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"It was my fault," Richie admitted as Bill sat next to him at the edge of what used to be their pool. It was an unbearably hot summer night, as it always had been, though neither of them was in the mood for swimming. "This whole stupid mess, it's all my fault."
For them, turning forty shouldn't have been as emotional as it was that year, but they both knew how utterly depressing it all was. This shouldn't have happened until decades later, until they were at least eighty and too far gone on medication to really notice the difference. To notice the silence that drove them insane.
Once upon a time, Richie would have said he loved Bill. For the longest time, he did; for twenty-three years he loved him, but that spark had died out just as the rest of them had. Six people Richie had loved, and only one of them remained here. He couldn't care less where the others went, he was never too religious of a person, but they weren't here and that was enough to choke out any remaining optimism Richie could have had for the future.
It was that dying optimism that drove Bill away from Richie and to a woman, Audra, who made Bill smile like he used to.
"Blaming yourself doesn't help anyone, Richie." Bill shook his head at his friend, who simply sighed in response. "It doesn't help me, it doesn't help them, and it certainly doesn't help you."
"There's no them, Bill. That's the fucking problem."
"I know that- believe me, I do," he sighed, trying to form the words in his head that he once struggled to believe himself. "When we lose people, it's easy to blame yourself when, in reality, it had nothing to do with you. You did nothing but make their lives better, Richie, and they'd say the same. Sometimes, you just- you have to move on sometimes. I don't mean forget them or act as if they never existed, but for your own sake, you have to understand their deaths should never create yours."
"Stan didn't want to talk to you," Richie whispered softly, wanting to ignore what Bill had said. "He told me how he felt and he didn't want to tell you. He thought you would think he was crazy."
Richie was only sixteen during that infamous conversation, the thing that started the end of it all. Stanley Uris, in all of his weirdness, was the love of Richie's life, a fact that they both knew quite well (and, if Stan had known it for a handful of years before Richie had caught on, well, that was a conversation they had another day). That crooked smile, that high-pitched giggle, that strange fondness for all things ornithology, it was enough to make Richie's frustratingly repressed life bearable.
It was that one conversation on that cold winter day that changed everything, as two became three, three became five, and five became seven.
"I told him that you were an idiot, but you were an idiot that loved him."
Five years later, it was Eddie that found Stan on the floor of his bathroom. Richie wasn't there that night, he was telling jokes three thousand miles away in some shitty bar. His phone rang five times during that show. It would've rang more if he didn't dramatically roll his eyes at the audience as he shut it off and handed it off to his manager, who, really, was just Richie's most agreeable classmate from his brief year at college who just so happened to be majoring in business management- total snore-fest, that one.
While Eddie was home alone in a state of panic, hands shaking as he called his boyfriends, called his girlfriend, struggling and unwanting to get the words out through his sobs, Richie was laughing as he told a story about Stan and how he'd scream whenever Richie would pick him up from behind and spin him around.
"I told him to do it," Richie continued. "How is it not my fault when he wouldn't have talked to you if I didn't tell him to? If he didn't talk to you, we wouldn't have been together. I wouldn't have been financially stable enough to take jobs out of the state. I would have been there."
"Believe me, you didn't want to be."
"I deserve that, I think," he sighed. And Richie believed that, he really did; though he always knew that Stan was Stan and his mind worked in the strangest of ways, Richie couldn't help but place some of the blame for that on himself. "I made Eddie go through all of that. It should have been me that… I saw you guys calling, you know, and I didn't answer."
"You were at work," Bill replied flatly. He knew better than to insert his own opinion of this matter into the conversation, knowing it would only make things worse. Should Richie have been there? Of course. Would it have changed anything? Probably not.
Bill Denbrough remembered that night a bit differently, of course, having been there. Well, not there, as he was down the street buying milk since Eddie had dropped the last gallon, but he experienced it just as much. Eddie was the only one actually there, as Ben, Mike, and Beverly treated themselves to a nice dinner. It was rare that all seven of them had the time and energy to do things as a group, but none of them were ever lonely. It was hard to be in a house of seven people.
He remembered getting that call from Eddie, it was 6:23. If Bill hadn't seen who was calling him, he wouldn't have recognized Eddie's voice, it had sounded so foreign to him. Eddie could barely get any words out, but it was the tone that made Bill run home, that half-gallon of whole milk ( It's all they have, Bill thought to himself when he stood in line at the register. They're gonna have a fit, but it's all they have.) weighing him down like an anchor, begging him to stop, as if it had known.
Eddie was inconsolable, especially when the ambulance finally arrived. He couldn't breathe, didn't want to breathe, hoping and praying it was all some cruel nightmare of his. That he would wake up just fine and his hands wouldn't be covered in blood, that they weren't shaking, that he wasn't as pale as a ghost and clutching a garbage bin to his chest as he sat on the couch, dry heaving through it all.
That was just the first, Bill thought as Richie just stared into the water. Stanley was only the first.
"Why don't you get out of the house?" Bill diverted. "Go on a nice vacation somewhere, go travel the world. Being stuck in this house isn't making anything better."
"I'd feel guilty doing that stuff, Bill. I don't want to just move on from all of that," Richie sighed, knowing that was only partly true. "There were seven of us, and now there are only two. How could you not be going crazy just thinking about it?"
"I do," he admitted softly. "Some nights, I wake up from those nightmares and feel like I'm dying. I get so scared that I forget to breathe, Richie, but- but those are just some nights, not every night. We're only forty years old, we have a lot more to look forward to in life. We can look back on life and mourn it, yeah, but we have to keep going. Looking back makes us human, but being able to move forward makes us who we are."
"What if we can't do that? What happens when we can't move on?"
"It's hard not to, I think," Bill replied, furrowing his eyebrows as he thought. "No matter what, time keeps going. The world moves on even if you don't, which certainly does help. I couldn't imagine what it'd be like if it was still that day, if we were just perpetually stuck there. But we're not, which lets me know that things are okay. Things weren't okay then, but we aren't then, we're now, and I need that more than anything."
Though he supposed Bill's words were meant to ease his frustrations, Richie couldn't help but think they were there to simply mock him. Stan was only twenty-one when he died, and that time was once now, too. How the hell did any of them move past that? Bev was thirty-two, Mike was thirty-five, Ben was thirty-six, Eddie was thirty-nine. Richie only looked at Bill and cried, believing something was coming for him, too.
Even back when there were six, Richie sank so far back into himself that none of them knew what to do. He'd have moments where he couldn't do anything but stare off blankly and cry. He wanted to yell at them for not doing the same, but Richie knew better than that; everyone grieved in their own way, of course.
Time made things better, as it always did, allowing those scars to fade slowly but surely. Those scars were scars, they'd always be there, but time made them not so painful anymore, not so apparent.
Those wounds had to have been reopened so cruelly, of course, as life would have it.
"I think we always thought Ben would go before Bev, honestly," Richie admitted. "No one said it, obviously, but no one would have imagined the opposite. Ben would've died for her- he'd die for any of us, really."
"We all were the same way." Bill nodded as he thought. "In that way, I think. It's the same in all relationships, you just find the people you care so much for that you'd die for them. I'm sure it's not a healthy way to look at things, but it's hard not to think about it in our case."
"So much violence…" Richie trailed off, not sure where to go from there and even more unsure of whether he wanted to think about it further at all. "When you think about a loved one dying, I think most people want it to be calm, you know? They're a hundred years old, lived long and beautiful lives, have an amazing family, and they just pass in their sleep. No one thinks about all the other ways it can happen."
"Maybe they don't want to."
"Believe me, I know they don't want to," he sighed. "They don't want to think about the fact that the number one cause of death among pregnant women is homicide. They don't want to think about how almost eleven thousand people die each year because of drunk drivers. And, well… heart problems, cancer… you know those things, but you never really think they'd happen to you or people you know and love."
"No one wants to think about that stuff, Richie. We don't like thinking about sad things- if we do, it's not very healthy. I know sometimes it's- it might seem stupid to only think about the good things, to ignore the bad parts of the world, but it's not that we don't know they exist. Deep down, we just hate the way the world treats those less fortunate than ourselves." Bill shook his head slightly as he spoke, the realization of the words coming to him just as quickly as he said them. "I think that's why we are so full of shock when those things happen to us, the health problems. We want to go through life believing we are well off, that we lead good lives. Bad things shouldn't happen to good people, so we start to doubt that we are good when so many bad things happen to us."
"They were good people, though. And so were Stan and Bev, even if they didn't really have those health problems- well, I mean, Stan did, but it- it wasn't really… it was easy for him to try and hide things. The others were more open about the things they struggled with."
"And that's okay," Bill replied softly. "It was a seven-way relationship, honestly, we all hid things from each other at some point."
"You were never comfortable with it," Richie admitted, turning his head away from Bill. "You- we both could tell that it wasn't something you were fully into. Part of me always thought you just went along with it because you loved him but you didn't love me. Not in that way, anyway."
"Even if that were true, it wouldn't mean I loved you any less. Just a different love, that's all."
"Is it true?" Richie asked, blinking solemnly as he stared at the calm water.
"I…" he sighed, unsure of where to begin. "If it's any consolation, I never really thought of Stanley in that way, either."
"Why would- you're an asshole." Richie's breath shook as he spoke, the emotions starting to bubble up despite him fighting to keep them down.
"I'm not a romantic person, Richie, and I thought that you would get that by now. I've never been that person and I never will be because that's not who I am. The kissing and the cuddling and the big gestures on holidays, I just… I don't get that stuff. But when I tell people I love them, I mean it just as fully as I would if I did understand those things."
"He adored you," Richie muttered. "Even before all of this shit, it was obvious that he loved you more than anything else in the world."
"Don't pull that shit to try and make me feel guilty, Richie," Bill warned, giving him a stern look before continuing. "All of you guys were like that, so don't say it like it was just Stanley. It was hard, okay? Trying to fucking- to just try and be whatever person you guys all thought I was. It was impossible to try and live up to that standard while also being the person I actually was and the person I was trying to figure out that I wanted to be! Don't act like I didn't know because it was very fucking obvious, okay? The way you guys looked at me, the way you always came to me with every question and every problem that I was to answer, the way you always were with me. I knew, okay? I knew and I hated it because I didn't always want you guys to be around but I just couldn't-"
"Oh, yeah, it's so hard being someone that everyone loves," Richie rolled his eyes. "No one's ever told you to shut up, Bill."
"I didn't always want you guys around because I was trying to fucking figure out my own life, Richie. It's hard to do that when you guys needed me to be someone that I wasn't- that I'm not. And I think that's why a relationship between just us two would never have worked out because you would never have accepted that." Glancing over at Richie, Bill sighed when he noticed that despondent look on his face. "That doesn't mean I don't love you any less. I just don't want to be in a relationship with someone when they want the complete opposite of what I am comfortable giving them. Before, I don't think any of you guys really expected me to be any more than you already saw me. But we're adults now, and adults want different things, especially when they've been to Hell and back. It doesn't matter, actually, whatever I say here. I don't need to justify anything to you."
Richie almost hated it, thinking about it all. It was his life, he had to live through all of that. Eddie was the last of them to go, that feisty little fucker, he always had his share of health problems- most of them were imaginary, though. Certainly not the heart problems, the hypertension that would never go away because, well, Eddie Kaspbrak was Eddie Kaspbrak. Those things stayed, and not only just with Eddie, but with the rest of them. Even Bev knew, or they always suspected she did, but it was only Bill and Richie that would have to watch him go.
Sometimes, though, you can't help but think of the one that got away.
"Stan texted me while I was at the show," Richie began softly. "He hated phone calls, and I suppose I do, too, but he just asked one thing. One thing that I can't stop thinking about and I hate it. I want to move on, y'know, like how you are. I want to find someone I can just be with and not feel like a piece of shit for it. He… Stan always was paranoid, wasn't he? I think maybe that was just because of his mind of his, but I don't mean to say that as if he was crazy. You remember, of course, Bill, how he'd always start crying, thinking I was cheating on him or some shit."
"For all the times he did cry about it, I think some of us might've started believing him. Or, at the very least, we were concerned about it."
"I would never do that to him, or to anyone," Richie scoffed. "You guys knew that, he probably knew that. Stan was just… I think he just couldn't understand it, having so many people love him. I got that way sometimes, too, thinking that it's all some joke. I suppose I didn't tell him that enough, that I understood, but he never believed me. I'd sit him down and force him to listen to me when I said that I would never do that, that I loved him, but it was never enough. In retrospect, I should've done more. Dragged him to couples' therapy if I had to. What I was doing was never enough, it was never going to be enough to stop what was coming and I fucking hate it. I wish I could have my younger self here right now just so I can scream at him. To tell him to just- just listen to him. Don't force him to believe things he couldn't believe but to listen to the things he needed to say. Just saying them helped, just having someone to listen to him."
"None of it was ever your fault, Richie," Bill sighed, having gone through this conversation way too many times with him.
"He was just a stressed-out kid, he- his classes were beyond what he could handle, he had to deal with being in a relationship with six people who were graduating college all at once and he was still in school and, y'know, that student debt between all of us was enough to make us sick- if we could afford to get sick, anyway- he thought the person he loved most in the worst was cheating on him with some dumbass business major- a business major - so he just… and I had to fucking leave, too. I had to leave and I wasn't there, Bill." Richie didn't want to cry, he was a forty-year-old man, after all, and he would've given anything not to do so as Bill sat next to him. It almost made him feel like a stupid kid again, that stupid thirteen-year-old kid who bawled his eyes out as he confessed to Bill that he was different (he didn't understand how, not then), begging him for help as to how to make him feel better. "And I- even if I did like that guy now, I could never do anything about it without thinking that I was betraying Stan. That those feelings were there all along and that it would just- it's best if I end up alone. I'll never find anyone better than him."
It shouldn't have taken so long for it to dawn on Bill, really, but when it did, it was like an ocean crashing down on him. Saying goodbye was not the issue with Richie, and Bill could probably make the case that it never was, but was the issue was getting the courage to say hello. To knock on the next door that life had to offer him and greet it with open arms. Instead, though, he stood in the hallway of destiny, stuck in purgatory forever as he bowed his head in front of the door, never raising his hand to knock on that door. No, of course not; Richie believed his hands were too dirty, too covered in blood to attempt to do that, lest he stain that door forever with that past he could never leave behind.
"I knew it was me," Bill settled on saying, not knowing if this was going to help in the slightest. "When Bev said… well, you know. None of us knew, of course, but in my head it was me. It doesn't matter, but I blamed myself for that whole mess anyway. All a matter of happenstance, drunk drivers are, but it still hurts, right? All of it hurt, but I'm still here. I'm with Audra now and she's… yeah. That little idiot of ours is going to be the best thing in the world. And maybe this whole thing isn't what was supposed to happen to me, Richie, but it did. Maybe I was supposed to end up with you guys, maybe I wasn't. Maybe I was supposed to have this kid, maybe I was supposed to have a different one, but none of that matters. It's not so much about what you are supposed to be or who you are supposed to love, but who you are, who you love. Who you end up with. For all we know, maybe you're not supposed to be a comedian. Maybe you're not supposed to be alive at all. But you are. I think what matters, in this shitty world, is that… nothing is predetermined. We're humans, we're messy and we're dumb. We don't have specific roles that we are meant to do in order to survive, we just go through life as we are and we have the privilege to do so. We make art, we make mistakes, we do things because we want to and not because we need to."
"I want to be with him," Richie whispered, uncrossing his legs and dipping them in the cool water. "I- it's not like I'm in love with the guy, but he makes me happy. Love doesn't feel like the right word to use, but maybe it is, after all. He's no Eddie, he's no you, he's no Bev or Mike or Ben, and he's certainly no Stan, but I do love him. I think, I- I don't know. I could never love him in that way, like, I don't imagine getting married or having kids or doing anything worthwhile, which seems so goddamn selfish, but if I don't end up with any of that stuff, I would be okay with that. I would be okay. But I don't know if he would be okay with that, that's the thing. It would be a terrible thing to do that to someone, to brand them as your second choice, and I wouldn't want him to feel like that. I love him, but that's all he is, isn't it?"
"I think that if you love him, that's all there is to it," Bill shrugged. "I mean, I don't really see Audra in that way. I might have at first, but it's different. You weren't replacing Stan with me, were you? No, because the relationship between you and Stan was different than the one between you and me. Even if we were in the same relationship, it's not universal. So, if you want to be with this guy, it's different, and that's why it's worth going after. Not because of the ways he reminds you of Stan, but because of how different he is. I mean, fuck, dude, that's why life is worth living at all. Just doing things that are different even if they're scary."
It wasn't the first time those words left Bill's mouth, though it had been the first time he was saying them to Richie. In his younger days, Richie was the king of the unexpected, always doing things just 'cause, but each heartbreak and each nightmare succeeded in whittling away that optimism into practical nothingness.
"C'mon, you never do anything different," Bill had whined while dragging Eddie down the stairs. "Life's no fun if all you do is worry, Eds."
"As great as I'm sure Richie's shows are, I really don't want to go," he said flatly. "Bill, stop- hey, I'm serious. I really don't feel good."
"Oh, you say that at least fifteen times a day, Eddie. How often does Richie get to perform here? You're just being overdramatic, really, just- you'll be fine."
"I hate this shit, Bill. Big rooms, a ton of people… God, it's making me sick just thinking about it."
"Would you stop saying that stuff? Eddie, you're fine. You're always fine. I know you think you're sick but you just have to trust me when I say that you're not," Bill attempted to reaffirm, watching as Eddie only nodded at his words while staring off at anything that wasn't him. "I know it's scary, but that's just because it's different for you. I promise it's not scary for anyone else. It's not scary at all."
Of course, he wasn't fine, or else that story would have been meaningless. Eddie left halfway through the show, complaining that he couldn't breathe, something Bill didn't think too much about since, well, Eddie always believed that. He ended up taking a bus to the nearest hospital, crying the whole time as Eddie truly, truly thought he was dying.
Of course, he was fine. It was mostly the looming stress of the whole situation that led Eddie right back to the hospital a week later, where he would stay for a handful of hours before, well, the rest is history.
"It doesn't feel scary," Richie said, furrowing his eyebrows. "The thought of being in a relationship again doesn't scare me at all. What scares me is that I don't know if it's the right thing to do."
"Is it what you want to do?"
It felt like forever to the both of them before Richie spoke again, really having to think that one over in his mind because, honestly, he didn't know the answer to that. He didn't want to admit it, either, which was the main reason behind the pain in his heart.
"Yes," he said. "Yes it is."
"I think that's all there is to it, really," Bill smiled sadly as he stood up, growing confused as Richie just shook his head.
"I- I don't know what I ever did to deserve this. To have loved so many people, I mean. To have so many people that have cared for me and want the best for me," he sighed. "It's… I feel like I need to say so much about it. All of you guys have done nothing but make my life wonderful. I'm not sure if I would still be here if it weren't for you guys, like you dragged me to my classes in college, you made all my shitty part-time jobs not so miserable just because I always woke up to one of your faces in the morning. You're a writer, so I think you can probably put it into words much better than I can, but all of that stuff is just a big chapter in my life, isn't it? Probably my favorite chapter, like, nothing can top that. But at the same time, there's still more story to be told. People just don't stop reading books in the middle- at least, they're not supposed to- so I think I owe it to myself to get to that last page."
"Never expected for you to say something so profound there, Tozier."
"Oh, don't get so sentimental now," Richie chuckled, spinning around and looking up at Bill. "If I recall correctly, you're the one that broke up with me."
"Yeah, and after you dragged me down here to complain for an hour, I think I stand by that decision." Bill rolled his eyes, feeling somewhat relieved as his time at this house was coming to an end. For now, at least.
"I'm proud of the complaining I've done today," Richie said, adjusting those obnoxious frames of his.
"Yeah, well," Bill paused, eyeing the back of the house that he'd lived in for fifteen years. He'd grown to love that blue siding, but he always hated the gray front door. A house of six working adults, money was never an issue, but space oddly was. As he looked through those gaudy sliding doors, Bill could remember quite clearly those memories. The way Ben would always, always burn the popcorn in the microwave no matter how hard he tried not to, the nights where Beverly would pull Bill away from his computer to watch some cheesy romantic comedy with her, how he could very faintly hear Mike hum to himself while he was in the shower, and those too-often days where Eddie would sit them all down to give them lectures on everything from the right amount of chlorine to put in the pool to the dangers of leaving candles lit while no one was in the room (that one was on Richie, really, who performed an infamous romantic gesture for Eddie and left one too many candles lit in the living room; "It's mood lighting!" he tried to explain, to no avail). All of those things, he had to realize, made them both- Bill and Richie- who they were. All of those things led up to this moment, this shining moment, where Richie was finally able to look at himself and want to move forward.
"Don't be a stranger, Richie," Bill said as he fished his keys out of his pocket, nodding to himself before turning back to look at the slightly less distraught man that sat uncomfortably on the concrete. "You are always welcome to visit us. You know how much Audra laughs at your jokes."
"Yeah, that one's a keeper," Richie smiled, laying on his back and staring up at the cloudy sky above him- always the best weather, in his opinion. Taking in the world around him, though not completely and not without some level of frustration and worry, Richie offered Bill a small wave, not wanting to move from his spot to do so. "Bye, Bill," he said.
Just for now, anyway. Just goodbye for now.