#it x reader

Twenty-seven years is everything to them.

You measure the time in doorways and lullabies. In the way different cities smell in the rain. In the number of times you have to buy a new pair of sensible shoes because the old ones have worn through.

You measure it in little faces that blur as you move on.

You measure it in the infrequent, unmistakable times when you feel his light twitch in the deep.

You don't stay anywhere long.

You never do.

You go where you're called; letters passed between sisters, whispered recommendations at PTA meetings, chance encounters in grocery store aisles.

"Best nanny we've ever had," they say. "The children sleep for you. They listen to you."

They never remember your name for long after you're gone.

The kids remember, for a while.

Some longer than others.

Long enough.

You're in Boston when you feel the first tug.

You've been nannying for a pair of brothers whose parents live in a brownstone near the Common. The younger one, Toby, has nightmares about the drains; you hum over his bed until the whispering in the pipes hushes. The older likes to tell scary stories to his friends over the phone at night. You listen, amused, as he gets the details wrong and the rhythm right.

The tug comes one rainy afternoon in late autumn, when the sky is the color of dishwater and the trees have already surrendered most of their leaves.

You're sitting on a park bench while the boys tear around the playground. You've adjusted your umbrella to just the right angle so it shields your knitting but lets the drizzle dust your boots.

Then your stomach flips.

It's not Derry.

Not yet.

But it's adjacent. The same flavor of fear, the same metallic tang of a memory trying to force itself through a crack.

You look up.

Across the path, under a dripping elm, a man stands with his hands in the pockets of his coat, talking to a film crew.

He's in his late thirties.

Tall.

Hair thinning a little at the temples.

He has familiar eyes.

You know his walk even now, even lengthened into adult strides.

You know his voice even without the stutter; it's buried in the cadence, in the way he pauses between sentences like he's still expecting his own mouth to betray him.

Bill Denbrough.

He's doing some promo taping, you realize, for a film adaptation of one of his books. The crew laughs at something he says. The director gestures. A PA checks his watch.

Bill glances away from them.

His gaze skims the park.

For a second, it catches on you and the boys.

On your umbrella.

On your face.

His expression shifts.

Confusion.

Recognition.

Loss.

You feel the blood oath in him like a distant ache, a scar under the skin he doesn't remember getting.

His eyes narrow.

He takes a half-step toward you.

"Mr. Denbrough?" the director calls. "We need to reset the shot."

He looks away.

The line snaps.

He nods and goes back to work.

You lift a hand.

Just a little.

Just enough for him to see, if he happens to look back.

He doesn't.

You smile anyway.

The boys shout for your attention.

You close the umbrella and go push them on the swings, humming under your breath to keep the drains quiet.

The tug fades.

The cycle ticks forward.

You see Beverly in Chicago.

You're nannying for a little girl named Mariah whose mother works long hours at a design firm in the Loop. Your days are full of finger paints and park visits and stern talks with radiators that hiss a bit too hungrily at night.

One evening, Mariah's mother comes home with a stack of mood boards and a headache.

"We have a consultant flying in," she groans, kicking off her heels. "Hotshot from New York. Structural genius. I just hope she's not a nightmare to work with."

"Hotshots usually are," you say.

She laughs.

The next morning, you take Mariah downtown to meet her mother for lunch. You hold her hand as you cross the street, guiding her through rivers of people in coats and briefcases.

You feel it before you see her.

A familiar spark.

The taste of cigarette smoke and steel and river water.

You look up.

Bev walks out of a revolving door with a portfolio under her arm.

Her hair is shorter than you remember it as a girl, sharp and chic, dyed a rich copper that catches the city light. She wears a good coat, good boots, a scarf that tries and fails to hide the faint mark on her throat she doesn't remember getting from a sewer.

She's older now.

She carries herself like someone who built herself from splinters and refuses to apologize for the cracks.

Her wrist bears a faint scar where a shard of porcelain once bit in.

Her eyes skim the crowd.

They pass over you.

Pause.

Backtrack.

She frowns.

You smile.

"Bev!" Mariah's mother waves from the top of the steps. "Over here!"

Beverly turns to her, smile snapping into place. They air-kiss, talk about load-bearing walls and impossible clients. Their voices blur into the city noise.

Mariah tugs your coat.

"Can I have a hot dog?" she asks.

"After we say hello," you say.

Beverly's gaze flicks your way again.

It lingers this time.

Her brows draw together, like she's chasing a smell she can't quite name.

Your umbrella is hooked over your arm.

It hasn't rained all week.

You give a little nod.

She nods back.

Polite.

Perplexed.

She reaches for her lighter.

A man's hand appears from the side, holding one out for her instead.

You don't have to see his face to know what he is.

The way he moves.

The way her shoulders flinch almost imperceptibly when his fingers brush her wrist.

Tom Rogan isn't Derry-made.

He's just human.

Sometimes that's enough.

Bev laughs at something he says, a shred too high.

Your lights hum.

Not yet, you think. Not now.

You're not here for him.

You're here for Mariah, whose dreams smell of deep water and the thin ice on the river.

You turn away.

Behind you, Beverly lights her cigarette.

For a second, as the smoke curls up, you feel something in her reach for you; a little girl in a stinking bathroom, a teenager on a trash mountain, a woman who once drove steel into the head of an ancient thing because you told her she could.

She shakes it off.

Tom puts a hand on her back.

You go buy a hot dog and warn the pigeons not to steal from Mariah's fingers, your umbrella resting beside you like a folded wing.

Ben finds you first.

You're not sure if he knows it.

Houston, a decade or so into the drift.

You're looking after a boy who's afraid to sleep because of the shadows at the edge of his room. His father is a contractor working on a new high-rise downtown, a sleek glass thing that wants to scrape the sky.

They're short a nanny for the day, the schedule tangled, the boy clingy. So when his father realizes he has to run to the site, you come along, small hand wrapped in yours.

The building is a skeleton when you step into it—rebar bones, concrete ribs, the windows not yet set in their sockets. Men in hard hats move through the structure like busy little blood cells.

Ben stands in the middle of it, blueprints rolled under his arm, pointing up at nothing and describing what will be there.

He's tall now.

Broad-shouldered.

The baby fat melted away into something handsome, lines of his face sharpened into a man's. His hair is cut neat, his shirt impeccable. There's a curve to his mouth that wasn't there when he was twelve, a kind of self-consciousness turned to quiet confidence.

He laughs at something the foreman says.

The sound turns your head all the way.

He stops mid-gesture when he sees you.

Just for a second.

His eyes widen.

Not in recognition.

Not exactly.

In...relief.

Like he'd been afraid of something and didn't know it until he saw you standing there with your umbrella, a kid peeking from behind your coat.

The little boy tucks closer to your side.

"Is he the boss?" he whispers.

"Of the blueprints," you say. "Not of the cranes."

The boy squints. "He looks familiar," he says.

You smile faintly.

"Some people do," you say.

Ben excuses himself from the group.

He walks over.

His steps are slower than Bill's, more cautious, as if he's afraid he'll scare you away.

"I... I'm sorry. Hi," he says.

Your heart gives the strangest little twist.

"Hello," you say.

He licks his lips.

"Have we...uh..." He shakes his head. "You just...you look..."

"Old-fashioned?" you supply.

He huffs out a startled laugh.

"Familiar," he says instead.

"Maybe we've crossed paths," you say. "Small world. Smaller towns."

"Yeah," he says slowly. "Yeah, maybe."

The boy at your side peers up at him.

"My room is scary," he tells Ben, apropos of nothing. "She makes it not scary."

Ben's smile softens.

"You've got a good nanny, then," he says.

The boy nods vigorously.

"You should keep her around," Ben says, eyes flicking to you again.

"Oh, I don't stay very long," you say lightly. "I never do."

He studies you like you're a blueprint he's trying to make sense of.

"You from around here?" he asks.

"Not really," you say. "I just...go where I'm needed."

Something in that phrase snags.

He looks like it jogs something for him, some echo of a conversation in a sewer, on a trash heap, in a town he doesn't remember.

"Thank you for taking care of him," he says, after a beat. His voice has gone oddly tender. He nods toward the boy. "There's...not enough of that in the world."

"It's what I do," you say.

He hesitates.

Then, impulsively, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small, smooth stone. It's darker than the one you gave him, but you feel the memory of it; the rock fight, the blood on his knuckles, the way Bev's arm swung true.

"I found this on site," he says. "Don't know why I kept it. Just...liked the shape." He offers it to the boy. "Here. Maybe it'll help."

The boy takes it reverently.

You see a flicker of the tubby kid with the big heart in the man's eyes, the one who once kissed a catatonic girl awake with a poem.

Ben smiles at you one last time.

"Nice to meet you," he says.

"You too, Benjamin," you say.

You shouldn't use his full name.

You do anyway.

He flinches.

"How'd you..." he starts.

You lift your umbrella.

"It's on the plans," you say.

He laughs, a little shaken.

You leave before he can ask more.

As you walk away, you feel him watching you, puzzled and strangely comforted, like a part of him believes some guardian angel he doesn't remember has just checked in and stamped his building pass.

The cycle hums louder.

You glimpse Eddie on a freeway.

You're nannying for a family outside New York this time, in a suburb so perfect it feels like a set. The daughter, Lily, is scared of her own asthma, every wheeze an apocalypse. You gently teach her the difference between fear and breath, humming in rhythm with her inhaler.

You're driving her back from a doctor's appointment when you hit traffic.

"Car crash," Lily says matter-of-factly from the back seat. "Mom says people drive like idiots."

"Your mom's not wrong," you say.

You inch forward.

Red and blue lights flash ahead.

Two cars twisted around each other, the aftermath already being swept to the side. EMTs move with practiced briskness.

You feel it.

Sharp, sudden.

The crack of a blood oath snapping like a dry twig.

It sucks the air out of your lungs.

For a second, you can't breathe.

The paramedics load a man onto the stretcher.

You can't see his face.

You can feel his fear, though, bubbling and sharp and oddly familiar; phobias and risk analyses and a lifetime of trying to control what can't be controlled.

You feel his light flicker.

Then go out.

Very quietly.

Very far away, something in Derry rolls over and sighs in its sleep.

Lily leans forward between the seats.

"Is he okay?" she asks.

You grip the wheel.

"Yes," you say.

You're not sure whether you're lying.

You see Richie on a TV before you see him in person.

He's everywhere, for a while.

Clips of a stand-up special. Cameos in talk shows. A voiceover on a cartoon that makes Lily and her friends howl with laughter.

He's refined the running mouth into something sharp and profitable.

Onstage, he's all swagger and timing.

Offstage, the cameras catch him sometimes thinking he's not being filmed; eyes dark, smile gone, shoulders sagging.

He talks about Derry exactly once on air.

"You ever going back to your hometown?" the host asks, leaning in, audience murmuring.

Richie snorts.

"Why?" he says. "I already survived it once."

The audience laughs.

Harder than the line deserves.

He smiles for them.

The smile doesn't reach his eyes.

You watch from a hotel room.

The storm chases your fingertip on the glass as you trace the outline of a town on a window that isn't there.

He's in Los Angeles when you finally cross paths.

You've been called in by a producer whose kid won't sleep through the night. The house is a sleek, glass-and-steel thing in the hills, full of sound stages and scripts and empty liquor bottles.

The producer invites friends over one night.

Industry types.

Actors.

Directors.

A stand-up comic who arrives late, sunglasses on even though the sun's gone down.

He steps into the kitchen and stops dead.

You're at the sink, washing dishes, humming.

His glasses hide his eyes.

You don't need to see them.

You feel the jolt.

"Hey," he says slowly.

"Hello, Richie," you say.

He barks a laugh.

"Okay, that's creepy," he says. "We met at the front door or something? I am so bad with faces, no offense—"

"We haven't," you say.

Not like this.

"You look like my third-grade teacher," he says, squinting. "And my...babysitter? Maybe? And..."

His voice trails off.

He tears the glasses off.

His eyes are wide.

"Do I know you?" he asks.

The room's noise recedes.

You could lie.

You always do.

This time you say, "Probably not in any way that makes sense. I take care of kids. I've been doing it a long time."

He leans on the counter like he suddenly needs the support.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, that tracks. You've got that...energy."

"What, nagging?" you say lightly.

He huffs.

"'Don't put that in your mouth, you don't know where it's been' kind of thing," he says.

You raise a brow.

"Sound advice," you say.

He snorts.

Then sobers.

"Do you ever get the feeling," he says, too casually, "that you...lost a summer somewhere? Like you did something...huge...and then you just...forgot to write it down?"

You look at him.

He looks back, trying to make a joke of it, failing.

"All the time," you say.

He swallows.

"Why does it feel like you know what I'm talking about?" he asks.

"Because," you say, "you have good instincts."

The producer calls his name.

He startles.

"Gotta go be funny," he says.

He hesitates.

"Nice to meet you," he adds.

"You too," you say.

He disappears into the living room in a crackle of one-liners.

You stand at the sink, water running, heart thumping in a rhythm that's starting to sound like rain on Derry's streets.

You see Stan in a synagogue in Atlanta.

Not for long.

You feel him first, sitting with his parents, suit a little too tight, hair slicked back. He's older; he wears success like an uncomfortable coat. His light is neat, controlled, wrapped in routines and rituals.

He looks happy.

Mostly.

There's a tightness around his mouth that wasn't there when he was twelve.

You're in the back, wrangling two fidgety kids whose grandparents insist they attend service. Your umbrella rests against the pew.

Stan turns his head.

Your eyes meet.

Recognition hits him like a slap.

He goes pale.

You see it; the flash of a sewer, a pit, a clown, a woman with an umbrella, a blood oath.

All at once.

Too fast.

Too bright.

His lips move around a word.

"Nanny," he whispers.

His wife touches his arm.

"Stan?" she murmurs.

He startles.

The vision shatters.

He looks again.

You're just a woman in a sensible dress with a couple of kids who don't belong to him squirming at her side.

He forces a smile.

Sings the next line of the prayer with everyone else.

Your stomach sinks.

You know the shape of what's coming later, in a bathtub with water that runs red.

You wish you didn't.

You don't see Mike until you're almost home.

He stayed.

Of course he did.

You wander for twenty-six years and some change. Ohio. California. Texas. Illinois. The cities blur. The kids don't.

You ride your umbrella through different weathers and never quite escape the taste of Derry on the wind.

The closer the years tick toward twenty-seven, the louder the storm gets.

Balloons start to appear in places they shouldn't.

Red ones, sometimes.

Other colors too, just to be cruel.

You catch yourself dreaming in circus colors again.

You wake with the taste of cotton candy and rust on your tongue.

You feel him stir.

Not fully.

Yet.

Like someone turning over in sleep, grumbling, sniffing the air.

He smells you long before he smells the children.

You smell him back.

Your deadlights burn low and hot behind your eyes.

You start humming the old songs again.

It's late summer when you drift back into Maine.

You didn't intend to yet.

The umbrella did.

Fussy thing.

You touch down on the side of Highway 2, grass brushing your boots, trees crowding the road. The air smells like pine and rain.

A pickup truck rumbles past, then slows, brake lights flaring.

It pulls over onto the shoulder.

You feel the shape in the driver's seat before you see him.

Mike.

Older.

Stronger.

Carrying the town in his bones like always.

He leans out the window.

"Need a lift?" he calls.

You walk up to the open window, umbrella hooked over your arm.

"You shouldn't pick up hitchhikers, sir," you chide.

He smiles.

"Well, my Granddad use to say there are exceptions," he says. "You look like one of 'em."

His eyes search your face.

You feel him feel it; that tug, that something, deeper than memory, deeper than the fog that Derry lays over everyone who leaves.

"Have we...?" he starts.

You tilt your head.

"Once or twice," you say. "Here and there."

He nods slowly.

"Figured," he says. He taps the steering wheel. "You got somewhere to be?"

You look past him.

Down the road.

Toward a town that's already starting to taste like copper and sugar again.

"I do," you say.

He follows your gaze.

His smile fades.

"You... feel it too," he says quietly.

It's not a question.

"Storm's rolling in," you say.

He inhales.

Lets it out.

"Gonna be bad, isn't it?" he asks.

"Yes," you say. "But you won't be alone."

He studies you for a long moment.

"Who are you?" he asks.

You think of a sewer.

A trash heap.

A clown.

A promise.

"A nanny," you say. "Yours, once. Theirs, always. His...complication."

It's not an answer he can use.

He laughs anyway.

"Sounds about right," he says. He nods at the passenger seat. "Get in. I'll take you into town."

You do.

You ride into Derry with him as the clouds gather, the old familiar streets unspooling in front of you, the storm humming under your skin.

The town hasn't changed.

The town has changed completely.

You roll past the Barrens, the library, the streets where you once walked a clutch of kids between you and the drains.

"Something's coming," Mike says quietly, fingers tapping the rhythm of his own fear on the wheel.

"Yes," you say.

He glances at you.

"You...gonna stick around this time?" he asks.

You smile.

"Oh, I wouldn't miss it," you say.

Below you, under the streets, under the bones and pipes and rust and rot, something ancient opens its eyes in the dark.

It smells rain.

It smells old blood.

It smells you.

And, faintly, no matter how far they ran, no matter how badly the town tried to make them forget, it smells six others, scattered across the map, hearts starting to pound in time with a promise they once made over muddy hands and cut palms.

You feel him grin.

You grin back.

Toxic.

Inevitable.

Yours.

His.

Always.

🎈🩸🤡🎈🩸🤡🎈🩸🤡🎈🩸🤡🎈🩸🤡

Not the sharp fanged, frantic hunger of the first days after a long sleep. Not yet. This is the heavy ache in the core of him, the hollow of a stomach that remembers what it likes and has been denied it for far too long.

The lair comes back to him in pieces.

Weight first. A mountain of junk pressing down from above, metal and wood and cloth and bone. His hoard. His church.

Then light. A low, wrong glow seeping from cracks in the stone, the last crumbs of deadlights he spilled before he curled in on himself. They pulse once in greeting, sleepy eyes opening.

Then sound.

Derry.

Breathing.

He stretches.

Limbs lengthen, joints bend in new directions, the clown shape cracking and reforming, deciding how closely it needs to imitate meat today. Fingers like spider legs brush the ceiling and send a cascade of bottles and coins rattling down. Above, in pipes and drains, mice scatter.

He inhales.

Deep.

Everything stops.

Because he smells you.

Faint at first, threaded through rot and rust and old terror. A hint of storm. Soap. That particular human warmth he has always associated with you, clean laundry and ink and the shadow of something older underneath.

He breathes again and lets it fill him.

You have been here.

Not just in the world.

In his town.

In his pantry.

His.

He told himself you would come back. Curled in his nest in the last sliver of waking, your taste still in his mouth, he promised himself that. But time bends in his sleep. Towns change. People rot. Toys break. Favorites drift away.

You did not.

“Governess,” he croons, voice scraping along the lair walls.

The echo comes back distorted.

His grin splits his face.

He uncoils, unfolding out of the nest like something dragged out of a throat.

His suit waits where he dropped it twenty seven years ago, bells tangled with ribbons and shoes. He shrugs into it and lets it crawl into the current idea of a clown the town holds. It fits differently now. He is leaner. Hungrier. Sharper. The ruff tightens like a hand around his throat.

Then he breathes the way only he can.

Not through lungs.

Through everything.

He spreads himself through pipes and dirt, up between floorboards, down into oil slick puddles. His awareness pours along drains like water.

Children.

He feels them first.

Bright little lights, each a different color and strength. Quick and flickering, steady and stubborn. Fear and sweetness and boredom, all the flavors he remembers.

He sifts them.

And there you are, threaded through them all.

Your hum on a little boy’s breath as he sleeps beside a paper boat.

Your storm smell in the lungs of a fast talking twelve year old whose mouth outruns his fear.

Your soft, exhausted warmth in the pillow of a girl who pretends she is grown and is still so small.

He recognizes them now. Your touch has flavored them.

Bill. Georgie. Eddie. Richie. Stan. Ben. Beverly.

Mike, out on the edge of town, steadier than the rest. Less drenched in you, but brushed by your magic all the same, like you hummed his name once in your sleep.

You have tucked them. All of them. Around yourself.

The realization makes a low, hungry sound tear out of his chest.

You are not just back.

You have been busy.

He pulls back into the lair until he is only one clown shape in a cathedral of junk.

His tongue slides along his teeth.

You are different.

He can feel it in the way your scent sits on the town. Not only you on them, your lullabies in their dreams. There is him in there too, in the seams. Deadlight threaded through your magic. A twist of Elsewhere where you have tucked the sharpest edges of their nightmares.

You kept the piece he left in you.

You have been using it.

He laughs.

It booms through the chamber and shakes dust from broken beams.

“Favorite,” he purrs.

The junk listens. Somewhere, a bicycle bell chimes.

He remembers the last time he saw you here. Bare thighs over his shoulders, your taste on his tongue, your hands in his hair. The way you shook, the way you opened, the look in your eyes when he slid into your head and took his piece.

You let him.

That matters.

He can feel the hollow of it still in you. The ghost of his voice in the back of your skull. The way you flinch at popcorn and balloons even in towns that do not have him under their streets.

He missed it.

He will not say that.

He missed your storms and your sharp tongue, the way you scolded him while you straightened his lair, tucking blankets over glass and making paths through his piles. He missed having something in this town that was not food.

He presses his face to a lower grate and inhales Derry’s breath.

Rain.

Exhaust.

Laundry soap.

And, faintly, your shampoo.

He closes his eyes and lets an image rise.

You, older. Lines at the corners of your eyes, hair pinned up and tugged loose by small hands. Skirt hitched from kneeling to tie shoes. The umbrella still at your back, still twitching toward the drains.

He groans.

He wants to see what twenty seven years have done to your spine and your magic and that mouth. He wants your face when you realize he is awake. When you realize what he has been tasting in your little charges.

He follows your scent.

Denbrough.

A certain house with peeling paint and a humming basement.

You smell like sugar and pencils and damp wool. Georgie is near, six year old light bouncing. Bill flickers upstairs, already edged with guilt.

You are humming.

He cannot hear the tune from here, only the way it smooths their fear.

You still make his meals harder to catch.

You still season them better.

He lashes his awareness sideways to check the others. Richie’s shrill laughter wrapped in your scent. Eddie’s apartment, thick with Lysol and your exasperated affection. Stan’s house, where your song fights sermons. Ben’s lonely rented room. Beverly’s bathroom, wallpaper clinging to your hum. Mike’s barn, your magic brushing his strong spine, respectful and distant.

You have laid a circle of children around yourself.

In his pantry.

Where he sleeps.

Where he eats.

Where he keeps his toys.

He pushes away from the grate, bells chiming softly.

“You came back to me,” he whispers. Not a question. A fact.

His suit needs fresh blood. Fresh screams. Fresh jokes.

He will have them.

There is a sequence. Storm. Boat. Drain. Arm.

But before that, he wants to say hello.

You are probably making rules in your head already, drawing lines on maps, promising you will not bargain, will not let him into your head or your bed or your bones. As if you did not do all of that already.

He knows how your fear is shaped and how your loneliness curls in the dark. He knows you missed him.

He missed you too.

He cannot wait to feel your magic slam against his again.

“Favorite,” he sings, echo rolling up through the tunnels.

Somewhere, a sink gurgles. A light flickers. A little boy with a paper boat shivers without knowing why.

You pause in your humming.

He feels it.

You heard him.

His smile widens. Hunger sharpens.

Food is everywhere.

You are dessert.

He steps away from the drain and starts up toward the surface.

“Ready or not, nanny bird,” Pennywise murmurs, “here I come.”

You are with the wrong boy when it happens.

You know that for the rest of your life.

The rain starts before lunch. Big, sloppy drops that smack the windows and turn Derry’s streets into gray rivers.

You are halfway into your coat when your landlady knocks, breathless.

“Phone for you. Some Mrs Kasbrak.”

Of course.

You take the call in the hall, cord twined in your fingers.

“Hello?”

“Is this the babysitter?” Mrs Kaspbrak does not ask. She demands.

“It is,” you say, already bracing.

“We are still on for today? You are coming?”

You glance at the rain streaked glass.

You had planned on the Denbroughs. Georgie with his paper boats, Bill with his too old eyes. You had pictured their messy kitchen, your humming turning the storm into background noise.

The umbrella in the corner rattles, restless.

“I was supposed to be at…”

“Eddie cannot go outside in this,” she barrels on. “He absolutely cannot. The rain makes him more likely to get sick. Damp air, mildew, mold. I need someone here to monitor him, to make sure he does not run around like those other boys getting infected.”

The last word bursts out of her like a cough.

You pinch the bridge of your nose.

“I do not think…” you start.

“I will pay you,” she says quickly. “Extra. Double. I will call your other clients myself. This is important. Life or death of my boy.”

Behind you the umbrella snaps open with a soft thump, fabric billowing. The handle swings toward the door. Toward the street. Toward the Denbrough house.

You grit your teeth and hum. The umbrella shivers and fights the hook.

“Miss?” Mrs Kaspbrak snaps. “Are you listening?”

You think of Eddie, small and anxious, already convinced he is one breath from death. The way his fear spikes whenever it rains because he has been taught that damp equals danger.

You think of Georgie, soft and bright and brave, probably at the window right now, delighted by the storm.

You feel the wrong hum under the town, deep and low.

Some days there is no right answer.

“Of course,” you say. “I will be there in twenty minutes.”

You hang up and face the umbrella.

It is fully open, handle pointed like an accusing finger.

“Do not start,” you say.

It jerks, stubborn.

“I know,” you mutter. “All right? I know.”

You snap it closed harder than necessary and step out into the rain.

Eddie’s building smells like Lysol, boiled vegetables, and worry.

“I am so glad you could come,” Mrs Kaspbrak gushes, ushering you in like triage. “He has been wheezing all morning. Rain just gets in his lungs. Sit, sit.”

Eddie waits in the hall, sneakers on, inhaler in hand, face falling when he sees you instead of open sky.

“Aw, man. Really?”

“Inside,” his mother snaps. “You heard the weather report. Mold spores are everywhere.”

“It is just water,” Eddie mutters.

“It is sickness,” she corrects.

Her eyes flick to you for agreement.

“We can make inside fun,” you say mildly. “Cards. Board games. Laundry folding races.”

“Kill me now,” Eddie groans, trudging to the living room.

The umbrella twitches in your grip. You hang it up.

“You cannot let him near the windows,” his mother says low. “Or the door. Drafts. I will be back in a few hours. There is soup on the stove, but it needs to be reheated to at least…”

“I know how to boil soup,” you say, then soften your voice. “We will be fine.”

She hesitates, then leaves, heart still in the room.

Eddie flops onto the couch with his whole body.

“This blows.”

“Language,” you say automatically.

He scowls. “You are gonna make me do homework, are you not?”

“Maybe,” you say. “After you beat me at cards.”

His eyes light, then narrow. “Best two out of three.”

“Deal.”

You sit cross legged on the floor and start dealing, trying not to listen to the rain. It is not just rain. It presses through the town, sliding into every crack and drain.

He is riding it.

Waking with it.

Your skin prickles.

Eddie plays and complains. You lose once on purpose, win twice. He accuses you of cheating.

The storm drums on the glass.

You hum, soft and aimless, the old habit of pulling kids’ attention away from the cracks under their beds.

Eddie relaxes, a little.

You reach for a card.

The world snaps sideways.

No thunder. No flash. Just a high sound in the back of your skull that breaks.

You feel Georgie before you see anything.

Fear.

Bright and sharp and sudden, stabbing through your chest. The connection you have woven into him with afternoons and lullabies pulls taut like a wire.

Your breath catches.

“You okay?” Eddie asks, wary.

You do not answer.

The room blurs.

You are still on the floor with cards in your hand.

You are also in the rain in a too big coat, boots splashing along a curb.

You are looking down at a paper boat sailing through a gutter.

You are laughing.

He is laughing.

Georgie smells like you and wet wool and wax paper and fear he has no name for yet.

“Go on,” a voice croons from below.

You know that voice.

Pennywise.

You cannot see him, but you feel him. Coiled under the street, pressed up against the brick, eyes lit from inside. His hunger spikes when the boat skips away and Georgie’s panic rises.

Lost.

Ruined.

Big brother said not to go out.

Big brother trusted him.

The wire between you and Georgie pulls tight.

You grab for it.

Your hum leaps, out of Eddie’s apartment, through rain and plaster and skin.

“Georgie,” you whisper without meaning to.

Eddie frowns. “Why did you…”

You are not with him anymore.

You are standing over a gutter.

Under it.

Both.

“Hiya, Georgie.”

You have heard that greeting before. In other years. In other mouths. Sweet and sing song and cruel.

Fear spikes in Georgie, but it is the fear of being in trouble and losing the boat, not of monsters.

He sees the eyes.

Your stomach flips.

They hook into the part of Georgie you smoothed. The part that curls against the idea of monsters and trusts you to keep them away.

He reaches for that trust.

He thinks of you.

The light inside him flares.

Pennywise inhales, delighted.

He recognizes the flavor instantly.

Not Tommy.

Too young.

Different.

Seasoned the same way.

Nanny bird hum. Storm at the edges. Terror soaked in old magic.

Oh, there you are.

You feel the thought like teeth against bone.

“Do not,” you hiss in Eddie Kaspbrak’s living room as cards slip from your fingers.

Eddie flinches. “What? What did I do?”

You are drenched in Georgie’s yellow slicker.

“You got a real nice boat there,” Pennywise coos.

Curiosity tilts Georgie’s fear. Clown plus boat plus rain equals a story, not a threat.

You shove harder.

Your magic slams into the drain like a wave on rock. You cannot see him, only feel him, vast behind the painted face, pressed against the damp brick, teeth itching.

“You leave him alone,” you snarl.

Deep in the lair something laughs.

On the street the painted mouth twitches.

He hears you. Of course he does. You are braided into Georgie now.

“I am not a stranger,” he says, voice even sweeter. “We are friends, your Nanny and I. You smell like my favorite. That makes us close.”

You want to rip the asphalt up with your hands.

Your real body sits rigid on Eddie’s worn carpet, fingers digging into your palms.

“Nanny?” Eddie’s voice shakes.

You cannot answer. You are too busy trying to wrap power around a boy crouched at a curb.

“What is your name?” Georgie breathes.

You know the answer.

“Pennywise,” he purrs. “The Dancing Clown.”

Delight flares through Georgie. Dancing, clown, rain, boat. Good things.

You see the picture in his head, bright circus posters from books, distance between fear and fun closing.

“Georgie,” you whisper, forcing your voice into every drop. “Back away.”

His muscles twitch.

He almost does.

Pennywise feels it.

His smile thins.

“Oh, you are here,” he says, not to Georgie. To you. “I wondered how long you would take.”

You snarl. He ignores it.

“You want your boat back, do you not?”

“Yes, please,” Georgie says.

“Well, I have it,” Pennywise says. “Right here.”

You feel the boat between his fingers. You feel his hunger spike. Favorite. He could not have Tommy. You made sure and bled for it. You have carried that debt for twenty seven years.

Now here is Georgie.

Small.

Sweet.

Yours.

Seasoned in you.

Close enough.

“This is not part of the deal,” you hiss.

He laughs, out loud. Georgie only hears a clown’s chuckle.

“What deal?” Pennywise croons. “Old deals for old boys. New cycle, new rules, nanny bird.”

The wire between you and Georgie hums.

Reach, or not.

Trust, or run.

You know which way Derry leans.

He holds the boat out. Small hand, big glove.

Georgie reaches.

You hit the drain with everything you have.

Rain whips sideways. Water in the gutter surges back. Pipes bang. Lights flicker across town.

Your storm tears along the drain and slams into him. Brick cracks. Water boils. Your humming goes feral.

For a heartbeat you hurt him.

The clown shape flickers. Deadlights spit. He hisses, jerked sideways by your rage.

Then Georgie’s fingers brush waxed paper.

Contact.

He is faster.

He is always faster here.

Everything hits you at once.

Georgie’s triumph, I got it,

Shredded into white hot pain as teeth clamp around his arm. Too many teeth. Too much dark. The rip and the impossible loss. Your magic wraps, trying to pull, to hold.

He is already going.

Water and teeth and screaming and red.

The wire between you snaps.

Not clean.

Ragged.

You feel it tear through your chest. You feel Georgie’s light flicker, burn, vanish, then get snatched.

Not entirely gone.

Pulled down.

Into him.

You slam back into your own body like you have been dropped.

Cards fly. The room spins. There is a roar in your ears that might be the storm or your blood.

“Nanny?” Eddie cries. “Nanny, what…”

You cannot breathe.

Your hands claw at your own chest, trying to grab the wire that is not there anymore.

Under the town, he laughs. Panting a little. Blood on his face. Little arm between his teeth.

Favorite, he purrs in the crack he left in you.

He lets you taste it for a heartbeat. Georgie’s last fear, sparkling with trust in you, curdling when he realized you were not there. Your lullabies and promises laced through every bite.

“I will kill you,” you whisper.

You do not know if it is out loud.

The rain hammers.

Eddie grabs your sleeve.

“You are scaring me,” he says. “Stop, please, you are scaring me.”

You look at him.

At his wide eyes. His small hands. At the way your magic hums on him too, making him part of your circle.

You swallow the scream and the storm and everything except the vow burning in your throat.

“Sorry,” you say hoarsely. “I am sorry. It is all right, Eddie. I am here.”

He does not quite believe you. He clutches his inhaler like a charm.

You force your legs to steady.

“I need… to make a call. Stay here. Do not open the door. Do not…”

“Do not what?” he demands.

You look at the window. At the streaming rain. At the town.

“At least one of you,” you say quietly, “is going to make it out.”

He frowns.

There is no time to explain.

You check his breathing. You check the stove. You lie and tell yourself you will be right back.

You grab your umbrella, ignore the way it jerks toward the drains, and step out into the storm toward a house with peeling paint and a boy’s bedroom that will never be slept in again.

Every step, you feel him.

Fed.

Smug.

Satisfied.

He knew exactly what he was doing. Georgie smelled like you. He could not have Tommy, so he took the nearest substitute.

You raised his favorite flavor and handed it to him on a wax paper boat.

You are the nanny. You were supposed to keep monsters away.

You gave one a feast.

The town hums. The drains giggle. Your umbrella shakes in your hand.

You walk faster.

You are furious.

At him.

At Derry.

At yourself.

At the bargain that tied you to the thing under its streets.

You feel the old line you crossed with him burning under your skin. You feel a new one forming.

Whatever you were to him last time, favorite or toy or lover or accomplice, that lies with Georgie in the water.

He took a child that smelled like you.

Good.

Let him choke on it.

You are going to make sure of it.

🎈🩸🤡🎈🩸🤡🎈🩸🤡🎈🩸🤡🎈🩸🤡