Richie Tozier / Bill Weasley
"Fuck off," Richie told Bill as he laughed and laughed. And his tone wasn't like... mean. He didn't mean it, didn't have any real intention of insulting Bill with his words, but it had to be said. "I meant to find a drug store," he lamented. He had. He'd tried pretty fucking hard to find one that first week and hadn't really succeeded. And then all the horror shit had been going on and -- no condoms or anything else for Richie Tozier.
And yeah, no. He definitely wouldn't have gone around asking.
He readjusted the damn things in his pocket and then took a long swallow of booze and a drag from his smoke even as everything burned on the way down. "Yeah," he said slowly, thinking of the date, of what had been going on around 1988. He'd been 12, had been in love with Eddie for going on a year already at that point. But it hadn't been safe back then, to think about anything. To do anything.
Eddie'd told regurgitated stories from his mom about how people got AIDS just touching the same street post as someone else.
Kids got beat up for all sorts of shit every day. Little gay kids? They didn't go home alive.
"Yeah," he repeated and then scrubbed at his face with the free fingers he had that weren't holding onto his smoke. "What'd you do?"