52 + stanpat 🤓
(200 prompts + send them to me here!)murryn i love you. here’s some pain.
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Stan’s never been scared of his own front door before. Not since leaving Derry, since finding out that home didn’t have to be a place you dreaded going back to.
Not since Patty.
The front door is green- deep, emerald, picked out on a mutual whim. Patty had thought that the color was pretty, painted the door herself. Stan had thought that her love of the hue was everything, and he’d helped paint, a bit, if ‘helping’ meant kissing her and getting covered in paint.
He’s terrified of it, now. Frozen stiff, split between knocking and just falling to his knees on the front porch and sobbing until he couldn’t anymore.
He thinks of Patty- inside, alone. Alone, because of him.
He knocks.
It could be a second or an eternity before Patty opens the door and oh, oh, Stan had missed her so much. He’s only been- well, alive to do it for a few hours, really, but it’s been an ache in his chest since nearly the second he’d come up in the quarry, gasping for air. Even once he’s stopped gasping, sobbing like a newborn being thrown into the world without warning, he’d felt like his lungs weren’t filling properly. Like there was something more than air he needed to be able to breathe.
He inhales, when their eyes meet, knowing that this is what he was missing then. “Patty-”
The door slams shut in his face.
“Okay,” he says, blinking. “That’s- fair. That’s fair.”
It’s another long moment before she opens the door again, and the emotions flicking across her face make Stan’s chest ache. Disbelief. Hurt. Hope. Fear. “I know I’m not asleep,” she says, looking him in the eye like she’s scared that looking anywhere else will make him disappear. “I haven’t been able to sleep for days. So, am I going crazy, or are ghosts real?”
“Babylove,” Stan says, because it’s the only thing he can say, voice breaking. “I’m so sorry.”
The next few moves are a chain reaction: Patty says “oh,” and takes a step back, and Stan stumbles forward in the same move with a sob that shakes his whole body. He trips over the doorstep getting inside; it’s a step up he’s missed so many times before. Patty had always laughed at him, caught him before he’d fallen. Today, though, he falls to his knees and doesn’t stand. Can’t. He’s not sure his legs will hold him.
“Oh,” Patty says again as the door swings shut behind him. The sound of it makes his ears ring. “Stanley.” She sounds like she’s crying too, but Stan can’t make himself pick his head up to look at her. He’s scared again, pinning in place, eyes squeezed shut, forehead pressed against the cool, dark wood in the entryway. Another thing they’d picked together; the whole house used to be covered in awful yellow carpet. They’d torn it up together, hollowed out the whole place, really, and rebuilt it into something better, nicer. Something that was theirs.
How could he have ever left?
There’s a hand, then, on his shoulder- and then another on the other, too, urging him to sit up. He does, and finds that Patty’s dropped to her knees, too, and she’s crying, shaking just as much as he is. He opens his mouth to apologize again.
He doesn’t even get out the first breath before she’s kissing him.
The kiss breaks him apart and sews him back together again a thousand times over. They’re both breathless when they finally pull away, and Stan isn’t sure if they’re laughing or crying. “You’re here,” Patty says, face pressed into the crook of his neck. “You’re really here, you’re home.”
“I never should’ve left,” Stay says, holding her like his life depends on it. It does. “I never meant to, I never should have, I’m sorry.”
“You’re home,” Patty says again, pulling back to look at him. She’s smiling now, even if she’s still crying, hands pushing into Stan’s hair, fingers tangling in his curls. “It’s going to be okay, baby. You’re home.”
They have to get up eventually, but neither of them are inclined to let go of each other any time soon. They beeline to the bedroom without having to say a word about it. Stan knows he probably smells disgusting- he feels disgusting. He’s still wearing the clothes he had been in in the quarry, and he hadn’t spent enough time in Derry to shower. He’d caught up with the Losers as much as he could, hellos, apologies, goodbyes, and new promises to meet had all been traded in a few scan hours. No one seemed to want to stay in town longer than they had to.
Richie had bought him his ticket home. “Tell her I said hi,” he’d said when he and Stan had parted ways at the airport, Eddie a few steps behind them, arguing with someone on the phone. “And, I call best man at the vow renewal.”
The flight had been long, too long, and he was drenched in sweat from the few minutes he’d spent out in the Georgia summer sun. None of that could possibly have made him smell nice. He needs to shower, soon.
The door to the bathroom is shut. Stan can’t even look at it without feeling sick.
So, instead, he lets Patty strip him out of his clothes, and he returns the gesture, and they fall into bed. They kiss- heated but without intent for more, limbs tangling for no reason than the fact that they need to be intertwined like they’d always been, need to be touching at every point to know that they’re both really there.
After awhile, they’re just holding each other, silent but not uncomfortable, even though Stan’s chest is still aching. It will for awhile, he knows- but. Not forever, not if he’s here. Not if he’s home.
“I thought I had almost-” Patty says after a long moment, but cuts herself off with a noise. “No. I thought I had really lost you.”
“I know,” Stan says, guilt tying his stomach in knots. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying you’re sorry,” Patty says, pressing a kiss to his jaw, hand stroking down his side, soothing. “I know you are, I know. You’re home, and it’s… it isn’t okay, now, but it will be. I just… I want to understand. What happened, how are you here, why did you k- why did you go?”
He takes a deep breath. “It’s a long story. I don’t know that you’ll believe me- shit, I barely believe me, and I know that it’s real.”
“I’m listening,” Patty says. She sits up, but doesn’t pull away. “And, I already believe you.”
When Stan looks up at her, there’s something fierce in her expression.
“I love you,” he says. She smiles, nudging him until he shifts, puts his head in her lap so her fingers can card gently through his hair.
“I love you, too,” she says. “I’m listening. I’ve got you.’
And, how she always knows just what to say, just what he needs, Stan will never know, but he’ll never stop feeling so, so lucky for it, either. He takes a deep breath, settles, and closes his eyes.
“What I was- geez, eight, maybe? I say next to this kid in class. He was… loud, and kind of annoying. But, he was nice, and funny- and, after awhile, my best friend…”
He starts from the beginning- the very beginning, meeting Richie- and tells her everything. He talks about growing up in Derry, the son of the rabbi, about meeting his friends, about the clubhouse and the early morning bike rides to the secret clearing out in the woods where he’d birdwatch by himself. He tells her about Georgie, and the painting; about It, and the sewers. About his bar mitzvah. About Neibolt, and getting the scars he’d never had an explanation for when she’d ask where they were from. About the most scared he’d ever been, seeing the Deadlights, the promise they’d all made- and, after. High school, wanting to leave Derry so desperately but never, never wanting to leave behind his friends.
About graduating.
About their last summer, and then leaving.
About forgetting against his own will, not knowing what he was losing, having his real family torn from him against his will.
About Mike’s call. About how scared he’d been, then, remembering what he’d seen in the Deadlights. Knowing what he had to do, knowing that no matter what, it had always been going to end like this.
“It didn’t end, though.”
Patty has been listening quietly, until he said that. Her fingers still in his hair. Stan opens his eyes to look at her.
“It didn’t,” he says. “I.. thought it would, though.”
Patty nods, her own eyes falling shut for a moment. Stan just watches, quiet. Lets her take her time.
“You saved them, then?” she asks, finally.
Stan hums. “And, they saved me. When they killed It.”
Patty nods again, once, and opens her eyes. “I’ll have to thank then, then,” she says. “For making sure you got to come home.”
Stan lets out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “They all want to meet you,” he says. “Richie said to say ‘hi.’ He wants to be our best man.”
Patty laughs. It’s a bright, happy sound, lighting up her whole face. It makes Stan feel like he’s flying.
“We’ll invite them all down, sometime soon,” she says, leaning down to kiss him again. “After I’ve had the chance to have you to myself, for awhile.”
Stan grins up at her. “Babylove,” he says, because it’s the only thing he ever wants to say again. “You and I have got forever.”
Patty’s eyes are sparkling. “You promise?”
“I do,” Stan says, and that’s all he gets to say before she pulls him into another kiss, and reminds him of the last night they’d had after he’d made a promise like that.
He’s home, and unafraid.
