Archive of Our Own

When Eddie opens his eyes, he’s peering out through a cracked, familiar windshield at an old dirt road, the sun hanging fat and low in the late afternoon sky.  The road ahead is littered with potholes, and as the truck’s suspension squeals in protest over a particularly deep divot, Eddie grips the right edge of his seat hard enough that he’s not certain his fingers will ever come unclenched.  The idyllic rolling hills of a familiar countryside unfurl lazily in the distance outside the windows as they bump along the road; Eddie watches in silence as they pass the well-beaten driveway that leads out to the Hanlon’s farm and the one just beyond it that leads to the Bowers’, both shrinking in the rear-view mirror as the head further west.  The daylight has only just begun to die - blazing valiantly, but in vain, casting the whole world within and around the cab of the truck in a glorious golden sheen.  Sunbeams catch motes of dust falling slowly through the cab and illuminate the clouds of dirt kicked up in the tires’ wake, stretching lazily to dip through the window shield and caress Eddie’s face in the brief moments in which the truck passes through them.  He tries to focus all of his attention on them, and not on the shape of Richie driving in silence to his left or the subsequent knot of emotion sitting thick and impenetrable at the base of his own throat.

It’s not like Richie to be so quiet.  Eddie can’t remember why, exactly, but he knows down in the very marrow of his bones that the silence is what concerns him the most.

They’re headed in the direction of the town line, and despite the instinctive feeling of satisfaction that comes with that level of distance from the center of town, Eddie knows with dream-like certainty that elsewhere is not their destination.  After the Bowers’ farm was foreclosed on two years previously and the land went unkempt and wild, word spread around town about a small pond roughly hewn through the tall grass just beyond the furthest northwest edges of the land.  It’s a disgusting thing, little more than an overly-large algae-ridden puddle, but somewhere along the line it acquired the rather ironic nickname Lovers’ Lake amongst Derry’s teenage population.

He knows - somehow - that the edge of the Lake is their final destination.

Richie pulls the truck off the road and onto a barely-beaten path toward the Lake, his grip around the steering wheel going steely, knuckles bone-white when the tires sink and skid through soft mud.  Eddie stays quiet as the truck slowly labors toward the Lake; he’s got this absurd fear that if he speaks, whatever precious paper-thin bubble in which they’re ensconced will burst for good.

The Lake is unoccupied when they round the last bend through the trees that conceal it from the road, and Eddie briefly closes his eyes to send a quick prayer of thanks to whatever cosmic entity deigns to listen.  The setting sun glints and glares off the shimmering surface of the water, casting such a lovely rosy glow across its rippling surface it’s almost easy to forget how disgusting it actually is beneath that thin layer of beauty. Eddie blinks spots of orange-pinkish-red out of his eyes as Richie eases the truck to a stop by the water and wrestles the protesting gear shift up into park.

He turns the keys to kill the engine but leaves them dangling in the ignition, and the engine peters out beneath their feet.  It’s properly silent now.

Eddie doesn’t know what to say.

He’s got this creeping sense of deja-vu, an unnerving feeling that they’ve been here before, but he ignores it - Richie looks gutted and flayed open where he’s all slumped in the driver’s seat and Eddie feels like he’s about to come out of his skin because of it.  He wants to reach for Richie’s hand, wants to pull him forward and hug him close and apologize for - for - something he can’t quite remember, but that makes every atom in his body shrivel with regret.

“I’m sorry, Rich,” he whispers hoarsely.  He can’t recall how long it’s been since they last spoke but the dull ache in his belly suggests it’s been days; when he really thinks about it, really focuses all his energy on remembering, he conjures a hazy image of Richie standing motionless on the sidewalk outside his house, bright eyes blazing with betrayal behind the thick lenses of his glasses flashing in the sun.  Richie sniffs beside him, but stays quiet; guilt twists his stomach into vicious, painful knots.  “I was gonna tell you, I swear to God I was.  I’m - I’m so sorry.”

The words fall from his lips as if he knows what they mean, and Richie’s whole body twitches in the millisecond before his head turns sharply toward Eddie.  Eddie keeps his eyes on the crevice between the glove compartment and the dashboard and tries to ignore the urge to jump out of the car and dive head-first into the Lake and drown himself in putrid green water.

“You think I’m mad at you ?” Richie asks softly.  “Eds - Eddie, look at me.  For fuck’s sake, please just -” he doesn’t have time to flinch at the pale hand that whips across the bench seat toward him before Richie’s fingers are hooked beneath his chin, forcing him to meet his brilliant, blazing gaze.  “There,” Richie says, chucking Eddie gently under the chin before dropping his hand back to the seat between them, kindly pretending not to notice the way Eddie’s lower lip wobbles.  “I’m sorry,” he says, voice earnest and cracking with conviction.  “I didn’t mean to - it’s just, it - this fuckin’ sucks,” his voice breaks again, and Eddie’s chest fissures at the sound.  “I didn’t mean the shit I said, I was just - upset.  Not at you,” he adds quickly.  “At your fucking mom.  It’s not fair.”

Flashes of memories come flooding in as Richie speaks; the two of them standing in Eddie’s front yard, three feet apart and screaming at each other, a sun-weathered For Sale sign planted in the yellowed grass in between.  The agony of it all hits him like a dead weight, a crushing blow that leaves him dazed and disoriented all over again.

“I hate her,” he spits, but the words feel distant.  “I fucking hate her.  I don’t wanna go.”

His voice warbles and dissolves into something pathetic and childlike, and he has just enough time to watch Richie’s heart shatter in his glassy eyes before Richie yanks him across the bench into a tight, harsh embrace. It was meant to be their best summer yet, he thinks petulantly as he fails to stifle his pathetic sobs in the loose fabric of Richie’s well-worn t-shirt.  Richie spent weeks perfecting his Texas Track Coach Voice to help Eddie train for try-outs in the fall, because despite his mother’s best efforts, Eddie’s always loved running.  And Eddie, in turn, checked out every practical guide to bowling the Derry Public Library had to offer to help Richie, because Richie’s had it in his head since the end of their freshman year that he’ll end up having the most extracurriculars listed in their senior yearbook by the time they graduate summer after next.

The fact that he’ll never know whether Richie will manage it slices cold and cruel through the cavern of his chest.

“I don’t wanna go,” he mumbles again, a bit more hysterical as Richie passes a soothing hand up and down his upper arm.  “I don’t wanna forget.”

That’s right, that’s it, that’s the real nut-kicker in all of this - apparently moving states away isn’t enough torture, no, he’s got twelve more hours to cling to everything he’s ever known and loved before it’s all wiped away forever -

The rim of Richie’s jaw brushes against the top of Eddie’s head; he can feel the tight clench of muscle there, the teeth grinding words unspoken to dust on Richie’s tongue.  The days of hurt wondering passed after the Denbroughs left town three days after Christmas and Bill stopped returning their calls within a week.  It wasn’t just coincidence, then, that Stan and Bev stopped returning calls shortly after they left, too.  And if Big Bill forgot...

“We could run away,” Richie quietly suggests.

It takes tremendous effort, but Eddie manages to keep his head firmly planted on Richie’s shoulder.  “Where would we go?” he asks, trying to keep the longing out of his voice.

“Bangor.  Or - or Portland.  We could go find Bev.  Or maybe - maybe we could go west, like Chicago or fucking - California, or somewhere like that.  Somewhere far enough away that your mom won’t be able to find us.”

Eddie closes his eyes, fighting back a fond smile despite the tears still steadily running down his face.  Richie speaks with such conviction that it’s easy to picture it through the spots of reddish-orange dancing against his eyelids - hunkering down in the passenger’s seat of this truck and crossing state lines with nothing more than the clothes on his back and his best friend in the world and the hope of a better future, Derry shrunken down to nothing in the rear view mirror.

Something about even that feels tinged with melancholy here in his once-sacred space carved out for him in the cab of Richie’s truck.

“I can’t,” Eddie says softly.  Richie sniffles, but doesn’t loosen his grip around Eddie’s shoulders.  “I don’t want to go, but I have to.”

“No, you don’t,” Richie sullenly insists.

It feels like an old argument.  It’s lost all heat.

“Yeah, I do,” Eddie says.  The truth of the words lands like scalding obsidian in his stomach; he passes a hand over his belly with a wince and leans a little further into Richie’s warmth as discreetly as he can manage.

“I could come with you.”

That, more than anything, drives the burning knife straight through his gut, a physical pain lancing all the way through him in a sharp, unforgiving burst.  He wants that - he wants that so much it scoops him out inside, leaves him hollow and lifeless.  He wants to pack Richie up in one of his thrice reorganized suitcases and stow him under the bed at his stupid new house and carry him around in his pocket like a rabbit’s foot, a talisman of hope, a little foul-mouthed angel to lounge on his shoulder and whisper stupid fucking jokes directly in his ear to drown out the sound of his mother’s voice.  He wants, and he wants, and he wants.

“You have to remember,” Richie says before Eddie recalls what he’s meant to say next.  “You have to remember, Eddie.  They need you.  He needs you. They can’t do it without you.”

Eddie furrows his brow.  Everything about the conversation thus far has felt familiar, almost like hearing a once-beloved song for the first time in several years, but these words fall foreign on Eddie’s ears; he is very suddenly overcome with the distinct feeling that he’s no longer listening to Richie speak.  He’s still very warm, very content despite the burgeoning pain in his belly warning him of danger; he clenches his jaw against Richie’s shoulder, but does not open his eyes.  The lights reflecting off the Lake dance brighter, wilder against his eyelids.

“There isn’t a lot of time,” not-Richie says, somehow measured and urgent at the same time.  “It’s watching you.  It’s coming for you.  For both of you.”

The warning stirs something to life - fear, bone-deep and chilling.  Eddie gets the feeling that he knows what it is, though he can’t quite grasp the memory; it slips through his fingers like sand in the breeze.  The lights move faster, and Eddie does not dare open his eyes.

“You don’t deserve this,” not-Richie says mournfully.  “You never did.”

“Why, then?” Eddie asks before he can stop himself.

Not-Richie is quiet for a long moment.  “He needs you,” he says eventually, “and you’re braver than you think.”

The words spear through him, sharp and unrelenting; Eddie huddles closer and turns his head, knowing Richie can feel the wetness streaming from Eddie’s eyes smeared across his neck and that he doesn’t mind at all.  Richie squeezes him a little tighter; the pressure of his jaw is replaced by the weight of his lips against the crown of Eddie’s head, his warm breath puffing through his nose to ruffle Eddie’s hair.  “We’ll see each other again,” Richie whispers, lips still pressed against Eddie’s head.  “I’ll find you, Eds.  I promise.”

His stomach still aches, but the weight of Richie’s words settles like a warm blanket over his shoulders; it takes a moment, but the razor-sharp edge of the pain fades to something duller and more manageable.  It would be so easy, in this little eternity, to believe Richie.

“Okay,” Eddie murmurs before he can logic his way out of it.  His eyes are still closed, but he can feel the way Richie’s lips stretch and curl into a smile against him.  “I trust you, Rich.”

He hears Richie swallow thickly and feels his body shift beneath him, hand stilling on his arm.  “Look at me, Eddie,” Richie urges softly.  “Please, open your eyes.  Look

at me, Eddie!” a muffled voice cries at the end of a long, dark hallway.

Eddie races toward the sound without a second thought, running so fast his feet hardly touch the rotting floor of the second-story landing in a dilapidated house that wreaks of death and decay.  Over the sounds of his thunderous heartbeat are rattling, labored breaths ringing in his ears and the heavy thump-slide-thump-slide of a leper’s bum foot chasing after him, deafening and inches away.  He shrieks at the feeling of blunt nails catching between his shoulder blades but the sound is distorted in his ears; a door flings open at the end of the hall, and a familiar bespeckled gaze contorted with unfamiliar terror greets him from the threshold.

“Richie!”

He forgets about the leper, about his throbbing arm and his throbbing gut, just pelts forward head-long toward Richie standing prone at the end of the hall.  Richie angles his upper body toward him but doesn’t move otherwise - something about the set of his shoulders and the part of his lips seems shell-shocked and terrified, suddenly so much younger than Eddie remembers.  But it doesn’t matter, none of it matters, because Eddie’s running faster and the leper’s falling behind.

He slams head-first against an invisible barrier a mere two feet away with enough force that he falls backwards on his ass right there on the dusty floor.  He’s close enough to see the way Richie’s chest is heaving, to see the shock crack across Richie’s eyes like lightning on the horizon as he stares down at Eddie sprawled on the floor.  “Eddie?” he croaks.

The leper’s still coming, jagged rotten nails clawing and reaching.  Eddie scrambles to his feet and slams his full weight against the barrier shoulder first, only distantly aware of the desperate noises spurting from his mouth like an unchecked geyser as he claws at rock-solid air.  The leper’s getting closer, and Richie’s still just standing there watching.

“Help me!” Eddie shrieks.

Finally - blessedly - Richie snaps out of his trance.  He lunges forward just as the leper slams into yet another invisible barrier - this one between It and Eddie - and Eddie presses his shoulders backwards toward Richie, paralyzed with fear as the leper begins slamming Its forehead violently against the barrier.  He can hear Richie screaming but it’s distant and distorted again; the leper rears back and Its mouth splits into a horrible razor-sharp grin, all crooked shark’s teeth and vampire’s fangs dripping with spit and blood and puss.

Eddie doesn’t collapse, but his knees go weak beneath him.

“He’s okay!” Richie screams - deeper, more frantic, cracking and splintering - to someone Eddie can’t see, pounding desperate and fruitless against the barrier between them.  “He’s okay, he’s just hurt!  We can still help him, guys!  Help me!”

“Richie!” he shrieks as the leper drags razor-sharp claws down the length of the glass, rotted tongue lolling out if Its mouth.

“Come back!” Richie screams, hoarse and hysterical.  Eddie manages to tear his eyes away from the leper up to Richie, still on his feet and slamming his shoulder against the barrier with all his might.  Tears are pouring down his face, eyes screwed shut in desperation behind his coke-bottle lenses, cracked and smudged and dripping with something dark and viscous that flips Eddie’s stomach.  “Come back, Eddie, come back, come back!  Please!”

I’m right here, Eddie thinks deliriously.

The barrier between Eddie and the leper is invisible, but the sound of cracking glass is unmistakable.  Richie’s still screaming himself hoarse behind Eddie, but he sounds far away now, and Eddie can’t tear his eyes away from the leper; the ground beneath his feet shudders, and his knees finally give out.

Broken bones grind together beneath his skin as his hands catch the weight of his body collapsing to the floor, and the leper lets out a chilling howl, rotted throat spasming around a ruffled, silvery collar.  “EDDIE!” Richie screams, voice fading quickly as it sails over Eddie’s blood screaming through his veins.  The top half of the barrier between him and It shatters; he catches sight of It lunging over the top, arm hooked and claws whistling through empty air before he screws his eyes shut and slams himself backwards, flat on his

back to Omaha so soon after your last trip, Eddie, what if you catch something on the flight over there and then get stranded all alone in a hotel without me, and - for God’s sake, Edward, get your feet off the furniture, you know how unsanitary that is.”

Eddie blinks once before he sighs and removes his heels from the edge of the antique coffee table, trying hard to keep his expression neutral as he plants both socked feet on the ground.  He needn’t have bothered; Myra, it seems, has developed the same sixth sense for detecting even the slightest hint at surliness in Eddie as his mother had before her, and lets him know as much with a derisive scoff.  Despite his irritation (his feet are washed and his socks are clean and he’s a grown man, for Christ’s sake), Eddie still feels the familiar knot of anxiety forming in his gut at the sound.

“Why are you watching this filth?” she demands when he does not react.

Eddie blinks at the television.  He can’t remember what he’s watching - can’t remember anything but a haze from before a few seconds ago, actually.  An unfamiliar man stands motionless on a stage on the screen, mouth half-open as if paused mid-sentence, blue eyes twinkling behind thick-framed glasses.  He’s holding a microphone and Eddie can see the barest edge of an empty stool to the man’s right.  Eddie shifts uneasily.  “A guy from work recommended it,” he says as he settles back into his seat.  He has no idea if it’s true.

Myra harrumphs but refrains from commenting for once, choosing instead to plant herself in the worn La-Z-Boy to Eddie’s left to squint disapprovingly at the television.  Her ruddy face appears sickly and washed out by the blueish light emanating from the screen; Eddie swallows, the acrid tang of wet nail polish inexplicably burning in his nose.  “We’ll watch together,” she decides, and his stomach sinks.  “Go on, then.”

Reluctantly, Eddie reaches for the remote and presses play.

“- girlfriend caught me masturbating to her best friend’s Facebook page,” the comedian says with a salacious half-grin, and Eddie immediately chokes back the urge to groan.  The comedian pauses as the audience roars with laughter, his grin only broadening when someone wolf-whistles off-screen.  “Yeah.  It was brutal, man.  I ended up in a sex addicts anonymous meeting, can you believe it?  The things we do to get laid, right?”  Another pause, more laughter.  “So, I go to this meeting, and we’re going around the room and introducing ourselves.  And it’s supposed to be anonymous - that’s, like, the keystone of the group or whatever.  So we’re going around the circle and we’re introducing ourselves and when it gets to my turn, I stand up and I say ‘my name is Richie and I guess I’m a sex addict.’  As one does on a Tuesday night.”

The comedian - Richie - pauses again as another wave of laughter washes through the audience, still grinning lazily, like he knows he’s got them all wrapped around his finger with bottom-feeder level effort.  He’s disingenuous and crass, but Eddie feels breathless watching him meander across the stage.  Something buried deep in the recesses of his subconscious is stirring, clawing its way toward the light.  Eddie’s heart won’t stop pounding.

Myra huffs beside him, and Eddie’s anxious gut twists a little tighter.

“Anyways,” Richie says once the laughter has died down, “we get going around the circle again, and then it gets back to the host.  And I can just fuckin’ tell, man, I know this guy knows exactly who I am.  He’s got that, like, nervous sweaty side-eye you’re-famous-and-I’m-shitting-my-pants-about-it thing going.  You know the one,” he lowers the mic and adopts a grotesque caricature of the aforementioned expression, body stiff, shoulders nearly touching his ears, throat working as he exaggerates a gulp.  The audience cheers.  “He gets up and he’s all stammery and nervous and I’m just - I’m already like ‘okay, yep, this was a mistake, I don’t care how fucking good the lay is -’ which was really fucking good, by the way, thank god for daddy issues - ‘it ain’t worth whatever the fuck this is about to be.’  So I’m getting ready to pack my shit up and get the fuck outta there when the host stops mid-fuckin’-sentence and just -” he lowers the mic again and closes his eyes, expression shifting at once to something tired and resigned.  He pinches the bridge of his nose with his free hand and slowly lifts the mic again.  “‘The fun’s just beginning,’” he says in a strained voice.

The recorded laughter warps in Eddie’s ears as his gut twists once more; the shape of Myra’s body shimmers and distorts in his periphery.  He tries to take a breath but his lungs are on fire and his throat is swelling closed; distantly, he wonders when the last time he got his inhaler prescription refilled was.

It takes a moment, but Eddie realizes Richie has gone quiet; through his swimming vision he sees Richie stumble a little, his obnoxious easy grin faltering for the first time as he grips the empty mic stand for balance and exhales heavily into the mic still grasped in his hand.  “God,” he chokes, voice reedy and unsteady as Eddie grips the arms of his chair and tries to sit up.

“Myra,” Eddie gasps over the sounds of Richie stifling a sob into the mic, “I need - I need -”

“Sit down, Eddie,” Myra says stiffly.  His fingers go slack at once; he slumps backwards heavily in his seat, chin tilted up in an ill-fated attempt to take in more air.  He hears Myra tut over the artificial laughter still ringing from the television.  “You haven’t been taking your medication, have you, Eddie-bear?”

“Fuck that,” Richie tearfully snaps.  Eddie blinks the dark spots out of his vision; Richie looks different, now, more disheveled, almost like he’s strung-out.  He’s turned away from the camera like he’s talking to someone off-stage, so Eddie can only see him in profile; he rakes his shaking hands through his hair, suddenly stringy and greasy like he hasn’t showered in days, and tugs absently at the roots.  His clothes are tattered and dirty and stained with something dark, something that sends a deep, twisting pain shooting through the pit of Eddie’s stomach the longer he stares at it.  It’s splattered across his face, too, except for two thin lines cut clean and pale by the tears still visibly spilling down his cheeks.  “I don’t care.  I don’t fuckin’ care, I - I’ll do anything.  Anything.  Whatever the fuck it takes, man, I don’t care, so don’t try to - just, just don’t.  I’m going back for him and you can’t fuckin’ stop me.  I’m not fuckin’ leaving him down there, not with - he’s - he’s fuckin’ scared, he’s alone and he’s scared and you fucking know he’s always fuckin’ hated the dark, man, I can’t - I can’t leave him, okay?  He’s too - he’s - look, either fuckin’ help me or get the fuck out of my way.  Fucking move.”

“Richie,” Eddie gasps, barely audible even to his own ears; on screen, Richie’s piercing blue eyes snap toward the camera, and for one ridiculous second Eddie truly, genuinely believes that he’s looking through the camera and the screen and everything in between, directly at Eddie.

Richie’s mouth drops open in shock.  “Eddie?” he gasps, and somehow, Eddie’s heart immediately soars in his chest.

“I can help you, Eddie,” says Myra.  He tears his eyes away from Richie - now scrambling closer to the edge of the stage, closer to the camera - to find her looming over him, pale sickly face split with a terrifying but familiar grin.  “Ready to come home, Eds?” she asks, voice deep and sinister and distorted, and Eddie forces his eyes to stay open and trained on her as she grows taller, more grotesque.  “Don’cha worry, Eds, I got all the medicine you need - medicine for your weak little heart and your paper-thin lungs and your little hollow tummy and your swimming little head - you’ll feel so good you’ll practically float!   Doesn’t that sound fun, Eds?”

“Don’t,” he gasps, “don’t - call me - that -”

“Such beautiful fear,” the creature above him simpers.  Richie’s tinny, nasal voice is still ringing through the speakers, but it’s little more than gibberish through the roar of static in his ears.  “I know you’re close, I can smell it, I can practically taste it - close, close, close close close CLOSE CLOSE -”

“EDDIE!” Richie screams through the television.

Eddie’s eyes snap shut as fury roars to life in the pit of his chest; he rides the sudden burst of adrenaline by reaching blindly with leaden arms to swing at the creature just inches from the top of his head.  He connects with something solid and the chair gives out beneath him, flipping so violently he

tumbles down the ladder and lands sprawled in a heap on his side, coughing and gasping through thick swaths of dust and dirt kicked up in a mushroom cloud around him on impact.  His quads are burning and twitching, his eyes watering and lungs viciously squeezing, his heart throbbing in his chest - he has the strangest feeling that he’s been running for a very, very long time, but he can’t remember why.

He rolls to his back and squints up through the dust still clogging the air at the patches of sunlight leaking in shimmering speckles through what gaps the foliage above allows, a moving picture framed by the narrow open doorway of the clubhouse over his head.  His head thunks back against hollow ground as the wind whispers incomprehensibly through the leaves, all brilliant shades of red and orange and yellow.

What little calmness he’s managed to recover in the seconds that have passed since falling disintegrates the instant he hears heavy pounding footsteps in the distance, far but rapidly approaching, thundering through fallen leaves and autumn-dry brush and heading straight toward the open clubhouse door.  With loud, wheezing breaths, Eddie scrambles back up the ladder and yanks on the door handle with all his strength.

It takes an agonizing moment, but he manages to slam the door shut - something he’s fairly certain he hasn’t been able to do by his own strength alone before - and falls back down the ladder, this time landing squarely on his ass.  His pursuer is close enough that Eddie can hear every growling breath, and he scrambles backwards away from the ladder, hands catching and slipping on haphazardly discarded comic books and random, dirt-stained articles of clothing scattered across the floor.  Pain radiates up his spine from his smarting tailbone as Eddie moves, but it’s little more than white noise compared to the agony blooming from the center of his stomach - it feels very much like he’s been suckerpunched, perhaps hard enough to crack a few ribs, but in his panic he draws a blank trying to remember anything before falling through the clubhouse door.

Maybe I hit my head, he thinks wildly as his shoulders hit the unfinished wall furthest from the door.  Maybe I have amnesia.

He tries desperately to quiet his wheezing breaths, slapping one hand over his mouth and reaching for his fanny pack with the other, only - his searching fingers close around nothing, thin air, and all thoughts of his inhaler shimmer and vanish like a high desert mirage.  The footsteps come to a skidding halt above his head, and with the promise of suffering on the horizon and no immediate rescue or escape hatch in sight, Eddie hugs his knees to his chest and buries his face in the gap between his arms and tries desperately to focus on the scent of the earth around him.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Henry Bowers sing-songs from up above.

Eddie almost lets out a yelp of pain at the sharp, burning agony that bursts from the center of his left cheek, only managing to hold it in due to the horrible warmth that instantly floods his mouth.  His gut lurches and his cheek throbs and some of the warmth dribbles down his chin, and it wipes away dark and ruby on the back of his wrist.

“I know you’re here,” Bowers taunts.  He’s pacing slowly; Eddie can hear the leaves crunch under his feet.  “Been chasin’ you for a while, Wheezy.  Come out and play, I promise it won’t hurt long…”

Eddie spits the blood into the dirt between his feet as quietly as he can.

“You’re so close,” Bowers hisses.  “I can smell the fairy blood.  Don’t you wanna play with me?  I’ll find you soon, Wheezy, I’ll rip you limb from limb, come out and play -”

“Eddie!”

Eddie freezes for all of one half-second before his head snaps up.  Richie sounds far away - his voice is only barely audible over the wind - but the adrenaline already flooding Eddie’s system doubles immediately, because Richie knows where the clubhouse is and he knows it’s the first place Eddie hides and he knows exactly how to get here - if Bowers is lying in wait and Richie is alone, Richie won’t stand a chance -

“Eddie!” He’s getting closer.

“Maybe I’ll go play with Tozier instead,” Bowers growls, so close it’s like his lips are pressed to the crack where the edge of the door meets the earth.  Eddie’s heart is still thundering but the fear feels bigger now, sharper, more unstable and vibrating in the space between his ribs.  “Maybe I’ll go play with Tozier and I’ll find out what his blood tastes like -”

“Eddie!  EDDIE!”

“Maybe I’ll run him all the way through just like I did to you -”

And it isn’t fear, it’s rage that propels Eddie up to his feet and sends him roaring up the ladder to slam his body against the clubhouse door.  Visions of ripping Bowers’ head off his shoulders cloud his red-tinged sight but he has the wherewithal to note the moment he touches the door that the door has betrayed Ben’s studious, careful design by swinging down into the depths of the clubhouse, sending Bowers howling with surprise down right on top of Eddie’s

head to the arcade in a minute, if you want,” says Stan.  “He said they’re installing some new game called - uh - Street Fighting, or something.  Apparently he played it with his dad a few months ago at some arcade in Bangor.  He’s going totally bonkers and he wants us to meet him there.  My mom can cover for us in case your mom calls.”

Street Fighter, Eddie thinks deliriously, stomach churning violently.  Eddie opens his mouth to tell Stan so, but all that escapes his teeth is a gritted, labored exhale; he grips the phone with both hands and angles the receiver away from his mouth so it won’t crackle over the line.  He knows only instinctively that Stan’s just hung up with Richie and is calling him to fulfill his phone tree duties, though he has no memory of answering the phone.  He doesn’t remember anything before this moment.

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Stan says, concerned, and Eddie realizes he hasn’t actually said anything yet.  “If you’re mom’s being - difficult, today.  It’s probably not worth the fight, if you think she’ll try to fight you on it.  Richie’ll get over it.”

“No,” Eddie says dazedly, “I - I should go.  I’ll go.”

The quiet, incomprehensible sounds of movement filtering through the other end of the phone suddenly cut off, and Eddie imagines Stan kneeling beside the antique side table in the Uris’ living room, paused in place and brows furrowed like he’s trying to piece Eddie together over the phone.  “Are you okay?” he asks carefully.

Eddie doesn’t like it when his friends ask him that.  They don’t do it often - or Eddie can’t remember the last time any of them did, at least - because they know Eddie doesn’t like it when they ask him that.  But despite everything, and for reasons Eddie can’t recall right now, he doesn’t mind as much when Stan asks.  “Uh-huh,” he grunts, unconvincing even in his own ears.  “Just - stomachache.”

Stan makes a thoughtful little noise, and Eddie flushes, suddenly remembering why he doesn’t mind it when Stan asks - because Stan, unlike Eddie’s mother, only asks when the answer is unequivocally no, and only when he has a solution to offer that doesn’t involve telling Eddie’s mother.  “You could try to sneak some Pepto Bismol from your mom before you leave,” he offers cautiously.

It’s gentle - gentle in a way Eddie isn’t particularly used to, especially where matters of his health and medicine consumption are concerned.  But - “n-no,” Eddie shakes his head, forgetting that Stan can’t actually see him in the instinctual surge of guilt over refusing medication.  “No, she’ll - she’ll figure it out.  She, uh, marks the levels, and - no, I’ll - I’ll be okay.”

Stan makes another little noise, and Eddie closes his eyes and swallows against a powerful wave of nausea.  “Are you sure you’re okay, Eddie?  You - you sound like you’re in a lot of pain right now.”

Eddie swallows and glances down to where he’s unconsciously pressed his free hand to his stomach.  Something thick and warm spills between his fingers as he looks, dark red like the wine his mother drinks on Thursday nights, metallic scent burning in his nostrils.  His shirt is tattered and dripping already, so frighteningly drenched in blood he can’t tell the difference between slickened skin and soaking tattered cloth and...something else entirely.  “I think,” Eddie gasps, “I think I’m hurt, Stan.”

“What happened?” Stan asks sharply.  “Are you okay?”

“N-no.”  The blood is in his mouth now too, and when he pulls the phone away to keep from staining the off-white plastic he nearly drops it in shock - blood comes spurting out of the speaker, dribbling in a thick stream down Eddie’s wrist until it drips from his elbow.  “What - Jesus Christ, Stan, what’s happening?”

“I’m sorry,” Stan says, voice no longer emanating from the phone, but rather rattling around in Eddie’s head.  His voice is quiet and tense and sad, and older somehow, too, like Stan’s aged fifty years in the span of five seconds somewhere across Derry.  “He’s right, you know,” Stan continues, and Eddie spits the last of the blood from his mouth and tries not to puke at the metallic film clinging to his tongue or the slick slide of his hand against his belly.  “You don’t deserve this.  It had to be you, and I can see that now, but - but you don’t - it’s just, it’s not fair.  I know it’s not fair, and I’m - I’m so sorry, Eddie.  If I’d known, I wouldn’t’ve…”

He trails off, and Eddie breathes heavily through his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Stan says again, “but I - I need your help.  It’s trying to find me - It’s trying to find us.”

Something deep and unsettling stirs in the back of Eddie’s mind, shapeless and void and terrifying.  The blood soaks into the carpet, and when Eddie shifts his feet, he can feel the wetness puddling against his rubber soles.  “What is?” he asks in a tremulous half-whisper.  “What’s trying to find us?”

Stan seems to have not heard him.  “He’s doing everything he can to help us, but It’s getting stronger.  He won’t be able to stop It soon, not without us.”

Blood is still pouring from the phone and gushing between Eddie’s fingers against his stomach, and Eddie can’t possibly fathom the meaning behind Stan’s words, but he finds that he desperately wants to understand.  He presses the phone back to his ear, determined to ignore the ticklish blast of blood spraying against his chin.  “Stanley, what are you talking about?” he wheezes.

“We have to help each other,” Stan tells him, and for the first time through the haze of panic, Eddie notices the way the wallpaper in his kitchen has begun to yellow and sag with age near the corners of the room.  “Losers stick together, right?”

The taunting name stings a little more than it usually does now that it’s coming from Stan, but that fades away after a moment; there’s something almost affectionate in the way he said it, and Eddie grips the phone tighter in his blood-slicked hand.  Losers.  “Right,” Eddie says slowly.

“Right,” Stan repeats, deadly serious.  “We can help each other, but I - I need your help first.  I’m - I’m lost, and I need you to find me, Eddie.  Do you think you can do that?”

Eddie nods rapidly, and the pain begins to fade, just a little.  “Yeah,” he says, and the blood pouring from the phone slows to a trickle.  “I can help you.  I can find you, Stan.  I’ll find you.”

He hears Stan sigh - quiet and relieved.  “Thank you,” he says softly.  “You’re really brave, you know?  You always were.”

“Eddie!” Richie cries from somewhere outside.

“Stanley!” a woman distantly screams on the other end of the line.

Something deep in Eddie’s subconscious shifts; he blinks, and the wallpaper has fully peeled and sagged away from the walls, and the rotting wooden beams holding the roof up over his head begin splintering and cracking ominously.  “Stan?” Eddie chokes into the receiver, clutching the speaker as close to his ear as he can with his blood-slicked fingers.  “Stanley?”

“Call Bill and tell him to meet us there in fifteen minutes, okay?”  Stan instructs as the ceiling fan in Eddie’s kitchen cracks and plummets from the ceiling, crashing loudly at Eddie’s feet.  “Richie’s already at the arcade and - dammit, where’d all my quarters go?  I just rolled them last night.”

“Stanley - ”

“There they are,” Stan says in a death rattle as the floorboards begin to quake beneath Eddie’s feet.  “How’d they get

behind us, Stan?  Stanley!”

Eddie’s knee-deep in sewer water, flickering flashlight in hand.  The mottled surface of the unfinished ceiling brushes against the top of his head as he twists around to look behind him, finding the long stretch of tunnel empty.

His stomach drops down to his toes.

“Stanley?” he shouts, a bit more panicked than before.  He can hear the others splashing through greywater right behind him, the beams from their flashlights flashing in chaotic overlap as the realization that Stan is gone ripples wordlessly through the group.  “Stanley!” he shrieks as he steps forward through the muck.

All five flashlights go dark for an instant, and then Eddie’s alone blinks back to life.

He doesn’t have to look back to know that the others are gone now, too.

“Guys!” he shouts, clambering up the sloped side of the pipe, twisting from right to left chaotically.  The light catches little more than dirty cement walls and sloshing greywater, winking and glittering in pseudo invitation.  “Guys!”

He can’t hear anything over his heart slamming in his ears and his own panicked, labored breathing, echoed grotesquely down the tunnel on either side.  He’s alone.  He’s fucking alone in the sewers with nothing but a fucking flashlight and a graffitied cast and a boulder sinking slow and painful through his gut.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says shrilly to the dark.  “I don’t wanna be alone, I don’t - please, guys, please - Richie! Stan!”

“Eddie?”

Eddie’s breath catches in his throat.  “Mommy?” he chokes.

“Eddie,” the voice says - prim and familiar, horribly familiar.  Eddie recoils, trying his best to pull his shoes out of the greywater before she notices.  “Eddie-kins, what have you done?”

“Mamma,” he chokes, tears dripping past his lips to wet his tongue with bitter salt water.

“Edward Francis Kaspbrak,” the voice growls, unsettling and sharp.  Eddie points his flashlight into the darkness and squints, only just able to make out a large, shadowy figure shifting in the darkness.  “How could you do this to me?  How could you make me worry so?  How dare you follow those filthy street rat miscreants down here, down in the sickness and filth when you know how fragile you are?  Come here at once, we’re going to the Emergency Room - it’s been so long since you’ve taken your medication, you’ll have caught pneumonia down here all alone -”

A warning light flashes in Eddie’s mind.  “I don’t have pneumonia, ma,” he says shakily, feet sliding back down into the greywater.  “I don’t need the ‘mergency room, and I don’t need any medicine.”

“Don’t be silly,” the voice says, affronted.  “Of course you do.”

“No, I don’t,” he says a little more boldly.  He can’t remember why, but he knows it’s true.  It settles over his shoulders, warm and secure.  “I never did.  Go away.”

“Oh, Eddie,” the voice sighs impatiently - different, but still the same.  “You know how much I hate it when you go on these little rebellious tears.  Will you please get over yourself?  The Morgans will be here at five-thirty for dinner and you need to go pick it up from the deli.”

He swallows.  He can’t remember who the Morgans are, but he knows instinctively that he hates them just the same as he hates the figure inching ever-closer in the dark.  “Leave me alone,” he says stiffly.  “Go away.”

“You know that I know what’s best for you, Eddie-bear,” the voice says condescendingly, like a parent talking to a very small, dumb, slow child.  It ignites a fury in Eddie that feels primordial, a roaring wildfire too large to contain in his wiry sewer-soaked frame.  “Come on, we’re going.  You’re lucky I’m willing to take you back after everything you’ve done.”

Sloshing footsteps grow louder; the shadowy figure moves closer, right up to the edge of the light.  “No,” he says firmly, thrusting the flashlight a bit closer to the figure.  “I’m staying here.  I’m helping my friends.  Go away.”

“Oh, Spaghetti -”

“Leave me alone!” he shrieks, enraged at such a cheap impersonation of Richie, kind and brave and wonderful Richie, and despite the distorted echo, his voice rings steady and true through the darkness.  “Leave me alone, you stupid fucking clown!”

He hears a hiss as the shadow figure recoils as if physically hit; Eddie steps toward it, emboldened.  “You fucking coward !” he screams.  “Lazy fucking piece of shit, can’t even think of a good fucking monster on your own!  Leave me alone, you fucking asshole bully!  Die up your own fucking ass!  Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!”

He races forward through churning greywater and finally, finally catches the blurry edge of the shadow figure; It collapses the moment the light touches It, hissing and snarling but visibly shriveled in Its stupid clown costume as Eddie towers over It.  It swipes at him with jagged, blood-stained claws and misses spectacularly, and Eddie surges forward as Its limbs crash into the stone ceiling above them, letting out a primal snarl of his own as he clenches both hands around Its throat and bashes Its head into the ground.

A blast of cold wind lifts his matted hair off his sweaty temples on impact, momentarily blinding him.  It stops as soon as it starts, and he catches himself with both hands before splashing down face-first into the greywater.  Pennywise has vanished.

“Eddie!” Richie’s voice echoes in the distance.

Eddie snaps upright, searching the darkness.  “Richie?” he shouts back.

“Where are you?  Eddie, where are you?”

Eddie takes two fumbling steps toward Richie’s voice before staggering to a halt - he was doing something - he was supposed to do something -

“Stan,” Eddie gasps, immediately turning on his heel.  “Oh, fuck, Stan!”

“EDDIE!” Richie screams.

“We have to find Stan!” Eddie shouts over his shoulder.  “Help me, help me find Stan!”

He stumbles back down the pipe, scraping the palm of his untethered hand to hell against the walls but he’s immune to the pain of it because he knows, suddenly he knows exactly where Stan is - exactly where he was before, hopelessly lost and convinced he was abandoned to die

violently toward the ceiling, an almighty crack renting the air in time with the explosion of shrapnel showering down over Eddie’s head.  He ducks and rolls instinctively, grunting in pain when his shoulder connects with the uneven stone floor, and tumbles into a dip in the ground large enough to cover his body in the fetal position behind a decent-sized ledge.

“Eddie!” a familiar voice shouts somewhere beyond the ledge.  Eddie tenses and pulls himself in closer, fingertips digging almost painfully into the soft flesh along the sides of his knees; it’s not until Stan lands in a sprawled heap at Eddie’s side after diving over the ledge that the recognition finally clicks.

Holy fucking shit.  Stan Uris.

“Holy shit,” Eddie chokes, uncurling at once and clawing along Stan’s back in a frantic attempt to help as Stan scrambles closer.  The ground beneath them quakes ominously in time with another loud crack and a maniacle high-pitched booming laugh, but Stan’s upright and gasping for air and looking at Eddie like he hasn’t seen sunshine in years and Eddie’s the whole fucking sun.  “Holy fucking shit!”

“I know,” Stan pants.  “I know, it’s - a lot, it’s a lot, but It’s here and It’s trying to get back out there and we don’t have time for this -”

“It -”

Eddie’s cut off by the loudest crack yet; they both wince at the spray of debris ruffling their hair.  “You have to tell me how you killed It,” Stan half-shouts, frantically waving his hand between them to clear the dust.  “It’s almost dead but I can’t do it alone, I don’t know how to kill It, please -”

“Make it small!” Eddie says.  “Make it fucking small!”

“What the hell does that -”

“Fuck off!” Eddie screams, craning his head up to peer over the ledge.  He still can’t see Pennywise, but he can hear It scuttling around in the shadows, kicking up dust and rocks in a haphazard retreat.  “You fucking chicken-shit dickwad!  Stupid fucking bastard!”

“I hate you!” Stan screams, pushing up to his knees to better hurl insults over the ledge.  “I fucking hate you!  Worthless piece of fucking shit!”

“Ugly fucking clown!” Eddie shouts over a piercing shriek of pain from the darkness.  He scrambles to his feet and clambers up the ledge, emboldened when he hears Stan following close behind.  “Not even fuckin’ scary!  Fuck you!”

“Fuck you!”

A pained groan echoes through the darkness, and Eddie rushes toward it, his heart a livewire thrumming with savage anticipation.  He can feel Stan on his heels, and then -

And then they’re standing side-by-side looking down at Pennywise’s shriveled, rotting body, Its giant head lolling weakly against the rocks beneath their feet.  It’s spiderlegs twitch uselessly; Pennywise takes a weak, uncoordinated swing at Stan, but Eddie snatches the claw mid-movement and rips it from Pennywise’s body with as much vitriol as he can manage. Pennywise keens, barely audible over the heavy thud his amputated leg makes as Eddie tosses it aside.

“God,” Stan spits.  He kneels down beside It, face contorted in a rare, unfamiliar snarl as Pennywise foams at the mouth.  “What a waste of fucking time.”  He plunges his hand through Pennywise’s paper-thin chest and rips a blackened lump of twitching, dripping tissue from the depths.  He examines it for only a moment before straightening up again, holding it out toward Eddie, mouth flattened in determination.  “Together?”

“Together,” Eddie says, fingers closing around Its heart.

It bursts between them with very little effort, spraying them both with an ice-cold black mist, and Eddie spits what little liquid landed in his mouth and looks down just in time to see the faint shimmering lights in Pennywise’s eyes flicker and go dark.

Stan sinks down and kneels beside It, his gaze glassy and far-away.  “You’re telling me it’s been that goddamn easy the whole time?” he asks quietly as Eddie squats beside him.

“I fucking guess,” Eddie says with a shrug.

“We bullied an inter-dimensional space demon to death.” He lets out a delirious, humorless laugh.  “How anticlimactic.”

Eddie snorts.  “Yeah. Pretty fucking stupid, all in.”

“Understatement of the century.”

Eddie glances down between his feet, eyes trained on the pebbles his heels dislodge as they skitter away.  “I’m sorry you died,” he says softly.

From his peripheral, he sees Stan stiffen for an instant, and then sees his shoulders drop.  “Me too,” Stan says, hardly louder than a whisper.  “It was a stupid mistake.  I shouldn’t’ve - but, then, I wouldn’t’ve been here, and It - It might’ve -”

“Right,” Eddie says as Stan stammers.  “No, I - I get it.  Um, speaking of - where d’you think here is?”

Stan leans back on his hands and casts a curious gaze up toward the ceiling.  “I don’t know,” he admits after a moment.  “An in-between, maybe?”

“So…so you’re saying we’re not dead,” Eddie says.

“Well.  Obviously I don’t know for sure, but…I’d say we’re not dead anymore.”

Eddie peers at him through his lashes.  “Huh.  And d’you think it’s weird that I don’t - I don’t totally remember dying?”

Stan’s gaze drops to Eddie’s face; he frowns thoughtfully.  “Do you remember anything?”

“I remember being here,” Eddie says, gesturing around the cistern.  “And I remember that fuckin’ thing,” he nods dispassionately toward Pennywise’s motionless body.  “I remember we were all fighting, and I know - I know It caught Richie -”

His voice catches just as Stan inhales sharply.  “It got Richie?”

“No,” Eddie says firmly.  “I got him back before It actually hurt him.  It Deadlighted him, but I - I got It.  Or I - I thought I got It.  I know Richie was okay, though, I remember - I remember him being on the ground.  Seeing his eyes.  He was okay.  But I don’t really remember anything after that.”

Slowly, Stan nods.  “Maybe that’s a mercy,” he offers softly.  “I mean, I wish - I wish I couldn’t remember how I -” he stops, looking constipated, and then lets out a slow, airy sigh.  “I messed up, Eddie,” he murmurs.  “I made a huge mistake.  I should’ve gone back with the rest of you, and I should’ve - I should’ve been down here to help.  Maybe if I had, I could’ve stopped whatever It did to you - maybe I could’ve stopped It from ever Deadlighting Richie to begin with.  I’m here because I screwed up, and It got me, and - and I think - I think you’re here because of me, too.”

A muscle in Stan’s jaw twitches.  His eyes are blown wide with fear.  Eddie suppresses the urge to scoff.

“I’m here because of It,” he says firmly, jabbing his finger toward Pennywise without looking away from Stan’s face.  “It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.”

“It kind of is, though,” Stan says, staring hard at his knees.  “I think he - the, uh, the turtle - Maturin was protecting us, the seven of us, that’s why we all made it out the first time when we were kids, and if I hadn’t -” he stops suddenly, bites down on the inside of his cheek, and sighs. “I got scared. I got scared, and I convinced myself that I’d be doing you all a favor if I tried to - to escape, and - now you’re here.”

It had to be you echoes Stan’s voice in Eddie’s head.  He needs you, echoes Richie’s. “It had to be me,” Eddie says, and the flickering hope in Stan’s bloodshot eyes bolsters him.  “You were right, it had to be me.  You got lost when we were kids and I’m the one who found you, remember?  It’s the same thing now.”

“It’s really not,” Stan says, but he sounds tired.  “You think you can get us back?”

Eddie pushes himself up to stand, offering a hand to Stan as he peers around the cavern.  “Sure,” he says.  “I know exactly where we are.  Come on.”

He turns toward the yawning mouth of the enclave, eyes drifting over 

muddy red stone and scraggly greenery framed beneath a brilliant, cloudless blue sky.  The sounds of water lapping against stone reach him from far below his bare feet, barely audible over the sounds of familiar voices shouting and laughing.  He takes a quick, determined step toward the edge of the cliff before him, but feels frigid fingers wrap around his wrist and tug him backwards before he can take off.  He whips around, snarled insult on the tip of his tongue.

Stan’s standing behind him, young and bare-chested and inquisitive in the late-afternoon sun, and the reflexive anger at being held back dies instantly in Eddie’s gut.  Droplets of water line the rosy skin of his young face, magnifying the fine freckles that dust his nose and cheekbones for brief shining moments before rolling further down the apples of his cheeks to gather and drip from the crest of his chin.  He cocks his head to one side, and glances down at his hand still clenched around Eddie’s wrist.

“Do they hate me?” Stan whispers.

Eddie blinks.  Behind him, someone lets out a loud, boisterous peel of laughter.  “Of course they don’t.  Why the fuck would they hate you?” Eddie asks.

“Because I - did what I did and bailed -”

“Stop it,” Eddie interrupts, twisting his wrist to grasp Stan’s wrist.  “You were scared.  We all were, but you - you’ve got history with It the rest of us don't have.  We missed you because we love you - not because you owed us something.  We could never hate you.”

Stan nods, still staring at their hands.  “I missed you all, too, you know,” he says quietly.  “Before all the panic set in, I - I was thinking about how much I missed you guys.  How upset I was that I forgot you all.  I want to make it up to everyone.  I…I want to remember.”

“They’re waiting for us,” Eddie says, tilting his head backwards toward the cliff’s edge.  “We just gotta jump.”

Stan’s eyes flick up to peer around Eddie’s shoulders through his lashes.  “Never liked jumping,” he mutters.

Eddie squeezes his wrist.  “We’ll go together, then,” he says.

Water drips from the tips of their fingers, painting the red rocks beneath their feet a murky brown.  It smells like sharp, wet earth and blooming flowers and spring; patiently, Eddie waits, knowing Stan’s still looking past him at the short stretch of rock and the endless expanse of brilliant blue sky beyond it.  Calculating, the way he always used to.

Finally, Stan’s chin lifts.  “Okay,” he says, firming his grip around Eddie’s hand.  “Together.  Are you ready?”

“Eds!”

Eddie’s head snaps toward the edge of the cliff at the sound of Richie’s voice; it cracks over the single syllable, like he’s been screaming it for a long, long time.  Eddie takes an unconscious step forward, only catching himself when Stan chuckles at being tugged along.  “I’m ready,” Eddie says, nodding so rapidly he can feel the twinge of irritation building in his neck.  “I’m so fuckin’ ready, dude, let’s go.”

They start running at the same time but Eddie immediately pulls ahead, laughing when Stan reaches to grab onto Eddie’s forearm with his other hand seconds before they sprint beyond the edge of the rock.  Eddie twists mid-air and looks up at Stan, still clinging to his wrist with both hands, framed by a blinding blue cloudless sky and the stone-colored blur of the clifface.  Stan’s curls have blown back from his face and his expression is two parts thrilled and one part terrified as they plummet ten feet through open air and land shoulders-first in the

water, and Eddie nearly loses his grip around Stan’s wrist in their molasses descent below the surface.  He curls his fingers tighter, tight enough to feel the delicate bones in Stan’s wrist shift and grind together between his fingers, and kicks as hard as he can while squinting through what scan light pierces the churning, murky water.  He can feel Stan struggling to swim up beside him, and Eddie’s lungs are burning, and the light doesn’t seem to be getting any brighter -

They breach the surface thrashing and gasping at nearly the same time.  Stray water droplets dot and blur the shrouded sunset above them, cast in sheltered shadow by the familiar jagged cliff.

“Eddie,” he hears Stan gasp over his own rattling cough.  “There.”

The phantom push of an invisible tide billows across Eddie’s thigh as Stan begins to kick in earnest, swimming as best he can toward a familiar sliver of shore twenty feet off.  He only pulls Eddie along for a moment before Eddie finally catches on - with a raspy grunt, Eddie begins to kick.

It takes far longer than it should for them to finally crawl ashore.  Eddie can feel every muscle in his body trembling as he hauls himself up onto a rock and flops back to lie on his back, still submerged in water up to his hips; exhaustion quivers in his bones as he coughs and gasps for air and stares up at the cloudless sky above them, only just able to hear Stan’s body splash through shallow water somewhere to his right, staggering up to his feet.

“Oh, God,” Stan pants, voice hardly louder than a whisper.  “Oh, Jesus.  Derry.”

Eddie tilts his head back, flipping the familiar curve of the road upside down, the towering spruce and pine trees beyond it hanging from the earth like mossy green stalactites.  Stan’s finally steadied himself with both hands flattened to the boulder he used to sit on while judging chicken fights when they were thirteen, shivering beneath his water-logged wool cardigan.  It’s the smallest, kindest sliver of Derry to see first after nearly thirty years of amnesia, Eddie thinks.  Stan really should consider himself lucky.

Eddie rolls slowly to his side and props himself up on one elbow, ignoring the slick slide of water pushing up between his chest and the thin material of his t-shirt as the tide rocks back and forth.  “At least it’s not the f-fuckin’ middle school,” he says through chattering teeth.

Stan laughs weakly, angling his body to better lean against the boulder; he looks back at Eddie over his shoulder, and then his gaze drifts over his head to the quarry beyond him.  “You think it’s over?” he asks the water.

“It fuckin’ better be,” Eddie pants. A dull pain presses against his temples.  “I’ll puke.”

Stan lets out another breathless laugh.  “I died,” he says to the water, “and then I - I un-died.”

Eddie shivers and waits.

“I was alone,” he says, “and then I was - I wasn’t alone.  There was a turtle.  I don’t - I don’t remember his name.  But he told me I was lost - I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.  He was upset with me.”

“The turtle,” Eddie says, deadpanned, “was upset with you.”

“Really upset,” Stan amends, and Eddie nods along.  “Gave me the dad spiel.  Not angry, just disappointed,” Stan laughs humorlessly.  “Then he said - he told me he couldn’t stop It and save me, it would be one or the other.  So I thought - I really thought - but then he said you were coming to get me.”

Slowly, Eddie nods again.

“Did you meet the turtle?”

“No, I didn’t meet a fucking turtle,” Eddie snaps sluggishly.  “I do feel like I just had the worst acid trip in fucking history, but - no, man.  It’s all a blur, but definitely no turtle.”

Stan finally tears his gaze away from the water to frown down at Eddie.  “You don’t remember any of it?”

“Of course I fucking remember it,” Eddie mutters.  “But it wasn’t - I didn’t have, like, full-blown conversations with cosmic turtles, or whatever.  It was like - I don’t know.  A kaleidoscope.  All these memories smashed together.  That’s why I said I’ll puke if we have to do it again, I swear to god -”

“I think it’s over,” Stan interrupts.  “We killed It.”

Eddie sags into the water a little more.  “So are we still dead, then?”

Stan doesn’t answer right away.  He’s tensed up on the rock when Eddie looks up at him; as Eddie watches, a shiver rattles his frame.  “I don’t know,” he finally answers.  “I didn’t think so, at first, but - it’s so quiet.”

Eddie exhales hard enough that his breath ripples across the water.  Beyond the tide lapping quietly at the rocks and Eddie’s body, he hears a lark calling mournfully from the trees and his own roaring heartbeat still settling.  He strains, but hears no nearby voices, no whistling traffic, no signs of life at all.

Stan starts forward when Eddie begins the arduous process of standing up, but appears to think better of it when his own knees buckle beneath his weight.  He watches Eddie stagger through the mud, hissing as he scrapes the heels of his hands against the boulder Stan’s sitting on when his legs wobble traitorously beneath him.  He feels like Bambi on the frozen pond; surefooted until he isn’t, vulnerable and exposed even with Stan grabbing at his bicep in a weak, aborted attempt at helping.

“Jesus Christ,” Stan mutters as Eddie turns his head toward him in thanks.  “When did you get buff?”

“Fuck off,” Eddie says sluggishly.  “You didn’t even get to see Ben, I’m - average.”

Stan absently pats his bicep again, eyes flashing beneath his glasses.  “Nothing average about that thing,” he says mildly.  “Did you move directly into a gym when you left Derry, or -”

“Fuck off,” Eddie repeats, cursing his stupid involuntary grin for leaking the heat out of his words.  “You had your post-Derry coping mechanisms, I had mine.”

And for the first time in nearly thirty years, Eddie sees Stan smile - a wide, toothy thing, cheeks so rounded they push his glasses up his face by the bottom half of his rims.  He laughs after a second, and Eddie’s belly feels like it’s swelling with something warm and weightless, something that tingles in the tips of his blueish fingers and toes until he’s laughing, too.

They laugh for an endless stretch of time, until Eddie’s stomach aches with it.  He presses his forehead to his forearm stretched across the side of the boulder, listening to Stan’s feet shift in the rocky sand beneath them as they sigh and hiccup their way back to comfortable quiet.  It’s over, he thinks with giddy certainty.  It wouldn’t let us laugh like this for this long unless It isn’t around to stop us anymore.

“So,” says Stan, “what should we do now?”

“No idea,” Eddie rasps.  He feels like he’s been screaming for hours, like if he talks any longer he may lose his voice for good.  “Maybe - figure out whether we’re actually alive or not?”

Stan’s quiet for a long moment.  “Did you - hear things?  While we were - wherever we were?”

Stan is already gazing at him when Eddie lifts his head, all anxious lines between his brow and nervous edge to his bitten lower lip.  “Well, yeah,” Eddie says uncertainly.

“Not memories,” Stan clarifies.  “Did you hear - people looking for you?”

Eddie swallows thickly.  “Yeah.”

“Different people, or - or just one person?”

“Just one.”

Stan nods.  “Me too.  I heard Patty.  My wife,” he whispers, like a confession.

Eddie swallows again - loud enough for Stan to hear his throat click - and drops his gaze.  “I - I didn’t hear my wife,” he says to their knees.  “I heard - I heard -”

“Richie?”

Stan’s expression is calm and kind when Eddie peers up at him nervously.  “I heard Richie,” he whispers.  “If you heard your wife, and I heard Richie, what does that - what does that mean?”

Stan studies his face for a long moment.  “I don’t know,” he lies.

Eddie can’t find it in himself to care.  “We should find them,” he says.

“I don’t think either one of us has the strength for walking right n-”

He’s interrupted by the deafening roar of an engine and a loud screeching sound from the road; dazed, Eddie cranes around Stan in time to spot the blurry shapes of two people sprinting full-speed toward them from a familiar red Mustang parked haphazardly in the middle of the road, and beyond them he sees a black SUV skidding to a stop only marginally more carefully at the side of the road, four more people scrambling out of the open doors -

And then he’s peeled away from the boulder and engulfed in a bone-crushing embrace, yanked into an all-encompassing warmth so fiercely his feet briefly leave the ground.  “Oh my god oh my god holy fucking shit…” he hears Richie’s voice gasp through the chaos, “oh my fucking god Eddie oh my god…”

He chokes it out through heaving sobs that Eddie feels all the way down in his bones, vibrating through him so violently he can barely maintain his admittedly weak grip on the loose material of Richie’s shirt.  His head is forcefully tucked into Richie’s chest, held in place by Richie’s giant hand on the back of his head and the iron-clad grip Richie’s got around his shoulders.  Somewhere beyond the wall of muscle to which he’s currently pinned, Eddie can hear other voices, too - familiar, but ragged with an emotion that makes his aching head throb.

“Rich?” he gaspsinto the swell of Richie’s bicep.

Richie downright wails at the sound of Eddie’s voice; his chest heaves and quakes so violently, Eddie’s vision blurs seconds before he closes his eyes.  He finally manages his first full, deep inhale in the shelter of Richie’s arms, and his senses are accosted by the pleasantly familiar warmth of deodorant, toothpaste, and a natural musk that makes him think absurdly of arm wrestling in a Chinese restaurant.

“Eddie,” Richie sobs into Eddie’s hair.  His fingers tremble as they skate through the soft hair at the back of Eddie’s head, but his thumb strokes a steady, soothing rhythm over Eddie’s temple.  “Eddie, fuck, Eddie…”

With no small amount of effort, Eddie tightens his grip around Richie’s middle, curling his fingers into his t-shirt hard enough to feel the individual notches of Richie’s vertebrae through the layer of muscle at the base of Richie’s spine.  Richie’s still sobbing, but the hold he has on the back of Eddie’s head is as gentle and tender as it is protective, and despite Richie’s obvious distress, Eddie feels something deep and primal go still and calm in his own chest.  “‘S’this real?” he asks in a whispered slur.

Richie’s still sobbing, but he ups the pressure with which he holds Eddie’s head to his chest.  Eddie feels warm, parted lips against his hairline and he’s suddenly infinitely grateful for the arm Richie has locked around his shoulders, holding him upright.  Eddie can’t even bring himself to care about the foreboding quake in his knees.  “It’s real, it’s real, this is real,” Richie finally manages to choke through his tears.  “This is real, honey, you’re alive.  I’ve got you, you’re okay.”

Richie’s thumb is still tracing the dip of Eddie’s temple, and relief cascades in a tingling wave down Eddie’s spine.  He sighs and drags his frigid nose over Richie’s damp collar and thinks rather hysterically that if fresh air smelled as good as Richie, he’d gladly live outside for the rest of his life, infectious diseases be damned.

“Missed you,” he hears himself breathe.

“Fuck, Eddie, fucking - I missed you, I fucking missed you, I’m never letting you go again -”

“M’tired,” Eddie tells Richie’s collarbone, voice pitched high and warbling and painfully childish.  He can feel a knot of unshed tears swelling in the space between his eyes, expanding to press sharp and painful along the interior of his skull, pounding with each valiant beat of Eddie’s heart.

“N-n - no, Eddie, no, you have to - Eddie - fuck, Eddie -”

“M’tired, Rich,” Eddie says again as he feels his knees buckle beneath him.

“Mike!  Mike!”

Richie’s panic-stricken voice fades into the wall of sound behind him as Eddie feels himself drop; he gets one last blurry vision of Richie’s stricken, tear-stained face set against the brilliant blue sky before his vision goes blissfully dark.

He does not dream.

He wakes some time later, newly horizontal, face pressed once again into a broad, familiar chest.

The scent of him is the first thing to process in Eddie’s sleep-addled brain.  It immediately sets him at ease, despite the itchy duvet irritating his bare legs and the unsettling darkness pressing in around him.  It all falls secondary to this, to this specific barrel chest rising and falling in a slow, even rhythm and the warm arm wrapped loosely around his shoulders, holding him in place.  Eddie lets his eyes flutter shut briefly, savoring the feeling.

His eyes adjust after only a moment.  Long shadows stretch lazily across the wood-paneled wall on Richie’s other side, all muted hues of orange and yellow and white from what scant light slips between the closed curtains somewhere beyond Eddie’s back.  He has no concept of what time it is outside - whether it’s sunlight or flickering street lamps, he does not know, nor can he bring himself to care.  It’s dark, but Eddie recognizes this place anyways; he thinks he’ll always have the misfortune of remembering the dusty, dated interior of Derry’s one and only Inn no matter the time and distance.

Richie’s breathing slowly and evenly, his chest gently pushing Eddie’s head up and down with each exhale, and what few traces of anxiety have stirred in Eddie’s consciousness fade at the achingly familiar sounds of Richie snuffling in his sleep.  His arm around Eddie’s shoulders tightens for a moment as he turns his head on the pillow, but slowly loosens again as he settles back down.  Eddie tilts his head up and watches him sleep for the first time in nearly thirty years.

It takes a long moment of squinting through the darkness, but eventually, Eddie spies the subtle marks of Richie’s tears dried salty and pale against his skin in a path down to his temple.  He’s certain, if he craned his head up to look, that he’d see similar rings of dried salt water soaked into the pillowcase above his own head.

He knows from experience.  He’d woken up the morning after his wedding to find similar whitish rings dried into his own pillowcase.  He’d thrown it away before Myra woke up.

Eddie’s stomach lurches.  He rips the duvet away and rolls to the left, barely hearing the startled, confused noise the sudden movement rips from Richie’s throat as he stumbles out of bed and into the wall before rushing toward the open bathroom door.  He doesn’t have time to kick the door closed or flick the faucet on as he passes it; already, he can hear Richie scrambling out of bed to follow him as he drops to his knees and vomits up the contents of his stomach into the toilet bowl.

He can’t hear anything for a long minute over the blood roaring in his ears, but the firm press of Richie’s hand to the back of his neck is unmistakable; miserably, Eddie retches again, and feels Richie shift closer to him.

“You’re alright,” Richie’s murmuring once Eddie’s hearing filters back in.  “You’re okay, Eds.  I’m right here, I’ve got you.”

Eddie heaves a third time, choking on bile and failing to bite back a subsequent pained sob.  Richie rubs his hand down the length of Eddie’s back, slow and steady.  He’s still talking to Eddie softly, soothingly, voice clogged with sleep and something else Eddie can’t fathom.

Eddie retches again, but nothing comes up.  “It’s okay,” Richie says.  “Just let it out, it’s okay.  You’re gonna be okay.”

It takes another long moment of Eddie tensing over the toilet bowl, head hung low to hide the tears spilling down his face, but finally, his stomach comes unclenched.  “Nn,” he hisses against his spasming throat.  His eyes are screwed shut from exertion, but he can feel Richie shifting; slowly, gently, Richie snakes his hand down to press against Eddie’s forehead, ignoring the sick slide of sweat against his palm to check Eddie’s temperature.

“You’re clammy, but no fever,” he mumbles as he withdraws his hand.  “D’you think you’ll need to go again?”

Eddie’s body pitches to his left for all of a split-second before Richie catches him and helps him ease down to sit crookedly, still heavily leaned over the toilet.  He feels Richie gently rearrange his legs to a more comfortable position and tilts his sweaty face up against his arm draped across the edge of the toilet seat.  He releases a shuddering exhale, too weak to lift himself up any further.  Richie’s kneeling down beside him, watching him closely with blazing, tender concern when he cracks his eyelids open.  “Dunno,” he finally manages, voice scratchy and thin.

Richie nods slowly, reaching up to gently brush his hair back from where it’s matted to his forehead. “We can stay here if you think it might happen again,” Richie tells him as he withdraws his hand, “but I wanna get you back in bed if not.  This fuckin’ floor is murder on your knees, believe me.”

Eddie blinks at him slowly, and Richie continues rubbing his back.  Despite the sour taste of bile still clinging to his tongue, his entire body feels swaddled in warmth at Richie’s touch. “Where’s Stan?”

If Richie’s surprised by the question, he doesn’t show it; with a small, fond smile, he nods his head toward the wall behind the toilet.  “Next door,” he says.  “Either asleep or also puking his guts up, but - alive.  He’s alive.  And so’re you.”

His voice cracks with quiet emotion as his eyes well with tears, and a tension set deep in Eddie’s chest fissures and snaps at the sight.  He reaches for Richie with a single, trembling hand, and Richie immediately snatches it out of the empty space between them with his free hand, dragging it first to his lips to press a flurry of stubbly kisses to his knuckles, and then to his chest where his heart is pounding.

Richie holds his hand in place with his right hand, and gently touches the side of Eddie’s face not pressed to the toilet seat with his left.  He drags his thumb over Eddie’s cheekbone slowly, adoration so pure and unadulterated in his eyes, Eddie’s breath catches.

“I heard you,” Eddie breathes on his exhale.

He hears Richie’s throat click in time with his adam’s apple bobbing.  “I know,” he whispers.

“How?”

For the first time since waking up, Richie looks away.  “It’s a long story,” he admits after a moment, gaze fixated somewhere down near Eddie’s elbow.  “Too much to get into right now, honestly.  Can - can we explain it to you in the morning?”

Eddie’s neck twinges as he lifts his head sharply enough to dislodge Richie’s hand from his cheek, immediately drawing Richie’s gaze back up to his face.  “You saved me,” he says unsteadily.

“You saved yourself,” Richie counters immediately.  “ And you saved Stan.  I - I did the bare minimum.”

“You saved me,” Eddie says again, lowering his head to rest against his arm once more.

He recognizes the argument rising in Richie’s expression, but Richie seems to think better of it at the last moment; with a sigh, he reaches to touch Eddie’s face again.  “Okay,” he says softly.  “Will you let me save you from falling asleep on the bathroom floor, too?”

Eddie pretends to consider it.  “Dunno,” he says with a jerky, one-shoulder shrug.

Richie breathes out a laugh and rocks forward to press another kiss to Eddie’s hairline.  “Are you gonna be okay right here for five seconds while I stand up?” he asks seriously.

Eddie nods sluggishly.

“I’m just stepping right over here to the sink, you’ll be able to see me the whole time,” Richie says, withdrawing Eddie’s hand from his chest and setting it down against Eddie’s thigh like it’s a precious artifact in need of careful preservation.  Eddie watches him in silence, tilting his head back a bit more to watch as Richie draws himself up to his full height and backs away three paces to the sink across from the bathroom door.  Richie, to his credit, holds Eddie’s gaze for as long as he can while he works, but it’s not until he finally looks away that Eddie realizes he’s dressing an unfamiliar toothbrush with toothpaste and filling a small crystal glass with water from the tap.

He settles down beside Eddie a moment later, waiting patiently while Eddie hauls himself back up into a semi-upright position before handing him the toothbrush.  Eddie’s arm burns from exertion, but he powers through - because even in the aftermath of coming back from beyond the brink of death, it’s a cold day in hell before Eddie goes to sleep without brushing his teeth after puking.  He spits in the toilet, grateful for the darkness concealing the rest of the bowl’s contents, and then trades the toothbrush for the crystal glass in Richie’s other hand.

Richie flushes the toilet while Eddie gargles and spits, and then takes the empty glass from him.  He leaves the toothbrush and glass in the sink without so much as a second glance.

“Okay,” Richie grunts as he hauls himself up to his feet.  Eddie pushes himself up off of the toilet with as much strength as he can muster and grits his teeth at the stiffness already protesting in the tender muscles of his lower back.  Richie’s hands are big and warm where they wrap beneath his biceps to manhandle him up to his feet; Eddie barely has a chance to stagger before Richie’s drawn him in close, one arm slung around his waist, the other maneuvering Eddie’s arm up over Richie’s neck.  “I gotcha,” Richie murmurs as Eddie fumbles over his own feet.

Eddie lets himself be half-guided, half-dragged back out into the main part of the room.

“There ya’ go,” Richie breathes as Eddie collapses against the mattress.  He tries to haul himself further away, toward the spot Richie occupied when he initially woke up, but Richie stops him with gentle hands and an amused tut.  “All good, Eddie Spaghetti,” he assures him in a whisper.  “I’ll climb over you.  You won’t even notice me, I promise.”

Eddie grumbles incomprehensibly, but allows Richie to pull the duvet up over his back and gently tuck him in.  He feels cool air rush in against his face at the same time the sounds of Richie’s footsteps retreat back toward the bathroom; after a moment, Eddie hears those footsteps return, and when he cracks his eyes open he’s greeted to the sight of the bathroom trashcan lowering to the floor beside the bed.

“In case it happens again,” Richie whispers.

Eddie hums and lets his eyes flutter shut.

The mattress dips down by his feet as Richie clambers back into bed, and another wave of cold air rises up Eddie’s spine as the duvet lifts, but it’s chased away immediately by the unfaltering warmth of Richie’s body sliding into place just behind Eddie, close enough that Eddie can feel the coarse hairs on Richie’s shin against the soles of his feet.  Richie fusses over the duvet for a moment, trying to smooth it down without disturbing the side tucked in around Eddie.

“This okay?” Richie asks after finally settling down.

Eddie considers it for the length of two breaths before rolling to his other side to face Richie, effectively shoving himself into Richie’s space.  Richie, for his part, merely snorts in fond amusement as he lifts his arm and drags Eddie in closer.  “Better now,” Eddie slurs into Richie’s sleeve, going willingly when Richie tucks his head down beneath his chin.  “Still wanna know what happened.”

Richie’s exhale ruffles the hair at the crown of Eddie’s head.  “Alien magic bullshit,” he says after a long moment.  “Mike’ll explain it better than me, I promise.  I was - I was - not in a good mindset when he explained it to us the first time, I just - I just kinda did whatever he told me to do, and - and.”

Eddie hums wearily at the weight of Richie’s lips pressing down on top of his head.  “‘S’okay,” Eddie tells him.  “I’m - here.  Safe.  There’s - there’s time.”

He feels the flex of muscle in Richie’s jaw clenching against his head; the grip he has around Eddie firms, sharpened along the edges with a kind of possessiveness Eddie’s never truly felt in him before.  “I will fucking die before I let another goddamn thing happen to you, Eddie,” he says, low and firm.  “You’re safe.  You’re gonna stay safe for the rest of your life, I promise.  And you’re right, there’s so much time, because you’re gonna live for a long, long fucking time.”

“With you,” Eddie says.

He feels Richie jerk a bit against him, but he doesn’t pull away.  “With me,” he echoes after a moment.  “For as long as you’ll have me, Eds.  Forever, if you let me.”

Eddie feels it - the endless stretch of it, a yawning infinity spread out into oblivion.  “Forever sounds nice,” he mumbles.

Richie’s quiet for a long time - so long, in fact, that Eddie’s nearly dropped off the edge of consciousness when the sound of a quiet, muffled sniffle rouses him.  “Whatever you want,” he hears Richie whisper, thick with emotion.  “Whatever you want, honey.  I’m so fucking glad I found you again.”

The words tickle at something in the back of Eddie’s mind - a distant, muffled sense of deja vu - but he’s asleep before it comes to him.