Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

~*~

Richie could feel someone staring at him.

It wasn’t a foreign feeling. Not really. Growing up having to dodge a magic murder clown with a penchant for stalking (and then later in life becoming semi-famous) kinda gave a guy a sixth sense for these things. But that didn’t mean it didn’t weird him out to have someone watch him while he (supposedly) slept.

Even if that person happened to be the love of his life.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s rude to stare, Edward?”

Silence met his grumble.

Richie kept his eyes closed, speaking to the ceiling.

“And I mean that as in Cullen, by the way. Was creepy when he did it too.”

More silence.

Then, from impossibly far away, nowhere near his bedroom, he heard a familiar voice shout out—

“Eggs are ready, Rich! Get your lazy ass outta bed already!”

Shooting up as if electrocuted, Richie scanned the room for the intruder, only to be met by a startled, gangly teenager with dark hair and coke bottle glasses, frozen like a deer in headlights at the end of the bed.

Richie gaped, his heart shooting into his throat.

Him.

It was Richie.

Richie when he was a kid.

Staring at him as if he, Richie in bed, were Pennywise himself.

A laugh bubbled up his throat, loud and hysterical before he let out a strangled yell.

“UH, EDS? CAN YOU COME IN HERE FOR A SEC?”

Eddie was having a heart attack.

He was sure of it.

Still, he threw the plate of eggs anyway.

“Eddie! What the fuck—don’t hit him, man!”

Eddie stared at Richie, older Richie, who was standing between him and...and whatever the fuck was masquerading itself as a teenaged Richie, large hands held up as if it was Eddie that was the threat.

“Why are you so calm?! Get the fuck away from It, Rich! It’s the clown, he—”

“I’m not the clown!”

Eddie blinked, meeting his Richie’s eye, who then turned around to face the boy who had just spoken.

“...you’re not?”

Eddie scoffed, scanning the room for another weapon as the plate had shattered into pieces against the wall, bits of bell pepper omelette littering the floor.

“No! I’m not fucking Pennywise!" The kid continued to ramble, growing more angry. "And I don’t know where the fuck I am, or who the fuck you two are supposed to be, but I’ll tell ya this assholes, you abducted the wrong guy. I’m not gonna make it easy on—”

“Abduct you?” Richie cut across his younger self, taking several steps back, bumping into Eddie. “Dude, I am you.”

Eddie watched as the kid blinked, his large, magnified eyes scanning between the two of them, a cross between realisation and horror dawning on his face.

“You’re...I…” he turned to Eddie, their eyes locking.

“What year is it?”

Eddie couldn’t look away from the gaze that was simultaneously identical and yet slightly different to the one he loved so much, but he felt his Richie shift his weight from foot to foot, their arms brushing. He held back a shiver, but just barely.

“It’s 2018.”

Young Richie stumbled back, away from them, colliding with the closet doors.

“Two thousand…” he gasped, head jerking around the room as if in search of an escape hatch, “no, no! This has to be a sick fucking joke. Fuck! The clown is back and he’s fucking with—”

“The clown’s dead,” Eddie interjected, something compelling him to reassure this boy.

This boy that not two minutes ago he had launched an omelette missile at, convinced he was somehow the aforementioned dead clown but now, wasn’t so sure. He let himself look, really look, at young Richie. Upon further inspection, he seemed older than Eddie had first thought. Sixteen, maybe seventeen, still gangly but having grown into his height, gaining a little weight and muscle to make up for the lack of decent facial hair. He had the perpetual bed-head, the still thick but slightly less so glasses. The Nirvana T-shirt and ripped jeans.

Eddie remembered this Richie.

It was the last Richie he had ever known before that fated phone call in 2016.

“What year is it for you, Rich?” He asked, the question falling from his lips before he could stop it.

Those wide, scared eyes met his once more.

“1993.”

“I’m calling Bill.”

“Good idea.”

“And Mike.”

“Right.”

“And Bev.”

“Let’s just call in the whole cavalry, Eds,” Richie grumbled as he snatched up his glasses from the nightstand, careful not to look at his younger self, already too freaked out by the low-def version sans glasses had already given him.

“No way, we’re still friends with Molly Ringwald?”

Richie felt Eddie freeze next to him, their arms bumping together in a way that had his hairs standing on end.

“Uh, yeah,” Eddie answered.

“And you’re…" younger Richie took a tiny step forward, eyes trailing over Eddie in a way that had older him wincing.

"It's you, right Eds? Little Eddie Kaspbrak?”

“Less of the little, thanks,” Eddie snarked back, “but yeah, it’s me.”

Richie cringed as he watched a very fond expression cross his younger self’s face, his eyes lighting up.

God, was I always so obvious?

“Uh, so what’s the last thing you remember?” he attempted to distract this apparent younger version of himself, saying the first thing that came to mind, anything to get that dumb expression off the kid’s face.

Younger Richie turned to him, managing to tear his gaze away from Eddie.

“I—I don’t know? I think...I think I was going to the movies? Eds keeps harping on about this dinosaur—”

“Hey, Jurassic Park ends up being a classic, just so ya know,” Eddie cut across, all karate-chop-hands, “and you fucking loved it. Didn’t shut up about Jeff Goldblum for like three solid weeks,” he rolled his eyes, voice raising an octave, a nazily quality to it. “‘He’s so good in The Fly too, Eds. If you’d just—’”

Older Richie stared at Eddie, eyebrows raised.

A gorgeous blush spread across Eddie’s cheeks.

“Right. Sorry. Not the point. Continue,” he waved a hand at the teenager, staring at the floor.

Younger Richie blinked at him, that same look on his face that older Richie hoped that Eddie would not be able to decipher.

“Okay, first of all, The Fly is a cinematic masterpiece, it’s not my fault you have no taste, Spagheds,” the teen scoffed, ticking off on his fingers, “and second of all, was that supposed to be an impression of me? Seriously?”

Eddie tilted his head, scandalised.

“Yeah, seriously! That’s a good fucking impression. That’s exactly how you sound!”

Richie stared between the two of them, suddenly feeling very sorry for Stanley and everything he had to endure over the years.

“Okay, both great points guys, really, but uh...can we get back to the little case of fucking Time Travel we seem to have on our hands here?”

Two pairs of eyes landed on him, both laced with surprise.

Gross. Since when am I the sensible one? Do. Not. Like.

“You’re right,” Eddie piped up, sounding reasonably shocked to admit it, “let’s focus. I’ll...I’ll go call Bill first, I guess,” he muttered, backing out of the room and calling over his shoulder, “oh and Rich? Ya might wanna put on some pants.”

Richie glanced down and was met by his pale, hairy legs barely covered by his retro Street Fighter boxers.

A scoff sounded from his left.

“‘Grow into my looks’ my ass, Bev.”

In hindsight, Eddie probably should have led with “Everything is fine, don’t freak out,” and not, “There’s two Richies. How fast can you get here?”

“Uh…” Bill said intelligibly, voice muffled, “say again, Eddie?”

Taking a deep breath, Eddie began pacing the living room floor, giving a hurried rundown of everything that had happened in the last twenty minutes. When he was done, he gasped in some well-needed air and waited for Bill to say something.

And waited.

And waited.

And—

“Bill! Kinda an emergency here. You on the way or—”

“He’s from ‘93?” Bill cut across him finally.

“Really? That’s your first question?”

“Well, I don’t know, Eddie! What should my first question be? How tall is he?”

“Tall. Almost as tall as he is now. Remember he went through that crazy growth spurt the summer of—”

“Eddie,” Bill interjected again in that Leader Voice that always had every Loser perking up to listen intently.

He froze on the spot, holding his breath.

It said a lot about everything that had gone down in Eddie’s life the last two years that a time-travelling-teenage-Tozier didn’t raise as many red flags as he would have thought. He was alarmed, sure, but all in all, he was taking this rather well, he thought. Guess that was the result of getting murdered by an alien clown, being magically resurrected along with your other dead friend, divorcing your wife, quitting your job and moving out to Los Angeles to live a completely revamped life with your recently-reunited best friend.

“I’ll be there in twenty.”

Eddie let out a relieved sigh. He may not be in full panic-stations-mode, but that didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate the backup.

“Mike too.”

He frowned.

“Wait...Mike is there with you? I thought he was in Flor—”

“He uh, got in last night. Was a bit jet-lagged so was waiting to surprise everyone over Skype tonight,” Bill rambled, sounding as if he was doing several things at once. “We’ll be there soon. Just, keep an eye on little Richie. And big Richie, actually. Who knows what hijinks two Richard Toziers could get up to.”

Eddie stared down the corridor at Richie’s closed bedroom door.

Shit. They’re being far too quiet.

“Okay, will do. Gotta go!” he half-yelled into his cell before hanging up and booking it as fast as he could towards Richie’s room.

The kid was probably not Pennywise. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t cause a whole host of problems. Especially if all he had for supervision was an older, equally-immature version of himself.

“42. Seriously?”

Richie glared at his younger counterpart as he shoved on some sweatpants, raking a hand through his messy mop of hair.

“Yeah, seriously. You were born in 1976. It’s now 2018. Do the math, dumbass.”

Younger Richie (he refused to think ‘young’ because that automatically made him ‘old’), levelled him with an unimpressed look.

“Guess all those stolen cigarettes take their toll then, huh?”

“I gave up smoking when I was 22. It’s not, and will never be, cool.”

Younger Richie snorted, shuffling his feet before gesturing at the door.

“You sound like Eddie.”

Richie shrugged, “Yeah well, he was right.”

A beat of silence followed that.

“So, uh, what’s the deal with you two? You roommates or…?”

Richie stared at his shoes, lacing them up, letting the loaded, anything-but-casual question float in the air.

“We’re—”

“Bill’s on his way,” Eddie burst through the door, cutting him off, a wild look in his eye as he surveyed the room, “Mike too. Apparently he got in from Florida last night.”

“No way, Mikey makes it to The Sunshine State? Good for him!”

Richie looked up, catching Eddie’s eye, instinctively knowing what was coming.

“Shit, fuck, I probably shouldn’t have told you that,” he winced, mouth going a mile a minute, “it’s like, some Back to the Future type shit. If you know things from now, you could accidentally change your future when you go back to the past, which will—”

“Okay, slow down there, Marty,” younger Richie held up his hands while Richie grimaced, again knowing what was coming.

A dark look clouded Eddie’s face as he said lowly, eyes narrowed, “Do not call me Marty. Ever.”

The kid lowered his hands, sensing Eddie’s seriousness through his obvious confusion.

“Uh, okay. Spaghetti Man it is then.”

Eddie didn’t seem particularly psyched about that nickname either, (he never was), but he let it go, gesturing behind him.

“Come on, let's go wait for Bill and Mike in the living room. I just gotta change.”

Richie watched as his mini me looked Eddie up and down, taking in his chequered pajama pants, tight black T-shirt and grandpa slippers. He didn’t need to be a mind reader to know what he was probably thinking.

Eddie was hot.

Even to a seventeen year old him.

Maybe especially so. He couldn’t really remember being into anything else but seventeen year old Eddie when he was seventeen, but he could hazard a guess that this version of Edward Kaspbrak would get any version of Richard Tozier’s motor running.

The kid really had to develop a better poker face.

Fuck.

“Yeah uh, let’s go. We got some time, Bill drives like my grandma on the way to Sunday service with that priest she hates.”

“No way! Grandma’s still alive?!”

Richie and Eddie exchanged a glance, pausing in front of the door.

Grandma Tozier had been dead for fifteen years now.

But…

“Hey, Back to the Future logic or whatever. We’re telling you nothing,” Richie warned, waving the teen out ahead of them.

“I’m not sure either of you are remembering that movie right,” baby Rich called over his shoulder.

Richie waited a beat.

“So, uh,” he caught Eddie’s arm, halting him in his tracks, leaning down to mumble into his ear, ignoring the skip in his heartbeat at their proximity, “you wanted to know why I’m so calm?”

Eddie nodded, still keeping his eyes on younger Richie as he made his way down the corridor and into the living room.

“It’s ‘cause I...I kinda remember this, Eds.”

That got his attention, his dark, ungelled, messy morning head whipping around to gape at him.

Richie took a breath.

“I’m pretty sure I saw flashes of this in the Deadlights.”

Richie remembered far too late that a lot of incriminating shit lay in wait in the rest of his house.

“Holy shit! There’s a pool in the backyard! Am I Richie Rich or something?!”

Eddie snorted at baby Richie’s awe as he pulled a sweater on, shuffling back into the room in his cozy, navy lounge pants that framed his ass amazingly and older Richie was in no way obsessed with.

“I’m...comfortable,” he replied to distract himself from his wandering eye.

“Comfortable?!” The teen whirled around, eyes as large as saucers as he waved around himself. “Dude, this is like a legit mansion. Are we actually in LA right now? Fuck comfortable, you’re Hugh Hefner minus the robe.”

Heat spread across Richie’s cheeks, still a little at a loss of what to say when anyone remarked on his successes. But his younger self, openly ogling the fruits of his, well, humour (his post-coming-out Netflix special really was making bank), that was on a whole other level.

He could feel Eddie’s stare boring a hole in the side of his head as he surreptitiously flipped some hard-to-explain framed photographs down. Not for the first time, did he ache to know what was going on in that brilliant brain of his.

“Hey uh, Rich?”

“Yeah?” Both Richies replied in unison, causing them both to cringe.

Eddie glanced from one to the other and back again, blinking owlishly.

“We really need to figure out what to call you,” he addressed the teenager, “but I was just gonna ask if you’re hungry? I uh...I kinda messed up the eggs, sorry, but we have more.”

The kid practically lit up like a fireworks display at the mention of food. Richie could relate, he was still much the same, 25 years later.

“Great uh, you just hang out here, they’ll be ready soon,” he gestured to the couch which mini Rich promptly sank into, kicking up his feet on the coffee table that under any other circumstances would have driven Eddie berserk.

Instead, he turned on his heel, calling out, “Hey Big Dick, come help me in the kitchen.”

“Oh, I’m all for that name, Eduardo,” the little shit called after them, smile in his voice, prompting a weird duel response in Richie where he didn’t know whether to high five him or flip him off.

“We need to talk,” Eddie hissed under his breath, dragging him over to the oven, preventing him from doing either.

“No shit,” Richie whispered back, “but we can’t exactly do it with an audience, can we?”

The two of them stared out to where they could clearly see younger Rich sprawled out on the couch, magazine in hand, eyes trailing it intently. (For once, Richie didn’t hate his open floor plan.)

Eddie smacked his arm with a dishcloth he got from god knows where, catching his attention, his jaw set as he stared up at him.

“When you said ‘Deadlights’—”

“Eddie—”

The sound of their doorbell cut him off, and before he could utter another sound, his younger self was bolting off the couch with a manic but familiar gleam in his eye, shouting out.

“God, I can’t wait to scare the shit outta ol’ Bill!”

Eddie sped towards him.

“Richie, wait—”

The door swung open.

Richie’s heart stopped.

From his vantage point at the oven, he could plainly see the confusion lining the teen’s face as he stared up at the tall, tanned blond, standing in the doorway, looking back at him with polite intrigue.

“Uh...Bill?” Younger Rich asked, doubt heavy in his tone.

“Oh no,” Eddie jumped in, halting in between them both, his voice a little strangled, “this is—”

“I’m Eric,” Eric cut across him, holding out his hand, “Richie’s boyfriend.”

Sweat broke out on Richie’s brow, dread sinking into the pit of his stomach while he watched, rooted to the spot as slowly, younger Richie turned, looking as pale as a ghost, meeting his gaze. It was a sight to behold, looking into your own eyes, full of confusion and...fear.

“Boyfriend?”