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He can remember being hit, that was a sensation he remembered all too well. The feeling of the slam. The whump so sharp and crackling against his ribs that all the air in his lungs combusts, evaporating into vacant space. There’s a blistering ache penetrating the side of his head, skull pierced by an invisible lance. But he isn’t even allowed the time to feel the pain, because his balance is sweeping away from him, and all of a sudden he’s not oriented, he’s swaying, something’s wrong, something’s out of place. The world is shifting on its axis. Too soon the familiar sight of cobalt blue helmets charging at him like a frenzy of sharks is replaced by the sight of the coarse green turf swirling up to meet him.
He remembers being hit, but he doesn’t remember falling. He doesn’t remember the physical sensation of hitting the ground. Though if he strains his memory – which is hard given the apparent throbbing – he can maybe string together an idea of laying supine on the ground, maybe panting, sweating, beneath a horde of onlooking figures, the turf prickling at whatever rubbed-raw skin his uniform left exposed, the wide expanse of the earth the only solid thing keeping his dizzy, tingling corporeality from swaying, swirling into oblivion.
Stan’s opening his eyes again before ever really registering that he’d closed them to begin with. He blinks once, twice, caught off guard by the newfound weight of his eyelids, the heaviness that isn’t supposed to sit there. And it’s bright. It’s so unnaturally bright, why is it so
One hand fingers the hospital gown he’s swathed in, while the other finds itself curling into a fist around the guard rail.
Oh.
The tiredness hits him like a truck, battering him into a full-bodied flinch. He cringes, his hands clapping over his face as he heaves out a hoarse sounding groan.
“Oh good, you’re up.”
Language is lost on him; the words don’t register at first, slipping through his grasp like grains of sand. His gaze floats around the sterile room, a fog settling over his mind. His apperception is sluggish; the act of merely looking around the room seems to disorient him. But through the haze he thinks he manages to find the source of the voice, and immediately, he’s taken.
Perched over the small table along the wall, hunched over a spread of textbooks and looseleaf paper is what Stan can only believe to be a Greek god dressed in human scrubs. Red hair, hooked nose, and a splattering of freckles across his pinched face, the young man offers an apologetic smile as he tucks away his textbook. Standing from his seat, he slips a pencil behind his ear and approaches the bedside.
“Hi,” he says with a tired smile. His smile is sincere — Stan isn’t the best with social cues, but he can tell this, at least — even despite the shades of purple hanging from the skin around his eyes, the young man in dark grey scrubs manages a kind smile. “I’m Kyle,” he salutes. “I’m looking after you right now.”
“Kyle,” Stan echoes, his mouth and brain working independently. “Hi.”
“Very good, Stanley. I’m glad to see you up and well. I’m going to take a look at your history real quick and we can-”
“-No, not-” Stan fumbles, face screwing up in concentration.
Kyle lowers his clipboard. His frown is so immediate, his concern so instant and genuine that it makes Stan’s heart quiver. “What is it?” he asks quickly, eyes flitting around the various vital charts.
“No, not. Not. Stanley…” he manages to choke out, each word an effort, any sense of meaning a thing that had to be searched for.
“Not Stanley?” Kyle stared at him intently, and Stan shrunk back against the hospital bed, humbled by his own inability. But then something clicked; the nurse gave a small, curt nod of recognition, “Not Stanley. Are you saying you don’t want to be called Stanley?”
His apprehension melts in the warm, gooey smile plastering his face. Somewhere in the back of his hindbrain, there’s a tiny voice of inhibition, shrieking and yapping to remind him how great an idiot he is, how stupid he must look right now. He can’t feel the muscles of his face; it mortifies him to think of what they’re doing without his volition. And still, Stan can’t seem to let it really bother him, too taken with the way the redhead is sweeping a strand of hair behind his ear.
“Okay, got it,” Kyle says. “Is it Stan, then? Do you go by Stan?”
Stan thinks he makes an affirmative statement - his confidence is hindered, though, when the nurse just laughs.
“Okay, Stan, that’s great,” the nurse says, resuming an air of professionalism, “Nice to meet you, Stan. I’m Kyle. I think I said that already, I’m sorry. Do you mind if I go over your history with you real quick?”
“Sure, that’s…” he starts to say. He feels something slow inside of him, a hindrance, a decrescendo of consciousness. As the lethargy seeps in, spilling over his insides like molasses, he pulls a squeamish face and forces out, “I don’t know why it’s so hard to… talk… Hard to think…”
Kyle hums curtly. He has to stab the small animal of fear that leaps into his throat, has to stifle his empathetic instinct to pamper this sweet-faced, soft-spoken man. He pinches the clipboard tight between his fingers, directly palming the problem at hand. He flips through a few pages just to give himself something to look at, something other than those giant, watery eyes. “Do you know why you’re here right now, Stan? Do you know why you’re in the hospital?”
Something tightens in his chest seeing the way Stan’s eyes swoop down to his paper gown, sulking under the weight of consuming concentration.
Kyle’s bitterly convinced that the patient won’t be able to provide any intelligible answer, not with that fuzzy look in his eyes, but holds his breath when Stan lowly rumbles out, “ … football.”
“Mhm,” he murmurs with willful gentleness. “Do you remember what happened?”
“Well, we were in the third down…the offensive line was struggling… and then, and then this d-back from the other team came out of nowhere, like, right from my blind spot…” He trails off, with tragic naivety. And suddenly, wresting himself from the lower depths of his nescience, Stan swivels his attention back to the caregiver. “Are you gonna take care of me?”
“Oh.” The word falls from Kyle’s mouth. “I’m really only here until the doctor comes back from dinner. I can page her if you need her.”
“No, it’s okay, I’m not in pain,” he says. He isn’t sure if it’s true. He probably is in pain, but right now, he can’t really tell. His entire body is an ache, his extremities tingling, his bones numb. He swallows, taking some relief in the sensation of muscular autonomy, and asks, “So does that mean it’s dinner time?”
“For her.”
“What does-?”
“It’s pretty late. You’ve been out for several hours,” Kyle says, and then adds, “Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay,” Stan says. He still feels like he’s missing some context, like there’s some big picture he’s only getting various, unrelated fine details of. It’s a conundrum that perhaps is supposed to unsettle him, but right now, with the bright-eyed nurse ahead of him, he’s filled with only a tepid state of serenity, a welcomed sense of peace despite all obstacles. “Can you talk to me some more?” he asks.
“Can talking come in the form of me taking your vitals?”
Stan laughs lightly, “You’re funny.”
“Am I?” Kyle raises his brow, rolling up the sleeves of his scrubs. “I don’t think I am. I didn’t say anything funny.”
“I like the way you say things. You say things interesting,” he murmurs sweetly. “I like you.”
Kyle’s so smitten with that lopsided smile that he almost forgets to roll his eyes and huff the other direction. His knee-jerk sarcasm comes a fraction too late–but not so late a severely concussed football player would notice, hopefully.
“Well that’s nice,” Kyle says with forced acerbity. “Make sure to tell that to my supervisor when she comes in for my report, okay?”
His eyes lit up with recognition. “Oh, you’re a med student! That’s nice.”
“I don’t know if it’s nice.”
“That explains these,” Stan says, gesturing to the skin beneath his eyes, waving at the low-hanging bags. On him, the skin beneath his eyes is yellowish with hospital sick, on Kyle, it’s purplish with evident exhaustion.
His weariness is apparent in the way he moves around the room. His quickly-darting eyes and short, shifting steps suggest he’s accustomed to moving quicker, or at least thinking quicker, than he currently does. Kyle hits the spacebar on his laptop in succession, battering his finger into the key until his hand cramps up. He curses at the device under his fingertips, slamming the cover in frustration
“They want me to get better at recording everything in the system. But the system is shit, I mean, it’s literally the worst thing ever designed,” he grouses, coming back to stand at Stan’s bedside. He removes the pencil from behind his ear and sets it to the clipboard, “The screen hurts my eyes. I much prefer analog, if you’re okay with that? I’ll type it into the system later, I promise.”
“Okay,” is all Stan can really say - Kyle had said too many words to register at once, and the numbness in his skull is starting to give way to a dull throb.
Kyle’s head is starting to pulse, too, but with a different kind of ache. He could really use a coffee right now, or water. In fact he’s quite sure he hasn’t eaten anything but the gnarled edges of his fingernails in the last few hours, unless you counted the four sticks of gum he plowed through when he was in the library at three AM, ripping through textbooks and wearing every pencil he owned down to a dull edge.
He starts going through his checklist, all the vitals that, at some point in his training, stopped feeling so vital. Respiration rate, pulse, blood pressure. Kyle makes short, quick notes in his tight, sharp penmanship, writing notations in the cryptic short-hand style only he knew. And through it all, Stan is a remarkably good patient. He doesn’t seem to be nervous, not even in the normal way everyone was when they were in the hospital. He simply watches Kyle work with soft eyes, answering all of Kyle’s questions kindly, and only getting frustrated when a word or phrase doesn’t fit correctly in his mouth.
It isn’t until Kyle neared the end of his list that Stan suddenly shifts forward in the bed, frowning. “Kyle?”
“Yes, Stan?”
“Where are my clothes?”
“They’re over there, in that cabinet,” Kyle smiles tiredly, gesturing to the sterile blue furniture mounted against the wall. “I know it’s a little, I don’t know, embarrassing? But you have to understand, your uniform was so muddy, we couldn’t keep you in it.”
It has to be the concussion that makes Stan frown so deeply. “Will they be okay?”
“Yes, your clothes are in a sealed bag, marked with your name and information,” he explains. “No one will take them, they’re safe.”
“No, I mean, will they, like- Will they stain?” He bites his lip, “I think there was blood…”
Kyle has to will himself not to gush in sympathetic pity. He’s been through bedside manner training, he’s been indoctrinated into apathy; he should know how to conceal his feelings with patients. But god damn it, that stricken puppy look in Stan’s eyes makes him forget everything.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” he says, setting his clip board down and moving towards the cabinets. “Let’s go check, shall we?”
Stan watches him go, sauntering to the blue cabinets with persistent, somewhat uneven steps. When Kyle’s back at the bedside, crinkling plastic bag in hand, he’s panting slightly, and Stan can’t help but notice the blankness in his eyes.
“Are you okay?” Stan asks, leaning in.
“Huh? Yeah. Fine,” Kyle says, a slight hitch in his breath. “Here, let’s open these up.”
He’s sure he’s not supposed to be doing this. Three months away from earning his degree and his supervisors are stricter and terser with him than they ever had been before. So many policies he can’t keep them straight. His brain is so fried from all-nighters that he doesn’t know for certain, but he thinks there’s a rule about the patients’ possessions he’s violating right now. Kyle is vaguely aware this bag of clothes may as well be his Pandora’s box, and yet, he proceeds, opening the bag, holding it agape at an angle where Stan could reach in with his lethargic, fumbling hands.
He’s making him feel like a person again, Kyle realizes, almost smiling at the way Stan oh so gingerly removes his uniform from the bag, running his hands over the jersey as one would stroke a polished heirloom.
“I’m sorry.”
Kyle looks up to meet Stan’s gaze, “What, why?”
“It really stinks,” he says, pink with embarrassment, the uniform wadding up inside his fists. “I’m sorry, I know it’s bad… You didn’t have to get up and get it.”
Kyle laughs, sharp and bright, “Oh, no. Not at all. Not even close. You have no idea the shit I’ve smelled around this place. Do not apologize, seriously. A little athlete sweat is nothing. I’ve been in the trenches with far, far worse.”
“Oh yeah?” Stan inquires, watery voice lilting up with the promise of optimism. “So you do a lot here, then? You must be really good at your job.”
“It’s not really a job yet. These are my clinic hours for my ADN,” he says. He doesn’t mean to groan, really he doesn’t, but he always seems to accidentally make a fuss about it every time he mentions his degree, his gripe grumbling out in flat tones and clipped consonants.
“What’s that?”
“Associate’s Degree in Nursing,” he sighs. “I’m on track to graduate by the end of winter.”
“That’s great.” Stan finds himself strangely fixated on this. He’s all of a sudden taken with the way Kyle sinks into his spine on the bedside stool, the way his eyes blink long and slow.
Again Stan lets himself take a glance at the purplish skin hugging beneath Kyle’s eyes, and thinks to himself if it weren’t for the crow’s feet, Kyle would probably look around seventeen years old.
“That’s great about your degree,” Stan says. He can’t quite remember if he’s said it already. He tilts his head, inquisitive and guileless. “Do you like nursing?”
There’s a tight dash of tension between them, a strained pull of silence that makes Stan shirk back into the hospital bed, troubled to think he had said something wrong.
But then Kyle just lowers his clipboard, muttering, “I haven’t done your blood pressure yet. Do you mind?”
Stan opens his mouth to reply, but Kyle’s already assembling the cuff and dial, tying the wrap around Stan’s arm and fastening the velcro.
“This’ll pinch, okay?” he says.
“Okay,” he says. “Thank you.”
He’s moving with such lethargy, straining to read the dial through the mist of drowsiness that fringed him from all sides, that those two little words of levity take a long time to register. When the statement of gratitude comes across, wading through the fog of his debilitation, Kyle lifts his head in confusion. “What for?”
“I don’t know,” he says with a hapless shrug. “Letting me know it’ll hurt. Looking out for me.”
“This shouldn’t hurt, it should just pinch. Let me know if it hurts, okay?” Kyle returns. His hands, one of them, at least, is curled around Stan’s bicep, around the warm flesh pulsing with life. He’s so magnetically close to muscle and brawn, to charm and graciousness, he has to look away, swiveling his gaze to the plastic baggie in the patient’s hands.
“The blood might not wash out,” Kyle remarks. “Blood is protein-based. It stains if it isn’t washed out right away. You could try washing it cold, with hydrogen peroxide.”
“It’s okay,” Stan sighs, rubbing the jersey between his thumb and finger in slow, soothing circles. “I’ll figure something out…”
Kyle watches him, concern hardening into a lump in his throat. He sees the way Stan’s gaze drifts, the dazed look in his eyes that comes as his attention dissolves to another place in space and time.
He gently touches his arm. “Hey, Stan, are you with me?”
Stan’s eyes snap back into focus, a spark of amusement lighting them. “Yeah, I just… I just remembered something silly. I used to play laundromat as a kid. Me and my friends, washing clothes. Dry cleaning, whatever the hell. It was the best.”
“I actually think I used to play laundromat too.” Kyle says, his small, scratchy voice somehow sounding gentle in the sterile expanse of the room. He eyes the way Stan coddles his uniform, the caked blood and dirt painting fingertips in shades of mahogany. Kyle doesn’t know much about sports, but he’s able to vaguely identify the colors on Stan’s uniform.
“You play for Colorado State?” he asks, hoping a conversation would help keep the patient grounded.
“Why, you a fan?” Stan smiles — Kyle doesn’t know how he manages to smile; smiling takes considerable muscular effort and Stan should theoretically be on the brink of passing out right about now. “You should be,” he goes on, that lopsided grin as charming as it was even the first time, “You’ll have to come to my next game.”
“I don’t have time to see any games.”
“I want to see you there, though. I can get you a ticket.”
“No more games for you, mister, I’m serious,” Kyle tuts. He finishes with the cuff and hastily takes it away, folding it back in its place. He’s breaking character once again, his barbed, caustic empathy bleeding through the pores of the stone-faced medic he’s supposed to be. “No more roughhousing, no more horsing around. No more shenanigans. Not until your doctor and coach say so, okay? Your fans can wait.”
“Shenanigans,” Stan repeats, his eyes softening with recognition, pure and of particular severity. He’s completely unguarded, his whole-hearted, full-bodied heart- throb making his breath shudder as he breathed out, “Kyle Broflovski?”
Kyle goes white, “I-? … You know me? Do I know you from-?”
“-From elementary school! Did you go to South Park elementary? You did, didn’t you!”
“I did, I…” he trails off, amazed. “I… I can’t believe you remember that.”
“Wow, this is crazy. What a small world it is. I can’t believe it.”
“I can’t believe you remember that,” he says again, something softening in his voice, a somber look crossing his face. “I mean, with your head the way it is, and you still remember… I don’t remember anything from elementary school.”
“Our desks were right next to each other,” Stan beams. “The kid behind us always pulled your hair because he thought it was pretty. You never cried, though. I cried instead,” he said with a laugh, “I cried because the fat kid behind us pulled your hair.”
“I believe you…” Kyle says, a strange sort of remorse seeping into his tone. The clipboard tight between his white-knuckled fingers, he tries to dismiss the dismay gnawing at his insides.
“I don’t remember anything from elementary school,” he says, shaking his head to return himself to the present. “I don’t really remember anything before the age of twelve, if I’m being honest.”
“I moved away when I was eight, you were nine,” Stan says, seeking eye contact from the nursing student who wouldn’t look his way. “What about you, still in South Park?”
“Unfortunately, yeah.”
“Damn, you’re tough as nails.”
“Christ, I can’t wait until we get those brain scans back. The fact you can remember that while concussed, that’s just…” Kyle shakes his head slowly, amazed. “I’m genuinely so impressed you can remember that, Stan. I’ll call my parents tonight and ask if they know your name. I’m sorry, I believe everything you’re saying, I just really don’t remember.”
“No, it’s okay. Why would you apologize? This is crazy for me, too, I mean, just wow,” he breathes, eyes wide with the glossy shine of ardor. “Wow. No wonder I can’t stop staring at you.”
A smirk breaks through Kyle’s phlegmatic mien. He leans coyly against the IV drip, clipboard tucked over his narrow chest. “You sure that’s not the head injury?” he asks with a roguish grin.
Stan holds his gaze, unfaltering, so remarkably intent for someone so hurt. “I’m sure,” he says, steadfast and earnest.
His ardency, so staunch it’s tangible, makes Kyle falter back, his unsteady balance sending him fumbling back into the IV drip. Stan wasn’t attached to it, so nothing was pulled or broken when Kyle stumbles, it merely shudders and rolls back on its squeaky wheels. But still, Kyle is mortified.
Stan’s gaze holds a depth that made Kyle’s heart race. Bangaged and bruised, sweet-faced and stout-hearted, he bears the weight of his soul in his eyes alone and asks, “Are you okay?”
Kyle quickly averts his gaze, scrambling to collect his notebooks and pencils, his clipboard and pens, filling his hands, filling the void in the air between them. “Yeah,” he blurts out, “Fine. Just tired. Just really tired.”
“Did I say something wrong?” he asks, eyes trailing every step Kyle took, every frenetic flinch.
“I’m just tired, I already said that. I’m just really tired.” His fingers, cuticles rubbed raw, fumble around his stacks of papers until they can’t hold on. Notebooks, clipboard, charts and diagrams scatter across the tiled floor like birds shot down from heaven, a virulent fit of white against the cold, hospital floor. Biting down a curse, Kyle drops to his knees, keeping his back facing Stan as he goes to pick up his mess.
“I have a girlfriend.”
Kyle’s hands freeze around the papers. He keeps his back turned. “Okay? And?” he barks.
“Just, I don’t want to freak you out,” he says. “I don’t want you to think I was coming onto you. I have a girlfriend.”
“Well, where is she?” he snaps, unable to filter the bite from his tone.
Stan blinks slowly. “What?”
“Where the hell is she if she’s so great?” he derides, the heat of his passion reverberating off the cold hospital walls. “You’ve been here nearly twenty hours, since eight PM last night, and where is she? It’s not like she doesn’t know where you are, we called everyone on your emergency contacts sheet. You could be in grave fucking danger and where the hell is she?”
All at once, Kyle’s reminded he’s not talking to an old friend, he’s talking to a patient, a vulnerable lifeform trusted into his personal care. For the first time since waking, Stan’s actually starting to resemble a hospital patient, curling his body back against the bricklike bed, cringing away with his grey skin, his soft, damaged eyes.
“I never said she was great,” he says, hoarse.
Kyle’s heart drops. “Oh.”
He stands, scattered papers clutched over his chest. And Stan lays back, holding the timid stare Kyle trusted him with. Something lacerates his chest, an aching, gammy, yet strangely familiar pain, as he sees the way Kyle shudders, the way he dips his chin over the clipboard that he hugs so ferociously over his heart.
“My boyfriend isn’t all that great either,” the med student admits, heart thudding in his chest.
Stan’s jaw, bruised and slightly swollen, slackens, “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry, too. Really sorry.”
“You’re really nice. You should have a nice partner.”
“I’m not nice,” Kyle cackles, sardonic and miserable. “You’re fucking nice. You should have the nicest fucking girlfriend in the world.”
The patient smiles, somehow looking princely and regal in that decrepit hospital gown.
Kyle wants to indulge him with another joke, another bit of levity to encourage him to flash that winsome smile again, but something suddenly twists in his stomach. “Oh shit.”
“What is it, Kyle?”
“I’ve been cursing like a sailor in front of you all day,” Kyle groans. “Shit, my supervisor’s gonna wring my neck…”
“Really?” Stan is immediately piqued with worry and fear, leaning so forward on the hospital bed that his gown and paper sheets slip, the bed groaning under his heroic lunge. “It’s okay, I can protect you. You can hide in here when they come—I'll stand guard, I'll scare them away-”
“Oh my god, Stan, no,” he chuckles tiredly. He’s completely endeared, but doesn’t have the energy for much more than a soft smile. “Sweet Stan, you are so concussed. It was a figure of speech.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah,” he says, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “I just meant she’s gonna chew me out. She’s been riding my ass about this whole bedside manner thing.”
“No one’s gonna hurt you?” he asks timidly, still shaking with anticipation.
“No,” he says. Not my supervisor, anyway . Kyle has to will the pleasant smile back on his face, reassuring his soft-hearted friend, “She’ll just be disappointed in me, that’s all. She may write me up again, but that’s about the worst she can do.”
“I don’t see why she would,” he huffs. “You’re the best nurse ever. You’re so easy to talk to, and when you curse you’re relatable. I like it. I like you.”
“I think we need to swap places,” Kyle laughs. He sits back down on the stool, propping his chin up on his fist. “You’re so good and reassuring, you ought to be a nurse. You could heal the world with that All-american charm of yours.”
“Fuck you, seriously,” Stan laughs, a jovial, open sound. “If we swap places, you’ll be, what, a football player? You?”
Kyle casts a look down at his body, curled up in odd angles on the bedside stool. Enervated and worn down practically to the bone, he flashes a sardonic smile and rears, “What, you don’t think little ol’ me can tackle?”
“No comment,” he smiles back. “I’m sure that all one hundred and five pounds of you can really pack a punch.”
“Maybe. I meant we should switch places right now, though,” he mused. “You, the nurse. Me, the patient. Strapped down in a hospital bed.”
With only a pinch of nervous hesitance, Stan looks down at his arms self consciously, “I’m not strapped down…”
“No…” the redhead sighs, “Sometimes I just feel like I should be…”
Stan holds his gaze, a shared secret whispered in the lyric language of the eyes. Kyle recognizes the morose concordance, the sensation of deep understanding blinking back at him.
Earlier, when Kyle was first assigned to Stan’s room, he sat reading over medical history until he noticed a detail that gave him pause. The two of them were on the same antidepressant; or at least, Stan was actively taking the same antidepressant Kyle was currently supposed to be taking. Kyle’s own pill bottle sat on the dirty sill of his creaking window, collecting dust among his gum wrappers and cigarette stubs; Stan, with his own bottle, was due for a refill tomorrow. In this silent, solitary moment of recognition, a profound connection, deep-rooted and forcible, forms in the gutters of their estrangement. They understand that they share a friend, a deep-seated familiarity with melancholy and instability. They don’t remember each other, not really, but they know each other, because they know the worst parts of one another.
“I think you’re going to be a great nurse, Kyle,” Stan says plaintively, but sincerely.
“Maybe,” he hums. “Hell, I used to be polite. I really did.”
“I remember,” he says humbly. “You were polite. You always called my mom ‘ma’am,’ and it secretly drove her crazy. Please, and thank you, and everything. You were so polite, Kyle.”
“Yeah. I wonder what happened,” he sighs, rubbing his tired eyes. He can feel the lethargy initiate its sinister, monstrous creep again, lurking around his shoulders, skulking under his heavy eyelids. Enfeeblement is a cretin he knows well, a demon he faces often, too often, but each encounter no less debilitating than the last; he’s still exhausted, and it’s still abysmal, a trial just to remain upright on his own two feet.
“Kyle,” Stan tilts his head to the side, his gentle voice dispelling the mists of Kyle’s fog. “Are you okay?”
“Don’t ask me that, okay? It’s my job to ask you that,” he says through a yawn, a full-bodied, rib-trembling moan of asthenia. “Makes me feel like shit-” he managed to articulate, still on the curtailed end of his yawn, “-that you’re doing my job.”
Determination flashes in Stan’s eyes, bright and fierce. “Kyle, come here.”
“I am here,” he offers.
“No, closer. Come into bed with me.”
Kyle hesitates, a flicker of doubt crossing his face. “What? No, I-”
“Kyle, you look like you’re about to pass out,” he says, sounding uneasy. “I don’t want you to pass out. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“I can’t,” he dismisses, swift and forthright. But when he sees the sureness shining in Stan’s blue eyes, feels the radical energy radiating from his worn and battered body, Kyle’s confidence falters, his resolve crumbling into small, uncertain pleas. “I can’t, Stan. I can’t do that, I- I can’t, I-”
Before Kyle can finish his protest, Stan pulls him in, drawing their foreheads together until they’re touching. The warmth of Stan's skin, the steady rhythm of his breath, are soothing balms to his weary soul, medicine for the sick, bandages for the wounded. In this moment, in this small, sterile hospital room, away from the drone of machinery, aside from the beeping monitors and sewing surgeons and wailing mothers, they succumb to a sensation so fulfilling, so enriching, so indulgent, that every scrape, strife, and sorrow seems to melt away, forgotten in this single moment of unison.
Kyle feels he could weep with relief, but what comes first is the impulse to sleep. With Stan’s steady breath gracing the pale skin of his face, he knows he could fall asleep, right here, right now if someone let him.
The next thing he knows, he’s pressed up against Stan’s side in the cramped hospital bed. It’s awkward and cramped, but somehow, they both fit. His scrubs are rubbing against Stan’s gown, they both smell like chemicals and greasy hair oils, and neither of them really look even remotely okay. But it feels so okay. It feels so…
Stan sniffles, wiping the tears from his eyes.
Kyle’s breath shudders, “Hey, are you-?”
“-Head injury,” he caterwauls, breath hitching, chest quivering. “God, fucking… Ow… Fucking…”
“I think I might remember you,” Kyle murmurs dreamily, basking in the warmth of unadulterated human devotion. “Did you… you wore a blue hat right? With a red pom-pom?”
“Yeah,” he sighs. Kyle’s head is digging into the scrape on his shoulder, but he’d be damned if he said anything to make Kyle move. He needs human connection right now more than anything else.
“I keep wanting to buy another hat like it. Checking stores to see if I can find something,” he tells Kyle, sighing into their comfortable embrace, “but I think that hat was only for kids.”
“Assholes,” Kyle tsks. “Whoever made that choice. Asshole.”
“You said it.”
“Look,” the corner of Kyle’s lip creeps up in a sickly, self-loathing smile. “We have the same bruise…”
A pinch of fear clenches Stan’s heart, following Kyle’s gaze to the wrist peeking out from the sleeve of his scrubs. There’s a bruise circling the soft flesh around the joint, marred and deep blue, not unlike the purple spot dotting Stan’s own wrist from the game’s first down, when he broke his fall on the cleat of an opposing linebacker.
“Mine is from football,” he says wearily, throat lurching. “Where is yours…?”
Kyle looks away, and Stan has to choke down the bile that rises in the back of his mouth.
They’re so close together, practically on top of one another, that when Kyle flinches suddenly, out of nowhere, Stan feels it too, spine juddering back into the steel bedframe.
“I’m gonna be in so much trouble,” the redhead gripes, sinking his face into his hands. “Oh god, I’m gonna die…”
Stan trembles, “Is your boyfriend gonna…?”
“ … him too,” Kyle says, paling. “If he finds out about, I mean if he sees… him too, yeah him too… But I meant my supervisor. If another nurse, if anyone sees me like-”
“-Kyle, no,” he interrupts, voice firm. “You need this. God, you’re so- You really, really need this,” he insists. Whatever resolve he still had, whatever athlete-hardened, tough-as-nails exterior he was still holding onto, softened at the candid admission; “I really need this, too. I do.”
“Stan…” Kyle looks sick to his stomach, infirm with guilt, feverish with shame.
“If anyone says anything,” he presses, voice trembling, “I’ll say I asked you. You were just doing what I asked you. You were going above and beyond, providing the best care you could.”
“I don’t know if I’m going to see you again,” the nurse says, shaking his head.
Stan’s eyes widen, “You’re not, like, assigned to me? And I can’t, I don’t know, request you or anything?”
“I’m not technically an employee, I’m just on my clinic hours… I’m not in charge of scheduling or anything, I have…” Kyle covers his face. “I have no power here… What the hell is-? I don’t know why I’m acting this way… I promise I’m not usually such a killjoy.”
Stan presses on, forceful with optimism, “Do you work tomorrow?”
“I’m scheduled for the pediatric ward,” he says, frowning. It’s not a horrible confession by any means, but right now the admission sours his mouth, and it feels like the worst thing he could possibly say.
“Okay, I can work with that!” Stan beams gleefully. “I’m a kid at heart. As soon as the real doctor sees what a fool I’m in, she’ll send me there straightaway. I’ll see you there tomorrow.”
He doesn’t know Kyle well, not really. His memories of the hollow-eyed, lithe-bodied zealot in front of him are few and far between, and the persistent dull throb through his frontal lobe certainly isn’t aiding his perceptive skills. But from all Stan can deduce, Kyle seems to be the type to roll his eyes and scoff, even take genuine offense, at a comment as stupid as the one Stan just made.
So it warms his heart seeing the way Kyle blushed, looking somewhat mousy and abashed as he offers, “I’ll come visit you after my shift. How about that?”
“That,” Stan starts, voice thick with emotion, “Would mean the world to me.”
Kyle’s eyes flick down, and Stan immediately knows what he needs, because he needs it, too. With a shaky, fragile inhale, so delicate and gossamer neither one could hear it beneath the increasing beeping of the heart monitor, their lips meet. Assuasive and ardent, they share a tender kiss, Stan’s blood-swollen lips curling Kyle’s dry ones. Kyle’s perpetually shaking hand comes to latch a soft spot on Stan’s shoulder blade, and Stan leans forward. They sink into one another, kissing, consuming, taking and giving; each one yearning to take it further, to accentuate their intimate, imminent commerce - but both feeling far too selfish, far too guilty to indulge even a second longer.
They pull away in time, each man bearing the same solemn reserve. Stan tries to swallow, finding his throat uncomfortably dry. He needs water. He needs drugs, sleep, food, anything. But he can’t pull away. He can’t tear himself away from these blighted green eyes, not for anything in the world.
“Are we, like, the worst people in the universe?” Kyle asks bleakly, tone dull and dead.
Stan meets his eyes, and immediately, his lungs heave with the onslaught of emotion. He begins to cry again, this time straining to hold back his shuddering lungs, shoulders quivering with every stifled sob. Kyle flinches at the sight, sputtering hasty, desperate apologies, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry. God, fuck, I’m sorry. Come here, Stan. Come here.”
It’s quite strange – even as pugnacious as he is, Kyle’s quite sure he’s never uttered that phrase before. Not to his bullies, who he preferred to face head-on, not to his little brother, who always followed without Kyle having to ask. Certainly not to his boyfriend, whom he wouldn’t dare dream of upsetting. Now he’s demanding Stan, a stranger, his liability and responsibility, to crawl into proximity with him. But airing from his lips, the phrase doesn’t clap like a command, it rather chimes like an invitation. And it comes naturally, this plaintive proposal, and Stan assents at once.
They set to holding each other once again squeezing and contorting in a bed built for the dying, their bodies a mangled mess of discolored skin, of scars seen and unseen. Guilt consumed them alive, gorging on the flapping fat around their tremulant hearts, guzzling down their spirits like cheap wine, wretched and worth spilling. And it hurt, spoiling in the admission of their own degeneracy; and it hurt even more to know the precious spirit beside each one was going through just the same.
“How’s your head?” Kyle croaks out after a bit of cuddling, once Stan’s tears had settled and the heart monitor went back to beep at a rhythmic pace.
“I can’t complain,” Stan says.
“Um, yeah, you fucking can complain, you’re in the fucking hospital.”
“I can’t complain,” he insists. “I recognized you, didn’t I?”
“It’s killing me that I don’t remember,” he says, lip quivering. “I, um… God, I don’t know if I- I haven’t told anyone this. I sort of started having a hard time after my twelfth birthday, and since then just started… forgetting things.”
“That’s sad,” Stan hums. At this point his head is pounding too hard for inhibitions, and he allows his right hand to drift into Kyle’s hair, marveling at the softness. “I think you would’ve liked nine-year-old you,” he murmurs, rubbing circles into the bed of red curls. “I liked him a lot.”
“Is that so,” Kyle mumbles, allowing his eyes to shut. He yawns, and whimpers out, “Tell me about him.”
“I’ll do my best,” Stan says haplessly, brutally charming, even in his debilitation. He starts speaking, a low, dolorous drone, recounting tales of better times, of adventures and whims long swept away by the drills and regimes of obdurate modernity. Kyle falls asleep first, and Stan keeps talking to him, ruminating sweetly as he swipes the hair from Kyle’s brow. As they eventually drift off to sleep together, the monitor fluting its mechanical lullaby, they hold fast to each other, a fragile, desperate grip around a tenderness they knew they couldn’t keep. The hospital room, deigned a sterile, impersonal space fit for no soul, for no joy, has become their sanctuary, a place where, for once, they can sleep, shutting out the rest of the begging world. Between the gauzy folds of gown and scrub, their hands clasp, fingers intertwining, as they welter in their fleeting quiescence.