#bc it turns out that it's just genuinely not possible while unmedicated

[gen-is-gone]

Am I continuing to hyperfixate on a children's show from ten years ago because the alternative is fantasizing about walking into traffic?

You can't prove it.

[clay-air]

IT Reddie/Stanlon/Benverly In the Flesh AU

Losers are in their early/mid-thirties.

Living: Bill, Ben, Mike

PDS sufferers: Georgie, Beverly, Stan, Richie, Eddie

Five years ago, the dead rose all around the world, and the small town of Derry, Maine, was no exception. Halfway into the zombie apocalypse, a breakthrough drug called neurotriptaline allows the risen dead to regain their senses—rebranded as Partially-Deceased Syndrome sufferers, they receive treatment and begin to be integrated back into the communities they nearly destroyed. Derry was never the most tolerant of towns, and to no one’s surprise the surviving townsfolk are incredibly hostile to the returning PDS sufferers. It is in this setting that seven Losers—each damaged in their own way by the events of (and prior to) the Rising—find each other and start to heal.

Disjointed outline and notes below the cut: I will definitely never actually write a fic for this bc I am pathologically incapable of turning my ramblings into a cohesive story with a plot and all that, so everything is up for grabs!!  If you do get inspired by my musings and write or draw something, please lmk!!!  Also feel free to comment with your own thoughts/ideas/headcanons!!!!

Warning for references to: suicide, homophobia, spousal/parental abuse, hate crimes, self-harm scars, violence

Bill Denbrough gets his baby brother Georgie (their age gap is a lot bigger in this AU) back but has to deal with the residual guilt he still feels about his death (an accident Bill maybe could have prevented). He saw Georgie after he’d risen, missing an arm and eating a dude (alternatively, Zombie!Georgie actually kills Bill’s wife Audra bc Bill hesitated over shooting him, and Bill has to deal with that while also trying to make sure Georgie doesn’t find out/remember what he did) and was the one to restrain him so he could be sent to the treatment center.

Ben Hanscom loved Beverly Marsh from afar until she went missing (killed by her abusive husband who later died during the Rising) and when she comes back to Derry from the treatment center with no one waiting for her, he decides this time he’ll actually step up and be there for her. Of course he has to actually get her to trust him first. She vaguely remembers him as a guy who was always nice to her, but it’s dangerous to assume that anyone in Derry has less-than-homicidal feelings regarding those with PDS.  Beverly is starts off nervous and flighty, but eventually adopts a very “middle finger to the whole damn town” attitude, and, despite her initial reservations, finds that the words of a certain Undead Prophet are starting to resonate with her....

Stanley Uris committed suicide before rising from the grave, and he’s trying to find a reason to stick around for his “second chance at life” that he never wanted in the first place. Can he finally move past the cloying, suffocating fear he felt every second he was alive now that he no longer has any need to “fear the Reaper”? He finds companionship in Mike Hanlon, a quiet man who defended his farm on the outskirts of town all by himself during the Rising, luring the Risen who wandered on to the property into a barn and keeping them inside once he heard about the successful neurotriptaline trials. Mike’s refusal to join the Human Volunteer Force during the Rising (he didn’t want to kill anyone, zombie or not) earned him the scorn of the already-pretty-racist townsfolk.

Richie Tozier was the victim of a homophobic hate crime, and now because of bureaucratic bullshit (reintegrated PDS sufferers need to be incident-free for a minimum of three years before they can change their address) he has to come back to the very same town that loathed him enough to kill him. Also they have another reason to hate him now! He’s trying to take it in stride (or at least outwardly appear like he’s taking it in stride) but his murderer, Henry Bowers, is basically a town hero for helping form the HVF, and he’s using his status in the town to make Richie’s already pretty miserable half-life hell. Things start turning around for him when he finds a reason to stop playing hooky and actually show up for the Give Back program: another PDS sufferer who is wound up tighter than anyone he’s ever met, is absolutely CAKED in flesh-tone makeup, and whose snapped insults in response to Richie’s trashmouth antics don’t carry the now-familiar hatred behind them that he’s become accustomed to. Also he’s cute as fuck. But damn, gay thoughts come with a lot of baggage after being gay literally got you killed.

Eddie Kaspbrak succumbed to slow poisoning by his mother, who’s Munchausen by proxy escalated with deadly effects. Unfortunately, once he’s released from the treatment center Eddie has nowhere to go but back into her open arms. She refuses to acknowledge what she did to him, and starts using his daily neurotriptaline doses as a new way of controlling him (Eddie is absolutely PETRIFIED at the thought of going rabid). Ironically, his only moments of freedom happen when he’s at work for the Give Back program (his mother’s protests that he’s too frail to do manual labor don’t really hold up under the fact that he’s kind of unkillable now?) where he meets a fellow PDS sufferer who’s an irredeemable trashmouth but who treats him more like a human being than anyone ever has, even counting before he was a literal zombie. And no, Eddie does not think he’s fucking funny. He doesn’t.

Featuring:

- Beverly supplying Eddie with DIY neurotriptaline she learned how to make from the ULA website so he can get out from under his mother’s thumb, which he accepts after an hour-long tirade about how she doesn’t know if it’s safe or even STERILE (“Eddie, honey, I don’t think we can get infections anymore” “it’s the PRINCIPLE of it, Bev!”)

- Mike showing Stan that all the bird species he saw in the woods when he was alive are still there, and that the Rising didn’t destroy everything good in the world, also introducing him to his secret library

- Bill bringing Georgie to Mike’s farm so he can see and work with the animals (and also so he isn’t in town where someone might mention Audra). Mike is somewhat disapproving of Bill’s not telling Georgie what happened, but he sympathizes, and tries to help both brothers work through their trauma. (Stan eventually convinces Mike that he should be taking care of himself too)

- Ben struggling to convey to Beverly that he genuinely wants to be her friend (and more) and help her (Bev: “Oh wait are you one of those guys who finds the whole ‘undead’ thing hot? Why don’t you go to the PDS brothel then and leave me alone?” Ben: *internal screaming*)

- Richie and Eddie building fences at 1/6th the pace of all the other pairs of Give Back program “volunteers” bc they can’t stop ribbing each other and arguing and also Richie might’ve made it his new-life’s purpose to get Eddie to smile and laugh as much as possible. “Do you even still need glasses, asshat?” “The better to see you with, my Spaghetti” “Don’t fucking call me that”

- turns out Richie and Beverly sort of hunted as a group during the Rising (a la Kieren and Amy) and now they like to get together in the Barrens, get high off sheep brains, and try not to have panic attacks about what they did while unmedicated. Bev confesses that while she hates the slow-drip of returning memories of the Rising, she hopes that one day she’ll remember being the one who killed her husband because that would mean she got her revenge in the end. Richie offers to help her jog her memory by reenacting it with him starring as her husband, but she just laughs and punches him in the arm. “Be glad I can’t feel pain anymore, Marsh, that seemed like it might’ve done some serious damage” “Beep beep, Richie”

- insert that ep 1 scene with Rick’s dad dragging the neighbor’s PDS wife into the street and shooting her, but replace with Bowers killing Adrian Mellon as Bill  watches from through the curtains across the street with Georgie’s head tucked into his chest so he can’t see

- Stan slowly coming into his own through what starts off as relatively harmless acts of rebellion against Derry but escalates to all the Losers having a blast vandalizing their own graves. “Honestly Richie, I’m surprised your epitaph wasn’t ‘blessedly silent at last’” “Woah! Stanley gets off a good one!”

- Richie visiting the Kissing Bridge where he was caught halfway carving his name + ??? by Bowers’ crew and was brutally beaten before being thrown into the river. Looking back, it was hardly a crush worth getting killed over, but this time he feels like he’s drowning in his feelings (of fucking course it would feel like drowning) and he’s terrified. Carving a shaky “E” where he never got to finish his declaration last time takes some of the weight off his heart.

- Ben finally getting Beverly to realize that he’s been in love with her since long before the Rising by telling her that he was the one who wrote the anonymous postcard she received a few months before she died, and showing her all the other poems he’d written over the years. “January embers”...

- Bill and Mike helping Eddie gather proof that this mother was responsible for his death by combing through Derry police records and autopsy reports (also hey, turns out you can still detect all those poisonous chemicals in his partially deceased body!) and using it to get him essentially emancipated and his mother arrested. Eddie moves in with Richie afterwards and being in close proximity all the time brings both their feelings to a boil.

- Georgie does eventually remember encountering Bill and Audra during the Rising. “I died, and you lied”. He runs away into the Barrens where he meets a strange PDS sufferer who wears clown makeup instead of the usual flesh-mimicking stuff...

- the creeping emergence of a ULA splinter group led by Pennywise that starts haunting at the edges of Derry and stoking the fires of the townspeople’s fear against the Risen. Eventually they kidnap Georgie to their weird sewer cult dungeon under Neibolt bc they think he’s the First Risen (lol sorry dudes, wrong side of the pond), and the Losers have to gear up and go get him back before a fucking clown EATS HIM to bring about the Second Rising.

Physical appearances:

Eddie: wears his contacts and makeup religiously until he is able to escape his mother, at which point he starts to let loose a bit (it helps that Richie says he’s still adorable, even tho Eddie would never admit to that). He has a gash in his cheek and a huge puncture wound straight through his chest, both of which he sustained during the Rising.

Richie: wears glasses even tho he doesn’t technically need to anymore. Gave up on the whole makeup thing pretty early bc it was a pain to apply, but he does sometimes wear the colored contacts when he’s out and about for the Giveback Program. He’s covered in cuts and blue/purple bruises that he sustained in Bowers’ attack, and has a big nasty stitched-up gash just above his hairline from hitting his head on a river rock.

Beverly: makeup and contacts whom? She has a pretty conspicuously hand-shaped bruise around her neck that she tends to cover with scarves tho

Stan: wears the makeup and contacts, but is much better at making them look natural than Eddie is. Matching scars on each wrist that he keeps covered all the time. A bullet hole in his side from the Rising.

Georgie: wears the makeup and contacts. Missing an arm (injury sustained during the Rising)