Runt in Shining Armor (Reddie) - COMPLETED

Hmm

    Eddie began to grow more and more worried about Richie over time.

    He started having less meetings with Richie in the attic room, and he stopped noticing him all around school in general. Eddie could think of a few reasons, and most of them made a good amount of sense, but he didn't like any of them. For one, Richie could just not want to talk to Eddie as often anymore. Naturally, being in love with Richie, to think that Richie didn't care about him anymore... was horrible. Another thought Eddie had was that Richie just couldn't find the time or even the excuses to get Eddie out of class without getting his mother involved somehow. It was a tight situation, and a terrible one. Eddie wished he were an adult already, so him and his friends could all live in a big fancy mansion or house or whatever they decided on, and he would only have to worry about his job, and not his best friend disappearing from his life because of his overbearing mother.

    The meetings in the attic stopped completely after a few months of short, sporadic lunch visits, and Eddie again wondered why. It left a hole in his heart, to think Richie had forgot about him entirely. Eddie wondered if that was actually best- to do what his mother wanted and forget about each other. He knew it would not happen, though.

Richie stopped showing up in the lunchroom, too, and even though they weren't allowed to sit together, it still helped knowing that he was in the cafeteria with him. That he was still.. there. Around him, near him, even if they couldn't speak. Eddie feared that Richie had found a new crowd to hang out with, though. None of the Losers figured out where he started disappearing to, either, leaving them all to believe he just hated them and moved on, or maybe dropped out of school. Stopped showing up. That was a pretty Richie thing to do, and it made sense, since he couldn't talk to Eddie...

    The Losers were falling apart. Nobody was sure why. They all had their suspicions; Richie slowly fading away, Stan and Bill starting to flirt and become closer, Beverly's huge crush on Bill, Ben's huge crush on Beverly, Eddie always feeling distraught over Richie being gone... Mike was caught in the middle of it, like some crazy love triangle he had (and wanted) no part in, yet he still had to be in it because he was cursed with stupid prepubescent teenagers as his best friends. The Losers rarely hung out together anyway, it was never the seven of them together at once, for various reasons. Bill and Stan would sometimes eat together outside, and Beverly would often leave to cry in the stalls... not that any of the Losers knew about that. Richie was hardly ever there, too.

    One day, Eddie received a note in his locker.

    Tomorrow lunch attic I have something to tell you. Please show up

-

    Eddie pushed open the handle to the drama room cautiously. He knew that nobody was on the other side, but if any slight noise made him get caught by a teacher...

    He stepped into the room and looked around, making his way to the ladder with the help of some daylight coming through the shades of the window. Eddie didn't have a good feeling about meeting Richie this time, his arms were stiff and he felt like there was something in his throat. Something bad was going to happen, he could feel it, and Eddie wasn't always right about things like this, but he had a sense of certainty this time around.

    He crept up into the attic and ducked down, now in the dreaded room. Richie sat in the corner, his knees up to his chest. "Hey," Richie greeted in a gloomy voice. Eddie noticed he wouldn't look up at him, he would only stare down at his ankles.

    "Richie?" Eddie asked, his throat starting to burn. He knew he had some tears coming, whether Richie had bad news or not. Seeing Richie in that state alone was enough to make him cry anyway.

    "Sit down..."

    Eddie sat down next to Richie, placing an arm around Richie's shoulders in an attempt to comfort him, but Eddie wasn't the best at those kinds of things. It was always Richie that did that, especially with the Losers. The meditator, as long as he wasn't on one side of the drama himself.

    "I'm uh, moving," Richie said grimly, turning to meet Eddie's eyes. "This is the last time we'll see each other."

    Eddie let out a choked sob, the words came too fast for him to even understand what that meant for him... for the both of them. This was the end. This was the end of Richie, of their friendship, of seeing him... of stupid, shitty jokes, and his dumb voices that Eddie hated but secretly loved so much.

    Richie moved to hug him immediately, and now that Richie was closer he noticed that Richie might have also been crying too. He sobbed into Richie's shirt, unable to even picture a future without Richie... he was barely keeping it together with seeing each other during their little attic sessions, but now he wouldn't even have that. The most important person in Eddie's world was suddenly being taken away from him, and there was a good chance they would never meet again. Eddie could make out Richie's sobs over his own, and that made him bawl harder, thinking about how hard it would be on Richie too.

    "Eddie, Eddie, it's going to be okay," Richie said suddenly, pulling away to wipe his nose and look at Eddie. "As soon as we get out of here, I'm gonna find you, okay? I will," he told him, sniffling between words. This made Eddie cry hysterically again, he didn't think he could make it through high school without his best friend, the boy he loved the most. It was terrible, and Eddie would never be able to talk to him again, he wouldn't be able to call, or see him, or hug him, or hear another one of his voices. Eddie wanted to die, he wanted to go home to his mom and throw a fit, he wanted to move away with Richie, wherever he was going.

    As Eddie's sobs came to an end, the two of them sat there, feeling angry and upset but too empty to say anything at all.

    "That's all, Eddie," Richie whispered, gaze unmoving from a particular spot on the wall.

    The younger boy sat there, defeated. There was nothing in the world that could make up for this. Nothing. He wouldn't be happy again, not for a good nine or ten months. Eddie was absolutely devastated and there was not a thing he could do about it.

    "Where are you moving?" he finally spoke, wiping his face with the inside of his shirt. Eddie figured he should at least know.

    Richie took a shaky breath. "Pennsylvania," he said hesitantly.

    "Oh."

    "Yeah."

    Eddie broke into tears again, reaching for his inhaler in his pocket. He doubled over and starting to puff on it intensely, he was dying, he was definitely dying. He couldn't stand it.
   
    Richie tore his inhaler from his hands and looked him in the eye. "Chill!" he exclaimed, not wanting Eddie to actually go crazy.

    "This is the end, Richie... I'm gonna miss you so fucking much," he wept, using his shirt to catch his tears. Both of their shirts were damp with tears and snot. "We're never gonna see each other again."

    "Yes! Yes we will, Eds, I promise we will. I swear on my life, on everything I have.. it's just a few more years of all this, and then I'll come back for you, and if you're in college I'll find you still."

    Eddie shook his head in disagreement, hot tears still flowing down his face.