Chapter Text
September came with a thunderstorm to end all thunderstorms. Chris and Henry sat inside Chris’s new house in Portland, watching the rain come pouring down.
Multiple families had moved out of Derry after the murders. Chris’s was one of them. His parents were kind enough to let Henry stay for a few weeks, until his mother and grandmother got everything situated for him to move in with them. In fact they wouldn’t hear otherwise. They were both so pleased that the two of them were talking again.
It was going to be awkward for Henry, he knew, but if things got bad, which he doubted in the first place, Henry would always have a place here.
They had been unpacking all day and getting things ready for their first day of senior year tomorrow, and now the two of them were sitting on the couch, eating takeout pizza while his parents were setting up their bedroom. Henry didn’t hesitate to make a joke about christening the new house. Chris punched him. God he’d missed that little shit so much.
He was getting better every day. Not going back to the boy he knew three years ago, Chris didn't think that was possible, but he was smiling more, flinching less. The nightmares still sucked. Henry’s guilt at the things he’d done while influenced by IT. Memories of that voice ever-present in his head. The fear that had been flowing through the both of them as Henry typed the letter and Chris soaked Henry’s bloody clothes in gasoline. The two of them dragging Oscar Bowers' body into the kitchen, propping him up in the chair at the kitchen table. Striking the match. How quickly it all had burned. How cold the river was and how desperate they were to get the smell of smoke out of their hair.
There were days where it seemed like Henry missed his dad, where the guilt ate him up, but Chris was there to help him through it. The details of the whole thing were getting fuzzier and fuzzier with time.
Chris looked over at Henry, smiling as he thought about how lucky he was.
“You’re being gay again, Chris,” Henry said, taking another bite of pizza as he flipped through a stack of VHS movies.
“Oops, my bad. My skin just secretes it. You know, it’s a very serious, very terminal condition.”
Henry rolled his eyes, very clearly trying not to smile. He looked up and down the hall, rudely shh-ing Chris when he tried to ramble on about the terrifying rate at which homosexuality was spreading through America. There were no sounds except for rain on the windows and his parents in the bedroom: cardboard unboxing sounds and oh, Roger, would you look at this? Remember when…
Henry said, “Okay,” and turned around, leaning forward and planting a kiss right on Chris’s lips. And then another one. And another one. And one more that lasted so long Chris might have passed out from lack of oxygen if Henry hadn’t pulled back with pink cheeks and a stupid grin.
“God, you’re such a tease, Henry.”
“Well, I don’t think you’d want me doing what I really wanna with your parents just on the other side of that wall.”
Chris cleared his throat, his face heating up. “Have you picked a movie yet?”
Henry shrugged. “Wizard of Oz?” Chris shook his head. “The Shining? Nope, definitely not. ”
“Okay what about Indiana Jones? Or The Outsiders? C’mon you love The Outsiders. You’ve absolutely got a thing for Soda.”
Henry glared at him. “You’ve got a thing for Soda.”
“I think everyone’s got a thing for Soda,” Chris said. “What about The Birds?”
Henry paused, considering. “Fine,” he said, like he was making a diplomatic decision to end the Cold War. “The Birds will have to do.” He got up and put it in, sat back down with another slice of pizza. He swore Henry had a bottomless pit for a stomach.
Chris leaned back and Henry yawned, as wide and dramatic as a cat. Stretched his arm over his head and around Chris’s shoulders. Chris just smirked, shaking his head.
“What’s so funny, huh?”
“Nothin’,” Chris said, smiling to himself as the opening credits played. They watched the movie, Chris teasing Henry about Rod Taylor. The two of them ended up finishing the entire pizza by themselves, much to his parents' dismay. They left, went out to get some dinner the two boys wouldn’t eat and to the hardware store, leaving he and Henry alone with the storm and Hitchcock to keep them company. And if Henry inched a little closer after each crack of thunder shook the house, well, that was for the two of them to know.
He was lucky. Really really lucky. Or maybe luck had nothing to do with it. Maybe someone was watching over them. He’d like to believe so. If there could be a darkness as terrible and complete as It, then why couldn’t the opposite be true. What else could have told him to leave his house when he did? Or how to save his best friend? How else could he have known how to burn a house to the ground and get away with it?