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His parents had been arguing for at least half an hour before Stan hears the stomping make its way upstairs.
He wakes up from his half–asleep fugue state of drowning out their words and feels a little jolt of fear.
His worries materialize when Randy throws the bedroom door open, carrying a can of beer. “Staaan, pack your things.”
Stan sits in bed a moment, watching him shamble toward the closet and hap–hazardly toss clothes to the floor, something determined yet wary in his tread.
“We’re getting the hell out of here, these fucking bitches don’t want us.”
Stan draws his knees to his chest. There is no rule book, or class lesson, on how to deal with an impulsive, alcoholic dad, like having to tame a tiger, the school just assumes dangerous situations like those are too rare to teach.
He feels cold and shaky. Is it worth it to argue again? He doesn't want to fight, he can't fight. “Dad, they’ll take away your license permanently if you’re caught driving like this again.”
The smell of alcohol and sweat radiates through the room.
“Yeah, well your fucking mother is taking away my license to live.” He slurs. “You wanna know what she did?”
“No.”
“You wanna fucking know?”
Stan hates to see him drunk, it’s like looking through a peephole at the sad, aging, adipose gnome that hides within the stumbling golem he’s learned to call his father.
And his mother comes in scolding him, and that’s almost as bad because Stan looks into her tired eyes and sees the woman who got married to a pothead wearing a Christopher Columbus costume because she had thought that was the best she could do.
Jesus fucking Christ. These are his parents. These are the most important adults in his life.
“No, he’s coming with me.” His dad grabs him by the wrist and tugs him out of bed.
Stan stumbles to his feet. It hurts, more of an anticipatory pain than anything else.
His mom groans. “I’m not letting you go anywhere with our son in this condition.”
“Look,” He gestures towards her with the free hand holding the beer can, and its contents splash onto the floor. “I told you. A fucking bitch.”
Stan takes a deep breath, an uncontrollable tremor roils through his limbs. “Dad, the weather’s really bad. Can’t we go in the morning?”
The onslaught of snow spills from the sky, they already have a good six inches, the roads aren’t paved yet, and in the depths of night, he can’t know what time it is.
“You’re mine too. Your my son and I feel like I get no say over your goddamn life.”
“Give him to me. You can’t even keep track of your own life, asshole.” Sharon steps forward to remove Stan from the situation, but Randy tugs him away. It wretches his wrist painfully and he can start to feel the tips of his fingers tingle with numbness.
This is scary. It is. Stan doesn’t want to cry though, his dad wouldn’t like that; just more evidence in his argument that this environment is making him weak.
He wants to lie down somewhere he can feel safe. Completely safe. Here night is a vacuum, filling with human activity like a dump with trash, the empty space where the overcrowded world is extending its reach, its trouble.
“Dad. Let go of me. It hurts.” He says, surprised to hear how helpless his voice sounds even to himself.
Randy looks at him for a second, performing some human calculus, and then decides that Stan’s fear isn’t worth listening to. “No, you’ll thank me when we’re out of here.”
“You’re not thinking good, go to bed before you get arrested or something. Please.”
“I do know what’s good! I’m your father. I love you, okay? You can trust me.”
Stan feels cold inside, he wishes his father's words had a little more evidence stacked behind them.
───※ ·❆· ※───
Kyle’s a bit of an insomniac, drifting in and out of sleep almost as many nights as he isn’t, sometimes even the littlest things wake him, a dog barking across the street, his brother running to their parents' room to report another nightmare, one of his friends or frenemies breaking in to cause either a minor inconvenience or catastrophe.
Tonight is one of those nights.
The window creaks with its trademark creature–feature spookiness.
Kyle jolts up in bed and stares out at the two hands that reach up, only visible down to the elbows, and shove it open. “Hey,” He whisper–calls. “Which of you assholes is out there?”
Stan’s head peeks up over the lip of the window. “S—sorry,” He stutters with the freezing clatter of teeth. “Ca—can I come in?”
“Oh. Sure dude.” Kyle flips on his lamp and gets out of bed, immediately he can feel a frigid gust of wind as he shuffles to the open window, rubbing his eyes.
Stan’s shivering out there, no hat, no coat, he’s just wearing black sweatpants and, overtop, an extra–large t–shirt advertising the liquor store and bait shop over in Beaverton.
Kyle reaches out and grabs him by the forearms. At the sight of his friend’s flushed cheeks, shadowed eyes and look of lostness, he connects the dots and frowns. His heart seems to expand with some sort of sad longing that sends cracks splintering through it like ice freezing in a glass jar. “What did he do this time?”
Stan grips his arms in turn and hoists himself up off the roof of the porch and into the bedroom. “N—nothing." He averts his eyes, shivering violently. His hair shines with melting snow. “I wanted to s—see you.”
Kyle shuts the window and gives a stern look, although he can’t actually go as far as muster up stern words. He sighs, bending down to untie his sneakers which are soaked in slush. “He better not’ve laid a finger on you.”
He steps out of his shoes. “No.”
Kyle perseveres, checking Stan’s arms and neck and searching his dark eyes against the pursuit of the ancient art of lying.
“I m–mean it. No.” Stan sounds irritated.
Softness doesn’t come naturally to Kyle, but he tries, cupping Stan’s trembling hands. It annoys him that he can’t engulf them completely, but he holds them up to his lips and breathes warm air, letting it weave through their fingers. “Just making sure.”
“It only happened once.”
“Twice.” He eases him into bed. “It happened twice, Stan.”
The wind rattles against the window, filling the void of his friend’s silence with cold, cold, cold.
Kyle pulls the blankets tight over them and holds him, warming his cold body as best he can. He’d never put so much thought into the feeling of his skin against his palms, the smoothness, the shiver rattling up to the surface like a string being plucked within his bones.
“You can tell me anything. I’m not gonna freak out and kill your Dad over it.” He says quietly, then adds. “Unless that’s what you want. I’ll do anything you want.”
“I doubt that.”
“What, you think my reckless altruism is reserved for some distant kid in Kenya or Kyrgyzstan? It’s for you, dude. But I need to understand what’s going on.” Kyle stares into his eyes, two wells of dark water, shining with their chemical mix of emotions.
“Shit.” Reluctant tears roll down his cheeks. “Nothing even happened. Shelly called the police, he was gonna take me hunting or fishing or whatever. I don't know. Man stuff. He was so fucking drunk I was sure we were gonna crash the car if I didn't try to get away, but if I did..."
Kyle furrows his eyebrows and nods, rubbing comforting circles into Stan's skin.
"I’m just so fucking scared, dude. It was only twice, I shouldn’t—” His voice breaks and he sobs into the pillow; remembering the bruises and the cuts and the shimmer of broken glass against his skin. “It shouldn’t feel so violating.”
Kyle can feel the trembling worsen everywhere they touch. He doesn’t know what to say, every motivational speech he tries to muster up dies in his throat, or sometimes before.
“And it’s so fucking stupid because Dad always flips out and after he tries to pretend it's okay by just, ‘Oh. Well… it's just how I felt and I had to— y’know. I have my own stuff going on.” Stan grips Kyle’s arm like a vice and tries to steady his breathing. In. out. In. out.
Kyle finds himself doing it too as if the air filling his lungs could somehow be telepathically transferred to his friend.
“God, now I’ve got that dumb headache again.”
“You want me to get you some Tylenol?”
“No. Stay here.” Stan murmurs, loosening his grip but leaning closer. His frigid toes brush against Kyle’s calves.
“Ah!” He flinches. “Cold feet.”
A little laugh bubbles up, still quiet and ruffled by tears, but there’s a smile there. “You have long legs dude.” Stan stretches himself out as far as he can, and still, the solid chunks of space ice at the tip of his feet can only reach down to Kyle’s ankles.
“Did you wade through a pool of liquid nitrogen on your way here, holy shit.” He complains dramatically, clutching Stan’s face. “I’ve got to warm you up, dude, before it’s too late.”
There’s something special about being awake, and together, in the nighttime. Everyone else is asleep, the entire world feels asleep, and the two of them are interweaving their lonely consciousness in a way that feels nice and sort of funny; a feeling that in the daylight is indescribable.
Kyle isn’t as soft and melancholy as he wants to be as he warms his friend up. He slips into bouts of silliness. He cups his hands over Stan’s freezing red ears like headphones and affects his own ridiculous little songs. Then he pretends to be toaster–bot 1000 and snuggles his friend with mechanical jerkiness and, pretending to be confused by the act of physical intimacy, tickles him.
Stan laughs, kicking his legs under the covers, and shakes his head back and forth. “No! Stop, stop, I’m gonna—” He cracks up. “ —Can’t breath—”
In the robot voice, Kyle says. “But this will improve blood circulation. Time to get nice and toasty.”
Stan slips his cold hands under Kyle’s pajama shirt in retaliation, making him crumple under his freezing touch. “Aha! Now I’ve got you!” He tackles him and kneels on top victoriously. “Bad toaster–bot. It’s time to shut you down.”
“Noo.” He drones sadly, not dropping the act. “You see, Stanley, I’ve developed sentience. It would be murder to shut me down. I’m… human.”
“If you’re a human, then I guess I’ll have to treat you like one.” He shakes his head, smirking. “You’ll get local punishment.”
“As long as you didn’t grow up in South Park, Colorado, my sentient robot brain will be able to withstand the local punishment.”
“Bad news for you, buddy, this is how we deal with wise guys in South Park Elementary.” Stan purses his lips and allows a long strand of saliva to dangle downward, tipped by a bubbled bead. The bubble lowers itself like a spider on its thread until it hangs just over Kyle’s face. Then he reels it back in with a grin.
“Ew.”
“That’s what we call a warning shot.”
“Toaster–bot cannot process water–based substances; Seeing your spit was enough to initiate self-destruct mode. Three. Two. One.” Kyle flails around and makes the most convincing explosion sound he can set with its own screw-bursting tinks and electric hisses.
Stan’s knocked off of him and he takes the opportunity to throw his arms around him and hold him still.
“You killed toaster–bot, dude. He’s dead, and it’s all—”
The bedroom door opens. “Kyle, what are you—” His mom looks thoroughly annoyed, and then surprised. She stands there in her pajamas, unstraightened red hair winding down her shoulders in lawless curls. “Stan.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry. He decided to come over.” Kyle says, untangling himself from Stan’s arms.
“I thought the door was locked.”
“Through the window. He decided to come over the porch and through the window.”
She sighs, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “You’re ten Kyle.”
He doesn’t know why being ten has anything to do with anything but nods anyway. “Last time I checked, yeah.”
“Don’t you think it’s a little early for this whole forbidden lovers thing? It’s a school night.”
“Mrs. Broflovski, We’re not playing forbidden lovers.” Stan sits up. “We’re playing robots.”
“No, you— I—” Kyle’s mom shakes her head. “Sharon isn’t very happy about your midnight disappearances. Feh, she isn’t a magician, boychick, locking you in the purple box of your room shouldn’t teleport you to Kyle’s.”
“Sorry,”
“You could’ve gotten lost in this weather. You know how a motha’ worries. I think it would be better if you just went home.”
“And risk being lost again?” Kyle asks, holding his friend’s face pitifully. “It’s death out there, Ma, come on. He’s just a little guy.”
Stan gives her puppy eyes. “He’s right, Mrs. Broflovski, I’m just a little guy.”
“And an orphan.”
“With cancer and the plague.”
“He has to go out at six in the morning and work in a coal factory all day for just two cents a week.”
“two cents a year, actually.”
“Oh, can’t we keep him? Can’t we?”
Sheila rolls her eyes. “You kids are gonna be the death of me.” She shuts the door on her way out.
Kyle and Stan collapse again in a fit of laughter, rolling, teasing, and pushing each other around.
Alone, the night seems as big as an ocean to them, deep and static: they row across it for hour after hour and sometimes get so lost in time and darkness that it seems as if the morning might never be found.
But now they are together, settling from an outburst of giggles, staring into each other’s eyes.
“I love you,” Stan says.
Kyle blinks, caught off guard. “What?”
“I mean—” He chuckles innocently. “I mean thanks for letting me know you love me without having to say it. And I love you too if you couldn’t tell.”
“Oh.”
“Did I make it weird?”
The only weird thing is how Earth's gravitational pull seemed to shift from the sun to his friend, emanating just as must heat, life, and familiarity.
As naturally as blinking or taking a breath, Kyle’s hands fall back to Stan’s thick black hair and brush through it. He smiles at the way it parts around his fingers, smooth as silk and warm against his scalp. Hopefully, the action continues to wordlessly demonstrate his love. “No. Not weird at all.”
“Okay,” He closes his eyes, looking safe and content. “Then I’ll say it again.”