DERRY, MAINE, 2016.

Ghost town.

Those are the first words that spring into Richie Tozier's mind as he coasts along the narrow, stilted streets of the town where he grew up. The fiery, shiny red paint of his convertible sticks out like a sore thumb against the surrounding rusty pickups and bug-eyed Jeeps that look like they haven't gotten a paint job since '84, and the only thing he can think is, I don't belong here.

But you did, at one point, didn't you, Trashmouth?

Yes, he supposes he did. But that was twenty-seven Christmases and one fifty-second phone call ago; he hardly remembers living here at all as a child, let alone belonging. To be completely honest with himself, he hadn't remembered this town at all until a few days ago, when he'd gotten the stupid friggin' call and Mike Hanlon had been all like, 'Is that you, Richie?' and he'd been like, 'Who the fuck are you?' except not in as many words, and Mike had told him to come back home, to Derry, and Richie's legs had gone numb and his avocado salad had taken a sprint up his throat, and he'd vomited off the side of a building, a tremor running up and down his body. He was scared, that's what he was, without the slightest idea why; but the hairs on the back of his neck were standing at attention and his stomach was flip-flopping again.

"You wanna clue me in? You know, on who you are, why you called me, how you got my number, why two seconds before you called me I was all fine and fucking dandy, and now my lunch is all over the sidewalk? I don't know, seems like the least you can do," he'd wanted to say into the phone, but he'd already hung up without remembering ever doing so. And then he'd been on in thirty seconds and he'd had to go on stage anyway, no matter that he royally screwed up the lines that weren't even his. The show must go on. Showbiz, baby.

But then it started coming back; bits and pieces, mostly. The kids. God, those kids that were his fucking family that summer. Then, Richie 'Trashmouth' Tozier, isn't that what they called him? He could see the dam they built, the trouble they caused, that mullet-wearing asshole they had to keep running from, friggin' psycho with his dad's knife. Kid probably killed cats in his spare time, then fed them to his fuckin' mother. Swimming in the lake in their underwear.

Bill. Beverly. Stanley. Ben. Mike. Eddie. Seemingly all at once, their faces came into his mind and a million memories accompanying each one--some more than others--but no explanation as to

(red balloons?)

why he'd nearly shit his pants when Mike called, or why a mock version of a family reunion was urgent enough to uproot every single one of the old gang, calling sounding like he was being held at gunpoint or some shit over the phone. What the fuck, Mike? Nice to see you all, who's balding? What, wanna do a shot for old time's sake? Down the hatch, now I gotta get going, this was fun, but not exactly worth the gas money it took to get up here and kiss all your asses.

Beep-beep, Richie. He's not being fair, and he knows it. There's something more here, something he's missing, and he knows that part of the reason he's cracking unfunny jokes alone in his car is because he doesn't want to deal with it. Doesn't want to think about it. Besides, there's more important things to dwell on, like the fact that Eddie Kaspbrak is gonna be there. God, he feels like a friggin' teenaged girl, wondering if her crush is going to make it to the party. Oh my god, Sarah, what if Johnny's there? Should I match my bra to my panties just in case?

Okay, maybe he doesn't want to dwell on that thought anymore. He was a kid and Eddie was a kid and they were friends, even best friends, and maybe he had dreams that they were kissing and teased him a little harder than anyone else in the group, but that didn't mean anything, right? It's not like he cares at all twenty-seven years later. Hell, he hadn't even thought about that inhaler-sucking, fanny pack-wearing idiot in decades, so why care if he shows up to the family barbecue? He grits his teeth and switches on his windshield wipers. When did it start raining? But it always rained in Derry. His old basement flooded more times than he could count, and

(the sewers)

it's perfectly normal for a dingy little coastal town to spritz a little on a June evening--

(sewers!)

A blaring truck horn brings Richie back to the present, the present where he had just ran a red light whose yellow was just a little too stale.

"Sorry," he mutters to himself, knowing the pissed-off driver couldn't possibly hear him, but his mind is elsewhere again.

I'm here.

(Home at last?)

Looming before him is the Jade of the Orient, a shockingly fancy Chinese restaurant that certainly hadn't been around when he was a kid. But this is the designated meeting spot, and Richie feels himself turn the wheel and park his car more than really doing it himself, his spirit seemingly hovering above his actual body. He palms the tops of his thighs--Keys? Wallet?--and then, stop stalling, you little bitch.

He takes a breath and steps out of his vehicle. Showtime.

He's nearly up to the door when he notices a man and a woman blocking his path. He blinks and looks again, feeling his insides chill at the way it feels like time had simultaneously stopped, gone back in time to when he knew them, then sped forward at breakneck speed, years whizzing past until he's forcibly placed back in the present. Beverly Marsh, who'd only gotten prettier, good for her, and--Ed..?--but then the man is turning around and Richie's faced with Ben Hanscom, looking as though someone had ripped off the facial features of his childhood friend and stuck them on a fucking underwear model. He can practically see the abs behind his tastefully loose dress shirt, and Richie wants to crack a joke almost as much as he wants to barf again. This is going to be harder than he thought, which was already pretty friggin' hard.

Then he finds his voice, which admittedly has never been hard for Richie to do. "Well, you two look amazing," he begins dryly, sticking his fretting hands in his jacket pockets. "What the fuck happened to me?"

There's a moment of silence, but all at once, they begin to laugh, and the tension is splintered like a toothpick. Beverly moves towards him, a smile lighting up her face that somehow feels like it never changed. "Richie!" She says, giving him a genuine hug, a whole package including the squeeze. He wraps his arms around her too, placing his chin on top of her head and subconsciously remembering that as prepubescent little shits that ran around all day, Beverly had been the tallest of the bunch. We're not kids anymore, dipshit.

When Beverly pulls away, Ben's reaching out to grasp his shoulder. "Good to see you, Trashmouth," he's saying, and Richie is trying to connect this person to the pudgy little boy who was introduced last into the group--new kid?--and probably the sweetest among them. And, yeah, looking into his eyes, he's still very much there, so much so that he's surprised he didn't recognize him at once. Though to be fair, it seems as though every building and person in this town needs at least a double-take before he can connect them to the shadows in his mind. God, what kind of fucking fever dream is this?

"You too, Haystack," he replies, the nickname falling out of his mouth before he even consciously remembers it.

"Yeah, yeah, almost forgot about that one," Ben chuckles, flicking Richie a little harder in the back of the head than he had been expecting. Then the three of them are walking into the restaurant.

"Are you with the Hanlon party?" The hostess greets them gracefully, waiting with wide eyes and her smile never wavering. 

"Yep," they all answer in the affirmative, but Richie's is slightly louder. Then, lowering his voice to a mutter as he follows the hostess to the private room in the back, "Fuck us." Richie is used to crowds, used to standing up in front of them, has never been shy or scared of people. But now, as the circular table comes into view and he can start to make out the figures belonging to his shadowy past, he thinks he's never been more nervous in his life.

Maybe you're just scared to see your little girlfriend, a voice in the back of his head nags at him. He tightens his jaw and squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. Shut the fuck up, Trashmouth. Then the inner pep talk is over and it's time to open his eyes, but he finds that he doesn't really want to.

His memories of Ben and Bev are already coming back in full force, but tainted by the way they look now--hell, a week ago, if they were walking past him on the street, he wouldn't have even given them a second glance. If he studies their faces and mannerisms, he can see the children he once knew in them, but they're fucking grownups now. All of them are. And if he looks into that room and sees the rest of them--sees Eddie--it'll all be real.

Then he's opening his eyes and spreading his face into a purposely obnoxious grin. "Buenas noches, ladies! Who the fuck are all you people?"

The room erupts into a mix of groans and cheers, and Richie can't help but bask in it. For a moment, it feels as though he'd stepped into a time warp, and it's 1989 again, and they're all about to pool their pennies to do some stupid shit for the day before making it home before dark, so that they don't get grounded and Eddie's mom doesn't take him to the friggin' emergency room. It feels like he's--

(home at last)

--but then Richie spots him, and the spell is broken. Unlike Ben or even Bill, Eddie looks so much like himself that Richie feels like he could recognize him from across the Grand Canyon, without his glasses on. Richie nearly chokes on his tongue, just looking at who Eddie had become, and he has to double his obnoxious levels just so that he doesn't start undressing the asshat with his eyes or something.

He's still short and little, thank fuck. If Eddie had surpassed Richie in height, he would have walked right out of the Jade of the Orient and went home and killed himself. He looks down at Eddie's hand and sees an inhaler. He's more relieved than he cares to admit (that's my boy). If Eddie pulled a fucking Ben, he could never forgive him. Yet, Eddie's there, so the same, so different, and everything Richie has ever wanted or needed, everything his thirteen-year-old self knew he would still love even when they were old people, like, over twenty or something.

Worth the wait.

They lock eyes right as Eddie's lifting the aspirator to his mouth. He sprays, his eyes bug in recognition, then he audibly chokes.

"Heya, Eddie, do you mind saving the oral sex with your little toy there 'til a little later? We're about to eat."

Eddie scrunches his face and rises from his chair. "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, dickwad."

They're both grinning. Then they're moving toward each other and connecting--he hadn't planned for this hug (did I remember cologne) and it wasn't planned, but he's melting into him--and they're slapping each other on the back, hard, and it's almost pathetic--

Look at us, gang, lookit this straight hug! Bros, slapping each other like a baby burping after a meal. This is what you do, right?

But that's just Richie's inner monologue. Inner stand-up comic routine that runs day and night. It's just Richie, always has been. Eddie's standing there, probably straighter than a fucking board, and Richie follows his lead, trying not to linger his hands anywhere on his body or breathe him in. But he does.

Suddenly, probably for the first time in his life, he's glad for his glasses, because his eyes are feeling pretty damn prickly. For the first time in twenty-seven years, he thinks about an old fence post with an R+E scratched into the soft wood with a Swiss army knife, and a small dark-haired boy with glasses much too large for his face whose heart had pounded and ripped through him, and how he had sped off on his bike right after, feeling as though he'd just committed a terrible crime, but how sweet the sin had tasted in his mouth as the adrenaline pulsed harder and harder in him the he further away he moved from the fence.

That had been the first time he had ever admitted who he was to himself. He wonders how he ever could have suppressed that memory, forgotten it. And for the first time, he begins to realize that something far more important was waiting for him here in Derry than just a reunion with a bunch of old friends. But as he looks at Eddie and the rest of the Losers

(but where's Stan the Man?)

and as he listens to Bill speak without even a hint of a stutter, like it was never there, he thinks maybe he doesn't care. He feels more alive than he has in decades, even if he has a sinking, distant feeling that he's playing with fire, kissing death on the mouth.

—

AN: this is my first time writing IT fanfic but I just had so much fun with it that I decided to post it.

Those of you who are coming from my other books, I know this is a different fandom but I hope you still enjoyed! I will be updating You Found Me as soon as possible.

Please send me a vote or comment if you enjoyed:)