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d0gdaze · 6 years

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The body swap au a surprising amount of people asked for, actually.

Read on AO3 / Summary

Pairings: Eddie Kaspbrak / Richie Tozier

Warnings: swearing, sexual references

Chapter 6/?

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Word Count: 4494

Eddie’s playlist

Seven uninspired oral presentations and a valiant attempt to set Richie on fire with his mind later – one day he would actually accept the fact he wasn't telekinetic, he swore he would – the bell rang and class was dismissed, and Eddie followed the outpour of students into the hallway. He scanned the sea of people, locating the maroon-clad boy fairly easily with his newfound height advantage. He strode over, completely ignoring and bypassing Beverly's questioning stare, and pulled Richie aside rather aggressively, so he had him pretty much trapped between himself and the wall of lockers.

“What the hell, Dick,” he spat through his teeth, attempting to keep his voice low to avoid capturing attention. (Sidenote, it didn't work, Eddie was just a habitually loud person, but considering what the rest of the school had witnessed in the cafeteria the day before, no one really gave the couple as much as a second glance. Most of them assumed it was probably just Trashmouth Tozier spitting some empty threats at the Kaspbrak kid, and nothing more. Which, sidenote, wasn't that far from the truth. All in all, time was sparse, classes needed attending, and no one really cared enough to watch a second fight in two days between the same two weirdos. Eddie could have probably been screeching at the top of his lungs and no one would bat an eyelid. Such is highschool. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming.) “AC/DC? Are you serious?”

“What, not your taste?” Richie smirked, thoroughly amused with himself. “Should I have gone with someone in the Weather Girls instead?”

“Why didn't you just give the presentation you wrote for yourself?” Eddie's face, like his voice, was an interesting mix of anger, desperation, and terribly faux collectiveness. Richie thought his eyebrows might get permanently stuck with how hard he was creasing them.

“Mine wasn't supposed to be until next week,” Richie said, matter-of-factly, “I wasn't even gonna start thinking about it until at least next Tuesday.”

Eddie nearly blanched, as if hearing that should have been even slightly shocking.

“Richie, I swear to god if I fail that class because of you I'm gonna-,” he brought his hand up and back, and Richie flinched, bracing himself for the incoming slap. Eddie exhaled shakily and dropped his arm back to his side, then closed his eyes, letting out a defeated sigh. “What do you have now?”

“Art, you?”

“P.E.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Eddie dragged his hands down his face in exasperation, then sighed again, as if to make some sort of point that Richie was pretty sure had already been made.

“Okay, this is fine,” he said, though judging by the complete lack of composure on his face, he was lying. “We're fine,” he repeated, “just-, try to get through today without ruining my entire life, think you can manage that?”

“Depends,” Richie crossed his arms over his chest defensively, “can you?”

Eddie sighed for a third time. Richie, quite frankly, was getting a little tired of Eddie's overdramatic ass.

“Just-” he tried to come up with a comeback, then decided against it. Because they were late enough to class as it was, of course, and not because he couldn't think of one. “Let's go to class.”

Richie nodded, though somewhat reluctant to agree and very much content to not go to class at all.

Eddie turned heel and left before the confrontative side of his brain could win him over.

Bill often dragged Ben and Eddie along to the art studios when their free periods overlapped or sometimes during lunch breaks if they decided they'd rather not brave the cafeteria. Bill would continue whatever new passion project he was working on, Ben would listen to music and read or study, and Eddie would consider doing homework and then do anything else, usually involving rambling on about whatever while Bill politely pretended to listen. It was decidedly one of the nicer aspects of the school, with big windows covering one wall and an abundance of posters and prints of famous paintings covering the others, student projects cluttering up shelves and racks and easels, coloured acrylic splattered on every surface, air filled with the mingling musty scents of clay and paint and something vaguely septic. And for someone with no sort of artistic talent whatsoever, Eddie had a quiet appreciation for it. It didn't feel like a classroom. If anything, the organised chaos and laid-back atmosphere gave it a very homely feel. He could understand why Bill was so content spending most of his free time there.

People were still milling around when he got there, settling onto paint stained wooden stools situated around three long tables. In the middle of each sat a woven basket overflowing with assorted fruit, spilling out onto an artfully crumpled stretch of sheen fabric. He made his best effort to look casual as he waited for most seats to be filled before he sat down, letting process of elimination aid him in figuring out which seat was Richie's regular one. He eventually pulled up a stool in between two occupied ones, one by a rather eccentric looking lass with several piercings that he could see (and undoubtedly plenty he couldn't), haphazardly applied makeup, and a hairstyle that surely had to be against school policy, the other a boy wearing a beanie that was pulled down nearly over his eyes and a black t-shirt with a band logo on it that Eddie had never heard of but already hated. He shuffled slightly in his seat, subconsciously folding in on himself. Sure, first impressions aren't always right, and he knew they were probably pleasantly decent and decently pleasant people, but that didn't mean he had to brush elbows with them. Thankfully, neither of them seemed to take much notice of him anyway.

He shrugged his backpack off his shoulders and brought it around to sit on his lap, and opened it up. There really wasn't much in it, a few loose scraps of paper, homework handouts and the like, a few more that were crumpled up into balls, a pen or two floating around, a couple of cheap lighters, a small brown paper bag that he was not going to investigate, a notebook – which he had discovered in History class contained the written work for all of Richie's classes with no obvious attempt at categorisation whatsoever – and a spiral bound sketchbook. He pulled the last item out, sitting it on the table in front of him and letting the bag slide to the floor by his feet. He flipped the book open.

Name: Seymour Butz.

Class: Easy Credit.

Eddie restrained himself from rolling his eyes and turned the page, wary yet intrigued about what the rest of the book looked like.

It turned out to be a mixed bag of crude stick-figure comic strips – most unfinished or completely nonsensical –, a handful of pages just scribbled on until there was no white space left, a number of tic-tac-toe games that he seemingly played with himself, and, very occasionally, actual classwork.

And dicks.

A lot of dicks.

An abundance, one might say.

Like, on almost every page.

And not in the tasteful nudity figure study way either. While there were a few more detailed spectacles, most were more on the cartoonish, bathroom stall graffiti side, you know the ones. In all colours, shapes, sizes, and artistic mediums.

Eddie was disappointed, but really not surprised, and a little flustered thanks to one particularly intricately shaded double spreader.

He quickly flipped through until he found a blank, phallic-less page, just as the teacher – he didn't know her name – brought the class's attention to the board and informed them they were doing still lifes – a term Eddie had never heard before and was honestly a bit confused by, fruit is not alive – in any medium they feel like, and then left them to their own devices. A bit of quiet chatter picked up, but nothing irritating. He grabbed a graphite pencil off the table, stared down the centrepiece, and got started.

Richie got to the gym in a record breaking time of sixteen minutes, the main contributor to his tardiness being that he previously had no idea where it was. Four years of avoiding any sort of sport, career fair, or school assembly left him with a pretty limited mental map of the school. He had his daily route that took him to his necessary classes, the cafeteria, and his regular smoking spot under the bleachers. And he had never found any sort of issue with that. Until now.

He dumped his backpack onto one of the benches in the boys locker room, and immediately wondered why Eddie would ever go in there. Everything smelt like perspiration and dirty socks and boy. Everything looked dewy and unclean. Every flat surface had been graffitied and vandalised – his eyes drifted to a tag he recognised as one Bev used to use, and he was definitely going to ask her about that later. There was a bandaid stuck to the floor by his feet. It was gross – and if Eddie could get worked up to the point of a public standoff because a stain on his shirt, surely he would never willingly step foot in a locker room.

Richie, however, was right at home.

He zipped the backpack open and shuffled a few books around before pulling out a plastic bag with, assumedly, Eddie's school uniform in it. After a second of consideration, he ripped the plastic to get it open rather than untying the knot, and grabbed the clothes before letting the empty bag fall discarded to the floor. He quickly shucked the shirt he was wearing and pulled the new one on. Just as he began to work on undoing his jeans, his eyes fell to the shorts. And he remembered.

Oh fuck no.

He lifted the bright red monstrosity, pinching the elastic waistband with both hands so they were on full display, and damn near scowled. Somehow they were more hideous up close. And so much shorter than he recalled, if that was even possible. His expression then could only be described as pure desperation. He should have just packed up and went home.

But he couldn't even do that, he thought, it's not his home anymore.

He sighed in defeat. Whatever scrap of dignity he still had left buried deep inside him was shrivelling up and dying.

He put the shorts on.

To add to his complete and utter dismay, Physical Education class apparently involved a lot physical activity. He was welcomed into the gymnasium by a chorus of shoes squeaking on vinyl flooring, with the occasional whistle blow accompanied by a booming voice shouting orders like “knees up! No slacking! Quit being a bunch of pussies! I have a power complex to compensate for my tiny dick!”

Well, maybe not those words exactly.

They were doing laps. Running. Richie would rather gnaw through his own ankles.

No one really seemed to take much notice of him skulking around near the entrance – that or they didn't care –, and he was about to make like a tree and get the hell out of there when -

“Dude, coach was totally bugging out, where were you?”

He turned around to see one of Eddie's nerd friends – the one without the stutter, though that's about the extent of the information he had – who was panting lightly and looking at him like he had just committed a crime – which he was sure he hadn't, unless wearing gym shorts two sizes too small counts as criminal, which it should, in Richie's opinion –, the tone of his voice indicating that he must have actually been walking around the school lost for three and a half years and not just sixteen minutes. Richie blinked at him.

“Everything okay?” Nerd Friend asked, starting to look worried.

Richie wanted to scream. No!, he would say, nothing is okay! I've got a curse on me! I got kicked out of my own body! I would barely be five foot five in stilettos! I can't reach the top of my locker! My worst enemy is walking around looking like me and dressed like a mormon! And he stole my ride to school! I'm pretty sure everyone can see my entire ass in these shorts! The weather is terrible! And now I'm getting chastised for showing up slightly late to a class I don't even want to be at! Nothing makes sense and nothing is okay!!!

“Yeah,” he said, “sure.”

A harsh whistle blow interrupted the start of Nerd Friend's next question, and they both turned their heads to look towards the coach, who was glaring at them and looked to be a couple of seconds away from marching over and dragging them back by their ears.

“Come on,” he said, and jogged back over, falling into a gap before working up to matching the rest of the class's pace. Richie took a deep breath and followed.

Eddie left class with a barely half finished and poorly executed fruit portrait – he had spent so long trying (and failing) to get the shading on one particular grape and ended up wasting a good portion of the hour. So he wasn't the best at time management, big deal – and a grey lead smudge on the side of his right hand hand that wasn't coming off and was really just getting worse with how much he was rubbing at it.

He had about a five minute timeframe to find Richie and swap schedules, because he was apparently too busy being annoyed to remember to do it earlier, so he walked with purpose, which turned out to be difficult when your legs have been replaced with knobbly stilts and you're approximately three feet taller than any human should be.

He was passing the language department when someone was suddenly linking their arm with his and pulling him off his course.

“Where're you off to in such a rush, buttercup?” Beverly M- something crooned, flashing him an easy smile that he didn't understand the meaning behind. She easily navigated them through the crowded hallway, headed towards the heavy doors leading out to the field.

“Uh,” he responded, sidestepping quickly to avoid colliding with someone's elbow as they widely swung their backpack on. Beverly's steps did not falter for a moment. “Class?” He continued, wondering why that was not the obvious answer. She responded with a laugh, unashamed, bright, and boisterous.

“Wow, first the new wardrobe and now you're skipping out on skipping? Who are you and what have you done with Richie Tozier?”

You have no idea, he thought. She punctuated her sentence with a grin and tightened her grip on his arm, walking through the doors and down the small flight of stairs just as the bell rang.

She led him out along the abandoned path around the skirts of the field until they reached the bleachers, standing proudly in all their rickety glory. Eddie didn't trust the bleachers; the support beams looked too frail and a few sections were in dire need of repair. Luckily, he never really had any need to use them, having no interest in attending football or baseball games, or rallies unless they had something to with his track, in which case he was on the field anyway.

He especially didn't feel like sitting underneath the bleachers, where, besides the risk of the whole thing collapsing on top of them, it was also dirty, and smelled like something that Eddie was pretty confident wasn't a legal substance, and there were so many cigarette butts littering the ground and so much chewing gum stuck to the underside of the seats that they may as well have been sitting inside a dumpster. Beverly did not seem to share the same concerns as he did, though, as she proceeded en route to the second stand over, and then proceeded to sit. On the grass. Wearing a skirt!

She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a red and white carton and a plastic lighter decorated in variously coloured star-shaped stickers. She flicked a cigarette out of the case and put the end of it between her lips before lighting it.

She seemed to lose herself for a moment then, closing her eyes when she inhaled. Eddie watched, mildly curious, as she took it between her fingers and held her breath for what felt like a few seconds too long before breathing out, the greyish smoke filtering through slightly parted lips and then dissipating in the air between them. She smiled, barely, a slight tug at the corner of her mouth.

“Are you waiting for an invitation or something?” she said, blinking one eye open and disrupting his thoughts.

“Huh?”

She patted the ground beside her, and managed to make it look sarcastic. He realised he was either going to have to sit down and be filthy and uncomfortable and risk lung cancer, or look like an insane person and hightail it out of there.

He sat down.

“So,” she started, after taking another drag. It smelt awful. He did his best to hide his disgust. He was only really successful in that because she wasn't facing him. “What's the 411 babe?”

Before he could even start to form a coherent sentence, she was offering him the open carton, holding it up in front of his face. He swallowed, leaning away from the box as if it might start spitting acid. (And it might have! For all he knew it could detect his fear!) He tried to think of a plan of action, but any option that immediately came to mind didn't really feel like it would be subtle enough. Smack the box out of her hand and stomp it into the ground, grab it and throw it as far away as he could and then bolt when she went to retrieve it, just start screaming bloody murder at the top of his lungs, tell the principal, call the police, call his mom, call child protective services, etcetera.

(He did not, at any point in this state of internal panic, think to politely refuse.)

“Rich?”

“YOU'RE GONNA DIE.”

Beverly, for some reason, looked rather affronted by the … warning? Threat? Prophecy? Nihilistic realisation? Whatever it was, though Eddie was just about as shocked, possibly even more so.

“Uh,” she started after an extended pause, when the echo produced by his sudden outburst faded out, “okay?”

“Cigarettes,” he said, the part of his brain that was definitely not the logical one deciding to take the reigns and push him further into his hole, “they're really bad for you, and smoking is the leading cause of cancer, and your lungs are gonna go black and all your teeth will fall out and you'll get mouth ulcers and burn holes in your throat and then you won't be able to eat and you'll have to put a tube in your stomach and it'll be horrible and painful and slow and then you'll die.”

She stared at him, then glanced back down to the cigarette still burning in between her fingers, then back at him. He regretted not running.

Then she laughed. Well, more of a snort than a laugh, and put the cigarette back between her lips.

“Is that like, one of your new characters or something?” she asked, words slightly muffled as she talked around the object in her mouth. “It's kinda shit, but alright.”

Eddie watched as she continued to smoke, even after he assaulted her with the most sudden and blunt anti-smoking campaign to ever be presented.

“Ha,” she continued, blowing the smoke out of her nose this time, like a dragon, or a tea kettle, or something, “work on it and you might have a decent Kaspbrak impression on your hands. That'll be some good ammo for ya.”

Richie did not like running.

He really did not like running for thirty minutes straight.

And he especially did not like running for thirty minutes straight while getting aggressively ordered around by some middle aged balding dude in a baseball cap. There were several times during the lesson when he had to stop himself from marching up to Mr. Tinydick and shoving that silver whistle so far up his ass that it got lodged in his throat and he choked to death.

He nearly crawled back to the locker rooms at the end of it, worried that his legs would just give out at any second, or that he would straight-up pass out from exertion. There was sweat literally dripping off him and his heart felt like it might actually burst out of his chest.

“Jeez,” Nerd Friend had said to him as he was slumped over on the bench seat with a towel around his shoulders, focusing all his remaining energy (of which there wasn't much) on staying conscious, “I've never seen you this tired out from a run.”

He wanted to return with some vulgar comeback, the first to mind was, 'oh yeah? Should have seen me with your mom last night. Yowza!' but what actually came out of his mouth was a drawn out, croaky whine, like the last sound you imagine a raccoon to make after it gets run over by a semi-trailer. Nerd Friend laughed softly and held out his hand.

“Okay, you really need a shower. Let's go.”

And so, after spending way too long standing under a busted shower hear with lukewarm water running down his back, making very little effort to actually, you know, clean himself, he was back in the locker room with a bunch of other dudes in various states of undress. Great!

He quickly got dressed and shoved the shorts as far as he could into the backpack, vowing to burn them as soon as he got home.

He made his exit just as the bell rang, – which was annoyingly loud on this side of the school. Between that and the coach's whistle, no wonder Eddie was so fucking tone-deaf. The hallways started to flood with students once more, the majority of them taking absolutely no notice of him as he tried to navigate through, being rammed into and jostled around like a human pinball until he could make his way to the side of the walkway. He huffed in frustration, standing against the wall as he waited for the crowd to disperse a little.

Damn shortstack, he thought, how do you live like this?

When the coast was relatively clear and the danger of getting actually trampled by his peers was gone, he kept walking. It was Wednesday, third period, which meant he was supposed to be meeting Bev to go smoke. He had no fucking idea what Eddie did during this time – probably attended class, like a prep, which he really was way too tired to even think about doing.

He decided to go find Eddie, though he wasn't entirely sure what he would do or say once he did. He walked out the double doors leading out to the quad, his calves protesting every step with a dull ache. From where he was, he would half to walk at least halfway across the field to get to the their usual spot under the bleachers, which, despite really not being that big of a deal, felt like he was being asked to climb Mount Everest in that moment. Except he wouldn't get to meet the president and get a cover story in the newspaper, or whatever it was that people who climbed Mount Everest were awarded with. Maybe it was just satisfaction and bragging rights. That sounded stupid. He would at least want a medal.

And so he began his ascent. It took all of a minute and a half for him to get close enough to see that Bev was already there – with Eddie. Of course. He couldn't help but feel a twang of betrayal, even though he knew that she had no idea what she was doing. For all she knew, that was Richie, just … dressed different. And more of an asshole than he was yesterday. And probably – definitely – not willing to touch a cigarette with a ten foot pole, all of a sudden. Yeah, she would have no reason to question the situation whatsoever.

Neither of them had seen him yet, but he could hear Eddie frantically going off about something that was undoubtedly out of character for Richie. He groaned. This boy was never going to make it in the world of show-business.

“Speak of the devil,” Beverly said, nodding towards the approaching figure. Eddie's head whipped around to see Richie – who looked horrifically dishevelled and so not up to his standards, dear god – trying to get his attention with jerky hand gestures. “Is he waving at you?”

“Uh,” Eddie replied, trying to figure out the what message Richie was trying to send through this weird interpretive dance, “I have to go.”

He stood and brushed off the seat of his pants more than he needed to before walking over. She said something that he didn't quite catch but didn't turn back to ask.

“What are you doing?” he asked through clenched teeth, pulling him into a stride beside him back in the direction of the school building.

“Trying to stop you from making a complete idiot out of me,” Richie replied.

“Yeah, you do that enough on your own,” he spat back, smugly.

“Not the time, shit-for-brains.”

“Says you.”

“Says your mom.” “That doesn't make sense.”

“Your mom doesn't make- argh,” he stopped walking, pinching the bridge of his nose, “Really not the time. You need to seriously chill out, dude.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What I'm talking about is you can't be giving lectures, washing your hands fifteen times an hour, or freaking out about everything. You need to not be yourself,” he huffed, “you need to be – uh –”

“You?”

“Exactly. Me. Be cool.”

“Okay, well, I can be one or the other, I mean –”

Richie gave him a pointed look. Eddie sighed.

“Look, it's not that easy, okay? In case you couldn't tell, I've never been in this fucking situation before.”

“You think I don't know that! I – fuck!” He all but smacked himself in the forehead, eyes blown wide. “What?” Eddie asked, tilting his head with his brow furrowed.

“The play,” Richie said, “I've got a rehearsal after school.”

“I though that was yesterday? You said they only happened once a week.”

“Yeah, well, we have to do extra rehearsals sometimes. It opens in like two weeks.”

“Fuck.”

“Yep.”

Eddie bit his lip, trying to think.

“What do we do?” he asked after a minute, worry written on his face. Richie looked at him, clicking his tongue. Eddie couldn't read his expression.

“Well,” he said, finally, his lips forming into a subtle smirk, “how do you feel about Shakespeare?”

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#writing #vice versa fic #reddie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #reddie fic #reddie fanfic #it 2017 #in which .. shit happens idk

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