Wait For It || Reddie ✔️

twelve

After they gorged on hamburgers and fries, pizza and breadsticks, and drank themselves sick with milkshakes and shirley temples, the seven teenagers carefully swung their legs over the seats of their bikes.

"Do we gotta?" Richie whined, lengthening his arms and leaning back off his bike.

"Maybe," Eddie quipped, "if you didn't eat all of your food and mine, you wouldn't feel so gross."

"But your pizza looked so yummy."

"I don't care, trashmouth!"

Beverly then added in with, "Actions have consequences," in a sing-song voice.

While Richie let out a long, theatrical groan, hanging his head back as he did so, Mike shot him a sympathetic look. "It's a long ride," he said, and Richie began stamping his feet.

"Way to poke the bear," Stanley said to Mike who only laughed, amused with himself.

Although, surprisingly, it was Richie leading the group to Mike's farmhouse. He peddled faster and harder than any one of them, his light brown button-up flapping around his black backpack. The sun was still two hours away from plunging the world into darkness, but it hung low in the blue sky as they rode, shining milky golden light into their eyes.

Hanging out at Mike's place required undergoing certain steps, similar to spending time at both Stanley and Richie's houses. They systematically leaned their bikes up against the side of the house, took off their shoes upon entering, politely greeted Mike's grandparents, and, if one wanted brownie points in his grandma's book, complimented how clean the house looked.

"Oh, aren't you just a sweetheart," Shirley said, cupping Eddie's face and rubbing a thumb over the apple of his cheek. "And a cutie, too!"

"Alright, grandma," Mike mumbled, embarrassed. He rushed their overlap along, ushering his friends down the basement steps.

As they were climbing down them, Richie got into Eddie's space and said, "Mrs. Hanlon definitely got one thing right, huh, Eds?"

"Shut up Richie before I push you down these stairs."

The basement of the Hanlon residence didn't look like it had been updated since the late fifties. Everything was in a shade of orange or brown---the couch; the old, crunchy carpet; the large, soft rug that compensated for the crunchy carpet; the coffee table; and all the other furniture. The only thing in the basement that deviated from the trend was the baby blue accent wall, painted over the wooden paneled wall, and the various old farm equipment small enough to be hung on said blue wall.

"You guys know the rules," Mike mentioned, and as he began to list them out, the others chimed in with, "No touching the sharp things and no going to the barn."

"Yeah, Richie," Eddie tagged onto the end.

Richie theatrically let out a long breath and raised his eyebrows. "Just can't get my name out of your mouth, huh, Eds?"

"Shut up."

/

Like many of the other Loser's, Mike's only television was in the living room. And that television was forever controlled by his grandpa. Mike once said as a fleeting joke he was lucky to even see the remote. Due to that, the group had to entertain themselves in other ways.

After cycling through the usual round of conversation topics---the update on Bowers, "I heard he got arrested," Beverly whispered to the group as if she was passing along a secret, her fingertips cupping her mouth; questions of when they would visit the quarry; and talk of the community events Derry was holding that summer---they spread out across the basement.