ethereal : it oneshots

cold showers

pairing: stozier

richie's stupid. that's what stan would say, if richie had to guess. you're stupid.  how on earth could you think it was a good idea?

but richie didn't know any better! a big hill and a bike under him, richie felt like a kid again, freshly fourteen and nowhere near twenty, and he wanted to grasp the feeling for the dopamine it had. life had been dull recently, so why wouldn't he have taken something exciting at face value?

maybe stan would say richie was naive.

either way, richie was now at the bottom of the hill, bruised as a rotting apple, and uncertain if he'd landed in mud or a puddle of horseshit; he'd yet to open his eyes. his elbow and palms stung, he was sure he'd fought with the gravel before making it off the road completely.

when he did blink open his eyes, everything was blurry, and the bridge of his nose hurt like a bitch. he looked around for something vaguely resembling his glasses, but instead saw his bike, crunched in a concrete barrier on the other side of the road. groaning, he decided the bike was a lost cause.

he felt around in the mud (he hoped it was mud, anyway) for his glasses, and found them, impressively unbent but unsurprisingly cracked. he put them back on his face, seeing better through the shattered lens.

he tried to get up, knowing he had one destination if he wanted to make it before his legs gave out. stan's apartment was closest, anyhow. his knees ached as he stood up, and he was upset to see his elbow cut into, bleeding a thin line. he brushed his hand off on his pants, inspecting it for other grime. after deciding it was good enough, he pushed his hand against the cut.

it hurt in the way that made richie want to hiss, but it wasn't completely unpleasant. maybe this was what being fourteen felt like anyhow. his thighs, however, reminded him that he wasn't fourteen anymore, and he began half-limping in the direction of stan's.

by a miracle of god and without interrogation from the passerbys on the street, richie found himself at stanley's. his knees had eased up on the crunching feeling, so he was limping less, but he could feel the dirt and mud still caked onto him.

looking once at his scraped palm, he typed in stan's buzzer, 222, and waited patiently. he felt around his head, but it seemed relatively unharmed, other than the bits stuck together from mud, now dried in the strands.

"hello?" stan's voice came through.

"hello fine chap, could i interest you in a bible and a chat about god?" richie couldn't help himself, scratching at his head as he did his best british evangelist (did those exist?) accent.

"richie, what are you doing?" stanley knew, he always knew. his voice was as calculated as always.

"i've, er.. i've got myself in a predicament. let me in? pwetty please?"

"fine." the door beeped, and richie grasped at the handle, only wincing slightly as he walked through the entrance, making it to the elevator.

an awkward fifty seconds later, once the girl getting her mail left the elevator on the fifth floor, richie got off at the ninth, and made his way to stan's door. he checked his knuckles: almost all good there, except for one scratch. he knocked on the door.

stanley opened the door and opened his mouth, as if to say something snappy (probably "i don't want your bible, thank you"), but froze as soon as he registered richie. he breathed very quietly for a moment, then blew air out his nostrils quickly and pushed the door open more, "come in."

"i was just wondering if i could use your shower. um..." richie said, making it in and trying to shed as little dirt as possible as he took off his shoes, his back and thighs aching.