your love // stenbrough

9

No matter how hard he tried, Stan couldn't stop thinking about his newfound personal revelation, which is why he found himself in a rather unusual and unsuspected position: pacing back and forth in the boys washroom, contemplating his sexuality, instead of sitting in his seat next to Bev in his typically slotted English class. 

You heard it hear first, folks, Stan thought to himself, slipping into a rather Tozier-esque persona. Stan Uris, the perfect, never-absent, goody two-shoes student has skipped his fourth period class. And for what you may ask? Because he may or may not be-

Stan stopped his train of thought and looked himself in the mirror, dead in the eye. Was he finally going to admit it? He couldn't, because it wasn't true, was it? The same questions whipped through his mind, just as they had been doing non-stop for the last hour. He wasn't gay; he couldn't be. It didn't add up. He had never been attracted to a boy in his entire life.

"Until now, dumbass," he mumbled to himself, leaning back against the paint-chipped wall, avoiding the fact that he had never been attracted to a girl either.  

He supposed that he could have a--

(he shuddered to himself, unfamiliar with all of this new terminology,)

--crush on Bill without actually being gay. Right?

He put his head in his hands and groaned. His entire mindset was idiotic. It was perfectly acceptable to be queer in his day and age - nothing like the homophobia of the past. His own best friend was queer for God's sake - so why was he struggling so much over a  label?

"Just don't label yourself then, you idiot," he muttered, standing up straight, fed up with his own indecisiveness. He leaned over the sink and washed his hands, finalizing his time in the nasty, graffiti-ridden high school washroom, and proceeded to exit into the deserted hallway. 

As much as he didn't want to admit it, there was no point in going back to class. He had already been gone for a solid half hour, and it seemed like joining the class halfway through the period would just bring about frantic and confused questions from Bev, as well as from his teacher. The net positive would be to busy himself until fifth period where he could slip back into the flow of students and pretend that absolutely nothing was out of the ordinary (which of course, it was, because his mind hadn't stopped racing a mile a minute since he saw Bill during the lunch hour). 

So, instead of walking left down the hall to the stairs that would lead him to the familiarity of his English classroom (or even his locker for that matter), he turned to the right and set a brisk pace, heading in the direction of the back exterior doors of the school. He wasn't sure where exactly he was headed, but he knew that  he needed to get out of the suffocating building and breathe in some fresh air. 

He ducked past the windows of various classrooms, eventually reaching the heavy metal doors. He shoved his way outside, immediately greeted by the warm June sun. Stan closed his eyes and sighed heavily as he stepped down onto the freshly-cut green grass. He wished that he could just stay that way forever: the sun warming his pale skin as the light breeze pushed at his golden curls ever-so slightly, mind completely free of all negative or troubling thoughts.

But all good things must come to an end. 

When Stan did eventually open his eyes again, he was greeted with the worst (and best) possible thing imaginable. Butterflies filled his gut and his heart stuttered for a second, much to his annoyance. He wasn't even shocked at this point; it seemed that Bill Denbrough showed up at all the wrong times.

If he was being honest, Stan should have known that his subconscious was leading him to the football field where he and Bill had first starting talking just a short week ago, but that didn't mean that he had hoped that the boy himself would be sitting there once again, much less looking absolutely adorable with the wind tousling his red-brown hair, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, pencil in his blue-streaked hand (deep blue as opposed to vivid red) running marathon after marathon against the sketchbook paper as it did so frequently.