cliché || reddie ✔️

eighteen

Christmas Eve. Richie is sitting on his couch in a dark living room, arm slung over the back as he watches snow fall outside. Wentworth is in his office working, Maggie said she'd be home in thirty minutes (She sent that two hours ago), and Beverly is at home, probably eating. Her aunt invited him over, but he held out the hope that his family would be normal for one fucking night and declined. Now he regrets it.

Richie gets up off the couch and wanders down the hall to his dads office. "Dad," he says from the doorway. "It's almost six. Can I start on dinner?"

Wentworth continues to stare at his computer. His tie is swung over his shoulder and his hair looks gross, shiny and falling in his face in separate strands. "Dad," Richie tries again.

"Huh? Oh! Rich," Went says. He looks surprised, like he was caught off guard. "How.. What did you need?"

"Uh.. I said it's almost six. Can I start on dinner?"

Wentworth's eyebrows pull together and he leans back in his chair to look behind Richie. "Is.. Is Mag not home?"

Richie shakes his head. "Nope," he says, popping the P.

His dad lets out a confused, "huh" and sits back in his chair. "Um.. yeah, go start on dinner. I'll call your mother and ask on when she's planning on coming home."

Richie nods, slowly backs out of the doorway, then pauses. Wentworth briefly glances up at him from the computer and asks, "Needed somethin' else?"

yes, he wants to say. when was the last time you slept, dad? or showered?

But he doesn't. He shakes his head and turns to make his way down to the kitchen. As his hand finds the light switch, Richie desperately fights back the memories. To when he'd come home from biking around Derry and Maggie would be at the stove cooking meals and Wentworth would be at the table reading the paper. When did everything go to shit?

Oh right. When Went lost his job as a dentist and when Maggie lost her baby girl. Oh how could he forget?

Richie pulls open the pantry door, hoping to find a bag of potatoes or canned gravy he could easily heat up. Instead, his heart drops when his eyes land on shelves with very, very few things. "What the fuck," he mutters. Harshly pushing the door closed, he walks out of the kitchen and grabs his coat from the stand next to the garage door.

"I'm going to the store!" Richie yells down the hallway. He waits for a response, for any acknowledgement at all. But the only thing from the end of the hall is the clacking of the keyboard and the squeaks of a chair. With his jaw set, he throws up his middle fingers and walks backwards to the front door.

On his way to the nearest open store, he keeps his eyes out for Maggie's blue car. She's always talked about getting a white one, or maybe even yellow, but Wentworth said something about bad mileage or maybe it was the money. Richie doesn't remember. At one point he spotted a car identical to his moms, but if Maggie aged thirty years and got a gender change, it couldn't be her.

He arrives at the grocery store and is pleased to see the open and relatively empty parking lot, which isn't surprising at all. The fluorescent lights light up the entrance, but it barely breaks through the darkness of early winter night. Richie walks in through the automatic doors and is instantly attacked with blasting heat.

He keeps his coat on, just unzips it. Some popular song that's always on the radio plays quietly over the whole building, barely heard over squeaks of wheels and beeps of check out machines.

"Potatoes and gravy," Richie reminds himself. "Potatoes and gravy." He's never been to the store much, always leaving that job for his dad. But, like any other kid, he helped out with taking the groceries in by linking each bag up his arms.