Work Text:
(one)
stan is gone.
he was the last to leave. he and mike spent their last days together, alone at the barrens, just watching the sunset, hearing the sounds of the trees, the bugs, the birds. stan talked about writing, calling, but they both knew he wouldn’t do any of those things. not because he didn’t want to, but because the others had promised the same. richie had left less than a month before. he swore a lot, that day. he said he would be fucking different, that mike would tire of his phonecalls--
(no need to worry. richie never called or wrote.)
but that day, he hugged mike in a way mike would never forget. mike would remember all their last hugs, the last time he heard their voices.
(but they won’t, he thought to himself, waving stan goodbye. they won’t.)
(two)
it’s weird, being alone.
mike thinks he should be used to this; he’s been alone all his life. the only people who cared about him were his wonderful parents and that was okay. that was good. but from the summer of ‘89 to the summer of ‘94 he forgot how it was to be alone. and now it’s really hard to remember. what did he do with his free time?
he still loves to read. he still loves to talk with his parents.
but the absence of them is so big that it becomes a presence itself.
his brain tries to argue with his heart: you’ve spent thirteen years alone. you spent only five years with them. that shouldn’t matter so much. stop crying about this.
five years that felt like a lifetime. he misses them. he misses them so much it hurts. he misses the eternal bickering between eddie and richie. he misses stan rolling his eyes. he misses bev and ben’s laughter. he misses bill’s knowing smile.
no one calls, no one writes. they’re all out there, in the world, and his mother hugs him and tells him everything will turn out fine, and his dad looks him in the eye, so serious, and says: it’s not their fault. it’s derry. it’s always derry.
mike knows this. but it hurts, nonetheless.
(three)
he wonders why he didn’t left derry too (it’s not the first time, it won’t be the last).
mike is in the clubhouse, sitting in the hammock alone. he looks at the walls, at the comic books in the ground, at the boxes full of stuff, one over another. their stuff: games and cards, ben’s tools, books. all the things they left behind, including him.
he murmurs: I chose to stay.
did he?
it looked like he never had an option. it was so natural, all of them leaving and mike staying. like somebody else chose this turn of events. maybe the same somebody that brought them together.
the first year he was alone, he went to the clubhouse almost religiously -- actually, more than religiously, he was there every day. mike would spend the day in the clubhouse, reading, worrying, missing. the second year, he started to go less and less. why throw salt in the wound like that?
now he only went there when the silence that surrounded him drove him to desperation. when the turtle’s voice in his head (was it really the turtle? bill would say so, and mike believes in his memories of bill) is not enough to mask the silence.
he closes his eyes and he can hear -- hear them. If he closes his eyes he can hear bill stutter the bravest words out of his mouth. If he closes his eyes he can hear the ghost sound of richie laughing too hard and that sound makes him smile too. he can hear eddie’s voice warning bev about the dangers of smoking and then stan’s voice saying at least it’s not marijuana. he can hear ben telling him about the last book he took from the library.
their voices mixing together is the best sound in the world, and mike feels his heart clutch.
he just wants to see them again.
(four)
mike wakes up in a cold sweat.
he can’t remember the nightmare very well, but he remembers the fear. he thinks to himself (always to himself now; there is no one to hear his thoughts) that it’s been a long time since he’d felt fear like that. eight years ago, the summer of ‘89. fear and love mixed together in his soul so deep that they couldn’t be taken away. he almost forgot the fear; he would never forget the love.
he breathes in and out, wishing he could call bill, just to hear him say that mike is not alone.
(five)
his father dies.
mike is twenty-two and has no friends to call, has to bear this alone. jessica, the best mom in the world, hugs him, but he can’t help feeling so utterly, so bitterly lonely that even her strong hug isn’t enough. william hanlon is no more. william hanlon, the best man he ever met, as dead as the luck mike had being his son. william hanlon and his stories about derry, about everything. william hanlon and his kind eyes, kinder words, soft spoken in a velvet voice.
that -- that thing ate his father from the inside. mike can’t even say the word, it feels so nasty under his tongue. eddie could say something about it, he thinks. eddie could say that his father was a fighter, that most people with a thing so advanced in their bodies would not live so long. mike thinks bev would say that he could always count on her. ben would be the silent one, but mike would see his own pain reflected in ben’s eyes, always the empathizer.
mike wants to shove away these thoughts. he wants to bury them deep underground, with his father. he has no friends now. he’ll only suffer more if he thinks about the six people that once were his home.
when they are back from the cemetery, mike doesn’t even eat. he just cries himself to sleep and prays to god -- please, please, let me forget too, let me forget, please, let me forget.
(six)
mike thinks about bill’s parents.
to be honest, for the last year he’s thought about all of his friends’s (stop using that word, stop using that word) parents. maggie and wentworth, always ready to welcome a bunch of noisy kids into their house; donald and andrea, as serious as they raised their son to be; sonia and alvin, better off dead; elfrida, worried but not enough to actually do something; arlene, trying to feed his son with the love she thought the world would never give him. but lately, bill’s are the most present in his mind.
bill’s parents were so devoid of emotion when speaking to their son that sometimes mike wanted to grab them by their shoulders and scream. didn’t they see the great son they had? how bill was the most heroic of them, how bill was their leader, how bill was the one who kept them calm? how could them not show love to bill? how could them not love william denbrough? bill was like the sun. how could they not see it?
(now he understands. he hates it, hates it so much, but he understands.)
mike looks at his mom and jessica tries to smile at him, to show him that she loves her son with all her heart, but what took her husband away also took a part of that heart and chewed and ate it.
but she still tries. mike is grateful for that; it’s more than what zack and sharon did. but he knows that it won’t last: jessica gets weaker every day, and he knows that she wants to say goodbye to him. he knows she wants to be with william.
mike wants that, too. but he knows he can’t. there is a reason why he was left behind. he has to stick his feet on the ground and be there.
he holds his mother’s hands and whispers to her, “it’s okay, ma.”
a few months later, jessica hanlon dies peacefully in her sleep.
(mike remembers that ten years ago he was at the sewers, fighting a monster, and for some reason that seems easier than burying his mom.)
(seven)
she kisses him.
mike still believes he’s dreaming, even when they are at her hotel room, even when her hands are taking his clothes off, even when she sits on his lap and bites his ear.
mike wants to cry. you’re so pathetic, he thinks. he wants to cry because it’s been so, so long since somebody touched him that way (bill, bill, I miss you), it’s been so long since he felt desired, since he felt like someone actually saw him.
guilhermina is a tourist, a brazilian journalist and mike has no idea what she could be doing here, in derry, but she’s here and she likes him and he likes her back. they drink together and laugh about cultural differences and mike can’t even remember the last time he felt so alive (stan, hugging him before saying goodbye).
when it’s over and they’re in the dark, she cuddles him. she asks if he knows what saudade means.
what a funny word.
(eight)
it’s mike hanlon’s twenty-five birthday and he’s all alone.
(why me why me why me why couldn’t be bill bill was the one who started it he could’ve stayed here with me oh why me please please i just want them back i just want them here i just want to be free why me why me)
(nine)
one day, at the library, mike sees it. inside a box yet to be unpacked, there are five copies of the same book. the glowing , he reads. william denbrough , it says under the title. it’s not his first book, but it’s the first that mike doesn’t have to buy (but he would buy, anyway. he had all of bill’s works) and he smiles to himself. big bill, getting bigger.
he takes the books off the box and puts them in the place of honor: writers from derry. mike wonders if bill remembers something about his childhood. he thinks he does. it’s another horror book, so he must remember something, deep down. some unsettling feeling.
he wonders if bill remembers him at all -- both of them on bill’s bed and doing all those things that mike can’t forget. it has a bittersweet taste. he’s so happy for bill, but he can’t call him, he can’t congratulate him, he wasn’t the one reading the first draft, laying on their bed together, feeling bill’s eyes scrutinizing him. d-d-did you like i-it?
he takes his address notebook and goes to a public phone. a stupid idea. he shouldn’t be doing this. his fingers are shaking when he presses the buttons. bill won’t even answer.
“hello?,” the voice from the other side is clear. mike feels he might pass out. “who is this?,” a pause. “look, if this is a prank I ask you not to call this number again. I’m really busy right now.” not a single stutter.
he takes a deep breath and hangs up. the way back to the library is blurry: he doesn’t want to let the tears fall from his eyes.
(ten)
he’s reading bill’s new book. bill is like a machine, a book per year. some of them are even written under a pseudonym, because editors don’t believe that people would want to read something from the same author twice a year.
to be honest, he is trying to read.
art consists of the persistence of memory, bill wrote and mike can’t go on, no matter how bad he wants to know how peter will get rid of marie. if he will. melancholy is a book about a writer and about art, under all the torture that permeates it.
the persistence of memory. huh. if bill only knew.
(maybe bill does. even if only in his dreams.)
mike is back at the clubhouse, because after all, he is just a loser. lost all his friends. lost his parents. lost his easy laugh. lost his nights of sleep. lost bill, lost stan.
he looks at his hand, the scar burning red. it never fades. it’s always itching, as if to remind him. is this a don’t give up sign sent by the universe? is it the turtle? the turtle couldn’t help them. it could be some other, a great big other. it could be It! how fun would that be? mike stars as peter, It stars as marie. and now the whole city is his torture chamber, but he has no idea of the story It wants him to write.
he wishes richie was there to make him laugh about this. maybe someday.
(eleven)
bill is married.
mike saw in the news. bill is married to audra phillips, now denbrough. it’s been a month by now, maybe more, and he thinks about this every day. he is happy. bill deserves to be happy, bill deserves to move on, even if he doesn’t know exactly what he is moving on from.
mike can’t believe in his own foolishness. he can’t be heartbroken eleven years later.
he wonders if ben’s gotten married too. mike thinks he didn’t. there wasn’t a bone in ben hanscom that wasn’t romantic, and even if he can’t remember beverly, he must be waiting for the love of his life, not knowing that he’s already met her. it was never about being reciprocal: ben had so much love to give that it didn’t matter if bev loved him back or not. ben was never a taker.
bill is married and the persistence of memory is only in mike’s mind.
(twelve)
it’s his thirty birthday. the library staff took a cake there during the day and carole hugged him. she’s nice, he thinks. but that’s it. he can’t do anything about her being nice or not.
now he’s alone, eating what’s left of the cake and watching tv. harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban is on and when sirius black screams i did my waiting! twelve years of it! mike laughs so hard that chokes himself.
(thirteen)
mike misses stan.
it’s been thirteen years since stan went away. the first one he would call, if It came back (please, come back, the thought is but a whisper, the guilt soaking every word). he would call everyone in the reverse order: stan, richie, ben, eddie, bev, bill.
they won’t remember him. will they remember their promise?
he knows stan will, after all, stan was the one that made them promise to come back. everyone looked so surprised; it would make sense to the narrative if bill was the one asking them to risk their lives once more, but life wasn’t a movie. if anything, life was a complicated thousand pages book, and just because some people looked less braver than others, it didn’t mean they weren’t brave at all.
he misses stan so fucking much.
mike hopes that, when stan is back, they go looking for birds. if stan stills likes birds. mike hopes he does. it was one of the most beautiful things in the world, his passionate side, the smile gracing his face when he saw a bird he’d been searching for. and mike had always thought that they had some connection -- stan loved birds and pennywise took the form of a giant bird to attack mike. it couldn’t be a coincidence. stan was the one that made mike like birds again.
bill was the first to leave, and when he did, mike spent the afternoon crying. he thought he was alone, but then he felt a hand on his shoulder and stan was by his side. stan was never a hugger, but that day he hugged mike, and said nothing. when mike got home, he was able to smile again.
he thinks about the way stan looked at him during the afternoons they spent alone, like he was keeping a secret. mike never asked, presuming that stan would tell him at any moment.
he never did.
(and mike will never know.)
he calls stan. it’s just like when he called bill. he won’t say anything. mike just wants to know that they are there, and that one day they will come back.
(stop wishing that, stop being so fucking selfish, if you call them you’ll put them in danger, if you call them that means that derry is again being the haunt of the horrible creature that feeds on it. stop, stop, stop.)
stan doesn’t answer and mike feels a shiver down his spine. it’s nothing, he says to no one. not everything is an omen.
(fourteen)
mike was thirteen when he met them. it’s been so long. his first life, the life he was meant to find the losers. now he’s living his second life, the life of waiting. waiting to bring them together once more.
if he has to, he repeats to himself. only if he has to.
he wants to call them, but if he has to, maybe one, or more, or all of them will be killed. maybe it will be their last time together. maybe they will not come back and their last time together was the night before bill left.
that night they made a fire and richie pretended he wasn’t crying and eddie hugged him and said it’s okay to cry and stan was so, so quiet. mike remembered a couple of years before, stan asking if they thought that they would still be friends. that night, bev and ben sang together a new kids on the block song and by the time the refrain came all seven of them were singing along. that night, bill thanked them for being his home when his parents weren’t, thanked them for not giving up on him. that night, they all held hands, like that time at the barrens. that night, mike went to sleep on bill’s house and when bill was under him whispering come with me come with me and mike wished he could, and they held each other and cried together.
mike is tired of being tired. he just wants to rest. he is tired of waiting.
(fifteen)
he’s so fucking drunk that he doesn’t even know how he got home. the last year has been like that. it’s easier to sleep when he numbs his mind down.
he’s alone, laughing at himself. he goes to his fridge and takes another beer. just one more. it won't hurt. today, his memories are running in his mind like a river, and he wants to forget. just once.
but he can't, apparently. he only remembers them more.
he remembers the first time they drank together, how he, bev and richie were the ones most wasted. richie held their hands and started singing and the three of them were spinning so fast, screaming and shouting. then richie said “we should kiss, mike, you’re a hottie and bev, you’ll always be my babe,” and because it was richie of course they agreed. they were all a bit in love with each other, but bill and richie had something about them that made all the losers a little flustered.
later that night bill bit him so hard in the shoulder that mike thought he, richie and bev should kiss some more.
(sixteen)
every twenty-seven years, he writes down. summer ‘89. It will be back by 2016. only six more years, mikey. what are six years for someone who’s waited all his life?
(seventeen)
michael hanlon, thirty-five years old, is addicted to facebook.
he doesn’t even have an account. but richie tozier has, even a page!, and his page is full of content. richie’s voices improved so much with time that mike finds it hard to breathe sometimes, genuine laughter escaping his throat. bev has a page too, and her clothes are amazing. bill, of course, is the most popular of them. he is a writer, he has a fandom -- mike loves seeing bill’s fans doing drawings (fanarts, man, you’re never too old to start fandoming ) and writing things about his books. eddie’s company also has a page, but edward kaspbrak is a reserved motherfucker and mike only could see his content if they were friends.
how ironic.
he has to force himself to go to sleep every night, because it’s so much easier to drown himself in the life of his friends than to living his own.
(eighteen)
he busies himself with work.
not only at the library, but he sure does a lot of searching there. he goes out and asks old people -- the ones who aren’t racists. he thought it would be impossible to find, but it was only very, very hard -- about derry, about what they think about their town. he listens to their stories, reads old newspapers, and even gets his hands on the diary of a girl who died in ‘61.
some people know about the cycle. the older folks, they say they remember, every twenty-seven years or so. some people say they heard voices coming from their drains. some people don’t let their kids out on the street alone, never alone. some people just forget.
he writes everything down. all the murders, all the hate, all the tragedies, the evil that sleeps under the town. sleeps? or is It dead? no, no, It can’t be dead, an evil so ancient, they couldn’t stop It when they were kids. It can’t be dead, mike will have to call his friends and bring them back home, he knows he will. that’s why he’s there after all. that’s why, right? he’s their lighthouse, right? It will come back, and he’ll see his friends one more time, and all these years will make sense, and they will kill It, for good, and then mike will leave derry, all his friends by his side, right? right?
(nineteen)
he sees a redhead in the street and thinks about bill and bev.
bev, the girl. mike and bev used to sit side by side and laugh about the others. how can one be so white?, mike whispered. oh, here comes the masculinity, bev said. of course, she was white and he was a boy and they all were a bunch of queer kids (except ben, but no one was perfect, right?), but the other five simply couldn’t understand some things that to mike and bev were as clear as daylight. mike and bev were, after all, the ones who made richie stopping doing racist voices. mike felt much more safe expressing his thoughts with bev’s hand on his. this conversation led to richie concluding on his own that his friends weren’t as okay with racist, misogynist, anti-semitic and fat jokes as he thought they were.
bev had such passion burning under her skin. her smile lit up the whole town. she always thought about the others. mike likes to remember her, remember the fiercest girl he ever met. it helped him to keep his head up.
and bill. while bev’s hair was fire, bill’s was autumn. the color of the dead leaves on the ground. he is married now, stop thinking about him and he is not the same bill you met, stop dreaming about him were frequents thoughts in his head.
but mike’s life was all about what he couldn’t do. he couldn’t leave derry. he couldn’t call his friends before the right time (if it ever came). he couldn’t forget the losers. he couldn’t stop thinking about rolling a lock of bill’s hair in his finger, bill’s eyes closing as he felt asleep.
that night, mike has good dreams.
(twenty)
twenty years since the last time he saw stan. twenty years and a little more since the last time he saw richie, ben, bev, eddie, bill. twenty years. was this his fault? that he never made new friends, never let anyone come closer, never tried to begin again? twenty years, mike hanlon. twenty five years since the day bowers and his gang made him run so fast he felt that all the oxygen on earth was running out.
twenty five years since they were found (mike found six kids that were still incomplete, the six kids found the missing piece). twenty five years since the word loser stopped hurting. twenty years since it started to hurt again.
he could be idealizing them. twenty years. was richie really that funny? was ben really that reliable? twenty years, no one never came close to being a colleague, let alone a friend. the scar on his hand burns, but it’s not as painful as the one in his heart. was he being a fool? twenty years. It could be dead ( please, don’t be ), all his life and his search being wasted on a clown that would never show up again.
to him, it made no sense to let other people in. no one would come as close to his heart as them. they were irreplaceable. their bond was fire-forged, never to be replicated. mike loves them. mike loves them so much that his waiting life doesn’t seem so bad, if he can see them again, one last time.
twenty years. he thinks about the brazilian girl. saudade.
(twenty one)
if he is right…
if he is right, it’s going to be next year.
mike tries his best to be calm, but he feels like he’s walking in a thin line.
he feels like he’s the most selfish person on earth. waiting for a disaster to happen, just to call his friends, just to bring them home. if nothing happens in 2016, mike will be alright. he will leave derry. he probably will forget too, and his future self will think that he led such a boring life, no friends and no lovers to recall. that’s okay. numbness must be better than pain.
he thinks about ben, solid as a rock, always there to catch anyone who was falling. he thinks about richie, masking his own sadness just to make others smile. he thinks about eddie, that had only known worried love, so worrying was his way of telling he cared. he thinks about bev, the bravest of them all. he thinks about stan, his weird sense of humor, his shyness, his willingness to leave the others comfortable. he thinks about bill, bill, who was everything to them, to him. bill, right words at the right time.
and who was he to them? now, just a stranger. no one. he spent all his life dreaming about six people who didn’t even remember his name. but they would remember. he knew. he trusted them, even after all this time. he would always trust them.
it wasn’t their fault. and it wasn’t his fault. he stayed in derry to be their guiding light. he remembers something he watched on tv and whispers to the darkness of his room, how many seconds in eternity?
if anything, he knew his time there was worth something if he could bring them together again. if he could be home to them. if he could be the one calling, like the turtle. if he could make richie and eddie find each other again, if he could make ben see bev one more time, if he could hear stan’s voice once more, if he could be side by side with bill. it would all be worth the loneliness, the fear, the anxiety. if they could kill It, and It would never hurt anyone, never again. it was his sacrifice to the world. the world was an awful place, but in that awful place he found six pieces of his heart, of his soul, and they were worth fighting for. homes in his heart.
he wishes he could talk to little teenager mike: you’re stronger than you think, he would say. but he can’t talk to little teenager mike, so he tells it to himself.
(twenty two)
adrian mellon dies a horrible, violent death. mike hanlon makes six phone calls.