(no subject)

[allthelifethereis]

Hilde's old enough that he doesn't really think about leaving her alone for a couple of hours at night. He promises himself that he'll be back before she wakes up, anyway. He just needs to get out of the house, needs to get his head clear, needs to...

He doesn't know what he needs, not really. Even with the difference in his age, even with all of the years missing between them, Bev has always been his person, and the thought that she's gone makes something in his chest ache in a way that he almost can't stand. For a while, he just walks, hands shoved into his pockets, but then he finds his way to a familar door.

When Jade opens it, Bill's standing with his forehead leaned against the frame. He shakes his head.

"I don't know why I'm here," he says, voice cracking. "Of all the places I could fuh-fucking be."

Comments

[whenwego]

“Because I’m good looking, charming, smell good, and have a lot of really delicious and expensive snacks,” Jade answers as he pushes the door open wider so Bill can come inside.

Something is going on. He clocks the stutter, doesn’t say anything about it, but it’s there for a reason. Some holdover from childhood, maybe some trauma. He knows Bill’s been through some shit.

“What do you need?” he asks.

[allthelifethereis]

"I didn't know about the s-..." The sound sticks in his throat and he stops, taking a breath. "Snacks."

He steps into Jade's apartment and shakes his head.

"I don't really know. I just had to get out of my place and this was the only place I could think of to come. I just..." I nuh-need to be out of my h-head."

Out of everyone he knows, he thinks Jade is the person he trusts most to get him there, one way or another.

[whenwego]

“Weed? Mushrooms? I have both,” Jade offers. “Edibles for the weed, if you prefer, the ones I have will relax you more.”

He’s not good at this. Bill needs something like comfort and Jade is truly bad at that, had only ever cared to comfort Tian-Chen or his grandmother. With everyone else, it felt like coddling and he doesn’t like to coddle anyone.

But if Bill wants distraction, he’s a good one for that.

[allthelifethereis]

"Weed," says Bill, immediately, because that would definitely help. "Relaxed would be good." He glances towards the door. "Was I...Was it stupid to come here? I didn't even think about it." He scrubs his hands over his face. "I lost someone. I need to not think about that for a couple of hours."

[whenwego]

“Were you stupid to come spend time with one of the most interesting people here?” Jade tosses back as he pushes Bill toward the couch, not roughly, but none too gently either.

“No, that was probably the smartest thing you could have done,” he continues as he goes into the kitchen to the pantry and then into the sealed container where he keeps the edibles. He chooses one of the bags and rips it open, then fights with the stupid child proof zipper opening as he heads back to Bill. “And that’s pretty shitty, dude, I’m sorry.”

[allthelifethereis]

When Jade pushes him, he doesn't offer any resistance, taking two slightly unsteady steps towards the couch and sprawling on it, head tipped back, staring up at the ceiling.

"Her name was...is...Bev. Beverly. I've known her since I was thirteen. She was a lot younger than me here -- timeline bullshit, right? -- but back home..." He rubs his hands over his face. "She was my first kiss."

[whenwego]

Jade gets the bag open and tips out the two gummies inside. Neither are overly strong, just enough that one will relax Bill and the other will made Jade slightly less manic than usual. He pops one into his mouth and offers the other to Bill.

“Pear flavoured,” he says. “It sucks, leaving people behind.” The way he continues, it’s as if he hasn’t said a word about the weed. “It has to happen, because that’s how life goes, but it’s still absolutely the shittiest thing.”

[allthelifethereis]

Bill takes the gummy, chewing silently for a long moment. He knows it won't kick in for a while, but he's grateful for it, all the same.

"I can't remember," he says. "How much I've told you. About when we were kids...about all of it." He knows that he's told Jade about Georgie, some of it, anyway, but the whole thing is so cluttered in his head. "I met most of the Losers in Kindergarden. But we met Bev when we were freshmen in high school."

He rubs both hands over his face. His eyes ache.

[whenwego]

“And so you fell in love, huh?” he asks as he leans back into the couch beside Bill. “High school love is kinda the most powerful, isn’t it? That first one that just slaps you in the face and it means so much more because you’ve never felt that shit before.”

He remembers his first. She was older than him by a lot, given how many grades he had skipped, and she hadn’t loved him back, but god, he had loved her so much.

[allthelifethereis]

"I think we were all kind of in love with each other, looking back," says Bill, shifting a little until his shoulder butts against Jade's. He needs that contact, right then, needs something solid. "But Bev. We were definitely all in love with Bev. It feels weird to think about the things I remember, because I'm forty five, and she was in her twenties, here, but there was this day at the quarry, when we went swimming, and she was the first one to jump, and I remember thinking that I'd never seen anything as lovely as her, not in my whole fuh-fucking life."

He winces when he stutters, rubbing his hand over his face.

[whenwego]

“Shit,” Jade says, smiling at the memory. “Yeah, I remember how something like that felt. Only I was twelve and she was seventeen and I’d skipped fuck only knows how many grades at that point. We were studying together and she grabbed this ponytail elastic thing and pulled her hair back and I just remember her neck, man. I was in love.”

But she’s not here. It’s not the same, not really. Still, he doesn’t know how to be properly comforting, so he’s doing what he can.

[allthelifethereis]

"Yeah, that's it," says Bill, nodding, still looking up at the ceiling, comforted just by Jade being close. "And then we lost track of each other -- all of us -- for years until we ended up back in Derry, in our forties, married to other people and it was so fucking stressful. She kissed me then, too."

He remembers how confused he'd been, standing on the stairs in the hotel, but it had been a good kiss, all the same.

[whenwego]

Jade is less concerned with the morals and ethics of wedding vows, than he knows a lot of people are, so he doesn’t much of Bill saying they kissed even though they were married to other people. In his life, Jade has done a lot more than kiss married men and women. Often together.

That isn’t the point of this anyway. Bill isn’t focused on that part either.

“That’s gotta be fucking weird,” he acknowledges. “The time jumps, the age differences, the memories. You take that with you, though. All of it, all of her.”

[allthelifethereis]

"Yeah, it was. Weird. At first, anyway," he says. Without really thinking about it, he lifts one hand, idly tracing his fingers against the fabric of Jade's pants as he talks. "We kind of settled into it. She was working for me -- kind of like my personal assistant. Doing all the shit I forget to do when I'm teaching and writing. It didn't really matter than there was suddenly twenty odd years between us. Turns out, she was still just...the person I needed around, most of the time."

[whenwego]

There isn’t a single person in Jade’s life who had been around that long with the exception of Tobey. Tobey, now dead, lying in some shitty grave in a shitty town where Jade led him and then left him. Both were unintentional, but he doesn’t know if that even really matters.

Whether he meant it or not, he took the one person he loved straight to his death.

“I had a friend like that,” he surprises himself by saying. “We met when we were… fifteen, I think. Not at school, Tobey, god love him, was a bit of an idiot. I’m not sure he even finished high school, which would kind of kill a normal person’s future, but he was from a super rich family and they just sort of let him do whatever he wanted. But he was always, always there for me. Always. He moved to Germany when I went for school.”

[allthelifethereis]

"It's...really something, isn't it?" he says, his voice a little raw and painful for a minute. He swallows against the lump that's suddenly in his throat. "Having someone like that."

The Losers had drifted apart, back home, but he knows, in his heart of hearts, that that wasn't their fault. It was Pennywise and Derry and them being far more of a problem together than they ever could be apart. "That's quite the commitment, though. Germany."

[whenwego]

“Like I said, he was too stupid to figure life out on his own,” Jade answers, staring up at the ceiling. The gummy has kicked in, he’s only now realizing it, and he feels pleasantly floaty. He hopes Bill feels the same.

That’s not entirely fair, Tobey hadn’t hung around Jade just for the money. He’d had plenty of his own, after all, and he hadn’t really been so much of an idiot that he couldn’t have survived without him. But they needed each other and every time he remembers that Tobey is dead, it sucks all over again.

[allthelifethereis]

He drifts for a moment, the gummy doing it's job, his fingers still idly tracing against Jade's thigh. "I know how that feels," he says. "I always used to think that I was just a shitty writer who couldn't figure out endings that made sense to anyone, but maybe it's because we were supposed to end the way we did, back home."

It hits him then -- maybe he's never going to be able to write properly again, now that Bev is gone. He hates that idea. He closes his eyes and tries to let it go.

[whenwego]

“What’s that mean?” he asks, tilting his head slightly to look at Bill. “How did you end?”

Maybe he’s just stoned, but Jade doesn’t follow. Then again, he also doesn’t know all the details of Bill’s life. He’s like that with most people, giving all the information and never asking for any in return. If Bill is referring to something specific, Jade doesn’t know what it is.

[allthelifethereis]

"When we were kids, we fought a monster," he says, his voice soft and a little dreamy. The only person he's really talked to about this, the only person who wasn't there, is Neil, and the way he feels about Jade isn't the same, isn't close, but he feels something and, right then, he needs to talk about it. "Our town was rotten to the core, poisoned by this...thing. It. It looked like a fucking clown." Even stoned, he shudders. "And we swore that, if It came back, we would do too. All of us together. We'd fight it again. Only, we all lost track of each other after that summer. Forgot it. Like we'd dreamt it or something." He opens his eyes, lifting his hand so that he can study the scar on his palm, holding it out to show Jade. "Maybe I was always shitty at endings because it never really ended, you know? Just faded out."

[whenwego]

Jade takes Bill’s hand and studies the scar for a moment before he sets it back down on his knee. “Life isn’t a story, though. I mean, it is, but not like that. It’s not neat. The only proper end of life is when you die, man, there’s not some grand climax and then fade to black with everything all tied up in a neat little package. No offence, but that’s not original to your town or your clown.”

He kind of wiggles his hand in the air and lets it glide off briefly.

“Everything fades in and out. People, places, success and failure. It comes and goes, ebbs and flows. We forget shit and people, even important stuff.”

[allthelifethereis]

It's difficult to explain to anyone who wasn't there, didn't experience how completely they forgot each other after that summer, and how it all came melting back after the first hour together as adults. Because, yeah, it was normal to forget things and places, but not like that. Not like something's been taken from you.

He doesn't say that, though. He scrapes his nails lightly against Jade's jeans instead.

"I don't know, man," he says. "The alternative is that I just write shitty endings. Let me have an existential explanation."

[whenwego]

“Maybe people are too stupid to understand your endings,” Jade shoots back. “I’ve read your books now. They’re not bad, they’re just not happy, and what the fuck is wrong with that? The world isn’t happy and if that’s what someone wants to read, they’ve got countless other options at their fingertips. Fuck ‘em. Let them think the world is beautiful and perfect and write whatever the hell you want.”

Jade knows all too well that the world doesn’t end happily ever after. Everyone dies and hurts and loses themselves to fucking monsters.

[allthelifethereis]

"You did?" Even in the haze of weed and grief, he's still weirdly pleased that Jade took the time, that he was bothered. "And, yeah, you're right. The world isn't happy, and its full of fucking monsters, and sometimes, things don't end happily."

Hell, sometimes, they don't even end, not really. They just taper off and you realise that, somewhere along the line, you stopped paying attention. He rubs his hands over his face. "Started with Georgie and then it just never really got better." He sighs. "Fuck it. I need to talk about something else. Anything."

[whenwego]

“It’s not like I’m doing half of what I was before here,” Jade answers. “I have a lot of time to read.”

Bill says he needs to talk about something else and Jade says, “Okay. Wanna hear my monster story?” There are a lot of parts of his story that doesn’t entirely make sense, he still doesn’t understand all the details, partly because he couldn’t get people to fucking tell him and if Victor was here, that part of his inner monologue would be very fucking pointed.

[allthelifethereis]

"Yeah," says Bill, because he doesn't really know much about Jade, about where he was before. For someone who talks as much as he does -- and, God, does he talk -- Jade's very good at not saying a lot. Bill shifts, turning on the couch so that he's facing Jade, leaning back against the arm, one leg curled up on the cushions. "Tell me."

[whenwego]

“Okay, so, I wasn’t really awake for the first bit, so take the arrival with a grain of salt. I heard it all secondhand after the fact,” Jade starts, head back against the couch, his eyes on the ceiling.

“Tobey was driving, I was passed out in the back seat, and we came across a tree in the road, blocking the way. Tobey turned around to try and find a way around it and then, probably because he was stoned, caused an accident with this RV. This family was inside, also trying to find their way around the tree, but joke’s on all of us, the tree is the first sign of this shitty ass town and once you see the tree, you’re not going home.”

He pauses, then says, “So I woke up in a smashed up car, Tobey wandering around in this forest, all bloody, and then there were other people helping me out, dragging me up to the road. They cuffed me to another car, which was rude, but I guess I was kind of high and out of it, probably just would have gotten in the way. But then it starts getting dark and they start freaking out and suddenly I’m being driven and then dragged toward this house and these people are coming out of the dark, screaming at us, and their teeth, man. They were like… fangs, their whole mouth, just these huge, sharp fangs.”

[allthelifethereis]

Bill just listens, his temple resting on his fist, his elbow on the back of the sofa. He hasn't heard most of this; for someone who talks as much as Jade does, he's very good at not saying much at all. It's probably just because of the weed that he's getting this much. He winces at the mention of a mouth full of fangs because, yeah, that part sounds familiar.

"Well, that sounds fucking terrifying," he says.

[whenwego]

“Then,” Jade continues, “then they tied me to a bed. Which really pissed me off after I figured out it wasn’t a sexy thing at all. And I was still really stoned, which didn’t help anything either, and then, okay, stay with me here, then I decided it was an elaborate escape room Tobey put together to fuck with me.”

He grins up at the ceiling, remembering that, how pissed off everyone has been at him.

“I stole someone’s bike,” he says. “I thought they were all in on it.”

[allthelifethereis]

He laughs at that -- the escape room, the bike. He can imagine Jade causing that kind of chaos all too easily.

"When I went back to Derry, before I came here, I found the bike that I had when I was thirteen in an antique store window," he says. "Guy made me pay $300 to get it back. And then it showed up here not that long after I did."

[whenwego]

“Shit, all I got was that creepy dummy,” Jade says.

He’s quiet, thinking, a rare moment, then says, “It wasn’t an escape room. And I didn’t know it yet, but Tobey was already dead. There was this girl, Sarah, and the town like… spoke to her. It told her to do things. She left the door of the clinic open at night and the monsters got Tobey and this guy Kenny’s dad. Ripped them apart.”

He licks his lips, still looking up at the ceiling. “They had to show me Tobey’s body before I understood it wasn’t a joke.”

[allthelifethereis]

"Don't remind me about that fucking thing," says Bill, barely surpressing a shudder. "Although, I suppose that was the first day I met you, so..." He goes back to listening to Jade talk, eyebrows pulling together in a slight frown; he's not sure he's ever seen Jade like this. Quiet. Reflective. A little vulnerable. He's not entirely sure that it's the right thing to do, but he reaches out and squeezes Jade's shoulder gently.

"That sounds shit," he says. Derry had been shit, too, but at least he'd had the option of walking away, even if he hadn't had the sense to take it.

[whenwego]

“It was bad. Tobey was… it was bad.” Jade doesn’t really want to think back on that, on how torn apart Tobey had been, the blood, the exposed bone and muscle. He tried to forget it and he’d prefer to keep it that way.

“After that I just decided I was going to figure it out,” he continues. “I was going to get us all the fuck out of there.” He shrugs. “I guess I got myself out.”

[allthelifethereis]

Jade doesn't shake him off, so Bill leaves his hand where it is, resting on his shoulder as he listens to him talk.

"Well, I'm glad you did that, at least," he says. He swallows, thumb stroking against the fabric of Jade's shirt for a moment. "Eddie..." He hasn't told anyone except Neil this, other than Eddie himself. It's not something he talks about but, right then, it feels right than Jade know. "He died. Right before I left Derry. Seeing his face again fucked me up."

He doesn't think about it as much as he used to. He still dreams about it.

[whenwego]

Jade thinks he remembers Eddie. Or some guy named Eddie anyway, maybe not Bill’s Eddie, but he doesn’t always pay enough attention to the people around him. Not unless they can help him in some way.

“Shit,” he says. “So you were there with him? When he died?”

That’d throw anyone off, he thinks. If he’d shown up here and saw Tobey, he thinks he might have had a full on mental breakdown. More than he already did anyway.

[allthelifethereis]

"We all were," says Bill, idly chewing on the fingernail of the hand not resting on Jade's shoulder, staring off into space as he remembers it. "Down in the sewers under Derry. We were...we thought we were winning. We thought we'd figured it out." They had, in the end, but not in time. Too late. "We had to leave him down there." He shakes his head. "I didn't mean to...We were talking about you."