Archive of Our Own

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A secret place for me and you

Where every day was fun and new

A simple time played in our heads

We'll tell this story again

A jet stream shoots across the sky

"It's just so bright" we stare wide eyed

What did your face look like back then?

I don't know why, but I can't see it at all

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He used to see him every night. Right there, by the Kissing Bridge as he carved their initials for the last time. Just as he’s about to fall asleep. Cold in his loneliness. Here, always in his dreams. It’s safe to say, Richie never really forgot about Eddie. And it’s not like he tried, anyway. 

“Mr. Tozier, you’re up in a few minutes.”

Richie nods at the assistant, waving him away as he tries to remember what it is that he was thinking about. He settles on his seat still, hoping to catch a few moments with himself. There is a mirror in front of him, those makeup ones with the lights all over. He has no choice but to look at himself under its scrutinizing brightness. 

He observes his receded hairline, deep lines embedded in his—what did they call it—a fivehead? He brushes his hair, what’s left of it growing white and thin. The crow feet by the corner of his eyes is the grand embellishment, the weight of old age in his face. The pristine suit does nothing to clean him up, in fact he feels even more out of place than before.

Nothing new there.

He braces his hands around the arm of the chair, his knees giving in more easily than he would like. When he stands up, his head passes the height of the mirror. He’s tall still, but his shoulders are hunched— burdened by a lifetime of bad posture, among other things. He straightens it back, like he remembers Eddie would tell him to.

Right. 

Eddie. 

He was thinking about Eddie. 

Richie wonders as he walks through the hallways to receive this silly lifetime achievement award, what life would have been, had Eddie lived.

--

“Richie where the fuck are you?” 

“ Kshhh ksshhh Gener—uhl, kshh kshhh I can’t hear—”

“Richie, cut the crap I know you can hear me.”

“Say it, Eddie. Say it and get it over with.”

Eddie sputters, protesting, “But- but Stan! You can’t make me say that—”

Bill catches up with Eddie, who is stomping along the Barrens. They haven’t been here in a while, for no other reason than that they outgrew it. They never say it, but the thought has always resigned itself in the back of their heads.

With the Bowers gang gone and the added responsibility of growing up, they never find the time to come back. There are moments when Bill lies on his bed and thinks that if maybe life had been kinder to them, it would have been Georgie who would inherit their little clubhouse. 

As it is, it lays abandoned underground. Buried within their memories, bittersweet.

The leaves crunch on the forest floor, with Eddie pacing back and forth in a frenetic energy. It is nothing unusual, but they do agree with Eddie’s concerns. Where the hell is their Trashmouth?

“Cuh-come on Eddie. W-we’ve all s-said it once in our li-lives,” he tries again.

Eddie looks at him, betrayed, to which Bill quickly tries to assuage, “You h-have to do it, or e-else we won’t f-find him.”

Eddie takes to his friends for support, and upon finding none, he whines, “Fucking fine,” putting the speaker directly under his mouth to whisper viciously, “ Kshhhhh— Major Dick, this is Doctor K. speaking—”

“ Hm! Interesting, Doctor K. Tell me, could you say my name again, and also, what are you wearing—”

There is a creak almost inaudible with the static of the radio, but Eddie hears it nonetheless. He is the only one who does, so the other Losers are surprised when he exclaims, “ Aha!” before bolting to a seemingly random area.

“Jesus, these two never get tired,” Stan mutters as he trudges down Eddie’s path.

“I can’t imagine them outside of Derry, everyone else would probably give up on these two,” Bev giggles.

Mike chuckles, agreeing, “We have built quite the tolerance.”

“Yeah,” Ben adds, and he looks out to where Eddie had run off to, “But you can’t quite have one without the other.”

--

The thing is. The thing is Richie knows Eddie. He knows that he grew into loving peanut butter banana sandwiches when Richie started sharing them with  Eddie by the end of middle school. He knows his nose crinkles when Richie tells a good joke. He knows he loves the way Eddie would always have to look up at him when they’re standing.

That is Eddie Kaspbrak, aged fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, forty-one, and then, not anymore.

When Richie walked away from Derry for the last time, he left a part of himself there. He drives to LA in static silence. He could have flown, but he liked to think something would happen along the road. Nothing did.

Bill rekindles his marriage with Audra. He’s off the movie he walked out on, but he writes a new book that gets 4.5 ratings and a review that says, “ Titillating from start to finish, with a dynamic cast and a cathartic ending that seems to signify the renaissance of Bill Denbrough the writer and man .”

Mike packs his bags and travels the world. When he stops by Atlanta, he gains a companion— a widow named Patricia Uris. Patty. Patty-cakes , as Richie would one day call her. They document their journey in a DSLR camera that Ben gifts Mike, not without a three-hour discussion on photography and its equipment.

Bev divorces Tom and Ben is patient through it all. When it finalizes  she celebrates by donating a large sum to domestic abuse programs. She calls Richie in the middle of the night and tells him, and only him, that she did it. He doesn’t ask why she didn’t tell Ben, nor did he ask why it was him she told him only. But he could guess why.

Richie?

Well.

Richie never goes back to comedy. His therapist tells him what he’s always known: that comedy is his way of deflecting, of hiding in plain sight. Congratulations, Dr. Mind, you’ve cracked the code. What now?

“You’re talented, Richard,” Richie doesn’t even think to correct him. “Have you ever heard of branching out? Storytelling is telling the truth through fabrications, one could say ‘ lies’. There are many mediums you might want to look into.”

He doesn’t care for it at first, but Bev insists. And then Ben also insists. As well as Mike. And then one day Bill walks into his barren LA house, bar the empty bottles, and boots up his laptop. “Get to writing, Rich. Or at least, think about it.”

Bill comes by every weekend. It takes three months before Richie gets tired enough to start cooperating. At first, it is Bill sound boarding ideas off his unresponsive state. Richie sees the unsubtle looks Bill gives, but he brushes it off just like he does with everything.

--

He wakes up one day with dreams of summer childhood slipping. The open windows usher in the cool morning breeze, and the sky is blue and melancholic. He could smell petrichor—

(“It’s the smell of the rain,” Stan tells him one morning, resting on the clubhouse after an early birdwatching session. Richie sits beside him, and he continues, “Petrichor. I love it. The birds are always ethereal when I see them, morning dew and all.”

Richie does not really understand what Stan is trying to say, but he’s ancient like that, so he nods and says, a little somber in the misty morning, “I bet you also look ethereal, rolling in the mud with your bird,” Richie finishes off with a crotch clutch.

Stan barks out a laugh, unguarded and almost fond, shaking his head, “You bet I do.”)

— and he almost feels warmed by the memory that he forgets to feel empty for a little while. The dream leaves him as quick as he got it. Almost like a certain someone. He remembers the disorienting sense of losing clear sight, the legs of his blurring glasses almost poking him in the eye, and he hears the irritated lecture that always comes with it. 

Richie swings his legs over the edge of the bed, slumping for a while. Just thinking. 

It’s a rehearsed script, that they never got tired of performing. Eddie goes: You never clean your glasses, Rich. How the hell do you see through this? You’re lucky I always carry the special cloth for it. What would you do without me?”

He paws his bedside table, knocking off his charger before finally getting his glasses. He puts them on. 

Richie always tells him, “I don’t want to find out Eds.”

He still doesn’t.

--

It takes him a long time to walk through the hallways. He almost meanders. If that makes him late, it would be the fault of some poor manager. This is what makes him walk with more purpose.

Someone catches up to him, looking hassled and almost too young. Or maybe Richie’s just really old now. The young man walks up to him and offers a hand, “Mr. Tozier, they are waiting for you in the theatre. The show’s starting in twenty minutes.”

“I may be 69, but I’m not yet senile. I can find my way there, sonny,” he says.

“You’re 89, Mr. Tozier,” the man replies.

“I stopped aging when I turned 69. It’s my only reward for being this old.”

The young man does not leave him like he tries to suggest, but he thinks maybe it’s alright because his presence does assure him that he is going the right direction. “Will it be a sacrificial ceremony instead, if I’m late?” he grins, trying to ease the poor kid’s mind, “Will they offer me to the hungry paps, with their mean questions and searing eyes?”

He tries not to lean all his weight on the young man, but he does relax into his touch. “Tell me,” he starts in a faux-apprehensive tone, “is there at least one person attending?”

That’s what gets the young man barking in laughter, disbelieving and a little intense. He reminds Richie of someone. “Come on, Mr. Tozier. Dolby Theatre is packed right now. Three thousand four hundred seats— full. They’re all here to see you.”

“Ahh,” Richie scratches his head, truly apprehensive now. “What would they want with a silly old geezer like me?”

Again, the disbelief. 

“Mr. Tozier,” he says in a tone that is a little apprehending. Like he’s trying to make him understand something.

“Yes…?” he trails off, not really knowing his name.  

The young man quickly introduces himself, almost flippantly, “Theodore Bonaobra, Event Manager.”

Before they turn the corner to where the entrance leads, Theodore comes to a full stop. They have the time. Plus, Richie thinks he wants  to hear what he has to say. Theodore has that intense look in his eyes. 

Richie meets his eyes. He has to tilt his head down to do so. 

“As I was saying— Mr. Tozier, I hope you know that I say this not to fluff your feathers because I have nothing to gain but my peace of mind. But for the longest time that I’ve followed your work, seen your interviews, and heard you talk about yourself; I’ve gathered that you don’t think much of yourself.  Which—I can’t let go on further!

“First off, you are the most genuine storyteller in this whole God forsaken industry. For that, I know in my bones that your movies will be remembered by generations past even my own grandchildren. You said that your movies are reflections of a life that was kinder. I wanted to tell you that I didn’t need life to be kind to me, because you already are. And I wish you knew that, the comfort that you gave. Everyone who watches your movies, they belong with you..

“So please know,” he pleads so earnestly that Richie can’t help but at least try, “All the big men and women out there? They become children again when they watch your movies, and with that comes the comfort that you gave them. That’s your legacy.”

Richie does not know what else to say, so he nods, almost at a trance, and he gathers his composure. His throat tightens, so he does not speak. The burning in his eyes is familiar and the way he holds it back is practiced. No one needs an old man crying on their shoulder, anyway. Especially not in front of such a keen fan.

(“Hah, look Eds, a fan! ”)

So, Richie Tozier does what he does best. He pastes on a smile, and he laughs—boisterous and larger than life. He ignores the way his voice chokes and continues with his hearty chuckle. “That was certainly something, young man. Tell me, do you tell that to all the girls?”

Theodore is stunned at his reaction, but his lips twitch in a smile. Another man appears from another corner and stops in front of him, “Uncle Rich,” he pants, “We’re coming up.”

Richie nods at his nephew, standing closer to him while steeling himself. He spares Theodore one last look before offering his hand with a grin, “Nice to meetcha’ Teddy Bear!”

--

“Why can’t I reach you Richie?” Eddie screeches into the static radio. 

He is leaping across the forest floor like it is nothing, fallen leaves gaining flight for the second Eddie was there. It is a different path than they usually take because they were roaming around the forest earlier, but as they draw closer, Stan notices the familiar arch of the trees that surround it. 

The rest of the Losers are not faring so well. They are all panting when Eddie finally stops a few feet from the open hatch of their Clubhouse, except for Mike.

When Eddie speaks again, it is like he’s celebrating a win. With a manic glint in his eyes, he says, “I got you now you fucking Trashmouth.”

Stan would say that the rest of what happens is a whole shitstorm unto itself. It is something that will happen only because he’s friends with both Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak, and now he is in the front row seats of something spectacular.

He wouldn’t remember this after the summer, but he does hold a weird fondness with orange wigs that he could never quite explain.

As it is, Eddie is stalking forward like a lioness with a prey locked in sight when a blur that must have been Richie peaks for only a second, and then reaches out the wooden door, slamming it shut with a loud bang. 

Eddie dives into the ground, not thinking about the dirt, only of Richie, and tries to wrench it open to no avail. He gets the other Losers to help him with one look back and an annoyingly high voice, “Well, are you gonna wait until I develop Wolverine’s muscles?!” 

There is a long handle that allows them all to lend their strengths. And with one forceful pull that has Stan tumbling back a bit, they get the door wide open. 

“Richie?” Bev calls, in a more welcoming tone than what Eddie’s would have been.

Stan sees the broken stick and figures Richie might have used it as a lock. His eyes sweep their old Clubhouse. The afternoon light pools into it, warm like old memories, and exposes the dust that has gathered in their absence. With every new movement, every new life that they breathe into it, the dust dances and moves.

Stan sighs comforted in the past. He is lost in his thoughts when Eddie exclaims, “We know you’re here asshole. Why the fuck are you hiding? What are you hiding— AHA!” 

His eyes are quick to follow, hard not to, with all the scuffling movements on the side where their makeshift closet stands. There, with the door wrenched open so hard it clanks heavily on the earthen walls, is Richie, Stan’s best friend, his oldest friend, covering his face.

Until the moment he forgets, Stan will remember this moment with such an absurdity and amusement. He will never forget that moment: Richie thinking he can hide himself by covering his face, wearing a ridiculously bright orange wig, shoddily styled. Standing there in a dress that is stretched it’s a miracle that it’s still in one piece and a skirt so scandalously short on his long, pale and hairy legs. 

“Bev?!” 

It is Ben who says that, intuitive to  everything Beverly Marsh. And it dawns on Stan. “You’re wearing a… Bev costume?”

“ NO!” Richie wails, still covering his face.

“Then… you’re… doing that for fun?” Mike adds, trying to be helpful.

Eddie is standing there in unnerving silence that has Richie trembling. Richie jumps off the closet before bending downwards to get something from the closet floor. He does not think about what he is doing because the action provides them an excellent view of his underwear, and the Losers, bar one, scream in absolute terror (the other, an additional scream of agony, and of confusion).

“Oh shit,” Richie grins, uncharacteristically shy, “sorry.”

Stan gets a better view of what he’s holding and is quick to point it out, “You’ve got a camera?”

Richie perks up and says, “Yeah, good old Went and Maggie bought a new one a few weeks ago and they gave this little thing to me.”

“Doesn’t explain the ‘Bev costume’ to me,” is the first thing Eddie says. It gets them right back to track, and Richie is immediately subdued.

His face is flaming red when he urges them all to sit down. When they do, Stan is hit with a sudden longing for the old days. Because they all automatically sit back in ‘their’ places. Bill takes his place by the wall where Ben installed a plank of wood. Bev leans on the wall a few ways back, as Mike sits on the swing. Stan sits beside Bill, and Ben sits on the mattress on the ground. 

Eddie sits on the hammock, a bit of the tension released. 

“Okay, uhh,” Richie adjusts his glasses, and, realizing he still has the wig on, snatches it off. He ignores the mess his hair is in, too frazzled to care. “I’m doing this thing, where. I. Uh, well—”

“Richie, just spit it out,” Eddie says, and Stan can tell he was going for irate instead of the soft, reassuring one he adapts. 

“I was making a film,” Richie says in a rush, blushing from his face to his chest as he does so. “About us. Uh, a little comedy skit. So that Eddie’s mom would remember the sweet, handsome boy in her bed but now in different flavors—”

“ Richie. ”

The look Eddie gives shuts him up immediately and he deflates.

“Fine, it’s— I wasn’t lying. It was a comedy skit. To. To, uh, remember us all by. I was just shooting Bev’s bit, that’s why I look like a fucking fairy.”

“You look like a pretty cute fairy to me,” Bev offers, a gentle smile on her face. She walks forward and takes the wig from his hands, putting it on his hair a little better this time. Richie is a little too tall for Bev. She looks up at him as she arranges it on his head. “There you go. Now you look more powerful with my red hair.”

The way Richie protests and defends his ‘mane of curly hair that all the girls love pulling when we—' makes them all laugh, more because of how flustered he gets than the actual joke and everything feels right as they are.

Later, Richie tells them he’s been filming in the clubhouse in secret. He’s been doing it during the day to get good lighting. That was why he hadn’t been able to hang out with them for a while. Eddie is pissed but he is easy to bribe with advanced viewing of what Richie shot already.

“So, wait, if you played all of us, then you did Mike as well?” Ben asks.

“Duh. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Uh, b-blackface, Richie? Ever h-heard of the shit that our fuh-friends t-tell us all the time?” Bill adds, referring to Ben, Mike and Stan’s impromptu lectures that he enjoys a lot.

Richie barks a laugh, then. “Oh no, of course I know that shit. Mike’s our peach, I love him,” he grins at Mike who returns it in kind, bright beautiful smile and all, “Bettah be prepared for what this fine lad has prepared in sucha sophis-ti-cated film, ah’ve got taste, ya know!”

Richie ushers them close to him and they all huddle around, Eddie pressed to Richie’s side so he could see it best.

In the small screen of Richie’s camera is him in a very tight, short sleeved white t-shirt, horribly drawn abs over the shirt, and Mike’s name on a name tag, all the while squinting because he’s not wearing his glasses. They catch him mid-impression, which is basically him flexing his (limp) biceps, trying to look as charmingly macho as the real Mike, and failing in the most horrifyingly humorous way.

It’s scary how comforted Eddie is by that—Richie just being Richie, even in his imitation to be someone else. He doesn’t have to think about it because the clubhouse is filled with raucous laughter a moment later, and it’s easy to let go and just be.

--

When Richie quits comedy, there’s really nothing to it. At least, that’s what he says. 

It has everything to it. But he doesn’t really explain it. He spends a year just meandering in his existence. He wakes up at the crack of dawn— another thing that changed after Derry, and only because of the nightmares—and then lies on the hammock he installs by his backyard. Sometimes he would walk along the park, and he sees the ugliest dog in the whole world grin up at him, tongue lolling and tail wagging. It’s the first time he’s laughed in a long while.

Nobody comes for  the dog and he assumes it is lost after waiting with it for five hours, so he takes it in. Simple as that. He calls it Bartholomeow even though it is not a cat, and he cries that night when he thinks of Eddie berating him about the name, probably wanting to change it to something anal like Bruno.

He calls Bev at 2 am, and his voice must have been so pathetic that she doesn’t even complain. They talk until the sun glares at him from outside his window, its warmth unforgiving—Richie, undeserving. 

It is a slow process, living. The rest of the Losers cut off his budding relationship with alcohol and replace it with little projects. He goes through with it, just ro have something to do. When Bill tricks him into sharing ideas for his book, he ends up co-writing it. 

It is, in simple terms, different from the horror that shrouds Bill’s stories. 

“A kid’s book?”

“Yeah. A Winnie the Pooh meets Studio Ghibli kind of book.”

Bill comes every afternoon and they write it outside, in Richie’s backyard. 

(Sometimes, when it is so quiet that he can hear the grass swaying by the wind, he thinks he hears his favorite laughter too.)

(Or, sometimes, when Richie is so focused on what’s in front of him that he doesn’t really see anything, he thinks they are back in the Clubhouse, and the Bill that sits on the bench beside him is still wearing his stupid jorts with a pen stuck in between his ears, instead of the Bill that has seen death and challenged it—bared teeth and steely determination.)

(Or, or, sometimes he would be alone and he would scream, with the echoes of his agony reverberating in his aching chest, and nobody to hear him.)

--

“Seven Summers,” Richie says one time, his leg braced on the ground to stop his idle swing. Bill looks up at him and then grins.

“That’s our book!”

It is easy enough to write with his best friend that he finds himself enjoying it. A soft, almost sweet breeze untucks his unruly hair form where he’s slicked it back and it almost feels like someone is caressing him. It whispers, “Sweet child,” a croon, “It’s okay, you can laugh.” 

Richie holds back a sob.

--

The book is about seven children who live their life in an unending summer, until one day, they suddenly begin to get older. At least, that’s how Richie explains it, barring all the fantastical story elements. He’ll tell you it’s because it’s the only thing that matters. Everything else is embellishment.

It becomes an international best seller and suddenly Richie is an author of a universally beloved book, and he couldn’t have been happier to share it with Bill. Somehow, they want to make it a movie and Richie puts his foot down, does not give them the rights unless Bill is the screenwriter and he is the director. He does not expect anything of it, he is only protective of what he loves. 

They give him what he wants. 

He works on it for two and a half years and gives it the care and love as he would if he had a child, if he had a lover. What he gets (instead) for it, are nominations across the board in the awards season. 

His interview is watched 11 million times after its release, and then another 20 million times after he passes away. It is recorded digitally, and the crisp video is flat compared to the projected 3D view of the future. The sound is good though, and it catches the way his voice hitches as he answers the man.

“You co-wrote, directed and even acted in this film—that’s how far your involvement in this is, and a portion of your earnings from this film will be donated to the organization you founded with Bill Denbrough, it’s—”

“The Lover Bird Foundation, yes.”

“Can you explain why it is called that?”

“I can.”

Laughter.

“…will you explain it?”

“ That’s the question. Do you like it when I act like your boomer teacher? It’s not a polished character yet, but I have enough experience with those little assholes,” the crowd laughs along with him and Richie feels the boom in his chest, the bark of his laughter—a little too forced, a little too loud. He exhales, extended, waiting for the crowd to falter.

He forces himself to be ready. “It’s named after two people—my best friends. The first one passed away a few years ago, and I wasn’t there to stop him from what he did. He loved birds so much that the six of us—our friends—gave him the same bird book that he talked about for a year and he read it six different times, all with notes in the margins. How much material do you have to write six books worth of margins about birds!”

There is a wistful tone as he recalls that memory, something that he hasn’t ever talked about.

“And the other, is he also one of your childhood friends?”

That word. ‘ Is’. Richie lets out a laugh that no one else understands, and it makes them uneasy, how melancholic it sounded, when the same man was making them laugh with tears earlier.

“Ah, yes,” he calms down, wipes the corner of his eyes, “You could say that.”

Something about the way Richie says it claws at the interviewer’s chest, and he remembers watching the movie and seeing a kid with a cast and the word ‘lover’ on it, how the boy was portrayed with such a light that you cannot help but fall in love with him. Beside the boy, is a funny kid, loud and awkward and  gangly. He always looked like he loved him. 

Richie stops shifting in his seat, so captured by his own nostalgia, that he does not see the moment it dawns on the interviewer that his book, and his movie, was a life that was lived. 

The man does not say any of this, instead moves on with his other questions, that, in hindsight, is nothing compared to what he wants to ask. Maybe that’s why he gets the courage to do so. 

“If it isn’t too personal a question, I just noticed, when you received your Oscar for Best Film… you looked kind of sad. Why is that?”

--

“Hey, Rich,” Eddie calls, a little subdued, squirming. He puts his chin forward, faux brave, brave nonetheless for Richie, “It was actually pretty good… if I ignore all the mistakes.”

Richie can’t help but beam at Eddie, buck tooth on display, lips stretched wide. “Aw, shucks, Eds. You’re so lucky I’m your best friend, then! When I finally become a big daddy in Hollywood, I’ll share all the girls that come flocking towards these babies,” Richie kisses his biceps with an obnoxiously loud smack.

“Eughk! I don’t want any girl that’s touched you. ” Eddie says, shivering exaggeratedly, “Think about the cocktail of bacteria festering from the moment you talked to them.”

Richie laughs, deep from the belly and goes to ruffle Eddie’s hair, “I have a cock and a tail for you!”

“Get off, Richie!”

“Wanna do it together?”

Eddie shrieks, but Richie does not miss the grin that settles on his face. 

When they’ve calmed down, sitting side by side, shoulders touching, Eddie mutters, punching him lightly before resting his hand on his leg, “Don’t forget about us when you’re rich and famous, okay?”

“I couldn’t even if I tried, Eds.”

“And… also…”

“Hm?”

“We better be the first ones you show your movies to. We’re your best friends, and I reserve that right.”

“Of course, Eddie my love, anything for you.”

--

He is the one Bev asks to walk her down the aisle, and he weeps through the whole walk. His grin is bright, nonetheless. When he sees Ben’s loving, disbelieving gaze, he thinks to himself, “They deserve this soft epilogue.”  

As he watches them take their first dance as husband and wife, a warm feeling flushes through his whole body. A small voice at the very back of his head surprises him, makes itself known: And maybe I do too. 

--

Bill stays over one night, while they are writing their book. They get drunk enough, with Bill’s hand on the bottle, that Richie lets it slip. The thing that Richie could never let go, other than with the words that forces itself out.

“I wish he didn’t die.”

It is a quiet confession, the most genuine desire he’s ever had past loving him. He lowers his cigarette, the smoke from it curling around in the dark hold of the night. He thinks he hears Bill inhale sharply, and he thinks it is unfair of him to put this on Bill—who has not only lost Georgie, but also two of his best friends. That’s three brothers to him.

When Richie gathers the courage to look at Bill, his eyes are leaking steadily. It is not the painful sort of tears, the ones that force itself out of his eyes with a hoarse throat and a heavy, heaving chest. This is easy, just there. 

Bill is the first to wipe his tears and he looks up at the moon as if it has anything to give them but its borrowed light. (Richie thinks that it is enough. It gives them enough. Plus, it is beautiful tonight. But it would have been great though, if it could also tell him what Eddie was going to tell him, right before he—)

“You never really move on,” Bill admits. And Richie agrees. “But you try.”

Richie finishes his drink.

--

The days come faster than they liked, but the kids could fly so they have the best summer of their lives. 

Stan is the first one to move out, an early school year and a lease to sign in an apartment far away in Atlanta. Bev leaves after another week, and Bill and Ben follow soon after. It leaves Richie with six more days with Eddie and they spend it together. Mike never leaves. 

Before they move out, Richie gives them their own copy of the film he made, with a unique message for each of them. 

The day comes, and Richie has to go to California. Eddie and Mike help him pack his things in his truck. Mike goes back to his farm just before the sun sets, his own special copy tucked under his arm.

Eddie stands in front of him, and the sun behind his head gives him a halo, his brown hair glowing at the tips.

“You have my address and number right?” Eddie mumbles, looking down.

“Of course, Eds,” Eddie smiles, “How could I not? You kept repeating it to us for two weeks, I have it tattooed in my brain. Plus, I couldn’t handle not hearing your voice,” and he says in a voice that may have sounded exactly like Eddie if he had more years to practice it, “ Richie, you hopeless bridge troll, don’t you ever clean up after yourself, what would you do without my cute lil ass—ahhouch !”

“Asshole!” Eddie smacks him, giggling against his will, as he always does.

“Exactly!” 

Richie basks in the sound of his laughter. He can’t help it, with how much it bursts through his chest, this love that he feels, special, and only for Eddie, that his hand moves on its own and brushes Eddie’s cheeks.

His smile falters, rests between comfort and uncertainty. But Eddie smiles at him unabashed, head tilting to nuzzle on Richie’s palm for a bit, and a shaky, somewhat relieved laugh escapes Richie’s lips.

They wouldn’t know it, but the curse of the clown that terrorized them as kids would hold onto them for a long time. But even It’s magic is not strong enough, because in the years between leaving and meeting again, they hold onto their feelings for each other, even though they never quite know what to call it. 

Richie watches Eddie and Eddie watches Richie, and they both think of how lucky they are to know  each other, and they both wonder when they will meet again, and they both think: I love--

“ I… I’ll see you again, Eds, ” Richie says instead.

Eddie smiles. He will hold onto the image of that smile, the one that reflects back onto his truck’s mirror, the one that grows smaller as he leaves this little town, and the one that he will always look for, wherever he goes. 

He knows that no matter how long it takes for them to see each other again, he will never forget the soft look Eddie had, like he never wanted to let Richie go.

And Richie thinks, well…

He reaches the outskirts of the city and he forgets what it is he was thinking. 

He remembers it being important though.

--

When Ben and Bev announce their twins, Richie gets excited for the first time in a long time. It is suspicious, then, how, months after the announcement, the two shift in their seats as Richie watches them from his laptop screen.

“Spit it out, you two. You’re acting like I’m the principal and I caught you necking it up in the janitor’s closet.”

“You and your analogies, Rich. Only you,” Ben shakes his head, fond and exasperated.

Bev musters up the courage after a few moments. She says, “We’re thinking of naming them Stacy and Edward.”

Richie knows his face freezes, because he sees Ben and Bev still. Laugh. Laugh, you idiot. 

He barks, more than he laughs, a release of sharp air, recycled in his haste to save face. It’s just a name, it doesn’t mean shit—

But of course it does. They’re naming their kids after Stan and Eddie. They’re already being repla—

“We’re not replacing them, Rich. Nobody could ever replace them. We just… we wanted to name our kids in their honor. You can help us choose another name for them, so they could have two names. I’m thinking its either Stacy Lou and Keith Edward, Lou and Keith can be their first names and—”

Richie thinks it's unfair that they have to seek his permission to name their kids, so he plasters on a smile—a good one, not so much that they wouldn’t know, because they can’t lie to each other, but good enough for them to think that maybe he’s getting better if he can smile like this.

Eyes crinkling, but not too much, lips stretched but relaxed, and a good old hearty chuckle, “It’s alright, Benverly , their names sound cool. We could be in a rock band or something. Ritchie—there’s a T there—and the Kidz, or something.”

They let it pass, ignores the way he stumbles into the conversation, and a few months later, they welcome Stacy and Edward into the world. 

Contrary to their fears, Richie adores them. When Richie visits them, he brings gifts and voices and love— so much of it that Bev can see his old self resurfacing. She shares a secret smile with Ben.

--

Richie still couldn’t quite say his name like that, free of all the baggage and layers and bullshit—so he doesn’t. He calls him Buddy instead of Edward or Eddie or Eds. He doesn’t deserve to carry any burden. After all he is just a kid, and it is just a name, no matter how much Richie’s brain refuses to think it to be just that. (Because it was Eddie's, still.)

Ed grows up as Buddy to Richie, and Richie is Uncle Itchy. One day, a few years later, Richie just calls him Ed, and Edward Hanscom does not look up immediately until he realizes Uncle Rich is talking to him. After that, they are Ed and Uncle Rich. 

--

Bill and Audra have one kid a year after Ben and Bev and they can already tell she’s spritely, giving Richie a run for his money. 

Mike gets married to a lovely woman out in Florida, who visits with him every other time. 

On Stan’s first anniversary, they reconnect with Patty, who wasn’t warm to them when she found out but has since grown to be part of their family. 

Every summer, they all free up their schedules and spend two weeks in Ben and Bev’s summer house. When Patty mentions just how lonely she is, Richie agrees. “Too big a house for such a small man,” he says. “I get lonely too,” is what he means.

Later, he walks to Patty, purposeful, “Hey, you’re just the right size for my big ol’ orgy room—er, my house, I mean—I never had an orgy in my life ever. I. What I meant to say is… I could use the company?”

Patty comes home with him easy enough, orgy metaphor forgotten in an instant. 

It is stilted at first, one used to order and routine while the other lives in chaos. They find a common ground, a routine in the chaos. Richie feels like he’s in college again, with the whole roommate situation. But now, instead of microwaved meals, Patty cooks Kosher meals, reminding Richie of sleepovers with Stan.

It’s all well, most of the time. There are times when they say things that make the other freeze. One time it is Patty who says it, and Bev is there to witness.

“Richie is actually very thoughtful you know,” she says in a surprised tone, “See, I always… with Stan, I’ve always relied on him to remember things for me. I’m a bit of a scatter brain, see. And I never quite adapted with those phones and reminders. So, I always forget to take my medicine. But Richie… when I mentioned this to him, he was very attentive. He had a reminder set all day too,” and then she giggles, “He’s kind of a dork, isn’t he? The best type, of course.” 

Bev tries to maneuver the conversation before Patty notices that Richie has stopped moving for a while now. He escapes to his room and doesn’t leave until Patty is well into slumber. 

He arranges Patty’s pill bottles, re-labels them and then puts them back where they belong, color coded. Just like how he would— no, stop it.  

Whatever it means, whatever this— everything he’s doing now means, it doesn’t matter because he’s not alone anymore.

He’s got a new roommate, and a thousand stories to tell. 

He never gets married.

--

“You know when you’re in a room full of people that you love, and it’s… like, fucking Christmas or someone’s birthday. And all of you like each other on top of, of, of loving each other. That—that shit’s rare. You know. You’re lucky when you have that for a few years, you’re a goddamn miracle worker if you have that forever.”

“…what the hell are you saying?”

“Anyway, shhhh. I’m saying something. Alright? Hm. What was I—”

“ He’s so fucking shit-faced hahahah.”

“Ah! Riiight. It’s just. When that party ends, and, and everyone has to go their own ways— cause that’s gonna happen someday— don’t you feel, like, empty? Like you’re already missing them, the moment they turn their backs. Cause you think, hey when am I going to see this person again? Will this be the last time I see this person I love? If it is, I should have said something other than how much I love shrimps and coke together… should’ve… told them. Something . You know?”

“I could get behind that, yeah.”

“Hey, when you leave for Atlanta, will you do it facing me, cause’ I’ll probably throw a rock at you or something just so you would look behind one more time. See that patended, pat, patentded Urine glare…”

“ Jeesus, Richie. Learn from your own words. You could have ended it right before that. Ugh.”

“Hey, Rich. You know you could always call, right? We’ll send each other photographs and letters. We could finally try and decipher that chicken scratch-shit you call your handwriting!”

“Go on Bev, hit me where it hurts why don’t ya.”

“Just kidding, Rich. I love you.”

“But do you like me?”

“That’s kinda stretching it buddy.”

“Go on, this is doing it for me—”

“ Richie STOP we don’t want to see your dick!”

  --

It is two years into college that he spends his first holiday with his parents and it's only because they finally move to the West Coast. He helps them move in a week before Christmas, and in the clutter of his own childhood junk, he finds a securely packaged film.

Something in his chest spreads, and he is quiet and stiff all throughout dinner. He feels like he is on the precipice of discovering something but keeps on tripping on the way there. It is not unlike the time he went for a midnight snack, so focused on getting to the fridge that he does not anticipate the last step in the stairs, putting his foot down only to feel air and then a sudden lurch. 

He wouldn’t know why until he is sitting on the living room floor, wrapped in a fleece blanket that he will bring back to the dorms, hand gripping the hot chocolate so tight that it tilts and burns his hand.

“…am Stanley Urine and if you dare look in the direction of my esteemed person, suffer with the knowledge that you shall never be as great as I am. Also, I fuck birds—”

“Richie, what the fuck, I do not fuck bir—”

It is an hour long, and he remembers spending so much money just to get it made. Seven copies for—

The Losers. 

His hand slams on his mouth, hot chocolate spilling all over. He feels the onslaught of tears, eyes burning and throat closing up. Richie knows that if he starts now, he will never stop. At least until morning comes. 

Plus— he has better things to do than cry. 

(Maybe later, he thinks.)

Richie stands up to clean the spilled drink, mind already planning on the ways he could reach out to his friends. They must have thought he abandoned them, and the shame spreads through his skin for ever forgetting about them. It must have been all the partying, or he didn’t know their addresses the first time around and it just got lost from his thoughts. 

Somehow, he thinks he is better than this, to have given up on reaching out to his best friends. But he decides that this time around, he will try to be better. 

Richie sleeps on his bed that night with a clear plan in his mind, thinking he will start looking for them once he wakes up. 

He never does. 

--

They get older. Richie wakes up one day with more wrinkles than he can count. Bill loses hair, Ben’s body loses its build just a bit. He gets softer. Mike, for some reason, looks much younger than he did in Derry. 

--

Beverly is the first to go. Richie couldn’t believe it at first, she was always the most resilient of them all. Bev with her fierce eyes and firm hands, always so quick on her feet, always getting back up— she couldn’t just—

“It’s cancer, Rich. It doesn't choose us, it just happens."

“Then just cut your boobs off, Ben wouldn’t cry about that for too long— y’know, I never even wanted to touch your boobs, cause, cause’ you know I’m—”

“Oh, Rich,” Bev says, comforting Richie like he is the one in the hospital bed, red fucking hair completely gone. “You know we can’t do that anymore,” and he does know. “We found it too late.” 

“Come on Bev, we fucking killed a clown from space. Can’t we kill cancer?” 

“You could try,” she says, her eyes never losing their twinkle, her  life, “With that big boy money of yours. You could fund research, make it the Lover-Bird Winter Fire Foundation, or something.”

Richie laughs, a pathetic mix of a sob and a genuine laugh, “Leave the catchy titles to me and Ben. I love you but I need to tell you, poetry ain’t it for you.”

“Oh shush, as if Ben will ever believe that.”

They laugh, this time much freer and Richie almost forgets the reason they’re talking about it at all. 

“Bev, my favorite girl,” Richie says.

Bev crinkles her nose playfully, “Rich, I’m your only girl.”

“And I’d like to keep it that way…”

It is too heavy, the reality of it. And Richie knows he has to leave soon, but there is something that he only realized with age. That even for someone as loud as he is, there is nothing so wonderful than the silence you surrender yourself into, when you’re so in tune with someone else that you don’t have to hide.

Bev breaks it first with a sigh, soft eyes, and gentle touch. Her fingers caress his hairy forearms and it tickles him. He thinks she did it intentionally.

“I love you, Rich.” He nods because he does, too. And when she opens her mouth to speak, she hesitates. 

What she does not say out loud, she means with the way her eyes convey the next few words, the words that he could never quite believe, words that he could never quite find thinking of himself, seeing in himself.

She goes:

“I’m so proud of you.”

--

They bury her in a bright autumn day, when the sky is the reddest it could have been and Richie thinks, "How fitting." For Beverly to be as beautiful in the sky as she was in front of him.

--

Bill follows soon after. Seventy and almost bald, still their Big Bill despite being the smallest of the group now. He dies in his sleep, and when Richie receives the call from his daughter, he thinks how anticlimactic it is that Bill, their fearless leader, would go down so quietly. He always thought Bill would die in battle, blood bathed and formidable in his determination.

He is still when he leans on the counter, just staring at the swaying leaves out in his backyard. He thinks he wouldn’t have it any other way. Anyone who dies a hero has always been in pain in the end. 

He does not hear the cistern, with its echoes and dripping water. Does not feel the shaky earth, and the warmth of blood. He only hears the whisper of the wind, and his own mind thanking the universe that they gave Bill peace at the very last moment.

A drop of tear rolls down his face, and he thinks that the one thing he regrets is not having said goodbye to yet another friend.

--

“How did you do it Mike?”

He is laying on his bed, and sunlight filters through the window and into Mike’s face—his warm, golden fellow. Richie memorizes the comforting smell of old books and traces the callouses in Mike’s hands, and thinks just how much the two things are so Mike. When tomorrow comes, and he smells and feels the things he does right now, he will think: That was my loyal friend, Mike. And even though I don’t always understand him, I see him smile and think, thank God I get to see this. You know, his smile was brighter than the gosh darn sun!

Richie cannot help the tears that slip from his eyes. He sniffles. Then, he chuckles, almost shy for being so emotional when Mike himself is just. Smiling. 

“What are you talking about, Richie?”

He forces himself not to avoid Mike’s inquisitive eyes. He must make this count. “Watching everyone leave.”

Mike hums, and he is the first one to look away. He does not do it out of discomfort, Richie knows, because he is still so serene in his bed. Maybe this comes with age. Or maybe not. Richie is an old man too, only a month younger than Mike and he still fumbles and burns just as easily as he did in his youth.

As it is, Richie adds again, almost hasty, like he has a time limit (he does). “I thought—I thought I would be next to go,” he says, “I think I’d like that. I don’t. I don’t want to be the last one. I don’t—”

His voice breaks and he ducks to hide his tears. The unspoken words: I don’t want to be alone heard and understood with the way Mike caresses his cheek, wiping his eyes. 

“It helped that I knew...” he says, and a benevolent smile welcomes his face, “that I was going to see you all again soon.”

When Mike closes his eyes, Richie realizes just how strong Mike had been. And how he could never do what he did, at least not intentionally. Because where Mike had hope, Richie just had too much time.

--

After Mike, Richie genuinely believes he would be next. Richie—who had a lifetime of vices and no reasons to stop until much later in life.

Ben and Richie are the only ones left in their lonely Loser’s club. 

“Ben, you bastard, I told you I would be the next one,” Richie says, seated on the armchair in Ben and Bev’s summer home, overlooking the beach. “And I was so close too with that heart attack last winter. My vices are catching up to me, but they’re too slow.”

Ben’s laugh vibrates through his whole body and Richie thanks God he can still have this. When he sobers up, Ben says, “You know, Rich, you weren’t the only one who had vices.”

“Yeah, if yours was looking hot and gaining abs.”

“It… wasn’t all that healthy. I also, you know, drank. A lot.”

This is the first time he hears of this and he asks himself why Ben never told him before. But he is an old man and he knows that time runs out, so he does not waste time and asks instead. “Why’d you never tell me, Haystack?”

“I… didn’t want to burden you anymore.”

“Look, Ben, I. I’m—”

“ Don’t say you’re sorry. You didn’t see yourself, after everything. But every time you chose to do the right thing for yourself, Bev and I always celebrated it. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck do you have to be sorry for?”

“For having to pry you off Ed… Eddie… for having to be the one to carry you away… for… for being the happiest I’ve ever been in my life, even after…. everything and—”

Richie stands up so abruptly that Ben looks up in surprise. It’s hard for him to do this but he leans down to where Ben is sitting and hugs him. His face is squished beside Ben and he feels the wetness and murmurs, “Shut up. I was never mad that you got to be happy, what the fuck. I love you all too much.”

The position is hard to sustain so he stands back up again and cracks his back before sitting back down in a slump. He looks at Ben and says to him, “I didn’t know you were holding onto that, after all this time. I just want you to know, I don’t hold it against you, any of you.”

That is the end of that conversation and they spend the night with Patty’s and Mike’s and Bill’s and Ben and Bev’s children, and the children of their children. 

On Christmas day, when they come back to the summer house, Ben passes away in his bed surrounded by his family.

And Richie weeps for the last Loser on Earth.

--

Richie turns eighty-eight alone. The kids are all working, and he suspects they will be giving him a party later. He appreciates it, but at this age, he would much rather turn in early. 

They take care of him. Bev and Ben’s children as well as Patty’s kid. Mike’s kid would visit him periodically, as well as Bill’s—having moved to London to take care of his mother.

They are good people, and he lets Ben’s kid manage the Loser’s Club foundation. He renamed it after Ben passed, finding it more fitting to branch out as well. 

Richie smiles to himself, and himself only.

--

They keep pausing in between skits and characters because Richie keeps adding commentary, filming it as he does. He calls it the ‘Director’s Commentary’ Stan calls it ‘Unnecessary Commentary’.

“Well, when I was shooting Bev’s part my mom saw me—”

“ HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH—”

Bev, at least, seems to be enjoying Richie’s commentary, with her face deep red and eyes tearing up from all the laughing. She slaps her knees and then wheezes.

Richie looks at her in absolute glee before pretending to be offended, hand over his heart and all, “Fuck you Marsh! I had to suffer a week’s worth of concerned looks. She thought I was doing drag—she even, she fucking supported me through it what the fuck, shit, I remember—she bought me a dress after that, and she said, and I remember this clearly, ‘Richie, if you’re into that, at least tell me. Here, I bought you a dress so you wouldn’t stretch mine out—' ”

The stories are endless and Richie’s enthusiasm in telling them, with his hyperbole and inappropriate jokes, somehow amps up the mood even more. It helps that they think this will be one of the last times they will see Richie Tozier, full frontal, and all. It’s also interesting, just how much clusterfuck Richie went through to shoot these. 

He talks of specific technologies with Ben and Mike and bizarre story elements with Bill. Stan watches from the sidelines, snide remarks on the go, a fond smile hidden poorly. Bev watches them and chimes in, and when she notices the lack of protests from Eddie, she seeks him out and—

Sees.

She watches him watch Richie, and she feels wrong for intruding in a moment like that one. It is like he is memorizing all of Richie, and she thinks it’s not too bad to do that too. 

On that bright summer day, the Loser’s Club gets to be kids for the last time. 

--

“Your stutter was shit though,” Bill teases him later, when they remember it, “How do you suck at stuttering?”

“He—ahaha—he stuttered at all the awkward words and those random fucking syllables! You’re hilarious when you’re not trying Trashmouth! ” Bev guffaws once again, enjoying this far too much.

“Oh Bev, I love you and all but please shut the fuck up—”

“Hey, if you’re gonna talk to Bev like that,” Ben starts good naturedly, “at least apologize for butchering my character!”

Bev roars in the background.

“I can’t believe it!” Mike gasps from the side, “He, Richie—he,” but couldn’t finish, surrendering to the silent wracks of his body, laughter too strong for sound.

“Yes, yes, I predicted the future, I made Ben the one with the abs because the pillow kept— the pillow kept falling and I already had the shirt with the abs. I even added the scar!” Richie’s indignation only causes the others to shriek in positive laughter, “I had to operate the camera by myself, and the pillow kept making it hard to set up the tripod—come on guys it was genius! And apparently prophetic!”

“Yeah, if drawing abs on your torso while making googly eyes at ‘Bev’ was genius,” Bill manages, curled in on himself, looking up at Richie who’s the only one left standing on the porch, the rest of them surrendering to their delight.

“I was so scared Bev would find out, I was sweating so bad!”

“Hey,” Bev grins, calmer now, “remember Stan’s?”

“Of course,” Richie breathes, “He didn’t get mad at all, that fucker. I specifically made it so he would get mad at me.”

“You were quoting bird facts every time he talked, of course he got excited!” Bill says.

“Remember the first thing he said?”

“ ’Wait, Richie, you went to the library?’” Richie, Beverly, Ben, Bill and Mike recited in various Indignant Stan Uris impressions.

They laugh heartily. 

The ocean hums back.

They are all settled on individual couches, comfortable as they watch the sun go down.

This feels… good.

“Hey, remember how flustered Eddie was?”

Richie blushes. 

“Yeah,” he says into the sky.

The four of them watch Richie, soft smiles in their faces, warm affection in their eyes.

“I think I accidentally confessed all my prepubescent feelings to him,” he says, chuckling fondly.

“You said things like, ‘ Well, because I’m the most reliable, most caring of the group, with my, with my—" Bill starts.

Bev continued, “’ With my big Bambi eyes that looks like melted chocolate—‘”

“’I’m going to keep a whole pharmacy in my fanny pack and patch Richie up whenever he’s being a dumb stupid idiot!’” Mike finishes, proud for remembering.

“And what did Richie say? What did Richie as himself say?” Ben prompts through chuckles.

Richie looks at them dead-eyed, despite the flush in his skin, embarrassed through and through.

“’ Gee, Eddie, you’re the best!” Richie says, flatly, which serves to make it even funnier, going by the way they all erupt into fond laughter.

“ You don’t even say that shit—HAHAHAHH—"

“Come on guys,” Richie tries, embarrassed, before he surrenders, and laughs at himself too, “I thought I was being subtle, God damn it.”

--

The things that happened in Richie’s life makes him who he is, but let it not be said that Richie was never happy, even just a little bit, after Eddie.

--

Richie met someone once, a guy named Jordan, and he was the type who was quiet at first and steadily got motor mouthed as they got closer. It never got as far as a kiss, before Richie told him he’s a fine man, but Richie was not as fine as he was. The look on Jordan’s face told him he did not quite understand, but he let it go.

They remain friends even when Jordan develops dementia and knows him as that guy with the funny voices, every time he introduces himself.  

--

He spends his time playing along with the kids, too. It’s both the youngest and oldest he’s felt in a long time.

He’s happy.

--

The first time Richie doesn’t think of Eddie, he’s playing jenga with the kids and he’s been talking to them exclusively in the British Voice. Bev tells him they’re developing a British accent themselves, and Richie laughs so hard he snorts and maybe cracks his back too, with the way he flails back.

He thinks of how funny it is, and how good it is to laugh like this.

It is only a few days later when he’s using the British voice again that he realizes he didn’t think about what Eddie would have said to him had he been there.

--

Ed Hanscom settles on the seat right in front of the stage, just as his Uncle Rich gets up the podium. 

He still feels it in his hand, the delicate wrinkles in his finger that does not do anything to lessen his uncle’s strong, calming touch. He always felt safe, holding onto him. Ed allows himself to think that maybe he was able to be that pillar to Uncle Rich, the way he had always been to Ed. 

They had walked in a slow but confident stride, but it felt like another Voice, a Calm and Confident Character. He knows this because of the way Uncle Rich’s hands trembled, close enough to hear the rattle in his breath, and the deep one he takes right after.

As he sits there, watching Uncle Rich get up to accept his Lifetime Award, Ed realizes that he will not get to take another breath, one day. Of course, he knew that, with Mom and Dad a few years before. But Uncle Rich has always been such a brightness in his life, a constant tenderness that never fails to make him feel safe. 

He remembers how relentless he was with all his cousins, and while his parents tried, they could never quite catch up with him. All except for Uncle Rich, who matched him blow for blow, laughter for laughter.

Under the light, Uncle Rich’s old age reveals itself in the lines in his face, so deeply carved the smile lines in his mouth, crow’s feet by his eyes and wrinkles on his forehead—or, what he would tease Uncle Rich with as a child, “ High FIVE, Fivehead!” 

Ed giggles at the memory of his four-year-old hand fitting in the wide expanse of his uncle’s forehead and how Uncle Rich looked shocked at first before dissolving into giggles with him, a tickle fight emerging soon after.

When he speaks into the mic, his voice is worn with its years, but the unique cadence that only Uncle Rich has is there. A certain mischief and flavor that give its richness, and— warmth. Ed tries not to think further on why he’s trying to catalogue everything right now as if Uncle Rich will fall apart any minute now. Plus, Uncle Rich always told him that he could edit his Wikipedia page to whatever he liked, after.

The murmurs emerge as Uncle Rich stands there, wide eyed, and slack jawed. He knows this look. The first time he saw it was when he was talking about the production of this one movie he watched. He was so into it that he was talking at the speed of light again, but it was okay because Uncle Rich could always understand him.

He noticed much later though that Uncle Rich stopped responding, and when he looked up his eyes were unseeing. 

He left soon after.

Later that night, he asked dad what it was all about.  

“It’s the years coming at him all at once,” Dad said, like it explained anything.

Mom saw his frustration and added, “He was seeing Eddie, baby.”

“But I’m here! He was definitely not seeing me.”

“He was seeing his Eddie.”

When dad comes up to his room later and tells him the story of the seven losers, he finally understands.

--

The murmurs wrench him away from his mind enough to start his bit, “You know, with an old geezer like me, I’d worry I’d collapse right here right now. But then again, the paps would love that.”

His jokes bring everyone to laughter, and he thanks his life-long honed skill for saving him in that one. He keeps on it, for maybe five minutes straight, with his mouth running and his head floating.

He feels like two people, as he watches his body speak and move and act while his head just stays. Still.

He sees his nephew, almost like his son, Ed. The other kids would be at the evening party, and he would take a picture with them later. There are occasional colleagues—Steve Covall, his lifelong work partner sits on the front rows, a proud smile on his old ass face. He sends him a cheeky grin. 

Sandy, his last ex and frequent collaborator, sits a few rows back with her daughter. He thinks, with the look she is giving him, that she might have actually liked his company in the years they were together. Maybe in another life, he thinks, they would have been married. 

The laughter fades after he finishes the improvised bit. His smile melts a little.

“See, that’s the thing,” he says in his own voice, “When the last of my best friends died, no one heckles me anymore.” 

The room quietens in an instant. “Ah, I made you all uncomfortable, haven't I. Let’s talk about boobs instead— sike! II came out years ago. That’s old news. I’m old news. Why the fuck are you guys even here? Everyone knows I like dick! The homo’s revealed himself, party’s over, let’s go homo everybody.” 

It still surprises him, when this many people laugh at his jokes, the rare times he gets on stage. It’s almost like he’s back to stand up again, but this time, he isn’t lying.

“Surprisingly, my two number one not fans, my best hecklers… they were the first to go.” That shut them up real good. But he continues. He needs to say this. “The thing is, I never even got to know them, when we got older. It’s something adults never think  to tell you— that friends grow apart. That you forget them. That one day, it will be the last time you will ever get to talk to them and you wouldn’t even know it. The last time I—” his voice breaks, “The last time I talked to one of them, I was telling him I would give him a porno for his birthday,” the crowd laughs, a bark of a laughter, taken aback, “Cause I thought college was when he finally got that stick out his ass and jerked off like rest of us schmucks. The fucker told me to go fuck myself, and I did!” 

He grins wide, with the crowd’s laughter echoing in the hall. Yet, he feels strangely empty. Incomplete.

“I never did get to find out. The first time I thought of his name again was 27 years later, and I find out he’s already gone. The next day, I lose one of them again.”

“I’m not saying this to be morbid, or to piss on your fancy asses, though I don’t doubt it’s new in your bedroom,” they roar, never stopping, “I’m saying this because those guys, and the four others who were left to deal with my bullshit… they’re the ones you should be thanking. We— I wouldn’t have been here, honored for the stories I told— retold— without Stan. Without Mike. Ben. Bill. Bev. Without Eddie.

“They’re the hecklers, best of em’. They’re all gone now. But, not really, right? Cause they’re in all the stories that I told. They’re in all the things that I do, the words that I say. I made sure of that. And when I finally go too, I want you all to remember not Richie Tozier— that guy’s an asshole— but the lucky seven. The Losers Club.”

He thinks, as the crowd’s applause becomes deafening, that it’s obvious, why it doesn’t feel as good as he once thought it would be.

His friends aren’t there to see him.

--

“In every few decades, there comes a film that just manages to do it all. His first film debuted out of nowhere, a film that was wrought after five years of hiatus, just after a public breakdown. Who would have known, then, how much the world would grow to love this film. It is, for lack of better words, summer but forever. It is only in the years that came, when Tozier received his Lifetime Achievement award that we would find out the reason for its incredible vulnerability. This story, that had the nerve to touch every soul, very much like its creator in its mischief, spontaneity, and surprising honesty, came from his own life. 

The seven kids that live in that summer for eternity, are none other than the Losers Club.”

--

Richie doesn’t do much these days. He is 96 years old. Spent too much time wandering this Earth. But he gets tired easier these days, so he spends the rest of his time on the beach. 

He sits on the bench by patio, listening to the whisper of the sea. He does not fiddle, nor twitch like he used to in his youth. These days, he is still. He never thought that day would come.

A young boy, not much younger than he was when he started living again, sits beside him. 

“You know, for all that you look like your mom, you were always so different,” he says, voice so quiet it could be woven into the wind.

“Dad always told me I spoke too much like Uncle Eddie,” he gambles on that response. It’s never quite set, how Uncle Rich would react to him mentioning Uncle Eddie. He doesn’t know the guy, but he knows his Uncle Rich. But the way he just laughs, free in a way he has never quite truly been, disarms him. 

“You spoke fast alright,” he chuckles, and Ed agrees. “But, and I say this with all the love sweet bum, no one could ever come close to your Uncle Eddie.”

Ed scoots closer to his uncle, seeking shelter in his presence.

“What… what did you love about Uncle Eddie?”

“Oh,” Richie remembers with a smile, “I loved making my Eds laugh. He was always trying not to. Made me feel real good about myself when I got him to. He had the cutest laugh.”

“Was he your husband, Uncle Rich?”

“No,” he confesses as the waves meet the shore, “He was my... Eds.”

The air is warm around them. 

Uncle Rich looks far away into the horizon. 

It is an orange melody, the sky, with its red and pink streaks making for a grand display. Like they’re performing for them.

“I say all that but,” Uncle Rich starts again, voice quiet, “do you wanna know something, bud?”

“All the time, Uncle Rich.”

A bird squawks in the distance.

“I have only one picture of Eddie, and it was from his LinkedIn profile,” he’s smiling, but it is withered. “He had some Facebook photos, but that was the only picture where I could see the brown in his eyes.

“But at least I had that, you know, cause’...” he whispers softly, vulnerable like snow touching his nose. Uncle Rich meets his eyes, then, and says, “I can't remember what his laugh sounds like."

The sun sets.

His tears fall with it.

They stay that way unmoving, Uncle and Nephew, Richie and Ed, until the night settles in. 

(In the warm Californian light, the wave of emptiness that settles in Ed’s chest feels like a fluke.)

--

“Were you happy uncle Rich?”

“Ah well,” he smiles, and he thinks of Eddie, the way his thoughts always lead to Eddie. “I had a good time.”

--

Richie Tozier passes on with Ed beside him, and the rest of the kids surrounding him. The world would ask them how it was when it happened, and the kids cannot hold Richie Tozier as their own, because in a sense, he is the world’s.

(Which is wrong, in every degree, because Richie Tozier belongs to one person only.) 

They would tell the reporters that Richie Tozier died with a smile on his face, and laughter on his lips. But Ed Hanscom would not tell them what he hears—when his uncle, in his final breath, chuckled, and whispered, “... my... spaghetti.”

And even then, no one but Richie would know that in his last moments, he was thinking of making a joke.

--

It is hidden in one of the lower drawers, an original copy of Seven Summers and Ed feels like he won somehow, when he blows the dust from its casing. An original blu-ray, signed by Uncle Bill and Uncle Richie.

He decides then that he would bring it home, put it on the mantle along with his picture, and when his own grandchildren are old enough, he could watch it with them.

When Ed opens to inspect its CD though, something flutters to the ground. He picks up the piece of paper and feels a gush of affection seeing the chicken scrawl of his favorite Uncle. 

This shit’s stupid

What fucking award

I don’t deserve to

What to say??

When  

It is smudged, and there’s way too much erasure in the beginning. There are ghosts of tears embedded in the history of this paper. It is small, and he squints to read it. But when he does, he cannot help but add his own piece of history on it with his own tears.

It says:

When I’ve got this much love, and no one to take it like I want to give it, where does it go? First it goes to anger. And when it’s all worn off, when you’re too tired to be mad, it’s stripped to crushing grief. And one day, you wake up and you realize that love overflows still, and you’ve got no choice but to put it towards moving on.

 --

Ed sees it much later, when he watches until the credits of Seven Summers end, and he is sitting, empty and lost for the first time.

It comes in a static shock. Like the blur of old VHS tapes, the ones from way back when. 

A text with neon colors flash in front of his flat screen TV: Meet the Loser’s Club, since 89’

The first to show up is a boy with a mop of curly hair, gangly and wild. “ —and I am a world-famous comedian. So, you—so you better shut the fuck up Stan cause I’m recording this, and when you need my help getting some boobies, I won’t even look your way!”

“ As if it’s me who needs help. ”

“ Oh, riiiiight. I remember Katie Durk from last summer. You telling me you got buncha boobies and didn’t even tell me? Tell me, did you suck—”

“Richie, I will cut your balls and feed them to you if you do not shut the fuck UP!” 

The camera pans from Uncle Rich to a much smaller, much vicious looking boy in a salmon polo.

“ Eds, if you want, you can feed on it too—”

An inhuman screech. The camera falls to the ground. Static.

When it comes back, he gets to watch Uncle Rich in a dress, and red hair, cigarettes on his lips—five of them all at once. He snorts, more because he realized it was his mother Uncle Rich was dressing up as.

He watches, as Uncle Rich introduces each Loser through his skits, watches as he shows just how much he loved Uncle Eddie, who was always quite a stranger to him, until now. It showed through the way he knew all the little details, body language that is not quite his own—Ed would have known, he’s spent a lifetime watching his Uncle Rich. 

The way he moved was more erratic, sometimes shy, his spitfire words eliciting a few chuckles out of Ed. And when Uncle Rich screamed, “ RICHIE!!!” and the same small boy with big brown eyes shows up in the screen a second later with a disapproving brow and waving hands, looking at the person behind the camera—Ed realized that what he was watching was something so… precious, and delicate. 

To see this love that existed between Uncle Rich and Uncle Eddie, love that existed without the need to take, only to give—one that they didn’t even know, or said, or did anything about, if he listened to Uncle Riche well enough.

But here he is now, decades after, a lifetime after, and he gets to see it. So, he will do his best to cherish it, and remember it. 

--

It is an hour long, and much, much better than the previous film he watched. 

The credits have Uncle Rich’s name in all of them, another bit that makes him grin with how much his mischief lived with him. At the end of the credits, they’re all standing in front of the camera, a patch of sunlight dancing across their faces.

Uncle Rich is in the middle, a wide, encompassing grin etched on his face, eternal, in this film. Under him is Uncle Eddie, the smallest of the group, yet the liveliest. And when he stops fussing under Uncle Rich’s arm, surrounded by the rest of his friends, he glances up at Uncle Rich with what one could only think of as devotion.

“Alright guys?” his dad asks, a gentle smile on his face as he watches the two.

“Come on, Richie, we don’t have time for your mating rituals—”

“ Shut up Stan—”

“ G uys,” his mom intones.

(And oh. He misses her too.)

“Th-th-tha—”

“What’s that Big Bill?”

“ RICHIE! Stop being a dick to Bill and start the fucking outro or something.”

“You want me to be a big dick to you instead, Eddie spaghetti? I have one right—”

“ THANKS FOR WATCHING!” he shrieks, hands over his ears.

The rest of the losers laugh.

And in one breath, they all look at the camera and say, “We’re the Loser’s Club!” 

It echoes, their voices, their memories. 

Uncle Stan leaves first. Eddie goes to leave but Richie holds onto him first, leaving Bill trailing along Stan about a book. Uncle Mike and dad sit by the corner, and mom lights up a cigarette by the stairs, looking on to the two left standing in front of the camera.

--

Richie is messing Eddie’s hair when he grumbles, “We better still be friends when we grow older you asshole, or I’ll… kill you or something.”

“Oh? You hear that?” Richie turns his head to the camera, “Little Eds is gonna kill me or something— youch!”

He rubs his inner forearm from where Eddie pinched him. But he forgets about that in a second as his face lights up, and he talks to the camera again, “Hey, hey! You over there watching, I want you to give me 10 dollars if Eds and I are still friends in the future. And if we’re not, well. Then, visit my grave and don’t piss on it!”

“Now you need to piss on it. But wipe your hands and dick, cause of all the bacteria in the air—”

Eddie catches on to what he says, crinkles his nose, and Richie sees this, which makes him laugh, and laugh and laugh. And after some time, Eddie joins in, too.

“Eds, look at that,” Richie says, close to Eddie’s ears.

Eddie’s gaze lingers, but he turns around eventually, grumbling, “What are we looking at?”

And when Richie says it, Ed cannot hold the tears that spring from his eyes, and he feels both so full of love and longing, for the Richie and Eddie that existed long before he was a thought. 

Because what they had was something Ed thinks Uncle Richie should have had his whole life, full, unbridled and forever. 

Because he never saw Uncle Rich smile like the way he did in this little film, like it’s the easiest thing in the world and it would be preposterous not to.

Because he finally understood why Uncle Rich said what he said, with his last breath, but his life still ahead.

On the screen, grainy but nevertheless bright, Richie looks at Eddie and declares, “That’s our future!”

He turns to the camera, and then waves his hand, arm still over Eddie’s shoulder, who gulps, blushing, before turning around and starts waving too.

The screen turns to black, and it fades away, in that way the old movies did, and the last thing it shows are Richie and Eddie greeting the future in each other’s arms.

--

“But even then, I never did forget how he made me feel."

Beside his uncle, under the warmth of the sun, Ed looks at the aged lines of Richie Tozier and he thinks he understands. 

--

He wanders around for a while. He doesn’t know exactly where he is, but he lets his body move on its own. He thinks he might be going somewhere, feels the need to look for something, scream for someone. 

He walks for hours, and it might have been days. The sun never sets here, so he would never know how long it took. But he does know exactly when he found it.

Such a familiar place, this part of the forest. It draws him closer, and he hears something that makes his heart blossom. He isn’t aware of it when he walks down the ladder, aged wood, beloved. 

He feels it before he sees it. The fullness. The click. That, “I’ve found it.” 

He turns. 

And.

He adjusts his glasses.

Ah.

There they are.

There he is.

Eddie.

“Welcome back to the Loser’s Club, asshole.”

--

But know deep down it’s over now

Our secret place, our final page

Lost as we were and what we found

We’ll tell this story again

The lonely kids will take a stand

Make up their minds and make a plan

Day after day they turn the page

We’ll meet again someday

--