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Sometimes Richie felt empty. Some days he woke up with glazed over eyes, and hair that was a mess, and a gaping hole in his chest, and some days he was fine until some kind of switch inside of him flipped and he suddenly shut down, unable to feel anything through the thick haze surrounding him; either way he could never see it coming. Some days his head felt like it weighed a million pounds and his skin felt tight and his face felt fake.
Days like those, Richie didn’t really feel up to living. Days like those, Richie wasn’t in control, not really. Days like those his body dragged itself out of bed and through his daily routine like some kind of puppeteer; he was on autopilot. Days like those it felt like he was trapped somewhere inside of himself- somewhere cold and dark and completely alone. He felt like he was trapped, and needed someone to break him out of himself, only he didn’t really even care enough to shout for help.
It was one of those days.
The thing was that when he was like this, no one could even tell. Call it self preservation, call it instinct, but he carried on without himself. His body still drove itself to school, still picked up Eddie and Bev along the way. His mouth still spat out comebacks to Stan’s snippy remarks at the lunch table ( “Richie, what the fuck did you do to your hair today? It looks like something I pulled out of my shower drain.” “Your mother wasn’t complaining last night when she was holding onto it for dear life, Stan the Man.” ), still poked fun at Ben when he blushed over Bev. His arm still slung itself around Eddie’s shoulders in the hallway in between classes just to irritate him into shoving Richie away. His body went through the motions so that nobody would notice that Richie wasn’t really there, and then he went home and dropped boneless into his bed to stare at the same wall (plastered with curling posters, a bookshelf with more cds and records than books shoved up against it, an empty guitar mount because Richie never put it back when he was done, dim shadows cast by a strand of lights haphazardly lining the ceiling) for hours on end.
He’d done this so many times that he had it memorized at this point, plastered with curling posters, a bookshelf with more cds and records than books shoved up against it, an empty guitar mount because Richie never put it back when he was done, the dim shadows cast over it by a strand of lights haphazardly lining the ceiling (Eddie’s voice played in his head, telling him to unplug those lights, idiot, you can’t have them rubbing up against all these posters like that; do you even know how much of a fire hazard this is? ). He tried to will himself up to unplug them before he inevitably dropped off into unconsciousness, but his body felt like it was made of lead and his eyes were already slipping shut, so he just allowed himself to sink into the fog.
---
Richie woke up to the sound of his bedroom door opening but didn’t open his eyes because they still felt heavy.
“Hey, Richie, your mom let me in- beep beep in advance, because I know you have some kind of comment to make about me and your mom. But I just remembered I let you take my math notebook so you could copy last night’s homework and you never gave it back, and I need it back so I can do tonight’s homework, so…” Eddie trailed off, because Richie hadn’t even moved to acknowledge Eddie’s presence in the room. He lay motionless on his side, back facing the door, blanket drawn up so high that only his mop of dark matted curls stuck out at the top. Eddie’s brow creased. “Rich? Are you sick or something? It’s five in the afternoon, why are you in bed?”
Shit, Richie thought, because he didn’t think he would have to pretend like everything was good anymore today, and he had already turned off the performance. But now here Eddie was, catching him off guard, mid depression nap, in bed like an invalid lump, because Richie forgot to give him back his math notes. I left his notebook at school, Richie thought distantly, and for some reason his eyes were suddenly prickling. Fuck. He burrowed deeper into his blanket. His chest felt tight. He kept his eyes shut.
Eddie hesitated for a moment, unused to seeing Richie this unresponsive, motionless, silent. He shut the door gently, walked over to Richie’s bed, sitting down on the edge, and placed a hand on Richie’s shoulder, so light Richie thought he was imagining it at first. He shuddered a little at the contact. “Richie, what’s up?” Eddie’s voice was so, so soft, softer than Richie had ever heard it, and Richie’s face felt hot and the tears started leaking out. Richie didn’t want Eddie to see him cry.
“‘M sorry,” he mumbled, muffled into his pillow, voice uncharacteristically small and raspy. His shoulders shuddered as he sucked in a ragged breath in an unsuccessful attempt to keep the tears at bay. The breath came out in a gasping sob, and he brought his hands up to swipe at his eyes in frustration.
Eddie felt his heart rate pick up as he watched Richie start crying. “Richie! Oh my God, fuck, what the fuck happened? What’s wrong, did someone- did something happen? Are you-” his hands floundered about Richie’s body uselessly, unsure if his touch would be welcomed. “Are you injured?”
At this, Richie released a wet huff of breath, which would have been a laugh had he not been quietly sobbing, and rolled onto his back in defeat. “Jesus fuck, Eddie, calm down. Can’t a man cry into his pillow in peace?” The joke fell flat as Eddie took in Richie’s appearance: puffy eyes with dark shadows underneath, red nose, bitten lips, tangled, greasy hair. He felt like his heart was breaking.
“Richie…” Eddie gently brushed the hair off of Richie’s forehead, and when Richie shuddered he repeated the motion. “Rich, what’s wrong?”
Richie closed his eyes and focused on the feeling of Eddie’s cold hand in his hair. “I… I don’t know,” he responded with a frown.
“You… Richie, you don’t have to lie, you can tell me what’s up. I’m not gonna, like, make fun of you or anything,” said Eddie, confused.
“No, I mean I- I don’t know, Eddie, I just… I get, um. This sounds stupid, but sometimes I just get, like, sad? And there’s not really a fucking reason for it, or anything, I know, I’m probably just being dramatic, but sometimes I get so sad that it’s almost not even just sad anymore, you know?” Richie’s speech was speeding up as he continued, and he pulled away from eddie to sit with his legs hanging off the opposite side of the bed, facing the same wall from before. “It’s not even sad, it’s like this huge emptiness and I can feel it, right in my chest, I can feel it like there’s something actually missing, or something. For no reason! I’ll just, you know, wake up, and before I even open my eyes I know that it’s just gonna be one of those days, where I’m empty, and sad, and wish i was fucking dead.” He went stiff like he had just remembered that Eddie was actually sitting three feet away from him and this wasn’t just some angsty inner monologue, and that he was saying these things out loud, and then let out a wet chuckle “Anyway. Sorry for unloading like that on ya, Doctor K, I know you’re a busy man; back to work with you, now, chop chop!”
Eddie felt like there was a pit in his stomach. Ignoring the Voice Richie had begun to deflect with, he pressed the issue. “You wish you were what, Richie?”
Richie fell back onto the bed so the top of his head brushed the side of Eddie’s leg. “Fucking- nothing, Eds, it’s nothing. Listen, I forgot your math notebook at school, so I’m sorry you wasted your time coming all the way over here, maybe next time you should call first or something. I don’t know. Do you- do you want me to walk you out?”
Eddie’s jaw dropped. “Rich, are you fucking kidding right now?”
“I know, I’m sorry, I meant to give it back but I put it in my locker before lunch and then I was too busy thinking about your mom to remember to go back and get it-”
“Richie, I don’t give a shit about my math notebook! Sit up, look at me,” Eddie demanded, trying to pull Richie up to face him on the bed. Richie groaned and situated himself with his knees pulled up to his chest and his chin resting on top of them. His cheeks were red and still shiny with tears. “I don’t fucking care about the math homework, and coming here absolutely was not a waste of time because apparently you sometimes wish you were fucking dead, which I guess I wouldn’t have even found out if I didn’t happen to walk in on you crying in your bed at five p.m.?”
“...I wasn’t crying when you walked in, I was sleeping,” said Richie meekly. It took every ounce of inner strength Eddie had not to roll his eyes.
“Richie.” He sighed. “You fucking… Jesus Christ, Rich, come here.” He opened up his arms for a hug and watched as Richie’s face crumpled. With a small sob, Richie flung himself across the bed into Eddie’s chest. The force of it all had Eddie flopping back into the pillows, but he held back a grunt and wrapped his arms tightly around Richie. “Richie, you’re shaking, calm down, sweetheart,” he cooed, fingers coming up to thread through Richie’s hair once more. Their legs intertwined messily, Richie seemingly attempting to attach as much of himself as possible to Eddie. His face was pressed into Eddie’s collarbone and Eddie could feel his tears dampening the skin there.
Richie was a noisy crier, sniffling and letting out wet noises, out of control, untamed. He let out a sad, keening noise and brought his hands up to press his palms against his eyes, drawing jerkily away from Eddie’s chest for a moment, then burrowing further into Eddie. He didn’t cry prettily, softly, quietly. He cried with sadness and anger, with anguish and frustration. He brought his hands up to pull at his hair, but Eddie pushed them firmly down and pressed a kiss there instead. He held Richie tightly, and kissed his hair, and rubbed his back, and let him cry all over his chest, and he didn’t speak, and neither did Richie. Richie was an ugly crier, but he was still more beautiful than anyone Eddie’d ever seen; Eddie thought maybe Richie was the most beautiful boy in the world. He held Richie until he’d exhausted himself, sobs slowly petering out into soft, warm breathing against Eddie’s neck as Richie drifted to sleep. Richie had just messily cried himself to sleep on Eddie’s chest, snotty and wet and gross, and now he was starting to drool, but as Eddie traced patterns on Richie’s back and watched the way the string lights cast fragmented shadows on Richie’s face, he found he didn’t care, not even one bit.