Archive of Our Own ^beta

Richie takes a deep breath, steadying himself before finally pushing open the double doors in front of him. He presses against the door, holding his injured leg up while he grabs his crutches from the wall beside the door. He enters what looks to be some kind of conference room. There’s a long, expensive looking wooden table lined with equally expensive looking chairs. A large window at the end of the room covers most of the wall. The curtains are drawn shut, which Richie isn’t too pleased about. It’s a waste of natural sunlight. That’s the type of thing his mother would lose her mind over. A warm light above the table washes the room in oranges and yellows. It looks like it was purposefully designed to seem welcoming. Richie still sees a prison. Waiting for him in one of the chairs is Duke Keane, the man who is going to be interrogating him for the next eight hours. Richie doesn’t know why he’s being forced to do this. There’s nothing wrong with him. Nothing at all. 

Duke immediately stands up to greet Richie when he enters, with a stupid kind smile on his face. He holds out his hand for Richie to shake. “Hey, Richie!” 

Richie stares daggers at him, letting Duke’s unrequited handshake hang in the air. It quickly becomes too awkward to bear and Richie’s hand twitches upwards to shake his hand. He quickly realises his mistake and tries to hide his left hand behind his back, holding out his right one. The left one is haphazardly covered in bandages and gauze. He’d wrapped it himself. Duke catches on immediately, raising an eyebrow and eyeing the hand. 

“What happened there?” He asks, his tone carefully measured. Richie had learned to be able to tell when people were treading carefully around him. 

“I fell three stories, Duke.” He replies dryly, crossing his arms. 

Duke doesn’t question how Richie knows his name already. He smiles at Richie with a similar dryness. “I read your file. A lacerated hand wasn’t listed as one of your injuries.” 

“Okay, Sherlock. I have a fractured tibia, several broken ribs, a sprained wrist that’s healed already, and I split my head open. I don’t think it seems so crazy that I also cut my hand up a little.” Richie sits down on a chair at the opposite end of where Duke had been sitting. Distance means safety. Duke assumes his previous seat, not commenting on Richie’s choice but writing something down on his notepad. It makes him feel a little uneasy. “I… fell on the sidewalk, if you must know.” 

Duke writes something else down. Richie shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Is it bright in here? 

“I thought I might tell you a little bit about why I’m here.” Duke begins, putting his pen back down on the table. Richie watches it roll down the wood a little and then stop once it gets to the center. This floor isn’t level. Richie pulls his legs up onto the chair, warily looking down at the laminate wooden floors. They don’t look new. There are scrape marks in the wood where the chairs are. 

“I know why you’re here.” Richie mutters, laying his hands down on the table, seeing the bandages and subsequently returning them to his lap. He’s practically curled up on the chair, shrinking into himself. “I did my own research. I stayed up all night.” 

Duke’s expression is unreadable. “Do you have insomnia?” 

“I have panic disorder and a caffeine addiction.” He hears a quiet laugh from Duke. “But it wasn’t… this bad before.” Richie isn’t sure why he’s even admitting this. He’s just giving Duke more reasons to believe he’s crazy, like everyone else does. 

“What’d you find out about me?” Duke leans back in his chair, looking slightly amused. 

Richie stares downwards, his brows creasing slightly as he tries to recall. “You’ve worked with almost every single troubled child in Hatchetfield, including me. You started working in this field in the year 2001. You have a bachelors in social work from Lewis University in Chicago. You dropped out of University of Michigan in 1997.” He looks up after he finishes droning everything he knows. 

Duke is smiling, and he looks impressed, or surprised. Richie can’t tell which. “Oh yeah, I dropped out of Comp Sci.” 

Richie’s eyes narrow. Duke is testing him. “No. It was childcare. You probably figured your penchant for making kids trust you was better suited to social work.”

“I knew you knew that.” He replies. His smug little smile makes Richie want to punch him. Maybe he will. It doesn’t seem out of character for the version of him everyone has been inventing since the accident. 

“I seem to be the exception, because I don’t trust you one bit.” He scowls, leaning back in his own chair in an attempt to mirror Duke’s confident demeanor. “Blatantly lying to my face isn’t exactly going to build trust. Not a great start, Douglas.” 

“Well, Richard. Let’s start again.” 

“I’m gonna know if you lie to me again.” Richie huffs. “I can always tell.”

“We seem to share that skill.” Duke replies, resting his elbows on the table. 

Richie swallows thickly, his throat suddenly bone dry. “Oh yeah?” He tries to sound like he’s calling his bluff, but the slight tremble in his voice still leaks through. 

“How did you cut your hand?” 

Richie feels a pit in his stomach, and this one definitely isn’t caused by his several broken ribs. He breaks eye contact with Duke like he’s been burned, fixing his eyes to the table. He clasps his functioning hand around his bandaged one, trying to stop both from shaking. The silence in the room is agonising, only broken up by the tick of the clock behind Duke. 

Tick, tick, tick, tick. 

“Do you want coffee, Richie?” Duke asks, standing up. “I’m going to get some.” 

Tick, tick, tick, tick. 

“Caffeine is the last thing I need right now.” He replies when it becomes clear Duke isn’t going to leave without getting a straight answer. 

“Decaf?”

“No.” 

Richie watches Duke leave. Once the doors slam shut, Richie is immediately overcome by the urge to check what he’s written in that stupid notebook. Logic, or paranoia quickly gets the better of him, and he stays put. There are probably cameras monitoring him, checking if he’ll do anything wrong while Duke is gone. It’s a test. This is all one big test. Even if he did decide he wanted to go over, he’d have to hobble over on his crutches and hope he made it back to his seat before Duke did. 

And he’s a little scared of touching the ground. 

Tick, tick, tick, tick.

He nervously pulls at the sleeve on his sweater until Duke comes back. He sits. Richie’s eyes periodically flit up to look at him. He’s not saying anything. 

“Your uncle sure chugs coffee.” Duke chuckles good-naturedly. “He’s been draining the Keurig. They’re refilling it now.”

Richie frowns. “He can’t function without it,” he says, adding in a quiet mumble afterwards, “or with it.”

There’s another string of silence. Richie hears a pen scribbling. Tick, tick. 

“Was Paul with you at the Waylon Place?” Duke asks, and Richie feels his shoulders stiffen at the mention of the house. 

“You know he wasn’t.” He snaps. 

Duke is undeterred. “Who was there?”

Richie counts each name on his fingers. “Ruth, Peter, uh.”

“Who was there later?”

Richie continues listing names, choosing to fully ignore Duke's clarification. “Stephanie Lauter, the mayor’s daughter. I’m not close with her but she hangs around with Pete now.”

“Who was-”

“Grace and Max. Some people left later on.” 

“Who was there later?” Duke presses on.

Richie huffs out a deep breath through his nose. He doesn’t respond. 

Tick. 

“Richie, I’m trying to get you to tell me what happened.” Duke says. The words are impatient but his tone is not. 

Richie runs his hand through his hair, feeling the grease caked into it. He hasn’t showered. It’s hard to shower when your leg is broken and your wrist is sprained. “Duke, I was sitting on a staircase with Max, something happened and I woke up in the hospital.”

There's more to it than that. Richie doesn’t want to think about it. 

“Alright.” Duke clasps his hands together. “What happened the week after that?” 

Richie tries to look unenthused. “I finally got discharged. Went back to school. That’s about it.” 

Duke isn’t buying it. He leans forward. “Your friends started to worry about you.” 

He fakes a scoff. “Well, there was nothing to worry about. Ruth is erratic. She notices things that aren’t there.” 

Duke gives Richie a look he can’t parse. He feels his shoulders tilt inwards a little. He tries to shrink into himself. 

“You said you went back to school.” Duke waits for a nod from Richie. “What happened on your first day back?” 

“I don’t… know what you’re-” Richie trails off. Even with his eyes trained to his lap, he can still feel Duke’s withering stare. “Nothing happened. I mean, school is awful every day.” 

“What class were you going to with Ruth and Peter?” 

Tick, tick. 

“I was going to history class.” He whispers. Duke seems to have heard him, because he nods. He’s urging him to keep talking. That’s his method. Duke thinks if he gets Richie talking, that he’ll tell him everything. “And then…” He hesitates. “Nothing happened.” 

He’s expecting some kind of frustrated sigh, but he gets nothing. 

“Not according to your friends, Richie.” He says, his tone still annoyingly measured. 

Richie clenches his fist, his nostrils flaring. “If you know what happened, when why the fuck are you asking me about it?” 

“What happened , Richie?” 

Richie slams his hand down on the table, feeling his entire body trembling with frustration. “I went to history class, and nothing fucking happ-!” 

There’s a knock on the door and Richie violently winces, his bandaged hand twitching upwards. 

⏮

Richie heard a barrage of panicked knocks on his bedroom door, and Paul was calling his name frantically. Over and over. 

⏭

“It’s the coffee, Richie.” 

Richie nods faintly, taking in breath after breath. He’s almost gasping for air. It feels like no matter how much he breathes he’s still suffocating. He can feel his heart beating in his temple. 

⏮

Richie was walking between Ruth and Pete as they made their way to history. They had both made a habit of making sure he was nestled in between them at all times, like they were his personal bodyguards. His palms were starting to hurt from repeatedly pressing into the handles of his crutches. Ruth and Pete seemed to be talking about homework or something. Richie didn’t really know or care. He was just focused on getting from one classroom to another without breaking another leg. 

“What was your essay topic, Richie?” A mention of his name from Pete was enough to drag him out of his haze. He looked at Pete, looking mildly confused.

“We had an essay?” He asked, earning two disapproving frowns. 

“It’s not like you to forget about a history essay.” Ruth said. “That’s like, your thing.” 

Richie didn’t care enough to respond. He didn’t feel like arguing, or even talking at all. 

“You’re gonna get in trouble, you know.” Pete warned. 

Richie still could not find it in him to care. His mind was static. They turned the corner to make it onto the corridor the history classroom was located on, and they passed a group of students. Richie saw Kyle and Jason first, and something in his gut told him he needed to run. Far away. He stopped walking, staying frozen in place. 

⏮

Richie’s eyes flickered open, and he immediately let out a pained whimper. It hurt. Everything hurt. He didn’t know where he was. Wasn’t he just at the Waylon Place? All he saw was splintered wood and darkness. He heard someone coughing wetly in between loud, piercing cries, right beside him. 

⏮

Ruth and Pete were eyeing him nervously. He asked them if he could sit down for a second. They both lowered him to the ground, and he hunched over and tried to breathe. He couldn’t stop shaking. Fresh tears were prickling at his eyelids, with beads of sweat blending with the droplets. 

“Richie…”

“I’m fine. I’m fine. We’re gonna be late for history.”

⏭

“Pete kept… bugging me about my homework.” He murmurs, returning to tugging at his sleeve. “I saw Kyle and Jason and they just made me freak out. Zone out. I don’t know. It’s never happened to me before, so it was probably just a one-off thing.” 

Duke clicks his pen. Richie’s eye twitches. “Their jackets.” He begins. Richie looks up. “They’re the same ones Max had, aren’t they?” 

“I don’t know.” He lies. 

Duke nods, confirming his own question. “They are. They all have varsity jackets and they look just like Max’s.” 

⏮

Coach Houston told him he could still stop by and watch their cheer routine, even if he couldn’t participate. Richie was looking for distractions, so naturally he said he’d be there. He slowly made his way to the gym after school, going through the already opened doors and feeling his body freeze up again. 

“Hey Richie!” 

Kyle. 

Richie’s breaths turned to shallow huffs. His crutches shook in his hands. He turned around and left as quick as he could, ignoring the cheerleaders calling after him. 

⏭

Richie blinks. 

“Max wrapped his jacket around me.” He whispers, almost positive he was too quiet to be heard this time. 

Duke confirms this with a “What?” 

“I was cold.” He repeats, a little louder. “And he wrapped his jacket around me.” 

⏮

Richie was shivering. Max sat down beside him on the staircase, eyeing him for a moment before pulling his jacket off. He wrapped it around Richie’s shoulders without a word. Richie whispered a thank you. 

⏭

“Why do you think he did that?” Duke asks, his head tilted. Richie thinks it’s an unneeded question. 

“I was cold.” He deadpans. 

Duke nods slowly, as if humouring him. “People don’t usually do that, you know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Did you know Max before that night?” 

Richie tries to twist his expression into one of cluelessness. “I knew he was an asshole jock. I knew he played football.” 

“Did you know him, Richie?” Duke’s eyes are intense. Richie gulps, trying to pretend it isn’t getting to him. He’s not supposed to crack this easily. 

“We were… friends. Back when we were kids. It was short lived.” 

⏮

Richie slowly lifted his head. All at once, he felt the congealed blood caked into his hair and the crook of his neck. He let out another quiet whimper, raising his hand to clutch his head and feeling a sharp burst of pain. He let his head crash back into the cold, damp wood. He felt weak. 

⏭

Richie starts to rock back and forth in his seat. Duke isn’t saying anything. “He used to play piano for me.” 

“That’s good, Richie.” Duke says quietly. Richie’s nails dig into his palm. It’s a nervous habit. “What would he play for you?”

Tick, tick, tick. 

Richie is sure he can hear piano in the far distance. The tune is familiar. Duke doesn’t seem to notice, so Richie doesn’t comment on it. 

“Your birthday was last week.” Duke continues. Richie gives a stiff nod. “Must be fun to have a Halloween birthday.”

“It’s overrated.” He mutters. 

“Something happened on your birthday this year.”

Richie sighs sharply. “Nope.” 

“Richie, this is the point in time where your friends and Paul were incredibly worried about you. They said you were a different person that day. That you’ve been a different person since the accident.”

“Forgive me for being a little shaken after falling through a goddamn staircase.” Richie snaps back, his words jagged. “They were wrong. Nothing is different. It was just an off day.”

Duke stares him down. “Have you had an on day since it happened, Richie? Can you honestly tell me that?” 

Richie’s mouth sinks into a scowl. “What a question.”

“A fair one.” Duke replies matter-of-factly. The urge to punch him in the face returns. 

“Who are any of you to tell me how I’ve been feeling?” 

Duke barely lets Richie finish his question before he’s cutting in with his response. “Richie, you screamed at every single person in that room.”

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

Richie’s heart sinks. He anxiously puts one foot down on the floor, and then the other. When he’s relatively sure it’s not going to collapse under his weight, he stands up and starts to pace. Rather, limp , but it’s better than sitting still. Duke lets him. 

“Ruth kept telling me I was going to love my birthday gift.” He says quietly, leaning against the windowsill at the foot of the room. Duke nods. 

“What was it?” 

“It was a- a camera.” He says haltingly, unconsciously caressing the bandages on his hand. Duke’s eyes seem to flit down to track the movement. 

“And did you like it?” 

Richie pulls one of the curtains open, deciding to stare out the window. There’s not much out there. It’s late. The only thing he can clearly make out is the lamps lining the street. Richie hasn’t been able to handle the dark since. The first night in the hospital, he woke up thinking he was back under the staircase. Paul said they had to sedate him. He left the lamp on after that. When he was discharged, he got home to see his room covered tip to tail in fairy lights. Richie keeps every single set on at all times. 

Tick.

“What happened, Richie?” Duke didn’t let the silences linger for too long. It had been getting harder for Richie to stay grounded lately. Even momentary lulls in conversation gave his mind room to wander to darker places. As much as he tried to pretend, to forget, that night was all he thought about when he was alone. Even when he was with people it was on his mind, slotting into each and every moment of quiet. Piano and screams. Blood. Wailing. Snap. 

Tick, tick, tick. 

“Richie?” 

“I was in the kitchen.” He husks watching a blue car zoom past the building. Blue was Max’s favourite. 

Duke nods. He’s been nodding a lot. “Who was there? It was your party, wasn’t it?” 

“Mhm.” Richie limps over to the chair across from Duke. He holds onto the back of it while he manoeuvres himself onto the seat. He tries not to wince when a burst of pain zaps down his leg. “Are you really gonna make me list everybody?”

“Mhm.” 

Richie sighs sharply. “Ruth, Peter, Paul and his girlfriend, Emma.” He replies, adding, “I don’t have many friends.” 

Duke breathes out a laugh. “It’s the real ones that matter.” 

“I’m fucked, then.” He replies dryly. 

“What were you guys doing?” 

Richie crosses his arms, falling back into feigned disinterest. “Paul wanted to keep it low-key ‘ because of the year I had.’ ” He does quotation marks with his functioning hand. “Cake. Gift opening. Fake smiles. People who’d rather be elsewhere. Whatever happens at birthday parties. Do you not have a birthday, Duke?” 

Duke leans forward. “Do you like your friends, Richie? Do you like Paul?”

Richie feels his mouth fall open. “I’m- what? Of course I do.” 

Duke holds up his notepad, turning it around and pointing to it with his pen. Richie has to lean forward to see what’s written. “You said Paul can’t function with or without coffee. You called Ruth erratic. You said Peter bugs you.” 

“That’s not- that’s not fair, Duke! We all get-”

“You’ve been slowly building resentment towards your friends and family since that night, Richie.” Duke is staring right through him. 

Richie shakes his head. “I- I haven’t.” 

“Resentment like that can only stew for so long before it boils over.” 

“But, I don’t-”

Duke raises a hand, and Richie stops talking. “Something happened on your birthday to make it boil over. Tell me.” 

Richie puts his face in his palms and rubs at his eyes. He keeps shaking his head. 

“Richie, you have to tell somebody. There’s only so much reality you can deny before it starts consuming your life.” 

Richie coils his hair around his finger and tugs at it until it hurts. “Duke. It was a birthday party.” 

“Tell me.” 

Tick, tick.

“They brought out the cake.” Richie feels dizzy. 

⏮

Everyone was crowded around him at the table, all smiles and cheers, and Richie still found himself just wanting to escape. Paul walked into the room with the cake, and then it all started. 

⏭

“Good. Then what?” 

“Happy birthday.” Richie pulls his legs back onto the chair. He’s shrinking again. “They started to sing happy birthday, and… and then.” Richie’s breath hitches. He stops. 

Duke squints. “And then what?” 

Richie breathes in. 

Tick, tick. Piano? 

⏮

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to-”

Richie closed his eyes. He winced, feeling his shoulders jerk upwards. He dropped one of his crutches and quickly grabbed the table for balance. His friend’s enthusiastic voices melted away, replaced by the opening notes of ‘happy birthday’ on piano. He started to shake, a bead of cold sweat running down his forehead. He wiped it away, forcing his eyes open. He tried to smile. To look at everyone. 

He heard a screech, seemingly coming from beside him. He whipped his head, eyes wide, to look, and there was no one there. He felt the need to grab his chest. He felt winded, like he’d fallen. 

The invisible person beside him started to scream for help. Richie could barely hold onto the chair. He couldn’t stop shaking. The screaming was constant. Richie couldn’t be sure it wasn’t him that was screaming. 

Richie heard a small crack, like a twig snapping, and then a louder one. He squeezed his eyes shut and the world fell away to nothing. He was an angel, plummeting. He was fallen. 

They stopped singing, and they looked at him, their faces expectant. 

The piano stopped. The screaming stopped. Everything stopped all at once and Richie was left in the rubble. 

Richie smiled and blew out the candles. He wiped the tears from his eyes. 

⏭

“Something caused a flashback.” Duke says quietly. 

Richie is shaking. “I don’t get flashbacks. I’m not a veteran. My coach, Mr Houston, he gets flashbacks. It’s because he did two tours in Iraq, which, you know. I imagine that’s a lot worse than what happened to me. I don’t think I really meet the criteria for flashbacks.”

“It frightened you.” Duke goes on, ignoring Richie’s tangent. Richie pouts. “You were, understandably, on edge.” He continued, prompting another head shake from Richie. 

“I wasn’t.” He whispers. 

Duke’s face softens. “Richie. You are allowed to be afraid. And you were on your last tether that day. You’ve been dealing with this trauma alone for weeks. It was weighing on you then and it's weighing on you now . ”

Richie doesn’t deny it this time. He pushes his seat back, feeling the need to pace again. Distance means safety. He leans against the adjacent wall, letting his head rest against it. 

It doesn’t feel like damp wood, so he knows he’s okay. 

“I opened my gift from Ruth first. After the cake.” He idly taps his fingers against the wall. “A camera, to repl-” Richie stops himself.

Duke raises an eyebrow. “Replace your old camera?” 

Richie says several expletives in his mind. 

“What happened to your old one?” He asks, and Richie is tempted to let the question hang in the air. 

“I left it. At the house. I dropped it.” He drones. 

⏮

Richie’s neck felt stiff as he tried to tilt it to the side. He saw something glinting beside him and he wanted to see what it was. He managed to turn, and he let his cheek rest atop of the pool of blood. It was leaking from his head. What happened? Richie saw his shattered camera laying beside him, the lens in fragments across the ground. There was a larger mass laying beside the camera. That was where the screaming had been coming from. He couldn’t hear any noise anymore. Richie wanted the noises to come back. They weren’t supposed to stop. You don’t stop screaming for help when you need it. 

Richie tried to reach over, but his arms weren’t long enough. He was much too tired to crawl over.

“Why aren’t you screaming?” He choked out, his voice flitting between whispers and rasps. 

He turned his head back up to the sky, feeling the fresh blood run down his cheek and onto his ear. It was so dark down here. 

⏭

“What did you think of the new one?” Duke asks. “Was it better than your old one?” 

Richie let his back slide down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. “I dropped it.”

“You dropped the new one too?” 

“It slipped out of my fingers.” He lied. “It didn’t break.” 

⏮

The camera was on the floor. Richie’s hands were open and he stared down at it blankly. His hands were still visibly shaking and it was starting to annoy him. He was absolutely fine and his hands needed to get the memo. Someone put a hand on his shoulder. Richie tried to shrug it away. 

“Richie?”

⏭

“Then what?”

“I don’t remember.” 

⏮

Everybody started to ask him what was wrong and Richie didn’t have an answer. He kept seeing Max every time he closed his eyes. Him posing with a wide grin while Richie held up his camera. 

Richie stumbled away from the table, holding his arms out. He tried to say he needed space but he couldn’t get the words out. 

“Do you need a second to take a breather?” Paul asked, looking worried. He was so sick of everyone looking worried. 

“I don’t need a breather. I don’t NEED a breather! I don’t need a new camera, I don’t need help from anybody! Pete, I don’t need you bothering me about essays! And homework! I don’t NEED your help and I never did! Ruth, I don’t need you watching over me like I’m a fucking TIME BOMB! I see the way you look at me! I’m fine, and you all need to get that through your heads. I’m FINE. I’ve always been fine. Everything is always fine.  You’ve all been asking me if I’m okay day after fucking day, because you don’t LISTEN. LISTEN TO ME! I’m FINE! I’M OKAY!”

Richie stepped back like he’d been burned. 

“Emma, can you see Ruth and Pete out?” Paul asked quietly.

Richie clenched his fists together, breaths escaping his throat in sharp bursts. He watched Ruth and Pete leave the room and the regret started to flood in. He started to pull himself out of whatever stupor he’d just fallen into. 

“Richie, sit down.” Paul said. Richie did as he was told. He laid his hands down in front of him.

“I’m sorry.”

“I think you need some help.” Paul muttered. 

“I’m sorry.” Richie repeated, like it would save him. “I need to apologise. Bring them back. I didn’t mean it.”

“Richie.” Paul’s voice is stern. Not angry, but stern. 

“I didn’t mean it.” Richie repeats, louder.

“I’m gonna find you someone to talk to. You need help that I can’t give you.”

“I don’t need anyone to talk to, Paul. I’m-”

Paul cuts across him. “This isn’t a discussion.” 

⏭

“Thank God for Paul.” Duke says. 

Richie shrugs. He’s now curled up in something resembling a ball, still on the floor. He wants to go home. But he doesn’t, really. He wants to go back to what home was before the accident. 

“Does Paul ever go to therapy?”

“Sometimes.” Richie replies, now fidgeting with his shoelace. 

Duke nods. “So he knows it’ll help. 

“It hasn’t been helping.” Richie huffs. 

“Don’t ignore the progress you’ve made today, Richie.” Duke replies. Richie fakes another scoff. It’s getting harder to pretend this isn’t getting to him. 

“Everyone is blowing everything out of proportion.” 

“They’re not.” Duke says bluntly. Richie looks up.

“You don’t get to decide that for me, Duke.” He says, pulling himself to his feet. 

“I can, because I know.” 

Richie limps over to his chair, not sitting in it but instead leaning against it and staring at Duke. Duke stares right back. “How do you know anything about me? You don’t know a thing about what happened to me. You only know what I’ve told you.” 

“How’d you cut your hand?” Duke says it quietly, clearly. Richie feels like someone threw water in his face. 

“Duke.”

“Richie. How did you cut your hand?” 

Richie turns and walks back up to the window. “I fell on the sidewalk. I grazed my hand against the tarmac and cut it.” 

⏮

Richie stared down at his palm, watching blood slowly seep from the fresh cut. The skin on his knuckles was torn to pieces and it stung. Glass fragments and a nylon strap laid at his feet. He heard stirring in the kitchen and footprints.

⏭

“I don’t think that’s what happened.” Duke stands up. He doesn’t come any closer. Richie thinks someone is standing on his lungs.

“I was walking home from school. Then I tripped over a rock and I fell over.” Richie had to carefully pronounce each word, trying to push past the tremble in his voice. Duke is staring him down like he's trying to set him on fire. 

“That must’ve been some pretty sharp tarmac.” 

“I fell hard.” He mumbled. “I’m still recovering from-” He took in a deep breath. “So, I’m not very coordinated.” 

Duke sighs, taking a step towards Richie. “Richie, you are in so much pain right now and every single person around you can see it. You’ve been trying to act like you’re okay all evening. I’ve seen it, you know it. You’re not fine. You haven’t been fine in a long time.” 

“There’s nothing wrong with me.” Richie whispers, wrapping his arms around his waist and hugging himself. 

“You’re not well.” 

“What’s wrong with me?” He asks quietly. For the first time this evening he’s not combative, not avoidant, just tired . The question isn’t even self pitying. He wants to know. He needs to know. 

“You have PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder.” Duke walks back to his seat, turning away and letting Richie stew in the information. He opens his mouth to speak, but he has nothing to say.

“That-” His breath hitches. “That doesn’t sound like something someone like me is allowed to have.” 

Duke tilts his head. “Someone like you?” 

Richie swallows thickly, turning back to the window. He doesn’t want Duke to see if he tears up. “I’m supposed to go to Harvard. I’m supposed to be going places. I don’t- I don’t think that I’m… I don’t think that’s me. I can’t be broken. I think you’re wrong.”

“Richie.” 

Richie turns and limps to the end of the room. And then back. It’s hard, and it hurts but he can’t stay still. He can’t bear it. “I know I’ve been difficult. I’ve been rude, and-” 

Duke shakes his head. “I don’t think you’ve been difficult. I think you’re scared and trying to protect yourself.”

“At a certain point, stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.” Richie mutters, unsure of where he even heard that quote. Duke’s laugh is bone dry. 

“You’re not stupid. Far from it.” 

Richie ignores that. “I know you want me to talk about my feelings, but I’m just… not built for that.” 

“That’s not why we’re here. I don’t need to hear about how you felt. If that comes into it, then sure. But what I want is for you to be able to think about what happened to you, to Max, without reliving it. Because you have been reliving it for weeks on end. All in your mind.” 

Richie can hear the piano again. Screams. Snap.  

Tick. 

“Richie?” 

Richie reassumes his seat from the start of their session, the one far from Duke. “He sang happy birthday to me.” He looks down. 

“Who did?” 

“Max. When we were kids, he played it for me on piano. That was the song he played for me.” Richie’s eyes are fixed to one spot on the floor under the table. It’s easier to recall when he doesn’t have anything distracting to look at. Duke hums quietly to indicate he’s listening. “Then, at the house, at the Waylon Place, he sang it to me because he knew my birthday was soon.”

“And then they sang it at your party and it all came back.” 

⏮

Richie was sitting on Max’s bed, watching him as he hunched over his piano and tried to work out the notes to a song. When he eventually figured it out, he turned to Richie with a smile. 

“Was that happy birthday?” Richie asked, smiling back. 

Max nodded, beaming. “It’s the only thing I know how to play.” 

⏮

“‘-birthday to you. Happy-”

⏭

“Then what happened?”

“I- I don’t know.”

“What happened to you, Richie.” Duke’s voice is drilling into his head. “What happened when they sang to you.” 

The piano is so loud. 

⏮

Richie couldn’t hear them singing anymore. He heard another loud snap. It wouldn’t stop. 

⏭

Richie covers his ears, bowing his head down. “I don’t know. “

“Tell me what happened when they sang to you. Talk to me.” Duke was closer to him now. He could hear it. 

⏮

The piano overwhelmed every sense. All Richie could see when he closed his eyes was splintered wood. His friends and his birthday cake were gone. 

⏮

Max screamed right after the wood snapped. Richie’s shrieks blended with Max’s as the staircase disappeared from beneath them. When Richie hit the ground, he heard a blood curdling scream beside him, and then nothing. He whimpered, coughing up the dust that had been unsettled by his landing. 

His eyes fluttered shut. 

⏭

“I couldn’t make it stop.” He whispered. 

Duke nods. “No, you couldn’t. And that’s why you’ve been feeling so scared. That’s why it feels like there’s a hurricane in your mind. You’ve been trying to patch your mind together by pretending everything is fine, but it’s been replaying in your head.” 

⏮

“-to you, happy-”

⏮

Richie gathered the strength to inch his way over to Max. He wasn’t moving anymore. There was something sticking out of his chest, and it was covered in blood. 

“Why aren’t you screaming?”

⏭

“I couldn’t make it stop.” 

“What did you do after that episode at your party?”  

Richie slowly lifts his head. Duke is sitting in the chair beside him. 

⏮

“Richie? What happened? Open the door!”

Paul continued to knock at his door. Richie stared down at the floor, at what he’d done.

⏭

“You had an episode at your party, you yelled at your friends. You weren’t fully lucid for either of these events. What happened afterwards, when you were alone in your bedroom-”

“Nothing.” Richie whispers. 

Duke clasps his hands together. “Alright. Nothing. I guess I’m done here.” He stands up, grabbing his jacket. Richie’s head shoots up. 

“I went for… a walk.” He croaks. Duke doesn’t make any motions to sit back down. He grabs his notepad. 

He turns to look at Richie, his voice rising. “Richie, can you honestly tell me that-”

“I- I tripped over a rock!” Richie’s voice rises to match Duke’s. It audibly cracks as he speaks. 

Duke slams his notepad back down on the table, and it makes a loud thump. “Ruth said your behavior, your lack of interest in anything made her feel like you’d lost the will to live. After Max died, can you honestly tell me that you didn’t wish you were the one who was impaled, instead of him? That you didn’t wonder if it’d all be easier if you were the one who died?”

Tick.

Duke puts his jacket down on the table, sighing sharply. 

Richie breathes in. “I didn’t wonder that.” 

“You’re lying.” Duke shoots back. 

“I’m not.”

“You two were close.”

“We weren’t.” 

Duke huffs out a laugh, but there’s no humour in it. He walks the length of the room before turning back to meet Richie’s gaze. “You two were childhood best friends. He played piano for you. You reconnected on that night and then he died.” 

Richie hears the first few notes of happy birthday. His eye twitches. 

“He gave you his jacket and wrapped it around you. You mattered to him. It’s been tearing you up inside. That night, when you went back to your room-”

Richie shouts over him before he can finish. He’s trying to get ahead of his stammer. If he’s loud enough, the voice cracks won’t be noticeable and Duke won’t know how scared he is or how cornered he feels. “I tripped! And my hand scraped the sidewalk!”  

Duke shouts back with equal intensity. “ Richie! RICHIE. HOW did you cut your hand?” 

⏮

Richie was sitting on his bedroom floor. In his mind, he saw Max. Choking on his own blood, eyes pleading for help but mouth unable to get the words out. He heard the snap of the wooden boards. He heard screaming, both his own screams and Max’s. He felt the searing pain in his leg. 

It’s all underscored by a familiar piano tune. 

It was too much to bear. Too much. 

Richie grabbed his new camera and hurled it into the ground. When it didn’t break, he picked it up and hurled it again and again until it broke. When it did, he punched it, watching the glass shatter and feeling the fragments embed in his knuckles. 

And at last, everything is quiet. All he feels is searing pain. 

⏭

Richie hears the closing notes of happy birthday. 

“Okay.” Duke says. 

“Okay?”

Duke stands up. “We’re done.” 

Richie shifts in his seat, his brows furrowing. What was he talking about? He didn’t feel done. “We’re done? I’m fixed?”

Duke smiles, humouring him. “Yeah Richie, you’re fixed. All patched up.”

“Duke.”

“I’m going to recommend a therapist for you.” Duke says, picking up his notepad and pen for the second time. 

Richie is lost. He’s not sure if this is some kind of test. “But I like you.”

“I’m a busy man.” Duke jokes. 

“I pummelled a camera with my bare hands. I’m not done.” He says bluntly. 

“You’re not gonna do that again.” He replies. “Happy late birthday, Richie. We’re done. I’m gonna give Paul a number for you.”

Richie pulls himself up, blocking Duke’s exit. “Wait. What if somebody steps on a twig or something and I get another flashback?” 

“That’s not your trigger.” Duke responds, making no attempt to get past him. “I know it feels like it, because you keep hearing it. But it’s not what instigates the flashbacks.” 

“Then what does?” Richie asks. He thinks he already knows the answer. 

“Happy birthday.” Duke says. “I think you knew that already.”

“Why would a birthday song cause the… flashbacks?” Richie leans against the wall.

Duke sat down on the table in front of him. “You said when you and Max were sitting on the staircase, he sang happy birthday to you. Is that correct?” 

⏮

Max was clearly a little tipsy, but Richie didn’t mind. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen him like this. 

“You know what’s crazy?” He’d muttered. “I still remember your birthday. Halloween! That’s soon! We should celebrate.”

Richie let out a quiet giggle. “I don’t think we should, actually.” 

“I’m gonna anyway.” 

He’d started singing happy birthday. Then the world fell away and Richie’s world crumbled away with the timber. 

⏭

“Yeah.” He whispers. “That’s correct.”

“The song came before the snap.” Duke explains. “It’s your trigger.”

“So that’s gonna happen to me every time someone sings happy birthday?” Richie frowns. It seems like a difficult life. 

Duke shakes his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because we get better.” He says, looking Richie in the eyes. He then stands up and makes towards the door. 

“I need more therapy.” Richie says.

“You’re gonna get it.”

“I mean now!” Richie huffs. 

“Goodbye, Richie.” Duke turns around when he gets to the door, giving Richie a small wave. It takes a moment for him to return it. 

“Goodbye, Duke.” He murmurs when Duke is already halfway down the corridor. 

Richie walks out to the lobby to see Paul waiting for him. He's sitting in a cosy looking armchair, reading a book. He immediately perks up and puts the book down when he sees Richie approach with his crutches.

Paul walks over to help him over. “Hey, buddy. How did it go?”

Richie pulls him into a hug. Paul just stands there for a moment, seemingly stunned. He hugs him back, wrapping his arms around him and squeezing as tight as he can. 

“I didn't fall on the pavement.” Richie mutters. “I punched the camera Ruth got me until my hands bled.” 

Paul doesn't look surprised.

“I know you knew that already.” Richie continues, his voice a little stiff. “But I couldn't say it before. I'm sorry.”

“It's alright.” Paul whispers, his voice soft. He pulls out of the hug, holding onto Richie’s shoulders and just looking at him. 

“Thank you.” Richie says, momentarily breaking eye contact. “For getting me help.”

“As long as I'm around, kid, you're gonna have somebody to help you.” He replies, patting Richie’s shoulder. “You're gonna be alright.”

They both walk out together, with Paul’s arm around Richie’s shoulder. Richie looks at him and believes he can get better someday.