oneshots ✧ : -˚̣⋅ .

1. Reddie

With his head in his hands, Eddie Kaspbrak mulled over the thought of how all of this came from introducing the concept of a work trip to Richie. It all seemed to have happened so fast, as if Eddie hadn't even managed to get half of the sentence through his lips before Richie started bawling. The two of them had finally quieted enough to sit across from one another, silently, in their living room.

"I said you can come with me if you want," Eddie reminded, not bothering to look up from his lap.

"And I said I don't want to come with you," Richie countered, before adding, "besides, even if I wanted to, I couldn't. Someone has to watch our shop." Before everything happened, Richie had bigger dreams. He wanted to go to an arts college and make his way into showbusiness, maybe doing some sort of comedy or a talk show. He ditched the idea the moment that Eddie divorced Myra, knowing that he'd been handed a second chance to be Eddie's perfect little house-husband on a silver platter. He'd be stupid, he figured, not to take it. He never looked back toward Hollywood. He didn't care nearly as much about that as he did about Eddie.

Richie was painfully aware that Eddie was inhaling and exhaling out pure stress. He was aware he was the cause. Something heavy and cold sat in the pit in his stomach.

"Why are you so upset, then?" Probed Eddie, finally making the effort to seek eye contact. "It's a business trip, 'Chie. It isn't as easy as just saying no." If Eddie turned down this business opportunity, he risked losing his upcoming chance at a promotion.

"I never said that." Richie sighed, his lashes still wet with tears.

"So what are you saying?" Eddie queried again. He was becoming noticeably fed up with Richie's habit of dodging questions.

"You never want to talk about it," Richie replied. He picked at his fingernails, despite that they'd been pulled down to their quicks already. He regretted his accusatory tone almost instantly.

"I'm sorry?" Eddie retorted, an eyebrow raising. "This is childish, Richard."

Richie's eyes widened for a moment. Suddenly offended, his brow furrowed as he gathered the nerve to meet Eddie's stare. "Don't call me my government name." He said.

"Sorry, Richie," Eddie argued, "this is childish, seriously. I understand that you're going to miss me, and I empathize with that. I'm going to miss you too! Maybe you're worried about running the shop alone. I get it. It's just that we're adults now, Rich. I can't spend all of my time just fucking around with you anymore. I wish I could, you know — I love spending time with you — but we're adults, we have jobs, we have responsibilities. We have bills we have to pay. And, you know... we just, we aren't kids anymore and this isn't the summer of '89. I wish it was." Eddie inhaled deeply, having not realized that he'd just poured all that out on one breath. "I have to take this trip, I just have to, if- if, you know, you ever want to pay off our mortgage for the shop, if you want to put our kids through college, if you want a dog... Richie, all of the things we want just cost a lot of money. We have to make that money and because of that I can't lose this promotion."

Richie sat obediently through Eddie's entire spiel, just itching to cut him off. He didn't. Despite that Eddie was making millions of hurtful assumptions, babying Richie and insinuating he has no idea how the world works, he patiently took the berating and waited his turn.

"You're so stupid," he finally breathed, finding a moment to cut in. Richie didn't wait his turn to be nice. "So stupid! You are so ridiculous, I actually can't believe you right now. Like, you seriously just ridiculed me for five minutes and you couldn't have missed the mark more. Disregarding the fact that I'm insulted by how dumb you must think I am to say all that shit to me, I'm not upset because I'll be lonely! I'm not upset because I'll have to run the shop by myself. For fuck's sake, it's a flower store. We're florists, Eds, it isn't fucking rocket science. I'm upset because we never fucking talked about what happened in 2016 and we haven't spent more than a day apart since..." Richie, previously bordering on shouting, quieted down. "Since I picked you up from the hospital. Do you remember? You served Myra divorce papers laying right there in the hospital bed. She stormed out in tears and I replaced her in the chair next to you, and I held your hand... and I expected you to cry, I expected to need to comfort you, but... you never did, and I never had to. The first thing you did was-"