Lover | Richie Tozier

Chapter 62.

"My god, Richie. What the fuck... what..."

It took everything within Elle not to cry. Her eyes paced across his face, waiting for the answers that his bleeding cuts would never give to her. "What the fuck happened to you?" She finally strained.

Richie lifted himself up onto the locker room counter and almost mistook it for another late summer rendezvous after the intrusive work of Henry Bowers. This was how everything started, and he was determined to fight before he ever let this become how it ended.

"It's- it's just," Richie tried to get his mouth to move, only to be interrupted by the taste of new blood sitting on his tongue.

The more that she looked at him struggling, the more she realized how painfully involved she had become with him. His bruises hurt like they were her own, the abrasions on his knuckles stung with the tears in her eyes, and every wound that resurfaced on his face was one that she was determined to fix again. The ties that had connected them were impossible to loosen.

She fumbled around her backpack, pulling out a small cosmetic bag that spun Richie's head around as if it were the first time all over again.

She grabbed a bottle of foundation, unable to stop the aching anxiety that was pulsating through her veins. As she looked down to gather the supplies that she needed, she fixed her eyes on Richie's glass-cut fists.

[She tilted her head up towards his, her eyes asking for permission but not staying long enough for him to grant it.

In a swift movement, she placed her soft hand on top of his rough one, letting his fingers slip through her own.]

Memory consumed her entirely. Burning like his palm was still pressed against her own. Remembering like she never truly forgot. Their hands together on a long walk home in the emergence of a blazing Fall, back when Richie was learning to trust her a lot more than he did right now. He didn't trust anyone anymore. He couldn't. He didn't listen the first time, and he couldn't deal with another break right where he needed to heal the most.

She met their eyes again, dimming with sadness and anguish. "Richie, please. Please tell me what happened. I can't... I can't look at you like this. You need to tell me what happened."

Richie lifted his chin, exposing a faint scar that was so unnoticeable it couldn't have held as much trauma as the others did. To say nothing to ease her pain wouldn't be right. Not the truth, but something nonetheless. "Bowers," he uttered dryly. "It was Bowers."

Elowynn stepped away, widening those eyes that Richie had mistaken so many times for being his entire future. "Henry fucking Bowers did this again? Are you fucking kidding me?" She spat, unable to stop the F's that lifted from her anger so easily.

Richie flinched backwards and shut his faintly bruised eye so that he wouldn't have to watch her come undone. Almost instinctively, his trembling hands began reaching out to her, ready to hook themselves around her waist in an effort to relax her. But he didn't. He only sat there and watched. How did he think he got himself into this position in the first place?

Elle's gentle tone quickly harshened around the edges. She clenched her jaw, ignoring the makeup that she was meant to be putting around Richie's eye. "I was ready to risk anything to come and find you, only to find out that Henry Bowers did this? I thought that your..." She drew in another shaky breath, completely unable to speak the words that were dancing with the devil on the tip of her tongue.

She clenched her fists again once she got a look at the fresh wounds that weren't there when he was smiling while laying on her bed a week ago. "This isn't okay. This is the farthest thing from okay. He can't just... he can't keep fucking doing this to you, Richie. I swear to God, I'm gonna find him and-"

"No," Richie interjected sharply. His posture straightened no matter how badly it threatened to hurt him. "No, don't do any of that. Don't go near him, Lively. Absolutely not." His eyes blackened, rage falling into his core.

"What do you mean 'no'? You expect me to just... sit back and watch this happen?" Elle appealed in amazement. "I watched him hold a knife to your throat and you're telling me that you don't want me to do anything about it?"

He coiled his grip around the rim of his glasses and pulled them off. His beauty was entirely unmatched. Powerful enough to separate the dense clouds up above, pure enough to hold a designated spot in Heaven, but unique enough to only be recognized by connoisseurs of art.

"You can't," Richie pleaded, softer this time. "Bowers is batshit crazy. It's not a fun game to play. Don't worry about me, okay? I'm fine. I'm bleeding, but I'm fine, so there's no need," he insisted.

The locker room fell quiet, using itself as a base for the drum of his beating heart. Instead of falling to his dominance and biting back with all of the reasons why she should turn Henry into the police, Elle set the glass bottle of makeup in her hands to the side. It slid across the counter, ringing like warped wedding bells.

Then, she carefully took her palms and slid them under his, which were pressed against the counter to support his faltering weight. When the silk petals held rough rose thorns, his breath refused to leave his throat. She brought her eyes upwards and fused them with his. "Do you remember the day that I told you I cared about?" She asked somberly.

[She placed her hand on the door, connecting their stares. Her eyes fell deeper into his broken soul as she did. She took a step out, saying one last thing that corrupted every negative feeling inside of him before she did:

"I care about you, Rich."]

Realizing how close she was getting to his face stole the air out of his trembling lungs. His lips stuttered, nodding his head but barely comprehending what he was doing. "Yeah," he exhaled. "Yeah, I do."

She intertwined their fingers and ran the soft beds over his wounds. "I meant it. I swear to God I did. You don't have to keep hiding from me. There's nothing that you can keep to yourself that I haven't already seen. I care."

Silence spun out between the two. He felt like the world was about to disappear from under him if he didn't admit to himself how ridiculously infatuated he felt right now. But he couldn't. No, he had to push away those feelings entirely. Those feelings lied to him.

"But Bowers..." Richie began after letting himself absorb the stillness. "He's after you, Elowynn. I wasn't going to tell you that, but he is. The psycho fuck asked me if you would go out with him. You can't see Bowers. If he was about to kill me, he'll kill you too."

Her lips remained shut. Instead, she flashed over his careful face in the form of impossibly alluring eyes as her way of communicating. She tightened the hold that they had on each other's hands, gripping his attention with the way she began to lean in.

Just when he thought the shortage of breath would defeat his weak heart, she stopped, leaning her forehead against his.

"You're my best friend, Rich," she hummed.

To Richie's dissatisfaction, her hands separated from his own and left them begging for her touch as they always seemed to. However, she didn't give him time to feel the air again. With her forehead still pressed on his own, her arms cradled around the back of his neck.

"To kill the both of us, it would only take one bullet."