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“Do you-...D’you know when uh Mike called me, I threw up.
Isn’t that weird? Like I got nervous, I got like sick, and I threw up.
I feel fine now. I feel very relieved to be here with you guys.”
“Richie, come on, you have to eat something. Please?” Bill stood in the door frame, hands knitting together up by his chest and feet shifting against the hardwood floor. Richie was slumped on the sofa, facing away from him.
“Not hungry,” he offered, voice so quiet Bill almost didn’t even hear him. “Just leave me alone.”
“Rich, you haven’t eaten since yesterday. Can you just try?”
There was a long silence. It was one that made your ears ring as you waited for that metaphorical pin to drop, but Bill let it sit. He figured now would be the worst time to push harder, because maybe Richie was thinking about it and would abandon the idea if Bill tried anything else.
And he did eventually seem to concede. With a heavy sigh and a series of cracks and creaks from the numerous tired and battered bones in his body, Richard was on his feet.
Coming into view, Bill saw Richie’s face in the light of the sun for the first time that day. His eyes looked bruised behind his glasses, rimmed red and set deeper in his face by the dark, purple bags underneath. His usual stubble was now desperately in need of a trim and his hair was slick with grease, sticking in tufts that protruded in an unflattering way. His clothes- an old pair of shorts and a corny graphic tee -were stained and stretched and hung off of his body in a way that made him look startlingly small. Combined, Richie was a sight.
Bill couldn’t blame him.
“Just a little bit,” he muttered, and walked past Bill and into the kitchen.
-
It really was just a little bit, just a handful of boiled potatoes and some stew from a can Bill had found in the cupboard. To give him credit, Richie had eaten almost everything on his plate. Bill hadn’t put him much out, maybe half of what he gave himself, but it was still the most Richie had eaten in over 72 hours.
“Was it okay?” Bill spoke around a mouthful of food, watching Richie chase the last of his around the plate with lazy turns of his wrist. The question refocused him, and Richie made himself nod and shove the chunk of meat into his mouth.
***
Meat.
He’d managed to eat all of the rest without even thinking about that, without thinking about the meat. Thinking about it having come from a cow that used to be alive and eating grass and doing whatever the-fuck else a cow did.
And Richie’s mind wandered.
It wandered through the field with the cattle. It wandered to a place he imagined they’d kill them in- all white concrete walls, grey linoleum floors, and metal tables big enough to fit a cow on. It wandered to the very closest point of view of it getting put out to pasture.
Then it wandered to all the blood that must drain out of a cow, bathed in it, but the cow wasn’t a cow anymore.
It was Eddie.
Eddie, staring up at him with dead eyes, pale face all lax, and his body contorted at angles that shouldn’t be possible.
***
Richie felt his stomach turn and Bill heard it, a growling, bubbling whine, and when he tried to swallow it just came straight back up again.
Twice more he tried before it finally fucked off down his throat, but he felt it the whole way down.
Saliva filled his mouth and a cold heat prickled over every inch of his skin, chasing a nightmare that was barely out of his conscious mind. He felt Bill’s eyes on him now
Richie swallowed again, but this time he kept swallowing. As if it would help anything; stop the churn set deep in his gut along with everything he’d forced past his lips. Despite it all, a pressure was starting to pull at the back of Richie’s tongue.
“I think I’m gonna puke.”
The second the words were out of his mouth, maybe even before, BIll was right there. Richie couldn't remember seeing him stand up or hearing the gentle pad of bare feet against the floor, but he sure felt Bill’s hands on his arms.
Bill urged him upwards, onto his feet, and when they passed through the lounge Richie saw one of those big metal tables where the couch should have been. Shut your eyes, Trashmouth - an automatic thought Richie was grateful for. He listened, and squeezed his eyes shut before he could see anything else.
Richie didn’t open them again until he felt bile rise in his throat with a heave, and the cold bite of tile against his knees as he was dropped to the floor.
His stomach clenched, his shoulders rolled under Bill’s hand, and the first surge of puke hit the water with a stuttering splash. Richie’s nose felt like it was on fire.
Richie threw up maybe two or three times more before he collapsed back against Bill with a defeated sigh, whole body shaking, and tears running down his cheeks.
“My fucking couch was a murder table, Bill,” he slurred, voice quiet and gruff. Bill, in turn, regarded him with confusion.
“What do you mean?”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that dinner used to be a cow, and then when we walked past it, the couch was a big metal slaughter table.” Richie almost laughed at himself now that he was saying it out loud. It rang a similar tune to thinking about a nightmare a few hours later. Everything felt a little ridiculous.
Bill made a sound, and though Rich wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or a cough it made him feel just a little more at ease. Then Bill wrapped strong arms around Richie’s chest and pressed a kiss to the crown of his head.
The stress of the last couple of weeks melted out of his body.
Richie should tell him to stop, that he was gross and not any good for kissing, but any words he could have dreamed of saying were lost in a desperate sob.
Everything poured out. Grief, guilt, anger, pain, regret. All of it. It ran from him like some fucked up stream running through a dam and wearing it down until finally it just breaks.
Bill held him tighter, and he rocked the two of them back and forth and just told him that it was over. Told him over and over that they’d killed It, that they were all free. Each time he spoke he felt Rich relax a little more, heard him pause just briefly to take a breath.
This, right here, was what Richie had been needing since they’d stumbled out of that god forsaken cave. Raw, unrestrained emotions.
“We should shower,” Bill muttered into his hair, and in lieu of a verbal response Richie nodded against his chest.