Some of you reddie writers put crack in your fics. Like!!!! Whenever i try reading fics from other fandoms i just can’t find them in the same quality as some reddie fics???? I don’t understand why????????????
imagining early 20’s richie tozier who has moved out and is living on his own for the first time in a kinda shitty apartment but it was the only one he could afford when there’s suddenly a leak in his pipes. he refuses to call a plumber because he is an ADULT is is INDEPENDENT and he can fix it by HIMSELF so he goes and buys some tools and tries to fix it except he has never done anything like this before in his life and he only ends up making the leak worse,, a few days go by and richie keeps trying because he’s determined to fix it when one day there is a very angry knock on his door so he goes to answer it and comes face to face with a man who is so attractive that richie almost doesn’t pay attention to what he’s saying
the man says that his name is eddie, that he is richie’s downstairs neighbour, and that the leak coming from richie’s apartment has been dripping down into eddie’s apartment as well and richie needs to get it fixed now. richie sheepishly admits that he’s been trying to fix it himself and eddie tells him to call a plumber to which richie tells him he’d rather do it himself (after all richie isn’t even sure he can afford a plumber) and eddie’s anger drops as he sighs that he gets it, he asks richie if he has tools and richie says yes and eddie offers to fix it for him, richie happily accepts and he has to try his best not to stare as eddie rolls up his sleeves and gets under richie’s sink and occasionally wipes the sweat off his forehead with the bottom of his shirt,,,
it’s not too long before eddie is sitting up and telling richie he’s finished, richie repeatedly thanks him and eddie’s just “it’s fine, don’t worry about it” but richie still feels kind of bad so he asks eddie out for coffee in return and he feels his heart flutter when eddie’s cheeks flush red and he gives a small smile as he says okay
Richie, on his phone at 2 a.m.: Jeez, a woman in North Dakota strangled her husband to death. Can you imagine just snapping like that?
Eddie, trying to sleep next to him: Yes.
it’s cute that eddie took off his shoes and rolled up his pants to cross the river while having richie followed closely behind but they should just make richie bridal carry him bcs you know, for time saving and safety reason.
What’s that? A new chapter of Will My Love Grow? Yessirree!
So, he sat, his feet up in the chair, watching these morons on Maury argue about who is or isn’t the father of this adorable baby girl with bright blue eyes and blonde curls that made his heart hurt as he was slowly nursing his tea. “We’ll find out whether or not Connor or his cousin Henry are the father of little baby Chyler when we come back from this commercial break.” There’s a cut of two men fighting and pushing each other while a girl who looked a lot like Gretta Keene sobbed holding the baby- It was. And it was Connor and Henry Bowers.
Huh.
His hand fell absently to his stomach and he had to tell himself that he wasn’t jealous. He certainly wasn’t jealous of their fighting. And he wasn’t jealous of the fact that no matter how hard they tried, he and Richie were never going to be able to do that naturally. There would have to be someone else involved. Besides, he and Richie had set a timeline years before. They’d revisit it at 25. They were only turning 22. It was just because it was them that he was so thrown by it. All three of them were so objectively awful for so many reasons, but that baby didn’t deserve that. She was so stinking cute it made him ache, but in that environment… He shook his head. That certainly explained why he hadn’t seen Gretta around town lately. The people of Derry loved to fucking talk.
His mind was automatically occupied by the commercials. The first was something about some new import car and Eddie had to fight off the way his body recoiled at the idea of anything that’s not American Muscle. His parents and Richie’s all drove European imports and they were junk. Absolute garbage.
The next one, though. A man lets himself into a picket fence by the ocean holding a puppy, a toddler following behind him. Liz Hurley lounges on a white Adirondack chair. Everything is dreamlike and hazy. Louis Armstrong croons about skies of blue and clouds of white. Eddie couldn’t help himself. Tears had started to fall and he was left to pick up the pieces.
What the fuck, dude?
He clicked the TV off and promptly moved to the sink to splash some cool water on his face.
What is wrong with me?
Other In-Universe Reading
You Can Change Right Next To Me - The first part of this story. How Richie and Eddie wound up bonded, some Maggie/Went/Frank back story, The Deal With Sonia.
X’s and Oh! - The Losers Club’s first kisses.
PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER (ALSO AVAILABLE ON AO3)
Excerpt “No!” cries Richie, the loudest he’s been. “No— I want— Wanna go home. Want Maggie.” Rating Mature Wordcount 1677 Warning Descriptions of sexual/physical abuse
On the outskirts of Derry, just a little past seven in the morning, a stubborn screen door is forced open.
“Marmalade,” mutters Norman Shepard, patting himself down for his keys. “Since when she be eating marmalade? Kid’s already got some fancy tastes.”
Jam has no damn business being so expensive. Definitely comes from her side. Who knows, though. Maybe his own momma would have had a craving for it, if she’d been off the crack pipe long enough to develop any.
Norman checks the rearview mirror before he backs out of their driveway, not that there’s many cars about so early.
“So much for a lie-in,” he grumbles as he fiddles with the radio. Jessey had left it on her pop shit again. The corner of his mouth tugs up.
It was a bit of a trek to get anywhere, but being out in the sticks wasn’t so bad. He likes the peace, and the car rides to-and-from Derry’s fishing shop where he worked helped clear his head, tending to sour with bad moods towards the end of the week. Ever since they moved out there, he’s had little patience for the long-faced townsfolk. Norman reckons he’s just getting old.
The backside of a familiar tractor appears in the distance, and Norman goes down a couple gears in preparation of overtaking it.
As he does so, he’s unsurprised to find the Hanlons’ boy atop. Norman sends a curt nod, and even with the bandana covering up half of his face, Michael’s smile still blinds from the warm crinkles around the eyes, raising a gloved hand back.
He’s a good kid. Well, not so much of a kid these days. A chill goes through Norman as he remembers the day when the farmhouse went up in flames.
“Damn shame about the Hanlons,” he tells the empty road. “A damn shame.”
The farm left behind, Norman turns off towards the scenic route. There’s a quicker way into town, which he’ll take on his way back, but the woodland makes for a pleasant journey. Forests have a sense of nostalgia. They take him back to his youth, one of skipping stones and roughhousing with his classmates in his dirt.
The daylight spills milky white through the leaves, the sun in its infancy as it rises through the clouds. The radio man announces it's gonna be another hot one, and Norman nods along. He has a full day ahead wood-working on the baby crib. He hopes Jess will keep him company pottering about the garden. Lunch on the porch sounded nice, too.
Up ahead, about midway through the brush, there’s some dead thing sprawled out of the road. Norman tuts. Another deer hit-and-run. Damn idiots need to leave how to drive.
He slows, wondering if any of it’s veal would be salvageable. Then, Norman sees it’s flesh-coloured rather than furred, and— “Jesus-fucking-Christ.”
In a heartbeat, Norman squeals on the handbrake and leaps from the car, almost tripping over his own feet. He breaks out into the best jog he can manage thanks to his hefty size, holding his beer gut in one hand, the back of his pants with the other. His worst fear is alleviated once he’s close enough to see the heap of limbs is breathing.
“Hey, you all right?!” he says, wheezing.
Splayed out on the asphalt, the naked man groans incoherently. No, naked teen.
Adrenaline helps Norman drop down onto his knees. “Son? Son, can you hear me?”
Norman puts a hand to his shoulder without thinking, and the boy jerks with such a forceful shout, Norman flinches alongside him.
The kid’s a mess. Whoever had their way with him, they were mean, his lanky body lit up like a christmas tree. Norman stares at the bloodied hand that had touched him, and a jolt of sick understanding goes through Norman as to his reaction: in disjointed, nasty slashes that dipped between a dislocated shoulder read FAGGOT. A little further down, dried blood streaked the boy’s thighs, and going by the smell, faeces, too.
“Mom,” the kid wheezes, and suddenly all Norman can see is his step-father and that damned belt.
“You’ll be with her soon,” says Norman, back on the path back to reality. He shrugs out of his jacket, using it to cover up his ruined backside. “What’s your name, son?”
The clammy body trembles against the asphalt, and Norman thinks he’s too far gone to understand him, until he says, “Richie… Richie Tozier.”
“Dr Tozier’s son,” Norman echoes. Shit. Kid’s face was so swollen, Norman hadn’t even recognised him. “All right, Richie. M’gonna go fetch my truck, and then we’ll get you to the hospital.”
“No!” cries Richie, the loudest he’s been. “No— I want— Wanna go home. Want Maggie.”
“Soon,” says Norman. “But we gotta get you to Derry General first. You’re hurt real bad, son.”
Richie begins to sob, and Norman has no idea how to go about comforting him, so he just gets back to his feet. “You hang in there, Richie,” he says. “Just gotta get the truck, and I’ll be right back.”
Getting Richie into the back seat proved a difficult task, but they manage it. The kid’s front exposes a sleuth of injuries that make Norman glad he’d skipped breakfast for later. And, God, the look in his eyes. It chills Norman to the bone.
“Wanna go home—” the kid moans from the back. “Mom— Call Maggie—”
Norman doesn’t waste his breath arguing with him, and he soon goes quiet. The smell of death hotboxing the car tells Norman all he needs to know. He’s taking him to the ER whether he likes it or not, certain that’s where his mother would want him, too.
Derry General’s lobby is as sleepy as the town they live in. Norman wastes no time driving directly to the sliding doors of it’s entrance, parking haphazardly over the huge, yellow crosses that lecture him the space is for AMBULANCE USE ONLY.
Norman uses momentum to haul himself out, huffing-and-puffing all the way inside.
The lady at the desk purses her lips. But before she can inform him he can’t park so close to the building, Norman is hurriedly explaining there’s a beaten kid in his car with glass sticking out his ass, praying the words he’s vomiting make more sense to her ears than his own.
They must do, because her eyes widen, and she reaches blindly for the phone, her deft finger punching in the right numbers.
It's seconds before a stretcher, a doctor, and two orderlies burst out through a distant door. They don’t ask Norman’s permission to enter his vehicle, shooting numbers and medical terms back-and-forth as they whisk Dr Wentworth’s boy back where they came from. Poor kid is still calling for his momma when he rolls past, not all there behind the eyes.
The next thing Norman knows, he’s sitting in a plastic chair one size too small, and the receptionist, once so hard-nosed, is soft around the edges as she presses a paper cup into his hand.
Realising she’s speaking to him, he says, “Sorry?”
Her patience doesn’t waver. “Are you next of kin?”
“No.” Norman’s mouth is dry, but he doesn’t drink. “No, I— Dr Tozier. The dentist. It’s his boy, Richard.”
Whatever emotion this brings out in her, she hides behind a veil of professionalism. “I’ll make sure he’s notified.”
Norman nods, and goes to leave.
“Sir,” she says. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait until Sheriff Bowers arrives.”
Before he can argue he has a wife to get back to, and a crib to work on, and a little jar of orange jam to buy, she’s already back at her desk.
Norman’s shoulders crumble. He slides back down into his chair. So much for a quick run to the store. He eyes the waiting room’s digital clock. Jessey’s gonna worry.
He brings up the thimble of water, and finally wets chapped lips.
*
Mrs Tozier arrives before the police do. She’s as white as the tiled walls with curlers in her hair. Her house shoes slop on-and-off as she hurries through the automatic doors, much like he had. Somehow, seeing the kid’s only wish come to life so quickly makes it easier for Norman to breathe, watching from his uncomfortable corner as a nurse comes to collect her.
The sheriff must be hungover, because he sends some lackey in his place.
He’s young. A rabbit-y look about him. Clearly out of his depth. He does his haphazard questioning right there in the lobby. He has to rush back to the front desk twice, once for a pen, again for some paper, having left both at the station.
He fails to grasp the magnitude of the situation, keeps calling it a mugging, but Norman doesn’t correct him. He remains deliberately obtuse. It was difficult to put into words what he’d seen—things the baby-faced officer would see with his own two eyes soon enough.
Half expecting to be dragged down to the station, it is a relief when he is forgotten in exchange for a heated debate with the no-nonsense receptionist over seeing the victim.
Against better judgement, he slips back to his car. When no one makes any move to stop him, he heads for the grocery store, gone midday by the time he sees his front door again, Jessey’s marmalade tucked under an arm in a paper bag.
“About time!” pours out from the day room, more relieved than scolding, and Norman blindly follows it’s call.
She’s sat on her side of the sofa. Her red hair plaited and rumpled over one shoulder. She has one hand under her shirt, stroking their baby as she flips through the pages of one of her gossip rags, hung over the arm of their sofa.
“Gee, I thought you’d disappeared off the face of the planet.” Her toothy smile recedes. “Norm? Are you okay?”
He doesn’t answer.
At her feet, Norman presses his cheek to her swollen belly, and holds them close.
NEXT CHAPTER
I realize that I’ve been making demands about fics about reddie but u see I fell down the rabbit hole of reddie fics again and they’re all so very wonderful
Reddie but make it Luca (the Pixar film we all know what I’m talking about right)
I also want a fic where Eddie is a pianist bec he was really just stuck in the house so what else is he going to do and Richie and the other Losers didn’t know about this particular skill until Eddie shows it off in some random hotel lobby and ofc Richie falls in love more
I have been thinking about the fact that Richie in the book shared all his hopes and dreams with Eddie, and it got me thinking about Eddie showing Richie the soapbox derby car he was building (also book canon), shyly telling Richie he wanted to race and waiting for him to react like it was stupid, that Eddie was too delicate, too fragile to do something as dangerous as soapbox derby racing, but instead Richie was immediately 100% all in. "I'll give this thing a bitchin' paint job, Eds my boy!"
It becomes a secret project for the two of them, something they work on over weekends and evenings. Richie even starts saving up pocket money so they can buy Eddie a helmet and he can race properly once it's ready.
But then Sonia finds out.
Despite Eddie screaming and begging her not to, she takes a hammer to the soapbox car, destroying it right in front of her tearful son's eyes.
Afterwards, she tells him she did it for his own good. When Eddie is older, he'll understand that she was only protecting him.
Eddie shuts himself up in his room, too angry to even speak to her, sobbing his heart out into his pillow. He doesn't come down for dinner. He doesn't know if he can ever look at her again.
Richie was supposed to come over the next day and help him with the finishing touches, but Eddie can't have Richie there right then. Richie is like his soapbox derby car. Too special. Too important. His mother would smash Richie up into bits if she could, just like everything else that's precious to Eddie.
He hears Richie ring the doorbell, hears his mother explain that Eddie is too sick for friends, hears her tell him Eddie doesn't want to race anymore, and Eddie bites down on his pillow to keep from screaming about how it's all lies. He needs Richie to go. He needs Richie to be safe.
His mother shuts the door on Richie, slamming it shut right over his babbling, and Eddie curls up into a tight ball, screaming into the pocket of space between his knees.
A few days later, Richie wakes him up by throwing stones at his window.
He coaxes Eddie out of bed and encourages him to climb down the trellis at the side of the house. Then he rides Eddie double on his bike across town and to the Tozier's garage.
It's late, but all the Losers are there and Maggie and Wentworth.
Also there, loving pieced back together, is Eddie's soapbox derby car.
"I figured Sonia was telling big fat lies," Richie says. "So I went to your garage after she shut the door on me. I salvaged what I could and got the others to help me."
"He tried to do it alone at first, but he hit his thumb so many times, he called me to help him," Ben chimes in. "And I called Bev."
"And I called Bill."
"And I called Stan and Mike."
"And ta da!" Richie finishes. "We fixed it for you."
"And we got you this," Wentworth says, producing a helmet from behind his back. "Mags and I wanted to contribute something."
"Yeah, so I'm flush with cash from all that allowance I saved up. Milkshakes on me for the next month," Richie grins, looping an arm around Eddie's shoulder so he can ruffle his hair.
Eddie for his part is stuck dumb.
For the first time in his life, he thinks he understands what love really is.
Love is someone who'll salvage the bits of your wrecked dreams and put them back together again, who'll call all your friends to help, who'll never tell you you're stupid or fragile for wanting things.
Love is Richie.
And Eddie loves him back.
hey besties,
i’ve been off tumblr for a while now and clearly my feed has changed. so i’m looking for accounts that post about 1917/marvel/it/stranger things/star wars. If you regularly post about any of these things, please just like this post so I know who to follow?
+18 only because i don’t really feel comfortable following minors (:
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