Platonic!eddie Kaspbrak - Tumblr Posts

Hypochondriac : Part 01

tbh i just love stan and eddie sm and i feel like sometimes they don’t get enough love, so i decided to put this out there.

summary: returning to Derry was terrifying enough, but when Eddie finds himself forced to deal with painful truths, he second guesses everything he thought he knew. Peggy returns to her childhood home and decides that being a sacrifice isn’t so bad, as long as the ones she loves make it out alive. And she lets herself wonder what could have been when she finds out the fate of her first love.

pairings: platonic!eddie kaspbrak x oc, stan uris x oc, richie tozier x eddie kaspbrak, (possibly?) eventual!bill denbrough x oc

warnings: mentions of bullying, not much for this part; slow burn

a/n: this is my first attempt at writing for IT, and I’m super excited about this piece. i decided to try out an oc so :’))

1985

Eddie Kaspbrak sat hunched over in his seat. He glanced over at the suitcase by his feet and fumbled with the pump inhaler in his hands. He wondered how much of the medicine and supplies he’d stashed in the second bag would be of any use. Since he got off the phone earlier that day, Eddie’s mind had been a foggy mess of returning memories and stinging nostalgia. Half of his mind could hear little more than his mother’s voice, scolding him for anything and everything. There was another part of him, though, that was stirring up an emotion he hadn’t felt in almost 30 years.

A heavy, thick feeling settled in his throat and he found himself thinking about people he’d long since forgotten. His mind glazed over misty images of long, dark hair and warm blue eyes. He thought of messy hair and big, ugly glasses, too.

Eddie twirled the inhaler over in his hands and wondered what she might have to say about him now; and the boy, too, always had something to say. That damn boy; Eddie’s heart strained at the thought of him and those horrid glasses, and he lifted his aspirator to his lips in a panic. He paused moments before it met his lips.

A voice that certainly was not his mother’s rang around his head.

Oh, Eds. You and that damn inhaler!

Burying his face into his clammy hands, Eddie screwed his eyes shut and tried to remember more about the girl with the starry eyes and the boy with those dumb glasses.

1958

Peggy stood before the dingy bathroom mirror, frantically rubbing at the food stains on her brand new blouse. Her blue eyes threatened to spill with hurt tears. She felt dumb and defeated. Frustrated, she yanked her neat French braids loose into wild brown waves. The stain only worsened under her erratic movements and she threw the paper towel to the floor in a huff. Wiping fresh tears from her freckled cheeks, she sought refuge in an empty bathroom stall at the sound of footsteps.

Peggy folded the toilet seat down into a makeshift chair and pulled her limbs to herself as she sat. The approaching intruders seemed to be in no rush, and she could only make out a pair of scuffed Mary Janes and some neat Penny Loafers in the spot she had just been.   

She had never liked school bathrooms; there were always busybody girls there gossiping about things they didn’t understand and bullies lurking around for prey to stumble in. If she had one guess, the girls fidgeting in front of the mirror were mere seconds away from spreading slander. The trembling girl jammed the heel of her palm between her teeth, crying softly. Today had not gone as planned, not at all.

A voice giggled through the silence:

“Did you hear?”

“About Peggy Turner?”

“Yeah,” a pause. “Greta planned that for weeks!”

“I heard she cried.”

“Oh, my god! What a loser!”

At least someone found it amusing.

Her stockings now had rips up the side and Peggy couldn’t seem to find a good backup story to give her mother for the absurd stain on her brand-new pink blouse. Worst of all, the confidence she spent a whole week building up was now squashed.

She’d talk to him next week.

While the girls chattered for a few minutes longer, presumably laughing at her some more, Peggy drowned their voices out. She never cared much about what others said about her, and hearing it now would do her no good. Eventually, the talking faded and the girls seemed to have left.

She inched the door open slowly, checking the bathroom for more threats. Peggy pulled the straps of her backpack closer and rushed down the fronts steps of school. A few people stared at her as she passed, but Peggy was a woman on a mission. The girl walked home as quickly as she could without working into a run. She hoped she could catch Eddie before he ran off with those friends of his.

Eddie Kaspbrak had been Peggy’s next-door-neighbor for as long as she could remember, and he had always been a good source of comfort for her. And he also just so happened to be friends with Stanley Uris.

A harsh rap rang out against the wooden front door to the Kaspbrak household. The girl bounced on the balls of her heels, hoping Eddie was home. She wanted him to comfort her after this atrocious day, and Mrs. Kaspbrak would only insult her. A moment of rustling could be heard from within the house before the door swung open.

Eddie, leaving the door cracked only an inch or two, stepped out onto the front porch. He offered his neighbor a soft smile, but grimaced at the sight of her dirtied clothing. Peggy reckoned she looked like hell, with her disheveled appearance and the rawness that came with crying still loitering in her eyes. She covered the blouse with her cardigan, frowning.

“Hey,” she said, breathless. “I just-“

She paused, sighing.

“Are you busy?”

Eddie glanced behind him, checked the watch on his wrist, and shrugged. The girl took this as a good sign, and grinned.

“Meet me on the roof in five?”

Happy for the first time since that morning, she made towards her own house.

“Pegs, wait!”

She turned over her shoulder, half-expecting him to tell her he’d changed her mind.

“I, uh, I promised Stan that I’d hang out with him today.”

Peggy’s shoulders deflated. She and Eddie hadn’t spent much time together in a while; not like he did with Bill Denbrough, Richie Tozier, or Stanley Uris. Still, she’d missed him and his dumb fanny packs.

“Okay,” she said.

Peggy dug her house key from her bag and was about to go inside when he spoke up again.

“You should come with us!”

She crossed her arms over her chest, as if he could otherwise see the rise in her heartbeat.

“I’m sure he’d be glad to see you,” he added.

“Hey, wait!”

She chased after him, discarding her bag onto the front porch swing.

“The hell was that supposed to mean!?”

Hypochondriac : Part 02

warnings: mentions of bullying, slow burn, not much :)

summary: returning to Derry was terrifying enough, but when Eddie finds himself forced to deal with painful truths, he second guesses everything he thought he knew. Peggy returns to her childhood home and decides that being a sacrifice isn’t so bad, as long as the ones she loves make it out alive. And she lets herself wonder what could have been when she finds out the fate of her first love.

a/n: this is my first attempt at writing for IT, and feedback is always appreciated!

PART ONE HERE

1985

The plane ride from JFK to Bangor, Maine didn’t sit well with Peggy for more reasons than a hellish storm and dangerous turbulence. Something felt off- even more off than the sound of Mike Hanlon’s voice as he told her that IT returned. She squeezed her eyes shut and marked the page in the book she’d given up on reading.

Unlike Bill Denbrough, who Peggy knew had a movie star wife and a highly successful writing career, and Ben Hanscom, who was internationally famous for his architectural designs, Peggy felt as if she had little to leave behind in her New York City apartment. These days, SoHo lacked the shine and love Peggy first fell in love with. She had never felt more alone after everything that happened with Nick, and that apartment still had his scent ingrained into each and every piece of furniture.

Peggy Turner and Nick Wilson fell in love hard and fast as naive college students, and they’d been so in love they never left the city: even after graduation. The lovebirds married by 25 and soon enough they had a decent apartment and the lives they’d always wanted. Peggy had a gallery in Brooklyn and Nick finally got that spot on the NYPD he’d always dreamt of. For a long time, they were really, truly, blissfully happy.

Until the summer of 1984.

Looking back, Peggy felt as if she should have known it was only the beginning of the end for her. As things usually happened for Peggy Turner, good things turned sour fairly quickly. And the summer of ‘84 was pretty high up on her list of bad memories.

Eyes still closed and fluttering softly, Peggy grasped around her memory for images of her husband. She could see him only fleetingly, in flashes of unruly hair and dimpled smiles. Just as quickly as his memory appeared, it morphed into someone else; someone Peggy had nearly forgotten. Nearly. Her heart thudded at the thought.

She had loved him so long ago, as if in another life entirely. Their relationship was sweet and innocent and pure, but when he moved away her young heart was shattered. If she didn’t think they were too young at the time, Peggy might have called him her first love.

And through her painful memories of last summer, Peggy found herself smiling like a fool on a crowded airplane. She didn’t know where Stanley Uris ended up or what he was up to, but she really hoped he was doing well.

For a moment- a brief, selfish moment- Peggy felt nearly excited to return to Derry if it meant seeing him again. She couldn’t have been more wrong about what Derry had in store for her.

1958

The pair walked in an uncomfortable silence, with Peggy carefully pulling at her cardigan in shame, and Eddie fiddling with the aspirator in his hand. She glanced sideways at him, mouth agape with half-spoken words.

“Eddie,” she said. “Am I loser?”

The boy nearly dropped his inhaler at this, taken aback. Sure, that word was no stranger to Eddie Kaspbrak, and to many of his friends, but it was not a term he would think to pin on a girl like Peggy Turner.

“Where did you get that idea?”

Peggy shrugged her shoulders, suddenly feeling very shy.

“That’s what they’ve been calling me,” she paused.

For a moment, he wanted to smile, maybe even laugh, and jokingly welcome her to the club. He and his friends were forever branded as losers. That much at least made sense to him. To their peers, Eddie Kaspbrak was a hypochondriac with a crazy mother, Bill Denbrough had a terrible stutter and a missing brother, Stanley Uris was Jewish and a neat-freak, and Richie Tozier’s glasses were too big and he never kept his TrashMouth shut.

Eddie glanced at her with furrowed eyebrows. He caught the tail end of her fiasco with Greta Bowie earlier that day, and thought about chasing after her, but Peggy ducked into the girls’ restroom before he could get to her.

It was common knowledge that Greta was a bully. She had a nasty tendency to harass anyone who stood out or who didn’t have as much money as her parents did. If Henry Bowers and his gang weren’t already doing it, she might give a go at Eddie and his friends from time to time. But Peggy? No one had seen that coming.

He thought for a moment that there must have been a reason Greta ruined Peggy’s pride and her clothing in one swift motion. What, though, he simply couldn’t work out.

As far as Eddie was concerned, Peggy was a walking daydream. She oozed kindness on cloudy days and always made sure her neighbor was okay, even if they weren’t exactly friends anymore. Apart from maybe Bill, Eddie admired Peggy the most in the world. He had never heard her say a bad word towards anyone, and seeing her with tear-stained cheeks and that defeated demeanor cracked his heart.

“I don’t think so,” he told her. “You’re not a loser to me.”

Eddie wasn’t sure how helpful he had been, but she smiled at him and he couldn’t help but to return the gesture. When Peggy pulled him into a side-hug, he tried to wriggle away, but she simply laughed and skipped ahead of him.

The girl turned on her heel to face her old friend and brushed her wild hair from her face. She started to ask where they were meeting him, but the words caught in her throat at the sight of Stan himself across the road. He stood on a park bench, focused on a book and oblivious to his approaching friends; Peggy thought he looked marvelous.

Eddie pretended not to notice the way she looked at him as he pulled her across the street.

“Stan likes to watch birds,” he explained.

“Birds?”

Eddie shrugged. Peggy smiled faintly.

Eddie had trouble matching her pace as she went to greet Stan.

“I hope you don’t mind that I crashed your afternoon,” she said sheepishly.

But Stan simply smiled at her, glancing at Eddie who stood behind her. Eddie silently pleaded with him not to say anything stupid, afraid it might offend her if he stared at her dirtied clothing.

“You’re not,” Stan said, blushing a faint pink.

Peggy tentatively sat down on the bench beside him, smoothing out her skirt, which left Eddie to stand or sit on the bare ground. He remained standing.

Stan clutched his book a little tighter in his lap as he caught a glimpse of the dirty state of Peggy’s clothing. He never liked unclean things. But this was Peggy and he had watched it happen.

She seemed oblivious to his gaze, as she remained silent for a moment.

“So,” Peggy glanced between the boys. “What’re you reading?”

She gently pushed his hands to close the book, smiling at the title. Stan parted his lips, embarrassed, and started to brush it off. She beat him to it.

“Cool,” she said.

He grinned back at her, surprised by her kind reaction. 

The three of them spent the better half of the afternoon strolling around the park, with Stan pointing out some Bluebirds and Eddie trailing a few inches behind them. Stan noted that his book claimed Bluebirds could symbolize transition, but kept this to himself. He never cared much for things like that.

They eventually collapsed on the grass- Stan testing the grass for dirt before sitting cross-legged beside Eddie, who Peggy had dragged down with her. Peggy laid back in the grass, dark hair fanning behind her head. She smiled to herself and watched the sky, occasionally laughing at something Eddie said.

Stan squinted at Peggy through the afternoon sun and grinned. He looked on with soft adoration as she deciphered shapes in the clouds; for the first time, he thought he could watch her all afternoon.