𝒎𝒂𝒚𝒃𝒆 • 𝒓𝒆𝒅𝒅𝒊𝒆

* hello *

They walked, and Richie couldn't quite tell who was leading the way. He thought maybe neither of them was. Maybe both of them were at once. Maybe they were leading each other, following each other. Turning left here, right there, another right, a left, all without a single word of direction from either.

    They walked, and Richie's heart slowly lifted and Eddie's anxiety gradually abated. It was nice. Comfortable. They didn't feel like two strangers wandering side by side. They felt like old friends, strolling together as if they had a million times before. Neither was quite sure why. Maybe it was the spell the night cast upon them - an illusion of intimacy that was never there in the harsh light of day.

    They walked, and they didn't talk very much. Didn't talk at all, really, save for a "Your shoe is untied," from Eddie and a "Watch your step," from Richie. Neither of them minded. It was a comfortable silence. They didn't really need to talk, anyway. It was enough just to walk side by side, to know they weren't alone.

When they found themselves once again outside their own doors, they still didn't talk. They parted without even a goodbye. Neither of them minded.

    That night, they both slept better than they had in months.

***

    "You look well-rested," Stan commented the next afternoon, raising an eyebrow at Richie over a mug of coffee. It was Saturday, and the two of them were in the living room of Stan's apartment.

    "Cause I banged your mom last night," Richie grinned. He was sprawled upside down on Stan's couch, his head hanging towards the floor and his glasses sliding off his face.

    Some may have interpreted the look Stan gave him as one of disgust. Richie chose to see it as amused and affectionate. "You're twenty-two years old," Stan said, and he nudged Richie's cheek with a bare foot. "When will you stop with the stupid 'your mom' jokes?"

    Richie wrinkled his nose and batted the foot away. "When will you start appreciating my quality humour, is the real question."

    "I'll appreciate your humour when your humour is good."

    "Fuck you. I'm hilarious."

    "You're not. You're the worst."

    "That's not what your mom -"

    He didn't get to finish, as Stan threw a pillow at his face, effectively shutting him up. It knocked his glasses off. Stan had impeccable aim with pillows. Probably because he had so many years' practice throwing them at Richie.

    "That should be an Olympic sport," Richie mumbled as he reached for his glasses. "Pillow throwing. You'd win gold for sure."

    "You know it," Stan said, nudging Richie again with his foot. "Anyway, d'you wanna spend the night here tonight? We can make popcorn and watch some movies."

    With Stan and Richie, "watching movies" meant Stan would point out every plot hole and character flaw he could find while Richie did voice-overs of the characters with his own improvised script. They couldn't watch movies with anyone else - they'd had Bev join them once and she'd been ready to murder them before the movie was even halfway through - but when it was just the two of them, it was a riot. They (usually Richie) always ended up spilling something (usually soda) all over the carpet somewhere around the third or fourth movie, which was usually the sign it was time for bed.