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They’re not friends anymore, but Stan still comes by sometimes. Only when he’s drunk.
Not blackout drunk. When it’s a party at some kid’s house and the ground is gritty under his feet and the music is too loud it thumps through his chest. Stan isn’t blackout drunk - but he’s not sober either. And his stomach feels sick and the kids he bumps into during his escape through the crowd no longer look like the people he’s been going to school with since kindergarten. They look like strangers, like they might hurt Stan.
The air is bitingly cold, a shock to the cooling sweat on his forehead. Stan tucks damp hair under his hat. Now that the music is muffled behind the shut door, it’s quiet and dark and so very winter in the way South Park always is.
Stan sets off down the path, kicking snow as he goes.
He walks till his nose is just one cold lump under his palm and his feet are numb in their thick socks. His mind skips on memories like stones on water. Boys, just boys, skipping rocks at Stark’s pond, complaining about their parents. Playing that stupid guitar game, plastic sweaty under his hands, but his best friend is smiling so hard he can barely focus on the screen. Bumping knobbly knees on a shared bed at a sleepover and watching that crack in the paint on the wall because he can’t sleep and his best friend is snoring away. His friend telling him that he’s like a black hole that sucks the life out of everyone. Smile more, then, take a sip if he really needs it. Not bumping elbows with his friend on the bed, because kids their age barely have sleepovers anymore, let alone sleep on the same bed. Watching the walls because the cracked paint has been painted over but it’s still there just covered up.
On nights like these, Stan’s feet take him there without thinking. Ask him during Math class how to get there and he might hesitate because it’s been years and the details are blurred at the edges. Is it a right turn or a left turn? But when he’s drunk enough to not focus on the details, he ends right back here again.
The front door would be too familiar so Stan half crawls half shimmies up the tree at the back of the house. He’s grown heavier but the tree’s grown bigger and sturdier too so it’s still okay. He hasn’t outgrown it yet.
Stan raps against the window. A minute or two. He’s a light sleeper. It opens.
The boy pokes his head out, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes but alert. He curses at Stan and it’s so familiar Stan breaks into a big smile.
“Jesus Christ dude,” Kyle Broflovski hisses and steps back so Stan can worm in. “Three in the ever fucking morning. Why is it always after two?”
Stan beams again. Kyle stops cursing him to the heavens, sighs a bit, and holds his hands out expectantly. Stan steps forward and kind of - relaxes into his body. Arms loose around Kyle’s middle as he buries his face into that warm neck. Still the same shampoo. Stan huffs and sinks onto him even more. In contrast, Kyle’s arms tighten once. Like he’s confirming he’s solid and there.
“I want McDonalds. Fries and maybe some nuggets.”
”Fuck you.”
They both climb out through the window, Stan going first and wrapped cosily in one of Kyle’s new jumpers. Kyle wore this two weeks ago. Stan saw him in it; Kyle’s arms crossed over the sleeves, leaning against the locker as he typed on his phone. Who was he talking to? Had he eaten? How did the sweater feel? It looked soft.
It is soft, Stan now knows.
Kyle knocks elbows with him. “Stop grinning at the ground. Weirdo.”
Stan links arms with him and they set off, snow crunching below their shoes. It’s late enough that the lamps have been shut off. Kyle tries turning on his phone flashlight and Stan hides it behind his hand, lighting his fingers red. Kyle curses at him again and turns it off.
Again; Stan isn’t that drunk, but the rest of the walk goes by in a blur. Kyle doesn’t talk much, but maybe Stan rambles a little. The neon McDonalds sign grows from a speck to a pronounced M. Stan hummmms back, drawing out the consonant. Kyle hums too, a new song Stan hasn’t heard before. That knocks Stan off balance, so he switches his tuneless humming to a song they both know.
It makes Kyle break into a grin. “There’ll be peace when you are done,” Kyle continues. Stan reaches up to trail a thumb against the yellow cast on his high cheekbones made even higher by his pretty smile. Kyle leans into it.
This. This is what Stan needs.
He doesn’t voice that thought. Instead, he complains about the fluorescent lights hurting his eyes when they approach the entrance. It makes everything feel too real. “Let’s sit outside instead,” says Stan.
“It’s freezing balls,” argues Kyle but he returns with nuggets and fries and ice cream, sitting on the parking lot stopper next to Stan. They used to walk on these when they were little, holding hands out and balancing. They used to be so good at balancing when they were kids.
“I miss you,” says Stan. He immediately wants to take it back.
Kyle inspects him. “You’re such a sweet drunk.”
Stan takes the out. He jostles arms with him and scarfs down the fries, feeding a nugget to Kyle and getting a zing of warmth when Kyle accepts it.
This is Stan’s favourite part of these nights. He’s never more complete.
“If aliens came down,” Stan wonders, “and offered you a chance to join them on their travels. Would you accept?”
“Fuck no. I’m not into anal probing.”
That distracts Stan. “Really?”
“What the hell, why do you sound disappointed?”
“I always thought you’d like…” Stan shakes his hand in a vague gesture, suddenly uncomfortable. “Since you like…”
Kyle shoves him. He nearly falls off. “Fuck,” Kyle curses with feeling. “I thought you wouldn’t remember that. Fuck.”
Of course Stan remembers that. It made his whole world spin differently when Kyle told him on a night not too different from this. He thinks about it. He dissects it even. Wonders what Kyle’s type is. Doesn’t approach it, not even on nights like these, because that’s crossing a line. Sober Stan knows the lines better and to be honest drunk Stan doesn’t understand why staying within the lines is so important but Sober Stan is to be trusted because he doesn’t fuck up his friendships while all drunk Stan does is moon and bother someone who entertains him because. Because.
“Drunk Stan wants to know why you talk to him,” Stan says. It feels like he’s crossing a line.
Kyle drops his hands from his face. He was hiding at the mention of anal probes. “Third person, really?”
Stan shrugs and steals a spoon of ice cream. Kyle’s eyes follow his hands.
“Well, we don’t talk much anyway. Only when you, uh,” Kyle leaves the rest of the sentence unsaid. Thank god because they’re coming too close to comfort to acknowledging this is something they do. And that’s the biggest boldest line to not cross.
“Uh,” Stan repeats agreeably. Then he steers the conversation back to safer waters, like what would Kyle do if a fairy flew into his room and granted him three wishes? (Kyle replies that he’d catch the fairy in a jar and become friends with it. He has such a soft spot for magical creatures. Stan wants to bring up Mr Hankey but gets distracted by the burning urge to know, if he could be any magical creature, which would it be?)
The conversation meanders and drifts aimlessly like smoke from weed in the sky. Stan asks questions at the start but as per usual Kyle’s answers grow longer and more passionate with him gesturing wildly in that way Stan loves. So Stan rests his arms on his knees and watches and listens.
“But that’s fucking stupid,” Kyle says, punctuating it with a stomp of his foot. “I hate junk food companies that promote something as ‘healthy’ just because it has a little less sugar in it. Like Coke Zero.”
Stan hums.
“Yeah! Like, get off of it. Every goddamn person knows that coke is unhealthy. Even with sugar substitutes it’s not going to be any better. Fuck. People just pretend it’s healthy so they feel better about themselves.”
Stan doesn’t say anything.
Maybe it’s the beer he drank in Kenny’s car while he hooted about getting some chicks. He’s starting to feel sick again.
Sick sick sick. The word rolls around his head and clatters terribly against the junk in it. He’s stupid for thinking he could pretend to be better, to be healthy. Those kids he barreled into at the party can take one look at him and see he is beyond repair. Sick.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Stan gasps and staggers to his feet. Kyle curses and follows behind just in time to hold Stan’s shoulder as he heaves into the trash can outside the building. More bile rises in his throat. Stan screws his eyes shut, moaning as he clutches the grimy rim. It doesn’t matter that it’s one of his most familiar habits. Throwing up will always be torture.
Kyle strokes his back throughout the ordeal and it’s simultaneously comforting and mortifying.
Stan wants to go home. He wants Kyle’s bed. He wants Kyle to lie on top of him. Not even in an exciting way. He wishes Kyle could sit on top and press his whole weight flat on Stan, so Stan could feel some version of alive again.
“I want to go home,” Stan says into the garbage can.
Kyle doesn’t understand. He’s usually awesome at understanding, but not this time because he nods and tells Stan his mom is probably worried. Stan wants to remind him but Kyle really ought to know so he stays quiet.
Stan ends up on Kyle’s back somehow. Just because he accidentally walks into one of those damned poles. Stan hugs his arms tighter around Kyle’s neck and subtly breathes his shampoo. The curls peeking out the back of his hat are soft.
“Stop smelling my hair you fucking creep,” Kyle says.
Stan nuzzles his neck.
“Sometimes I wish you’d stop drinking.”
Oh. This is new.
“You’re a sweet drunk dude, we’ve established that. But I can’t remember the last time I’ve talked to you sober.”
Sober Stan would probably be biting his nails off at all the lines being crossed.
“But it’s a trade-off,” Kyle continues lightly like Stan can’t tell this topic is killing him in some way. “Do you know what a trade-off is? You should. Were you listening in class? But anyway, it’s a trade-off. If you stopped drinking maybe you wouldn’t talk to me at all.”
Oh.
Stan breathes with some difficulty. So many questions and he can’t decide which is okay. Why is Kyle talking about this? Is Stan heavy? Has Kyle noticed there’s something irreparably wrong about him? Some days he’s just not okay? Does Kyle know that if he stopped drinking, he wouldn’t be talking to Kyle because he’d be dead? Would he miss him? Does Kyle even miss him now or is Stan a ghost that burdens him occasionally? What’s a trade-off?
So many questions and Stan only says into Kyle’s shoulder, “math?”
A huffed laugh.
“Fucking econs,” Kyle says.
Kyle carries him to Stan’s house. Stan gets back on his clumsy feet and hugs him goodbye because he can tell Kyle is going home.
“I love you,” he reminds Kyle. He does so every time just in case Kyle forgets. He’d still donate his kidney if he could, even if it would hurt a whole lot.
Kyle smooths his hair back. “See? Sweet drunk.”
They’re not friends anymore, but Stan smiles big and wide and tucks some loose curls back into Kyle’s hat too. He’s still smiling as he goes back to his dark room, ignores his dad’s drunken rambling, and peeks out the window to see Kyle waving and walking back home. Stan waves even after Kyle has disappeared behind some houses. He collapses onto his bed, mattress coils squeaking. He shimmies along the bed and slides his legs up the wall, just like he used to when he was little. The paint behind his feet has hairline cracks in it.
You shouldn’t paint over cracked paint. Adhesion issues. Randy told Stan that when he had the genius to paint their walls green because his horoscope said it was his lucky colour. Adhesion issues, so it’s a bad idea.
He yawns into the quiet room.
Stan isn’t blackout drunk, so he’ll remember tonight. But he’s not sober either, so it won’t feel real tomorrow when he goes down that fluorescent lit corridor, past Kyle, and he won’t be able to look him in the eyes, let alone remind him of things he ought to know. But it’s okay, Stan will be okay, he’s going to be okay.