He was pretty sure he was real, anyway. Sometimes he wondered if it was true, but with every passing day in this place it felt a little more true. No one could dream up something as weird as here, not for so damn long anyway.
Was he okay? No. Not really. Richie was pretty sure he'd never be okay again, not really, but it was a different kind of not okay than he'd been back in the Quarry. Things were different now, in new and better and exciting ways that often made Richie giddy, happy, overly emotional in ways he'd never allowed himself before. But being happy didn't always make things okay. Not after what they'd lived through. What some of them hadn't lived through at all.
"Fuck," he said, voice cracking, and maybe he could cover that up because it was cold, and Beverly was stealing all his warmth (and all he wanted was to let her have more of it, all of it if she needed). "Yeah, yeah." Of course he'd say he was okay, of course he would, when Bev had her hands on his face, was looking at him so imploringly, like his feelings mattered while she wasn't wearing any shoes in the snow.
"Let's get you some clothes," he said, quick to change the subject because it wasn't Time yet. "I brought you a sweater." It was bright red and green and it would be a dress on her, for how it was even a little big on him. "Then we can talk. Okay? Bev?" Van Dyne's was only across the street some. After that, they could get to everything else.