Reddie Oneshots

What REALLY happened after It Chapter 2 (Pt. 4)

Richie — settles in. He's always been adaptable, and after two weeks in his bony thirteen-year-old body he starts to remember where it is in space and stops walking into things. It isn't that he forgets that he's an adult, but he forgets part of what being an adult was — that is, he just feels like who he is, thirteen and forty all at once. Sometimes more one than the other. Usually something in between.

He spends more time with his parents than he had the first time around, goes with his mom to doctor's appointments and helps his dad organize the garage. He finagles a sleepover at Ben's to horn in on his mom's breakfasts, but it turns out she has him on a no-carb diet so all they eat is fruit, which is ... a fucking war crime, in Richie's opinion. They go up to Ben's room after and Richie breaks out the box of Pop Tarts he's taken to carrying around, because he'd forgotten that at this age he was starving to death all the time.

He goes to Bev's when his house is empty and he doesn't want to explain to Stan or Eddie or Bill why his parents are spending the weekend down in New York, and her not-Aunt Marisha truly doesn't care about anything so Richie sleeps on the floor for a couple days until they get back. On Sunday, all seven of them bring a picnic out to the quarry and lay in the sunshine, eating candy and peanut butter sandwiches that Mike made, the only one of them to bring actual food.

Richie starts to think that maybe he could do this, maybe he could just live a life, a better one than he had the first time. He starts to think that maybe, for some reason, perhaps by accident, It has given him a second chance.

And then he wakes up to all six-foot-one of his adult body dragging him out of bed with absolutely insane eyes, shouting, "WHAT IN THE SWEET FUCK DID YOU DO TO OUR LIFE?"

-

two and a half weeks earlier or twenty-seven years later,
depending on how you look at it

Nobody dies at the end.

Well — except Georgie, Richie supposes. Sweet Georgie, who always seemed so small, and who looked at Bill the way they all looked at Bill, as if he was president of the world. Richie had liked him, for a kid. Most little siblings Richie knew were annoying, but Georgie was quiet and sweet and mostly just wanted to be in the same room as them when they were all over.

But none of them died, and Richie hadn't realized he was kind of expecting one or two of them to until they were standing in a field slicing their hands open and promising to come back when It does. He hadn't realized he was half expecting it to be him until he went home and his mother freaked out about the cut on his hand and sat him down at the kitchen table, bandaging it as if he was hemorrhaging blood, and he realized that he was alive and going to stay alive. Rich you've got to be more careful now, she'd told him, squeezing his wrist, because it's going to be a busy summer and I — and your dad and me are going to be away a lot.

She's sick, is the thing, and Richie knows she's sick, but no one is exactly telling him, which means it's bad. Really bad. Two days ago, distracted, Richie's dad forgot his fucking name when he was trying to ask him to pass the salt. Uh, uh, uh ... son, will you pass the —

But Richie thinks: I can survive anything. Clowns, psychopaths, his parents, and even the inevitability of Eddie Kaspbrak refusing to love him; Richie is going to survive it. He's going to get the fuck out of Derry and never, ever look back.

But for now he makes sure the spine of his E is straight. Eddie has always been such a stickler for handwriting, because Eddie is a pretentious shit. He's small and he's a little asshole and Richie likes him so much, it's honestly embarrassing, even apart from the, like ... whatever. The gay thing.

Richie doesn't think he's gay, per se. He's like — he doesn't know if there's a word for it. He likes the nudie magazines he has hidden in his decoy box. It's just ... he likes the other ones, too. He, uh. He likes them a lot.