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onze

The word first comes to him in his sleep.

Deadlights.

Richie's nightmares are ever-changing now. He doesn't like the shift. He would rather be able to predict the horrors he's going to face. Now, he can't.

He feels like it's unfair. He feels cheated, almost. They all do. They're sixteen. They aren't supposed to know the answers to anything.

Yet, dangers are being heaped upon them that most- if not all- adults never face. Richie gets angry about it sometimes. He should be having a carefree, flirtatious friendship with the cute new kid. Maybe developing it into something more. But he can't, because of It. It takes top priority, and that's infuriating.

But they don't complain. Because it isn't surprising. Now that everything is happening, each member of the group feels as though it were their destiny. They have no other choice, so they begrudgingly accept what they're given.

Richie dreams about Eddie most of the time. He feels changed after that day at the barrens. Like maybe the mist wormed its way into his head and stayed there, mining his thoughts and creating twisted fantasies based on his worst fears.

But last night, Richie dreamed something different. He saw the mist's lair, where Its heart lies. He wasn't in control, he never is. They're more like visions than dreams, really.

He's alone. His hand closes around nothing, and he looks beside him to see a distinct lack of Eddie Kaspbrak. Dream Richie swallows, moving towards the thing.

"Guys?" He yells, hoping his voice will carry enough to reach his friends.

Floating, in the midst of a column of dead bodies, on top of a pile of children's toys. A heart. A beating heart. It's glowing with some sort of otherworldly energy, and Dream Richie squints at it.

"Guys!" He yells again, louder this time.

"Richie?" He hears the voice of Beverly in the distance.

"Follow my voice!" Dream Richie turns in the direction of the sound. "I'm in here, follow my voice!"

Dream Richie opens his mouth to keep speaking, but something kicks him in the back of his knee, making him topple over with a small cry of pain. Dream Richie scrambles up, turning around to face whatever had kicked him.

Nothing is there. And then he looks down. A pair of white sneakers is sitting there, uninhabited. Except they're moving, doing a slow step-touch.

"Oh, goddamnit." Dream Richie sighs, smoothing his hair back with shaky hands as he watches the shoes.

There's a sort of wail of pain as the sneakers stop moving, in a soft, sweet voice that Richie definitely recognizes. He wonders if the sound is coming from real life or not. And then blood soaks through the material, as if it's coming from the shoes themselves. It keeps coming until the shoes are overflowing with the substance, the entire canvas stained red.

"Shit." Dream Richie whispers. He sees something being written on the side of the left shoe, in black sharpie.

"Trashmouth Tozier" in Richie's loopy handwriting. With a heart drawn beside it. Dream Richie turns away from the sneakers, back to the glowing heart, his eyes wide as his chest rises and falls. Except he isn't met with the heart, instead facing three swirling, orange lights.

Deadlights.

And then Richie wakes up in a cold sweat.

"You sure have a lot of crazy exes."

Eddie and Richie are sitting in Richie's tire swing, letting the wind rock them back and forth gently. Eddie is sitting in between Richie's long legs, his head resting on Richie's stomach as the tall boy plays absentmindedly with his hair. Richie smiles, feeling how soft Eddie's curls are between his fingers.

"Hell yeah, I do." He says. "It's because I was always in it for the wrong reasons."

"That's big of you." Eddie compliments. "Taking responsibility. Understanding you had a fault."

"Yeah, I guess so. I was pretty shitty at relationships." Richie tilts his head to the side, stretching his neck out. It's sore from sitting in the tire swing for so long, but it's not like he's going to move. "I was really cold to my partners, all the time."

"You were or you are?" Eddie asks.

"I was." Richie answers definitively.

"Yeah, you're all soft now." Eddie grins, reaching around to poke Richie in the side, looking up at him through his long eyelashes.

Richie smiles down at him, squirming away from his touch. "All your fault, cutie."

Eddie frowns. "I keep telling you not to call me that."

"And I always will." Richie assures him, and Eddie rolls his eyes.

"Jack-off." Eddie shoots back. Richie blinks in surprise.

"Never heard that one before." He laughs, and Eddie can feel the vibrations on the back of his head. "Speaking of jacking off, I always wondered. Do you jack off to your mom?"

Eddie opens his mouth in complete shock, sitting up and turning to look at Richie over his shoulder, the tire swing swaying a little more from the motion. "I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer."

"I bet you do." Richie teases, poking his tongue out at the boy as he sticks his hands behind his head. Eddie shoots daggers with his eyes. "I'm not judging, I do it, too."

"You're absolutely disgusting, Trashmouth." Eddie rolls his eyes. "I don't even... I wouldn't imagine my mom, dude."

"Wouldn't or don't?" Richie raises his eyebrows. "Is this a hypothetical right now? Do you not masturbate?"

"That's none of your business." Eddie replies, laying back down on Richie's stomach, but Richie sees his already rosy cheeks flush even more.

"Ohh, innocent little Eds." Richie coos, and Eddie scoffs frustratedly. "Now, that's something I could get off to."

Eddie sits up again abruptly, hopping out of the tire swing and giving it a hard push, sending Richie spinning through the air.

"I'm going inside, Tozier." He says, grinning as he walks away towards the house. Richie sticks his leg out, letting it drag on the ground to stop the swing's wild motion. "Don't call me Eds."

"Aw, Eds, you love it!" Richie yells after him, standing up out of the swing.

And, yeah. Eddie kind of does.