Reddie Oneshots

What REALLY happened after It Chapter 2 (Pt. 6) (Finale)

twenty-seven years later
(if you're counting up from 1989)

A week before, Adrian Mellon is murdered in the water beneath the kissing bridge. Richie hears about it in the café off main street, where his waitress is talking to Greta Bowie as she sets down her pancakes. He freezes, looks up at their oddly detached expressions, and knows.

"Rise and shine, King Clown Bitchwizard," he says into his coffee, hands suddenly cold. He squeezes them into fists a few times to restart the circulation.

"What was that?" Greta snaps at him, tossing her blonde hair back.

Richie blinks at her, slowly and deliberately, then turns to the waitress and says, "Could I get the check?"

"Fine, ignore me," Greta mutters. "You think you're better than me because you have some stupid fucking podcast nobody listens to. Maybe you'll be next, radio boy. We all know what you are."

Richie puts his phone away. "Your husband certainly knows what I am," he tells her. "He says your technique could use some work, by the way. Hot tip from me to you: really try to minimize how much teeth you use. It's a dick, not a corndog."

The waitress snorts, then covers her mouth with her hand when Greta glares at her. Richie drops five dollars onto the table. "Tell you what, keep the change," he tells the waitress. "Bye, Greta. As always it's been a truly and extraordinarily exciting time talking to you. Remember my advice." He snaps his teeth cheerfully at her and exits the café, tucking his hands into his pockets as he jogs to his car.

Richie takes a deep breath, then blows it out on a long count of four, pressing his forehead against the steering wheel. He chews his thumbnail. It doesn't feel good. It hurts a lot, actually, because Richie inevitably goes too far and makes himself bleed. But it's something to do. Richie is trying this new thing where he goes to a therapist and also listens to that therapist when she tells him things like did you know you don't always have to do every impulse that comes into your head?

It sounds like a boring existence but Richie has spent the last year trying to cultivate some fucking zen. He meditates now. Well, he sits on a yoga mat and counts how many times he can bounce his knee in one minute and the rewards himself with a Snickers but that's probably as close to meditating as Richie is ever gonna fucking get, so.

Anyway, Richie chews his nail and breathes in on a four count, then out on a four count. When he's calmer, he drives out to the kissing bridge and ducks under the crime scene tape to stand at the rail.

Adrian Mellon had asthma, Richie is pretty sure. He was little. He laughed really loudly in public spaces and then looked sheepish about it. He looks down into the water and tries to imagine Adrian there, scared and alone.

I'm not scared of you this time, Richie thinks. He's spent twenty-seven years exorcising his demons. There's nothing scary left about a hungry clown except its teeth, and Richie plans to make him choke on those.

"Hey, fucker," Richie says to the water, "I know it was you."

There's no answer but for the water, which rushes blindly beneath him, sweeping all the blood away.

-

Three days before, Richie records a special episode of his podcast and schedules it to go out in two weeks' time.

"I've been thinking a lot this week about time travel," he says, "maybe because I'm, like, old as fuck now. I am. I'm almost forty. I always knew I would make it exactly this far but I will be honest, the future is a total fucking crapshoot. So it has me thinking, you know? If you could go back in time and tell your younger self something, what would it be? What would you say? Because I think I know. I think I would say: stop itching your dick in public. You think you're being subtle but absolutely nobody believes that you're just rummaging around in your pocket. If anything, they probably think you're masturbating."