Lover | Richie Tozier

Chapter 16.

Bill slid a small container of Pringle's across the lunch table with perfect aim in the direction of his best friend. "E-Eat those," he instructed firmly. Instruction was kind of a light term; it was more like a demand to up the boys calorie intake.

Richie looked down on them. They looked tempting, and he probably should save them for later, but it seems his appetite has depleted along with almost all of his energy. "I'm good, Big Bill." He tried giving him a convincing smile; a beam that showed how forced the part of his lips was and how it only covered the front of his eyes without fully brightening them.

Bill pushed them further in Richie's direction in response, not willing to give up on him so easily. "Ah-At least suh-save them for later. You're... you're all-already skinny enough, Rih-Rich."

The world darkened around Richie as he wrapped his hands over his chest, solely to cover his physique from the crude comment but playing it off by only taking the chips and placing them in his lap. "Thanks, man. You know you don't have to-" he started, quickly halted by a fumble of words interjecting.

"D-Don't. Don't suh-say I don't have to. I kn-kn-know that. Point is, I want to," Bill finalized. There was a note of authority through the breaks in his stutter. A protectiveness.

Richie looked at the gentle boy, staring into the blue windows of his soul. Rain pattered in his eyes like the storm that had taken his little brother's life 10 months ago. No matter how hard Richie tried, he still didn't understand why Bill cared so much. He thought he never would. His eyes carried across his soft face as he tried to piece together the puzzle that resulted in Bill going the extra mile for Richie every day when packing his lunch and would only grow increasingly confused. Maybe he was loved a tiny bit, after all.

Baby steps, Rich. Don't take it too far. Don't get too brave.

"You usually always take the food he gets you. Something wrong?" Stan asked, drawing an eyebrow upwards.

Richie's eyes shifted their gaze between him and Elle, who was sitting a few tables behind Bills back to the left. "Nothing, Stan the Man. I'm as good as the sex I had with your mother last night," he finally bounded back - only after taking a few seconds to indulge in her profile.

Stan and Bill reacted accordingly, as they always did, pulling faces and trying their hardest to not laugh, but Richie didn't. He didn't feel the same rush he usually felt after telling such a joke.

Usually, nerves would buzz in synchronized shock and he'd get the little bit of exhilaration he needed to carry on throughout his day. But this time, the emptiness he was feeling wasn't exactly emptiness at all, it was numbness. Not numb like stiffening novocaine, either. It was more like the kind of numb that blocks your mental floodgates with one thing and refuses to let anything else slip past.

He didn't think it was because he hadn't eaten or had little energy, either. He thinks it's because his attention was so far gone that he couldn't even process what he was saying: as if it was automatic.

Placed perfectly (almost so perfectly that it couldn't have been a coincidence by the universe) in Richie's view, Elle and Beverly engaged in their regular lunchtime conversations that would never change the course of their subjects and usually persisted around magazines or music or movies. Every topic had its own function of subtopics, but today Elowynn's attention had translated into something so small that it couldn't be seen nor felt, let alone spoken.

"So," Beverly wrapped her lips around the rim of a Coke, leaving a fresh lipstick print. "What's with the eyes?"

Elle shot her a confounded look, eyebrows high with stagger. "What?"