A/N: Here's my new chapter story! There will be ten chapters total, each relatively short like this one. The main pairing is Stan/Kyle, and as it's a story about a serial killer there will be some gory elements, though I will try not to overdo it. While it's not a major element in the story, at one point a character discusses a traumatic event from his childhood that was somewhat but not explicitly sexual, so bear that in mind if you try to avoid that sort of thing.
I hope you guys will enjoy this - please let me know if you have thoughts or questions along the way!
At two o'clock in the morning on a Friday night, three hours before his next shift, Stan was sleeping deeply and dreaming about Kyle Broflovski. It wasn't rare for him to dream about Kyle, though they had not seen each other or spoken in eleven years, and even in his dreams Stan's access to Kyle was always obscured somehow. In this case, he was in a charming bookstore in the early evening, browsing shelves that were illuminated by a candle-like glow, when he found a six volume biography of Kyle for sale. It was bound in pastel hardbacks and tucked into a box set, modest in length but expensively styled. Stan bought it, not minding that it cost eighty-eight dollars before tax, and was excited to read about what had become of his best friend. His cell phone woke him up before he could open the first book.
It was Bebe, calling from the station.
"You'd better come in," she said. She sounded grave but not devastated, so Stan didn't ask if it was one of his kids, some bad news.
"What happened?"
"Wayne and his buddies got picked up by the rookie for underage drinking. I haven't called Lola yet."
"He's - is he okay?"
"He's fine. Not even drunk. A little surly."
Stan's heartbeat had launched into a painful hurtle at the sound of his son's name, but it was okay: it was only drinking, the kid being stupid with his friends; nobody had died. Then again: Wayne was still a baby and this seemed to be happening way too soon. He was still twelve, for fuck's sake, though he would have his thirteenth birthday in less than a week. Stan hadn't gotten him a gift yet. He was lost where Wayne was concerned, recently, and this news had already shoved him further off course.
"You want me to call his mom?" Bebe asked. "Or do you want the honors?"
"I'll, I should - no, you call her. I'd lose it on her. Where the hell is she while he's doing this? It's two in the morning and he's getting arrested? He's fucking twelve."
"Well. He's almost thirteen."
"Not yet. So what? What the fuck!"
"Alright, calm down. I'll call her."
Stan put his uniform on, confident that the shitstorm that was about to hit his life would keep him from returning home to change before the start of his shift. He was confident about little else as he climbed into his squad car, feeling shaky. He couldn't actually blame his ex-wife for this, not entirely. Wayne came from a broken home. This sort of thing happened to children when their parents divorced. Stan had started drinking at ten years old, and though he tried not to do it in front of his kids, not wanting to turn into Randy, he had slipped up once or twice since the divorce. Not drunk, not looking for a fight like his old man at the little league field, but he'd had beer in the fridge on weekends when the kids were over, and one night he lost track and drank four of them over the course of dinner and Netflix. Wayne had noticed this, maybe. Lola didn't drink. Even in high school, at parties, she had never been a drinker. Stan had found that very attractive about her, in the way that he'd tried to turn what he hated about himself into virtues that he laid on her shoulders.
Driving the streets of South Park at two-thirty in the morning was something Stan was very accustomed to, but tonight the stillness of the town felt off, maybe only because of his personal turmoil. It was early October and the late summer heat had been lingering uncomfortably, but the nights were starting to get cold. The streets were empty except for Stan's cruiser and one pickup truck that he passed near the entrance to his old neighborhood. A young couple with twin girls now lived in the house where Stan grew up. Sharon had moved up to Spokane after Randy died, to be near Shelly and her kids. Stan still felt a little bitter, driving by, though he didn't resent his mother for leaving, Shelly for needing her more or Randy for dying relatively young. It was a more of a general bitterness toward things that had been promised to him as a kid, things he had taken for granted. Most of those things had dematerialized as soon as Stan decided he wanted them.
Not that he was unhappy. Life had actually been a lot better since the divorce, fun again, but now Wayne was in jail and Stan was pretty sure it was his fault.
Bebe had Wayne at her desk when he got to the station, and Stan was annoyed to see that she'd bought him a danish from the machine near the old pay phones. Wayne gave Stan the same look he'd been getting pretty much nonstop for the past year: preemptively bored and irritated with hints of a strange new shyness, as if the divorce had transformed Stan into some kind of step-father.
"Is that coffee?" Stan said, indicating the styrofoam cup Wayne was sipping from while he stared up at Stan with that look. "You drink coffee now, too?"
"It was just beer," Wayne said. His voice hadn't really changed yet, but it was getting there, shifting in a subtle way that seemed menacing to Stan. "Paul is the one who wanted to drink them, I didn't even care."
"I shouldn't have given him coffee," Bebe said. "Without, uh. Asking you. Sorry."
"You're not hanging out with Paul anymore," Stan said.
"Yes, I am." Wayne scoffed and then looked sheepish, maybe because Bebe had witnessed his backtalk. He had no problem doling it out to Stan on a one-on-one basis lately.
"What do you want to drink for? You're bored? So what, play a video game, watch a movie, egg cars if you need some excitement. You're too young to be bored enough to drink."
Wayne had no response except to stare angrily into his coffee cup. Bebe sighed and stood up.
"Obviously they're not going to be charged," she said. "The rookie just brought them here so their parents could pick them up. He thought that would scare some sense into all parties." She snorted and smiled a little. "He didn't realize Wayne was yours until he was in the back of the squad car with his buddies. Rookie's face was white when he came in here and told me he'd picked up a Marsh."
"It's not like I'm his chief," Stan said, muttering. "How many others were there?"
"Two other boys. I'm surprised nobody ran."
"That's good." Stan looked at Wayne, who was turning red for some reason. "Hey. Look at me. That's good that you didn't run."
"We didn't think they'd arrest us since you're a cop."
"That's bullshit. You don't get special treatment because of my job. What's wrong with you?"
"Hey, okay," Bebe said when Stan's voice started to raise. He hadn't planned on yelling; he hadn't planned on being here at three AM and seeing his son at the booking table. He hadn't planned on having kids at all, but here he was.
"Sorry," Stan said, to Bebe. "Wayne, how did - I know your mother doesn't know you were out after midnight. You lied to her? You snuck out?"
"I was spending the night at Paul's. We went out to his backyard, and then Paul wanted to go to the woods so his parents wouldn't hear the cans opening."
"Classy, that's good. Well done, Paul. You're not friends with him anymore, I mean it."
"You can't tell me who I'm friends with."
"Like hell I can't." Stan pressed his lips together when he heard his voice rising again. He tried to imagine what Randy would have done in this situation. Probably not much; Stan was around Wayne's age when Randy started letting him have a beer during tailgates with Jimbo, as long as Sharon wasn't there to catch them. Stan had already been drinking in secret for years and had developed a tolerance that both Randy and Jimbo were impressed by.
"I'll get you some coffee," Bebe said when an uncomfortable silence began to stretch between father and son. Everyone else in the station had steered clear since Stan came in, but he could hear some snickering in the break room. They were probably ripping on the rookie for making such a bush league arrest and picking up Stan's son in the process. Stan didn't hold it against the kid, though if Wayne had gone to bed on the floor of Paul's room with a two-beer buzz and felt like shit in the morning, that might have been preferable to this.
"Dude," Stan said, squatting down to look Wayne in the eye. He was still seated, still staring down into his coffee cup like he wanted to hide in it. Stan took it from him, gently, and set it on Bebe's desk. Wayne looked up at him.
"Maybe we don't tell mom," he said, quietly.
"Ha, yeah, no. Bebe already called her."
"Shit."
"Don't - hey." Stan put his hand on Wayne's knee; for a moment he'd looked like he would cry. As if Lola's wrath was really something to fear; she was soft on both the kids, the kind of mother that Stan's had been, always wanting to sweep them under her wing. "Don't get mixed up with this shit already," Stan said when Wayne met his eyes. "Drinking is messy. It makes you stupid."
"So how come you do it?"
"When you're older you can handle it better."
"But why?"
"Here's the thing. It's against the law for you to drink alcohol. This is strike one for you. You want to be the kind of kid who gets strikes? Huh?"
Wayne rolled his eyes. Stan had lost him; he'd had him there for a minute, but he was too sleep-deprived and angry to come up with good lies about his reasons for drinking, as if he even knew what they were precisely. He rose and groaned, remembering that dream about Kyle. He felt embarrassed by it, though it wasn't like anybody knew he had dreamed of savoring six books full of Kyle information. It wasn't like he was going to tell Bebe, or Kenny, or anyone.
"It wasn't even my idea," Wayne said again, mumbling. "And Paul was just being stupid. He's not like that. He just thought it would be funny if we got drunk."
That seemed to pierce through Stan's stomach, anxiety flooding his chest. They didn't just want to drink some beer, they wanted to get drunk. It was Paul's idea, apparently, so there was no need to panic, but hearing that word on his son's lips seemed too nightmarish to be real.
"It's not funny," Stan said. "It's dangerous. Your brain is still developing, you can't just pour poison onto it and expect-"
"Did I say I would do it again? No!"
"Well, I can't exactly just take your word on things after tonight, can I?"
Stan regretted saying that instantly, because it felt untrue and Wayne's eyes changed when he heard it, as if Stan had pulled the rug out of from under him and not vice versa. Before Stan could backtrack he heard Lola asking the receptionist where they were. Evan came bounding into the station ahead of her, beaming as if her brother's arrest was the most exciting thing that had happened to her in months. Being that she was an eight-year-old girl who lived in a small town, it probably was. She was wearing a coat and her pair of sweater-looking boots over her pajamas.
"Daddy!" she said, and Stan allowed her to bound into his arms, though he felt like it would hurt Wayne's feelings. Around the same time that Wayne began to look at Stan with disdain, Evan decided he was a kind of celebrity-level perfect person, and she had been complaining about her time spent at Lola's house.
"Hey, pumpkin," Stan said when she hugged him hard, and he pressed some of her static-filled hair into place, wanting to believe that he still had more than a few years of her uncomplicated adoration ahead.
"What is this?" Lola asked, looking from Stan to Wayne as if they'd been caught drinking together in the woods. "Where are Paul's parents?"
"They took him home already," Wayne said.
"Are you going to press charges against them?" Lola asked, snapping her eyes to Stan's. She looked very tired, and she was hugging her over-sized sweater around herself as if it was a robe. "For letting children have access to alcohol?"
"Nobody's getting charged with anything," Stan said. "The boys snuck beers from the fridge during a sleepover. But I was telling Wayne, I don't want him at Paul's anymore. And Paul's not coming over to our place, either."
"Which place?" Wayne asked, glaring at both of them. "There's two now."
"You're grounded," Lola said. "At dad's house and at mine. For a month."
"I'm not even drunk!"
"Don't shout at your mother," Stan said, pierced again by that word. "That's not the point. You did something illegal. You're at the police station, you rode in the back of a cop car. You should be feeling ashamed and apologizing for waking us all up in the middle of the night, and instead you're giving us attitude."
Wayne turned away from them and glowered angrily at nothing, his hands in fists over his knees. Evan was still plastered to Stan's side, clinging to his arm.
"Is Wayne going in there?" she asked, pointing to the holding cell where a guy who tried to start a fight at Skeeter's during Stan's last shift was still sobering up.
"No," Lola said, pointedly, looking at Stan as if that was what he wanted. "This won't go on his record, will it?"
"Of course not, but it's protocol to bring them here so parents can retrieve them."
"They weren't even at Paul's house?"
"They went into the woods behind the neighborhood. Neighbors complained about kids being loud."
"That's not safe!" Lola said, speaking to Wayne again. "Three boys your age out at night in the woods? Are you insane?"
"What was going to happen?" Wayne muttered. "It's South Park."
"There are plenty of creeps in every town! Ask your father! Why do you think he has a job? Because there's crime here."
Wayne snorted. "Yeah, like. Graffiti on the side of the mall and people not picking up their dogs' poop."
Evan giggled. Stan was taken aback. He'd always assumed that Wayne thought his job was a little impressive, at least compared to his friends' fathers who worked at the CVS Pharmacy or in the lumberyard.
Lola took the kids home after some semi-excruciating begging from Evan to stay with her dad at the station. Her new thing was saying that wanted to be a cop when she grew up, like Stan and Bebe. It made Stan's stomach hurt to think about his daughter in the line of fire, though he was sure she would change her mind about her future career thirty times before she left for college, and then there was the chance that she'd end up hating him and everything he stood for like Wayne, who had once been Stan's best buddy.
"That was rough," Bebe said when they were gone, the sun still not up. "You want to hit the diner before our shift starts?"
"Yeah," Stan said, thinking of greasy bacon, fluffy pancakes, coffee that was slightly more decent than what they had at the station. It all sounded like the cure for his sudden emotional hangover.
The diner was the only South Park business other than Wall-Mart that was open twenty-four hours, seven days a week. It was out by the highway ramp, and mostly empty when Stan and Bebe got there shortly after four AM. They took their usual table and placed their usual orders.
"What the hell do I do now?" Stan asked, though Bebe had no kids and wasn't even married. She still gave good advice, most of the time. She'd been his best friend almost as long as she'd been his partner on the force, seven years.
"I think he'll be okay," Bebe said. "It's upsetting, but it's normal kid stuff."
"He's such a mystery to me all of a sudden. His birthday is in a week and I have no idea what to get him. He asked for cash. Jesus Christ. I'm not giving him cash."
"Why not? Kids love cash."
"What if he uses it to get someone to buy him beer?"
"Oh, god. After tonight I doubt he'll go near beer for another couple of years. He was pretty embarrassed."
"Embarrassed? He seemed brazen to me, and remorseless."
"He's just putting up a front for you."
"For me? I'm his fucking father!"
"Yeah, well, sons like to impress their fathers, right? Look, I don't know. Let's talk about something else until you calm down. How are the Kevins?"
"Ugh," Stan said. Since his divorce and his ensuing, long-delayed embrace of his bisexuality he'd been sleeping with two men who were both named Kevin, though Kevin McCormick was really more of a fuck buddy and Kevin Stoley-Donovan more of a secret affair that was barely worth the trouble. "They're fine. Same as ever."
"Is Clyde back in town?"
"No, he's still on his book tour. I think he's in Portland."
"I can't believe fucking Clyde Donovan is a nationally renowned author."
"It's not like he's writing novels, Bebe. His books are about a talking banana."
"But kids love them! Didn't he win some kind of award?"
"He didn't win, okay, he was just nominated."
"It was a big deal, though, wasn't it? What's it called, the Caldecott Medal or something?"
"I don't know," Stan muttered, though he did, and yes, it was. On the one hand, he hated himself for being the homewrecker who fucked Kevin while Clyde was off being celebrated for the 'authentically childlike wonder' with which he wrote and illustrated the adventures of a talking banana who cried too much, and on the other hand he loved that he was the guy who had infiltrated the seemingly perfect couple. Clyde and Kevin were junior high sweethearts who came out together and were fawned over by the girls for being best friends turned lovers, inseparable soul mates, and adorable hallway hand-holders all through high school. Stan took it all kind of personally, and when Kevin came onto him after a town council meeting last winter, while Clyde was in New York signing banana books, he jumped at the chance to prove to himself that there was no such thing as a real happy ending for boyhood best buddies who fell in love as teenagers.
"Are you freaking out about Wayne?" Bebe asked when Stan sat in silence for a while, staring down at his freshly delivered plate full of food.
"No," Stan said, and he almost blurted something about that dream, the idea of Kyle's life story in six accessible volumes. "I started drinking when I was ten," he said instead, and Bebe laughed.
"Wait," she said, frowning. "Seriously?"
"No - yeah, but. Never mind."
"Stan. Um, wow, well-"
The bell over the diner's front door rang, and Stan turned as if he was very eager to see who was coming in, glad for the excuse to break eye contact with Bebe. It was Kenny, wearing his too-big thrift store overcoat and grinning as he came toward them.
"Five-oh in the joint," he said, crowding into the booth beside Stan. Kenny was sort of enormous, six foot five and broad-chested. "Why's everyone look so grim? Who died?" Kenny rubbed his palms together, either cold or excited about the prospect of a local death. He was a mortician and ran the town's only funeral home.
"Wayne got picked up with his friends for underage drinking," Bebe said, and Stan blushed with gratitude, glad that she was letting that thing he'd said drop. Kenny was a good friend, too, but Stan didn't want to talk about it with him; he didn't even want to talk about it with Bebe, really, but concealing his urge to talk about Kyle had somehow unearthed that other old truth.
"Whoa," Kenny said. "Little man's growing up."
"It's not exactly a sign of maturity," Stan said.
"You know what I mean. Damn, he'll be thirteen soon. And you'll be thirty-one! Is that numerologically significant somehow?"
"Nothing is numerologically significant," Bebe said.
"Sure it is, like the golden birthday, remember? We all thought Wayne was going to be born when Stan turned nineteen on the nineteenth? Shame he came early, he probably would have been immortal or something if that due date was right."
"I screwed this whole thing up," Stan said, not wanting to think about his nineteenth birthday and the fact that it was thirteen years ago. "I should have just stayed with Lola until the kids left for college."
"No," Bebe said. "That's worse. That's what my parents did. It still sucks for everyone, believe me."
"Yeah, man, you've got to do you," Kenny said. "I'm really proud of your progress in that area, too. Though you could probably find some better characters to explore yourself with than my loser brother and Clyde's asshole husband."
"We were just talking about the Kevins," Bebe said, smiling. She loved this subject. She was less fond of the subject of her own love life, which sometimes involved Kenny.
"Clyde hasn't caught Kevin sending you incriminating dick pics yet?" Kenny asked, grinning.
"I don't want to talk about the Kevins." Stan did kind of wish he had someone to tell that he wasn't actually into Kevin Stoley-Donovan's dick, he was into Kevin McCormick's. The married Kevin, meanwhile, possessed the ass of interest.
"Alright, fine," Kenny said. "I've actually got some local gossip that's better than Stan's fabulous new gay love life."
"Ooh," Bebe said, hugging her coffee cup in her palms. "Tell us."
"Yeah, please," Stan said, ready to talk about anything other than himself.
"Rumor has it that the illustrious Leopold Stotch may return to town soon. His mom isn't doing so well."
"She's sick?" Bebe said.
"Off her meds again, I hear. Back to accusing the local businesses of being fronts for gay brothels."
"That's sad," Stan said. Linda Stotch had lost her grip on reality when Butters left for college and her husband subsequently left for Atlanta, where his long-term online boyfriend lived. Half the reason Stan wasn't out to anybody but his best friends and the men he was sleeping with was that he didn't want to be compared to Stephen Stotch, the current town title-holder for man who left his family to fuck dudes. It wasn't like Lola was on the verge of a nervous breakdown or had even been very sad to see him go, from a romantic standpoint, but her name even fucking sounded like Linda's, which was just Stan's luck.
"Cartman will be happy if Butters comes back to town," Bebe said, and Kenny nodded sagely.
Stan wondered what people would say if Kyle came back to town. Stan Marsh will sure be happy about that! It was irrelevant, anyway; Kyle's parents had moved back to New York after Ike finished high school.
"You really think Cartman still cares about Butters?" Stan asked.
"Hard to imagine Cartman actually caring about anything," Kenny said. "But he did love to mount dat ass back in the day."
"Are you sure?" Stan asked. "I mean, it's not like he's out." Cartman owned a Cadillac dealership and still lived with his mother, though he could afford his own place. In his demented view it was more convenient to stay with Liane, who still cooked his meals and laundered his clothes.
"Cartman has always been like Butters," Kenny said. "Sorta like an open bisexual secret."
"Then what am I?" Stan asked. "Do people call me an open bisexual secret?"
"Nah," Kenny said. "People will be surprised when you come out."
"God," Stan moaned. "Wayne most of all."
"Don't worry about that right now," Bebe said, and Stan saw her shoot Kenny a look. "You're allowed to take your time with telling your kids. It's a big deal."
Stan was in a funk by the time their shift started, and it didn't help that their first call, shortly after sunrise, was that Linda Stotch was demanding to be allowed into the Catholic church, which was currently being decorated for a wedding that would take place at noon. They apprehended the offending scorned woman without much difficulty or the need for restraints, and escorted Linda home to the tune of her ranting about the fact that the church's allowance of private bookings was evidence of homosexual corruption from the Vatican on down.
"What kind of asshole gets married at noon on a Saturday?" Stan grumbled as they backed out of Linda's driveway.
"Only the biggest assholes in town," Bebe said, smiling over at Stan.
Stan smiled back at her, glad that she understood the joke. He and Lola had been married at noon on a Saturday, thirteen years ago, in that very church. The noon booking was half the price of an evening ceremony. It had been the most terrifying surreal day of Stan's life, which had generally not been short on terrifyingly surreal days. He'd thrown up three times. Kyle also threw up, but only once, and he claimed it was entirely due to the fact that he had to watch Stan vomit, as if he hadn't seen a lot of that already, over the years.
"That thing you said earlier," Bebe said when they were parked near Deer Hill Road, clocking cars. "About drinking? Since you were ten?"
"I keep thinking about Kyle today," Stan blurted, because, as it turned out, he wanted to talk about that other admission even less. Bebe raised her eyebrows when he peeked at her.
"Kyle Broflovski?"
"No, Bebe, Kyle Schwartz."
"Who's Kyle Schwartz?"
"The other - I was being sarcastic, okay. Yes, Broflovski, that one."
"Okay," she said, slowly, as if preparing to diffuse a bomb. "In what context?"
"You and Kenny, talking about Butters coming back here. People still thinking Cartman would be happy about that."
"Kyle is coming back to South Park?" Bebe was openly incredulous.
"Of course not, why would he?"
Kyle worked for the FBI and lived a fabulous life of professional and personal success in Washington D.C., according to his Facebook, which Stan had last checked a year ago, shortly before he asked Bebe to block the site on his work and personal computers. The only reason he hadn't unblocked it was that he didn't know how to do so, and he wasn't quite self-destructive enough to actually research and find out.
Bebe sighed and put her hand on Stan's thigh.
"You've had a long day," she said, and Stan was relieved when their radio crackled on. It was a call from the station, asking them to check out the Evergreen Apartments out on Ridgewood. Building 5, Apt 512. According to the dispatcher, a neighbor had heard a woman scream and no one responded when he knocked on the door. Bebe put the siren on and drove like a maniac on the way there. She and Stan had a mutual tendency to respond ferociously to the suggestion of a woman in distress.
The days were already shortening, and it was starting to get dark when they pulled into the apartment building's lot. Bebe had shut the siren off one street ago, not wanting to alert the bad guys if they were still on the scene. Stan was hoping it was just a television left on, or a roach that had startled a woman who then didn't want to confront her neighbor's humiliating concern.
"Something's off," he said as they climbed to the second floor, where apartment 512 was located, Stan's hope that this was a harmless misunderstand plummeting. The air felt light in a dangerous way, and there was an unsettling quiet to the whole place, which had outdoor breezeways littered with pine straw.
"Yeah," Bebe said, her hand going to her gun. "I'll knock, you hang back out of sight."
"Yep."
Stan pressed his back to the wall beside the neighbor's curtained window and drew his gun while Bebe knocked.
"Park County Police Department," she shouted when there was no answer. "We received a call regarding this unit. Ma'am? Hello? May we come in?"
"Is it open?" Stan asked when there was no answer. Bebe sighed.
"We should call the station-"
"Bebe, what if he's still in there?" Stan asked, the bad feeling he'd had since they pulled up intensifying. Bebe winced a little and reached for the door knob. The worst case they'd dealt with so far was a few years back, a woman who'd been assaulted. Stan still thought about it a lot. He'd been driving when they got the call; he could have driven faster.
"Ma'am?" Bebe said when the door opened, unlocked. "Hello?" She pushed the door open with her elbow. "Furniture's knocked over," she said as she hurried inside with her gun drawn, Stan following in the same fashion.
What happened next seemed so dreamlike that Stan didn't feel the impact right away, though he knew that over the next few days, weeks, months, years, it would gradually press in past his skin and bones and never leave him. He had seen a dead body before, a homeless man who froze to death behind Wall-Mart on Christmas Eve, but this body was not like that body. This one was cut open in three places, bloody, white and stiff and posed on the couch as if it had been waiting for them.
"We've got a female homicide vic, looks to be mid-twenties, multiple stab wounds." Bebe was speaking into her radio, her voice shaking. Stan was still near the doorway, pinned there by the dead woman, unable to move because it seemed like doing so would somehow hurt her further. "Red hair," Bebe said, and she tried to clear the shake out of her voice. "No suspect on the scene and - ah, oh, shh-shit, I. I can ID the victim. That's Ruby, Ruby Tucker, oh. God, yeah, that's her."
Ruby's eyes were closed and her mouth was open. She was missing her tongue.