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Arlene is worried about not getting kicked out, about money, and most of all, about her Benjamin. He seems happier than he has been in a long time, bringing to light just how much of his misery she’d overlooked. Maybe she was too used to the dour faces, the books he held dearer than anything else, maybe she had just been glad he was still there, still alive. He beams at her now, and when his cousins put him down, he doesn’t shy away from them anymore. She hasn’t had time to ask him about his new friends; he hadn’t had time to tell her. She’d seen the redheaded girl, and noticed Ben’s shy smiles. The one with glasses has a nickname for him, Haystack, who is a wrestler she’s pretty sure. It doesn’t sound like a jab at him, not with the way he yells it when he feels Ben has done something particularly impressive. The others are quieter, but still smile fondly at him in a way she wished more people would, still cheer him on enthusiastically, make him feel loved in a way she couldn’t. She would do anything to make sure his newfound friends, his newfound sanctuary remained safe.
Sonia Kasbrack held a similar sentiment, only her ideal sanctuary for her son included her alone. She’s met her son’s “friends”, knows their parents, and is firmly of the opinion that they have nothing to offer Eddie. She’s seen how upset he gets after he gets home from hanging out with them. He glares at his dinner, huffs excessively, and pouts. She thinks they might need to increase his allergy medication. She’s surprised when Arlene Hanscom comes to her door.
“I’m Ben’s mother, Arlene Hanscom. He said you’d prefer to meet the parents of the kids Eddie is hanging around?”
Sonia nods. “You can’t be too careful.”
“I think that’s so smart, I’ve heard nothing but good things about Eddie from Ben!” Arlene looks exhausted, dark circles and chapped lips belying her enthusiasm.
“I’ve heard good things about your son.” She has, but not from Eddie. He never talks to her anymore. During the brief moments she allows his friends inside, there is talk about Ben, about how smart he is. “Is your family new in town?”
“My sister and her family have lived here for a while, but Ben and I are new.”
Sonia tilts her head slightly. Only her and her son. Perhaps there’s some value to be had, especially with how close she seems with her son.
“How long has your family lived here?”
“Eddie and I have been here for about ten years now.”
She waits to see if Arlene will acknowledge the lack of a husband on either side. When she does, Sonia invites her in. She doesn’t want the neighbors to gossip after all. The face Eddie makes is indecipherable to her, but Arlene seems to understand.
“Sorry to drop in, just getting familiar with Ben’s friend's parents.” His wrinkled forehead smooths, he nods, and he turns back to whatever he was reading. He was confused. She’s tempted to shake her guest, ask her how she knows what Eddie is thinking, how she defused a potentially awkward conversation so easily.
“It’s hard, without Frank. Eddie was always so close to his father.” She wonders what Frank would think of her now, nearly ten years later, heavier, sadder, and lonelier. She thinks he would still love her. Even if he didn’t, he would still love Eddie. Maybe not how she’d raised him, but if he wanted a say, he shouldn’t have died she thinks bitterly. “I don’t get him the way Frank did.”
“I’d love to say I miss John, but it’s simply not true.” Arlene says something which would normally make Sonia gasp, but she says it softly, a self-effacing smile, her hands clasped around her knee. “He didn’t treat Ben well.”
Eddie pretends not to have heard anything, still on the same page he was on when Ben’s mom first knocked.
“My sister doesn’t either.” Sonia doesn’t miss the steely glint in her eyes. If her sister had been mistreating Eddie… She wouldn’t have a sister anymore.
“That’s awful! Why is she bullying a child?” Why are you letting her?
“She was kind enough to take us in after John- Anyway, she was kind enough to take us in, but apparently not kind enough to let us live there without resenting us.” Arlene wipes away an angry tear. “We pay rent to her, buy our own things, and Ben is so quiet and sweet and she still finds things to get after him about.”
Sonia doesn’t think before she says it. “Why don’t you live here?” She should talk to Eddie, think it over, talk herself out of it but she sees the warm eyes of Arlene tear up and can’t bring herself to regret it. “We have space. Frank and I- well, we were hoping to give Eddie a sibling but that didn’t happen. We don’t need rent money, and I think it might be good to have another person around who understands.”
Eddie blinks frantically. What the hell had happened to his mom? He tries to pay attention to the ongoing conversation, something about how they couldn’t possibly, and how she was absolutely going to pay rent if they did. They end with a tentative move in date, sometime in the next few weeks. Whatever. He could definitely do worse than Ben.
“Sorry Eddie! I should have talked to you before. I-” She can’t bring herself to rescind her offer.
“I was right here the entire time. If I didn’t like it, I’d have said something. Ben’s pretty neat.” Sonia almost tears up. It’s not much, but Eddie is telling her about his friends, no conflict, no fuss. She thinks Frank might be proud of her. He had always pressed a soft kiss to her forehead, run his hands through her hair, and told her how proud he was when she did something like this. Something generous, or outside her comfort zone. She misses him so much it aches.
They clean up the spare bedrooms, not that they’re messy or anything. Eddie helps her enthusiastically, gathering fresh bedding, rearranging furniture, and airing out the rooms. Ben and Arlene move in, with few belongings and the soft kindness Sonia doesn’t know how to give. Eddie seems to thrive with Ben’s presence, less tense, more enthusiastic, more genuine. Ben also seems to be doing well. Sonia isn’t as familiar with him but he seems to stand up straighter. They stay up late, go to the library together, and talk for hours.
Sonia aches for the siblings Eddie will never have, and the father he had for far too short a time.
“How do you understand Ben so well?” Sonia asks one night, a few glasses of wine into the evening, it’s supposed to be good for you.
“I think we have our own language. It’s been hard letting him grow up. I worry but he's smart and a good kid. He has wonderful friends.” Arlene smiles her signature soft smile. Ben has her smile Sonia thinks. Eddie has his father’s eyes, large and brown. She’s not sure if she’s actually taken the time to mourn him or if she just threw herself into protecting Eddie to avoid it. With a sinking feeling, she asks her closest friend, someone she has known for less than a month, a question she isn’t sure she wants to know the answer to.
“I’m not a good mother, am I?”
“Maybe not, but you can always get better.” Sonia smiles sadly.
“I’m holding him too tight.”
The next day, they pretend the conversation never happened but Arlene still hugs her warmly when she sees Sonia has canceled her account at Keene’s. Arlene is able to cut her hours at the factory, and she takes over shopping for medication. Eddie is pleasantly surprised and more than a little relieved. He wasn’t sure if his mom would relax, or if Ben’s mom would become more strict. This is better than he hoped for. He still had an inhaler, more for comfort than for anything else.
“Eddie? I need to talk to you about something.” He freezes. Maybe it was too good to be true. He should have known better.
“I haven’t been a good mom.” Whatever he was expecting wasn’t this. Was this a guilt trip? “That’s not on you.”
“Mom?”
“I messed up. I made you think you were sick when you weren’t. Made you think you were fragile. You weren’t. I was.”
This is unfamiliar, somehow scarier than her usual tactics. When she cried, or said he didn’t love her, it seemed off somehow, like how Richie used to pretend to cry to get Bowers to stop before he learned it didn’t work. This was something he hadn’t seen before, it was genuine.
“Your medications.” She closes her eyes, silent tears falling. “They’re fake. You don’t have asthma, or allergies.”
Eddie feels like he should have known, should have guessed but it still feels like a slap in the face. “You-” Instead of finishing his sentence, he bolts. She’s sobbing too hard to follow him.
She can’t breathe and the world is fuzzy and distant. If this is what she inflicted on her son, she deserves to die like this. She doesn’t want to leave him an orphan but is having her as a mother any better? Not for the first time, she wishes she had taken Frank's place. Maybe if she had, Frank could have moved on, met someone new, someone like Andrea. She thinks she wouldn’t have minded.
If Eddie had to grow up without her, had to call someone else “mom”, she thinks she wouldn’t mind it if it were Andrea.
Andrea comes home to the sound of hushed sobbing, terrifying in a way she hadn’t known existed before now. She drops to the floor, eyes wide.
“What happened?” she asks, as gentle as she can manage.
Sonia can’t speak, not enough oxygen, breathing too shallowly, too quickly. Andrea pulls her into her arms, frightfully limp and still. Andrea holds her and rocks back and forth. She hums softly, drowned out by the desperate gasps.
The scene at Richie’s house is startlingly similar. Eddie is hyperventilating, and when Richie hands him his inhaler, Eddie throws it against the wall.
“What the fuck? You put it in your face and breathe it in, so you can fuckin’ breathe genius.” Richie retrieves the inhaler, offers it to Eddie, and watches unimpressed as it goes straight out the window. “You little shit!” Eddie takes a deep breath as he starts to laugh. Richie lights up. He can do this. He throws himself into various bits, a little bit of British Guy here, Irish Cop there, a Voice Bev swears is what you’d get if a bus got fucked by a parrot, and he pointedly avoids any “Your mom” jokes. Usually if Eddie is this upset, and isn’t covered in bruises, it’s safe to assume it’s fucking Sonia Kasbrack, his least favorite Kasbrack by far.
Eddie has caught his breath and Richie trails off, Irish Cop giving way to fraught silence.
“All the bullshit my mom makes me take is bullshit.” Richie graciously lets the repetition go without comment. “The inhaler, my allergies. I thought things were finally getting better.”
“Do you think she’ll still make you take them?”
“I don’t know. She told me they were fake, said she’d been a shitty mom and that things were going to change. I don’t know if I can believe her.”
“She told you?” The disbelief is audible. “Does the entire Hanscom family have magic friendship powers or something? I try for years, on my best behavior,” Richie decides to ignore the incredulous look Eddie is giving him in favor of continuing his speech before Eddie’s muttered “Best behavior my ass!” make him snort like a fucking pig.
“Rich? Another one of your friends is here, I’ll send him up.”
“Thanks mom!” Richie bellows before turning back to Eddie. “Wanna bet on who it is?”
Eddie looks distinctly unimpressed. There’s a soft knock on Richie’s door, Ben entering after Richie yells at him to come in.
Both Ben and Eddie look incredibly uncomfortable.
“Hey Haystack! What brings you to my humble abode?”
“Can you give Eddie and I a minute alone?” Richie looks confused.
“Don’t you guys live together? Why’d ya need to have a moment alone in my room?” He’d make a joke about his nudie magazines if he didn’t think he would puke before he got to the punchline.
“I don’t care if Richie stays.” Richie feels a little bit like he’d found the perfect spot of sunlight after the cool of the quarry, the warmth bringing a subtle smile to his face. “Do you?”
“No, it’s alright with me. So first of all, you aren’t in trouble.” He’d never accuse Ben of lying to Eddie, but he wouldn’t hesitate to accuse Sonia.
“She always says that, and I always am!”
“She didn’t ask me to tell her where you were. She just told me to make sure you were okay.”
“Did she follow you or something? A listening device?” Ben looks at him flatly. “What?”
“She checked herself into a mental hospital.”
“WHAT? Oh my god, I’m going to be an orphan, I’ll end up on the fucking streets, what the actual fuck!” The hyperventilation had returned. Richie resisted the urge to glare at Ben while Eddie continued a surprisingly consistent chant of “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”. It wasn’t his fault Eddie’s mom was fucked up. He sighs and starts into a bit about the flying inhaler and how they’d probably make a fortune off of an inhaler tree if it landed in the garden..
“You could probably stay here if you want to.” Ben looks a little surprised at how shy Richie is as he makes the offer.
“Or stay with us. We wouldn’t let you live on the streets.”
“Or if we did, you’d have the finest cardboard box we can get our hands on. A couple of refrigerator boxes, some tape, maybe a blanket, I bet Ben could make you a real neat place.” Ben looks pleased at the indirect compliment.
“Besides, I think my mom would let us have a sleepover tonight, if you wanted to, if it wasn’t too much.”
Eddie looks like he’s holding back tears so Richie sits next to him on the bed and answers for him. “I think that would be good. Could you be in charge of planning?” Richie twists to open his nightstand, a rusty globe-shaped piggy bank holding what he’d saved up from his allowance. “Get a movie, some snacks, and get Stan to help you. No matter what he says, he does not have boy scouts tonight and no one likes twizzlers. If you have to get a horror movie, get Puppet Master or else we aren’t watching a horror movie. We’ll meet at your house around six.” Ben nods, repeats the instructions, and tucks Richie’s savings into his most secure pocket.
Before he closes the door, he softly says “You’re a good friend Richie.” Richie waits until the door closes before he scoots closer to Eddie. As soft and sweet and kind as Ben is, Richie isn’t ready to let anyone see him like this. It was an Eds exclusive, for his eyes only. Richie places his cleanest pillow on his lap, pulls Eddie towards him, and plays with his hair, taking great joy in how messy he makes it. It seems the messier his hair is, the more Eddie relaxes, and the more he relaxes, the more Richie relaxes. Ben had caught Maggie up on his way out, gotten directions to the Uris’s house from there, and made her promise to make sure Eddie and Richie make it over. The soft knock gets no response, neither does her calling Richie’s name or even Eddie’s. She opens the door pleased to see them both asleep. She thinks she’ll make a snack to send over with them while she waits. Before she does, she snaps a polaroid. It’s been a while since Richie was comfortable enough to be this sweet to anyone besides his family. She has the nagging feeling that soon enough, he won’t be comfortable with even that. She tucks the picture into her wallet, hidden until Richie’s immediate reaction won’t be to burn it.
Eddie wakes to the smell of cookies, a comforting hand tangled in his hair, and the sinking feeling that he’s forgotten something important. It doesn’t take long for him to remember. He feels a little like he’s trying to control his body from miles away. Richie doesn’t so much as twitch as his hand slips away from Eddie. Eddie grabs a bag, and starts blearily gathering whatever he deems acceptable from Richie’s drawers. Contrary to most people’s assumptions, Richie is not the messiest of the Losers. His clothes are strewn on every available surface, he’s probably never worn a matching pair of socks in his entire life, and Eddie refuses to look under his bed or in his closet for fear of what he might find, but at least it’s mostly clothes. Bill was worse. The more food he had in his room, the less he saw his parents and the less blatant Georgie’s absence was. Usually it was at least shelf stable but when it wasn’t… Eddie shudders. Richie had been unusually subtle, a glance to both Eddie and Stan, nodding to signify they’d talk later. Richie was the distraction, Stan and Eddie sneaking in to take care of the worst of it. He’s not sure Bill even noticed.
Maggie knocks, her knock distinct from anyone else's in a way Eddie’s not sure how to put into words. She smiles at Eddie, pulling him into a quick hug before tapping Richie awake.
“Hey sweetheart, time to get ready.” Richie groans dramatically. “I made cookies.” Richie sits up rapidly, grabbing his head as he hisses.
“Dizzy,” he says grumpily “ngh”.
“Don’t forget your toothbrush. Also I will be asking to make sure at least some of the cookies make it to your friends.”
“You made four batches. Our kid can eat but I don’t know if anyone could eat that many on a five minute walk.” Went kisses Maggie’s forehead, making Eddie look down to fidget with the zipper on Richie’s stupid bag. It’s not like he doesn’t know most married people love each other. It’s not part of his day to day life. He wonders if Richie knows how lucky he is, this soft almost instinctual affection. Not meant to check for a fever, or a rash, or some other bullshit, just affection and love expressed with simple gestures. He kind of wants to scream or cry, but as much as he loves Maggie and Went, as much as they love him, he doesn’t want to scare them.
Maggie stocks the bag with as many cookies as will fit, Richie carrying his pillow so they get maximum cookie space. They don’t talk on their way, but Eddie could swear he hears a hostile whisper calling Richie’s name. If he ever was asked, Richie would swear he heard the same voice beckoning Eddie.
Andrea had taken care of Alvin, somehow convincing him to not only let Bev come over, but also to stay the night. Richie was becoming more and more convinced of his “power of friendship theory”. Ben and Stan had decided on a comedy and Ben had remained strong despite Stan’s incredibly persuasive arguments in favor of twizzlers. Instead, they had soda, chips, cookies, a few different kinds of candy and popcorn.
They don’t know when Sonia will come home, likely not for a couple of weeks. Eddie isn’t sure how to feel. On one hand, this is the longest he’s been away from his mom since his father died, the most freedom he’s ever had, on the other hand, what if she never comes back? What if she was lying about him not being sick? He’s been staring into space for at least half an hour when Eddie feels the noxious prodding of fingers searching for weakness. “Richie, I swear to-”
His face goes pale when he sees Richie is nowhere near him, everyone else settled in with him out of reach. He tries to ignore it, probably just his imagination.
He had a hard time falling asleep that night, he slept earlier, the weird tickling bullshit, the weird medicine bullshit, and his mom going to a psych ward.
Richie hasn’t made a single joke about Eddie’s mom the entire night and frankly, Stan finds it to be more than a little disconcerting. If Richie is shutting up about something voluntarily, it has to be serious. If Eddie is letting Richie make decisions for him… They haven’t had something that serious yet, not about Eddie anyway. There’s only so much they can do. They can’t bring Georgie back home and they can’t fix Mrs. Kaspbrak. Stan probably wouldn’t be helpful in the way Eddie needed either. Richie reads people, finds the underlying meaning and either bugs the hell out of them, or endears himself to them. With the Loser’s and Eddie in particular, it’s both. Stan analyzes people. He doesn’t think Eddie needs him to know this whole thing is fucked up.
Richie can make Eddie laugh himself out of a panic attack. Stan would probably just have a panic attack too. As much fun as they have trashing the Trashmouth, he wishes, at least for today, that he had a little bit of what he does.
Mike got there late, and hasn’t been filled in. Eddie has been preoccupied all throughout the movie, Richie has been getting up and pacing for most of it, and far, far too quiet. Bev almost seems like she’s trying to fill the silence Richie’s left. The other’s are harder to tell. Stan is always quiet, and Bill and Ben both don’t usually talk during movies. Ben is picking at the carpet and Bill is chewing on his lip. The energy is more frantic than he’s used to and the fact that they’re at Eddie’s house without being yelled at somehow doesn’t bode well. Mike hasn’t personally had the pleasure of being yelled at by Sonia Kaspbrak, but he’s sure it’s just a matter of time.
Bill pulls him aside to give him the broad strokes of the situation. There’s not much to say after that. Richie can get away with helping Eddie because he keeps needling him while doing it, Stan gets away with it because he’s stubborn and will tear down his objections almost instantly, and Bill gets away with it because he’s Bill. He thinks Ben, Bev, and himself will have to settle for helping out indirectly. Eddie has far too sharp of a tongue for the type of tonguelashing he gives out. Mike is starting to wonder if Richie enjoys being verbally eviscerated, or if he just loves bugging Eddie enough that he considers it part and parcel.
Things are only slightly less tense in the morning. Eddie doesn’t look like he’s slept at all, and if he were a cat, his tail would be thrashing behind him. Richie intentionally draws his ire whenever he seems too agitated with anyone else, both preventing him from lashing out and also keeping his attention on Richie at all times. After a few hours of this, Eddie seems a lot more subdued. Andrea leaves for work, and they leave for the quarry. Bowers and his gang must be busy elsewhere because they don’t see hide nor hair of them. Mike is relieved because he’s pretty sure Eddie would try to strangle them. He’s a little scary and Mike can’t help but admire Richie for being able to withstand him at his angriest.
Bev is a little jealous, not that she’d ever say anything, but she can’t help but wish her father had been sent away, or that Andrea was her mom, soft and kind in a way she hadn’t known since Ma died.
Bill had been withdrawn since Ben moved in with Eddie. She hadn’t gotten it until Stan brought up how much of a big brother Bill was. He was jealous, or afraid of being replaced, or that he was failing all over again. They looked for Georgie more often and more intensely, and she had her suspicions he was searching alone as often as he could.
Sonia was still in the psychiatric ward when shit went down with the clown the first time. Eddie was with Richie, covering his mouth before he said something he’d regret and Bill didn’t punch him. Eddie wasn’t dragged away from his friends. Andrea, Ben, and Richie went to the hospital with him. Andrea went to visit her, bringing Ben and Eddie along. Obviously Sonia freaked out however, it was much less than expected. She was medicated. Not for some made up malady, not with sleeping pills, but for her severe anxiety. She didn’t kick out Andrea or Ben, didn’t decry Eddie’s friends, or try to make Andrea lock him inside.
She cried, hugged him, and asked if he was alright. He said he was. Richie had helped him, kept him safe and gotten him out. She’d forgotten some things in her zeal to protect Eddie, number one, he wasn’t helpless, and number two, his friends were also trying to protect him. She remembers the inhaler Richie carried around for her son, the way Bill had befriended him, became his first friend, how the way Bill treated Eddie made her wish Eddie could be a big brother, how Stan brought him along when he went bird watching, taught him what he’d learned in boy scouts when she hadn’t signed him up. Sonia wrote out an apology as well as a thank you for Eddie to hand over.
In many ways, these few weeks had been the hardest in her life, looking back at what she’d done, how afraid she’d made her son, how she’d lied to him. She’d told herself, told Frank when she thought of his disapproval, told Eddie she was only trying to keep him safe. She was still taking in her diagnosis.
“Eddie-bear? I don’t think I’m ready to come home yet.”
For the first time in years, Eddie hugs her without any presumption of affection.
As Sonia works on her mental health, works on making up for all the harm she’s caused, Richie finds himself not missing the “Your mom” jokes, perfectly happy to follow Eddie’s example of joking about fucking a non-existent sister. This confirms Stan’s theory that the mom jokes were simply his way of expressing his anger at Sonia’s treatment of Eddie without being direct about it.
The Loser’s don’t split up that summer, they all go to Stan’s Bar Mitzvah, cheer at his speech, and when the clown takes Bev, they kick IT’s ass. They kill IT, never split up, never marry the wrong person, never forget.
When the realization hits them, that Andrea and Sonia still live in the house in Derry together, long after Andrea could have afforded to move out, that they’ve never dated anyone else, that they have a suspicious amount of Xena merch, were extremely excited about Ellen coming out, and the piece of paper on their wall from Massachusetts isn’t some fun tourist souvenir, Eddie and Richie have been dating for years.
Richie is a little wary of Sonia still, understandably. Although her anxiety is much improved, and having more than one person to focus her energy on had undeniably helped, he had no doubt she would throw him down a mineshaft if he hurt Eddie. He was even more scared of Andrea. If she was throwing him down a mineshaft, he had no doubt he deserved it, and no doubt that Ben would be the one hauling his dead ass around until she found a suitable shaft. He’d threatened Ben to treat Bev well, so he felt like they were even now, even though his threat was more along the lines of Ben being forced to fight him, then feeling bad once he’d seen how badly Richie had lost. He’d also technically threatened Bev in that he’d started his spiel, she’d smiled, and said she’d rather face Pennywise again than hurt him. He felt that was a pretty solid promise.
Stan and Patty had threatened Eddy long before they were engaged. Mike had forgone the threats, the thought of his disappointment directed at them more than enough of a deterrent. They weren’t entirely sure if Bill knew they were dating, and was just joking around, or if he was that obtuse. Audra wasn’t going to tell them, nor was Mike. No one threatened Patty. They threatened to steal her away if Stan didn’t appreciate her enough, teased her about stealing Stan, but there were no doubts how much she loved him.
Anyway, telling Eddie’s moms about the engagement was easy. Stopping Richie from making step-brother jokes about Ben and Eddie was much harder “That’s what he said.”