Odalisque

January: Black Sheep Boy

January

It's only the first day of the New Year and already Richie can't believe his rotten luck; he really can't. It was like he was fighting against some unseen force that just really wanted to see him miserable, and god was it a losing battle. He had only been awake for about a minute, but the flames of his life burning before him danced in his eyes. He had woken up, in Stan's room, to Stan glaring at him, holding his bag of cocaine. Shit. It's the first coherent thought that runs through Richie's mind as he reaches for his glasses so he can see Stan's disappointment in HD. Fuck. What a way to start off the new year.

"Richie," Stan's voice comes out like steel, cold and sharp. "What the fuck is this?"

Richie just stares at him, stringing together the events that had led up to this situation. He had come to Stan's for a party last night, he remembers. He remembers he brought a lot of coke, and he remembers hiding in Stan's bathroom and doing it, this time off the back of the toilet. It was less disgusting than the school bathroom, because Mrs. Uris kept the house spotlessly clean, museum clean, and the idea of snorting coke off the toilet didn't seem gross to Richie at all now. In fact, it seemed like a genius spot, because he could sit on the toilet while he did it. And that was classy.

It wasn't a big party, by any means, not as big as one of Ben's- there had been about maybe ten other kids there besides Richie. There was alcohol, however, which Richie drank in excess, never able to actually get that drunk when he was coked out and compensating for it by drinking as much as he could. He remembers how good he felt, how alive. He remembers talking to Beverly and feeling like he was able to talk to openly and freely about himself, more than he ever could before. Everything had been so fun, and he was the last one to pass out, curling up next to Stan on his bed without caring if Stan woke up and told him that was gay. Fuck, he felt so good last night, and just thinking about it made his skin start to prickle and his blood get hot; fuck, he wanted to do a line. He really, really wanted to do a line but then here's Stan, standing in the middle of his bedroom holding Richie's bag of coke like he just found a murder weapon and fuck he does not look happy.

"Stan-" Richie tries to speak, but Stan cuts him off.

"So this is it, huh? This is why you've been acting like such a fucking freak lately? You're hopped up on fucking cocaine?" He throws the bag at Richie as hard as he can, and it hits him in the chest.

"Stan-" Richie still isn't able to get a word out, as Stan plows on;

"So this why you've been a twitchy fucking space case? Why you're never around? Why you always sound sick? You fucking asshole," he's yelling, and Richie hopes there's no one around to hear them. "I've been worried about you, everyone's been worried about you, and it turns out you're a fucking druggie?"

Those words sting a little, because Richie didn't want to see himself that way. He liked cocaine- really liked cocaine. Did that make him a druggie? Was he scummy now? He pushed the thoughts out of mind quickly, not wanting to think about it. Stan was wrong. Well, maybe not wrong, but he didn't understand. He never would, or could, understand, because his life didn't have that hollow echoing emptiness that Richie's had. Richie could never make Stan understand how that feels.

"I'm not a fucking druggie," he mumbles, eyes shifting uneasily towards the door. He thinks about just making a run for it, but he feels like if he does that, he'll lose Stan as a friend forever. He doesn't know if he can handle that. He feels like he's pretty damn close as it is right now, and Stan's fury is scathing him.

"Yeah, you are," Stan laughs, a bit hysterically. "All those times in school you seemed strung out, all the sniffing. The reckless behavior. It's been coke the whole time. You do this shit every day, don't you?"