reality problem (henry bowers x reader) chapter two
ser·en·dip·i·ty (noun): the fact of finding interesting or valuable things by chance.
You woke up slow like a sunrise.
The light against your eyelids indicated it was morning. You’d slept hard and fast the previous night, having closed your eyes for only seconds in bed before falling asleep.
You were about to sit up and open your eyes, but you suddenly noticed how odd the bed felt beneath you, the once soft cot now akin to a stone army bunk. The room, without even having to look, seemed off. The air was different, smelled different, felt different.
Different from what, your old room in Baltimore?
“Hey!”
An unfamiliar and frightened voice cried out, only a few feet from you.
Jolting up out of bed, your eyes shot open and you sat up in the direction of the noise. You were given sensory whiplash.
You weren’t in your bed. You weren’t in your room. You were on the floor, beside a bed that wasn’t yours, in a room you didn’t recognize.
In this foreign bed sat a rotund boy with brown hair and hazel eyes, more green than brown. These hazel eyes were opened as wide as you imagined they could be, trained directly on you, and he was covering himself with the bedsheets in similar manner to a bathing woman whose shower curtain was rudely drawn back by a stranger. His expression was of utter shock.
Doing your best to recollect last night’s events, you realized what happened.
“Fuck.” You hissed, knitting your eyebrows in disbelief, squinting your eyes shut in frustration.
It’d been months since you’d randomly woken up miles away from where you’d gone to sleep. It was about as embarrassing a habit as an adolescent peeing the bed at a sleepover - yet certainly far more dangerous.
If this kid had been an adult instead, you’d probably be in the back of police car right now, just like last time.
What luck.
Scanning him over once more, you debated how easy it’d be to explain this and have him understand and keep quiet. After a moment of hesitation, you knew it would be near impossible.
Despite this reasoning, you stood up, dusting yourself off, and tried to do it anyway.
“This happens a lot. I’m so sorry.” You confessed, as if it was a common accident amongst teens.
Momentarily wondering why it was his bedroom you’d unconsciously teleported to, you remembered.
You had fallen asleep on the cot in your new room last night, in your new apartment. Your parents slept in the master bedroom with the door locked, silent as mice. You too had no problem falling to sleep that night, though your thoughts were occupied with Henry Bowers again, as they had been for a majority of the day since lunch.
There was certainly something special about him. Your former peers of the past who ogled you like a circus freak after you lifted a textbook with your mind, or broke a pencil in half without touching it, or convinced the teacher to let the class play heads-up-seven-up for the entire period without words were not as calm and collected as Henry had been. And sure, he was scared, but it was like he had a respect for what generated the fear.
You fell asleep while simultaneously trying to dig inside who he was, attempting to navigate the dank, dark room that was your natural born ability, feeling for personality traits, for history. Your consciousness slipped into the river of sleep right at the moment that you identified something.
It was small, but it was something. He’d spat an insult at someone that day, that morning, right before he sat at your lunch table.
“Fat fuck.”
Exiting your memory, you audibly gasped. The boy backed up as you stared at him, but he hit the bedside wall. His gaze never left you.
“You’re that kid.” You murmured. It was probably rude to forego an explanation, but it was a whole lot better than saying, “You’re the fat fuck Henry was talking about”, for sure. Just by looking at him, with even a mere glance into his eyes, you could tell he was a genuinely nice boy. Henry had no business being a dick to him.
“What an asshole.” You muttered under your breath. You rose to your feet and moved towards the nearby window, brightly illuminated by the morning sunlight.
“Who are you?” The kid asked, a little loudly, likely feeling he was still in some sort of danger, considering you hadn’t answered a single question as to why you were unconscious on the floor. Considering you were muttering random shit.
You didn’t bother to turn and face him. Scanning the walls, you noticed an assortment of sketches hanging up depicting buildings, scaled and revised and erased and redrawn. They were paired with a handful of missing kid posters and the torn out pages of books. How interesting.
“I’m Y/N. I’m the new kid.” You told him.
What a way to introduce yourself, you thought.
Ben sniffled.
“I’m a new kid, too.” He noted out loud, as if to make you feel better about it.
Finally, you turned around to look at him.
“What’s your name?” You asked.
He gulped.
“Ben.”
You knew you shouldn’t still be talking with him, that you should be busy wiping his memory instead of interrogating him. The mind-wipe was pretty much unavoidable; he saw and knew too much. Even though it was your fault, Henry Bowers already impeded your fresh start; you didn’t need another Henry out there telling your secrets.
Walking towards him, you mentally primed yourself to force him out of consciousness, when his aura stuck out like a hand demanding you to wait.
Ben Hanscom was scared, not just in that moment, but all the time. Scared by the high school, a new school, with all these new faces judging him. The yearning for acceptance was still alive in his heart. Despite feeling like no one liked him, he desperately hoped someone would.
The scattered remnants of childlike innocence, more than you’d seen in others, gave a luster to his mind. Henry Bowers, just one of a few bullies he’d encountered in his life, elicited genuine fear inside him, threatened to ruin that innocence.
Derry itself made him incredibly uneasy, for a myriad of reasons. Ben felt there was something bad about the town. You agreed with him.
Dammit. How were you supposed to wipe his memory now?
Giving you the-deer-in-headlights look, you put a hand on Ben’s shoulder and rather than turning out his lights, you soothed him. As soon as you touched him, his eyes filled with fog.
“I’m sorry I scared you.” You mused. “I’m sorry Henry Bowers is such an asshole. I’m sorry Derry didn’t roll out their welcome mat for you. They didn’t roll it out for me, either. You’re a good kid, and you deserve much better than this.”
His eyes that glazed over with your words suddenly cleared like smoke in the wind, and he looked at you like you’d relieved all of his ills. Words escaped him.
Patting his shoulder with a half smile as a means of a shitty goodbye, you turned around and walked towards the door, decorated with a giant New Kids on the Block poster.
“Wait!” He called. You stopped in your tracks, closing your eyes and pivoting your body to face him with a cocked eyebrow.
“Are you going to school?” He asked, shyly.
You shrugged. “Yeah. I guess.”
Ben quickly got out of bed and motioned for you to leave. “Wait for me in the hall, we can walk together.”
Staring at him for a second more, you quietly obliged. A part of you wanted to groan at the prospect of having someone attached to you, and so quickly.
Another part checked off this newly forged friendship like an accomplishment. You made a friend despite starting off on a terrible foot.
‘My second friend at Derry High’, you shyly thought with the ghost of a grin, shutting the door, waiting beyond the door like he’d asked.
“I haven’t made too many friends yet. You’re one of the first people to really talk to me outside of school. And I mean really outside of school.” Ben enthusiastically chattered.
“Yeah, it must’ve been quite a scare for you this morning.”
The two of you trudged towards Derry High, Ben flashing the occasional odd glance at you.
“I wish you’d tell me how you ended up in my room.” He begrudgingly added, like a child that was denied a bedtime story.
You cleared your throat, rummaging through your backpack mindlessly as you strolled.
“I sleep walk. When I was younger, I taught myself how to jimmy locks effortlessly, even while unconscious. You wouldn’t believe how many locks I can break through without trying.”
Well, it wasn’t totally a lie.
“That sounds like a lie.” Ben noted, smiling up at you. You shrugged.
“Believe what you want. I sleepwalk for miles. I collapse once I’m through.”
Ben furrowed his brow, pointing at your bag. “Hey, since when did you have your backpack?”
This kid was quick. Most people don’t notice stuff like that, you thought to yourself, almost in admiration.
“I’ve had it the whole time. Boy, are you paranoid or what?” You shook your head with a smile.
“Do you blame me, Y/N?” He asked, your grin apparently contagious, and you laughed out loud.
“Nope. Not at all.”
Henry thought of you the entire day since lunchtime, his conscious singed with the memory of that cigarette, lighting up brighter, the color changing like leaves in autumn, suddenly burning out like you’d personally delivered it a small winter.
You put it out yourself. Nothing could convince him you hadn’t. Eyes upon it, you snuffed out the fire. Cigarettes didn’t go out like that. He’d smoked plenty. He knew.
He knew. He wasn’t crazy.
But you weren’t either.
That was something else he knew, without debate or question. It was clear. The power you showed him was something so genuine and so fleshed out. You knew exactly what you were doing. You weren’t some crazy, bog-witch-wanderer babbling to herself.
Then again, you did set a house on fire on apparent ‘accident’. He’d seen you talking to yourself.
He didn’t know what you were.
The mystery kept him consumed all night until morning, in which it swallowed him up again. It was noticeable to the guys after lunch, as Henry stayed silent the entire time.
He wanted to tell Patrick about you. Of course he’d understand. He was basically crazy. He was the most likely to believe what Henry had to say, to believe who you really were.
Whatever you were.
Still, a small fear rested within the solution: Patrick was so crazy, that he might try to tie you up and experiment on you. Or at least try his hardest to get you alone and do… Whatever. He’d probably be desperate to fuck somebody who had special powers. Maybe worse.
Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.
Whatever. It wouldn’t happen. And he had to tell someone.
“What’s up, Henry?” Vic asked, his voice akin to odd background noise against the loudness of his thoughts.
Henry turned. “Where’s Patrick?”
“Must be sick or something. I haven’t seen him.” Vic answered.
Course. Great.
Standing outside the high school, right as the post-lunch bell rang, Henry suddenly spotted you, his lungs filling with invisible flame as he stared. You weren’t alone.
That stupid, fat, fucking-fuck new kid was with you.
The two of you looked to be laughing together. How on earth did Ben become friends with you overnight? Of all people, one of the dumbest kids at the school?
Thankfully, you and Ben parted ways after bidding an annoyingly long held out goodbye, and Henry saw his chance to strike.
It took a few minutes of following Ben to his next class, but thankfully it was gym, and the new kid wobbled off towards the secluded boy’s locker room.
Right before Ben could enter, Henry pushed him hard against the brick wall of the outer gym, tightly holding the sides of his shirt. Ben stared with shock at the bully before him.
“How do you know Y/N?” Henry questioned in a rush.
Ben opened his mouth, unsure of what to say, moreover, why it was being asked. He cleared his throat nervously.
“I met her just this morning on my way to school. That’s all.”
Ben was a terrible liar, bad enough that Henry could sense that it was probably made up on the spot. Still, it’d be a process to drag the correct answer out of Ben, and Henry was aware of that as well.
It was much too early to be getting the knife out. What a fucking hassle this all had to be.
“Tell me the truth, fatty. Don’t you know she’s dangerous?”
Ben couldn’t help but crack a smile. Henry, of all people, wielding the word ‘dangerous’ in the same way a mother would warn her son or daughter against walking the streets at night.
“Dangerous?” Ben asked, his voice delicately suffused with disbelief, despite secretly knowing what Henry referred to.
Realizing how ridiculous it must’ve seemed to someone who hadn’t seen the same girl manipulate fire, Henry threw Ben back against the wall in utter frustration and walked off in a huff.
Patrick was probably playing hooky, and that meant Henry knew just where to find him.
chapter one
chapter three
taglist: @pinkey629
