now and then

III. The Poem and the Bridge

now

Richie Tozier is a coward.

No, seriously. Which is fine—it's something he's long since accepted about himself. It's important to be honest, you know. About who you really are.

Richie is forty years old, and he's a coward.

(If this were one of his AA meetings, this is the part where everyone would give that droll, monotonous: "Hi, Richie," and then he'd sit back down, and think about what bar he was gonna hit up on the way home.)

"Richie!" Bev exclaims from the stairs when he charges into Derry Townhouse. "Are you okay? What happened? You look like you've seen a ghost!"

"Move," is Richie's curt reply as he pushes his way through Bev and Hot Ben.

"Richie—what are you—"

"I'm leaving. Fuck this."

"What? No."

And when she says it with a gasp, it's clear that Bev is hurt. Well, she didn't have any right to be hurt. He was hurt first. He had dibs on being the fucking hurt party here. How the fuck could she not see that? That was how it was supposed to be with them. When one of them felt things, the other knew. Instinctively. Deep-down. Without having to ask. Because they really were the same. One person. Soulmates—the way all best friends should be.

Richie blinks. Realizes that when he looks at her now, he looks at her like thirteen-year-old Richie looked at thirteen-year-old Bevvie. Thinks of her the same, too. This place was killing him. Best friends? Soulmates? Fuckin' God. He was forty. What the hell? She wasn't any of that shit. He didn't know her from fuckin' Adam.

The more Richie feels himself reverting back to '89, the more he wants out.

But still, maybe he was a little pissed at her right now. Because God knows if anyone...she should understand. She should know. If she knew, she wouldn't ask him to— "Stay. You can't leave. Richie, you can't, if you do, we—"

"—we all die, yeah, Bev, fuckin' whatever. Okay, way I see it, we're all gonna die anyway."

And with that he's up the stairs. At least he's already mostly packed, he thinks, from that other time in the last twenty-four hours he'd tried to pussy out.

There's a loud wooden creak behind him, and the sound of the door slamming back into place. Richie doesn't turn to look.

"Wow, no one knocks anymore—"

"Richie, no." It's Ben. Richie doesn't appreciate his tone.

"I'm not a fuckin' dog, dude. You can't spray me with water until I agree to stay here and kill your clown for you, or stop humping the neighbor's leg."

"It's not my—" Ben growls in frustration, in a way that is—you guessed it—kinda hot. "Dammit, Richie, it's your problem, too! I know you saw something that spooked the hell outta you out there—"

Richie slaps a shirt down in his suitcase. "Nah. Nah, man, you don't."

"I beg your pardon?" asks Ben, politely—except it doesn't sound at all polite.

"You don't fuckin' know." He zips up his suitcase; grabs it by the handle, and slams it down on the floor. "You just don't fuckin' get it."

When Richie looks up, Ben's brow is furrowed something awful.