headcanons for richie and eddie both surviving IT go go go
(This might get slightly spoiler-y, so if you haven’t seen Chapter Two yet, maybe scroll away. I mean the story is 33 years old so I don’t know how much there is to spoil. But just in case.)
Okay, here’s the thing: Eddie still gets hit. Because I’m a monster. But Richie saves him! Because I’m a benevolent monster with a soft spot for lifelong romance manifested in dire circumstances.
So, Eddie is seriously injured, and Richie is freaking out, and the house is started to collapse, and Bill and Mike are yelling at everyone to move because they need to get their asses out of there, and that’s making Richie freak out more because he’s trying to keep Eddie awake and trying to figure out how to get him out without hurting him worse and oh my god, Bill - Mike - just shut up and help him. Ben comes to the rescue like the angel that he is. He helps Richie carry Eddie out, and Beverly calls for an ambulance. Only one person is allowed to ride with Eddie, and of course its Richie. The rest of the losers meet him at the hospital and spend the night in the waiting room with him, sleeping in uncomfortable plastic chairs on each other’s shoulders, taking turns napping and making sure Richie is eating and drinking water and doing things other than staring at the operating suite doors waiting for the doctor to come out. All of them are gross and exhausted, but no one’s leaving until they’re sure Eddie is going to be okay.
He is going to be okay, but it’s a long road to recovery. He’s in the hospital for a long time, and Richie has taken up residence there to take care of him. The nurses keep trying to get him to go home, but he rarely leaves for more than a couple of hours at a time- he’ll run to the hotel, shower, then race the clock back to the hospital. He doesn’t adhere to any rules of visiting hours, and at this point the nurse’s aren’t going to force him. The losers take turns visiting them, and when Bill and Ben are drawn back home for work, they swap their visits for phone calls to check-in. They have a schedule: Mike visits on Mondays, Bill calls on Tuesdays, Beverly visits on Wednesdays (when she’s away with Ben, she calls instead), Ben calls on Thursdays, they let Richie keep Fridays for himself, and every weekend they have one big conference call with everyone on.
While Eddie is recovering, Richie is house shopping. He knows he doesn’t want to stay in Derry - their time there is done, that chapter has closed, it’s time to move on. He checks places in Manhattan, near Beverly and Ben; he checks Los Angeles, by Bill and his wife. He asks Mike about towns nearby. He asks Eddie what he thinks, and Eddie says he doesn’t care. He’ll go anywhere as long as it’s with Richie.
So, Richie plans a road-trip.
The first place they stop when Eddie is finally, finally, finally released is the bridge. They find their initials and they re-carve them. Eddie is still slow-moving; Richie thinks that might last a while, one last remnant of what they did in Derry. They spend some time there together, looking over the water, and then they hit the road.
They visit the rest of the losers, and Richie calls his managers and arranges some drop-in shows in each city they stop in to bring in some cash for their travels. Eddie crunches numbers every night, adding up his savings and Richie’s and he stalks real estate websites and has some (secret) phone calls with an agent in Upstate New York. He finds a little cabin-like house. (”Is this some Cabin in the Woods shit?” Richie asks, to which Eddie replies, “Shut the fuck up and carry me over the damn threshold.” - Richie does.)
It’s quiet there. They live near a great big lake that reminds them of the quarry. The losers visit for a week every summer, and for that week once a year it’s like they’re all kids again. They drink. They laugh. They catch up. Slowly, the memories of It fade. Slowly, Eddie’s nightmares fade, too. Richie doesn’t hear him screaming in the middle of the night anymore; the only things he has to talk him down from is a panic from taking an expired Excedrin (”Are you sure it’s okay? Should I call the doctor? I’m going to the E.R.” “Oh, my God, the DRAMA.” “Richie, this is serious.” “It expired one day ago, you’re fine.”). His physical injuries start to fade, too. The scars get fainter and fainter, until he can’t remember where he got them, and then can’t recall they were ever there.
The only thing they remember is being kids, reading comic books, being with their friends. They remember loving each other, and they’re grateful every day that Derry somehow brought them back to each other all these years later, to their little cabin that Richie still thinks is kind of creepy and that he’s written into more routines than he can count.
And they’re happy. They’re so, so, so happy.
