Chapter Text
Everybody must remember when Stan sort of went crazy, but sometimes Kyle feels like he's the only one, because no one ever talks about it. Stan might talk about it, but he probably doesn't, and Kyle wouldn't know. Stan only talks to Craig and Kenny and the other kids who get high in the woods after school. If Kyle accidentally meets Stan's eyes in the hallway, he'll flush and feel like he should apologize, though by then Stan will have already looked away, pretending not to notice as Kyle walks past.
Or maybe he really doesn't notice. Kyle has been invisible since freshman year. Even Cartman ignores him, having moved on to obsessing over people with tits now that his balls have dropped. Kenny sometimes throws Kyle a bone, for old time's sake, but Kyle can see him struggling not to mention Stan's name, and Kyle would rather just avoid Kenny if it means they have to act like Stan never existed. Kyle's only real friend is his younger brother. Kyle suspects Ike sometimes gets high with Kenny and those guys, but he doesn't mention Stan, either.
Wendy is Kyle's academic rival, and they pretend to be friends while they're competing for leadership positions in their many afterschool clubs. If popularity factors in, and it usually does, Wendy always wins. Kyle is proud to be head chair on their academic bowl team, which was not an elected position. He secretly thinks he's much smarter than Wendy and that she just works hard, and he knows she thinks the same thing about him.
She's the one who tells Kyle about Stan getting arrested.
“Kenny, too,” she says as Kyle stands listening to the details, his back pressed to the freezing brick wall of the main school building. They're in the skinny alleyway between the school and the gym, where Kyle eats his lunch even when it's forty below, because it's better than sitting by himself in the cafeteria or eating in a bathroom stall. It's not like it's a secret that he's a loser with no friends, but he likes to pretend that he can hide that fact.
“Was it more than an ounce?” Kyle asks, running over what little he knows about possession laws for minors.
“How should I know?” Wendy asks. She does her hair-flip thing. “They're so stupid. Everyone knew they smoked back there. It was like they wanted to get caught.”
“Craig, too?”
“Are you kidding? No. He ran.”
Kyle nods. Craig is on the track team. Kyle wanted to try out, freshman year, just so he could do some sort of athletic activity that didn't require hand-eye coordination, but his asthma prohibited it.
“Anyway,” Wendy says. “I thought you should know.”
“Why?”
“Because – I don't know. We both used to care about him.”
Kyle nods. Of course he doesn't care about Stan Marsh anymore. Not actively, anyway. He's allowed to be nostalgic about the Stan he used to know, though. Before Stan decided Kenny was right about everything and started putting anything Kenny could get his hands on up his nose.
Kyle tried getting drunk once, on a forgotten bottle of almond liqueur he found in the back of the pantry. He ended up crying with his head in Ike's lap, and his stomach didn't feel right for three days.
“Well,” Kyle says, when Wendy stands there staring at him. “I hope he'll get a fair trial.”
Wendy rolls her eyes like she knew he would say that and waves, leaving him alone in the courtyard. Kyle listens to the clack-clack of her heeled boots until she's gone.
Stan is back in school the following week, but he's there in name only, as usual. He sleeps through class until the teachers bark at him loudly enough to wake him, shows up late and plays with his phone whenever he can get away with it. He only has one class with Kyle: Honors English. How Stan managed to get into the Honors track for this one subject, Kyle has no idea. Stan turns in homework only when it's absolutely necessary and doesn't participate in class discussions. Kyle suspects their teacher, Ms. Doyle, wants to fuck Stan or something. He's got that doomed, Byronic thing going on, and he probably turns in erotic poetry in place of term papers, just to keep her fooled.
"I heard you guys got arrested," Kyle says when he sees Kenny later that day, not in school but hanging out behind the soccer field, an unlit cigarette dangling from his bottom lip. He looks like he just woke up, but that's nothing new.
"Yeah, but it's no big deal," Kenny says, the cigarette wagging when he talks. "It was my second strike, so."
"So the next one is your third."
"Right." Kenny grins. "What are you doing back here? You got a light?"
"You know I don't have a fucking light. I'm walking home from school. I saw orange over here and figured it was you."
Kenny looks down at himself as if just now realizing what color his parka is. Now that he's sixteen he's mostly grown into it.
"Well, don't worry," Kenny says when he looks up again. "Craig didn't get picked up."
Kyle scoffs. "Like I give a shit about Craig."
"Oh, that's right." Kenny closes his eyes and puts his palm against his forehead in a gesture of mock self reproach. "You don't care about Craig. You barely even remember who Craig is. You just came over here because you care so very deeply about my well-being. Thank you, Kyle."
"What the hell is your problem?" Kyle pretends not to understand that Kenny is talking about Stan, but Kenny has known him for a long time and pretending doesn't go far with him.
"I got no problems, man," Kenny says. He takes the cigarette from his mouth and tucks it behind his ear, strands of greasy blond hair falling over it. "None at all."
"Yeah, that's good," Kyle says, getting agitated. "'Cause you're high all the time, right? So who gives a fuck? That's a solution, that's awesome."
"Hey," Kenny says, and he points his finger at Kyle, his face growing serious. "You keep on believing there's a solution, Broflovski. Believe that for all of us, forever."
Kyle isn't sure if Kenny is being sincere or making fun of him, but his eyes are stinging as he walks away. Fuck Kenny and Stan and however many strikes they have. Roughly eight billion by Kyle's count. He's surprised they're both still alive.
The week before Thanksgiving, Kyle is doing homework at the kitchen table when his mother comes in. She's humming the way she always does when she's got something unpleasant that she feels guilty about laying on him, and if his mother feels guilty about asking him to do something, it's usually really bad.
"What?" Kyle asks when she hovers, pretending to brush dirt from the top of his ushanka. People make fun of him for continuing to wear it, but he needs something to stay the same as it used to be, and it feels like the only thing he can actually control: his hat.
"I was just on the phone with Tara from the congregation," Sheila says, toying with the curls that have escaped from the back of Kyle's hat. Kyle raises his shoulders and moans, wincing.
"Don't mess with my hair," he says. "What does Tara have to do with me?" She's talking about Mrs. Verner, a busybody middle-aged lady who his mother likes gossip with before and after services.
"Oh, nothing, bubbeh! I was just bragging to her about what a kind and charitable son I have. Her son is a real piece of work. No spirit of generosity, wants everything for himself, gimme, gimme, gimme! That poor woman. I'm just glad we raised you not to be that way."
"What do you want?" Kyle asks, his teeth gritted.
"Kyle, don't be so cynical!" She gives him a light whack on the back of the head. "It's just a small favor to Mrs. Marsh. You'll probably enjoy it!"
"Mrs. Marsh?" Kyle turns from his math book. "What's she want with me?"
"It's just - speaking of no good sons, you know what's become of her Stanley. Oi! To think that the two of you were such good friends as boys! Thank goodness you didn't follow him and the McCormick boy down that - path."
"What does she want me to do, stage an intervention?" Kyle laughs. "Me and Wendy tried that in eighth grade. It was pretty much the last time Stan talked to us."
"Nothing that dramatic, she just wants you to spend an afternoon with him. She thinks you'd be a good influence, and I agree! He got arrested recently, you know. It's only a matter of time before he ends up in real prison!"
"Maybe that'd be the best thing for him."
"Kyle! Have some sympathy!"
Kyle turns back to this book, his fists curling up so tightly that he nearly snaps his mechanical pencil in two. Someone asking him to have sympathy for Stan. That's rich. Stan was never interested in Kyle's sympathy. It was always irrelevant to him.
"Anyway, she's keeping a very close watch on Stan since his arrest, and I told her she could bring him over here for dinner."
"Mom! What? Tonight?"
"Yes, tonight! Don't act so put out. It's not as if you had other plans."
Kyle growls in frustration and slams his book shut, not appreciating the reminder that he spends every night here, with his homework, stupidly excited if Ike makes room in his busy social calendar to watch a movie with him.
"Where are you going?" his mother asks as he hurries out of the kitchen.
"Up to my room," Kyle says. "Why don't you try entertaining Stan when he gets here? He's a really fascinating conversationalist these days."
"Kyle!"
He ignores her and slams the door of his bedroom. He would almost welcome having Stan here, just to show his mother what a lost cause he is so that this topic can forever be closed, but it's mortifying, their mothers arranging a play date for them. He drops face first onto his bed and lies there on his stomach until he hears a car out in the driveway. He hopes it's just his father or one of Ike's alarmingly older friends, but he hears the high, hopeful tone of Mrs. Marsh, and then an low mumbling voice that must be Stan's. Kyle can't remember the last time he heard Stan speak.
Kyle waits, his heart pounding. He can't look like he's just moping around when Stan comes up here, so he grabs his laptop and sits up in bed, pretending to study the Denver Post's website intently. He hears his mother greeting Stan downstairs, a brief and indecipherable exchange of conversation, and then there they are, coming up the stairs: Stan's footsteps, plodding and slow, as if he's dreading this, too.
Even Stan's knock is lethargic. Kyle groans loudly enough for Stan to hear and wipes his sweating palms on his comforter.
"What?" he says.
Stan responds by entering. Kyle huffs, because he might have been naked, for all Stan cares. They stare at each other for awhile, Kyle glowering from the bed and Stan expressionless in the doorway, his shoulders slumped tiredly.
"Hey," Stan says.
"Hey."
"Can I come in?"
"You're already in, for all intents and purposes."
Stan seems to take that as a yes. He steps into the room and shuts the door behind him, then stands there like an idiot with his hands in his pockets, looking around at the walls of Kyle's room.
"Kinda looks the same," Stan says. He sounds stoned. Kyle wouldn't put it past him to get high to celebrate his release from prison.
"I heard you got arrested," Kyle says, letting his voice stay sharp. Stan smiles a little, but it's not his old smile, the one that meant something.
"Yeah," he says. "Two hundred motherfucking hours of community service. Plus probation, and my parents have to pay a fine. Why the fuck isn't pot legal? You know?"
"It's not one of my biggest concerns," Kyle says, and Stan laughs. "What?" Kyle barks.
"Nothing, dude," Stan says. He's got that infuriating pothead grin on as he wanders over to Kyle's bulletin board to look at the reminders he's tacked to it. "You're such a dork."
"I am? Oh, Jesus, thanks for telling me. I'll have to do something about that. Quick, give me a beer and a joint! That'll make me cool right away, I'm sure."
Stan laughs, flicking at a curled up corner on a flyer for a bake sale Wendy organized to raise money for debate team jackets.
"What, like," Stan says, still playing with the paper, still smiling for no good reason. "You think I'm, like. Cool?"
"No. That was the joke. You used to know what sarcasm was. I hope those brain cells died a beautiful death."
This finally wipes Stan's smile from his face, though he still seems vaguely amused. He puts both hands in his pockets and walks over to the end of Kyle's bed, blowing out his breath like a guy who's had a long day. He's got the usual bags under his eyes and the pallid skin of a basement-dweller. He never really had breakouts, the son of a bitch. Kyle's face was a minefield in junior high. It's cleared up now, due to chemical intervention. Stan is taller than Kyle, despite his regular substance abuse, and he looks huge at the foot of Kyle's bed, probably because he hasn't stood there since he was eleven years old.
"My mom thinks you can save me," Stan says.
"I can't," Kyle says, scoffing at the notion.
"I know," Stan says. "You used to want to. Remember?"
"Barely," Kyle says, mumbling. He stares down at his laptop screen. Outside, it's already gotten dark, and there's a lazy snowfall. When they were kids, Stan would say, Look, it's like God's got dandruff.
"You know I was, like, in love with you, right?" Stan asks. "When we were kids?" Kyle looks up from the computer, ready to defend himself against that accusation, only Stan isn't accusing Kyle of anything, and he doesn't seem to be joking.
"You're full of shit," Kyle says. "Or high. Both, probably."
"No, it's true." Stan frowns a little and sits down at the end of the bed, near Kyle's socked feet. "I mean, I didn't really know it. But I thought maybe you did. Like, you would have figured that out before I did."
"Right, okay." Kyle stares at the laptop screen, at the news, trying to focus on the words Guns Okay in Church - Sometimes. "Did Kenny tell you to say that? Is he in on this? You guys are gonna laugh really hard about this later, right, 'cause everything's a big joke -"
"I shouldn't have said that, forget it," Stan says, waving his hand through the air. For a moment Kyle thinks Stan will touch his sock, which is something Stan used to do when Kyle's knees were hugged to his chest, his feet curled around the edge of the sofa cushion while they watched a movie. If Stan got bored with the movie, he'd poke at Kyle's feet, tracing the argyle patterns on his socks.
"How'd you get arm muscles?" Kyle mutters jealously after they've been quiet for awhile, Stan staring straight ahead at nothing and Kyle sneaking looks at him. Stan looks down at his arms. He's wearing a t-shirt, of course, despite the fact that it's November and snowing outside. Stan Marsh feels no pain, not even the weather-induced kind.
"Me and Kenny found this weight bench at the dump," he says. He looks up from his arms and meets Kyle's eyes. His gaze makes the air too heavy, unbreathable, and Kyle has to look away.
"You're dumpster diving with Kenny now?" Kyle says.
"Sometimes. Anyway, we work out. He wants to get girls, so."
"Do you guys blow each other, too?" Kyle asks, the question making his eyes water, the glow from the laptop screen stinging against them. "When the girls don't show?"
"Yeah, Kyle, we totally blow each other," Stan says flatly. "It's awesome. Kenny gives great head."
"That's cool. Good for you."
"You want me to go?" Stan says, and then he laughs. He's picking at the nail bed on his thumb when Kyle looks up again. "Stupid question," Stan says, muttering. "I know this wasn't your idea."
"Are you, like, feeling sorry for yourself?" Kyle says, his eyes narrowing, and still burning a little. "For a change? 'Cause none of what happened was your fault, right? Pot should be legal, class should be more interesting, I should have let you treat me like shit -"
"I never treated you like shit," Stan says, pointing at him. "Never. Not the way -" He scoffs and shakes his head, looking away.
"Not the way what?" Kyle asks, though he's pretty sure he knows what Stan is going to say.
"Not the way Cartman did. But Cartman, hey, he could do no wrong, right? No amount of forgiveness is too much for the great Eric Cartman-"
"Oh - what - seriously? You were jealous of Cartman? They're called low expectations, Stan. The lowest, in his case. If he wasn't actively trying to fart in my face, I was impressed."
"So that's all you require in a best friend, at the end of the day. No face farts."
"Who else did I have?" Kyle asks, and only when he feels the silence in the room regrowing like mold does he realize that he was shouting just then. There's a new stillness downstairs, as if his mother is trying to eavesdrop from the first floor.
"Well," Stan says, picking at his thumb again. "You had me. Sort of."
"No, I didn't. Not even sort of. Not even a little. Not anymore."
They're quiet for awhile, and Kyle is surprised that Stan isn't storming out. He's more surprised that he doesn't want him to. He scrolls the main Denver Post page up and down, pretending to read it. Stan bites at a cuticle.
"That's disgusting," Kyle says, muttering.
"What?" Stan says, looking up, clueless, and for a moment he looks like he did when they were kids, when Kyle would tell him it was gross to put the knife he used in the jelly into the peanut butter jar. Kyle smiles, and it happens without his permission, but he can't get rid of it.
"Nothing," Kyle says. He slides one foot forward until it's touching Stan's thigh and gives him a push, jostling him. "You. You're, like. You look like you're covered with this greasy film. These days."
"Some days I am," Stan says thoughtfully. "But not all days."
Kyle laughs, and it hurts and feels good at the same time, his eyes blurring over when he looks back down at the computer screen. Stan puts his hand over Kyle's foot, holding it against his thigh.
"Why do you have to be like this?" Kyle asks. "Why can't you just be-"
"Like you? Don't you think I wish I could be? Every fucking day?"
"You don't even try!" Kyle is crying for real now; fuck. He looks up from the computer, showing Stan his face as tears streak down over his cheeks. "You never tried. I only ever asked you to try."
"You didn't understand what you were asking," Stan says. His voice is tight, and so are his fingers, curling around Kyle's foot. "I couldn't even hear you half the time."
"You didn't want to!"
"Yes, I did! Kyle, goddammit, I just told you I loved you. Did you hear that? Do you know what that means? You were the one thing I still loved."
"Oh, whatever," Kyle says, shaking his head and hiccuping a sob. "You hated me more than anything. I let you down, right? You wanted me to know that I let you down most of all."
"No, Kyle-" Stan's eyes are wet as he crawls across the bed and shoves Kyle's laptop aside. Kyle should hit him or lean away, but he's worn thin and he's needed this for too long, Stan's arms sliding around him, Stan sniffling against his shoulder while he holds him. Kyle puts his arms around Stan's back and buries his face in Stan's hair, trying to keep his crying quiet while his chest bounces with sobs, not wanting his mother to come to the door and interfere.
"Shit, shit," Stan whispers, sniffling. He's getting snot on Kyle's neck, and Kyle feels stupidly grateful for it, just like he always has with whatever slimy residue of Stan's life that he could get. He shifts until he's basically in Stan's lap, his leg thrown across Stan's thighs. Stan is rubbing his back, and Kyle is swallowing down the urge to whimper like a child, holding on tight.
They sit like that for a long time, until Kyle almost feels like he could fall asleep, the tension draining from his body as Stan continues to rub his back. He can feel Stan's heart beating fast against his own chest, and he can't believe how warm Stan is. He'd been afraid for years that Stan's skin would be cold to the touch, like a thing that had died.
"You smell the same," Kyle says, mumbling this sleepily. Stan laughs and maybe kisses his hat; Kyle can't say for sure.
"So do you," Stan says. "So does this room."
Kyle sits back, and Stan's arms slide down to circle his waist. He feels like maybe Stan won't let him go, like he might actually fight for Kyle for the first time in six years. That used to be such a given, that Stan would fight whole armies for him. But Stan looks tired now, as if this has taken the last of whatever energy he'd been holding on to.
"Why are you in Honors English?" Kyle asks. Stan blinks a few times, then laughs.
"That's what you're asking me now?" he says. Kyle nods and puts his hand on Stan's chest so he can feel his heart again. It's still beating hard.
"Um, 'cause reading is the only thing I really like?" Stan says.
"What do you read?" Kyle asks. "I mean, for fun." He's envisioning relentlessly depressing French novels where everyone but the villain ends up dead.
"Graphic novels, mostly," Stan says. Kyle grins.
"And I'm the dork."
"That's what I was trying to tell you." Stan tugs him closer, and suddenly he has this look on his face like they're going to kiss, which makes the breath in Kyle's lungs freeze solid. "I'm a dork, too," Stan says. "And a burned out loser, so I don't even get the academic benefits."
"You're not a loser," Kyle says. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slow, watching Stan's gaze sink down to his lips. "At least you have friends."
"I do?" Stan looks genuinely curious.
"Kenny and Craig and those guys."
Stan snorts. "Kenny is my dealer, Craig is the worst person I've ever met in my life, and 'those guys' don't even count."
"I hate Kenny for doing this to you," Kyle says, his hand curling into a fist over Stan's heart. Stan shakes his head.
"Kenny didn't do anything," he says.
"He gives you drugs!"
"I'd get them from someone else if not him."
"What - so - you're not going to quit?"
Stan shrugs. "I don't want to," he says. Kyle sputters in disbelief, shoving him away.
"Why not?" he asks. "What's wrong with you?"
"I don't know," Stan says. He scoots away until Kyle's leg isn't draped across his lap anymore. "But it's not going to go away."
Kyle groans in frustration, turning to punch his pillow. Stan says it's not a matter of trying or not, but Kyle has never seen him try. He keeps his back to Stan, seething, and flinches when Stan touches his shoulder.
"I used to hate it that you didn't understand this," Stan says. "And now I'm so glad, Kyle. I'm glad you don't get it."
"You think I'm such a baby," Kyle says. He sinks down to hide his face in his pillow, curling his knees in toward his chest.
"I don't think you're a baby," Stan says. His hand skims down over Kyle's side and comes to rest on his hip. Kyle shivers, his toes curling inside his socks. "Can I spoon you?" Stan asks, and Kyle laughs hard into his pillow. He peeks at Stan with one eye, thinking he must be laughing, too, or at least smiling hard. Stan looks like he just got punched.
"C'mere," Kyle says, grabbing Stan's arm when he tries to move away. "Spoon me, yeah. I'm cold."
Stan seems to move in slow motion as he settles in behind Kyle, maybe because Kyle is impatient to have Stan all around him again. Kyle is holding his breath, and he doesn't let it out until Stan's arm slides across his chest, his knees pushing in behind Kyle's. Stan pulls him close, until Kyle can feel Stan's nervous breath fluttering low in his stomach, pressed against the small of Kyle's back. They're both tense for a moment, twitching into comfortable positions, and then Stan gets soft and heavy at the same time, his face resting against Kyle's neck. His breathing is slow and deliberate, despite his pounding heart, as if he doesn't want to disturb Kyle with the force of it. Kyle puts his hand over Stan's and wiggles back against him a bit, until he feels Stan's breath pause for a moment before resuming.
"That's nice," Kyle says, idiotically. He's melting inside his clothes, flushed with embarrassed pleasure. Stan feels really, really good. Like home.
"Yeah," Stan says. His voice is pinched, but he doesn't sound like he'll get emotional again, just like he's trying to hold something else back. He sighs, and it moves across Kyle's skin like wind over water, making him shiver.
"I feel like I still know you," Kyle says. He pushes his fingers in between Stan's, rubbing his thumb over Stan's bitten cuticle. "Like there's nothing I don't know about you."
"You know everything that matters," Stan says. "It's like there were these brittle, old, handwritten accounts of who I was, and most of them got burned up in a big fire. But I gave one of them to you, the most important one, and I worry sometimes that you got rid of it, but you have it, Kyle, I can feel it, you still have it."
Stan cries again, quietly, curling up tight around Kyle. Kyle could cry, too, and he will later, when he thinks about that more, but for now he just brings Stan's hand up to his mouth and kisses his knuckles, his uneven nail beds, the tips of his fingers and the webs between them. Everything he can reach.
Kyle knows the way this works. Eventually, the world resets. But tonight, it feels like all Stan needed was an hour of spooning Kyle and a big Broflovski family meal. Kyle's mom cooks all of Stan's old favorites: noodle pudding and roast beef, carrots with honey, even hamantaschen stuffed with figs. Kyle had no idea she'd prepared anything so elaborate. Candles are lit, prayers are said. Ike shows up sober and hugs Stan before taking a seat. Gerald gives Stan advice about how to get the possession arrest stricken from his record.
"Pot should be legal," Ike says. "The criminalization of marijuana has done way more harm to this country than good."
The family gets into a mild debate over this, everyone passing dishes and pretending this is Stan's problem: just a little afterschool pot smoking, nothing that solid legal advice and a healthy attitude about recreational drug use can't solve. Kyle appreciates the charade, and wonders if Stan is chewing on the insides of his cheeks, wishing he had a beer. Kyle touches his foot to Stan's under the table, and Stan looks away from Ike, who is ranting about Canada's superior handling of this miracle drug. Kyle smiles, and Stan smiles back. It seems real. Kyle consults the book Stan trusted him with all those years ago, carefully turning its dusty pages, trying to translate the look in Stan's eyes. Kyle is a little rusty with this particular language, not exactly fluent anymore, but he thinks it might be hope. It's small and fragile like hope, a tiny little flame, though it could be the dangerous sort of flame that turns into a raging fire. If that happens, Stan will survive, because Kyle has the last sacred book of him, deep down and safe, and he knows that now. He can feel it, too.