Chapter Text
He’s never liked puzzles.
Eddie remembers when he was young, about five, he didn’t have any friends. Not like it mattered at least, his mother would never had let him outside anyways. No, it would always be Eddie Kaspbrak, the boy who kept quiet in his kindergarten class, coloring or listening intently to the story. Avoiding the sand pit and the swings. Hell, avoiding the entire class. It’s not like he was exactly asking to be approached. Though, he’s never liked playing with puzzles. It was hard for him to put the pieces together. It was just difficult to find which piece fit where, he never liked sitting down with his mother and doing a one thousand piece puzzle with her. He wondered, what was the appeal in trying to put something back together? What was the point if it was already scattered, broken in a thousand small pieces, fitting in the palm of his hand perfectly? All to add up to what? Some stupid picture? It was why Eddie always hid when his mother called out the same ‘Eddiebear! I have a puzzle we can do!’ that he’s never liked hearing. He always hid in the same place, under blankets and behind his stuffed animals in his closet, where he felt the safest.
His mother always found him, considering he was always hidden in the same exact place. He had vague memories of before it had happened, his father would just let Eddie hide and do that stupid puzzle with his mother. However, when he had passed away, Eddie was taken out of hiding, scolded for possibly make his newly diagnosed asthma act up, and dragged off to do a puzzle he didn’t want to take any part of. Eventually, Eddie stopped fighting his mother on doing things with her. He was not only forced to do puzzles, but also shown sewing. Another thing the young boy didn’t care for. Once again, what was the point of mending something that was ripped? Something torn? Why make a t-shirt that he could easily just ask his mother to buy from a department store?
Eddie didn’t want to do puzzles or sew. He didn’t want to stay inside all day and watch his mother’s soaps that he only half understood at the young age of five. He didn’t want to spend his whole life inside, when there was so much outside to explore.
When Eddie was seven years old, he met Bill Denbrough, who was nice. He was kind, he gave Eddie a flower. It was a real one, and not the fake ones that smelled like cheap plastic. It was one that grew from the Earth the young boy had never gotten to experience, it was grown by the rain that Eddie was always shunned from. Bill somehow convinced his mother to let him go outside, he somehow helped Eddie explore the wonderful world, and they did it together.
Bill Denbrough wasn’t a puzzle Eddie needed to put together. The boy wasn’t shattered in a thousand pieces. He wasn’t something he needed to stitch back together, he was a person. He was Eddie’s first friend. Together, they played games. They pretended they were pirates, or werewolves, or vampires, hell, sometimes they pretended they were knights or princes. Eddie got to play in the dirt, he got to play with mud, he got to be in the rain. With Bill, he could get his lavender colored shirt dirty. It didn’t matter, because Bill’s mother would kindly wash Eddie’s messy shirt or mud covered pants, and Eddie would just borrow something of Bill’s. Granted, it didn’t fit him, but he always got home safely and in clean clothes.
Eddie was always told before Bill that he was delicate, fragile, sickly. He hated being any of those things. He knew he wasn’t destined to be putting puzzles together for the rest of his life, he knew he wasn’t destined to be sewing things back together, he wasn’t destined to stay inside every day. He wasn’t destined to never experience how nice the sun felt against his skin, how cold the rain could be. He was destined to live, he was destined to be free. It was a refreshing thought in the young boy’s mind. Bill became his best friend. Older kids would always comment on the both of them. Bill, on his stutter, and Eddie, on having a watch that went off every few hours to tell him when to take his pills, for being fragile. When the kids shot insults at him, he had to fight back somehow. Bill started fighting back with him.
In fourth grade, the duo became a trio, Stanley Uris was someone that was always as quiet as Eddie used to be, he was snappy, he didn’t talk to a lot of people. He was always reading a book with birds on the cover, he always stayed out in the grass, more near the trees with a pair of binoculars. Bill had been the one to point him out. He was the one who sat next to Stan, asking him about the birds in the book. And Eddie had simply followed. He would follow Bill everywhere and anywhere. It was simply the way of the world, Bill had this pull to him. Any person he touched was permanently attached to him, as if by a string. It could easily be ripped or cut away from, it was completely your choice to follow Bill. And Eddie wanted to follow Bill.
Stanley had made himself a wonderful friend. He was a kind person, he taught the two all about the birds he loved to study and watch. Stanley found a beauty in things that most kids didn’t care for. He found beauty in nature, and like Eddie, he found beauty in Bill. He had chosen to follow him as well.
In the eighth grade, the trio met Ben Hanscom. He was new, and only had one friend, being Beverly Marsh. Ben was very to himself if he wasn’t around Beverly. On the first day of school, Ben told his class a story of his father. He was brushed off by most, and made fun of by many of the same people who bullied Bill, Stan, and Eddie. It was halfway through the year when Ben had nervously walked up to their table, telling them that he couldn’t find Beverly. He asked if he could sit with them, and of course, Bill responded with a definite yes. Eddie got to know more stories of Ben, how growing up with a dad in the army was. He had moved after his father’s death, and was now living with his aunt, mother, and cousin. He was kind, and even funny.
The next day, Beverly and Ben had shown up. Beverly Marsh was a kind girl with the most beautiful red hair Eddie had ever seen, of course, he had admired it before, but it was a fire that he had never thought could be real. She sat with them, cracking jokes, and making even Stanley laugh. She made a wonderful friend.
Over the summer before high school, they had met Mike Hanlon. Mike was different from everyone else, but the same as them. Mike was being assaulted, there was no other word for it, he was being assaulted by Henry Bowers and his gang. Beverly had thrown the first rock to defend Mike, and eventually they had all started throwing rocks. Henry Bowers had left with shouting after them that they were losers, and Mike decided to follow Bill to the end of the earth as well.
All of them were bound to Bill, and Bill was bound to them. It was the way it worked. Each six of them loved Bill, through everything. Eddie loved him for showing him the world he was once never allowed to see, he knew there were most likely reasons why everyone else loved Bill endlessly, why everyone else was tied to Bill by a thin string. Bill Denbrough was the most caring and kind person that any of them had ever met, and that was enough for all of them.
Through his childhood, Eddie stopped playing in the mud and the dirt. His mother told him that his allergies would act up if he didn’t. When Eddie didn’t believe her, she took the young boy to doctors, plenty of them, the doctors telling him the same thing. he was allergic to nearly everything outside, his asthma could only get worse, and his heart was in potential danger. Which is why he took all the medicine he did. He knew his mother, knew she would never lie to him. And that was fact for thirteen years, until the pharmacist had enough with Sonia Kaspbrak tricking her son. He told him that his pills were fake, his asthma was fake, and the only sick one was his mother. Eddie didn’t believe him, he knew he had asthma. He knew because he had asthma attacks every time he had to run too fast, or when he needed to speak in front of the class, but it was explained to him that half of it was in his head, and the other half was most likely anxiety.
That was the day Eddie went home angry, the day he had flushed all his pills down the toilet and cried. When his mother found him, it was one of their biggest fights. He screamed at the top of his lungs, anger flooding him, that the pills were fake all along. Tears streamed down his face, but she had just stared. She had just calmly told him that his pills helped him, but Eddie knew behind the calm exterior his mother was shocked. Shocked that her obedient son, her little Eddiebear, would yell at her. Scream, throw a tantrum unlike anything he had ever done. Eddie wasn’t a little boy anymore. He was growing and changing, he was being held down by the very woman who was supposed to love him for who he is. It wasn't the asthma that suffocated him, it was her. It had always been her
Once she had left, Eddie snuck out to Bill’s, and had just cried to his best friend. He ranted for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a good half hour. By the end of it, both boys were crying, Eddie’s head in Bill’s lap. Bill had ran his hand through Eddie’s hair, stuttering out apologies that ran endlessly.
“I’m suh-suh-sorry sheh-she did this to you, Eh-Eddie.” Bill had whispered through his own tears.
With a small sniffle, Eddie responded, “It’s not your fault Billy. You didn’t know and neither did I. It’s like she doesn’t even love me, she just loves the idea of me. The idea of not being alone.” he spoke his last part coldly, lip trembling again.
“One duh-day you’re guh-guh-gonna f-f-f-find suh-someone who v-v-values you f-for who you are. Not beh-because they suh-see you as suh-suh-someone else.” Bill promised him. Bill didn’t know, but Eddie wished more than anything for Bill to be that someone. Instead, Eddie nodded, and let Bill comb his hands through Eddie’s hair, basking in the small comfort it provided.
And the next week, he was back at the pharmacy, getting more placebos. He still popped them into his mouth like candies when he was around his mother, because it won’t help him, but it certainly helped his mother.
Eddie didn’t think he was destined to put puzzles together. He didn’t think he would ever like mending things together with stitching, he thought he would never love to be at home.
However, in his junior year, Eddie was introduced to the new kid, Richie Tozier, by Bill. Eddie knew him from his English class, but didn’t pay much attention to him. But Bill had been the one to bring him over and sit him down, and Eddie was accidentally given the most complicated puzzle he would have ever been given in his life.