Summer, 1993
-5 Years later-
"You've got to be fucking kidding me Eddie..."
Angrily, an eighteen year old Lydia Greystone brought her hands up to her face and wiped away the white hot tears that fell down her face. Mascara stained her cheeks that flushed a bright red, and her hands shook with not only fear but anger too. How could he? How could he do that to her after everything? They promised each other...
"Lyds..." a much older and much more handsome Eddie Kaspbrak crouched down in front of his crying girlfriend. Carefully, both of his hands found her own and held them as if it was second nature, which it was. "It's not a big deal."
"It's not a big deal, huh? We've been planning to go to college together in New York for two years Eds! And now you're saying it's not a big deal? We're supposed to be leaving in two days!"
"Babe, I gotta stay here with my Mom, she needs me."
"But what if I need you?" Her voice cracked, almost as if she would start crying at any second, "What happened to me, you, Richie and Stan living together? The four of us? We all got accepted in to NYU and we were supposed to go together! A-And now you're giving up on your dream because your Mom wants you to stay in Maine? Please tell me you're joking E, please just tell me you're messing with me."
"You know I can't."
"You'll be eight hours away, I'll never see you." The blonde wiped her eyes repeatedly in an attempt to stop any more tears from falling
"Lyds I don't know what else to say..." Eddie paused as he cautiously sat on the beaten up couch beside his girlfriend, he was afraid that she'd crack at any second and either cry or start hitting him, something which he knew she wouldn't do but he had never made her so upset before. There was no saying in what she might do to him. "Look... Why don't we think about our options here? Maybe you can stay here with me? Yeah... We could go to college here in Derry and we could live on campus together, this way we won't have to be apart babe. Nothing would have to change."
"I need things to change Eddie. I can't be in this town anymore. I have to go to New York with Stan and Richie."
All of the teens had forgotten Pennywise the clown a long time ago, he was nothing but a mere image in the back of their hands, long forgotten and thought to be imagined. But even if they had thought they'd forgotten, the feeling It left behind and what It put the town through still lingered in each and every one of them, and that was the thing that drew Lyds away from Derry. And from Eddie.
"Let's just think about this-"
"I get that you want to give everything up to stay in this town and be with your Mom, b-but I can't do that. I can't give up my dreams Eds."
"Not even for me?" The way he looked at her, with bloodshot teary brown eyes and a look of utter despair covering his whole face, it broke her heart. But the young girl knew that she needed to put herself first for once, even if she did love Eddie so much that it destroyed her.
"Not even for you..."
"Fuck." His head fell in his hands and silently, Eddie began to cry into his palms. He couldn't imagine being in Derry without her, the couple had been best friends since they were twelve and they'd been together since they were thirteen. The thought alone sickened him. Even with Bill and Ben and Mike by his side he'd still feel alone without her.
"Eddie..." Lyds sighed as she wrapped her small arms around his crying figure, "I love you."
"This is it, isn't it?" He spoke through his tears, "You're breaking up with me, five fucking years together and you're breaking up with me!"
"I'm not the one doing this Eddie, we were supposed to leave together-"
"Don't you get that I can't do that?" The Kaspbrak boy suddenly yelled, causing the much shorter girl to jump back in fear. He'd never yelled at her before.
Mutedly, Lyds climbed to her feet, grabbed her bag from the end of the couch and slipped Eddie's sweater from over her shoulders. Without even looking him in the eyes she handed the sweater back to him, threw her backpack over her shoulders and walked out of the empty house.
For a while the blonde girl walked down the street in silence, summer rain was casted down on her over and over again until the thin t-shirt and denim shorts she wore were soaked through. There was nothing left for her in Derry, in that moment she knew it.
She'd drifted away from Bill, Mike and Ben a few months earlier, she hadn't spoken to Bev in years, and now that Eddie was gone too, the pieces in the puzzle that was her life had all fallen into place. New York was the place she belonged, with Stan and Richie.
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"You're sure you've got everything you need?"
"Yes Uncle Sam..." Lyds rolled her eyes
"And you've got snacks for the trip and those cassettes I gave you because it's an eight hour trip and I know you're going to get bored since you've got to drive for so long-"
"Sam, you're seven years older than me. I get you're my uncle but you're acting like a grandma."
"Get in your car before I run you over with it." The older man laughed, ruffling his niece's hair with his left hand.
"Okay, okay."
The blonde lifted her backpack further into her shoulder as she made her way over to the rusted car. Before she could even reach the doors, Sam was stood back beside her.
"What now?" She asked
"You're sure you don't want to say goodbye to Eddie?"
"Why would I?" She shrugged, "Okay I really need to go Sam, I gotta pick up the boys and right now Stan's probably going ape shit about how late I am.
"Okay. Have a safe trip kiddo, I love you." The Brown haired boy called out as his niece climbed inside the car and waved him goodbye
"Love you too Sam!"
And with that Lydia Greystone turned out of the driveway and sped off down the street towards her new life with her two best friends, and without Eddie Kaspbrak.
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Hours passed by and it was midnight, joy division played softly from the speakers of the car and despite his not having a licence Richie had swapped with Lyds and drove the rust stained car through the rain.
In the back seat Stan sat upright with his curly hair covered with the hood of his jacket, and his chin rested atop of his best friends head. Lyds stretches out across two seats and slept with her head resting on Stan's chest. To the untrained eye the pair would've looked like a couple and if they'd never have met Eddie they most likely would've been, but Richie knew as he watched them both through the rear view mirror that it was only Lyds and Stan, his best friends.
"She okay back there?" Richie asked
"I think so." Stan replied, his hand gently brushed the hair from her face whilst his other arm lay still around her small figure. "She mumbled his name before."
"I can't believe he'd do this to her after everything. All for his fucking mother-" Richie briskly turned a corner causing his friends to slide across the backseat. Still, Lyds didn't wake up.
"He's a dipshit... I'd never-"
"I know Stan." Richie caught his eyes through the rear view mirror, "I know."
(You guys can decide what this means for yourseleves(For all you Stanstone shippers out there 😂 (me included)))
After that the friends drove in silence until at 2am they finally reached a motel where they decided to spend the night. After Stan ran inside and paid the woman at the front desk for a one night stay, Richie carried Lyds up to their room and Stanley grabbed everything they needed from the car.
As Lyds slept on one of the two beds in the room, Stan sat silently on the other and Richie sat at the desk against the wall across from Stan. The two gravely looked between one another.
"Should we wake her?"
"No, she doesn't need to know."
"But he called for her for a reason Richie, we can't just lie-"
"Stan, if you care about her in any way then you'll forget that that he ever called. You're not going to tell her and let her get hurt even more than she already is. I'm not gonna let you do that." Richie snapped
"You're right." He nodded, "If he really does come to New York I'll-"
"Kill him? Yeah me too." The Tozier boy chuckled and soon both of them were in soft fits of laughter.
"What are you guys doing?" Lyds spoke through her half awake state.
Suddenly Richie's phone began to ring from the night stand and hastily both of the boys grabbed for it before finally through a lot of tugging and fumbling, Richie managed to turn it off.
Thankfully, Lyds had already fallen back into a dreamless sleep by the time the ringing hand stopped.
"We tell her nothing! Okay? Nothing."
"Nothing." Stan nodded
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-15 hours later-
Finally after a lot of cursing on Richie's part, the three friends had found their new apartment with no help from Stan's map, and through a lot of bickering and laughing they'd began to decorate the living room.
Richie, suited out entirely with a pair of painters dungarees and a paint brush, ran around the room flicking light blue paint onto not only the walls, but also himself and both Lyds and Stan. The two blonde haired friends shrieked and frantically grabbed whatever they could as Richie continued his assault.
Hastily, Lyds hid behind Stan, using his tall figure as a human shield all the while Stan picked up the bucket of blue paint and hurled its contents at Richie.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me Stanley!" He yelled, now covered completely in blue paint.
"Oh fuck..." Stan mumbled, "Lyds?"
"Yeah?"
"Run!"
Faster than they ever had, the Greystone girl and the Uris boy ran around the room, dodging Richie and his blue handed grasp. However within a minute, Stan had slipped on the plastic covering the floor and fallen in the remaining paint, whilst Richie had grabbed ahold of Lydia in a bear hug, coating her entire body with blue paint.
"Asshole, let go!" She shrieked
Stan couldn't even help, all he could do was laugh from his place in the ground, where Richie and Lyds soon ended up lay beside him.
"Hey, did you guys ever think that five years ago this is where we'd be?"
"No way. I thought I'd still be stuck in Derry with my Aunt."
"What about you Uris? Where'd you think you'd be?"
"I knew I'd probably be with you guys I just never thought it's be in New York."
"Me either..." Lyds sighed, her head fell to rest on Richie's shoulder, "If I'm honest I thought you'd be dead by now Richie."
"What? Why?"
"I'm sorry but me too dude, you know how clumsy you are and you're kinda still a trash mouth. If we hadn't done it to you someone else would've!"
"Nothing but bitches-"
"Shit, someone's at the door."
With an annoyed sigh, Lyds dragged herself away from her friends and with a pause to step around the paint covering the floor, she headed to the apartment door.
"Who's even at the door?" Richie turned to Stan from where he sat, "No one knows where we live."
"Except-"
"Fuck!"
With a bright smile on her pink lips and blue paint on her clothes and in her hair, the freckled girl opened the door only to be greeted by the sight of her curly haired ex boyfriend, Eddie Kaspbrak. He stared at her with a look that couldn't be described, practically everything he owned was placed on the ground around him.
"Eddie? What are you doing here?"
"Why are you covered in paint?"
"I asked first." She cut in
"I told my Mom that I couldn't stay in Derry, that my dream was to be here in New York with you and the guys. I couldn't just leave things the way we did L..." he stumbled across his words, "My mom drove me here and dumped me and all of my stuff outside. I should've never listened to anything she said."
"My friends and I are decorating." The blonde spoke, ignoring everything he'd told her and instead she answered his earlier question.
"Can I come in?"
"There's a password dipshit!" Richie suddenly burst into view behind her, Stan was at the girl's other side
"Uh- Is it something to do with my Mom by any chance?"
"No it's you can't come in bitch."
"Guys, please just hear me out. I fucked up, I know, I shouldn't have listened to anything my Mom told me to do but I thought I had to because- Well, she's my mom you know? But I never meant to hurt anyone." Eddie's brown eyes fell on Lyds, "Especially someone I love."
"You fucked up Eddie." She bit her lip
"I know." He shook his head, "But I realised I couldn't give up my dream, and I realised that... my dream isn't college in New York. It's all of us in New York together...
it's me and you L."
"Fuck you Eddie." The short girl spoke before she stepped forwards and pressed her lips against his, "I still love you, fucking dipshit."
With that, she turned on her heel and headed back into the living room to carry on decorating, Stan followed quickly behind her.
"What just happened?" Both Eddie and Richie spoke simultaneously.
"Get back in here and help us decorate, assholes!" Lyds yelled from the other room
"Welcome back Eds..." The Tozier boy sighed
For the whole night until four in the morning, the four newly reacquainted friends sat together drinking shitty wine and having paint fights in every room in the house. By five am, Stan was passed out on the mattress on his bedroom floor, whilst Richie was puking up the shitty wine in the bathroom. Lyds and Eddie only sat together on the paint covered floor. Everything was as it should be.
"We were only broken up for two days but I really fucking missed you Greystone." Eddie spoke without even looking at her, he was scared that if he did she'd leave him again. And so instead he stared out into the dark sky beyond their living room window.
"Well I really fucking missed you too Kaspbrak." Carelessly, her head fell to rest on the brunette boy's shoulder without even looking at him.
"If it's okay with you can I still be your boyfriend?"
"As long as you stop being such an asshole."
"I think I can do that."
"Good." She pressed a soft kiss to his jaw, "Then I'll still be your girlfriend Eddie, on two conditions.
"Anything."
"One, you never hurt me again, and if you do I'll make sure Richie and Stan Murder you."
"Done."
"Secondly, kiss me... like you really mean it Eddie."
"Easy." He smirked, slowly, Eddie leaned in and pressed his lips against her pink ones and before either of them knew it they were lay on the paint covered floor kissing over and over again.
"Eds?"
"Yeah?" He caressed her cheek, wiping more blue paint across her skin.
"I still love you."
"I love you too." He told her, "And I'll never let you get hurt again, I promise."
And still, he broke it.
He broke his word when the clown came back twenty two years later...
THERES ONE CHAPTER LEFT NOW HOLY SHIT IM SCREECHING