Lover | Richie Tozier

Chapter 2.

Elle
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Freckles danced in a choreographed ballet across the surface of the boys seamless skin as he waited for an answer. Butterfly kisses fluttered on his cheeks, their wings escaping through his eyelashes.

My mouth opened, ready to give him the explanation he'd been waiting so patiently for, but the response was cut off by three words flying down the corridor.

"Richie fuckin' Toaster? What the fuck are you doing with a girl?"

Emerging from the shadows in every corner of the hallway was a tall blonde slowing his way towards us like a creature in the night. His stature was slightly bent, allowing his tone to be heard without fault. The voice was thundered and distressed in the midst of the empty environment.

"Tozier," Richie corrected nonchalantly, turning around and meeting the source of the hovering presence. His glasses slid down the bridge of his nose, and in response he took his slender fingers to adjust them upwards.

"Toaster, Tozier, Toad, it's all the same, isn't it?" Henry pressed on, pushing Richie's shoulder forcefully. He didn't even look at him for more than 5 seconds before disputing again. "Jesus, Tozier. You look like hell. You already get a good ass beating today? I know that father of yours has some serious anger issues. Looks like he's been home for once."

In spite of the ceaseless taunting, Richie's face was dead-panned with a lack of amusement. "Better than your mother when I left her this morning," he shrugged, fixing his glasses back onto his face again from where they had continuously been slipping off.

There was no sense of bother sitting on his features or anywhere in his suppressing tone. If he was scared of Henry, and he surely didn't seem like it, he hid it really well. The comment about his father stung like the bite of a wasp, but he still didn't let it show.

Henry drew in a stern breath, igniting up in scorching flames over the mere mention of his mother. The way that she had left him more than 9 years ago still burned wounds through his soul. "Do you hear yourself, Tozier? This is why I push you around so fuckin' hard. That mouth of yours. It's constantly talking back. Maybe if you learned to shut that roadrunner mouth then..."

Richie scoffed flatly. "Then what? That's not true, Henry. And you know it. I see you picking on that poor Kaspbrak kid all the time and God knows that he doesn't say shit to you. He doesn't say shit to anyone. You know exactly why you push me around, fucker."

While the boys disputed, the name that had crossed paths with Henry's mouth brought on faint recognition. Eddie Kaspbrak -- a smaller kid who carried around two fanny packs and usually donned a bright red polo t-shirt. In the little bag around his waist held two very important things: a bottle of anxiety medication and an inhaler.

"Wheezy can't even form a singular sentence without his lungs collapsing on him," Henry simpered. "That's the fun of it."

Pure evil shook from his mouth and took form in the grin on his face as he said this. Everything about him seemed wrong. Henry picking on Richie... made sense. Surely Richie didn't deserve it, but the two go together like night and day. But to go after someone like Eddie Kaspbrak was nothing but a way to get completely high on power and control.

"God, you're a real asshole, you know that?" I bit abruptly. "I was never one to pay any mind to preconceived notions, but here we are. Making fun of a kid for being asthmatic. Imagine that! You're such an asshole, Henry."  My locker slammed with more force than I intended, sending chiming waves of rattling noise down the vacant hallway.

Richie watched the action with a cocked eyebrow. Amusement dawned on his face, touching the highest points with sparks of interest.

Henry placed his long arm over Richie's face and onto the locker that he was leaning on, purposefully blocking him from my field of view. Richie ducked and delved to try and get a good look at what was going on, but Henry didn't seem to care. He couldn't anyways. Henry was a good 6 feet tall and Richie only made it three or four inches past the top of my head.