tells them, he decides,  he’ll let it happen. He’ll face the music. Eddie’s faced worse things, right? But for now he’s going to pretend that none of it’s possible; that Richie’s right and they’ll all still love him regardless. For now, he’s going to let Richie hold him.

When Eddie falls back to sleep, it’s dreamless.