Ben (notdyingalone) wrote in wtnvic, @ 2019-10-16 12:12:00 |
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He’d literally been stepping through the front door of home when Ben’s world view shifted, tilted, and went completely sideways. He was somewhere that he didn’t know and certainly didn’t recognise and he got a sick feeling in his stomach that maybe just maybe defeating Pennywise had all been a figment of his imagination.
Of course that did beg the question as to why his imagination would do something horrible like kill Eddie.
He pushed a breath out and rubbed a hand through his hair as he glanced around trying to in some way get his bearings.
Once he found a light that immediately highlighted his silhouette against the dark he began to worry for his friends. There was no sign of Bev, Bill, Mike or Richie and if he’d learned anything it was that they were stronger together than they were apart.
Never one to sit around and do nothing Ben immediately began walking in the hopes that he might run into somebody or anybody who might know where he was and where the rest of his friends were.
Richie would know that silhouette anywhere.
Okay, actually, he wouldn’t - since prior to the Losers Club meeting at Jade of the Orient he hadn’t seen Ben in twenty-seven years, and the last time he laid eyes upon the kid his shadow looked like a beach ball. They were the same height, now, it was just that Ben had a twenty-pack for abs and an ass you could eat breakfast off of, and Richie -
Well, no one was offering him the centerfold in Esquire. Too tall, too awkward, and his fashion sense left a lot to be desired.
But anyway, after being unceremoniously dropped on his ass in this drug-fueled city, he was quick to find a townhouse in the community that seemed to have been built for the benefit of the other ‘fluctuations’ in time and space or whatever. It had enough bedrooms to accommodate him, Eddie, and adopted child Jughead, though Richie was made aware that one of the kitchen cabinets was marred with a literal, actual black hole that would quiet its rumbling if you fed it a spoonful of peanut butter. One of the quirks of Night Vale, he guessed.
On this particular day, he happened to be passing by the living room window when he saw a fellow member of the Losers Club wandering about. It really was Ben, out there on the front lawn and he had that look about him which suggested he had already experienced the hell that was Derry - the quarry, and the dip at the end as they all tried to hold Richie together, tethering him to this shitty world. The only tethers he had left.
Opening the door, he was sure he looked like a gazelle on meth when he sprinted toward his friend. “Ben - hey, over here, buddy. You take a wrong turn somewhere?”
Ben turned his head and his brow furrowed as out of nowhere it would seem came Richie, Richie who was by all accounts looked a whole lot better than the last time Ben had seen him.
A surge of relief rippled through Ben unlike any he’d felt since they had all reunited in Derry and the memories had come flooding back. Without much warning he launched himself at Richie and bundled the other man up into a hug which was impressive to say the least as it wasn’t like he and Richie differed much in height.
“Jesus, am I glad to see you,” he mumbled as he took a moment to reassure himself that Richie was actually here and it wasn’t some Pennywise mindfuck.
Holy shitballs, now that was a hug. A big ol’ Benjamin Hanscom Bear Hug, and Richie would take it. He clung like a limpet for a moment there, a part of him just wanting to break down sobbing again like a little girl because what the fuck was life.
But he didn’t. He held it together well enough, for now.
“You too, kiddo,” he chuckled and goddamn, he still couldn’t believe this was really Ben sometimes. Figured he would grow up to be both Successful Architect and Supermodel - and Richie had yet to grow into his looks like Bev prophesized. But at his age, it was probably too late for that prediction to come true. Woe.
Anyway, no sense in standing outside like a couple of jerk-offs. “You wanna come in?” he asked, nodding toward the townhouse. “I literally just got here too after what I’m guessing was some blip in space and time so it’s not very homey but - it’s something.”
Ben was a lot of things. One of those things was emotionally competent and aware so he knew that Richie was clinging but he said nothing, just held firm and let the other man latch around him in the hopes it might go some way to making him feel in any way better.
He pushed out a breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding when Richie finally leaned back and he gave a nod. “Uh, yeah, that would be good.” He wet his lower lip and just before Richie turned to head inside he caught his friend by the arm, worried eyes locking onto his. “This isn’t- It’s not another Pennywise trick, right? We killed him, he’s dead, he has to be. We lost way too much for that not to be a thing.”
The loss of both Stan and Eddie was still fresh, too close to the surface, and he was going to straight up murder the clown all over again if somehow he’d managed to survive their last encounter because fuck him very much.
“It’s not a trick,” Richie assured, his voice gentler than normal. He usually didn’t go soft, not for anyone - except his friends. His family. He would die for them and almost did - they’d all almost died for each other, and some actually did. The love he still held for them was as pure as it had been when they were kids, when they used what he joked was ‘the magic of friendship’ to burn away the dark. “We definitely killed IT.”
No, it was some other funhouse nonsense - but pretty benign in the scheme of things. Into the townhouse Richie went, and he immediately headed for the alcohol since Ben might want a shot at the very least. He poured them both scotch, and he wasn’t about to sip it like a seasoned pro. Give him that taste of smoke and fire - it was either that or he’d light up a cigarette (and then Eddie would bitch about the smell clinging to furniture, for a thousand years).
“I’m actually not sure what it is,” he admitted as he handed Ben his glass. “People keep saying the word portal though. I guess it kind of...malfunctions. And here we are.”
Ben felt a surge of relief at the confirmation from Richie that it wasn’t a trick and that IT was definitely dead. He would have hated to think that Stan and Eddie had been lost for nothing.
He followed Richie into the house he’d apparently acquired and as with most buildings he entered he cast a discerning gaze over the structure as well as the layout. Some habits died hard and that happened to be one of them.
The glass was taken gratefully and all but enveloped in his large hand before his brow knitted together. “Portals?” There were theories about alternate universes knocking about and people had gone so far as to write books about how you might exist as one person in your current reality but then be a totally different person in another. Clearly this wasn’t the case here as he was still Ben and Richie was still Richie. Still, it was fascinating and did beg the question as to why them, why now and why here wherever here was.
“So, where are we?” He asked, taking his first sip of scotch. “And is it just you and me?”
Oop, there went the scotch. Down the hatch, and Richie immediately poured himself another. The shiver that wracked his bones as a result of him swallowing fire was a pleasant distraction from, well, everything else.
He sat on the sofa, patting the cushion beside him so Ben would sit too. “It’s a town called Night Vale,” he said. “New Mexico, I think? But it’s weird. Like, super fucking weird. In that quirky, Lewis Carroll jacked up on coke sort of way. Not really dangerous from what I can tell - “ No one was trying to kill them, especially malevolent Eldritch monsters, “....Eddie and Stan are here.”
Yep. He may as well get to that sooner rather than later, before Ben ran into ghosts in the grocery store or something.
Wait… what? Ben blinked, not once, but several times as the words “Eddie and Stan are here” came tumbling out of Richie’s mouth.
“What?”
“Eddie and Stan. Still breathing.”
Richie would elaborate, not to worry. He had just needed a little adult beverage reinforcement first. “I don’t know how, but whatever the portal is that brings people here? It can snatch anyone from anytime or anyplace. So it brought them both to the town, fully alive,” he explained (or tried to).
“Eddie remembers everything, up to...you know.” He couldn’t say it, not right now. But they were both aware that Eddie had gone into Neibolt, and he hadn’t come out. “Stan is - I mean, he’s really the same old Stan. I would have recognized him even if I didn’t know it was him, I think.”
That mop of curly hair and those sad, expressive eyes - there hadn’t been a long time to miss Stan, but in Derry, Richie felt it deeply. So deep he could almost see him as a teenager there in the synagogue, ever serious. His ghost forever present, heart and soul.
Ben was still for a long moment until he knocked back the scotch in one fell swoop and stuck his glass out for a refill. “That’s unreal.” And it was. Also too good to be true. Most things too good to be true if regarded closely generally fell apart. Hopefully that wasn’t the case with Stan or Eddie.
He exhaled a breath, slow but shaky, just trying to wrap his head around everything because it legitimately made no sense but it wouldn’t be the first time. Alien killer clowns from space didn’t exactly make sense and they had all met and dealt with that for how long?
“And how are they?”
Richie wasn’t sure how to answer that - how were any of them? Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition (FUBAR), most likely, but other than that. Who knew.
“Fine?” he hedged since, well, in the physical sense Eddie and Stan seemed to be hanging in there. “Eddie has some scars. Not sure if Stan does or not.” He wasn’t about to ask if he could see his friend’s wrists - he didn’t want to think about Stan in that state of mind, where he chose to end everything in order to give them all what he believed to be a fighting chance. “It’s just - I think the reunion in Derry and having to kill the clown kind of shook us all up.”
But they would grow back together this time, instead of the memories of each other fading away gradually. Richie found some comfort in that, if nothing else.
“I mean they both died and now they’re no longer dead so that’s bound to screw them up and make adjusting difficult.” Not just for them but for everybody else as well. “But I mean, it’s better we’re all here, together.” And it was. The Losers were stronger together than they were apart.
He contemplated his drink for a long moment before he looked up to catch and hold Richie’s gaze.
“And you? How are you handling all of this?”
“I’m - “ Okay, maybe he shouldn’t word vomit quite yet. The remaining Losers had been with him as he lost his shit in the quarry water, they held him while he cried. Richie would forever be grateful for that - he was even grateful about how Ben’s solid form, and Mike’s too, were barricades that prevented him from running back to swan dive into the crumpled remains of Pennywise’s lair.
Ben knew why Richie wanted to go back so badly. He had been pining for Beverly for twenty-seven years. He knew.
He’d let it remain an unspoken thing, though. For now. “I still...see things,” he admitted. “Because of the Deadlights. But I’m trying to get used to all of this. There doesn’t seem to be another option.”
Ben nodded in understanding. He himself had never been exposed to the Deadlights but he knew Bev had and he’d seen how haunted she had been by them the moment they heard that news of Stan’s suicide. If anybody could truly understand and help Richie deal with that particular horror it would be Bev and God he hoped she was okay wherever she was.
He reached out and closed his hand around Richie’s and gave it a firm reassuring squeeze, an anchor if nothing else.
“You know it’s okay not to be okay, right?” He said with a small soft but warm smile that literally spoke of the fondness Ben had towards Richie and his other friends. “What we all went through and what you saw it’s hard to deal with and that shit haunts you.” He took a breath and let it out a moment later. “But if you need anything, at all, even if it’s to talk about nothing or watch some really questionable movies or tv or whatever I’m here, okay?” He snorted a second later. “Hell, if you wanna cry, I’m sure as hell not gonna to judge you.”
Richie huffed a laugh - a puff of air that was a chuckle, really. “I know you won’t,” he said, and it was true. They’d all seen him ugly crying, his ocean of tears nearly drowning the remaining Losers in the quarry - and they held him too, Ben and the rest of them definitely his anchors to this world.
“I’m here for you too,” he promised, his fingers curling around Ben’s. “And I’m glad you’re around, Haystack.”
Wow. Did he actually get that out without making a joke? Amazing. But sometimes Richie had his serious moments. Blink, and you’d miss them.