3rd Person POV

Richie really wanted to smoke. Of all the times he had been urged to relapse, this by far was the worst.

He was pacing in his room, thinking about his friends.

They seemed so grossed out.

He wondered what would happen if they ever found out about him. It didn't sound like they would accept him. Richie felt he had to keep it in him forever, he never wanted to tell his friends. He had so much fun hanging with them, he didn't want to ruin that.

I'll just be...gay at night, when I'm not around any of my friends or my parents. Yeah, that's what I'll do.

Richie tried to feel content with the idea, but in reality he wanted to shout from the rooftops. He wanted to be proud of who he was.

But Richie didn't see any way that he could do that.

I need to express myself somehow, he thought. Then an idea hit him, he ran to his parents bathroom and started digging through drawers.

His parents weren't home at the moment so he wasn't worried about getting caught.

"Bingo," he smiled, holding up the bottle of white nail polish up. White was the perfect color. Rainbow would have been too obnoxious, but white was the color before hitting the prism and becoming a rainbow. And that's how Richie felt, like he was just white light waiting for his prism to let him be a rainbow.

Richie sat on his bed and meticulously painted his nails, which was harder than he had originally thought. the finished product wasn't very clean, but Richie was still proud.

"It's better than smoking," he whispered softly, smiling at the small expression of his identity that he could control.

Then he got another idea.

"When I'm feeling gay, I eat ice cream," he decided, remembering the time Eddie had gotten ice cream for him and only him and how many butterflies had flown around in his stomach.

So Richie went to his kitchen and got out ice cream from the freezer, smiling all the while.

As he scooped it into a cone he sang to himself, 'ice cream is officially gayyyyy,'

It was therapeutic, Richie sitting on his couch holding an ice cream cone with his painted nails. He felt like everything would be okay if he could keep doing stuff like this. Being gay in secret. It was almost thrilling.

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Eddie was getting ready to shower, 'all those germs from Ben's house,' as his mother put it. Eddie had agreed that it was a good idea for once, he needed to wipe away Richie from his lips. He thought that maybe the memory would go away too.

He also needed to wash Bev's disgusting cigarette lips from his cheeks. Somehow that had been way worse than him kissing Richie.

It was just gross for him to think about. He and Richie were best friends, kissing him was way more right than Bev -- a girl -- kissing him. Girls were so much scarier. People expected a girl and a guy to be together, friendship was out of the way. But guys were supposed to be friends, and Eddie was comfortable around friends. He knew how guys worked, he was a guy.

So kissing a guy was safe and comfortable compared to the foreign feeling of a girl's lips.

Eddie reasoned that that was why he was more grossed out by Bev kissing him. He would rather kiss Richie right on the lips than have Bev kiss his cheek again.

My shower thoughts are fucking weird today, Eddie thought.

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Woah

Another chapter.

Who is she?

Lol okay, Some of the stuff Richie does in here actually relates to things in my life and so it really made me happy writing this chapter. Idk.

Love the coping