21

Coming clean

Richie pulled a canvas out of the closet. Rent was due soon, so he needed to paint something to sell. Richie tried having an hourly paying job like Stan and Bill, but he was terrible at it. He got too distracted all the time. He just wasn't cut out to work at a coffee shop like Stanley, or a book store like Bill. 

Richie really didn't want to have to borrow money from his adoptive parents for rent. They had already done so much for him, he didn't want to mooch off of them forever.

Richie set up a tarp, so he didn't get paint anywhere that wasn't the canvas. He had to grab a chair from the kitchen to sit in, and lower his easel to a sitting height so he could paint. This was his job. He would paint something that stupid trust fund kids would find interesting.

Richie felt bad sometimes, telling kids his age with daddy's check book that his art was the "next big thing" when he knew it wasn't. Sometimes he even spoke in an accent to make them think that he was some mysterious artist from France, or something.

He was, in other words, a bit of a con artist.

Bill and Stanley were both at work, and now so was Richie. 

He started painting. Most of the time he didn't know what he wanted to paint or how to start it. Sometimes he'd started painting a sunset scene, only to hate it and turn it into something completely different. 

What he really wanted to paint, was something dark. That's all he was able to conjure up in his mind. Dark scenes. Brush strokes of black and grey mostly. Sometimes he painted twisted trees with yellow eyes. Other times he painted the whole canvas black, and then added a red clown nose in the center, it was simplistic sure, but it was familiar to him. Artists tend to paint what they know, perhaps in a past life Richie knew someone as terrifying as the art he portrayed.

Richie didn't want to be this dark and brooding with his art. But with everything he's been through in his life, it was only natural for his art to be as dark as his childhood.

Richie had just finished painting the background a light grey, when there was a knock on the door.

Richie was annoyed, but got up limping over to the door with his boot for his broken leg thudding against the apartment floor.

He swung the door open, hoping it wasn't some kid trying to sell him something he didn't need.

"Hey, Rich."

Standing before him was his first true crush. He knew he had been living in NYU for awhile, and they had crossed paths, but he never in a million years did he think that he would show up to his apartment. He hadn't spoken to him since that day in the arcade.

Connor Bowers had been the one to knock on his door.

A/N: HA! Bet you thought it was gonna be Eddie. Eddie is going to come into play a little bit later, but first we gotta throw in a little bit of chaos just for funsies.