Chapter Text
“Holy shit, she called the cops!”
“What?” Eddie presses up between the front seats, peering out the windshield with Will as they roll to a stop across the street from his house. Incredibly, Richie's not exaggerating. There's a police car sitting empty in front of the walkway that leads up to the porch. “Fuck, not again.”
“Again?” Will asks, voice cracking.
He shushes Richie’s peals of laughter as Eddie slides down the backseat, scrambling out of the car to get a better look. Will sees a neighbor two houses down, watering their garden with the hose and giving them a cursory glance. Will hunches a little in the passenger seat to try and hide, which only sets Richie off again, rolling down the window so Eddie can better appreciate his joy.
“Okay, you have to go now,” Eddie says, fidgeting beside the car.
“Don’t you need help getting inside?”
“I’ll be fine,” he replies, looking both ways and doing a quick limping hop across the street to prove his claim. He stops in the grass lining the curb, shooing them away, but Richie just waves, encouraging him to keep going. Once Eddie’s back is turned, Richie’s smile falls into a faint and worried line.
Will’s been thinking about the way Richie has changed since they entered Derry. He oscillates between the trusting and vulnerable person that Will first met at school and this harsh, defensive person that has so many walls, he doesn’t know how to navigate them himself. The only explanation Will entertains is that something about growing up and going through what he went through here made the real Richie hide, somewhere deep, afraid of letting people close and getting burned.
So while Richie is remembering Derry, he’s also forgetting how to put himself at risk and be rewarded, trapped in the protective labyrinth of his own design.
It's horrible, seeing him stuck in all that doubt and hesitation, especially because it goes against everything Richie stands for. All his joking and teasing, it's not humor for the sake of making himself laugh. He does it to give other people relief. He dulls sharp edges and lights dark places. He picks people up and dusts them off and says we’ll get ‘em next time, bub. That's what Richie is - at least for Will - and he's irreplaceable.
Will sits up. This time, it's his job to remind Richie not to take it all so seriously.
“Richie.”
His friend hums in acknowledgement, still watching Eddie go.
“What if the Derry you remember is your hermit crab shell?”
Richie turns to Will, features slack with contemplation with the metaphor flipped around on him. He knows Will’s follow-up question.
If this is your shell, are you gonna stay in there forever or take a chance to grow, scary as it may be?
“Eddie!”
The unsteady figure hauling itself up the porch steps halts, facing them with a disapproving frown. His finger presses urgently over his lips to encourage silence, but Richie ignores it.
“You forgot something,” he calls.
Eddie glances at the front door of the house, then out to them, hands coming up to ask what the hell Richie could be talking about in gestures. Richie unclips his seatbelt, shifting to lean over the center console and root around on the rear flooring. He drops back into his seat, holding in view the arm sling Eddie that ditched before the malt shop.
Eyes scrunching up in irritation, Eddie comes down the front walk, injury less pronounced. He checks traffic on the empty street before crossing again. Eddie’s face reappears in the window, right hand bracing on the lower window frame while the other reaches out for the sling. He retrieves it.
“Thanks. My mom…” Eddie's words trail off, his good arm cradling the sling to his chest. The hand on the window is caught in place, the sharp jut of his wrist brushed over by Richie's thumb. Eddie follows the limb up to find Richie watching their sole point of contact with single-minded focus.
“Remember when you asked me what my past is worth, down in the sewer?” After a long beat, Eddie nods, fingers twitching. “I’ve got my answer, if you still want it.”
The front door of the house opens with a squeal of old metal hinges and out comes Sonia, just as terrifying as the last time Will saw her. She shouts for her son, voice like cut glass dipped in honey. Will's stomach sinks as she leans into the house to yell for the officers that are surely inside.
Eddie looks to Richie, skin pale but his eyes bright. “Tell me.”
Someone with a uniform appears behind Mrs. Kaspbrak, and Will grips his seatbelt as she yells for Eddie again, not given an ounce of attention this time.
“I think that even if killing It didn't work, I wouldn't regret anything we had to do to get my memories back," Richie says. He's not using any voice but his own, honest and shaky with fear. “For me, knowing you is worth all the trouble in the world.”
Will tunes out the frantic calls of Eddie’s name and the sound of wooden porch steps creaking as Sonia makes her way down, two officers behind her now. Richie’s right hand, which is on the gear shift, clenches around the top so hard that the blood is leached away. As Will watches, the digits slowly relax, knuckles growing pink and chasing away the numb look. The fingertips drum a light little trill, and Will dares to confirm his hopes. He finds Eddie gazing at Richie speechlessly, his face speaking for him to say that's-the-right-answer. His smile is shy and very, very cute.
“EDDIE!”
They all jump, seeing Sonia storming to the far edge of the street now, officers reluctantly following as they anticipate a problem.
“Go, just go," Eddie urges, drawing his hand away from the car and quickly waving them on.
“Alright, Will, your time to shine-”
“No fireball, Richie, drive!”
“Call me later, if you’re not grounded for life,” he says lightly, jerking the car out of park and pulling onto the road. Sonia screams after them and Eddie gets in her way, telling her to let them leave. The cops are scrambling, not sure who to listen to. Mrs. Kaspbrak is a bit of a mother who cried wolf, but Eddie is littered in bruises and bandages, so it could go either way.
Will keeps his eyes on the road behind for a few blocks, fully prepared for lights and sirens to come blaring after them.
“We can’t get arrested for kidnapping if we’re also minors, right?”
Richie laughs so hard he cries, and if some of the tears are more about overwhelmed relief than amusement, Will doesn’t mention it. He passes his friend tissues from the glovebox when his vision gets too blurred to see the road.
Fussing with the controls for the radio, Will gives him space until Richie takes it upon himself to talk.
“So what are you gonna do next?” he asks, glancing over as Will settles on a blues station. “You’ve got a bunch of free time, now that you’re not solving my unresolved trauma. No more distractions from dealing with your real problems.”
He picks at the outer leg seam of his pants, frowning at Richie's profile. “What?”
“You, Will Byers, got attached to my dire situation to avoid your own personal drama.”
“I did not.”
“Did too. You have experience fighting monsters and not with extreme emotional distress, so you went for the easier problem.”
Will gawks at him. “You think fighting It was easy?”
“To you, at least, yeah. You said it yourself, you’ve faced scary things before. El used some magic powers and you won. You knew you could handle monsters, so you went monster hunting.” Richie shrugs. “And now you’re back to square one.”
Will shifts, uncomfortable with this sudden change in topic. This trip isn’t supposed to be about him.
“Look, I get wanting to escape down any road long enough to take you away, believe me. I know you have a lot of shit at home that needs handling. There’s the lingering tension with El, your mom’s grief, Jonathan’s tenuous departure for college, and we still haven't talked about Mike.” Richie pauses thoughtfully. “Not to mention the bleeding facial orifices you picked up over the weekend.”
“Do we have to talk about this right now?”
“Fuck no, you don’t have to do anything,” Richie says. He’s so quick with reassurance that Will has no time to properly stew in his worries. “I’m not about to pull a Sonia and demand some answers, but considering how well you fixed my catastrophe of a life, I’m on board with helping you figure out your own.”
“It’s complicated, Richie.”
“More complicated than a child-killing alien sewer clown?”
“A different kind of complicated,” Will stresses, arms crossing tight over his stomach like he can hold off the flood of unhappiness that comes with being reminded of recent years. “I can’t explain any of my problems without telling you all of it.”
They pass the Thanks for Visiting Derry sign, glad to leave it in the rearview mirror. Richie grabs Will’s wrapped forearm and tugs it free of the limb shield, lifting his wrist to eye-level and checking the time.
“You’re got two hours on the clock, starting now. I’d offer to show you mine first, but that ship has sailed.”
Will looks at the long stretch of road ahead, finding he feels unusually safe about spilling his personal life to someone who’s dealt with the strange and lived beyond it. Richie would believe him, which is important. Plus, Steve had told Robin about their misadventures in new dimensions. Maybe Will doesn’t have to make a new party – he can just slip Richie into the old one.
He starts with a deep breath, chest tight at the thought of sharing information that could send Richie – his only real friend in California – running in the other direction. Then he remembers that Richie helped him kill a whole monster. He would have run then, if he was ever going to do it. Will may not be ready to talk about Derry, but Hawkins isn’t so fresh. He could try.
“Around two years ago, we were playing a game of D&D at Mike’s house. I rolled a seven.”
“Is that bad?”
Will slumps in his seat, then bursts into slightly deranged giggles, pressing his face into his hands.
"What?" Richie nudges at his shoulder, feeling left out of the joke. “What’d I say?”
-----**-*
“Right, a big scary flesh monster attacked you in the mall, but what I don’t get is why Eleven thought I was replacing Mike,” Richie says, pulling into the driveway of his aunt’s house, their journey complete.
“That’s your biggest problem with everything I just said?”
“I’m seriously concerned about her perception of me! The only thing I have in common with him is our looks. How has he survived so long being so oblivious to other people?”
Will sighs, lifting his seatbelt out of the way. “Give him a break, Richie. He had bigger things to deal with than noticing that I wanted to spend time with him.”
"Sounds like you were wearing a neon sign to me."
They climb out of the car, Will’s door lightly shutting while Richie makes the car rock by slamming his own. Through the open curtains of the front window, he can see his dad cross the living room, carrying luggage. Will joins Richie at the trunk, sorting out what needs to be carried inside. He shoves the plastic bag of bloody clothes in the top of Will’s backpack and zips it tight. They’ll need to ditch that in the outdoor garbage can before Maggie can stumble onto it.
"I'm just saying, the dude belongs on a football team with a skull that thick. He must already have the concussion for it, if he can't see what's right in front of him."
"What, the flayed monster? Mike saw it - the thing was two stories tall, it was kind of hard to miss.”
"You, Will." Richie stops moving to stare at him, making a serious point. “You were right there, asking him to be a better friend. I can’t fathom how he missed you.”
Will goes quiet, features soft and pinched, ever the wistful lover. Old romantic painters would go crazy over that expression.
"Especially when you’ve been friends since kindergarten," Richie says, closing the trunk as Will makes a non-committal noise. He keeps his hand light on Will’s back as they shuffle up to the front porch and ring the doorbell. "Has he always been that dense? What was he doing in recess that made him the youngest person ever diagnosed with a concussion?"
"Richie." Will’s eyes roll, but he relaxes a fraction, his mood reeled away from the cliffs of pining.
"It all makes sense now. Naptime was only an hour long because they couldn't let him sleep with a head injury, not unless they wanted a lawsuit on their hands."
Will represses a smile as the door opens, Maggie offering a pleasantly surprised hello before she catches sight of Richie’s bandaged face and the broken lens of his glasses. Moving slow to avoid detection, Will tucks his cocooned arms behind his waist.
“Richie, there better be a very good explanation for this.”
“Roughhousing,” he says simply, letting her tip his chin this way and that to take in the damage. “Mike let me wrassle one of the Hanlon prize pigs and it got out of hand. The pig played dirty.”
Maggie tuts in defeated exasperation, releasing him and stepping away from her guard dog role to show them inside. They’re led into the front room, Went scanning the Sunday paper in a wingback chair.
“You’ll never guess who was at the door,” Maggie says, as though she didn’t threaten to take away Richie’s allowance for a month if he wasn’t here by two o'clock.
Went looks over, catching sight of his irresponsible child. “Home on time? I would have worn my good socks if I knew I’d be witnessing a miracle today.”
“So you missed us?”
“I managed,” Went says. “Your mother, however, was inconsolable.”
As though proving the point, Maggie’s hand reels Richie in by the shoulder. She goes to kiss the side of his head, but her nose wrinkles when it gets close to his hair.
“Ugh, did you spend the night in a dumpster? You reek.” Maggie takes a second sniff, then holds Richie a safe distance away, troubled as she turns to her husband. “Went, smell him. It’s like a sewer line burst.”
“No thank you, dear. I went through puberty once myself.” Went cracks his newspaper flat, staying firmly seated. “There’s plenty of time before our flight to remedy the pitfalls of youth. Have them use the guest bath.”
Maggie notices Will trying to shuffle out of the room, her mothering eyes pinning him in place. She’s prepared to sniff his hair too, while she’s at it.
“Right you are, sir. We’re growing boys,” Richie announces, prying Maggie’s lacquered nails from his shoulders. “Perfectly natural for us to stink. If not us, who? If not now-”
Went sighs over the impassioned finish. “Beat it, Mr. President.”
Richie salutes his father, marching from the room before Maggie can work herself up to a full inquisition. They’ve almost made it safely up the stairs when she comes to a delayed realization and shouts after them.
“Whose clothes do you have on?!”
----**--*
Will drags his hand down through the condensation on the mirror, wiping his wrinkly hand dry on the towel draped around his neck. He feels like a completely new person, now that he's clean and isn't wearing anything that was recently steeped in a public waste reservoir. He'll never underestimate the benefits of a hot shower again.
The used gauze from his arms is gathered in a misshapen heap on the countertop beside the sink. Will pokes at it until the stack unravels down into the trash can on the floor, looking over his scratched arms. They're not pretty, but the bleeding's done. It stings a little to pull on a long sleeve over his t-shirt, covering the marks, but it's necessary. Bulky bandages under the fabric would definitely get his mom's attention when she picks him up from the airport tonight, and Will can't risk that.
Feeling a twinge as he takes a deep breath, Will checks on his chest too, a nasty bruise centered at the top of his abdomen where Its tail caught him. He prods at the splash of color, the area still tender to the touch but not painful on its own yet. It looks like someone's spilled a grape slushie on him, staining his skin.
It could be a lot worse. He could be dead. In that light, these injuries suggest he managed a seriously impressive saving throw.
As soon as Will steps out of the bathroom, Maggie is there, offering him a plated sandwich with soup in the kitchen if he wants more. Will can hardly start to accept before Richie intercepts, scooping the plate from her hand and leading Will out to the patio. The patterned brick is cold beneath his bare feet.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll make sure he eats," he calls to his mother, shutting the door firmly behind them and pulling out a deck chair at the outdoor table for Will. Richie pushes it back in once he's seated. "While you were taking your sweet time in the shower, Eddie called me."
"What? Why?" Will asks, paralyzed with fear that they did something wrong and It's not actually dead. We have to go back.
"Apparently, Bill showed up on his doorstep half an hour ago." At Will's open-mouthed stare, Richie laughs, taking the seat across the corner from him and setting down the plate.
"He's- how?"
Richie picks up the overstuffed sandwich, holding it out until Will takes it from him. Once he's had his first bite, he practically inhales the food, reminded how little he's eaten over the last two days.
"He just got in his car and drove there," Richie says, delighted. "The memories started bubbling up when they mentioned Georgie at his father's funeral. Bill claims he didn't call before coming because he had to see them to make it real or something, but Eddie says he seemed pretty out of sorts. I think Bill knows the Losers are the only ones that get his grief, considering what It did. He needs his friends to mourn in peace."
"I hope he can. I mean, it's amazing he showed up at all," Will says, picking up the edge of the towel to scrub at his hair when water drips onto his cheekbone. "Is he still there now? Did you talk to him?"
"Briefly. They were headed to see Mike. You should have heard him though, he was so pissed when he found out he could have caught us there."
Will finishes his late lunch in pleased silence. He's happy for them, even if they were cheated a full reunion. It's a great sign, too, Bill's memories jumpstarting themselves. They might not need to send those letters out after all.
"Did Eddie say anything else?"
“Not with his mom breathing down his neck," Richie says, laughter drying up. He gives Will an odd look, somewhere between uncomfortable and hesitant. "Why did you leave me alone with him, at the park?”
The answer is pretty obvious, but Will's still embarrassed to say it out loud. “I thought you two needed time to talk.”
“Maybe we did,” Richie allows with a slight frown. “It’s not your job to manufacture that for us. We can find our own moments to talk alone.”
“Okay,” Will says, stomach churning with regret. He didn’t mean to violate an unspoken rule, but maybe Richie thought it was nosey, assuming as much as Will did about their relationship. “I’m sorry for...reading it wrong.”
Richie pushes aside the empty plate with a slight head shake that heightens Will's anxiety. This might be a trespass that can’t be fixed with a simple apology.
"I’m not asking you to feel bad, Steamboat.” Richie's words momentarily quiet Will’s overactive mind in its wild conclusions. He focuses on hearing what Richie is actually saying. “I want to know why you act like you aren’t allowed to be around us. Every chance you got, you tried to slip away, like you're some burden we're supposed to want gone."
What? Will fails to process. Richie's still talking.
"Things were weird at the beginning when we were all feeling each other out, but I think it's safe to say they've got nothing against you now. We make a lot of smartass comments, but you're aware we actually enjoy spending time with you, right?”
In a way, Will knows that. He knows they don’t despise him, and he wasn’t…Did he do that? Will was trying to give them space. He thought that’s what they needed.
“But Eddie…” Will’s determination grows enough to be direct. They're alone outside anyway - there's no one around to eavesdrop. “You like Eddie. Don’t you want to be alone with him?”
“Are you kidding? We’d kill each other in a week if we were alone all the time,” Richie says, amused by Will’s blank surprise. “I do want to be with him, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to stick around too.”
Oh.
“Is it awkward?” Richie asks, vaguely concerned about the possibility. “Are we making you a third wheel?”
“No,” Will says, eyes damp. “I feel welcome, it’s just-” He stops, unable to explain why he forced himself out of the group to make them happier. His fingers pinch at the inside of his shirt cuffs. “My mistake, I guess.”
Dazed, Will thinks about the fact that Richie not only noticed his self-isolation, but wanted to ask and reassure him that his disappearance wasn’t necessary or desired. Will scrubs the heel of his hand over his eyes.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” Will says, forcing words past the croak in his voice. “There’s too much.”
“That’s what happens when you forget to talk it out.” Richie pats his wrist to soothe. “Come on, tell the Toze your woes.”
Will is too drained to resist. He slumps onto the table over his crossed arms, the full ache of his strained injuries sweeping through him and fading away. He presses his mouth into the bend of his elbow, peeking up at Richie to find the offer wholly serious despite his lighthearted way of proposing it.
Everything going on in his head is a lot. Once again, Will doesn’t know where to start.
He’s relieved to be going home. In retrospect, not telling his family anything about Derry was reckless, even if his mom would have flown here on the slightest suspicion that he would be in danger. Now he has to face them, knowing that he lied, and he has to continue to lie, to save them the stress of finding out just how disastrously things could have gone for him. Nor can they know how well things did go. Will can never tell them what he did, that he fought and he won.
Just one more secret to keep. His family doesn’t know everything about him, even if Will sometimes wishes they did.
As far as the Party goes, and Hawkins, Will isn’t sure he knows where they stand. They’ve been drifting apart for a while, and the distance certainly didn’t help. It’s not that he’s afraid of losing them, not really. He knows that they can come together and fix their problems and make it right.
Except he’s started to wonder if his friends think it's even a Party worth keeping, considering how easily they've been able to abandon it. Maybe Will’s childish, not wanting to let go, but isn’t that what friendship is? Flying across the country to find your missing parts and facing your fears to protect what matters to you?
Will wants that again. He wants to be important to the people who are important to him.
And he wouldn't dare overlook the sewers. Whatever happened in that foul place, it scares him, and not just because of the physical aftermath of the monster. Will unlocked something down there. He stepped into the dark, and he isn’t sure he fully stepped out again - even though he's sitting in afternoon daylight right now, his stomach full and wounds healing. He left another piece of himself under Derry, just like his week in the Upside Down. He doesn’t know how much he has left to lose before he doesn’t recognize himself anymore. He’s growing. He’s changing. He desperately wants to keep what’s being taken from him.
Will summarizes. “I don’t want to do things alone anymore. I don’t think I can.”
Richie leans over the table to match him, resting the side of his head on his overlapped hands so they’re at the same eye level. It makes it easier to talk, looking directly at him. His glasses are crooked from the uneven pressure and an irrepressible hint of a smile lurks at the corner of his mouth.
“I want support, instead of protection,” he explains. “For some reason, I’ve just sat still, waiting for people to come to me after miraculously sensing that I need them. I have to start meeting them halfway.”
“Look at you, figuring life out in one afternoon. You're a problem-solving machine.”
Will snorts, watching Richie’s smile grow too big for his face. Too big for Mike’s face, his mind quietly corrects. For Richie, it’s just the right size.
“I’m proud of you, Byers.”
Damn it. Will squeezes his eyes tightly shut against the swell of sudden tears and Richie chuckles, ruffling his hair when he ducks further into his own arms.
Maggie pokes her head out the door. "Will, honey, can I move this camera bag without breaking anything?"
He lifts his head, trying to stand. "Yeah, do you want me to-"
"You rest, we'll get the car packed," she says, waving him to sit back down. When Will nods, pressing a hand beside his eyes to keep them from watering further, Maggie gracefully doesn't comment. She does give her son a narrow look, trying to determine how heavily he was involved in upsetting Will. "Do you need anything else? Are you still hungry?"
"Didn't ask if I was hungry," Richie mutters.
"Of course I didn't, you couldn't possibly be hungry after the third helping you stole while my back was turned. Will's our guest, we have to host him properly."
"This isn't even our house!"
Needless to say, Maggie remains suspicious. She shoots Richie that warning look all day, to increasingly earnest insistence from Richie that he has done nothing to deserve the scrutiny. It’s not until they’re seated on the plane that Maggie risks leaving them alone again, flipping through a magazine as Went dozes off beside her, a full aisle of privacy between them.
“What about you?” Will asks.
Richie picks up the thread of the conversation without a missed beat, leaning in to speak quietly. “Like you said, it’s a lot. If we ignore the kid-eating alien part, this trip has still been one long jaunt down a grueling memory lane.”
Will doesn’t know how that first part can be ignored, but he does his best.
“I can’t believe it yet.” Richie reaches up to fix his glasses, but detours, pushing his hair behind his ear instead. “Any of it. I don't know when it'll sink in, if ever.”
Will nods, yawning as sleep creeps over him to reclaim the lost hours of this morning. His head tips onto Richie’s shoulder, and he doesn't fight the drowsiness.
“I think I'm gonna tell Mike,” he confesses quietly. It’s been one of those thoughts floating around since this morning that he hasn’t been able to pin down, just a vague idea in mind.
“Yeah?”
Will nods, the shoulder bony against the side of his face until Richie hunches, making it possible for Will to fit on a gentler slope. “I know, sort of, what he's going to say, but I think I need to hear it.” Will’s eyes close. “He needs to hear me out, too. I can’t hide forever - or at least, I don’t want to. Not from Mike.”
Richie’s silence is understanding. When Will is on the cusp of unconsciousness, Richie's neck tilts, his cheek resting against the top of Will's head. Will feels perfectly safe in his temporary resting place.
“Hey,” Richie murmurs into his hair. “You don't know till you ask.”
Maybe I don’t. And that’s the thought that carries him off to sleep, Richie following shortly after. Neither of them can recall their dream upon waking, but it's a nice dream. It is the first one they share, unlonely and unhidden.
Just the first of many to come.
Epilogue
March 11th, 1986
Will smiles at the rolled canvas resting on his lap. It’s a blank off-white page for now, barely an idea, but Mr. Patricks says his vision has honesty and spirit - which is a high compliment, as far as Will’s concerned. As soon as Argyle hits the driveway, Will is slinging open the door to a brief protest from Jonathan about safely exiting the vehicle, rushing inside the house with a silent greeting to his mom while she's on the phone. He drops his backpack in his room, setting the canvas up on his easel and taking his time to decide on the right sketching pencils. His favorite one is still broken at the end from the last time he used it.
The place that Will’s sharpener usually turns up when it’s missing is his mom’s desk, so he heads to the front room. He takes it upon himself to search while Joyce is getting off the phone.
“I’ll get that sample sent right away. Yes.” She leans in her chair to let him reach around her, puzzled by his hovering. “Yes, alright. Sounds great. You have a super day. Uh-huh. Bye.”
The phone clicks, giving Will the ability to talk without interrupting his mom's work.
“Sharpener?”
“Somewhere around here,” she says, confusion clearing as she gestures to her mess of reference sheets and number lists. Will does his best to root through the stacks without disrupting them.
“Do you know if Mike’s plane comes in on Friday or Saturday?”
“Saturday, why?”
“I want to start working on something, but I don't know if I'll have enough time,” Will says. The painting is going to be daunting to finish inside of two weeks, but he really wants to get this right. He gets the feeling he has to make it, that he’s going to need it-
“I'm sure it'll work out, sweetheart. Things always do," she assures. Her voice falters only a little, remembering the times where things didn't go as they should have. Recovering, she peers around him, checking for someone in his shadow. "You came home with El today?”
“Oh, yeah. Richie and I thought it might be better if he gives me a ride every other day, instead of all the time. Gas money and stuff.”
The real reason is a bit more complicated than that. Will had promised that he and El could try being friends, but in order for that to happen, they have to spend time together. He can admit, he’s been neglecting hanging out with her in favor of Richie, and he doesn’t want to do that anymore. He doesn’t want to be a hypocrite about the same complaints he made last summer.
Besides, he still enjoys spending time with El. Going to and from school with Argyle again offers them more chances to talk and catch up. This Angela situation, for instance. Will’s been where Eleven is now, and he knows it's not easy, navigating life when it feels like everyone's out to get you. He may not be able to stop them, but he can give El his support to help her ignore what they say and do, like the Party always did for him.
“Speaking of Richie - Jonathan told me to ask what he should do with the film. I figured Richie might want copies, but he was thinking about a little album, like the one El got.”
“What film?” Will asks, rifling through the cluttered top drawer.
“The negatives, I guess," his mom corrects. "From the camera you took to Derry.”
Derry-
Will hisses through his teeth, hand sharply withdrawing from the drawer like he's been bitten by a snake. He checks the pad of his index finger, a clean slice across the skin. As he puts pressure on it, blood wells up.
“Are you alright?” Joyce asks, fluttering nervously at his side for the unclear sound of pain.
“Just a papercut,” he says. For such a small thing, it sure can hurt. He considers what his mother asked, trying to remember when he took out the borrowed camera during their trip. He can’t recall it ever leaving the case.
“I think I forgot to use it," Will says, brain feeling fuzzy. "We didn’t end up taking any pictures.”
“That’s a shame. It would have been nice to capture some memories,” she says, looking over Will’s injured hand herself until the phone starts to ring. “Makes them harder to lose.”
Will nods absently. The small manual sharpener reveals itself beside the handset when his mom reaches to pick up the line.
“Hello?”
“Joyce, wonderful!” Owens greets. “Listen, I got that information you were after.”
Joyce holds the phone to her shoulder, watching as Will returns to the stairs and descends to his room, sharpener retrieved. Hopefully he tracks down a bandage for his finger while he's at it. She tucks herself into the far corner of the kitchen, bringing the receiver to her ear.
“Anything weird?”
“Nope. The whole family’s clean as a whistle. One Richard Tozier, born to Margaret and Wentworth on March 7th, 1969. They moved to Lenora Hills last May to expand Wentworth’s dental practice. Moderately wealthy with no shady income or affiliations. The kid was a bit of a rascal in school - got Honor Roll academically, demerits for disruptive behavior - but his official record’s spotless.”
That does sound like Richie. Joyce leans her head back against a cabinet in relief. She doesn’t know what she had expected Owens to find, but she had to ask after that day, with the way Richie became Jim-
She can't take chances. Anything strange has to be searched with a fine tooth comb, and there’s no finer tooth than a CIA contact.
“There was one thing, but we looked into it and nothing turned up, so-”
“What was it?”
Owens makes some defensive stuttering noises for a second, as though he considers telling her it's really nothing, but he remembers that won’t work with her. Joyce Byers is not the sort to let a fleeting comment slide.
“It’s where they lived before California,” he reluctantly tells her. “Richie’s hometown was an area of interest on one of the old project files from the mid-fifties. There was dissent about the cause of unexplainable events from around those years, but other than a string of child disappearances and some old town legends, there was nothing concrete to suggest a serious, otherworldly threat. The investigation was closed by the turn of the decade.”
Joyce remembers the marks on Richie’s face at the airport. He had brushed them off with a light joke about trying to take candy from one tough baby, and it had passed Joyce’s original bullshit filter because Will was unharmed. Surely he would have told her if anything went wrong?
A sudden change of plan. Failing to call any earlier than one AM. Will's inability to meet her eyes after their reunion hug.
“Listen, Joyce, I don’t want you to worry over someone else's paranoia. Back then, we had plenty of investigations into a lot of small towns with low media coverage, as a precaution. I could give you a dozen other names just like it, and a dozen other families like this one whose connections are purely circumstantial.”
She scrubs her hand over her forehead, pressing hard. “What was the uh- the name of the town? Richie’s hometown?”
“Give me a second here,” Owens mumbles, shuffling papers. “That would be...yeah, it’s a place called Derry. Derry, Maine.”
Joyce closes her eyes, relief crushed by the returning weight of concern. Her son’s detour may not have been as innocent as she was led to believe. The coincidence is too great, considering everything else she knows. Will happens to meet a boy who happens to look exactly like Mike, who happens to be from this weird town, where Will happens to go without warning and one of them happens to come home all banged up after abandoning communication for a full day?
Please. She's been a mother for eighteen years, not eighteen minutes.
“Why did you want to know?” Owens asks, mystified.
“I thought it would sound familiar,” she says, keeping her voice free of her growing certainty that there's trouble brewing. “Richie must have mentioned it. I’ve got dinner on the stove, so I’ll let you go.”
“Alright. You know you can call me, if anything happens.” That's almost funny.
“Yes, thank you. You’ve been great.” Joyce makes the goodbye quick, dropping the phone to the counter behind her once the call ends. She takes a deep breath, resisting the urge to approach Will’s closed bedroom door and make sure he's in there.
It’s starting, her gut whispers. Joyce tries to break the feeling down, tries to escape it, but it doesn't let her go, like all the times before when she knew- she just knew that something was wrong. But there's often no time for fear. There's no room for doubt. Joyce's hands curl into fists as she looks forward, to the fight sure to happen in their future.
Something is starting, she accepts. And when we end it this time, it'll be for good.