#wrangle their most paranoid comedians

[juuheizou]

ok as much as i love to imagine the hijinks of reddie and their pomeranian-shaped closet monster

i can also see them, of all pets, owning a fish tank. think about it. for one, apparently fish owners have the best (or at least in my experience, they sure think it’s the best) senses of humor among pet owners, and i can see a respectably famous richie finally having enough time on his hands to a) do anything other than write jokes and scramble for gigs and b) be heart-crushingly lonely enough to consider a pet. it’s where he’s headed at this point, so no time like the present to become a sad 30-something man who lives alone and has 3 cats!

except cats need a lot of enrichment and attention so maybe something a little lower maintenance. he is a busy guy, after all. and i mean fish are a lot of work in their own way, but most will be chill as long as he keeps the water chemistry right and feeds them once or twice a day. and a lot of fish maintenance can be made a million times easier by investing in equipment that doesn’t suck.

i can see him being hesitant at first, but he just happens to wander into an aquarium store at the right time to witness some poor employee try to wrangle a clownfish (as someone who has done so several times, clownfish are adorable but they can be such little turds-- gee almost like someone else we know, and haha clownfish the irony) for someone and returning immediately after getting his first bigshot comedian check to drop a sizeable chunk of it on a full saltwater setup. after the eternity it takes to get everything ready for fish, his first is, you guessed it, a clownfish. so instead of a sad 30-something man who lives alone and has 3 cats, he gets to be a sad 30-something man who lives alone and argues daily with the fish he spends a third of his checks on. 

that’s how he gets strong enough to beat eddie at arm wrestling in the 27 year timeskip, bc we all know he ain’t working out. lugging buckets (if not trash cans) of water and boxes of salt around to top off and do water changes, scrubbing algae off the glass, etc. will put some muscle on your old bones.

even though the tank came with richie, fish are also the animal i see eddie being the most open to having. they don’t leave fur and dander everywhere, don’t make piles of hay and droppings all over the floor, don’t contract rabies, don’t carry salmonella, don’t have little itching hairs they can drop on u, like they’re pretty low-risk as far as welcoming a living thing into his life goes.

also saltwater is so so meticulous, taking care of the tank would grow on him and end up being a calming activity that probably saves him from many many aneurysms.

one thing he will not do, even though richie --touch starved motherfucker he is-- loves it, is hand feed. hell no. what if they have fungus and we just haven’t seen it yet, richie? have you ever heard of fish tb? they’re gonna nip your finger and you’re gonna die of a secondary infection from their nasty fish water in your wound! meanwhile richie is just feeling the slimy underwater love. to be fair, he won’t put his hands in the tank if he has a scratch or anything, which eddie supposes is better than the alternative.

richie chasing eddie around w a thawed chunk of bloody dead fish in his tongs or slipping a cube of frozen fish food down the back of eddie’s shirt.

richie does his due diligence (as evidenced by his managing not to kill his entire delicate mini-ecosystem for several years) and isn’t gonna take home something that won’t do well in the tank, but eddie is so extra abt risk-analyzing every potential new fish. he has a whole binder detailing every possible pro and con of any kind of fish they consider adding.

even though they’re hundreds of miles away and pretty sure they killed pennywise, they keep a padlock on their tank stand to make them less paranoid about their worst fears crawling out of their sump. for this reason, top offs are not their favorite part of fishkeeping, but it gets done.

richie named all his fish. it makes it easier to talk to them and makes them feel more like companions. eddie thinks this is ridiculous at first. they’re fish. but p early on in his new inherited hobby he discovers blennies and immediately must have one bc ‘haha it looks just like you i’m naming it richie jr.’