embarrassment floods his features as his sister finds him, tangled up in lights and no idea how he got here. as though they were children all over again; is pretty sure this has happened before. he thinks he remembers. maybe it was before derry. his face is redder than he’d like to admit to, but in the end, ben is shrugging his shoulders. can’t really explain it because he doesn’t know how he ended up in this situation – he’d been distracted, maybe. too lost in thoughts and then—— and then she’d found him, an amused expression on her face and ben’s embarrassment only growing. “i— uh. i was trying to untangle them,” he insists, knows that’s the obvious thing to say. that it isn’t a lie, nor will it appear as one, despite how he’s managed to get himself more tangled than he thinks they were in the first place. how does anyone ever manage to untangle the bastard things? ben truly doesn’t know. “i don’t think… i’ll be able to get out of this,” he confesses, and now he’s amused. a laugh escaping him before he can stop it. “can you give me a hand? i wanted the tree done today.”