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Stan still isn’t at the bus–stop. This is the second day this week that he’s missed. It’s becoming excessive.
Kyle watches the sidewalk towards his house and rubs the back of his neck.
His friend’s grades fluctuate wildly now, almost with an exact correlation to how often he comes over and helps him catch up. When he is in school, which is not often, he seems different, quiet and anxious, eyes just a little more hollow. It’s worrying, maybe he’s getting sick, or worse—
Cartman elbows him. “Hey, Jew,”
Kyle almost stumbles away from the force and suddenness of it. “Hey, Goy,” He replies. “What do you want?”
“Nothing, It’s just important to look after my friend who I care about with all my heart.” He shrugs, mock sympathizing. “Nah I’m kidding,” He gestures to the end of the street. “The bus is coming and you’re not doing that thing you always do where you rock on your heels and look all eager.”
He raises an eyebrow at him.
“Which is stupid and I hate you,” Cartman clarifies, crossing his arms. “But whatever, you always do it so I wondered if you turned into a fucking vegetable or finally gave it up.”
The bus is almost here, and still no Stan.
“Oh… yeah,” Kyle’s too distracted to try and think of a comeback. The familiar string of disappointment is plucked in his heart. “And actually I feel kinda sick. I think I’ll skip today.”
Cartman clasps his hands together. “Lovesick?”
“What?”
“Lovesick, you gay fuck. Every time Stan misses school you get a stick up your ass.” He snickers. “Probably a shitty replacement for his dick.”
“Shut up!” The words leap out a little too defensively. Kyle clears his throat, silently reminding himself it’s just banter; this is what they do every day. “I mean, you think you’re so fucking observant this morning, asking why I’m not rocking on my heels or in my friend's lap. Sure you’re not projecting?”
The bus screeches to a halt in front of them.
He smirks. “What you think I can superimpose the blush on your face?”
“You– ugh it’s just the cold.”
“Some fucking cold. Your cheeks are so red you look like a hazard map.”
“Yeah, they’re selfless enough to warn people how many earthquakes will be caused by the colossal impact of your every step.” Kyle snarks.
Cartman rolls his eyes and follows Kenny onto the bus, turning around at the second step to reach a hand back. “You coming?”
“No, no, I’m really not feeling good.” Kyle shakes the offer away.
“Oh… you really do have it.” He says. “bad.”
The doors close and the bus drives off, leaving behind it a fading film of heat and exhaust in the crisp winter air.
Kyle waves it away from his face and coughs as he walks back towards Stan’s house.
His mom is gonna be so mad when she learns that he’s skipping school to go see his friend. She’d persuaded him not to waste on wandering what she called, with an air of utter, soul-enveloping conviction that has since led to great misery and that he has never for one instant forgotten, his 'gift'.
School smarts.
How much of his good grades come from actual intelligence and not his endless writing, debating, and adventuring — plus occasional cheating off of Wendy — is questionable, but he’ll take that to his grave.
It’s fine. It’s one day. Stan is probably just playing video games right now and needs an extra push. They can go late together.
Hah. Kyle puts a hand on his cheek and understands what Cartmen was talking about. Together. He and Stan.
The driveway is empty but the lights in Stan’s bedroom are on. So he’s home alone, wasting the opportunities that arise from the absence. But really how many opportunities are there? Practicing embarrassingly bad skills? Making messes? Causing trouble? Jerking off?
Oh no, I'd hate to walk in on that. Kyle lamely tries to convince himself. He walks faster.
The door opens to a warm stillness, a melancholy. He feels disconcerted and somehow disarmed to not see his friend watching TV on the couch or fumbling with eggs in the kitchen. It’s silent, not even a shuffle upstairs.
Probably reading comics. “Stan, It’s me, are you home?” He calls.
No reply.
Kyle shucks his coat and hat and then leaves them on the floor with his backpack. He walks up the stairs toward Stan’s room. The house smells good, familiar, sort of an implacable combination of clean laundry, rice pilaf, tissue paper, and a gun-power tang of what he recognizes as Randy’s cigarettes.
But then, as he walks past the bathroom it takes a sharp twist to the stench of vomit and vodka.
Kyle instinctively covers his nose before pulling away and knocking on the door. “Mr. Marsh?” Most of the things he knows about Randy are things that Stan told him, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d seen his friend’s dad contemplating his on-and-off relationship with a faithful bottle of bourbon. “Are you in there? Are you home?”
There’s no reply, but maybe a gurgle of some labored breath.
That sort of freaks him out.
“Randy?” He peeks through the key hole, knowing it’s weird but if Stan’s dad really is suffocating on his own vomit, Kyle tells himself that he could hardly feel worse than he already does. And he supposes that he also tells himself that he doesn’t really care.
It isn’t Randy. It’s Stan crumpled on the floor, still in his coat and shoes.
“Oh shit,” Kyle tries to open the door. It’s locked. “Oh shit, oh fuck–shit–this–is–bad.” He paces a few steps before making up his mind to slam into the door with everything he has.
Kyle gets good grades in physics. He understands it, you could go as far as saying he likes it. Newtonian mechanics, actions and reactions, gravity and mass, it’s one of those classes that file away with the other evidence of his ‘gift’.
The idea of momentum, for example, the tendency of a body in motion to stay in motion. Yeah. Maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised when the door doesn’t content itself with dislodging the lock.
His jaws snap together, making each tooth ring out with its own pure tone as the impact of his shoulder against the ground conducts its Newtonian business with the rest of his skeleton. “Ah–fuck, ow.” He tries to ignore the pain. There’s a more pressing issue, after all.
The air around his friend hums almost to burning with the radiance of alcohol. He isn’t moving.
Kyle slides over and applies those intuitive and flashy skills in feeling for a pulse that he has no memory of learning but suspects have something to do with Kenny. It’s steady.
Okay— okay, he can breathe again. He can categorize the facts.
1. Laying in the chrome–and–tile desolation of his bathroom is his super best friend forever.
2. He is unconscious, ashen, and, in one way or another, covered in vomit.
3. A fifth of Canadian vodka is currently sticking out from the left pocket of his jacket.
Kyle feels a lurch inside him at the idea of his friend drinking it. Some kind of moral muscle that recoils. He chances a quick peek into the cobwebby root cellar of his soul. “Stan, I’m here okay. I’m here. Are you— do I need to call an ambulance or something?” He shakes his friend. “Fuck, you look dead, I thought you were dead.”
“Mnm” Stan groans and opens his eyes a crack, shading them with his hand from the bathroom lights. “No, not dead.” He tries to sit up before dropping his head to the toilet and coughing up whatever unlucky substance is still left in his stomach. “Hangover.” His movements are odd, sluggish, and offset by a heavy tremor.
Kyle grabs him by the shoulders and looks him in the eye, silently begging for some type of explanation.
Stan half slides into his lap and slumps over to rest his forehead against the nape of his neck. “What’re you doing here?”
“Thought I’d spend some time with you.”
“Shit— I’m sorry Kyle. You should’ve— I dunno, fuck. I dunno. I’m sorry.” The plaintive rasp of his voice is heart-wrenching. “God, I’m such a fucking idiot.”
“No, don’t— don’t do that. I don’t wanna be the guy who has to argue with you right now.” Kyle pulls him closer and subconsciously strokes his hair. They stay like that for a while as he tries to get his thoughts in order.
Stan is drinking again. Badly drinking. How did he miss it?
The answer comes immediately because he’d already begun to put it to himself, that he hadn’t missed it, not really. No clear signs like finding an empty bottle or his friend still tipsy came to mind; he would have stopped it with concrete proof. But there were times, with their attendant vibration of shame or remorse, when Kyle had wondered, and let it slide even though he knew it could lead to something really bad because, after all, it also might not have.
He takes a shuddered breath to keep from tearing up. It’s okay. It’s not his fault. Not totally his fault... It kind of is though, isn’t it? He should have at least asked about alcohol when Stan got all sweaty and withdrawlish during sleepovers. Or, what about the time he joked that he could never be an organ donor? That was a sure sign.
The tips of Stan’s fingers graze back and forth over the textured surface of Kyle’s sweater, his soft breath tickles his neck, sending a weird tingling sensation through his stomach, and he’s slumped over like the fingers of an empty glove.
Kyle could hold him forever like this; it feels good in a weird, guilty sort of way. Like everything could get better if he just ignores it. Maybe nothing’s wrong at all. But he shakes the thought from his head. Not again. “Stan, are you okay?”
“Killer headache.”
“No, I meant, like, okay, okay. This is pretty bad, dude. Drinking and stuff.”
“Oh, yeah.” His voice comes out as more of a croak. He clears his throat. “It’s fine.”
“It isn’t fine. Have you told anyone about this, or— or asked to be medicated for depression?”
“Depression? I seem depressed to you?”
Kyle wants to shake him into answering the questions as quickly and bluntly as possible. He isn’t a very patient person. “It’s just a word. Do you take anything?”
“No, not really,” Stan mumbles as if this conversation has been stretching out too long already.
“What does that mean?.”
“No. I don’t want to.”
“Oh, of course, you don’t want to,” Kyle says. “That changes everything.”
Stan scoffs and shoves his shoulder, half to demonstrate how he feels about the smartassery and half to pull far enough away to make eye contact. “Yeah, dude, I—y'know—don’t want to seem sick.”
“That explains the drinking then,” He snarks. “I heard it does wonders for your self-image.”
“ugh never mind, I revoke my sorry.” Stan wipes his face and then drops his hand back on top of Kyle’s. “Don’t tell my mom.”
“I won't, but the mess in here will do it for me.”
“Oh,” The way he furrows his eyebrows is such a potent demonstration of his headache and futility, the feeling almost starts to radiate through the bathroom. “Right, fuck, I’ll have the fix this before my parents get home tonight.”
Genuinely, Kyle doubts that he could even walk downstairs and get the mop. “You look like shit, I’ll take care of it.” He intertwines their fingers. “I’ll take care of you.”
Stan smiles. Exhaustion stains the underlids of his eyes, dark eyes with a spark of light, the hundred million miles between the Earth and the Sun. They lock on his gratefully.
And after bracing so long against it, Kyle’s mind is eclipsed. A starry cloud of diamonds condenses around his head. He doesn't know what to say next.
Stan Marsh is handsome.
This isn’t a new observation. He had thought this, with a hint of jealousy, for his entire life. But something is different now, maybe he got a haircut — no — maybe it’s the lighting. But how could it be the lighting, he looks sick, he is sick. Nothing has changed with Stan, if anything he looks worse than usual.
So that means the change is in Kyle.
He can feel the shifting of something dark and irresistible inside, a hundred tons of oil pouring over him gathering its skirts to light aflame.
No, no–no–no–no no. Not now. It’s the wrong time and place and person to start feeling this with. His circulatory system, that bastard, couldn’t give a shit about what he wants.
He pats Stan’s shoulder awkwardly and stumbles up to his feet. “Take a shower. I’ll make you something for breakfast.”
“Wait—”
No, nope. Waiting is not on Kyle’s agenda. He walks backward out of the bathroom and shuts the door behind him. It’s less of a click and more of a jamming of wood against the frame since he’d broken the latch when he slammed into it, but, all the same.
It’s okay, he tries to remind himself. Erections are a completely normal part of life. Maybe it wasn’t normally that quickly, but friction is friction right? Even if it’s his best friend.
It wasn’t the friction though, Fuck!
Kyle walks downstairs to the kitchen, rolls up his sleeves, and washes his hands and face in the cold sink water. He still feels gross. Vomit had smeared from Stan’s chin onto his sweater and the part of the pants he was kneeling on aren’t doing much better.
Cool. Great. Absolutely terrible. Not only does he hand the cliche urge to go after God with a mallet for letting his dick react that way — or any way — to looking into his best friend’s eyes, but he is now acutely aware of how gross his clothes smell and feel.
Kyle leans against the counter and groans into his hands, he can hear the shower start upstairs. He should do the laundry anyway, to get rid of the alcoholic evidence. And they’ve worn each other's clothes before, all the time.
It’s stupid how much convincing he needs, how much mental effort it takes to put one foot in front of the other.
Eventually, he makes it up the stairs to Stan’s room. It’s a little messier than usual. Unfinished homework that's been due for weeks is strewn across his bed and a striped yellow sweater is draped over the dresser. Kyle remembers Stan wearing it on Monday, then becomes immediately embarrassed that he cataloged this sort of thing. How long have these feelings been buzzing around? How many of his actions were driven by some subconscious crush that he's only recognizing now?
Kyle throws off his own dirty clothes into the hamper in the corner of the room and picks up the one on the dresser. An urge to smell it that he should–but–won’t deny himself arises, no one’ll ever know, after all. He lifts it to his nose. Cooking oil, sweat, the orange–peel–and–Listerine smell of Stan’s deodorant and something uniquely him. It’s perfect, almost mind–numbing.
For a fraction of a second Kyle wonders how long he’d been wasting this opportunity before he remembers how weird and new this is. His grip tightens against the soft fabric.
Cartman was right, for once. He really does have it bad.
───※ ·❆· ※───
Stan doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting in the shower, too tired and achy to stand up. Probably a while. He slowly scrubs shampoo through his hair, trying to wring out the stench, unable to clear his head of a thick blue smog that had begun to reform inside it.
The broken door awkwardly shuffles open and Kyle steps in, holding a folded pile of clean clothes for him. He, himself, had already changed into Stan's sweater and jeans. Cute. He always gets a little giddy seeing his friend in his clothes but right now he wants to take a picture, to trace out each little angle and curve of his body, to project his freckles like constellations against the planetarium dome of his imagination “Hey dude, are you planning on getting out, the food’s ready.”
“Yeah.” His arms and legs feel weak but he braces his elbows at the edge of the tub.
“Oh hey, not yet, you still have soap in your hair.”
“Shit, still?”
"Yeah," Kyle drops the clothes at the edge of the bathtub and rolls up his sleeves. “How do you even do this hangover thing on your own, dude?” He kneels down to run his fingers through his hair but hesitates.
Stan nods an okay which is enough for his friend. “It usually involves a lot more laying on the floor before anything happens.”
“Does this feel better?”
“Mhm, yeah,” He leans into the gentle preening. The care and attention Kyle puts into every touch make Stan’s fingers feel like mittens in comparison. “You have really nice hands.”
Kyle pauses. “No, I meant–” His face is flushed and uncomfortable. “I meant not laying on the floor.”
“Oh,” Stan coughs up a laugh while his heart seizes with fear. Shit. It’s all over, Kyle thinks he’s gone too far and pushed his crush over the edge of acceptability. “Yeah, this— I think I’m loving it.” Bad, bad, bad choice of words.
Kyle laughs too and looks away. “I doubt that. You look pretty— uh pretty sick.”
Stan breathes a sigh of relief. Okay. He’s chill with it. “Less than usual. I’m hungry though.”
“I bet.”
“Throwing up’s the worst part of drinking. But I always forget why I regret it so,” he shrugs. “coo coo ca choo.”
Kyle loops his fingers through Stan’s hair to affect ringlets before brushing them back to normal.
It feels unfairly good, and maybe he's just touch-starved, but he’s pretty sure it’s the person who’s touching him that’s making all the difference.
“You know, I thought you were your dad when I got here.”
Way to ruin it.
“Don’t make me think of my dad right now.” Stan says. This is way too nice for that, way too intimate. Not that Kyle knows or wants to know the fantasies this moment will curate in the future. “Or ever. He’s an asshole.”
“You don’t mean that. He’s cool. At least compared to mine.”
Stan sighs. Sure. “Kind of not too bright though.”
“No, but I think that trade-off was genetic so—” He’s splashed with a face–full of water. “Hey! What's that for?”
“You’re such a jerk, man!” Stan laughs. “Every time I open up to you.”
“Oy, fine, you want a little inspirational speech?” He holds up a finger with pretend pretentiousness. “You know, today I learned something really important. My best friend can send me into cardiac arrest at will just by playing into his self-destructive tendencies, It's not a good thing, but it'll probably force me to be a more attentive friend. Unfortunately, it also happens when...” There’s a childish note of shame in his voice. “...when he's just looking at me. I haven’t figured out the moral of that part yet. Maybe it'll come later.”
It isn’t fair, it just isn’t. It’s torment. It’s romantic, it has to be romantic. But if it was, Kyle would just kiss him. That’s a fact. Kyle Broklovski has an air of competence, of faith in his own abilities, that Stan, through constant effort over the whole of his life, has finally learned only how to fake.
And it hurts.
It hurts because all he wants is to be the type of person Kyle could love; to be more than the result of two hundred regimens and scenarios and self-improvement campaigns that are always ruined by his stupid perennial inability to locate an actual self to be improved.
Fuck. He wants another drink right now, something to numb this.
“Wait, hey, what’s wrong dude? What’s that look for?” Kyle cups Stan’s face with one hand.
Stan shakes his head and pulls away. “Nothing, It's just you...you're great and helpful, and I feel like anyone, anyone could love you. So why are you—”
His friend gives him a desperately worried look and he cuts off his self-deprecating remark. "Why am I...?
He sighs. "Nevermind."
───※ ·❆· ※───
"If you're still hungry, have mine." Kyle holds out a forkful of banana pancake.
They're sitting on the couch, wrapped up in blankets, eating breakfast, and watching Terrance 'n Philip.
Stan shakes his head. "Come on. I can't."
"I had breakfast already. 'Thought I was going to school, remember?" He watches Stan's lips with an eager expression he can't quite recognize. "Plus, I made them for you. Banana pancakes are the best for nausea."
"Fine." Stan opens his mouth comically wide to demonstrate his sarcasm and closes it around the fork. It is good. Really good.
Kyle claims his cooking skills come half from his unfaltering desire to do better than everyone else, and half from his Jewishness; both of which he attributes to his Mother. Somehow by adding butter, eggs, brown sugar, chopped nuts, mashed banana, and a snow pile of other dry ingredients, he can perform something that seems more like a magic trick, a feat of transformation.
After being blended and subjected briefly to intense heat, the result is both smooth and textured, crisp and light. Drizzled with hot milk and maple syrup, it melts in Stan's mouth. “You’re gonna be such a good dad, Kyle.” He says. “Like crazy good. I don’t even think your kids get messed up at all.”
“Thanks, but I’m just better with you. We make a good team, you know?” Kyle replies, grinning. “Our kids would be super un–fucked up.”
And that’s it. He has to know how much Stan loves him. He has to be mocking him, condescending to him, trying to get him worked up for nothing.
“Are you teasing me, dude?” Stan aims for anger but falls very short of that mark. “Because it’s not cool.”
“No,” Kyle frowns and puts the plate of pancakes on the little table next to the couch. “We do make a good team, it isn’t a lie.”
“But you– ugh, not that.” He punches him on the shoulder just hard enough to let him know he’s serious. “You’re flirting with me. Okay? I haven’t even really accepted that we’ll only ever be friends yet and you’re already rubbing it in.”
Kyle is silent for a little while, just examining him with those evergreen eyes. Finally, after too long, he speaks. “Do you… do you have a crush on me Stan?”
It feels like Kyle had tried to defuse the ticking time bomb of his soul and instead, set it off. “Yes! I have a crush on you!” Stan grabs him by the shoulders. “I’ve had a crush on you for years! You... wait you didn’t know?”
“It didn’t even cross my mind.” He says, dazed.
“Idiot.” Stan mumbles, half to himself. “Seriously. I thought I was obvious.”
Kyle blushes so deeply his hair doesn’t really seem that bright in comparison. “My family’s pretty big on saying exactly what we mean, in case you haven’t noticed. I’m not really a trained expert on the whole body language deal.” He pauses for a second to awkwardly scratch his cheek. "I mean, It's cool that you're gay though. And like, for me, that's even cooler."
Oh. Shit. If Kyle didn't know, it means he confessed.
“Oh my God.” Stan presses a fist to his forehead. “I wish you went to just school and let me die.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic. Oh, and, you're welcome.”
“I can’t believe just confessed my love to you.”
“Wow, love?”
“Shut up. I take it all back. I never said anything.”
Kyle stifles a laugh. He looks at Stan and smiles with a sleepy vulnerable expression on his face like someone caught without his glasses on. “You know, I learned something very important today—”
“No, shut up.” Stan covers his face with his hands, although at this point his blush is probably radioactive, glow-in-the-dark, traceable through the nuclear detectors in space satellites. “Don’t say anything.”
“Can I do anything?”
“Depends.”
“Can I touch you?”
Stan peeks through the gaps in his fingers. “What?” Is this a hallucination? Did he really fry his brain with that confession so much he'd imagined those words?
Kyle looks happy to have asked for a count of three, followed by a two-count of looking anxious and lovely. He plays out the last five seconds by looking ready to mix it up with Stan if that’s how he wants things to go.
Stan decides that he heard him right. “Where?”
“I dunno, you’re hair. It’s soft. I liked it.” His hands ball into fists on his lap. "I mean I really liked it— a lot. And it's actually, sort of, really good that you said something about having a crush on me because today, uh, I sort of... you... made me feel kind of like, you know, don't make me say it."
Stan bites his lip for a hopeful second before bursting into laughter. He likes him! Kyle likes him! “You already got your turn with the hair touching.” He tackles his friend teasingly and gains purchase on top of him. "Now it's mine."
Kyle half–laughs, half–gasps when Stan plants a dorky kiss on his forehead and buries his nose in the tumbling coils of dark pumpkin hair.
“It’s so soft.” He says. “And orange!”
“I thought you were supposed to be hungover,”
“The bath helped, so did the pancakes and you cleaning everything up.” Stan inhales a deep, fragrant breath. It doesn't seem real. He pulls away to admire his friend's expression. It's even more adorable than he could've imagined, which is saying a lot considering how many years he'd been staring at that face. “If you kiss me it’ll probably be like one of those corny–ass movies, I’ll start glowing and be magically healed.”
Kyle leans up on his elbows and captures the image of his best friend straddling him with an almost blank gaze as if the import takes a second to register. He looks up at Stan. “But if I kiss you won't you throw up?”
“Shit.” His smile falls. “Maybe... probably.”
“What if I go really, really slow.” He sits up and cups Stan’s face in his hands.
“Smooch at your own risk dude.”
"Okay." Kyle devises his own little plan of action, his eyes locked on Stan’s lips. The flush and shine of sweat on his face are the only things that give away any anxiety, but even those could both be taken more than one way.
And actually, the more Stan thinks about it, he shifts his hips. “Do you have a boner right now?”
Kyle’s concentration breaks. “Dude, this is all new to me. I didn’t even know I liked you. I didn’t even know I was gay. And then suddenly... it happened earlier too.” He says.
"No," Stan giggles with an intrigued, and slightly mocking, expression. "When? I didn't even do anything... are you really that sensitive?"
"Shut up." He chuckles a little but seems to be too embarrassed to really take in the joke. “We can talk about it later.”
“I mean a more hands-on approach might work better if you're that pent up.”
Kyle flushes more, red spreading across all the moles and freckles on his cheeks. “Oh... yeah. I look forward to it.”
“Me too. But the future isn’t really that interesting when you’re about five inches from kissing me.” He says.
Kyle nods and leans in. Their lips brush, only just barely. The feeling is more intense and richer with both joy and panic than anything else Stan's felt in a long time, maybe ever. He deepens the kiss and parts his lips. The flavor of banana pancake still lingers in both of their mouths.
Stan makes a content little humming sound before pulling away. “Woah,” He hears himself saying. “That was good, dude, I think we're onto something here.”
“You think?” Kyle grins and speckles a couple of soft kisses along Stan’s neck.
“Mhm, it’s better than drinking, I think.” Stan mumbles, snuggling back down onto the couch with him. “Different, mostly, but like, better; something else to ease the pain.”