god i love the idea that actually stan and richie get along so well but put up this competitive front in front of other people including their friends,,,,, like bill has seen both their faked competitiveness and like how they actually interact with each other,,,

like it’s all stupidly night and day how close richie and stan are, why they are still friends even when they verbally pull each other apart in front of other people,,, they don’t like people knowing that they care about each other,,,

and generally richie finds it funny that stan is very much different around everyone else (ie: his more cold demeanor towards their friends) so they kind of started to pick at each other, and it’s all in good fun,,

but bill always has this knowing look on his face whenever they argue because he knows they dont mean it and no one understand why he knows this bc they keep up that act even if its just a group of three of them,,, but bill knows,

and he says “they don’t actually hate each other,” with such confidence, because he’s seen his friends,,, he’s seen them get close and whisper to each other and smile and talk in a language that he won’t ever understand,

and now bill is watching mike get used to this different version of richie and stan,,,

like richie and stan always are okay apart but when they are put together they are unstoppable, unflappable, they are MORE. it’s why he smiles, tells bill that this is how they are always, they’ve always been the invading each other’s space kind,

they’ve always talked like they know exactly what is going through the others head, they’ve always been able to keep up conversation with each other that can span hours upon hours without stop.

they’ve always been richie with his arm around stan’s shoulders and stan’s thin arm around richie’s waist. they’ve always been knocking knees at campfires and small nags about being too cold or too hot and getting either a drink or sweatshirt in return.

they’ve always been this way.

i apologize to sarah for this thread tho bc hdksbsid this was all typed in dm