Work Text:
I don't really give a damn about the way you touch me
When we're alone
You can hold my hand
If no one's home
It began as a desperate bid to catch his parents’ attention. He didn’t exactly do it for attention, so to speak, he didn’t want to be pitied or looked after like a child, but he wanted them to notice him. Since Georgie’s death, they stared unblinking across the table, shuffling food around on their plates. They didn’t notice if he showed up for dinner, so he might as well not grab breakfast or lunch either, right?
Bill thought back on this bitterly. A text buzzed from his phone where it sat on the bed, but he didn’t get up to check; what he was waiting for was the timer that would signal he was allowed to stop doing sit-ups. The hardwood of his bedroom floor dug into his spine, the little knobs he could count now when he looked in the mirror, straining to see if the number was the same as yesterday, if the number of ribs was the same.
Thirty minutes of sit-ups, two hundred calories. The end was a light-up goal post in his mind. Thirty minutes, he had noted, was about six hundred sit-ups. He did this every day, so he’d had time to count. His phone went off again. He knew it was Richie. They were supposed to go out this afternoon. Richie had to wait, though, until Bill was finished with his sit-ups.
He let out a little grunt of pain, the burning sensation in his abdomen hiking to its peak. That marked twenty-five minutes. Yes, it’d been an experiment in the beginning, but anymore he couldn’t stop if he tried. (He’d tried.) Bill had never been a big person— he felt guilty, seeing fat in the mirror, when Ben was the person who’d really had to deal with the social effects of being fat— but as they say, you can never be too rich or too thin. When Bill had started cutting down his intake, naturally, his weight had begun to drop too, and people began to give him compliments. He pushed them into the forefront of his mind as he struggled through the last five minute of situps.
“Have you lost weight? You look so good!”
“Damn, Billy, you’re gonna need a new belt!”
“You’re getting so thin!”
And the others.
“Come on, have something to eat!”
“Ice cream is your favourite, right? Are you sure?”
“Dude, come on. Just eat something. You’re a twig.”
The timer rang out and Bill sunk with a sigh to the floor, staring up at the ceiling, watching the stars spin around.
Once he had caught his breath, he slowly stood up, using the edge of the bed to steady himself. His head filled with warmth, blackness swimming across his vision, and he gripped the covers for dear life as he careened wildly towards his end table. Too fast. Always. It was getting harder and harder to stand up slow enough.
He took a few seconds to open his phone as he walked towards the bathroom, scrolling through a pile of Instagram notifications to Richie’s text.
Hey, we still on for coffee today? Want me to pick you up?
Hell yeah. I can get there, see you in like, twenty?
It was nine am. He’d been up for about forty-five minutes, but he hadn’t had any water yet, and he was thirsty as all hell. But the sit-ups came first, trying to sweat out any excess, and now the weighing.
He tugged his mom’s creaky old scale out from its place in the corner and situated it carefully on the most level tile in the room. After stripping off the shirt and shorts he’d slept in, he stepped delicately onto the scale, holding his breath.
110.
He exhaled shakily. A pound less than yesterday. He’d been terrified, with all the salt he’d eaten on his meager lunch of vegetables the day before, he was going to retain.
He gave himself a little cheer, a grin spreading to his face. His next goal was 100 even, but this was good.
Richie had texted him back. It was time to go.
He went back to his room, shuffling through his closet for a moment before finding his clothes. He preferred baggy. After people had started asking questions, oh, ten pounds ago, he usually went with baggy. His jeans no longer clung neatly to his waist and he instead had to do them up with a belt, into which he’d poked three extra holes because he couldn’t be bothered to find a new one. Over that, a baseball tee, which hung off of his frame as if it were still in the closet, and a nice, if over-sized, blue sweater. The sweater gathered in bunches by his wrists.
He could have had Richie pick him up, but he preferred to walk. It burned more calories. The rain had finally cut off— Bill hated rain, how it reminded him of the car accident that had killed his brother— and the sun was actually starting to show its face. His mind wandered as he made his way over to Richie’s. He had trouble focusing anymore.
He didn’t bother knocking or ringing Richie’s doorbell, his parents were used to Bill by now, and they were rarely home during the day anyway. Richie sprung from his seat on the couch to greet him before Bill could open his mouth. He slowed down his momentum before he reached the doorway; Bill always thought it was adorable that Richie always looked like an excitable puppy when he saw Bill, and then suppressed it, pretending to be cool.
“Hey, Bill,” Richie grinned, wrapping him in a hug. Bill sighed into the embrace. He loved how safe he always felt in Richie’s arms. He’d outgrown bill by about four inches when they hit their junior year, and the wait paid off; rather than a gangly beanpole, he’d become a picturesque young man. His hair still hung in black curls he rarely bothered to brush, though, and he’d never quite abandoned the punk look. Bill felt his hands— strong hands— run down his back, feeling for the ribcage, but his layers helped to save him from a lecture.
“R-richie,” he said simply, and then pulled away, pecking his cheek. He feigned exhaustion, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “Cooooffeeee,” he groaned, and they both laughed.
A short car ride featuring loud rock music got them to a little local coffee shop called Brianna’s Brews. Richie held his hand until they got to the door— his hands were so warm, or was Bill just cold?— where he held it open. They linked arms as they got to the counter.
“What can I get for you?” asked a chipper young barista. She had white-blonde curls that spilled over her shoulder in a loose ponytail. Richie shot her an award-winning smile and Bill’s heart fluttered.
“Give us just a second, please.”
After some deliberation, he ordered a large caramel frappe with extra whipped cream, a shot of chocolate, and a cinnamon roll the size of his face. Bill just asked for a hot coffee, black. Richie frowned at him as they went to sit down.
“You know, you can get something fancier,” Richie chided.
“I don't w-want to waste your m-money.” Richie rolled his eyes.
“I can smell that bullshit from 420 miles away. I don't care, drink it with Splenda or whatever, but at least get whipped cream. Or a cinnamon roll. Come on, they’re fucking delicious.”
Richie tore off a chunk of his cinnamon roll and held it out to Bill. It smelled so good he could nearly taste it. Dripping with cream-cheese glaze and cinnamon, so sweet it made his head spin, the world blurred around the edges and Bill tried to calculate the number of calories in a square inch piece of cinnamon roll, yes Richie I really would love a cinnamon roll, get me two with extra cream cheese, and an extra large mocha with whipped cream and sprinkles, and—
“No thanks,” he lied, forcing it through his teeth. “I had b-breakfast already.”
Richie pinched his nose with one hand and waved the other around. Smelling bullshit, Bill supposed. But he didn’t push the issue, and for that Bill was grateful. Nothing ever tasted good if someone forced you to eat it. Mike and Ben had ruined french fries for him like, last week. His stomach cramped around water and coffee at the memory.
Richie started talking about his day, and Bill stared across the table at him as he sipped his coffee, smiling in spite of himself. He loved the way Richie talked. He motioned wildly with his coffee or his fork, speaking through a mouthful of cinnamon roll. At one point he forgot he had iced coffee in his mouth, not cinnamon roll, and accidentally spit sugary caramel disaster out onto the table, and when they both dissolved into laughter it came out of his nose, and from there he only laughed harder. He loved that about him. No matter how weird one of them was being, everything they did felt so natural. He could just be himself. Even if himself was not getting out of the house until he did two hundred situps or cutting his food into infinitesimal pieces before he would touch it or never eating in front of anyone except Richie or being sad about Georgie or calling him at two in the morning to help him find the perfect word for some story or poem or something.
“So in the end,” Richie said, finishing off his story, “that’s why Eddie is giving me the silent treatment. It’s not my fault his mom’s hot.” Bill laughed, almost shooting coffee out of his own nose. He just smiled. Richie took that moment to lean over the table and kiss him. Richie never gave a shit what anyone else thought of the two of them.
“I love you,” Richie said, his voice softening.
Yes, Bill loved Richie. Not just his perfectly soft brown eyes, or his strong arms, or the blurry, early 2000’s way he insisted upon doing his eyeliner, or how he always insisted on paying for dates. Bill loved Richie for the way he was just Richie, and because around Richie, he could just be Bill. And that was enough.
“I-I love you too.”