Archive of Our Own

Richie hated family gatherings. Any familial gathering of any kind was not his forté. He’d always been the black sheep, even before he came out, preferring to sit in a secluded spot and draw rather than interact with the others, near his age or not. More often than not, it ended up with him saying his polite greetings and then retreating, like a rabbit straying out of its hole to search for food before being scared straight back by a wandering fox. He simply didn't feel like he had anything to say to his relatives. Nothing that they would want to listen to, nothing that they wanted to hear. 

But his cousin's family gatherings; he always hated them with a little extra vitriol. His cousin's always invited every single extended relative they could think of to every single one of their events. Birthday party? Go down the entire family tree. Wedding? Hell, why not invite the pope or something! They were distantly related in some way, weren’t they?

And then Richie would have to go around shaking hands with everyone, even if he had no recollection of ever even seeing their face in a picture before. Usually he gave it about 20 minutes before he went to hide, only to inevitably be fetched by his mother, intent on making him socialise. Then he’d slink away again, and this would be how things went for the rest of the event, until they were in the car-ride home, where his mother would scold him for everything he did wrong while he tuned her out and stared at the passing scenery.

Never say his family didn’t have traditions.

Since he had come out, things had been a little harder. His mother wasn’t overly pleased with the change. After he’d built up the courage to tell her, it seemed like she’d immediately forgotten about it. He told her a second time, and she told him she didn’t want him to make any rushed decisions, that he was still young and figuring things out, and that he was such a sweet girl, that he’d grow out of it. No cutting your hair, don’t tell anyone, just keep it quiet … Coddling words and sentiments that only made his eyes sting with tears, as he wondered what he would have to do to make her see him the way he saw himself. He wondered if it was even possible.

He felt like that greek guy with that big rock, the one he was pushing up the hill or something. Each time his mother made some sort of a step in the right direction, she fell back on it. Always with the name, always with the wrong pronouns. It stung. It made him want to crawl into a ball and hide under the bed.

It's hard to do that during a birthday party. Especially one that wasn't his.

Richie was sitting on the steps leading down from his cousins’ (outrageously fancy) house to their terrace. It never ceased to astound him how incredibly big his cousins’ house, or yard in general, was. Ostentatious and big and white. In his hand he held a plastic-cup full of soda. Cola. Richie didn’t like Cola, but it’d been all but forced into his hand all the same.

He felt out of place. A dandelion in the middle of a big field of grass, or something like that. He wasn’t stupid; he was acutely aware of the judgmental glances, the fake smiles hiding a greed for gossip. He was just a circus freak, something for everyone to gawk at and then give their opinions of. Not a person. Never a person. Sometimes he wished they’d just call him a slur and move on with it. 

After around the 8th look in his direction, Richie stood up, deciding that his 20 minutes were up, bringing his backpack with him. At the edge of the yard, where the yard met the forest, there was a little hammock sofa. It was deep in the shade, and the fabric was coated with pollen - obviously this wasn’t close enough to the festivities that they’d decided to clean it. Which was perfect, because it meant nobody was likely to join him.

From here he could see the pristine white house. It was a little like being flashbanged, looking at it. Like stepping out from your dark house into a snowy landscape. Maybe he should’ve brought sunglasses. Hah.

Richie took out his sketchbook from his backpack and began to doodle.

He could do that for hours, mediocre anime drawings bleeding from his pencil like he was a twelve-year-old, weeby Michelangelo. Right now it was Naruto, but he tended to flip through a different anime from month to month, with varying intensities. When it was at its peak, he could stay up entire nights just consuming that particular media. It wasn’t the most healthy habit, but it made him giddy with excitement, and was a form of escapism he figured he’d allow himself (even if his already questionable grades suffered a little for it).

“What are you drawing?”

Richie jumped about five feet in the air and slammed his hand onto his sketchbook, (debatably) hiding his drawings from view. When he looked up, there was a suit-clad man with his hands in his pockets and an awkward smile on his face.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you heard me coming.”

“I-it's fine.” Richie immediately responded, avoiding eye contact. A thick silence fell over the pair.

“So… What are you drawing?” The man asked again. 

Richie hesitated for a few seconds before uncovering his sketchbook. He didn’t really like to show people his drawings, especially not when they weren’t finished yet. 

“Oh, oh wow!” The man's eyebrows shot up, and he took a little step forward to take a closer look, ignorant of the way Richie tensed up. “This is actually good!”

Richie looked up at him at that, any fear he might’ve had for the man replaced by surprise and affront. The man seemed to have realised what he’d said, because his eyes widened.

“Oh, not like that! I just meant, well, you’re pretty young, I wasn’t expecting it. I like it.” 
That seemed to be an acceptable excuse, because Richie looked away from him again, a little bit of pride shining through in the way he held his head higher.

The man relaxed, and a less tense silence fell over the two of them. Once again, the man was the one to break it.

“You’re Eliza’s kid, aren’t you?” The way Richie tensed up was enough of an answer. Richie could already see the way the conversation would evolve from here - the exact same one he’d had with everyone else a million times before.
“What’s your name?” 

Richie curled in on himself, pulling his knees up to his chest, as if the question was a punch he could avoid.
“You know my name.” He grumbled, because he was certain the man did know his name. He was certain his name had been brought up many times during the night.

The man seemed surprised at the effect the pleasantry had on Richie, glancing between the kid and the festivities again. He remained silent for a few moments, swallowing thickly. A dot was connected.
“Well… What do you… Want to be called?” The man asked carefully, like he was solving a puzzle he wasn’t sure if he should stay away from or not. 

Richie froze. That was a first. He looked up at the man, shock evident in his expression. This was the last place Richie had expected to find any trace of validation. A beat passed between the two of them. 

“... Richie.” 

The man nodded, like a puzzle piece was slotting into place in his mind. He smiled gently. 
“Nice to meet you, Richie. My name is Paul.”

Paul. Paul. He wasn’t sure if he’d heard that name before.

His thought process must have been visible on his face (he never was good at hiding his emotions), because Paul continued;
“I’m Eliza’s brother. Your Uncle.” 

… Now that was news to him. Once again his emotions must’ve shown on his face (he must’ve looked dumb; slack-jawed and surprised), because Paul, his uncle, took a perfectly distanced seat next to him.

“Your mother and I don’t see eye to eye. I’m not surprised she hasn’t mentioned me.” Paul said, as if not being mentioned was probably the better option here. He didn’t seem too beat up about it. It wasn’t hard for Richie to imagine why that might be.
“I’m only here for your cousin. I don’t give a- I don’t care much for the whole social thing.”

Richie almost laughed at the way Paul censored himself- as if his own mother hadn’t hurled worse words at him than ‘shit’.

“I don’t want to be here,” Richie admitted, keeping his gaze on the neatly mowed lawn in front of them. 
“I don't know anyone and everyone keeps staring at me like I’m a freak.”

He didn’t see the look of recognition that passed over Paul’s face, as if Richie had just taken a page from his younger self’s diary and read it out loud. He recognised himself in him more than he wanted to.

The air between them fell silent again, though not in the tense way it’d been before. The seeds of trust had been sown.

“You know,” Paul began, voice hushed and conspiratorial, “When I was your age, and I had to get through parties like this, I’d just mention football or whoever was running for mayor at the time. Usually people continued on those subjects instead of questioning me, and then I could just… Quietly sneak away.” He tapped the side of his head, as if sharing some forbidden knowledge.

Richie gave him a disbelieving look. “There is no way that works.”

“Every time. Like a charm.” 

His words came easier after that. Paul, Richie figured, just seemed to be on the same wavelength as him. Richie talked while he drew (explaining the plot of Naruto), and Paul seemed content just to sit there in his presence (not understanding the plot, but listening anyway).

Like all good things, it had to come to an end.

“Eliza is heading this way, just so you know,” Paul informed him, halfway through his rant, which effectively cut it short. His mom usually didn’t appreciate his infodumps. The tension that had left his body during the course of their interaction gradually returned with each step in their direction, until the woman was in front of them with a smile so cold it sent a chill down Richie’s spine.

Paul didn’t seem deterred, meeting hers with a fake smile of his own.

“Paul! Long time no see!” She didn’t seem all too upset about it.

“Far too long. I must’ve missed your invitations.” It was very clear that none of her invitations had been sent his way, and that none of them would have been accepted if they had been. 

Richie looked between the two of them, halfway expecting one of them to lunge.

“I just came to fetch Sandy. She’s missing out on the party!” She held out her hand, clearly expecting Richie to heel to her side like a dog. And Richie did, lowering his head and grabbing his backpack and sketchbook to silently shuffle over to her. Immediately upon regaining her child, she placed a possessive hand on his shoulder, staking claim. Richie tensed up and risked a glance up through his bangs at Paul, who was masking his discontent pretty well.

“For sure. We were just chatting.” He gave Eliza a tight-lipped smile before looking at Richie. “I didn’t mean to keep you from the party.” He said, tone on the brink of sarcasm, as if he was making a joke only the two of them were in on. Richie offered him a hidden, shy smile back.

Without entertaining the conversation any further, his mother gave Paul a cold smile (more of a grimace really), as she led Richie away, back to the party. For the remainder of the event, she kept a close eye on the boy, and he was left unable to make another escape. Paul didn’t come to talk to him for the remainder of the evening.

He wasn’t disappointed at that. He wasn’t.

It wasn’t until the car-ride home that his mother brought up Paul again, right in the middle of their scheduled scolding session.
“You need to stay away from him, Sandy.” Richie winced at the name, keeping his gaze set firmly out the window. “That man is a bad, bad influence.”

That did catch his attention. He couldn’t remember his mom being so adamant about him staying away from someone else before. He wasn’t sure she’d ever even given him a stranger-danger talk.

“He is?” He asked, poorly hiding his curiosity. 

His mother scoffed, like the mere thought of her brother was enough to tick her off.
“He shouldn’t even be invited to any of these damn parties. That man should have been cut off long ago.”

She didn’t elaborate further, choosing to stew in the driver's seat instead. And Richie was too afraid to ask anything more when she was already upset.

They spent the rest of the car-ride in silence, as Richie considered what the man could have done to piss off his mom this badly.

The meeting with his uncle Paul slipped his mind for a while thereafter. He had other things to worry about - like keeping his mom happy and avoiding bullies, and staying up so that he didn’t miss the chapters in Mystic Messenger.

The callback came to him in the form of another invitation in their mailbox two years later. This time to a wedding; a much more formal and, undeniably, heteronormative environment than a birthday party. All of his relatives gathered in one place, all of them wearing their sex-assigned formal clothing. And Richie’s immediate thought was: Shit, I’m gonna have to wear a dress.

Not just a dress, but the puffiest, pinkest, mostly girly atrocity he’d ever laid his eyes on. It even sparkled. Even if he had been cisgender, this would have been an entirely unsuitable dress for someone older than nine. He was on the cusp of fifteen.
He’d stood his ground on this one, to no avail. The screaming match had come and gone. And at the end of it he was no closer to ridding the world of that monstrosity, so he took matters into his own hands. His mother had taken from him the control of his wardrobe on this occasion. Everything else, however, was still his to do as he wished.

An hour after that thought crossed his mind, he stood in front of the bathroom mirror with a pair of scissors in his hand. All around him on the floor, his hair lay scattered. The haircut was by no means perfect. In fact, it was pretty shitty. Choppy and uneven, and sticking out in some places even if he tried to get it to lie down. But it was short, and it was his haircut. He stepped out of the halo of hair, like a lizard shedding its skin. It felt a little like rebirth.

His mother reacted as expected, with more screaming and with the shattering of one ruler who had made the grave mistake of existing within her vicinity. He certainly wasn’t getting out of wearing the dress now, but he probably wouldn’t have done so before either. On top of that, his mother had outright refused to aid him when it came to styling his hair. Not that he thought she’d be any help, but he certainly didn’t know how to fix it. She’d argued that he’d put himself in that spot, and now he would have to face the consequences of it. And he didn’t have any arguments against that.

It’d been a small blessing that his relatives had chosen to have an autumn wedding and that he’d been allowed to bring a sweater.

Immediately after the ceremony (which was fine, by the way), he’d donned the sweater, claiming that he was cold. It was actually very hot, what with all of his sweaty relatives getting more and more drunk around him, but he’d rather deal with his overactive sweat glands than the discomfort of what he was wearing.

It was harder to find somewhere to sneak off to at a wedding. And it was harder to find a time to sneak off, too. And there were so many people, he felt like his head was spinning with the amount of faces he’d had to look at, and the amount of hands he’d had to shake, and his mother kept steering him in different directions by his shoulders like he were a dog on a leash.

But worst of all were the looks. He knew he looked weird, with his choppy haircut and his blue sweater over a very, very pink and sparkly dress. But it was like people could see through him, like they could tell the dress was wrong. Or well, it wasn't the dress that was wrong, not really. No, he was wrong. There was something wrong with him, and he could see it in the eyes of everyone he met.

He was really, really hating this reception.

Somewhere around his mother's third glass of wine, the voices around him started to echo through his skull like gunshots, and the lights seemed too bright, and the people on either side of him kept brushing against him way too much when they reached over the table, or when they talked, and everyone kept acting like he was not even there. It was like he was invisible. He fled the table, slinking towards the bathrooms with the feeling of tears burning behind his eyes. Nobody noticed.

It was an odd feeling, both wanting to be found and wanting to remain unseen and hidden at the same time. He knew there was nobody in the family who cared about his disappearance. It was a bone-deep piece of knowledge he’d had for as long as he could remember; the sky was blue, water was wet, and Richie's family did not care when he disappeared. He’d accepted it, internalised it, but he couldn’t keep himself from wishing that someone would care. Maybe just once.

The handicapped bathroom was thankfully empty. He felt guilty for occupying it when someone might need it, but facing the judgmental looks of the women's bathroom or the harsh stares of the men’s bathroom felt impossible right now. And those were the best-case scenarios. When there was a lack of gender neutral bathrooms, the handicapped bathrooms usually became his escape, his liberation. A safe space. 

It was clean - enough so that he felt comfortable sliding down one of the walls until he sat on the floor, feeling the cool tile against his back, beneath his bum. It was soothing, like putting a wet towel on your forehead when sporting a fever.

The reception continued outside the door, even as Richie curled into a ball, invisible to the world. In times like this, he felt like the world was passing him by. At times like these, his tears flowed freely.

He was snapped out of his mild dissociation by a gentle rapping on the door. Richie’s heart leapt into his throat, his hands coming to clutch at his forearms as his breathing sped up. Oh god, he’d spent too long in here, and now someone who actually needed to use the handicapped bathroom was waiting outside, and he’d have to walk out of the bathroom, not handicapped, and it would be so embarrassing-

“Richie?... Are you in there?”

Over the sound of his own hyperventilating, he heard his uncle's voice, muffled from the other side of the door. Paul’s voice. Paul was the only one who would call him Richie. Paul was outside the door. Why? Did Paul need to use the handicapped bathroom?

“Please give me a sign you are alive. I’m uh, getting a little worried.”

Right.

Richie scrambled off of the floor to the bathroom door, wiping at his wet cheeks with the sleeves of his sweater. He (very clumsily) unlocked the door and shoved it open - startling the suit-clad man outside the door. In fact, he was pretty sure it was the same suit the man had worn the last time he saw him - either dark brown or black, he couldn’t really decide. The familiarity was comforting either way. But the music. The music immediately became much louder, deafening, choking any other sound until all he could focus on was the thudding of the bass and the clinking of glasses and the tipsy laughter.

“Richie.”

Was he supposed to face them after leaving the bathroom? Face the rest of his family, in their increasingly un-sober states? Return just to be ignored for the rest of the evening? Listen to his mother's laughter get louder and louder - speaking of which, how the hell were they supposed to get home? They had driven here. She hadn’t told him about any plans to sleep over. Were they supposed to sleep over?

“Richie.”

He hadn’t brought any pyjamas! Or anything else! How was he -

“Richie, buddy, I need you to open your eyes.”

What a silly thing to say. His eyes were already open. Right? No, no wait, they weren’t.

Richie opened his eyes. Paul was in front of him, a concerned look in his big blue eyes - oh yeah, they were related, alright. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t clocked that immediately. 

A quick glance around confirmed that he was sitting on the floor of the bathroom again, with no memory of how he’d gotten there, and his hands were firmly clutching his own forearms, as he tended to do when he was anxious. He hadn’t even noticed himself doing so.

He blinked and looked up at Paul, noticing his own breathing begin to level out. God, had he freaked out in front of his uncle that he’d only met once before? 

Paul didn't seem too upset. In fact, he seemed relieved to have Richie’s attention again - that he’d managed to dig Richie out of his own head for the moment.
“Good, good job.” His uncle nodded at him, glancing down at his shoulder as if debating whether to give him a pat on it, but ultimately deciding against it. Instead, he moved over and sat down against the wall next to Richie. Richie tensed up at first, but slowly relaxed into the presence next to him. It was maybe even a bit comforting to have someone by his side.

“My mom doesn’t like you,” Richie stated bluntly, breaking the silence. The words came mostly from a need to say something, but he couldn't deny he was curious.

Paul didn’t seem offended. Rather, he nodded, unbothered by the fact and the bluntness with which Richie pointed it out.
“I know.”

Which did nothing to satiate Richie’s curiosity. He pressed on.
“She says you’re a bad influence."

Something like a small snort came from Paul, and Richie’s gaze flicked over to him, a confused look on his face.
“It’s funny coming from her,” Paul explained. Which, well, Richie could concede to that point - but that did little to explain anything. 

“Are you?” Richie asked, “A-a bad influence, I mean.”

A silence fell over the pair. Richie risked a glance up at Paul, only to see him frowning, lips pursed. He wondered if he’d crossed a line, if maybe Paul had taken offence to his question. Or maybe there was something more to this.

Paul broke the silence again, 
“The reason your mom thinks I’m a bad influence is because I’m bisexual.” It clearly wasn’t something he was ashamed of, but maybe the hesitation came from who he was talking to. Maybe he was hesitant because Richie was his sister's kid. Just another curse that came with being related to his mother.

“Oh.” Was his very smooth response to that. As soon as his own response registered in his mind, he scrambled to continue -
“I mean - that’s fine with me. I don’t care about that, I’ve read yaoi since I was 11.” Which was not information he meant to let slip. He counted his lucky stars that Paul didn’t seem to know what that was.
“But that would make sense. My mom isn’t very… She isn’t very…” Richie trailed off, the weight of his mother's nature landing on his chest once more like an elephant.

“I know,” Paul responded, voice earnest as he looked over at Richie, a melancholy expression on his face. Like he knew just how hard this had to be on him, just how conflicting and scary it was to have a mother who didn’t support who you were. And he probably did know, if Richie’s grandmother was anything to go by.
“I’m sorry, Richie.”

Tears burned behind Richie’s eyes again, and he curled up tighter, a little ball on the floor of the bathroom.
“Yeah. Well. You don’t get to choose your parents.” He managed to mumble, though it didn’t come out as lighthearted as he had meant for it to be.

Paul didn’t respond to that. There really wasn't much he could respond with. The two of them sat in silence on the floor of the bathroom, both unseen and ignored by their family, but no longer alone in their shared experience. The party raged on outside the room, the door acting as a temporary shield for the two of them. He could not be less excited about exiting a bathroom.

“You know, if you want,” Paul broke the silence, “You could sleep in my guest room. Just for the night. I don’t think your mother is planning on driving home tonight.”

Images of his mother yelling at him for disappearing during the party flickered through his head. Images of his mother dragging him back home in the morning, and screaming at him until her voice got all scratchy. But then images of his mother yelling at him tonight flickered through his head as well. Images of her drunk and shouting, and he decided immediately that that was definitely the worst option.

“Thank you.” He nodded gratefully at his uncle.

Leaving was a quiet affair - for Richie, at least, who had been told to wait outside while Paul spoke to his mother. Paul came out of the venue with a stormy look on his face, but immediately covered it up with an awkward smile in Richie’s direction. Richie figured the interaction went just about as well as he thought it would. His mom was rarely pleasant when she was intoxicated.
“The car is this way.”

Paul’s apartment was just as ordinary as the man himself. The “guest room”, Richie found, was less of a guest room and more of a home office with a pull-out couch. In the morning when he woke up, he noted that the couch was actually a grey-ish green, and not just grey like he’d thought when he went to bed the night before. The desk was old and made of Teak - figures that Paul would be a Teak kind of guy. His kitchen table was teak, too. But the chairs were from IKEA, or something. Richie continued observing his uncle's furniture in an effort to distract himself from the upcoming unpleasant interaction with his mother. The half-eaten slice of bread in front of him was getting less and less appetising by the second.

Paul seemed unsure of how to approach him, and remained hovering by the sink with a cup of coffee. Perhaps sensing that Richie was in his own little world, he didn’t speak up too much. Except…

“Your mom is coming to pick you up at around 12.”

Richie had known it was coming. But still, it felt like the sky was crashing around him. He nodded wordlessly, shifting in his seat. Even without meeting Paul’s eyes, he could feel his concerned gaze on him.

“Hey, why don’t you take my number?” Paul offered, his voice gentle and his movements slow and predictable as he approached the table. “If you ever need a break, you can come here. Just give me a call beforehand.”

Richie tried to smile at him. He wanted to believe him, to trust him, and to an extent he did- to a further extent than he trusted any other adult. But there was just something holding him back from fully doing so. He allowed Paul to put his number into his phone either way.

His mom was about as mad as he’d expected her to be when she picked him up.

Uncle Paul

18:37 
hey uncle paul

18:39
Hey Richie!

18:40
did yuo mean it when you said i could 
come to you if i needed to?

18:43
Yes, of course I did!

18:44 
ok, be right there

18:46
Is everything alright?
Read

18:50
Richie?
Read

The rain was pouring down outside, as if the gods themselves were determined to pour salt into his wounds, just to make this day that much worse for him. He’d meant to answer Paul's texts, but there’d been too much rain to use his smartphone. Richie trudged down the sidewalk, his sneakers squelching in the downpour, and his wet socks rubbing uncomfortably against the heel of his shoes. It’d be just his luck if he got sick now because of this. He managed to lumber his way to Paul’s front door either way.

He’d barely managed to finish pressing the doorbell by the time the door flew open, to the sight of a worried uncle Paul. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and his tie was missing, and Richie wondered if this was what Paul looked like after work or if this was all because of him. He didn’t get much time to wonder, because Paul ushered him into the apartment immediately.

Paul fussed over him, and Richie couldn’t find the energy to stop him. He shoved a pair of too-large sweatshorts and a sweatshirt into his hands, along with a towel, and then more or less pushed him into the shower and left, with a promise that he was right outside if he needed him. 

A warm shower turned out to be more or less exactly what he needed to rid himself of the bone-deep chill that had settled in his body after the rainy walk here. Paul’s clothes were big and warm and soft, like wearing a blanket. There were no scratchy hems or itchy tags or anything.

When he exited the bathroom, Paul was right outside, just like he’d promised he’d be. He gave Richie an honourable attempt at a smile, but his worry shone through either way.
“We can talk now or in the morning. If you’re too tired now, I get it, but if you want to sleep in, we can talk now and get our affairs in order tomorrow.”

Richie did want to sleep in. So a few minutes later he was sitting on Paul’s big couch, a blanket over his shoulders and a steaming mug of hot cocoa in his hands. Paul sat across from him in an armchair with a cup of tea. He hadn’t drunk from it yet, and Richie was suspecting he just found it comforting to hold something in his hands. Paul struck him as more of a coffee guy.

They sat in silence until Richie managed to find his words.

“She’s been threatening to kick me out for a while,” he explained, glancing up at Paul, who looked like Richie had just confirmed what he’d suspected - feared. “I just didn’t think she’d actually do it. It seemed like empty threats, like you know, everything else.”

Paul nodded. And Paul kept nodding, kept encouraging Richie to keep talking as he explained the fight that had broken out after she’d overheard one of his friends referring to him as Richie. The rest of the argument was a blur - he only knew that somewhere along the line he started apologising, started truly believing that this was his fault, that he’d done something wrong. It wasn’t a surprising turn of events; that was usually how their arguments ended. Only this time, she told him to get out.

“And so I packed some things and left.” Richie shrugged, keeping his eyes on the couch table. Teak. His cup of hot cocoa had cooled down in the time it took to tell his story, developing a gross layer of skin on the top of it. He set the mug down.

The silence that followed was empty, like all the air had been sucked out of the room. Paul looked, for all intents and purposes, like someone had just kicked a puppy in front of him. There was nothing left to say.

The older man nodded after a bit, as if he’d just made a decision. He offered Richie a small smile.
“Well, your bed has already been made. Tomorrow we’ll go and get the rest of your stuff.” He stood up, taking his cup and Richie’s mug (both still full) along with him to the kitchen. And that was that. 

Richie blinked in surprise at the shape of his uncle in the kitchen, who was now doing the dishes. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It didn’t. Instead, Paul dried his hands on a cloth and came out of the kitchen,
“I’m going to bed. You should try to get some sleep too,” no judgement in his tone. Just well-meaning concern. “We’ll get this figured out, I promise.”

That was a hefty promise. But Paul made it anyway. 

When Richie woke up, it was to the sound of muffled conversation, or more accurately, one side of an argument. He sighed, pulling his blanket up over his head to try and shut it out. It didn’t work, unsurprisingly. The argument seemed to reach a crescendo when;

“You know what, Eliza? You are just as bad a mother as you were a sister.”

The phone call seemed to be over after that. Richie found himself wondering who hung up on who.

A few minutes later, Paul came and knocked on his door, telling him he’d made pancakes. Who would Richie be to say no to that?