Random OneShots

Catch your breath

By: taylor_tut on Ao3

Reddie

~~~~~

After the third time in one conversation that Richie had trailed off of laughing to lean away and cough from deep in his lungs, Ben frowned.

"You still smoke, Richie?" he probed disapprovingly. "I thought you quit when the scientists found out it gives you cancer, like the rest of us."

Richie finished hacking and blinked the tears out of his eyes, still smiling but red in the face. "I did," he admitted. "I was a little under the weather like two weeks ago and the cough won't go away." Eddie perked up at that, and Richie noticed, waving him off with one nonchalant hand. "It's fine; I'm fine. No need to get your panties in a twist, Dr. K."

Eddie tried not to flush. "Have you seen a doctor?" he asked. "What were you sick with?" The cough sounded pretty bad, in his opinion, for someone who'd been "over" a cold for that long. Richie shrugged.

"I dunno. Didn't bother seeing anybody about it because I had shows to do. I had to cancel one because my voice was gone and I felt too crappy to even get up off the couch, so my manager was pissed. I just drank honey and muscled through it, because I'm super tough and sexy."

Eddie rolled his eyes, but not without a wince as Richie began coughing again, long and hard.

"Maybe you should see somebody, Richie," Bill suggested. "That sounds terrible."

"Look, if you all keep acting like your mothers, I'm gonna start to get horny, and SOMEBODY is going to have to deal with it," he warned. "I'm FINE. End of discussion. Can we move on?"

For as long as Eddie could remember, Richie had been sensitive about illness. All the losers were a little, particularly around Eddie, since they were afraid to send his anxiety spiraling, but none more so than Richie. Whereas the others would just stay home if they were sick so as not to be around Eddie at all until they were feeling 100%, Richie would go off the deep end in the other direction, adamantly denying that he was ill to anyone who asked and putting on a ridiculous, unnecessary act in front of Eddie or anyone who might tell Eddie if they figured it out. He'd gotten, Eddie hated to admit, really good at it. In middle school, it had been easy to tell when he wasn't feeling well, but by high school, he was an expert at hiding it. He would force himself to keep up rapid-fire jokes while burning up with fevers that should have had his brain fried over-easy, to ride his bike several miles to and from school with chest infections, to finish his whole lunch to ward off suspicion only to throw it up in the bathroom because he knew he'd had the stomach flu.

The worst part about it was always the fear in his eyes when they asked if he was feeling ill. It was like being sick was the worst thing that could possibly happen to him, like he was just as hesitant to admit it to himself as he was to his friends.

"Alright, alright," Bill agreed, throwing his hands up in mock surrender. "You're a big kid, now. You can take care of yourself."

Eddie had his doubts about that, but he allowed the conversation to drift away from the subject of Richie's health and watched diligently as Richie seemed to visibly decompress. He tried to remind himself that Richie was grown, now: they all were. He wasn't some stupid teenager with a bad case of FOMO and thinking he was invincible. Perhaps he'd changed; Eddie certainly had. However, looking at Richie, who he retroactively noticed had spent most of his time sitting during every conversation and strolling comfortably behind the group when they walked from place to place, he couldn't nullify the seed of doubt in his stomach that threatened to bloom.

Beverly had run out of creamer. That was what sent Richie and Eddie out to the store because while Richie had been the one who offered to drive out and pick some up, citing a need to get out of the house and to think about something else for a little while, Eddie had asked to tag along and Richie could never say no to Eddie.