.: Friday I'm In Love :|: Reddie :.

Cold

Cold.

It was so cold.

That was all he could think about when he woke up. The boy tried to move, but a wave of agony flooded over him like it was the middle of hurricane season. His head felt like it was being split open with a wedge and a hammer, sinking down through his scalp and the second it touched his skull every bone in his body shattered.

Of course, his bones weren't really broken. Hopefully. His head wasn't really split open. Probably.

He opened his eyes, but he could hardly see anything. It was night time. It was freezing. Wasn't it summer? Why was he so cold?

Oh, that's right. Derry nights were always chilly, and someone else had borrowed his sweatshirt. It hadn't mattered, had it? He was supposed to just be in and out. So why was he still in? It was night time, he can't have been here long.

These were the questions he had at first. Now he was just tired. Nearly two weeks later, he was just tired. Starving, thirsty, hurting, and tired. Not to mention lonely. He had stopped texting him back.

Did he not believe who it was? Perhaps he should have tried to be more serious about it.

But no, he had to have believed it, because the piece of shit phone managed to pick up one more post before the battery died for good. He had believed him. That was a week ago. The phone hadn't died until a day later, and the boy was worried. He had told him not to go looking, and now he wasn't replying anymore. If he had gotten him, then why wasn't his friend here yet? Where else would he put him?

The boy had found the backpack, all right. It was sitting on the floor beside him, wide opened. There were tons of medical supplies in there, and a bottle of stuff had spilled out that smelled very strong. It was a clean, sharp smell. It smelled like him, the one the boy missed more than anything in the world. The one who wasn't texting anymore. The one who had, in a sense, gotten them into this whole mess, but he was already forgiven. He always was.

All the boy wanted to do was to leave and find his friend. He wanted to make sure he hadn't gotten lost trying to find him. Or worse. The thought made him so angry and upset. He had allowed this to happen. Why couldn't he have just waited?

But the look of terror on his friend's face when he was stuck under the fence. The tears in his eyes when he couldn't quite get free. It made him so angry. He knew why. Bev knew why. But the other boy didn't know why, and he wasn't going to find out. Ever.

Then again, the boy wished he had told him while he had the chance. After all, if he was going to die here, then he wished he had at least said something. But he didn't, and now he was going to die without knowing how his favorite person in the entire universe would have responded.

He laughed a little bit at that, but the sound was muffled by the grimy cloth stuffed in his mouth. His wrists and ankles were tied in front of him, but he wasn't attached to anything. The difficult part would be getting up with how little he had to eat, or drink in the past fourteen days. Not to mention the unknown injuries he may have sustained. It hurt too much to open his eyes when it was the day time, and even if he did, he couldn't see for shit.

He glanced at the opened backpack and tried to scoot himself over, ignoring the screaming pain in his head and stomach and basically his entire existence at even the tiniest movement. He pulled out one of the snacks that had been packed in there, a little pack of cheese and crackers wrapped in plastic. It was the last one that had been packed. The boy had already eaten the rest. He decided to take this one slow and just eat half a cracker. After all, who knew how long he'd be there?

He had tossed the old phone in the bag once it died. He had been getting worried after a day of no replied and risked a call, but it had died before the second ring. He opened the crackers with trembling fingers and broke one in half, taking tiny bites so it would trick his stomach into feeling like a lot more than it was.

It really didn't help.

His clothes felt like literal scraps on his body, since he had been in them for two weeks and hadn't been granted bathroom breaks. He lifted his hands, muscles screaming as he ran them down his face. They didn't come away wet like they had the first time. Instead his face and scalp just felt crumbly, as if something had dried there and become a crusty substance. He had an idea of what it was.

He could see the door, because it was opened just a crack. He was somewhere outside, and if the boy tried to leave, then it would only get worse. He knew that much. He hadn't tried to speak in all the time that he had been there. He was terrified of what might happen if he defied in any way, but at this point, death would be a blessing in his case. He wondered how long it would take for his friend to be there with him, and hoped it would be a very, very long time. After he finished his half a cracker, he heard something and froze. That didn't sound like the heavy footsteps that he usually had. They were light and childlike.

But they were soft. There was a loud snore from the room next to the boy's, and he thought perhaps whoever it was could get away. But they were coming towards his room, and in his room, there was no way out. He would have warned the child, but then he would wake him up. So instead he watched as the door was opened slowly and a flood of bright and painful light entered the room.

There was a small and rather rugged silhouette framed in the doorway, and the boy couldn't quite make out who it was until a quiet, and very scratchy child-like voice sounded from across the room.

"Richie?"