Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In an endless space outside of the universe, a turtle floated listlessly. This turtle, as well as the space it was floating in, had only been glimpsed by a handful of people throughout human history. Seven of these people had been children during the summer of 1989 when they first saw Maturin, and they had forgotten him upon waking. 

These children, apart from the one who stayed behind, forgot a lot of things about what happened in the summer of 1989. They forgot a lot of things about Derry in general, as well as large chunks of their childhood: years later, when asked, they tried skirting around the question - who, after all, remembered their childhood friends? The places they went, the things they did? It was perfectly normal, surely. And if it wasn’t, none of them advertised the fact that they remembered very little about 

(derry)

their childhoods. The gap - for it was a gap - fit into their minds comfortably, as much as a gap can be comfortable. It was a gap that had been placed there, carefully crafted, so none of them poked around it very much. Sometimes this gap, and the invisible things that filled it would make them moan in their sleep, or sob, or cry out, but this was forgotten upon waking. When people asked them the next day what their dreams were about, none of them could come up with an answer. They would say they didn’t know, and they would mean it.

Years after the events of that summer, another summer bloomed. It was two years after the millennium. Y2K was an old worry to laugh and nudge each other over. Cellphones were thick and chunky, with tiny screens. American airports were on high alert after what had happened to the World Trade Buildings the year before and everyone still traded excited, mournful stories of Where They Were When. 

In the endless space outside the universe, Maturin watched the summer unfold.  It was hot, as summers tended to be. It was cooler for some, depending on where in the country they were. For instance, two of the 

(losers)

previously-Derry dwellers were in New York, and did not always have to stick to the shade when they went out walking. Another lived in LA, and he survived solely by ducking from one air-conditioned place to the next. 

On the day things were set into motion for a second time, only one of them was filled with the appropriate amount of dread. Mike Hanlon had put a lot of thought into what he was about to do, and he was pretty sure he was going to go through with it. Not in the next hour, or maybe two - but soon. Definitely today. Because these things couldn’t be put off, not with deaths piling up like they were. 

It was too soon. He knew this, he knew it in his bones - it had been 13 years, not 27, as it had been for centuries and possibly millenia before that - but he also knew that nothing else made sense. He touched the photo he’d found as he walked away from the yellow tape around the last crime scene - the photo of Georgie, water-damaged, but otherwise showing no signs of any time having passed. 

He sat down at his desk, went over the phone numbers. They were written down carefully, but hard enough to puncture the paper at some parts. He ran his fingers over the neat letters and numbers and smiled to himself: he didn’t want to drag them back into it, he wanted desperately to leave them alone, but - god, he’d missed them all so much.

His grandfather coughed, then, and Mike looked back over his shoulder, asked if he was okay. Granddad said yes, and Mike turned back to the paper, to the phone.

Soon, he promised, dread and yearning mixing into a chokehold around his throat.

A few states over, Stanley Uris was reading a book. It was an old book, he’d read it before, but he liked to read it every few years to see if he could gleam anything new. Often, he could . He interpreted this book very differently to how he had in college, though he’d only graduated a few years ago. People changed fast, he figured, though deep down he feared

(the deadlights)

that he was always the same person if he scratched hard enough at the surface. The paint would give and there he’d be, still the same after all these years, for better or worse. Next to him, on her favourite spot on the couch, his wife of one year curled up with a crossword. Patricia Uris was deeply immersed in it, and Stan often glanced over to watch her face: the deepening curve of her brow, the not-yet wrinkles. Marrying her at 22 had gotten them many raised eyebrows, but he was sure they wouldn’t regret it. 

In five hours, Stan would be trying to dig a trembling blade deeper into his arm while his wife beat at the bathroom door. But at that moment, he watched her frown and thought about the coming years, those wrinkles forming properly and nestling in the lovely corners of her face.

Another few states over, Bill Denbrough put his head in his hands. He lowered those hands-and-head down to his laptop and beat them as hard as he could without damaging the keys, which was quite hard, since laptops were sturdier back then. Then he sighed and lifted his head out of his hands.

It was times like these when he regretted not leaving a better impression on anybody in college. He’d scoffed at the notion of networking, claiming that his work should be able to stand up on its own - and now he’s a small-time writer with one short story published and no connections to speak of. He’d romanticized the idea of the starving artist in college, back when his parents were supporting him, but now it was solid, it was around him, and he missed being able to eat vegetables that weren’t out of a can. He’d had about enough of slimy, canned asparagus and beets. 

He sighed, getting up from his desk and stretching his arms over his head. He’d had a dream last night, something that made him wake up panting, and he’d been trying to coax it out of himself for story fodder. But try as he might, he couldn’t work it out of his brain. It stayed in the shadows, out of reach, no matter how hard Bill scraped around for it. The only thing he could remember about it was rain, and an impending sense of dread, nameless but 

(you always call boats she thanks bill she)

so powerful it cinched his throat right up. He had to clear his throat once, twice, before he could pour himself a glass of water and drink it. 

Ben Hascom was running. He did this every morning, and every evening, before breakfast and before dinner, when he came home from work. This, now, was his after-work run. He did it because it gave him time to think about what he’d done at work, what he could improve about his designs, how he could design buildings in a way that was both tame and still interesting to him. But mostly, Ben ran because he was terrified of being

(you disgust me and you disgust them as well)

fat again.

Ben didn’t think much about this fear. It would be like thinking about having hands - so normal it would be strange to put much thought into it. The fear had been in him since he’d started to lose the weight he’d been accumulating his whole life, at which point gaining a pound back seemed like the worst thing that could happen to him. So he’d kept slowly and steadily losing weight, and not put any back on, and now he was at a weight doctors actually deemed healthy. He’d hit this point last year, and he’d been more happy than he’d allowed himself to show people - all his progress had been worth it, finally.

Now, Ben Hascom was working on both losing fat and gaining muscle. It had been a pipe dream back when he was a kid, getting muscles. He’d watched superheroes on Saturday morning cartoons and hadn’t even entertained the idea that he might have muscles. Now, though, he was getting weight lifting sessions in the morning, right after he came back from his run. 

Ben hummed the tune of a pop song he’d heard on the radio as he ran. He didn’t know the name, but he liked the tune and the lyrics were catchy. He hummed this as he ran, and mumbled some of the lyrics - something about a girl and her beautiful hair, which he liked. He kept humming, both because he liked the tune and also because sometimes when he ran, he got the feeling that he was running away from something, and however many glances he shot over his shoulder, the feeling wouldn’t shake.

Beverly Marsh was also thinking of her designs, but hers weren’t of buildings. She was thinking over the frills on a dress she had to have planned and submitted by 5pm the next day, and was trying to remember an interview with another up-and-coming fashion designer, because they had mentioned something about frills on a fall dress. What had she said? 

Beverly couldn’t remember. It was frustrating, and she was frowning as she paced around her desk. She was still frowning when a man across the office caught her eye and raised his brows, as if to question why she was upset.

She immediately lapsed into a smile. This man, Tom, had been flirting with her for five months now. She had been flirting back. She still was - Tom was, after all, sickeningly sweet. He got her coffee and made self-depreciating jokes and once helped her pick up her folders after she tripped and dropped them all over the office carpet. He also, in a way that Beverly was not entirely conscious of, said certain things in a way that reminded Beverly of 

(i worry about you bevvie i worry a lot)

someone familiar. She hadn’t put this connection together yet, and wouldn’t for a while, but when she did, she would feel stupid for smiling back at him, stupid in a way that burned and turned to rage - at him, at the man he reminded her of, but mostly at herself, for falling for it all over again.

Two miles away from Beverly and not knowing it, Eddie Kasprack was wondering what was wrong with him. This was not unusual for Eddie, as this thought was never far away in his mind. One cough would have him thinking of symptoms, going over everything he’d touched that day, squirting hand sanitizer over his hands. Most of the time it turned out to be nothing, but sometimes Eddie would get sick. Sometimes it was a relief - waiting for it, the sickness, all the time, meant that he could at least stop worrying about it once it arrived. That is, until he started thinking about how infections can develop, and how bacteria could get into his bloodstream and sepsis could set in and and and -

For once, though, Eddie wasn’t thinking about illness. He was thinking about his head, and what could possibly be wrong with it. He’d started feeling very depressed as of late, and he can’t figure out what’s wrong with him. The depression had made sense after his mother died last year, but it had started before that, the first creeping tendrils. It carried on as he graduated with a degree in Business and Statistics and got a job lined up at the Risk Statistics Bureau, a very good yet low-level job with excellent opportunities to climb the ranks in the coming years. Until then, he was spending the summer working more at what was his part-time college job: a personal chauffeur of a bigshot Alumni from his university, who called him “the most careful driver he’s ever met in his life” which Eddie was both proud and ashamed of. He wanted to be careful, of course he did, careful kept him alive and well, but hearing that made him feel like something was

(at least budge over come on get your feet out of my face i’m supposed to be the gross one eds)

missing from his life, or from - from him, somehow. He tried not to focus on that thought, but it kept coming around, louder and louder. 

What was wrong with him? He should’ve been excited. He should’ve been a lot of things. He should’ve especially been excited about his new relationship with his fellow chauffeur, Myra, who had started out as someone to share his anxiety with, as she also had it in spades, and then took a surprising turn into dating. Eddie hadn’t expected her to agree to go on a date with him in the first place, and now that they were actually, truly dating he found himself recognizing some familiar patterns, patterns that reminded him of someone he’d just

(eddie don’t get your feet wet you know that’s how you catch cold and then you’ll get an infection and die and leave me all alone but you wouldn’t do that eddie you wouldn’t leave me alone)

lost. And it was a relief, almost, to fall back into that dynamic, even if it was just echoes of it right now - Myra reminding him to bring a coat, Myra telling him about the latest animal flu and giving him a matching mask to wear over his mouth, Myra asking him to please stay longer, don’t leave just yet, don’t leave -

He couldn’t figure out why he felt like this. Why he’d do this to himself, when he just got out of this situation, and now he’s driving right back into it, and he’s doing it with an overwhelming sense of relief, of familiarity, of being HOME, even if that home feels like a cage. The cage is what he’s used to. Eddie didn’t know what he’d be without it. 

He didn’t know if he wanted to find out.

Across the country, Richie Tozier planned for his next set. Nowadays this meant that he got drunk and shot the shit with the guy he’d befriended to write his jokes for him, since Richie’s stuff had been coming across as a little stale lately. 

He sprawled out on the couch and passed the guy - Nick - another beer. Nick scribbled notes sometimes, but mostly he drank. Richie took the notes that Nick was holding and put on his Performance voice, which honestly felt so much like his Normal voice sometimes that even Richie couldn’t tell the difference. He was a Jenga-stack of badly constructed lies and excuses, he was 26 now, he was old enough to acknowledge that. Just like he was old enough to acknowledge that he could easily keep going like this, just barrel forwards into the terrifying future and Keep Going. Get jokes off of straight guys and get up on stage and pretend to be one of them while he has furtive, guilty encounters with men in bathrooms once every six months, after which he couldn’t look himself in the mirror after.

Yes, Richie could absolutely continue like this. It would be easy. He’d never known anything different, anything other than this, anything other than covering his shit with jokes, nothing vulnerable and/or real here, just lil ol me, Richie 

(trashmouth)

Tozier. 

The idea of it - of going on like this - sometimes made Richie want to puke. Sometimes Richie did puke, sometimes the booze helped it along but once or twice he got himself into a thought spiral about the notion of just - doing that same shit for the rest of his life. It terrified him, but in a distant way, a safe, comfortable terror he’d grown used to. 

I can do this , Richie thought as he read over Nick’s jokes in his Stage Voice. It would suck, but what was the alternative? It wasn’t like he could just go out there and say

it wasn't like he could

it wasn't like he could just go out there and 

it wasn't like he could just go out there and say hey everybody I’m a total 

“piece of shit for saying so, but I think she looked better with the wig.” Richie pauses for laughter. There’s a smattering of it, and Richie shrugs. 

Good enough. Smatterings of laughter pay the rent, for now anyway.

He raises a hand at the audience. “You’ve been a great crowd! I’ll be here all week. Later, losers.”

His head throbs. Richie’s smile flinches, but by then he has his face turned away from the audience, so it doesn’t matter. He gets off the stage and rubs at his forehead, but the pain’s already gone. Weird.

Sometimes Nick or another comedy buddy is waiting for him after he finishes his set, but no-one’s there when Richie leaves the stage. He scans the crowd: there’s a few people he knows dotted around, one of them preparing to get up on stage and do his own set. Usually Richie would head over to someone and start talking, but now he finds himself hit by a surprising wave of weariness. 

Nick sees him as he’s heading for the exit. He cups his hands over his mouth and yells, “RICHIE!”

Richie waves at him without looking back. “I said later, losers,” he calls back over his shoulder. 

“Go get your beauty sleep,” Nick yells as Richie opens the door.

Richie can’t see Nick, but knows he’s being flipped off, so he returns it and steps outside, letting the door swing shut behind him. He takes a breath: ah, the bracing weight of LA heat in summertime. Sweat instantly beads under his armpits.

Luckily for Richie, he’s used to it by now. He’s spent - what, eight summers in LA now? He’d been here ever since heading to California State and then promptly dropping out of it to pursue comedy. So the heavy, dry heat doesn’t faze Richie anymore as he strolls through the dimly-lit streets of the shitty neighbourhood he’s in. All of the bars he performs at are in shitty neighbourhoods, but Richie tells himself this is just the start of the game. Ten years, twenty - who knows? Richie could take over the city, if he wanted. At least, he hopes. He really hopes he’s not still performing at dive bars when he’s forty.

Richie’s brain whirs as he takes his usual path home. It’s an okay walk, thirty-five minutes, and he only takes a cab if it’s hammering rain. Otherwise, he walks or takes the train. But tonight, he walks - he thinks he might continue walking when he reaches his apartment, pass the familiar slumped building and keep going. He does this sometimes, goes for long walks until his brain stops humming.

He’s approaching his apartment, trying to decide whether he’s going to miss it and keep walking, or go inside and collapse on the futon that doubles as his bed and hope against hope that he’ll be able to get to sleep without burning off all this brain humming.

He’s at the point of no return, where he’ll have to actually decide, when his phone rings.

Richie sighs. Gets out his cellphone, which is still pretty clunky but he can’t afford anything released before 2000 yet. It’s heavy in his hand as he checks the number, which isn’t anything he recognizes.

Richie clears his throat. Puts on a Texan Voice. Not his best work, but he’s tired. “Howdy, pardner, who do I be speaking to?”

There’s a pause.

“Uh,” says the guy on the other end. “Is this Richie Tozier?”

Richie drops the Voice. “Yep, that’s me. What’s up, doc?”

The guy snorts, then sobers. “Rich - it’s Mike.”

“Mike?”

“Mike Hanlon.”

There’s nothing, and then there’s a jolt of

(seven of us against one of you bowers i think we can take you i saw a bird not a normal bird it was as a big as a station wagon with orange tufts i’m gonna miss you richie promise to call ben and bev and bill stopped calling so fast it’s like they forgot who we)

recognition. 

Richie’s head throbs. He raises his free hand to touch it, but the pain is gone again, as quick as it’d come.

“Mike,” Richie says, and finds he’s croaking. He clears his throat again. Swallows. There’s a lot of memory there, but right now most of it is clouded, out of reach. Richie flinches away from them instinctively. He’s very used to cringing away from shit he’s shoved into the shadows of his mind.

“Hey.”

“Hi,” Mike says, sounding relieved and - something else, but something bad . “How’re you doing, Rich?”

“Fine,” Richie responds, on autopilot. He rubs at his eyes behind his glasses. They’re swimming. “How’s, how - how are things in Maine?”

There’s a pause. For a second Richie thinks he can glimpse everything behind the pause, but then it’s gone.

“Could be better,” Mike says. “I - I didn’t want to call. Not that I didn’t wanna hear from you, I do, but I know if I called, then you’d remember.”

“Uh-huh,” Richie rasps. He swallows, but there’s no spit to go down. His throat is bone dry. Remember. Yes. Oh god, what is there to remember, Richie doesn’t want -

“But I think you have to,” Mike continues. “I think we all have to.”

All . Richie’s head pounds, then the pain recedes. He’d just thought of some names, what were they? Ben - Ben and Bev and Bill and - there were others, it felt vitally important, who -

“Mikey,” Richie says. It comes off his tongue as naturally as he’s been saying it every day since his birth. “What’s going on here?”

He knows before Mike says it. He knows, though the actual knowledge, the memory, doesn’t come back until later. For now, he just has the appropriate feelings as if he does have all of it back - the incredible terror, the roiling dread.

“IT’s back.”

Richie nods. Nods some more. Then his stomach roils along with the dread and he bends over, dry-gagging.

“Rich? You there?”

“I’m here,” Richie says. He straightens up. No puke. Great. “What’s - what-”

“You need to come back, Rich,” Mike says. “To Derry.”

Derry . Richie closes his eyes, squeezes.

“We made a promise,” Mike says.

Richie stands in front of his apartment building, trying not to shake too bad. Someone passes him, eyes him strangely, and Richie can’t even bother to be reassuring towards her. 

“Rich?”

Richie doesn’t answer.

“Trashmouth, are you

(trashmouth cut it out man honey remember the curfew we don’t want you going missing like those other kids i’m not going in that house okay guys i 'm sorry but i can’t go in that house GET OVER HERE FAGGOT I’M GONNA STRING YOU UP I’M GONNA)

alright?”

Trashmouth , Richie mouths. He bends over again, braces a hand on his knee.

“I’m alright,” Richie says. “I’m alright. So we gotta come back, huh?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry, Rich.”

“Hey,” Richie says. Something starts coming up his throat. He swallows it down. “Don’t be. We’ll get - we’ll see the old gang again. We’ll all… uh.”

“It can take a while to come back,” Mike says. “That’s the gist I’m getting, anyway. And part of me just knows . You know?”

Richie does. He shouldn’t, none of it makes sense - but he knows, bone-deep and automatic, just how Mike knows. It was like that, that summer -

“Is everyone else coming,” Richie asks. He’s still unable to put faces to names, or even remember the names of a few of them - but he wants everyone to be there, desperately and completely. God, it’d be good to see - who? He almost had it. 

“So far,” Mike says. “So you’re coming?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Yeah, of course, Micycle.”

Mike laughs. It’s a surprised sound, creaky from disuse.

“ Micycle . Forgot about that one, no clown magic needed.”

Richie whimpers. 

“Shit,” Mike says. “Right. No clown talk yet.”

“What-” Richie pinches the bridge of his nose, under his glasses. “ Fuck , Mike, what the hell happened to us back then?”

“You’ll remember,” Mike says.

Richie laughs. It comes out thin through his teeth. “I don’t think I want to.”

“You will anyway,” Mike says. His voice softens. “Hey - take care, man.”

“I will,” Richie says. “Uh. You too, Mike. I’ll see you soon.”

“See you, buddy,” Mike says. 

Richie hangs up. He takes a deep, steadying breath

(i’m gonna snap your arm back into place DON’T FUCKIN TOUCH ME RICH)

and then lurches forwards and throws up towards the wall of his apartment building. Only a little of it hits the wall, the rest of it puddles on the sidewalk. 

Richie’s eyes stream. He takes off his glasses, wipes his eyes on his sleeve, then his mouth. He can’t bring himself to grimace down at his newly dirty sleeve - he has bigger, more awful things to worry about. 

Derry. Derry . Home sweet

(this thing kills kids you k-killed my brother you m-motherf-fucker WELCOME TO THE LOSERS CLUB ASSHOLE)

home.

After a few more pitiful gags, during which only a string of yellow spit comes out, Richie straightens back up and heads into the apartment building. He has enough money to scrape a flight together. He books a return flight and determinedly doesn’t think about whether or not he’ll be there at the airport after spending a few days in Derry, doesn’t wonder if this is the last time he’ll ever see his apartment, its scraggly walls and sink that stops working three times a week.

He throws his stuff - almost all his clothes, which aren’t much - into a bag and heads to the airport and doesn’t think about it, doesn’t think about anything, tries to keep his mind clear and empty, but that’s never been his strong suit. The memories come anyway - not all of them, not all at once, just a slow trickle that still makes Richie have to get the driver to pull over so he can vomit at the side of the road.

Home again, he thinks blearily as he wipes his mouth, stares down at the sandwich he’d only eaten ten minutes ago, which his stomach had very quickly rebelled against, like, no sir, all of us is messed up right now and that includes the stomach, get ready to eject.

Richie giggles weakly. His stomach gurgles. He’s hungry again, which is annoying. He’ll have to grab something at the airport.

Home . Oh, god.

Many things happened over the next 12 hours, and Maturin watched.

Mike Hanlon finished his calls and spent a long time staring at the phone, biting at his thumbnail. Then he got up and looked over his research - interviews he’d done with people who’d been around for Derry history, then books and records for the rest of it.

His Granddad began to cough, and Mike went to him. It was time to take him back to the hospital, but Granddad wanted to die at home, so Mike bent to his wishes. As he fed Granddad his soup and got him water, Mike wanted to ask, again, about the fire that burned down the nightclub, and the bird that his Granddad had seen that night. The same bird that Mike had seen at age 12, the impossible bird that IT had turned into. 

But Granddad had only mentioned it once, months ago, when he’d been doped up to the gills at the hospital. Mike didn’t think Granddad realized he’d told him. He’d gotten the feeling that Granddad had tried to forget all about it, had convinced himself he never saw anything in the first place. So Mike stayed silent, and thought about his friends coming home, and prayed to God he hadn’t just doomed them all.

Beverly Marsh stormed around her apartment, throwing things in a suitcase and leaving, red spots high on her cheeks - not from being hit, just from rage. The memories were hazy, faded, but the gist of them were there, and that was all she needed to be mad. She had been barrelling straight for the old hurt, goddamnit, and she would’ve welcomed it with open arms. She barely remembered that she’d have to call work tomorrow and tell them she couldn’t make it for a few days, and this made her think of Tom’s voice in the background, asking if Bev was okay. This made her angry enough that she smashed a lamp against the wall, after which she got a dustbin brush and swept it up. 

Eddie Kasprack experienced the same revelation. His was more muted, though there was anger - at himself, at his mother, a little at Myra. How could he have done this to himself? Why was he like this? How could he have gone right back to taking pills, those pills he’d forgotten were - were - there was something wrong with them, or maybe with him, or both at once. He called to cancel his upcoming driving appointments. He called Myra, told her their date for tonight was cancelled, and had to hang up on her asking him what was wrong, saying she was coming over. Eddie got out of his apartment before she could.

Stanley Uris acted strange enough around the phonecall to arise his wife’s suspicion, who then came up to knock on the door about a minute after the bathroom door closed. This was lucky - a few minutes later, and she would’ve been too late, the damage would have already been done. But she did knock, and Stan had not finished the cuts yet, he had only just started. He said that he was okay, for her to go back into the lounge, but Patricia Uris heard his voice break and refused to go. She ended up almost smashing the door down with an ornamental vase before Stan opened it, towels wrapped around one of his arms, his whole body shaking like a live wire.

Ben Hascom calmly called into work to let them know he wasn’t going to be able to make it for the next few days, then arranged for someone to take care of his dog while he was away. He booked a flight. He packed his bags, then ate a salad and three protein bars. As he was leaving his house, a memory came back and he dug into his pocket for his wallet. When he opened it, he could, for the first time, faintly remember who had signed the yearbook page he’d been keeping in his wallet since he was a kid.

Red hair, he remembered. She had red hair.

Bill Denbrough cried on his couch after getting the call. Like everyone else, he couldn’t remember all of it, but he remembered enough, and the barely-there memory of Georgie got him crying harder than he’d cried in as long as he could remember. There were memories of crying as hard as this, but they were still out of reach for now. Bill cried and thought of paper boats and policemen coming to their door. He made the connection between this and a story he’d written, the only one he’d gotten published, which had been about a boy taking on a monster in a basement. Then he got up and booked a flight to Maine.

Richie Tozier got in a plane. He, like the rest of the Losers, had been getting the occasional throbbing headache, and, like the rest of the Losers, he hadn’t been able to even begin to connect them to Maturin. None of them remembered Maturin, apart from some incredibly fuzzy dreams that slipped away whenever they tried to pinpoint them. 

Richie Tozier got on a plane, and immediately grabbed a puke bag as he sat down in his seat. Apparently suppressed memories triggered his gag reflex. He tried, again, to quiet his mind, but it didn’t work. The memories were coming back, fleeting and old, some of them clear, some of them hazy. He remembered, mostly, his friends, and what they had been like. He remembered the clubhouse Ben had built, and the crummy apartment building where Bev had lived, and Bill’s stutter which they would’ve all followed to the ends of the Earth. He remembered Stan’s dry wit and Mike’s big goddamn heart. He remembered waiting on Eddie’s porch for Mrs. K to open the door so Richie could ask if Eddie could come out to play. He remembered that porch, kicking pebbles around, glimpsing Mrs. K peeking at him through the curtains and wishing she’d just open the door instead of hoping Richie would go away if she left him long enough. Because Richie was never going to go away, not when Eddie was involved.

This memory made Richie clutch the puke bag in his hand tighter. He didn’t use it, even when they ran into turbulence and the guy next to him clutched at the arm of the chair like a life preserver. Instead, Richie rode it out, let the memories come, and tried not to get too

tried not to get too

not to get too

get too

“lost,” Richie explains. He gestures at the terrible map the last guy had drawn on his arm.

“They’ve put new things in since I was here,” he says. “There’s a fucking mall , okay? It’s a whole new world. Anyway, I’m supposed to go to this Chinese place, and that’s supposed to be near this new mall, and I thought I’d be able to find a big ol’ mall in the town I grew up in, but apparently, no dice! So if you could just point me towards-”

“Richie!”

Richie freezes. He turns. Across the parking lot stands a gorgeous woman with red hair, smiling at him in a way that makes him sad he can’t fall in love with her. There’s something -

She puts her hands on her hips. “You just gonna stand there staring, Trashmouth?”

Richie blinks. Then he grins. 

“Miss Marsh ,” he says. “As I live and breathe!” 

He walks up and she follows suit, and they meet in the middle with a hug that squeezes the wind out of both of them. Richie’s mouth hurts from smiling so hard as he turns around, still half-hugging Bev, to wave at the guy he’d been talking to.

“Nevermind,” he calls. “Move along.”

He watches the guy start to walk off, then turns back to Bev.

“Hi!”

“Hi,” she says. “You got tall. Did you get tall before I left? Or did you leave first?”

“You left first,” Richie says. He hadn’t remembered before now, but it comes easily. “You and Bill, about a year after that summer.”

“Right,” Bev says. “You were not this tall back then.”

“Nope,” Richie says. “Had a growth spurt at 16. I’m taller than everybody , Bev. Unless the others grew more after I left. Seventeen,” he adds when she looks at him questioningly. 

She nods. Tucks her hair behind her ears. Smiles some more, and Richie smiles back, giddy with it. Beverly Marsh . God. He could remember all of it, almost - smoking with her behind the bleachers and in the backyard of her aunt’s house after her dad died that summer. He could make her laugh so hard milk came out of her nose and they’d teased each other mercilessly. She’d painted his nails once, in a fit of summer boredom - black, obviously. Any other colour was too girly.

“I’m lost,” Richie admits. “Do you know where the fuck the Chinese place is? ‘Cause this feels like a whole new town, I don’t know how to get around it.”

Bev’s face goes shuttered. “It hasn’t changed that much.”

“No,” he agrees. “I just mean-”

“I know,” she says. “Uh, I was gonna head that way.”

She points at the main road. 

“Follow the river, right,” Richie says. “Got it. After you, Miss Marsh. Or is it Mrs , now?”

He peers at her hands, but she flutters her bare fingers.

“Nope, not yet,” she says. “Come on, Rich, we’re barely in our mid-twenties.”

They fall into step beside each other and she continues, “Why, what about you? Is there a Mrs. Tozier waiting back home?”

Richie’s chest twists with a thousand unnamable things.

“Nope,” he says, popping the p. “Just me. A lone wolf. Prowling the streets, looking for prey.”

“Ew,” she says when he mock-bites her neck. “Here’s a tip, Rich - don’t describe women as prey .”

“Sound advice from milady,” Richie says, barely listening to whatever the fuck he’s saying because of how damn normal this all is. There are people, he’s heard, that you always stay in the same place with - whatever dynamic you have when you meet them, that’s how it always stays. Doesn’t matter if you’re 12 or 26 or 40, you guys will always default back to what you were at the start.

Richie isn’t sure that bodes well for

(shut up richie that’s disgusting get it away from me you’re such an asshole don’t you know that you can get malaria from that no seriously rich put it down)

everyone else.

They find the Chinese place. It’s further away from the mall than Richie had been told. He whines about this to Bev, who calls him a baby and shoves him a little, and Richie realizes he’s missed her desperately. He has the looming feeling that he’s missed them all desperately, and he’s not going to realize how much until he sees them again. 

This feeling is confirmed when he walks into the restaurant and sees Ben, Mike, Bill and Eddie sitting around the table, all talking as if - well, as if they haven’t seen each other in over a decade. Which, hey, happens to be the case.

The conversation yanks to a halt when Richie and Bev walk in. 

Richie waves. “Hey, Losers.”

Mike’s the first one out of his chair. He stands up like he’s got springs attached, then launches himself at both of them, hugging Bev and then Richie hard enough that they look at each other while it’s happening, like, ooookay! This is a thing!

“Missed you too, Mikey,” Richie says. He plays it as a joke, but he thinks Mike catches the current of sincerity running under it. 

Mike’s eyes are wide and warm when he pulls back. “Good to see you guys.”

“You too, Mike,” Bev says. She squeezes his shoulder.

Mike squeezes her hand where it’s touching him, then gestures at the table. “Come sit!”

Richie does, but only after Ben’s gotten up and hugged him and Bill leans over the table and shakes his shoulder and Eddie - well, Eddie looks like he’s going to do something , but Richie can’t handle that right now so he reaches out and ruffles Eddie’s hair over the empty seat between them.

“Come on , dude,” Eddie says, and it’s snappish and familiar and makes Richie fucking ache .

“What,” Richie says. “I missed my Eddie Spaghetti!”

“Oh fuck ,” Eddie says, face creasing up. “I blocked that out. Don’t call me that, man.”

“What? Eddie Sp-”

“Don’t make me wrestle you in this restaurant,” Eddie begs. “Don’t make me do it, I will do it but I really don’t want to, this is a public place, just shut up .”

Richie’s shaking with laughter by the time Eddie stops talking. He’s aged well - all of them have, somehow. But they’re all still the same people behind the cosmetic changes - even Ben, who has dropped however many pounds and carries himself entirely differently, is still obviously the same kind goofball he was at age 12. 

“You’re gonna wrestle me,” Richie says. “What the fuck, Eds, I ruffled your hair and you’re gonna knock me to the ground for it?”

“I forgot how annoying you are,” Eddie says. “I gotta make up for lost time.”

But then he cracks a smile, and it turns into a grin, and then they’re beaming at each other like idiots. Yeah, nothing’s changed, not really.

Mike leans forwards in his chair, puts his hands on the table. “Okay! Now we’re just waiting for Stan, then we can get started.”

“Right,” Ben says. “Get started. Hey, Mike, you wanna tell us what we’re starting?”

“Nope,” Mike says. “That would be counted as starting. And we can’t until Stan gets here.”

“I feel like I want to get this over with,” Eddie says. “Like - Mike, you’re not going to tell us anything… good, are you?”

Mike takes a long drink of water. He doesn’t say anything.

“Great,” Eddie says. “That’s promising.”

“It’s really good to see you guys,” Mike says.

It’s a blatant distraction, but it gets them all smiling. Because they have missed each other, and a day ago most of them didn’t know who or what it was they were missing. Now they knew, and they had each other sitting around a table, falling back to the same dynamics they built as children. Even with the looming dread of what Mike will tell them, being reunited is a relief so big it almost drowns it out.

Forty minutes later, they’ve ordered food and Stan still hasn’t arrived. Mike calls his cell and it goes to voicemail.

“Maybe we should start and Stan can catch up when he g-gets here,” Bill suggests.

Mike frowns. He still has his phone out in front of him on the table. He opens his mouth, then looks up and his face changes.

“Or we could start now,” a voice says from the doorway to the alcove where their table is.

Richie looks behind him. Stan - because it is Stan, of course it is, no other 20-something would be wearing such a respectable cardigan, the fucker probably irons it along with all the rest of his clothes - looks tired, and reluctant, and he has some very prominent, bulky bandages poking out from under his left sleeve.

“Hi, guys,” Stan says. He raises his good hand in a wave. 

Mike immediately gets up and bear-hugs him.

“Oof,” Stan says. “Alright.”

Mike eventually lets him go, then touches the shoulder of his bad arm. “What happened, man?”

Stan sits down at the seat between Eddie and Richie and takes a dumpling off of Richie’s plate.

“Hey,” Richie says.

Stan ignores him. “I’ll tell you later,” he says. He chews his dumpling. “Your thing sounds more important, Mike. What’d you bring us back for?”

He says it plainly, but Richie can see it in his eyes, a flash of three rotating lights - Stan knows. Stan knows like all of them know, but Stan somehow knows it more clearer than anyone, even maybe Mike.

Mike lowers his head. His mouth pinches. He looks back up.

“IT’s back,” he says.

This is met with a round of silence. Richie swallows. Clown. Mike mentioned a clown, there was -

Beside him, Stan crosses his arms. Richie glances over to find Stan with his eyes closed, a muscle in his jaw flexing. Beside him, Eddie’s face has gone grey.

“Pennywise,” Bev whispers.

“Yeah,” Mike says. “All of that should be coming back ‘round about now. Sorry, guys.”

“I - i-” Bill grits his teeth. “I-IT’s back? How-”

“I don’t know,” Mike says. “Thing is - I don’t know how much you guys remember, but it really shouldn’t be-”

“It’s early,” Stan says.

Mike nods. “Yeah. Usually the cycles happen every 27 years.”

“It’s only been 13,” Eddie says after a second. He looks around the table like he might be wrong about the number of years in his life. “Right?”

“You’re right,” Mike says. 

Bill’s hands are shaking. Richie doesn’t blame him. His own hands are shaking, too, though he’s keeping them in his lap.

“Any theories, Mike,” Stan asks quietly.

“Some,” Mike says. “But one - it just feels right. You know?”

They know. Some things that summer just felt right . Before Mike had stumbled into the group, the Losers had been collecting rocks. Ammo for Bowers and his cronies, who they didn’t know where anywhere near, yet they somehow knew a threat was on its way. Then when Mike showed up - no one had been surprised. They had been expectant. 

Oh , Richie remembers thinking, clear as a bell, as Mike had appeared through the trees and out into the clearing. There you are.

He gets the feeling that everyone else must’ve had a similar, if not identical thought. It was the same thought Richie had had whenever any of the others had come into the group - beyond that summer, even. When he’d met Bill and Eddie and later Stan, it had been the same overwhelming relief and recognition: Oh, there you are. I’ve been waiting for you.

“What’s the theory,” Ben asks.

“Uh,” Mike says. He scratches his nose. “So - the last time we faced IT, we hurt IT. Not bad, but enough to end the cycle early, right? We hurt it, and it lost some energy. Now, IT’s making up for what we did by coming back early.”

This sinks into the table. 

“Wait,” Richie says slowly. “You’re telling me that the demon alien clown came back 14 years before it was supposed to because it’s snacky ?”

“Yep,” Mike says. “Pretty much. It might be something else, but - that feels right.”

“Well,” Richie says. “Shit.” 

He combs his memories, tries to remember that last fight

(weight of a baseball bat in his hands swinging hard swinging for his life for his friends oh god oh god we’re all gonna die down here)

and most of it comes back, but only in patches. He has faint memories of IT’s head flaking off into pieces, but it’s so faint it could be a dream.

“So we have to kill IT,” Ben says. “For real, this time.”

Mike nods. “I think we have to.”

Stan makes a noise in his throat. “Or,” he says, “we could all just leave .”

Everyone looks at him. Eddie meets Richie’s eyes and makes a face that Richie translates as the guy’s got a point.

“We can’t just leave,” Ben says, but Stan’s already talking.

“We have no obligation to-” Stan takes a deep breath through his nose. “To do this. We can get up right now, get our stuff, and leave Derry together.”

“Stan,” Mike says. He lowers his voice. “Kids are dying .”

“I know,” Stan says, and his voice breaks, but only a little. “But that’s not on us, that’s on a - an otherworldly evil entity hellbent on devouring children. We’re not doing anything. We don’t owe this place shit.”

“Maybe not,” Mike says. “But we are the only ones who can stop it.”

“Says who , Mike?”

“Says me ,” Mike says. “Says - says you . Says us , right? Guys?”

He looks around the table, desperation clear in his eyes.

Richie winces. He’d been immediately on board the Leaving Derry plan.

“We can stop other k-kids from dying,” Bill says. His tone is very solemn and everyone quietens to look at him. 

Bill continues, “I don’t know if we can kill IT. But we’re the only ones who even have the possibility of killing IT. I can’t walk away from this place without knowing we did all we could to kill this son of a bitch. So I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m staying.”

He looks at them all and Richie knows in his gut that all of them are going to walk right back into the sewers because it’s Bill, and because he’s asking them to do it. Not directly, but it’s like last time: Bill walking into the house, and none of them being able to abandon him. It’s as good as asking them to come along, because of course they will, it’s Bill .

A memory hits, so blinding Richie has to close his eyes

( hey big bill you didn’t stutter once during that )

and his heart sinks. They’re not gonna get dragged into the belly of the beast, they’re going to walk right in. 

Richie turns around and waves at a waitress. “Yeah, hi! Can we get a round of drinks? Literally anything. We do not care. Oh, cheap! Anything cheap. Thank youuuuu.”

He turns back to the table. Eddie meets his eyes again, then nods at Stan - Stan, who is shaking slightly, his hands clenched.

“I can’t go back in that house,” he says, voice shot through with tears.

Richie goes to touch his arm, and suddenly knows what the bandages are from.

“Stan,” he says. “Hey. Stanley Urine.”

Stan glares at him.

“I know,” Richie says. “But we’re gonna - we can do this, man. Probably. I don’t know.”

“Great motivational speech, asshole,” Eddie stage-whispers.

Richie makes a face at him, then turns back to Stan.

“The best shot we’ve got,” Richie says, “is if we’re all in this together.”

He knows this is true. Knows it like he knows a lot of things that he shouldn’t know, not really, but knows them anyway. And judging by how Stan’s eyeing him, he knows too.

Richie squeezes his shoulder. “Just stick with us, buddy. We won’t let IT eat your face this time.”

Stan shudders, and Eddie kicks Richie under the table.

“Ow,” Richie says.

“Didn’t eat my face,” Stan mumbles.

Richie squints. The scars from the toothmarks are still edging the sides of his face, but barely.

Richie pats his shoulder. “Almost did, pal. But not this time! This time you’ve got the Losers 2.0, all shiny and new and now tall enough to ride scary rides at Disneyworld. Well, except Eddie.”

“I’m 5’9,” Eddie says. “That’s the average height of the world!”

“Keep telling yourself that, Eds,” Richie says. “Stan, are you in? Oh god, why the hell am I talking you into this?”

Stan sighs. “‘Cause you know it’s our best shot.”

“Right,” Richie says. His throat clicks. “Man, I haven’t missed the whole - instinctively Knowing things.”

“Yeah,” Stan croaks. “It’s weird.”

He wipes his face as the waitress starts to bring them drinks - a tray full of shots of clear liquid, which is a start. Richie takes his from the waitress before she even sets it down and throws it back.

He’s wincing at the taste when another waitress comes bearing a load of fortune cookies.

“Oh, hey,” Richie says. “Who ordered those?”

Everyone glances around the table, but no one raises a hand.

“Whatever,” Richie says, which is his first mistake, one he’ll look back on later and want to hit himself for. He reaches for one, as does everyone else.

“Can’t wait to see what this is,” Richie says as he turns his cookie around in his hand. “ You will soon be eaten up by a large monster. Have a nice day .”

It earns him a few halfhearted snorts, at least. He checks to see if Eddie’s laughing and gets a small smile in return. Richie smiles back, as much as he’ll allow himself. A thousand memories float out of reach, and Richie doesn’t grab for them. He doesn’t want them. If he hadn’t had them magically erased, he’d still repress the fuck out of them. Clown memories, sure, who needs that kind of trauma - but also the ones about Bowers. The ones about his nightmares, turning into a werewolf or being chased by one or both, unable to control his desires and transforming into something horrific. He still gets those nightmares, but they’re muddled now, and he shoves them right down whenever he wakes up from one. He doesn’t need a therapist to sit him down and tell him oh yeah, that indicates a lot of really fucked up stuff, probably to do with your homosexual urges which you’ve been keeping a lid on since you were 10. He fucking knows , alright, he doesn’t need to think about them, so why not shove them down far enough you can pretend they don’t exist?

And Eddie - 

Richie looks away, down at the fortune cookie. He’d always had a thing for loud, pissy, secretly sweet brunettes, and now he knows why. It’s because he’d never gotten over his first - ugh, his first love , as mortifying as it is to admit, even to himself. Remembering Eddie, seeing him again, is like a series of mismatched puzzles finally clicking into place. This is why I had a crush on my college roommate who teased the shit out of me and yelled at me when I didn’t do the dishes, this is why I had all those strange guilty dreams of hammocks and swimming in quarries trying not to look at some boy’s wet skin, this is why, this, this , it’s you -

He’s almost glad when everyone cracks open a fortune cookie and all hell breaks loose.

Chapter Text

In another world, it happened differently. Stan’s seat stayed empty and the Losers received a phone call informing them he wouldn’t be coming. In that world, it was later in the millennium and they were more solidly stuck in the lives they were leading. It was harder to move at 40 than it was at 26. This was true in many ways that didn’t involve joint pain.

In another world, Stan’s suicide broke the circle of the lucky seven. With the circle broken, they were lucky to get out alive at all, and most of them did. Eddie Kasprak, however, had to be left behind. His body did, anyway. His last words, as far as everyone thought, were “I fucked your mom.” His actual last words came as Eddie watched his friends chant in a circle a dozen feet away. He tried to keep his eyes open, but they drooped anyway. He could feel the life ebbing from him, and as it ebbed it was replaced by something clear and shining that washed through him, getting clearer and more shining the bigger it got inside of him.

As he died, Eddie thought distantly of purification. He thought of his friends. Then his last words and last thoughts slipped from him:  “Rich, you know I… I...”

And with that, Eddie Kasprak died. His body stayed down in the cistern. After the Losers left it - some more voluntarily than others - none of the Losers ever saw him again.

But that world is not this one. 

In this world, Patricia Uris helped her husband pack his arm - just one arm, and not enough deep cuts to do the job - with towels and drove him to the emergency room. Ten hours later, Stan walked into a Chinese restaurant and sat down, and the circle of the lucky seven was complete for the first time in years.

In this world, the Losers were just starting out into adulthood. One day they would be successful, but for now they were scrounging in low-level jobs and figuring out how to make a life, how to make a person out of the half-formed shapes they felt they were. At 26, their life stretched out in front of them like Sylvia Plath’s fig tree, and they would all pick a fruit to bite into. That is, they would pick a path to go down.

In another world, they picked one path and walked down it until they got somewhere.

In this world, they were just starting down the path. They would have gotten somewhere, if a glitch in IT’s cycle had not occurred, if it had stayed dormant for the usual 27 years as it did in the other world. All seven of the Losers would have picked a path that would lead them somewhere they would one day have to break out of. 

In this world, they 

“went another way.”

“We didn’t,” Mike says as he walks them to the Inn. “We always went down Murray Street to get to the Barrens.”

Eddie frowns. The memories are clearer now, but apparently not as good as Mike’s, who had never left Derry. The idea makes Eddie’s stomach curdle. What if IT had come back after 27 years like IT was supposed to? Would Mike have kept playing lighthouse keeper until he was middle aged, waiting for the day everyone would gravitate back home?

Eddie has the sinking feeling that Mike would. Someone had to, they couldn’t all escape and have their memories erased. One of them had to stick around so they could remember, and apparently that one had been Mike. 

Eddie almost wants to apologize for leaving Mike holding the bag. The bag, in this case, being the potential of a muderclown popping up and murdering the unsuspecting children of Derry after a certain amount of years.

“That sounds right,” Ben says. “Man, I really hoped I’d remember things from class, but nope. Street names.”

“That’s how it goes, doc,” Richie says in a Daffy Duck Voice. “The stuff you studied for months on end? Nothing. Random memory nuggets of unimportant shit? It’s in there forever. Unless you get memory-wiped by an alien clown. Hey, how the fuck do we know IT’s an alien? Like, it’s in the ol’ knowledge bank, it feels true, but-”

“The smoke hole,” Bill says, going distant for a moment before blinking back.

Eddie doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and then he 

(the clubhouse choked with bamboo smoke shapes of his friends through the blur of it heavy in his lungs oh god it’s too much)

stumbles over nothing. Richie puts a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“I’m fine,” Eddie croaks. There’s the ghost of smoke in his lungs, which had him bailing out before almost anyone else. He’d wheezed until his throat became a pinhole and blindly climbed out, someone - Stan? Yeah, Stan had left first - grabbing his hand when Eddie reached into the open air. 

He looks up at Richie as they keep walking. Judging by his expression, he’s just had a memory blast too. Eddie bets it was bigger than Eddie’s - after all, Richie had been one of the only ones able to withstand the smoke long enough to get the visions.

Eddie snorts under his breath. God. Visions and murderclowns , oh my. In his head it comes in Richie’s voice, dry as smoke.

“Dude,” Eddie says.

Richie meets his eyes, dazed and troubled.

Eddie says, “We had a weird fucking childhood.”

The troubled look flashes away from Richie’s face, though the dazed part sticks around.

“You said it, hombre,” Richie says. He moves like he’s about to sling his arm over Eddie’s shoulder, then aborts it in mid-motion. Eddie looks away, towards the street in front of them, and tries to convince himself he’s not disappointed.

Apart from the reunion and the demented fortune cookies, the night is uneventful. This is suspicious enough that Eddie lies awake until 1am frozen solid, listening for any kind of noise. He has disturbing dreams, but that’s to be expected, all Neibolt and sewers and 

(eds eddie no hey don’t look at it just look at me LOOK AT ME i’ll do it for a dime i’ll blow you for free kid)

other things he hasn’t thought about in years. He wakes up needing to shower and scrub himself in a way he hasn’t done since his mother died, needing to be goddamn clean and never quite getting there. When he gets like this the dirt feels like it’s under his skin, like he could cut himself to bits and wash around his organs, filter his blood and polish his bones and it would still never be enough, it’s in him in a way that surpasses his body. It’s in his soul, if those exist. Eddie doesn’t know if he believes in souls, but if they do, that’s where the dirt lives, all the bacteria and infection that never stops lying in wait for Eddie to let his guard down. Then it’s gonna pounce, it’s gonna get him, and -

“You look like shit,” Richie tells him at breakfast. 

Eddie glares. Richie doesn’t look too hot either, all eyebags and jitters he’s trying to hide.

“Back at you, dick,” Eddie says. “What’s that, your fourth cup of coffee?”

“Fuck you,” Richie says mildly. He takes a sip. “Third.”

“Oh, so much better.”

Richie grins. Eddie starts assembling his own coffee so he doesn’t do anything stupid, like smile back with everything playing out on his face, all the realization of how much he’s missed Richie shining through. Because it’s easy to sit here and shoot the shit with Richie just like they did as kids and then as teenagers, it feels normal, but part of Eddie wants to just - cling , and not let go, and tell Richie all about how fucking miserable he’s been and how he wants Richie to climb in through his window like he did when they were kids, to climb in through the window of his life and make things better, or at least provide humorous commentary while Eddie’s life continues to be a shitfest.

“Are you having marshmallows with your fucking coffee,” Eddie says instead.

Richie gestures at the Inn kitchen, which is just as unattended as the front desk. 

“They’re available,” Richie says. “So yeah, I’m having marshmallows with my coffee. Why aren’t you, you fucking weirdo? Do you still have a list of foods you aren’t allowed to eat?”

Eddie opens his mouth, then remembers. He’d started to give that up, after that summer. He’d stopped believing everything his mom told him, he’d eaten peanuts and found out that he did not, in fact, have an allergy to them. He’d found a new freedom, he’d thrown away his inhaler after he’d found out that his pills were -

“Oh, fuck,” Eddie says. “The pills were fucking fake ! That’s what-”

He digs his inhaler out of his pocket. He’s carried one ever since he - ever since he went back to the Neibolt house and picked his fanny pack back up. He’d been free and then he’d just went straight back -

Richie is staring at him. He’s holding a tiny pink marshmallow he’d filched from a glass jar, but doesn’t raise it to his mouth.

Eddie’s throat starts to close up. He bends over the counter, wheezing.

“Shit,” Richie says. “Hey, Eds-”

Eddie turns away from him. He tries desperately to get a proper breath, but his throat is about the size of a pinhole. He sucks air and clenches his inhaler, brings it up to his face, hand shaking around it.

“Eds,” Richie says. “Hey - hey, look at me, alright?”

Eddie closes his eyes

(look at me don’t look at IT eds look at)

and opens them when Richie’s hand closes around his shoulder.

“You’re okay,” Richie says. His eyes are wide and unsure, which isn’t comforting, but the fact that it’s Richie’s eyes is comforting.

“Uh,” Richie continues. “You gonna use that inhaler or-”

Eddie makes a ragey noise through his teeth. It’s mostly lost in his breath, but Richie seems to get it.

“Okay, okay,” Richie says. “Breathe with me, alright?”

Eddie wheezes in response. When Richie takes a slow, deep breath, Eddie can’t begin to follow suit. He glares at the inhaler he’s clutching, almost brings it to his mouth. It would be easy. It would make him be able to breathe again - 

Eddie’s vision starts to tunnel. Richie is in the middle of taking another breath when Eddie gives in, shoves the inhaler between his own teeth and presses the trigger. The taste is foul and comforting and fucking water vapor with medicine  flavoring, something he found out at age 12 and then forgot. Not at first - at first he went back to it because his mother was worried about him, and he wanted to make her happy even if he didn’t trust her anymore. Then he kept using it out of habit. Then he got out of Derry and things went back to normal. Normal being Eddie using medicine he didn’t need, even after his mother died and stopped fussing over him about it. He hadn’t stopped, he couldn’t stop, he’s sick. There’s something wrong with him, he’d grown up believing it, he still believes it, and this sick thing won’t shake out even with Eddie remembering the medicine is fake.

His vision keeps swimming until he takes a few lungfuls of air. He keeps his gaze on the floor so he won’t have to look Richie in the face, who had said “Ooo-kay,” when Eddie sucked on the inhaler and is now patting Eddie awkwardly on the back.

“C - cut it out,” Eddie says when he can manage language again.

He expects Richie to pat harder, but Richie immediately drops his hand.

When everyone’s awake and fed, Mike arrives at the Inn.

“Right,” Mike says. He puts his hands on his hips. “So! I think you should all go walking around town. Alone.”

This is met with a series of blank stares, some of them more incredulous than others. 

“You mean we should split up, ” Richie says. “Hey Mikey, you ever seen Scooby Doo?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “I’m with Rich. That sounds like a bad idea.”

Richie points at him. “Listen to Scoob.”

“Why am I Scooby?”

“You’re the smallest,” Richie deadpans.

Eddie has his mouth open, almost ready to point at Bill and Bev before Mike cuts him off with, “I know, okay? I know. It just - it feels right .”

A moment passes where everyone checks in with themselves. Eddie is dismayed to find that the internal Intuition they used to have in spades when they were kids - which has shrank over the years but is by no means gone - echoes Mike’s words. Going out into Derry alone sounds right , in the same way that Mike stumbling into the Barrens felt right .

He looks over at Richie, who looks just as reluctant as Eddie does, but also has the same resignation: shit, we’re actually doing this.

“Right,” Mike says. He puts his hands on his hips. “Everyone has a cellphone, right?”

Everyone nods except Bill. 

“I can’t afford one y-yet,” Bill says.

“Well,” Richie says. “If you run into anything weird, just scream real loud.”

“Th-thanks, Rich.”

“ So loud,” Richie says. 

Everyone else trades numbers, and Eddie walks off with his heart thudding hard in his chest. Going out alone feels right , sure, but only in his Intuition. Every other part of him is screaming at him to head back into the group, to dummy up like they used to do as kids, safety in numbers, right? They’d always been told that, whenever the curfew was mentioned. Travel in packs. And they did - they did, they always tried to, but sometimes they ended up alone anyway. 

Eddie shudders

( blow you for a dime )

but keeps walking.

At first he thinks he’s walking aimlessly, but soon realizes that’s not the case. It becomes clear the moment the Pharmacy sign appears down the road.

Eddie swallows and stops.

There’s a moment, a strange, dreading second where he might glimpse everything that happens in that place. But it’s only a second, and then it’s gone, and Eddie is left blinking the sweat out of his eyes. 

He hasn’t moved. The Pharmacy is still in front of him, less than a minute’s walk away.

He frowns. Tries grasping at whatever that last second of thought had brought him, but whatever had been given to him had been taken away just as fast.

The Pharmacy looms.

As he has done countless times before, Eddie walks towards it.

After

( what are you looking for eddie did you miss me i’ve missed you i’ll still blow you for )

that, Eddie walks until he stops shaking. It takes a while, and he’s distracted, which is probably why his feet take him along familiar roads. When he tunes back in, he’s mostly stopped trembling and he’s standing in front of his old goddamn house.

“Oh, fuck ,” Eddie says as it registers. 

The house is the same, if a little older. Eddie can relate to every bit of chipped paint - time has passed, it’s a little worse for wear, sure, but the foundations are the same. He’s gripped by the idea that if he walked inside, things would be exactly the same - his mother in her armchair in front of the TV, asking what took him so long and what he did that day. He’d answer her questions and then go up the stairs and he wouldn’t have to bend for that dip in the ceiling because he was twelve again and the ceiling missed him by many inches. He’d go up into his room and unclick his fanny pack from around his waist and check his pills, make sure they’re all accounted for, and then read some comics or do his homework and desperately ignore the sense that he’s being choked , that he’s being pressed in from all sides, which persists even when he’s in the safety of his room.

Eddie

( don’t be mad at my mommy she’s just eating me because she loves me )

flinches, the shakes coming back even though he’s standing on the other side of the road from the house. She’s just eating me because she loves me - Eddie remembers that now. He’d said that to a nurse while she was tending to his broken arm, while his mother screamed in the background. The nurse had been - angry, he remembers. Not at him. For him. It had been weird and touching to Eddie, who wouldn’t put together that he was mixing up his mother and IT until later, and only be a little horrified by it.

The horror is back again, but it’s distant now. 

Eddie checks in with his Intuition, trying to see what’s right to do. 

Come on, he thinks. Give me a helping hand. Please, god, don’t make me go in there -

“Wanna float ,” a voice says, close to his ear.

Eddie screams and narrowly avoids punching Richie in his stupid fucking face, and only because Richie dodges.

“Whoa,” Richie says, holding up both his hands. “There’s the fight in fight or flight, holy shit! Were you always this jumpy?”

Eddie stares at him. Then he braces his hands on his knees, wheezing.

“Shit,” Richie says. He comes closer, hovers his hand over Eddie’s back, but Eddie slaps it away.

“You-” Eddie raises his head to glare at him. “You are such an asshole .”

Richie’s smile is thin. “That’s me, baby.”

“ Why did you think that would be a good idea?”

Richie shrugs. It’s jerky. “I dunno, I wasn’t thinking. Since when do I think? Do you remember me at all, Eds?”

Eddie takes another deep breath, then straightens. He suddenly wants to shower so bad he’d give over his life savings for it.

“Unfortunately,” he says.

Richie snorts. 

Eddie looks him over. Richie had been awkward and gangly when he’d started growing into those ridiculous limbs, but it seems like he’s still not that used to them. At least, he doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands now.

“What’s with you?”

“What?” Richie had been looking at Eddie’s old house. “Nothing. Ran into the ol’ clown. Looks like you did the same, what with the - wait, what even is that? Ectoplasm?”

Eddie winces. “Leper… vomit.”

Richie makes a face. “Vomit? How the fuck are you not scrubbing yourself down in a HAZMAT shower right now?”

Eddie sighs. “I know, I wanted to, I just - I wanted to walk first. You ran into Pennywise? What happened?”

Richie’s gaze goes shuttered. He looks down at his shoes, scuffs them against the concrete.

“Ah,” he says. “Y’know. Same old, same old. For a billion-year old alien, he’s not great with trying out new tricks. Just sticks to the same stuff.”

“Yeah?” Eddie tries to remember. There had been something with Bill, something about a horror movie they all went to see - “the werewolf?”

Richie flinches. It’s barely there, just in the line of his shoulders, but it’s enough.

Still, he doesn’t reply. Instead he turns, facing the house properly now.

“Why the hell’d you come back here,” he asks.

Eddie opens his mouth. Closes it. 

“It just happened,” he says. “I didn’t want-”

He stops. There are a hundred ways to end that sentence. I didn’t want -

What? To leave his friends? To forget? To have his mom die and start dating a carbon-copy of her before she was even cold in the ground? To date someone even remotely like her at all ?

He doesn’t say any of it, but Richie’s looking at him in a way that suggests he hears some of them anyway. It makes Eddie’s skin crawl, Richie possibly knowing about Myra, about how helpless Eddie has been.

“She died last year,” Eddie says, and it feels like an escape and a trap all at once. “My mom.”

“I’m sorry,” Richie says immediately.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “You hated her.”

“Yeah, but she was still your mom,” Richie says, just as instant as I’m sorry . It’s surprising - Eddie had expected him to scoff and say something about how he was in love with her. 

Then Richie continues, “And it was a mutual hate, fueling our torrid love affair, I gotta tell you, Eds, she-”

Eddie shoves him. “She’s dead , you dick!”

Richie rolls with the shove, comes right back like one of those rubber punching dolls. 

“And I mourn her everyday,” Richie says. “Wait, no - she didn’t tell you? She totally faked her death, dude. We’re living it up in LA, I fall asleep every night buried in her fat folds-”

“You’re such a fucking asshole,” Eddie says. “Shut up , dude.”

Richie pockets his hands. “You never used to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Call me dude ,” Richie says. “Or man . What is that, some New York thing?”

“Uh, yeah,” Eddie says, instead of I started doing it when my mom told me I was effeminate one time too many, I think I’m trying to prove something to everyone but mostly myself . The chasm between himself at 26 and himself at 12 feels non existent and leagues away all at once. How can Eddie be so similar to that boy and so different? Is everyone else like this? Eddie has a sinking feeling that they are, that down deep everyone’s the same kid they were at 12, and they’ve just piled their grown-up selves on top of it. One scrape and there they are, their true, scared, child selves under all the wrapping. Just waiting for the scrape. Waiting -

“Let’s get out of here,” Eddie says. His voice is hoarse.

He starts walking away. Richie doesn’t hesitate, says, “You read my mind,” and Eddie listens to their steps fall into sync, just like they used to.

Eddie tries to feel like he isn’t running away from something. Tries not to tell Richie sometimes I feel like running away is all I do, I’m trying to get away and I don’t always know what I’m trying to get away from, do you know what that’s -

“Rich,” Eddie says. “At the Jade, you said you do standup.”

“Uh,” Richie says. “I do do standup. Ha, do do -”

“Jesus Christ ,” Eddie says. “Do not - you just made a do do joke at 26, are you proud of yourself? Huh? I hope I never hear your standup, man, that’s fucking terrible .”

“Is there a follow up to that question or did you just bring it up to insult me?”

“I just wanted to insult you,” Eddie says, acting on autopilot. It’s easy, all of it - talking with Richie had always been easy, even when Eddie had been overcome with feelings and thoughts that he never let get coherent. They would start to make sense, form a word, but Eddie would smother them before they got sharp enough to understand.

When Richie grins, Eddie aches with it. After the age of maybe 14, he’d started looking away from Richie when he smiled. He couldn’t - he couldn’t . This thought was never allowed to complete itself. It always stopped at I can’t or I won’t. No context - nothing legible, anyway, nothing Eddie can point to and say this, this is what I’m running from, among other things.

“Never expected to come back here,” Richie says as they turn the road that leads them away from Eddie’s old house.

Eddie nods. “You always said you’d never come back.”

“And I intended to follow through on that,” Richie says. He kicks a rock out of place, then keeps kicking it in front of him as he walks. “Except. Y’know. The promise.”

Eddie’s hands sting with old scars. He watches Richie’s hands flex.

Long fingers, Eddie thinks, and then shoves that thought down.

“Yeah,” he says.

Richie looks troubled, but the kind that he’s covering with indifference. Eddie only recognizes it from years of trying to figure out what Richie was thinking. Because he could rarely tell, and Richie always covered everything with a veil of jokes. Anytime something serious came up, he’d do a fucking Voice or make a dick joke. Eddie’s still surprised he admitted to hating Eddie’s mother, even with Richie immediately following it up with a Your Mom joke.

“Do you think-” Richie pauses.

“What,” Eddie says.

“Nah,” Richie says. “Nevermind - ow.”

Eddie had hit him again. “Just say it, Trashmouth.”

Richie gives him a look, but it fades back into careful indifference.

“Do you think it’s better that we came back earlier,” he asks. “Rather than when we’re - what, 40?”

Eddie chews the inside of his cheek. He’d thought about this, but it’d been lost in the din of everything else.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I mean - we could die. If we got called back at 40, we’d at least get all that time rather than dying before we’re 30. So this is worse, right?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “I - yeah.”

“Do you not-”

“I don’t know,” Richie says. “I just - uh. I’m glad I remembered you guys before I’m 40.”

It happens again - a glimpse, a small second of it. Eddie isn’t sure how real it is, it’s pretty hazy: Eddie driving cars and not acting on his road rage except when he’s finally driving alone, careful driver my ass. Then he takes up the job in Risk Analysis. He panics over being alone, he has no friends except his girlfriend Myra, who is - who is - enough , maybe, and she takes care of him, and Eddie needs someone to

( cage him )

take care of him. So he proposes and she accepts and they get married and Eddie sweats through his suit and smiles for the cameras and his internal monologue is oh god oh god please please please . Life continues. Eddie gets up and brushes his teeth and flosses and scrubs himself down and takes his pills and goes to work and comes home and talks to Myra and goes to sleep and then does this until he’s 40, until he’s fucking forty , and then -

Eddie stops walking. There’s a lump in his throat. He swallows it.

Richie slows and stops. “Hey, you okay?”

Eddie blinks. It’s gone, it was never there, it was his imagination, it was 

(the turtle)

nothing important. Just more of Eddie’s panic.

“I’m fine,” Eddie says when Richie reaches out to touch his arm.

Richie doesn’t touch him. Eddie aches for something he can’t and won’t define.

I missed you , he thinks, bigger and more powerful than anything he’s ever thought. 

“Let’s go back to the Inn,” Eddie says.

Richie nods. 

They fall back into step. 

Not everyone’s back yet, so Richie and Eddie take up seats at the bar and pour themselves generous glasses. It’s not even 2pm but Eddie figures this counts as extraneous circumstances, they’re allowed to do a little daydrinking.

“We shouldn’t drink too much,” Eddie says. “In case we gotta fight a clown.”

“God, I wish that sentence didn’t make sense to me,” Richie says. “I wish that was just weird crazybabble. I’d just edge awkwardly away from you. What clown? I have no idea what you’re talking about, clearly insane man, and I’m going to leave now.”

“Nope,” Eddie says. He takes a sip of whiskey and winces. “You’re right down here in crazytown, Rich. With the rest of us. Fuck you for picking whiskey, by the way.”

Richie leans sideways and clinks his glass against Eddie’s. “What? Whiskey was our first drink.”

Eddie thinks about it, then groans. “Oh, god, it was . I blocked that out.”

Richie cackles.

Eddie watches him, watches the loose curve of his mouth, and remembers the whiskey - Richie had smuggled it out of his parent’s cupboard and brought it along to a sleepover. This had been a year after Bev and Bill had left, and about a month before Ben had left, which meant they were - 14? 15? Too young, however old they were. Definitely too young to be drinking straight whiskey. Richie had choked it down first, the same way he’d choked down his first cigarette: struggling not to spit the smoke/whiskey back out again, valiantly keeping a straight face while low-key gagging before straightening up and saying, it’s pretty good, Eds, you should try it.

Eddie had tried it, but in much smaller sips. His only saving grace was how used to swallowing awful-tasting medicine he was. The whiskey tasted awful, but nothing like medicine. Still, he’d managed to force it down, and it got easier the more he did it.

Apart from puking in Richie’s bathtub at one in the morning, that had been a good night. Eddie smiles, remembering.

Then he takes another sip of whiskey and is hit by a wave of oh god, yep, still awful. 

“Fuck,” he says.

Richie hums in agreement and takes another swallow. All the grimacing from that night is gone, replaced by an ease that suggests he’s done a lot more drinking than Eddie has since they parted ways, which isn’t saying much. 

They both look over their shoulders when the Inn door opens and closes. Ben walks in, seeming shaken, which is par for the course. Eddie would be more weirded out if Ben looks normal.

Richie raises a toast at him. “Heya, Haystack! See any clowns out there?”

Ben makes a face like he doesn’t want to talk about it, then says, “Eddie, what is that?”

“Leper vomit,” Richie says. 

“Oh,” Ben says. “Right.”

Eddie sighs, lifts a crusty sleeve despairingly. He downs the rest of his whiskey. Or, he tries, then gags and gives up halfway through, passing the glass over to Richie.

“I’m gonna shower,” he says. 

He gets as far as the sink in his bathroom before his shower is interrupted by Bowers - Henry fucking Bowers, batshit dad-murdering bully extraordinaire - shoving a knife through his cheek. Go figure. 

Eddie stumbles back into the bathtub. Bowers laughs. Eddie laughs back, all adrenaline and no sense as he starts pulling the shower curtain. That sense comes back when he thinks, gotta get a weapon and then, in the slow, numb way you do when you’re in shock: well, I technically have a knife right now.

Things go even more sideways after that. Eddie trips out of his room less than a minute later croaking, “GUUUUYS, BOWERS IS IN MY ROOM,” loud enough to get them all sprinting up to him.

Later, in the check-in room of the Inn, Eddie waits until his friends are finished patching his cheek up and then starts yelling about Intuition with a capital I and how useful could it possibly be if it doesn’t even warn against childhood bullies breaking out of asylums to come and murder you like he promised all those years ago. 

Stan - who has gotten back to the Inn at this point - pats him on the back and says, “Agreed. It should at least give us the winning Lottery numbers. The Intuition,” Stan says when Eddie stares at him.

Eddie snorts. Same dry, bastard, brilliant Stanley. Eddie hadn’t understood why Stan and Richie had been best friends until a month into hanging out with them, when Stan had cracked some sarcastic joke with a completely straight face and Richie had just about died laughing.

 The Inn is just as empty as it’s been since they actually checked in, which they had done by helping themselves to their allotted room keys they’d booked before arriving in Derry. So far they haven’t actually seen another person here, other than Bowers. Eddie suspects it’s the Derry magic at work, but so far it’s just been convenient, so he doesn’t worry about it too much. 

When the last of them, Bev, arrives ten minutes later, Eddie’s cheek hasn’t stopped throbbing and won’t stop for a while.

“So,” Mike says when they’re all standing around the check-in room. He claps his hands. “Everyone remember everything? Everything important, anyway?”

A murmur of reluctant agreement goes around the circle.

“How would we know that,” Richie says. “We might think we remember everything important, but how can we really- ”

Bev elbows him in the gut. 

“We’re good, Mikey,” Bev says as Richie’s mock-wheezing.

“Wh-what’s the plan now,” Bill says. He’s a little grey, which is fair. Eddie assumes he’s seen a copy of his dead brother.

Mike shifts on the spot. He looks uncomfortable with the limelight, like he’d much rather hand it off to Bill. As if on cue, Mike says, “Uh, well. I was thinking - I had an idea, but how about we go around the circle, see what everyone thinks?”

“Call the cops on Bowers,” Richie says. “Or start being very careful going around corners.”

“Are you not already,” Stan says. “We’re being stalked by Pennywise, Rich. You aren’t being careful going around corners?”

“IT’s not gonna be foiled by me being careful going around corners , Uris.”

Bill says, “We should do the s-smoke hole a-a-a- fucking again .”

He looks surprised by the last part. He looks less surprised to find everyone looking to him, which Eddie supposes is to be expected. It’s Bill . And everyone else is - everyone else. They’re still the lucky seven. They’ve always looked to Bill like it’s built into their DNA; like they’re the kind of creatures who travel in packs and an alpha falls naturally into place - not because of anything he did, but because of pheromones or brain chemistry.

Wait. Maybe not the best analogy. Bill - he’d done stuff, right? Eddie remembers him doing stuff, leading them places and making the best suggestions and standing strong and calm when no one else did. Bill Denbrough was everyone’s beloved big brother.

“The smoke hole. Alright,” Mike says, relieved. He glances around. “Guys?”

“Sure,” Richie says. “Can’t wait to be one of the only ones not to pussy out again. You guys missed a hell of a ride. Prehistoric Derry and alien meteorites, oh my.”

Bev gasps loud enough to make everyone look at her. She’d been especially shaken when she came back in, but now she just looks scandalized, which only makes it funnier when she says, “IT killed the fucking dinosaurs !”

The way she says has Eddie folding in half and crying with laughter. He’s not the only one. It takes a full minute for the group to straighten up, the giggles fading as everyone wipes their faces.

“I can’t believe we forgot that,” Bev says quietly, grinning, which is enough to send Richie off again, leaning sideways on her until she covers his face with her hand and pushes him away good-naturedly.

Eddie watches them. They move around each other like they know each other’s bodies, though that can’t be the case. Bev had moved before Richie had his growth spurt. Still, there’s an ease, a familiarity that makes Eddie have to close his eyes for a moment.

They stick together on the walk over to the Barrens. Eddie glances over his shoulder every thirty steps or so, but deep down he knows it’s probably safe. IT rarely came after them unless they were alone, or maybe one or two of them. With a few

(you’ll all float down here kids)  

exceptions.

“You’re really gross right now,” Richie says as they get in sight of the Barrens.

Eddie sighs. Flexes his elbow to feel his sleeve crackle under the dried leper vomit. Gags slightly as that notion settles in his head.

When the threat of adding more vomit onto his person has receded, he says, “Aw, sorry that I didn’t have time to shower, Rich, I got kinda distracted when Henry fucking Bowers stabbed my face .”

“Yeah, that was a blast from the past,” Richie says. He angles his eyebrows in a way that lets Eddie know there’s a very stupid joke coming, then: “Or should I say-”

“You should not,” Eddie says. “No stabs from the past, or - or whatever synonym you’re gonna come up with for stab. He stabbed me in the face , Trashmouth. This isn’t funny .”

“Everything’s funny if you say it right,” Richie says. He says it breezily, his eyes on the Barrens in front of them and his limbs loose, but there’s something dark under it that sets Eddie on edge. It sounds like - it sounds like all the shit Richie didn’t say when they were kids, things he still doesn’t say, because he never found a way to make it funny.

Eddie doesn’t think that Richie believes that everything’s funny if you say it right.

It takes a while to find the clubhouse. Ben’s the one who ends up finding it in the end, even if he does it by falling through the door. The amount the door’s rotted doesn’t make Eddie feel particularly happy about the planks holding the clubhouse together. He eyes them warily as he climbs down with the others.

“Huh,” Stan says. “It’s smaller.”

Eddie doesn’t give him a look, but is sure that someone else does it for him. 

“Oh, fuck,” Richie says. When Eddie turns, Richie’s straightening up as much as he can in the clubhouse - which is by no means all the way - with a box of shower caps. “Stanny, remember your dumb-”

“Only you thought they were dumb,” Stan says. He comes over and takes a shower cap, putting it securely over his hair all while maintaining eye contact with Richie. “Everyone else actually kept spiders out of their hair. Hey Rich, remember when you had that giant huntsman-”

“That wasn’t a huntsman,” Ben says. 

“It was a huntsman,” Stan says.

“It wasn’t ,” Ben says. “Rich, don’t listen to him, I saw it, it was a normal spider. Just - big.”

“Guys, chill, I’m not traumatized over a spider crawling through my hair when I was 12,” Richie says. He holds out the box of shower caps as everyone gravitates towards him and takes a cap, up until Eddie reaches for one.

“Come on,” Richie says. “You were the only other occasional member of the Shower Caps Are Dumb club, Eds. Don’t wimp out now.”

Eddie blinks, goes to ask what he’s talking about. Then he remembers: Richie had said this is dumb that very first time and Eddie had immediately reached up and ripped his off. After that he hadn’t worn them unless Richie wasn’t around, or if spiders in his hair felt particularly likely - that is, if he was more anxious than usual.

“I’m not gonna wear it,” Eddie says. “It’s just - a keepsake.”

He stuffs it into his pocket. “Besides, I feel like spiders in our hair isn’t gonna be our focus when we’re down here. Should we get back up and start bambooing?”

Bambooing , Richie mouths.

“Shut up,” Eddie says. 

Before Eddie climbs out of the clubhouse again for the second time in a decade, he pauses. He only has to slouch a little to fit in the clubhouse, which makes him think back to the last time he was here - he’d been 16, maybe, or 17. It had been just after Richie had left, which meant it was less than a year before he’d leave Derry too. He hadn’t known it was the last time he’d come in the clubhouse while he lived in Derry, and that whole year before he left he’d known it was there, it was an option, and Mike and the rest of them who were still around - there weren’t many, after Richie left - still went there once every few months. 

Lost in the memory, Eddie glances back at the hammock. 

He’d had come down here two days after Richie had left and sat in the hammock and just felt - stupidly, pathetically alone, the kind of loneliness that felt devouring and neverending. He’d climbed out of the hammock and then out of the clubhouse and he hadn’t gone back, not until -

There’s a prickle on the back of his neck.

He gasps, slaps at the spot, only to come in contact with a hand.

“Gotcha,” Richie says. 

Eddie kicks him in the shin, feeling sixteen and six and twenty-six all at once.

They light the bamboo.

“This can’t be good for my stab wound,” Eddie rasps as the smoke starts to rise. His eyes water. He can’t remember all the bad things smoke does, and how those things effect other things, a chain of awfulness that doesn’t end. He’d grown up like that, being told that one thing would lead to another and another and the end line was death. A tick bite? It swells, gets infected, the infection gets into your blood, which makes your heart stop. Everything was like this. Everything is still like this, in a way. Eddie’s brain never shuts up about it. Blood thinners? Does smoke work as a blood thinner? If so, he’ll bleed more, he could just keep bleeding -

“You’ll be alright, Eddie,” Bev says.

The smoke curls around their feet, then their calves. Up to their knees. 

Eddie casts a look around. He hadn’t noticed before, but now he does: they’re in the same placement they were in when they made the blood pact. Mike and Richie are on either side of him. Unlike the blood pact, neither of them are touching him. Everyone’s sitting about an inch apart, watching the smoke and each other. 

Eddie meets Bev’s eyes. She gives him a smile and he returns it, both of them uncertain and determined. He’s more uncertain and she’s more determined. As always. It makes Eddie feel fond. Everything about these goddamn people make him feel fond.

The smoke reaches their chests.

Your lungs will get inflamed and then fill with water , Eddie thinks as he takes his first mouthful. The voice sounds a lot like his dead mother. The smoke burns just like it did when he was 12, thick down his throat. 

He coughs.

Your lungs will fill with water and you’ll drown , says his mother-mind.

If I’m gonna die today it won’t be from drowning , he tells it. There are bigger things than breathing in smoke. There are bigger things than me. There is magic at work, magic that made it so we didn’t fuck ourselves up with this smoke. Maybe there’s something in the smoke, something magic, the same kind of magic that governed that fucking summer in 1989, the magic that made us restless until we all found each other. Did we find each other, or did we get dragged together? Maybe both. Either way, we got the lucky seven and it was worth it for that.

Eddie wheezes. It’s nothing new. It never was.

His inhaler burns in his pocket. He doesn’t reach for it.

He’d wimped out fast last time. No one had been angry with him, but then again, only two out of seven had lasted long enough to get the visions last time. Sitting in a room full of smoke breathing it in until they passed out was a lot to ask from a group of children.

It’s a lot to ask from anyone, Eddie realizes as he sucks in another breath trying for air and just getting smoke.

“Oh wow,” Stan says. “This is worse than I remember.”

He’d been the first one to bail. That, Eddie remembers. When Eddie looks at him through the smoke, Stan’s eyes are streaming. He’s coughing on every other breath, and so is everyone else. Did it happen this fast, last time?

The smoke blocks Eddie’s vision. His eyes are watering hard enough he can barely see, but he thinks that even if he could see, it’d all be smoke. It is happening faster than last time, which is - not comforting. They definitely should’ve had someone stay outside to pull them out when things got too intense.

“O- ho shit,” Richie coughs from somewhere in the smoke. He’s right next to Eddie, but he suddenly sounds further away.

Eddie squeezes his eyes shut and keeps coughing. He remembers, he remembers, he remembers - they’d gone back in for Mike and Richie and the clubhouse had been bigger, impossibly bigger, they’d all stumbled through the smoke calling out and grabbing at nothing until they’d reached their friends, then they’d hauled them out into the air and let them heave on the grass and drink water until they were okay to get up again.

But most importantly - the clubhouse had expanded . 

“Rich,” Eddie chokes out.

Richie replies almost instantly. “Eds?”

It’s even further away now.

Eddie says, “I think we’re-” and can’t finish. He doubles over, hands on his knees. The smoke is in his lungs but it feels deeper than that, like its in him , in parts that don’t make sense: his bones and his marrow and all his organs, all the parts he wants to scrub clean but can’t. 

The smoke pulses through him like it’s replacing things.

Eddie thinks distantly of 

purification. This was close, but not quite. 

There was an endless space and in it there was a turtle. It was floating and it was big in a way that people thought God must be big, an incomprehensible kind of big, an all-seeing kind of big.

Maturin

(turtle the fucking turtle holy shit guys do you remember the turtle it’s)

floated. Not menacingly, not as a threat - this was how it got around. It was an endless space, after all, which meant there was an infinity of places to get around.

As it floated, it spun in a slow circle. Maturin did this sometimes, when an important moment was happening in a circle, or a cycle. Circle: people. Cycle: the thing the people were in. The thing the lucky seven were in; a cycle they had the chance of ending neatly

(no wait no the turtle can’t help us)

for once. There was rarely a neat end. Usually, there was a mess, prompted by many things, but mainly - and unfortunately - the suicide of Stanley Uris. His death broke the circle, and without the circle they could not be properly protected. Maturin was not angry with Stanley for breaking the circle, it understood why Stanely felt it was necessary - but it was sad when it happened. So Maturin was glad that in this universe, Stanley remained alive and the circle remained intact. It made things easier. For the turtle, of course, but also for the seven. For Maturin was old now, and could not help like it used to, or like it wished he could. Mainly, the fate of the Losers was solely up to them and them alone. 

This was usually not complicated. This time, however, it was. 

There were many worlds. This was one of them. But there were others, and though they rarely overlapped, the Losers - another world’s version - went through many trials in order to go back in time and rewrite their history. They meant to override IT’s magic that made them forget after leaving Derry, so they could stay in touch after the events of that summer instead of drifting away and forgetting. They were very tired when they finally managed to get into the macroverse, a soul kind of tired, as their trials had not been purely physical, and they did not have a good grasp of direction or the macroverse they were manipulating. As a consequence, they didn’t just sent a burst of magic to override IT’s memory wipe. They also sent their memories, and to more universes than they intended.

A few worlds over, just as Mike picked up the phone to make the first call, the Losers were flooded by the memories sent through from a different universe. 

In another, the memories were received by Losers through fitful, confusing dreams throughout their teenage years. This world had no Pennywise in it and the summer of 1989 had been an uneventful one except for Eddie Kasprak’s broken arm, which happened when he fell out of a tree.

In a few worlds - including the old Losers’ world, where they managed to rewrite history after all - the memories made it to their intended target and seven Losers, twelve years old with fresh cuts in their palms, stumbled away from each other in dazed amazement. Their memories - their own and otherwise - were unmoving and would not be taken when they left Derry.

The overwhelming torrent of memories, sent out in every direction, was unintended. By the Losers, anyway. But they were a warning nonetheless. They were a lighthouse in the distance, signalling cliffs. The memories were a plea, lifetimes long and folding in on each other.

Throughout countless universes, the Losers were flooded with a choking mess of

(years and years and years and years and years and)

(you didn’t say i love you say i love you eddie say it i love you myra)

(i’m gonna whup you bevvy yeah you go crawling to the door you can leave if you want but you’ll never)

(actually no i don’t think i’ve had enough and you know what man who gives a shit if my life is empty and my words are put in my mouth for me and none of it’s real because i’m too chickenshit to own up to the fact that i’m a fucking) 

(somebody’s gotta stick around and keep watch even if it means living my life here in this town that devours all of)

(what oh thank you i just go running i run all the time my secret is i run like something’s on my tail and i gotta keep going or it’ll)

(i have this grief and i don’t know why audra i wish)

(i slept fine yes really patty i don’t know i never remember my dreams i don’t remember any of it i don’t know why i was crying)

(something's missing something's MISSING we need it back there's something crucial missing there are several things yes seven in total yes we) 

(you made a promise)

(i swear bill)

(i think we all still love each other do you know how rare that is)

(eddie no eddie hold on oh fuck guys he’s bleeding so much i think he)

( maybe in another life we)

(and years and years and years and years and years and)

( really though rich do you think we would all do it right the first time around if we just got the right)

memories. 

the Losers were

the Losers were flooded with

the Losers were flooded with a choking mess of

smoke. It billows out of the clubhouse door as it’s flung open and the Losers struggle out into the dirt. Eddie doesn’t know who goes first or last but he does know that he flails around into spaces that were walls ten minutes ago, until someone grabs him and pulls him, gasping, into the light. It might be Mike. Eddie’s eyes are streaming so hard and his head is throbbing so he can’t fully tell.

He crawls until he’s far enough away and then curls up on his side, hacking bile and sucking air and his inhaler until his eyes have mostly stopped leaking. 

Around him, the rest of the lucky seven are sprawled out in the dirt of the Barrens. Smoke continues to pour out of the clubhouse, which looks pretty normal-sized again, at least from where Eddie’s lying. The coughs and hacking has died down now, and the Losers are all sitting up, covered in sweat and stinking of smoke, with varying expressions of dazed confusion. 

Eddie’s head gives a particularly hard throb. He winces and everyone else follows suit - apparently Eddie wasn’t the only one to get that throb. Any other time this would strike Eddie as weird, or make him panic, but right now it just joins all the rest of the blurred panic.

It’s Stan that speaks first.

“That could’ve gone worse,” he says.

Eddie tries to feel if his lungs are inflamed. He can’t tell. 

He also can’t tell what Stan meant, whether that meant the smoke hole or if that meant - life. Their lives in that other world, not connecting again in their twenties but spanning out miserably until they’re 40 goddamn years old, then coming back together. Except for Stan, who -

Eddie looks over at him. Stan has his eyes closed, face tipped back towards the sun as it filters through the trees.

“God,” Bev says. 

Eddie can’t help but 

( something through his abdomen it’s dripping with blood richie’s looking up at him with this face of pure ) 

shudder. He gasps, retches again. Oh right, that thing.  

He flinches away when Mike tries to touch his shoulder.

“What the fuck,” he croaks. He presses a hand, splayed open, on his chest. Close to his stomach. 

IT’s claw -

“Ohhhh fuck,” Eddie says. He bows his head against his chest, takes some more breaths. One breath in - oh god he died in that other world - one breath out.

“What was that,” Ben says. He’s eyes are big and concerned right now, Eddie doesn’t even need to look over and check. “How - what -”

“I d-don’t kn-know,” Bill says. But he says it the way everyone else is thinking it: they don’t know, sure, but it’s pretty obvious. It sounds dubious even coming out of hs mouth.

“Could’ve been IT,” Stan says.

“It w-wasn’t,” Bill says. Okay, dubiousness is gone now. This fills Eddie with more comfort than it should, like Big Bill is going to get up handle things for them.

Stan says, “How do you-”

“Y-you know ,” Bill says. “It doesn’t feel like-”

“You and your fucking feelings , Bill,” Richie says. He sounds wrecked, and it’s worrying to the point that Eddie’s vision stops tunneling long enough for him to look over. Richie is shaking, tremors running through his shoulders and legs and arms. His hands have the worst of it. When he reaches up to adjust his glasses, he nearly pokes himself in the eye.

Eddie says, “Rich.”

There’s something under the name. It’s itching to get out, itching from the inside, like a splinter that’s broken off and the skin’s grown over it for decades.

Richie looks at him. Then he looks away so fast it’s almost a flinch.

There’s something in the memories they’ve just been slapped with, something Eddie’s missing. Or, not missing - he’s lost it in the sea of knowledge. Years of it or snapshots of years - Bev’s college years, her first job, the first time her husband hit her, her husband who he doesn’t know if his 26 year old Bev has even met yet - it’s all there, but when Eddie tries to look into it too deeply it hurts . Humans aren’t designed to contain this much memory, so it’s more - snippets, now that they’re out of the macroverse. Glances of memory; slivers of it. Still, there’s something there, something 

( we left him in the dark eds hates the dark fuck we fucking left him no of course i’m not fucking okay you don’t get it guys i LOVED him like love-loved i’m a )

important. 

Eddie hears himself take a strange, shaky breath that borders on a word. That memory - that had been of After. After Derry, after killing the clown, after they had to leave Eddie’s body in the cistern and move on and live for decades without him or Stan.

Eddie looks at his hands. Flexes his fingers. To his left, Bev reaches out to touch Ben’s shoulder, or maybe his hand, and it’s okay for them - they had gotten married a few years after killing the clown for good.

Richie, however - 

“Rich,” Eddie says. He doesn’t know what he wants to follow it up with, and then he does, even though he knows he’ll never say it: you knew, right? I never told you, but please tell me you knew, please say the other-you figured it out after I died, or I finally admitted it to myself and I said something before I died, or -

If other-Richie did know, it didn’t filter down with the memories. Richie doesn’t look at Eddie, and keeps not looking at him as he stands on wobbling legs and brushes his dirty hands on his shirt and says, “Up and at em, kids, we have a clown to scream to death.”

His voice is still strange.

“Trashmouth,” Stan calls after him.

Richie doesn’t stop walking. “I’ll see you guys back at the Inn.”

“Hey-” Mike coughs, then croaks, “We have to stick together, remember? Safety in numbers, Trashmouth-”

“I’ll chance it,” Richie says. He disappears through the trees.

Ben struggles up. He isn’t the only one.

“I’ll get him,” Ben says. He squeezes Bev’s hand - they’d been holding hands, apparently - and starts after him.

Eddie watches him go. The memories - the ones from another world, another version of them, which is never getting less crazy - sit uneasily in his head, not splaying out unless he concentrates on them, which he tries not to. There are a lot of them, and it’s giving him a headache.

He thinks, briefly, of his mother dying. This feels like that, sort of - the numbness of oh, I can’t deal with this right now, because it’s far too big, but when it comes it’s really gonna knock me out. This is gonna be paralyzing -

Eddie makes a noise. He must do, because Beverly walks over and bends down and hugs him. Her gaze is slightly glazed when she pulls back, and Eddie guesses there has to be some numbness in everyone right now. 

“I fucking died,” Eddie mumbles. “I - I died , Bev.”

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t-”

“It does,” Eddie says. “And it - I was gonna - I would’ve just kept going like that. I would’ve married-”

He sucks in a breath. It’s hard in a way that has nothing to do with smoke inhalation. 

“I would’ve married Myra, and worked a job I fucking hated for the rest of my life, and I would’ve gotten - what, two days back with you guys, and then-”

He stands up. Somehow he manages to make that an angry movement. The others are coming over now.

“You’re alright,” Mike says. “You’re, uh. We’re in our 20s, there’s tons of time to turn things around. Even at 40, there’s-”

“Mike I love you but shhhhhhh ,” Eddie says, rushed.

He looks desperately towards Bill, whose eyes are shiny. His shoulders sag when everyone else turns to do the same.

“I-” Bill rubs his hands down his face. Takes a deep, deep breath. “We k-know how to kill IT. That’s what w-we sh-should be focusing on right n-now. And m-making sure E-Eddie doesn’t d-d-d-”

“That,” Mike nods. “Yeah. But we should be - it should be okay, right? Since the circle… isn’t broken?”

“You’re welcome,” Stan says, and it comes out dry right up until the end, where his voice cracks.

Bev and Mike touch a shoulder each.

Eddie joins in, touching Stan’s back. He does it because he loves Stan and wants to comfort him and he does it because it’s better than having to focus on his thoughts, which are revolving around a cacophony of thoughts he never let himself vocalize, even in his own head, except those thoughts are coherent now, and it’s freaking him the fuck out, especially with this new revelation that Richie -

That Richie -

That he -

Eddie sits down on the ground again.

“I’m fine,” he says when Bev starts to follow. “Don’t sit again, I’m just having a moment. Keep - be with Stan, he needs it more.”

“You sure, Eddie,” Stan says.

Eddie gets out his inhaler and takes a few drags. 

“I’m getting up,” he says. “Just - just a second-”

“Take all the time you need, man,” Mike says.

Eddie closes his eyes.

Time. Sure, yes. It stretches out ahead of him and he has no idea how long it is but it could be pretty fucking short and even if it isn’t, he doesn’t do anything with it. He makes himself miserable and keeps doing it, continues to make this life for himself and telling himself he’s fine, he’s coping, this is just how things are. There is nothing else. There is no other choice, no other life he could live.

Except -

Time , Eddie thinks to himself. It still feels like something that will be used to smother him, especially with the memory fodder he’d just been blasted with - but there’s another aspect to it, too, if he tilts it the right way, like glass catching the light. Something like - hope?

Eddie slaps one of his cheeks. Gently, because he can’t do anything bad to that cheek, he’s only got one good one left.

“I’m fine,” he says when everyone looks bewildered. “Let’s - let’s go.”

They look at him, and Eddie is suddenly struck by how young they look, all of them smooth and unworn and somehow unfinished. It’s a strange realization to have about people his own age.

But it’s only for a moment, and then his friends look normal again, and they walk out of the Barrens together.

Chapter Text

The Losers reel with it: the future, glimpsed. The future, put through a shredder and returned to them, a future they escaped by chance. A glitch in IT’s cycle, bringing them back at 26 instead of 40.

They knew it would have happened. By now they knew themselves well enough to recognize that this future version of them would have happened, of course it would have, if they had continued on their paths. If they hadn’t been thrown off course. 

Mike reels with it: the decades of loneliness stretching impossibly long. Intolerably long. But he tolerated, and he got his reward in the end. But those long, lonely years, even in the memory of a future that wouldn’t come, were enough to turn his stomach.

Ben reels with it: he got his weight to something he was almost comfortable with, gained the muscles he was trying for. But nothing changed, deep down. Running didn’t get him away from anything, didn’t provide an escape. There was still that hole, that emptiness, he could never fill. And then he was dragged back to Derry, and the hole was realized when he walked back into that restaurant and saw that red hair for the first time in 27 years.

Bev reels with it: she ran, too. She ran so fast and so long and she’d run smack into the plastic mould of her father, brought to life in the form of Tom Rogan. He wasn’t the flirty coworker of her time - he changed. No, he revealed himself, peeled the nice veneer away until his ugly core was revealed. And Bev stopped running. She took every inch of it. What else could she do? It took her 27 years and killing a clown to realize that she could run, one last time. Make it somewhere else. Stand her ground. Fight back, and go somewhere where she didn’t have to fight. There was a place that was gentle, people who were kind, and love that didn’t hurt, but she spent so goddamn long in a place where it did.

Bill reels with it: searching, a constant fumble in the dark with a dead torch, trying to figure out what all this loss was from. And then there it was: Georgie, with his boat and his missing body, the yellow rain slicker he found in the sewers. That was it, after so long. It wasn’t the only thing he found when he came back.

Stan reels with it: an end, the same way he dreamed about for years after leaving Derry. He’d gotten snippets of it when IT had closed its mouth over his head, showed him all those glowing lights that weren’t lights at all. He’d had a happy time, other than the nightmares and the gnawing fear, the terrible dread. He’d loved well and lived a life he was proud of. Patty and he had collected some more laugh lines. And then there was a phone call, and - well. There hadn’t been much after that.

Eddie reels with it: the numbness never went away, it just kept going. He constructed a cage and then climbed right in. He’d stayed there for a long time, a lifetime, until he’d gone back to Derry and realized he didn’t have to live like this. It had been one realization of many, except he’d never finished the last one. 

That realization had occurred while he was dying, watching his friends circle the monster and scream it small. He’d looked at Richie, his tear-wet face and his sewer-wet clothes and a knowledge had started to manifest. This had happened once before, the start of it, when he was leaving Derry, as Richie grew smaller and smaller through the car window. The knowledge started, but it didn’t form. It would have, if he had more time. But he left Derry and along with it,  his memories. The second time, all of him trickled from existence just before the realization could make sense. 

Eddie knew this. He could feel the hazy start of it, and he knew he didn’t have time. He tried to make himself know it faster. 

Before he died, he said the name. 

Richie

isn’t thinking about it.

He’s just - taking a walk. With his old buddy Ben. Who he hasn’t seen in a while, which is - fine. Richie isn’t thinking about the reason why he hasn’t seen Ben in a while. 

Ben, as usual, isn’t prying. He’d caught up to Richie, asked if he was okay, and then fell into step beside him. He’s got that adorable worried face on, and he keeps glancing over, but he doesn’t ask again. Richie always liked that about Ben.

“So you’re an architect,” Richie says when they’re far enough away from the Barrens and he doesn’t feel like he’s going to shake out of his own skin.

Ben nods. “I am,” he says.

He kicks gently at a rock. His posture is sure and steady, but not cocky. There’s a softness there that is very familiar. There’s still that 12 year old in there, under the start of muscle.

Richie suppresses a shudder. Yeah, they’re all the kids they used to be, underneath. They never grew the fuck up. It was all right here, in Derry, waiting for them to come 

( home ) 

back. 

“This is above my pay grade,” Ben says quietly.

Richie snorts and looks over. Ben is looking around the streets. They’re back in the suburbs now. His gaze is mostly neutral, but there’s a current of unease running through it. His shoulders are getting tense, but as soon as Richie notices it, Ben’s shoulders soften forcibly.

“Above all our pay grades, Haystack,” Richie says. “And anyone’s paygrade. Madonna couldn’t handle this shit. This is - it’s-”

He waves a hand in front of them.

“Not even mentioning-” Richie cuts himself off again, waving in a way he hopes gets across the visions of the future bullshit.

“Yeah,” Ben says. His brow furrows. He looks sweet. Kind. Richie bets that he’d unclenched his shoulders so as not to seem threatening. It’d be just like Ben to grow into the kind of guy who does that, growing up tall and strong and making sure no one has any reason to fear him. 

It makes Richie’s mouth twitch. God, he’s missed this guy. He’s missed all of them, he’d been searching for them and not even knowing it -

He’s flooded, then, with images of the future. It’s not a vision, it’s just remembering, but it’s enough to make him stop and put his hands on his knees, breathing hard.

The gang at 40, old and fucked up and limping back to Derry after the 27-year mindwipe. The gang minus one Loser, then minus two. The gang limping out of there, dragging Richie as he screams and struggles and

( no he’s just hurt guys we can still help him )

tries to get Eddie before the rubble does. But they don’t, and in the end they leave him there. In Neibolt, in the dirt and the dark and the filth -

Richie grits his teeth. He isn’t thinking about it.

“Fuck,” he says, weak and wet. He wipes at his face, at his nose. Smears his shirtsleeve.

Ben puts a hand on his back. Richie allows this for a second, then straightens up and shrugs him off.

“I’m fine,” he says, and keeps walking.

Ben follows.

They walk in silence for a block. 

Then Richie says, “So, good for you, man.”

Ben looks over expectantly.

Richie waves a hand again. “Architecture’s going good, huh? And will continue to go good, if that mansion in the future-vision’s anything to go by.”

“I honestly can’t imagine that,” Ben says, with one of Ben’s good ol’ self conscious laughs. “I’m nowhere near a mansion right now. If you stand in the middle of my bedroom and hold your arms out, you can touch the walls. The whole place is like that.”

Richie whistles. “Oh, man, you have walls ? Lucky.”

Ben laughs. Richie’s relieved. He said it purely on autopilot, grabbing for something, anything, to say. He thinks Ben is in the middle of the same thing - what the hell is there to say?

Richie is thinking about congratulating him on marrying Bev in the future when Ben says, “Hey, Rich - we should really go back to the others.”

“Why,” Richie says. “We got the buddy system right here, my guy. Are you telling me my six-foot-five ass doesn’t fill you with confidence? You don’t think I can take that clown? Fuck, all we gotta do is call it names . That’s where Trashmouth lives , man-”

Something comes closer through the trees.

Richie grabs Ben’s arm. Or tries to - he ends up with a handful of Ben’s shirt, as Ben tries to stand in front of Richie like he’s a fucking knight or something, and Richie’s the princess who needs to be saved.

I’m taller than you, dickhead , Richie goes to say, but then shuts up when a figure starts to emerge.

Ben tenses, and Richie lets out the tiniest, barely-there yell.

Stan mirrors it, jumping in shock and almost making the others walk into him when he reels backwards.

“What the hell , guys,” he says when he recovers. “Richie, what was that scream? Do I look like-”

“I don’t know ,” Richie snaps. “And I didn’t fucking scream, okay, I was just-”

“-wandering off alone into a town that wants to brutally murder you?”

Richie glares. He can’t come up with anything to say to that, and besides, Eddie is standing there with the group and Richie can’t for the life of him look over at him.

Instead he turns to Ben and slaps him in the arm.

“What the hell were you doing,” he says. “Gonna shield me with your body, Haystack? I’m taller than you.”

“It’s really weird that you’re so tall now,” Bev says.

Richie looks at her. “Uh. What?”

She shrugs. She looks kind of numb. She has dirt on her cheek, probably from the Clubhouse. No matter how much they cleaned it, propped it up with wood and put blankets down - it was still a big, reinforced hole in the dirt. 

“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s just weird. I left first, so I remember you as this small, tiny, bespectacled-”

“Bespectacled,” Richie says, glad for something to hold onto as Bev holds a hand to her wait, indicating his smallness.

“ So bespectacled,” Bev says. “Those glasses - guys, remember his glasses? They weren’t bad,” she adds when Richie makes a face. “Just - big. Like you are, now.”

Richie opens his mouth to make a dick joke.

“ Don’t ,” Eddie snaps.

Before he can stop himself, Richie looks. Eddie’s face is tight and his eyes go big, then away at the street, and Richie is happy enough to follow suit.

There’s a tense silence that is so full Richie can’t begin to say what’s under it.

It’s Mike that breaks it.

“So,” he says. “It’s - uh, we really shouldn’t split up, in the future.”

“Unless the Intuition c-calls for it,” Bill says.

Mike points at him. “Unless the Intuition calls for it. Yes.”

Richie looks over at Bill. He then has to force himself to look at Bill’s face instead of his shoulders, which he now realizes he’d stared at a lot when he was a kid.

There’s a realization nudging at the side of his mind, a quiet ohhhh right okay that makes a lot of sense and also makes him feel like a big gay idiot.

“No splitting up,” Richie says. “Got it. Can we go - take a nap at the Inn, or something? Quick one, 20 minutes to just - sleep off this crazy vision shit.”

He expects some pushback from Mike or Bill - some form of no way let’s go kill IT right now now now - but instead he gets a general mumble of agreement.

Five minutes down the street, Bowers tries to stab Mike while he’s peeing off in the trees.

Richie’s milling around the street with the others, doing his best not to interact with any of them while still sticking to the group, when Mike screams.

It’s enough for Richie to forget he’s trying to escape into his own head, and he looks around at everyone before joining them in sprinting towards Mike.

They find him on the ground, Bowers on top of him, trying to get a knife into Mike’s face as Mike holds his wrist fast.

Richie has a second of do we have to stick together on bathroom breaks now and oh fuck what can I hit him with before Ben runs up and kicks Bowers in the head.

Richie whoops. It’s mostly involuntary. 

Ben kicks again and Bowers falls mostly off of Mike, who Richie rushes to help up. Mike's bleeding from his face and his dick is fully out.

“Ohhhh-kay,” Richie says, looking away. He checks back at Bowers, who is still being kicked by Ben and also Eddie. Richie and Bev go to help kick, but then Eddie yells and Ben pulls him away and Eddie’s bleeding from his forehead. 

“Back,” Mike says, dick still out, but covered with his hands now as he struggles to shove it back in his pants. “Go back-”

Everyone heads out of the trees and back to the road.

When they stumble onto the asphalt, Eddie’s wiping blood from a shallow cut on his forehead. Mike’s pants are zipped up and he’s drooling blood.

Bowers wheezes his way through the trees.

“Where the FUCK does this guy keep appearing from,” Richie says. “Also: you guys couldn’t have kicked him harder? Or stabbed him harder? Eddie, you stabbed him in the chest at the Inn, right, ‘cause he doesn’t seem like he’s-”

Eddie talks over him, says, “Oh, sorry, didn’t see you helping-”

Richie opens his mouth to say I was on my way, when Bill cuts him off.

“Keep b-backing up,” Bill says. “G-gotta be in close range to hurt someone with a kn-kn-”

“Great, let’s stay away from the kn-kn-knife,” Richie says, very fast, and grabs the back of Bev’s shirt for no good reason. She grabs his hand. 

Stan says, “Shutthe fuck upRichie,” and the Losers run-stumble to the other side of the road.

Bowers approaches. He’s still got that fucking mullet and it’s just as dirty as it was when he was a teenager - because he was a teenager, he was a few years older during that summer - and his fashion sense hasn’t changed either. His smile, however, has. It’s decidedly more unhinged , which is - not comforting. And yeah, okay, Eddie definitely got him in the chest back at the Inn, there’s a considerable amount of blood down his shirt and pants coming from a rip in his shirt. And - skin. And beyond. 

Bev says, “Guys-”

“Seven on one,” Mike says. It’s slurry with blood. He spits some onto the road. “We’ll be fine, we just gotta-”

“He’s got a knife ,” Eddie snaps. “He stabbed me in the face and now he tried to stab me in the head and you want us to, what, dogpile him-”

“He can’t get us all-”

“ Get us , Mikey? Please fucking enlighten-”

“He’s coming closer,” Richie says. It’s embarrassingly high with fear. He’s almost surprised by the intensity - guy with a knife, sure, scary. But Bowers with a knife? Bowers, period ? That guy always scared the shit out of him. 

Some things don’t change.

Bowers reaches the middle of the road and stops. It’s only for a second. But he stops, and sizes them up with a smile that’s studded with new gaps, courtesy of getting kicked very hard in the face.

He says, “I’ve been waiting-”

A car slams into him before he can finish. Or, slams isn’t the right word - it hits him, definitely, but only enough to throw him down. He doesn’t go flying, or go bowling up over the roof of the car, or under the tires. He’s just - forcibly pushed down into the road, and skids a few inches.

There’s another silence, punctured by Bower’s groans. This one doesn’t last long.

Patricia Uris - Patty, who Richie kind of knows now from the future visions, younger and frazzled and wide-eyed - opens her car door.

“He was trying to hurt you, right,” she says. “I didn’t just run over some poor guy?”

Richie looks to Stan, who is gaping.

Eddie yells, “Hit him again!”

Patricia looks at the street. Bowers is groaning, but pushing himself up to his feet.

“Damnhell shit ,” she says. She starts motioning at them wildly. “In the car , get in the car- ”

It’s a good thing Stan has a station wagon, Richie thinks deliriously as he climbs in. Then he remembers it’s probably a rental. Whatever. 

Bowers jeers from the street. He’s using the hood to hold himself up.

Patty says, “Do I-”

“ Yes ,” Stan and Eddie say. Eddie continues, “He was fully trying to kill us-”

He stops as the car jerks into motion, right over Bowers. There’s a thump and some muffled yelling. Then Patty puts the car into reverse and drives back over him. The yelling stops after that.

The Losers sit in stunned silence as the car rolls over Bowers a third time.

“I think,” Patty says, voice shaking, “I went a bit… overboard. Do I-”

“Yes,” Stan says.

Patty drives off.

Richie twists in his seat - he’s in the very back, squished in with Mike and Bill - to watch Bowers get smaller. He doesn’t move, which is good.

“Hey Staniel,” Richie says. “What kind of car do you have?”

Stan doesn’t answer him. He’s in the front seat, staring at Patty in bleary panic.

“Patty,” he says. “Why are you - how did - 

“Thanks for the rescue,” Bev says.

“You’re welcome,” Patty says. Then: “Oh god. Damn damn damn. Did I just kill a man?”

“If you did, you did the world a favour,” Stan croaks. “Pat, you said - you promised- ”

“I did,” she says, loud and fast. “And Stan, I am sincerely sorry for breaking that promise, but also, did you really think I was going to just let my husband waltz off to his hometown, which he’s never mentioned before, to see a bunch of people he’s also never mentioned before, right after I just caught him trying to slit his wrists in our bathroom?”

She draws in a shaky breath in the sudden quiet. 

They turn a corner. Bowers disappears from sight. Richie settles back in his seat.

“I promised not to follow you,” Patty says. “I did. But you were - you were hurting so much, baby. I’m sorry for breaking your trust, but I couldn’t let you do this alone.”

Stan’s breath shakes along with hers.

“It’s dangerous,” he says.

She laughs. “I can see that-”

“Not him,” Stan says. He swallows and his throat clicks. He runs a hand through his hair. “Patty, Bowers is - was? - the least of our worries. I - the stuff I said I couldn’t tell you, that it’d make you think I was crazy-”

She glances over at him, as much as she can while keeping them on the road.

She’s so young, Richie thinks. It’s not just the physical age - she’d been older in the visions, just like all of them - it’s deeper than that. Vision-Patty had been tired in ways that had nothing to do with her age. She’d been tired in a way that reminded Richie of - well, how he himself had been in the visions. Weary from missing someone who should’ve been around, tired from carrying the weight of that loss.

When Stan looks at her, it’s desperate. 

“I don’t want you to get involved,” he says.

“I think I’m already involved ,” Patty says, and flinches. “If anyone else saw that, I - oh God. He was trying to kill you, but still. Do I - am I going to be -”

“Police here are, uh, bad,” Mike says. “As in, magic kind of bad. Bowers ties into that magic. I wouldn’t worry.”

Patty sighs, long and trembling.

“Gosh,” she says, under her breath.

Despite everything, Richie grins. He hadn’t seen that in the visions.

“Stanley,” he says. “Your wife says gosh .”

Stan glares at him, but there’s nothing behind it. 

“If you’re worried about your wife thinking you’re crazy,” Mike says, “Seven people saying it is better than one. And it’s not like we don’t have proof-”

Stan whips around in his seat. “We are not dragging her to see Pennywise! She doesn’t see any of this, alright? Proof or no proof, she’s not going anywhere near- ”

Mike holds up his hands. “Okay, okay! She stays out of it. But we should tell her, if she wants to be told-”

Stan puts his head in his hands. Both are trembling. Patty indicates for three seconds and then pulls over, then strokes her fingers through Stan’s hair as his breathing slows.

“I got you,” she says quietly.

Stan looks up at her, his eyes red. He puts his hand over hers, presses it into his face.

Richie looks away. This is a brand of intimacy he’s never seen up close. Walking in on the fucking would’ve been preferable. The way they’re looking at each other is - so fucking tender . Aching. Movie kind of bullshit, except it’s genuine and heartfelt. 

Unable to help himself, he glances over at Eddie. He’s watching Stan and Pat, and his face is ashen. Richie has no idea what to do with that.

“Always,” Stan says softly. Then he clears his throat. “Thank you for - thank you.”

“Of course,” she says.

“I feel like I should be comforting you,” he says.

She laughs. It’s teary. “Later. Tell me now, Stan.”

Stan takes a deep breath. “I - there’s a reason I don’t remember my childhood, babylove.”

Richie chokes.

“ Babylove ,” he wheezes. He folds in half in the car seat, eyes watering with it. “Ba - baby- ? Stan, oh my god, what- ”

“Shut the fuck up, Richie,” Stan says.

Richie gestures helplessly at the others. “Babylove! Guys! Come on! I’m Richie, by the way,” he adds to Patty.

She waves. “Hi. I’m Patty.”

“I know,” Richie says. He doesn’t mention the visions. He’s not sure if they’re saving that for later, or if Stan’s gonna include it in the shitstorm of everything else.

Then, because his mind is still whirling, he says, “Did anyone else see Mike’s dick back there?”

There’s a silence and a bunch of averted eyes that makes Richie nod.

“Okay,” he says. “Good to know.”

They get packaged food from a grocery store and go sit in the Inn. They crowd into one room, eating chips and filling Patty in the best she can.

She takes it like a champ . She asks a lot of questions, but she also nods with a straight face when one of them says something like, “and then it turned into a bird and chased me down an alley.” Which is nice.

Rice sits in the corner and watches it all happen. Eddie paces. Richie tries not to watch, but it’s hard when Eddie keeps walking directly into his field of vision.

After they get the overall narrative down, they get into the nitty gritty stuff. At some point, Patty goes around and asks everyone what the clown appeared to them as, back before they all ganged up and took it on as a group.

Richie’s scalp prickles. He never told the others what the clown appeared to him as, so everyone’s pretty interested when they get to him. 

It’s also probably why Bev says, “You don’t have to tell us, Rich.”

Rich snaps his fingers and points at her.

“I always liked you, Marsh,” he says. “Okay! Moving on. Mike, tell us more about that fucked up bird.”

“Hold on,” Eddie says. “Why does everyone have to spill but Richie?”

There’s a pregnant pause. Richie discreetly wipes his palms on his jeans.

“Because Richie doesn’t want to talk about it,” Bev says. “Right, Right?”

“I sure fucking don’t .”

“It’s fine,” Patty says. “It doesn’t matter, we can just-”

“We all told ours ,” Eddie says. His arms are folded and there’s colour high on his cheeks. He’s all stubborn, nervous lines and Richie can’t look at him directly in case he starts sweating through his clothes.

“Richie’s not ready to talk about it,” Ben says, which - okay, makes Richie sound like a fucking pussy. “And he doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want-”

Jesus. 

“A fucking werefwolf,” Richie snaps, tilting his head back with the force of it. It also gives him an excuse to look at the ceiling rather than anyone in the room. “It was a werewolf, and it was big, and it had-”

It was me , he didn’t say. It had a ripped jacket on that said Tozier. It was me, guys.

When Eddie speaks, it’s puzzled. “Like from that monster movie we saw that summer? That’s not embarrassing, Rich.”

Richie does look at him then, unamused. He opens his mouth to say something cutting, but nothing comes out. Eddie’s looking at him like he’s daring him to do it.

Richie folds. He gets up and walks towards the door. 

“It’s a metaphor , dumbass,” he says as he passes Eddie. It’s quiet, but he knows everyone hears it. 

He almost manages to get out before Ben says, “Rich, buddy system-”

“Then someone follow me,” Rich says, and leaves. He leaves the door open, and as he walks down the hall he can hear his friends all saying who’s going with him. He doesn’t stick around to find out who they pick.

He goes outside and dry-heaves. It nearly gets wet at one point, his eyes watering with his lurching stomach, but nothing comes up.

He doesn’t look up when the door opens. Still, he can tell who it is from his steps. He didn’t know he could still do that, years later, with all of them grown from teens into adults. Eddie still walks the same.

“How’s the stab wound,” Richie says, staring at the gravel around his shoes, still bent over. He waves a hand. “The head one, not the cheek one. Cheek one’s obviously not great.”

“It’s fine,” Eddie says. “Head wounds always bleed this much. The bandage helps. And it’s not a stab wound, it’s just a cut.”

Richie straightens. “What do you mean, you literally got stabbed.”

“Yeah, but it’s not-” Eddie makes a stabbing motion. “It’s just - he grazed me.”

“Yeah, with his stab.” Richie makes a stabbing motion right back, all Psycho , complete with the music, which he hums through his teeth,

Eddie puts his hands on his hips. It’s endearing and Richie wants no part of it.

“I hope IT’s not giving him directions,” he says.

“Here’s hoping,” Richie says. He rubs his hand down his face. “Hey, look - uh.”

Eddie looks at him, expectant and - yeah, definitely fearful. Great.

“Quit it with the face,” Richie says. “Look, I just wanna say - I know it’s weird, okay? It’s weird. Don’t tell me it’s not weird, ‘cause it is.”

“What?”

Richie gives him a flat look.

“You know what,” he says. He waves between them. “The me thing. The you thing. The-”

He waves some more. Checks around, then back to Eddie.

“My big gay feelings,” he says, very fast. “For you. That thing.”

“Oh,” Eddie says, voice small. “That - right.”

“Right,” Richie agrees. “It’s weird .”

“It’s not… weird,” Eddie says, halting and awkward, hands going to his pockets.

“You’re so convincing,” Richie says, layering on the sarcasm thick so he doesn’t puke or cry. “You should give tolerance speeches at high schools. They’re doing that now. You should do that. Anyway - I - I know it’s weird. And I don’t blame you if-”

“Rich-”

“No, come on, let me say it,” Richie says. He pockets his own hands and they stand there, all tight-shouldered and pocket-handed and fidgeting on the spot.

“I just want to be your friend,” he says, and then makes a face. God, that was pathetic. He sounds like he should still be in middle school. “Like - as in, I hope we can still be friends. But I totally understand if you - if it’s not-”

“Richie-”

“That would be fine, too. Expected, even! If I was in your position-”

“What,” Eddie says. “What would you do in my position?”

Richie opens his mouth. Then he closes it. 

“I’d,” he starts, and then pauses. “I don’t know, I’d - probably not be friends with me anymore. Like, I’d try, maybe, but it’d be too weird. And - I don’t know, gross?”

Something too close to pity flickers over Eddie’s face. The only reason Richie doesn’t bail out is because there’s obviously a lot more going on in Eddie’s face right now.

“I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable,” Richie tries. “Or - or obligated. You don’t owe me anything, man.”

“I know,” Eddie says slowly. His mouth moves wordlessly for a few seconds, and Richie watches it before tearing his gaze back up to Eddie’s eyes. Bad Richie.

“We can still be friends,” Eddie says, and then his face creases. “Of course we’re still friends, Rich, who the fuck do you think I am? You think I’d just - I’d-”

“I mean, kinda,” Richie says. “Wouldn’t anyone?”

Eddie stares at him. “You - don’t you live in LA , dude?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “Yeah, I do, but - there’s still gay-bashing in LA, Eds.”

He tries to laugh. It’s dry and shaky. Eddie doesn’t join in. He’s looking at Richie with his face all pinched.

“Rich,” he says. He hesitates. “That vision - it didn’t - show everything? Just flashes.”

“Uh,” Richie says. Okay, they were talking about this now. “Yeah?”

“So,” Eddie says, and skids his feet against the gravel. “Maybe it - I think I might have been different, if I had lived.”

Something zips down Richie’s spine. No, nope, we’re definitely changed subjects now -

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He swallows. “Better. A better me.”

Richie snorts. “You’re pretty okay how you are, Spaghetti.”

He panics after he says it - was it heterosexual enough? Surely not. Shit - but Eddie doesn’t look weirded out. He does look upset, but in a way that goes inwards, not at him.

“I’m not,” he says. “I’m - Rich, I’m miserable and I did it to myself. And I have - there’s so much shit I don’t let myself think? Staying with mom, and then - that woman I marry in the visions, I’m dating her now, and it’s like… static. Turned up in the background all the time. Makes you numb. And I don’t have to think about anything important? And I never noticed until I remembered you guys, and what we did that summer, and when I left-”

He pulls in a breath. Looks at Richie again, right in his face, almost pleading.

“Do you remember when I left?”

Richie swallows the lump in his throat. “Yeah. I remember.”

Eddie nods. “Work kept you late,” he says, and his voice rasps. “You got there just as we were driving away from the house and I made mom stop and I got out of the car and - and I ran to you. And you hugged me. Said we should run away together. Just get in your car and drive.”

Richie resists the urge to apologize for that. Eddie’s probably looking at that in a whole different light now, and now a flattering one.

He can’t think of anything to say, but Eddie seems good with talking enough for the both of them.

“I said I wished I could,” he says. He’s smiling, in fits and bursts, and it’s not a happy smile. It aches. Or, it makes Richie ache.

“And you said - you said don’t forget me, because at that point we suspected what had happened to the others when they left. And I was next. I said I wouldn’t forget you, ‘cause how could I? And then I went back to the car. I got in and we - we drove off. And I never saw you again, until - well, this.”

Richie nods. He can remember now, the Kaspbrak house getting empty, that car heading away, never to be seen again. He’d cried as it drove off. He’d cried as he hugged Eddie, who had also cried, and neither of them had mentioned it.

“We drove off,” Eddie repeats. “And I - I turned around to watch you - and Mike and Ben - until I couldn’t see you. They both put a hand on your shoulder. And I think - I think I was realizing something, or starting to. I was finally starting to think about something I never let myself think. I was going to do it.”

Richie’s breath comes thick in his tight throat. He nods and tries to look normal, but his mind is racing. What the fuck is Eddie saying? Not what Richie thinks he’s saying, surley.

“But then I-” Eddie rubs a hand through his hair. “We got out of Derry and I couldn’t remember you guys. I tried not to forget, I wrote down all your names and I - I tried , Rich.”

He looks at him desperately, and Richie forces his voice out.

“I know,” he says. “We all did. I wrote down all your names, too.”

Eddie laughs. “Then you know how that turned out. A few days later I found the paper with all your names and I didn’t know what it was. I threw it out. Didn’t even think about it. Anyway, I think if I’d remembered, I would’ve - it would’ve been different. You know?”

Richie does and he doesn’t. But he nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “Probably.”

Eddie nods with him. Then he squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head.

“That wasn’t the point,” he says. “I had a point - Rich, I don’t wanna die without - I mean, I don’t know , but I think if I had time-”

“Whoa, hey!” Richie takes his shoulders. There’s a brief panic over whether that's okay or not, but Eddie looks at least a little comforted, or at least desperate for someone to comfort him, which is what matters. 

“You’re gonna get time, man,” Richie says.

Eddie laughs again. “You don’t know that, Rich.”

“I do,” he says. “Just - don’t go walking onto any clown arm spikes.”

Eddie’s face twists in that familiar expression that means he’s going to come back with something scathing and hilarious, and Richie’s chest tightens in joyous preparation.

And then Mike comes out of the Inn.

Richie drops his hands from Eddie’s shoulders.

“Hey,” Mike says. “You guys okay out here?”

“We’re good,” Eddie says. He wipes at his eyes. 

Richie tries to quiet his whirling mind. “Is Patty gonna have us committed?”

“Not yet,” Mike says. “She’s - we’re probably going to head to Neibolt soon. She’s coming to the house, but not going in.”

“How much did she have to argue Stan down for that to happen?”

“A lot,” Mike says. He drums on the doorframe. “Come in when you’re ready.”

“Thanks, Mikey,” Eddie says.

Mike gives them a smile, warm and relieved. Then he heads inside.

“Well,” Richie says.

“Yeah,” Eddie replies.

They start for the door. Just as they hit the porch, Eddie says, “I should’ve said yes.”

“What?”

“To running away with you,” Eddie says. “Just - getting in your car and going. I should’ve said yes. It would’ve been better.”

Richie might be having heart palpitations. He’s young for it, but Eddie could probably give him a list of perfectly valid medical reasons why his heart is freaking out right now.

“Uh,” he croaks. He clears his throat. “Eds-”

“Don’t call me Eds,” Eddie says. Then he grins. It’s unsteady and fleeting. “I fucking missed you, Rich.”

Richie swallows. If he hadn’t been outed a few hours ago, he might’ve teased Eddie for it, pinched his cheek or something. As it is, he blinks a few times and says, “I missed you too, man.”

Eddie claps his shoulder and heads into the Inn.

Richie follows, adamantly not letting himself think about everything he desperately wants to. It doesn’t fully work - Eddie might be able to stop himself from thinking thoughts he doesn’t want to think, but Richie’s never been able to do that. He shoved them down deep, sure, but he always finished the thought. 

Patty drives them to the Neibolt house. 

“ Please stay in the car,” Stan tells her, about a hundred times before they get out.

“I won’t go in the house,” Patty says. “Unless - I mean, if some giant hex appears over it and lightning starts flashing-”

Stan grabs her hands. “That’s exactly the time when you DON’T go in the house! If lightning starts flashing, you drive the hell out of here!”

She pulls a hand away from his and strokes his cheek.

“If lightning starts flashing,” she says, “I will absolutely abandon you and your friends and drive out of Derry.” 

Stan’s mouth twitches in a smile, then pulls tight.

“I love you,” he says. “I love you so much-”

“I love you ,” Patty says, and kisses his mouth, his forehead, his jaw.

“Jesus Christ,” Richie mutters, and gets out of the car. He trades looks with the others, all of whom are just as amused and exasperated as Richie. They’re also the same kind of soft as he is about them - they’re gross and sappy, sure, but there’s so much obvious love there that they have to be thankful that Stan found someone so good for him.

When a minute passes and the Urises are still tearfully sharing their love, Mike knocks timidly on the window.

“Guys,” he says. “IT could still kill people before we get him-”

“WE’RE ON THE CLOCK, URINE,” Richie yells.

Stan flips him off as he climbs out. Then he turns and gives Patty one last kiss, which, of course, lingers.

Richie makes a fart noise.

Stan whips around to face him. “Rich, just because you don’t have-”

He cuts himself off. Richie’s lips curl, part surprise, part panic, part genuinely wanting to hear what Stan was going to say.

“What,” he says. “A wife?”

He’s definitely not imagining the uncomfortable atmosphere that just rolled in.

Stan sighs. “No,” he says. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

The silence drags. Stan glances over at Eddie, which Richie can’t deal with, so he looks over at Neibolt, which is - weird, that looking at Neibolt is preferable right now.

“A babylove,” Ben suggests.

Richie snorts. The others mirror him.

Stan rolls his eyes.

“Let’s go in the nightmare house already,” he says. He turns back to the car, puts his hand on the window, which Patty mimics, and then starts off towards the house like he didn’t just give his friends teasing fodder for years to come.

Richie is pretty impressed with Stan walking up to the house. Then Stan starts hyperventilating on the porch.

“Hey,” Mike says, rubbing Stan’s arm. “Hey, Stan, you’re okay-”

Stan shakes his head. “I can’t, I - Mike, I can’t go in there-”

“Yeah you can, man,” Richie says, taking Stan’s other arm. “Dude, we’re in and out. We know how to kill IT, we just chew it out - we just have to insult him to death, you’re gonna love it! Stan, don’t you want to call the muderclown a little bitch baby?”

Stan cry-giggles. It’s adorable. Richie’s missed him.

Richie pitches his voice down.

“Don’t you wanna call the clown a little bitch baby,” he says, and keeps pitching his voice deeper until Stan laughs and slaps him halfheartedly in the arm.

“I just,” Stan says, and swallows thickly. “I saw - I saw IT. That summer, when it put its mouth around my head. Not just the deadlights - I saw IT, what it really was. I don’t - I don’t want -“

“I know,” Mike says. “Hey, we know, Stan the Man. But - we gotta do this. Kids will die if we don’t.”

Ben says, “In an hour or so, you’re gonna be in a car with your wife.”

Stan looks over at him. Ben is standing in a way that reminds Richie a little of Big Bill, now but especially that summer - loving authority , Bev had said once, when they were ditching class to smoke, maybe a month before she left. That was Bill all over. That was a big reason why they all gravitated towards him - Bill was an authority, sure, but he was an authority who listened and loved and would die for them, as they would die for him. 

Ben nods, all understanding and love. “Just think about that,” he says. “This - this is just something we have to get out of the way. After that, you get to live your life. With Patty.”

Stan stares at him. He glances back at the car, where Patty waves.

He waves back. 

“And you guys,” Stan says. “You’ll be around, too.”

“Eh,” Richie says. “We’ll call. If we can afford it.”

Stan slaps him softly in the shoulder. Then he leans in and presses their foreheads together. He has to drag Richie’s face down to do it. Richie is still not used to being taller than his friends, who he always remembered as being his height, even in the last couple years after he shot up taller than pretty much everyone.

He’s also not used to this kind of intimacy with a guy. Especially not when they know he’s gay. He tenses, but Stan just snorts and presses harder.

“We love you, Trashmouth,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

Richie tears up. He pulls away, and Stan lets him. 

Richie breathes evenly and sniffs until he’s got himself back under control.

“You missed a great joke opportunity,” he says when he can speak again. “ Nothing wrong with me? Come on.”

Stan shrugs. “I can miss that one. There’ll be others. Obviously there are a ton of things wrong with you, like you liking pineapple on pizza and never washing your pants.”

“Pants don’t need to get washed much-” 

“But nothing big, Trashmouth. You’re not bad. You’re good.”

“We - we’re supposed to be comforting you,” Richie says, voice still thin.

“Yeah,” Stan says. “Well. I just - wanted to say it. The other me - the future version, he never got to.”

Beside them, Eddie makes a noise not unlike a gasp.

Richie thinks about Stan in the visions.

“You wrote a letter,” he says. It’s distant - the vision had been shards of scenes, really. Or not even shards, just pure information dumped into their brains.

Stan doesn’t say anything. He turns towards the house, the front door.

It looks like a mouth. Richie had always thought that, even as a kid.

They walk towards it.

“Hey Big Bill,” Richie says. “Remember when we went into this place armed with itching powder and a slingshot?”

“Yeah.”

“How the fuck did we not die that summer, man?”

Bill sighs.

“I d-don’t know,” he says. “I guess just l-luck.”

“Uh-huh,” Richie says. Luck. It doesn’t sound quite right, and there’s something hovering at the edges of his mind, which usually only happened in dreams that were

( full of nothing a great big nothing except for the turtle who spoke in a deep kind sad voice and said hello richie i)

forgotten upon waking.

The house is a shitshow. Richie operates on instinct and adrenaline all the way down the lower levels, because every time they try to scream IT small, it just fucks them up and then vanishes downwards.

“Okay,” Bill says as they’re about to enter the cistern. He points at Richie. “Don’t get D-Deadlighted. Eds, don’t get s-stabbed.”

Richie salutes him. Eddie nods.

“Got it, Cap’n,” Richie says. “Hear that, Eds? No getting stabbed.”

“I will try my best not to get stabbed,” Eddie says, dry and nerve-wrought. 

“You fucking better,” Richie says. He slaps Eddie’s back, and then they descend.

Richie gets Deadlighted.

In his defense, it’s not like he goes charging out calling Pennywise a bitch. Well, he kind of does. But Bill’s about to get stamped on, and what’s Richie supposed to do, let Bill get turned into Denbrough jam?
So he darts out of his hiding place - yes, he was hiding, screaming insults at IT is hard when it’s trying to step on and/or stab you - and starts waving his arms.

“HEY YOU FUCKING PUSSY SHITHEAD TAP DANCING FUCK,” Richie yells.

It’s not his best material. But it does get IT turning away from Bill and 

                                    (                                               

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  )

Richie doesn’t know what happens after that. He knows it at the time, but when he thinks back on it afterwards it’s a blur. 

It’s eternity in there. That’s mostly what Richie remembers. The knowledge of it, rather than the experience: an eternity, and a lot of bad things happening in it. Children’s voices pleading with him. Screaming.

But all of that’s pretty abstract. To his mind, it’s more like he sees a bright light and a few bleary seconds pass where his mind is filled more than any humans has been filled, full past overflowing, and suddenly there are hands on his shoulders and a mouth on his mouth and his mind is emptied back to a normal human state.

It does take a second to tune back in. His mind’s been through the blender. 

The mouth leaves his.

Huh , Richie thinks, the first coherent thing he manages to think after being brought out. 

He opens his eyes.

Eddie’s staring at him. It’s his hands on Richie’s shoulders, and - and -

Oh , Richie thinks. He might also say it. If he does, it’s slurred. His lips tingle.

“Rich,” Eddie says. He’s dragging him sideways. “You with me?”

Richie stares. He almost slips on a rock. 

Eddie steadies him, says, “Rich! Are you-”

“‘M here,” Richie says. He blinks hard. “Uh - I’m - was I-?”

“Bill said not to get Deadlighted,” Eddie says, eyes mostly on the ground as they make it to behind a rock big enough to shield them. “He specifically said-”

“I’m sure he’ll forgive me, since I saved him from getting squished,” Richie says as they crouch down together. It’s getting easier to speak. There are still wails fading from his head. 

He shudders. 

Eddie’s eyebrows draw inwards.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Richie says. He wets his lips. He always does this after kissing a guy. It’s a habit. A guy kisses him, he absentmindedly licks his lips for a while after. Not in a weird way, just - he’s always surprised that it happened. He’s kissed three guys in his life.

He winces, tries to stop himself. Eddie’s still looking at him.

“Uh,” Richie says. “Thanks for - saving me?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He’s blinking a lot. “‘Course, man.”

“Right,” Richie says. “So, that - was better than throwing a fence post into ITs mouth. Made you get… less stabbed.”

He touches Eddie’s stomach through his shirt. Then regrets it, draws his hand back. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “I - yeah. I am less stabbed. I mean, I’m not at all stabbed. Except for Bowers’ stabs.”

“Good,” Richie says.

Near them, there’s a shower of rocks and a couple of yells. Richie thinks he heard Bev and Ben among them.

“We gotta,” Richie says.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Hey, no, wait-”

He grabs Richie’s wrist. Richie bends back down into a crouch.

“What,” he says.

“Um,” Eddie says. “I. Uh.”

“Kind of on a time limit,” Richie starts, and then he stops talking, because Eddie’s kissing him again.

It’s better than the first time. Most notably because Richie kisses back. There’s no Deadlight-slack lips. Richie kisses back, and it’s soft skin and firm pressure and Eddie’s lips are nearly chapped, which is strange, because Richie knows he uses chapstick. He saw him apply it a few hours ago. Then again, they have been through sewer water since then.

It should make Richie grimace. It should make Eddie gag , at the very least.

He’s kissing me with sewer mouth , Richie thinks, which is both the grossest and sweetest thing he’s ever thought. He feels weirdly blessed.

There’s a scream from Pennywise, and a few more from their friends.

Eddie and Richie startle apart.

“Not the best time,” Eddie says.

“Uh,” Richie says. “No. Hey, what. What’s - what?”

“What what,” Eddie says, which is something they used to do. One of them would go what ? and the other would go what what? And they’d parrot it back at each other until someone gave in, or, more likely, they started screaming at each other.

“Dude,” Richie says. “I’m - you gotta , okay? I’m - or, later, you can say something? Now’s kinda-”

“I know,” Eddie says. “I just - there’s no time and then there’s no time , you know, like, if I die here-”

“You’re not gonna fucking die, Eds, Jesus!”

Eddie says, “Look, I’m - love you?”

Richie blinks.

Not far away, Bill screams at Pennywise to go fuck himself. No stutter.

“Uh,” Richie says. “You - I’m love you? ” 

“Shut the fuck up, I’m panicking and everything’s happening really fast,” Eddie snaps. He touches Richie’s cheek. “Look, I - we can figure it out later, I just had to tell you now. Just in case.”

“Oh, cool, okay,” Richie says, and he is absolutely about to cry in this hellscape cistern while their friends fight for their lives a dozen feet away. 

Eddie says, “We should go.”

“Yeah,” Richie says.

They go.

They get IT into a corner and scream it small. It cowers like a goddamn chihuahua and whimpers, also like a chihuahua, and keeps shrinking until its skin is transparent.

The Losers crowd around and rip out IT’s heart.

“Look at you,” IT wheezes. “All… grown… up.”

Richie wants desperately to grow up.

With the rest of his friends, he squeezes the heart until it oozes between their fingers, then turns to ash and drifts up towards the ceiling, which abruptly begins to shake.

“Go,” Bill says, and they fucking book it.

Ben has a limp, but other than that they’re pretty much good to sprint out of the house. They haul themselves up the well and are almost through the front of the house when Patty appears, heading their way.

“CAR,” Stan screams as they reach her. He grabs her hand and she grabs back. 

“Would YOU have stayed in the car,” she yells as they run.

“Of course not,” Stan yells back, and that’s when they clear the front door.

They get to the street and turn around to watch the house crumble. It’s fast, once they leave - ten seconds after the last of them leave the porch, the house folds in on itself.

They stand together, leaning or holding hands, a line of seven - eight, now - in the new silence as the house settles.

Bill clears his throat.

“Uh,” he says. “Head count?”

Everyone sounds off. It gets giddier the more they do it, and by the end of it they’re whooping and hugging and Patty’s kissing Richie on the cheek before dragging her husband in.

Richie hugs Eddie hard, and he can feel Eddie grinning into his neck.

“Holy shit, man,” Richie says. He draws back. “We fucking did it! No fatalities! Fuck you , Pennywise!”

Eddie laughs. It’s wet. “I didn’t die!”

“You didn’t die,” Richie says, taking Eddie’s face in his hands. He did this as a kid, mostly to piss him off, but now it has new and scary connotations. He pauses, unsure if this is welcome. It must show in his face, because Eddie’s eyes get shiny and determined.

“Rich,” he says, and pulls him down into a kiss.

There’s someone clapping Richie’s back, but Richie doesn’t check who it is. Bev is laughing in delight, and Richie is pretty sure it started when Eddie pulled him in, but it’s a distant thing. Right now it’s all Eddie, his mouth open against Richie’s, his hands around the back of Richie’s head, alive and warm against him.

Richie’s eyes are wet when they pull apart, full of a relief he didn’t know he was capable of, a huge 

( endless space of ) 

relief that might not be entirely his own.

“We did it,” he says again. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, soft, and Richie knows he’s thinking about the other versions of them, the ones who sent them the vision of the future, a map of what to avoid.

They stand there for a while longer, hugging each other and marveling. It reminds Richie a little of graduation - he’d been out of Derry for a year by then, and he’d been lost and missing people he didn’t remember, but there had still been this feeling, this anticipation.

All your life is ahead , the valedictorian had said. That, Richie remembers clearly. And he’d felt it, the truth of it - all his life was ahead. It still is. Last time it had been daunting, eighteen without any real friends or direction - but now it fills him with hope as he looks over his friends, his friends to whom he’s bound, his friends who are in him deeper than blood.

Eventually, Eddie says, “Okay, can we wash off now? We’re so gross, guys. Also, I need to go to the hospital.”

“I have an idea,” Bev says.

They go to the quarry.

“This isn’t a lot less gross than what’s on us already,” Eddie says.

“Then don’t go in,” Richie says.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “You’ll bitch so hard if I don’t get in.”

“I absolutely will,” Richie says. He checks no one’s around who will mind, then kisses Eddie’s forehead, away from the cut, and then starts crooning, Eddie, come onnnnn, it’s just some water! Just some dirty water! You swam in in all the time as a kid, come onnnnn -

“It was good of them to put a safety barrier up,” Eddie says, peering down at the water below. He kicks at the barrier. “They really should’ve done it sooner. It looks way too new, when do you think-”

Bev runs past him and leaps off the cliff.

“Jesus fuck,” Eddie says.

Richie grins and starts for the cliff. 

It’s pretty fucking gross. 

Richie can’t bring himself to care. Sometimes his thoughts drift to the other life they could’ve had, the one in the visions - the survivors crowding around him as he sobbed over Eddie - but then he looks over and sees everyone messing around in the sunlight and the thoughts go away easy enough. 

Bev and Ben aren’t kissing, but Richie definitely caught a handholding moment. Stan and Patty are kissing, enough that Richie has to yell over at them about public indecency and Stan throws some lake slime at him. Mike and Bill float around and none of them stick to one person the whole time. At one point there’s a game of tag.

Eddie bitches about the unsanitary water for ten minutes straight. It’s fantastic. 

Not long before they leave, Richie swims over to him and says, “Hey Eds.”

“Yeah?”

“Got something important to tell you.”

Eddie’s eyes narrow a little. 

“I’m love you,” Richie says.

Eddie groans.

“You’re never gonna let me live that down,” he says. “Is this it, huh? We’re gonna be in rocking chairs and you’re gonna croak Hey Eds! And I’m gonna be like What ? And you’re gonna be like I’m love you . Like it’s still funny after 50 years.”

“It will be,” Richie says, instead of you think we’ll be together in another 50 years?

Eddie’s cheeks are red, and not just from the warmth.

“I can’t believe I have to put up with your dumb jokes again,” he says.

Richie shrugs. “You don’t have to.”

“No,” Eddie says, “I’m - I’m gonna.”

Richie grins. He might be crying, but only a little. 

“Okay,” he says. “Cool.”

Eddie looks strangely relieved. Then his face creases.

“Oh, shit,” he says. 

“What?”

“I gotta break up with my girlfriend, man.”

Richie cackles. Eddie splashes him. Richie splashes back, and then they’re in a splash fight, and for a moment reality bends and no time has passed at all and it’s that summer again. But then Eddie stops the fight with a kiss, and time stretches out again.

It’s not the summer of ‘89, and thank god for that. Neither is it the dark future where a version of the Losers broke into the macroverse to send a warning into other worlds.

It’s 2002, and the Losers are 26. They don’t have to rebuild their lives after Derry, there’s no difficult reconstruction of the path they’re on. Instead take a step to the left and keep walking.

By the next day, Eddie and Mike have gotten stitches for their stabs and Ben has gotten his leg checked out. The cops have ruled Bowers' death an accident, which goes to show a) just how much the town cares about a serial child murderer who escaped from the asylum and b) the absolute incompetence of the police force in this town. At least this time it works out in their favor.

Bottom line, everyone’s showered and rested and ready to get the fuck out and never come back.

Richie takes Eddie to the kissing bridge.

“Oh, right,” Eddie says. “This is where you-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Richie says. “Damn future vision.”

They stand there looking at the carving for a while. It hasn’t faded so much. It hasn’t even been twenty years since it was carved.

“It’s sweet,” Eddie says quietly.

Richie beams at him. He can’t quite keep his smiles in control around Eddie.

“Aw, shucks,” Richie says in his Southern Belle voice. “Thank you ever so kindly, mister-”

Eddie jostles his shoulder. Richie jostles back.

“We should get to the airport,” Eddie says.

“Yeah, we only have three hours,” Richie says, but starts towards the car. 

“Wait,” Eddie says.

Richie turns back. “What? Airport’s a-waitin’.”

Eddie shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s just - we’re never gonna see it again.”

He gestures towards the carving.

“Yeah, thank fuck,” Richie says, coming back to stand with him. “I’m okay with that. What’s up, doc?”

“I don’t know,” Eddie says again. He pauses. “Hey, do you have a knife with you?”

“Oh, totally,” Richie says. “Let me just go into my knife collection - no, I don’t have a knife, Eds, what are you-”

“Fine,” Eddie says, and goes back into the car. He goes through his luggage and comes out with a swiss army knife.

“Always prepared,” Richie says.

Eddie gives him a look, then head to the fence and bends down. Richie stands with him, watching the wood give way under Eddie’s blade.

Eddie takes his time.

“Thought we had to get to the airport,” Richie says.

“Shut up,” Eddie tells him. He puts the finishing touches on the carving, then leans back on his heels. “There. What do you think?”

Richie hasn’t stopped looking at it since Eddie started. It’s a small, clunky R in the middle of a heart, which looks more boxy than hearts usually look, but it chokes Richie with emotion anyway. 

“It’s good,” he says, strained. He coughs, tries to even out his voice, says, “So, airport?”

Eddie gives him a look that’s all too knowing and stands up. He pockets his hands, since they can’t exactly hold hands in Derry - at least not in such plain sight - and knocks their elbows together.

“Airport,” he agrees. “Sooner I go home, the sooner I leave it.”

“And come to me,” Richie says.

“And go to you,” Eddie says. “Quit saying it like you’re expecting me to wimp out, man. Death visions are a pretty good wakeup call.”

“Thank god for the death visions,” Richie says. 

Eddie snorts. He bumps their elbows together two more times before they get to the car.

At the airport, they sit in the uncomfortable chairs and Richie’s knee vibrates. The others are already gone, most of them left this morning and Mike is driving out later in the afternoon. They’ve all promised to call, and Richie believes them.

“I forgot you were like this when you had to sit still for a long time,” Eddie tells him, putting a hand on his knee so it stills. “God, you used to tap your fucking pencil for the whole of class.”

Richie focuses on the warmth of Eddie’s hand. Says, “Remember that time you stood up and broke my pencil and yelled at me to let you fucking concentrate?”

“Yeah. I got detention for it.”

“Yep,” Richie says. “Which meant I had to find something to make me get detention before school ended.”

Eddie laughs. “Oh man, did you have to try hard?”

“It was last period,” Richie says. “There was a time limit.”

“You managed,” Eddie says, smiling softly. He keeps his hand on Richie’s knee for the next half hour, until his boarding call comes.

Before Eddie gets on his flight, he says, “There’s this stupid thing I keep thinking and you’re gonna make fun of me but I also know you love this shit so shut up, alright?”

“Alright,” Richie says. “Hit me.”

Eddie sighs, but then relents.

“So there’s this book I read,” he says, “I can’t remember what it is, but there’s this - romance, in it, and one of them keeps saying to the other throughout the book, come back. Come back to me .”

“Okay,” Richie says. “I feel like that’s my line? Since you’re going home and then coming to LA-”

“Yeah, yeah, shut up,” Eddie says. Richie loves him impossibly. 

Eddie continues, “I just - I’m gonna come back, is my point. And you’re gonna come back to me, if you ever have to go. We’re always gonna come back to each other, man.”

Richie’s already welling up. “I can’t believe you just called me man during your love speech.”

“Yeah, well, this is your life now,” Eddie says. “Get used to it.”

He shuffles his feet. Glances back at the terminal, where his flight is boarding.

“I was waiting for you to come back,” he says. “While I was - when I was away from Derry, even if I didn’t remember. I was waiting for you to come back, or - or for me to somehow find my way back to you.”

“Me too,” Richie says, all thick throat. He blinks away a shard of memory, a life that never happened - even after Eddie died, Richie never stopped waiting.

That’s not here, Richie thinks. You are. You’re here, in this world, and so’s Eddie.

Eddie touches Richie’s arm. Rubs his thumb against it, just for a second. Richie fights the urge to put his hand over Eddie’s and clasps his elbow instead.

“I’ll see you soon,” Eddie says.

“Not if I see you first,” Richie replies, knee-jerk.

Eddie snorts. Hits his arm gently. Then he turns and heads through the airport gate, looking back at Richie just before he vanishes beyond it.

Richie waves. He doesn’t know if he’s disappointed or relieved that they didn’t kiss, but he figures it doesn’t matter that there wasn’t a kiss just now.

They have time.