Work Text:
Peter Kaspbrak is a serious boy, as most Kaspbrak boys become under Sonia Kaspbrak’s watchful eye. Has the same dark hair as his brother, curling slightly when it gets too long, but their father’s blue eyes. Pure luck of the draw, but it drives a wedge between he and his mother that Eddie ends up bearing the brunt of.
Peter is the older boy, the firstborn. Man of the house with his father dead. Eddie is his ickle baby brother, sickly and wheezing, taking pill after pill-
(Peter was still young when their father passed, so he didn’t know better. Didn’t know that the inhaler was a crock of shit, or the sugar pills, or-)
Peter Kaspbrak does not hate easily, but he hates his mother. Hates the way he’s shackled to his brother, always has to tag along and mind him because little Eddie-bear is so fragile, Petey-puppy, he needs you-
Little fucker doesn’t need anything, Peter thinks sourly as he watches the little hellion scream his lungs out in the Tozier boy’s face. Now, though, thank god for Bill Denbrough and Stanley Uris, because otherwise he’d have to separate the two himself. They’re worth remembering the names of if only for that. Tozier’s just a thorn in Eddie’s side, and sure it’s funny to watch his little brother fume, but-
Look, he likes Tozier’s older sister just fine. Year or two older than him, has a leather jacket and what seems like all the Springsteen albums in the world. Meghan is more than fine, she’s maybe even cool. A little part of Peter even thinks she’s bad-ass. But Richie Tozier? If they were any farther in the woods, he’d think long and hard about potentially drowning the loudmouth. If Peter drags Eddie home like this, mom will kill him for letting his lungs get overworked.
Instead, he sits on the boulder by the edge of the creek, watching four boys be absolute idiots. Mom will know if he waded in after them, getting his jeans wet, and he hadn’t thought ahead to lug his backpack around with an extra pair to change into. No, Eddie’s the only Kaspbrak in the water, and he’s not jealous, he’s not-
Okay, so maybe he’s a little jealous. Maybe it’s why he not-so-subtly teaches them cusswords sometimes, pretending not to see them overhearing as he wrangles a shitty bush or something every time they head to the creek. But he has to be serious, adult, perfect, has to be ready anytime and anywhere to drop everything if their mother needs him, and Eddie doesn’t, and it bites, frankly.
It fucking sucks that that Eddie gets to run around with his friends, that he actually gets to have some, and Peter…
Peter can’t because mom needs him, and Eddie needs him, and without him the whole house of cards collapses. Maintaining the house is his job, and so are the chores, and the cooking, and making sure Eddie’s ready for school and not slacking off. He has to be ready to drop by the Keene’s pharmacy for every scrape or med pickup, has to learn how to drive so he can get them to the hospital in a pinch. He can’t have any girls around because then mom gets this weird look in her eye and starts piling on more responsibilities until he can’t breathe at all, and he can’t befriend any boys because they’re all ‘filthy and uncouth’, will ruin her precious Petey-puppy’s reputation by mere association.
She piles the same shit on Eddie, but it’s filtered through her thinking that Peter’s watching him like a hawk every second. Like he’ll swoop in and chase off every bad influence before they can sink their talons into his baby brother.
As-if. Eddie’s already enough of a little wacko to scare anybody off with the set of lungs on him, and his almost grotesque memorization of every disease known to man. And if anybody tried to touch him, Peter would rip their hands off first.
He loves his little brother, he does. He’d kill any creeps who even looked at him wrong. The only reason he hasn’t tried to rip Bowers’ head off is because his dad’s the sheriff, and that Hockstetter guy is…
He makes Peter’s skin crawl, sometimes. The way he looks at everybody with this… leer, and a gleam in his eyes that’s… piggish, maybe? He’s never been to a farm before, but even he can tell there’s something animal-like about the other boy’s eyes that makes the back of his neck itch.
*
There is a clown. There is a fucking monster clown underneath the haunted-ass house on Neibolt, and it went after his baby brother and his baby brother’s friends-
He is going to make that clown choke on his bones before it can even touch Eddie, make it swallow until his ribs pierce its throat-
There’s a baseball bat, snatched out of Tozier’s hands. There are missing posters with the faces of two different boys on the ground, both dark haired and blue-eyed, but only one with glasses. A coffin, dark and deep, opens like a yawning maw. Peter would have been great at baseball, he thinks a bit hysterically, if their mother didn’t worry about him overworking himself despite the fact she has him contributing to the bills already-
Afterwards, after watching a goddamn blood pact and feeling mildly stunned his brother wasn’t losing his mind over blood-transmitted diseases, Beverly Marsh offers him his first cigarette when his hands are still shaking. He has one of Eddie’s little fanny-pack plasters on his forehead where he bashed his head against a wall, and Stan- Stan has outright bandages wrapped around his head and face, like a mummy or something. Beverly Marsh doesn’t like Springsteen, and doesn’t have a leather jacket, but Peter thinks she’s a little bad-ass just like Meghan Tozier.
Not cool, she’s his brother’s age and still a bit stupid considering she tried to fucking tackle a monster solo, but he’ll give her bad-ass. Maybe all of his little brother’s friends are bad-asses, just for now. Just until they’re annoying little twerps again.
But the Hanlon kid, Mike, he lets Peter pet a cow once while he’s ‘supervising’ his brother’s visit out there, providing them cover for a hang-out. It was pretty cool. Mike gets to be cool for that.
(He gets fired for walking out of work that day, and for the fast-food uniform getting stained. His boss can go fuck himself, what was Peter supposed to do? Let them die?)
*
The Kaspbraks move out to Nevada eventually, in with one of Sonia Kaspbrak’s oh-so-lovely sisters. A change to drier air for Eddie’s lungs, for the things they don’t remember about the summer of ’89.
Eddie goes quiet again, pliant, like he’s wrapped in cotton-balls and can’t get out. It’s like he folds himself up so small until he disappears almost into nothing. Just wheezing lungs, shaking hands, clinging to their mother’s skirt in the face of the unknown. More of a ghost than a boy who keeps fading by the day.
It’s Peter who gets electrifyingly angry, arguing and snapping, baring his teeth. When his mother asks where her precious Petey-puppy went, he laughs in her face even as his hands shake. Ends up smoking a lot more, and fighting with boys at school, and getting his mother called by the principal more than once because of both. There’s a whirlwind behind his ribs and he can’t control where it leads him, just has to hold on and wait it out. He hates his mother, and is simultaneously terrified of her.
Neither Kaspbrak boy knows why this happens, what changes them so bone-deep. There’s just a creeping sense of unease, questions that they can’t figure how to even spell out. Peter does not remember how Eddie broke his arm, or why it’s even in a cast, besides being wildly furious whenever he sees it. Eddie doesn’t remember where Peter got the scar through his eyebrow, why the sight of it makes his heart leap into overdrive until he’s having an asthma attack and can’t breathe-
(Neither of them know why the thought of caves make them break out into sweat, makes them want to run and never stop until their legs give out-)
Peter Kaspbrak marries his first girlfriend, and ends up taking her name because he’s exhausted of the way he gets lumped in with his family. It’s always Peter-and-Eddie, Eddie-and-Peter, the Kaspbrak boys, Sonia’s boys, and he doesn’t want to be hers anymore. Wants to escape grasping hands and on-call duty, a fucking pager at his belt that only his mother has the number for so he’s forever at her beck and call-
His mother is not invited to the small shit-ass wedding, hastily thrown together. Eddie is, but he never shows up.
It’s like a stone in Peter’s stomach, a hand around his throat, but whenever he calls, his mother tends to hang up immediately. Sometimes she only stays on long enough to berate him for abandoning the family for some small-time floozy, how he’s an awful son and a worse man-
The handful of letters Peter manages to scratch out never get replies.
The real breaking point is when he sends Eddie a gift for his birthday, and it gets sent back to him marked ‘return to sender, no one by that name at this address.’
So Peter Strahm ends up cracking open the box of the model car his brother’s dreamed of for years, never stopped babbling about it in high school whenever he brought up driving, and making the thing by himself in bits and pieces over the next few months. It’s a 1970 Mustang Coupe, glossy black thanks to some enamel paint. He doesn’t even know where or when Eddie had spotted one, but his little brother had been obsessed and…
It'd been nice to see Eddie so excited about something, voice rapid and high with unbridled glee. Rattling off the make of the engine, what kind of tires it would need, how it maybe wasn’t the fastest car he could pick but it was so pretty, Pete-
(It’d also been bittersweet because the older he gets the more Peter realizes how fucked their mother is, he left him with her, it’s his fault-)
So yeah. Peter Strahm builds a model car meant for his brother, and puts it on his bookshelf. His degree in criminology gets framed next to it. The first award he ever gets with the FBI ends up with it too.
Eventually his wife divorces him, but he never changes his name back. Strahm’s on his degree, on his records, is his now in a way that Kaspbrak never quite was.
Peter Strahm keeps moving through life, and tries to ignore the unease oozing down his spine, the way fear grips him cold and deadly sometimes. That’s the one thing Kaspbraks seem pretty good at: ignoring what they don’t want to see.
*
Peter gets a leather jacket eventually. He listens to all the Springsteen he wants, and dabbles into some other artists that’d give his mother a heart-attack, like Adam Ant and Black Sabbath. Bowie’s not his thing, not really. That’s more Eddie’s speed, just like Duran Duran used to be.
(If he can’t listen to either artist except in short bursts, what does it matter? He’s just not feeling it is all.)
Whenever he smokes he ends up turning as if to talk to somebody else, or offer them a light absently, and no one is ever there. Even when there is somebody there, it’s the wrong somebody in that place, the wrong body in that spot. Hair too long, too short, too neat, where’s a snorting laugh and the curl of a mouth like she knows something you don’t-
(Where are gangly limbs and big glasses, a fucking annoyance that gets his hackles up, but it’d be worse if they weren’t there-)
His second wife adores the Marsh brand, swears by it for almost everything. Coats, skirts, shirts, doesn’t matter. If B. Marsh has touched it, it’s gold. He buys her a purse from them for their wedding anniversary, at a fucking insane price tag.
Looking at the looping letters of B. Marsh’s signature on the tag, he’d swear the writing looks familiar. Scratches at part of his brain that rubs elbows with nostalgia every now and then. He rips the tags off anyways, and wraps the thing up as neatly as he can. The signature is on the bag in a delicate script, tucked onto a metal plate near the zipper. It’ll still be there if his wife needs to show off and brag.
His second wife eventually leaves him too, same bag in hand and designer suitcases from another brand at her heels. Everybody leaves Peter Strahm. He’s gotten used to it by now.
Peter ditches the cigarettes to distract himself from the divorce, and does what he does best: moves on.
*
Peter Strahm meets Mark Hoffman, meets the other man’s eyes, and think This is going to be a problem.
He is absolutely correct, and never lets Mark forget it.
(There is no third wedding. There is no ring. But third time’s the charm, isn’t it?)
*
Peter still hates dark enclosed spaces to some degree, not quite claustrophobic but not not claustrophobic either. Anywhere cave-like, damp and cold and tight, immediately gets his hackles up.
It’s easier to crawl into the brightly lit coffin than it is to stay in that room, easier to follow through on because he already knows he’s going to die someday. He knows every time he feels something oily down his spine, thick and oozing like sludge, a deep primal fear and the urge to scream welling up in the back of his throat.
Mark Hoffman won’t be the man to kill him, is what the fear says. It will be something far more cruel and with far more teeth, whatever the fuck it is he starts seeing in his nightmares after too long without sleep. It is tall, spidery, isolating, lonely. It is the strange, awful realization that he thinks he’s climbed into a coffin before, soft and spongy where this one is firm and hard.
He is going to die, but not here. Not here, the oily darkness croons as it trails fingers up his spine, barely cut through by the light of the coffin. Not yet.
“You want me dead, you do it with your bare hands or not at all, you sonuvabitch,” Peter snaps at the other man in the reflection of the lid, hand curled around the edge of the coffin. The bolts are rough against his hand, probably improperly soldered or something. Welded? He doesn’t remember the difference.
He turns to look at Hoffman head-on, says “Do it, just fucking do it,” like a taunt, and the sound he makes when Hoffman slams into him and presses him into the glass is inhuman. Is an awful kind of relief because the oily feeling gets cut through by it, by the glass in his back and the warmth and weight of the other man against him.
Nothing can crawl in after them. He’s not going to be snatched into the dark alone. If he goes they’ll both go, and he knows Hoffman will fight it tooth and nail. This time, he gets to choose to close the coffin instead of having it slam shut on him-
Peter’s been to plenty of funerals by now, but never one where the coffin lid slammed. It’s a sound that weaves into his dreams nonetheless, alongside animal teeth, spidery hands, and a cloying dampness. The more years that pass, the more the dampness makes his bones ache, makes him choke-
It’s the coffin that presses them chest to chest. It’s Peter who kisses him, because he’s been watching the man from the start and the weight and heat make him feel the steadiest he has in years. He was safe if there was somebody else to watch him. He’s safe, glass in his back and the taste of blood in his mouth. Anything that wants him has to go through them both.
(Hoffman may be a killer, but he’s a man. Human. And Peter would rather have a human monster at his side than one which merely imitates a man like a goddamn cuckoo.)
*
Mike Hanlon somehow, beyond all fucking belief, manages to get Peter’s number. Mike Hanlon who let him pet the cows and feed the pigs, and it was the Hanlon farm where he got that bit of muscle when he was an older teenager, huh? Helping with Mike’s chores for a few bucks here and there, lying to his mom that he was helping a different family down the way. It was Mike’s grandpa who started teaching him how to maintain a car, because the man may have been stern but he wasn’t an asshole. Said any boy driving a car should know how to fix it with what he had.
(And as long as Peter helped with the chores, or the car, or any other little jobs around the place, Eddie could come with. Get some fresh air, see the animals that would have sent their mother ranting and raving about disease transmission. It didn’t feel the same as when Eddie’s entire little gang tagged along, but that didn’t matter to Peter. What mattered was that they got out-)
Mike Hanlon calls him, reminds him he exists, and proceeds to hit him with the verbal equivalent of a baseball bat. “I’m calling Eddie tomorrow. If you could get to New York, it might help him, you being there.”
“He’s in fucking New York?” bursts out of Peter before he can help it, disbelief coloring his words. “All this time, fucking New York- no, you know what? Fuck you, how do you even know this, Mike? How can you even ask him to come back to that shithole-?”
Mark casts a quick glance at him from the stove, working on stirring some vegetables into noodles, eyebrow raised in question. Peter waves him off with a glare that could strip paint, but Mark just snorts and goes back to making dinner. It’s nauseatingly domestic, both of them in casual wear and in a kitchen together. In Mark’s kitchen nonetheless, considering Peter’s ditched the hotel room the bureau had paid for him when he first got on the case. Not that he’s exactly on the case anymore, but. Semantics.
“Which is why we need some back-up, Pete. And there’s this funny thing called Google, it helps you look things up. I thought an FBI agent would know that.” Mike says, voice steady and even. “You two haven’t been in contact?”
“Michael, don’t you start with me. Ask my fucking mother about it. Hell, ask Eddie.” Peter snaps, even as some part of him rages and screams. New York. Eddie’s been barely an hour away this entire goddamn time, and he didn’t even know-
He’d been in fucking Virginia for years before this, lurking around Quantico and at the bureau’s beck and call. Playing happy homemaker with a string of failed wives. He had been hours away for half of his brother’s fucking life by now, his little brother, stuck with her-
“…Pete, Mrs. Kaspbrak, she’s…” Mike’s voice trails off, softening in a way that raises Peter’s hackles immediately. Mike Hanlon had been soft back then, but he’d also been a kid. Mikey, soft despite the calluses on his hands and that fucking bolt gun, where the hell had he gotten that bolt gun, why does he remember Mike holding it, hands shaking-
“She’s been dead at least ten years now. I’m sorry, I thought- I thought you knew.”
The laugh that rips out of him is jagged and harsh, almost a cackle that hurts his throat, and it’s-
If Peter had any shame he’d be drowning in it right now. Withering. But he’s fucking a Jigsaw accomplice, has tangled with more killers worse than the man, and his mother, the fucking spider who’d smothered him in her web until he’d rather be dead than a Kaspbrak, is dead-
If it stutters into a sob by the end, it’s only Mike and Mark who will ever know. Soft sweet Mikey, apologies flowing like a river, and the pan clattering on the stove as Mark drops dinner entirely, pressing a large warm hand to his shoulder. His mother is dead, and he’s relieved. He tastes acid in the back of his throat.
“I- Mike, I can’t. I- we haven’t seen each other in years. He’d probably maul me before even listening to me. Give me the address you’ll be meeting at, and the time. I can swing it.” Peter manages to get out, fingers digging into his thigh harshly through his sweatpants. Maine isn’t too far from Jersey. It’ll be a fucking headache, driving through the night just to make sure he has time to poke around first, but worth it. He has his private-carry license for his gun, pocketed his FBI badge, and can bullshit his way into a police station easily enough.
If Mike thinks a situation is serious enough to call him, there’s got to be something behind it.
Out of spite, Peter puts the address into Google Maps then and there, and makes sure to tell Mike exactly that. He knows about Google, you twerp, but when you think your only family hates you, it’s easier to never ask instead of dig. It is the only mystery Peter never pursued doggedly, because if Eddie- if his little brother hated him-
Something would crack, and it’d be hard to be Peter Strahm anymore. Hard to be a man at all, instead of a shambling thing meant only to crawl around in the dirt and muck.
“I’m calling out,” Mark says a bit later, firm and decisive. “No, no protests, we’re going,” He says, already snatching up his own phone to call out from the precinct, and Peter nearly crumbles then and there. It’s a sick sort of relief, knowing he’ll have Mark at his back if it all goes to shit. Lindsey wouldn’t understand, hasn’t understood him since she faked her death, a fault line opening between them. The agency thinks he’s on vacation, would avoid Derry like the plague after the Castle Rock fiasco in the nineties anyways, so that’s useless too.
There is going to be blood, he knows with a sick certainty, and who better to have at his side than a man who’s bathed in it already?
*
“…I don’t know what we’re walking into,” Peter admits while they’re throwing their bags together. Mark’s taking the time to fold everything neatly, while he’s just piling in everything he can fit for at least a week of bullshit. His hands are shaking, and it’s nauseating. It’s wrong. His hands aren’t supposed to shake like this. “I don’t… remember everything, from back then. But bring your gun.”
“Shoot first, ask questions later, agent? I like how you think.” Mark jokes, low and almost teasing, and the snort that rips out of Peter makes his throat hurt again. “Private-carry?”
“Please. Town’s filled with fucking freaks. Small-town bullshit, lots of gossip and dirty little secrets. I’ll take the local precinct if you’ll take recent news.”
“Anything to look out for-?”
“…Missing kids. Anything to do with kids. I don’t- I can’t say why, but it has to do with the kids-“ Peter closes his eyes, dragging a hand through his hair roughly. Clenches his jaw tight enough to hurt.
That’s a particular sticking point, for the both of them. Anything to do with kids or siblings. It’s probably cruel asking Mark to look into that shit, but it’s easier to bullshit an FBI agent needing local information than an out-of-jurisdiction detective. And- and that sick fuck, Kramer, was right. Mark being anonymous was a boon. He was charming enough he could probably sweet-talk any of the old biddies into giving him access to shit he shouldn’t be able to touch.
Peter is just going to be one of the many prodigal sons in the spotlight, dragged back into whatever that cesspit of a town had done to them in ’89.
Peter wants to remember, he does, if only for answers. But seeking those answers are like touching a hot stove in a house on fire, and the thought of choking on smoke is- it’s terrifying. And he’s about to walk into that house on fire willingly.
Not just for Mike, but Eddie, too. The little brother he abandoned. The one he thought he’d lost. This might be his only chance to make things right between them, and he can’t, won’t waste it-
(He doesn’t say a word when Mark slips more than one knife into his duffle bag. Peter’s already shoved one into the pocket of his jeans, and a back-up into his inner coat pocket.)
*
Walking around town leaves Peter using every bullshit calming technique he knows so he doesn’t burst into flames instead.
Keene’s Pharmacy, lightly rebranded but that’s fucking Greta Keene behind the counter still. She still plays and twirls with her hair a certain way when she thinks somebody is hot, and it makes him want to gag. The movie theater, abandoned and a monument to past daydreams that died before they could even settle. No globe-trotting or grand adventures, no movie stars. Just banal bullshit life instead. They’ve tried to twee the place up, make main street cutesy and sweet, but Peter’s picked up last week’s paper already: Adrian Mellon, found dead after the carnival with his chest ripped open.
The precinct hadn’t had better than that either, besides shrugging it off and saying he probably got drunk and mauled. Wandered into the woods opposite the canal while shit-faced, maybe, and how was that their problem? They weren’t animal control. You expect them to put down a bear?
No goddamn coroner has even looked at the body. It’s despicable. A fucking joke of a precinct, when Peter had thought Mark’s own department was scraping the bottom of the barrel. Now they seem like goddamn geniuses in comparison. At least they’d gotten something from Jigsaw, unlike these chucklefucks not even wanting to lift a finger because god fucking forbid a gay man should have his death investigated in this town-
He can see the text of the witness statement behind his eyes still, even as he presses his fingers to his closed eyes hard enough to see blurs of color. He slumps down on one of the stupid benches lining the street nowadays, and tries to breathe through the bubbling rage.
Don Hagarty, boyfriend of Adrian Mellon. Local boy, Mellon an out-of-towner. They’d been ganged up on by some local pieces of shit. Watched them chuck Mellon over the edge of the goddamn bridge into the canal, but because Hagarty couldn’t name them, the police never pursued any line of investigation. He’d gone to try and get his boyfriend, but-
There’d been something else there first. Something that ripped right into Mellon like an animal.
The cops noted that there was a chance both men had been under the influence, and the witness statement shouldn’t be relied on. Ergo, no leads. It’s the stupid relaxation techniques that are keeping Peter from hunching over the nearest trash can and puking, or demanding to see the incompetent jackass in charge to put a bullet in his head.
He wanted to be better than these type of people. Wanted to be better than fucking Sheriff Bowers, and all the other useless cops he’d seen growing up, the ones who hadn’t even done anything when George-
George?
He pinches the bridge of his nose, and rubs at it. Jots it down mentally as another damn thing to ask Mike about tonight. Dead kids. Missing ones. Men with their chests ripped open, so-called clowns and a river of red balloons-
George with Bill, Bill with Eddie, one of Eddie’s friends was named Bill, and George and Bill are connected, but he can’t see where-
Text me what you want for lunch, Pete sends off, hoping to fucking god that maybe Mark’s found something by now. Meet me back at the hotel.
If he has to spend one more minute out here, he’ll throw somebody through a display window. Maybe the one of that antique place nearby which is fucking bullshit, nothing was antique in this shitass town-
(George Denbrough, 1988. Nothing recovered but his arm. The ghost-echo of a starched collar at his neck, Eddie’s serious little face turned even darker, hollow-edged, and Bill- oh god, he was Bill’s brother, George, Bill with a handful of soil and tossing it down onto the too-small too-soon coffin, and all he could think was That could’ve been Eddie-
“I went to my first funeral at fifteen,” he manages to get out distant and hazy, head a thousand miles away, “my first funeral and it was Bill’s baby brother, I- oh my god, it was Georgie-“
He doesn’t puke, but it’s a near thing. Mark has to walk him through a breathing technique, and it’s like being flayed to the fucking bone. Peter Strahm doesn’t break, he can’t break-
But Peter Kaspbrak can, and he is cracking at his foundations.)
*
Eddie slams into him like a feral cat, hissing and scratching and biting. It’s nostalgic in its own way, as Peter resists the urge to smother his little brother.
(It’s so fucking hard to see him, see how he’s gotten older, the bags under his eyes and the wrinkles on his forehead and a fucking wedding band, who married his shitass little brother, is she good to him, is she worth it, does she even treat him right, if she fucking doesn’t Peter will scream-)
“Fucking dickwad, I should kill you, you abandoned us-“ Eddie hisses, trying to claw at Peter’s back and arms through his leather jacket, get free, and Peter just squeezes him tighter. Little shithead hasn’t been able to take him down besides a nut-shot in middle school. He won’t be able to do shit now. “Mom fucking died and you didn’t even show, you fuckhead, after everything she did for us-”
“I thought you were dead, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Ed,” Peter breathes, pressing his face into his brother’s hair. Tries to ignore the way his stomach twists at the smell of camphor and tea-tree shampoo, his little brother’s fists slamming frantically against his ribs. “Thought you were gone. Mom moved before I could come back.” It’s the quiet fear he’s never been able to shake off, his mother running far away out of spite, his brother dead or dying, but never even reaching out to tell him if it happened-
There’s an animal keen, another thump against his side. “Asshole, you’re an asshole, I’m-“ A short, punched-out sound, not quite a gasp or a sob. When Eddie wiggles away just enough to look at him, his eyes are shiny, his teeth bared like a frightened animal. “Pete. You owe me, dickhead. You owe me everything, what do you mean she moved, she said- she said you left, what the fuck do you mean-“
“Anything, Ed. Everything.” Peter says, softening despite himself. Relaxing slightly now that at least one thing has been confirmed. His stupid, prickly asshole of a baby brother, all in one piece. All safe. If he presses a kiss to his brother’s hair, no he didn’t. Anybody who says otherwise can get fucked. “Talk after dinner and Mike, alright? Mikey needs us first.”
There’s a wet not-quite laugh, a half-hearted hit with an open palm against his side. Eddie’s leaning into the embrace now, soaking the contact up like a sponge, head tucked underneath Peter’s chin. It’s an achingly familiar position, curling around him. Protecting him. “You still like him more than me, don’t you? Asshole. Sucking up doesn’t make you a Hanlon.”
“Unlike some people, Mikey never kicked me in the nuts, shithead.” It’s said with more fondness than Peter means to use, one of his hands coming up to just- touch his little brother’s cheek. Cup his face. Clean-shaven as always, the dork. “…And it’s- it’s Strahm now. Peter Strahm. I kept Jessica’s name.” Peter admits, softer than before, more tentative. Waiting for Eddie to go for the jugular now that he’s baring his metaphorical neck. “Missed you at the wedding.”
“There was a wedding? Peter, what the fuck did you do, what do you mean, wedding-“ The words burst out of Eddie rapidly, like bullets from a gun as he finally pushes away from Peter properly. “Who in their right mind would ever marry you, you’re a goddamn nightmare-“
Yup, that’s Eddie alright. Still a set of lungs on him that could shout down the entire state. Peter missed it so bad that it hurts. Doesn’t stop him from knocking a fist against his brother’s shoulder, simultaneously fond and sick of his shit. “And you’re a goddamn dream, is that right, Eddie? No longer worried about getting mono from a little kiss, like that time with Nichole Rivers?“ Peter starts, even now knowing the exact buttons to push. “Ickle baby brother finally get over his fear of cooties-?” He coos the last word, just to piss him off. He has way too many years to make up for, to be the pain-in-the-ass Eddie was to him.
“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, I am going to kill you, Pete, they’ll never fucking find you when I’m done-“ Eddie hisses, face starting to go a little red either in anger or embarrassment, hands all balled up. His face doesn’t match his jacket just yet, but it could get there.
“Better men have tried, Eddie-bear. Try me.” Peter challenges, letting his voice go sickly sweet on their mother’s old pet-name even as it nearly makes him want to vomit, too. Regrets it the second it even leaves his mouth. He’s been swallowing way too much bile since he got into town, and with the way Eddie’s looking a bit green around the gills-
He’s pretty sure he isn’t the only one.
*
Mark has the good taste to talk with Mike and Bill for most of the dinner. Gushing about how well the library was set up, Mr. Hanlon, can I call you Mike? Complimenting the recommended book selections, as well as the organization of all the old town newspapers. Mark hasn’t touched microfiche in years, but the old machine was in good working order and he didn’t struggle at all. Oh, why was he looking at old newspapers? Well, y’see, he’s interested in the town’s history considering it’s where Peter grew up, and it’s hard to not be curious about a place that results in a man like him-
Peter absolutely elbows the fucker in the ribs for that one, an advantage of sitting right next to him. The smug slant of Mark’s mouth doesn’t lessen, as he says “See? I’ve been working with this guy for months now, and he’s always like this. Was he like this as a kid too?”
(If Peter wasn’t vaguely restraining himself, he’d be leaning over and hissing in Mark’s ear to shut up, shut the fuck up, we aren’t here for meet-the-family shit, we’re here for whatever fucking thing Mike’s terrified of, what I’m terrified of, whatever the fuck took those kids and ate that man-)
With Bill, Mark turns into an absolute nerd for the guy’s work. Peter already knew he had a thing for fiction, especially when he started a talk with Mike about which Dumas book would be better on the recommended shelf for baby’s first classic novel, but this is ridiculous. He’s grilling Bill on influences from Shirley Jackson, brings up how Black Rapids is a return to Bill’s earlier explorations on grief and loss, and dear fucking god, he is analyzing said themes with the man in question. They’re even getting into how places can be haunted not by people, but by emotion. It’s the dorkiest shit Peter has seen in years.
Jigsaw wasted you, Peter thinks, when he isn’t calling his partner out on being a goddamn suck-up and quietly enjoying the sound of Mark’s laughter after he does. You should have gone into English instead. Law enforcement wasted you too, didn’t it?
Then Tozier, Richie Tozier whose jokes have been parroted around the coffee machine so often that Peter’s sick of hearing them, shoves his foot into his mouth. Guy is definitely on his way to shit-faced too, with the flush on his cheeks and a certain looseness to his shoulders.
“Wait, so you’re like- work partners? Holy shit, I thought- I thought you meant partners-partners, and- with Pete?“ Tozier interrupts himself by laughing, as if the shithead has ever been funny, and Peter bares his teeth in a mockery of a grin. Fantasizes about slamming him into the stupid fish-tank wall, rattling him as hard as he can.
It doesn’t matter than they smoked together as kids, Peter-Beverly-Richie. Doesn’t matter that Richie talked Springsteen with him, Neil Young, a couple of other fellas too that hit just the right sound, as they shared a lighter. He’d grown on Peter back then, like a fungus or particularly virulent strand of mold, but he’s going to kick his fucking ass if he pushes any further.
“‘Partners-partners,’ what are you, five? It’s 2017, loudmouth, Mark is my partner. My work partner’s on a case in Jersey.” Peter says, hackles lowering slightly as Mark rests a hand on his thigh, gently squeezes in something like approval. He cannot launch himself across the table, he shouldn’t, he is being good and respectable and responsible- “S’not like a chucklefuck like you has gotten any. How’s Masturbators Anonymous? Get back to your girlfriend yet?”
It shifts the attention onto Richie as the others burst into laughter, start heckling the guy again. It’s a quiet sort of relief that none of them say shit about Peter and Mark, or try to pry into it deeper. It is… odd though, that Eddie’s got the wedding band but the wife isn’t with him. He knows the Marsh brand turned into Rogan-Marsh at some point, and there’s a tan-line on Beverly’s hand where a ring should sit. Bill’s with goddamn Audra Phillips, big-time actress, if he remembers the gossip in the station breakroom right. Lots of bemoaning at the time that she’d been taken off the market by some writer guy.
….Why is he the only one with somebody willing to back him up-? In sickness and health and all that shit, and this definitely counts as some kind of sickness-
(Mark upturns the main serving dish quick as a snake, once the food starts coming to life. Crushes the fucking cream cheese wonton that cracks open with a mechanical click, and a rasping Hello, Mark. Peter stabs the spidery hand that claws itself out of a fortune cookie with a nearby fork, and does his best to ignore the way water is gushing out of another one, already starting to pool on the floor, carpet turning soggy-
John Kramer’s decaying head floats in the fish tank alongside Amanda Young’s, among a bunch of other smaller chattering heads speaking with a voice like Legion, and it takes a lot of self-control not to shoot the damn tank. It takes even more to bullshit when the waitress comes in to Mike smashing a fist down onto another living platter of food, as Peter flashes his badge and says “Sorry, ma’am, we reached a tense point in our discussion. We’ll compensate you for the damage.”
He can cover this shit solo, it’s not like he’s paying for much when the FBI tends to subsidize what it can.)
*
The pig mask makes his blood freeze, as he levels his gun right at whoever’s wearing it. It doesn’t matter if that is Mark’s parka, his boots, his gloves, Mark didn’t- he wouldn’t, not after Peter had seen him burn the mask himself. Not since the acrid fumes of it had burned his nose and it felt like slamming the door closed on Jigsaw once and for all.
That was the deal they hashed out eventually. Everything Kramer built got burned down, every little blueprint and machine obliterated. Mark gives it up and Peter won’t say a fucking word as long as he never starts it up again. If it does, he’ll kill the man himself.
(Mark had been particular on that, wanting to die by his hands if nobody else’s. Peter felt strangely touched by the declaration instead of disgusted, which- yeah. They’re made for each other on some sick level. It’s great. Peter both loathes and delights in it, depending on the day.)
There’s a knife in the person’s hand. It is Mark’s too, but Peter knows (he hopes) that it’s whatever is fucking with them instead. Mark hasn’t used the serrated scalpel in years, after all.
“Drop it, piggy. Go squealing all the way home or I’ll open a new fucking hole for you to breath out of,” Peter threatens, doing his best to keep his voice steady and even. Training is the only reason his hands stay steady because this isn’t right. Mark wouldn’t, he wouldn’t fucking dare, not at a time like this. “I don’t care if I lose the deposit, asshole, because I am really unamused right now-“
An exaggerated sniffle, a bestial whine. Broad shoulders slumping under the jacket like the person’s deflating themself, the mask tilting to the side in a doggish way as Mark’s voice says “Aw, Petey-puppy, don’t you love me? I thought you loved me.” It’s sickly sweet, cloying. The kind of tone Mark lays on thick just to get a rise out of him sometimes, laughing when Peter’s teeth end up in his neck.
His mother’s nickname for him sits awfully in his partner’s voice, makes him feel sick to his stomach. Instead of cringing away, running as his skin tries to crawl off his back, Peter lets his finger rest on the trigger. Bad discipline, but it makes him feel safer in the moment.
“Nice try, shit-fuck. Ditch his skin or I’ll cut you out of it myself.”
The fucker has the audacity to tsk at him, even waggle a goddamn finger at him. “Now, now, Petey-puppy, I thought you had manners. Did mommy dearest never teach you manners?” The mask tilts to the other side this time, an unnaturally sharp angle as the empty holes of the mask’s eyes bore into him. “Does Petey-puppy need a muzzle? All bark and no bite? Does mommy need to muzzle him, hm?”
By the end the voice has shifted, Mark’s lowness graduating into a higher breathy, lilting thing that makes the hair on the back of Peter’s neck stand up. There’s a soft thump of the knife hitting the carpet. When a leather glove comes off, it’s not Mark’s hand underneath either. It’s paler, but the fingers are similarly thick. There’s cornflower blue nail polish on each finger, and a delicate chain bracelet around the wrist.
Sonia Kasprak’s wedding band glints in the light as that goddamn hand reaches out towards him, for him, nails shifting into polished talons, the ring into a collar about to snap around his neck-
Peter shoots the motherfucker right in the throat, and tries to ignore how the thing wails like his mother in a crisis, how it sobs out a wobbly “Petey-puppy,” that burbles around the edges. “I just want to love you, sweetheart,” it croons, collapsing in on itself like a cloth doll as it hits the floor, starts dragging itself towards him as the mask slips back, revealing a hint of dark curls and dark eyes, round shattered glasses like the multifaceted eyes of a fly-
The collar is slithering on a chain like a snake across the floor, the circle snapping open and closed as if it’s a gnashing mouth instead. Peter shoots that goddamn hand, shoots the not-snake like he once shot a rattlesnake while on a case in Texas, and his hands don’t shake. Him adding another bullet in the thing’s thigh makes it shriek, sound shifting from woman to wounded animal. Then the thing scuttles like a roach, a blur of limbs and dark fabric as it dives underneath his fucking bed, and jesus fucking christ-
Fuck this hotel. Fuck this entire town, frankly.
He dials Mark’s number without even thinking about it, not even looking at the screen. Lifts the phone up to his ear with his gun still in his other hand.
“The fucking thing showed up in our hotel room. Shot it three times. Tried to pass itself off as you when you were working that other job of yours.” He gets out, clipped and sharp. Keeping a watchful eye on his goddamn bed. “You see anything similar yet?”
There’s a pause, and an all-too-familiar sigh. He can see in his mind’s eye Mark dragging a hand down his face. “…Checked out a nearby bar for any chatter. I thought- I thought I saw Amanda duck down an alley before I went in. Didn’t follow, though. Thought it was me seeing things. Sleep deprivation.” There’s a careful blankness to his voice, a distance between Mark and the world. Peter wants to tear it down with his teeth and hands, fucking annihilate the thing making Mark go all closed off again-
“…No. I think it’s- whatever the fuck this thing is. Pulling from us. I didn’t hit it anywhere vital. I’ll go to the front desk, see if they heard anything. You see her, you stab her, alright?”
“Oh, is that permission, Agent?” Mark asks, a particular curl to his tone now that would make Peter snort any other time. Flirtation over permission to kill, what a world to live in. Something’s wrong with that man, Peter thinks all too fondly. “Here I thought it’d be life or death before we got to this point.”
“This place is a goddamn hellhole, it already is life or death. Now get back here, I don’t- I don’t think we can split up anymore.” Peter doesn’t turn his back as he makes his way towards the door, eyes still glued to the void underneath his bed. Only holsters his gun once he’s underneath the shitty strip lighting in the hallway, dashing for the staircase at the end of it. If he falls down the stairs and snaps his neck, that’s on his own head.
“Got it. If it’s able to imitate people…” Mark’s voice trails off. There’s a shaky breath. “I got some photos you should look at. Of me and Angie. Just in case.”
“Alright.” Peter says, adding “Don’t die, jackass,” as an after-thought when he hits a landing. Debates if he could take the remaining stairs two at a time or not without eating shit.
“Only if you’re the one doing it, Peter.” Mark replies, and the sweetness that thing had imitated is absent. It’s said simply, plainly, as if stating a fact. “You see any other pigs, you gut them.”
“You say the sweetest things,” Peter grumbles, a little strained and breathy thanks to the stairs. Mark laughs on the other end of the line, and it’s still ringing in Peter’s ears when he hits the lobby. It’s one of the few things keeping him from tearing out his hair when the desk person just blinks at him, glassy-eyed and absent, and doesn’t answer him when he asks about any gunshots. Just looks through him like he’s not even there, like he’s glass, like he’s missing, dead-
(He is not missing, he thinks as Mark’s hand curls around his shoulder, as he leans into the other man as subtly as he can while Mark shows him photos. He is real, he’s real, he’s Peter Strahm and this is Mark Hoffman, and if It tries to take either of them they’ll rip out it’s throat-)
*
“Uh, Pete, hey, I- I need a favor,” his brother says on the other end of the line, voice thin and anxious. “I- Mike wants us to go around town. Find some token or whatever for a ‘ritual’.” Eddie snorts, and Peter makes a noise of vague interest in reply. Stops cross-referencing some of Mark’s notes with his, filling in the gaps that have started hitting him since last night. George as in Georgie Denbrough, Sheriff Bowers with his shithead son, the whole lot. There’s still some shaky spots, but it’s all starting to clump together. He isn’t sure if he’s grateful for it, or if it’s making this situation all the worse.
“And-?”
“And, he was all like ‘You gotta do it alone, we were alone that summer’ but- I know it, I know you were there. And statistically speaking, it’s safer if I have back-up, right? So I just- don’t laugh, asshole,” Eddie hisses, right after Peter snorts. “Don’t fucking laugh. Either you can walk around town with me, or you can go fuck yourself. Take it or leave it.”
“…I need to stretch my legs anyways. Meet downtown?” Peter offers, closing his notebook on the pen he was using. “I wonder if the old house is still up.”
Eddie makes a sound of disgust, gagging dramatically. Peter can imagine it perfectly in his mind’s eye, even if it’s of a smaller, younger Eddie instead. He doesn’t know how long it’ll take before Eddie is an adult instead of a kid like that in his imagination, knows it’ll take time. “Absolutely not, Pete. It’s probably riddled with black mold by now. Do you have any idea how many floods have hit this fucking place? Do you want me to go through another goddamn rotten floor? I’m not breaking my arm again just because of some shitty wood in our old fucking house-“
“….Oh my god, that’s how you broke your arm. You broke it, in Neibolt, and mom kept you in that thing for months,“ Peter says after a moment, as that slots into place too. “And once the cast came off, it was all bony and pale, and I kept thinking you’d snap it again, that it’d mean another cast-“
Eddie makes a low wounded sound on the other end, says “I- no. I don’t- we’re not talking about that. We aren’t talking about that, just- get down here, alright? Dickhead. I was gonna offer to pay for lunch if you did this for me, but if mister FBI agent is just gonna be a lazy-ass and do fuck-all-“
“Eat shit. Ten minutes, Ed, and there’s this sandwich place I saw yesterday-“
“…Pete, I’m- my wife has me on this diet with her, where we try to cut out processed foods and shit, like gluten, in kind of a cycle, and-“ Eddie’s voice trails off, voice getting awfully small. “And I already used yesterday as my cheat day for this month.”
It is then and there that Peter knows he is probably going to ruin his sister-in-law’s life. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but soon. Cheat days, his fucking ass. This sounded like some bullshit fad diet.
“That sounds like fad diet bullshit. And what the fuck is processed on a sandwich? Cheese? Meat? Of course it’s processed, dumbass. It’s salami, Ed, they cure that shit and cheese is processed milk, what does she even mean by processed? No GMOs? Organic only, no pesticides? C’mon, that is bare-bones, what the hell does she expect you to eat outside of the house, air?“ Peter argues on autopilot, scribbling a note for Mark to look at as he keeps his brother on the line. “You’re not a houseplant.”
There’s an angry, frustrated sound on the other end, the distant jingle of a bell. “Fuck off. I’m at Keene’s for a pick-up. Five minutes, or you can go get your own sandwich, shithead.” The words are sharper, louder.
“Seven, I’m heading out now. Don’t die, idiot.” Peter says without thinking about it, sliding the note into Mark’s view on the shitty little table that came with the room. “I just got you back.”
The note is simple and quick: Eddie called, I’m backup. Getting lunch after. Same as yesterday? Text me.
The other end of the line goes quiet for one beat, then another. The silence drags on long enough that Peter asks ‘Eddie, still there?”
“I… you wanted me back?” Eddie’s voice is small again, barely a whisper. “Then why didn’t you come back, Pete?”
“…That’s too big of a talk to have over phone, Ed. But we can start it over lunch.” Peter offers, voice softening again. Always softening around Eddie, for him, which-
It’s the one vulnerable part Peter hasn’t tried to cut out of himself over the years. The one part he couldn’t. It’s embarrassing, that kind of tenderness. The sort of thing that hollows people out when it withers and dies. Nice to have, but awful to hold in its own way.
“….Fine. Seven minutes.” Eddie replies, parroting Peter’s earlier bargain, agreeing to it. “Better be here, asshole.”
Peter gets there just in time to see his brother stumble out of the pharmacy, coated in some kind of thick black ooze. Smells like bile, fresh blood, and the sweetness of rotting flesh. It is only pure luck Bowers manages to stab Eddie in the goddamn bathroom, and Peter is going to kill the sonuvabitch if he sees him-
Mark’s stitches are a bit oddly sized, but steady enough to close up Eddie’s cheek with the dental floss they have. Doesn’t flinch when Eddie jerks away from the needle, demeanor cool and calculated in a way that Peter is currently envious of. “It’s not ideal, but this is a stop-gap,” Mark says, voice low and smooth like he’s soothing a horse, Eddie’s blood staining his fingertips. “Temporary. Buddy of mine showed me how to do it in emergencies. You’re gonna be fine, kid.”
“M'not a fuckin’ kid,” Eddie mumbles, eyes glassy. Blinking rapidly to stop any tears from falling. His clothes are still stained with whatever ichor the thing had spewed on him, the scent of fresh blood thick in the air.
“You’re Pete’s kid brother, course you’re a fuckin’ kid. As long as it’s in for under twelve hours, you should be fine. Nurse’ll hate me, but. What’s new?” Mark jokes, casting a brief glance in Peter’s direction, eyes glittering. “Hated me when I went to see your brother out of visitor hours. He got laid up on a case, and this motherfucker, he gave himself a tracheotomy, it was insane-“
“Shut the fuck up, shit-heel, and take the goddamn gauze.” Peter interrupts, offering up a wad of gauze and a roll of medical tape with it. “Stop embarrassing me.”
“It was hot,” Mark counters, and Eddie makes an exaggerated gagging sound. Winces as the gauze is suddenly plastered to his cheek and taped in place. “Hey, see? Thanks for the distraction, Peter. Big help.”
“Die.” Peter hisses, angrily shutting the emergency kit that’d been in the back of Mark’s trunk alongside a container of gasoline and some loose tools. He doesn’t know why the gas was back there, and is doing his best to ignore the part of his brain shrieking over both it and the tools. Least there wasn’t any trash-bags and duct tape back there. Small mercies.
“Only with you, sweetheart.” Mark replies absently, checking the gauze one last time. “Alright, Kaspbrak, up and at ‘em. If you got the guy like you said, he can’t have gotten far. Stomach wounds are nasty.”
(“Peter, why is your boyfriend dousing Bower’s body in gasoline? And the vomit?”
“What, do you want to get arrested, Tozier? Take the fucking favor. Mikey, call me when you get a fundraiser set up for the library, I am so sorry about this.”
“We’ve been needing a new building almost fifteen years now, Pete. I’m almost glad this is happening.”)
*
It goes like this:
It tries to isolate them into smaller groups, pairs at most and individual if It can manage it. Ben and Beverly, Bill on his own, Richie and Eddie fuck knows where-
But it separates Peter and Mark, which is perhaps the biggest mistake It makes. It hasn’t had enough time to pry into Mark yet, and sup on all the fears laden in his bones. Just pure surface level dives, because why waste time on an appetizer when the entire dinner is so close at hand?
It finds John Kramer, and pulls-
“I wanted to do this for ages,” Mark confesses, voice hushed as his eyes don’t move away from the old man in a red and black robe, hood draped around his shoulders. “You made a mistake, picking him.“
John Kramer is an old man, cancer-ridden and feeble. Even as It lurches towards him, jerky and doll-like, the base shape is Kramer. A mouthful of needle-teeth as the thing snarls “Killing is distasteful, you’re no better than a swine-“ in Jigsaw’s deepened rasp doesn’t change that either.
Mark Hoffman doesn’t believe in the supernatural, even now. Doesn’t believe that there’s anything unkillable in the world, except maybe fungi or some shit. He can understand if the strange or unusual do exist, but supernatural? The inhuman? That’s all excuses to cover your ass when the cruelest things are done by human hands, everybody knows that. Like places using vampires to explain wasting diseases, or demonic possession for mental illness.
Pennywise wears the face of a dead man, and Mark Hoffman’s hands are steady. He puts three bullets into the man’s torso, center-mass. Not quite fatal yet, but close to it.
Pennywise wears the face of a dead woman, snapping and snarling like a dog, suddenly clawed hands lashing out, and Mark has wanted to put a bullet in Amanda Young since John dragged her down into the filth with them, since she took to it all too gladly. He shoots her in the shoulder, the hand. Non-fatal, but painful.
The Amanda-thing claws his leg raw, screaming “Inferior steel, inferior life! Stupid fucking lump, fat fucking fuck, you killed me-”, but he doesn’t flinch as he presses his gun to It’s forehead. There is one bullet left in his gun.
“I thought you loved me, Mark,” Pennywise says in another dead woman’s voice, neck weeping blood as the head tilts upwards, eyes gone pale and blue. There are bruises down the exposed arms now, but the fingers are still claws, bringing up fresh blood as they shred through his pants and skin, maybe even down to bone. “Mark-and-Angie, Angie-and-Mark, forever and ever and ever and ever-“
Mark pulls the trigger.
It abides by the rules of the form it is in. Mark Hoffman has plain fears, when you cut him to the bone.
It wore the faces of the dead, and It dies just as suddenly as the dead did. Spiderweb cracks take over the false body, covering it in thin lines.
“Never use her again,” Mark says roughly, hand shaking slightly. “Never, ever again. She’s at rest, you piece of shit!” When he kicks the thing in the side, the ribcage gives like rotten fruit, squelching and black. The hunk of meat that’s supposedly a heart bursts underneath his steel-toed boots, the only scrap left of his ill-spent time with John Kramer.
No fanfare, no lightshow. Dead is dead. It goes out not with a bang but a cut-off whimper, just as pitiful as the rest of it’s manipulation and trickery.
Simple problems require simple solutions: bring a new player in when all the original ones are compromised. It wrote him off as a nice little snack it would get to once it drained all the others dry, but who’s laughing now?