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mitchsmarners · 5 years

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semi charmed life | chapter four | 2.9k | teen |

“You guys have kept in contact this whole time?” Bill asked, brow disappearing underneath hair line as he looked like his old friends in amazement. “And you guys are.. what? Room mates?”

Eddie avoided looking at Richie as he answered. “Yeah, uh… room mates. Something like that.”

[or: the adult!losers reunion, done 2000s sit-com style, just like we all deserve.]

PREVIOUSLY ON SEMI CHARMED LIFE: “I applied to some museum job in New York on a whim earlier this year”. “ “I meant to turn it but every time I went to I… I just couldn’t. I should have told you, I know. I know. But I think I need to do this.” | “Okay, stop, I don’t understand.” Bill rubbed at his temples. “You and Richie adopted two kids? Two actual human children and this never came up? Not the entire time we’ve all been hanging out since showing back up in Derry, discussing our lives? Your two children with your high school best friend didn’t seem like might be relevant to those conversations?” | . “I did some shit that I’m not proud of. My best friend… I… I was so desperate to get away from this place, and I kind of betrayed him.” “I thought I was past this, I thought I was easily eight years past what you did. But now I’m here, looking at you and having to listen to you go on about what a great experience you had at school and how in love you are and I…. I want to be happy for you, Stanley, but I can’t. Because you stepped on me to get it.”

Stanley Uris let his forehead press against the car window as the Georgia landscape whizzed past them, Patty occasionally glancing towards her fiancée and smiling to herself. Ben Hanscom was reading a newspaper outside the car rental store, sun shining on his face and smile on his lips at the lingering smell of vanilla on his clothes. Bill Denbrough wadded through the multiples of unpacked cardboard boxes, and knocked on the locked bedroom door at the end of the hallway. Mike Hanlon dropped a couple quarters into a payphone in Metro station and punched in the number he had written on the ripped napkin.

Richie Kaspbrak had his three year daughter tossed over his shoulder, rushing through the family’s New York townhouse making over-excited airplane sounds. Frankie shrieked in joy as her father dipped her suddenly, Eddie smiling happily as he reached out and answered the ringing telephone. “Hello, you’ve reached the Kaspbraks’.”

Mike gave the payphone an odd smile as Eddie’s phone came through. “Hey, uh, Eddie? It’s Mike.”

“Mike!” Eddie cried in a sharp, pitchy voice. Richie looked up from where he was dangling Frankie upside down and gave his husband an amused smile. “I take it if you’re calling that you made it into the city alright then!”

Mike laughed nervously, looking around the barely moving ridiculous traffic and the buildings that were nearly so large that Mike wasn’t sure if he was really even seeing the tops of them. He certainly wasn’t in Maine. “I sure hope so, or I’ve crossed over into some terrible alternate dimension of Derry that I really don’t want to give that much thought into.”

Eddie laughed with him over the line, as the buzzer signally the ringing of their door bell rang through their home. “What is this, Grand Central Station?” Richie laughed as he tossed a giggling Frankie onto their couch like a football in the touchdown zone. “I’ll get it.”

Eddie nodded at his husband as he turned his attention back to his conversation. “Good, good. You’ve still got a few hours before meeting with the real state agent your work gave you, right? You going to do any big city exploring before then?”

Mike gave a nervous chuckle, smiling against the phone. “I don’t know. It’s just… big, you know? I’m starting my life over from scratch. I just… It’ll be nice to do these things with somebody there.”

Eddie leaned against his kitchen counter, phone pressed against his ear. “Welcome to the Big Apple. Nothing is ever going to be the same again.”

Richie padded to the front door, his tiny toddle of a daughter hurrying in her small legs to keep up with her daddy. He turned the handle and yanked the door open, taking in the person standing on his front step with their whole life surrounding them in suitcases.

Beverly Marsh looked up at him from under her lashes, fiddling with the straps on a backpack that Richie recognized from high school. “Is your and Eddie’s invitation for a place to stay still open?”

→ → →

“Baby….” Bill banged his head against the locked bedroom door. “Will you please open the door? We need to talk about this.” The silence on the other edge make the anxiety in Bill’s stomach swill and sour, making the man unable to ignore how he was now only moments away from reducing to his childhood stutter. “Please, Audra. Please.”

It had been radio silence from his pregnant girlfriend since Bill had told her the night before that he was setting out from Derry. The conversations had been dim and unlively since she’d taken off to their New York apartment in the middle of the night, but Audra had not answered the phone even one time since hanging up on Bill with a simple “Okay” as he told her he was ready to come to their new home. It seemed the Bill having finally arrived hadn’t changed his girlfriend’s stance on potentially never speaking to him ever again.

Bill kicked lightly at one of the boxes closest to him and let out a frustrated sigh. “Okay, I know you’re in there because I saw you run from the kitchen into the room as soon as I opened the front door. I literally heard you turn the lock, and that’s really immature, I might add-“

The door flew open and his girlfriend was suddenly glaring angrily up at him. Bill’s heart lurched in chest, even knowing the fight they were about to half, and the struggles they were about to face, he’d missed the hell out of his girlfriend and seeing her still took of his breath away every time. For the first time since he’d been told, the thought that this beautiful woman he loved was carrying his child gave him a spark of excitement instead of a spark dread.

“Baby…” Bill whispered.

Audra’s eyes sparkled up at him. “Don’t you baby me because I’m only realizing right now how much I fucking missed you and I’m trying to be pissed at you!”

Bill cupped the side of Audra’s face, pressing their foreheads together. “Let’s put that anger on pause, fuck now and fight later?”

Audra giggled and leapt up to wrap her legs around Bill’s waist. “I guess that is how we should break in our new apartment.”

“I fucking love the way you think, baby.”

→ → →

Beverly leaned over the side of crib, peering down at the sleeping baby inside. She furrowed her brow and tilted it to the side. “So this is…” She started.

“Yep.” Richie confirmed.

“And you and Eddie…”

“Yep.”

“Huh.” Beverly stepped away from the sleeping child, running her fingers through her tangled red hair. “And how long have you been….”

“Well, we met in 1982 so give or take…” Richie cleared his throat awkwardly. “Thirteen years this November.”

Beverly’s mouth dropped open as her mind went spiraling. “Thirteen… Wait, wait, wait. You guys were together in high school? What the fuck, why didn’t you…”

“Tell you?” Richie bitterly. “Bev, I adore you but it took you almost six months to even speak to me again after we broke up. The last thing I wanted to add onto that was ‘oh, hey, also I’m gay.’”

Beverly let out a small laugh, rolling her eyes at her friend. “You know, that might have made it better. If you’d told me that you liked Eddie, I definitely would have believed you. I didn’t cross my mind back then but now that I’m looking back at it- it adds up a lot of shit.”

“Ha ha ha,” Richie mocked laughed, but the amusement in his eyes was real. Tossing an arm around Beverly’s shoulders, he lead the girl back to the kitchen where Eddie was holding up two packages of pasta in front of Frankie’s face.

“Just pick one,” Eddie said in calm voice, a voice that Richie instantly recognized as I’m about to loose my shit with this fucking child and he grinned. “Bow ties or shells.”

“I want bow ties AND shells!” Frankie cheered, reaching out for the bags with gabby hands. Eddie clenched his jaw and widened his eyes, Richie ducking in and swooping the now-giggling girl into his arms.

“Come on, Franks. Bowties are your favourites! Why don’t we just make those and we can have shells another night?” Richie asked her, balancing the little girl on his hip.

Frankie furrowed her brow and smacked at Richie’s chest. “Don’t call me Franks, Daddy! You know I hate that!” Beverly raised her brow at Richie as Eddie chuckled under his breath.

→ → →

Patty ducked back into the apartment, two bags of take out food in her hands. Stanley had been mostly silent the entire ride back to the city and she chalked up to Stanley’s dislike for travelling. Back home now, in their half packed up apartment, and Stan still hadn’t said anything, and Patty felt her anxiety rising.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” Patty asked, unpacking the food onto their table. Stan looked up at her, frowning slightly. “And don’t tell me that you’re fine, because we both know what a terrible liar you are. You’ve been practically mute since we left Derry, so please tell what’s going on. I’m worried.”

“I…” Stan shook his head. “I guess it’s just… Richie. I think there was a part of me that really thought I’d go to this reunion and everything would be sorted out. I’m just sort of struggling with knowing there’s really nothing I could do to make it up to him.”

Patty sat down across from him, beginning to pick at the food. “I can’t help you feel better or worse when I don’t know what happened, baby.”

Stan let out a shaky breath. “In our senior year of high school, I tried to kill myself.” Patty’s eyes blew wide but Stan carried on right over. “I’d fought with depression since middle school, but Richie and my parents are the only people who knew about my attempt because…” Stan cleared his breath. “Richie found me that day. He saved my life.”

“And that’s why you stopped being friends?” Patty asked slowly. “Because that’s not on you, Stan, if he-“

“No.” Stan interrupted, looking tortured. “No, but that’s what started it all. And that’s why I’ll never be able to forgive myself for what I did to him.”

→ → →

“What do you think?”

Mike looked around the small apartment. Very small, even smaller than he’d expected and he felt his heart sink. There was no way they’d be able to have a Golden retriever in this apartment, but he couldn’t possibly ask for more from a job he hadn’t even started at yet. A job that was already putting themselves out for him more than they needed to, when they could simply hired another person for the job. Blinking back tears, Mike smiled at the real estate agent. “It’s perfect. Thank you so much.”

She beamed at him. “That’s wonderful! I’m go glad, we’ll just go over some paper work and this place is yours. Your girlfriend is coming up to live with you as well?”

Mike forced a smile. “My partner is back in my hometown, we’re still putting a few things into place for the move. It was more than a little unexpected.”

“Life is like that sometimes,” the real estate started unpacking papers from her brief case. “But I think you’ll find the most sudden of changes are sometimes the best ones.”

Mike nodded, thinking of Alexander back in Derry. He couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t true.

→ → →

Ben opened the door to his apartment, sighing as he pulled his jacket tighter around him. His landlord had turned on the buildings’ air conditioning mid-April and Ben’s home was always freezing. The walls were a bare, ugly grey and if Ben himself didn’t know he lived there- he’d assume nobody did. The amount of time Ben Hanscom spent in his office, he knew that he might as well live there- and this apartment was just for appearance. For the occasional days off or the even more rare time that Ben got out of work early enough to sleep in his own bed instead of hunched over a desk.

Rubbing sleepily at his eyes, Ben stumbled through his apartment and thought- not for the first time- that maybe he should get a dog. There was an loneliness in Ben Hanscom’s heart that he once been used to- a sadness that he hadn’t realized he’d had because he’d never known anything differently- until he’d moved to Derry. Meeting the Losers had shown Ben a life of friends and connection, and it was something he’d once more forgotten about until this weekend. The loneliness was settled deep in his chest now.

His phone had six messages from his trip to Derry, even though he’d been gone through weeks and weeks of getting approval for the time off. The last one was from his direct superior, Robert Gray. A very brief, straight-to-the-point demand. Be in your seat at 7 am on Monday morning or don’t bother showing up again. Ben sighed, looking up as the clock hit midnight and gave up on having dinner for what he knew wouldn’t be the last time this week.

As he hung up his jacket, Ben pulled the folded paper out of his pocket. [email protected]. Sighing, Ben crumbled the paper up and dropped into his waste paper basket as he walked past it.

→ → →

Patty pulled her sleeves up over her hands and pressed her face against them. She and Stan were sitting side by side on the living room floor, Stan’s face wet with tears and eyes pleading. Patty swallowed at the sick feeling in her stomach and looked at her fiancée.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” she said slowly. “What you did… is not good. But baby, you aren’t what you did ten years ago. If Richie can never forgive you for it, then I guess we can’t blame that. You told me yourself what a bad place you were in then, and while it doesn’t excuse it, I just… the Stanley Uris I know would never do that.” Stan looked away, face burning with shame but Patty reached out and grasped at his hands. “And I think the reason it hurts you and it hurt Richie so much was because the Stanley Uris he knew would never have done it either.”

Stan and Patty held each other’s gaze for a long time, Stan’s body trembling from the unexpected support. He had given all his thought to having her turn her on back on her the way Richie had the day he’d found it, expecting to see a mirror of Eddie Kaspbrak’s horror in Patty’s eyes and suffer the brutal slap of Bill Denbrough’s words come from her mouth.

“If you want to mend things with your friend,” she said slowly. “You need to prove that you’re not the person who did that. If your friendship was real as you believe it was, he’ll see that someday. But you’ll have to put in effort.”

Stan leaned his head onto Patty’s shoulder and her wraps went around him.

→ → →

“I know,” Mike said into the phone, squeezing his eyes shut as he leaning against the pay phone outside his building. “I don’t know what else to do.”

The line was quiet on the other side, if it wasn’t for the persistent barking of Henry in the background Mike would almost think Alexander had hung up on him. Hell, Mike wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. “I’m not sure what you want to say here, Mike. Do you want to give up Henry?”

“You know I don’t,” Mike said, the sound of his puppy barking in the background making his heart hurt. “What if… What if you stayed on the farm for a while? My dad is supposed to move into the home on Wednesday but until I figure out something in New York, just stay there with Henry? You haven’t left your job yet, we could just-“

“Do long distance?” Alexander asked through the phone line. “Mike everybody knows what that’s like, the cost it has on relationships-“

“It’s not forever,” Mike pleaded. “It’s just until something else comes along. Just until I find a way to fix all this.”

Alexander sighed. “Alright, Mike. I’m with you.”

→ → →

Audra wrapped her bathrobe around her naked form and turned to face Bill as he struggled into a pair of pajamas pants. “Do you want me to get an abortion?”

Bill startled, tripping and nearly falling onto the bedroom floor. Audra watched him with a blank expression. Bill’s answer came to him without a moment of hesitation. “What? No. Of course not.”

Audra looked relieved for a spilt second, then her frown returned. “We’re going to have to change things. You know I love your writing, Bill, but hopes and dreams won’t pay for a baby. We need to get a real jobs, we have to get our shit together. Or… or maybe we’re not ready, I get that, I do, I didn’t really plan to-“

Bill came forward, pulling Audra against his chest. “I know. I know, I started looking at jobs in New York while we were in still in Derry. I’m fucking terrified, okay? But I’m serious about us, about our lives together. Maybe this isn’t exactly planned, but I think it’s what’s meant to happen.”

Audra laughed wetly, wiping at the tears falling from her eyes. “You know, for a dumbass, sometimes you say exactly the right thing.”

Bill beamed and kissed the top of her head.

→ → →

The Kaspbrak house was quiet as Beverly came out from unpacking as much of her belongings as she could fit into Eddie and Richie’s spare room. She came into the living room, smiling at the sight. Richie was fast asleep on the couch, baby Marty resting in his arms with Eddie asleep pressed beside him, leg draped around waist. Frankie was curled on Richie’s other side, half disappearing into the couch cushions, with her baby sister’s little hand dropped onto her forehead.

Grabbing the camera off the coffee table, Beverly snapped the quick photo and smiled at the warm feeling in her chest. Maybe this life wasn’t the one she’d thought she’d ever life, but right now it felt exactly where she belonged.

#reddie #reddie fic #it fanfiction #my writing #stanpat #philbrough #semi charmed life #im sorry im posting so much lmao #ive had this whole week off so #and i have no control when it comes to pacing my posts lmao lmao

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