#turns out we're both sentimental fucks and he got attached to half of them

[invinciblerodent]

This little guy is a test for my "basic" amigurumi creature/animal body shape, so far adapted to a teddy bear shape (with different ears), and a baby dragon (with a back frill and wings in progress!)

I'll try to write a beginner-friendly pattern so there can be more of them 💓💓💓

[billhaderlovebot]

beep beep (5) - richie tozier.

@ceruleanrainblues @the-star-above-you @a-second-hand-sorrow @shockwavee @socially-unaccepptable-dameron

the usual sexy stuff and swearing and weed. y'all know the drill.

"i've never been... uh... good at the whole, um, serious thing. but, this is us. this is... our wedding. and i put real effort into this shit. so, get ready, fuckers, because this is a real tearjerker. um, yeah. okay..."

you honestly hadn't trusted richie to write his own vows, but neither of you had wanted them to feel... artificial. you wanted them to be your own. and now he was standing before you, holding your hands in his and tearing up already. big softie.

he had also teared up as you walked down the aisle on wobbly legs, mike on your arm.

"we were... we were owed more time, i think." richie lamented. "we should have done this years ago. i should have married you years ago."

---

richie had known, for a long time, that you were the one he would marry.

it was 1993, and the sun was setting over sleepy little derry, giving the quarry an orange-pink glow and bathing you all in its warmth.

you were all pruning up a little, and it wasn't as warm as it was when you'd come down a few hours previously, but summer was coming to an end, and you wanted to make the most of your last couple weeks of freedom with your favourite people in the world.

richie watched as you sat in the shallows, taking a hit of the sizeable joint between your fingers. you exhaled loudly, leaning your head back toward the watercolour sky.

shades of blush pink and peach and apricot illuminated your skin, the low sun setting a warm glow across the water, and oh, god, he was in love.

you laughed, loud and beautifully obnoxious, at something stan had said, passing him the joint and wiggling your legs in the water. your laugh just so happened to be the losers' favourite sound in the whole world, as it was one of those wonderfully infectious laughs you can't help but laugh along with.

richie had always tried to make you laugh in the hopes that you'd like him, but when you did laugh, he found himself falling in love.

eddie watched on in disapproval, sitting cross legged on the bank behind you.

"when you get lung cancer i will laugh and i will spit on your grave." he grumbled, but took the joint anyway when it was passed back around to him, just as enthusiastically as the rest of you. perhaps he was trying to protest in hopes that it would lessen the guilt he would feel later as he frantically sprayed himself with deodorant to get the smell out, and applied the emergency eyedrops he had bought.

ben, bev, bill and mike were in the middle of a very intense game of chicken. beverly had toppled off of mike's shoulders at least twice, but she had pushed bill back into the water more than four times, shrieking with laughter as, arms flailing, he disappeared under the surface of the lake.

"rich! c'mere." you had caught sight of him and held out your arms in his direction, making cute little grabby hand motions toward him. the look of utter joy on your face warmed him from head to toe, and he smiled as he swam over, dodging bill, who had once again been knocked into the lake by bev. ("stop being such a little bitch, billy.")

you came to meet richie halfway, leaving stan and eds to finish the joint and sinking into the water up to your neck. you immediately attached your lips to his, running both of your hands through his hair because you were stoned and everything felt better under your fingertips.

kissing him was like... a whole other plane of existence. you were joined at the lips, joined at the heart. the sun was going down and it was getting cold, and you were both shaking, and he noted the way you tasted of smoke as he kissed the life from you, the water rippling against his chin. you groaned quietly, and richie smiled into the kiss, ignoring everyone else's exasperated groans because ugh they're making out again ew look at them they're so disgustingly in love.

"you're both whores!" stan all but screamed, and you flipped him off, kissing richie all the more enthusiastically.

and richie broke away just to look at you.

the sun, now casting a deep orange-red light behind you, was almost set, and you were beautiful.

the quiet "hi, babe." that tumbled from your lips made him feel as if everything was right with the world, and, then, staring at you, drinking you in, in all your red-eyed, swollen-lipped, soft-grinning glory, like he was seeing colour for the first time, he knew that if he didn't marry you he would probably die.

---

"but now we're here."

richie cleared his throat, his eyes darting around because if he looked directly you he had no chance of keeping it together. "and i have you for the rest of my life. it took a lot for us to get here, too. god knows how we managed to plan all this. thanks, bevvy."

---

eddie was your best man.

obviously.

eddie was your best everything, to be honest, so it was an easy choice while wedding planning. eddie had been the essential third to your group of three ever since you were kids, and he meant so much to richie, and so much to you that you hadn't even had to think about it.

eddie was going to be the best man. that choice was a no-brainer.

all of the other choices, however, were not.

richie and yourself, apparently, were completely incompetent at any sort of planning whatsoever.

you tried, though, you really did.

you got out the big notebook and a pen and richie pulled up pinterest and you had some serious talks about colour schemes and flower arrangements and the like.

well, sort of.

("can we have, like, yknow, like, those worms..."

"worms?"

"like those worms on strings... yeah, those."

"the googly eyes?"

"the eyes.... yeah, and just..."

"hang them?"

"from the ceiling... yeah. "

"richie?"

"yes?"

"i think that's the best idea you've had since i met you.")

but after consuming copious amounts of alcohol, and only having made one useful decision, the two of you decided that you were not in any state to plan your fucking wedding.

("so... s-so if we get- richard, stop trying to take my clothes off- if we get the worms, do you want the pink- rich, i swear- do you want the pink ones or the blue ones...?")

turning off whatever true crime show was playing in the background, you stumbled, leaning against one another, to the bedroom.

"sex?"

"that's the plan."

but any attempt to undress each other only got half way before you were both asleep atop the bedsheets, snoring lightly, an intoxicated tangle of limbs.

the planner notebook you had been using to write down the essentials lay open and abandoned on the coffee table, the only thing in it being one line of richie's chickenscratch handwriting.

it read: set a place for stanley.

---

richie was really, properly crying now, and the only think keeping him from losing his shit was eddie's hand on his shoulder, and your thumb running across his knuckles.

everyone else was crying, too. not a dry eye in the room.

"almost losing you again... so soon after we had found each other... really put shit into perspective for me, yknow? hospitals, um, suck. and i was so pissed... because... fuck, sorry, fuck... i was, uh, pissed, because all i could think was that we were losing time again."

---

(before the sewer fight)

"kiss me." richie's quiet, shaky voice came from behind you, and you whirled around from the suitcase from which you were trying to put together an outfit more suitable for clown killing.

he took you in his arms almost immediately, bending down to kiss you, but the kiss almost scared you.

it was too tense.

there was too strong an edge to the way he held you close, kissing you as if it were the last time.

"what's wrong?" you murmured, centimetres from his lips, your breath ghosting across them.

"i... i don't know if we'll both come out of this." he admitted in hushed agony, kissing you again, slower. "i won't be able to live with myself if something happens to you." richie kissed you again and again, such raw emotion behind each soft crush of lips that he had to swallow the quiet, broken gasps that spilled from you.

"whatever happens," you breathed, running your thumbs along his cheekbones. "i love you."

"show me." he pleaded, red rimmed eyes locking onto yours with such intent that you almost fell over. "please, just-"

"we have to be quick." you said, and he nodded, pulling you into another long, searing kiss. there was a sort of burning desperation to the way his lips moved, now.

richie shifted your shorts down and slid his hands under your thighs, whispering a low "jump" in your ear. your legs wrapped around his waist, and you gasped as your back hit the wall.

"fuck, rich, hurry the fuck up." you mumbled, tilting your head so as to give him better access to the skin of your neck, to which he was already leaving marks.

"okay, baby." and then he was all but tearing off your shirt, immediately exploring the newly exposed skin with his mouth, teeth included. fuck.

"you're such a prick." you hissed.

"and you might just be the most beautiful thing ever to have existed, sweets." said richie, pushing his glasses up his nose and looking at you with dark, dilated, sex-me-up eyes.

"do something about it then." you challenged.

"anything for you, doll."

richie was pushing you so hard against the wall, that you were surprised you didn't go right through the drywall and topple into eddie's room.

you ran your tongue along his bottom lip and he groaned so fucking loud.

"i love you." you whispered the sentiment against his lips, fumbling at his belt buckle.

"i love you more."

---

richie took a moment to compose himself, allowing you to do the same. your eyes drifted about the room. the absence of both yours and richie's families bothered neither of you.

at the front row, the losers and stanley's empty chair, reminded you that they were the only family you'd ever need.

---

"you fucking what?"

"it was an accident!" richie held his hands up in defense, slumping down next to you on the couch.

"richie, do you ever imagine what it would be like if you'd have gotten enough fucking oxygen at birth?" you snapped, raking your hands across your scalp.

"watch it, or no sex." he said.

"i will never have sex with you ever as long as i live unless you uninvite my mother right the fuck now."

"i couldn't say no!" richie was now flapping his hands about in frustration, looking a little like a cartoon character. "she called me up yelling about the divorce and then i told her about the wedding--"

"my life would be so much easier if your dad had just pulled out." you deadpanned.

"--and i didn't know how to tell her she couldn't come--

"we have to change the venue. she's not coming."

"but that's the beach grease was filmed on, babe, there's no way i--"

"richie, if you don't change the venue, i will fucking castrate you in your fucking sleep."

---

it was raining that day, anyway, so a beach wedding wouldn't have been possible. it was okay, though. richie quite liked the little chapel you had picked out, and the coloured light that filtered through the stained glass windows danced across your skin in a way that reminded him so much of quarry sunsets. it was perfect, really.

"we could have had... so much more, yknow? a normal life. but, instead, we grew up in fucking derry... like idiots from some dumb horror book." you laughed at that. so did the losers. you were the only ones who knew what it really meant. "i promise... i'm going to, um, spend every moment of the rest of my life, the rest of however long we have, showing you how much i love you. and i do... love you, that is. every moment of the rest of fucking time, baby, because god knows we've lost enough."

and you kissed him before the priest even said the words, knocking him backwards into eddie.

your first dance was unconventional.

of course.

richie was nervous. he had practiced this dance so many times, with beverly, with eddie, with fucking bill. (that particular endeavour had been a tough nut to crack.) and you pretended you didn't know, for his sake, because he had tried so hard.

his hands shook as he positioned them on your waist where beverly had taught him.

"i can't dance, babe." he snorted.

"i know you can't." you giggled, kissing his cheek.

you held him close to you, blinking back tears as the first chords of billy joel's vienna drifted quietly from the speakers in the corner.

richie lay his head on your shoulder, murmuring the words softly in your ear and pressing light kisses to the soft skin under it.

about halfway through the song, you realised you didn't actually know how to dance either, which was a relief to him. whatever you ended up doing had to have been acceptable, because, once again, everyone was sobbing.

bev cried, mike cried, ben cried, bill cried. eddie shoved almost his entire hand into his mouth to stifle his tears, because there was no way in fuck richie was seeing him cry.

richie would sooner find himself down in the sewers again than admit it, but he could carry a damn tune.

when the song faded to its soft end, the two of you didn't move for several more seconds, eyes gently closed, foreheads together. (admittedly, richie was quite a bit taller than you, and to lean down a fraction.) it seemed almost wrong to open your eyes and join the rest of the world, but the losers' over-enthusistic applause and cheering pulled you both from the trance as they drowned out everyone else.

"you're beautiful." richie whispered, and your eyes snapped open. you had a feeling he wasn't just talking about your dress. eddie, of all people, had helped you pick it out, following you around the wedding dress outlet centres, hissing profanity at the disheveled women who got in his way and muttering furiously about how he'd sterilise the fuck out of whatever you chose to buy.

"you're beautiful." you sniffed, wiping your watery eyes and pulling him down to kiss you softly.

"why are you two like that?" eddie whined when you sat down at the table you'd put them all on. he was only half joking.

"it is their wedding day, eds." bev shrugged, remembering how gross her and ben had been at their own wedding a few months previously.

"what can i say?" you arranged the skirt of your dress comfortably around you before slinging your legs over richie's. "richie's a whore."

the rest of the party was... eventful.

most notably, the losers club's exclusive, very enthusiastic (and frankly quite dangerous) group dance to uptown girl in which your shoe ended up across the room in the wine cooler on the table you dubbed "friends from work" and bill and mike accidentally threw eddie half way across the room at the final chorus.

there was also the matter of richie and yourself insisting on recreating the "come on eileen" dance from the perks of being a wallflower, but then not remembering any of the moves. losers club exclusive group dance part 2 ensued.

eddie's best man speech was a wreck, mainly because he was absolutely bladdered.

("trash-mouth... trash-mouth fuckin tozier got the girl. nobody thought it would ever happen, i mean ever-")

---

(6 months after the wedding.)

"are we gonna pretend we have kids?" you pondered, crumpling the empty juice pouch in your hands and tossing it onto the steady-growing pile in the corner of the living room. "or are we just going to have to own up to the fact we drank twelve boxes of capri suns between us this week?"

a quiet slurping noise came from beside you as richie drained his own capri-sun, throwing it onto the pile with a flourish of his arms.

"i think that they've come to expect this of us." he said, shifting your legs out of his lap and standing up to answer the door.

"alright!" you heard him call down the hallway, as who you assumed was bev began pounding the doorbell aggressively.

and then the door swung open, and you heard a chorus of cheerful greetings and borderline yelling. ah, your best friends.

the losers came over to the tozier residence almost weekly for drunken antics and the spilling of long overdue tea.

"MRS TOZIER!" mike hollered jovially, bill in tow. they'd been seeing more of each other recently. none of you were able to miss how mike looked at bill when bill wasn't looking. it was how beverly and ben looked at one another, and how you looked at richie every morning you woke up to his face, and all throughout the day when he wasn't looking, and even when he was looking.

"MIKEY!" you yelled back with equally as much gusto, stretching your arms out for a hug, which he gladly returned.

"novelty not wore off, yet?" mike asked, gratefully taking the capri sun you offered to him as he settled next to you on the couch. "you've been married long enough, realised you don't love him yet?"

"oh yeah, no, this is purely a marriage of convenience. he's not that ugly, and i get laid like every day, and all i have to do is pick up his socks and share a bed with him."

richie wasn't impressed, storming back into the room in front of bev, ben and eddie.

"hey, um, ok, well, i actually am having a passionate affair with ben, and, ben's fucking hung. so, there."

richie slumped on the other side of you, grabbing you and blowing a raspberry on the side of your neck.

"seriously, bitch?" you whined, but you wrapped your arms around him all the same.

eddie bustled over to the towering pile of capri-sun packets, a plastic refuse bag in hand that you assumed he'd just pulled from his fanny pack.

"you guys are disgusting." he shoved the packets into the bag with unnecessary force. "you fucking deserve each other."

"tell them why we got kicked out of the drive-in theatre last week, rich." you smirked, leaning into your husband's side. he cleared his throat.

"i, uh..."

"tell them." you pressed.

"we saw titanic-" richie started, quietly, keeping his eyes fixed on the wall in front of him.

"oh, god." eddie groaned, storming out of the room in search of a recycling bin.

"-and i, uh... was yelling diving scores as they, uh, jumped off the boat."

"for fucks sake, richie." ben sighed. beverly was borderline cackling. mike and bill just looked disappointed.

"it's not my fault!" richie whined. "my beautiful wife was the one who insisted we recreate the sex scenes as they happened. hand on the window and everything."

"the toziers, everyone." eddie came back into the room, sitting on the ground on a beanbag near the coffee table. "you two should never have been allowed near each other."

"ah, but we were." you chimed in. grabbing richie's face and kissing him obnoxiously. "what say we get piss-drunk and, like, play dumb drinking games. for old times sake?" you suggested when you tore yourself from him, your lips separating with a wet pop. "it's been a while."

---

1993

"what's up, fuckers." you threw up a casual peace sign as you descended into bill's smoke-shrouded basement, stumbling slightly down the stairs and sitting between richie and stanley in the circle that the losers had formed.

richie immediately attached his lips to your neck, pulling you into his side.

"hello to you too, trash-mouth." you grinned. richie looked fucking good.

he'd only gone and got his septum pierced the day before, and you were wary at first, but the little silver horseshoe ring that hung between his nostrils now looked amazing, glinting in the low basement lights. richie wore a deep red, oversized, cable-knit sweater that you could have sworn was yours but you'd smoked a huge joint on the way here and weren't too sure. a black beanie sat on his head, a few errant curls poking out by his forehead and around his ears.

"you're hot." you mumbled.

"you're hot." he grinned against your neck, and lifted his head to kiss your lips, his glasses bumping against your nose.

"yo, whores, truth or dare." beverly said, throwing back about half of the bottle in her hand, a mischievous glint in her eyes.

"i fucking hate this game." richie hissed, leaning against your shoulder, sulking.

"truth." you said.

"what's richie's biggest kink?" she leaned forward in the circle, her tongue poking out from between her teeth.

"beverly!" richie was not amused.

"he's really into hair pulling." you sniffed, taking a blunt from between stan's fingers.

"babe!" richie exclaimed. you exhaled in his face.

"is he loud?" bev asked, leaning to take the joint from you.

"BEVERLY!" richie was shouting, now, throwing his hands up in frustration.

"oh, yes. he is." you nodded, grinning from ear to ear.

"FUCK!"

"a bit like that, actually."

"this is actual abuse." richie put his head in his hands, edging away from you.

"i love you." you tried, tugging on his sweater and leaning against him.

he had crawled into stanley's lap at this point, curling up like a baby.

"i fucking hate truth or dare." richie sat up and reached for another bottle, allowing you to wrap your arms around him.

---

most of the losers were asleep, curled up in various, not so comfortable looking positions on your couch and beanbags and weird hanging egg chair thingy that you'd insisted on buying.

"where did you come from, babe?" richie sighed, snaking his arms around your waist from behind as you brushed your teeth. "you're fuckin'... perfect."

one thing richie had always remembered, if a little vaguely, was your smell. the smell of sleep and fabric softener and your shampoo. his memory hadn't done it justice, he decided. when he took you in his arms in the chinese restaurant and inhaled deeply as if it were his last breath, filling his lungs with the smell of you and trying to sear into his brain the memory of how you felt inside his arms. because he would forget again, surely.

he hated himself for forgetting you.

"we're married, rich." you pointed out, rinsing your toothbrush and dropping it into the holder. "you're not too bad, yourself."

"i mean it, though." he muttered, pressing the softest of kisses to your jaw. "you're so fuckin'... doll, i, fuck-"

"don't go all shy on me, babe." you teased. "come to bed, yeah? im cold."

he watched as you shuffled off to your shared bedroom, doing that thing you always did when you stretched, making an unnecessary amount of noise. he smiled. that's my baby.

"hey, rich." another voice came from behind him. at the door of the bathroom, small and tentative.

"oh, hey, eds." richie smiled, taking his own toothbrush from the one next to yours, continuing the conversation through the mirror. but there was a somewhat uncomfortable silence in the small room, made worse by the hollow rattling of the toothbrushes.

"i, uh..." eddie shifted his weight, leaning against the doorframe. "i, uh... gotta tell you something, rich."

"knock yourself out, eddie spaghetti."

"im getting a divorce."

"oh, yeah? good, she was a fucking-"

"im with someone. a guy."

"a guy?"

"yeah. his name is, uh, richie, as it happens. well, richard, but, yknow."

"eds-"

"i loved you." eddie blurted. quiet. barely there. "for, uh... so long."

"you-"

"when we were kids. and, and i... you were never out of my head. not for one fucking second. and my mom... god, my fucking mom, she knew. i think she knew. every time you came round she made sure to scrub me a little harder. the soap burned. fuckin, i don't even know, some carbolic shit, or something. but... it was always her, wasn't it? you and her, um, you loved her and you continued to love her for... for fucking ever. and i wanted it to be me, rich."

richie was almost choking on his heart.

"eds, you know i-"

"no, actually, i don't."

"well i-"

"im not... bitter. if that's what you think. because i think the world of her. she's... my best friend, i would do anything for her, rich. and it wouldn't have made sense for you to end up with anyone else.

and im not... pining anymore? this was uh, what i needed. and im with someone, and he loves me, and i love him. so much, i do. and i love... you... and her... "

"eddie, i loved you too, yknow."  richie muttered. the words hung in the air between them like the sword of fuckin' damocles.

"you did?"

"yeah. course i did."

"well, fuck."

"yeah. fuck."

"can i-" eddie held out his arms.

"yeah.",

richie was so used to hugging smaller people that it was natural to rest his chin on eddie's head, enveloping him almost completely. he noted how eddie gripped his shirt a little tighter than was probably necessary.

"you gotta let me meet this guy, yeah?" said richie, muffled against eddie's hair. "you're, like, small and shit. so i gotta make sure he won't break you or something."

"okay, rich." eddie laughed quietly.

when they broke apart, something had changed. there was closure. eddie could go back to his loving boyfriend and richie could go back to his wonderful wife and it was okay. all of it was okay.

it was okay.

---

"g'morning, doll." you had woken up to richie going to town between your legs. which was, um, always a good time.

after he had finished, wiping his lips, wiping you from his lips, he mumbled the term of endearment lowly into your ear, kissing the spot just underneath it, and you almost grabbed his head and pushed him back down there. however, it was cold, and he was warm, so you melted against him, pulling his arm over you.

"hey, baby." you weren't sure if the words had come from you, because you were floating. and half asleep. but they must have done, because richie kissed the back of your neck and pulled you closer to him, if that was possible. "what time is it." you continued, yawning.

"uhh, like, nine." he yawned back.

"ew."

"i know."

"why did you- and not that i'm complaining, because that was great- why did you wake me up, you fucking insane person."

"because they all left, and woke me to tell me they were leaving, and then i was awake, and you weren't, and i was bored, and i wanted to wake you nicely."

"mission fucking accomplished." you sighed, a sleepy grin spreading across your face. "but can we go back to sleep, now?"

"yeah."

"love you, stinky." you mumbled.

"love you more."