Chapter Text
i.
In the quiet of early dawn, Stan looks at Kyle. Kyle is sleeping in the passenger’s seat, his head against the window, his mouth ajar. Drool collects on his chin. While Stan looks at him, Kyle jerks as if he is aware he is being observed, grunts softly but defiantly, then settles back in. Stan is so suddenly and viciously seized by love that he must turn away and focus back on the road. They are in the desert and the sun is rising, painting the sky in baby shades, and all the animals are secure inside their burrows, sleeping.
Two days ago they were ankle-deep in the ocean, professing their love, making a blood pact with the shattered pieces of their hearts. That night they’d had sex in the motel room, their tears collecting with their semen on the sheets, leaving little marks wherever they went. Stan hasn’t stopped crying since, really, his eyes wet. He wants to touch Kyle, doesn’t want to wake him.
ii.
Kyle was back in Washington and sitting on his bed in his dorm room. His senior year, he’d finally ascertained a single, and it was just him in the room, staring out the window. It was raining hard, so hard it looked like streaks of gray flying at him, and he puts his eyes right up to it, let himself flinch as the wind pushed the rain towards his face.
New prescriptions lined his windowsill. Retreating from the rain, he picked one up, read his name over and over again. Kyle Emmanuel Broflovski. As boys when they exchanged middle names, Stan revealed that he had a great-uncle on his mother’s side named Emmanuel, and Kyle had felt a pull deep in his stomach, the hand of God on his back pushing him towards that boy.
He felt that now, that low pull, and put his head back to the window. Stan was not in Washington, and Kyle hated this place.
iii.
They are born of the mountains, these boys. They spent their childhood huddled together nestled between peaks, their little town a stifling recluse. They fled together, first diving into self-made forts, then flinging themselves across the continent. They are standing on the precipice of adulthood yet they are immovable god-children, they cannot be separated. For all its worth they share the same beating heart. A strike against one is a strike against other; they are always in pain, they would not have it any other way. For now the winter has not come and the spring is breaking across the mountains. They are back home, though home is not a place that can be visited physically, home is the space they have carved into each other. Not for long but for always, they are home.