cliché || reddie ✔️

thirty eight

Then, the two are meeting eyes and Richie darts his attention to the lake, overcome with embarrassment. His skin crawls under Eddie's gaze and nothing can tear his mind away from the sound of Eddie's shoes crunching on the dirt towards him.

"I got you a towel," Eddie says, something much different to the anxiety induced thoughts that bounced around in Richie's head.

"Oh," he forces out and grabs the rainbow checkered towel from him. A slight smile crosses his face, but before he could make any sort of comment Beverly's voice calls out to them.

She and Mike are already waist deep in the water, Ben farther out then the two of them. "Gonna stand there all day or what?" She asks, wading further into the depths of the murky water.

Richie drops his towel over his discarded clothes and takes Eddie's wrist, dragging the boy over to the waters edge. His own shoes were left by the fire long ago and Eddie stumbled to get his off before they could touch the lapping edge.

Ben was right, the lake was relatively cold, but still bearable. Tadpoles and plants alike all float and drift with the current, the small fish scattering when Richie splashes in further.

With no dock to dive off at or floaties you'd have at a pool, there wasn't much to do besides swim around and splash each other.

Beverly shrieks out every time someone even slightly gets close to her, not daring to trust another friend after Mike dragged her to where the sand slopes down into the abyss.

Eddie refuses to let Richie swim farther than a few feet away. He searches for Richie's hand until he can grab onto it and pulls himself closer, simply saying each time "Stop leaving, you idiot."

Richie only hugs the boy tighter, feeling Eddie's skin under his fingertips and begins to drift farther away from the group with Eddie close behind.

"Where the fuck are you going, Richie? I can't feel the ground," Eddie says, tipping his head back to keep from going under.

At this distance, the conversations of the others in the water drown out into silence. All the two can hear is the slight splashes of their arms and the crickets deep within the brush alongside the lake.

The sun is still minutes from setting and hours until darkness, but that doesn't stop the sky from dissolving into yellows and pinks and oranges. The moon is already out, round and full as it hangs with the blue of the sky.

"I'm never gonna leave you. You know that, right Eds?"

He looks over at Richie, his arms ceasing the excessive paddling he was doing to keep up. The water around them stills.

"I know that," he responds.

"Then stop making it sound like I am."

Eddie's eyebrows draw together and he looks a bit taken aback. His shoulders break the surface of the water (forceful kicking) and he says, "I'm not- I'm not making it sound like anything, Richie."

"Really?" Richie asks. He can feel his face crumble and he starts to repeat the words he's been telling himself for the past two weeks now.

don't cry, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry

But he's been keeping the hurt and the longing deep inside for far too long. Once he thinks he finally has Eddie, has a reason other than Beverly to stay in this pathetic excuse of a town, it gets ripped away. It's taken from Richie's hands just like everything else he thought he had control over.

At the mere thought of Eddie not being a few blocks away for the summer hurts Richie. His hands feel as if they've fallen right off, useless and no matter how hard he tries, they just won't move.