Archive of Our Own

The only reason Richie answers the phone so early, when he’s on vacation no less, is because Steve, his manager, is also supposed to be on vacation, which means it’s an emergency. Sleep-addled and wanting nothing more than for the ringing to stop, Richie glares at the screen briefly before sliding to answer the call.

“Hello—”

“Do not go on Twitter,” Steve says, sounding out of breath and panicked.

Richie sits up, the pile of blankets falling off him as a shot of adrenaline lights him up like a firecracker. He pulls the phone away to put it on speakerphone and do just that, before remembering where he is. He looks to his left, and sees Eddie’s arm a scant few inches from his face, hanging over the side of the bed like he was reaching for Richie. His eyes are closed and his face is soft and slack in the pre-dawn light peeking in through the curtains.

Putting the phone back to his ear, Richie catches the tail-end of Steve’s sentence. “...anything else, you need to tell me right now!”

“Steve,” Richie says, quiet so as not to wake his favorite Spaghetti Man, though Eddie has always been a heavy sleeper. “I need a little more to work with. What are you talking about?” He’s not ready to panic quite yet, though he’s definitely no longer sleepy. Before he came out publicly, his mind would be racing with the possibilities of what people might have dug up on him. Now, he can only imagine someone’s found some old jokes he made and he’s getting cancelled, or someone’s died.

“The leak Richie, there’s been a fucking leak!” Steve is on the verge of shouting.

“Think you need to call a plumber, not a comedian,” Richie says, bewildered.

Steve keeps going, like Richie never spoke. “There’s tons of shit coming out. Pictures, and videos, and documents! Personal information and all kinds of shit! Those fucking videos, and God knows what else!” He sounds like he’s running on pure caffeine, which, considering it’s gotta be four in the morning in Cali, probably isn’t far off.

“What’s—”

“Someone’s posting it on some website, for just anyone to see. Melody Long’s sex tapes are all over Twitter! Jessica woke me out of a dead goddamn sleep for this!”

Richie wonders if he’s actually still asleep, and this is just a very weird dream. He looks over at Eddie as Steve’s agitated voice details which celebrities are having their nudes paraded around the internet. Eddie is breathing soft and deep, the white line of his scar cutting through his morning stubble. His lips are gently parted, and he’s snoring softly. His hair curls over his forehead, unstyled, rumpled from sleep, and so cute.

“Also, fucking financial documents and texts! You haven’t been sexting anyone, have you? I didn’t see anything else, but there’s more shit getting posted every few minutes.”

Anything else? Richie’s confusion only mounts. He doesn’t have anything to leak, does he? He's taken a few pics for some guys on hookup apps, but never with his face, and always hastily deleted for this very reason. He’s got a few messages on them, too, but never with his real name attached.

Finally, he has to cut off Steve’s impassioned rambling about how an American Idol contestant had her nudes leaked. “I’m lost, Steve, did something important get out?”

There’s a long, weighted silence. Then, “There’s videos, man.”

“Videos of what?” Richie says, mystified.

“Okay, well, I guess they’re kind of old, so maybe you forgot about them,” Steve says quickly, and Richie knows by his tone of voice that, wherever Steve is, he’s pacing. He takes a deep breath, says, “They’re sex tapes, Richie. Your sex tapes.”

A beat, as Richie’s brow furrows, and he runs that replay.

“What are you talking about? I’ve never done that,” he says, laughing, mildly relieved. “Sure it’s not just a lookalike? Hey, maybe they made a porno parody of one of my movies.” He laughs again at the idea of anyone making a porno out of Camp Hardwood or Santa’s Sack.

“Unless you have a twin brother running around you conveniently forgot about, it’s you. Look, look, I’m sending you the post,” Steve says, all in a rush.

Richie doesn’t mention that having a twin brother he forgot about honestly isn’t entirely out of this realm of possibility, considering Derry 2: Loser’s United. He gets up as he waits for the text to come through, pausing to stretch on his toes and once more look at Eddie, sleeping peacefully on the bed.

The bed he’d offered to share, last night.

Not a chance in hell Richie is opening that can of worms. He’ll take the sore back and the stiff joints before he gets his fucking hopes up or lets his fantasies run away with him. He’s been letting that happen way too much lately.

His phone pings and Richie steps out of the room. The wooden floors in the Ben/Bev love nest are cool through his socks as he shuffles into the living room, pausing at the sight of Bill and Mike stretched out on the sofas. Welp.

Steve is still chattering in his ear, so Richie tells him to hang on as he grabs his hoodie and shoves his feet into his shoes, squishing the backs of them rather than putting them on fully.

The blast of freezing air has him whispering curses to himself as he steps onto the terrace, his sweatpants too thin and jacket barely doing anything. The sun isn’t even up, leaving the world outside a milky gray, and there are no sounds of morning traffic. It’s eerie and quiet as he shuts the sliding glass door behind him.

He takes a seat on the edge of one of the lounge chairs, next to a tiny white table and a few potted plants with long, spiky leaves that stick out like spines. Hunching slightly against the whip of the wind and already shivering.

“Alright, Steve, give me a damn minute,” Richie mutters, putting him on speakerphone finally so he can thumb open the link.

“Just don’t freak out on me, okay, buddy?” Steve says, sounding about two seconds from his own freak out.

It’s a Reddit thread, and Richie blinks at the title of the post when it comes up.

Don’t let the Tozier sex tapes get lost among the T&A

The post itself is blurred for being not safe for work, and he clicks into it, not sure what he’s expecting to see.

An image loads all at once, and he stares, uncomprehending.

It looks old. Pixelated, dated. Pre-touchscreen, pre-video camera phones. There’s a guy on a bed, and that guy has Richie’s face, almost twenty years ago. It’s his profile, looking up at the person between his legs. And the man between his—that guy’s—legs, his head is out of the shot, but he’s big, almost as big as Richie is—was—that guy is. That guy’s mouth is open, and he looks like he’s laughing, or talking.

He doesn’t recognize the white walls of the room, or the rumpled bedspread, and that should be a relief, but that guy has his face and the man between his legs doesn’t have a head but his T-shirt is a dark washed gray advertising Pabst Blue Ribbon and he wore it as an undershirt to his white collar button up and suit jacket because he thought it was funny and Richie thought it was funny too the first time Chuck showed him and then he hadn’t thought it was so funny anymore—

His gut heaves and he grabs the cold white pot of the plant, vaguely feeling the spiny needlepoints of its leaves jabbing him in the chest as he vomits all over it. Warm wetness sprinkles on his hands as it splashes against the dry dirt.

“Richie!” Steve shouts. “Richie!”

Tears sting his eyes and his stomach cramps and rolls, but nothing else comes out. He spits, panting, and sets the pot down with shaky hands. There’s vomit on the terrace and his shoes. Guess he missed a little.

“Rich, Jesus Christ, talk to me, buddy,” Steve says desperately.

“I’m here,” he gasps, spitting again, tongue foul with the taste of last night’s pizza. He ate the jalapenos off Eddie’s slices last night. That was less than twelve hours ago. He feels dizzy.

“Okay, Jesus, okay,” Steve says, mostly to himself. “So, I’m going to guess by that reaction, the videos are real?”

Holy shit. Everyone’s going to see this. The Loser’s are going to see this. Eddie’s going to see this.

They won’t care, a soft voice says in his head, childish but serious. The voice of his conscience, a voice he never had a name for until he went back to Derry the second time. Stan.

The air shudders out of Richie’s open mouth. It takes him a long minute to say, “Sure looks that way.”

Everyone’s going to know. His stomach rolls again. Everyone’s going to know about him and Chuck. If they didn’t know how disgusting he was before, they will now.

They wouldn’t think that. None of them would, Stan says.

“Well, shit,” Steve says. “Okay, we need to get with Jessica. We need a game plan. We have to figure out if we want—”

“I need to come home,” Richie says abruptly, shoving to his feet. The world sways as he takes a step, and he catches himself on the end of the lounger. Only then does he realize he nearly left his phone, lying on the woven plastic cushion.

“Wait, you’re in New York still, right? Look, this is not ideal, but you don’t need to fly all the way home. I’ll get Jessica on the call, you—”

“I’m flying back. I’ll call you when I land,” Richie says, hardly aware of what he’s saying even as the words fall out of his mouth. He hangs up, and pushes upright again, and the world manages to hold steady.

He needs to get the fuck out of here.

He’s even quieter going in than he was going out. Bill and Mike are dead to the world, but Richie tiptoes on bare feet to the hall, carrying his gross shoes in one hand. All he can think, over and over, is, they can’t see him like this.

They won’t hate you. You know better, Stan says. He ignores it.

In the bathroom, he washes his mouth out and rinses the vomit off his shoes and sleeve. In the back of his head, a voice that might be Eddie’s or might be his dad’s tells him how bad it is for his teeth to not brush after vomiting.

Ignoring it, he slips into the guest room and grabs his duffle, ol’ faithful. Eddie is also out like a light, and Richie keeps his gaze firmly on the floor, as if the laser of his vision might wake Eddie up if focused on him too long. Ears straining for the sound of movement from the bed, Richie changes out of his sweatpants right there, shoving into his jeans and shoes, bare of socks.

Just wake him up. They can help. They won’t care.

He tiptoes back through the living room, and out the front door, like a thief in the night. 

In the hallway, he pauses long enough to order a rideshare, and waits in the lobby, biting his nails, bouncing on the balls of his feet. The doorman eyes his bedhead and rumpled clothing suspiciously. It feels like razors against Richie’s skin, and Richie ducks his head and fiddles with his phone, thinking of his own—that guy’s—face in profile.

The clouds in the cold sky are striated with orange light, and the traffic picks up slowly as he’s hurried along to the closest airport. He avoids the eyes of the driver, pretends to be busy with his phone, earbuds in. He can’t actually bring himself to unlock it and look though. He ignores the pleading of his conscience to turn around, go back.

The flight doesn’t leave for two hours. He’s got hundreds of alerts from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. He sits at the arrival gate with his hood up and sunglasses on, feeling it buzz incessantly in his pocket. He shuts his phone off the moment he’s on the plane, grateful for the excuse.

Sleep is a non-starter. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees that image floating in front of him. He puts on a movie, the first one that comes up, and watches it blankly, biting each fingernail down to the quick.

Call them when you land. They’re going to be worried.

No one looks at him twice. No one talks to him except the flight attendant, who asks if he would like any refreshments, and Richie almost says, The strongest drink you can legally give me.

He gets water, shaking hands spilling it down his wrist when he twists the tiny bottle’s cap off.

Halfway through the flight, he gets an itch to find out what people are saying. To see what else has been leaked. What else he doesn’t know about. Steve said videos, plural. How many? What’s on them?

He leaves the phone in his pocket, watches the action movie blindly, bites his thumbnail until it bleeds.

Leaving LAX is like walking through a dream. It’s busy, thousands of people funneling through its wide corridors despite it being New Years day, but Richie is caught in a muted bubble. Something else holds the reins, guides him to parking, and gets him in the front seat of his car.

The sudden silence is almost deafening. He sits, shivering, keys in hand. He feels numb. Separate. Disbelieving. Like the video is of someone else. Like if he checks the screenshot again, he'll realize that's not actually him.

He needs to call Steve, but the idea of turning his phone back on makes him want to throw up again. He’d rather toss it into the Pacific and become one of those hermits people used to pay to live in their gardens.

It’s almost noon here, but in the dimness of the parking garage, it’s not obvious. He powers his phone up, looking at the dirty, concrete wall beyond his windshield. It buzzes in his hand for several, long moments, and when he finally looks down, the preview for a text from the Loser’s group chat is at the top of the screen.

Ben
Wish you were, Richie!

He laughs, startling loud and strangled. Almost opens it to say, Send a postcard next time why dontcha?

But then he thinks of why Ben’s saying that and what else they might be saying and the text previews stacked down his screen feel like a physical weight in his hand and he clears them all without looking.

Call them, you idiot.

He calls Steve, who answers on the first ring, sounding less manic, but no-less worried. “Richie, hey, buddy, that was quick. You alright?”

“Living the dream. Not my dream, obviously, but maybe someone’s,” he says, and that’s good, he sounds pretty normal.

It must be enough for Steve, who sighs with relief, says, “Okay, so, I’m gonna meet you at Jess’ office. Just get there as quick as you can. Traffic’s a bitch right now, but the sooner we get on this the better. She’s been—whatever, I’ll let her fill you in.”

Richie wants to argue. They can do this over the phone, Richie doesn’t need to come in.

If he argues, though, he’ll have to explain why he flew all the way to California when he doesn’t even want to deal with this in person.

“Sounds good,” Richie says, ready to hang up, until Steve says his name.

“One thing, real quick. The other guy in the video, who the hell is that?”

“Nunya.” Richie shoves the key into the ignition with more force than necessary.

“I’m just asking because we need to know. Was he a boyfriend?”

“He’s no one,” Richie says, loud, gripping the wheel so tight the leather creaks under his hand. “He’s—” Dead, but that might give too much away, “no longer in my life.”

“Okay, jeez, I got it. I’ll see you when you get here. Get goin’.”

Richie gets goin’.

It takes almost forty minutes to get to Jessica’s office from LAX, and in that time, Richie’s phone rattles like clockwork in the cupholder. At a light he picks it up and turns off his notifications. He turns on the radio in lieu of his Spotify, but when the first song he lands on ends, the talking heads start chattering about the leak. He slams his palm blindly against the dashboard until it cuts off.

The PR firm Jessica works for is the same one Richie’s been with since Steve became his manager, though she’s only been his publicist since Richie decided to come out and the firm switched him to her team. She’s good at her job, and Richie has no doubt she’ll be able to handle this.

It’s Richie who’s not sure he can handle it.

The glass front of her office is thankfully shrouded by the vertical blinds when Richie steps in. Steve’s already there, sitting stiffly in one of the two stuffed armchairs, wearing his black work suit, but the knot of his tie is askew and his gelled hair has come loose from its hold. Jessica is behind her white desk, tapping away at the laptop. She’s short, olive-skinned, with straight black hair pulled into a sleek ponytail, wearing a plum-colored suit, jacket discarded over the back of her chair.

She has a comforting voice, a little husky, serious, as she lays down their options for dealing with this. Richie listens, and nods, and says things. He thinks she’s being reassuring, that this is not nearly as bad for him as it will be for the women affected by the leak. Of course it won’t. He’s a schlubby white guy, no one wants to see him fuck.

They laugh, so he probably said that out loud. Cool. Autopilot is great.

She mentions what other PR teams are doing for their clients, and Richie nods along to that too. No sense denying it’s him, his face is there, clear as day. Best thing to do is admit the videos are real and offer support for the women who are affected.

Some media outlets have reached out asking about the validity of the videos, but Twitter is where many of the other celebrities have made their statements, since this is such a personal matter. It’s where he came out. Sure, that makes as much sense as anything else happening today.

He thinks maybe they’re almost done, but Steve sets a hand on Richie’s shoulder, and says, “Hey, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but we need to know about the other man.”

“What? Why?” Richie asks, panic spiking through him, the first clear feeling he’s had in hours.

“Transparency is important, Richie,” Jessica says, eyes flicking from the screen to him. “It makes recovery easier. Is the other man likely to come forward about these videos? If he’s in the industry, we can get in touch with his PR team.”

“No, no,” Richie says, shaking his head, reality seeming to sharpen around him. He’s too aware of the sweat trickling down his back and the two sets of eyes boring into him curiously. “Definitely not a worry.”

“He in the closet?” Steve asks.

He’s in a casket, Richie thinks, and wants to laugh hysterically.

“He’s not going to be a problem, I promise you.”

“Look, buddy, this is exactly the kind of thing you need to tell me about,” Steve says, a frustrated furrow between his brows. “I asked you when I started working for you, if there was anything like this I should know about. We’re lucky this didn’t leak sooner.”

Jessica’s mouth purses. “That’s another thing. No one’s sure where all of the leaked information is coming from yet. If we know where you uploaded those videos to, we can help the investigation. We’ve already been in contact with law enforcement on another client’s behalf. If you have any ideas…”

“I don’t know,” he says, dropping his gaze to his bouncing knee.

“Come on, you gotta have some idea, buddy,” Steve says, pleading. “The other guy have an iPhone, he use iCloud? Or did you guys put it on some website somewhere?”

Vertigo hits Richie like a truck, the room tilting alarmingly around his still body. He grips the plush arms of the chair, unsure if he’s going to throw up or pass out. Maybe both.

“I didn’t know,” he manages, the words sounding like they’re coming from a distance. Like someone else’s mouth is speaking them. “I didn’t know he—” He waves a hand. Can’t get it out.

Slowly, the world rights itself. They’re both looking at him, twin mirrors of surprise and something like concern. Richie decides to look at the framed diploma on the wall behind her instead.

“Okay…” Jessica says slowly. “Is there anything else we should know?”

He shakes his head. Anything to stop talking about it.

Steve puts a hand on Richie’s shoulder, and it takes everything in him not to jerk away from the touch.

“Hey, are you sure? You’re kind of worrying me here, Richie,” Steve says, more sympathetic than Richie thinks he’s ever heard. Steve’s always been a little bit of a hardass, and that’s partly why Richie liked him, a familiar comfort he couldn’t place. He’s not used to this, and he hesitates.

Steve knows about his “accident.” If he knows about Chuck, he might put two and two together. Richie’s stomach lurches at the idea of Steve connecting any of the dots.

“Yep,” he says brightly, forcing a grin onto his face. “That’s literally all you need to know. Now, find me some work so I can forget this is happening.”

Jessica looks taken aback. “You sure you don’t want to take a break? This type of situation can be very mentally taxing. There’s nothing wrong with laying low and letting the heat hit the ones on top.”

A break sounds great. A break from everyone’s eyes on him. A break from people who might recognize Chuck, who might know.

Just tell them, Stan urges. They want to help you.

But it means more time to think, it means admitting something’s wrong. It means more people wondering what he’s doing, if he’s hiding, why he’s hiding. He can’t hide. He needs things to look as natural as possible. He’s been trying to get his career back on track, trying to do the things he wants to do again, instead of just going through the motions.

“I’m so sure, Jessica Beal,” he says, putting his foot flat on the floor, forcing it to stop bouncing. “If I’m staying busy and active, that helps distract, right? New news means old news fades faster.”

She lets her hands rest on the keyboard, frowning in thought. “You’re not wrong, being active does help."

“You do have the press stuff for Netflix coming up,” Steve says, nodding, already into the idea of Richie getting back to work. Not that he hasn’t been working, but he’s been staying out of the spotlight for the most part. “They’re going up on YouTube, so it’s not like they’ll be asking about any of this shit. And we had a request for you to fill in for some sitcom guest, I can look into that. Plus, I’m talking to people about your script, so we might have some meetings soon.”

“Perfect, whatever you’ve got, lay it on me.”

Thank god they’re done after that. Jessica tells him to write up something for Twitter, she’ll check it over, and he can post sometime tonight. Easy peasy.

He drives home in a daze. The sun is incongruously bright, and it’s almost twenty degrees warmer than New York, but Richie can’t stop shivering. He doesn’t register anything except the road directly in front of him until he’s suddenly pulling into the driveway, unable to remember the last thirty minutes.

The familiar sunny walls of his home have always been a relief to see when he comes back from touring or long trips away. He’s only been gone twenty-four hours, but the plane ride yesterday, and the party last night, feels like a distant dream. Setting foot back home two days earlier doesn’t dispel the strange feeling.

His room at the back of the house has large windows that let in all the sun he could want. He pulls the blackout curtains over them until the room is as dark as it gets, then drops his duffle bag on the end of the bed and sits next to it, staring through the gloom at the framed concert posters on the wall, waiting for something to break through the cloud.

When nothing does, he pulls his phone out of his pocket, and finally looks at his notifications.

Missed calls from Ben, Mike, and Eddie. Missed texts in the Losers group chat, as well as from Bill, Beverly, and Eddie. Hundreds of notifications on various social media and email apps.

The texts from Eddie are the oldest, but he saves them for last. Looking back through the day in reverse chronological order as the Losers say how much they miss him, if he needs anything just say the word, it looks like none of the other Losers were affected by the leak, is he coming back, is he alright, where did he go, why didn’t he tell anyone when he left, they just saw the news.

It’s all supportive, sympathetic. No one says anything about the videos or anything else that may have leaked.

Finally, he opens Eddie’s.

Eddie
You better be on a plane and not ignoring me.
I saw an article about what happened. Are you okay?
Call me when you get a chance?

His eyes sting. He bites his lips, running a hand through his hair. It’s too much. The undeserved concern.

Please, just talk to him. Call him. He’s not going to hate you.

His hands are sweating as he taps out a quick reply for everyone before swapping to Eddie alone. 

Richie
All good spaghetti. Just had to put out a few fires
U werent worried about lil ol’ me were u? 😉

He goes back to the group chat, thinks for a moment, and types. He gets another reply from Eddie when he hits send.

Eddie
Yes, dickhead.

Normally, he’d be a puddle on the floor at the blatant care Eddie is displaying. Now, it makes Richie so scared, he thinks he might puke again.

He replies to the others as they joke around in the group chat, until he finally gets beeped. But he knows Eddie is still expecting more. He asked for Richie to call when he got a chance, but Richie’s not sure he can carry on a conversation with Eddie without him picking up on something. He’s a perceptive little fucker.

Richie
I cant talk right now but Ill call u later 🤙

Having assuaged his friends, Richie takes care of assuaging the public. This is an aspect of the job he previously left entirely up to his old publicist, but after deciding to come out and switching teams, he wanted more involvement in what went on his social media.

He’s regretting that now as he types out a draft in his email.

That’s me in the corner. That’s me in the spotlight. Losing my virginity (to my manager)

He deletes that quickly.

Let’s play a game. Never have I ever been blackmailed for sex by I guy I would have let fuck me anyways

He deletes that too.

Sorry u guys had to see that. If it makes u feel any better, I wouldve tried harder to kill myself if I knew these videos existed before now

Obviously he deletes that, and about seven more tries, before he comes up with something roughly similar to the bullshit he fed his friends, which makes him feel even more like a dirty fucking liar, but what else is new. He shoots it off to Jessica. She suggests adding supporting words for the other victims of the leak, and Richie, selfish motherfucker that he is, thinks, yeah, duh, he’s not the only one affected here.

When that’s finally done, he swaps to the message from Steve and clicks the link again.

Again, the image loads, but this time he scrolls down to the top comment, where someone has oh-so-dutifully left a link to a website tastefully named FapGate.com.

The website is nothing but black text on a white background, with a simple search bar at the top and a long list of names. Bigger celebrities, like Melody Long and Neave Jacobs, are right at the top, prominently displayed. Each of their names has a number next to it.

Lesser celebrities are listed in alphabetical order, and he has to scroll almost to the end before he sees his name. The numbers vary wildly, and compared to some, his name has a paltry (13) beside it.

He clicks it, and finds a list of thirteen video links, each one dated.

Tozier20000307.mp4
Tozier20010120.mp4
Tozier20010609.mp4
Tozier20010825.mp4
Tozier20020301.mp4
Tozier20021130.mp4
Tozier20030214.mp4
Tozier20040101.mp4
Tozier20050921.mp4
Tozier20051216.mp4
Tozier20060526.mp4
Tozier20080318.mp4
Tozier20080504.mp4

He looks down the list at the dates, from 2000 to 2008. Eight years of his life, documented via videos he didn’t know existed.

The oldest one is from his twenty-third birthday.

He clicks the link, and the phone screen goes black.

Then, a video starts to play. It’s grainy, old. It shows the same room from the picture. White wall, a side view of a bed, and there’s his younger self. He’s laying on the bed, his pants undone, the fly and belt sticking up. His bare feet hang off the end. He remembers what he was wearing. A black Tool T-shirt with a wrench on the front that looked like a dick. A white and blue palm-tree patterned button-up he’d had for as long as he could remember.

The button-up is crumpled on the edge of the bed by his feet, and another man steps into frame from the direction of the camera and swipes it onto the floor. He sets a knee on the bed, climbing up over the Richie on screen, straddling his legs. Tucks his fingers into the waistband of Richie’s open pants and begins to tug them off.

Richie stares down in sick fascination at the image of himself being undressed in a room he doesn’t remember. He remembers his clothes. He remembers the man. He remembers washed-out, blurry, flash-photography snapshots of a bearded face 

He remembers the birthday party Chuck insisted on throwing, after Richie’s first big show. Everyone he knew in the comedy scene showed up, and plenty of people he didn’t, as well. Chuck rented out a club for it and Richie felt like he was on top of the world. He was seeing success, he was making money, people liked him, he’d finally moved into his own apartment. A month ago he told his manager he was gay, and Chuck had been so cool about it. Surprised, sure, but after almost a year of knowing each other and feeling out Chuck’s opinions, Richie figured he was safe.

He didn’t know any better.

On screen, his younger self is loose-limbed, a drunk marionettist operating his body. Chuck gets Richie’s pants down and off, and Richie mumbles something too quiet to hear. Even while he was roofied, he couldn’t shut the fuck up. His shirt is still on, but Chuck rucks it up, running his hands over Richie’s stomach and ribs, then back down to his bare hips, with a certain excitement and eagerness. He yanks Richie suddenly to the end of the bed, his ass nearly hanging off.

In real time, Richie watches the video in silence, sitting on the end of a bed nearly twenty years removed from the one on his screen. He watches Chuck touch him, fuck him. He watches himself lay there, just taking it. No fight. No idea that his first time is even happening.

There’s the slap of skin on skin, Chuck’s soft grunting. Screen Richie says something, too low to hear, but Chuck must catch it just fine, because he says, annoyed, “What, you gotta go right now?”

The sound of his deep voice is so familiar and yet deeply alien.

Whatever Screen Richie says in response is unintelligible, and Chuck doesn’t say anything to it.

A minute later, Chuck says, “God, you feel so good. Are you feeling good, baby?”

His stomach drops and Richie shuts his eyes, listening to the indistinct sound of his own mumbling, Chucks laughing reply, the wet noise of them fucking, his heartbeat in his ears, getting louder and louder and louder.

He forces them open when Chuck speaks again, another response to Screen Richie’s muttering. “You’re fine, it’s fine, I’ll call them for you later.”

Like they’re having a normal conversation. Like they’ve done this before.

“I knew you’d be good,” Chuck pants, hips moving faster against Screen Richie’s ass. “God, I didn’t think I’d get the balls. Never done this before.”

“Me too.”

The sound of Richie’s own voice, so clear, so coherent, makes the world tilt around him.

Chuck goes quiet, the force of his hips rocking Screen Richie rhythmically, his fingers gripped tight around Richie’s thigh in the fuzzy, pixelated shadows. He moans, loudly, the motion stuttering to a deep grind, and Richie thinks about the morning-after soreness and dried cum sticking his skin together.

“Happy birthday, baby,” Chuck says, gasping a little, flush with Richie’s ass.

Screen Richie replies softly, and then Chuck pulls out. His dick flops between his legs, still half-hard. It’s the first time Richie’s seen it. That he remembers.

He moves back to the camera, that Pabst Blue Ribbon shirt growing closer, clearer, filling the screen. A hand stretches out, beyond the frame, and the video ends. A replay button covers the logo on Chuck’s shirt.

So that was his first time. In what was probably a hotel room, or maybe even a guest room in Chuck’s house. Down the hall from where he slept with his wife. Ten minutes in a strange room with his manager that he can’t even remember.

There’s a buzzing, tingly feeling running up his hands and down his neck. He closes the video, goes back to the Reddit thread. There are dozens of comments, and he reads through them.

sassinmyass 1.7k points · 8 hours ago

This has to be some of the most boring gay porn I’ve ever seen. You can’t even
hear what Richie’s saying in it.

        LogicalBeaver60 684 points · 8 hours ago

        That’s cause the video quality is shit

        accreditedbooty 1.1k points · 8 hours ago

        Being spared whatever Tozier thinks dirty talk sounds like is probably a blessing in
        disguise.

        KaitheCreampieKing 954 points · 8 hours ago

        Not surprised at all that he still talks and laughs during sex, it’s kind of cute. Wish we
        could hear it, like you said.

                [expand]

GGezClap 849 points · 8 hours ago

Did you guys see him getting spanked in the fourth video?? The noise he makes kind of got to
me

        peppertornado 444 points · 8 hours ago

        I jacked off and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

                pepesad 59 points · 7 hours ago

                Dude.

                TheRaven666 115 points · 7 hours ago

                I’d be ashamed to admit jacking off to Tozier of all people

                        peppertornado 69 points · 7 hours ago

                        He’s hot though

slims2001 884 points · 8 hours ago

Never thought I’d see the day Richie Tozier has leaked sex tapes.

        FloridaXman 752 points · 8 hours ago

        And no one wants to see that shit

                PM_ME_YIFF_PICS 446 points · 4 hours ago

                speak for urself Im typing wth one had rn

                        FloridaXman 834 points · 3 hours ago

                        I couldn't tell

DoubleSlamWham 1.3k points · 8 hours ago

This is karma for the jokes about jacking off to his girlfriend’s sister’s FB page

        adiposedatass 765 points · 8 hours ago

        It was his GF’s friend, but I agree

KaitheCreampieKing 748 points · 8 hours ago

It’s disappointing you can’t even see anything. I want to see if Tozier’s dick is as big as he brags.

        GGezClap 1.5k points · 7 hours ago

        Go to the seventh video on the list, or just click here cause I took a screenshot.

        KaitheCreampieKing 752 points · 7 hours ago

        Wow… he wasn’t lying

        billyjoearmstwong 985 points · 7 hours ago

        Oh come the fuck on

        FloridaXman 1.4k points · 4 hours ago

        Never has a man been less deserving to have such a big fucking dick.

                [expand]

RandoCalSissyan 156 points · 7 hours ago

How has no one mentioned the fact that Richie’s overdose is on here? The 20030214 video matches with the day he got put in the hospital for OD’ing. It’s disturbing.

        anklemonitored 96 points · 3 hours ago

        Surprised this isn’t higher up, but I guess most people aren’t actually watching all of
        these videos.

        slims2001 24 points · 2 hours ago

        He’s lucky he was getting some, imagine if he’d been alone, he might have died

        adiposedatass 523 points · 2 hours ago

        Yeah but imagine bein the guy fucking him and all of a sudden he
        starts dying

                comeonandslammyasshole 16 points · 7 hours ago

                The last video is really weird too

  MrWeiner 846 points · 7 hours ago

  Thank god it’s not NNN, or I’d have lost

        tinkleonthetwinkle 1.2k points · 7 hours ago

        I can’t believe anyone actually wants to fuck this douchebag.

                MrWeiner 346 points · 7 hours ago

                I can’t believe I want to fuck this douchebag

                        scottyDK 240 points · 7 hours agoo

                        I can’t believe he wants to fuck this douchebag

                                billyjoearmstwong 689 points · 7 hours ago

                                I can’t believe it’s not butter.

                                        [expand]

He reads every single one, and then he switches to Twitter and searches his name.

Screenshot after screenshot, reaction image after gif, tweet after tweet. People commenting on his ugly body, his sexy body, his quiet reactions, the quality of the video, complaining they had to see this, railing against the leakers, praising the leakers, hoping there’s more recent stuff. They’re in his notifications, asking who’s the other man, does he top too, how big is his dick, is there more? Sending him screenshots, video clips, wanting Richie to see, wanting him to know he deserves this.

He doesn’t know what he’s searching for, but by the time his battery has eaten itself to less than half, he has an answer anyway.

No one can tell. No one knows what was really happening in those videos.

He lets his hand fall to his thigh, back aching from sitting hunched over his phone for so long.

This is a good thing. No one knows. Plus, he’s already out, so it’s not like this will destroy him. Not the way it would have even a year ago. If this had happened before last year, he probably would have finished the job he couldn’t in that car next to Chuck.

Maybe he still should.

How long until someone does find out? Are any of the other videos obvious, or are they all like the first one?

His overdose is supposedly preserved in one of these videos, too, and Richie wonders how long until that hits tabloid sites and Twitter. It hadn’t been intentional, not like his “accident.” That had been the vain hope that getting too drunk before Chuck handed him the drink would make it easier. Make it less scary.

It got him off the hook for almost a year, but in exchange he got a night in the hospital, his name plastered on tabloids, and paparazzi stalking him for a week until more interesting celebrities took the spotlight.

He was supposed to be over this. He was forgetting. He stopped drinking, he stopped thinking about Chuck. He was writing again, even if it wasn’t stand up. He’d moved on, for god’s sake.

That’s what hurts the most. He thought it was so far in the past, no one would ever even know. Now anyone who searches can see evidence of the worst moments of his life. It’s as bad as any torment the clown threw at him. In fact, he’d wager that Pennywise himself couldn’t have come up with a more horrific scenario, because Richie himself hadn’t known it was a possibility.

Now he’s got the commentary of hundreds of strangers floating in his head. If they knew the truth, would they stop?

No, he suspects the comments would be much, much worse.

If he tells the truth, the Losers will know. Eddie will know. What would he think? How disgusted would he be with Richie?

There’s a memory of Eddie’s child-voice screaming about AIDS, staph infections, syphilis. Richie used to be so scared that Eddie would hate him for being dirty, for being gay. But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t, it’s 2017, and Eddie is still the best friend he’s ever had, no matter how pathetic that is.

He wouldn’t hate you for this. You know he wouldn’t, Trashmouth. Pull it together, Stan says furiously.

But this is different. This is Richie’s dirtiest secret. That it happened and Richie just kept letting it happen. That it happened thirteen discreet times, and Richie could have swallowed his fears and put a stop to it at any moment, but he’d rather have killed himself than just be honest.

Now there are people talking about him. How much better he used to look, how much prettier, he’s still hot, yeah, for his age, he used to look so good, he should stop wearing those glasses, they make him look like a dork, his dick is fucking huge, dude like him doesn’t deserve a dick that big, wasted on a fucking pillow princess, that last video was so weird, it’s crazy that no one’s talking about him straight up ODing in one video, he just never shuts the fuck up does he, can’t believe he turned out like that.

There are ants squirming under his skin, and he wants to tear it open, get the crawling sensation out.

He wishes Stan was actually here, and feels immensely selfish for it. But he doesn’t want this to be like last time. He doesn’t want these thoughts already circling in his head, the idea that if he went to sleep and didn’t wake up, he wouldn’t have to deal with this at all. He might not be able to tell Stan everything, but he could talk to Stan about that. Stan would understand what fear could drive someone to do.

You know what I would say. You just don’t want to hear it, his mental Stan says, weary.

But Stan isn’t here. He made his choice, and he got what he wanted. The only thing Richie can do is shove the truth so far down it suffocates so he can puppet its corpse around like a prop.

It’s old hat, at this point.

Before Derry, he’d managed to stay sober for seven years. The first drink he had was after Mike’s call. It’d been his go-to, to steady his nerves, to prepare for the horrible things to come. Get drunk and not think. Get drunk and forget why he was drinking in the first place.

But there hadn’t been time to get properly drunk, either before going to Derry, or during it.

After, though. After he returned to L.A., after he survived that stupid fucking clown and remembered, oh yeah, he used to be in love with his neurotic best friend who’d grown up just as neurotic and cute as ever and, god help him, he might still be in love with Eddie—after all that shit, fuck sobriety.

He spent the last two weeks of July too drunk to function. Barely remembering to eat, apathetic to the canceled tour dates and his manager’s pleas to know what the hell was going on with him, sending stupid texts to random Losers to see everyone talking and alive and not hating him.

It made him sick to think about coming out to them, that they knew. It turned his chest tight, choked the calm out of him, sent spiders scurrying across his skin. Like they could see the horrible person he was inside. The disgusting creature that wanted to devour men and wanted to be devoured in turn.

But he said it and they didn’t hate him. Beverly touched his arm and said she was glad Richie told them like it was normal. Mike gave him a huge smile across the table and, when they had a moment alone, pulled Richie into a hug like it wasn’t gross that he was a man and Richie liked men. Big Bill of course had to go and say how proud he was of Richie, like the big brother he was. Ben gave Richie that same sweet smile he remembered from when they were kids and said that he loved Richie which, ugh, what a sap, Richie could have cried.

And Eddie. Nothing changed with Eddie, which had been Richie’s biggest fear. That he was too dirty for Eddie, just like his mother always said, and he would finally realize it. Or that he would just be uncomfortable. That he might realize Richie’s feelings and decide to put distance between them.

Richie went home and let the fear of telling more people he was gay drive him into the bottle. But slowly, he realized, there were no negative consequences. There was nothing to numb himself against, nothing to prepare himself for. They didn’t hate him, and of course, of course, they wouldn’t use it against him the way Chuck had.

Then he’d been afraid they would forget each other again, that he would forget Eddie again. He’d already forgotten his childhood, his friends, whatever bravery had him following Big Bill into that shitty fucking house on Neibolt. And beyond that, he’d forgotten so much else, thanks to Chuck, and then to his own need to drown out the thoughts. So he let himself call. He climbed back out of the bottle with the help of Eddie’s reassuring voice, still ready to argue, to call Richie an unfunny asshole despite his badly hidden laughter.

This, however, is a special occasion. What’s about to come is going to hurt. And Richie doesn’t want to feel it. He wants to feel nothing at all.

There’s a bottle of vodka in the freezer, the only remains of his post-Derry bender. It’s almost empty, and he has nothing to mix it with, so he takes the whole bottle with him as he settles at the breakfast bar.

You’re already out. It was almost ten years ago. Chuck can’t hurt you anymore, Stan says, so steady, so reassuring, so wrong.

“What the fuck do you know, Stan?” Richie mutters as he twists the cap off. “You’re dead, you lucky bastard.”

—

Drinking has always led to bad decisions, and this is no different. The hangover is just a nasty bonus. He wakes up to the darkness of his bedroom, a pounding pulse behind his eyes too small to be a migraine, and Eddie’s furious Fuck you text.

He knows Eddie didn’t mean it, Richie can see that in the aftermath. It was a stupid joke about Richie’s stage persona, hell, he’s pretty sure he’s told jokes about sending dick pics to women in his standup. He overreacted, but it had hurt. A blind swing that landed like a hammer against Richie’s stupid fucking heart. The idea that Eddie sees him that way. As someone who violates boundaries. Either because he can’t keep his stupid mouth shut, or because maybe, Eddie can see deep inside, to the hungry creature that lives in Richie’s chest.

He burrows down into his blankets, breathing in the quiet, head heavy and mouth dry. Thinks about falling asleep and never waking up. It sounds really nice. Peaceful. Preferable.

He goes back to sleep, and when he wakes, he feels like a piece of sludge that’s grown sentience. It’s mid-afternoon, though the sun doesn’t touch his dark cave, and he checks his phone to find a few texts from the other Losers as he lays curled up under his blanket, in the near-suffocating warmth.

Bill
When me and Mikey get in this weekend, we were thinking we could meet up and hang out, if you’ve got time! :)

The thought of seeing his friends sounds like nothing short of the best thing in the world. He wishes they were here right now. Wants Bill’s reassuring presence and Mike’s easy camaraderie.

It also freaks him out a little bit. What do they want to hang out with him for? Do they know something? Are they suspicious? Are they going to ask about the videos? Is it obvious, have they seen something, is it obvious can they tell is it so fucking obvious how fucking disgusting he is?

He throws the covers off and sits up, breathing in the cool air of his bedroom, sweat soaking the back of his neck and behind his knees. He runs his hands through his hair and over his face, feeling greasy and gross, like there’s a sheen of oil across him, visible and visceral and nasty.

He tries to remember what his therapist told him, when his thoughts spiral like this. It was in regards to fears about coming out, but this is close enough. Just another dirty secret that’s gotten out.

Of course Bill and Mike don’t know anything. They’re asking to hang out because they’re his friends, and they’re all going to be in the same town in a few days, and Richie missed out by leaving New York without a word. They wouldn’t watch those videos. They can’t tell something’s off if Richie just continues acting normal, and acting normal means hanging out and being a human being. Or at least, pretending.

Which means replying to texts, and apologizing.

But first, he has to scrape this grime off his skin.

After a scalding hot shower and some clean clothes, Richie feels a little more present, less in his head. In the light of his living room, with the curtains on the patio doors open and letting the late afternoon sunshine in, nothing looks as dire. He even has something to eat, something he’d neglected when giving in to his stupid urge to binge.

He should probably tell his therapist about this. Should, but won’t.

Suck it up, champ. Rub some dirt in it.

He texts Eddie an apology for being a dick, and that goes an even longer way towards making Richie feel better when Eddie so quickly asks if Richie wants to call. It sends that warm, fluttery feeling through Richie’s chest that makes him feel impossibly young and giddy, like he never grew out of being that kid with a crush on his best friend.

Which, he supposes, he never did.

He thought, in the months since Derry Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clown, that those feelings would fade. He’d still love Eddie like he loves all the Losers, but he would finally be freed from the restless wanting that’s plagued him all his life.

Maybe that would have been the case if he’d stayed away. But that was like asking a moth to avoid the light. For the earth to cease orbiting the sun. It’s all he’s ever known, even when he couldn’t remember. Instinct. Gravity.

Eddie was the first person he called, when panic gripped him and he realized he didn’t want to forget and the drinking wasn’t helping. Then he called Eddie again, because he couldn’t stay away. Then Eddie called him, and it just didn’t stop.

This time, though, Richie can’t call. He doesn’t know what he’ll say. Like the toxic sludge is going to come surging up his throat if he picks up the phone and hears Eddie’s voice, asking in that angry-concerned tone if Richie’s really okay. He won’t be able to help it.

He wants to accept Eddie’s invitation to stay with him more than anything, but can’t. It makes Richie feel skeevy, because Eddie doesn’t know what Richie thinks of when he thinks about spending time with Eddie. What he wants to do.

It makes him think of Chuck, hiding whispered threats behind a friendly, bearded smile and small, kind eyes.

It sours Richie’s feelings. He can’t bring himself to accept Eddie’s invitation to visit, so he makes his excuses, and tries to work on editing his script the rest of the evening. It doesn’t really keep his mind off anything, but at least he’s not drinking.

That’s how he spends the rest of the week. Avoiding Eddie, texting sporadically, staying indoors. Steve books him for some auditions for more voiceover work and a cameo on a sitcom, filling in for an actor who broke his leg.

He compulsively checks Twitter and Googles his name, terrified of what he’ll find. The news is mainly focused on the bigger, A-list celebrities, most of whom are younger women. It sucks, but Richie is relieved every time he opens an article with his name, and he’s only mentioned incidentally.

He reads the comments, which is always a bad idea, but the need to know if anyone’s noticed overcomes any self-preservation instincts his therapist has managed to instill in him since he came out. And just like the comments Richie read after he came out, they make him sick. Most aren’t even about him, but the ones that are love to speculate who the other man is, if they were dating, how bad this would have been for Richie if they’d leaked before he came out.

He knows exactly how bad it would have been, thanks.

When editing becomes too repetitive and not distracting enough, he tries to work on standup material in his office. He wants to return to it eventually, because he loves being on stage and making people laugh in a way he can see and feel, but he can’t do it with material that isn’t his anymore.

With Is This It by The Strokes spinning in the background he taps away at his laptop for a meager hour or so. What ends up coming out is definitely him, but there’s no way he can ever show another human being. He’s not sure anyone wants to hear horrible jokes about the first time he told someone he was gay and the consequences. He shuts his laptop after that and wants to drink, but there’s no more alcohol in the house.

It’s not that late, but Bill and Mike are supposed to come around in the morning, so Richie says fuck it, and shuts himself in his room. He puts in his headphones, turns on a random playlist, and lays in the dark until he can’t tell the difference between the shadows on the ceiling and the ones inside his eyelids.

—

Being behind the wheel makes his brain itch. He keeps thinking about the speed of oncoming traffic. The glide of the steering wheel under his palm. The resistance of the acceleration pedal. Low-level dread simmers deep in Richie’s stomach as he drives to the Netflix office where he’s being interviewed with some castmates for the YouTube channel. He’s sweating and pale by the time he arrives, but a short fifteen minutes in a makeup chair makes up (haha) for his pallor.

In spite of everything, the interview goes fine. No one mentions the leaks, let alone asks him, Hey, was that your old manager in those videos? They play a stupid game and talk about nothing but the characters they played and doing voice work.

It’s why the panic attack catches him so off guard. Sends him stumbling through the building, sure he’s having a heart attack, vision blurring, until he’s bursting out into the sunlight and nearly falling down a short flight of concrete steps.

He really doesn’t mean to call Eddie as he collapses onto them. His tunnelling vision and shaking hands make it hard to navigate his phone, and he only realizes he’s hit the wrong name in his call history after it’s rung a few times. He hangs up, panting, squinting at his phone, spotting Steve’s name eventually. Drags the phone up to his ear as he taps on it.

He doesn’t hear it ring, just hears a voice saying, “Hello? Richie?”

It’s not obvious through the ringing in his ears that he answered a return call until it’s too late. All he can do is let Eddie talk him through his panic attack after that.

—

Of course it ends up on TMZ. Why the hell wouldn’t it? The cherry on the shit sundae.

He wasn’t aware of anyone else around him as he spoke to Eddie and slowly came down. Even when he got it together and walked around the building to his car, he was unaware.

Always unaware, never party to his own fucking humiliation.

He’s looking at the pictures while laying in bed, where he’s been eating most of his meals and leaving the paper plates and fast food bags on various surfaces. He actually really likes cooking, but lately all he’s had the energy for—between script editing, writing bad jokes, any meetings and guest spots on podcasts and game shows Steve can get him, and laying in bed for hours at a time—is whatever he can order from his phone or nuke in the microwave for less than five minutes.

He’s had a lot of Hot Pockets the last few weeks.

The phone rings in his hand, and Steve’s name appears on his screen.

“What the hell happened, buddy?” Steve says before Richie can even say hello, and there’s a hard edge to his tone, almost accusatory. “It was one interview, why didn’t you call me? You should have told me something happened out there! What’s going on, Richie?”

“Got papped,” Richie says, fighting to keep his voice flat, not to snap.

“Yeah, I got that, but what happened to you? In the pictures, you look…” Steve trails off.

Richie stares up at the ceiling, apathetic. “Like shit. No need to sugar coat it.”

Steve makes a frustrated sound. “I’m trying to ask if you’re alright.”

That gets through the seal of apathy, a flush of shame and embarrassment. First Eddie, now Steve. The others are going to see the article soon and start trying to check on him.

Would that be so bad? Stan asks quietly.

“I am, I just,” Richie sighs, the brief flash of emotion seeming to drain out of him. “I need some time, okay?”

“It feels like there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“No, no, I just had a little panic attack, man. I’m alright. I had a friend talking me through it, I just didn’t realize I was being fucking watched.”

“A panic attack? Is it about the videos?”

Richie says nothing. Let Steve draw whatever conclusion he wants.

“Look, Richie, it’s not the end of the world. In a few weeks, no one’s going to care anymore, I promise you. The Netflix thing is already done, so it’s not like they can drop you. And you’re still getting work! More work than ever, actually.”

He lets Steve’s reassurances wash over him like white noise until Steve is satisfied Richie is okay and hangs up.

He doesn’t even know why he’s freaking out so hard. It's not like he remembers any of it that well. The drug Chuck gave him made sure of that. And it wasn't like he didn't know it was happening at all. He figured out the pattern eventually, after all, and did nothing to stop it. Plus, it was almost ten years ago.

He pulls up the leak website again, and stares at the list of thirteen videos. It’s more than he remembers. Maybe some of the times have gotten mixed up in his head. He remembers these nights more by their aftermath than any actual memory of the event, or even the dates, with some exceptions.

The first had been, well, his first in a lot of ways. First birthday without his parents. First manager. First guy he ever came out to. First guy to fuck him. He remembers taking drink after drink from Chuck as the party wound down. He doesn’t remember getting in a car, or being taken to bed.

Just flashes, astigmatic starbursts of light against a blurry, white body and textured ceiling. Movement, lethargic. Strong hands guiding his limbs.

His memory really begins again in the back of a taxi. Feeling like he was floating. Sore, with Chuck next to him, chatting with the driver. Then, bleary-eyed, unsteady as a newborn deer while Chuck opened his front door and nudged him inside. That's what he remembers most. His kitchenette suddenly coming into focus, blinking awake from a dream. Uncomfortable in his own clothes, in his own apartment, that Chuck helped him find, and had the spare key for.

He stumbled to the counter, hanging on like a sea-drunk sailor, barely even aware of what had just happened, when Chuck took him by the shoulder and told Richie he wouldn’t breathe a word of this to anyone, or everyone would know his secret. The white and blue palm-tree shirt was wadded up in Richie’s arm, and he didn’t remember taking it off or why he was holding it so tight.

He threw it out eventually. He threw out everything he was wearing that night, after he spent three days sleeping off what felt like an endless hangover. Barely able to get out of bed, sick to his stomach, avoiding the ringing phone.

Richie watches the second video. Maybe it’s perverse, watching himself being fucked. Watching his body experience things he has no memory of. It feels like watching a video of his own surgery. Only aware in the aftermath that someone opened him up and took what they wanted from his body.

The second time it happened was almost a year later. At a party for another one of Chuck’s clients. It was cold, he remembers. No snow in L.A., but cold enough he’d bought a nice, new jean jacket for himself, for Christmas. He thought he was in the clear. It was one time. There’d been other parties and other drinks he’d been forced to accept from Chuck in polite company, but there’d never been a repeat. He’d mostly forgotten it, because there hadn’t been a lot to forget anyway. The black hole of the night ate it up.

The bar was packed for the party, and Richie took the drink that was handed to him when Chuck joined Richie in a circle of other comedians. There was a prickle of hesitation in the back of Richie’s mind, but he was already drunk, and he was surrounded by people he thought of as friends, so he tipped his head back and drank deep.

He knows he started feeling a little loopy. He knows he excused himself to smoke outside, planning on catching a ride from someone so he didn’t have to call a taxi. He pulled his new jacket on, fumbling for the packet of Newports as he stumbled out into the chilly night where the party was spilling over.

The memory goes soft and dark, a blanket draped over the scene.

In his hands, he sees what was hidden. Himself, not yet twenty-four, laying on that bed. Maybe the same hotel, or maybe that guest room down the hall from Chuck’s wife. Richie is naked this time, his lither, younger body completely bared to Chuck’s hands. There’s a restrained fervor to Chuck’s movements. Like he’s barely able to stop himself from tearing into Richie. Like he’s forcing himself to savor it.

He says, “You with me baby?”

Richie’s skin crawls. His on-screen counterpart mumbles unintelligibly.

“Don’t be like that,” Chuck croons with a low chuckle.

There’s a lot of that. A lot of baby, a lot of, you like that.

Had he liked it? Somewhere deep down, in the yawning, hungry pit of his soul, had he been aching for an excuse to have another man want him like this?

It surges up his throat, a thick sludge of vile self-hatred that he has to scramble off the bed to avoid soiling his bedsheets with. He bangs his knees on the tile of his en-suite and his ribs on the toilet rim as he voids his roiling stomach. Sick with the idea of what he would have done for Chuck if his manager had only asked. Even after that first time.

He brushes his teeth and crawls back into bed, throws his glasses onto the nightstand, and shuts his eyes. He thinks about the jean jacket, one of the few nice pieces of clothing he ever bought for himself. When he came back to himself, being shuffled into his apartment in the dead of night, Chuck threw the jacket over the back of Richie’s couch. It stayed there for a week, and then Richie took it out with the trash without even getting his cigarettes from the pocket.

The sun is still out, but in his cave, it’s dim and quiet and safe. He wants to call Eddie, but Eddie is still at work, and Richie already fucked his day up once with his undue panic attack.

He lets himself drift on a wave of lethargy, to the edge of consciousness and sleep, until the Loser’s group chat begins to explode when Bill drops that stupid article in it, and Richie has to muster up the energy to fend them off.

—

When he came out to Chuck, it seemed like the right choice, but there’d been so many factors driving his decision. At the time, it made sense. Now, he looks back on his younger self with so much hatred, he could choke. It was stupidity. Pure, fucking stupidity, to think that he was safe. That he could ever be safe if anyone knew he was gay.

You know that’s not true. You’ve seen it, Stan’s voice whispers.

But it is true. He should have known better. Even if he couldn’t remember the specifics of what Bowers and his gang used to shout at him, what the kids in high school used to say the longer he went without a girlfriend, or how Eddie’s mother eyed him like a piece of shit clinging to her shoe as they got older, he still carried that dread, that surety that something in him was wrong.

Somehow, it hadn’t been enough to stop his mouth. His stupid, fucking mouth.

Wentworth got diagnosed with laryngeal cancer in April, just weeks before Richie’s graduation. He didn’t walk the stage—instead, he flew home to Tampa, Florida, where his parents had planned to retire. He couldn’t stay long, though. He wasn’t exactly rolling in cash, working at the bar and grille, doing open mics, and applying for every radio job he could find in the classifieds. He had to go back too soon, and he felt like a shitty son for it, but his dad assured him that he would be fine, and that he’d update Richie.

Less than a year later, he was dead.

For the first time, Richie was completely alone. His mom and dad both gone, and he’d never told them. And maybe he never would have, if they’d lived, but he wouldn’t get the chance to find out. He’d never know if he would have nutted up or how they would have taken it.

Richie turned twenty-two a few weeks after that, and then a month later, Chuck found him.

He was older, in his fifties, and he’d been around the comedy scene forever. He knew everyone, and everyone seemed to know him. He was legitimate, and Richie was ecstatic that things were finally turning around for him. It wasn’t radio, and he didn’t think it was possible for him to make it a career until Chuck made his offer, but it felt good to get recognized. For someone to look at him and believe he had some worth.

The first thing Chuck said when Richie accepted Chuck’s offer to manage him, was that he needed to know any secrets Richie was keeping, anything that might come to light and make his job as Richie’s manager harder. Richie shook his head then, assured him there was nothing.

With Chuck, his career really took off. He opened for bigger comedians, he played bigger audiences—he even got to be on the radio for a day, promoting his first, big solo show. His family was dead, he was a dirty fucking queer, but at least he could make people laugh.

Chuck was a great manager. His presence opened doors and got Richie opportunities he wasn’t even aware of. But more than that, Chuck was cool. He was well-liked, friendly, and he didn’t care who anyone was or where they came from. It was through Chuck that Richie met the first openly gay people he knew, and Richie thought, for the first time, maybe someone wouldn’t hate him if they knew about him, too.

And worse was the crush. Chuck was the polar opposite of the kind of guys Richie usually found his eyes sticking to. Older, almost as tall as Richie, and just as big. He liked to laugh as much as Richie did, was slow to anger, and had ashy, gray-blonde hair that was thinning around his crown. He was touchy, quick to throw a friendly arm around the shoulder of whoever he was talking to, and always happy to hear a joke.

It was just a stupid crush. He was never going to act on it, not in a million years, because his manager was married, to a woman, and had a kid who was almost Richie’s age. But he couldn’t help that when Chuck put a hand on Richie’s back as they walked, gave him a bear hug when Richie did better than usual after a set, bought Richie a beer and touched his hand so gently when Richie told Chuck about his mom and dad, it sent a warm thrill through him.

So about a month before his twenty-third birthday, Richie made the dumbest mistake of his life.

He tries hard not to think about that moment. How immature, how stupid he was. He was far less nervous coming out to Chuck than he was to the Losers, which would be hilariously ironic if he ever told anyone about this.

Chuck didn’t look at him different, didn’t curl his lip, didn’t tell Richie to get out of his fancy fucking office on the twelfth floor of the building his management company owned. No, he came around his desk, clapped Richie on the shoulder, and told him, “You did the right thing, telling me. Thank you, Richie.”

Richie was practically vibrating out of his skin, but that assurance that he’d made the right move, trusted the right person, calmed him like nothing else. It felt like he could finally take a full breath, for once in his life.

Now, he can’t stop thinking about that moment, and all the moments before then. He used to do this all the time, too. Wonder at what signs he missed, or if there’d been hints he should have picked up on. Every innocent memory tainted by the knowledge that Richie was a fucking idiot. He picks over the memories like dirty scabs. Ripping them up, seeing the blood welling underneath, and cringing.

Maybe that’s why he calls Mike up as he’s lounging out in his backyard by the pool. It’s chilly and the sun is going down. Deep shadows blanket him, and the pool is covered for the season, but he’s got his hoodie and sweatpants on, so he endures for a little while longer as he smokes an illicit cigarette. He doesn’t smoke as much now as he used to, but lately he’s been craving the release of tension with each exhale. The CBD gummies are good for it, but there’s something so comforting about smoking that can’t be replicated.

Eddie would chew his ass out if he knew Richie had picked up smoking again. But it’s either a cigarette, or a bottle, and he’s trying very fucking hard not to go down that route again-again, so what Eddie doesn’t know won’t send him into an apoplectic fit.

“Hello? Richie?” Mike says, his voice soft and concerned. It makes Richie’s eyes prickle.

“Hey, Mikey,” Richie says, pouring the joy of talking to his friend into his voice. “Just calling to see what you’re up to.”

“Not much,” Mike says slowly. “Seems like you’ve got a lot more interesting things going on right now. Did you want to talk about it?”

“Not even a little bit,” Richie says with a laugh. He looks through the patio door, where he can see his lit living room, the yellow-painted walls looking warm and inviting. He takes another drag, feeling a little light-headed from the rush of nicotine, and shivers. “What are you up to right now?”

Mike takes that answer without a fight, thankfully. “Not much at the moment. Bill’s writing in the camper and I’m taking a walk along the beach.”

Richie imagines it—the setting sun shining on the wintery blue waters as Mike walks along the rocky coast of Big Sur.

“Ooh, how very Rupert Holmes of you.”

“Ugh, no, I hate that song,” Mike says. “Plus, it’s way too cold for piña coladas. I’d rather have a fireball right now.”

Richie hums a few bars of “The Piña Colada Song” to Mike’s laughing protests. A fireball doesn’t sound too bad to Richie, either. Reminds him of fucking around in college. But he hasn’t bought any more liquor and he’s kept his promise to Eddie, even if Eddie said he didn’t want it.

“So, what were you up to back in the day?” Richie asks.

“What, back in Derry?”

“Yeah. What was ol’ Mikey up to when the rest of us Losers fucked off like assholes?”

“I mean, not much of interest. Not like you guys,” Mike says, sounding a little self-conscious. “A lot of researching Derry’s history and talking to the locals, trying to figure out what I could to help us, if It came back.”

“No, I don’t give a shit about that clown stuff, what were you up to? You know all about what we were doing back then, but I don’t know jack shit about you, dude. You go to college after I left?”

“Oh,” Mike says, sounding surprised, and that makes Richie feel a wash of guilt through his chest. He knows he couldn’t have stayed in Derry, but sometimes he wonders if it wouldn’t have been better if he’d been the one stuck there, and not Mike. At least if he’d stayed in Derry, he wouldn’t have— “Yeah, I went to the University of Maine over in Portland,” Mike cuts into that thought, and Richie happily casts it aside. “I thought my grandpa would be mad about me wanting to do something other than taking over the farm, but he was actually happy for me. I think he wanted me to do more with my life.”

“Guess he wasn’t counting on you camping out in the public library’s attic, huh?” Richie says, half-expecting to get beeped.

Mike just laughs. “Yeah, he had no idea! To be fair, I didn’t either. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I just kind of gravitated to local history anyway. It was something my dad was interested in, before…” Mike trails off, his voice going a little wistful.

“I’m sorry, man,” Richie says quietly, feeling his own throat tighten in sympathy. It had sucked, losing Maggie and Went, but at least he had them when he was a kid. Mike never talked about his parents much, but Richie can imagine it was a special kind of hurt to not have them raising him, on top of the shit the resident racists would spew about how they died.

“It’s alright. Been a long time,” Mike says easily. “My grandpa got sick when I was going to college, though. He told me to do whatever I wanted with the farm, so I sold it to some developers and used it to pay for school. Then I pretty much just stuck around Derry, after that. Got on at the library, started researching local history to see if I could find some more information about It—”

“Wait, hold up, I said no clown talk,” Richie butts in, and hears the staticky gust of Mike’s laugh.

“Shit, you’re right. Sorry, it seems like I spent so much time worrying about It, it’s hard to remember what else I was doing. I was so focused on that for so long.”

“Jeez, Mike, that’s sad as hell,” Richie jokes, but he means it, too. “What were you doing for fun? I know it couldn’t have all been research, there’s only so many assholes in that town who would have seen anything.”

“Uh, well,” Mike says, fumbling a little. “I did a lot of writing in my spare time. Research papers, mostly, but a few short stories now and then.”

“Good god, tell me that’s not all,” Richie says with feigned agony. “Research papers and short stories? Come on, Mikey! You weren’t going to concerts, bagging babes, partying, anything?”

Mike sighs fondly. “No, Richie, I wasn’t out ‘bagging babes.’” He gives the phrase a little tickle of sarcasm that makes Richie grin to himself.

“How about dudes?” he says before he can shut his stupid mouth. Immediately, a hot surge of anxious dread fills his stomach. “Aah, I’m just fucking with you,” he says quickly, putting as much asshole dude-bro inflection into his voice as he can. His hands prickle with uneasy tension, the same way it always used to when he thought about someone else finding out he was gay. While he does suspect there’s some chemistry between Bill and Mike, the thought of making Mike feel that way sends Richie’s stomach rolling dangerously.

It’s silent for a moment. Then, Mike says, “No, no dudes.” He says it casually, like it doesn’t matter that Richie asked. “I dated a few girls, but I… I—can I ask you something, Rich? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.”

Richie’s heart is in his mouth. He’s not sure he’s prepared for whatever this conversation is about to be. “Sure, lay it on me,” he says anyway.

There’s a soft breath against the speaker. “Okay. So, when you figured out you liked men. Guys, I guess. How did you know? What made it click?”

Oh. Oh, this is not the conversation Richie thought he was about to have at all. He’s not sure he’s the right person for Mike to be asking about gay awakenings, considering Richie’s nearly-lifelong closet residence.

“Well, Micycle,” Richie says, brain feeling like it’s suddenly full of bouncing ping pongs and he can’t catch a single one. He opens his mouth and one falls out at random. “Guess it was probably the day I found my dad’s stack of Playboys and realized I really was more interested in the articles.”

As always, it’s easier to tell a joke. Nothing is as scary if he can laugh at it. If someone’s laughing with him, they can’t laugh at him. And if someone does hurt him, it’s better to laugh so they never know.

It isn’t a complete fabrication either, but the truth is, he knew he was different long before then. The real memory that sticks out is coming home from school when he was around seven, crying because the teacher told the class that someday all the boys would grow up to marry beautiful women and have families, and he was upset because he didn’t want to marry a girl.

He wonders, sometimes, if his parents caught on eventually, or if they just shrugged it off as Richie being a dumb little boy who thought girls had cooties. Doesn’t know what answer he’d like better.

Mike, thankfully, laughs at the stupid joke. “Yeah, I guess that would be a pretty big clue, huh?”

It eases the tightness in Richie’s chest to hear it, even if his palms are still slicked with sweat. He laughs along, hoping it sounds genuine.

“It’s not weird if I talk to you about this, is it?” Mike says, voice going soft, unsure. “I just don’t know what I’m doing. I never thought about it before, but if it’s too much, you can tell me to shut it.”

Oh. Oh, Mike is trusting him. Oh, shitttt.

Part of Richie wants to make crackling noises with his mouth into the phone and pretend like he’s losing reception, but the other part of him shouts, in that little boy Stanley voice, Get it together, Trashmouth!

“No, it’s not weird, man.” He fumbles for a second, unsure of how to do this for anyone, when no one’s ever done this for him, then decides to just let his mouth take the reins. “Let’s do it, talk boys to me. Wait, hold on, do we need to be doing our nails at the same time? What’s the teen girl protocol on this?”

“I think we’re a few years too late for that,” Mike says, amused. “But, uh, I don’t know. I’ve never felt like this before. Not even with any of the women I dated. I don’t know if I just missed you all that much and I’m excited to spend time with him, or if this is something… more.”

Mike doesn’t need to say it for them to both know he’s talking about Bill, but Richie’s mouth bites the bullet for both of them. “Bill, though? Seriously? Why not Ben? The one who grew up into a Brazilian soccer Adonis?” Or Eddie, but he keeps that to himself.

“Shut it,” Mike groans. “I don’t know! I just like him, okay?”

Leaning back on his poolside lounger, Richie stares up at the darkening sky. This isn’t so bad. It’s almost… comforting, in a weird way. It’s nice knowing that he’s not the only one in the group. Would have been better if he could have known when he was a kid, but like hell is he going to begrudge Mike that, especially when it seems like it wasn’t even on Mike’s radar back then. If it had been, he can only imagine the kind of hell Derry and that fucking clown would have rained down on Mike.

“Well, what about old Billiam? Getting any signals?”

“I don’t know about signals,” Mike says hesitantly. “Sometimes I think there might be something there, and it makes me feel so… I don’t know. I’m trying not to look at everything he does through rose-colored glasses, but sometimes I just can’t help it, you know?”

God, does Richie know. He knows only too well. The sound of Eddie calling him Sweetheart hasn’t left his brain in days. Busy as he was with having his first panic attack in seven years, he couldn’t think about it in the moment, but sometimes he has the urge to text Eddie or call him and scream, “What does it mean!?”

He knows what it means. It means Eddie is a kind guy, under his asshole exterior. It means he was probably a great husband to his shitty wife, and he just used that experience to get Richie to stop freaking out. Richie’s just a jealous asshole because he wishes it could mean something more.

“Well, it sounds to me like you have a grade A crush, Mikey,” Richie says, swallowing his own urge to dump this shit out on Mike. No one wants to hear about that.

“Is it a crush, though?” Mike says, sounding far too unsure for a man who believed a failed Native American ritual would be enough to kill their childhood nightmare. “Or am I just latching onto him because he’s adrift right now, too?”

It sounds, to Richie’s well-trained ear for self-deceiving bullshit, that Mike might be afraid of his scary new feelings for a dude. Richie wishes he were on the beach with Mike now, so he could drag him into a big bear hug.

He thinks about what he would have wanted to hear, if he’d gotten to have this talk with someone.

“Don’t overthink it, man. You’re just going to freak yourself out. Enjoy it. If it isn’t a crush, you’ll figure it out eventually. And if it is, nothing wrong with that. Right?” Richie runs a hand over his forehead, already second-guessing himself. He’s got no business giving anyone advice on how to deal with feelings, since his go-to has been repression.

But after a moment, Mike says, “Yeah, you’re right.”

Richie can’t help the noise he makes. “What, really?”

“You’re full of surprises,” Mike agrees blandly, and Richie laughingly protests.

The conversation meanders to concerts they’ve been to and musical artists they’ve discovered in their years apart, then he finds out how Mike’s been enjoying music since he’s been solo-traveling, and Richie nearly explodes.

“You’re telling me you’ve been listening to CDs? CDs, Mike?” Richie says, outraged.

“You have a record collection! You’ve got no room to talk!” Mike says, laughing.

“Yeah, because I like to support artists, I’m not carrying around a cinderblock binder of CDs in my car though! Hold on, hold the fucking phone.” Richie swaps to speaker so he can pull up his Spotify app. “I can’t fucking believe this. What century are you living in, man? You can stream anything these days, dude, you can listen to all the conspiracy theory podcasts you like.”

“I can listen to podcasts already—”

Richie cuts off Mike’s protests. “A fucking travesty! I’m hooking you up, Mikey, don’t you worry, you’re old pal Richie has your back.”

They don’t go back to the conversation about Mike’s life in Derry after that, and they don’t bring up Bill again, either. Both are in the back of Richie’s mind, though. He’d hoped for better, for Mike. Even if Derry sucked shit, he’d hoped that at least Mike, with memories of his complete self, might have found some happiness there.

But no, he’d been plagued in his own way. Trying desperately to research some way to deal with the clown before It woke up, stuck with a bunch of prejudiced assholes who barely improved after the turn of the century, only finding comfort in the people and things outside of Derry, but unable to actually leave to be a part of it.

It sucks. It all fucking sucks.

But at least he’s doing it now. He’s traveling, he’s with one of the Losers, he’s discovering himself in a way Derry would never allow.

It’s still crazy to think that, and to think that Mike would choose Richie to confide in, but it also makes sense. Richie’s gay, sure, but they’d also been the last ones left, before Richie graduated and took off to California and never looked back. They’d been the two amigos after Stan was dragged away by his parents. Most of their days were spent with Richie driving over to the Hanlon farm to harass Mike while he did chores until Mike was allowed to finish up for the day. Then they’d go down to the quarry, listen to music, smoke weed if Richie had any.

That’s how Richie spent his last day in Derry. At the quarry, listening to the boombox Richie got from his parents on his last birthday. His parents were moving to Florida and Richie was splitting ways and going to Cali for school. They swam in the warm summer evening, drank sweating beers while sitting on the wet rocks, and laid out on towels under the stars after the sun sank.

He said, “You could come with me, Mike.”

“Can’t,” Mike said, not meanly, just matter-of-fact. “Grandpa’s been sick, you know that. I can’t just leave him.”

Richie swallowed the disappointment, but he couldn’t stop the thoughts of Eddie that crept in after. How Eddie had said no, too. How Eddie never called. How Eddie never came back. None of them did, but it was always Eddie Richie thought of.

He thought about driving up to New Jersey, but he thought about that all the time. So when he finally left, “Born to Run” blaring over the radio, passenger window down like Eddie was still in the seat next to him, he bellowed the lyrics at the top of his lungs and drove west.

At least they have each other now. Eddie’s only a phone call away. He can share music with Mike any time, just like when they were teens. He’s got all of them again. Almost all of them, that is.

The sun disappears, and Mike has to go, rejoining Bill to scrounge up dinner. They say their goodbyes and, fueled by some hope that maybe not all of their lives actually sucked in the last twenty-seven years, Richie calls up Eddie to find out as he lays beneath the clouded sky in his backyard, shivering in the cooling darkness.

—

The water sloshes up to his waist as Richie settles into the bathtub, soaking instantly through his sweatpants and band tee. Black with a fun-shaped wrench on the front. It’s hot, and steam collects on the clean, white tiles, dripping thickly as it cools. He sinks lower, letting it soak up the back of his shirt as he leans against the tub. His knees poke out above the surface. There’s not enough room in here, with Stan sitting on the other end.

Richie’s clothed calves press against Stan’s pale, hairy ones under the water. His feet might be touching Stan’s naked hips, but he’s not really focused on that.

Stan isn’t looking at him. He’s looking at a small razor blade pinched between his index and thumb as he lounges back against the tub, one arm resting lazily along the rim. There’s a thick trail of red trickling down the porcelain, clouding the water around him. He looks so much older, and yet exactly the same. His curly brown hair seems to have darkened with age, but those serious, adult eyes finally fit his face.

“Hey, Richie,” Stan says, voice echoing around the room despite the softness of his voice.

“Stan the Man,” Richie says, smiling slowly. He wants to sit up, grab Stan in a hug, but the water is so warm and comfortable, and his limbs feel so heavy. “I really miss you.”

“I know,” Stan says. The razor turns over between his fingers. His eyes don’t leave it. “I miss you too.”

They sit without speaking for a few minutes. The sound of the water gently lapping at the sides of the tub is their only company, soothing and warm. Richie studies the familiar fall of hair over Stan’s forehead, as if he hadn’t changed his style in two decades. He looks good. Healthy, if a bit solemn as he studies the razor.

“Do you regret it?” Stan asks.

“Regret what?” Richie asks.

“Not finishing the job like I did.” Stan’s eyes flick to him.

Richie doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know what the answer is. He doesn’t know how he feels sometimes.

“You know what I think?” Stan says, head tilting slightly. “I think you do. I think you wish you’d finished it right the first time.”

Maybe Stan’s right. If he had, none of what’s happening would even matter. He wouldn’t be here to care. Richie wants to shut his eyes, shake his head, but he can’t. He can’t even speak, as if his lips have sealed themselves shut finally.

“Maybe it should have been you.” Stan taps the razor against the side of the tub purposefully. Click click click. “If you wanted to be where I am so bad, maybe we could trade places.”

“Okay,” Richie whispers. It’s an effort to get just that word out. His tongue feels heavy, his jaw locked tight.

Nodding, Stan lifts his arm from the rim of the tub, holding it out in front of him like an offering, and Richie can see where his skin splits like a peach down the middle of his forearm. Torn muscle and flesh pulses in the bloody crevice. Richie mirrors him, his body moving of its own volition. Baring the soft, whole flesh of his own arm.

With the hand holding the razor, Stan brings it down to the crook of his own elbow, where the tear in his flesh ends. Richie’s empty hand follows, and he feels a sharp bite against his skin.

Slowly, carefully, Stan drags the razor down the wound, zipping it closed, while Richie tears his own arm open with his claws.

He wakes gasping, sweating, and can’t grasp why the world has gone dark and where Stan went for several long moments. His mind clears as he sits up, taking in the blurry shapes of fast food cups on his nightstand and the dirty clothes spilling from the open mouthed hamper onto the floor in the faint glow of the hallway light.

Lifting his arm close to his face, he sees nothing but unblemished skin. Not even a scratch. Just the memory of it, pulsing deep in his arm. He presses the heels of his palms to his eyes, gritting his teeth against the building pressure. It doesn’t stop the heat from coalescing into a hoarse sob. The sound of it makes him hate himself even more.

Don’t be stupid. I wouldn’t really say that, the voice of Stan says in his brain, childish and huffy.

But that’s just his own mind, projecting what Stan might say. He’ll never actually know. The only thing Richie can know is that Stan killed himself, and maybe if Richie had done it right the first time, Stan could be here instead.

Like instinct, he slides out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom. Flipping the light on, bathing it in could fluorescents. It’s familiar, but no part of it is comforting in its familiarity.

Stepping into the tub, he sits down, pulling his knees in, folding his arms on top, tucking his face against them. His sides heave and his vision tunnels. His fingers tingle with numbness. He’d forgotten the feeling of this. Being unable to take a deep breath, panic clawing at his insides, an aimless animal feeling that screamed he was going to die.

He wishes Eddie were with him now, as Richie curls up in his bathtub, the sound of his panicked panting echoing loudly around him. He thinks about calling, but he’s not sure he can handle having Eddie call him Sweetheart so earnestly again. Not sure he deserves it, when he wants so bad for it to be real.

You should call him. He wants to help you.

But Richie can’t. He can’t make himself do it, because he doesn’t want to drive off one of the only people he cares about with his stupid neediness. He just has to get over himself. Stop freaking out.

Or finally do something about it to stop it for good.

—

Some of the dates stick in his mind, like gum on the underside of a waiting room chair, but most of them were just random days. Nothing special, nothing different. Just a day of the week that a party or celebration took place. And it’s not like it happened at every event Richie went to, but he learned Chuck’s tells eventually.

If Chuck and alcohol were in attendance, chances were high. Making excuses to escape trivial birthday celebrations and afterparties became an art, but he couldn’t escape them all. If Chuck wanted him there, he had to go. If he had a drink shoved into his hands every hour, an eager arm draped over his shoulder, eyes on him, making sure the drink went down, Richie knew what kind of night it was going to be. But knowing didn’t mean he could avoid it.

Valentine’s Day is, unfortunately, very memorable, and not just because of the date.

He pushes it to the back of his mind as much as he can while working, but some vengeful god, or maybe karma, is out for his head.

The filming itself was nothing. Richie’s been in enough TV shows, films, and the like, that a couple days on set for a cameo in a sitcom is easy as pie. It still took a long time, but compared to filming in the woods for his first movie, a studio set is a breeze.

No, what sucked was one of the actors would not get off his case about the leaked videos. He was a few years younger than Richie, and seemingly impervious to the way Richie did his best to redirect every conversation to the script or the scene or literally any other topic.

“So is it totally weird to have your sex tapes all over the internet?” was his first question after their introduction. The man, Garrett, was stick-thin, bright-eyed, blonde, and uncomfortably eager.

“About as weird as this conversation,” Richie said, gut dropping at the phrase sex tapes, and moved on to make introductions with someone else.

That hadn’t been the end of it, of course. They had a scene together, so they had to run lines, block the scene, do run throughs, then do the actual filming. Between all that was plenty of time for Garrett to ask as many questions or make as many weird comments as his little heart desired—which was apparently, a lot.

“You know, you never really struck me as the kind of guy who…” Garrett made a circle with his forefinger and thumb and pumped a finger through it as they stood to the side of the set, waiting between scenes. “...You know?” Garrett finished.

All Richie’s usual desire for dirty innuendos and jokes fled him. He resolutely did not want to talk about this. “Do you think we’ll finish this scene today?”

“Probably,” Garrett said. “For real though, aren’t you like, a bear, or whatever it’s called? I didn’t take you for the girl in the relationship.” He laughed, like he’d made a hilarious joke, and not the same shitty joke people have been spewing about gay people since the 80’s.

Richie crossed his arms, laughing nervously while hot humiliation bloomed in his chest. The director called his name and he took off without a word.

Between takes there’d been a small lull while the director talked to the writers. Richie fully intended to get some coffee, only to be cornered at craft services by Garrett once more, who came up behind him and started in right away.

“So, you’re like, actually gay, huh?”

With his hand on the metal coffee carafe, Richie stilled, then turned to find the man half-heartedly peeling an orange, most of his focus on Richie.

“I guess I just didn’t believe it, you know?” Garrett continued, thumb squirming under the skin and tearing at the fibrous muscle. “Kinda thought you were playing all that shit up, for the press, after you shit the bed on your tour.”

“Well, either I’m gay or jerking off to pictures of your mom just lost that magic sparkle,” Richie said, lips pulling back into a smile without conscious thought even as his heart beat itself bloody against his ribs.

Garrett’s mouth dropped open. “What’d you say?”

“You know, you’re really invested in this,” Richie said flippantly. His hands were shaking and he shoved them into his pockets. “Were you wanting a ride? Want to see if the Tozier Express is everything your mom said it was? I promise, it is.”

“You fucking asshole—”

Turning on his heel, Richie strode away, half-expecting Garrett to jump on his back and start pummeling. But there were dozens of people hanging around the set, and Garrett didn’t say anything else and didn’t follow him.

It was a little better after that, with Garrett mostly ignoring him, but every conversation was excruciating, and Richie felt like a fucking coward. He should have told him to shut up or to mind his own business, but the words wouldn’t come out. Like if he said something, if he pushed back a certain way, Garrett might smell Richie’s panic like blood in the water.

At least he’s done for the day, and for that, Richie’s grateful. After the nightmares and everything else about this job, all he wants to do is head home and go to sleep.

He’s outside, at one of the picnic tables by the cadres of vans and trailers, far away from the cast and crew still finishing out their day, sipping the coffee he finally managed to snag and waiting on Steve so they can get lunch. Steve doesn’t normally come with him to these things, but he was on the backlot the last few days for another client, and Richie’s been grateful for any excuse to duck away from the cast and avoid Garrett. Prepping for meetings and talking about his script is almost a relief now.

He’s playing that new Pokémon game, a nice distraction because he’s also avoiding all his social media. Aware of the few people passing by, either on foot or on golf carts, glancing up to try and catch Steve before Garrett decides he actually does want to fight Richie. Thinking distantly that he really wants to go home and just lay in bed.

“Hey! Richie!” someone shouts. “Hey, bro, you screw a lot of married men?”

He recognizes the tone, the way paparazzi shout something to try and get a reaction. His jaw clenches. There’s an older guy a few feet away, standing at the tail end of the line of trailers, holding his camera up and clicking away. What the hell is a pap doing back here?

“Was screwing Chuck Perkins’ old man dick worth it?”

The name ricochets through Richie’s head like a bullet.

“He pay you for those sex tapes? Hey, he leave you any money when he kicked the bucket?”

Dizzying nausea grips Richie as he shoots upright, knocking his coffee over, trying to escape, trying to control the rush of bile up his throat. He doesn’t even make it over the bench, spewing his guts in front of everyone on the fucking backlot while some asshole shouts his secrets for the world to hear.

“Oh shit!” the man shouts. “Ugh! Are you on something?”

Richie wipes his mouth with his sleeve, panting, not sure if he’s going to puke again or not. His ears are ringing. He feels both too present and a thousand miles away, and he needs to get out of here. The eye of every single person is on them, on him, and the shutter-click of the man’s camera goes off again and again.

He stumbles off the bench, walking unsteadily towards the doors into the set, even if that’s where everyone is standing around watching him. He just has to get somewhere away.

A hand touches his shoulder, and Steve is there, guiding him past the watching crew, into the dim back hallways of the studio with quick steps that Richie, even with his longer legs, struggles to keep up with. His stomach is still rolling and the ringing in his head has only gotten louder. The firm hand steers him through a paint-chipped black door leading into the dressing room. It’s empty and silent, and Richie takes off for the single person bathroom at the back.

He doesn’t bother closing the door as he turns on the sink and splashes cold water on his face and rinses his mouth. Sweat pours down his back and his heart is slamming so hard he thinks he might genuinely be having a heart attack this time. Bracing his hands on the sink, he tries to remember what Eddie told him, but it gets jumbled in his head. All he can do is try and breathe through it.

“Is what that guy said true?” Steve says suddenly, and Richie jumps, head whipping up.

“What?”

Steve’s mouth is bracketed with frown lines, and he crosses his arms. “That was Perkins. In those videos.” It’s not a question.

Richie drops his gaze to the sink, trying to think of a denial. If a pap figured it out, then it’s only a matter of time before Steve finds out anyway. Water drips off Richie’s nose and chin, and he doesn’t know if he’s going to throw up again or cry.

“Yes,” Richie finally says, shutting his eyes briefly as the word leaves him.

“What the fuck, Richie!” Steve nearly shouts. He turns away, then turns back with his mouth open, then turns away again and paces into the dressing room.

Hanging his head, Richie considers locking himself in the bathroom until Steve leaves. Then he sucks it up and follows Steve out, face still wet.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Steve says, pacing back and forth in front of the wall of makeup stations and chairs, illuminated brightly by the fluorescent bulbs.

“It wasn’t anyone’s business,” Richie says.

Halting in his tracks, Steve turns to jab a finger at Richie. “Of course it’s my business! This is the kind of thing you tell your manager!”

“Well how the hell was I supposed to know this was going to happen?” Richie says, hating the feeling of being scolded as if he’s a child.

“You should have known better!”

That hurts, as sharp and pointed as hearing Chuck’s name again for the first time, and Richie snaps. “Fuck you! Just fuck right off, Steve!”

Steve takes a step back, looking genuinely shocked by Richie’s explosion. “What the hell is going on with you? We could have prepared for this if you told us.”

“I told you. It wasn’t anyone’s fucking business,” Richie barks. Every nerve is on edge. He still hasn’t caught his breath, and he feels like a caged dog, waiting for something bigger and stronger to tear him to pieces.

Steve shakes his head, putting a hand over his mouth in thought and pacing in a small circle. Finally, he stops in front of Richie, who can’t help the way his shoulders hunch, hands digging into the pockets of his jeans. “You need a break.”

“What?” Richie blinks rapidly, his water-spotted glasses blurring Steve. “What? No, I don’t. I need to keep working, so people aren’t fucking talking about this.”

Reaching out, Steve puts a hand on Richie’s trembling arm, patting gently. “This isn’t an option.”

“What about the meeting tomorrow night?” Richie says. “We can’t cancel that.”

“And we’re not. But after that? You’re taking a break, maybe until this all blows over.”

“But—I can’t,” Richie says, suddenly desperate, eyes burning. “I need to keep—I need—” His throat goes tight and he can’t get the words out. He’s been trying to be better. He needs to keep being better. People already think he’s on drugs, that he’s a fucked up closet case. He can’t stop working, he needs to be better. 

Far kinder than Richie deserves, Steve says, “I don’t know what’s going on with you Richie, but you need a break. We won’t cancel any of your upcoming contracts, but until then, no more shoots or auditions. Alright, buddy?” He claps Richie’s arm and then lets his hand fall. “I’m gonna call you a ride home.”

—

He doesn’t bother turning on any lights as he stumbles through his house, into his bedroom. He kicks off his shoes, strips down to his boxers, and crawls into bed. Somehow, he still hasn’t caught his breath since he left the studio, and he tosses his glasses off and buries his face in his pillow, wishing he could just smother himself.

When he grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it out of Chuck’s lax, unsuspecting grip, he hadn’t been thinking about Chuck himself. All he’d been thinking about was how much he didn’t want to be there. He was tired of being a disgusting, cowardly piece of shit, who kept letting his manager fuck him because he was too scared to come out. He’d be better off dead.

It had gotten him what he wanted, but not in the way he imagined.

His memory of the car ride and the crash are blurry. Chuck’s startled scream, the headlights flashing across gray concrete, and then the jarring explosion of pain across the side of his head and his face.

In the aftermath, he learned his head hit the window and he was lucky he didn’t crack his skull. It rattled his brain good, though, and he was taken to the hospital with a concussion. He only kind of remembers an EMT helping him out of the car, the crunch of broken glass beneath his wobbly legs. Doesn’t remember the ambulance ride at all despite apparently being conscious for it.

He was disappointed when he woke up. It’s the first feeling he remembers having after the crash.

But then Chuck dropped him. Before he’d even gotten out of the hospital, Chuck met Richie in his room, his arm in a sling, and told him that if this was the thanks Chuck got for giving him a job, he was through with Richie’s crazy ass. Richie had laughed, because he didn’t know what else to do, and Chuck left, and that was the last time Richie ever saw him in person.

He should have known it wouldn’t be the end. Just like with the clown. What he doesn’t finish right, will come back around to bite him in the ass.

There are knives in the kitchen. Sharp, honed, because Richie likes cooking. He doesn’t have razors. But before he dug into his wrist with his claws, the bath with Stan had been so peaceful.

He imagines it, shutting his eyes. Imagines the warm water lapping at his skin. The cloud of red around Stan’s body. The calm, heavy weight of his limbs.

How nice it was to see Stan again, if only in a dream.

He forces himself to get up to answer the call of nature a few hours later, sleepless but unable to close his eyes for long without hearing that man shouting, Was screwing Chuck Perkins’ old man dick worth it?

On the way back to bed, he finds his phone in his discarded pants. He turned it off when he got home, and he turns it back on as he lays down again. A rumble from his stomach cuts through the silence, but he’s already laying down, so he just drags the blanket up over him.

There are texts in the group chat, of course. It must not have taken long for those pictures to hit the internet.

There are two missed calls and a text from Eddie, too.

Eddie
It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it, but will you just let me know you’re okay?

It’s from two hours ago.

Anxiety grips him. It’s so obvious that he’s fucked up, someone’s going to figure it out. Eddie’s going to figure it out.

He can’t make himself reply. Whatever he types looks like a big red flag, declaring, Richie Tozier is a disgusting liar. He says nothing, and instead, opens the leak website once more.

Valentine’s Day was never his favorite holiday. He spent each one when he was younger alone, and sure that he would always be alone, because how the fuck would he ever find a guy who would want him? Somehow, though, he had found one. It wasn’t that serious, really, but to Richie, whose only experience with men were the blackout, starless nights he couldn’t remember with his manager, it seemed like a light in a dark tunnel.

His name was Andrew. He was a bartender at a comedy club Richie performed at regularly, and he was the first guy to kiss Richie. Andrew was broad-shouldered but slim in the waist, short—shorter than Eddie even—with big, hazel eyes and a bit of a temper. He clocked Richie’s interest right away, because Richie couldn’t keep his eyes off him to save his life.

So, they had a thing. Richie knew it wasn’t serious, and it wasn’t dating, because Andrew would come over, they’d get drunk, they’d fuck, and then in the morning Andrew would be gone. They didn’t spend time with each other outside of that, really, which was fine, or at least Richie told himself it was fine, even though he really liked Andrew and really wanted to do more. Like hold hands, watch TV together, meet the ferret Andrew sometimes talked about.

But Andrew was only in it for the sex, and when Richie cried after the first time, overwhelmed by crushing shame and self-disgust, Andrew awkwardly patted his back. When it kept happening every time they fucked, Andrew would roll away in bed and pretend to fall asleep, while Richie slunk away to the bathroom and tried to get his shit under control.

Andrew might have been lonely too, but he never talked about it, and when Richie invited him over for Valentine’s Day, he didn’t say no, though he made it clear it was just because he didn’t have anything better to do.

It was something, though. It was fun. It was sex that Richie could generally remember, and it was with a guy he was really attracted to, even if they never fucked sober and he felt like complete shit after. Even if it wasn’t serious.

It was also a secret, until Chuck burst into his apartment that night, and caught them making out on the couch when Richie was supposed to be going to a dinner party he thought he’d excused himself from.

A thrill of fear went through Richie when he realized Chuck was standing in the doorway, arms crossed, his small eyes flinty. Richie pushed Andrew off and scrambled up, not sure if Chuck was going to be pissed he was with another man. If he would out Richie for fucking someone else. Not sure of anything in that moment except heart-stopping terror.

“Why the hell aren’t you dressed? Get up, get moving, we’re going to be late.” He didn’t even seem to care about Andrew, who was looking between them worriedly, while Richie gaped at Chuck. “Well? Move it, Rich!” He clapped his hands, so sudden that Richie jumped and then darted past him to his bedroom. He could hear Chuck’s low, friendly voice, telling Andrew that Richie would call him later. He didn’t sound angry.

In the car on the way to the restaurant, Chuck just told him not to let his boytoy interfere with his schedule or get him in trouble with the press. Last thing they needed was people finding out Dick liked dick. He laughed.

That’s when Richie realized Chuck didn’t care about him, didn’t want him, didn’t have any kind of fucked up love or desire for Richie. He didn’t care that Richie might be seeing someone, just as long as he didn’t slip up and didn’t come out. He’d never been sure if Chuck was closeted too or what. He used to rack his brains for why Chuck was doing this, and why Richie. But in that moment, he knew that it didn’t matter. This wasn’t about Richie being a man. It was about him trusting the wrong person with the wrong secret. It was about him being powerless. It was about him being convenient.

It’s probably the closest he’ll ever get to the truth.

He went to the dinner party, and let Chuck pass him drink after drink on top of the drinks he’d had with Andrew, because he knew what was coming. The stuff Chuck gave him must not have agreed with all that alcohol, though, because waking up in the hospital feeling like he’d been put through a compactor is his next clear memory.

Finding out he’d been admitted for an overdose was just a kick in the shin. Or something a little harder than a kick in the shin. A boot to the nuts.

So he’s never celebrated Valentine’s Day, never gone anywhere or done anything with another person since. Never felt anything but sour unease at the first sign of pink balloons and grocery store bouquets. The only comfort was in the fact that he didn’t remember it.

Yet here the memory sits, in the palm of his hands. Come back round to haunt him again. Like Pennywise. Like Derry.

He opens the leak website, and watches a Valentine’s Day from thirteen years ago.

It’s always the same angle on the same, or a similar enough, bed. That changes, this time. When the camera comes on, it’s being held, and Richie’s face is in view clearly for the first time. He looks like shit. The bedside lamps make his skin look sallow, and he’s covered in a fine sheen of sweat that sticks his hair to his forehead and temples. His eyes move erratically, unfocused and huge.

He’s no longer wearing the sports coat and white button-up Chuck forced him into for the dinner party, totally nude, and Chuck is clearly a little more tipsy than usual. Slurring his words a bit, even more talkative. Calling Richie baby, saying, you feel so good, and, you like that?

The camera pans down Richie’s body, rocking with the motion of Chuck pushing in rough and eager. A rush of humiliation goes through Richie, real Richie, when he sees his own dick, half-hard and smearing precome across his hip. Then there’s Chuck’s dick, and he pushes Richie’s leg up towards his chest by the thigh and thrusts slowly for the camera. Showing the slick, wet shine of lube on his cock as it slides in and out of Richie’s hole slowly.

“Fuck, that’s good,” Chuck grunts, holding there as he fucks Richie leisurely.

His screen counterpart is entirely silent. None of the mumbling, unintelligible comments from other videos. The camera moves across Richie’s body, sometimes with purpose, sometimes in jagged little jumps as Chuck gets lost in the feeling. His face comes into view again, eyes twitching and unfocused.

There’s no warning when it happens. Yellow-ish foam begins to seep out of screen-Richie’s slack mouth. He convulses, making a thin, choked noise, and the motion of their bodies slows as Chuck cottons onto the fact that something’s wrong.

“What the- Oh, shit! Oh shit oh shit oh shit!”

The scene blurs dizzyingly. Richie watches numbly as the bedspread takes up most of the screen, with Richie’s torso taking up the other. He’s moved roughly onto his side, fingers spasming briefly into view. The sound is the worst part. The gagging as he tries to breathe and vomit at the same time.

“Fucking drank too much, you fucking idiot, oh fuck, oh shit oh shit!” Chuck shouts. There’s shuffling and a shadow moves back and forth across Richie’s body. “Goddammit, why did you drink so much? Fuck!”

The camera cuts out a few seconds later, the video going dim with its end, and the replay symbol coming up. Would he like to rewatch his overdose?

Maybe Chuck was present enough to get Richie back in his clothes before the ambulance arrived. He could have explained to his wife that he was just letting Richie crash because he got too wasted at the dinner party, and it’s lucky Chuck checked on him.

Or maybe he left Richie at a hotel, called an ambulance, and got the fuck out of there. He can only speculate, because it wasn’t in the tabloids where he was found. Everything else was, including his fucking toxicology reports, but not that.

Hell of a thing to learn his manager regularly used GHB to roofie him only after a near-fatal overdose.

A few weeks after that, the first time Andrew came over when things had finally calmed down, they got drunk. It was business as usual, fooling around, getting off. What wasn’t business as usual was that after, when Richie went to the bathroom, those stupid tears already streaking down his face, he couldn’t catch his breath.

He sat on the edge of the bathtub, hyperventilating, vision tunneling and growing faint, until he had to slide down and sit on the floor or risk falling if he passed out. Filled with a panic so visceral he was sure he was about to die, and almost hoping he would.

He hadn’t, of course. After a while, he finally got it under control. Caught his breath, his spotty vision filling in with the familiar sight of his apartment bathroom, the feeling returning to his body. He thought about going to the hospital, but after his shit was dragged through every gossip column for the last few weeks, he was reluctant to put himself under the scope for something that had seemingly fixed itself.

He thought about calling Chuck—but his chest got tight and his fingers tingled and he dropped that thought as quickly as it came.

So he told no one, and did nothing, except learn how to hide it the best he could when it happened. Only much later—after Chuck was out of his life, when he hadn’t had one for a whole year—did he learn they were panic attacks. Mentioned off-handedly by one of the writers Steve hired, who said his older brother got them, and that he was a total pansy. Richie laughed along with him and never, ever brought it up, not even when he finally got a therapist after Pennywise: Back 2 tha Hood.

It would have been nice if that overdose had taken him out. Cut all this shit off early, without Richie really needing to do a thing. Just another Jim Morrison or Janis Joplin, though not half as important, and not quite old enough for the 27 Club.

He could always start the 40 Club.

He doesn’t have a garage to fill with carbon monoxide. No gun, which would be easiest. There’s always the old standby. Razor in the bathtub, classic Stan.

Realistically, though, he knows he’d just get drunk and take as many pills as he could get his hands on. It’s not like every third person in the industry doesn’t have a coke or pill habit. He could get something easy. Maybe even GHB.

They say if it doesn't work the first time, try, try again.

That’s a lot of effort for one day, though. So he lays there and just imagines it. Getting in the tub with a handle of bourbon. Running a warm bath, just like his dream. Getting nice and drunk, so it won’t hurt. So he won’t even notice. Drifting into a sleep that feels heavy and dark.

Time passes strangely as he floats, half-conscious, half-sleeping. He opens his eyes every now and then, but his room remains a shrouded, quiet tomb, so he closes them. Imagines, or maybe dreams, that he’s under Derry again, in the dark tunnels. Being chased by something, with Eddie’s wrist caught in his grip. Reaching the doors. Opening the middle one, just plain Scary.

His body, swinging from a noose, in a tiny closet.

He opens his eyes and fumbles for his phone amongst the rumpled sheets, finding that it’s well past midnight. The texts from his friends remain unanswered. He wants to talk to them, wants to talk to Eddie. Call him up and hear him bitch about Richie disturbing his sleep.

Call him, Stanley says urgently. Just call him, Trashmouth. He wouldn’t mind.

He watches another video. The phone held close to his face so he can see even without his glasses. Then he watches another after that. And then another.

He watches all of them. Looking at the dates. Thinking of where he was, what he was doing, what he wore. He stopped wearing his favorite shirts as much. Let Chuck pick his wardrobe for shows and parties. Plain shirts and sportscoats. Never bought another nice jacket, just cheap shit, stuff that wouldn’t be missed. Things he didn’t care about, if he had to throw them away.

He continued that habit even after Chuck retired. Right up until Pennywise Now Redux, when he’d found himself slipping into his favorite button-up as he prepared to return, falling into some weird amalgamation of the person he was and the kid he used to be.

On screen, Chuck says, “Baby, I missed you so much. Missed this.”

His counterpart mumbles a reply.

Chuck grunts, the sound of their skin meeting loud and disgusting. “Can’t get it anywhere like I can with you. God, you take it so well. You love it, don’t you?”

Another unintelligible reply from screen Richie.

“Yeah, yeah, you love it. You need this as bad as I do.”

He remembers returning from his two year escape to New York filled with dread and, somehow, a sick relief. It still fucks him up when he thinks about it. He was thirty goddamn years old. A thirty-year-old man, but instead of telling his manager to finally fuck off, he came crawling back with his tail between his legs. Had he liked it, somewhere deep down? If he hadn’t, wouldn’t he have done something to stop it sooner? Why didn’t he just fucking nut up?

If he hadn’t taken the wheel, would he still be doing this shit? Would he still be Chuck’s bitch at forty?

It’s fucking pathetic that he can’t answer that for himself.

The last video is markedly different from the others, in that Richie almost remembers it. He remembers the sensations the clearest. The rocking like ocean waves as he was fucked, seasick and confused and scared. The grip on his arm, firm, moving him.

The video plays, heated groans and Chuck’s voice, crooning. “Shh, baby, come on, doesn’t this feel good? I’m feeling good.”

The Richie of eight years ago responds quietly. Chuck’s hips smack obscenely against his ass, fast and hard. Richie’s arms making snow angels on the bedspread, head rolling slowly on the loose hinge of his neck. He’s mumbling a lot, but the Richie of now has no idea what he’s saying, and can’t remember, either. It’s all just white noise in his memory.

“Fuck! Can you stop with that shit?” Chuck says, halting his thrusts as Richie mutters and twists suddenly on his side, one hand grabbing at the blanket under him. "Fuck’s up with you today? Just hold fucking still!”

The bed springs creak, overburdened, as Chuck knees up onto the bed, grabbing Richie’s arm and hauling him back into place, cursing. A sharp smack startles Richie, and he realizes belatedly that Chuck slapped him across the face. A phantom sting resounds over his cheek.

“Okay, just stay there. We good now? You good?” Chuck’s panting, overly loud wheezes—a man unused to that much physical effort. Richie doesn’t reply. The bed springs creak with relief as Chuck gets down, and then he groans loudly as he fists his cock and guides it back between Richie’s legs. “Fuck. There we go, baby.”

Chuck groans, the sounds of their coupling faster, harsher. Richie is making sounds too—short, sharp whines. He slides a wandering hand across the blankets, grasping blindly at nothing.

It ends like every other video. Nothing special, as Chuck pulls out, satisfied, and turns off the camera. Then it’s over.

But for once, his memory picks up the pieces, fumbling and missing many, but more than he ever had before.

Towards the end, he remembers coming in and out of the dense fog as Chuck got him back in his clothes, one ten ton limb at a time. Realizing dimly that his ass was sore and wet and his head was killing him. Knowing what had just happened, but too weak to do anything but lean heavy against Chuck’s side, eyes slipping closed despite his best efforts.

Then, the car ride. The rising awareness that this was never going to end as street lights careened by in a dizzying rush. That Chuck would keep doing it until he got bored or outed Richie. That Richie would keep letting it happen until he died.

And that he wanted it to end more than anything else.

If only Chuck had been driving faster.

He sets the phone down again.

In the early hours of the morning, it buzzes with a text from Eddie.

Eddie
Why are people who do yoga so fucking annoying?

God, he wants to talk to Eddie so fucking bad. It’s like an itch, deep inside, unreachable by anything but the sound of Eddie’s voice.

Call him, that Stan-voice urges again. Call him, do it, you’ve never had a problem running your mouth before.

He wants to. He wants to. But he has no idea what will come out of his mouth if he does. If hearing Eddie’s voice right now will have that wild beast inside of him tear its way out, bloody and disgusting and abominable.

He replies to the text. It’s close to what he wants, but it’s safer.

And afterwards, he lays back down, to try and sleep.

Sleep still doesn’t come, but at least that means no dreams.

—

Emerging from his bedroom around noon, Richie squints in the light that filters in through his patio doors, the warmth of the sun sending shivers down his back. He feels disgusting, greasy, and shaky. His stomach is achingly hollow, and five steps into the living room he has to sit down or collapse.

Slumped on the couch, all the things he needs to do seem to tower over him, huge and insurmountable. He should shower and brush his teeth, but he can barely stand right now. The kitchen is a mess, his bedroom’s worse, he’s got almost no clean clothes left, and he needs to make food, because he didn’t eat at all after his Hot Pocket breakfast yesterday, but even the thought of dragging himself to the kitchen and facing the piles of dishes overflowing the sink feels too hard right now.

Sluggishly, he orders a burger from the closest place that does delivery, then drops his head back on the cushions, worn out from nothing and everything all at once.

He’s got nothing to do now. No work to distract him. There's the meeting tonight, but Steve’s the one building heat for his scripts, Richie just has to show up and smile. He could edit those, but there’s not much else he can do to them without tearing them down to scraps and starting over. He can’t write standup without every punchline being, and that’s why I let my manager roofie me. All he can do is press play on a random Spotify playlist and stare at the wall until his food arrives.

Except, the temptation to see what people are saying finally wins out over his fear, and he picks his phone back up and does a Google search.

It’s not a surprise to see the top articles speculating that he’s on drugs. The pictures are certainly damning enough. Puking on a backlot. Public opinion says addiction but a few intrepid souls believe he’s sick and dying. He wishes. It’d be so much easier.

Call the Losers, Stan says again. They could help.

He opens his texts, wanting nothing more than to do just that, and yet dreading the questions about the photos, about what’s wrong with him. They’re already sitting there in the group chat, landmines of concern. Is he okay? What happened?

Tell them, Stan says.

He ignores the questions completely and texts the first fun fact he can think of about the last movie he watched.

Richie
How fucked up is it that the noises the raptors made in jurassic park were actually turtles fucking?

After a minute, it nets him a series of outraged or disbelieving replies, and he eggs Bill into betting against him on his fun turtle fact. The conversation turns to other things after a few minutes, and Richie follows where it leads, until reality seems to fall by the wayside. Eddie doesn’t pop in, and Beverly has to slip away for a few minutes, but it’s nice to talk to some of his friends for a little while.

God, he misses them. He wishes they were all on the same coast, in the same city. But Bill is going through something with Audra, even if he won’t talk about it with anyone, and has taken off with Mike on his roadtrip to get his head on straight or something. Mike is enjoying the taste of freedom and choice for the first time in his life, and he might not want to settle down on the west coast when he finally decides to put down roots, depending on his thing with Bill.

Ben, Bev, and Eddie are all on the east coast, but if he moves there, how pathetically obvious is he going to be? There’s no way he can keep away from Eddie every day. With the distance, he can’t pop over to Eddie’s apartment daily just to bug him, but if he moves to New York, his self-restraint is not strong enough to resist the call of his favorite pasta dish.

He misses Florida. The warm sunset falling over them with Eddie next to him on the sand. The smell of his clean, lavender scented shampoo when Richie pulled him close for a hug, a picture, just to rough house. The easy way they leaned into each other and sat nearby sharing chips and talking shit. The Losers playing in the water like when they were kids, taking pictures, tending to sunburns, laughing.

He wants it again. The easiness and simplicity. Grabbing Eddie up in a hug under the guise of irritating him for fun. Playing board games with them on the floor of the beach house and watching Beverly and Eddie get unreasonably competitive. Listening to music on the deck under the sunshine, back when no one knew about those videos.

I know your secret. Your dirty, little secret.

The doorbell rings, startling him out of his reverie, and he remembers the food he ordered and climbs, unsteady, to his feet. His stomach has settled somewhat, so he makes his way down the front hall, grabbing his wallet from the table by the front door and not even checking the peephole before he opens it.

“Hey—”

“Richie!” several different voices shout at once, overlapping, calling for attention.

“Richie, are the rumors true, are you on drugs!”

“Is it cancer!”

“Hey, hey, is what they’re saying about your former manager true!”

The delivery lady cringes, shoulders hiked up, and behind her, Richie can see a group of people standing on the sidewalk in front of his house, cameras in hand, clicking like a flock of birds. They’re all shouting, fighting for his attention, vying for a response.

“What did you order!” one of them shouts, nonsensical, and in any other circumstance Richie would laugh and spit off a smartass reply.

His mind is glaringly empty.

“Is that your former manager in the videos!”

“Richie, over here!”

“Were you having sex with your manager!”

“You don’t look so good, dude!”

“Richie Tozier?” the delivery lady, who can’t be older than twenty-five, slides a greasy paper bag out of her insulated case. Her face is a dark red as the paps take picture after picture of the two of them, shouting.

It snaps Richie out of his shock, and he fumbles his wallet open. “Fuck, yeah, sorry about the shitshow. Here.”

He swaps a fifty dollar bill for the burger bag, and the lady reaches for, of all things, a fanny pack buckled around her waist. “Let me get you your change.”

“Keep it,” he says hurriedly, and barely glimpses her surprise before he slams the door in her face.

“Fuck.” In the sudden silence of his home, it’s startlingly loud.

His knees wobble dangerously, and he stumbles back to the living room, dropping the bag on the coffee table and collapsing on the couch, head in hands. Trying to breathe deep and quell the black spots flashing across his vision. His chest is a drumhead about to burst.

God, they knew. They fucking knew. How many people had figured out that it was Chuck? One person recognizing him, that could be a fluke, but this. Shit.

He finds his phone, abandoned on the couch, and searches Twitter. His hands are shaking and he might throw up.

There are plenty of tweets, but his name isn’t trending. The usual garbage slides up his screen as he scrolls. People complaining about his comedy, posting pictures, quoting jokes, asking what he’s been up to, commenting on his coming out or on the videos. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing until he searches his name, and the top post hits him like a sledgehammer.

Kat 😺 @KatAttttack· Feb 12
TW S*XUAL ASSAULT/R*PE
Please move forward with caution. This is in regards to Richie Tozier’s leaked sex tapes. http:// t.co/VbmGKY9
2,046 Retweets | 5,497 Likes

“What the fuck,” he says, distant, calmer than he feels.

It’s from three days ago. He clicks it, and there’s a second Tweet, and a link to a Google Document, and when he clicks that, it opens and he reads what sounds like some kid’s fucked up conspiracy theory, like the queen being a lizard or whatever, except they’re completely fucking right.

There’s a video. He clicks play. Hears his voice, amplified and fuzzy, saying, “Wher’za bathr’m?”

“Fuck!”

His phone smashes into the corner of the TV stand and hits the carpet, facedown.

A whine pitches low in his throat, uncaring of how tightly he grits his teeth. He shakes his head, scrubbing at his face with his palms, like he could scrape away the anxiety and dread crawling over his skin. His shoulders tremble and he shakes his head again, hating himself hating himself hating himself.

Something thick lodges in his throat, and he tries to choke it down, but it spills out of him. A wet, hateful sob. He wants something to drink so fucking bad. He doesn’t want to think about this anymore. He wants it to stop hurting.

It’s only a matter of time before some pap somewhere connects Chuck and that post, and then it’s all over fucking TMZ or Huffington Post or what-the-fuck-ever.

But he doesn’t have to be around for it.

He could make it stop hurting.

He could make it stop.

Beep beep, Richie, Stan says in his mind.

He can’t do this anymore.

Call someone.

He can’t. He can’t, they’ll know, they can’t fucking know.

You don’t want to die.

He just wants it to stop. He’s only ever wanted this to stop. He fucked it up the first time, but he could get it right now. He could do it, and why should anyone fucking care?

You have friends. They love you, they would miss you.

He sobs, choked, thinking about the safety razors in his bathroom and the bloody line down Stan’s wrists and that if he does it now, he won’t have to see anyone’s reactions.

Eddie would miss you.

He shakes his head, unable to do anything but cry. He wants it to be a dream. He wants to wake up. He wants to go back to sleep and never wake again.

It’s just like Derry. It’s scary, but you have to be brave, Stan insists.

He doesn’t feel brave. He feels like something has sunk its pointy teeth into Richie's soft middle, and his disgusting entrails have been slowly spilling out over the years, dragging behind him, and now everyone is finally seeing it.

Call one of the Losers. They’ll help you.

They’re going to know. They’re going to find out. He doesn’t want to be around for it. He doesn’t want to know their reactions, to see the disgust and pity.

You know they wouldn’t. They love you. Don’t do this to them.

But why can’t he do it for himself? No one else has to be involved. Why can’t it be his choice?

Because you don’t really want to, Stan says, and it’s exasperated, but not unkind. I’m just you, trying to talk sense into your thick skull.

Fuck, he wishes Stan were really here. He misses Stan so much, and he knew him for less than half of his life. Maybe there’s nothing after death, but if he kills himself, maybe he’ll at least end up wherever Stan is, too.

You knew all of the Losers for less than half your life. You missed out for almost thirty years. Even if you don’t think they’d miss you, you’d miss them. Are you going to throw thirty more years with the Losers away? Are you going to throw away more time with Eddie?

He doesn’t want them to find out, but he especially doesn’t want Eddie to find out.

Get up.

It’s so fucking scary. He’s terrified.

Eat something.

He was so much braver as a kid. Where’d it all go?

Take a shower.

Maybe because he didn’t think about the future. He was always bravest when he didn’t think. When he just acted.

Call Eddie.

Richie gets up.