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Stan doesn’t eat after their second round at Neibolt.
At first, it’s too painful. The gashes lining his jaw take over six months to fully heal and opening his mouth more than an inch always disturbs them, always rips the soft, barely-knitted flesh and leaves thin streams of red gliding down the pale skin of his neck.
So, he sips from water bottles with white straws. On her good days, his mother makes a smoothie for him when she makes her own. On his good days, he drinks them. Sometimes he carries baggies of diced-up fruit for when the growling in his stomach gets loud enough for his friends to hear and subsequently comment on.
Then, it stops making noise.
He forgets to start eating again once the wounds heal. He continues to get lunch when he’s still in the same lunch period; he makes careful selections in the lunch lines while Eddie and Bill commentate on their options and Richie tries to rile up the lunch ladies with jokes Stan is happy to tune out. Once seated, Stan slowly tears his food to shreds and slips them into a napkin in his lap, so he can throw it out later.
Then, eventually, the hunger is gone altogether.
Then, no one’s around to watch him anyway.
Stan doesn’t eat after their second round at Neibolt. Then the last half of that sentence falls off and it becomes just that.
Stan doesn’t eat.
-
Bill bumps him from behind, a soft shove that can’t be called a shove as he reaches to take Stan’s books from his arms. He’s been doing this a lot lately: walking Stan to class and carrying his books and tugging him places by the wrist. Stan fights him enough to make sure he keeps the little, leather-bound book with a Plover embossed in the corner in the safe space of his grip. A journal that, according to his friends, is not really a journal because he tells them he never writes in it.
He does.
But they don’t need to know that.
“Do you w-wanna guh-go t-t-to the d-diner today?” Bill asks once he’s gotten Stan’s books pressed against his chest with his own. His stutter shifts now; sometimes it overpowers him and sometimes Bill overpowers it, but Stan hasn’t figured out the significant reasons as to why. Stan can see him eyeing the blue book he’s holding in his hands, so Stan shifts it into the crook of his left arm, doing his best to shield it from Bill’s view. “M-Mike’s got-t-ta make a d-d-d-eliv-very and h-he thinks he c-can get us a nice d-d-discount.”
“I can’t, Bill.” Stan says, aiming for an apologetic tone and fighting the urge to rub at the scar closest to his left eye. The diner is not a place that Stanley Uris can frequent, not after last summer. Plus, he’s tired and he’s got his schoolwork. And, honestly, he doesn’t want to. “I have to be at the synagogue at three-thirty.” A common lie that Stan only knows the truth behind. Everyone seems to think that everything that went down last year drew him closer to his religion, but it’s the exact opposite.
Stan doesn’t think he’s ever felt farther from God than he does now.
-
His father’s been trying to teach him about shaving. Stan’s jaw is about as smooth as it was the day he was born, outside of his scars, so his only conclusion is that Stan’s father knows he’s pulling away and is trying to keep Stan in a static position next to him.
He found the box on his desk and he’d almost missed it in his haste to drop himself into his bed and attempt to sleep.
The box is ash-grey, striped with black, and has a grey bow on the top. Inside, six things are nestled carefully in white and grey tissue paper. The first is a shining, silver safety razor. It’s heavy in Stan’s hand, a weight that Stan’s not confident enough in his ability to hold. The second, a shave brush with a carved, wooden handle. The bristles are strong and thick, almost painful, despite their slight softness, as he runs them over his palm. The third, a stainless-steel bowl. It’s cool and hard, but somehow seems to bow when Stan tightens his grip. The fourth, an alum block. Stan wonders if it works on nicks not caused by shaving. The fifth, a pale-yellow round of shave soap. The light lemon fragrance wafts up to his nose slowly and it twists his stomach into knots in seconds.
And, lastly, a pack of platinum, double-edged blades. There are five of them, the box boasting that the platinum is superior, that it can’t rust, and that you’ll never change brands again!
The blade is surprisingly light in his hand, almost like it’s not there. He closes his fingers around it and he can feel the sharpness bite into his palm, just barely.
When he opens his fingers, there’s a tiny starburst of red spreading along the creases of his skin. Bev once told him that they’re called ‘future lines’, that they predict your future and tell you how your life will turn out. Eddie had rebutted by telling them both that they’re called ‘palmar flexion creases’ and that they develop in the womb.
Whatever they’re called, Stan’s are slowly filling with blood, and he’s mesmerized.
-
He goes to sleep that night tracing the tiny little cut on the inside of his palm, thinking about the pack of blades stuck neatly away in the corner of his medicine cabinet.
-
He packs his lunch the next day. Eats two pieces of the diced apples that he’s soaked in lemon juice to keep them from browning. His stomach twists uncomfortably and Stan can’t keep from grimacing as a feeling that Stan assumes is akin to being stabbed and then having someone twist the knife spreads along his abdomen.
He coughs into his palm, counts out a three second sip of water in his head.
Bill watches him but says nothing.
-
Stan sometimes wishes someone would just say something, anything.
He’s not sure why.
-
Richie asks about the nick when it’s almost healed three days later.
Stan knows that Richie never would’ve noticed it if he himself hadn’t been looking at it, so he fights the slight irritation that bubbles up in his chest.
Stan shrugs as he takes his seat next to Marcie Goodfellow. Stan sees Richie’s eyes narrow as he scratches at the line, twisting his body to keep it out of Richie’s view and picking the last bit of scab from his pink skin. He’s dizzy that day, his stomach hurts in a way it never has before, and his journal has no real insight on when he last ate.
Should probably get on that, he thinks to himself, neck still buzzing with the unpleasant prick of Richie’s gaze.
He crosses his legs then, turning toward the board, and listens as their project is explained, ignoring Richie to the best of his ability. He already has his project planned out, all he needs to do is write up the mock-ups he has at home, so he tugs his journal from the pile of books on the edge of his desk.
He leafs through the pages until he finds the last one he’d written in. He ignores the entire page of pennywise, pennywise, pennywise, written over and over in a red cursive that deteriorates into scribbles as it goes down the page, refusing to even consider asking why he doesn’t remember writing it. He picks a pale lavender from his pencil case and scrawls richie, richie, richie, in the middle of the opposite page.
When he turns the book to show Richie, he tries to cover up the full page with his free hand, blinking away the nightmares that dare to fill his eyes, but from the way Richie’s smile slips from his face almost as soon as it appears, Stan knows he’s failed.
-
He does write.
He writes about the doctors. About the therapist Bev suggested: Ms. White who insists he call her Mia and all of the things he can’t tell her. About the surgeries for his wounds and the creams and salves and medicines that are supposed to make the scars heal smoothly. About the doctors repeatedly asking what it was that caused the wounds in the first place, we believe it would be easier to draw up a healing plan if we knew, if there was anything specific about the accident that caused them, and Stan doesn’t really get why they need to know.
A part of him wonders if they’re trying to get him to admit that he did it to himself.
He writes about his father’s face when both of his parent’s say, simultaneously, he won’t tell us in response to the doctor’s questioning. He’s clearly trying to seem stern, or angry, even, but the look on his face betrays him, tells Stan that he’s hurt, that they’re scared of what did this to their son and, even more so, of the fact that he refuses to talk to them about it at all.
He writes about how hard it is to sleep, about dreams he doesn’t remember and purple bags under his eyes and falling asleep in the middle of class.
He writes about his friends.
About the way Mike’s thrown himself into his work on the farm to keep himself from focusing on last summer’s events and to make sure he can defend himself. just like me, he rarely sleeps. Stan writes, he’s terrified of how easy it is to shoot the sheep, now. He’s broader now, stronger, but his eyes somehow seem deeper, darker. Stan thinks he’d sport sleep-deprived bruises if his skin was light enough to take them.
About the way Richie has looked at Eddie with stars in his eyes and pink cheeks since the way Eddie quietly told them about standing up to his mother. About Richie waxing on without even realizing he’s waxing about holding Eddie’s face in his hands and forcing him to look at him. About how he told Stan that he can sometimes feel Eddie’s arm cracking back to place in the palms of his hands, that the sound sometimes echoes in his ears over the sound of his own rushing blood.
About Ben’s phone calls with Bev throughout the first few months of the year, – i burn, i pine, i perish, he’d said once, and Stan had rushed to scribble it down despite not really knowing what he meant – ones that he only seems comfortable enough to tell Stan, and only Stan, about. About how sometimes he catches Ben running his fingers over the sides of his belly without even seeming to think about it, touching the pink H knifed into one side and the claw-shaped slices in the other.
About how Eddie sometimes comes to school with bandages hiding patches of skin that he’s scrubbed until they were raw and bleeding, and then some, because he could still feel the slime. About how he’s still terrified of germs, if not even more fearful of them, despite his original fight with his mother. He still has them, days where he tries to leave, and she attempts to stop him, and everything conflicts inside of his head; he remembers the black sludge that had covered him down in the sewers, but he needs his friends now more than he needs his inhaler or those fake pills or the liar that he has no choice but to call mom.
About Bev moving to Portland with her aunt at the end of the summer and how there was this Bev-shaped hole in the group. She’d called a lot during that time, taking turns talking to all of them – with the exception of Stan because he’d never been able to handle it. Then, halfway through the first semester, she’d come back. She told them about buying a bus ticket and packing a bag and slipping out in the middle of the night. When her aunt had tracked her down, Bev pleaded her case to stay in Maine because she needed her friends and her aunt had agreed to find a way to make it work.
About the way Bill seems to be kinder to Stan, seems to be reaching out more, trying to pull on him in a way that Stan vaguely understands. As a concept, he gets it, but as an action, one that’s being used on him no less, it’s a little harder to get. Bill invites Stan places and smiles more, asks him to study and if Bill can accompany him while Stan goes bird-watching and Stan’s opinions on plans with the rest of the Losers. Stan wonders what it is that Bill sees when he looks at him, what it is that made Bill decide that he was the one that Bill wanted to help and why Bill had to be the one to do it.
About the way Stan could’ve reached back out toward Bill, about how he wants to – about how much he wants to – but he can’t, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t – he can’t let anyone in, he can’t let anyone see, he can’t let anyone know.
He writes about the nightmares that feel more like memories. About an empty picture frame and a throat that glows golden and a blood-soaked bathroom. About hearing his friends screaming inside of Neibolt and claws tearing through gloves and teeth that glisten ruby. About watching Bill chase after a shape-shifting monster that tried to pick them off one by one.
He writes about what he eats because he thinks about it a lot, because those thoughts take up a lot of his brain space. He writes about what he eats. Those pages are, admittedly, pretty bare of ink.
-
He tries to remember when it was that the reason behind his eating became his friends rather than his hunger. His hunger is ever-dwindling though, so he supposes it’s good to have a new reason.
The part of him that still thinks about his help, a part that seems to be shrinking as the days pass, worries for the day when his friends aren’t enough.
-
say something, say something, SAY SOMETHING – he scribbles in thick, red marker, then draws thicker black lines through the words until they’re indecipherable.
-
It’s eight-thirty on a Wednesday night the first time Stan ever takes a blade to his wrist.
It’s six days since the gift box was found on his desk. The nick on his palm is all but gone, a tiny pink line that offers no satisfaction when he presses on it, not that he realized that that’s what it had been offering until it no longer did so.
He started thinking about it in English when he’d gotten a papercut, and, for some reason, he’d found joy in the little dots that he’d trailed over his critique of Lord of the Flies. As soon as he’d come home from school, he’d gone into his bathroom and pulled down the box of blades, unwrapping the one he’d held last time from its wax-paper and allowing it to settle in the palm of his hand. Was it lighter than before? Stan couldn’t tell, not really, but he thought for sure that it was.
He fumbles to get a good grip on the blade, scared of cutting his skin – which, isn’t that what you want here? – with the edge closest to his fingers and unsure exactly what it is he’s doing. Before he can figure it out, though, he hears the front door swinging open downstairs and he drops the platinum tool into the basin of the sink.
“Stan?” his mother calls up the steps. Stan can hear the rustle of grocery bags and the clicking nails of their neighbor’s dog, Mya. “Could you come help me with the groceries, dear?”
“Coming!”
His parents go out for date night. Stan takes Mya back home at seven o’clock on the dot. He locks the door behind himself and settles down on the living room couch, attempting to watch something on television.
At a quarter after eight, his thoughts stray back to the blades tucked up and away in his bathroom for the tenth time since sitting down. At nineteen after, he answers a call on the hall telephone from Bill, who’s laughing as his voice comes through the receiver. He thinks that he wouldn’t have answered had he known it was Bill calling, then guilt fills his chest. He can hear Richie in the background, obviously attempting to tickle Eddie and Eddie screaming, do not fucking touch me!
He’s heard that before, once.
“St-s-Stan?” Stan still isn’t sure why his stutter fluctuates like this.
“Yeah?” The clock at the end of the hall ticks to eight twenty-three. He wonders if that was the first time Bill had said his name.
“Do you w-want t-to?” Bill asks.
No, he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t know what it is he’s been invited to, but, whatever it is, he doesn’t want to. His knees are wobbly with the need to touch that blade again. He can’t help looking longingly down the hall to his bathroom.
“I can’t, Bill. My parents want me to stay in tonight. I’m sorry.”
He is sorry, he is, but he’s not sure what for.
The silence of the house is very noticeable once he’s hung up the phone. Somehow it becomes louder in the bathroom, seems to take on an echo. He pulls a fresh blade from the pack, tearing it out of its sheath of wax paper almost desperately.
He’s not sure where this sudden, heady, almost dangerous-feeling need came from, but he pretends that it doesn’t scare him.
His fingers shake as he grips the blade, pressing it to the inside of his wrist, but not pulling. The clock in the hall reads eight twenty-nine when he looks. He watches, slowly adding pressure to the metal he has flush against his skin.
When the long-hand twitches to the six, he pulls.
Watching the blood drip into the bright, white porcelain, Stan’s sure it’s never been this easy to breathe.
-
“I miss hearing you laugh.” Bill says.
They’re out in the woods, a few miles down from the Barrens. Stan told his father he was going birdwatching because he just needed to get out of the house – out of his head – for a while. Bill had been standing on the doorstep, hand poised to knock, when Stan had opened the door, and hadn’t given Stan a choice when he said he’d wanted to go with.
“What?” Stan says, trying to make the difference in volume obvious. They weren’t actually birdwatching, Stan didn’t care all that much anymore about…well, anything, but he couldn’t let Bill know that.
Plus, he’d been hoping that Bill wouldn’t have heard his response and might’ve just dropped the entire conversation.
“I haven’t heard you laugh in a while. I miss it.” Bill’s voice gets lower, but more like he’s sad about what he’s saying rather than trying to be quiet.
It’s not like Bill’s wrong. Stan doesn’t laugh anymore, so obviously Bill hasn’t heard him do it. Just like eating, it had hurt too much at first, and, eventually, he’d just drawn a taste – ha – for not doing it anymore. Nothing was all that funny to him at this point anyway and there was always a phantom pain when he stretched his jaw too wide.
He can’t remember the last time he laughed.
“I’m sorry?” Stan says, watching as Bill’s hand slides across the dirt, as he draws the pad of his pointer finger over the back of Stan’s hand.
-
what does it mean when a boy tells you that he misses hearing you laugh?
-
They don’t notice that he doesn’t eat. At first.
Their first semester of high school passes in a blur. Stan’s home a lot, unable to go due to the healing of his wounds, then the panic that consumes him because of the scars on his face. He was gone suddenly and randomly enough once he’d finally started that his parents decided it wasn’t worth the effort of him going in at all. Weirdly enough, he doesn’t actually care about the possibility of falling behind. He spent those months mostly with his parents, allowing them to drag him to doctors and surgeons and medicine men about the scars that their little boy couldn’t – wouldn’t – talk to them about.
By the second semester he’s missing so many credits that the guidance counselor jokes about removing his lunch period for his Honors English. He agrees in a way that he believes to be nonchalant but the woman across the desk from him furrows her eyebrows and he immediately backtracks, offering to take the first lunch in favor of keeping his English.
He does this knowing full well that the other Losers fought tooth and nail to get placed in the second lunch, so they could all eat together.
-
There’s a day at the quarry that Stan thinks everything thing kind of comes to a head.
Well, no, actually. It’s just the day that he starts to feel everyone’s eyes on him instead of just Richie’s and Bill’s.
It’s the third week that they’ve gone out with the main plan of swimming – it’s the highest temp of the season, Bev keeps saying, don’t be pussies – and, the first time, he wouldn’t take his shorts off. The next time, he wouldn’t take off his shirt.
Now he just doesn’t swim at all.
Everyone else still gets in each time and each time their worried glances get both heavier and more frequent. He does his best to ignore them as he spreads his towel out in front of a big oak a few yards from the bank. He stares back blankly, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes, as he rests his back against the base of the tree.
It’s vaguely painful, the rough bark of the oak pressing into the protruding knobs of his spine, but it’s kind of nice as well. He’s tired due to another sleepless night – that’s three this week – and the sun that’s trained on him isn’t helping with that. His eyes shift from his journal where it’s lying open in his lap – bill denbrough, blue and shaking, a man in the body of the boy, cracked kneecaps and forgotten screams, blood dripping from unwounded skin, storming blue eyes – to the inside of his left wrist where three perfectly straight lines are healing, down to his right ankle where four are held together with steri-strips, up to his left hip.
His next target.
“W-wanna s-sp-split th-this with me?”
The words jolt him from his thoughts and his half-asleep daydream of the blood pooling beneath him on the bathroom tile. Bill is kneeling in front of him, holding a wrapped sandwich out with a hand that seems oddly still to Stan. He can see that the crusts have been cut off and where the bread is starting to turn pink because the jelly had started to soak through it. Bill is only wearing his underwear – when did he upgrade to boxers? the voice that vaguely wants him to be normal but doesn’t actually show up enough to make that a reality asks – like they always do, and his skin’s only wet up to his knees, like he got in the water with the others but immediately thought better of it.
Stan can’t help wondering if Bill actually wanted to check on him or if he was the Chosen One, picked because everyone else knew that if any of them had a chance of getting through to Stan, it was Bill.
Stan scowls at the thought. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it.
“I’m, uh, I’m good, thanks.”
Bill’s eyes narrow at the mistake but Stan doesn’t really notice when he reaches out with the hand not clutching a sandwich like it’s the key to everything. Stan goes stock-still when Bill’s palm closes around his wrist, somehow sliding the sleeve of Stan’s shirt up at the same time. Bill’s hand is hot, practically searing, against the three mostly-healed lines. “Are y-you o-o-okay?”
“Bill,” Stan says very softly, unable to keep the tremble from his voice. “Bill, let go of my hand.”
“W-what?” Bill’s blue eyes are dark and worried – worry, worry, worry. about your boy stanley? he’s a mess, forget about it – and Stan wants to kiss him and slap him, but mostly he just wants him to let go.
“Bill, let go.” Despite the words coming through his teeth, they still sound weak.
“Wha – hey.” Bill says, grip slackening and disappearing, only for his hand to slide over to the journal in Stan’s lap. Stan uses the distraction to pull his sleeves down over his hands, balling the fabric into his palms. “‘B-bl-blue and sh-shaking,’” he reads, gently pushing Stan’s hands away when the blond tries to reach out and close the journal. Bill turns it toward himself, reading the rest silently.
Stan sees when he finishes, sees when Bill’s eyes dart to the opposite page. It’s taken up by a pencil sketch of a sand-piper, a half-finished drawing of an open jaw full of sharp teeth, a golden light shining out from the throat, and Stan’s report of the last time he ate. He hadn’t been able to finish the drawing when the idea to draw it had first popped up; the picture had spawned a headache as soon as it had taken shape on the page and the throbbing had only gotten more intense as he’d worked. His food report read: 1 Red Delicious apple, 76.3 grams weighed, diced, spread out over three hours and twenty-seven minutes. Stan doesn’t have to keep looking to know that the date reads at least two days ago.
Stan waits. He sits silently, waiting for a question about the food or at least a quip about the poem or whatever the writing can be defined as. I thought Ben was the one who wrote poetry around here, Stan can imagine him saying, and he can almost hear Richie in the background yelling, Look at this shit! Big Bill got off a Good One, goddamn! even though that joke wouldn’t even be a joke, let alone a Good One.
Instead, Bill just crosses his legs beneath himself, sandwich forgotten, and points to his name with a finger that has clearly seen less-anxious days, and asks, “What d-does th-th-that mean?”
Stan tries to ignore him, tries to focus in on the leaves, rustling as a breeze blows through, the splashes drifting over from the water, the various yells and laughs and screams that echo across the rocks that make up the cliff-face.
But Bill Denbrough stares at him straight, face both smooth and curious and worried, and his gaze burns.
“I don’t know.” Stan says nervously, kneading his hands in his lap, slowly allowing his right pointer finger to trail up inside of his sleeve, to press at the wounds on his wrist. “It’s nothing.” Richie’s and Eddie’s voices get louder, loud enough to pick them out from the rest, and Stan trains his eyes over Bill’s shoulder to see Richie swimming after Eddie, arms stretched out as though he plans on launching an attack.
“Stan?”
“I don’t even remember writing it.” Stan says softly after another stretch of silence, letting his defenses slip a little because he’s so tired of it all right now. He can feel color seeping into his cheeks as he meets Bill’s eyes. It’s true, he really doesn’t remember writing it, even though he must’ve done it in the past day or two. He can’t tell what Bill sees in his eyes, but it must not be good because his eyebrows knit, and the corners of his lips turn down slightly.
Bill opens his mouth, but he doesn’t get to say whatever he’d been planning to.
A loud splash, then a gargled scream, then – “Enough!” Eddie screams from the water and they both twist to look. Stan feels his walls climbing back into place, keys twisting in locks. Eddie’s laughing as Richie makes grabby hands at him, but Eddie jumps out of his reach, stomping out of the water and toward them. Richie darts after him, gathering him into a squirmy hug. Mike and Ben follow suit, talking about pooling money and getting a pizza, while Bev stays floating out in a patch of sunlight, purple heart-shaped glasses blocking her eyes.
“Stan?” Bill asks again, running his finger over his name in Stan’s journal.
“It’s nothing,” Stan repeats, voice firm again, keeping his eyes trained on where the sun is dipping behind the trees across the water. “Don’t worry about it, Bill.”
-
Stan never though he’d like harming himself.
He thinks this as he participates in the act, drawing straight lines with a fresh blade across the tight skin of his left hipbone. After the second slice, he wasn’t so sure this area was a good idea; the bone protrudes sharply, so it feels like he’s cutting the bone, too, and it stings in a way that’s more annoying than it is satisfying.
It’s not like he’s thought about it a lot, whether he’d like harming himself or not, it’s just – now that he’s doing it, he’s reflecting on who he was when he didn’t do it. And he just can’t see that boy ever doing it.
Good boy Stanley Uris with his button downs and his khaki shorts and his perfect white Converse. Good boy Stanley Uris with his mint condition school supplies and his studying time-slots and his hundred percent essays. Good boy Stanley Uris with his fear of confrontation and his desperate desire to please his father and his plans to never be anything special.
You’re a good boy, Stanley.
Good Boy Stanley Uris and his evenly spaced slices. Good Boy Stanley Uris and his painfully concave stomach. Good Boy Stanley Uris and his almost obsessive desire to see his insides. Good Boy Stanley Uris and his double-edged razors. Good Boy Stanley Uris and his countless lies. Good Boy Stanley Uris and his one hundred and one secrets. Good Boy Stanley Uris and this gaping hole in his chest.
Good Boy, Good Boy, Good Boy.
Good Boy, Stanley Uris. Aren’t ya just a Good Boy? Good, good, good!
He just can’t see that boy ever doing it. Just like he can’t see this boy ever not.
-
His mother forces a smoothie on him for the first day of finals at the end of freshman year. It’s banana and strawberry and his insides twist and curl and cry at the sugar that his mother so clearly added.
He stops halfway to school to vomit on the side of the road, but all that comes up is saliva and barely a tablespoon of the pink and yellow drink. He dumps what’s left of the smoothie out in bushes with blue and white blooms, leaving a tiny little bit at the bottom of the glass so that he can make it look like he’s eaten if anyone asks.
They’ve been watching him, his friends, and he can see them doing it: worrying about him, talking quietly, shooting looks between themselves, randomly shutting up when he walks in or looks their way.
He needs it to stop.
-
The blood is his favorite part, surprisingly enough. The majority of the relief comes later – unless he’s let everything build up, then that first slice is like heaven – during school or at the synagogue or when he’s unable to get out of plans with the Losers. When he can press at the scabs because he’s being asked questions he can’t answer. When he can pick with perfectly filed nails when his parents look at him for too long. When he can scratch the scars open when he catches people staring at his scars.
The blood, though, it’s nice. He likes the copper-iron taste of it. The smooth, silky texture. The wet warmth. The way it glides in straight lines down his thighs. He likes spreading it over his fingers, drawing in the puddles he allows to pool on the tile. He likes the way it dyes his skin and the porcelain of the tub pink. Even when he doesn’t wash it all away, it’s never enough for anyone to notice. Plus, it gives him a job. He carefully cleanses his skin of the pink tinge, then scrubs the sink out with bleach and a toothbrush, then does it all again for good measure. Cleaning is good; he’s always enjoyed it, and he enjoys it even more now that he's actually doing something beneficial to the world.
He makes a mess of himself, then he cleans it up.
-
He can hear Richie talking to himself two aisles over, muttering about human nature and something about snakes that Stan doesn’t catch the tail-end of. Bill’s in front of Stan and he’s mostly quiet, tapping his fingers in a three-beat that Stan has subconsciously copied with the toe of his hiking boot. The way Bill’s leaning over his desk has his shirt struggling to contain the hard curve of his shoulders, stretching over the sharp blades that run parallel on each side of his spine.
Stan hates himself for staring but it doesn’t stop him.
He copies the three-beat with his pencil, staring down at his question about people being haunted by procrastination which would be funny if he actually were procrastinating.
He pushes his thumb under the hem of his shirt, fits his thumbnail into the groove of the freshest mark on the lower half of his ribs and twitches his thumb. The relief is almost immediate, a gushing warmth that floods his brain and clears him of distraction.
He doesn’t look at Bill again. He finishes his English essay with twenty-two minutes to spare.
-
He walks past the lunchroom after he’s finished both of his morning Mathematics finals. He’s heading outside to find a shady tree in the yard of the school and try and sleep a little or, at least, rest his eyes.
He pauses outside the doorway, trying to gauge the pain in his throat and decide if he needs a water bottle. He doesn’t really go in there anymore; there wasn’t much of a reason once he’d stopped eating, then there really wasn’t a reason once he’d switched lunch hours and stopped sitting with the Losers.
But it’s finals week now, which means the entire freshman and junior class eats lunch together at second lunch, instead of just those who were assigned it.
He ducks his head in, trying to decide if entrance is worth it for a water bottle, and his eyes immediately zero in on his friends. They’re sitting at a table next to the windows, in a patch of glittery sunlight, and everyone’s leaned in slightly toward Bill who’s telling a story dramatically, waving his hands around, smiling, and his eyes are fucking shining.
Stan feels his pulse pick up.
Bill finishes his story with a slam of his open palms to the tabletop and all the Losers break out in laughter, Richie yelling, “Big Boy Bill gets off a Good One, ladies and gentlemen!”
Bill seems to soak up the praise, smiling and laughing with them, cheeks turning pink.
Stan finds himself smiling as well, ignoring the phantom pain. There’s something beautiful in the way his friends all sit together, enjoying themselves, obvious as a full friend group. They all look so happy: Richie sliding slightly closer to Eddie, Bev mirroring the position with Ben, though much more confidently. Ben smiling with flushed cheeks and Mike clapping a hand on his shoulder in silent congratulations. And, of course, Big Bill, their leader and savior.
Then Stan sees the empty spot between Richie and Bill. It wasn’t as noticeable when Richie was a few inches closer, but even when he imagines Richie where he was, there’s definitely still a space there.
Before Stan’s able to really think about it, Bill’s glimmering blue eyes are trained on him.
Stan feels his heart lurch.
He freezes, though he had no intention of moving until Bill looked his way, unable to move from under his gaze. He doesn’t know how he feels about being caught watching outside of the general twist in his stomach that he thinks everyone feels when they’ve been caught.
It’s Mike who notices first, twisting to look over his shoulder at what Bill’s looking at. Ben and Bev, then, as a unit. Eddie, with flushed red cheeks, who in turn elbows Richie in the ribs to make him to stop whispering in his ear and doing whatever it is he’s doing with his hands to get him to look.
He almost expects Richie to call out, yell Stan the Man or something. But he doesn’t. They all just stare and it kind of feels like time has stopped. Then –
“C’mon!” Bill yells, waving and beckoning and clearly saying join us without saying it. Everyone else joins in then, now that their leader has shown approval, tossing their arms and smiling in invitation.
Bill Denbrough fucking glows and Stanley Uris can’t help but allow himself to be blinded by the light.
-
Bill follows him around for the rest of the day, when he doesn’t have his own finals, up until his dad calls to have him come home.
Stan doesn’t remember the last time he’s smiled this much.
-
He writes bill denbrough in the best cursive that he can on a fresh page in a sunny yellow because that’s what Bill Denbrough is to him: a sunny sky on the darkest of days.
He’s not bright enough to light up the shadowy parts of Stanley Uris, but he’s still pretty fucking bright.
-
School’s out in four weeks.
Stan’s just finished his last final and that’s all he can think about. Four weeks until he’s free. Free of his bike and schoolwork and people watching him weirdly and his therapist and why don’t you wear shorts, stan-leee? it’s fuckin’ hot and comments about his scars and beratements over skipped classes and the Losers.
He never would’ve thought that he’d want away from them, but this year’s been pretty brand new all around, so he just adds it to the new developments list and moves on.
He’s almost free.
-
He gets a call on the first Tuesday of May from the public library. It’s about a copy of a National Geographic book on birds in North America that he requested information on last summer, before – well, before.
He walks through downtown on the way home, is too busy staring down at the book to notice the man he’s about to walk into.
“I’m sorry.” Stan calls back after their shoulders hit, continuing to stare at the book. He remembers being so fucking excited about this book, remembers begging his dad for a week to call about it and offering to put up the pre-rent money back before – well, before. And now, now he can’t even remember what kind of eagle is on the cover, only knows that it is an eag-
“Stan!”
Stan slams the book into his chest, hard enough that an ache immediately forms in his sternum, an instinctual need to protect it bursting through his bones. For a tense, painful moment, that book is his journal – a little, blue, leather-bound thing that is basically just a doorway to the inside of Stanley Uris’ ribcage with a vague notion of a lock – and Bill Denbrough wants to take another peek. His vision blurs as his head spins, brain trying to locate the journal that is not in his arms.
He can see it in his head, the directions to his house, his bike still latched to the railing of his front porch, opening his front door, the walk up the steps and to his room, tapping his fingers against the book spines lining the shelf next to the window, digging through his closet before it clicks in his head and he remembers stuffing it between his mattress and box spring.
“You okay?” A sharp voice asks, strong hands landing on his shoulders. He can’t help cringing away from the thumb that presses softly at the connection between his upper arm and shoulder, brain swimming back to the night before when he’d cut six even lines there.
The hands fall from his shoulders and his eyes light up enough for him to see that it’s Mike standing in front of him, arms halfway stretched between them as though he thinks he’ll need to catch Stan. “I’m fine.” Stan spits out, looking around to take in his surroundings.
He’s right outside the record store that Richie frequents despite his perpetually empty pockets, and two storefronts down is the diner that the Losers themselves have come to call their haunt over this past schoolyear. Stan’s surprised by the feeling of longing that bubbles up in his throat when he looks at the blue and white piping along the windows, the faded red name painted on the glass. He doesn’t remember feeling as fond of it as everyone else seemed to but now, now he misses dipping fries in shakes and pretending to work on homework and watching Richie pile his mouth full of cheeseburger despite how disgusting he looked while doing it.
“You startled me.” He reports but somehow insists at Mike’s concerned look. It’s an accusation, that much is clear, but Stan also needs Mike to believe it.
“Okay.” Mike smiles hesitantly, tucking his hands into the pockets of his work-jeans. Stan wants to know what he’s thinking. “We’re all up at the diner,” he says, pulling one hand out to fling it over his shoulder.
It feels like a blow to the chest, just for a second, then Stan remembers three phone calls that he’d ignored last night and how he’d run from Ben in the middle of a conversation when whatever it was he’d forced down his throat for his mother this morning had come crawling up.
“I had a delivery and we’ve got half-price milkshakes as my tip.”
Stan’s already opening his mouth to refuse when Mike asks if he wants to join them. Stan doesn’t answer, looking over his shoulder where Bill is spilling out of the door at the diner, Bev standing at his shoulder. Her flowered dress flutters in the breeze as she leans into Bill’s shoulder and smiles at Stan, mirroring Bill’s action of waving him over.
It’s one thing to say no to Mike. He has this way of knowing whether you need to be left alone by your response, by your facial features, even if you lie, and he won’t push or pry, will only ask once. His word is kind of like law, like Bill’s, but it has more logical reasoning behind it most of the time. But it’s another thing to say no to Bev and Bill’s beckoning hands, their smiles and eyes that burn bright. Bill’s flaming, blue orbs that Stan can somehow see the hope overflowing from despite what must be ten yards between them.
“Yeah, sure.”
He follows Mike back to the diner. Bill grabs his fingers once they get into the door, tugging him to a round booth in the back where Stan can see Ben staring at Richie with wide eyes. They’re not exactly holding hands, he and Bill, but they’re not not holding hands. Bill slides in next to Eddie, then pulls Stan in next. Bev crosses her legs beneath herself at Ben’s side and Mike drops in next to her.
Richie seems to be snorting a thick chocolate shake with random chunks in it – caramel chips? Stan wonders, trying to remember what Richie prefers, unable to stop his nose from wrinkling – from the tabletop and Eddie’s voice is vaguely choked as he screams, “What in the actual fuck, Tozier? That is horrendous!”
But his cheeks are flushed and he’s leaning into Richie and he’s smiling and laughing and – oh, Stan can see that Eddie looks at Richie the same way Richie looks at him. Wow, Stan thinks to himself as Bill pulls him flush against his side in the booth, wrapping his arm around Stan’s waist, this is a new development for the list. He wonders how he can differentiate this from the other things on the list; everything on there is kind of bad, he’s realized the few times he’s reread it, and this is clearly a good thing because, he can see it now, they’re going to be good for each other.
He doesn’t let himself think about it, about Bill’s hand – the one that he was kind of clutching just a minute or two ago – lightly resting against his right hip. Or about the long line of Bill Denbrough that’s pressed up against his side, basically connecting them from ankle to shoulder.
He doesn’t let himself think about it, but, boy, does he think about it.
Stan doesn’t join in on the conversation, but he enjoys himself anyway, clutching his book to his chest and just watching his friends – family – smiling and laughing and having a good time. He’s missed them, somehow. They’ve been around – when he hasn’t been avoiding and lying to them – but it still feels like he hasn’t seen them in months. He can feel his heart beating inside of his chest for the first time in what feels like forever.
Then Bill’s hand squeezes his hip before sliding across the small of his back. He takes the hand that Stan has lying on the slick vinyl of the booth-seat, interlocking their fingers. Stan looks up at Bill, sees his cheeks are pink and his eyes are bright, though he seems to be avoiding meeting Stan’s own, glancing at them for a moment before letting his gaze slip to Stan’s cheeks or his mouth. Bill smiles and pushes his milkshake glass – vanilla with chunks of strawberries – toward Stan. Stan raises his eyebrows, stomach twisting, and Bill shrugs.
But his eyes are like stars.
Stan takes a sip, ignoring the attempt his throat makes at forcing the cold drink back up, and suffers through the stabbing pains in his stomach because of the way that Bill’s cheeks get even darker.
-
He walks home later – with the sun dipping down behind the houses – and feels like he’s on top of the world. The sunset is prettier, the colors twisting and shifting in a way he’s never seen before, and everything is okay.
He eats dinner and showers and brushes his teeth. He finishes his homework, enjoys picking through the National Geographic book, then lies down for bed.
It takes ten minutes for his brain to settle down. Then his dinner comes up. The glow from the day starts to fade and his brain curls into the black shadows.
He can’t help thinking that every second he spent with the Losers today was a mistake.
-
He uses a kitchen knife to slit a shallow gash on the inside of his thumb. It hurts more than the others do, it stings like a paper cut – pressure, pressure, pressure! cut a little deeper, stanley, let the blood out, empty yourself, cleanse yourself, make it all better! – and Stan hates it.
Especially when he realizes that it brings no release.
He flips to the page where he last wrote about Bill – bill denbrough, blue and shaking, a man in the body of the boy, cracked kneecaps and forgotten screams, blood dripping from unwounded skin, storming blue eyes.
He wipes off some of the excess blood with the kitchen towel hanging on the oven, then holds his thumb so the pad of it is parallel to the ceiling. He allows the blood to sink into the grooves of his thumb, then he presses it to the page, right over the bill of bill denbrough.
Below the original writing, he adds – the blood of another boy, his heart just another toy.
-
His father sends him to get a book from the synagogue, the Cambridge Guide to something, something about Jewish history that Stan has long since forgotten the name of and how to care about.
It’s a Wednesday and he didn’t go to school because that dumb voice in his head wouldn’t stop vibrating its vocal chords, but he told his mother he just wasn’t feeling the best. He’d choked down a smoothie and plain toast under her careful eyes, stomach rolling. His father sent him to get the book because the fresh air and exercise will do you good, Stanley, and Stan didn’t care enough to say anything to that.
It’s not a problem anyway, until –
None of his long-sleeve shirts are clean. They’re either one wear too dirty for Stan to be able to handle letting the fabric touch his skin again or have random dots and speckles of blood on the wrists or the shoulders or the sides. His favorite shirt, a thin, pale green sweatshirt, had a giant spot just on the hem that had slowly appeared during PE without Stan being aware. He hadn’t noticed until Richie had asked if he’d started his period, crowing about how our little Stanley is finally a grown woman! Stan had startled, tripping his way out of the laps but thankfully not face-planting. Richie had kept jogging – do you know anything about female anatomy, fuckwad? Stan had called over his shoulder because, seriously? – but Stan could feel his eyes on his back as he’d ducked into the locker room.
The freshest cuts on his wrists are mostly healed but the worst – on the inside of his elbow – are still sealed by butterfly strips that pop open at the slightest of stress, so Stan ends up stealing one of the tees his father wears to mow the lawn. It’s super oversized and it hangs past where the shorts he used to wear would’ve stopped. The sleeves, though, Stan thinks as he slips the soft material over his head and watches himself disappear into it in his mirror, the sleeves are key. If Stan unrolls the cuffs, they lie just past the crease of his elbow, hiding the little white strips well.
It’s perfect. Well – okay, it’s not, it really isn’t, and the fear kind of has Stan’s knees a little jellified on his way into town, but he can handle it.
Wednesday’s are generally reserved for the quarry or the arcade and movies at the Aladdin because tickets are always half-price on the second Wednesday of the month, Stan reminds himself as he multitasks by walking and worrying about running into any of the Losers. So, really, he has nothing to worry about. He’ll be a block behind the theater and a few storefronts and across the street from the Aladdin.
He’ll be fine.
Then he gets to town and – nope, no he won’t.
The first time he goes to town in a week and there’s a fucking parade – what fucking day is it? he asks himself – or there’s a marching band practicing for a parade and, of course, because someone hates Stan Uris, there’s Richie fucking Tozier wrestling a trumpet from one of the band member’s hands in the middle of the street, most likely making an ill-fitting joke about horns.
Eddie is standing off to the right, a few yards ahead of Stan on the sidewalk, waiting patiently as Richie seems to cross the line between attempted theft and assault by shoving the trumpeter. He’s licking a pale, pink ice cream cone with a sort of bored yet fond look on his face as he watches Richie, holding a chocolate cone in his other hand, which Stan can only assume is the Trashmouth’s.
With another shove where the trumpeter drops back onto his ass, Richie jumps and skips around for a moment before fitting the mouthpiece to his lips and, presumably, blowing, because an awful noise that kind of resembles a really high screech pops out from the bell and Stan can’t help closing his eyes and turning away.
Before Stan gets through a complete thought – outside of fuck, my ears – and because it’s actually the fucking Universe that hates Stan, there’s a loud, metal clattering and Stan looks back to Richie to find him staring at Stan, mouth open, the trumpet he’d successfully stolen, and not-so-successfully played, now lying on the ground in front of him.
“Stan the Man!” Richie crows and Eddie spins to get a good look, almost dropping Richie’s cone in the process. Richie smiles and bends to grab the trumpet but the man he’d been fighting with has already snatched it and scampered off. “What the fuck, man?” Richie calls after him, shaking his head and heading toward where Eddie seems to be cautiously sidling up to Stan.
“You weren’t at school today.” Eddie says softly, obviously taking in the way Stan swims in his shirt, and Stan just knows Eddie wants to offer him Richie’s cone. That’s been happening a lot lately – can I get you anything else, dear? and stan, do you want some more? – and he can’t help wondering if he really looks as hungry as people seem to think he is.
“What’s Stan the Man been doin’?” Richie asks, shoving his hands into his pockets. Stan notices his quick glance at Eddie’s red shorts. Wait, no, Stan starts to correct himself when Richie’s gaze darts back for a brief second, he’s looking at Eddie’s thighs. “Haven’t seen you around much lately.”
Stan can’t stop himself from crossing his arms, tucking his left wrist into the space of his opposite elbow despite knowing that Richie’s watching for a movement just like that. He’d rather Richie be suspicious than actually have an inkling of proof. Still, he brushes at nonexistent lint on his right sleeve to try and rectify the action, making a distasteful noise at it like the motion didn’t work. “Just, um, at home, helping my parents. Doctors and stuff, you know,” he tacks on at the last second without thinking about it. He rocks back on his heels, very aware of how awkward this is and very, very aware of the fact that it’s all because of him.
“Are you sick?” Eddie takes a half-step back and Stan beats down the slight tinge of annoyance that used to bubble up whenever Stan was already in a vaguely sour mood and Eddie’s fear of germs made itself known.
He’s earned this fear, Stan thinks to himself, blinking back an image of Eddie covered in black sludge that had previously been the contents of some monster’s stomach.
What have you earned? a voice Stan still hasn’t managed to find the residence of asks. Stan’s head immediately goes to the food he’d eaten, the first real food he’s eaten in months, the biggest meal he’s had in a long time. Did he earn it? What has he done recently that deserves reward?
He’s avoiding his friends, he won’t talk to his parents, he’s stopped eating, and he’s been shredding his skin eleven ways to next to Tuesday.
You’ve earned nothing, the voice says. His stomach twists and Stan nearly trips over his boat shoes to spit out a goodbye.
Then he spits up his breakfast.
-
The pain in his stomach doesn’t subside.
-
Sometimes he sneaks off to the library, so he can sit in silence.
Silence is helpful. He can at least get some sort of rest inside of it.
Silence on the outside, at least, because his brain is screaming about the weird look Richie had shot him as he’d slipped past the door to the Biotech class they both shared and Bev’s glance that had resulted in her brows furrowing when he’d been leaving first lunch and she’d been entering second. He’d ducked out before she could say anything, and his brain is still flashing with the image of her hurt as it’d spread across her face.
He reaches his hand up to touch his face, running the tips of his fingers over those scars that only he’s ever touched. He’s been touching them a lot recently and he can hear Mia’s voice telling him that he’s trying to reacquaint himself with them as a coping method.
He tells himself that he’s just checking to see if they’re still there. Then he realizes that that’s what Mia’s saying, only she’s doing so in her more complicated, psychological talk with all the complicated bullshit words, and he tries to stop doing it at all.
When he touches one that’s diagonal from his mouth, something flakes off and flutters down to his knee where it’s pressed against his chest. His first thought is dry skin – there’d been a lot of it when they were first healing, a lot of random scabbing peeling off around him – but then he sees that it’s red and he immediately pushes himself up to head toward the bathroom.
He ignores the weird look the librarian shoots him as he leaves.
He waits patiently just outside the door before the jock inside – a senior Stan vaguely recognizes as someone he’d probably had a crush on in middle school – steps out, barely glancing at Stan as the door swings shut behind his letterman jacket. He locks the door behind him, then stares at his reflection for a good five minutes.
There are three, small lines of dark, dried blood trailing down from three of his scars to the skin of his neck. He scratches at them softly, watching as it flakes, dropping down onto his shirt and into the sink.
The three scars closest to his mouth have been ripped open, almost as though done in a frenzy.
He doesn’t even remember doing it.
-
“Stan?” His mother calls his name as soon as the door clicks shut behind him.
He’s supposed to still be at school, but he left after second period and spent a few hours wasting time down at the quarry, trying to wait until his mother was gone. He’d overheard Richie and Mike talking about getting together with everyone else and talking to Stan, something about him not talking much anymore. All he’d heard was that he was about to be cornered and he knew he wouldn’t have been able to handle it without causing a scene, so he’d left through the gym door without even grabbing his stuff.
An action he slightly regrets now that he knows his mother is still home. “Just a second!” he calls as he tiptoes toward the stairs, hoping that it seems as though he wants to drop off his bag first.
“Why’re you home?” his mother asks when he carefully steps into the kitchen, hesitating a few feet in from the doorway.
“Half-day.” He lies, opening the fridge and grabbing an orange without thinking about it.
His mother hums noncommittally, then turns to him. She eyes his hands as he digs his thumbnail into the soft outer-skin of the orange and Stan fights the urge to scream.
He’s tired of people eyeing him all the fucking time.
“Do you know why one of the good dishtowels has blood on it?”
“Blood?” Stan asks, tipping his head up and peeling a chunk of the orange skin away from the flesh.
She hums again, in affirmation this time, holding out a pale blue dishtowel with white piping. And, yep, yeah, there’s a large, misshapen round of blood in the corner that Stan absolutely remembers putting there like a week and a half ago. He’d gotten that thumbprint idea for his journal and hadn’t been able to stop himself.
Or, at least, force himself to grab a napkin rather than the dishtowel that had been hanging on the handle of the oven.
“I’m not sure.” As Stan climbs the stairs to his bedroom, he notices that the lie doesn’t make his stomach twist anymore.
-
He buries himself in pretend schoolwork and ignores calls and tells his parents he has plans when they want to do something with him. He thinks he’s had a breakthrough seven times in about three days and every time he’s realized how fucking stupid he is. He feels like his heart is beating so hard it’s about to shoot itself out of his chest.
He’s never felt so high in his life but the only thought that he keeps in his head is the one that wants to know how hard he’s going to fall.
-
“Stan, sweetheart, what happened?”
Stan freezes at the bottom of the steps. But he doesn’t. His limbs are still loose and airy, his shoulders aren’t tense, he feels like he could move if he tried. But he’s just – he’s rooted to this spot.
“Honey, why are your – the wounds on your face? They’re fresh.”
He says nothing. He doesn’t spin to face her. He feels like j-ello but it’s a bad feeling now. He feels like he’s drowning but he just doesn’t care enough to find a way to get air. Everything’s just – it just doesn’t matter anymore, he can’t help thinking that nothing ever did.
“What happened?”
He doesn’t say anything. He’s no longer rooted yet he makes no attempt to move.
Somehow, even he can feel the heartbreak in his own silence.
-
School’s out in one week.
Stan’s father has given up on teaching him to shave.
Stan’s mother doesn’t make him smoothies anymore, even on her good days.
Beverly Marsh looks at Stan with pity in her eyes. Stan wants to gouge them out.
Ben Hanscom is writing poetry about a lost bird. Stan wonders when he lost the boy piece of his nickname.
Richie Tozier still watches him like a fucking hawk. Stan can’t help laughing because Richie is the blindest of them all.
Mike Hanlon still looks strong, but visibly less tired. He’s not actively looking, and he never says anything, but Stan knows he notices.
Eddie Kaspbrak smiles and laughs but carefully keeps his distance. Stan questions if it’s possible to catch whatever it is that he’s contracted.
And Bill Denbrough still attempts to hold Stan’s hand, though his eyes are dark around Stan. Stan can’t make him stop but he’s not sure he wants him to.
Stanley Uris considers his mother’s sleeping pills in more than a joking manner for the first time in his entire life.
-
He’s almost free.
-
He passes out in gym class.
It’s ridiculous and he feels like a goddamn cliché when he hears about it later.
He’s jogging on the field, just fast enough that he knows Bill will never catch up but slow enough that he knows his legs won’t be sore until he’s already home, showered and sliced and lying in bed.
He hears one yell of his name, and his vision goes black.
-
There’s a white light in his eyes when he wakes up. He tries to blink but someone’s thumb is holding his eyelid open. After a few seconds, the light’s gone and he squeezes his eyes shut, bringing his hands up to rub at them harshly.
His hands feel a little rubbery, his head a little dark, and his body aches.
Then he feels them against his skin. Rough but soft, raised scars rubbing along smooth, slippery ones, and he realizes that his arms are bare. He opens his eyes to find his entire chest bare, what the hell?
There’s a knock, then – “Stan!”
“Bev.” Bev?
The person with the light is gone and Bev is standing in the doorway. Her pale pink dress is patterned with navy blue stars and it dances just above her knees; Stan can see an oddly-shaped scrape that’s scabbed over on her right knee and spreading up along her thigh. Stan shifts until he can tuck his wrist beneath his back, sitting up and propping himself up against the pillows.
“Hey, um,” her voice is nervous, soft and shaky – use careful hands with your porcelain bird, bevvy – and Stan hates it. “Bill, uh, Bill was here, but he needed to go get his stuff from the gym before it got locked up. He asked me to stay with you, but the nurse wouldn’t let me stay in here while he checked you out.”
Stan nods, closing his eyes. He’s exhausted, somehow, like passing out didn’t actually help in any way with the whole rest thing he’s been failing at.
“Stan?”
“Yeah, Bev?” he keeps his eyes closed, unwilling to waste the energy on opening them. And unsure if he’d be able to handle her crying because he thinks she is.
“Are we still friends?”
He pauses to think about the question and –
No, it bursts into his mind without any warning, harshly enough that he flinches inwardly, no, because you were floating, floating, floating, and they all left me alone, and Ben is hamburger helper, and Mike pushed Henry Bowers down a well, and Eddie is never going to feel clean again, not even clean enough, and Richie had to feel a monster’s skull crack under a baseball bat he was wielding, and Bill will never have a little brother again, will never see Georgie again, because he had to shoot him in the face, and I’m always going to have these goddamned scars, I’m never going to be able to forget anything, no matter what, and we’re all going to have to do it all over again in twenty-seven years.
this has literally been the worst year of my life, why in the hell am I still alive? and – oh. That’s a realization and a half.
Why are you still alive? the voice in his head asks.
And – well, he didn’t know he was trying not to be. He didn’t even know he didn’t want to be until now.
But, “Yeah, I, I think so.”
“Does that mean you’re going to come back to us?” Her voice is scared, trembling and when he opens his eyes, she’s standing next to him, eyes shiny but cheeks dry.
“What do you mean?”
She doesn’t say anything, reaching for his arm and gingerly tugging it from beneath his body. She looks at the pink lines decorating his wrist, but noticeably refrains from touching them.
“We’re still here, Stan. All of us. We’re waiting for you.”
-
He gets out of it in a way that’s way too easy. He doesn’t even have to do anything, not really. He says that he didn’t eat at all, that he hadn’t been sleeping well, that he’s stressed about the end of the schoolyear.
He even admits that he should’ve been wearing a short-sleeve shirt when he’s informed that he passed out due to overexertion and some form of heatstroke. They don’t even say anything about the scars. Maybe they didn’t notice them or maybe they already put in a call to his parents and left a message, but, really, he doesn’t care either way.
He goes home an hour late to a note that tells him his parents won’t be back until the weekend. He opens the fridge, picks through leftovers and takeout containers. He wants to eat, he really does, even if it’s only so he can avoid another incident like this one.
Still, he grabs a water bottle before retreating to his room.
-
Stan’s dozing, belly full of water, stomach bare of shirt but covered by gauze, – his entire stomach this time, pulsing and throbbing and spitting up blood, turned into a curvy, overlapping highway of self-inflicted wounds – skin freshly scrubbed and a rosy pink, when he hears a soft tapping. He jolts, eyeing the window once he looks around and confirms that he’s alone, but the curtains are drawn so he can’t see anything.
He chooses to ignore it and settles against his pillows, assuming the position of dead body at a viewing for no reason other than his desire to see what it’s like. A straight line from head to toe, left hand over right on his stomach, breathing slow, eyes closed. He can feel the edge of his journal digging into his knee.
tap, tap, tap.
He looks to the window again.
tap, tap, tap.
He doesn’t really get how Eddie does it, ignores Richie’s constant knocking on his window. Maybe it’s because he knows Richie’s on the other side, Stan thinks, maybe that’s motivation. But, now that he thinks about it –
tap, tap, tap.
– none of those stories have ended with and Richie finally gave up because I ignored him, they always end with, and it was fucking ridiculous because it was Richie. And, that’s why you love me, Eds. Then blushing cheeks and, Fuck off, Tozier, through a bitten-back smile.
tap, tap, tap.
He stands. Maybe it is Richie, the more upbeat voice in his head says, though the thought isn’t really any type of motivation to ignore it. It’s more of a motivation to open his window and shove Richie in the chest just to see Richie tumble off of his roof. Plus, if it’s Richie, he might be able to handle it. But, out of all of them, why would it be Richie?
tap, tap, tap.
Without even thinking about the fact that he’s only wearing pajama pants, he strides over to the window purposefully and pushes the curtains back to find Bill crouching on the other side of the glass pane. Stan just stares for a moment, mind somehow peacefully blank, and Bill taps again on the window, tilting his head slightly to the left, brows furrowing.
Stan sighs and opens the window but doesn’t step back or invite Bill in. Bill’s eyes are noticeably fixed on Stan’s eyes, maybe on the scar closest to his left one. “C-can I come in?” Bill asks after a minute or so of silent staring on both their parts, where Stan makes no move to allow Bill entrance and Bill makes no excessive attempt to gain it.
Stan stares some more; Bill’s eyes stay fixed; both sets start to glaze over. Stan shuffles back, padding toward his bed as he blinks the film away. He seats himself against his headboard, crossing his legs and making some sort of dramatic gesture with his arms that’s meant to convey a very sarcastic be my guest or, at least, come in.
Bill clambers through the window, his ratty, black Converse getting caught on the frame and his long limbs causing him issues. He’s really started sprouting up this year, they all have, but Bill is the only one that Stan finds himself regretting the fact that he’d missed it.
Stan covers his mouth to stifle his laugh, wincing. It doesn’t hurt to laugh anymore, not really, but the phantom pain still flares up when he stretches his jaw too wide.
Bill pauses for a moment just inside the window, smiling as he watches Stan hide his laugh.
He really is beautiful, Bill, and Stan can understand why his brain likes him so much. With Bill standing there in front of the window with gold light curling around his frame, there’s a coiling in Stan’s chest, a desperate desire to touch that he’s only felt for a blade, never a person.
Bill greets him quietly before bending to unlace his Converse. He presses them together against the wall under the window, then folds his jacket along the spine and lies it over his shoes. He sticks his arm through the window and pulls in his backpack, then another and a gym bag that Stan recognizes as his own, before shutting the window.
Stan doesn’t really know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything, just watches Bill as he drops Stan’s bags next to his closet, then carries his backpack with him as he sits in front of Stan, mirroring his position and crossing his legs. Stan’s right knee barely grazes Bill’s left but there’s still a good foot of empty bad space between them. Stan feels self-conscious sitting there without a shirt on, but Bill has effectively trapped him in his own bed.
Stan briefly entertains the idea that Bill planned this.
But Bill doesn’t seem to be paying attention to Stan anyway, he’s unzipping his bag in his lap and pulling things out one by one and spreading them out between them. A plastic-wrapped sandwich, an apple, another sandwich, a carton of orange juice that he must’ve stolen from school, a half-empty bottle of Sprite, a rolled-up family-sized bag of kett-
No, Stan wants to say when he realizes what this is. His stomach twists and his heart hurts and he hates Bill with everything he has. No, Bill, no, we’re not doing this. He wants to say something, anything, but he can’t speak, his throat is too dry, his lungs too tight. Bill scatters everything between them, oblivious to Stan freaking out right in front of him, and in his panic, Stan is fighting the urge to fix it all.
“I want you to eat with me.” Bill says after a minute or two, once the food is spread out, apparently, to his liking and he’s put his bookbag on the floor.
He doesn’t stutter. This fact is worth screaming over.
Stan’s throat is tight as he tries to feign surprise, “What? No.”
“Stan, I…” Bill trails off, settling his hand against Stan’s ankle. His thumb slips up under the hem of Stan’ pajama pants, the same way Stan has done dozens of times, except Bill’s not pressing the sharpened edge of his nail into the cuts and scars on Stan’s skin, he’s gently rubbing his thumb over them in a way that Stan doesn’t want to admit to himself is soothing.
He feels like a deer caught in the headlights, wide eyes and fear swirling inside of every inch of his ribcage. He feels like a tortured animal that’s been rescued but is still unable to tell the difference between their hero and their captor. He’s never wanted to think of Bill as his savior, never wanted to believe he needed anyone but himself, but out of the two people in this room Bill is the last person Stan can think would be willing to leave him to rot.
Stan doesn’t want to think about where that leaves him.
“I want you to eat with me.” Bill repeats when he deems Stan calm enough. Stan’s hands are twitching, eyes flicking back and forth between the food piled between them and Bill’s hand on his ankle, but his chest is rising and falling less rapidly and the full-blown panic that was boiling in his dark eyes is now kind of just a simmer. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but he knows he needs to try. “Please,” he pushes as Stan gives in to the itching in his brain and starts rearranging the food between them.
“No.” Stan says, voice hard but not hard enough.
“Then I want you to show me them.” Bill says quietly, reaching out to brush his fingers over Stan’s bandage, trailing his fingers down to the mostly-healed lines on Stan’s hip.
“No.” Stan says again, distracted, staring at Bill’s fingers splayed out over the pink flesh. It was different with his ankle, he couldn’t see Bill touching them, he might’ve been able to pretend that he wasn’t touching them, just him.
“Please, Stan.”
Stan’s eyes flicker up to Bill’s face for the first time since Bill came in through the window. He looks pained, scared, hurt and – wait, he’s hurt by what Stan’s doing? Stan wants to ask but his throat tightens again, and he chokes on the words.
He can’t stand the hurt in Bill’s eyes, so he watches it melt away as he reaches for the apple.
-
“I’m tired, Bill.” Stan says, later, gaze sliding from where their socked-feet – he tries to ignore how obscenely white his are compared to Bill’s – are just barely touching at the end of the bed over to the discarded trash and leftover food from Bill’s impromptu ‘picnic’ piled up on the floor next to Bill’s backpack. Stan had barely managed a quarter of his sandwich and maybe three sips of orange juice after his first bite of the apple before his stomach warped in the way that told Stan he’d be throwing up if he kept going.
Bill was still proud of him.
His stomach still hurts, but he thinks it’s because of something different now.
He doesn’t know why he said it, not really. He’s wanted to before, wanted to share his feelings and his thoughts and his own hurt, but has never felt like he was allowed to. They all have problems, they all have issues, they’re all dealing with consequences of last summer, why should Stan get to be the one that’s allowed to complain? But Bill knows now anyway, to a degree, and Stan is tired and sort of sated and, most importantly, so damn tired of lying.
“I know.” Bill’s voice is low, and he shifts to press a kiss to the three lines on Stan’s shoulder – Stan just barely catches the thought that tells him that if either of them were any more awake, they’d both be freaking out about that. But they’re not. Bill rolls to his side and gathers Stan up in his arms, bare skin, cherry-tinged gauze and all, pulling him into his chest, urging him to settle his face in Bill’s neck.
He presses his own kiss there first, then presses his forehead to Bill’s warm skin. He closes his eyes and he can feel himself drifting off easily for the first time in a long time.
“I’ve got you,” Bill says gently, and Stan can hear the soft smile in his voice. “I’ve got you, I’ll be here, I promise. You can sleep.”
He does.