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maidenjediTITLE: The Sleep of Reason
AUTHOR: Maidenjedi
FANDOM: Stephen King's It
RATING: R
DISCLAIMER: Not my characters or my book.
ARCHIVE: Anywhere, just keep my name on it.
SUMMARY: "It's never too late to have a happy childhood." - Tom Stoppard
Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
luzdeestrellas in the Yuletide NYR 2008 Challenge; she asked for post-book remembering or Ben/Beverly. This started like that and kind of took on a direction of its (Its?) own.
Together they were a tabloid cover story waiting to happen.
Ben Hanscom, architect. Bev Rogan, fashion designer.
"Marsh," she corrected him. "Beverly Marsh. My husband...I mean, that man, we weren't. You know."
Ben kissed her, like he'd wanted to since they were kids. He blushed but hid his face in her hair so she wouldn't see.
"I know."
The wedding ring was flushed down the toilet, a little ritual of scorned brides and disappointed wives. They didn't hear groaning or chewing or any kind of voice, though neither would admit that they had been listening for it.
And with that, they disappeared. They didn't talk about it, they just got in a rental car and left. Ben's hand on Bev's knee, her fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. Nothing truly intimate, not yet, because they were such a shy pair, and she'd only been his a matter of days.
They didn't talk much at all, really, those first few days.
Secretly, neither was sure how they ended up with the other.
---
The rental car had a Maine license plate, and on the sixth day, Bev asked Ben why they had been in Maine.
"We were visiting friends." His brow furrowed.
"Which friends?"
"Old friends. From a club or something. From school, maybe."
Bev reached into her purse for a cigarette and nodded.
Of course, old friends. From school.
---
They drove and they stopped at motels, parks, restaurants with dark corner booths, any place they could touch each other, sit close together, kiss. They hadn't made love yet when they reached Virginia; they finally did in a nicer hotel, Ben sprung for something old-fashioned and classy.
Bev spread beneath him and arched with him, and they were like teenagers with unsated appetites.
She was sleeping soundly one early morning as Ben traced a finger along her back, intricate circles and patterns with no direction.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
A darker thought: Who am I?
---
The paparazzi caught up with them in Atlanta, and they drove away, west and north then south and back east to try and lose them.
The headlines read "Architect and Fashion Maven On the Run?" - "Ben and Bev - The REAL Story" - "And You Thought He Was Gay - Ben's Lover Reveals All in Exclusive Interview!" - "Whatever Happened to Tom Rogan?" - "Beverly Rogan - Pregnant with Ben's Baby?!"
Hiding out, on the run from nothing in particular.
Dreams, maybe.
The story died after a day or tow. And in other news, the author Bill
Denbrough and his wife Audra Phillips were in Maine, taking a vacation in between Audra's films. Only Audra was rumored to be in the hospital.
On the fourth day, Audra and Bill announced their divorce, another Hollywood scandal or something, and Bev and Ben found out while they were watching Entertainment Tonight in a motel in southern Georgia. Bill Denbrough's face was plastered among lurid yellows and oranges and Mary Hart's fake smile.
"Beverly?"
"Yeah?" She was fixed on the television screen, staring at Bill Denbrough's face like she was trying to place him, like she knew him and didn't know how or why.
"Do you know him?"
She blinked and was surprised to find tears rolling down her face.
"I...don't know."
Ben turned the television off and sat on the floor at Bev's knee.
"I think you do. Hell, Bev, I think I do. I dreamed about Bill Denbrough last night. Except he was a kid, and so was I. And you. And bunch of others."
"What happened in the dream?"
Ben shut his eyes tight and buried his face against her thigh. Visions of a bicycle and a young Bill bent over the handlebars, riding like the wind, riding to beat the devil.
"We all died."
---
"I remember how I got this cut."
Bev was whispering, sure than Ben was asleep and therefore not privy to this conversation with herself.
"I..I remember throwing a perfume bottle, and I remember how it shattered. I remember stepping on it when I left. He was...he was bleeding, I cut him too."
"Who's he?"
Bev froze, ashamed for no reason. Ben's voice was calm, loving, curious. Never full of rage or revenge.
So unlike his voice.
But which voice? Tom's?
Or maybe...her father's?
She shuttered as the vision of a laughing clown passed before her eyes. She shut them and willed him away. We killed you, you're dead, It can never get us again.
What?
"I don't know."
She still whispered, and Ben held her hand.
---
"Mrs. Rogan?"
The cops had questions about Tom, and Kay was looking for her. They'd all used the tabloid tales to track her down.
She sat for questioning at a station in a town with a hard-to-pronounce Czech name, and they were satisfied, if a little worried about how easily she cried. Kay thought it was natural to cry so much when your husband died, even if he was a son-of-a-bitch who liked to hit.
She wondered about this Ben Hanscom character. Bev couldn't explain how they'd met. "We just...we ended up together, Kay." But he was kind and quiet and his eyes didn't gleam with any kind of rage or jealousy, and so Kay let Bev go.
There was romance in the world, after all, she thought as she watched them hold hands, two kids in a grown-up world.
---
They had been driving for three weeks - or maybe three months. It was hard to tell anymore. But she was sleeping better at night and the cuts had all healed, and he could remember Hemingford Home and longed to go back.
Bev had nowhere to go, really. She was done with Chicago, maybe done with fashion. She doodled on napkins in diners, but it was always monsters or heroes, never clothes. She told Ben she wanted to see where he came from, where his home was, and neither of them said a word about being from the same place, the same hometown. Neither of them really remembered.
So to Nebraska they went, finally settling on a destination. There Ben brought his girl to the bar and she ordered a vodka tonic. And Ricky was relieved to see Ben and wouldn't say why.
An old man walked up to Bev and shook her hand. "Ya got yerself a good prize there, young lady. Take care o' him."
"I will," she said, her eyes sparkling as she grinned at Ben.
The old man grabbed her wrist, just hard enough so that the grin slipped from her face and Ben stood up. "The Turtle. Remember the Turtle. It's never over, young lady."
Just as Ben's fists were curling and Bev felt tears threaten, the old man hobbled away. Later on, Ricky told Ben, there hadn't been any old men in the bar that night.
---
"Eddie Kaspbrak. Richie Tozier. Stuttering Bill. Stan the Man."
"Ben?"
"Yeah. Beverly Marsh. Michael...what was Michael's last name?"
"Ben, wake up."
"Hanlon, that's right, Hanlon. And there was me, Ben Hanscom, the tank, Haystack, Fats...." He was giggling now.
He was still asleep.
"Ben, wake up!" Bev shook him hard and when his eyes flew open at last, she muffled a scream.
He had no eyes. Just silver pennies that flashed.
---
"I had a dream."
She didn't look as though she'd slept at all.
"What was it about?" He took her hand and she jumped. Like in the beginning, like when they were still in Maine. What was the name of that town again?
She closed her eyes and her mouth, and put her hands over her ears.
"Bev? Bev, it's me, it's Ben."
He touched her face, her shoulders, her knees. She rocked back and forth, humming a Ritchie Valens tune and almost laughing.
He took her in his arms, and she stopped, burying her face in his neck and sobbing a little.
"I had a dream, Ben. You...you w-w-were s-s-saying things, saying n-n-names..."
She hiccuped and Ben pulled back to look at her face, into her eyes.
"What names, Bev?"
She told him, and Ben felt the temperature in the room drop like a ghost had just walked in unannounced.
He'd heard her say those names in his dream, and what kind of fucked-up mind voodoo was going on now?
---
They sat at a park, in the daylight, where there were a few kids and a few more grown-ups, and they talked.
"What do those names mean, Ben?"
"I don't know. But I'm in there, and so are you."
"Yeah." She twirled her hair absently with one finger.
He took in a shaky breath before speaking. "I think...I think we have to go back to Maine, Beverly."
She sighed and closed her eyes, and reached for his hand blindly. He took her hand and kissed her fingertips.
"Bev?" Darlin'? Sugar-pie, honeybunch?
"Okay, Ben. Lead the way."
---
They never said the name of the town out loud, and never spoke of Maine after dark. They pretended they were carefree and had no destination in mind, no purpose to their drive.
Sunglasses kept them from being recognized, like they were Superman and Supergirl and people really were that dumb.
But Bev began to feel like they weren't really there, not in the world or of it, just floating on by while the rest of them went on with their lives.
The Turtle would know, she thought, and promptly forgot.
They had nightmares, and some good dreams. The names floated in and out, Bill-Ben-Richie-Stan-Michael-Bev-and-Eds.
Sometimes Henry.
In one dream, not a nightmare, Bev dreamed of a not-quite-teenaged boy with red hair and a stutter. She thought his name was Bill and thought he hung the moon.
She couldn't see his face.
That night, Ben dreamed of Morlock holes and smoke in a pit, a crazy Voice saying, like Porky Pig, "be-dee-be-dee-be-dee, th-th-that's all folks!"
They didn't talk about the dreams.
---
They were close to Derry now, maybe two hours out. But they stopped for the night anyway, at four o'clock, saying quite logically that by the time they got there, the library would be closed anyway.
Best save it for the morning.
They ordered takeout and sat in the room on opposite beds, having asked for a king and gotten a double. Ben picked at his General Tsao's and Bev ate white rice with her fingers. They were delaying the Talk.
So many memories were coming back, in dreams. All but the crucial ones - how they'd come back the first time, why, what had happened to Eddie. They anticipated filling them in with Michael and perhaps Bill, if he was still here.
They weren't supposed to leave. That was the trick.
Derry had called them all home again.
"Do you remember that time in the Barrens when it was just you and me and a stick of Little Orphan Annie comics?"
"Do you remember how I tried to teach you and Richie to dance, and Eddie told us that people who danced ended up with Old Scratch when they died?"
"Do you remember the day at the rock pile, the fight we had with Henry's gang?"
"Do you remember..."
All night long.
---
Michael Hanlon was working the front desk at the Derry Library, as he often did during the lunch hour. He didn't see Ben Hanscom walk in; he heard the squeal of delight from some library patron who recognized the architect from his magazine pictures.
"Mike? Are you Mike Hanlon?"
"Yes, I'm..."
When Mike looked up and met Ben's eyes, he was knocked back with the force of memory. It. They defeated It. Stuttering Bill and all the Losers, they won. Eddie, Stan, they were lost, but the others were alive and grown-up and now what were they all doing here?
"Ben?" he whispered.
Ben nodded.
Beverly came up behind Ben, followed by a bewildered and somewhat
happy-looking gentleman.
She was crying, but her grin made up for it. "Do you see? Guess who I found in the parking lot?"
The guy spoke. "I'm...wow, I'm Richie. Do you remember me, Michael? Haystack, it's good to see you! Do you remember me?"
When they left, they locked the library, and went off in search of Bill Denbrough, who was still in Derry, after the divorce and life had descended and he decided he couldn't leave just yet.
None of them really could, after all.
==============================================================
END.
NOTES: Title from a Jean-Jacques Rousseau quote about childhood.
AUTHOR: Maidenjedi
FANDOM: Stephen King's It
RATING: R
DISCLAIMER: Not my characters or my book.
ARCHIVE: Anywhere, just keep my name on it.
SUMMARY: "It's never too late to have a happy childhood." - Tom Stoppard
Written for
luzdeestrellas in the Yuletide NYR 2008 Challenge; she asked for post-book remembering or Ben/Beverly. This started like that and kind of took on a direction of its (Its?) own.Together they were a tabloid cover story waiting to happen.
Ben Hanscom, architect. Bev Rogan, fashion designer.
"Marsh," she corrected him. "Beverly Marsh. My husband...I mean, that man, we weren't. You know."
Ben kissed her, like he'd wanted to since they were kids. He blushed but hid his face in her hair so she wouldn't see.
"I know."
The wedding ring was flushed down the toilet, a little ritual of scorned brides and disappointed wives. They didn't hear groaning or chewing or any kind of voice, though neither would admit that they had been listening for it.
And with that, they disappeared. They didn't talk about it, they just got in a rental car and left. Ben's hand on Bev's knee, her fingers playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. Nothing truly intimate, not yet, because they were such a shy pair, and she'd only been his a matter of days.
They didn't talk much at all, really, those first few days.
Secretly, neither was sure how they ended up with the other.
---
The rental car had a Maine license plate, and on the sixth day, Bev asked Ben why they had been in Maine.
"We were visiting friends." His brow furrowed.
"Which friends?"
"Old friends. From a club or something. From school, maybe."
Bev reached into her purse for a cigarette and nodded.
Of course, old friends. From school.
---
They drove and they stopped at motels, parks, restaurants with dark corner booths, any place they could touch each other, sit close together, kiss. They hadn't made love yet when they reached Virginia; they finally did in a nicer hotel, Ben sprung for something old-fashioned and classy.
Bev spread beneath him and arched with him, and they were like teenagers with unsated appetites.
She was sleeping soundly one early morning as Ben traced a finger along her back, intricate circles and patterns with no direction.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
A darker thought: Who am I?
---
The paparazzi caught up with them in Atlanta, and they drove away, west and north then south and back east to try and lose them.
The headlines read "Architect and Fashion Maven On the Run?" - "Ben and Bev - The REAL Story" - "And You Thought He Was Gay - Ben's Lover Reveals All in Exclusive Interview!" - "Whatever Happened to Tom Rogan?" - "Beverly Rogan - Pregnant with Ben's Baby?!"
Hiding out, on the run from nothing in particular.
Dreams, maybe.
The story died after a day or tow. And in other news, the author Bill
Denbrough and his wife Audra Phillips were in Maine, taking a vacation in between Audra's films. Only Audra was rumored to be in the hospital.
On the fourth day, Audra and Bill announced their divorce, another Hollywood scandal or something, and Bev and Ben found out while they were watching Entertainment Tonight in a motel in southern Georgia. Bill Denbrough's face was plastered among lurid yellows and oranges and Mary Hart's fake smile.
"Beverly?"
"Yeah?" She was fixed on the television screen, staring at Bill Denbrough's face like she was trying to place him, like she knew him and didn't know how or why.
"Do you know him?"
She blinked and was surprised to find tears rolling down her face.
"I...don't know."
Ben turned the television off and sat on the floor at Bev's knee.
"I think you do. Hell, Bev, I think I do. I dreamed about Bill Denbrough last night. Except he was a kid, and so was I. And you. And bunch of others."
"What happened in the dream?"
Ben shut his eyes tight and buried his face against her thigh. Visions of a bicycle and a young Bill bent over the handlebars, riding like the wind, riding to beat the devil.
"We all died."
---
"I remember how I got this cut."
Bev was whispering, sure than Ben was asleep and therefore not privy to this conversation with herself.
"I..I remember throwing a perfume bottle, and I remember how it shattered. I remember stepping on it when I left. He was...he was bleeding, I cut him too."
"Who's he?"
Bev froze, ashamed for no reason. Ben's voice was calm, loving, curious. Never full of rage or revenge.
So unlike his voice.
But which voice? Tom's?
Or maybe...her father's?
She shuttered as the vision of a laughing clown passed before her eyes. She shut them and willed him away. We killed you, you're dead, It can never get us again.
What?
"I don't know."
She still whispered, and Ben held her hand.
---
"Mrs. Rogan?"
The cops had questions about Tom, and Kay was looking for her. They'd all used the tabloid tales to track her down.
She sat for questioning at a station in a town with a hard-to-pronounce Czech name, and they were satisfied, if a little worried about how easily she cried. Kay thought it was natural to cry so much when your husband died, even if he was a son-of-a-bitch who liked to hit.
She wondered about this Ben Hanscom character. Bev couldn't explain how they'd met. "We just...we ended up together, Kay." But he was kind and quiet and his eyes didn't gleam with any kind of rage or jealousy, and so Kay let Bev go.
There was romance in the world, after all, she thought as she watched them hold hands, two kids in a grown-up world.
---
They had been driving for three weeks - or maybe three months. It was hard to tell anymore. But she was sleeping better at night and the cuts had all healed, and he could remember Hemingford Home and longed to go back.
Bev had nowhere to go, really. She was done with Chicago, maybe done with fashion. She doodled on napkins in diners, but it was always monsters or heroes, never clothes. She told Ben she wanted to see where he came from, where his home was, and neither of them said a word about being from the same place, the same hometown. Neither of them really remembered.
So to Nebraska they went, finally settling on a destination. There Ben brought his girl to the bar and she ordered a vodka tonic. And Ricky was relieved to see Ben and wouldn't say why.
An old man walked up to Bev and shook her hand. "Ya got yerself a good prize there, young lady. Take care o' him."
"I will," she said, her eyes sparkling as she grinned at Ben.
The old man grabbed her wrist, just hard enough so that the grin slipped from her face and Ben stood up. "The Turtle. Remember the Turtle. It's never over, young lady."
Just as Ben's fists were curling and Bev felt tears threaten, the old man hobbled away. Later on, Ricky told Ben, there hadn't been any old men in the bar that night.
---
"Eddie Kaspbrak. Richie Tozier. Stuttering Bill. Stan the Man."
"Ben?"
"Yeah. Beverly Marsh. Michael...what was Michael's last name?"
"Ben, wake up."
"Hanlon, that's right, Hanlon. And there was me, Ben Hanscom, the tank, Haystack, Fats...." He was giggling now.
He was still asleep.
"Ben, wake up!" Bev shook him hard and when his eyes flew open at last, she muffled a scream.
He had no eyes. Just silver pennies that flashed.
---
"I had a dream."
She didn't look as though she'd slept at all.
"What was it about?" He took her hand and she jumped. Like in the beginning, like when they were still in Maine. What was the name of that town again?
She closed her eyes and her mouth, and put her hands over her ears.
"Bev? Bev, it's me, it's Ben."
He touched her face, her shoulders, her knees. She rocked back and forth, humming a Ritchie Valens tune and almost laughing.
He took her in his arms, and she stopped, burying her face in his neck and sobbing a little.
"I had a dream, Ben. You...you w-w-were s-s-saying things, saying n-n-names..."
She hiccuped and Ben pulled back to look at her face, into her eyes.
"What names, Bev?"
She told him, and Ben felt the temperature in the room drop like a ghost had just walked in unannounced.
He'd heard her say those names in his dream, and what kind of fucked-up mind voodoo was going on now?
---
They sat at a park, in the daylight, where there were a few kids and a few more grown-ups, and they talked.
"What do those names mean, Ben?"
"I don't know. But I'm in there, and so are you."
"Yeah." She twirled her hair absently with one finger.
He took in a shaky breath before speaking. "I think...I think we have to go back to Maine, Beverly."
She sighed and closed her eyes, and reached for his hand blindly. He took her hand and kissed her fingertips.
"Bev?" Darlin'? Sugar-pie, honeybunch?
"Okay, Ben. Lead the way."
---
They never said the name of the town out loud, and never spoke of Maine after dark. They pretended they were carefree and had no destination in mind, no purpose to their drive.
Sunglasses kept them from being recognized, like they were Superman and Supergirl and people really were that dumb.
But Bev began to feel like they weren't really there, not in the world or of it, just floating on by while the rest of them went on with their lives.
The Turtle would know, she thought, and promptly forgot.
They had nightmares, and some good dreams. The names floated in and out, Bill-Ben-Richie-Stan-Michael-Bev-and-Eds.
Sometimes Henry.
In one dream, not a nightmare, Bev dreamed of a not-quite-teenaged boy with red hair and a stutter. She thought his name was Bill and thought he hung the moon.
She couldn't see his face.
That night, Ben dreamed of Morlock holes and smoke in a pit, a crazy Voice saying, like Porky Pig, "be-dee-be-dee-be-dee, th-th-that's all folks!"
They didn't talk about the dreams.
---
They were close to Derry now, maybe two hours out. But they stopped for the night anyway, at four o'clock, saying quite logically that by the time they got there, the library would be closed anyway.
Best save it for the morning.
They ordered takeout and sat in the room on opposite beds, having asked for a king and gotten a double. Ben picked at his General Tsao's and Bev ate white rice with her fingers. They were delaying the Talk.
So many memories were coming back, in dreams. All but the crucial ones - how they'd come back the first time, why, what had happened to Eddie. They anticipated filling them in with Michael and perhaps Bill, if he was still here.
They weren't supposed to leave. That was the trick.
Derry had called them all home again.
"Do you remember that time in the Barrens when it was just you and me and a stick of Little Orphan Annie comics?"
"Do you remember how I tried to teach you and Richie to dance, and Eddie told us that people who danced ended up with Old Scratch when they died?"
"Do you remember the day at the rock pile, the fight we had with Henry's gang?"
"Do you remember..."
All night long.
---
Michael Hanlon was working the front desk at the Derry Library, as he often did during the lunch hour. He didn't see Ben Hanscom walk in; he heard the squeal of delight from some library patron who recognized the architect from his magazine pictures.
"Mike? Are you Mike Hanlon?"
"Yes, I'm..."
When Mike looked up and met Ben's eyes, he was knocked back with the force of memory. It. They defeated It. Stuttering Bill and all the Losers, they won. Eddie, Stan, they were lost, but the others were alive and grown-up and now what were they all doing here?
"Ben?" he whispered.
Ben nodded.
Beverly came up behind Ben, followed by a bewildered and somewhat
happy-looking gentleman.
She was crying, but her grin made up for it. "Do you see? Guess who I found in the parking lot?"
The guy spoke. "I'm...wow, I'm Richie. Do you remember me, Michael? Haystack, it's good to see you! Do you remember me?"
When they left, they locked the library, and went off in search of Bill Denbrough, who was still in Derry, after the divorce and life had descended and he decided he couldn't leave just yet.
None of them really could, after all.
==============================================================
END.
NOTES: Title from a Jean-Jacques Rousseau quote about childhood.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-29 09:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-30 02:30 am (UTC)