cliché || reddie ✔️

five

you guys really wanna feel depressed? listen to daylight by taylor swift while thinking of it chapter 2 reddie 😔✌️

Richie sat in his room, tucked into himself with earbuds forced into his ears and the volume reaching dangerous levels. He didn't mind it, though. Anything to block out the argument from downstairs.

Richie's parents attempted to be hushed, to keep their arguing to a low, but as time went on and tension built up, so did the volume. Richie can't blame them, times like these when money is tight and Richie's going off to college in a year.. it's stressful and complicated.

Everything's complicated.

Richie's relationship with his parents, his relationship with this unfortunate town, his relationships with those certain three classmates... His relationship with his parents isn't bad. They're there, present as much as they can be, but with Maggie's long shifts at the hospital and Wentworth's business trips to where the money is, Richie's always alone. Even with his parents downstairs, he's alone. And he hates it.

Richie swallows thickly, pushing past the ball that formed in his throat. Freddie Mercury's voice pounded through his ears, loud enough to drown out both the arguments and any thought that floated into Richie's head.

Richie found himself staring out the window, watching as the harsh December winds danced around with the falling snow. A longing look pooled behind his eyes, a similar one to when he looks at a certain boy. But this one is different, it aches to escape, to run away. To where he doesn't know, just away.

He stands up, not being able to sit for a second more, and his earbuds tug at his ears. One gets roughly pulled out while the other threatens to fall, barely clinging to his ear. Richie's fumbling fingers aren't fast enough to push them back in.

Over the music vibrating out of the earbuds, harsh, muffled yells can be heard from downstairs. Richie only sighs and returns the pounds of music to his ears. He walks around his dark room, the only thing lighting his way is the light leaking out from under his door. He pulls on his shoes, messily lacing them up and goes to pack his school supplies.

As he packs up, he goes over the three places he thought of going to. He's forced to cross one out when he remembered the snow plummeting from the gray skies above. The other two he jumps between as he grabs clothes for school the next day.

Richie slings both straps of his backpack over his shoulders and breaths in deeply. The loudness of his music starts to give him a dull headache, but as long as he was still inside the house, he refuses to turn it down.

He forces his window open, the cold winds nipping harshly at his skin. The urge that's been itching at Richie's feet is finally given into when the window sill presses into the bottom of Richie's shoe.

~~~

Richie has experience climbing onto roofs and slipping into windows; something he's been doing since fourteen. So, as he stares up at the window perched above a small slope of roof, he can't figure out why he's so nervous.

The hazy light from the room doesn't break the barrier of darkness waiting right outside. Richie breaths in, the cold filling his nose and blossoming in his lungs. His eyes fall as he trudges through the snow. There's no dormant tree growing near the window, unluckily enough, so Richie has to resort to his own jumping skills.