A pair of lips reached the edge of a bottle as they took a swig; a pair chapped slightly by the cold but quivering for reasons unrelated. They belonged to one Stan Marsh. The eighteen year old sat and swayed back and forth to the music on the steps of Bebe Stevens' house, the alcohol coursing through his veins making the crisp, cold Colorado air seem to him much less cold than it actually was. This probably was less a blessing than it was a curse; he'd been sitting there for at least half an hour, and he was wearing neither his coat nor his shoes. Both had gotten lost in the throes of the party raging behind the door he wasn't facing. He shivered, but his mind took no notice.

He took another long swig of the 16oz bottle of vodka, the burning sensation in his throat fending off the cold that kept trying to spread from his outside to his inside. So far, he was pretty successful. In fact, he was perfectly warm, perfectly content to sit there the whole night, perfectly in need of no one. The vodka, he was certain, would make the cold, heartbroken feeling in his chest go away eventually. He needed no one.

No one.

He stretched out his foot and absentmindedly drew a "K" in the snow, shaking the ice off languidly before putting his foot back down, looking at what he'd done, finishing off and throwing the now empty glass bottle at his sketch in the untouched white. He missed.

"Fuck you."

He crossed his arms into his chest and let out a long, heaving, intoxicated sigh, his breath forming a cloud of condensed, humid longing that disappeared as quickly as his ability to forget the letter he had just made in the powder... or the person it belonged to.

Most people have that memory of the moment they met the person they can't stop thinking about, but the truth was, he couldn't really remember when it was that they had met. They must have been too young, because there was no specific moment pointed out in his mind; no first hello, no anything. He made a mental note to ask his mom when that moment was, so he could at least pretend he had it in his memory banks, and then immediately decided he didn't want to know. He didn't need another reason to be dwelling on memory after memory of his once-upon-a-time Super Best Friend. He saw a shooting star streak across the sky, and snorted. He was in no mood for wish-making. It had gotten him absolutely nowhere in the past, so why should it work this time?

Wishes don't exist.

And the minute that realization crossed his conscious, he put his head in his knees and cried.

"So that's it then?"

Kyle Broflovski stared intently into his eyes, searching the blue ones before him for any kind of confirmation; confirmation that what had just come out of the mouth that quivered some three and a half inches below them was indeed what he had really meant to say. Stan tried to open it, to say something else, to say anything that would allow him to keep his best friend. But there was nothing he could say to make it better. He started to look like a fish out of water before he managed to make sound.

"K-Kyle, I," he began.

"I want to hear you say that again," the red-haired boy demanded, his eyes painfully dark with an angry hurt that filled the room.

"Kyle, it was hard enough to—"

"Say. It. Again." Tears welled up in his eyes as he grabbed Stan by the scruff of his shirt, bringing their lips no more than one fourth of an inch apart. Stan felt Kyle's breath on his lips and closed his eyes tightly shut to stifle the impulse to throw them both down on the floor and repeat what had happened two weeks prior. "Say it, Stan. If you meant it—if that's the TRUTH, then SAY IT."

Stan opened his eyes to meet what he momentarily felt were two brilliant, sparkling emeralds, and, feeling his mental state being to flail around in confusion, stood his ground on the side of the denial that would keep him from acknowledging how those eyes made him feel. It was now or never.

"It was a drunken mistake. I want to forget it." He paused, praying he'd said enough and he wouldn't have to—

"Finish."

"Kyle..."

"Finish what you started, Stan," Kyle demanded, pushing the dark-haired coward in front of him against the wall and closing the gap between them so that no part of them wasn't touching. As he spoke, his lips moved against Stan's, his breath filling his mouth in such a way that Stan feared for both of them what would happen if they stayed in this position any longer. Kyle was bound to notice that his body and his words didn't seem to be in accord with each other. "Say what you said before. I dare you."

Stan's eyes fluttered shut in a rush of arousal, pain, hatred, love, and distress. He felt his hands reaching up to grip at Kyle's hips when the awareness of what that would lead to ripped him from his reverie. And yet, his instinct was to pull Kyle even closer. If this was the end, he'd at least let himself feel this much.

"It meant nothing to me."

As soon as those words brushed against Kyle's lips, the red-head devoured his best friend's mouth in the angriest, most passionate, whirlwind-of-emotion kiss either of them had ever experienced in either their eighteen years on the planet. He didn't know what to do. He had expected Kyle to slap him, punch him, storm out, something, but not this. So, for an inability to do anything else, he kissed him back.

Stan's hands gripped at Kyle's hips, grinding into him as his fingers wandered up and down to touch any part of the beautiful young man before him that he could. They kissed fiercely, dangerously for a whole of twenty seconds before Kyle pushed Stan back with all the strength he could, sending his friend flying back into the wall. Stan shook his head, trying to get his bearings, bewildered and panting. He looked up at Kyle, who was now crying freely, liquid beads of dismay falling off the edge of his face in droves. Stan pleaded silently with him to not do what he was about to, but he did. He took a few steps backwards, shaking his head in disbelief, and then walked briskly out the door and slammed it behind him.

Stan hugged his legs closely to his chest. His gay little crying spell had been short, which meant he hadn't had nearly enough to drink, in his opinion. He stared out onto the road for a moment before getting up, the street lamps reflecting dully on the fresh snow below them. It finally became clear how cold his feet really were when he put his weight on them, their condition causing him to buckle slightly. He cringed. He lived in the cold long enough to know that he was fine, but it still hurt enough to be annoying. He grabbed onto the rail next to the steps, the feat of steadying himself proving harder than he thought, both because of his feet and the alcohol. Once he'd gotten his footing, he went back inside.

12:40 in the morning and the party was raging, the mess of people in the living room dancing around to a combination of Lady GaGa, Beyonce, and Chris Brown. The girls danced together in a circle, leaving the guys to try their luck at grabbing one of them to grind up against. He spotted the queen Bebe herself, her arms around Token's neck as she drunkenly seduced him with her silly little hip swivels and hair tosses. Clyde and Annie really needed to go get a room. Off in a corner he saw her, passionately pushed against a wall, being kissed tenderly by her new sadistic asshole of a boyfriend. He wanted to throw up at how happy she looked.

He weaved his way through the crowd, getting bumped into from time to time on his way to the not-so-virgin punch bowl. Rebecca, who demanded to be called Red the same way Madonna refused to have a last name, was having herself a time serving drinks for everyone as Craig unsubtly fondled her thighs and hips behind her. He seemed to be trying to get her to go home.

"STAN!" she squealed, taking a big gulp of whatever was in her cup and coming out from behind the table to force-feed him the rest. He coughed, sputtering, but managed to swallow most of the whatever-alcohol-that-was. He couldn't taste the difference anymore. She laughed, putting her arm around his shoulders and pressing against him. "How are you? We haven't hung out in soooo long," she frowned.

"Yeah, well," he mumbled, unsure what to say to one of his ex's best friends, who, incidentally, he had fucked during one of their break-up's, and feeling like Craig was going to leap over and kill him if she kept up her touchy-feeliness any longer. "It's been kinda crazy lately."

"TELL me about it. This one's," she nodded to Craig, "all pissed cause he thinks I flirt with everything that moves." She handed Stan a beer cup full of punch and he immediately raised it to his lips, trying to avoid having to comment.

"You do flirt with everything that moves," Craig chimed in. Stan knew he shouldn't have laughed, but something about the way Craig said that made him choke into his drink. He sputtered, his laugher getting more out of control the more he tried to stop. Red smacked him on the arm in protest and walked back to her man. Craig grinned at him, somewhat competitively, as though he were daring him to deny it. Feeling put on the spot, he took another sip.

"Anyway, Stan," she continued, clearing the table of empty cups and sharing between them the ones that had a little left over. "You okay?"

Stan blinked, confounded and surprised she was asking. He must have looked like a deer in the headlights for the half-second it took him to respond.

"Uh, yeah," he lied. "You know, break-ups are tough." He was always good at giving the most vague answers to questions about his personal life. He had become a very, very private person as of late. Losing the one person he told everything to had taken away his ability to open up to anyone over just about anything. When Kyle "left," he took with him a lot of his ability to function.

Stop. Thinking. About Kyle.

"Well, I gotta go to the bathroom," he blurted out awkwardly, turning around and walking away.

"Hey, wait!" Red called out, making him look back at her. She looked like she was about to cry, and she threw her arms around him in a hug, spilling her drink into the crowd, which caused the people who got spilled on to cry out in protest and those they were with to laugh very loudly. She unsteadily pulled away and said: "what ever is meant to be, will be, okay?"

He stood there, speechless and uncomfortable, but somewhat grateful that someone cared how he was doing. Too bad it wasn't the person whose comfort he wanted. He managed a weak smile before tipping his cup up to her in a toast and walking towards the stairs to the bathroom. On his way, he saw a half-full cup of something he assumed wasn't water and grabbed it shortly before colliding with whoever was making their way down from where he was headed.

"Watch it, dammit!"

The blurry sight of his ex-girlfriend's pink beret was almost enough to make Stan Marsh reach for another drink. And he would have, had he not already been double fisting. He was pretty sure he'd had enough, anyway. Bebe did always throw the best parties.

He stepped back a little bit and looked Wendy up and down. Even though the room was spinning, he could see that she was still hot, still very smart, and still kind of a bitch. The way she was staring daggers at him told him she was still quite sore about the way things had ended, and he was in no mood to be guilt-tripped about his mistakes. He couldn't really blame her for being mad, however; he was the one who fucked things up, mostly. Not that he cared much. She wasn't the one who had taken over his mind. But, the way he saw it, she should take her victory and walk, cause he, Stan Marsh, had suffered the majority of the damage. And he already knew she had someone to fall back on, anyways.

"Sorry," he mumbled, somewhat defiantly, looking off to the side to avoid eye contact. She had an uncanny tendency of reading him like a book when she made him look at her directly. He almost smiled at the memory of how close they had once been; that is, until he caught her smiling at her knight in fascist armor, who was waving her over from across the living room. He snorted. "Yeah, mustn't be late for your fuck buddy, huh."

He had no idea why he said that. He found it hard not to cringe in regret at himself in front of her after that stupidity came stumbling out of his intoxicated self. Why the hell was keeping her there any longer than she had to be? He looked off into the crowd like a very grown-up-looking petulant child, and she rolled her eyes and made for the other side of the room, only to find his arm blocking her way.

She stared up at him, questioning him with a steady gaze as to why he was doing what he was doing. Unfortunately, he would have come up answer-less had she asked, because he had no fucking idea why he suddenly felt the urge to fuck with her. And he couldn't very well tell her 'my arm is stopping you cause I need a punching bag, so hold still please.' He just needed to annoy someone. He needed someone else in this room to be as frustrated, aggravated, pissed off, or whatever else he was feeling as he was. Someone other than him; and Wendy, he knew, was easily annoyed. At least, he seemed to have a knack for it.

"You heard me," he spat.

Still, this wasn't like him. Even with alcohol, he was never a spiteful guy. He was a slightly angry kid, but he was much more level-headed than Kenny and Craig, and most of his comments were more sarcastic than they were anything else. He wasn't a mean kid by any terms. But tonight, he wanted to be mean. He wanted to try it out. And Wendy was the first person in the room he'd run into that he had a beef with. She hadbeen sleeping with Cartman for at least two years before they broke up, after all. But he hadn't been a saint to her either, so he had no right to be harassing her, nor was he really enjoying it. So why was he?

"Move out of the way, Stan," she said calmly, a veiled warning tone in the back of her voice as she spoke, refusing to look away from him. He, on the other hand, only looked at her for a whole of one or two seconds at a time before scoffingly looking off somewhere else.

"Why, so you can go running to your backup?" he snapped, knowing instantly that he'd gone too far. Wendy's eyes instantly went dark. She stepped up on the stairs so that she was at his eye level, her hands resting on her hips as she leaned over slightly, dominating. When he tried to avoid her gaze, she felt her hand sternly turn his head towards her. Once he was in, she let him go.

"Let me make something clear to you, Stan," she growled. "He was never a 'backup.' The only person who was a 'backup' in any of this was me, and you know it."

She waited for him to react in some way, holding her ground. He wanted to look down at the floor, to curl up into a ball and disappear, but letting that show was out of the question right now. He had to save whatever pathetic scraps of his dignity he had left. He was still angry, but he knew he wasn't going to win this one. He didn't want to win this one. He didn't want to win anything. He just wanted to lock himself in the bathroom and never come out.

"I didn't know it," he said finally. "If I'd known it, I wouldn't have put you through that."

Wendy sighed, sensing anguish through his honesty. "Well, you know it now." She made to leave, and Stan almost felt the urge to reach out and stop her. Not because he wanted her around... He just wanted someone around. She hesitated in her movements long enough to say to him: "I really cared about you, Stan, but he puts me first."

The comment would have hurt him more if it hadn't been so true, or if he was still in love with her. Wendy noticed the look on her former boyfriend's face and put her hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. "I hope things work out for you and—"

Before she could finish, and because he knew the end of that sentence would kill him, he shoved her hand off forcefully.

"Fuck off, Wendy." And with that, he stumbled off.