𝒎𝒂𝒚𝒃𝒆 • 𝒓𝒆𝒅𝒅𝒊𝒆

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Richie wasn't sure what made him do it. Maybe it was a momentary lapse in sanity due to sleep deprivation. Maybe it was the joint he'd just finished off, fucking with his head. Maybe it was the fact that it had looked, for a split second from his spot down on the street, as if the person in room 307 had been waving at him.

Maybe it was just because the night was lonely. Maybe it was because Richie was too.

***

Eddie had never been more grateful for a Sunday. He'd gotten less sleep than usual last night - barely an hour total - and he would much prefer to be a dead-eyed zombie at home, surrounded by schoolwork and with an endless supply of coffee, than behind the till at the grocery store where he worked.

It wasn't a terrible job - close to his apartment, fairly slow most days, open late enough for him to work night shifts. Plus it was closed on Sundays, which gave him a guaranteed day off every week to catch up on assignments or hang out with Bill. What was more, he got a thirty percent employee discount on all of his groceries.

This particular Sunday, he stayed curled by the window where he'd fallen asleep for nearly an hour after waking up. He was warm under his enormous pile of blankets and comfortable despite the awkward curve of his spine. The window had become fogged overnight; the early morning sunlight seeping through filled his apartment with a soft, warm light, dappled here and there by the dew on the glass. Eddie traced a smiley face with his finger and admired the effect. He wished he had a camera. Maybe he could sell his shitty clock and buy one.

He finally rose when said shitty clock announced seven in the morning. Keeping his blankets wrapped tightly around him, he trudged to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee and throw some bread in the toaster. He leaned against the counter as he waited, looking around his apartment.

It was messy, even by his standards. Though he could be a tad (read: extremely) neurotic when it came to hygiene - including sanitizing every surface of his apartment religiously - he had always been much more lenient when it came to organization. You were hard pressed to find an inch of flat surface not taken up by books, pillows, appliances, and miscellaneous knick knacks. The coffee table - which doubled as a dining table, given the limited size of the apartment - was completely covered in papers, notebooks, pens and pencils from his most recent attempt at rewriting his class notes. The couch, with its mound of throw pillows and knitted blankets - all gifts from his mother - looked more like a bed than did his actual bed, which had been stripped bare some months ago. Since he so rarely slept in his room anymore, he had moved his bedding to the window seat. He now pretty much only used his bedroom to store clothes in, and occasionally to lay on his back on the floor when his head was aching more than usual.

When his toast popped, he spread a generous amount of strawberry jam onto it and brought it and his cup of coffee to the couch with him. He figured today he would try to make some progress with his schoolwork, and maybe clean up a bit. Midterms were coming up this month and he was growing more and more panicked each time he looked at his messy, barely legible notes. How was he to study when he couldn't even tell what he'd written? Sighing, he picked up a pen and got to work.

By ten o'clock, Eddie was fully immersed in political science. He had even managed to translate ten whole pages of chicken scratch into neat, colour coded notes, complete with headings, sub-headings and footnotes. He was just adding a footnote to his latest bullet point, elaborating on a definition, when the bright red telephone hanging from the wall began to ring.