[ There's relief in the fact that it's really him and Bill breathes out a sigh he doesn't actually need to be giving at all. A part of him wants to give him a hug or at least grip his shoulder, but there's the unfortunate reality that this horror town as changed those small things for him — the most recent craziness of Deerington rendered him somewhat ghost like, much as he tried to hide it, and so he stuck his hands in his pockets so as not to do something like accidentally pass right through the kid and freak him out that much more. ]

I-I-It kinda sss-seems like it might be. B-But not our dream, it's Ss-Sodder's. The one wh-who wrote you the nuh-ote, if you uh... R-Read it.

[ He knows he'd bolted from his house without so much as a glance his first day. He wouldn't have blamed Ben in the slightest for doing the same. ]

I kn-now it's weird. B-But this place i-is called Deerington and w-we're still in Maine. Th-things are a little different than home, b-but not much, really. N-no clowns and the a-a-adults don't sssuck as much... A-And we don't have to go to sch-school and we can luh-ive all by ourselves.

[ He grins, like this is good news, because ultimately, the more Losers together, the better. He hates any of them being here, but it's better than being alone, the way Eddie was for so long. Five of them in one place is something neither of the boys had dreamed of when Bill had first woken up. ]

And the other L-Losers are too. M-Me and Rrrichie and Bev and E-E-E-E-E— [ ... He waves his hand to show that he can probably fill in the important name here. Fuck his inability to say Eddie. ] W-With you here, we're only mmm-issing Stan and Mike. FFfive out of ss-seven isn't bad, right?

[ A beat. Wait a second. ]

B-Ben, you need... pants.