Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Richie was in Freshman year, they’d read Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1933 Inaugural Address in class.

Richie didn’t remember being in Freshman year, or 6th grade, or Junior year, or any year of his presumably miserable childhood until the point where 18-year-old Richie, pimpled and beanpole-boned, drives along the I-84 on the way to Chicago and watches every sign to New York pass until he’s in Pennsylvania and wondering why he didn’t just bite the bullet and go through Canada.

So, Richie doesn’t remember reading a speech made to a starving nation, but the phrase “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, or rather the bastardisation to “nothing to fear”, sticks in his mind like the decades of gum stuck to the undersides of the Derry History classroom desks.

It takes a fucking batman film for him to finally track the quote down.

By that point Richie is not only making the kind of money where he can have a laptop, but, to Steve’s relief, actually getting enough emails that checking his inbox has become a necessary and routine part of his day. But on June 15th 2005, stumbling home after the midnight showing, it means that he is able to boot up the angry grey slab and google the phrase while it’s still fresh in his mind.

He finds Roosevelt, and Thoreau, and Oingo Boingo - which was probably his first hearing of the phrase, knowing his and Wentworth Tozier’s music taste - but there’s a sense memory of chalk and teenage sweat that feeds the gut feeling that it’s Franklin D himself who’s carved out the mental real estate and set up shop. (He orders some Oingo Boingo CDs anyway because, despite the familiarity of the album covers, he can’t remember ever listening to them.)

He reads about an address made to a country in the grips of the Depression, and understands it was directed to the policy makers, encouraging those with power to make big changes, but wonders how comforting those words would be to those who had lost their jobs, homes, loved ones, lives. Nothing to fear but fear itself.

He reads it used in articles and art; warnings against the rise of populism and self-help books and “how-to-get-the-corner-office” finance bro inspirational quotes. The middle-class, financially secure White American, who need only fear the limitations of their own minds. Resulting success or failure down only to them and their actions.

Class, race, gender – all apparently inconsequential. Nothing to fear but fear itself.

And he reads and he thinks about how they argue that people only do horrible things out of fear and he thinks, no, they do it out of hate. Fear was powerful, yes, but to use it, to use the word “phobia” was misleading, as it sure wasn’t fear he saw in the eyes of every asshole who’d decided to rearrange his face for him for looking too queer.

Nothing to fear but fear itself. Bullshit. There was plenty to fear. Fear of dying alone; fear that his liver may finally reap its revenge; that Steve and the team of fratty dude-bro writers would swap him in for a younger, less visibly pitiful model; that a hookup would have bad enough taste to recognise him and Annie at the PR firm couldn’t find the story in time; that his stupid, inebriated, lonely mind misreads the signals and leans in, only for the rug to pull away and be left falling and floundering with his gut split between throat and toes, and eyes, so many eyes, knowing exactly what Richie Tozier is.

But maybe that quote was onto something, at least, because if Richie knew anything, it was that fear needed to be avoided at all costs.

He liked to think of it as self-knowledge – if he let himself be as terrified as he knows he could be, the low thumping hum in the back of his mind allowed to take centre stage, then he’ll definitely fuck up. Overthink and overcompensate or just become paralysed with it. Neither option is “Trashmouth”.

Trashmouth is too assured in his power as a red-blooded-American-heterosexual-man who every woman wants and every guy wants to be and whoever doesn’t agree is a snowflake who he’s “totally owned” by “telling it like it is”.

Trashmouth is a fucking dick.

Richie’s known a few people who’ve had mental breakdowns. LA is a goldmine of neuroses and the comedy and closeted D-lister circles Richie swims in would have your lucky little neurosis miner rich as Daddy Warbucks. Both groups are also pretty infamous for using, rehab being somewhat a rite of passage.

He’d rocked up to the University of Chicago with an already impressively high tolerance compared to the many first-time drinkers around him. Student life and then, when he dropped out to focus on radio and stand up full time, the late nights in the studio and at open mics had allowed if not actively encouraged the regular heavy drinking and sharing spliffs or something stronger. When your days finished at 5 am and started at 3 pm it seemed less like a warning sign to be drinking continuously from waking to sleeping.

And his liver might not be, but Richie was better off with a little booze in him.

His nervous vomiting for one was almost completely stopped. He was more relaxed; his constant terror at being found out, for looking too long, was quieted by the soft fog in his mind. His jokes were funnier or at least his filters were even looser, everyone laughing in shock at the filthy things coming out of the Trashmouth. Weed made him even more relaxed with less of the side effects, and coke made him sharp and fast and cutting and like he could take on the world, but alcohol was easier to get a hold of and felt easier to control.

By the time he’d moved to LA and been signed by Steve, he was even more sure that sticking to alcohol was the right move. When he was a nobody the worst that would happen if someone caught him and a guy going home together or if he hit on the wrong guy at a bar was-

Well, it was becoming a fucking statistic to be honest.

But when everyone found out that Richie Tozier likes dick, he wouldn’t be the one to deal with it.

As a celebrity in LA the chances of that at least were reduced, but the likelihood of being recognised, the truth splashed across every gossip rag available, was a very real and terrifying reality. And all those eyes would be on him and they would know-

So. Discretion better part of valour yadda yadda but no bravery here just good old-fashioned fear which needed to be squashed, could not be felt, because then he’d make mistakes and mistakes would lead to everything crumbling down and what he feared becoming the present, becoming terror – frozen and caught.

Nothing to fear.

He’d figured it out though, see? Booze or drugs keep that fear quiet, keep him in control. And he was in control, he had it under control.

There had actually been a moment, in the late 2000s, when he’d tried to get clean. Behaviour that’s accepted in your twenties earning long glances in your thirties, even Steve making worried murmurs, and Richie, who had realised he was nearing 35 and everyone around him had reached some level of self-accepting and happiness in themselves that seemed alarmingly foreign and unattainable to him, read an article about how alcohol acted as a depressant and, naturally, made the life-altering and potentially dangerous decision to go cold turkey, on a whim.

In retrospect he was lucky not to have died, he found out later. He spent four days inside his apartment, vomiting and sweating and cursing himself, but he’d already poured all the alcohol in his cupboards down the sink and he couldn’t bring himself to order some with the food he forced down because he was supposed to be in control, wasn’t he?

Finally, the worst of it seemed to have passed, and he celebrated by going out and getting a green smoothie that tasted like lawn trimmings and did not help with the continued loose bowel situation he had going on from the withdrawal, but he felt triumphant.

And then, a week after he’d stopped drinking, he settles down to watch a movie an old college buddy had recommended; some psychological horror adaptation called the Black Rapids. He’s having a popcorn dinner and the glass of Fanta makes him feel like a kid, but the premise sounds interesting and the first scenes set a moody, tense atmosphere.

Richie wakes up the next morning, curled up naked on his kitchen floor.

The apartment is trashed; the sofa ripped open, stuffing trailing around the whole room; lamps and their side tables knocked to the floor and ranging from cracked to fully shattered; the motorised shades that span across the huge window wall suffering large tears or fully ripped off. His front door and parts of the wall look like someone took a kitchen knife to them, gouging out long scars in the wood and plaster.

Aside from the nudity (he finds scraps of the clothes he was wearing around the room), he’s completely unharmed. None of his neighbours mention hearing anything strange, though Mrs Hernandez’s Shih Tzu won’t come near him anymore. He cleans up as best he can and hires contractors to fix the rest of the damage, spinning some story about a cousin’s large dog going crazy, and he desperately searches up anger issues and blackouts caused by sobriety after the withdrawal period.

Short term memory lapses and aggression are listed as side effects, though unusual after a week.

He calls his doctor and tries his best to explain his symptoms without seeming like he’s gone full psycho, and after receiving a lecture on the dangers of going cold turkey alone, Dr Simmons suggests booking into rehab so that he can be under observation.

Steve is pissed he’s been ignoring his emails, but relatively supportive that Richie’s getting clean, and books him somewhere discreet and luxurious.

There’s a lot less talking to people about your issues than he’d feared and a lot more yoga and health foods. The programme seems designed to get its clients back to working order as soon as possible rather than the much longer process of self-realisation and the risk that brings of stars abandoning celebrity life forever. There’s a lot of the group leaders saying things like “everyone’s a little bit crazy” and “you’ve already made the most important step”.
Richie’s there for two weeks and his tasteful cream and eggshell suite remains undamaged. The night staff assure him that no disturbance is heard from his room and, when he gives them express permission to set up a camera and monitor him, they confirm that all the hours of the night he doesn’t remember are spent asleep in his bed.

He leaves the centre and three days later wakes up naked in his destroyed apartment, the fading memories of a nightmare all that he remembers.

He decides to experiment, in case something was triggered in him by the film, like the world’s most useless sleeper agent. He buys a bottle of cheap whisky and tells himself he’s just testing his theory. Everything else he sets up the same – time, film, popcorn, Fanta.

He starts the film after a couple of glasses of the whisky and watches the film in its entirety. It’s a creepy film, though he finds it scarier than he should, certain frames hitting a nerve, and the ending is frustratingly bad. But he watches the whole thing, then goes to bed and wakes up to everything as he left it.

Cutting the drinking again, pissed off about how much he’s craving it, he stays in his apartment for the next few days and marathons reality tv. Nothing happens whilst he’s awake but the nightmares, which had for some reason stopped when he was in rehab, are back and he wakes up again and again to his duvet, mattress and, on the third morning, bed frame, in pieces. Steve asks what the fuck he’s doing to need a new mattress express delivered three days in a row and Richie sends him a link to the Amazon listing of the Kama Sutra with a kiss emoji.

He tries smoking some pot before going to bed and immediately stops waking up to broken shit. That continues for a few days before he becomes paranoid about it happening in public and hurting someone. Of being seen. So, he starts smoking in the morning and throughout the day, stinking of weed and perpetually red-eyed. But it works, even if it makes him cotton-mouthed and giggly.

A few weeks later he’s at a party and it’s only a few glasses in that he remembers he’d quit alcohol. He doesn’t know how he forgot but it was only the fact that the drinks are hitting harder than they should that jogs his memory.

Rather than stopping, he gets another.

There’re the familiar pangs of failure, but he’s used to being a fuck up, so fuck it. Since he’s clearly prone to violent psychotic breaks when he’s sober, or gearing towards the mother of all breakdowns, he’s going to do his best to put it off for as long as he can. The method of running away from or staunchly repressing his problems has worked out pretty well so far.

And when he’s drinking, he’s in control, and that’s safer for everyone.

It crosses his mind, before time passes and he manages to forget the entire incident far too easily, that he never considered that something or someone else might have been causing the damage, but he knows, deep gut-knowing knows, he’s the problem.

Because at the end of the day, the knowledge that pulses sickly in his fucking scholar of a gut, is that he is something to be feared. Like the vestigial neurons that once controlled the cocked-ears-stock-still-deer-in-headlights prey instinct are all turned inwards and screaming at him to run. To tear himself apart and wildly fling his ripped apart prey flesh away from the predator core.

And look, he’s not an idiot. He’s aware that growing up in bum-fuck Maine has made him internalise some pretty shitty views on homosexuality, that the trope of predatory gay men was particularly rampant. Intellectually he’s aware that all of it was bullshit and he’s never done anything with anyone who wasn’t explicitly willing and consenting and Christ, he even has gay friends who he knows none of the bullshit applies to (not close, not anymore. A mix of the closet doors widening the space between them and no self-respecting gay wanting to be in the same circles as The Trashmouth).

He’s even aware, after a few pointed Thanksgivings, that his parents would be fine with it. The grandchild quota has been filled thanks to Rachel, and now it’s just Went and Mags catching him in the kitchen and saying shit like “we just want you to be happy” and “we’ll love you no matter what” in gentle voices that make him want to rip himself open just so they’ll see his true self and be horrified before something else does it for him.

It’s 2016 - 60% of Americans support same-sex marriage, the kid who played Matilda comes out as bi, the Mormons elect an openly gay mayor, and every time Richie thinks about coming out, he’s struck with the fear of eyes and knowing. But at night he dreams of a boy, backing away from Richie, big brown eyes filled with terror, and he knows, deep down in his bones, he is, in fact, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, terrified of discovery.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

“Ok Rich, soundcheck is in five. Did you get a chance to read over my notes?”

They’re back in California, though in Fresno because the Trashmouth hits better there than with the LA demographic, so Richie’s still living out of his tour duffel. Annoyingly it’s not the last stop with Nevada still to go. But Steve, who’s been on a juice cleanse and who he’d expected to be complaining about it until the end, has been smugly singing the praises of California oranges and how amazing it is to get all the produce fresh from the fields, organic and local. He’s not lying, it’s good shit, but Richie’d appreciate the support in the ‘annoyed-this-isn’t-over’ camp.

Steve’s notes are mostly nit-picking – pauses Richie had cut a little short, partly from adrenaline partly because some of the jokes are more anti-pc than funny and he wants to get them over with quickly. He wonders if he’d feel any better saying some of the shit he does if it was actually funny.

He thinks this might be his last tour. He hates the material obviously, it’s somehow getting even more dire now that anti-woke comedy is a thing and you can just be awful without being funny, but it’s also exhausting and boring to be on the road for months on end. He doesn’t actually need to tour, financially speaking. But each time he returns to his empty apartment with that massive fucking window, he feels like clawing the walls to get out again. It’s both too big and too claustrophobic; empty and cramped.

Most of Richie’s wealth comes from voice work. More specifically, horror – movies, games, the odd music intro, you name it.

Richie’s always been good at voices. His impressions are some of the only parts of the Trashmouth shows that he enjoys, that he feels some ownership over. And he does do some other voice work in cartoons for more fluffy characters, but Richie’s ‘monster voice’, as Steve calls it, isn’t drawn from anything or was even intentional the first time it came out.

It was 2003, at a gig a few months after he’d been signed by Steve and he was still nervous about pissing him off enough and blowing it, so he’d been keeping the drinking before shows to a minimum. Keep the façade of non-alcoholic and non-liability going just a bit longer. But his weed guy was out of town for the month, something about family in Albuquerque, and he’d meant to ask around for a new seller, but he’d also run out of Ritalin and writing ‘BUY WEED’ on a post-it note immediately birthed a brand spanking new irrational fear of his mom deciding to spontaneously visit and be yet more disappointed in his life decisions.

So, Richie was left to go on stage more sober than he’d been in years and so nervous it felt like his bones were trying to stretch outside his skin. He caught sight of his arm and he must have had goosebumps because the hair was practically standing on end and… thicker? Definitely more hair there.

But he didn’t have time to freak out about hairy arms for long because only a few lines into the material he was reciting, things go off the rails a bit. It was supposed to be the beginning of a joke about calling a sex line, he thinks Jason wrote it (Jason who thought jokes about getting one over on sex workers, in either meaning, is something to brag and make crude gestures about. Jason, who liked to talk about what a prude his girlfriend is. Jason who seemed so fucking happy and so fucking assured in his personal safety), but instead of the snide douche persona voice, what came out is at least two octaves too low and rippled through the room like a roll of heavy thunder.

All other sound in the room, the clink of glasses, conversations by those not watching, the shuffling of coats and bags and human bodies, stopped. A couple of nervous titters broke out but were quickly squashed again by the thick, suffocating silence.

Somehow, Richie wasn’t scared. He fucked up, and apparently was possessed by the voice of Cthulhu, but in that moment he felt completely in the present. Apathetic and reckless, weirdly free. Adrenaline you wonderful bastard.

He didn’t make the conscious decision to whip out the mid-western mom voice, but then he’s doing it and asking “can you repeat that hon, oh gawsh the reception’s just terrible out here I keep telling Dave- Dave honey! Did you check the telephone pole after that big storm we had? – sorry hon what were you saying?”

Then followed a skit about Cthulhu (or some other demonic entity) trying to call a sex line and ending up getting invited for dinner and it’s weird and definitely didn’t fit with the rest of his set, but people were laughing. The cautious chuckles had given way to genuine laughter and he thinks he heard someone practically shrieking they were laughing so hard and it’s more addictive than anything he’s ever felt.

He had to go back to the rest of the set eventually. The crowd were more generous than they should be, warmed up by their earlier laughter, and he got some actual whoops in with the applause when he exits to the wings.

Steve was waiting backstage, looking pissed but not apoplectic.

There was the obligatory wrist-slapping because Jason got paid to write those jokes, Richie needed to at least tell them, but then Steve looked at him consideringly.

“You know, we could always rebrand to MonsterMouth.”

He doesn’t understand why but the idea of being called a monster makes him feel sick, and it showed clearly on his face.

Steve back peddles, “Jesus, ok, fine we’ll stick with Trashmouth,” and side-eyed Richie the rest of the night, as if he might have had a breakdown any moment.

The voice gets incorporated in his routines for a while, until he starts getting pretty big and Steve becomes obsessed with brand – “does it fit with the Trashmouth image?” – and it’s decided that Demon Voice doesn’t fit with the tell-it-like-it-is white straight dude persona. Distances him from the audience. Richie wonders whether they’d feel more distanced by him being gay or being an actual demon.

Whatever, it’s a bit tricky to do the voice the more he’s had to drink anyway. He can access it whenever but it’s like playing a song you know by muscle memory on the piano; it gets real fucking janky when you’re shit-faced.

He imagines that they could probably edit a normal voice lower and make it sound the same, but a sound technician once excitedly talked his ear off about distortion and over-editing, and he keeps getting hired, so he guesses it’s useful.

He makes enough from it that by 2006 he can afford his own place.

It’s an apartment in a good area of town and Steve had hired some contractors to do it up inside so it’s frankly far too nice for someone like Richie. Steve is with him as he walks around the place, giving him the rundown on his schedule for the next few weeks whilst they check out the final touches being added.

He’s not really paying attention to either, gaze fixed on the massive window in the open-plan kitchen-living space area, wondering nervously how easily the buildings across the street can tune into the Richie Tozier show, but he hears the change in Steve’s tone.

“Why would you put the lock on the outside of the door? It’s clearly the wrong way round, change it.”

The contractor is polite but firm as they explain that there’d been specific instructions on where to install the simple sliding bolt.

“Well, it was obviously a mistake, why wouldn’t you pick up on that? It’s called common sense.”

“I’m sorry, I have to go by what the plans ask for.”

“The owner is literally right- Richie come here! You want the lock inside your bedroom, so you don’t get someone breaking in and locking you in whilst they rob the place and then burn the building down, right?”

Richie awkwardly laughs his agreement. Later, he looks at the plans and sees his own handwriting asking for the lock, an addition he had no memory making, and he wonders, for the millionth time, Why?

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

In 2016 in Fresno, it’s nearly showtime. The soundcheck guys are happy, Steve’s had something thick and green to drink so his blood sugar’s up, and Richie is waiting for lights up in his dressing room, nursing a glass of scotch.

Makeup have done their thing so he’s trying to remember not to touch his face. Mainly he’s just messing around on his phone, writing thoughts that had the potential to be jokes in his notes app to never be looked at.

He almost drags a hand down his face, catching himself just in time and swapping the phone in his hand for his glass. Fuck, but he should just quit stand-up. If he thinks about his motivations for sticking with it all this time, they just seem to trickle down to ‘maybe one day’ – telling his own jokes, firing the writing team, coming out. He’s fucking forty, he shouldn’t still be making frat bro jokes.

It’s still scary though; the idea of that many people knowing is terrifying. Plus it’d alienate his entire audience, and whilst he knows there’s a sizeable crowd in the repressed and depressed category, they’re unlikely to want to watch him talk about his sad-sack life when Bake-Off and Drag-Race exist. He doesn’t blame them, he thinks, rubbing his mouth before remembering and gingerly inspecting the damage. Nothing visibly messed up thank fuck.

Maybe it is time to throw in the towel. Stand up was his dream but it’s proven pretty empty – the high of strangers’ approval can only get you so far. It always feels like every time he cracks a joke he wants to look to his side and check to see if someone’s laughing, but there’s no one there. He’s been stuck in friends-with-benefits situations for so long, abandoning hookups way back when paparazzi became a genuine worry, but neither party is interested in anything more.

Somehow, Richie ended up a romantic, which is hilarious. The idea that there’s some great love out there for Trashmouth of all people is ridiculous. He feels the need to mess with his hair and tightens his grip on the scotch.

No, the big romance isn’t on the cards for Richie, no matter what he wants. But maybe, if he steps back, lets himself fade into irrelevance, maybe he’ll be able to be open to himself at least.

He thinks of his parents in New Mexico, Rachel in Vermont. He could spend some time with them. Maybe see his nieces and nephews more than once a year. He could tell them.

Every tour he thinks, this is it, no more. And it never is because he can never bring himself to change. He’s too much of a coward. He’ll keep doing this until he dies, probably.

His phone buzzes face-down on the table, pulling him from his thoughts.

He flips it over and it’s an unknown number from Derry, Maine.

The scotch slips over the edges of the glass, the hand placing it down sloshing the liquid around violently from its shaking. He catches sight of himself in the mirror. His right eye looks like there’s dark bruising around it. He’s rubbed it. The makeup is still fresh on the heel of his hand.

Richie accepts the call and is told it’s Mike Hanlon calling; is told it’s time for him to come home.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

Steve doesn’t know why Richie had flown past him, bursting out the fire exit to vomit, but he ushers him back in and tries to get him back on stage.

Richie’s shaking, he doesn’t remember what’s in Derry, not yet, but the terror that’s been stalking him his whole life is dialled up to a thousand and having a fiesta in his stomach.

Somehow, he gets on stage, waving to the crowd and smiling, waiting for them to quiet down a little before beginning.

“My name is Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier and I’m-“

Burning, throbbing pain, splintering in lightning shocks up from his mangled torso to his arms, clawing up his neck, carving down his legs and filling every inch of him and bursting out his skin. Terrified voices are clamouring to be heard over the thunder in his ears, hands pressed anywhere they can reach as he thrashes.

There’s a weeping, choked voice begging into his neck that’s wetted with tears as a small hand desperately tries to hold wadded fabric against the- the teeth marks stretching almost to his bellybutton, a matching set to his spine. And he wants to make a joke, make him smile and cuss him out, but there’s only pain and something growing, taking over and pushing Richie out. He can hear the fucking laughter in his head as his bones crack and stretch, blood boiling and thickening as everything that once was thirteen-year-old boy becomes something huge and jagged and unnatural.

There’s screaming and the hands have left his body, the tear-damp nose torn away from his neck, and those are his friends. His friends are scared. They’re scared of him oh god no please no – but then there’s nothing but light, floating lights, and he’s floating out of his body and into them and with them.

And he can smell their fear, rank and cloying and sweet sweet sweet, and it hungers.

…

…

“What the fuck, is this a bit? Is he coming back on?”

“It has to be a bit, ah fuck wait do you think this is some kind of public apology shit? Did something come out?”

“It has to be a bit. ‘I’m a monster’? What the fuck does that mean?”

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

It happens like this. Richie Tozier, aged nine years old, sits in the living room of the Denbrough’s on the night of Halloween, the TV set blaring old black and white horror flicks.

He, Bill, Stan and Eddie have foregone trick or treating or any newer scary movies in an effort to appease Sonia Kaspbrak into letting Eddie join. It’d taken the extra reassurance that it be at polite, good-family Bill Denbrough’s house and that Eddie have a curfew of 8 pm for her to reluctantly agree, but Eddie had called home at 7 to say how rowdy it was getting outside, and how the older kids would be out soon and wouldn’t it be so much safer if he just stayed at the Denbrough’s I’ll get a good night’s sleep mommy I promise.

It’s after 10 pm now, the boys hopped up on sugar and adrenaline, and I was a Teenage Werewolf is playing. They’ve been making jokes about the main character being like Henry Bowers, saying that Bowers would turn into a mangey old dog rather than a wolfman. Privately though, Richie thinks that Bowers enjoys hurting others too much for it to be a good fit; the troubled Tony seems nothing but distressed at his own rage and violence.

The movie goes on and that would have been the end of it, but just as Tony wanders into the gymnasium, Richie’s eyes, as they have been more and more often lately, find themselves drawn to Eddie Kaspbrak’s legs in their little sleep shorts. He tells himself it’s because Eddie’s always been meant to run, even as he’s forced to sit out of P.E, and Richie’s brain sees a gym and thinks of Eddie.

But he can’t help sneaking glances between the screen and Eddie’s legs, Eddie’s lips, Eddie’s neck, and, in a horrible coincidence, the shots flick between the girl in the leotard and Tony’s transfixed gaze. He tries to keep his focus on the screen, but then the bell rings, triggering Tony’s transformation, and his eyes are hungry even before he changes – a hunger Richie is starting to recognise.

And when the girl sees the wolfman and screams in terror, well that’s right too, isn’t it? Because there’s something terrible and wrong in him, down to his DNA.

It’s too easy after that to see the parallels. The adults are dismissive and blind to what’s happening to their children or are actively harming the young people. Tony is hunted down and destroyed before he can hurt anyone else, or worse, infect them. He’s powerless to stop the beast that lurks inside him – there’s no cure for being a monster.

Richie goes to the Denbrough’s bathroom and throws up the copious amounts of candy in his stomach, and, knelt down next to the toilet, he screws his eyes shut and prays the monster in him will go away.

And time passes and his prayers don’t work. And little Georgie Denbrough, who had spent that Halloween giggling with orange frosting on his chubby toddler cheeks, who had cried when he couldn’t stay up with the older boys until Bill went upstairs with him and told him a story about a cheeky pumpkin and a kind black cat, loses a paper boat and his life to an ancient, hungry evil.

Then Bill - brave, grieving Bill – wants to search the sewers, and poor Betty Ripsom’s shoe dangles at the end of a stick.

Then four becomes five becomes six becomes seven. Ben, Beverly, Mike. A projector in a garage and clown in the pictures, and Richie clings to Eddie and Eddie clings to Richie and Richie wants to keep him safe but there’s a monster in the wall and a monster in Richie that enjoys it too much.

Then they’re standing outside the Well House and Richie doesn’t want to go in, doesn’t want Eddie to go in, but they’ve drawn the short straw and they can’t let Bill go in alone, and it’s immediately creepy as shit inside. They head up the stairs and Richie doesn’t know how but then Eddie isn’t with them and isn’t responding to their calls. Then he hears his name whimpered and it’s Eddie’s voice coming from behind a half-open door, little begging cries of Richie, please, and he doesn’t think to alert Bill as he stumbles towards the room.

Inside, the disrepair and rot of the rest of the house aren’t as immediate, instead, walls of peeling paper are covered in posters of films and bands. There’s a desk, and a bed, and something hairy and heaving half hidden by the edge of the wardrobe. And, underneath the too large, hulking thing, a pair of tube socked and trainered feet stick out, kicking out as the whimpers turn to screams Please Richie no no please don’t.

There’s blood on the walls, on the bed, streaked across the floor leading to the corner where the creature is going to a frenzy, on the small legs that a growing feebler in their struggles, until they still, and the cries of Eddie’s voice are cut off with a choked gurgle.

And Richie, Richie can’t breathe.

That can’t be, Eddie can’t be- and he must make some kind of noise because the creature stiffens and then drags itself back.

It pulls itself upright from all fours, and he can see it’s wearing a varsity jacket and it has his fucking name on the back, TOZIER printed in gaudy yellow on green, stretched to splitting over huge furred shoulders. When it turns to face him, he can see the blood soaking the fabric in dark brown stains.

Bill barely pulls him from the room in time, and Richie’s crying out garbled whimpers about Eddie, they need to help Eddie, when the mattress starts shuddering and Eddie’s head tears out through the fabric. It’s not Eddie but Richie doesn’t know if that means the other Eddie was real or if they’re both fake, but the black goop is streaming towards them, eating away at the floorboards.

The doors. Scary, Very Scary, Not Scary At All; Betty Ripsom’s legless body and Bill screaming that it’s not real until he opens the door again and it’s just a door and they can finally hear Eddie screaming downstairs.

They burst through the door and there’s Eddie Eddie he’s alive he’s okay Eddie Eddie Eddie, the clown crouched over him, hand around his neck.

Richie wants to shout at him to get away from him, but he’s also shit-his-pants terrified, and when the clown comes racing at him and Bill, Richie curls into Bill and whines in fear.

Then Beverly, with her fence post, and the three of them scamper around the impaled clown to Eddie. He sees Mike, Stan and Ben, piling into the room and immediately flattening themselves against the wall.

Eddie’s cradling his right arm which is clearly broken, his forearm suddenly turning at an angle that makes Richie want to throw up. But they need to move, they need to get out of here before-

With an unnaturally deep, gravelly laugh, It swings around and stalks slowly towards them.

The teeth, the growling, It’s hands ripping out of the gloves to reveal course fur and claws; it’s all too close to everything he’s just seen upstairs, down to Eddie’s white tube socks kicking out in fear.

He grabs Eddie’s face, yelling at him to look at me, trying to force him to meet his eyes instead of watching the clown advance. The fake Eddie upstairs died alone, betrayed and begging. And maybe if he knew what Richie thinks about and what he is he’d recoil from Richie too, but at least he can try to stop Eddie from seeing death as it comes. The anticipation is almost the worst part after all.

It lunges with a roar, and they collectively shriek, but somehow It steps back, twisting sharply and ripping those claws into Ben’s stomach, before staggering back, deeper into the house.

Maybe It felt outnumbered. Maybe It didn’t want to eat them all at once but string it out, marinating them. Richie doesn’t know and doesn’t have time to worry because Bill is running off but Eddie’s still next to Richie, his hands on Eddie’s shoulders, and the other boy is still yelling and whimpering, clutching his arm and clearly in a lot of pain.

It’s got to be like, grating, right? The bones and everything, they need to reset it, so it isn’t just flopping about (oh fuck he’s going to throw up).

But if it means Eddie’s in less pain.

It is a very stupid idea, and Eddie is yelling very hard at him not to do it, but Richie’s had at least five near-death experiences in the last ten minutes and the adrenaline is giving his mind tunnel vision.

He never actually finds out if he did more harm or good trying to reset the bone, but they all scramble out of the house, Mike lifting Eddie into his bike basket, and they cycle away as fast as they can.

Eddie’s dragged away by his mother, Richie screams at Bill and gets punched for his trouble, and the Losers tear apart.

He’s terrified and lonely, keeps thinking he sees the werewolf out the corner of his eye, and he misses the others with everything in his small body. He clambers up to Eddie’s window a few times, keeping as silent as possible so as not to alert Sonia Kaspbrak.

It helps, seeing Eddie, but it tears him up inside. His nightmares have been steadily featuring Eddie, dying or dead, and it helps, the proof that he’s alive. But in his nightmares, Richie is Eddie’s killer, and that, together with being in Eddie’s bedroom on a regular basis and unable to stop his mind from making the connection of Eddie and bed, makes him feel more and more like a dangerous creep. A monster.

Then the arcade and Bowers and the statue, and there’s so much fear and grief and anger inside him.

He steals his dad’s penknife and carves some lines on a bridge and he aches with fear and something better but so much worse.

Then Bill finds him and tells him that Bev’s been taken, and Richie thinks desperately that he’s too young to die but so was the young, angry man in a black and white horror movie. Maybe teenage werewolves are not meant to live long.

They return to the house and before they even get down to the sewer’s where Bill’s convinced It’s taken Bev, Bowers shows up and nearly kills Mike, before getting pushed down the well himself.

Then it’s Stan, screaming that they left him to be eaten, then Bill’s run off and they find Beverly and Ben brings her back with a kiss, and then they find Bill and a crying, one-armed Georgie that isn’t real but Bill is sobbing as he pulls the trigger.

And then and then and then – Bill in a chokehold in the clown’s arms, Richie spouting shit as he edges towards the baseball bat sticking out of the mountain of decaying toys, the satisfying thunk of It’s head against the bat when he swings.

It is shapeshifting rapidly, but there’s too many of them and It barely has time to hold one form before another Loser has fought It off.

But then, Richie’s swinging the bat and he trips on the uneven ground, stumbling a little too close. And It turns to him, victorious glint in animal eyes, and the werewolf pounces. It knocks him on his side, pinning him to the ground, before descending with a snarl, clamping half of Richie’s abdomen in-between powerful jaws.

If Mike Hanlon, thinking of dogs and sheep, hadn’t stuck an iron pole in through the fleshy corner of It’s jaw and up into the gullet and believed, with the expectation of someone who’s performed the action a thousand times, in the gag reflex loosening the grip of teeth, Richie would likely have lost most of his side and his life with it. But, unlike with the bolt bullets, this time Mike doesn’t even need to think to believe.

The werewolf releases its victim, but, whether through It’s intention or Richie’s belief, the damage is done. Werewolf bites beget werewolves after all.

Richie’s crying, praying once again, but once again he knows it won’t help. The others continue to fight It, pushing It back until It is left crawling away, scared of the children who refused to be scared of It anymore.

Bill tells It it will starve and advances to strike, but the clown flips itself into the open pipe behind it.

It stutters Bill’s tongue twister before raising slightly, leering past the wall the six children have formed.

“At least I’ll have Richie Rich for company, he’ll keep poor old Pennywise from being lonely! Beep Beep! Beep Beep!”

Bill lifts the pole and tries to hit It again, but It drops down further, cackling and beeping as It’s head cracks apart and drifts up and up, before letting go and dropping into the dark below.

There’s a pause, unsure if it’s really over, before they’re all racing back to their friend’s side. He’s gasping and shaking, his eyes as milky as Beverly’s when they found her suspended. Eddie’s cursing himself for throwing away his fanny pack, but they can all see it wouldn’t be any help.

The skin around the bite has turned black, blood vessels leading from the wound visibly moving something dark and poisonous to the rest of his body. All too quickly the veins of his throat are swelling and darkening in turn.

They’re all talking over one another, panicking, and Eddie has thrown his arms around Richie’s neck, wetting it with tears as he begs his friend to get better, to fight.

But all Richie can see are the lights floating high above, promising reprieve from the pain as his bones start breaking and his muscles tear themselves apart. There’s another voice in his brain, hungry and cruel, and he doesn’t want to let it near his friends, but he has no choice, he’s losing the battle and his mind and body are not his own.

When the first bones broke with a sickening crunch, the Losers had backed away, Eddie pulled by Bev and Stan, though still trying to keep their hands on his feet and arms. But as they watch, Richie’s insides shift and swell, pressing up against the skin and stretching it grotesquely, splitting it in some areas. The screams in the boy’s throat begin to choke him and are replaced more and more by gargled grunts and growls.

The other children yell out but are powerless to do more than watch their friend’s face twist in anguish as his spine buckles and the two squirming protrusions in his sides finally break through the skin.

Richie hears his friends cries and he’s sorry Bill, he’s sorry Stan, he’s sorry Bev, Ben, Mike, Eddie, he’s sorry he’s truly a monster now and he’s sorry he can’t control it.

His body is nothing more than ripped flesh and contorting bones as thick, wiry hair bursts first across the spine and then down limbs with too many joints, across the torso until nothing recognisably human remains. And the Beast laughs and laughs in his head as Richie floats away from the pain and away from his body, into the lights.

Perhaps its Stan or Bev, recently victim to the Deadlights themselves, or perhaps its Bill, filled with conviction that they have power because they aren’t afraid, or maybe Mike with his knowledge that belief gives It its power but also gives them power, or Ben, who kissed Beverly with half-remembered fairy tales and a pull of something deeper but has realised that love has power stronger than they know.

Or maybe it’s Eddie, and all he knows is that some things are bullshit, and some things are lies, and this is class-A motherfucking bullshit and Richie isn’t dead. There’s something there he can’t understand, doesn’t recognise yet, but Richie is his favourite person in the entire world; he refuses to lose Richie he can’t he won’t.

Whether it is one of them or all of them, the same determination fills them all. Knowledge without knowing, understanding without conscious thought, and they link hands, surrounding the creature that was once their friend, and demand he is returned to them.

The creature stalls in its transformation, a panicked growl escaping the heavy jaws.

All the losers are speaking; crying out to Richie, calling for him to come home or yelling memories of their Trashmouth. Theirs. Bring Him Back To Us.

A heavy paw raises as if to strike but falls under its own weight, suddenly weak.

He’s Ours. Bring Him BACK.

And all that once was Richie Tozier is clawed back into being and stretched over the creaking, gnashing, hungry mass, desperately wrestled into place by dogged belief and love love love.

Richie’s left curled up in a ball, his clothes in rags around him as he shivers on the cistern floor, but he’s quickly pulled up and surrounded by his friends in a desperate pile of affection and tears.

Eventually, Richie makes a joke about being dick-to-the-wind in a sewer and the others peel off him, all the boys insisting Bev turn away even as she rolls her eyes. Richie’s overshirt sleeves are split but it’s still wearable and the buttons were undone and so unharmed, and noble Bill donates his jean shorts to the cause, though tying his plaid around his waist does nothing to hide that he’s down to his tighty-whities.

It’s a weird fucking walk back through town and to their respective homes but they’re together and, somehow, they’re alive.

Then comes golden sunlight and bloodied hands as oaths are made, but they’ve won, they’re safe. Things can go back to normal.

And then, the sun sets, night falls, and something shrieks in the dark. And the fear that races through Richie Tozier stretches his bones and tears his skin, until something monstrous is left in his place.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

It’s when the plane is already taxiing on the runway at LAX that Richie suddenly realises he’s trapped himself in what is essentially a small box that’s about to be a thousand feet in the sky for the next five and half hours. More than that, he’s condemned a couple of hundred innocent people to fly across the entire country, trapped in a metal coffin with whatever the hell he is.

The thought makes the two old fashioneds he’d downed post-security threaten to come back up. He struggles with the net on the back of the seat in front of him, ripping a sick bag out and tearing it in the process. Swearing, he manages to get the second bag out undamaged and shoves his face into it.

The guy sitting next to him – blond, nice suit and pink, sweaty face – is leaning as far away from him as possible as if Richie had already vomited, afraid at the thought of future disgust.

“Sorry, the environmental impact of flying just makes me sick to my stomach, y’know?” he offers with a weak grin. The other man grows pinker and somehow looks even more fearfully disgusted at the prospect of being talked at by Richie.

Buster if you think the vomit and the jokes are bad just wait until you see my next party trick.

But both Richie and his pink-faced seat neighbour’s fears weren’t realised, though Richie spent the rest of the flight clutching the balled-up paper bags tighter than a dowager at her pearls. His clawed fingers cramp up and he has to pry them open with his other hand.

A changeover at JFK and on to Bangor. Before boarding, he finds himself in front of a best-sellers display, unable to stop staring at the new Denbrough novel. Something in his brain is itching at the wooden floorboards and aged wallpaper depicted on the cover, the author’s name in stark, white capitals underneath.

He’s probably zoning out, fear of vomiting or something worse so much worse had stopped him from doing more than listening to some of the saved music on his phone and playing candy crush.

He hadn’t managed to eat. Sleep, when it came, bought the boy’s face again and his eyes filled with that terrible fear, and clocking that that was likely a memory rather than a figment of his imagination was enough to rule sleeping out for good and get him from Lemonade Lake to the Chocolate Mountains in an attempt to distract himself.

So maybe a half hour’s nap after a full day of being awake before driving the four hours from Fresno to his apartment and then getting an uber to the airport. He needed coffee and something high in sugar, but on his way to the nearest Starbucks, he’d glanced to his side, seen the display and found himself stuck.

There was something nudging at him, like his fingertips were scrabbling against the edge of a memory but unable to gain purchase. His parents’ bungalow in Santa Fe was all terracotta tiles and white walls, maybe an elderly relative had had an attic, or a weird neighbour? Maybe a film he’d seen and forgotten? What was it, why did he know it, why- three doors that lead to nowhere, red blood on white tube socks, a torn jacket over matted fur-

“This is the final boarding call for Delta Airlines flight DL 4942 non-stop to Bangor, Maine. Passengers, please report to gate number 13 for immediate boarding.”

Shit. In-flight coffee it is then.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

He’s still 10 minutes out from the Derry town line when he starts to remember. Mike. Fuck, he’d barely responded with more than a whimper to Mike’s gentle command that he ‘come home’ before hanging up and racing to the fire door to puke. Gentle Mike, who would duck his head when he smiled, like he needed to hide some of the sunshine of it. Who had been through so much so young and deserved far better than Derry had ever given him, yet had seemingly stayed all this time, waiting. He’d still been there when Richie left for Chicago, promises to visit they both knew were empty since Went and Maggie were moving to New Mexico in the fall.

Richie had been the last to leave, the Losers club (The Losers! How had he forgotten?) down to him and Mike after Stan’s dad had accepted a position at a synagogue in Pennsylvania.

Holy shit, Stan. Stan the man. The tiny little boy in perfectly pressed khaki shorts who’d seen wild, noisy toddler Richie and the beetle he’d found and bought him in offering and, instead of running screaming, had led them both over to the big poster on insects on the kindergarten classroom wall. Then, when Richie had moved too quickly and was crying because his beetle had flown away, told Richie facts about the dinosaurs on his shirt and laughed at Richie’s joke asking how often dinosaurs brushed their teeth.

As they grew up Stan had seemed more and more like his polar opposite but would let him flop down next to him and run his mouth until he felt less like he was about to shake out of his skin, then tell him the newest bird facts he’d learnt and make dry jokes that had Richie wheezing in laughter. He’d call him an idiot and ‘Beep Beep’ him, but he never doubted loved him as deeply as Richie loved him in turn. Who’d started writing the Losers’ names in all his favourite books when Ben stopped calling as well.

Ben, who despite his begging had once again been uprooted by his mother in their junior year and moved across the country, the new kid once more. Who’d had so much love in him but until the Losers, no one to give it to. He’d promised to write them even though they’d all started to realise that something happened to those who left Derry. After all, it’d been Ben who’d given Bev regular phone calls until one day she no longer remembered the name Ben Hanscom.

She’d been the first to leave, hadn’t she? Beverly Marsh with her tired eyes and wry smirks. Richie’s experience of girls before her was generally confined to bullies like Greta Keene or the queasiness that came from the other boys talking about pretty girls – a mix of jealousy and panic as he tried to echo their words and fit in. But Beverly, who’d definitely been far too cool to be hanging out with the self-professed Losers, had made jokes as dirty as Richie’s and let him nab cigarettes to smoke together underneath the bleachers. She’d been his first date, technically, though Richie was pretty certain that was only because she knew he had no interest in her romantically at all and she needed a break from the Ben-Bill drama.

Of course, their fearless leader. Bill Denbrough. The airport incident obviously makes more sense now, and he can’t help feeling some form of misplaced pride that the boy who had come up with the best ideas for games and told the scariest stories at sleepovers had become successful enough for several film deals.

He’d wanted to be Bill for the longest time, tall and beautiful with his bright blue eyes and endless bravery. Even as he struggled to get the words out even Richie would wait and listen because Bill knew the right things to say, the right things to do. When Big Bill said jump you jumped, and you managed to reach further than you ever had before because Bill believed you could. Richie had loved it as a kid, feeling less like the perpetual screw up when that smile was turned on him. Like in their games when he and Bill were knights or partners in a buddy cop movie, fighting for justice and cracking jokes. Stan would be the brains, giving them cool gadgets with dry quips, and Eddie… Eddie.

Eddie had always wanted to be Bill’s partner, telling Richie he should be the mouthy janitor that gets killed or the bad guy they were hunting down. Richie had said he should be the doctor patching up their wounds which Eddie had still been huffy about, but he’d nevertheless sat them down and pretended to treat their ‘wounds’, rolling his eyes at the imagined escapades and injuries Richie would claim to have whilst meticulously checking is arms and legs for bullet holes.

It made something strange and breathless take over Richie, the desire to impress Eddie, to have him listen to stories about the cool spy things he’d done and think him, Richie, brave and impressive, like James Bond or Rambo.

Richie would pretend to have horrific injuries that “didn’t even hurt Dr K!” and feel giddy when Eddie pressed his small hands to Richie’s bony ribs, the smaller boy yelling at him that you didn’t just break 12 ribs and not be in massive amounts of pain. The little sadist would then dig his fingers into Richie’s sides until Richie gave in and called uncle, prompting a smug grin as Eddie called him a pussy.

Eddie whose pinched, beautiful face and neurotic behaviour he’s been searching for in every hookup and wistful fantasy his entire adult life. Eddie, who left a few months before Stan - dragged to upper New York to live near his aunts when his mother decided the air, or the weather, or Eddie actually having a fucking life, was too much for her and her precious Eddie-bear’s fragile health. Who had hugged Richie tight behind his house the day he’d left, like he was trying to merge their bodies into one, and sworn thickly in his ear that it was going to be ok. Made him promise… what had he promised?

Eddie, the boy with the big, brown eyes and neat white keds that trip over themselves in terror to get away in the nightmares that have haunted Richie for as long as he can remember. Who’d stared at Richie in horror, unable to flee.

And fucking shit he hadn’t drunk on either flight, had he?

Because he remembers now, waking up to his trashed apartment and now, what had caused it. Why he’s been fear-averse and why it is vital that Richie Tozier not be sober.

It’s barely three in the afternoon, broad fucking daylight, and the road he’s driving on has been pretty empty, forest on either side, but it’s still the Interstate.

His whole body spasms. Ok, so this can’t wait.

He pulls over to the side of the road and flings himself out the door, feeling his bones break and reshape agonisingly before he even hits the ground. The cars still running, keys in the ignition even, but all Richie can do is shuck off his jacket and try to drag his convulsing, shifting mass over to the tree line.

Please let no one be nearby.

Please don’t let me hurt anyone.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

He wakes up to fabric being thrown in his face.

There’s dirt and twigs digging into his bare back (and bare ass, gross), and when he opens his eyes he can’t see shit. Automatically he reaches over to his bedside table to grab his glasses. Except there’s no bedside table, and certainly no glasses, because he’s lying butt naked in the middle of a forest.

“Richie?”

Ok well at least he’s not alone, Jesus what did he do last night? He must have taken something pretty crazy to get-

The memories of the last 24 hours, last 27 years, flood his mind.

Well. Fuck.

“Richie bro I really fucking hope it’s you.”

And fuck, that is definitely not anyone he knows, oh god is it a fan? The press?!

He pulls himself up a little, grimacing at the feeling of little pieces of dead tree bits falling off his back, and pulls the fabric over his crotch, catching a glimpse of what it is as he does. And, huh. That’s his clothes. Not the ones he was wearing before, uh, his hairy Mr Hyde experience, from experience he knows those are all toast.

No, these are clothes from his hastily repacked tour duffle. The bag that had been sitting in his rental car. Which admittedly, the last thing he remembers was leaving it door open and still running but that someone found the car, found him and decided to get him clothes before waking him up and/or calling emergency services AND knows his name?

That’s a little weird.

“Look man if you’re not Richie just, fucking, say something and I’ll leave or call an ambulance or something.”

Ok, not calling an ambulance for the naked unconscious man in the woods is profoundly weird.

He looks up at the man at last.

And, of course, he can only see a blob, he thinks with dark hair? But it might just be a hat.

“I can’t fucking see man.”

“Oh shit,” the blob moves closer. “Here.”

Glasses are put in his hand. Bringing them up to his face Richie can see they’re his spares, also from his tour duffle.

He’s got an idea of who the guy must be now, but he shoves the spares on anyway and there, older and just as pinched looking and Bambi eyed and beautiful is Eddie fucking Kaspbrak.

“..Hey Eddie.”

Eddie smiles, bringing out a pair of dimples that immediately make Richie’s heart stutter in his chest.

“Hey Rich.”

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

After he’s dressed, they head back to the road, Richie finding the remains of his glasses as they go. The lenses are ok, but the arms have snapped clean off.

He remembers as he sees them how that was a common problem in his teen years. After years of broken glasses from bullies punching him in the face, he suddenly had a new source of destruction to drive his mother to despair. At least the arms were easier to tape back on; sometimes he’d even just use pencils if he lost the arms, and one time, memorably, the cafeteria’s plastic spoons.

Richie’s drawn from his glasses reminiscing by Eddie’s voice.

“So, uh, that’s still, still a thing then?” He’s determinedly not looking at Richie, staring straight ahead at the gaps in the trees that reveal the tarmac ahead.

“What my penchant for unintentional naked hiking? Or that apparently I go full Beast Within if someone says boo?” It’s a little hysterical he knows, but he thinks he’s earned it.

Eddie scowls a little deeper and shoots him a look before quickly looking away again.

“Obviously the latter. I just- how does that even work? I mean, you’re famous dude.”

“Eddie Spaghetti, are you a fan?”

“Answer the question dick-for-brains”

There’s a pause, Eddie’s eyes widening in horror and flicking to him in apology before Richie bursts out into loud, startled, brays of laughter.

“Fuck you. I don’t- I’m a normal human being. You’re making me turn into teenage-me again!” But he’s smiling, those thick lines in his cheeks creasing yet deeper.

“It’s my brain of dicks, it’s highly infectious I’m afraid to say.” Richie gets out between giggles, letting himself enjoy them for a little before sighing and answering his initial question.

“It doesn’t, generally. I mean, I had no idea until Mikey called and then suddenly, I was on stage in front of a few thousand people, remembering that every so often I have the tendency to grow some additional limbs and I’m some kind of eldritch monstrosity.”

“So what you were just blacking out and waking up naked and what? Chalking it down to sleepwalking?!”

The idea that he’d put others at risk like that makes him want to hurl, but he can’t blame Eddie for being worried. Frankly, he’s terrified there’s something he’s not remembering, someone he’s hurt and forgotten about.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t attack anyone, I think that’d make the news pretty quick anyway. I’ve been, uh, clouding it out I guess?”

“I didn’t mean-“ Eddie huffs, looking frustrated, “you’re pretty vulnerable, after. That’s all.” He skirts around a branch and finally, they’re back on the verge. “So what, you’ve just been non-stop drinking the last twenty years?”

The rental’s still there, though the engine’s off and the door closed - locked knowing Eddie – and parked a little further down is a tank of a car he can only assume belongs to the other man.

“Pretty much” he throws back, distracted as he heads to his car. Eddie had bought him his boots but not any socks as apparently, he didn’t know which were clean and which dirty, responding to Richie’s suggestion of the sniff test with abject horror. He spares a brief regretful thought to his dress shoes. They were expensive and he’d just worn them down enough to be comfortable.

“Holy shit dude, seriously? Do you even have a liver anymore?”

The door’s locked, just as he suspected, and he turns to Eddie and holds out his hand expectantly.

“Yeah, the doctor says it’s equivalent to eighty, which is good, right? The higher the better, like an IQ test?”

The other man actually barks in displeasure, and Richie is delighted but also, really wants some socks, so he shakes his outstretched hand a little and mouths “keys” at him.

Eddie blinks and shakes himself, muttering about liver failure as he fishes Richie’s keys from an inner pocket of his red jacket – he’s dressed like an angry, off-duty soccer referee it’s fantastic- and tosses them over for Richie to catch. He nods his thanks and rounds the car to the boot, opening it and sitting on the ledge as he pulls his bag over and searches for socks.

Eddie shuffles over and stands awkwardly, clearly wanting to say something. Richie waits until he has both socks on and back in the boots, lacing them up before he puts him out of his misery.

“What?”

“Are you planning on driving?”

It’s not what he was expecting, and it makes him pause.

“Well, I have a car and I wasn’t planning on walking to Derry.”

An awkward shift from one foot to the other. “Are you sure that’s safe?”

“…What do you mean?”

“It’s just,” Eddie’s gearing up for a rant, he can tell, still, somehow, “look, we know that it’s triggered by fear and driving is a notoriously stressful activity with ridiculous rates of accidents, and all it would take was someone taking you by surprise, or jamming the horn, or, or any number of things. And that’s not even taking into account the likelihood of wildlife on the road which is probably crazy high around here-“

“Ok, but what do I do about my car.”

“… maybe I could come back and get it?”

“And what? Leave your car here?”

“Someone else could drive me, Mike could drive me-“

“And what will you tell them when they ask why I can’t drive it? Why I was able to drive it here from Bangor but suddenly can’t make the final few miles?”

“... Maybe the rental company could pick it up”

Richie actively scoffs at that.

“It’s fucking Maine Eds. Don’t think the customer is king here like in, what’s that accent, New York?”

“That’s not- don’t call me Eds for one, and second, there’s a difference between customer is king and protecting company assets-”

“Eddie. I’m going to drive the car ok? I was able to pull over and get out the car last time; worst comes to worst I’ll just do that again.”

“And if there’s someone around? What then?”

“…How do you feel about pretending I’m your very large, malformed dog?”

“Richie!”

“Relax Eds, I’ll go slow and steady, do some breathing exercises. Just like I tell your mother, just take it a little at a time.”

“My mother’s fucking dead, asswipe.”

“Shit. Sorry.”

“No don’t be. She… she was still the same after Derry, even when I finally moved out.”

“Fuck man. I should have treated her a little meaner, though to be honest she would have liked that-“

“Fuck you!”

“Didn’t know you had an animal fetish Eds, that’s a bit too much for me.”

“I will strangle you with my bare hands.”

“Kinky!”

Eddie makes that little bark of frustration again and Richie takes pity on him.

“It’s getting dark anyway, I’ll just run away from the street lights.”

He’s not lying, the sky has darkened considerably. He starts to think about how long he was out there, changed, and quickly redirects his thoughts. Eddie still looks stressed and Richie doesn’t even think before he’s taking his hands in his.

And huh, that’s a wedding ring. Great stuff, good for him, both of them, the happy couple! Of course Eddie’s married, you never had a shot anyway Trashmouth. Get it together.

He shakes his head, focuses on trying to persuade him.

“I know it’s not great, but this isn’t, I can still do things, ok? I’m not trying to, I mean I’m a safe driver and I normally have to sober up to drive and that’s in LA traffic, I’m not trying to hurt anyone.” Good job keeping it together asshole. But for fucks sake, he’s tired, he’s just remembered the love of his pathetic life who’s married, and he knows he’s begging but he also knows Eddie thinks the worst of him and that hurts. But he’s right to. God, he should do as Eddie asks, fuck the deposit on the car. It’s just- it’s just that he’s been a regular human able to regular human things his whole adult life, and now it turns out he wasn’t and he can’t, his freedom stripped away from him.

But that’s selfish, Eddie’s right.

Just as he’s about to say he’s changed his mind, the wifi bar creases between Eddie’s eyebrows soften.

“That’s not- I just don’t want you to hurt yourself. You’re right, there isn’t likely to be many other cars, but if an animal darts out into the road-“ He sighs and pulls his hands out of Richie’s to rub at those creases in his forehead. “I’m being ridiculous. You should drive. You used to drive us when we were kids and I didn’t get up my own ass about it. And if that tetanus infection on wheels didn’t kill us then we’re probably invincible.”

But Richie’s done the leg work in convincing himself, and, frankly, now Richie’s kind of nervous about driving.

“Are you sure man? Like fuck the deposit I can just pay it. Or like you said, I should try and call them up, see if they do pick ups.”

“Screw that, they’ll fucking rob you blind! Richie.” He ducks down a little to try and catch his eye. Even though Richie’s half sitting half leaning, he doesn’t have to lean down far. Eddie’s still a compact little dude. “You should drive, you’ll be fine.”

The sincerity and prolonged eye contact is doing funny things to Richie’s breathing so he does what he does best and deflects.

“I don’t know Eds, driving was always something your mother and I did together, though there’s usually less driving and more riding if you know what I-“

“SHUT THE FUCK UP RICHIE!”

Richie’s still chuckling as he makes his way to the driver’s seat. He checks his phone, relieved it wasn’t stolen before Eddie found him, before looking to his side and seeing that Eddie’s picked up his jacket and left it folded up on the passenger seat. Fuck, but he’s missed this neurotic little bastard.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

They drive to Derry, Eddie leading the way, in case any animals run out into the road Richie, and pull up at the address Mike had given them.

The Jade of the Orient had definitely not existed in Derry when they’d been kids, which means it’s more likely to have been cleaned sometime in the last decade, Eddie mutters darkly. Honestly, it looks like most small-town Chinese restaurants, but Richie’s happy and ready to eat his weight in fried food so authenticity be damned.

He misses Eddie on the drive over though, as ridiculous as it sounds. Five minutes in Eddie’s company and never wants to leave. It’s difficult, knowing Eddie sees him as a liability or another thing to form a stress ulcer over, but to know that someone cares that much? It’s… nice, in an incredibly pathetic way.

Eddie’s different though; beyond that first “dick-for-brains” insult, he doesn’t fire back with same feral enthusiasm, seemingly reining himself in. Which is fine! Eddie’s grown up, like Richie really should have done, and he doesn’t find the same joy in teasing and hurling insults as he did when they were grubby little kids or hormone-ridden teens. It’s normal, healthy even. But now they’re back and forth is less that and more Richie making crude jokes at a progressively more annoyed Eddie.

He’ll still manage to fall ass-over-tit in love with the bastard; at least maybe this time he won’t delude himself into hoping its reciprocated.

Speaking of reciprocation.

His first thought is that it must be the two most beautiful inhabitants of Maine, ready to battle it out for the title over wontons and duck pancakes. His second is holy shit is that Beverly Marsh, because his only real ex – Sandy, now based in Virginia and married to a 6ft goddess with two Maine Coons – is obsessed with her. His third thought is Oh Shit Bev Marsh.

The two are hugging tightly, smiles wide and, oh shit that’s Ben, isn’t it? It’s difficult to see where he’s hunched over Bev, but he still smiles the same, plus he looks absolutely besotted with the woman in his arms, which is a pretty clear give away identity wise.

Eddie’s still fiddling about with something in his car, but Richie’s able to walk right up to them.

“Wow, you two look amazing. What the fuck happened to me?”

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

It’s a bit of a blur after that, hugging and remembering. Eddie joins them, monopolising the hostess’s attention to give his laundry list of allergies and intolerances as they walk to a back room where Mike Hanlon and Bill Denbrough are already waiting.

Richie feels practically giddy, at home for the first time in as long as he can remember, old dynamics slotting back into place. Plus, there’s alcohol by the bucket load so Richie can finally relax.

He can see Eddie eyeing him and raises the shot in his hand in acknowledgement, before placing it on the table to show off his blowjob shot technique.

The burn of the liquor makes him stupid(er), asking about Eddie’s marriage and making him clarify if it was to a woman. Which, ha ha yes, great joke!

It’s an even harder task to keep his face blank when Eddie’s reaction to Richie saying he got married is, “What the fuck?” Richie hadn’t exactly appreciated Bev’s loud denial that he could be married, but Eddie looks angry before he manages to school his face into something like detachment.

Richie brings the your-mom joke around, swings in a Jabba-the-Hut impression just for good measure, and of course Eddie’s yelling at his mom once again being the butt of the joke but he looks relieved.

In fairness, he was probably worried that Richie might eat some poor woman alive.

The chair between them is empty. Stan’s late. Richie finds himself wishing even more acutely for Stan’s steady presence, even if just to have a living barrier between him and Eddie.

But Eddie, as the night goes on, starts to throw jokes and barbs back with more and more of that feral glee Richie adored. He’s pulling on Eddie’s pigtails, but Eddie’s pulling right back. Every time Richie starts a conversation with another loser, it’s not long before Eddie is butting in and somehow it becomes just the two of them bickering back and forth.

Because he has no self-control, rather than cool it with the jokes and the Eddie Eddie Eddie, Richie ends up arm-wrestling him of all things. He feels deranged, constantly needing Eddie’s attention.

They slowly finish their meal, everyone getting progressively drunker on both alcohol and the joy of being together again. Ben drinks almost as much as Richie, which is somewhat alarming, but he figures a high metabolism must be a side-effect of Ben’s clearly extensive workout regimen. He wouldn’t know, Richie and exercise were not two words often put together.

Of course, then everything goes to shit when it turns out Mike didn’t tell them everything and somehow, involuntarily growing an extra pair of limbs and a whole bunch of teeth, isn’t the worst thing Richie’s been forgetting.

The fucking clown.

Thank fuck he’d been drinking because Richie felt ready to shit himself with fear.

The restaurant had put a big bowl of fortune cookies in the middle of the table. Richie’d been excited because those fuckers are normally rationed out, one per person, but the joy’s left him, just a bit. Traumatic memories and all.

They’d all grabbed one, but for some reason, no one had cracked theirs open. He sees Bill do so, and figures that there’s about to be some attempted mood lifting with the cheesy lines.
Richie snaps his open, pulling the little strip of paper out.

‘They’ll know and they’ll fear you’

…oh that’s fucked up.

He raises his head, sees everyone around him is staring at their fortunes with the same dawning horror. God he hopes this isn’t going to be a group trauma sharing thing, he thinks as he quickly scrunches the paper up and stuffs it in his pocket, before reaching for a second cookie, hoping to get something less ice-cold-poker-to-the-heart.

‘HE’LL know and he’ll HATE you’

Wonderful, Richie thinks, clamping down the urge to laugh and/or violently sob, that’s even worse.

Then the remaining fortune cookies start shuddering in their bowl, and everything gets even more fucked up.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

So either they fight It and die, or don’t and still die. Great.

The brief elation he’d felt when Eddie said he’d leave with Richie, turned to him and murmured, “someone’s got to take care of you asshole” with a soft grin, is lost when they realise that Derry has its claws in them once again and it isn’t letting go without a fight.

Maybe Richie would have risked it if Mike hadn’t told them they’d forget again if they left without killing It. Ignorance may be bliss, but he thinks about the life he’s been living and the bone-deep feeling of rightness he gets around the other losers, like parts of him that were missing are finally whole, and he finds himself hoping that Mikey’s right and they can destroy the clown for good.

They don’t even get a chance to sleep. Mike leads them like a line of pre-schoolers (and Stan still hasn’t arrived, where the fuck is he?) through the town and into the fields beyond.

Ben finds the clubhouse again, or it finds him when he falls straight through the hatch. They all descend, memories of the safety the underground den had bought them filling their minds. Richie sees the hammock, remembers the little nightmare Eddie was back then and how obsessed Richie was with him.

Mike tells them they need to go find their ‘tokens’ whatever the fuck that means, and that they have to split up. He’s pleased that Eddie thinks it’s a terrible idea as well, but apparently it’ll mess with the ritual and so Eddie, the consummate rule-follower he likes to believe he is, gives Richie an awkward little wave before walking off in some direction known only to him.

Knowing Eddie, it’s probably the best route back into Derry, so Richie sighs and follows at a distance.

He walks all the way back into town, shoulders hunched and head down. He’s fucking sober, all the alcohol from the night before worn off, and if that clown decides to pop a jump scare at him, Richie’s going to hulk out in public which is no bueno, so he needs to find a bar or liquor store, stat.

After a while he’d broken off from trailing Eddie, seeing the river and following it downstream like muscle memory, and he finds himself walking first past Derry High School and then the Kissing Bridge which is just, nope. But continuing on means he swiftly finds himself right in front of the Paul Bunyan statue, which he now remembers coming to life and asking if he wanted a kiss before trying to eat him?! Fucking Derry.

He scans the area, reluctant to take his eyes off the statue but knowing the clown has to be nearby – the trauma here’s too good for It to pass up.

But there’s no sign of anything amiss. The birds are still singing away in the trees. People pass by, enjoying the warm weather or heading to the fair. No one even gives him a second look.

He heads through the park, keeping as close to the edge and away from the statue as possible. He remembers there being a bar down off Canal and Centre, if he can just get there before anything freaks him out too much-

Richie sees the sign for The Falcon, remembers exactly what kind of bar it is and turns in the opposite direction.

Which leads him directly to The Aladdin.

It’s closed down, if the ‘TH-NKS FOR THE MEMOR-ES DERRY!’ is any indication. The front doors are covered up with old newspapers, but the glass of one is broken at just the right height to slip his hand through, push the bar and open the door.

Again, he’s struck with memories of his younger self. He’d run to the park – and the Big Unfriendly Giant, which again, had tried to eat him – after being chased out of the arcade by Bowers. Because Richie had chosen Bowers’ fucking cousin to make his awkward thirteen-year-old moves on.

He half expects the Street Fighter machine to turn on, blaring the tinny music light it had that summer in 1989. But again, nothing happens, even when he puts a quarter in to get a token.

…It must be fucking with him.

But he leaves the arcade unbothered, token in hand.

He feels a little thrown, he’d expected some big encounter with It, trying to stop him from getting his token, so he wanders a little aimlessly until, finally, he finds a rundown old dive bar and practically runs inside.

It reeks of cheap beer and cigarettes, a couple of weathered old guys nursing bottles whilst watching some sports game on the tv mounted in the corner, but there’s a bartender and there’s booze.

Richie strides up to the bar, drumming his fingers against the wood and flashing an insincere smile at the man behind it. Quickly, there’s a whisky on the rocks in front of him which he downs in one, wincing at the burn of cheap alcohol even as he raised his finger for another. He downs that as well before finally looking up, for the first time noticing the mirror in the shape of a wolf’s head above the stacked bottles of liquor.

The bartender’s filled his glass again and he thanks him absently, turning away and leaning against the counter to take a look at the rest of the bar.

Someone’s clearly a big wolf fan, considering the everything about the bar. There’s posters and paintings covering the walls; little figurines lie here and there; the menus are printed with them; there’s even a wolf themed salt-and-pepper shaker.

And high up on the wall opposite, mounted on a plaque, is the large stuffed head of a wolf, teeth bared in a snarl.

He can hear the ice in his glass rattling, he’s finished his drink again, and he holds it out behind him without thinking. Despite this being Derry rather than LA, the barman fills the glass up again, the thunk of the bottle on the bar-top prompting Richie into bring the glass back up to his lips.

It’s warm, though rapidly cooling from the ice, but if that wasn’t enough of a clue, the heavy iron taste makes him pull back and actually look at the glass.

Blood. Not clean like in the films, a vampire swirling deep red liquid in a wine glass. No, there’s bits of flesh, some shards of bone. An eyeball.

He throws the glass to the ground, gagging and spitting, desperate to clean the taste out of his mouth.

Spinning back towards the bar in search of napkins, he sees his face reflected back at him through the wolf mirror. There’s blood smeared around his mouth and between his teeth, his tongue a deep scarlet.

“Wanna kiss Richie?”

His heart, already pounding, kicks up another notch at the familiar, growled words. But there’s no bones-pushing-out-your-skin sensation. The alcohol’s done its job in time.

Taking a breath, he steals himself. If he turns around and sees fucking Paul Bunyan again, he’s going to be pissed. Piss himself as well, probably, but the point still stands.

“Get some new material fuckface.” He spits as he whips around, hands raised defensively.

The wolf head across the room laughs at him, bloody tendrils of spittle clinging to its muzzle.

Quickly it’s laughter turns to growls, as it snaps at the air, powerful jaws slamming shut as it twists in its mount, trying to break free.

His attention is drawn from the violent display by a red balloon, floating in front of him and across the room, until it lands in the hand of Pennywise the clown itself.

“Did you miss me Richie?”

“Jesus Christ” he mutters to himself. It’s been twenty seven years since he’s seen It’s clown form and it’s still just as fucking terrifying.

“Because I missed you. You were meant to stay and play, we’re the same Richie.” It lowers its head and drops the cartoonish voice for a low growl, “Both monsters.”

It cackles gleefully, eyes fixed, unblinking, on the comedian.

“Shall I tell them Richie? Shall I tell them what you are?”

The wolf head he’d forgotten to pay attention to, breaks free of its plaque with a ripping sound and falls to the ground, rolling towards Richie, snapping and snarling.

Richie stumbles away, trying to avoid getting his ankles bitten whilst keeping an eye on the clown, but the three glasses of whisky are hitting and maybe some clown magic because things are swaying more than they should be.

“Should I tell him, Richie?”

The wolf head’s got a hold of his trouser leg, refusing to let go as he swings it back and forth, the denim too strong to rip.

“You were already a monster, weren’t you Richie? Don’t want anyone to know your Dirty Little Secrets.”

Richie starts using his other leg to stamp down on the wolf head, bludgeoning it with his boot until its grip loosens and he can kick it away.

A gloved hand seizes him by the throat and throws him back over the bar and into the liquor bottles, glass rattling and smashing. The clown leans over him, one gloved hand reaching up to the hanging bottles above.

“Truth or Dare Richie? Bottoms up!”

With one sweep of the arm, It smacks the stoppers off all the bottles in the row, letting them empty their contents in heavy streams onto the man below.

Finally, the downpour stops, and Richie is left gasping for air, fully drenched with eyes and nostrils burning, in an empty, abandoned bar.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

He needs to get out of Derry.

He needs to get out of Derry right fucking now, but he’s drunk, very literally soaking in booze, and if he drives he’ll likely hurt more people than the five he’ll kill if he stays in Derry.

The clown’s taunts have confirmed the thing he should have realised this whole time. They’re the same, he and It, which means It can probably control him if he changes.

Richie’s got plenty of experience hating himself but killing the people he loves most in the world is not on his list of things he’d like to do, hence, leaving Derry, pronto.

His phone’s taking forever to load, probably suffering from the brief stint into making phone and comedian flavoured vodka they both endured, so getting a taxi or finding a bus is gonna have to go the old fashioned way.

He sticks his thumb out into the road, might as well try hitchhiking. He’ll take his chances with human serial killers over supernatural ones any day.

Of course, no one stops for the crazy-eyed, soaking wet man. After 20 minutes of nothing, he slumps onto a nearby bench, staring at his still-loading phone.

A car pulls up next to him.

“Need a lift?” calls a wry voice.

Richie lifts his head to find Stanley Uris gazing back.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

“I needed to take myself off the board. I couldn’t come back to Derry, but if I didn’t the rest of you would die, so I needed to take myself out the picture. For good.”

“No offence Staniel,” and fucking hell it’s Stan, Stan the Man, an adult in his fucking cardigan under the navy jacket, “but that sounds like absolute bullshit.”

Stan huffs a laugh. He’s sitting on the bench next to Richie, explaining that the reason he’s arrived so late is the same reason he’s wearing heavy bandages under the sleeves of his cardigan-jacket ensemble. It’s Maine but it’s still summer, too hot for so many layers, but when he’d said so Stan had grinned and waved a wrist in the air,

“I don’t have enough blood to keep my bones warm Richard,” his eyes dancing, remembering the weird-ass joke he’d loved as a kid. “Kookie, kookie lend me your bones, the warmer the better!”

Richie had giggled, alarmed and confused, but delighted to have his weird, wonderful best friend at his side once more.

Now, Richie takes a sip from the bottle of water that had been pressed into his hands by an insistent Stan, who stares up into the branches of a tree opposite them, and sighs.

“It was It. It convinced me that it was the only option, that I had to kill myself to save all of you.”

“…Why didn’t you?” Richie immediately winces, hearing his sister’s voice chewing him out for being an insensitive asshole once again.

But Stan doesn’t seem to mind, turning to him with a smile and simply saying, “You.”

Not the answer he was expecting. He asks hesitantly if Stan means the Losers Club generally.

“Sure, a bit, but mostly you, specifically. Do you remember when we fought It the first time?”

Richie nods.

“I thought we were going to die, and we did manage to beat It, but only temporarily. I saw, in the Deadlights, when the woman from the painting, when she-“ Stan stops, breathing again, in through his nose and out through his mouth.

“I saw us all as adults, fighting It again or dying alone. I knew we wouldn’t kill It for good then.

“But then you got bitten, and you changed, you were gone, but somehow, we bought you back.”

Stan’s smiling again. He’s got crows-feet, a term Stan had loved as a child.

“We did something then, something more than a bunch of kids should ever be able to do.

“It made me realise, we have power together, the seven of us. And taking myself out of the picture would destroy that. And It knows that, which is why It tried to get rid of me before I even came back.”

Richie stares, stricken. He’s right to an extent, the other six had bought Richie back. But like the cuckoo birds Stan would tell him about when they were children, he’s an imposter in the nest, poised to push the other eggs to their death.

But how can he tell Stan that now?

“Plus, since we bought your sorry ass back, I couldn’t rule out that you guys would bring me back as well, and then I’d have ruined the grouting for nothing.” Stan says with a teasing smirk.

Richie huffs a laugh and gets out, “would someone only think about the grouting,” before he’s choking on sobs, and Stan’s taking the water bottle from him and holding him, despite the fact that Richie smells like a distillery, getting snot and spirits on Stan’s nice jacket.

Stan lets him cry it out, before reminding both of them that as useless as Derry’s police are, he can’t actually keep his car parked illegally forever, and he needs to get to the town house.

Richie remembers about the tokens suddenly, giving Stan a garbled explanation of them that has the other man nodding thoughtfully to himself, before looking pointedly at the bottled water, telling Richie to finish it, and then Stan’s gone.

He does drink the water, because he’s got the mother of all headaches coming on from the crying, alcohol and the fact that he hasn’t slept in, jesus, three days? They don’t even need to fight It. Richie’s going to end up in hospital soon with or without the clown if this keeps up.

Getting up, he remembers Mike’s instructions to meet at the library after finding their tokens, and begins the short walk over there.

Wet jeans are always awful, but he feels sticky and his skin burns from the drying alcohol, and his back is definitely bruised from landing in all those bottles. He can feel the awfulness enough to know that the adrenaline and water have managed to reduce the alcohol in his system frustratingly quickly. He’s just going to have to hope Mike has a bottle of something lying around.

But when he gets near the library he sees a car, parked across three bays, that he’d hoped he’d never see again

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me” Richie breathes, because no way is Henry Bowers still out to get them after all these years.

He starts running. He knows Mike was planning to be in the library, preparing everything for the battle with It.

If Bowers caught him alone, Richie might already be too late.

He stops just before the heavy double doors and tries to calm his breathing, before opening them as quietly as he can and slipping inside.

Luck is on his side, or really against him, because he spots the back of an all too familiar mullet heading into the main reading area. A knife, also familiar, drips from a meaty fist.

For the first time in his life, Richie feels the stretched-skin, shifting-bones shudder ripple through him and he’s grateful.

Seeing a half-hidden gap between a shelf and a corner, Richie tries to scramble as quickly and quietly out of his clothes as possible, shoes first. He was lucky to have a spare pair at all and going shoeless down to the sewers sounds even worse than your run-of-the-mill treks through human waste.

He hears a crash and Mike crying out, and stops trying to be quiet, stripping the final pieces of clothing off and shoving them into the gap, stuffing his glasses into his jacket pocket.

Turning to the reading room door, Richie surrenders to the change that’s coursing under his skin.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

At thirteen years old, Eddie Kaspbrak broke his arm, stood up to his mother, and kicked a demon in the face.

They’d go home after the fight, because they were covered in literal shit, Bill accompanying Bev back to hers to grab some clothes before returning to the Denbrough’s. Luck on still on the seven’s side, they arrived in the short period of time that the apartment was empty.

A neighbour had called the police upon finding the front door open and Bev’s father unconscious on the bathroom floor. It would transpire that the other residents of the tenement all knew the kind of man that Alvin Marsh was, and when he awoke, handcuffed to a hospital bed and growling about teaching that little bitch a lesson, Child Protective Services were called and an aunt, the mother’s sister, was called.

But that was to still to come. For that sunny afternoon, all that the Losers cared about was that they had won, and they had friends stronger and truer than they had ever known.

Eddie felt reborn. He’d ignored his mother’s shrieks when he’d returned, covered head to toe in filth, and marched directly to the shower, scrubbing in vain at his stained cast, before throwing everything he’d been wearing into a black bin bag and immediately taking it to the trashcan on the kerb.

Finally addressing his mother only to tell her he was going out for the day, he sprinted out the door before she could stop him, feeling giddy with the freedom of it all as he ran to meet his friends.

Sonia Kaspbrak had barely even waited for Eddie to run out the door after their first fight before dialling 911, but Mrs Kaspbrak’s reputation, combined with the frequency of child disappearances and the freshly discovered murder of the chief of police, meant that when she called again to declare her son had gone insane and run away from home, the dispatcher merely made a note that Eddie Kaspbrak had returned alive and well.

The blood oath and Bev’s deadlight visions were a reminder of a looming terror, but that wouldn’t come to pass until they were old, like their parents. And Eddie refused to be ruled by future worries anymore.

For one glorious, sun-soaked afternoon, the problems of Eddie’s life had all been resolved. Bower’s was gone, fallen down the well, his mother had no power over him, and It was dead. Hell, he didn’t even have asthma anymore! He could laugh and run and roll in the grass and dirt with the six people he loved best in the world.

When the sun began to set they dispersed, though this time it was decided that Bev would stay at Richie’s since his parents had a blow-up mattress and the foresight to have a daughter who could be prevailed upon to share her room for a night. At least, Richie said that would be the case. But knowing Dr Tozier and his wife, Eddie knew that they’d be unlikely to turn Bev away.

Bev had said she’d catch up with them, Bill hanging back as well, so the rest of them made their way back from the banks of the Kenduskeag through the trees to where the others had left their bikes.

Mike had gone ahead and left already. He had the furthest way to cycle and chores to finish before nightfall, but the rest of them dragged their feet, reluctant to separate.

Even Ben had walked several yards behind them on the way up, and was still suspiciously pink eyed, wasn’t making any moves to pick up his bike, instead smiling as he chatted to Stan about more complex bird houses, or something, that sounded dull as shit to Eddie. He was engaged in a competition with Richie to see who could flick pinecones at the other hardest. He was winning, even with his cast, and smug as hell about it.

Eventually, Bev showed up, blushing, and asking if Richie was ready to leave. Eddie stood up as well and gave his goodbyes to Stan and Ben, telling himself that he was just saving himself the boredom of talking about birdboxes, Jesus H, they really were losers huh? He loved them but like hell was he going to let Richie leave alone with Bev.

Because Richie would annoy the shit out of her. Yes, that’s why.

And, and Richie was his best friend.

Eddie had seen the other boys lose their minds over Bev and she was cool and everything, but he didn’t want Richie to be like Bill and start ignoring the rest of them and ditching them to spend time with a girl.

So Eddie walked to the Tozier’s with Richie and Bev, the fact that he didn’t have a bike either, probably stopping Bev from riding double with Richie. Good.

Bev, it turned out, was cool. And funny, the kind that apparently made Richie drop his bike and curl up in a ball, making sharp honks of laughter. Eddie didn’t think he’d ever made Richie laugh hard enough to fall over, and seeing it made something churning and uncomfortable settle in Eddie’s stomach.

When they got to the Tozier’s, Eddie felt like he was going to scream if he had to watch Bev and Richie go inside whilst Eddie had to walk away, but when they got there Maggie Tozier rushed out, her eyes locked on Bev.

That’s when they found out that Alvin Marsh had been taken into custody and Bev’s aunt had taken a sublet out in Derry for the summer.

And well, you didn’t just leave after hearing something like that.

Richie’s mom had taken Bev into the kitchen, fussing over her and pouring them all lemonade whilst she called around to get the message to Bev’s aunt that her niece was safe and sound at the Tozier’s. After being assured that Maude Peters, sister to the late Elfrida Marsh, would arrive within the hour, Richie turned to Bev and asked if she’d ever played on a SEGA before. Richie had yelled for Eddie to come on Eds, so he supposed he was staying as well.

Eddie liked Bev a lot better when they were playing on Richie’s console. She could swear like a sailor and would cuss both of them out without hesitation. Richie, for the first time in his life, had gained some self-awareness and let Bev play each round, taking turns playing against her with Eddie.

Then, after Bev got picked up, Richie suggested a match between the two of them, then a rematch, and then well it was dark and Eddie decidedly didn’t want to go home, and Mrs Tozier seemed to have assumed he was staying the night anyway so…

Neither he nor Richie suggest getting the blow-up mattress out, though Richie’s twin is definitely too small for them both to lie down without being right in each other’s spaces.

It’s something they’ve done since they were tiny and there’s comfort in it, snuggling together like six-year-olds. And they certainly deserve some comfort tonight, Eddie thinks, wearing borrowed pyjamas and wedging himself in against the wall so Richie can burrow in without falling half off the bed.

They whisper back and forth for a while, words slowing as sleep catches up to them.

Sometime in the night, whilst it’s still too dark to see anything, Eddie wakes up.

He recognises where he is before he’s even fully conscious, quickly realising that the bed is missing another body. Richie’s probably gone to the bathroom; he thinks.

Sleep is already pulling him back when he hears the sound of something heavy pressing on the floorboards and a muffled whimper breaking through the night’s quiet.

“…Richie?” He hisses into the dark, pushing himself up on his elbows.

Silence. Then, faintly, a rumbling noise like an engine.

Slowly, Eddie lifts the duvet up and slides his legs, hovering above the sheet, trying to be as silent as possible. Crouching on the bed, he reaches for the lamp on the bedside table.

Before he can reach the switch, the darkness is broken by seven floating lights on the far side of the room, pale and shining, the top one pulsing a burning yellow.

He remembers what Bev said about the Deadlights and scrabbles for the light switch, fingers feeling thick and useless without his sight. He finds the switch and flicks it, and the lights were eyes.

Yelping, he tumbles out of the bed, single working arm dragging him back into the corner as far away as he can get from the creature crouched on the far side of the room.

Shitting fuck, It’s not dead. It’s here and It’s going to eat him.

The monster pushes itself up and stalks towards him, head down and pushing out low, guttural bursts of sound. Eddie’s back is pressed tight against the wall as he pushes uselessly back into it.

Suddenly, Eddie remembers Bill’s words in the cistern, how It couldn’t hurt them because they weren’t afraid.

“I’m not afraid of you!” He tries to yell, but it loses some of the believability with the way he’s cowering against the wall.

The creature stops though, again making those short, growling chuffs, before whining and shaking its large head violently, as if in distress.

He’s so focused on watching the beast’s legs, trying to anticipate the moment in springs forward to attack, that he doesn’t initially see the glasses jammed over its snout.

Then, behind the creature he sees the remains of the clothes Richie’d been wearing, Taz the Tasmanian Devil left cleaved in two. And back in the cistern, he hadn’t had seven god damn eyes, but everything else – the extra limbs; the dark fur that drips like oil, fat drops floating up into the air; the teeth and the horns and the long, snaking tongue – it’s the same.

“Richie?” he asks, in barely more than a whisper.

The creature lifts its head from where it’s been hanging despondently, and shuffles closer, its lips rolling back as it bares every one of those huge, pointed teeth.

Eddie lets out a little shriek and scrabbles against the floor, before realising that it, he, was trying to smile.

Jesus but Eddie misses Richie’s buckteeth right now.

The Richie in front of him, with huge fangs that curve out from his mouth like tusks, whimpers at Eddie’s obvious fear and shifts back, hunkering down to try and seem less imposing.

He’s big, like one of those dogs used to hunt bears, but with more length, including the thick, rat-like tail that ends in a spiky little tuft of hair. Small white spikes, that Eddie realises are yet more teeth, stick out from the bony shoulders and elbows of the front and middle legs which stretch out to end in wicked claws. Curving up from his mouth are curved, horribly familiar red lines.

Again Richie whimpers, before making a hacking, choking sound before, in a voice like the roar of an approaching train, “EDDIE”, is wrenched out around the overflow of teeth.

Eddie’s heart aches as he shushes him, reaching up without thinking to run a hand through the oily fur around a jutting horn.

“Don’t worry, Rich. It’s going to be ok. I’ll look after you.”

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

At forty years old, Eddie has realised over the course of 24 hours that his allergies and medications are fake, his marriage is disturbingly similar to the relationship he’d shared with his abusive mother, and, after worrying all his life about dying, he’s duty-bound to fight the embodiment of nightmares itself.

Oh, also he’s gay and in love with the comedian he couldn’t stop watching clips of on YouTube.

He hadn’t even meant to be going that route to Derry. It was a remarkably inefficient route to take, doubling back on itself, but when he’d seen that flashy red convertible, the pull in his belly that somehow always knew which way to go said stop. Destination on your right.

He’d barely remembered Richie’s tendency to shapeshift, vague flashes of teeth and fur and prehensile tongue wiggling into his ear for the worst wet willie of his life, all that he’d gained by that point.

If his internal compass hadn’t been screaming here! This spot right here! Eddie wouldn’t have recognised the man lying on the ground and the lanky teenager he’d hugged goodbye and then cried over for an hour in the car. He recognised Trashmouth Tozier though, which was a fun connecting the dots to have when the other was naked and unconscious. He’d picked his way back to the convertible, still open and running, horrifyingly, and grabbed Richie’s clothes before trudging back to awaken him.

Hours later in Derry, Eddie storms back to change his own clothes, leper vomit coating him, and in his mouth oh god he’d swallowed it.

He’ll need to get tested, fuck knows whether It could impart actual diseases, but considering Richie turns into the bastard child of Dexter Jettster and some kind of wolf-rat-thing whenever the adrenaline gets pumping, he’s not feeling up for taking chances.

Apparently though, Eddie’s karma must be absolutely shit, because fucking Bowers is standing behind him when he closes the cabinet mirror.

Now, he’s got an extra hole in his face, staunchly refusing to let Bev try to sew it up with non-suture thread because Eddie wasn’t actually looking to get an infection and have half his face fall of, thanks.

He, Bev, Ben, and Stan, who’d finally showed up a day late and said he’d explain later, the asshole, are in Ben’s car driving to the library. Ben had seen Bowers, apparently unphased by his own stab wound, run to his car and drive away towards the centre of Derry. Remembering Bowers’ specific hatred of Mike, and the vulnerability of waiting alone in the library, they’d tried calling and texting Mike on all their phones. When he didn’t answer, they piled into the car and Ben floored it.

When they get there though, there’s no Bowers, though something big obviously went down.

The doors to the reading room are ripped off their hinges, several feet away from the frame, and one of the large windows has been almost completely destroyed. The rest of the room shows a clear path of destruction of shattered display cases and thick gouges in the wooden floor from massive claws.

Eddie only has to hear what he already suspected - that the creature had appeared and taken Bowers from where he’d been attempting to murder Mike with that dirty knife - before he’s sneaking back out to the library doors.

It’s only by chance that he spots the bundle of clothes and pair of shoes wedged next to a set of shelves. Looking around, checking none of the others have followed him, he grabs the bundle (which is wet? Jesus, Richie) and hotfoots it out the door and around the building.

He makes sure to enter the treeline before he’s in sight of the broken window, following along the edge of the forest until he finds the felled and scratched trees that tell him which direction to head in.

Once he’s far enough from the library he turns his phone torch on – the sky dark and only getting darker.

It means that when he finds Richie, it’s only one huge paw that he first sees.

When Eddie had last seen Richie in his changed form - eighteen years old and all elbows when human – he’d grown to be the size of a small car, skeletally skinny with ridiculously oversized feet and a dorky tuft of hair that always stuck straight up on top of his head.

Now, Richie’s the size of a bus.

Twisting his phone up, Eddie can see the horns that had been jutting spikes now twist in looping curves that brush up against the branches of the trees above them.

“Rich I don’t think we can pretend you’re my dog, bro.”

There’s a snort like a tractor backfiring, then Richie lowers his head until it’s level with Eddie’s – seven bright eyes focused on him.

Eddie struggles to figure out how to hold the torch without binding one of them, before Richie makes a soft chuffing noise and opens his mouth to let thick, glowing smoke billow out in thick, swirling columns. That’s new too. Before Eddie had left, Richie had only sometimes coughed out a wisp of the heavy yellow vapour.

He turns off his phone torch tucking it in his pocket and placing the clothes bundle on the ground before stepping forward and taking Richie’s giant jowls in his hands, letting his head fall down to rest in the dip between Richie’s nose and yellow seventh eye.

“Hey Rich.” He breathes.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

They’d realised, after that first night, that other people, people who weren’t the losers that is, didn’t notice anything strange that happened when Richie was transformed.

They hadn’t tested how far it went, because worst-case-scenario Richie got taken away and experimented on, but certainly any loud noises or damage from his claws went unnoticed and unremarked.

Richie half-heartedly suggested using it to start their life of crime, but one look from Eddie had made him shut up on that front.

The Losers however, are the exceptions to all the rules where Richie is concerned. Or they’re the rule that this thing follows, Eddie doesn’t really know, but he does know that whilst Richie’s parents hadn’t batted an eye at the thick gouges that appeared in the floorboards and walls of Richie’s room pretty regularly, when Stan had shown up the day after the Oath, he’d done a double-take and asked what the fuck happened.

They don’t initially discuss it but both Richie and Eddie know that they need to hide it from the others. Years later, the rest of the Losers will wonder why, wonder what they did, but there would be no answer for them.

The clown and Derry itself had done its damage. Richie Tozier would have preferred no one know either of his secrets, but the choice had been taken from him in this case.

But Eddie’s presence allows him security and, it transpires, his mind.

They realise when Eddie and his mother go to visit family for a week. Eddie returns to Richie clinging to him even tighter than usual, shivering with fine tremors.

Once they’re in the privacy of Richie’s room, he explains that though he knows he turned, the evidence clear from the state of his room and bedding, he has no memory of any of the events.

Months later, during an impromptu Losers sleepover at the clubhouse, they discover the opposite holds true as well.

When Richie turns back, he’s immediately jabbering excitedly about how much more aware and himself he’d felt. The presence of the other losers centring him more firmly into himself.

It makes sense. The losers became a part of Richie in bringing him back, part of him down to the seven eyes he sports in his non-human form.

To Eddie, who wants Richie’s attention like air and watches with warring jealousy and affection the way he loves his friends with all his soul, it fits.

Richie has always been so full of love, now he is truly made and remade of it.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

When Richie turns back, Eddie turns his phone torch back on and awkwardly turns away whilst the other man gets dressed.

Richie mutters a quiet, “I’m decent.’ And Eddie turns back around, grateful to the darkness for hiding his blush.

When they’d been teens, being exposed to Richie naked on a regular basis at the same time Eddie was figuring out his own sexuality and attraction to Richie had been near overwhelming.

The guilt at his friend’s vulnerability had stopped him from peeking, but Eddie, a teenage boy who it seemed popped a boner just hearing words that sounded sexual, felt like he was losing his mind. Particularly when Richie, clearly thinking Eddie had seen the goods anyway, got far too comfortable lazing around in his room with Eddie, wearing only a pair of ratty boxers.

Now, in 2016, Richie looks small, especially compared to the behemoth he’d been minutes before.

He’s still attractive, damn it but Bev hadn’t been lying when she said that Richie would grow into his looks - Eddie’s thing for Tom Selleck as a child and Richie’s shoulders make him want to eat drywall – but the years have not been kind to Richie Tozier, the little boy who’d been so full of love and laughter, now a sad, slumped figure of a man.

Eddie wants to comfort him, but he doesn’t know how. He’ll say something without thinking and Richie will close off, his expression is shuttering.

They don’t have time for comforting anyway, with It running loose.

“Bowers?” He asks, because the man seems to spring up like a cockroach.

Richie shakes his head though and jerks it over his shoulder. Eddie leans around him and shines his torch across the ground.

Oh. Maybe not springing up from this one.

He snaps back upright, realising belatedly that he’d stepped closer to Richie, their chests barely a hands length apart.

His eyes automatically fly up to Richie’s face to find him already looking down at him, brow creased.

A hand comes up and rests gently on his jaw, turning his head so that Richie can examine the gauze there.

“What happened there?” Eddie can feel the heat of his breath on his jaw and barely manages to suppress a shiver,

“Bowers.” He manages to get out, eyes flicking to Richie’s just in time to see them harden, the gentle hand on his jaw flexing minutely.

Richie turns and looks over his shoulder, silent and considering.

He turns back and twists his lips in a half-smile,

“Call me karma I guess.”

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

The summer after It, Eddie sits in the library with Ben, Mike and Stan.

The latter is working on the holiday assignment they’re supposed to be completing for history, but, as often happens nowadays, Ben and Mike have gotten distracted talking about their latest research into It.

Stan has visibly tensed up, and Eddie isn’t so keen on it either, preferring to avoid thinking about It as much as possible, But then, Mike spouts off some crazy idea about It creating more versions of itself and taking over the world, like the plant from Little Shops of Horrors, and Ben throws in the idea of demons being linked to vampires and creating more vampires. Eddie’s suddenly invested, thinking of Richie, infected by It into becoming something other.

And then, Ben brings up succubi, feeding from the emotions of their prey.

Eddie has no idea what a succubus is and when he asks he gets a very red-faced but earnest explanation from Mike and Ben, and learns the term incubus as well for his trouble.

Stan, less tense now and scoffing at every other word, asks why Eddie’s so interested with a smirk. Because Stan is a little shit and is probably still bitter about Eddie seeing a fold in his shorts one day and deciding to tell everyone that Stan gets hard from watching birds.

“No reason.” Eddie tries to appear casual, “If someone we knew was an incubus, or a- a succubus, who do you think it’d be?”

He needs to know if it’s time to start panicking. If Richie’s actually one of these sex demons, they’re going to have a lot of problems real fast in how to keep him from starving and not killing anyone.

Oh God if people start lusting after Richie it’s gonna be impossible to hide that there’s something weird going on.

He’s definitely starting to panic.

But there’s panic, and relief, because of course Eddie didn’t really like boys, demonic influence didn’t count.

“Anyone we know or just in the Losers?” He’s surprised Stan is joining in, but he must be more desperate to lead the topic away from It than he thought.

“Losers, let’s keep it simple.”

“I mean,” Ben starts nervously, eyes flicking between them all “I feel like Bev’s a pretty obvious answer.”

Eddie wrinkles his nose. He’s not wrong, it felt like everyone lost their heads around Bev, but Eddie never felt the same desire to date Beverly or kiss her.

“Does it have to be sexual?” Stanley asks thoughtfully.

“Probably- “

“Because if not then maybe Bill? He’s got that charismatic leader thing going on.”

Mike’s nodding firmly, “Yeah I think Bill too.”

“…What about Richie.”

Eddie tries to throw it out as innocuously as possible, hoping it gets snapped up for agreement as easily as the rest. He’s not in luck though.

Stan immediately bursts into laughter and Ben tries gently to explain that it’s about the attraction of others to the demon, less so how horny the demon was.

He feels embarrassed and indignant. They were behaving as if Richie was completely undesirable, when Eddie knew for a fact that girls had started approaching Richie.

“Richie got asked to Homecoming by Amy Simkins.”

“Yeah, but didn’t that turn out to be a whole thing to make Harry M jealous?”

He hadn’t heard about that, and his chest aches to think of Richie being used like that for others’ petty relationship drama. But Richie hadn’t seemed down in the weeks between Amy approaching him after Chemistry to ask and the dance itself; when Eddie asked bitterly where his date was Richie had responded with something stupid about not wanting to limit the Toze-Train to a single passenger with his usual level of glee and pinched Eddie’s cheek.

Eddie thinks of Amy Simkins and the ugly peach taffeta dress she was wearing and how she didn’t deserve Richie, cackling as he tried to learn Ben’s line dancing moves. He’d used too much product in his hair, plastering it to his head, and his blazer had been too big in the shoulders and yet too small in the sleeve, and Eddie couldn’t look away.

Amy Simkins didn’t know what she was missing.

Months later, Eddie will finally stop denying to himself that he’s attracted to Richie. Later still, he’ll realise its love, and that the emotion he sees in Richie’s eyes is that same love directed back at him. But Eddie, aware that he’s the only person that knows Richie’s secret, his only support, thinks it’s too risky. He can’t risk Richie being alone and vulnerable, a relationship gone sour prompting Richie to cut ties with Eddie and isolate himself.

He’s always wanted to protect Richie, since they were little children playing and he wanted to be the knight that rescued Richie’s knight. Like when he was made to be the doctor in their games, Eddie’s knowledge of illness and injury made him a protector of the Losers, a healer.

Richie, terrified and bewildered by his transformation, needed a protector. Eddie would worry that he was like his mother but Richie soaked up affection and attention like water, and Eddie didn’t want Richie to hurt because of him, Richie being safe and happy is all he cares about.

No, they won’t cross that line, but he knows that Richie loves him, and he must know how much Eddie loves him in return. And that’s enough.

Until Eddie’s standing behind his house, holding Richie as tightly as he can because he can’t bear to say goodbye, and it was all for nothing because Eddie’s leaving and he can’t stop it. He tries to say the words but they’re stuck in his throat with the tears, so instead tells him it’s going to be ok. Makes him promise to look after himself, to be safe, to remember that he’s loved.

He doesn’t tell him how much but he knows he knows he must know.

And Eddie cries in his mother’s car until he forgets who Richie Tozier is.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

Returning to the library, the others luckily don’t think to question where they’ve been, though Stan levels them both with an assessing look.

Apparently, the kid Richie had yelled at in the restaurant the days before was It’s latest target, and Bill’s decided he needs to take on It alone, so they all need to hurry before the idiot gets himself killed.

Richie asks if he can use Mike’s bathroom and comes down holding a rucksack that he asks Mike if he can borrow, slinging it over one shoulder when Mike responds in the affirmative.

All six of them pile into Ben and Mike’s cars, who step on it to get them to the house on Neibolt Street as fast as humanly possible.

They arrive just in time, Bill squaring off like he’s going to fight the house itself.

The others go forward to talk some sense into Bill, but Richie lags behind. Naturally, Eddie waits for him as he pulls the rucksack around to his front, opening the zipper and pulling out an almost full bottle of scotch,

“Looked like someone was generous with the librarian Secret Santa.” He jokes, waving the bottle by the neck before de-corking it and taking a slug.

Eddie’s glad Richie's remembered because he’d completely forgotten the need to suppress the change. But it means he has to go through this nightmare house and then fight a demon, drunk.

Seeing his distressed look to the house, Richie confesses, “I really thought about leaving, before Stan showed up. Some of the shit It said in the bar, I think it might be able to control me when I’m changed.”

Shit sticks, Eddie hadn’t even thought about that.

He casts a worried glance at the bottle then the house.

“Is that going to hit fast enough?”

“I’d literally just chucked back two whiskies when the clown showed up last time and nothing happened, so fingers crossed I guess?”

The others are calling them over, having stopped Bill’s martyr complex, for now.

They all edge into the house together. It’s dark as hell’s asscrack inside and Eddie wishes they’d been able to wait until morning, but the head torch helps a bit.

Things quickly go downhill. Ben starts screaming and then the door is slamming shut and cutting him, Bev and Mike off behind the rest of them. Eddie and Bill try banging down the door, but then the fridge starts juddering wildly, in some horrible déjà vu.

The door flings open, revealing the twisted and mangled body of the kid Richie had yelled at in the restaurant and Bill had failed to save.

Its eyes open and it emits a horrible scream, separated head rolling suddenly out the fridge and across the room.

Landing upright, it looks to Bill, asking “Why didn’t you save me? I thought you were trying to protect me?” to which the author can only respond in stuttered apologies, begging the child to forgive him.

It turns its face to Richie, saying in a small voice “The fun’s just beginning right?” cutting off in a whimper as a bony, insectile leg begins pushing its way out of its face, followed quickly by seven more, until the cries of pain become manic laughter and the head launches itself with a snarl at Richie.

Somehow, despite Richie’s coordination clearly being shot, he manages to flail enough that he backhands the spider-head-child-thing away from him and into a wall.

It starts wailing and careening, screaming that Richie scratched them, as tufts of mangey fur start sprouting out over its face and legs.

It skitters over to Eddie, cackling, locking eyes with him and asking, “am I infected Eddie?”

Teeth pop up at weird angles, poking through the tuft of fur and rotting skin.

“Are you infected Eddie?” It climbs up the wall, it’s heading staying vertical as it crawls up to his eye level. “Would you like to be?!” It screams before launching itself at Eddie, attaching to his face with the sharp little hooks on its legs.

Quickly, it’s ripped off him, Richie, though it immediately fastens itself to his face instead, slobbering, asking for a kiss.

Eddie staggers upright, searching for some kind of weapon. Bill is struggling to keep the gnashing teeth away from Richie, but screams at Eddie and jerks his head towards a rusty kitchen knife.

Tetanus. No, fuck off.

He grabs the knife and skids across the floor to the struggle, grasping a hand in the things hair to help Bill hold it off.

It twists, trying to snap at his wrists.

“You don’t want to catch it Eddie, do ya?” it shrieks gleefully, sharp teeth smacking together.

Leaving Derry, forgetting the Losers, Eddie had fallen back into old habits fast. But there’d been an ache in his chest that something was missing, that there was someone who needed him.

He’d thought it must have been for his mother, staying with her when she begged him not to leave, letting her control every aspect of his life because that’s what a good son does, right?

Then he’d thought it must have been for Myra, taking her on nice dates, walking her home, being respectful and ignoring the voice that said it wasn’t that he was a gentleman he just wasn’t interested. Asking her to marry him, buying a house together and letting her choose everything that went in it, staying in a job he despised and letting her fret and scold him into a frightened shell of himself because that’s what a good husband does, right?

He’d avoided looking at men, knowing it would hurt his mother, thinking she was right when she said he needed to find a good wife and take care of her. Because the ache inside his chest said someone out there needed him.

Years of his mother and his wife’s poison filling his brain, convincing him he was sick or was going to get sick and die, for what?

Would it be so bad? To be like Richie, be able to keep up with him and protect him. Be together, always.

Outside his epiphany, Eddie raises the knife and jams it repeatedly in the things face, cursing and screaming.

It squeals, releasing Richie as it spasms, and he and Bill throw it together as far away as they can.

Still squealing, It drags itself to the door, before suddenly springing up and skittering away, cackling, just as the locked door slams open and Ben, Bev and Mike pour through.

The others exclaim and check each other for injuries, whilst Eddie leans over Richie, using the sleeve of his hoodie to try and wipe some of the spider-child spittle off his face.

Richie won’t meet his eyes though, sitting up and putting his head between his knees. He breathes deeply, and Eddie can see him shaking slightly, before raising his face and looking around the group, a furrow quickly forming between his brows.

“Guys! Where’s Stan?”

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

Stan was a small room off the kitchen. It looked like it might have been a study or a parlour, or perhaps It had willed it into existence just to one day trap someone like Stan, separating him from his friends.

He’d thought it might be a corridor, or give a route back to the other Losers, even thinking he’d seen another door inside the room, but as soon as he stepped fully into the room the fridge in the kitchen shuddered, hiding the sound of the door suddenly shutting, cutting Stan off from them.

And after banging on the door and trying to open it as he heard Bill and Richie’s horrified voices and then a child’s scream, he turned to look for other exits and realised that it wasn’t another door after all.

It was a picture frame.

Distantly, Stan could hear the voices of the others through the wood at his back and the whistling sound of his throat closing up, but his heart was beating so loudly in his ears that his vision seemed to pulse with it. She was there, of course. She always was.

Something happens in the room behind him and suddenly they’re all screaming and yelling whilst something scuttles and squeals. He’s not looking directly at the painting, he can’t, but he’s keeping it in his peripheral vision and sees it start to shift as that awful, screeching shrill of instruments starts up, making his entire body feel like it's crawling with fire-footed bugs.

The stretched and distorted nightmare is clawing her way out of the frame with the cracking sounds of rearranging bones, but the sounds from behind him and in front of him and around him are swelling and converging together and it’s all just so much.

His hands that have been rubbing at his skin, trying to push out the feeling of tiny flaming knives, find the pockets of his jacket and push themselves in. And. He likes this jacket. He likes the pocket linings, satin the colour of bluebirds that always feels cool and silky to his fingertips.

His hands dig into the pockets, a spark of cool calm from the familiar, smooth fabric. And in the right pocket, where it always is, is his pocket calculator.

It’s been broken for years, though even when it had worked, he hadn’t really used it to calculate anything. Yet everyday, he leaves the house with it in his coat pocket, to then be moved to his trouser pocket when he gets to work, and then back to his coat when he leaves for home. It’s the perfect size to hold and the buttons are a soft rubber that sink down, not rattling like plastic ones do. He’ll rub his thumb over the buttons, enjoying the feeling of the uniform mounds against the pad, and when everything feels too much he can focus in on those buttons and it all gets a little more bearable.

Patty had noticed, of course, though she hadn’t said anything. But one morning on his commute, he put his hand in his pocket to find that she’d tipex-ed his name and phone number in careful lines on the back.

There’s not many things he and Patty won’t talk about, even after twenty-two years he’s still so excited to talk to her every day, but she knows that with some things pushing him will just cause him to retreat more into himself. Instead, Patty, who has told him she often feels like energy is buzzing out of her eyeballs, making her all elbows, will wait as patiently for Stan as he will cardinals.

Her work as a teacher and, more importantly, her passion for helping the children in her care, had led her to research neurodivergence, finding how much misinformation she’d been taught even as an educator. She threw herself into identifying and helping as many kids as she could, trying to ensure no one fell through the cracks for any reason.

And then, Patty would talk about the children in her class she was trying to refer to get diagnosed, and sometimes, for both of them, the signs she was training herself to see would hit too close to home. His brave, beautiful, brilliant wife had found answers for herself, but both Stan and Patty knew that her ADHD diagnosis didn’t fit him the way it had seemed to slip onto Patty - like a coat they finally realised she’d been wearing the entire time. Patty has ideas, he knows, but he hasn’t been ready to hear them. Maybe he’ll finally be ready when he gets home. If he gets home.

He twists the calculator in his hand and his thumb traces the tipex writing.

The problem had always been that It made no sense. The universe has rules and mathematical answers if you knew the right questions, and It took those rules and spat in their face.

As if the aberration of It’s very existence weren’t enough, with It always came awful, wrong sights, awful, wrong sounds – and so much of each. It felt like being pulled into a tornado, the iron anchor of reality and logic he’d been clinging to apparently paper all along.

But the pad of his thumb traces the numbers of his own phone number, and that is exactly as it has always been. Eleven letters, eleven digits, separated by a colon.

He focuses on the familiar lines, letting them anchor him, even as he sees the woman sway in weaving lines towards him in his peripheral vision, smile full of needle teeth stretching wider and wider.

The dimensions are the most irritating part, the painting is flat against the wall for fucks sake.

…

He’s not entirely sure where that thought comes from but it’s true, and it’s infuriating. He remembers now, how he’d been less scared of the concept of It as a child as offended. And It was! It was offensive! Mass did not work like that!

The calculator is in his hand, the nice rubber buttons against his fingers and Patty’s tipex against his thumb, and Stanley Uris raises his head and looks up into the face of the creature that now towers over him.

He opens his mouth.

And he means to say It makes no sense, it’s logically impossible, to fuck off, but at the last second he thinks of bluebird pockets and he says,

“The Eastern bluebird weighs twenty-seven to thirty-four grams and is sixteen to twenty-one centimetres long.”

…

It pauses.

The halt in its slow leaning in is blink-or-you’ll-miss-it, but Stan is certain the shrieking music had stuttered as well before increasing in volume.

“It’s wingspan is 25 to 32 centimetres, lifespan six to ten years”

It doesn’t pause this time but the music is even louder and Stan is livid that It thinks it can use the same tactics to overwhelm him and make him forget the facts, the rules of nature that It is too much of a bastard to follow.

He’s shouting to hear himself over screeching violins. “Latin name, Sialia sialis; territory stretches as far south as Nicaragua and north to southern Canada.”

Yet more teeth are revealed as the caricature opens its mouth wider and wider, but Stan lets a lifetime of fear turn to rage as he continues to yell about bluebirds until his throat burns and the music is so loud his vision feels like it’s pulsing.

Clawed hands slam down on either side of him and the woman shrieks before descending, jaw widening completely fucking unnaturally.

And Stan spits, “You’re just fucking paint” and smacks its head away from him.

It’s paint it’s a painting it’s paint it’s paint it’s paint.

Half its face explodes in a shower of dried flakes and it staggers back, wailing and laughing and shrieking. It’s chaotic and he can feel his concentration being lost, but that’s what It wants isn’t it?

“We’re going to fucking kill you”

The half-dissolved face snaps to him with a sickening crack.

“We?” It hisses, smiling smiling smiling, “Who is we, Stanley? Your little friends? They’re gone. They’ve left you all alone again.”

“They haven’t left me. Losers stick together.” But he’s being pulled back to the memory of the last time they were here, no one noticing he was gone or following him. Knowing he would die alone.

“You’re a loser alright. Stick in the mud, up-tight, boring Stanley Uris, no fun to anyone!”

“That’s not- that’s not true!”

It laughs and laughs, lazily swinging a kitchen knife claw at him that gouges the door as he scrambles away.

“Little Stanley Uris, no fun and no friends!”

Another swing and he doesn’t dodge quick enough, the sharp edge catching the sleeve of his jacket, ripping it.

Fuck. He really did like this jacket.

He doesn’t have time to mourn it though as the creature’s slow swipes have become quick-silver slashes and he’s desperately backing away, making quick dashes across the room to avoid getting pinned.

All too quickly though, he’s stuck in a corner as it approaches, teasingly dragging its claws across the floorboards and leaving thick scars in the wood.

“You were always the weakest one, weren’t you? You know you should have done it, should have died. Now they’ll ALL die. Because of YOU.”

It lifts one spindly, elongated arm, ready to strike, and then the door bangs open, a split second later a torch slams into the painting’s crumbled face

“Get the fuck away from him!” It’s Bev, and she’s running into the room, jabbing the fence post out in front of her like a cattle prod.

It hisses, lunging a couple of times at her and the other Losers before ducking out the door, disappearing into the shadows.

He’s quickly surrounded by everyone, asking if he’s ok and checking him over for injuries.

“Jesus Stan, how long were you alone with that thing?”

“Definitely long enough to get to second base I reckon.”

“What the fuck Richie that is so disgusting-“

His bark of laughter cuts Eddie off.

“Why Rich, you looking to get circumcised a second time?”

“Yeah, it’s a real weighty burden being so blessed. I won’t miss it, but I know Eddie’s mom-“

“Shut the fuck up Dickwad!”

Stan tunes out their squabbling as he walks over to the now-empty picture frame on the wall.

Calmly, he removes it from the nail where it had hung, and then slams it violently down against the floor until it snaps, pulling the bent frame up to shove his foot through the canvas and tearing pieces off until it’s nothing more than a pile of old wood and fabric scraps.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

They continue on, moving deeper into It’s lair.

Despite their earlier bickering, Stan can see there’s something off between Eddie and Richie.

Richie is facing down and in front of him, which would be understandable if they weren’t trudging through waist-high sewage, looking down being the last thing Stan wants to do right now. But Richie seems singularly determined to keep his gaze down and front, his shoulders hunched, making him appear smaller.

Eddie meanwhile is a bundle of anxious energy, making jokes and attempting to pull Richie into conversation, but receiving short, to the point answers in return.

Despite his focus, Richie seems to have trouble keeping his balance as well, Eddie often reaching out to stop him pitching into the filthy water.

His attention is taken from the pair though, when they reach a turning in the tunnels that opens out into the large cistern where they fought it the first time, flooded now, the pile of children’s possessions standing like an island.

They’ve mostly all made it to the junkpile when something springs out of the water and grabs Bev, pulling her down. Stan doesn’t even think before he’s diving into the water with the others, searching blindly for anything at all that will tell him where Bev is.

Magically, they all emerge together, and Bev is with them, gasping for air.

He turns to the island and finds Richie and Eddie sat there, Richie taking swigs from a thick rectangular bottle whilst Eddie holds the cap.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?!”

He’s livid, and he doesn’t know who he’s angrier at – Richie for getting fucking pissed while his friends are in danger and putting himself in danger from it; or Eddie, who’s somehow ok with it and even encouraging him?!

No, actually he knows. At least Richie has alcoholism as his excuse. He doesn’t know what Eddie’s excuse could be beyond sheer fucking insanity.

The others haven’t noticed yet, too busy reassuring each other of their continued arrival, so Stan pulls himself through the water and onto the island, hissing,

“I don’t know what the fuck you two think you’re doing but you need to stop it right now before you get us all killed.”

Richie’s face creases in misery, and they’re screwed because Richie is absolutely off his face.

“You-you don’t understand Stanley,” he slurs, “I’m-m better, i-ss better for everyone if I’m-m drunk”

When Stan was four years old, he’d stood at the sidelines of the kindergarten classroom and tried not to cry at how loud and noisy and too much everything was. Until a little, grubby boy with glasses that made his eyes bug out, had approached him and solemnly offered him a bright winged beetle. And Stan liked bugs, and Stan decided he liked this boy with the bug-wide-eyes. And from that day Stan had loved Richie like a brother.

In this moment, Stan wants to murder Richie with his bare hands.

“Listen to me Richie. I am going to live, and I am going to get back to my wife, and if you jeopardise that, so help me I will beat your ass before the clown even gets the chance.”

“Stan, lay off him ok, he’s got his reasons-“

“Eddie I am so mad at you for enabling him right now I can’t even look at you. You are going to throw that bottle away and get your acts together, now, before the others see what you’ve been up to whilst Bev nearly fucking drowned.”

He storms off, though it’s a small trash heap so it doesn’t let him vent any of his rage.

The others pull themselves up, and Mike says some gibberish before pulling open a hatch, revealing a tunnel cut in the stone, leading down into darkness.

One by one, the Losers lower themselves into the tunnel.

Stan pointedly stands waiting when Richie and Eddie draw back.

“Eddie, I don’t think- I can’t.”

“Rich-“

“No Eds, I’m serious, I’m putting everyone in danger just being here!”

“We can’t do this without you asshole, Mike said all seven of us had to be together.”

“Look me in the eyes and tell me you’re happy with me being there.”

“What the fuck? Of course I want you there! Why wouldn’t I?”

“Don’t fucking lie to me Eds.”

“Ok, dick, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about right now, but if you just-“

“You’re afraid of me!”

“…what?”

Stan’s lost as well, he and Bev making awkward eye contact as Bill struggles to find his footing, holding Ben up from heading down.

“You know what I’m talking about. You’re afraid of getting ‘infected’ by me.”

Richie sounds exhausted suddenly, like all the fights gone out from him, taking Eddie’s silence as a cue to continue.

“I know I just stress you out, whether I’m going to hurt someone or not, but I would never hurt you I swear.” Stan can hear the tears in his voice, his hitching breaths. “But if I go down there I may not have a choice.”

“Richie,” and it’s pure heartbreak. “Richie, god, jesus, of course I’m not scared of you.”

“I know Eds, you’re brave-“

“No Richie, listen to me. You’re kind and you’re brave and you would never hurt me, or anyone else. And that thing tried to use my, everything, against me but it didn’t work because really I’ve always wanted, god Richie, do you really not know?”

He can only guess Richie shakes his head because Eddie makes distressed bleat before his voice goes quiet and intense.

“Richie, I have loved you for so long, with so much of me, I didn’t know how to love anyone else. I think you’re wonderful, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and if I got it too I’d be happy because it would mean I could spend that with you too.” The pitch rises and breaks, as he says, “I thought you knew, I’m so sorry, I thought you knew” he’s clearly weeping.

Stan turns at last to two pulled tightly together, Richie’s forehead to Eddie’s cheek, and Eddie’s mouth pressed desperately into the dip next to Richie’s nose, his cheekbone, his eyebrow.

Both men are sobbing, clinging to the other.

When they pull back, move in to kiss with the same desperation, Stan turns away. It’s not a moment that’s his to view.

When they move to rejoin the group, Bev hands Richie the fencepost.

“This kills monsters,” she says, “if you believe it does.”

Richie stares down at the iron post for a long moment, before looking at Eddie. Holding eye contact, Richie presses the post into Eddie’s hand, face pleading. Eddie, in turn, looks stricken, mouth trembling, but he nods.

Richie squeezes his hand and moves to go down the pipe after Bev

Stan is… perplexed.

There’s something they’re not telling them.

In what world would Richie hurt Eddie?

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

The ritual was a bust, apparently from the start, Mike almost getting killed going practically catatonic with apologising.

They’re left to scram, like ants under a thumb, as It charges behind them whooping and cackling in the gigantic spider-centaur form It’s invented.

In fleeing, they’ve split up, Stan, Richie and Eddie crouching behind a jutting outcrop of rock, peeking out at It.

“Do you think he can see us?”

As if summoned, It’s head jerks up like a bloodhound, gaze narrowing on them.

“Oh shit!” Eddie yells and turns to run, at the same moment Richie’s whole body spasms and contorts.

Stan, unsure on what to do but not willing to take his eyes of It for a second, sees It suddenly stop its charge towards them. For a brief second, there’s a flash of fear across It’s face.

It changes course, scrabbling over the meteor shards to the other side of the cavern, poking its face into the tunnel Stan thinks he saw Ben and Bev duck into.

He feels a tug on his shirt, and it’s Eddie, pulling him along, whilst his other arm pushes Richie who’s still twisting his body in sudden jerks. Stan keeps his eyes trained over his shoulder, but It doesn’t follow them.

Eddie bring them further into the tunnel until it widens out, the roof curving up in a natural cavern.

Richie collapses to the floor, scrabbling for hold on the rocky floor as he contorts and flails.

“Can’t- can’t hold it!”

“You drank half the bottle on the island! What’s going on?!”

“Don’t kn-now,” spasm, “N-not drunk.”

“Ok, Richie, hang on,” Eddie crouches down next to Richie, pulling an arm to Eddie’s chest, ignoring Richie’s stuttered protests, “Breathe with me, ok? You’ve already held it off so long, you’ve done so well. Just a little bit more, yeah?”

Richie’s crying and shaking his head between spasms, but he does as Eddie tells him and they slow, getting rarer and rarer until Richie collapses his head into Eddie’s shoulder with a weak laugh as the other man gently rubs his back.

“Glad you’re ok and all, but what the hell is going on? Richie, what was that? Do you have some kind of a condition or-?”

Richie starts to giggle again.

“Yeah Stan the man, I got one hell of a pre-existing condition! No company will insure it”

Stan narrows his eyes, “You’d better not be talking about your dick.”

Richie wheezes. “Stan the man you’re gonna put me out of a job!”

He decides to change tack. “It stopped chasing us, when you started the, what are they? Seizures? It stopped, and for a moment I swear It looked afraid.”

Then man in question is still out of it, exhausted, but Eddie suddenly freezes before sitting up ramrod straight.

“Richie, sweetheart,” there’s a momentary pause where Richie does a full system reboot, before nodding, cheeks darkly flushed, “where have you seen It, whilst we’ve been back?”

“Um, the Jade and the bar? And here, obviously, but I think that’s it?”

“And both times, you’d been drinking right?”

“Yes...?”

“And It never popped up when you were sober and tried to make you turn? Not once?”

“I don’t think so? I was pretty focused on not being sober so, I could avoid that-“

“Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?!”

The other two turn to Stan, faces identical masks of guilt.

He rubs his temples. He is too old for any of this shit.

“If it makes any difference I’d like to point out that It still isn’t here which is weird.”

Richie lifts his head at that, cocking it to the side like a dog.

“When I went to the arcade, and in the park with the statue, I thought it was weird that It didn’t show up. I figured It was messing with me, y’know?”

Next to him, Eddie’s face has grown still more determined.

“Richie, I think you need to turn.”

“What?! No, no, that’s a bad plan I just need-“

“Rich! If It could control you, why not do it before? Why not stop you from taking out Bowers?”

“...Fuck.”

“I know Rich.”

“I’m scared.”

Eddie smiles and leans up to press a kiss to Richie’s forehead.

“Don’t be a pussy.”

Huffed laughter and then Eddie gets up, stepping a little ways from Richie, turning to Stan and opening and closing his mouth a couple of times before saying, “it’s easier to show you probably”, turning back to Richie.

Richie hauls himself to his feet as well.

“What, we doing this right now?”

“Why, you don’t think you can get it up?”

He barks out a laugh, and shrugs out of his jacket, tossing it and the rucksack to Eddie.

“I’m good to go, any time any place babe you just say the word.”

“What am I holding your jacket for?”

“I like that jacket!”

“It’s covered in greywater, and it stills smells like a distillery.”

“At least save it so I have something to cover my junk with afterwards.”

“Did I miss something? Why is Richie going to be naked?”

Richie and Eddie look surprised to hear him, and Stan hates third-wheeling for these two, it’s been unbearable since they were eight.

“Eddie’s right, it’s easier if I show you.”

And Richie takes a breath, exhales it, and then it’s like his bones and skin are bubbling or elastic or stretching, splitting, spiking and growing and growing, until something huge and monstrous is left in his place.

Eddie gets maybe two sentences of an explanation in - and Richie’s been turning into this since the first battle, twenty-seven years ago, what the fuck? - but then there’s a loud cackle of laughter and a cry of pain coming from the main cavern.

Picking up the fencepost, Eddie looks up to seven glowing eyes and smiles tight and vicious.

“Let’s go kill a monster.”

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

Bill’s watching, helpless, as It squeezes the tentacle tighter around Mike, pressing the wicked spike up against his neck with greater and greater pressure as It stretches its massive jaws wide.

Suddenly, a large rock smacks against the side of It’s head, distracting It from its prey.

It whips its head around, and Bill strains up to see Eddie Kaspbrak, still clutching the fencepost in one hand, the other holding a second rock.

“Hey asshole!”

Its eyes narrow. The tentacles tosses Mike like an unwanted doll, slamming him into a rock wall he ricochets off, landing heavily on his injured arm.

“I fucked your mum!”

And something huge and inky black leaps out from behind Eddie, straight for It’s throat.

It, jaws readied to unleash the Deadlights, stills, taking a staggering step back, but it’s too late.

The creature slams into It, the force knocking it back and pinning it up against the crystalised shock wave, and digs its muzzle into the clown-spiders throat, massive teeth ripping into flesh.

It shrieks and goes to raise a speared tentacle to skewer its attacker, but the limb is suddenly pinned.

Eddie Kaspbrak and his fence post, having sprinted down from the ledge, stab viciously at any limb that dares lift, whilst Stan Uris stands on the ledge above, hurling rocks to confuse It as to where it’s being attacked from.

Bill pulls himself up and clambers over to Mike, tugging at him to move out the way of the two grappling monsters.

But Mike’s transfixed on the sight before him, muttering about knights and weapons, and Bill can’t shift him.

“Mikey, we have to move!”

Mike turns to Bill, pinning him in place with his solemn gaze.

“Bill,” he says, hand gripping the other man’s forearm, “is that Richie?”

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

Bev arrives just in time to see a writhing, midnight beast get thrown to the side, Pennywise crawling back and howling “Bad puppy! Nasty, bad, evil puppy!” as it clambers over the meteor impact to the other side of the formation.

The other creature is picking itself up, shaking off rubble and hunkering down to keep the clown in its sights. Next to it, she can see someone crouched down, arm over a giant paw, and is that Eddie?

It must be, and he’s holding the fencepost still, clutching it in his other arm.

She can see Bill and Mike, Mike crawling over to where the creature and Eddie lie, Bill tugging on his shoulders, trying to drag him in the other direction. She sees a brief flash of movement from an outcropping between the two groups, and it’s Stan, waving madly to get the attention of Bill but going unseen.

When It goes quiet she doesn’t notice consciously until the back of her neck prickles, goosebumps erupting on her bare, bloody arms.

Turning away from watching her friends, she looks for It. Panic starts to pump through her when she can’t immediately see the clown, then all at once, she sees It, pale face peeking between a gap in the formation. It’s making use of the distraction to try and creep around towards Bill and Mike.

“Pennywise!” She yells. The clown’s head snaps to her and It snarls, but Bill and Mike have seen the danger, though Mike has taken his chance to slip away from Bill and head towards Eddie, turning back to check Bill is following.

The other man, torn, shifts in place as if his body could make the decision for him, but that isn’t what Beverly should be focusing on. Because now the clown has its sights set on her and Ben, winding up like a spring and then pouncing, bounding towards them both with its two arms stretched out towards them, grasping like a child for its toys as it chortles.

But the creature on the other side of the cavern is ready, six long limbs scuttling up and along the cavern wall to half cover the cave the pair are in, hind legs clinging above the opening, body stretching down the other limbs on the floor, forming a makeshift wall of fur and bone and flesh.

Pennywise shrieks, rearing back before hunching its shoulders and lowering its head to taunt,

“Lie down puppy, roll over, roll over for me. Show your belly, that’s all you’re good at aren’t you? Scared little puppy!”

“Stop being so fucking creepy, you giant tampon!”

Eddie’s reached them, brandishing the fence post like the clown isn’t ten times bigger than him and armed with spikes as thick as his waist.

She doesn’t even realise she’s yelling until “Eddie!” leaves her mouth. The tunnel’s a dead end, but It can’t fit in at least.

But Eddie isn’t seeking shelter. He’s standing in between the two behemoths, clutching the iron pole with white knuckles, stance wide and determined.

When It snarls and swoops down, it should be the end. But Eddie ducks as the creature behind him lunges, and it’s like they’re dancing as they move and twist around the clown’s attacks. The creature pulls Eddie out the way just in time to avoid getting crushed by a stabbing limb, and Eddie’s magically there to stab viciously at any darting attack that tries to aim for the creature’s unprotected flanks.

It shouldn’t work, Eddie’s tiny and mortal compared to the other two beings. But it does.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

Ben sees the moment It’s jaw starts to stretch, the rest of the face folding back as the rows of teeth open wide, revealing the pulsing gullet, framing the swirling lights above.

Remembering Mike’s order to not look at them; Stan’s body, frozen before jerking to life again; Bev’s frantic whispers when they were alone as children about the wide mouth and rings of teeth that led down to pulsing light that made her float; Ben screams, “Eddie, the lights!” but Eddie isn’t their target.

The beast’s seven glowing eyes pulse brighter, the yellow teardrop of the central eye burning like a flame, like the lights spinning high above them, and its body goes slack, the two hind legs almost hitting Ben and Bev as they flop like dead weight, before they’re lifting, rising up.

He hears Eddie scream out, “No!” and sees him leap up to grab a hold of the creature’s head.

Ben remembers pulling Bev down to the ground in the cistern as children, how it had felt like hauling her up from the ground rather than down from the air, and Eddie shouldn’t be able to hold the massive body down as it starts to float, but he does.

“Richie, please, can you hear me? I need you to wake up, wake up Rich please!”

Taking advantage of It’s transformation into a conductor for the Deadlights, Mike, Stan and Bill have scrambled up to join them. Stan quickly joins Eddie, placing a hand on his shoulder and stretching a hesitant palm to touch the creature’s inky fur.

The creature he calls Richie.

That’s a lot.

Mike’s drawing them back a little, eyes on It as he states what they’re all thinking, that the clown’s too big for them to fight, even before Richie (and it is Richie, is he ok?!) had been caught in the Deadlights.

And there’s blood streaming from Richie’s muzzle floating up into the air. Ben doesn’t know how giant were-beast-creature biology works, but it doesn’t look positive.

They’re arguing about what they can do next, how to escape, when Stan speaks up from next to Eddie.

“Earlier, up in the house, I managed to hurt the woman from the painting. Because she was a painting, I knew it was a painting so I knew when I hit her that she was just paint and so she’d flake to pieces. It tried to overwhelm me so I couldn’t focus, but It seemed scared.”

“‘All living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit’” breathes Mike, and they form a plan to get It to pass through the crevice they all squeezed by to get into the cavern, forcing It to shrink down.

“Guys?!” Eddie’s panicked voice interrupts them, because the floating is becoming stronger and Richie’s body is rising as Stan and Eddie struggle to keep a grip on his head.

They all scramble to grab a part of their friend, dragging him down, but they won’t be able to hold him for long.

“How do we help him?” Ben cries, praying that someone else is less terrified and lost.

And it’s Bill, of course it’s Big Bill, who looks up with grim determination but a glint of hope, “We’ve done it before. We bring him back to us.”

Bev’s the first to throw herself further into Richie, worming her arms as far as she can reach over the fur to Ben and Mike, who take her hands, pressing close to Richie and stretching out to join hands with the others, until their hands all cling to each other and into Richie also.

And they believe.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

Richie’s floating.

He’s tried to anchor himself to Eddie’s voice, not wanting to leave him, but the lights are loud, and everything gets fuzzy and overlaid like radio waves, and he keeps losing it, trying to grab back on to the string of Eddie’s words but not knowing if that’s an illusion he’s made for himself.

But it’s like something boosts the signal, and suddenly he can see the way out, hear all the Losers calling him back.

And he realises the lights were a bubble all along, a balloon.

And he pops that bubble and sucks in the air.

What are you doing?! That’s not in the rules! Bad puppy! Down!

Sorry dude, he thinks, feeling his feet settle on the ground and the new burning power under his skin, that’s not my kink.

And he opens his eyes to everything sharper and defined, and Eddie smiling in relief, Eddie laughing, Eddie Eddie Eddie, and his friends are surrounding him and they don’t hate him or fear him because he’s filled with their love, he can feel it glowing in him next to the power he’s just consumed. He can hear their voices in his head, which is new, but helpful, images of the narrow entrance to the cavern filling his mind.

Richie smiles with too many teeth, and pounces.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

On the attack instead of defence, Richie’s able to steadily push Pennywise across the cavern, new power in his veins giving that extra burst of speed and strength.

The others sprint around to the entrance, careful to avoid any flailing limbs from the fight above them.

The clown, unwilling to be backed into a corner, tries to fight him off, but in the brief moment when It manages to throw Richie away from him, It shrinks down to try to slip through the crack and escape. And the Losers are waiting for It.

Surrounded, Pennywise twists around, only to find Richie crouched and ready behind it.

“‘All living things must abide by the laws of the shape they inhabit’” Stan says, repeating the words Mike had told them.

It’s face screws up like a child having a tantrum, before snapping its head forward to stare down Stan.

“Ok Stanley, I’ll play by your precious rules. I’m big, you’re small. I’m predator, you’re prey!”

“Not anymore you’re not.”

And then the fight begins.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

Because apparently, fighting a child-eating nightmare is like riding a bike, they fall into a rhythm as if they’d done nothing else for the last twenty-seven years.

Like in the battle in the cistern when they were children, It is trying to shapeshift into their different fears but there’s too many of them and It starts to shift into new creatures, unrelated to their fears, in an effort to escape.

It becomes a bird and attempts to fly back into the open cavern, only to be caught and batted down by one of Richie’s giant paws.

It becomes a snake and is stamped on by Ben’s thick boots.

It becomes a faceless, bloodied figure with chainsaw hands, and that’s probably the most effective, but Bev launches herself onto its back with a cry, knocking it to the ground as the others stand on It’s arms until it wriggles away into a new form.

Bill sees the creature, the cowardly bully that’s fed on vulnerable children, weakened and afraid, pushes all the grief and guilt out into his anger and thinks, no more.

Mike sees all the years of waiting, of hoping, researching late into the night, alone in his attic, and he sees his friends, who came back, and thinks, this is the end.

Bev sees her arms, strong and sure, the weakness she’d had forced on her falling away as she fights the monster that stole her bravery, and thinks, never again.

Eddie sees Richie, sees himself, sees his friends and the bravery and love that’s spilling out of them even as they beat the clown to death, and thinks, we’re stronger than you ever were.

Ben sees friends he’d forgotten as he’d gone through life alone and resigned, the woman who burns brightly at his side who he can’t wait to know, and thinks, a fresh start.

Stan sees how they’re able to fight together and protect each other, the lucky seven, and how It tried to take that away from him, his friends, his wife, his life, and thinks, I’ll never lose them again.

But no one sees the clawed limb, raising up like a scorpion tail behind Eddie, until it’s too late.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

One moment, Eddie’s fighting the clown, working out years of trauma with some aggression therapy, the next, there’s a foot-long claw sticking out of his torso.

It chortles in glee, whooping as it flings Eddie to the side like so much garbage, and he hears his friend’s cries, Richie’s roar of anguish shaking the ground as that otherworldly voice pushes out his name, “EDDIE!”

The wound is huge, and he can already feel himself struggling to get enough air; the urge to violently cough telling him that something awful had happened to his lungs. But he refuses to be afraid. He won’t let It have the satisfaction.

“Kill It!” he screams as loudly as he can, choking around the blood that he’s coughing up.

With a bellow, Richie flings himself at It, ripping in with teeth and claws as the clown screams. The others join him, Bev picking up the fence-post Eddie had dropped to start stabbing any piece of It she could see.

Someone, in some remembered moment from the last time they fought it starts yelling, “We’re not afraid of you!” and then they’re all joining in, yelling and cussing the clown out for the years it had taken and the coward it truly was.

Finally, It’s shrivelled and weak, unable to even hold Mike’s hand away when he pushes through It’s rib cage to pull out the still-beating heart, the five standing humans squeezing it to dust in their joined hands whilst Richie growls his approval.

But Eddie doesn’t see this.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

The sound is a wail, but a wail as if the Earth had split in two and pulled the guttural rumble from it’s depths.

It dead at last, they’d collapsed into one another, crying and laughing, but Richie’s heartbroken cry reminds them all of their injured friend.

Eddie’s body is still, cooling in the underground air.

Ben chokes out a sob when he checks for a pulse, the other Losers shaking as his grief confirms it.

The cavern’s beginning to break apart, It’s magic no longer holding it together, but Richie’s thrashing and howling in his grief, yellow smoke billowing from open jaws, and the others don’t know how to bring him back to human.

“Richie, we have to go.”

He ignores Bill, hunching over the body and nudging it with his snout as if that might make Eddie wake up.

“Richie! The caverns falling apart! We need to leave!”

He seems to take notice at that, for the first time peering up and registering the falling rocks. He turns back, and gently pick up Eddie’s body in one large paw, cradling it to his chest, then twisting around to head back into the cavern.

“RICHIE!” Stan yells, chasing after him, unwilling to lose another friend so quickly.

Richie turns, and rests his gaze on him. He realises for the first time that Richie had left his glasses on, the arms popping off but the frames jammed over the muzzle. And his eyes… The central amber eye burns brighter than before, but the eye to its right is nothing more than a small flicker of sparking white. The other five pulse, something like the deadlights swimming inside them. Richie stares at Stan for a long moment, leans forward to nudge his nose into his forehead, then he’s gone, clambering too quickly to be natural into a dark tunnel, before a giant chunk of rock falls from the ceiling and blocks Stan’s view.

The cavern collapses, and the Losers have no choice but to scramble as fast as they can back the way they came.