"I'll need to go away for a little bit, Georgie." Somber, withdrawn, and so suddenly unlike himself was the clown that let Georgie wrap his arms around.
The boy clung as tightly as he could, staring into Pennywise's green eyes when given the chance to speak with him properly and face to face, but it was Pennywise who couldn't help but linger. The need of his friend to seek out affection, especially through what Georgie called hugs, had been so 'other' for It at first, and he'd been sure that he didn't like them at all. At first. Low and behold, however, when it came time to choose between obtaining a tangible meal and being without a hug. The decision took some thinking and some internal whining over why he could not have both.
Pennywise did, in fact, know very well why. He'd turned it over and over in his ancient consciousness, which had to have been so empty and bereft of any claim to meaning before he'd been given a hug.
Georgie didn't care for the inner-workings of the clown's mind, having no forbearing knowledge of what Pennywise had been like prior to Georgie or of how it was that mind that maintained everything one sensed in the mindscape. The child patted the despondent Pennywise's cheek, then got the bright idea to hook his fingers in the corners of his mouth and pry them upward.
He laughed at the sight, bringing Pennywise back from oblivion and making him genuinely smile. Pennywise's smile was unique, as Georgie called it, and forming one led to a puddle of drool dropping from his lower lip.
"Eww!" Georgie laughed uncontrollably, then grew grave again. "Where're you going?"
"I want to say hello to our guests." Pennywise enfolded the little boy's tiny hands in his and brought them down, shifting so that Georgie's arms were at his sides. "But, I don't know if these are good guests or bad guests. So, I want you to stay here. I'll be back in a pinch!"
Georgie was quite young, so young that such a remedial explanation would check out with him and not rouse potent questions. An explanation like that would've given Georgie's mother or Georgie's father a pass as far as putting the logic together. Still, Pennywise felt a brush of that unnamed magic that warmed him like a hug or a laugh, when Georgie did argue.
"But it's no fun here without you!" He whined, but the boy radiated pure… earnestness.
Pennywise's demeanor softened up quite a bit whenever Georgie was blithe like this, as the clown had learned.
"Well, we can't have leave you with no fun, can we?" Pennywise patted Georgie's cheek, and mimicked the boy's smile before standing at his full height. "Let's see what I can do before I have to go."
It was endearing when Georgie trotted after him like a duckling following its mother, when one minute Pennywise was trying to get his bearings by matching the expressions his little friend made and the next, Georgie was doing the same.
Endearing, or better yet, considerate.
Showing the DeadLights to Georgie to keep him calm and keep him (blind) safe was out of the question entirely. Pennywise knew that if It expelled its energy and illusion in another vicinity, Georgie would only be trapped in his unconscious body in his hospital bed until the clown returned. It was so difficult to deny the human child anything, though.
Georgie's consciousness departed into a different place altogether, once Pennywise thought of it, and lucky for It – theatrics would be necessary when it came to greeting aforesaid 'guests'.
As far as appetizers went, Henry Bowers was decent. Biting into the skin was heavenly when It-as-Butch-Bowers felt the pop and snap of bones, tendons and ligament, and Henry's pain receptors going into overdrive. It'd been a while since It had dug into youthful, strong flesh and since It had been able enjoy the whole morsel without plowing around a skin disease here or a failing heart there.
The teenager's scream was like the sizzling of meat on a grill, if It had any way of describing just how special that perceptible terror was. Raw pain was a sliver on the spectrum of feelings that It could taste, more a physical accessory to what the boy's brain communicated – emotional fear and helplessness were stronger. Savory.
The flavor settled on Pennywise's tongue, leaving him satisfied for some time before he felt the glow of tasty fear turn to ash in his mouth. Eddie Kaspbrak's fear was not tantalizing like it should've been, not with his soot-covered face frozen as it was and not when Mike Hanlon reacted with a mixture of pulsing fear and stabbing bravery.
Fear and bravery were just a shot in the dark away from one another. This, It knew, without a doubt in its mind, and despite the tingling of… pride? Hope? Solace?
In It's favorite form…
It wanted nothing more than to sink into the floorboards of its home. It was an unreliable way of leaving the scene and the trio of thunderstruck faces would only mutate and twist into unforgiving looks.
Horror was mutating already, into something unforgivably mystifying.
Pennywise whisked away like leaves disintegrating in a traveling wind, leaving nothing behind once the inhaler was retrieved. He blinked out of existence and reappeared in the next flicker of compacted warmth and energy, appearing a short distance away to the real prize for the evening. Initially, the clown had wanted to slink into the well and let the journey clear his mind, but he wanted Georgie to return even more.
The teenager was half-dead already, though he still had blood to give to the few leeches that Pennywise let remain on his pale skin. Patrick was barely breathing, but his wheezes were deafening in the otherwise silent underground. They were surrounded by walls that gladly echoed the smallest of sounds, from the steady drip of water out of the sky-reaching ceiling to the harsh pants from his new and rather vile companion.
The blood would not be so sweet as Henry's, primarily because Pennywise had left Patrick to exhaust himself. He'd wasted more than enough time giving back the inhaler, and had let the summit of Patrick Hockstetter's fear burn out until the teenager was wrought with emotional and physical collapse. Standing over him now, Pennywise could see that there was life enough there for Patrick to realize that he wasn't alone in his agony. It was a wonder, however, if the solipsism in this child prevented him from finding something worthy of hope in the appearance of a human-looking creature passing by.
Sometimes they saw him and, in their drunken state of fear and tiredness, believed he was there to save them. Surely, Patrick, near blind and dying, would spare a little of that.
The air around the boy changed, and Pennywise was surprised at all being reinvigorated with a new waft of terror. It was as if Patrick wasn't seeing Pennywise at all, but something else entirely. The clown had an inkling as to why – but he cut Patrick's attempt at a strangled scream off before that thought in the back of his mind could come to a head.
"Your tongue is rather wiggly like a leech, wouldn't you say, Patrick?" Pennywise smiled. "Old buddy, old pal?"
The tongue between Pennywise's agile fingers came loose and into his waiting gloves for hands. Patrick jerked against the ground, bones bouncing against the sewer floor as his mouth sputtered blood. The clown caught the back of the kid's skull with easy, and kept his eyes pried open as wide as they could go before stuffing Patrick's tongue into his mouth. It was obscene, rolling the tongue inside his mouth and sucking loudly, but it was also karmic and that was just what Pennywise wanted.
Patrick bled out, convulsing, before he had nothing left to give – his time had run out.
Georgie wasn't here. He didn't have to look as Pennywise guzzled on the remains.
That was what mattered.