it may surprise many to know, but there was a limit to how long richie could spend in the arcade. it wasn’t hard to tell how much he hated being alone. and ever since that fucking crack house, he’d been predominantly alone. alone at home, alone during the day, just fucking alone. normally he’d be the first one dragging everyone out, helping eddie come up with excuses for his mom, convincing stan it’d be worth his while. but he was so....fucking mad at bill, and underneath that was another emotion that was far easier to ignore as long as he stayed mad at bill.Â
mike distanced himself. maybe he thought if he stayed away from town then it wouldn’t bother him. ben was upset—which richie had initially thought was about the clown but apparently it was about something else entirely. about what, richie couldn’t fucking say, but ben was upset enough to not want to hang out with him. stan was busy, preparing for his bat mitzvah, but richie knew better than that. he didn’t know much but he did know a lot about avoiding the fucking point. bev was on bill’s side, bill’s stupid fucking agenda of retribution or something—and richie was mad at bill so he couldn’t go be a third wheel to that shit show...which left eddie.Â
he tried multiple times after eddie came back from the hospital to talk to him. Mrs. K was like a goddamn bloodhound though. she caught him every time, snapped him away. it didn’t bother him, richie was used to being trashed by adults. he was used to being trashed by everyone. karma’s a bitch, right? but what was fucked up, see, what was fucked up is that eddie wasn’t trying to see him. usually, when his mom was being a fucking bitch like this ( she was, alright, and what it’s not like he said it to her face, damn ) eddie usually found a way to convince her to fucking chill. he hadn’t gone more than a few days without seeing eddie before. now it was verging on two weeks. and he could handle losing most his friends...but he couldn’t handle losing all of them.Â
He went around to the side of the kaspbrak house, slinking under the living room window where he was sure Mrs. K was watching some after hours skin flick. eddie’s room was the third window down, and when he popped up, eddie couldn’t hide from him this time. there he was, the dipshit, just laying there in his bed. richie tapped on the window.Â
“eddie.” he tapped the window again, because he knew eddie heard him, and that just wouldn’t do. ask anyone, ask stan, richie got exponentially more persistent the harder you tried to ignore him. “i’ll stay here all day, eds. i’ll even try your mom again.” it wasn’t a joke, for once. he had tried to reason with mrs. k. it hadn’t gone well. “—and you know she has such a hard time turning me down.” he smiled, and then tried to shake it off. he was trying to be serious, dammit. “no, i’m serious! what, are you just gonna stay in there forever like that boy in a fucking bubble? you’re not fucking john travolta, eddie.”

















