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It: Chapter Three

Summary:

Richie usually loved holding Eddie. When he was younger, he would take any excuse to put his hands on him. He would pinch his cheeks, sit on his lap, slap his can. There was only ever one time Richie didn’t absolutely love holding Eddie, and that was when Eddie bled out in his arms, a million miles underneath Derry.

Now, as Richie trudged through the sewers once again, Eddie’s limp but breathing body in his arms, all he could think about was how he was determined not to have a repeat of last time. Through some miracle, Richie had gotten Eddie back, and there was no way in hell he’d ever let him go again.

(Or, the ultimate fix-it fic.)

Chapter 1: The Fallout

Chapter Text

Patricia Uris Can’t Catch his Breath

 

1

 

A woman in a city too small to be famous but too big to be forgotten sat at an old dark oak desk. It was a writing desk, seldom used for that purpose, but used for it now; it was a gift from her father for her wedding. She sat in a chair, one that replaced the original that had fallen apart only last spring when her husband had stood on it to change a lightbulb. The original had no arms, only a seat and a back, and her husband trusted it like a blind man trusted a dog to help him cross the street—often worthy, but sometimes foolish. The leg had cracked, and luckily he had been alright, save a sprained wrist, but he made a comment about how he had maybe one too many of her homemade butter biscuits for dinner the night before. She merely smiled in reply, as if one too many biscuits might have actually been what did the chair in, and it wasn’t something that could simply be attributed to old age.

 

Now though, the chair wasn’t a stool, it wasn’t a place that grew dusty or held books like it had occasionally in its life, it was, simply, a chair. A chair with a woman firmly planted upon it, where she had been for the past two hours.

 

She was wearing yoga pants. Whatever that means, she heard her husband dismiss with a small, teasing grin. They look like leggings to me.

 

They’re not, Stanley. These are more comfortable.

 

Hmph, then they’re sweats, he argued, maybe using the pants as an excuse to just admire his wife. 

 

They’re not sweats, Stan, they’re yoga pants.

 

And a hoodie, one with a zipper, one that Stan wore on weekends with jeans when he wasn’t headed to work at seven in the morning to avoid rush hour traffic.

 

She didn’t care for how she looked though; she couldn’t if she tried as she held a pen with the butt end pressed firmly against her temple. Stan had always dealt with the paperwork; she didn’t know what she was reading. It could’ve been a Harvard student’s essay on rocket science for all she knew. He was the accountant, he was the one who dealt with papers and numbers, and now here she was, filling his shoes.

 

Filling his hoodie.

 

For what seems like the millionth time but was probably only the tenth, the woman set the pen down on the writing desk with a vendetta, staring at the papers before her, the will before her.

 

The will of her late husband. Her late husband’s will.

 

Stanley Uris’ name had been in the obituaries a week prior, though they had saved the gruesome details, mostly because his wife would not disclose them. Wouldn’t disclose the way the man had one long gash on each arm from wrist to elbow, two cuts so deep she could see tendons that looked like wet dog food bleeding out of him. Wouldn’t disclose 

 

IT  

 

written in his own blood on their bathroom wall. Wouldn’t disclose that their bathroom looked like not even a fly had touched it since the day they bought the property now, how it was clean with bleach, how she could still smell his cologne, how she, if she listened hard enough, might hear him open the fridge to grab a beer that he only kept for the odd night. 

 

It had read plainly, loved by many, lost by more, survived by his wife, Patricia Uris, née Blum, and no children.

 

2

 

Thirty-two miles away in a cemetery, there sat a gargoyle. A gargoyle is only a gargoyle, by definition, if it has the purpose of deflecting water from the roof of a building when it rains. Otherwise, it is only a statuette. This, for all intents and purposes, was a gargoyle. He sat two feet tall on the corner of the synagogue that watched over the graves, and when the light filtered from the sun around dawn, like it was now, through stained glass, the gargoyle could enjoy the view of the cemetery. Yellows and pinks and blues reflected over headstones of different shapes and sizes, and the gargoyle, forever frozen in the position of which he was sculpted, one clawed foot beside the other, squatted down with wings protecting him from a non-existent wind, could imagine jumping from one headstone to the next. Like a maniacal game of The Floor is Lava, a game every child played in their own living room.

 

Maybe this was the gargoyle’s living room. After all, he had nothing else, and outside was the only room he had ever lived in.

 

It’s sneering maw watched over row upon row of man, woman, and child that lay six feet under. As gruesome and crude as he may look, he was there to fend off evil, to let these beings dwell within their coffins in peace and quiet.

 

His wing cracked, maybe with age, maybe with despair, under the mourning sun. The mourning sun. Not morning. This was an important difference, for perhaps the sun was punishing the gargoyle, reprimanding him for failing his duties.

 

In the third row, second aisle, there was an ornate grey slab, fresh and shiny, only with the dirt from a windy day over it. It hadn’t the time to decay, and over it, one could read:

 

Stanley H. Uris

1976 - 2016

 

“There is no Exquisite Beauty,

Without some strangeness in the proportion”

- Edgar A. Poe

 

Loving Husband of Patricia “Patty” Uris

 

And thirty-two miles (and six feet, if you counted the dirt above him) from Stanley, sat his Patty at a writing desk that they’d gotten from his father-in-law for their wedding.

 

Beneath the gravestone, though, beneath the six feet of dirt, more like only five with the coffin counting, was the body of Stanley Uris. One might say the corpse of Stanley Uris.

 

One might be wrong, then.

 

Air forced its way into Stanley’s lungs, and his eyes opened so violently, so quickly that it was like he’d been shocked by a defibrillator as he inhaled oxygen into his body to feed what little blood was left inside of him. He blinked away dirt that had crept into his straight jacket of a home, not that he could see anything anyway. If someone could see him, it would be like seeing a ghost or something from a particularly terrible zombie film. He was pale, his gums felt sticky and swollen in his mouth, and his eyes were bloodshot red.

 

He had an open casket service. Stan had always looked like a peaceful man, of course, but everyone agreed that he looked at peace . They had said it in a tone that conveyed that he was dead, yes, but that wherever he was, he was happy. 

 

The morticians had said offhandedly to each other that he wasn’t an ugly man. His eye sockets sat in a bit, but not from death, instead from years of knowing too much, and his hair was inky, in a way they were sure would look nice against his smooth skin if he hadn’t been so ashy. They bathed him. It was a dirty (and ironic) job, but it needed to be done alongside disinfecting. He’d been dressed in his Sunday best: a black suit, a white dress shirt, and a black tie. On his wrist sat his Rolex that Patty had gotten him for his birthday three years prior. The watch that he wore every day dug into stitched up skin in a way that, if he had been alive, would have hurt tremendously. His hair was swept to the side like it had been every day since he was barely seven, and his eyes were shut peacefully. 

 

To be cremated was against his religion, strictly. To be embalmed was also a no-no. He thought now, trapped in his polished wooden, satin-lined hell, that if embalming weren’t a religious Big Bad, he would surely be dead. All of his blood in his body would be replaced with fluid to keep him from decaying before the funeral, but somehow he hadn’t decayed. He thought, behind the panic of waking up in a darkness darker than hell, hey, at least I still have blood, which was bizarre, because he killed himself. He had bled out. Hey, at least I still have blood, but I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t have any blood left. It should be all out in my tub and on the wall beside it. Why do I still have blood? Why do I still have blood? Bill, why?

 

When he opened his mouth to speak, to scream for help in what he could only assume was life after death (and oh how painfully right he was), he found he couldn’t. Not in a surreal I’m so terrified I can’t speak or yell for help! Nobody will ever find me! kind of way, but a physical holy fuck! I can’t move my mouth! kind of way.

 

Stanley had always been a logical thinker, even when panicking, but now any logic he had fled him like he used to flee Bowers and his gang, fled him like he used to flee the synagogue after temple on Sunday to go and catch up with the Losers for the day during spring and summer.

 

He inhaled deeply through his nose, hands pressing against the soft ceiling of his eternal prison, and realized with horror that he didn’t have unlimited air. Slow, deep breaths Stan, breathe slowly or else you will die. 

 

But hadn’t that been the goal?

 

He steadied his breaths and again tried to open his mouth, his jaw clicked (he realized, again with horror, that his jaw had never clicked before now, and that perhaps it was the dampness of the soil around him that was causing rigor mortis to itch into his bones) and it moved freely, but his skin pulled, and he gasped through his nose in pain.

 

My mouth! He thought and a sudden noise yelped from his throat, panic racing through his veins with the speed of Silver, Silver who could beat the devil, they’ve sewn it shut! My mouth! My mouth!

 

A shame , the mortician had said to the other, his voice older than the rest of his body, as he’d sewn Stanley Uris’ mouth shut with practiced fingers, with thread so fine and stitches so tight it was like a machine had done it, a real shame . He has good teeth. He probably had a good smile.

 

Stans arms burned, from the tips of his fingers, to his wrist that had his Rolex on it, to the stitches that had his arteries sloppily sewn together, to his elbows. Everything burned like fire ants under his sleeves, and it was then he’d allowed himself to move, to lift his hands and feel along the inside of the soft box. He started light only for a second, his hands were shaking and he was running out of air. 

 

Patty had put on a movie once, one with Ryan Reynolds where he’d been buried alive in Afghanistan or somewhere in the Middle East, Iraq, maybe. Stan couldn’t remember. He’d been held for ransom by terrorists, and Stan remembered thinking how absolutely horrifying that would be. He remembered thinking how is he going to get out of the box with only an old Nokia cell phone, a pencil, and a lighter? He remembered (spoiler alert) that Ryan Reynolds didn’t get out, that the box had cracked open and dirt had piled in and that Reynolds had choked to death on dirt. If Ryan Reynolds couldn’t get out of a coffin, then how could he? It was a stupid thought, but he felt hopeless, even with his even breathing. Not only did Ryan have those items, but he also had people looking for him. 

 

What did Stan have? A wife and co-workers and the Losers, all of which he was certain thought he was dead. Hell, he thought he was dead, in all fairness to them. Stanley slammed his hand against the ceiling, and pain shot up his forearm as he thought miserably I’m never going to get out of here. I’m going to choke on my own dust and ashes.

 

What made him think he could get out? He couldn’t; it was that simple. He was completely at the will of God. At the will of Him, who had blessed Stan with everything short of children in his life. 

 

And he didn’t even have a cell phone, a pencil, or a lighter.

 

And distantly, six feet up (more like five, with the coffin) and across the rows of gravestones, the gargoyle's wing cracked further, and he wept morning dew along his cement cheeks that said something was not right in the garden he’d nursed. He mourned for a son who had come to life, a son who he had failed to protect in death.

 

A gargoyle wards off evil, and he hadn’t.

 

 

Richie Tozier Takes a Nap

 

This was fine. Everything was fine. Richie was fine. He had literally never been more fucking fine in his fine fucking life.

 

Richie sobbed silently like the pathetic loser that he was until four thirty-two in the morning. Everyone else was fast asleep by one at the latest. He was going to fly home to California and forget about fucking Derry, Maine. He was going to forget Beverly and Eddie and Stan and Mike and Eddie and Ben and Bill and Stan and Eddie and Eddie and fucking Eddie

 

Richie never did clean off his glasses. They were still cracked at the top of the left lens, and they still had Eddie’s blood on them. Richie had a jacket he stole from Eddie’s still-unpacked suitcase pulled close to his chest. He breathed quickly, trying both to catch his breath and remember as much of Eddie’s scent as he could before he lost it for good. Tears stained the light grey jacket dark. It looked as ugly as it felt. 

 

Richie fell asleep a little before five, not because he wanted to, but because his body was so physically exhausted it just shut down. 

 

And he dreamed. 

 

He opened his eyes, and he was inside a box. A wooden box, from the feel of it. One lined with soft fabric. But there was no air. He looked around frantically, but it was a darker black than Richie had ever seen before. He involuntarily moved his hands and began pounding on the roof of the box. His wrists burned. His hands shook. His gut instinct was to scream for help, but he knew better. He didn’t know why he knew better because nothing made sense, but then fear washed over him like cold water from an idle bathtub. He made such a small sound, it was an honest-to-God whimper, but his lips didn’t move, and he didn’t sound like himself. He sounded like... like what a grown Stanley Uris might sound like. It was thirteen-year-old Stanley Uris but just a little deeper. It was such a brief noise, barely lasting even a second, but Richie knew it was Stan. He didn’t know why he knew, but then it clicked. It wasn’t a box, and he wasn’t dreaming that he was actually himself. He was Stanley  Uris, who was alive and was buried two days ago. And he was running out of air. 

 

The next thing Richie knew, he was half-submerged in water. He could barely breathe. He was scared- no. He was petrified . There was an insane amount of pain coming from his chest, more than he had ever known before, right where Eddie had been stabbed. His hands were soaked in blood. Wet blood layer upon dried blood layer upon raw skin. He blinked and tried to look around, but there was only dust and rubble and debris. He called out for Bill. Then Bev. Then for Richie. But nobody could hear him. 

 

It was Eddie, underneath Neibolt. There wasn’t a doubt in Richie’s mind about it.

 

Richie woke up in a cold sweat, scrambling for something, though not knowing what. He sat up and tried to get out of bed, but in his restless sleep he’d tangled his slightly-better-than-motel-but-not-quite-hotel-quality sheets around his legs. In his haste, he took himself to the ground, his chin landing on the uneven wooden flooring of his room with a painful thud and a “fuck! ” Richie took half a second to register the pain, but as soon as he was coherent, he pulled the blankets off himself—tearing them in the process—and got to his feet, grabbing his car keys and pulling on the first pair of shoes he saw on the floor as he sprinted down the stairs. He didn’t think twice before getting in his car and speeding down the street. This was Derry, so cops didn’t really do jack shit. Even if they did, Richie wouldn’t have slowed down. He didn’t think his rental car had ever been driven over one hundred and twenty miles an hour, but hey, there was a first time for everything. The drive to Neibolt from the Townhouse was about fifteen or twenty minutes, and Richie was there in under three. When he got to 29 Neibolt Street, he slammed on the brakes, making his seat belt lock up for a split second. (He was in a rush but he wasn’t about to die in a car crash on his impromptu well-past-midnight drive.) He didn’t pull off to the side of the road and didn’t turn off the car before getting out. He ran through the gate and stood at the front of the pile of a shattered house. Richie would have called it a home, but he wasn’t so sure if it had ever been that.

 

“Eddie!” 

 

He knew it was just a dream. He knew Eddie was dead and that he was a mile deep underground and crushed into a million little pieces, but he didn’t care. He was hysterical with grief; he was willing to grapple at the frayed ends of the rope that he could only hope led back to Eddie. 

 

“Eddie! Eddie!”

 

Richie had no idea where to start digging. He was absolutely terrified of the dark and everything around him sucked up light. But underneath him was Eddie, so fear was thrown out the window, completely forgotten. Richie began shoving things off to the side with such a force that they shattered when they hit the Earth again. Wooden planks, metal stakes, and pieces of glass panes flew across the gloomy night sky. His movements were weak but not sluggish, tired but not slow. 

 

“Eddie-“ Tears fell freely, and for once in his life he didn’t care. “Please... Eds… Eddie, where are you?! Eddie!” 

 

Richie’s throat was raw, but he ignored the pain. It was nothing compared to what his heart had gone through. He was clawing at the rubble, a newfound wave of strength coursing through him from out of nowhere. He dug in random places before moving on to somewhere else as if Eddie would be right on top of the debris, buried under only a thin layer of remains. Richie only stopped when he found the top of the well. That stupid fucking well. The hook above it where they had hung the rope to lower themselves down was gone. Fucking shit . There went Richie’s plans to hang himself. (As if. His manager would kill him. Again.) So instead, Richie sat down, pulled his knees to his chest, and didn’t cry anymore. He ran out of tears to give. He just felt miserable. If he closed his eyes and blocked out the sounds of the wind shaking the trees, it was almost like he could hear Eddie calling out for him. 

 

But then he heard it again, only this time more clearly. It was coming from the well. 

 

Eddie was in the sewers. 

 

The well led to the sewers. 

 

“Holy shit,” Richie cursed. “Holy shit! Eddie!” He looked around frantically for something to get down there with, something he could use so he could follow the voice he never thought he’d hear again but there was no time to look for a rope. Eddie needed help, and he needed it right then and there. He wasn’t just hurt, he was dying. 

 

Without thinking about his own wellbeing, Richie swung his legs over the side of the well. His feet dangled over the seemingly endless abyss. He had no idea how deep it went or what was at the bottom, but he pushed his feet up against one side of the well and pressed his back to the other and began to lower himself down. He got maybe four feet down, his head barely under the top of the well, when he heard Eddie call for him again. 

 

Then he slipped. 

 

His shirt rode up and his back scraped against the jagged stones as he fell. He could feel his skin being shredded like paper. He wasn’t sure how exactly he caught himself, but his hands were bleeding too, but the entrance to the sewers was only a foot below him, so he would take it. Nearly dying was worth it if there was any chance Eddie was down there, dead or alive. Maybe Bon Jovi knew what the fuck was up after all. 

 

Richie crawled into the sewers and immediately felt colder. There was absolutely nothing in the sewers. Not anymore. They killed It, for real this time. It was gone, and all that was left was piss and shit. Greywater. Piss and shit and greywater and Eddie. 

 

Eddie.

 

“Eddie!” Richie took off as quickly as he could while wading in water that came up to mid-thigh. 

 

“Eddie!” His one voice bounced off the walls. The water burned like hell against his new open wounds, but he didn’t think about the pain. He couldn’t afford to.

 

 “Eddie! Goddamnit, where the fuck are you?! Eddie!”

 

 

Eddie Kaspbrak Wakes Up

 

He woke up in water. In water and under something heavy that made his chest feel like it did when he needed his inhaler. He hadn’t needed his inhaler in years, decades even, but something about Derry itched at his lungs and mixed the asthma he didn’t have with the anxiety he very much did have. Now, he felt like he had never needed it more as air tried to fill his lungs and he gasped out raggedly.

 

Eddie didn’t remember a lot of things upon welcoming the living world. He remembered being scared, he remembered following the Losers, he remembered that fucking clown, and he remembered Richie. He remembered running over to him to check if he was alright, to celebrate the death of-

 

Wait. No. Not the death of. He remembered being stabbed and thrown aside. 

 

He remembered dying.

 

He did not, however, remember Pennywise dying, and that made his heart beat faster as he blinked into the dark space around frantically, as if the clown could show up from the shadows (and he could, if memory served Eddie correctly, which it did). He coughed as his hands felt down; he wasn’t being crushed, but he was definitely trapped. He wasn’t by any means chubby, though he wasn’t a stick like some of the other Losers either, and he thought maybe if he was, he’d be able to shimmy his way out, but rubble poked against baby fat he’d never been able to get rid of on his sides and pinned him down over his naval.

 

But then he moved, and searing pain shot up his torso and into his ribs. Right . Stab wound. Gaping stab wound. “Fuck-“ he heaved out, eyes wide as he glanced at his hands, shaking and covered in crimson. “Fuck- fuck, fuck- fucking-“ and then he promptly gagged, just the pain made him nauseous. How am I even alive? What happened? Where is the clown? Fear coursed through him as he blinked around, water sloshing as he moved his head, which was resting in a puddle. “Billy?” He tried, and he sounded smaller than he cared to admit as an almost forty-year-old man, “I-I don’t-“ He looked back down, grimacing as he shifted his leg and moved a bit of rubble onto him. Not that he’d be able to move on his own even if he wasn’t covered in whatever he was under; his body had a massive flesh wound for fuck’s sake. “Bev? R-Richie?” He tried again, trying to pretend like he wasn’t about to cry.

 

He could almost hear the laughter as the seconds passed like hours, the laughter of a clown, or hundreds of Derry children, he wasn’t sure, and every time something echoed around him, he panicked. He panicked and accepted death, going through the five stages of grief at a quicker and quicker speed every single time he cycled through them until he just rested. Maybe resting included a little bit of crying, but he was alone, and being alone meant nobody needed to know if he let a few tears slip.

 

Somewhere, many, many feet below the desperate cries of a decaying man, Eddie’s eyes adjusted slowly to the damp, dank sewers. And it was, in fact, the sewers. He resorted to laying still—not that he had many other options—and he stared blankly at the drowning darkness around him. He figured if there was someone watching him, they’d laugh. His pupils were probably blown, his movements were stiff and shaky the odd time he did move, and he had cried at least three times now. 

 

 

Eddie tried desperately to ignore the amount of greywater around him, and he tried to tell himself that all of those shadows dancing around his vision weren’t real. They weren’t, after all; scientifically, he knew that when the brain had no visual stimulation, it got bored, and it made something out of nothing. It gave the darkness a body. And how bizarre was that, he thought with a small scoff, that perhaps their brains had all been bored, and they had made Pennywise, they had given the darkness a body. But It wasn’t a figment of his imagination, no, Eddie had quite a hefty hole in his chest for It to be just that.

 

He thought about the wound and thought maybe he was losing blood again when he heard an echo. It wasn’t an echo in the sewers, and it wasn’t an echo in his head, but somewhere between those. It was real and entirely imagined at the same time, as he heard a resounding voice calling him, a voice belonging to a little boy in an oversized Hawaiian shirt he probably got from the off-brand Goodwill on Fourth Street. He closed his eyes as he listened to Richie, to that dorky little kid with glasses who fucked his mom. Then he scoffed and blinked his eyes open at his own thoughts. What he wouldn’t give for a ‘your mom’ joke now. 

 

But it got louder, less like an echo in the mountains, and more like an echo in the sewers. It got older, more desperate, and Eddie tried to sit up again as he blinked around owlishly before fire burned up his spine and he cried out in pain and fell back. “Shit-“ he hissed, “Richie-“

 

His voice was hoarse from crying, but he tried again and was louder this time, doubting his sanity but grasping for straws. “Richie!”

 

Eddie heard something and he felt his shoulders shaking before he realized he was crying. He’d been awake for so long, an hour or two at least of just laying there, and the idea of salvation or extermination seemed so impossibly far away. “Ri-chie-“ he managed, voice breaking as he cried. He didn’t care if that asshole saw him crying at this point, he just needed to see a familiar face. “Richie!” He felt so close; he sounded so close.

 

“Richie for fuck’s sake-“ and then his voice got quicker in the way it did when he was panicking. “Get your stupid fucking ass over here or I swear to God I’ll-“ All while he was shaking with the effort to just steady his breathing. 

 

He could hear the water sloshing, and if this was how Pennywise wanted him to die, hallucinating his friend’s voice, then this was how he was happy to go. Or maybe this was hell, and Richie would never actually reach him. “Please,“ Eddie choked through a sob. “Please I-I’m so fucking scared Richie- I can’t breathe-“ he continued, as though the man were right next to him, talking to him. “Richie! I’m right here!”

 

 

Richie Tozier Carries a Corpse

 

Richie wasn’t hallucinating. There was no way he was hallucinating. 

 

Although maybe Richie was still caught in the Deadlights. Maybe he was still floating in the air with his eyes turned white and jaw hanging open. Maybe Eddie hadn’t saved him, and this was all just a bad dream It was feeding into his head. He’d take being stuck in the Deadlights for all eternity if that meant Eddie got another hour of life. Or even just a minute.

 

Then Eddie started a string of curse words so long and vulgar that they basically had the Kaspbrak seal of approval on them. And then Eddie’s voice broke. He was scared. 

 

“Eds, hang on! I’m coming, I promise! Just keep talking to me!” 

 

Richie ran around in what felt like circles; he had no light except the dull green glow of the water. After circling around to what looked like an area he’d seen a million times, he spotted a shoe. Without thinking, he grabbed it. “Eds!” When he pulled, he anticipated Eddie’s voice; what he got was an entire leg coming his way, completely detached from a body. 

 

“Whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck.” Richie dropped the leg and prayed it wasn’t Eddie’s. “You still got all your limbs right? Eds?”

 

There was a second of silence, and Richie didn’t know if Eddie was checking, or if he was just trying not to sound completely mortified, before he heard a distant, “yeah. I got ‘em all.” Richie felt the tension in his shoulders slacken just a bit. 

 

He looked around frantically, trying to find something new, something he hadn’t seen, something that would lead him to Eddie. It took what felt like hours, but eventually, he spotted a thin line of blood floating through the water. Richie followed it carefully, his face so close to the surface of the sewer’s water he could smell a century's worth of Derry pee, and it led him to a hand. He knew that hand. He would recognize it anywhere. 

 

“Eddie!” He gaped for a moment before running over into the shallow water to greet the man that stared back like he was seeing a ghost. He dropped to his knees and took Eddie’s hand, who managed to weakly grab back out of, if nothing else, shock. Eddie couldn’t believe that he was real. Richie was real

 

“Oh my God! You’re alive!” He squeezed Eddie’s hand gently, careful not to hurt him. He would never forgive himself if he hurt Eddie, even if it was just a little bit, especially not now when he was already in so much indescribable pain. Eddie stared at him, brown eyes hazy with mortal grey around the edges. He swallowed thickly unable to look away from his own reflection in Richie’s cracked glasses. “Eh- Eds,” the latter’s voice cracked. “I-I left you down here. Eds, I... Eds, I’m so sorry.” Richie stared at the gory scene in front of him. It was a miracle Eddie hadn’t already bled out, but he hadn’t, not yet. 

 

Eddie hadn’t died yet.

 

Richie scrambled to his feet when he realized Eddie needed to get out as fast as possible if he wanted even a fraction of a chance at seeing the sun again. Richie began throwing debris and rubble off of Eddie, and while there wasn’t all that much, he knew Eddie couldn’t move. He was rendered almost entirely immobile all because he had taken a hit meant for Richie. 

 

It should have been him. 

 

Between the adrenaline and the worry, Richie had the area cleared in less than a minute, much to the relief of both men. He knelt down over Eddie, tears dripping into the water around them. 

 

“Eds.”  

 

He knew he should have immediately gotten Eddie up. He knew every second was the click of an empty chamber in a game of Russian roulette between life and death, but Richie took ten of those precious seconds and hugged Eddie, choosing to ignore the hiss of pain that Eddie choked on as he was jerked forward, even if it was only by an inch. 

 

Richie cried into his shoulder, feeling his chest rise and fall, and listened to his heart beat slowly, while Eddie was just grateful for the physical warmth of another living being after so long of suffocating on the nothingness. 

 

“We killed It, Eds,” Richie said, almost breathlessly. “We killed It. No more clowns. This goddamn circus is over.” His joke landed flat because it was shitty, he was shitty (pun intended), and Eddie was dying

 

“Rich,” Eddie started, his voice wet. “Richie.” He hugged back as tightly as he was physically capable of, ignoring the blood dripping from his mouth and coming from his stomach that he was most definitely getting on the other man’s shirt. “I’m going to fucking kill you, you dickwad,“ Eddie let out, lost somewhere between laughing and sobbing as he pulled back. “I’ve never wanted to shower this badly. Please, please get me out of here. I’m never coming into the sewers ever again- I do not give a shit how many fucking clowns-“ He choked, coughing, hacking blood and various other fluids, both bodily and not, all over Richie. 

 

Of course the first thing Eddie wants is a shower, Richie mused to himself. Of course. How very Eddie of him.  

 

 “Alright,” Richie huffed, ignoring all of the blood. Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, Tozier, do not throw up. “Okay-“ he added on with more emotion than he cared for, and after his ten seconds he’d allowed for the hug, he lowered Eddie again. 

 

“Rich- no, “ Eddie wheezed out, eyes widening in panic. “Please don’t go. Please-“

 

“Hey- hey.” Richie hushed, trying to smile, but really, it just looked like an awkward twitch of his mouth. “I’m not going anywhere. Not without you. Let’s get you out of here.”

 

It felt better now that rubble was no longer scraping at Eddie's sides, even when he gargled on a noise of pain, blood pooling in his mouth as he was moved. That couldn’t have been a good sign, but he would rather die of blood loss than under a heap of rocks in greywater; he’d already gone that way once, so he took his vices.

 

“I didn’t realize how much it felt like my bones were being crushed,“ Eddie wheezed out. He had managed to sit up a bit, propped up on his elbows, but choked on his own words again. Thick globs of blood splattered out of his mouth, onto his chin, and into his hand as he lifted it to cover the hacking. 

 

Eddie swallowed thickly and looked to his hand vaguely. “Huh,“ he said promptly with wide eyes and raised brows, and then he gagged, all while Richie watched with thinly veiled disgust and worry.

 

“Yeah, alright. Out now, bitch later.” Eddie swallowed again, wiping his hand on his jacket as he looked back to Richie, breathing still heavy. He shook his head.  “I don’t know if I can get up. I don’t-... I don’t think I can.“

 

He coughed up clots of blood, and panic hit Richie from a new angle. “You can bitch as much as you want later, Eds,” he promised, “but you’re getting out of here. I’ll-... I’ll fucking carry you out of here if you can’t walk, but I’m not leaving you again, goddammit.” 

 

Richie put a hand underneath Eddie. He could feel every bloody, shredded thread of skin on his Eddie’s back. His skin was so pale and fragile. Richie could confidently say that this was the one occasion where Eddie actually was fragile. Normally he was made of stone, and Richie wasn’t afraid to toss him around, but Eddie had been dead not but a few hours ago. He didn’t have a fucking pulse. Sue him if Richie felt like maybe Eddie wasn’t in the best shape. 

 

“I’m gonna lift you up, okay, Eds? It’s gonna hurt like a bitch but suck it up. It’s either that or die again down here ‘cause you were too much of a pussy to deal with being stabbed by a killer alien clown.” Richie put his other arm under Eddie’s knees and counted to three before picking him up. 

 

Eddie screamed as he was lifted, a low and pained noise echoing back at him through the sewers as he felt red hot searing agony shoot up his spine. He didn’t have the energy to waste on defending himself against Richie calling him a pussy. “Mhm,” he hummed, but it wasn’t a steady sound, so it wasn’t really a hum. Nothing about him was steady. He kept trying and failing to catch his breath. He needed his inhaler, God, how he needed it. 

 

After eating at Jade of the Orient, Richie and Eddie wound up screwing around in Richie’s room, just the two of them, despite the fact that they knew they should have been packing their bags. Maybe they both subconsciously knew that they weren’t going to leave. Maybe they knew that leaving Derry after arriving wasn’t an option. It wasn’t as simple as taking their shit and driving out of town. And besides, they had a promise to make good on. 

 

While in the Townhouse, they didn’t so much as catch up rather than poke fun at each other for three hours, but Richie did learn about Myra. He didn’t know a lot but he knew he didn’t like her. He had picked up enough of Eddie’s tone and word choice regarding his wife to know that much. Another thing Richie picked up Eddie himself. It was just for shits and giggles, something that led to an immature tickle fight that made Richie feel like he was twelve again (Eddie was just as ticklish as he was when they were kids), but he had learned about how heavy Eddie was. 

 

But now he was so much lighter. The water in his place was red.

 

Richie wasn’t sure how to get out. He couldn’t lift Eddie up the well, he knew he couldn’t. It was impossible with him in his current state. Richie wasn’t that strong, and even if he was, what if he dropped Eddie? It would kill him. 

 

But then Richie remembered something. The Barrens.  

 

“We gotta go out through the Barrens,” he said, knowing Eddie had an unusually remarkable sense of direction. He was never lost, even if he was somewhere new. He always knew which path to take, it was like he had a compass in his head. There was a vague memory of a younger Eddie leading the Losers through the sewers that was threatening to surface in Richie’s mind, but he pushed it down. There wasn’t time for reliving repressed memories. “I came down through the well, but I can’t get you back up that was. I can’t think of another way out. It has to be the Barrens. I just don’t know...” Richie looked around, and suddenly the many different tunnels branching off of wherever the fuck they were looked a lot more daunting than they had a few seconds ago. He knew that whichever way they had to go, they had to go quickly. Without the cold water helping to slow blood flow down, Eddie was going to bleed out in Richie’s arms. Again.

 

Eddie blinked and forced his eyes open wide, glancing at the tunnels around them. He looked down at the water and mentally sent a thank you to his enthusiastic ten-year-old self who joined Boy Scouts just to spend more time with Stan as he watched the current. “Follow the water,” Eddie instructed drowsily. “Follow the current. It’ll lead us out into the Kendudkeag—the river,” he explained, not coherent enough to care about how his head fell back into the crook of Richie’s arm and his shoulder.

 

Eddie’s thoughts drifted. He soon came across something strange: it was incredibly ironic that he was a risk analyst and had yet somehow fucked himself so terribly. “Then call a fucking ambulance, and get me out of this goddamn hick town and to a hospital.”

 

“Okay,” Richie said mindlessly, feeling the water rush against his ankles, against his calves, his thighs, hips, and waist as he waded deeper into the sewer’s murky waters. In literally any other situation, Richie would have poured all his attention into how precious Eddie was, his eyes barely open as he tried to stay awake, his head against Richie. But this was a weak Eddie fighting to stay alive, using Richie as a lifeline. “That’s the plan, Spaghetti,” Richie said, nearly unaware that he was speaking as he plowed through the water. He was fairly certain he felt human hair and fingers brush up against his legs every few minutes, but he figured it was best to keep that little detail to himself. It would only freak Eddie out more, although Richie didn’t think they could get any more unsanitary. They both had several open wounds and were sloshing around in literal piss and shit. 

 

It felt like hours—and honestly, it probably was—but eventually, Richie caught sight of the rising sun. He broke out into a sprint, fresh air hitting him with a wave of relief as he stood at the opening of the sewer drain they’d entered so long ago to find little Georgie Denbrough, naïve to the ways of the adult world. But he couldn’t calm down too much; the hardest part may have been over, but Eddie was still dying, and he was dying quickly.