cliché || reddie ✔️

fourteen

"All set over there, Eds?" He hears Richie whisper. He's about to nod when it clicks as to what Richie's asking of him. He's the one with the slideshow pulled up, therefore the one who need to connect the laptop with the projector. Mr. Martinez watches expectingly, a foot set out in front of himself, ready to jump in with assistance.

Eddie sets the laptop on the podium and pushes the blue cord into a port of his laptop. The projector is showing nothing, only washing the whiteboard with light until the two devices connect and the colors Richie chose for their slideshow flicker.

"Welcome ladies and gents," Richie says. There's no hint of nervousness in his voice and Eddie can barely wrap his head around how Richie isn't in the slightest bit scared. He peeks over at him and he looks a lot more relaxed than Eddie feels. A few breathy chuckles escape the tired students, all slouched in their seats waiting for lunch.

"Eddie and I are about to present hours of work only to be shown in the span of eight minutes." From under Richie's breath, Eddie hears a quiet "bullshit." He smiles, amused, but it's cut short when someone in the front row snorts loudly.

The two presenting boys look towards him, who only lifts a hand to cover his mouth as he laughs softly. From out of the corner of Eddie's eye, he sees the corners of Richie's mouth lift. Does he like all this attention?

Eddie clicks the space bar of his laptop and the slide changes. He glances at the stopwatch Mr. Martinez set out on a stool. Three sets of double zero's blare at Eddie, the last set slowly climbing higher and higher. eight minutes, Eddie tells himself, eight minutes and we'll be done

Weirdly enough, time passed quite slowly when Eddie looked at Richie. Everything seemed to drip away around them, but when he returned his attention back to the class, it all rushed back in. So, he either kept his eyes on Richie or the stopwatch, watching as the zero's flipped. On their third to last slide, Richie was babbling on, trying his best to hit their eight-minute mark.

'I could amaze them with my jousting skills,' Richie said, standing in the middle of his room with his arms up in a pretend sword fight.

'Richie, that's sword fighting you're doing. Jousting is when you're on a horse.' Richie looked at Eddie's pixilated face as he dropped his hands.

'Wanna be a horse boy then?'

'What the hell? No!'

"Then, as the army was swooping in, this General guy right here," Richie says and looks at Eddie. The two make eye contact and within that moment, Eddie gets the hint and quickly raises his hands to show off the black-and-white picture of the general, "Came in and stopped them all." A few chuckles rose into the air, including one from Mr. Martinez. Eddie's eyes roll and he switches the slide, a slide he has to lead.

Eddie looks at Richie, who's focus is on the students in front of him, blue light from the projector washing over his body. If Bill can get through a presentation with minimal stuttering, so can Eddie. Without the stuttering, of course.

~~~

"Why not invite Ben?"

"Ben?" Richie asks with a snort. His food sits forgotten in front of him, his eyes trained on the Rubik's cube spinning and rotating in his hands. "You mean the loser that got chased by Bowers?"

"Chased? What?" Stanley asks.

Eddie shakes his head, waving off Stan's confused look before saying, "Yeah, him. We also met him at the library, remember? He's the one that's friends with Mike."