❝︎ 𝙈𝙪𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝘼𝙣𝙙 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙙 . ❞︎ ━︎━︎ 𝐈𝐓 𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐓𝐒

『︎𝑻𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒎』︎

Ship; Steddie

Fluff

By leighwrites oh Ao3

Everyone finds their soulmate... eventually.

~

Everyone is born with a small plastic timer embedded into the skin inside of their wrist that counts down until the exact moment in which they will meet their soulmate. There are always people looking down at their clocks when the timer is almost done, anticipation high for the moment.

For Beverly Marsh, the moment her clock stopped had been back in the eighth grade. She'd turned thirteen not long ago, when Ben Hanscom and his mother had moved to Derry. She had been so interested in checking her watch which now displayed 00d, 00h, 2m 10s that she'd slammed right into him and knocked the stack of books from his arms.

As she apologised profusely and swept his books up to hand them back over, she caught sight of the neon green numbers and letters on her wrist.

00d, 00h, 00m, 00s stared back at her unblinking before the plastic screen went blank.

The name Benjamin Hanscom took its place in bright green letters.

For Mike Hanlon, that clock-stopping moment had been at fifteen. He'd been delivering something into town for his parents when he'd almost ridden his bike right into some poor girl who had been crossing the street. As he stood there, gripping the handlebars of his bike in a tight grip, he heard the buzz of his timer.

Julie Bell was the name now displayed on the timer in place of the numbers.

For Richie Tozier, that moment had been in his sophomore year. That had been the moment he'd met Bill Denbrough for the first time. Sure, everyone knew of Bill. He was an athlete. It was hard not to know who he was. But Richie had never really met him in person before now.

Richie had been smoking in a stall in the boy's bathroom during lunch when he'd heard the voices of the jocks just outside at the sink unit. They were laughing about something and congratulating each other on a good practice, and Richie was happy waiting until they were gone before leaving.

Bill was nice enough from what he'd seen, and so were some of his friends, but the others were not, and it wasn't something he was particularly in the mood to deal with.

But Bill was a person who had kept his eye on his clock all day, which now stood at 00d, 00h, 00m, 40s, so when his friends had left the bathroom he'd stayed, gesturing to his wrist when one of them, James, had looked back to see why he wasn't following them.

James gave him an encouraging smile, letting the bathroom door swing shut behind him as he left Bill alone in the bathroom.

Richie exhaled sharply in relief and dropped his now finished smoke into the toilet before flushing it. When he opened the stall door and stepped back out into the main part of the bathroom, he'd been surprised to see that Bill was still there, but there wasn't much time to dwell on it as a buzz came from his timer; mimicked by the one on Bill's wrist.

And as Richie looked down at the inside of his wrist, the numbers vanished and were replaced with the name William Denbrough.