#no mike in this one sorry :( homeschool bby

[skeletonscribbles]

are u doing those prompts? if so how bout "so… did you miss me?" and “why do i love you?" ship of your choice but u know what im gunnin for :)

I am doing prompts, and I can totally deliver you some Reddie :) This one got away from me a little bit (2340 words…not bad, but not gr8 either), but I think it turned out pretty cute all in all, so – here’s this! I call it Mating Season, pure fluff, rated G :)“So…did you miss me?” & “Why do I love you?”

—-“Eds!” Richie Tozier cried out, loud even though he was sitting right next to Eddie on the cramped bus seat. “Eds, Eds, Eds!”

“What?” Eddie snapped, wound up from hours of being jostled. School buses were full of germs, and Eddie was sure he’d contracted at least twenty diseases just from spending fifteen minutes on this yellow death trap. Three hours was unthinkable.

And then, of course, there was the unfortunate matter of his seat partner.

When they’d boarded the buses, Eddie had tried his best to jockey himself into position behind clean, quiet Stan, but Richie had pushed his way in between them at the last second, insisting upon spending the next three hours “as close to [my] Eddie Spaghetti as possible”. Eddie had almost thrown up then and there.

He wasn’t upset about it because he didn’t like Richie. He liked Richie very much - in fact, most of the time he liked Richie enough to ignore his annoying habits, like speaking three decibels louder than was strictly necessary or making crude jokes about sex at inappropriate times.

Lately, though. Lately, sitting next to Richie had thrown him into a weird sort of anxiety spiral, and he wasn’t really sure what was causing it. Ever since last summer, when they’d all done whatever crazy amazing thing they did together (Eddie was fuzzy on the details of it, for some reason), every time Richie’s arm brushed Eddie’s side, or Richie’s thigh pressed against Eddie’s on the bench of the lunch table, Eddie had felt a little bit like he was on fire. He had no idea why, and he wasn’t sure he cared to think long enough on it to find out.

Obviously, then, three hours squished against Richie in a bus seat was nothing short of excruciating.

“It’s mating season,” Richie said gleefully, much to Eddie’s confusion, annoyance, and great embarrassment.

“What are you talking about, dumbass?” Eddie asked. He didn’t have to look in a mirror to know his ears were bright red; he was well aware of all the little ways that his body betrayed him when Richie started in on something like this.

“At the Wildlife Park,” Richie explained, bouncing a little in his seat. “It’s spring. Maybe we’ll get to see some of the animals doin’ it.”

“Gross!” Eddie exclaimed, shoving Richie against the window and wondering why his stomach suddenly felt like it was in his throat. “You’re so gross, Richie, oh my God.”

Richie cackled, grabbing Eddie’s hand and licking it. Eddie shrieked and withdrew, wiping his hand anxiously on Richie’s shirt before drawing it back in.

“I know exactly what moose mating calls sound like, too,” Richie continued, a terrible smile on his face. “I hear them every night when your mom–”

“Shut the fuck up!” Eddie slouched down in the bus seat, livid.

“Aw, Eds,” Richie began, but he was cut off by their science teacher, Mr. Williams.

“All right, we’re just about to the Maine Wildlife Park, so I want to announce the groups for today’s field trip. When you get off the bus, we’ll walk to the water fountain by the Visitor’s Center, you’ll find your chaperone, and you’ll stay with them until we get back on here in the evening. Understood?”

“Understood,” the entire eighth grade mumbled back disjointedly.

“All right.” Mr. Williams looked at his clipboard. “Four groups. First group, you’ll be with me, and that’s Angstrom, Arrowsmith, Bowers, Bowie, Conklin, Corcoran, Denbrough, Dunton, Earl, and Fadden.”

Eddie looked sadly across the aisle at Bill. No friends, and stuck with Henry Bowers? Yikes, alphabetical order had really screwed Bill over.

“Next, with Ms. Marsden: Gordon, Hagarty, Halloran, Hanscom, Hocksetter, Huggins, Jagermeyer, Johnson, Kaspbrak, and Kersh.”

This time, Bill was looking at Eddie sadly. Eddie didn’t have Bowers, but Hocksetter and Huggins together were just as bad. At least he’d have Ben with him…and he would have had their friend Mike, too, but unfortunately Mike’s grandpa had yet to be persuaded to take Mike out of homeschool and put him in the public system. Alas.

Well, at least Ms. Marsden was nice…as language arts teachers went, anyway.

“Third group, with Mr. Doyle: Laurie, Marsh, McCall, Mellon, Mueller, Phillips, Ripsom, Rogan, Rogers, Sadler”

Beverly groaned really loudly from her seat. Mr. Williams shot her an exasperated look, and then continued.

“And finally, with Mrs. Emerson, we have Starrett, Taylor, Tozier, Unwin, Uris, Webb, Winterberger, Wolcott, Wormwood, and Zachariah. Again, find your chaperone when we park and get off the bus. It shouldn’t be more than three minutes, now.” Mr. Williams sat back down, and there was an immediate roar of discontent. No one wanted to be separated from their friends, the Losers least of all.

“I can’t be with Richie,” Stan complained, “he’ll just make jokes about animal genitals all day! I wanted to record the ring-necked pheasants in my bird journal, and I swear, if he ruins it or vandalizes my stuff before we get there–”

“Nerd,” Richie stuck out his tongue at Stan. “Where do birds keep their dicks, anyway? Do birds even have dicks?”

“Cool it, Mr. Tozier,” Mr. Williams warned without turning around.

“Won’t happen again,” Richie called back. This was a very rehearsed line of his, and it was starting to come off as insincere…and it was insincere, but Eddie thought it would benefit Richie to be less obvious about it.

“It’ll happen again within five minutes,” Mr. Williams responded, resigned.

“Yeah, probably.” Richie sank down into the seat, unusually quiet as a sea of angry 13 year old voices rang out around him. Eddie peered at him curiously - usually he’d be more than thrilled to have hours upon hours to grate on Stan’s nerves, but apparently not this time.

“You alright, Rich?” he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

Richie shrugged. “I wanted to be in your group, is all.”

Oh. Eddie was surprised, and a little flattered - he’d honestly not considered that option.

“Thanks, I think?” Eddie tentatively put a hand on Richie’s forearm, shivering a little at the more intimate contact. “Next time.”

Richie still looked put-out. “I guess.”

Before Eddie knew it, they were being shepherded off of the bus, walking to the fountain meeting place where tour groups departed from, and dragged into their field trip groups. Eddie hadn’t particularly enjoyed sitting next to Richie on the bus, but he found that he missed him in a pretty immediate way once he was gone - especially with the looks that Patrick Hocksetter and Belch Huggins were giving him.

He moved closer to Ben, and hoped for the best.

It didn’t come.

The groups began to move off in separate directions pretty immediately (the Losers had all shared a fair amount of despondent looks amongst each other, and Richie had gone so far as to blow kisses to each of them). Eddie and Ben’s group shuffled off to the left after a young-ish looking red-headed tour guide that looked a little bit like an older version of Bill. Eddie grabbed Ben and tried to push towards the front, both to be able to hear the guide and to be nearer to Ms. Marsden in case anything went awry, but he was stopped by a hand on the back of his collar.

“Going somewhere, fairy boy?” Belch Huggins’ gross breath was unmistakable. Eddie gulped.

“Leave us alone, Belch,” Ben tried, valiant as ever, but he was grabbed in turn by Patrick Hocksetter.

“In the woods, no one can hear you scream,” Patrick said, emotionless in a way that gave Eddie an extreme case of the heebie-jeebies.

“They can see you eat shit, though, so…there’s THAT.” For whatever ungodly reason, Richie was back. He punctuated the last word of his sentence by shoving Patrick off of Ben and into a nearby tree.

Belch turned on Richie as Patrick struggled to right himself, and Eddie stared at the situation, frozen and aghast.

“Trash boy,” Belch growled. “You’re not in this group.”

“I am now,” Richie said, sounding way more confident than he looked, “and if you touch me or Haystack or especially Eds, I’m gonna let the whole eighth grade know the good news about what I caught you and Henry Bowers doing by the field house when I skipped social studies to go smoke, Hocksetter.”

Patrick, who was making his way back over, immediately paled and backed up. “Belch. No-go on this.”

Belch eyed him suspiciously. “Why?”

“No-go,” Patrick insisted, grabbing Belch’s arm. “Let’s go look at some fucking animals or whatever. Shit.”

Belch looked livid, but he moved towards Patrick anyway. “You got off easy this time, Tozier, but next time….look out.”

“Was that a glasses joke?” Richie called out after them, but they were too far away to feel like they had to respond.

Ben, Richie, and Eddie were left staring at each other in silence.

“Well,” said Ben after a long moment, looking between Richie and Eddie knowingly, “I wanna go catch up to Ms. Marsden to see what I missed. I’ll see you guys in a minute.”

“But–” Eddie began to protest, but Ben waved and moved curtly up the path ahead of them, not interested in hearing what Eddie had to say.

That left Eddie alone with Richie. Again.

“So…did you miss me?” Richie asked, grinning sheepishly.

“You weren’t even gone for five minutes,” Eddie said, crossing his arms. “What’s the matter with you?”

Richie shrugged, and shoved his hands in the pockets of his too-baggy cargo shorts. “It’s like I said. I wanted to be in your group.”

Eddie shook his head, absolutely baffled. “Why?”

“The moose enclosure is first for you guys, I think.” Richie changed the subject deftly. “That’s what the guides were muttering to themselves about before we left, anyway. Let’s go check it out.”

“Richie–” Eddie tried again, but Richie had grabbed ahold of his hand and was guiding him firmly towards the moose exhibit, or whatever.

When they finally caught up with the class, they were treated to the sight of exactly….one moose, with a disappointing lack of antlers.

“Moose are usually solitary animals,” the tour guide was explaining, “but during mating season, females swarm around males as a sort of harem.”

Richie squeezed his hand, and Eddie jumped - he’d forgotten that their fingers were still laced together.

“Richie, let go of me.”

“Are you even listening at all?” Richie’s face was alight. “Mating season? Moose harem?”

“When two males are interested in the same female, they’ll usually fight it out, which is pretty intense. Alice here is pretty big, right? Well, male moose are even bigger…and their horns are pretty deadly if used right.” The tour guide gestured to the moose behind him when he said Alice, and Richie bounced excitedly on the balls of his feet.

“Moose fight!”

Eddie tried to tug his hand away, but Richie wasn’t interested in letting go. “Richie, what the fuck?”

The group was moving towards the next exhibit, but Eddie wasn’t interested in moving until he’d gotten an explanation from Richie. This clingy behavior was out of character in a really concerning way. Usually he’d just insult Eddie’s mother, pinch at Eddie’s cheeks and move on, but today…

Well, no, not just today. Now that Eddie was thinking about it, Richie had been touchier than usual for a couple of weeks now - slinging his arm around him at lunch, or pulling him over to sit next to him during movie nights. It was probably just more obvious today, because they weren’t split up by different classes and assigned seats.

What the hell was going on?

“Whaddya mean, Eds?” Richie smiled, but his fingers started to tap against Eddie’s hand in a way that Eddie knew meant that Richie was nervous. (Richie fancied himself a good actor, but Eddie knew him better than anyone, and as such had catalogued all of his little tells.)

“Don’t call me that.” Eddie forcibly yanked his hand out of Richie’s and glared up at him, frowning. “Why have you been acting so weird?”

A little color drained from Richie’s face. “Weird?”

“Yeah, like…touchy and stuff.” Eddie didn’t understand any of what Richie was doing, least of all how nervous he was right now. He looked like Eddie felt around him, nowadays. “What’s up?”

“They’re going to see the swans without us–” Richie tried, but Eddie wasn’t having it.

“Richie.”

“Swans mate for life you know,” Richie said, quiet and unexpectedly sweet. Eddie felt his heart skip in his chest, stared at Richie’s slight frown, disheveled curls, and furrowed eyebrows that were causing his glasses to slip down his nose, and came to a realization that almost made him pass out.

Oh, FUCK.

“Just like me and your mom!” Richie finished, crowing, and Eddie almost screamed.

“Why do I love you?” he blurted, mouth miles ahead of his mind. Immediately, he clapped his hands over his mouth, mortified. Richie stared back at him, mouth hanging open stupidly.

Well, there was that friendship down the tubes.

“Sorry, what now?” Richie asked after a moment of terrible silence.

“Nothing,” Eddie hissed, storming off. “We have to see the swans.”

“Eds, come on!”

“Swans, Richie!”

Richie laughed, surprised and joyful, and followed after Eddie with a gigantic dorky smile on his face.

“We could be swans, you know, Eds,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows exaggeratedly and grabbing Eddie’s hand again. Eddie made no move to pull away this time, though he did make a point of digging his fingernails extra hard into Richie’s hand. (Richie flinched, but did not complain.)“Um, no we couldn’t?” Eddie was so lost in the swirl of feelings and thoughts in his brain that he couldn’t for the life of him understand the meaning of what Richie had said. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s mating season,” Richie said simply, and Eddie shoved him into a bush.

It was going to be a long, strange day, followed by a long, strange bus ride home.

Eddie found himself looking forward to it.