Work Text:
"If you try to do fergalicious one more time, I'm going to murder you."
Eddie's voice this time is so sincere that Bill's tempted to believe him, but since this is about the fifty thousandth time he's said it and Richie's still standing (or, rather, lying on his stomach with his feet kicking in the air), he knows better. He can tell by Richie's cackling that he has indeed tried to play "fergalicious," even though three heated debates in a row led to the inevitable conclusion that someone who's strictly adhering to the rules of Scrabble cannot put down those tiles in that order. Not that the losers can stop Richie from trying; as long as it gets Eddie to groan and whack him, he's going to keep doing it.
"That's almost a real word," Stan says mildly. Bill, drawn by Stan's voice (which, during the trio's game, hasn't gotten out much), looks over his shoulder. Since Richie's missing most of the tiles that he claims make up the word "fergalicious," he has instead played "fetacious," which Eddie has yet to stop fuming over. Stan, ignoring Eddie's complaints, swats Richie's hand out of the way and swaps a few letters around, ending up with "facetious."
It doesn't matter if Stan helps Richie anyway, Bill notes with a smile. He's so far ahead of both Richie and Eddie that continuing to play is more of a courtesy than anything else.
"Earth to Bill," Bev says, and he looks back at her.
"Sorry. S-say it again."
Bev glances at Ben and Mike, who are trying to fix a picture of the group that Stan brought a few weeks ago. Richie swiped a picture frame from his parents, but Eddie got nervous when Mike suggested nailing it to one of the pillars that held up the fort. Each of the pillars are way too load-bearing to put holes in them, he pointed out, and maybe Mike would have done it anyway if not for Ben agreeing with him.
Even the compromise of tying a string to a pillar and hanging the picture from there proved not cautious enough, though, because the string snapped. Ben and Mike, now, are trying to attach the frame to one of the wooden boards that make up the perimeter of the clubhouse, with minimal success.
It's a nice picture, taken after a swimming excursion, all of them wet and out of breath but grinning with glee. Richie is all but on top of Eddie, grinning at some joke that has since been forgotten, but Eddie can no longer claim to have been annoyed by Richie's closeness, because his smile is immortalized in the photo. Bev and Ben are sitting side by side, Ben admiring Bev and Bev with her chin in her hands, laughing at Richie and Eddie. Mike is sitting with his back against a rock, arms crossed and head tilted in thought. And Bill himself is front and center, sitting on his knees, hands waving as he suggests some idea or another to Mike.
Bill wasn't in favor of putting the photo up, because it doesn't have Stan in it, hidden behind the camera as he was, but he was far outnumbered and Stan appeased him by saying that next time they were out, he'd let Bill borrow his camera and take a few pictures of him. (He's yet to follow through on that promise, because he doesn't bring his camera out unless he thinks there's a chance of birdwatching. It's been over a month, and Bill still thinks about it sometimes.)
Bev, instead of saying it out loud (she has been uncharacteristically shy about this whole ordeal), nudges the paper towards him. He reads it, but it might as well have gone in one eye and out the other.
He is, perhaps, the worst possible person to bring this to. A few days ago, Bev came to him first with her plot to write a poem for Ben, and he said at once that he's among the least poetically-inclined of the group, but she frowned and said she trusts him more than anyone else with this- after all, the two of them had their whole will-they-won't-they for a couple weeks until Bill put a stop to it, and they've learned more about each other during that whole process than Bill knows about most of the losers- and after the reminder of that, Bill couldn't bring himself to deny her.
So he reads the poem, and hands it back. "It's good," he says.
This isn't what Bev wants to hear and he knows it from how she sighs and turns away from him. He watches her for a moment, wondering if there's anything he should say, but she beats him to it by asking, "How would you do it?"
"How w-would I d-do what?"
"If you were to write a poem for someone, how would you do it?"
Bill scoffs at the very idea. "I don't write p-poetry. B-besides, I wouldn't be able to r-read it p-p-properly."
"You don't need to read it out loud." She looks once more at Ben (who is scolding Mike, as much as he can scold anyone, for not holding the picture straight), and lowers her voice. "He just wrote it out, you know? I'll do that too. I don't want him to know it's from me."
"What's the p-point of writing it if he doesn't kn-know it's from y-you?" Bill asks, without caring too much about the answer- he's been distracted again by Stan, who has taken it upon himself to pick up the Scrabble board and raise it a few feet into the air, so none of the tiles get shaken out of place as Eddie tackles Richie over a stolen piece.
Bev thinks much more about the question than Bill did, and comes up with: "So he knows how wonderful he is. Don't you ever want to make sure someone knows that they're wonderful?"
For some reason, Bill thinks of Stan, how everything is a routine to him, done with so much care but almost thoughtlessly, as if he doesn't know how unusual it is for someone to be that particular.
He isn't sure how to compare his friendship with Stan to Bev's relationship with Ben, because they're nothing alike, and besides, Bill doesn't want to write Stan poetry, because he doesn't like poetry and even if he did, no poem could do justice to Stan. So he doesn't. All he says is, "I suppose n-not," and Bev shrugs and moves on.
Ben and Mike do eventually attach the picture to the wall. Bev gives up on writing the poem, but promises to try again the next day. Richie and Eddie both come out somewhat worse for wear, more so from the roughhousing than the word game, and Stan wins Scrabble, because of course he does.
They start to leave, a few people at a time, Eddie and Richie first because Eddie needs to get home before curfew and Richie jokingly-but-not-joking offers to escort him, then Ben and Bev and Mike.
Bill waits by the ladder as Stan straightens the picture, and it seems to go without saying that they'll walk together. Most things between them go without saying. Bill's never been good at dressing his feelings up in pretty phrases and metaphors and whatever else, but he's usually adept at articulating them; his feelings for Stan are the exception.
As Stan goes up the steps to his house, Bill says, without meaning to, "Remember to bring your c-camera next t-time." Stan pauses, and smiles at him over his shoulder, but he doesn't answer before going inside.
Bill walks the rest of the way to his house in silence, thinking about poetry and pictures and a thousand other ways to tell Stan he's wonderful.