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There’s someone in Eddie’s bed.
He doesn’t realize at first, too occupied with waking up. Something is strange. He feels… different. Wrong, almost, but he can’t figure out what -
Beside him, someone stirs.
Eddie turns towards it, thinking of sleepovers with the Losers, of Richie knocking on his window at 10pm and crawling into Eddie’s bed when he lets him in.
His eyes adjust. It still takes a second.
“Morning, babe,” says a man, a full-grown adult man, in his fucking bed.
Eddie screams. The scream is much lower than he expects, but he’s not focusing on it, too busy in his knee-jerk reaction, which in this case is literal. He strikes out with his knee and catches the guy in the nuts.
The guy lets out a choked yell, curling up on himself. He starts to say something that sounds like, “What the fuck , Eds,” but Eddie’s too busy yelling to pay attention.
“WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU,” he screams. He whirls around, grabbing the first thing he sees, which is a lamp, and brandishes it at the dude, who has groaning on the mattress, clutching his genitals, which are mercifully covered by boxers.
“MY MOM’S GONNA KICK YOUR ASS,” Eddie screams. “I’M - SHE’S GONNA CALL THE COPS AND THEY’RE GONNA BE HERE SO FAST-”
All of this is wrong. It still takes a while to sink in, because he’s still in panic mode, but he looks down at his arms and they’re - not his arms. They’re too long, and they have hair, proper hair, like a man’s arms, and his legs are the same. He’s wearing boxers with little Superman symbols on them that definitely aren’t his and he’s standing in a room he’s never seen before, and when he looks out the window he’s in a city. A real, actual city , like on TV.
“What happened to me,” Eddie croaks. He swallows, tries to suck in more saliva for a yell, but he can’t get his mouth wet enough. “Where - where are we? How did-”
The guy has managed to roll over onto his knees now. He’s still clutching his nads with one hand, but the other one is held out to Eddie, as if trying to calm a spooked animal.
“Oookay,” the guy says. “Are we doing 13 Going on 30 right now? No, you won’t know what that - Eds, what’s the last thing you remember?”
Eddie bristles at the nickname. Bizarrely, another part of him relaxes at it. There’s something about this guy -
He holds up the lamp higher. What was that thing, Stockholm Something?
“I said , where are-”
“Eds,” the guy says. He’s looking at Eddie like he understands, which shouldn’t be comforting, but it kind of is. “Do me a favor and look to your left, okay? There’s a mirror.”
Eddie swallows again. He adjusts his grip on the lamp, which he now notices is still plugged into the wall. Then he looks over.
He means for it to be a glance, but his gaze sticks and holds. The mirror is a full-length one, so Eddie sees all of it: an adult stares back at him, eyes wide in fear and alarm. His forehead is creased. He has stubble. His expression is familiar, and so is his posture, because it’s Eddie’s expression and posture, but the body is - is -
Is this IT , Eddie thinks, but it’s distant. It doesn’t feel like IT, doesn’t have that under-the-skin quality that always came with those encounters, even before he knew what was going on.
“It’s you,” the guy says. “It’s you, okay? You at 38. You’re okay, Eds, you’re just - getting a glimpse into what’s coming. Last thing you remember, you were hanging in the clubhouse with your pals, right? In Derry?”
Eddie feels himself nod. He’s still staring at the reflection - his reflection? - but he makes himself look away, towards the man on the bed, who is still wincing in pain but has both hands off his crotch now, which is good.
“Yeah,” Eddie says, and his voice breaks on it. He clears his throat. The clubhouse - he remembers now. Kind of. He’d been climbing the ladder to get out, and then -
“You fell,” the guy says. “Hit your head. Found yourself in some white space with a turtle who told you some weird shit about being in one of the good worlds.”
Eddie lowers the lamp.
“Yeah,” he whispers. He’s trembling. He stares at the guy, who reaches over to the bedside table and puts on a pair of glasses.
It’s almost embarrassing how fast it clicks after those glasses slide home. Eddie squints, watches the guy adjust them and push his hair out of his eyes. How the hell could Eddie not have known?
“Richie,” he says.
The guy startles a little. Then he grins.
“In the flesh,” he says. He gets out of bed, bends down and starts pulling on a shirt he finds on the floor. “Hey, Eds - I know you’re in that adult body right now, but do you think you could do us both a favor and put on some clothes, bud?”
Eddie stares at the man - Richie - as he stands on one foot, hopping as he yanks some shorts on over his boxers. Richie’s tall as an adult, and lanky, which Eddie assumed he’d grow out of, but nope, there’s that awkward way he holds himself as he moves.
“Right,” Eddie says, and his voice squeaks on it as he tries to make sense of this. The adult thing, sure, but also - Richie was in bed with him. Richie was in bed with him, Eddie, as adults, and that might be okay when they’re 14 and having sleepovers, but it’s starting to get less okay the older they get, so why is Richie in bed with him as adults? And why is he almost naked ?
“Um,” Eddie says. “I - where are my-”
Richie goes over to a chest of drawers and takes out a t-shirt, then goes into the lower one and takes out a pair of jeans. He throws them both to Eddie, who fumbles but catches them.
“I’ll meet you out there,” Richie says, pointing out of the bedroom. “Come out when you’re ready.”
Then he leaves Eddie, like he can’t just - call the cops or something. He still kind of wants to, even if reality, or whatever this is, is setting in more clearly now. It’s hard to argue with the guy - Richie, it really is him - when he’s suddenly in an adult body, he can look down and see it for himself, clench and unclench these hands which are new, sure, but get more familiar the longer he stares at them.
He gets dressed. Thinks about looking around the bedroom a little, but decides against it.
When he goes out into the lounge, Richie’s sitting on the couch eating cereal.
“Eds,” he says. He waves, then motions at a bowl on the couch next to him. “Got you some.”
Eddie approaches cautiously. He tugs at the hem of his shirt, glances over at Richie as he sits down a safe distance away, picking up the cereal before he does. He holds up the bowl. It’s cheerios, like he always has for breakfast.
“Usually you have bran,” Richie says. “But I figured, you’re having a hard day. Might as well give you something you’re used to.”
Eddie’s weirdly touched that Richie remembers what cereal he ate as a kid. Wait, when did he stop eating them?
Bigger questions, Eddie tells himself.
“What the fuck,” he says, “is going on. Why do you know what happened - me falling in the clubhouse, hitting my head?”
“‘Cause you told us,” Richie says. He eats a spoonful of cereal. His is sugary and colorful. “You get back from your Back To The Future trip, and you tell us what happened. So I know how this goes, kind of. It took you a while to get really specific.”
“What - so-” Eddie stares down at his bowl as he works it out. “Like-”
“Like,” Richie says. He sits up straighter, turns to face him. “The way you explained it to us, it’s a closed loop. Remember Terminator?”
Eddie nods. His face must show what a dumb question that is, because Richie snorts.
“So,” he says. “Kyle Reese comes back to help save Sarah Connor, who’s gonna give birth to John. But while he’s back in the past, he bangs Sarah Connor, which makes John get born. Then John grows up and sends Kyle back. And Kyle bangs Sarah Connor-”
He makes a repeating cycle with his fingers.
“-and so on,” he continues. “You come here, see the future, go back to the past and tell us what we need to do. We do it, then we all grow up. And then one day baby-Eddie’s consciousness time-travels here, and I get kneed in the nuts.”
Eddie’s mouth moves wordlessly for a bit. He’s trying not to think about why Richie was in bed with him.
“I’m not apologizing for kneeing you in the nuts,” he says. “I - as far as I knew, you were some freak who kidnapped me and-”
“Your terrifying fight-or-flight instincts kicked in, emphasis on fight ,” Richie says, beaming like he’s proud of him. “You’re still like that. Last week you-”
He stops, looking at Eddie like he’s just caught himself on something he’s not allowed to tell him. Eddie’s both annoyed and relieved.
“So you know how this all goes,” Eddie says.
“Ayuh,” Richie says, playing up the Maine drawl that’s mostly gone.
“How long am I here for?”
“Like, six hours.”
“What do I have to do when I get back?”
Richie clicks his tongue at him.
“All in due time,” he says. “We have all day, dude, you don’t have to start taking notes. Let’s chill out for a second.”
Eddie stares at him. Richie looks back impassively.
“Let’s ch- ” Eddie stops, puts his face in his hands. “I just - time traveled, and you - how are you still this annoying, 30 years later?”
“It’s a talent, babe,” Richie says, and then makes that face again, like he’s just let something slip.
Eddie feels his cheeks go red. Not thinking about it. Woke up and he was pretty much naked. In bed with future-me. Nope, I’m not -
“ Anyway ,” Richie says. It’s loud enough to make Eddie jump.
“ This is a phone,” Richie says, and gets something slim and shiny out of his pocket. “Not phone-shaped at all, I know, but-”
“You know,” Eddie says, “Now that I think about it, if this were to really happen, you’d just be showing me random crap and telling me it was some future gadget. Like, you’d show me a - an automatic peeler and go, ohhh, it reads your vitals in a second! Stick your finger right in there, Eds -”
Richie laughs. He clicks the device and it lights up.
“That does sound like me,” he admits. “But look here, baby-Eds-”
“I’m not a baby,” Eddie says. He puts his cereal down next to him on the couch.
“You’re 14,” Richie says, poking at the screen, which does - something. Many things.
“You’re a fucking infant, dude,” Richie continues. “Anyway, shut up-”
He pokes at another thing, a bunch of photos all together and very small, and then a phone - a real phone, a proper-shaped one - shows up on the screen.
“Who are we calling,” Eddie says, slightly proud of himself for having put it together.
“Who do you think,” Richie says.
Eddie stares at him. There are the obvious people, but that’s - would they still be friends at 38? Surely not. No one is adult friends with their school friends. They say they will be, but even Eddie knows that it’s probably not true -
A guy appears on screen. Then, as the guy’s saying hi, another guy appears. Both of them are new and familiar all at once, and Eddie watches as Richie tells them hi and more people start appearing on the call -
Bill , Eddie realizes, putting names to faces. It makes sense as soon as he thinks it. Stan. Mike. Bev - and oh shit, that’s gotta be Ben. Same kind eyes.
“What’s up with Eddie,” says Mike, sounding adult and confident and - other things that Eddie doesn’t really want to focus on past the brief thought of oh god everyone grows up hot.
“Yeah, you look weird,” Bev says. “Something happen, Eds?”
“Um,” Eddie says, suddenly shy. “I, uh. Hi, guys.”
His voice catches for what has to be the third time this morning. It’s a lot , okay? Everyone answered so fast and their faces and the way they talk made it clear that this isn’t a rare occurrence, they still talk all the time. And everyone looks so happy to see each other despite that.
“Eds is fine,” Richie says, when a few faces start looking concerned. “He’s just Back To The Future -ing.”
The faces on the screen smooth out into surprise.
“Oh, wow,” Stan says. “Now?”
“Apparently,” Richie says.
Bev is grinning. “How are your balls, Rich?”
“Sore, thank you for asking, Beverly,” Richie says.
Eddie flushes again. “What else was I supposed to do, guys!”
“Stranger danger,” Ben says, nodding.
Eddie points at his tiny spot on the screen. “ Thank you, Ben!”
“Aw,” Mike says. “He recognizes us. Hey Eddie, do you know who I am?”
“You know, I can’t really tell you, specifically, apart from the others,” Eddie says flatly.
That gets a laugh. It makes Eddie glow a little, because he’s making adults laugh, but also because he always glows a little when he makes his friends laugh.
We didn’t lose it , he thinks. The friendship they’d all die for, that they almost did die for, screaming in Neibolt as the clown advanced; fighting for their lives in a sewer.
Now I gotta kill this clown, he remembers Richie saying. He looks over at Richie, who is thicker and taller and has none of the in-between look that his Richie does at 14, in the middle of a growth spurt that makes his joints ache. He looks - settled. In himself, or whatever. Which none of them are at 14.
“Guess we better hope no one calls him in for a surgery,” Bill says.
Eddie blinks. Does he need surgery? He feels fine -
“You’re the surgeon,” Richie says. Then he laughs at whatever expression Eddie must be making. “I know, right? What the fuck.”
“What the fuck,” Eddie echoes. He looks back at the phone screen.
Richie makes a face. “Hope no one needs emergency surgery from Dr. Kasprak today.”
Eddie stares at him.
“It’ll be fine,” Richie says. “Probably. I’ll make an excuse for you if somebody calls.”
“Great,” Eddie says, dripping sarcasm. “So - wait, so - Richie said I have to get told what to do - we have to do something when I get back?”
Everybody’s faces go serious.
“Yeee-ep,” Richie says. “Sorry, Eds. You have to kill IT.”
Eddie goes cold.
“I know,” Richie says again. He rubs Eddie’s shoulder. “Hey, it goes fine. It’s scary, but no one gets hurt. I get a scrape, and it heals in a couple days and you fuss over it the whole time. It’s just a scrape, Eds.”
Eddie looks over him, as if he’s able to sense the decades-old scrape.
“I thought we did kill IT,” he manages.
“You almost did,” Mike says in the phone. “But there’s a trick to it. Want us to talk you through it?”
Eddie hesitates. He nods, then jumps when a hand closes gently around his wrist.
“You,” Richie says, “are the bravest motherfucker out of everybody here. Or, everybody on this group call. Whatever.”
Eddie has to look away. It’s so - it’s Richie . It’s weird, seeing him grown up like this, but underneath the grown up is the guy that Eddie knows, the one who’d yelled his name as he fell off the clubhouse steps right before he woke up here.
“Okay,” he says. “Tell me how to kill IT.”
After the call ends, Eddie spends a few minutes pacing and yelling and eating cereal, because he’s angry, but his stomach is growling.
“That’s so STUPID,” he yells, between mouthfuls. “And EASY. You’re telling me no one in however long IT’s been around, has yelled YOUR FACEPAINT IS STUPID at it while it’s coming at them with his big dumb clown fangs?”
“Not enough to kill it,” Richie says. He’s still on the couch, watching Eddie pace. He’s finished his cereal and is slurping at the colorful milk.
“Get your feet off the coffee table,” Eddie tells him. “There is no way I let you do that.”
“You live with it,” Richie says. “My feet are clean, man.”
Eddie pauses in his pacing. He looks around the place, as if he can find out whether or not Richie lives here from the decor. There are some framed photos - Ben and Bev’s wedding, which is exciting and surprising, and others of the Losers at various other occasions.
“Who does Stan marry,” Eddie says, stopping in front of it.
“Patty,” Richie says.
She looks kind in the Ben sort of way, the sort that shows up in the eyes.
“Patty who?”
“Nope,” Richie says. “You don’t know that.”
Eddie scowls at the photo, then back at him. “I don’t?”
“Nope,” Richie says. He holds up his hands. “Hey, you tell us you don’t know Patty’s last name! I can’t break the time circle, sorry, Eds.”
Eddie touches the photo frame. Everyone looks really happy. Everyone looks really happy in all the photos.
“Who do-” he stops, looks across the wall. Looks down at his hand, where he’s wearing something that’s probably a wedding ring, if he has the finger right. “Um, am I...”
“Married,” Richie says when Eddie trails off.
Eddie nods. Twists the wedding band around his finger.
“Oh,” Richie says. “Yeah, dude, you’re married.”
Eddie risks a glance back at him. Richie’s face is unreadable, if a little soft.
“Am I-” Eddie can’t get it out, so he doesn’t. Instead he says, “Am I happy?”
“You’re happy as fuck,” Richie says. “You’re super happy, Eds. Or did you just mean happily married? You’re that, too. But life is good in general.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Eddie looks away. He goes over to the window, where the city - he’s pretty sure it’s New York, he recognizes some of the buildings from sitcom scene transitions - is alive under them. They’re pretty high up, and it’s enough to make Eddie feel queasy, if he wasn’t already.
He asks, “Are you?”
“Happy or happily married?”
“Both.” Eddie traces the shape of a building with his finger. Cars and trucks are driving through the streets, which stretch further than Eddie’s ever seen. It looks impossible.
“Both,” Richie says back at him. “I hit the jackpot.”
Eddie says it before he realizes he’s saying it: “Shit, did my mom finally accept your proposal?”
He turns around, nearing embarrassment until he sees Richie laughing, delighted, his whole body moving with it. His head’s thrown back, and the line of his throat is long, like the rest of him. Eddie looks away again. He did that earlier today, back in his time, looked away from Richie while he laughed, too overcome by something he didn’t let himself examine.
“God, I wish,” Richie says. “Nah, even better than that, Spaghetti.”
“Jesus,” Eddie says. “Please don’t say you still call me Spaghetti. We’re adults - we’re forty , dude, are you gonna call me that until we die?”
Richie looks at him, so fond Eddie wants to look away again.
“Eds,” he says. “I will never, ever stop calling you Spaghetti. It’s in our v-”
He stops, half-winces.
Eddie hasn’t been stuck by lightning, but he imagines this is how it feels. Richie looks off to the side towards the bookcase, and Eddie follows his gaze, and there he finds what he supposes he’s been looking for in the photos: Eddie and Richie in the middle of their friends, with the pair as the focus of the shot. They’re both in suits. They’re kissing.
Eddie makes a sound. He’s not sure it’s even him until he feels it in his throat, scraping.
“You okay,” Richie says slowly.
Eddie hasn’t said anything for a while. He’s just been staring.
He swallows. Then does it again.
“‘M fine,” he says, and goes over to the photo. His hands curl and uncurl at his sides, his too-large fingers in his too-large hands. His body still feels strange, almost alien, but not quite. It’s his body, sure, but he hasn’t grown into it yet. He needs that growing time.
This close to the photo, he can see everybody better. Richie has a smear of something on his lapel. Eddie assumes it’s cake. He’s crying, and so’s Eddie. Crying into the kiss.
I pronounce you husband and husband, Eddie thinks numbly. It sounds stupid. It doesn’t sound real, it sounds like a joke some asshole makes in class right before someone calls him a dipshit and hocks a loogie at him.
When he looks back at Richie, he’s watching. He looks worried, but not overly so. Mostly he looks expectant.
“I,” Eddie says, and stops. He has no idea what to say next.
“I can leave you alone,” Richie offers. “If you don’t-”
“No,” Eddie says. “I’m, I-”
He rubs his hands over his eyes. They’re wet. He wipes until they stop being wet, and then says the first thing that comes to mind, which feels very big and very small all at once.
“What would we do today,” he says, “if I didn’t wake up like - if it was just a normal day. Did we - did we have plans for today?”
Richie watches him for a while longer. Then he nods and gets up. He’s holding his empty bowl, He comes up to Eddie and holds his hand out for his.
Eddie gives it to him.
“It’s Saturday,” Richie says. “We were going to go to the supermarket. There was talk of movies. Watching them all afternoon. Lazy Saturday.”
Somehow that makes Eddie want to cry more. It’s not a bad crying, mostly. Just - overwhelmed. He has this idea, this immature fantasy that he doesn’t talk about anymore because he’s too old for it, but Richie and him used to go on about how they’d get a place together when they grew up. It’d be far away from Derry, because of course it would, and they’d read comics and eat junk and have sleepovers all the time. Eddie had wanted that so much as a kid. He still wants it now, even though it’s been maybe a year since he’s believed it could be a reality.
“That sounds good,” Eddie says. It comes out scratchy, and clearing his throat doesn’t help.
Richie says, “Yeah?” He moves like he’s about to touch Eddie, then doesn’t.
“Yeah,” Eddie says. He wipes his face again. “Let’s do that.”
“Okay,” Richie says, quiet but not unhappy. He does touch Eddie then, a soft touch on his elbow, like he’s unsure if it’s welcome or not.
Eddie’s stuck, torn between stepping away and throwing himself into a hug, but everything is new and terrifying and he doesn’t know what to do with it, so he just stands there and tries not to hyperventilate.
“Want to see the kitchen,” Richie asks.
Eddie sniffs. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” Richie says. “Follow me, we’ll do the dishes and then go shopping. Cool?”
“Cool.”
“Cool,” Richie repeats, and then heads out of the room.
Eddie follows.
They go to the supermarket. It’s something Eddie never knew he wanted, walking around the aisles arguing with Richie over what brand of milk to get. Apparently Eddie has some new preferences when he’s an adult, so he lets it slide, but he still puts a lot of junk food in the cart, all the stuff he eats with the Losers, plus whatever looks nice. There’s a lot more choice in the future.
When he does this, Richie gives him a look like he knows everything that’s going through his head, which is both the best and worst thing Eddie can think of. But it’s always like this, isn’t it - Eddie wants Richie to look, and then he squirms under his gaze, uncomfortable with it, but disappointed when he looks away. He hopes he’s more okay with it as an adult. He thinks he is, judging by how steadily Richie looks at him, like they do this all the time, look at each other and not stop, just keep looking, like it’s something they’re allowed.
“Hey,” Richie says as they’re in the home stretch, almost at the checkout. “You can say no if you want, but want to do something crazy?”
Eddie narrows his eyes at him. “What?”
Richie holds out his hand.
Eddie looks at it, then up at Richie, uncomprehending. It takes Richie physically reaching down and picking up his hand, placing it in his own, for Eddie to get it.
“We don’t have to,” Richie says as Eddie starts to recoil.
He’s in the middle of detangling his hand from Eddie’s before Eddie’s fingers lock, almost too hard.
“No,” he says. “It’s - fine. It’s fine, right?”
“It’s fine,” Richie assures him. “We do this all the time. Every day.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Richie says. He squeezes his hand.
Eddie squeezes back. He’s missed this. They used to hold hands when they were younger, mostly when they were running. This new context makes him sweat.
They walk through the rest of the supermarket, picking up the rest of the stuff on Richie’s list. Eddie steers the trolley and holds Richie’s hand and glances at every single person who walks by, but no one spares them a look. Except one person, a guy with bubblegum pink hair who meets Eddie’s eyes and smiles when he notices their joined hands.
Eddie smiles back, a little shaky.
Oh , he thinks.
Richie squeezes his hand again. Eddie’s been clutching. He loosens the pressure.
Then Richie ruins it by leaning in and saying, “It’s gonna be okay, kid.”
Eddie has no way to deal with that. He draws in a sharp breath and starts clutching again, fights the urge to pull away and just - book it, run out of here and down the street, away from anyone who could’ve seen him holding a boy’s hand -
“Shut the fuck up, Rich,” he tells Richie, and it only wobbles a bit.
“Alrighty,” Richie says, in his quoting voice. Eddie doesn’t know what he’s quoting from, but he supposes he’ll find out.
They get home. They put away the food. Richie makes some jokes about all the junk Eddie’s brought, tells him about how he did this in college as soon as he moved out of his mother’s house - eating anything and everything, staying out all night, getting into fights.
Eddie’s not surprised at his college-self. Much, anyway.
“Well, that’s done,” Richie says when he closes the last cupboard. “Rest of the day’s free. What do you want to do? Tourist traps?”
Eddie thinks of New York and all the germs that must be in those places. No thank you.
“It’d be cool to know more about the future,” he says.
Richie stands there, hands on his hips. His eyes are wide.
“Oh god,” he says. “9/11.”
“Uh, what,” Eddie says, but Richie’s already talking over him.
“Nevermind,” he says. “ Closed. Circle. Hey, still up for that movie night? We could watch Terminator.”
He punches Eddie’s shoulder. “Junk food and Terminator. You can pretend you’re back in your own time!”
Eddie laughs. Rubs his shoulder, though Richie didn’t punch him hard.
“Seriously, though,” Richie says. “It’s your future jump. You get to decide what we do.”
Eddie blows out a breath. “Don’t you already know what we do?”
“Oh, yeah,” Richie says. “We stay in and watch movies.”
Eddie throws up his hands. “So what’s- ”
“Eddie,” Richie says. “What do you want to do?”
It feels like a loaded question. Eddie puts that out of his mind.
“I guess I want to stay in and watch movies,” he says.
Richie finger-guns at him. It’s still cute and it’s still annoying. Eddie wonders if 40-year-old him still feels that same wash of exasperation, and then feels a surge of - something. Jealousy, maybe, at his older self, for being allowed to have all this.
“Has the next Terminator movie come out yet,” Richie asks as he piles bags of gummy worms into his arms.
Eddie shakes his head. “Not for a few months. Oh, shit, can we watch it now?”
Richie’s grinning. “You bet we can, you little asshole. When we see it in the theaters you spoil every plot point before it happens.”
“Well, now I gotta.”
“Right,” Richie says. “Damn. Walked right into my own doom. Are you helping with the snacks or what?”
He angles his elbow towards the cupboard, his arms full of sweets.
“Need the savoury,” Richie says. “Go, Eddie, grab.”
Eddie does. He fills his arms with bags of chips and then follows Richie out into the lounge, where he learns about DVD players.
Terminator 2 is good . Eddie cries and pretends he doesn’t, and Richie laughs at him for it.
“It’s fine,” Richie says when Eddie shoves him in the ribs. “You get back at me when we see it in theaters.”
“Do you cry?”
“I cry so hard,” Richie says.
Eddie laughs wetly. “Looking forward to it. Hey, can we - do we talk to the others again?”
Richie thinks about it. Bev had asked this at the end of the call this morning.
“Maybe,” he says. “Do you want to?”
Eddie considers. He would love to see their faces again, the strange, lovely faces of his friends as adults. But then again - he’ll see them soon, right? As kids, the ages they should be. And then he just has to wait. They’ll be adults eventually.
“You don’t find out more, I don’t think,” Richie says. “Unless you - real you - have been keeping stuff from us for the last few decades.”
Eddie laughs. It’s stiff.
“I guess I’ll see them soon,” he says. Then, “Do I - when do I tell you? About us?”
Richie snorts. “Dude, I’m not telling you that .”
“What? Why!” Eddie hits him in the arm. “At least tell me if - like, do I - is it okay?”
“Uh, duh,” Richie says. He spreads out his arms, indicating the apartment. “We’re married , man.”
It’s weirdly comforting that they still call each other man .
“But before that,” Eddie says. “Like, I - I don’t know if I would’ve reacted… great to this if you - my you - had just come up and-”
He gestures helplessly.
Richie shifts against the couch. The bowl of gummy worms moves in his lap.
“Yeah,” Richie says. “Gotta love that internalized homophobia.”
Eddie moves his mouth wordlessly around the words. They fit, but barely.
“It all ends up okay,” Richie says.
Eddie swallows. He wants to ask more, but instead he sits back against the couch.
“Next movie,” he says.
They watch 13 Going on 30.
It’s - it’s something. Eddie doesn’t cry, but it’s a close call. It’s near to his situation, kind of. Eddie gets why Richie had referred to it this morning.
He keeps not crying, but his throat does grow a lump when Jenna says, I love you, Matt. You’re my best friend. And Matt says, Jenna, I - I’ve always loved you.
It’s too late. It’s not really, and Eddie knows it even as he forces down tears, but in the moment it doesn’t help. He doesn’t breathe evenly until they appear in the dream house, curled up in that couch in the front yard.
Richie picks up the remote to scroll through more movies - there’s things even more advanced than DVDs, which wasn’t much of a surprise after the videocall this morning.
He opens his mouth, probably to ask Eddie what he wants to watch next, but Eddie stops him by blurting out, “What if I don’t do it?”
Richie looks over at him.
“What if I’m too afraid,” Eddie says.
Richie blinks. “About me, or about IT?”
“I don’t know,” Eddie says. “Both? I’m not-”
“You’re brave, Eds.”
“I’m not,” Eddie snaps. “I’m - I threw away those pills, the ones mom gave me, but after IT I just went right back and found them! I’m not - I barely even knew how I - how I felt about-”
He can’t say it. He can’t, because he’s a coward, it’s down in his bones.
Richie’s voice is even. “You figure it out. Everything turns out okay, Eds.”
Eddie pulls in a breath. He breathes it out, clenches his hands against his knees. He misses his body, his proper one that’s still going through puberty and doesn’t have all this hair. He’s not used to it, he’s not used to any of it. He held Richie’s hand in a supermarket and no one stared, no one really looked except for a boy Eddie thinks might be like them.
He takes another breath, bracing himself. Then he looks over at Richie.
“It’d be really weird if I kissed you, right?”
“Yes,” Richie says instantly. He only seems a little surprised at the question. “You’re a baby.”
“They kissed in the movie,” Eddie says weakly.
“Yeah,” Richie says. “And it’s weird if you put five seconds of critical thinking into it. You get to kiss me when we’re both the same age.”
Eddie must look like a mess, because Richie relents.
“It’s a hell of a first kiss,” he says. “Well. Not my first kiss, but our- ”
“Wait wait wait,” Eddie says. “You - who was your first kiss? Has my Richie had his first-”
“Yep,” Richie says. He grins at Eddie’s outraged look. “Okay, Eds, breathe. It sucked . I thought about you the whole time. Felt guilty as hell about that after, but hey, didn’t know you had a big gay crush on me right back.”
“Who-” Eddie’s having trouble wrapping his head around it. He didn’t know Richie was kissing people. “Was it a girl? Who was it?”
“Not a girl,” Richie says. “Connor Bowers.”
“CONNOR BOWERS,” Eddie says. He really doesn’t mean to make it so high-pitched, it just comes out that way.
Richie folds over with laughter. Eddie kicks him for it.
“He’s such a creep ,” Eddie says. “Always fawning over you, trying to talk to you like he didn’t snub you that summer, just let Bowers insult you like that-”
Richie’s still shaking with laughter, though it’s fading now.
“God,” he says. “I forgot how much you hated him! Whenever you’d catch us talking you’d just ram right into the conversation.”
He puts on a nasally, pitched voice. “ Hi Richie, we have somewhere to be, remember? Oh hi Connor, didn’t see you there . Jealous little punk. You were actively mean to the poor guy later in high school.”
“I don’t sound like that,” Eddie snaps. “And I wasn’t jealous! And I’m not mean !”
“Yeah you were,” Richie says easily. It’s all ease, his voice and his limbs, like this is an easy thing to talk about.
Eddie, however, is a coiled wire. All his joints are locked up tight, and he keeps having to look away.
“He is a creep,” he insists.
“Yeah,” Richie says. “But it was kiss him or nobody. Or so I thought. I didn’t think you’d ever be interested, remember?”
Eddie runs his hands through his hair. Feels the shape of the skull. Do skulls change throughout your life? Surely not. So his skull will feel the same when he goes back to his normal body.
“Do I kiss you first,” he asks.
“Yep,” Richie says. “Gotta take the reigns, dude.”
Eddie burns . “Is it a good kiss?”
“Yes,” Richie says. “It’s awkward, because neither of us know what we’re doing - Connor and me kissed twice, maybe a few months ago in your time - and we’re both nervous and I’m very surprised when it happens.”
Eddie still can’t look at him.
“I mean,” he says. “I’ll try to make it not be a surprise?”
“Terminator rules,” Richie says. “It’ll be a surprise. Looking back, you’re pretty fucking clear about it. I was just in complete disbelief, even when you were actively kissing me. Kept expecting to wake up.”
It’s the sweetest thing Eddie has ever heard. He puts his face in his hands, clenching his body so tight it hurts.
“How old are we when it happens,” he says, muffled into his skin. “Do I - right after I get back? Or-”
“I can’t tell you,” Richie says. “Gotta live it, Eds.”
There’s a small silence. Eddie watches Richie eat a gummy worm. Watches the relaxed sprawl of his limbs, the angular lines of his shoulders, his chin. He looks over to the wedding photo, then at the rest of the bookcase and the room. It’s filled with their things and Eddie recognizes none of them yet.
A feeling rises. It’s not jealousy towards his older self for being in this place, it’s joy: he gets to experience all this someday. It’s all ahead of him. He gets to become this person and watch his friends grow up with him, into whoever everyone is going to be. He gets to grow up with Richie, he gets to know every version of him including the one sitting across from him eating gummy worms and watching the end credits of 13 Going on 30, this version of Richie who’s so changed and yet so similar to the one Eddie knows.
I get to grow up with you, Eddie thinks, and wishes sorely to be back home, so he could - so he could -
He doesn’t finish the thought. He has time. He’ll get back home, and then - then, the rest of his life. He’s surprised to find he’s looking forward to it.
He opens his mouth to ask if they can watch another movie when something yanks . It’s a familiar feeling, it’d happened as he was climbing the ladder out of the clubhouse. At first he’d thought that someone had crept up below him and was tugging him down, and then he’d found himself in that white, endless space with the turtle.
Something yanks, and Eddie has a second to realize he’s leaving, and he tries to tell Richie something but he doesn’t know what, and then he’s
standing in that endless white space.
The turtle’s back.
I NEVER LEFT, says Maturin. SO, HOW DID YOU LIKE IT?
“Uh,” Eddie says. His voice is normal again, and so is his body. “I - uh. It was good? Thank you.”
YOU’RE WELCOME, says Maturin. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU MUST DO?
“I do,” Eddie says. “I - we’ll kill IT. Properly, this time.”
GOOD, says Maturin. He pauses. One giant, swirling eye is bigger than Eddie’s whole body, and both of them are fixed on him. His flippers swish slowly in the void.
IT IS A GOOD WORLD, he says. YOU ARE LUCKY, EDDIE KASPRAK.
Eddie knows. He doesn’t know how he knows, but while he’s standing here, he has glimpses. This version has been spared. It could have been so much worse.
“Thank you,” Eddie says again. “I - really, I - thank you.”
Maturin floats. His flippers swish.
I AM GLAD, he says, WHEN I CAN HELP. HAVE A GOOD LIFE, ALL OF YOU.
Once again Eddie is yanked, and he falls
onto the dirt. The breath is knocked out of him.
“Eds! Dude, are you-”
Richie , Eddie thinks. He opens his eyes.
Richie’s coming down the ladder, his eyes big and concerned behind his glasses. He’s growing weirdly, stretched out in a way that doesn’t look 100% natural in that way puberty sometimes doesn’t. He has acne and his hair falls over his forehead and he hasn’t washed his clothes enough, since his parents put him in charge of his own washing this year, and it’s down low on his priority list.
Eddie smiles. “Hey, Rich.”
Richie stops, blinking down. He’s just got to the ground and is leaning over him now.
“Uh,” Richie says. “Are you concussed? You look kinda concussed. How many fingers am I holding up?”
He waves his middle finger around.
“H-how is he,” Bill calls down.
Eddie slaps Richie’s hand out from in front of his face.
“I’m not concussed, asshole.”
“He’s fine,” Richie calls up at Bill. He holds out a hand, this one open. “Need a hand, guv’na?”
“Don’t do the British Guy,” Eddie says, but takes the hand.
Richie hauls him up, and Eddie rubs at the back of his head. It twinges, but on the inside. His skull is the same shape as it was when he was an adult. Huh.
“Hey,” he says, as Richie turns back to the ladder. “I’m gonna say something crazy. Like, certifiable.”
Richie looks at him dubiously, but turns back.
“Okay, Eddie Spaghetti,” he says. “Hit me.”
It takes a surprising lack of convincing. Eddie swears he’s telling the truth and then tells Richie that Richie cried the first time listening to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” alone in his room, which is something that older-Richie told him to tell young-Richie to convince him.
It works. Richie shrugs and mumbles to himself and then says, “Well, I’m sold. Back into the shithole we go.”
“Sewers,” Eddie says.
“Shithole,” Richie agrees. “That’s what I’m saying.”
Eddie, bizarrely, thinks of their wedding photo. Eddie’s gonna marry this annoying dork. It fills him with a terrified joy that almost eclipses the horror at going back into IT’s den. But then his friends all look at him with grave, determined faces, and the reality of what they’re about to do comes back.
“We have to do this,” he tells them. “If we don’t - it won’t be good. And that future - it was good , guys. It was really good. We get everything we want.”
Beside him, Richie twitches.
“And we save people’s lives, obviously,” Eddie continues. “So, that’s - yeah.”
“Okay,” Bill says, low and serious. “Let’s do it, then.”
“Yeah,” Richie says. “Let’s go scream insults at IT until it dies! God, that’s so easy-”
“ So easy, right,” Eddie says.
Richie gives a jerky smile, then turns towards the mouth of the sewers.
Eddie follows suit.
"Super easy," he whispers.
The Losers walk in together.
It takes longer to coax IT out than it takes to kill it.
Hibernation does strange things, Mike had mentioned on the videocall.
And it does. After stomping around and yelling for a while, IT emerges. It’s disjointed, limbs all the wrong sizes, and it drools from one side of its lopsided mouth.
“You’re eeearly ,” it trills. “I’m not - decent. Come back in 25 years, kiddos. I know you will. Back home, run all the way home, little piggies, squealing all the-”
“You’re a goddamn parasite,” Mike tells it, his voice ringing off the concrete.
IT flinches.
“You’re n-nothing,” Bill says. “You’re a l-leech feeding off of kids ‘cause you’re not strong enough to go for ad-ad-ad- adults- ”
“You’re a coward,” Eddie says. “You’re a coward and you’ve always been a coward and you’re going to die here and we’re going to grow up and live good lives , you FUCK, you’re never gonna touch any of us EVER again-”
The others join in, a chorus of killing, and IT spasms and shrinks like a dying fly squished with its insides on the outside.
IT screams.
The Losers scream louder.
Eddie doesn’t know if he’s screaming the loudest, but it feels like it. His throat scrapes raw as they continue. He’s screaming for Georgie, who would never get to grow into anything, and he’s screaming for the other versions of himself who ended up with a worse life than the one ahead of him. He screams so he can get that good life, the one he’s gotten a glimpse of, the one he’s going to grow into.
He screams until IT is a transparent husk, and then he joins his friends in reaching into IT’s chest and crushing its fucking heart.
Something is different after they kill IT for good. The air, maybe. The atmosphere. Bev had said something two summers ago about IT filling in all the empty spaces. Now there were just empty spaces, with nothing to curl up inside them and secrete its poison.
When they get back up to the Barrens, covered in grime, the scars from two summers ago are gone.
“Huh,” Richie says, tilting his hands up to the light. “Cool.”
After he’s finished looking at his hands, he puts his arm back around Stan’s shoulder. Stan had cried a lot, going in and coming out, and also during. He’s still shaking now, back in the light of the quarry, but he’s smiling through it. Relieved tears.
Eddie can relate. He’d cried a bit down there too, part fear, part rage. The relief had come after. He’s not sure it’s even fully hit yet.
“Stanley,” he says.
Stan looks over.
Eddie says, “You marry a woman called Patty. She’s very nice.”
Stan laughs, incredulous. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says. “I couldn’t find out her last name. Sorry.”
“That’s fine,” Stan says. He wipes his eyes. “She’s - nice?”
“She’s great,” Eddie says. “Everyone really likes her.”
He beams at them all, and watches them smile back, still confused and exhausted but happy for this future Eddie’s promised them, even if most of them still seem dubious about it. Not about Eddie telling the truth, but about them having a happy future.
“Wow,” Richie says. He claps Stan on the back. “I can’t wait to meet Mrs. Patty Urine! Eds, who does Mike marry?”
He doesn’t ask for himself. Eddie guesses he’s scared of the answer, scared of the - what do they call it, the closet? - and the eternal space outside of it.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I didn’t find out a lot. We just gotta live it, Rich.”
“We’re happy,” Bev says. She’s asked this before. It had been the first thing she asked, sounding skeptical, after Eddie had told them that they ended up okay.
“Right?”
“We’re happy,” Eddie tells her. He reaches over and squeezes her hand. “Everything goes good, Bev.”
She squeezes back. He gets the feeling it’s not the last time she’ll ask.
He looks over at Richie. He’s let go of Stan and he’s fidgety. He won’t meet anyone’s eyes and he has a scrape on his chin that will definitely take more than a couple days to heal. A week, at least. And it’s deep enough to need disinfecting, no wonder Eddie’s going to fuss over it.
Liar , Eddie thinks, with a rush of fondness towards the guy Richie isn’t yet. It’s distant. His Richie is right here, shuffling his feet and hunching into his shoulders.
Eddie sighs.
“Rich,” he says.
Richie kicks at a rock. “Yeah?”
“Trashmouth,” Eddie says. He walks over and puts his hands on Richie’s shoulders. “Look at me.”
Richie does, startled. He glances at one of Eddie’s hands, lightning-fast, like he’s surprised by the touch, then back at his face. He looks like he’s braced for something.
“25 years from now,” Eddie says gravely, “On a Saturday, I’m gonna kick you in the nuts.”
Richie stares at him. Then he laughs, head tipping back with it, and Eddie watches the line of his throat.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Richie says when he can talk again. He giggles weakly, scratches at his hair. “What’d future-me do to make you do that?”
Eddie shakes his head.
“I’ll explain later,” he says.
Richie rolls his eyes. “Yeah, right.”
“I will,” Eddie says. “I promise. I’ll tell everybody everything I learned. Right now, let’s just - go for a swim. We have time.”
He looks around at the others. “Anyone else want to go to the quarry? We gotta wash all this off. Mom’s gonna freak out when I come home wet, but she’ll freak out more if I come home covered in sewage.”
“Yeah, she really hated it last time,” Richie says. He puts on the British Guy voice. “Pip pip and tally-ho! To the quarry!”
“Shut up with the British Guy,” Eddie says, flicking his ear.
Richie flicks him back and sticks out his tongue.
Eddie sticks his out his tongue right back.
“After the swim, we gotta disinfect this,” he says, pointing at the scrape on Richie’s chin. “Don’t put your head in the water much, it’ll just make it worse-”
“Oh no,” Richie says, mock-panicked. “Eds, level with me: do I get a face infection and have to get my chin amputated? Am I chinless in the future? You have to tell me-”
Eds opens his mouth to call him a dumbass, but Stan cuts him off.
“Are we going to go to the quarry or are we gonna stand here doing this all day?”
“Right,” Eddie says instead. “Pip pip, or whatever.”
Richie looks over, delighted. Eddie elbows him, unable to stop the grin, and starts walking.
The Losers leave the Barrens together, heading towards the quarry and then into everything that comes next.