au where ben also never forgot

to set our scene, bev left town first and never called back, everyone was very upset, then ben left

and ben took the yearbook page with bev's signature and he tore it out and folded it up and put it in his wallet, and this act, this memorializing, kept his memories of derry alive

so ben was able to call the losers after he left and they were still in town, everything seemed normal. then the denbroughs left derry and bill slipped away. then stan left and never called, even after he promised. mike and richie and eddie couldn't figure it out,

ben called and he called often, it didn't make sense, why did ben stay in touch and no one else? richie and eddie dug up the denbroughs' new number and found out bill didn't remember. they sent a letter to the address stan had left with their phone numbers and no one ever called

eventually eddie left. mike confided to ben over the phone that he thought eddie leaving had broken richie. richie was different than ben remembered him, mike assured him. ben was the only person mike told that he wasn't leaving derry after high school.

ben didn't understand mike's choices, but they were mike's to make. when richie leaves, things change. ben and mike had been talking once a week, now they called every day, just to check.

"you still in there?"
"i'm still in here."
every morning, all through college. ben paid for his own landline in his dorm with money from his summer job. his dormmates thought he was weird

he eventually told them mike was his long distance girlfriend so they'd leave him alone for his daily calls to check in. it also meant they'd stop trying to set him up with people. ben didn't mind, his heart belonged to beverly marsh, always had always would.

mike told ben that he'd started looking for the others. that he had a feeling. ben told mike he had feelings, too.

ben's mom died shortly after he graduated undergrad. mike apologized profusely to ben that he couldn't come to the funeral. ben told him he was doing more than enough, being there for ben the only way either of them knew how, now.

after ben's mom died he was a little shiftless. mike was getting a bachelors, eventually a masters, from the University of Phoenix online, a blessing he hadn't thought he'd get, and finding a place for himself in derry, but ben was adrift.

mike's research skills paid off, he found bits and pieces of the other losers, enough to follow their basic movements, and so ben tasked himself with following their physical movements.

it was easy at first. bev, eddie, and richie were all in new york, bill and stan were both in boston. it felt ridiculous, spying on his friends, but then, he wasn't exactly hiding. he saw them, and they saw him, he knew, but it was like their eyes glazed right past him

like his face blurred for them, like a reflection, like a ghost, like a shadow.

so he got closer. he went to richie's shitty gigs. he started jogging in central park on the same route as eddie. he stood next to bev in the subway once and almost had a panic attack

he'd tried to talk to her, to tell her. who he was, who she was, what they were to each other. he'd slid into a chair across from her at a coffee shop, and he'd told her everything.

it made her sick to remember, he'd seen her hands shake, seen the lights go out behind her eyes, but she remembered. she spilled coffee on the table. he got up to get napkins. by the time he sat back down, she'd forgotten. he didn't try to tell her again.

so he followed. he'd spend the week in new york with richie, eddie, and bev, and weekends in boston with stan and bill. he got his master's in architecture from Pratt and started his own design firm out of necessity, to give himself the freedom to follow his friends.

mike thought ben should give it up, should live his life. by this point they'd figured out it was about It, they'd figured out the 27 year cycle.

mike wanted ben to get to live, even if only for a little while. ben told mike in no uncertain terms he wasn't leaving mike alone like that. mike was guarding derry, and ben was guarding his friends.

he didn't interfere in his friends' lives often, but sometimes he couldn't justify not doing so. he was there when stan proposed to patty and took photos that he mailed to them anonymously. it hurt when they moved to atlanta.

but he visited when he could and kept an eye on them. he bought two copies of all bill's books and went to every reading, every signing, every author's event and got them signed. he mailed one of every set to mike and kept his own well thumbed copies over his bed.

ben went on a date with bev's friend kay and convinced her to talk bev out of marrying tom. if tom had been a good man, ben wouldn't have done anything, would've let bev live her life, but ben could see the tension in bev's shoulders and the bruises on her wrists.

so he did it, and he didn't regret it. richie moved to LA, and then bill, and it got even harder. bev moved to chicago for a fresh start.

eddie's mom died. ben and mike sent flowers.

ben watched eddie start to fall into the same trap as bev, almost marrying a lesser copy of their parents, and he didn't know what to do. his design firm was taking up more of his time but he was still

keeping tabs on everyone, living in new york, monthly visits to chicago and LA, every other month to atlanta, it was starting to wear him down, it was getting exhausting

eddie was sliding farther towards myra when mike came up with the idea: ben hired eddie's insurance firm for a project he'd put in a bid on in LA, pulled strings to get eddie attached, and they moved to LA.

he met with eddie face to face twice during this. both times it was like being stabbed. ben dealt with it.

by this point it was like 2005, 2006, ben, bill, eddie, and richie were all in la, it was the most losers in one place since like 2001. richie started to get bigger and bigger and ben could see the cracks from a mile away.

tw drug mention for the next several // ben called the ambulance the night richie overdosed. he paced the hospital hallway outside the room while he waited for richie to wake up, on the phone with mike til his first gen iphone died, unwilling to leave without knowing he was alive

he didn't mean for richie to see him, doesn't know how richie was even aware enough to notice him, to be honest, but a nurse called him in and for the first time in 12 years one of the Losers looked at him and really saw him

richie didn't know who he was, didn't have any clue, beyond "the guy who called the ambulance" but it was enough. they exchanged numbers. ben expected richie to forget he existed as soon as he was out of sight

he almost had a heart attack when richie texted him to thank him again. he called mike in a panic and they talked for hours about the ethics of becoming friends with someone who doesn't know you're already friends with them.

eventually he and mike drafted a text back to richie, and richie took the inch ran the mile.

ben called mike near broken down the night richie drunkenly told ben he'd never had a friend like ben in his life.

when richie got arrested after fighting a paparazzo outside a bar and tested positive for a whole host of substances, ben dropped him off and picked him up from court mandated rehab. ben cleaned out his house. ben helped him find a therapist.

mike and ben thought maybe richie had it worst because he remembered the longest outside of them. he may not remember anymore but at one point he knew he'd been abandoned, knew the memory wipe was probably coming for him, too

so richie needed more help than the other Losers. they didn't begrudge him it.

and the years pass and ben and richie's friendship grows. richie never asks about the trips to chicago and atlanta, but he pretends to understand when ben talks to him about the architectural history of LA, and he comes to more than one of ben's building openings.

he comes out to ben quietly, privately, and ben doesn't even tell mike. it's not his to tell.

their friendship isn't the same as it was before, isn't as all consuming and obsessive as what the Losers' have, but it's special and it matters to both of them.

Ben knows what's coming, though, and months turn to years and soon it's been 27 and Mike tells him it's time.

Ben goes to Atlanta on instinct alone and he's thankful he did. Mike texts him right after he hangs up with Stan and Ben rings the doorbell on Stan and Patty's little bungalow, and when Stan sees him he /sees/ him

it's just like Richie in the hospital, being seen by another Loser for the first time in ages, but now the knowledge is there, too, and Stan looks petrified. he slips out of his house, closes his door behind him, and falls into Ben's open arms.

Ben quiets' Stan's sobs as best he can til his phone starts ringing. It's Richie.

he leaves stan, head in his hands, sat on his porch step so he can walk out into the yard to take the call. richie is calm, too calm, in a way that worries ben more than the opposite would.

"do you need to call your sponsor?" ben asks
"no," richie says "i called you. i remember, now."
"all of it?"
"i don't know," richie says, shaky. "and i don't know if i'm going to deck you or kiss you."
"do you remember eddie yet?"
"who?"
"i'll see you tomorrow, richie."

and they do see each other, in the parking lot of the jade, ben gets out of the rental he and stan shared and richie nearly tackles him back into it. stan watches, he's been quiet all day, but the shadows in his eyes have something behind them.

the hug richie gives ben is so hard and so long and ben hugs back just as hard, murmuring his apologies into richie's hair. richie is shaking, but not crying, when a voice ben's dreamed about for years says "am i interrupting something, boys?"

and ben feels his heart jump and he knows richie feels it too because richie laughs and pulls away and shoves him at bev and when the four of them finally make it inside and richie see's eddie ben gets to do the same for him.

ben and mike hug for the first time in 25 years in the private dining room, and then they share looks across the table that say as much as they were never able to before. thank you. i love you. i see you. i missed you. i've got you.

and then they all live because i said so.