losers club ↹ imagines | completed

Signs ↹ Richie Tozier

Pairing: Richie Tozier x Mute!Female!Reader
Prompt: request from anon "hi! one with richie x mute!reader where richie rlly likes her and doesnt know shes mute almost no one does and one day tries to talk to her but shes shy plus the fact that shes mute justs nods at him and goes away, and later on the losers find her being bullied by henry and his gang and defend her, and then she does her best to explain to them shes mute since they dont know sign languague, richie promises to himself hes going to learn sign languague just to talk to her? thank u very much!"
Warnings: none that i can think of! uses she/her. swearing!
Word Count: 911
Pronouns: SHE/HER
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There she was. (Y/N), AKA the girl Richie Tozier has been practically in love with for months on end now. The entire Losers Club knew about his crush, and also that if he ever talked to the poor girl she'd have a heart attack. It's not that she was weird or anything, it's just that no one had ever seen or heard her talking to anyone. Which makes Richie's crush on her even stranger.

Richie had tried to talk to her more than once, but she always just nodded him off or ignored him. He always had to play if off like it was no big deal. But it always definitely hurt him. He was just trying to be nice and get to know the girl.

"Trashmouth!" Eddie shouted, regaining Richie's attention, "We're getting ice cream after school. You in?"

It was already after school, they just hadn't decided what to do yet, sitting on the steps outside the school. "Of course I'm in, I'm always a slut for ice cream," Richie smiled and laughed as if his joke was nice. No one else laughed.

Beverly groaned in response however, "Gross, Richie. You know (Y/N) will never love you if you talk like that. Girls don't think that's cute."

"Good thing she'll like me for me, anyway. That, and my charming good looks." He stuck his tongue out at her, then pushed pretend hair over his shoulder. This caused the other Losers to groan, too.

The trip to get ice cream wasn't too long, but it also wasn't incredibly short. None of them took their bikes to school that day, as it was a Thursday and they don't bike on Thursday. So they had to walk.

Beverly and Stan usually took photos during this time, Stan was so good at it and Beverly marvelled his talents. So he decided to teach her. This meant every ten steps stopping so one of them could get a "really cool and amazing" shot. One of Richie's personal favourites that Beverly has is a series of photos that consist of Eddie and Richie. The first one is normal, they're holding, get this, ice cream in their hands. After that they progress downhill and Richie is shoving his ice cream into Eddie's face. It truly was a work of art.

They also had to stop and wait for Mike, so that added more time to them having to be in the heat before take ice cream.

"Isn't that the Bowers Gang?" Ben asked, "And (Y/N)?"

Richie's head shot up as soon as he heard her name. Ben was right, (Y/N) was being picked on by the Bowers Gang. And before he, or any of the other Losers, really processed it, he was marching is way over there.

"Hey Bowers! Why don't you pick on somebody your own size!" Richie shouted. He has sprouted up a bit, now being almost six foot, but he was still nowhere near strong enough to take on Bowers. "Leave her alone."

"Why? Here to defend your little girlfriend are you?" Bowers snickered, "You're lucky, four-eyes. You'd be dead if I really wanted you to be. Have fun with this little freak." He grabbed (Y/N)'s arm and threw her towards Richie. Thankfully, he caught her so she wouldn't fall.

The two younger children made their way back to the Losers, where almost all of them were looking like they'd just seen a ghost.

"You actually just did that!" Beverly laughed, "That's like, one of the coolest things I've ever seen you do, Trashmouth."

Richie rolled his eyes, "Gee, thanks." He then turned to the smaller girl at his side, "Are you okay, (Y/N)?"

The girl's eyes widened as she nodded softly, not saying anything in response.

"Why don't you talk?" Eddie asked, "Richie over here tells us all about how you never talk to him. I can't blame you, I wish I had never talked to him either."

(Y/N) wanted to tell them; but between her being ridiculously shy and almost entirely unable to speak, she couldn't. She tried her best to slightly sign in, but then gave up. They didn't know what she was on about.

"What is going on? Is this charades? I'm bad at this game," Eddie was clueless as to what was going on, and this made her smile.

She finally pulled a paper out of her bookbag and wrote down the words "I can't talk. I'm mute, and assumed you, like most people, don't know sign language." (Y/N) held the paper out in front of her, for all of them to read.

Richie's eyes scanned over the paper, and he suddenly felt so dumb. It all made a lot of sense now, why she never responded, why the teachers never called on her in class, and why he never saw her talking. She genuinely couldn't.

"I'm so sorry," Richie held his head in shame for a moment, "I don't even know how to begin to apologise."

(Y/N) smiled and waved him off, writing down on the paper that it was fine, most people didn't know and don't know sign language.

"Well I'm going to learn," Richie smiled, "For you. So I can talk to you." He watched as her face lit up, clearly excited. No one had ever done that for her, and she was amazed that Richie Tozier would be the first to do so.