IT ⇢ ONESHOTS

senses - [stanlon]

[angst!stanlon]

WHAT DOES YOUR FAVOURITE PERSON REMIND YOU OF?

⇢

when stanley uris thinks about mike hanlon, he thinks about the sweet bitter taste of lemonade. he thinks of old wood lining front porch steps and he thinks about thick cotton blankets, trapping heat and keeping winter evenings from being unbearable. when stan thinks about mike, he sees the colour green. he sees the colour blue, too.

endless fields of four leaf clovers and running oceanscapes and daydreams about the enticing, dizzying smell of salt water. he sees flowers entwined in curly hair and he sees dark freckles lining mike's shoulders like twisted and beautiful constellations, crowded and striking. he sees sunshine blasting through homemade wind chimes and the feeling of laying on cool summer grass, a blessing after a winter without it. when stan thinks about mike, you see, he thinks about every ounce of goodness rising from the tar-like blackness of fear. he thinks of safety inside of his panic, like an isle full of fresh air.

the touch of fresh linen, hung out on the line. he hears birds, ravens and chickadees and even gulls, even the gulls sound beautiful when he thinks about them like this. he thinks about rising tides under the changing phases of the moon and he thinks about writing poetry that he had never thought to write before, words coming to him that he had never known he knew.

he thinks about patience and love and every full emotion that mike never judged him for feeling, for expressing. all of them.

and my god, sometimes, stan thinks, when he thinks of mike, that he can hear the boy, twelve then, whistling through the open forest air.

-

when mike hanlon thinks about stanley uris, he thinks about the brilliant yellow of sunflowers, like the ones he would stare into on his walks home from school. he thinks about fingers grazing the petals but never tugging or pulling, never uprooting the flower from it's spot in the dirt. he thinks about the smell of a new book, the way paper folds delicately if your fingers were to press it too tightly over itself. he thinks about the subtle hum of streetlights when he walks home after late evenings at the library, and the thinks about the way snow tastes differently against your tongue than tap water.

he thinks about the way shooting stars always seem to dart across the blackened sky just outside of your eye's focus. when mike thinks about stan, he sees a wine red, a forest green.

he sees languages spanning over centuries, ages of knowledge trapped inside words that will some day fall dead to the average tongue. he thinks about the feeling of crushed velvet, and sometimes when mike thinks about stan uris, he swears he can hear the mournful sing song of birds, cardinals and crows crying out in melancholic shrills. the smell of coffee dripping into the hollow bottom of a coffee pot. mike cannot tell, when he thinks of stanley uris, if the birds scream or sing.

the year after stanley uris left him, only one summer after the losers returned to their lives away from derry, mike noticed that the sunflowers that rimmed the property next to his home never grew back.