Work Text:
Since Richie and Ruth were young the Fleming and Lipschitz households had celebrated the holidays together. Their parents had thought it a good idea, stemming both from the respective families not being the religious kind, and it made sense they thought to raise their equal-aged girls up together to do all the things girls growing up together did.
Things did not turn out quite as expected. Sometime after noon the Fleming family arrived at the doorstep. Upon opening the door Ruth does a squeeze through the people downstairs, not wanting to join in on the unnecessary chit chat, knowing Richie was upstairs waiting for her. Remaining in the doorway, Mrs. Fleming and Mrs. Lipschitz both do an inward sigh in unison, what happened to the little girls they once knew they think. For they’re not quite as small anymore, or not quite girls. At the sound of Ruth yelling something up the stairs, they look at eachother and give a sort of ‘what can you do’ smile and shrug.
Upstairs Richie is scrolling through Tumblr at what is trending under his favourite fandoms, there’s a lot of Christmas related art and memes as one could expect, but also the usual top fandom filth you find while searching through the basic tags. Sighing he switches to his Discord to check if anything else has been said since he last checked 2 minutes ago.
Brainrot central - #boobs
11:20 peter claus: ted’s being really annoying about going to church
who’s gonna tell him that “picking up hot babes” is not typical church behavior?
11:27 christmas w-ruth: if it was i’d be the one going to church
if u can get away u can come 2 richie’s and watch dumb Christmas movies with us
11:28 merry richmas: (ò_ó)
11:28 christmas w-ruth: hey what did i say now
11:28 merry richmas: u cant just invite people to *my* house ruth (=_=)
11:29 christmas w-ruth: it’s not like we’re gonna be making out, it’s just movies
even if we were idm pete joining
11:29 merry richmas: that’s not the point ruth
if pete came over i’d have to tell mom
what if she said no
11:30 christmas w-ruth: Richie
Richard
11:30 peter claus: full named
11:30 christmas w-ruth: shut up peter
richie ur literally worrying about nothing
has ur mom ever said no
11:31 merry richmas: no but
11:31 christmas w-ruth: exactly
ur being dumb and worrying about nothing
11:34 merry richmas: fine
pete u can come if u want but could u tell me beforehand so i know and can metally prepare :-)
11:39 peter claus: ill let u know
Ted will probably go out to the bar later so atleast ill be able to join a call
12:27 christmas w-ruth: this is me telling u we’re otw richie :3
12:28 merry richmas: (=^・^=) maow
Being too busy reading the old messages, Richie does not hear what Ruth yells up the stairs at him, he does however jolt when the door to his room bangs open and hits the wall.
“What the fuck Ruth!” Richie yells in surprise. Ruth looks sheepish, but really smug.
“I got you your present!” She flings the gift like frisbee across the room, being made of flimsily put together wrapping paper it only goes about a quarter of the way into the room before landing on the floor.
While Richie gets up to get it, muttering a “thanks” as he does it, Ruth makes her way into his room and sits down on a pillow on the floor before starting “You know-
I saw the hottest lady on my way to you, and I mean, wow, banging body, your lucky I prioritised you getting your present or else I would’ve totally made my moves on her” she’s grinning as she continues on.
Richie looks at her with a confused face “yeah? Guess people are out a lot of Christmas.”
“Oh no I didn’t see her outside, I saw her when she opened the door for us” Ruth is still grinning, really proud of herself for her joke. Richie just continues to look at her with a blank expression.
“It was your mom” she bursts out into a giggling mess “your mom is really hot, just ask pete he’d agree”.
Richie rolls his eyes and focuses on the collection of wrapping paper he’s holding now, his gift from Ruth. He sits down on another pile of pillows on his floor before rolling over to grab something from one of his shelves.
“Your present. Here.” Richie gives it to Ruth who immediately starts opening it, forgetting all about her ‘ur mom is hot’ joke she had pulled earlier.
“I never quite know what to get you, and u owe me because getting this shipped to me and not having my parents see it was annoying but after you made that joke a couple months back about-“ Richie is interrupted by Ruth yelling “oh my GOD richie! I love them.”
In her haste to open the present the ‘them’ had managed to spill out, many penis-shaped lollipops were now all over ruth’s lap and richie’s floor. He only hoped that she’d bring them all with her when she left, he didn’t want his parents to see them later on his floor, that would only be more embarrassing.
“That’s good. I was sort of worried you wouldn’t find them funny so I also gifted you a small game on steam right after you left. So there’s that as well.”
“Richard Lipshitz trust me when I say I will ALWAYS love getting a surprise penis for Christmas. Oh wait I need to share this with peter he will hate it” She quickly pulls out her phone and takes an image of the lollipops scattered around.
Then she stops and thinks “Hey richie, what message do you think is better im stuck between two jokes. Either A. Look they’re all the same size as you, or B. Got dicked down by Richie Lipschitz now I need to think of a new, new years resolution”
“Those are horrible Ruth, and also unrealistic because you’ve never seen Peter’s you-know-what and you can’t have been dicked down by me, it’s literally impossible.” Richie says while plugging up his laptop to the floor-level projector he has.
“It being physically impossible makes it even BETTER Richie, I’m going with that one” Ruth finishes up on her phone before going over to Richie’s laptop and searching up Aniwave to find something to watch.
“What do you wanna watch?” “I don’t really care, there’s not much new stuff to watch” Prompted by this she scrolls down to see what series got updated recently “haven’t heard of it… haven’t heard of it… this is all boring.. Wait didn’t you like idolmasters?”
Richie looks at Ruth “Yeah, but not the new stuff obviously” “what’s obvious about it?” “Well first off Million Live is made by a different studio, you can’t trust stuff when it’s made under new people.”
He sits down again as Ruth listens while simultaneously scrolling through the show’s page.
“ - and they totally showed they messed it up because they made the new series with 3d animation. We all know that anime was intended as a 2d piece of film, making shows 3d fundamentally messes with the experience. It’s like forcing an English dub on the audience, only worse! No anime is enjoyable when it uses 3d animation, it’s just cheap and inexcusable.”
At this Ruth perks up a bit “didn’t Attack on Titan use 3d animation in season 4?” she knows she has hit the spot when Richie sputters “B-But that’s different! Completely different Ruth don’t you get it, Attack on Titan is a work of art that has been crafted meticulously, while yes they may have taken some shortcuts you can in no way-“
Richie’s argument that had shifted into discussing Attack on Titan lasted for atleast 27 minutes, with Ruth nodding and agreeing, but still prodding the other with questions she knew would annoy him. Until she was getting tired of hearing about the art of animation as Richie had started calling it, and decided to change the focus.
“Aren’t you gonna open the present I gave you?” At this Richie finally paused and looked down at the present he hadn’t noticed had slid a bit aways from him.
Reaching out he grabbed it, sat upright and started unwrapping it. “You know Ruth, you could’ve just given me something online, or money, I could always use more money”
“Yeah I know, but I think you might like this,” He had finished unwrapping it now and looked down at two clear phone cases and a pile of different stickers. Looking through them he saw several of his favourite characters on the stickers, as well as things from his favourite anime and manga in general.
As Richie looked through the stickers Ruth started explaining herself “I figured you would want a little variation in what shows and characters you’re showing off. I thought about putting them together myself but figured you would like the option to put together the stickers on the phone cases yourself.”
“Wow thanks Ruth, this is really nice. Oh there’s even little heart stickers!! And crosses. Now I can show who I hate and who I love that’s so nice.”
Richie smiled at Ruth, and she smiled back at him. Then a glint in her eyes shone and she turned to Richie’s laptop in a hurry and got up a movie for them to watch.
“What are you looking for?” Richie asks as he sees the movies fly across the screen while Ruth scrolls “oh just the best Christmas movie” she giggles.
Despite his initial protests they strike a compromise that this will be the only movie Ruth gets to pick, then watch the entire 2018 Grinch movie together.