ethereal : it oneshots

i want a lobotomy

pairing: stozier 

tw: some not so good stuff. feel free to ignore this chapter.

it's cold. it's cold and it's frustrating for stanley uris because he is alone. well, not really. yeah, richie could easily be on the other end of the phone if he just tried, but he's not. instead, stanley uris is alone in front of his bathroom mirror, like some dumb movie scene.

 he is scratching his head a little too hard, grimacing at his outward appearance. he looks dead. and so he should. his skin looks lifeless, barely coloured at all. despite how cold it was, stanley was wearing a short sleeved shirt. stanley never wore short sleeved shirts, but his therapist had said it would help. accept the scars, or whatever. but he was cold. so fucking cold. his arms looked wrecked. the right arm was more orderly than the left, but they were both just unbearable. he had always wanted to be ambidextrous for that reason, for them to be slightly easier to attack. left handedness was impractical for other reasons too. it started at the end of the palm of his hand and travelled up his arm to his shoulder. the only untouched places being the places that stanley couldn't reach. he had asked richie once, in fear, in anger, to touch the places for them, but richie refused. stanley had gotten angrier. but even through anger and red lenses, richie had still been calm and the same colour. lenses did nothing to richie. he was and would always be, richie. 

but richie wasn't there to be calm or still. instead it was just stanley, both hands on his sink staring into his own eyes. his eyes were his favourite thing about himself. they looked like the calm before the storm. the still moment before everything fell apart, pouring out of stanley like it had always been supposed to. physically? they were hazel-ish. weird compliment to his jet-black hair. but nonetheless, stanley supposed they expressed some things. right now they looked cold. 

it's so fucking cold. goosebumps are raising on stanley's arms, but it's nothing he isn't used to. he can't stop looking at his own face. he wanted it gone. it was like looking at a car crash. you can't really see anything, you don't recognize anyone, and it's horrific, but you can't look away. it wouldn't go away, even if stanley tried. and, he had tried. but it was still there. every single piece of his physical appearance was still there, despite trying through reopening old wounds every day. bandages, he'd need bandages soon. his body had adapted, he no longer had to open them himself, they opened alone. he wanted it gone. he wanted it all gone. 

back in the mirror, he could've sworn his reflection was smiling back at him. not nicely, not the way richie had through every hard time, no, no this was closer to a different familiar smile. a smile that had thought paternal instincts were to reprimand and punish. there's another one. there's another reason to get rid of it. he looked too much like his family. yeah, dna and all, but stanley was done with it. 

how do people do it? how is it possible that people wake up and find a point to all of this? stanley understood the basic concept of others having different mindsets, but he didn't understand how people found it easy to continue. it was incredibly difficult to wrap his mind around it, he just didn't know.

he was tired. he'd always been tired. he was tired, and cold, and he wished he was in richie's arms. but he didn't, too, because then he'd be involving the one and only good person in the universe with the worst thing on the planet. love. specifically, stanley's love. it just never worked for him. stanley was already taking up too much space in this world, and he needed richie to just forget he ever existed. how nice richie's life would be without stanley, to just experience the stars and the moons and not have to hear stanley's wails and radio silence. stanley's stupid fucking wails. 

how unlucky richie must have been, to have been cursed with a shell of a person for a best friend. the only thing that made stanley believe that maybe, maybe he wasn't entirely a void was how he felt about richie. how he was crying just thinking about richie, because he deserved so much better. about how stanley's dumb fucking tears meant nothing because he'd never tell richie. right? he never needed to know.