cliché || reddie ✔️

fourteen

The phone burned hot in Eddie's hand, overheated from the four hour long FaceTime call. He was laying in bed, face pushed into the pillow with his phone faced up to the ceiling. Richie sat up in his own bed, messing with a Rubik's cube, only his upper half visible.

'What the fuck? This thing is impossible,' Richie had said and tossed it to his bed. Eddie's tongue felt heavy in his mouth from the excessive talking, but he lifted his head off the pillow anyway.

'I can help you if you want. Bring it to school tomorrow. I'll show you how to do it if you're so incapable.' His lips are cracked in a small smile from his own insulting joke, but Richie doesn't comment on it.

He grabbed the cube and tossed into the air, the glossy plastic hitting his hands with a smack. 'Sure. But you're all gangster until you come up against the Rubik's cube.'

Eddie's head fell back into the pillow, one eye cracked open to study the lamp on across his room. He listened to Richie ramble on about the time he watched Beverly complete a Rubik's cube in under thirty minutes. It was an overdramatic retell, but it amused Eddie nonetheless. He only looked back down to his screen when Richie stopped talking and his camera shook and moved around. 'Hey, Eds?'

'Not my name, idiot.'

'Yeah, yeah, tell me again later. Um, my phone is at 5%. I think I gotta go..'

Eddie propped himself on an elbow and lifted his phone for his face to be shown. A second later, Richie's camera moved so his own face filled up Eddie's screen. 'Okay. Don't forget the Rubik's cube.'

'I won't, dude! Goodnight, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite!'

'I'll send them off to your house to eat you.'

Richie laughed, a stupid grin plastered to his face as he waved to Eddie before ending the call.

But that was at the beginning of the week, and now Mr. Martinez is checking off the last of the groups that need to present before the weekend hits. There's only four pairs left, Richie and Eddie included.

During the four hour long FaceTime call, either before or after the room tour - Eddie can't remember - Richie propped his phone up against his desk and gave Eddie an overdramatized example of how to two's presentation will go.

It was only after Eddie said how short it was, was when Richie started using props from around his room. They wouldn't be used during the real thing, but either way it was amusing to watch Richie balance books on his head only for them to topple down and hit his feet.

"Who wants to go first?" Mr. Martinez asks. Not us not us not us not us not us, Eddie thinks desperately.

"Richie? Why don't you and your partner go up."

Shit

Eddie swallows hard, a thick and sickening ball of nervousness forming in his stomach. He drags himself to the front of the classroom, laptop balanced in his hands as Richie weaves through the desks.

'I'll lead the thing,' Richie offered, his voice breaking over the poor internet connection, 'and you stand there and look pretty.'

Eddie inhales deeply, eyes looking out at the students who are only half-interested. He meets Richie's eyes, blown huge behind those awkward frames, and everything in the classroom seems to slow.

Friends

Richie cocks up an eyebrow and grins, one that's bound to make Eddie's own lips twitch up. The two face the class and the quickness of everything returns. But now the ball of webs in his stomach is starting to thin because Richie, his friend, is beside him on the other end of the screen.