An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
“Somehow, he woke up at the end of the world.
(They’d been too busy running for their lives, too busy trying to get out and figure out what was going on. The only things that had wanted them dead had been the guards they’d come across, not the monsters.
“Hey, you’re getting rid of your history research stuff?”
Ben looked down at the box in his hands, then back up at Mike. “Yeah. I mean…I guess I’m just not really into historical research anymore? It was a fun hobby, for a while, but I just…I dunno.”
Mike propped his bike upright, pushing down the kickstand for once. “Can I have it?”
“Sure,” Ben shrugged and handed him the box. “Need any help getting it home? Lot of stuff.” He shrugged, tugging his shirt down self-consciously. He had lost a lot of weight over the school year, gotten a girlfriend, grown up in general. He hardly seemed like the chubby kid that had joined the Losers club three years before.
With a nod, Mike carefully sorted things out of the box and into the basket on his bike. “That’d be good, I think.”
Picking up his own bike, Ben slid papers and books into the set of panniers on the back of his bike. “Just going to your house, right?” he looked up to see his mom waving from the kitchen window. “Should probably make it a quick trip, if we can. I’ve got to go to work in a few hours.”
“Yeah,” Mike looked at him, frowning a little. “Definitely. Just need to get all this stuff home, don’t want to have to make too many trips.”
Once everything was put into baskets and bags, they peddled off.
Richie was next.
“What do you mean, ‘leaving’?”
Richie looked up at him, his eyes unusually wide and wet and more than a little upset. “My mom and dad got divorced, okay?” he scrubbed the heels of his palms over his knees. “Dad is keeping me, we’re moving to Los Angeles.”
Eddie was sitting at his side, their shoulders bumping together, his hands clasped between his own knees so tightly that his knuckles were white. “You can still come – We can still come visit you, it isn’t the end of the world!” he fluttered about for a moment and Mike watched his eyes grow a little wider. He looked nearly unhinged, like he was a scared kid again.
“Yeah,” Bill managed to get the word out without stuttering. “We’ll come visit, I m- I mean, we’re your friends, Richie.”
“Thanks,” Richie looked entirely unhappy with something, but Mike couldn’t tell if it was being their friend or leaving. “Dad says I can finish out the school year. We only have…”
“Two months,” Eddie said it softly, bumping his shoulder into Richie’s again. “We only have two months until you leave.”
There was something about the way Eddie said ‘We’ that had Mike blushing, just a little.
He had long since suspected something was going on between the two. They were the happiest and also the most annoyed when they were together, Eddie kept Richie in his life despite the jokes the glasses-wearing boy made constantly about his mother. Mike had figured, at first, that it was just the price a person had to pay when keeping Richie as a friend, but Eddie had been the one to handle it day in and day out.
Things had made more sense when he thought about what he had seen out of the corner of his eye in the house on Neibolt.
In the moment they had been certain they were all going to die, little Eddie Kaspbrak had been focused with his entire being on Richie Tozier. Richie had been holding Eddie’s face so that the smaller boy could only look at him, could only see him. Not the ugly death descending on them, not the fear and chaos around them.
Mike swallowed against the sudden lump in his throat at the unfairness of it all.
He suspected that Richie and Eddie had loved each other in their own secret way for longer than the rest of the Losers had known.
When he looked up to see Bill and Stan, Bill was talking to Eddie and Richie but Stan…
“That’s good,” Mike looked up as Stan dropped down next to them. It was the graduation party Bill’s parents had thrown for him, he was wearing a tie and the nicest slacks he owned. Eddie had already gone home and Ben was at his own party, taken out to dinner by his grandparents and the rest of his family, so it was just the three of them. “College will be good for you, give you a chance to meet someone, figure out what you’re doing.”
On Bill’s other side, Stan nodded. “You’re going to do great,” he told his friend. When Bill smiled so hard his eyes crinkled shut, Stan’s gaze moved to Mike.
He had been doing that a lot, lately.
“What about you?” Mike asked him, suddenly very aware of how tight his tie was. “Where are you going, Stan?”
“Probably to go work in my uncle’s office.” Stan drew his knees to his chest, eyes finally dropping from Mike to focus on the floor. “Be an intern in his accounting firm while I go to college to learn the trade. Dad says it’s already all arranged, I just have to decide by the end of the summer.”
“That’ll be interesting,” Mike smiled at him.
“Mm.”
Bill sighed and looked back into the house. “I think my mom w- wants me to come take photos n-now.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Mike nodded. “Go be the guest of honor.”
He smiled at both of them, patted their shoulders, then walked back up the small staircase and into the house.
Mike and Stan were left on the porch together.
“Where are you going to go?” Stan’s voice was oddly quiet.
“I’m staying in Derry,” Mike shrugged one shoulder. “My grandfather’s getting older, needs more help around the business now. I’ll get out one day, but I guess it’s just not supposed to happen for me yet.”
“Does he still say this place is cursed?”
Mike blinked a couple of times and turned to look at Stan again. “What?”
The Jewish teenager – young man – sighed and stood up again. “Never mind,” he waved Mike off as he half climbed, half walked up the stairs and back into the house.
It meant that Stan was last.
“He still calls this town cursed,” Mike called out to Stan, seeing him sitting on his own front steps. “Just says it’s sleeping.”
Stan looked up at him, his eyes wide as he studied his face. “Do you remember?” he asked quietly. “Because I still remember. Hard not to, I saw these…These lights.” He shook his head, turning away. “It’ll just sound crazy.”
“No,” Mike walked his bike closer and offered Stan a hand up. “It won’t. Can we talk for a bit?”
Brown eyes stared up at him for what seemed like an eternity before Stan accepted his hand and got to his feet. “Not here,” his voice was back to being soft again. For a moment, as he turned to grab his own bike, Mike could have sworn he saw Stan’s cheeks turn pink.
They walked in silence until they reached the end of the street and then they got on their bikes and started pedaling slowly.
“I still have scars,” Stan broke the silence once they had gotten to a back street with only one or two cars parked on it. “On my face, I mean. From where It bit me.” He looked around and drifted to a stop, watched as Mike did the same. “When my face was in It’s mouth, I saw these lights. Down It’s throat. They were so bright and I…”
“It made sure you remembered,” Mike stared at him, a little in awe. “For whatever reason, It made sure that you would remember.”
“And then you kept Ben’s research,” Stan nodded, still perched over his bike like he would get back on the seat and ride away into the sunset, never to return. “And I knew you remembered too. I don’t know why we’re the ones who remember everything, but I…” he shuddered, tears welling up in his eyes, his shoulders shaking. “I’m just glad I’m not the only one.”
“Hey,” Mike got off his own bike and let it drop to the ground, putting a gentle hand on Stan’s shoulder.
Instead of pushing him away, like he expected, Stan dragged him closer.
With the heat of the other’s body against his, Mike felt something twist through him, repositioning his hands so that he was hugging Stan tightly. “Fuck,” Stan muttered, nearly shoving his face into the crook of Mike’s neck. “I don’t want to be alone in remembering this, I don’t want our friends leaving, I don’t want to be alone,” his hands were clenched tightly in the fabric of Mike’s shirt. “Please don’t leave me alone.”
“I’m not going to,” Mike whispered the words, letting his chin drop to the crown of Stan’s head.
After a few minutes of standing there, as close as they could get without sharing the same clothes, Stan calmed down. The shaking subsided and he pulled back a little, scrubbing at his eyes. “Can we go someplace and be alone?” he asked the question with hopeful eyes and Mike nodded.
“Yeah,” he pulled away and realized that the anxious worry that had been building in his head for the past five years had almost completely melted away. “C’mon, we can go to my house.”
They rode in silence the rest of the way.
Mike’s bedroom was neat and quiet and he liked the way that Stan seemed to almost slide into it without any sign he hadn’t always been there. “I like your room,” he turned to Mike and smiled for the first time in ages. “Suits you.”
“Here,” Mike dropped onto the bed, kicking off his shoes and leaning back against the headboard. “Come and sit with me?”
Stan nodded and used the foot of the bed to balance as he took his own shoes off. With that done, he settled himself into Mike’s lap, curling close once more. “Is this okay?”
“That’s perfect,” Mike pressed his nose into Stan’s hair, threading his fingers into the mass of curls and letting his eyes droop shut. His other arm was around Stan’s waist, holding him close. Stan was soft and warm against him, pliant, like he would move with Mike. Like they were going to stay as one mass for the rest of their lives. “Have you decided about the internship yet?”
“I don’t want to,” Stan’s chest was against his, legs wrapped around Mike’s waist. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“Everyone else left Derry.”
“Yeah, and that’s part of why I don’t want to go,” Stan’s lips pressed against Mike’s neck, just over his pulse, as if he could keep him alive simply by feeling it thrum into his own body. “You’re going to be left here, all alone. That isn’t right, it isn’t fair!”
Mike held him even tighter. “I think we both need to get out of Derry,” he smiled. “You’re good with numbers, you should go to that internship. Get a job at your uncle’s office once you graduate college. I could save up money, move to an apartment in the same city.”
“You-”
“I would never leave you alone,” Mike smiled at him when he pulled back to look at him. Stan’s eyes were wide and full of wonder. “I would call you every day and I would write you so many letters and I would make sure that you were never alone.”
Between the look on Stan’s face and the way they were holding each other, Mike should have expected the kiss that followed.
Stan tasted like the lazy days of summer, the hint of autumn coming in and making everything crisp.
His prosthetic probably hid something he never wanted the world around him to see, but he kept his hair pulled back into pigtails and he was built thin. His hands were delicate and his eyes, from what Larry could see, were the most intense blue.
He had tried mixing paints to look like them a couple of times, to match the blue.
So far, it hadn’t worked, but he still kept trying.
Larry erased a line in his sketchbook, trying to get the shape of Sal’s prosthetic just right, nudging it into the right place. The other boy was sitting across the room from him, curled up on the mini-couch across the room. His fingers were wrapped around the toe of one of his shoes, picking at the edge absently. Sal looked deep in thought as only he could, his entire body strained against something that was probably eating him up inside.
It strangely took minimal prodding to get the other boy to speak and it was about kissing.
It was about kissing him.
Sal, pretty as he was, wanted to kiss Larry. Sal, with his sarcasm and a good sense of humor and everything about him that made Larry want to tell him every day how much he liked him, wanted to kiss him.
His heart was pounding in his chest as the smaller boy settled on the floor next to him, holding as still as he could.
One wrong move and Sal might run away, that was how scared he seemed to be.
Creating a friendship with him had required a new way of figuring out emotions. Sal’s face wasn’t on display for him to see. Larry couldn’t see the curl of a smile on his mouth, couldn’t watch his cheeks turn red when they embarrassed each other, wasn’t able to see what Sal’s face looked like when he was thinking. He’d learned to read the boy’s body instead, figuring out what each jerk of his head and movement of his shoulders meant.
If anyone asked, he’d say he’d become fluent in Sally Face.
Larry wanted to smile, pull Sal close and just focus on the moment with him. Sal was the only person he’d ever wanted to kiss since a crush he’d had in fourth grade. Instead, he held still until he figured out that Sal was trying not to freak him out. His hand was cold over Larry’s eyes and true to his word, Larry wasn’t peeking.
When he turned his head, it was like a single electric spark shot down his spine.
Sal pressed closer into him and the warmth between them grew, like sitting in front of a fire in the winter. Curled in blankets and with mugs of hot chocolate and saying nothing but feeling excited and happy, with snow outside. Kissing Sal was the best thing he’d ever felt in his life.
His knee was a little clammy under Larry’s hand but it was good.
Sal had the courage to bring this up.
One day, Larry would have the courage to tell him exactly what it meant to him. His elbows were bony and pressing awkwardly into the beanbag, causing the whole thing to tilt sideways but it was the best thing.
~
There was a time for courage and there was a time for quiet and there was a time for saying things.
Larry was on the mini-couch, curled sideways a little, his feet on the floor to accommodate Sal’s head on his hip. The smaller boy had come out of his final class of the day at school and looked exhausted. Larry had guided him home and immediately took him downstairs to lay on the couch.
The music was playing as it always was when they were in his room.
He could feel Sal’s fingers curled tightly in the fabric of his pants, where they were a little looser at the knee. What was worse was that he could still feel Sal shaking, his entire body trembling as he continued to deal with the bad alone. Whatever was going on in his head, it was obviously hurting him still, had been since before they’d made it home.
With just a bit of hesitation, Larry reached out and put a hand on Sal’s head, scratching gently at his scalp. “Dude,” he said quietly. “I can hear everything bouncing around in there. What’s up?”
“I shouldn’t…” Sal started his sentence, then groaned and rolled so that the forehead of his prosthetic was pressing into Larry’s thigh. “It was just something stupid, someone said it at school, I don’t…” his hand clutched tighter at Larry’s jeans, the trembling even worse now. “It shouldn’t matter that much.”
“Obviously it does,” Larry sat up a little, bracing himself with his free arm. “Want to talk about it?”
“…Yeah.”
“Okay,” he adjusted Sal’s head onto his lap, scratching gently at the base of his pigtails. “Where do you want to start?”
He could feel it when Sal relaxed just slightly, his shoulders slumping from the tense position they’d been in. “Probably at the beginning,” Sal muttered, tracing a thread in his jeans with one finger. “There were some girls at school today and they just…Said…Stuff.”
Oh.
Larry wanted to pull Sal entirely into his lap and hug him, make himself into as much of a shield as he could be for the other boy. “About?”
“…My prosthetic.”
“Yeah, okay,” Larry felt a bit of anger in his chest. “Then they’re stupid, if they were making fun of it.”
Silence, no answer, Sal’s entire body stiff and still and a soft whimpering noise.
Hit the nail on the head.
“Dude, it’s fucking cool. It’s a part of you and who you are and it just means that you’ve gone through some shit and you’re still alive today.”
“…Larry?”
Sal twitched and Larry pulled his hands away, letting him sit up. “What?”
“…Can I show you?”
For a moment his heart stops and he wants to kiss Sal again. They’ve gotten pretty good at it, even with Larry not being able to see what he’s doing. He knows the curve of Sal’s back, the way he kneels into Larry’s lap and the weight of him. The warmth of him when they’re holding close to each other. He could go off into poetry about the way Sal leans into him, the way his hair falls and creates a curtain around him.
When they kiss, it’s a lot of hair, especially when Sal pulls his down from his pigtails.
“Yeah,” Larry said quietly. Sal was still tensed up, like he almost wanted to run but his feet hadn’t gotten the message yet. He relaxed a little when Larry spoke next. “You can show me. Do you want to?”
A shaky sigh and Sal nodded. “Yeah.”
“Alright.”
He kept his hands to himself, looking at Sal in what he hoped was a reassuring way. The other boy took a deep breath and pulled off the prosthetic slowly. His hands were shaking and he immediately looked down at his own lap, hiding what was revealed.
Larry waited, letting him go at his own pace.
Sal pulled his hair down, letting it form a curtain around his head and he sighs. “Just…Don’t panic, alright?”
He sounded scared.
“Would I?”
That got a laugh from Sal and Larry can feel when some of his anxiety spills out and away from him. “No, probably not.”
With a deep breath, Sal looked up, his shoulders coming up to his chin. It makes him seem even smaller than he is and Larry wants to hold him and keep him safe. There were several dimpled scars across his left cheek and a sunken-in portion on his right, leading up to the right eye. Without the mask, Larry could see that his right eye wasn’t real, it looked too glassy and reflective. Some of the scarring looked like teeth.
“Woah,” he reached forward slowly, then pauses. “Can I?”
Sal’s eyes were opened wide and he looked stunned. “Yeah. I mean,” shrugging again. “If you really want to.”
“It’s not going to hurt anything?” Larry put his hands on Sal’s chin and cheeks, feeling his warmth and the shape of his jaw. “This looks sick, dude. Properly metal, y’know?”
Sal burst into laughter and Larry joined in, watching his face crinkle into a smile for the first time.
This must be what his mother felt when she looked at his father, he thinks. He wants to try mixing paint to match Sal’s eyes again, wants to write poetry to him, about him, to tell the world about him. He’s beautiful, scars and all, and he is everything Larry wants in his life when it comes to romance and happiness.
Sal was pretty.
Even if his prettiness came from something no one else would think about. It came from the way he tilted his shoulders, the way he laughed and it was muffled behind his prosthetic. His sort of pretty was in spite of everyone who called him anything else. He was scarred and a little scared and bitter and angry, but Larry loved him.
Oh, Larry thought as he kept laughing, leaning in to press his forehead gently against Sal’s. Oh.
The music was loud and it made it easier, somehow, to pull on his courage.
Sal took a deep breath, watching Larry drawing something in his sketchbook. His hands moved quickly over the page, occasionally tossing his pencil down to pick up his eraser, humming as he wiped away a mistake. His hands were pretty, Sal would have said if the other boy would be okay with it. They were best friends but he didn’t know how Larry would react to being called ‘pretty’.
But Larry was pretty.
He wasn’t handsome, not the way that girls at school would talk about. His ears were a little bit bigger than they should be and his nose was long and the girls at school whispered about him being a weirdo who liked heavy metal music. Their parents would watch Larry and Sal walk from the doors of the school together and whisper behind their hands, the two freaks were walking home together, wasn’t it odd?
But Larry was pretty.
He was nice and he was a good artist and he didn’t mind waking up to Sal nervously using the walkie talkie at three in the morning when he’d had a bad dream again. He drew and he painted and sometimes he wrote poetry that he’d keep hidden in the back of his binders and notebooks, showing Sal when they hung out on the weekends, away from prying eyes. Larry was his best friend and probably one of the few people who understood him in any sort of way. His mom had immediately accepted Sal in her life, as her son’s best friend, and had set herself to making sure that Sal was alright.
There were pictures of him on the living room wall, tucked neatly in between the two Johnsons. His face was under the prosthetic, but he remembered having a smile on when the photo was taken.
His stomach twisted when he was around Larry sometimes. It was the sort of feeling he thought might have inspired love songs, as weird as they were. It was waking up to think about Larry, falling asleep with the vague thought of something the other boy might like. Wanting to show him the secrets he kept and the bad dreams that woke him up and the things that made him feel too little again. The things he was afraid of, the ones that sent him back to the shivering, scared child he’d been once.
He wanted Larry to know these things.
Larry wouldn’t do anything with them, would probably even just try his best to help Sal with them. He’d already shown that a couple of times, talking Sal through the aftermath of his nightmares.
God, Larry was pretty.
“Hey Sally Face,” Larry spoke without looking up from his drawing, etching a line carefully. “What’s in your head right now?”
“Nothing, Larry Face,” Sal responded automatically, sticking his fingers into the hole at the knee of his jeans. “Just…Thinking. What’re you drawing?”
Larry shrugged, glancing up for a moment. “Nothing,” he shrugged again and Sal knew he was nervous. “Your head is like…A million miles away right now though. Want to talk about it?” he folded his sketchbook shut, setting it to the side. He set his pencils and eraser carefully on top of it, a gentle reminder not to go looking through it. Any art set out was free for Sal to look at but his sketchbook was still a secret.
“It’s just…”
“Yeah?” Larry tugged at the hem of his shirt, making the Sanity’s Fall logo ripple with the movement of the fabric, stretching his legs out across the floor and pointing his feet with the force of the stretch.
Sal sat up a little straighter, swallowing nervously. “Have you thought about…Kissing?”
“Kissing?” Larry’s eyebrow rose as he thought about it, running a hand back through his hair. He frowned, his eyes unfocused for a moment. “I mean, a little? Not really anyone at school I’d want to. Well, there’s someone, but-“
“I mean,” Sal curled in on himself, his knees against his chest. “Me.”
Larry stopped cold, his hand in his hair and his eyes wide. Both of his eyebrows were raised now, his cheeks a ruddy sort of red that stained across his nose and back towards his ears. “Kissing you?” he put the words together in a full phrase. “I mean-“ he licked at his lips, glancing nervously at his feet, the floor, his sketchbook, anything he could look at while his face got redder and redder. “A little?” his voice was so quiet that Sal almost didn’t hear it. “Does…Does it make you uncomfortable?”
“…Can I kiss you?” Sal could feel the words trying to stick in his throat, his palms sweating and his cheeks felt like they were burning. “It doesn’t make me uncomfortable, it’s…”
“Oh,” Larry hunched down in the beanbag, nodding slowly. “Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Sal let out the breath he’d been holding, standing up from his seat and walking over to drop to his knees next to Larry. “I can?”
“Yeah,” Larry looked at him, meeting his eyes. He was smiling a little and it made his eyes curl, the mole under the right eye following the crescent-moon-curve. He wasn’t handsome like the girls at school wanted but Sal thought he was pretty. “You can.”
With one hand on the chin of his prosthetic, Sal hesitated, making a noise in his throat. “Can I cover your eyes while I- I just…”
“Here,” Larry closed his eyes, taking one of Sal’s hands in his own and putting it over his eyes. “No peeking, I swear. Deep breath, dude. You still want to?”
“Yeah,” Sal pushed his prosthetic up and off, the straps falling loose once he got them off past his pigtails. He knew what he looked like without it, didn’t want that to be something Larry had to deal with. His lips were mostly okay, however, and he swallowed his nervousness as he leaned in. Larry leaned back in the beanbag a bit, letting Sal follow him so that neither of them were trying to hold themselves up in midair.
The kiss was awkward, Sal’s heart racing as he pressed in close. Larry smelled like the soap his mother bought for him to use and a little bit like sweat. The angle wasn’t great, their teeth clacked for a moment before Larry turned his head and then it was soft.
Kissing was strange.
Sal decided that he liked it. After a moment, he set down his prosthetic on the edge of the beanbag, curling himself along it and halfway into Larry’s lap. They had sat closer than this to watch movies before, sharing heat and a blanket and snacks. This time, Sal was distinctly aware of the warmth coming off of Larry, the line of his side against Sal’s.
He pulled back to breathe, slowly and carefully.
“That was nice,” Larry said quietly, his chest rising slowly. He put his hands on Sal’s shoulders, dragging them down his arms.
“Do you really mean that or are you being sarcastic?”
“Dude, I wouldn’t, not about this.” Larry laughed a little, one hand going to Sal’s knee and rubbing in gentle circles over the hole in his jeans. “Not about this.”
Sal still had a hand over his eyes, Larry still had his eyes shut.
“It wasn’t weird?”
“Oh, I mean, it definitely was, but I think any kissing is going to be weird, y’know? But kissing you is…Good.” Larry laughed again. “That probably took a lot of courage, huh? I’m…Kind of glad you were the one to bring it up.”
“Do I still have time for courage?” Sal asked quietly.
“Yeah,” Larry nodded slowly, pulling him in closer again. “I think you have time for courage still.”
They kissed again, Larry’s hands warm as they slid up to Sal’s back and stayed there.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Part 4 of “ I Always Swore I Was Going To Marry Him Someday “. Sal has nightmares, Larry panics about this, Lisa is a good mom and knows how to calm them both down.
