Adventures in Impaired Judgment

by whyamisoclever

Stan trades Kyle a shirt for his sobriety. Unfortunately, it's a plan that doesn't exactly work the way Stan expects it to and things...get weird. southparkkink meme fill for renpop. STYLE

A/N: This work, in its original, lj-commentish glory, can be found at southparkkink[dot]livejournal[dot]com (it's fill #09 under Stan/Kyle). This may be of interest to you because there is also some really freaking amazing art that inspired this whole thing and you would definitely be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't look at it! Seriously, it's awesome. Go look at it and give major props to renpop, for real.

#

When Stan opens the front door, he only barely manages to catch it with the tips of his fingertips as a gust of wind whips across the porch, threatening to knock the door off its hinges. Around him, the whole house shakes. He knew it was raining like a motherfucker outside, if the sound of rain beating on the roof and pouring out from the gutters in rivers was any indication, but he's taken aback enough at seeing the veritable monsoon outside his door that he doesn't really seeKyle until he's elbowed his way into the house, dripping all over the Marsh's welcome mat.

"Jesus Christ," Stan says as he takes him in, one hand still firmly on the door. Kyle is pressing his old green ushanka to his head with one hand, flaps fluttering around his ears, and Stan can see a few wet curls poking out from underneath it. He shuts the door quickly behind them.

For a moment Kyle just stands in the dull glow of light spilling in from the living room, looking a mixture of relieved and drowned. His hair is dark from the rain, enough that it looks more red than orange. Stan's eyes linger on it for a moment, but then Kyle brushes a hand across his forehead, pushing the escaped tendrils back up under his hat.

"Dude," Kyle says, lifting his eyes to Stan's as he dumps his backpack next to the coat rack, "please, pleasetell me you've done laundry recently."

Stan's mom stopped doing his laundry at the beginning of the year, ostensibly because he'll need to know how to do it for himself by the time he leaves for college. Stan's own approach to laundry consists of calling his clothes clean as long as they aren't noticeably stained and don't smell like complete ass; it disgusts Kyle, apparently enough that he'll sometimes do Stan's laundry for him. In fact, Kyle did Stan's most recent load of laundry, and his shirt still smells vaguely of evergreen forest or whatever weird-ass detergent it is that Kyle insists on using. Even though it smells totally gay, Stan sort of doesn't mind it. "Sorry," he says, a little ruefully. "I haven't since the last time I took it over to your house."

"Sick, dude, that was over a month ago," Kyle says, making a face. Kyle actually looks sort of sick himself, cheeks that had been pink from the wind or cold or whatever starting to lose their color enough that he mostly just looks pale and clammy. His clothes are completely soaked through, and they cling to him in a way that makes Stan feel uncomfortable on Kyle's behalf. "The last time I had to borrow one of your shirts I smelled like Axe for, like, three days. I think your sweat makes that shit extra-long-lasting."

"Shut up, you love it," Stan says, but he ducks his chin down and sniffs in the area of his armpit as surreptitiously as he can manage anyway. "Why'd you walk here, anyway?"

"My parents grounded me. No car for a week."

The twist to Kyle's mouth has turned ugly and his hands are balled into fists at his side. Stan guesses, "The fatass?"

"The passenger seat smells like straight-up urine, dude!" Kyle growls. "I don't care how drunk you are, you can't legitimately confuse a Honda for a bathroom. That shit was premeditated."

"Fuck that fucker. Kick his ass, dude."

"Oh, I would," Kyle says murderously, and slight as he's built they both know that he's perfectly capable of breaking Cartman's nose if he's pissed off enough. "Except he was too much of a pussy to show his face at school today."

Stan narrows his eyes. "You didn't wait out in the rain for him after school, did you?" Stan generally considers Kyle to be the most sensible person he knows after Wendy, focused on test scores and perfect attendance and avoiding detention like the plague, but when it comes to Cartman, Stan wouldn't put anything past him.

"No, I had to make up a physics lab," Kyle says with a shrug, the anger beginning to drain from his features. "I texted you, by the way. To see if you could stick around and give me a ride."

Stan raises his palms and glances away. He saw the text, but there's nothing that he finds more uncomfortable than hanging around in the science wing after school. The last time he did, he sat on top of one of the desks in the chem. lab while Kyle silently fiddled with beakers and a Bunsen burner behind him, fielding awkward questions from the chemistry teacher about why he wasn't in science this year and what his college plans were. "Hey, that AP shit is your problem," Stan says. It could have been worse, this time: what if Wendy had been there, soliciting for college recommendations or extra credit? "I'm not obligated to, like, bail you out when it screws you over or whatever."

Kyle rolls his eyes, peeling off his jacket and putting it on the coat rack. Underneath it he just has on a faded green South Park basketball T-shirt from, Stan's pretty sure, junior high, and he rubs his hands over his bare arms, shivering. "You know what, I'll take any shirt you haven't beat off into over dying of hypothermia," Kyle tells him, giving Stan a sideways grin like he knows that that's the ultimate fate of at least half of Stan's wardrobe.

Stan can feel a flush starting to creep into his cheeks, so he turns away toward the couch, grabbing an old wool afghan and tossing it over his shoulder at Kyle. "I've got a couple of clean shirts," Stan offers. "Pants too, I think."

"Really?" Kyle asks, raising an eyebrow. He shakes the blanket out and wraps it around himself like a cocoon.

"Yeah, but, uh – " and suddenly Stan is struck by an idea, and he has to fight down the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth, "there's something you're going to have to do for me if I let you use them." In a way, he feels kind of guilty for what he's about to ask of his friend, but then, this is just the opening he's been waiting for and he's not going to pass it up. He can't help it: Kyle is his best friend. It's only natural that he's curious.

Beneath his sodden hat, Kyle eyes Stan warily. "Oh hell no, dude, I know that look," he says, crossing his arms. "No fucking way."

#

"The whole thing?"

Kyle worries his bottom lip between his teeth as he kneels on Stan's floor, the bottom drawer of the dresser open in front of him. On his right, Stan is crouched down beside him, a bottle of Jack Daniel's balanced on one knee.

"It's like eighty percent empty," Stan says, feeling through the drawer with his free hand to make sure there aren't any errant bottles tucked away in the corners. "You'll probably only get a buzz."

"Dude, I weigh 140 pounds. I'm diabetic. I'm pretty sure that I'm the definition of 'lightweight'."

Stan snorts, acting like this is news to him. Kyle is sensitive as hell about a lot of things, but his weight battles it out with his hair for the top spot. "140, for real?"

Kyle swats at the back of his head. "Yeah, soaking wet," he says, and they both laugh. "So, like, right now," he adds, shooting Stan a pointed look.

Stan groans and turns his attention back to the small pile of clothes he's hauled out of the drawer, some of which date back to elementary school. "The thing is, I don't have anywhere else to put that stuff," he tells Kyle, shaking out an old Broncos T-shirt he caught at a game when he was twelve. It's an XXL and he's only worn it once, on the car ride back to South Park after the game. "Like, I know my mom doesn't snoop through my shit like yours does, but sometimes she'll look through my desk or dresser or whatever. The only reason she stays away from this drawer is because she thinks it's just full of a bunch of sentimental crap. That kind of shit's sacred to her. If I move it, though, suddenly it'll be fair game."

The whiskey slips off Stan's knee when he shifts his leg reaching for another shirt, rolling onto the carpet between the two of them. Kyle sighs, leaning toward Stan to pick it up for a closer inspection. He tilts the bottle to one side and squints at it, as if he's trying to figure out a way to redistribute the liquid so that there will be less for him to drink. "So put it in your closet."

"Yeah, that's how she found my porn collection, no thanks." Stan looks up, holding the Broncos shirt in one hand and his old 'Getting Gay with Kids' T-shirt in the other. "Which one?"

Kyle glares at him. "You think I'd fit into a shirt you wore when you were eight?"

"You don't?"

"Hey, fuck you, give me that other one," Kyle snaps, and Stan laughs as he puts it in his outstretched hand.

"Whoa dude, mellow out," Stan says, raising his hands in a 'slow-down' gesture.

Kyle breathes out harshly through his nose, but the tension in his shoulders eases a fraction. He shakes his head and shoots the Jack Daniel's a look, as if he's planning to continue this conversation with it instead of Stan. "If I get drunk," he says, pulling his wet shirt up over his head, his face disappearing inside of it momentarily, "you have to promise to finish whatever I haven't yet."

Stan laughs again. "Dude, seriously, it'll be fine." He pokes under Kyle's ribcage; he really is too skinny. "Hey, I bet you I could count all of your ribs."

Kyle folds his arms self-consciously over his chest and frowns. Maybe it's because he's a redhead, Stan's not sure, but when he blushes, it reaches down past his face, neck, shoulders; every part of him Stan can see is pink.

"Stan, goddammit," he hisses, snatching the Broncos shirt off the floor and struggling into it, muttering curses under his breath when the collar catches on his hat. "I'm serious. I mean, look." He gestures toward the drawer. "How long have you had this stash?"

"Uh," Stan says, and now he's blushing. "Since I was ten?"

"Exactly," Kyle replies, and he spreads his arms wide like this proves some kind of point.

"Hey, so what?" Stan says, stung. Somehow, he feels like whatever Kyle's implying here is supposed to be an insult.

"So – Stan, do you remember the first time you got drunk?"

"Um," Stan says. He's not sure where Kyle is going with this. They talked it about it once, a few years afterward, and established that Stan's memory of the event is hazy at best. From what he could gather, things were pretty trippy on Kyle's end, too. "Didn't – wasn't there something to do with the Matrix? Was it a game we were playing?"

"I don't know. Sort of. Not really. That's…not really the point."

Stan frowns. "Oh," he says. He scratches his chin and feels faint stubble there, doesn't know what else to tell Kyle. "Uh, okay."

Kyle rubs a hand across his face and blinks a couple of times, then seems to refocus. "You were ten, dude. And, okay, I know it's not really the same thing, but it was – I know it wasn't your idea, you know? I've always sort of thought it was awful – I mean, I feltawful, like, that I wasn't there for you and then you had to go through that. Forced inebriation or, or…whatever."

"Oh," Stan says again, rubbing the back of his head. He's suddenly struck by a terrible possibility. "Wait, do you think that's what I'm trying to do to you?"

Kyle considers this question carefully, fidgeting and tugging at the hems of his borrowed shirt, but he doesn't look away. "I trust you," he says finally. "I mean, Stan, you're my best friend. But…I think that day kind of messed me up, too. So, just. Don't let it go too far, okay?"

Suddenly it seems very important that Stan be able to recall any detail of his interactions with Kyle that day, but even though he tries to remember more intensely than he ever has before, he still comes up blank. "Was I really that bad?" he asks.

Kyle looks away; Stan can tell he's feeling guilty now. "Dude, no. I mean, were you totally out of it? Absolutely. But it wasn't anything you did, it was – I think it's just me. I take shit too seriously, that's all."

It's precisely for this reason that Stan thinks getting drunk would probably do Kyle some actual good, but he understands now that reassurance isn't just something Kyle wants, it's something that Stan owes him. "I won't let anything happen to you," he says, making sure Kyle makes eye contact with him before he continues. He needs Kyle to know he's telling the truth. "I promise, okay?"

"Can you promise I won't say anything I'll regret?"

Stan reaches over and tugs on one of the earflaps of Kyle's hat. Kyle flinches at the contact, but relaxes after a moment and knocks his shoulder companionably against Stan's. "Hey, if you say anything that dumb," Stan tells him, "I promise I'll get so wasted I won't even remember my name, let alone whatever it was you said."

"Okay," Kyle says, still leaning against Stan a little. He sounds like he's come to some kind of decision. "Deal." He uncaps the bottle and takes a drink all in one swift motion, as if all this was his idea from the very start. His head tips back when he swallows, and he looks like a pro, Adam's apple bobbing as the drink goes down.

A second later, however, Kyle's shoulder is shaking against Stan's and he's clutching at his throat, practically coughing a lung up. "Jesus, what the hell?" he chokes out. "How can you drink this stuff?"

Stan pounds Kyle's back a couple of times. "Years of practice, apparently," he says, giving him a wry smile as he waits for his breathing to even out. When it does, Kyle tries to lift the bottle to his lips a second time, this time pinching his nose shut for good measure. Before he can take another drink, however, Stan grabs the neck of the bottle and slides it out from between Kyle's fingertips. He opens his mouth to protest, but Stan keeps the drink well out of his reach as he climbs to his feet. He feels compelled to do something lame like pat Kyle on the head, so he takes a step toward the door instead. "I'll get you some Coke."

#

There's a half a liter of Diet Coke in the fridge and an unopened bottle of Pepsi in the pantry. Stan is fairly certain that Kyle will want to put more cola in his drinks than is strictly necessary so he opens the freezer to chill the Pepsi before he remembers that, duh, Kyle doesn't drink pop with sugar in it.

Stan sets the Pepsi on the counter and opens the refrigerator back up again to look for any other potential mixers, but unless Kyle wants whiskey and milk or whiskey and beer, it's a bust. Stan wouldn't mind a beer himself, but at this point he feels like it would be irresponsible to take one, to in any way compromise his ability to look out for Kyle.

Of course, as he opens the cabinet under the sink to see if there are any cups left from the post-game football get-together he had here last week, Stan can't help the thought that if one looked at this situation from a different angle, well. The fact that he's staying sober while basically asking someone else to get shitfaced could be construed as taking advantage. But that could only be the case if he happened to have, like,intentionstoward the other person. Which he doesn't: Kyle is his best friend and they're not gay, no matter how many fag jokes Cartman wants to make about them.

Stan shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair. There's a half-empty package of red plastic party cups behind the dish soap; he grabs a few and flips off the kitchen light, a flash of lightning illuminating the room a second later. This storm isn't going away anytime soon.

With one foot on the stairs, though, Stan seriously considers returning to the kitchen for a beer. He suddenly can't shake off a slightly dirty feeling about the whole thing; if word of this somehow got back to Wendy, he'd never be able to convince her that she's wrong about him. And if it's turned out that she's even a little bit right, it's only because she put the idea in his head in the first place, and these thoughts are just more proof that he takes her seriously as a person. After what she said when she broke up with him, she should consider herself lucky.

But no, Stan decides, on second thought, Wendy is just as full of shit as Cartman is. He takes the stairs two at a time, tucking the bottle of soda under one arm while he grips the railing to gain leverage with the other. The carpet feels solid and familiar under his feet. Sure, people do stupid things when they're drunk, but Stan promised Kyle that he wouldn't let him, and they'll probably just play Gamesphere and watch crappy movies all night. Nothing will happen except they'll laugh about a bunch of stupid shit until 4 a.m. and Stan's curiosity about how alcohol affects Kyle will finally be satisfied. It's not like he's getting Kyle drunk to get into his pants or anything.

At the top of the stairs, Kyle's jeans lay draped over the hallway radiator. Stan nearly trips over the landing. That can't be right. He's only been gone five minutes, tops, and Kyle didn't seem very interested in drinking any more of the whiskey straight. Is he really that much of a lightweight? Stan squints at the clothes. Upon closer inspection, Kyle's shirt, socks, and shoes are also arranged neatly in the vicinity, and it certainly doesn't look like the handiwork of someone drunk enough to start stripping.

Still, as Stan pushes open his bedroom door, he does so with caution. He's relieved to see Kyle sprawled out on the bed, cell phone pressed to his ear, and wearing a pair of shorts that Stan recognizes as some of his middle school track warm-ups.

"No, ma, I couldn't take the bus, I had to stay after school. Stan's house is just closer, so – uh huh, yeah, I know, ma. Hang on, he's right here, I'll ask him." Kyle covers the receiver with one hand and looks across at Stan. "Dude, when are your parents going to be home? My mom wants to know if it's okay for me to crash here tonight; they're in Denver with Ike and I guess all the roads are flooded or whatever."

"What, you weren't planning on staying anyway?" Stan asks, clearing a spot on his desk and setting the pop and cups there.

Kyle makes a helpless gesture and holds up his phone. "You know how she gets, just humor her."

"Uh, okay. My parents are out of town too, though."

"That's fine," Kyle tells him, picking his phone back up. Stan sits down in his computer chair and watches him. The shirt Stan lent him keeps sliding off his shoulder, and his legs are long pale things poking out of the green track shorts. "You still there, ma? Okay, he says they'll be home before dinner and I'm welcome to spend the night. Yeah, I'll be sure to thank them, don't worry. Uh-huh. Seriously, I'm sure Stan's parents say don't mention it. Okay – yeah, I will, okay. Love you too, tell Ike I said congrats. Okay, bye."

"Nice shorts, I wore those when I was twelve," Stan says when Kyle flips his phone shut and tosses it on the nightstand. "What'd Ike do, discover the Higgs boson?"

"Nah, it was some geography thing. And shut up, you were clearly a total fatass in seventh grade," Kyle informs him, twanging the elastic of his waistband with one finger. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and leans down to pick up the Jack Daniels from where it sits next to his feet. "Are you gonna mix me a drink or what?"

Stan grins. Kyle's hat is on crooked, and even though he has on fresh clothes now and otherwise looks comfortable and warm, his hair is still wet. "Yeah, but only because you just lied to your mom and I'm sort of proud," he says, pulling a single cup free from the stack on his desk.

"Shut up," Kyle says, tugging on the flaps of his ushanka. "I'm grounded, she'd make me go over to Butters' or something if she knew there were no adults here." Now that Cartman and Kenny are no longer Kyle's "little friends," Cartman now anti-Semitic in a way that can't just be ignored because he's ten and doesn't know any better, Kenny old enough now that Sheila Broflovski suspects he knows where to find (and can provide Kyle with) the drugs in his house, he's forbidden from going over to either of their homes. Kyle still goes over to Kenny's sometimes, but as far as Stan knows he's never had a reason good enough to defy his mother on Eric Cartman's account.

"Tell me if it's too strong," Stan says, passing Kyle a cup. "You can add more Coke if you want, but don't add too much or you'll run out before the whiskey's gone."

Kyle sniffs dubiously at the drink, then takes an experimental sip. He coughs, but only once, not nearly as bad as the first time. His nose is wrinkled in disgust, and Stan can't help but laugh when he pours in a generous measure of Coke. "What? It tastes like shit, okay? I'm not going to pretend to like it just for your sake."

"Dude, I would never expect you to," Stan says, taking the cup out of Kyle's hand and trying a little. It goes down smooth, so diluted that Stan can't tell there's anything but soda in the cup. "You'll taste it less after a couple of drinks, though, I promise. I just don't want you to run out of Coke, this is seriously all I've got."

Kyle looks at the pop bottle, now only about half as full as it was before he made his drink. He sighs and adds a couple more drops of whiskey to his Jack-and-Coke. "When am I supposed to start feeling this stuff, anyway?"

#

"I just think," Kyle says, fingers tucked into the collar of Stan's shirt as he follows him down the stairs, "that you're supposed to put ice in these things. And maybe it'll make the bottom part more watery and less, you know, fucking disgusting? The bottom of the drink sucks, dude."

Kyle is already slightly unsteady on his feet, knuckles pressing against the nape of Stan's neck as he tightens his grip on Stan's shirt. He doesn't let go, even when they reach the bottom of the stairs, and Stan doesn't ask him to.

"I can get you a real glass, too," Stan tells him. He turns his head to look over his shoulder at Kyle as they pass through the living room and into the kitchen, and his nose nearly brushes Kyle's cheek. It surprises Stan enough that he jerks away a little, but not enough to break contact. When did Kyle's face get so close? "You know, since you want to get all fucking fancy."

"Uh, good," Kyle says firmly. He uses Stan's shoulder to lift himself onto one of the stools at the kitchen island, face retreating. "Those red ones are for douchebags."

Stan laughs at how serious he sounds and turns toward the freezer. "I think Cartman, like, seriously stole them from a frat party."

"What a cheap bastard." One and a half drinks in, yet there's no mistaking it – Kyle's tone has taken on the sort of transparent sincerity that only alcohol can produce. "Remind me to tell him that the next time he tries to talk shit about Jews. Then I can say, 'uh, no, you're cheap, fat-boy!'"

The ice trays are buried somewhere behind two frozen pizzas and a box of Eggos, and it takes Stan a minute to dig them out, knocking the waffles on the floor in the process. He bends down to pick them up.

"Which cabinet are your glasses in?" Kyle's voice calls out from above him. There's a rattling noise and then the sound of dishes clinking together. "Because, uh, these are bowls, dude."

Stan is still crouched down next to the fallen waffles, but he looks up at this. "Are you serious?" Kyle has climbed onto the counter and thrown open all of the upper cabinets, which he is staring into with a look of deepest confusion.

"What?"

"Okay, first of all, don't fall." Stan feels like he's already preparing himself to catch Kyle, like a fireman holding a tarp open underneath a burning building while someone readies themselves to jump from a window ledge.

Kyle scowls. "I've climbed the shit out of this counter since preschool. I think I've got it."

"Yeah, dude, so – point two: you know where we keep our glasses."

Kyle's scowl becomes a frown. He slides down from his knees but stays on the counter, crossing his legs Indian style. One of his knees is half in the sink. "Fuck. It's sort of hard to, like. Focus."

"Hey, okay," Stan says, reaching up into the bank of cabinets on his side of the kitchen and pulling out a tumbler. He sort of thinks he might be enjoying the taking-care-of-Kyle part of this more than the drunken-antics part. "When was the last time you ate?"

"Oh, fuck, is there food?" Kyle asks, perking up instantly. "I want, like, a pizza. A ham-and-bacon pizza."

"Dude, what?" Stan says, laughing. "I don't think they even make those." He turns back to the freezer, which is still hanging open, to inspect the selection of frozen pizzas. "There's, uh, pepperoni. And meatlover's, if you're trying to get as anti-kosher as possible."

Kyle leans forward, squinting at him. "What's in your hand?"

"What, these? Fuckin' Eggos, dude." Stan squeezes them into an empty space in the freezer door. "So, meatlover's or pepperoni?"

Kyle's stomach growls and he brings both hands up to rub it, looking at Stan with wide eyes. "I totally bailed on lunch, dude. Can I have, like, both?" It's no wonder he's already past tipsy, Stan thinks; he knows Kyle skips breakfast most days, so it's entirely possible that the only thing he's consumed today, in addition to these drinks, is a cup of coffee. "Hey, do you remember that time we ate frozen waffles at Kenny's?"

"Yeah, sort of," Stan says, scratching his head, trying to recall. "Weren't our parents trying to make us catch chickenpox or something?"

"Yeah, but we didn't. My mom kept taking me back over there trying to infect me, it was so retarded."

Kyle uncrosses his legs and lets them dangle over the edge of the counter. Stan pushes them out of the way with one hand as he sets dial on the oven to preheat. "If you don't want to wait for the oven, I can nuke some of the pizza for you instead. It'll probably be all soggy and shit, but I kind of like it that way sometimes." Stan actually only likes soggy microwave pizza when he's drunk, but he supposes this works for Kyle's situation. There's a reason places like Taco Bell and McDonald's are havens for drunks, after all, and it's not the high quality of their food.

Kyle nods, nudging Stan toward the microwave with his foot. "Did I ever tell you about this weird-ass game my mom made Kenny and me play while I was over there?" he asks. "I mean, it was really fucking weird, dude."

"No," Stan says. He throws a few slices of the pepperoni pizza into the microwave.

"It was called ooky-mouth – like, she actually made up a name for this bullshit game – and you were supposed to let the other person spit in your mouth and say 'ooky-mouth' at the same time." Kyle makes the same face he makes when he catches a whiff of one of Cartman's farts, like this is the most disgusting thing he's ever done.

"Hey, don't lose your appetite, dude," Stan says. The pizza has a minute and a half to go. "You seriously need to eat something."

"I think Kenny kind of liked it," Kyle continues. "Fucking perv."

Stan shoots Kyle a bewildered look that he apparently completely misinterprets as jealousy, because he says, "Don't worry, dude. I wouldn't have minded if you spit in my mouth."

"Uh," Stan says, "thanks?" Thankfully, the microwave starts beeping at this point, saving Stan from having to worry about why Kyle thinks he should, and he oddly sort of does, find this particular piece of information reassuring. "I made you three pieces of pepperoni for right now, but I'm going to put the other pizza in the oven for both of us for later, okay?"

Kyle nods, looking prepared to accept whatever Stan tells him.

"Do you want to eat in here or take it in the other room and see what's on TV?"

"Are you going to make me another drink, too?" Kyle asks. "I don't really want to have to, like. Carry stuff? Or walk, really."

"We can stay in here, then," Stan says, grabbing a couple of napkins. "I'll just get you water for now and wait until after you've eaten to make another drink."

"But, dude." There's a hint of a whine to Kyle's voice, and his eyes are big and puppyish in a way that should seem pathetic but somehow doesn't. "Top Chef is on."

Maybe it's the way Kyle's sitting, leaning forward a little with his arms almost (but not quite) outstretched, or maybe it's another one of these weird protective urges Stan keeps having – he doesn't know. But he hears himself saying, "All right, come here then," balancing a plate of pizza in one hand while the other guides one of Kyle's arms around his neck. "Try and keep your legs up at my waist, I don't want to drop you."

Kyle laughs, a sort of contented little giggle, sliding forward on the counter and wrapping himself around Stan without question. His chin is pointy, digging into Stan's shoulder a little. "Whatever you say, dude."

#

"Dude, I just realized," Kyle says, nudging Stan in the ribs as he struggles to hold back laughter, "that guy's name is Hung. Like, seriously, that – is fucking hysterical."

Stan snorts, tipping his head back to rest on the top of the couch, looking up at the ceiling. It's the finale of one of the old Top Chef seasons, which Kyle apparently wanted to watch because it takes place in Aspen and he thinks it's hilarious that people are actually trying to prepare gourmet food in the same place that Stan got suckered into racing some asshole teenager down the mountain. Twice.

"They should just make, like, pizza and French fries," Stan says. "That's seriously the only thing I remember from that trip: pizza, French Fries, pizza, French fries."

Kyle pokes him in the side, waggling his eyebrows and laughing, a little drunkenly. He's had two more drinks since dinner. "You don't remember Hea-ther?" he asks, drawing the name out, and it takes Stan a minute to register who he's talking about.

"You actually remember her name?" Stan asks, genuinely surprised. He remembers Tad, her psycho boyfriend, the one who kept challenging him to races and who for some god-forsaken reason wrote a song about how much he sucked. He even remembers Thumper, their ski instructor, who is the reason he now associates skiing with food items. "I still hardly know who that bitch was."

"Dude, I for real thought you were going to die over that bitch," Kyle says, and suddenly it's not quite so funny anymore.

"Whoa, dude," Stan says, reaching over to squeeze Kyle's shoulder. Kyle looks up at Stan and scoots a little bit closer. "I had, like, training. Mostly on how to go really slowly and make sure I didn't, you know, break my neck or whatever." His feet are propped up on the coffee table and he points the toes inward to demonstrate: pizza.

Kyle sighs. "Stan," he says. He sounds sort of sad and scoots closer so that he's pressed up to Stan's side, rests his head on Stan's shoulder. "I don't think I'm a very funny drunk. Am I?"

"What, you think I just want to laugh at you?" Stan asks. He's a little bit offended, even though that was the initial idea here. "And anyway, just because you're not peeing all over shit like Cartman or doing god knows what like me – I fucking don't even remember half of it in the morning, dude – doesn't mean – I don't know. You're actually more interesting than that."

"What if I don't remember things either?" Kyle asks. He tugs anxiously on the flaps of his ushanka, his arm rubbing against Stan's as he does so, brow knit with worry. "Do people tell you what happened?"

"Sometimes," Stan mutters. He looks away, embarrassed. "Sometimes I wish they wouldn't."

Kenny is the only one who tells him the stupid shit he does, completely honest in a way that tends to make Stan uncomfortable. He's been drinking with Kenny longer than he has with anyone else, longer than he'd really care to admit. When Stan was ten and first started experimenting with alcohol, he was terrible at it and he knows he could have easily fucked himself up if Kenny hadn't noticed, shown up at his house one afternoon after they'd gone to some shitty Adam Sandler movie, and instructed him in moderation. Not that Kenny practices moderation himself, generally, but he's at least knowledgeable enough about this kind of thing that he was able to save Stan from getting in too deep.

Recently, though, Kenny's started confiscating Stan's phone from him whenever he drinks, over an incident that even he won't give the full details on. Even though it was just the two of them, no one else to witness whatever happened, Stan feels acutely humiliated just thinking about it. He knows he had too much that night, remembers feeling sick – Kenny did tell him that he kept saying he was going to die, and based on how he felt when he woke up, Stan believes it. He has a vague memory of shouting random declarations of love, afraid he'd never get a chance to make them again, and trying to make a phone call. It wasn't too long after he and Wendy broke up – for good, it's starting to look like – so Stan figures it must have been her he wanted so badly to talk to. For some reason, Kenny refuses to confirm or deny anything.

"Have I said anything stupid yet?" Kyle asks, breath tickling Stan's neck. He's gotten closer, enough that he's practically cuddling Stan now. Stan feels like he should probably extract himself somewhat, but he can't work up the energy to move.

"Why are you so worried about saying something stupid?" Stan asks. "The whole point of drinking is that you're allowed to be stupid and do things you'd never do normally, and no one will judge you for it."

"I don't know," Kyle says. The end credits of Top Chef start running across the television screen. "Drunk or not, I'd judge the shit out of anyone who, for example, might have peed in my car. Dude! We should go fuck up his truck as payback. Do you have bananas? We could throw bananas at it!"

"What?" Stan says, and he's laughing again. "Why bananas?"

Kyle grins easily at him, looking pleased to be back in familiar territory, joking along with Stan. "Well, it has to be something even grosser than pee, doesn't it?"

Kyle stands up and stretches, and Stan's side, which he had been pressed up against, suddenly feels cold. Kyle takes a couple shaky steps and pauses, leaning against the arm of the couch for support.

"Maybe we should take a rain-check on that until you can walk a straight line," Stan says, and he can't help but laugh at the petulant look that passes across Kyle's face. A clap of thunder follows, the loudest one yet, and the lights even flicker a little. "And on, like, the actual rain. Fuck dude, it's nasty out there."

"Dude, we should watch a scary movie," Kyle says. He heads over to the Marsh's TV stand, where their DVDs are arranged in one of the storage areas below the TV. Kyle crouches down and begins picking through them, then turns his head to look over his shoulder at Stan. "I can pick one out, right?"

"Yeah, sure," Stan says distractedly. There's something weirdly familiar about the way Kyle is knelt down on the carpet, leaning over as he looks for something. It's something about his posture, Stan thinks, like he's seen that exact silhouette before but somewhere else, on TV or something, and it's going to bug the crap out of him all night if he can't figure this out, but Stan can't quite put his finger on it.

"Oh, fuck, dude," Kyle shouts, grabbing one of the movies off the shelf, "you know what was really, like, traumatizingly scary? Backdoor Sluts 9, holy shit, do you remember that?"

"Uh!" Stan shouts, sitting up straighter on the couch and looking at Kyle with horror. "There is no way we have that shit sitting out in the living room."

"Yeah, no, this is Lord of the Rings," Kyle says, resuming his search. "I'm just saying, it reminded me."

"Do you think it would be hot now that we're older?" Stan asks, suddenly curious.

"No way, dude," Kyle says, without hesitation. "That shit scarred me for life. What, do you think it might be?"

"Fuck no," Stan says. He actually finds most porn incredibly off-putting. The stuff that does work for him usually has something weird about it, but not weird in a way that he'd really want to brag about, and definitely not weird in the same way that Backdoor Sluts 9 was.

"Well, good. What movie do you wanna watch?" Kyle asks, but suddenly Stan has lost him, because as he bends over to get better access to the back row of DVDs, the borrowed shorts slide down his hips a little – which, they shouldn't, shorts made for a twelve-year-old should be, if anything, too small on a high school senior – but they do, and holy shit, is Kyle not wearing any boxers? They were probably wet like the rest of his clothes, why the fuck would he want to wear them, but still, seriously, what the hell?

Except that's not even the thing that's really bothering him. Kyle can go commando in his shorts, what the hell ever; why should he care when it's almost a given that Kyle will be the one laundering them anyway? Stan pulls out his phone and starts flipping furiously through the log of his texts with Kenny, half of which are picture messages – pictures that Kenny snapped himself and sent to Stan, something he's been doing since fourth grade, when Stan unwisely started emailing him about hot butt cracks or whatever the hell – and even though Stan thinks it's completely stupid, he saves the hottest ones anyway. And – holy Christ, he thinks, finding the particular one he's looking for, that's the thing that was nagging at him just a minute ago, because one of these anonymous asses actually fucking belongs to Kyle.

"Stan," Kyle says, and he's now turned around fully, looking at him with concern. Stan's sure that his current freak-out is written all over his face. "What movie. Do you. Want to watch?"

"Uh," Stan says, choking off the rest of the sentence because his broken brain is halfway to stuttering out 'butt cracks' in response. There's a text underneath the picture; it says, bet u'd like 2 wear this ass as a hat haha lol haha. Stan sent back, it IS a hot ass lol. Jesus Christ, he thinks, and tears his eyes away from the phone, eyes darting around the room wildly until they settle on Kyle. He feels crazed. "Pick, um. Pick whatever. Maybe something with, uh, like. Megan Fox? Or something." Anything to cleanse his mind of the knowledge that he was just checking out his best friend's ass. And that, apparently, it's not even the first time he's done it.

He wants to call Kenny, ask him what the hell he thinks he's playing at sending him pictures of guy's asses, scream at somebody until this makes sense. But Kyle has picked out a movie – Transformers, it looks like – and is settling back down next to him on the couch, still drunk and still cuddly.

"Is something wrong?" Kyle asks, frowning.

Stan shakes his head stiffly. "No," he lies.

"Okay," Kyle says, but he looks unconvinced. He readjusts his position on the couch, stretching out on his side, head ending up firmly in Stan's lap. "Is it okay if I lay here?" he asks, looking up at Stan with his big, green eyes, a sloppy smile plastered across his face.

"Dude," Stan mutters, huffing out a laugh. "You're gone."

Kyle gives him a confused, innocent little look. "Am I?"

"Yeah," Stan says, and he reaches over Kyle to grab the whiskey from the coffee table. "So, uh, I guess I can help you out with this now."

#

Megan Fox doesn't help.

Stan hasn't gotten a boner from hot (non-X-rated) movie chicks since he was thirteen, so that's one less thing he should have to worry about with Kyle's head in his lap through the whole thing, except he's totally worrying about it anyway.

Kyle's head is in his lap, attached to possibly the hottest ass in his super-secret, super-retarded personal photo collection of people's asses, and that is a problem. Kyle's drunk, too, totally wasted, and Stan sees problems there as well, has spent the last fifteen minutes trying to convince himself that his get-Kyle-drunk plan is not the manifestation of some weird repressed kink of his.

He can feel Kyle's breath on his knee, through the fabric of his jeans, and the edge of his hat brushes along Stan's thigh every time Kyle moves his head. That's also a problem: it's kind of hot. And if he is trying to suppress any possibility of getting a hard-on right now, to get back to the matter at hand, looking over at the TV screen and seeing Megan Fox isn't exactly going to do the job. She may not give him a boner, but she's certainly not going to make one go away, either.

Stan's left hand twitches and the ice in his glass jingles. He brings his drink to his lips and tips his head back, taking a long swallow.

Over the course of the past hour, Stan has come to the conclusion that he is like a bizarro Superman. Well, not really that, maybe more of a real Superman doing bizarro-type things, because whiskey is supposedly kryptonite for boners, and he is deliberately dosing himself with it.

It's not working. Not yet. He feels warm and buzzy, the world glowing a little around the edges, and this is the most dangerous part of drinking: getting through that interval between "sober" and "drunk" where you get too comfortable, let your guard down, but still remain enough in possession of your faculties that if you slip up, the drink doesn't absolve you of the blame for whatever it is you've done.

On the heels of that thought, Kyle sits up. Stan stealthily adjusts himself, just in case.

"Dude, pause it for a minute," Kyle says, stretching.

Stan gropes around for the remote and finds it sandwiched between the couch cushions. He aims and clicks, and the screen goes still on a shot of Shia LeBeouf making a face like a fish.

"Ugh, no, that sucks. Try again."

Stan makes a fish-face at Kyle, who punches him in the arm. "Whoa dude, ow," he says, reaching over to rub at the spot. Kyle would make a great street fighter; brass knuckles would be, like, a handicap for him. "This is the arm that got us within 14 points of Middle Park, dude. It deserves to be treated with respect."

"Sure, dude. Whatever you say." Kyle takes the remote, pauses and unpauses the TV, giving a satisfied nod at the Optimus Prime on the screen. "I'm going to the bathroom."

Stan waits until Kyle has disappeared down the hallway and he can hear the sound of the bathroom door clicking shut, the tap springing to life. He looks both ways anyway – what is he, crossing the street? There's no one there to catch him – before he downs the rest of his whiskey in a single gulp, still mid-swallow as he goes in for a refill.

Then his jeans start buzzing, and Stan startles so violently that he slops whiskey all over his hand. Not wanting it to go to waste, he licks it off, and then digs out his phone. It's Kenny.

Stan considers hitting "ignore," but decides he'd rather see if he can wring some sort of vindictive pleasure out of being rude and bad-tempered. "What?" he snaps into the receiver.

Kenny laughs like that's somehow funny. "Bad time?"

"Maybe," Stan says, guarded, and it's not quite a lie. "What do you want?"

"Oh, I don't know. How about you telling me what the fuck is going on with Kyle?"

Alarm bells start going off in Stan's head.

"Nothing!" Stan shouts, a little too loudly, jumping to his feet. He looks down around stupidly a second later when he realizes he isn't sitting anymore. Of course his first reaction is to panic. Of course. "I mean, I don't know what you're talking about."

There's a pause on the other end, then: "So, just to be clear, he hasn't been sending you a bunch of weird-ass texts all night?"

"Fuck," Stan mutters, turning his head away from the phone, though there's still a good chance that Kenny heard him anyway. Why didn't he think to confiscate Kyle's phone? He angles his mouth back toward the receiver. "Weird how?"

"Uh, well, there's one where the only word I can actually read is 'waffles'. And, like, the fact that Kyle's not spelling shit correctly is…you know, right? For all I know, he's been kidnapped – I guess by giant waffles – and had his fingers cut off, or he's been drugged, or, I don't know, maybe Cartman's finally got him and he's going loopy in the gas chamber."

Stan can tell Kenny doesn't actually suspect any of this only because he sounds like he thinks each possibility is, like, the height of hilarity as he rattles them off to Stan.

"You know what, fuck you, Kenny," Stan says, and he hears another laugh on the other side of the line. "You know he's just wasted."

"I do now," Kenny agrees, sounding pleased. "Dude, I've got to see this."

"Ugh," Stan groans. "No. Don't you get enough of this shit as it is?"

Kenny makes a 'tsk'ing noise because, right, of course not. "How'd you get him to do it?"

"Look, it wasn't like…planned or anything, all right?" Stan feels himself blushing. Out of…what, guilt? He can't tell. "Just forget about it. It's not a big deal."

"Oh, no no no," Kenny says. "Kyle is like, straight edge, dude. It is so a big deal."

What does Kenny want, a signed confession? 'I, Stanley Randall Marsh, do hereby accept sole responsibility for the corruption of Kyle Broflovski,' that kind of shit?

Stan sighs and rolls his eyes. "Okay, fine. I slipped it in his Coke when he wasn't looking."

"Ha ha, Marsh, very funny. You know I've already tried that, right? He totally would have caught you."

"Oh, is that why he spent two weeks giving you the silent treatment last year?"

"Stop dodging the question, asshole."

Stan throws a punch at one of the cushions. "Why don't you tell me, since you seem to know everything?"

"Yeah, all right. Personally, my money's on that you're either blackmailing him or the two of you made a fucked up little agreement that I don't ever want to know the details of. And since, come to think of it, I can't really see you two trying blackmail on anyone but Cartman…"

"Goddammit, Kenny."

"Stan."

Stan sighs, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Maybe I was curious," he says, hedging.

"Yeah, I could have told you that," Kenny says, and Stan really wants to punch him. "Where are you? I'm coming over."

"Why? There's like, lightning and shit. And you'll, uh, get wet."

"Yeah, I don't care." There's silence, and now Kenny is apparently waiting him out.

He can't really tell Kenny that he wants him to stay away. If he does, it'll just sound like he's trying to keep drunk Kyle all to himself, and he…isn't. Or if he is, it's only because Stan is trying to respect Kyle's privacy, right?

"Don't be a dick," Stan says.

Kenny snorts. "Your place?"

"Fuck you," Stan mutters, but there's no real malice behind it, just resignation.

"I'll be there in twenty minutes. Tell Broflovski…I dunno, tell him to try and keep it in his pants until then."

"Jesus Christ, dude!" Stan yelps, but the line is already dead.

#

Stan spends maybe a minute just glaring at Optimus Prime's motionless form before Kyle wanders back in from the bathroom, looking lost.

"What took you so long? Did you crap out another piece of talking shit?" The second those words are out, Stan replays them in his head and his mouth twists; fucking Kenny, making him sound like an asshole.

Kyle frowns, a crease forming between his eyebrows. "Dude, you loved Mr. Hankey. Don't talk about him like that." He comes further into the room and sits back down next to Stan, eyes changing to drunk-serious, and he rests his cheek on Stan's shoulder. It's not, like, a weird gesture or anything, Stan doesn't think. It's friendly is all, which is fine – great, even – because they're best friends and whatever, they can totally touch each other platonically and shit. "Just, like, I have to ask you a question about your mirror. Did you know it was totally hilarious?"

Stan pauses for a moment, his shoulder tingling. "Which mirror?"

"Uh, the one you can make faces in," Kyle says, giving him a look that says this should be obvious.

"Oh. Well, in that case. Um. I guess?"

Kyle's frown deepens. "That's not what you're supposed to say. Are you sure you're Stan? Stan would have said 'dude, making faces is fun' and then I totally would have showed you my that-guy-from-Lost face. The, like, doctor or whatever."

This is true. Kyle knows him too well.

"Sorry, dude." Stan leans his head back so that his face is almost parallel with the ceiling. He needs to excuse his behavior somehow, so he might as well go with the truth. "Kenny's just being a douche. He fucking, like, invited himself over."

Who does that? Asshole.

"Oh, that's okay!" Kyle says brightly, and it's at this point that Stan realizes that by tipping his head back all he's done is expose his neck, and that Kyle's breath is really warm but he's getting goosebumps anyway. "I like Kenny! He's a really good friend; he should come over."

"He just wants to come watch you drunk it up all over the place like you're some kind of fucking entertainment for him," Stan mutters, not quite able to keep the bitterness out of his voice. Kyle should be able to understand how fucking…invasive, and just, goddamn assholish that is all on his own, but Stan's tone probably makes his opinion on the matter pretty clear, too.

Kyle lifts his head from Stan's shoulder at that, blinking at him with wide, unguarded eyes. "Wait," he says, confused and perceptive and vulnerable all at once. "I thought…isn't that what you're doing too?"

Kyle's eyes are wide, framed with these soft red lashes, and he seems so fucking innocent right now. Weirdly, weirdly innocent, because even if he is "innocent" in the sense that most people take that word to mean, Stan has sure as hell never thought of him that way.

"Dude. I don't know. That makes me sound, like, really shitty." To be honest, Stan actually has no idea what motivations he had in the first place, but whatever they were, or are – because he feels like they may have changed – he's not sure he's entirely comfortable with them.

"Stan," Kyle tells him earnestly, "you are definitely the least shitty person I'm friends with."

He must have moved closer when Stan wasn't paying attention, because now he's close enough for Stan to see, really see, the green of his irises. And that matters, Stan realizes, because now if he tries to look Kyle straight in the eye he risks becoming mesmerized.

"Gee, thanks," Stan mutters, rolling his eyes and then averting them, taking a sudden interest in throw pillow patterns.

"No, I mean. Do you think I'd agree to do this if you were just anyone? I know I can trust you."

"Why?" Stan says suddenly, eyes snapping back to Kyle. "I don't even trust me."

"Well…because," Kyle says, like that word means everything, and his eyes are boring into Stan's. Stan feels paralyzed, his limbs heavy weights, and Kyle hasn't even touched him. Then Kyle puts his hands on Stan's shoulders, leaning in close, closer, and just before their noses touch, just before Stan's brain short-circuits and his heart beats out through his chest, Kyle goes cross-eyed and just…makes a face at him.

The first laugh that escapes him is strangled and weird and just a little bit terrifying, but the next is louder and actually real, and it at least sounds like a noise that human-Stan would make. Before he knows it, Stan has collapsed against Kyle – whether it's out of relief or from laughing too hard, he can't tell – and is in a fit of hysterics that's starting to make his sides hurt. But he can't help himself, cracking up over that face, at Kyle, at himself, at these last few ridiculous hours, eyes leaking tears onto Kyle's collar as Stan presses his forehead into his shoulder.

"Dude," Kyle says, when Stan has finally composed himself enough to sit up and wipe his sleeves over his sticky face. "I told you it was hilarious."

"Holy shit, dude," Stan agrees. So he makes a face back, one where he touches his nose with the tip of his tongue, and Kyle falls against his side, giggling like a maniac.

By the time he hears a pounding at the front door, obviously Kenny announcing his presence, Stan is in a much better mood. He pushes himself up off the couch and Kyle follows, a little unsteady on his feet, bumping into Stan and grabbing his arm for support when they reach the door. When Stan yanks the door open and Kenny's face breaks into a knowing smirk, though, Stan feels some of the anger and annoyance start to bubble back up again.

"Marsh. Broflovski," he says, giving them each a nod in turn. He's got that shitty old parka on, the hood of course pulled up. Kenny doesn't wear it much these days, but it is pretty much the only water-repellent thing he owns. "Going to invite me in?"

"Nah," Stan says, turning away. Kenny can invite himself in, just like he invited himself over in the first place.

Sure enough, Kenny sloshes on in anyway, shutting the door and pushing his hood down to shake his hair out.

Stan looks over his shoulder and catches Kyle's eye for a second.

Kyle wrinkles his nose and looks back over at Kenny. "You walked over here? That was dumb."

"Didn't see your car parked outside either," Kenny shoots back, dropping his parka on the coat rack by the door. He's relatively dry underneath it in a plain gray T-shirt and some jeans, which is good, because Stan sure as hell isn't lending him any clothes.

Stan must be giving Kenny a dirty look, because Kenny turns to him next and his smirk widens. "Hey, you should look happier to see me. I brought you a present and everything." He reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a mostly-full fifth of Captain Morgan's, dangling it in front of Stan's nose.

Kyle takes it out of his hand and holds the label up to his eyes, squinting as he inspects it. "Does this taste as shitty as Stan's whiskey did?"

"Maybe," Stan says, snatching the rum away to examine it himself. It's the 100 proof kind. Of course.

"It's not for you, anyway, Broflovski," Kenny says. "I figured Stan might need something a little stronger than whatever he's been letting you have."

Stan rolls his eyes, but the longer he looks at the rum, the more his fingers itch to twist the cap off so he can pour himself a shot or two.

"Oh, hey," Kyle says, nudging Stan, "I finished that, by the way."

"I know," Stan says. "I really don't think that means you'd want this, though."

"Why not?"

"Well, it tastes really shitty, for one thing," Stan says.

"Hey, don't insult my wares, asshole," Kenny says, reclaiming the rum for himself and walking into the living room. Stan shrugs and he and Kyle follow, sitting back down on the couch. "Plus, Broflovski, no offense or anything, but I'm not letting you touch any of the really hard stuff. You're about as drunk as you want to get already, trust me."

"Hey, fuck you, Kenny McCormick," Kyle says. "For your information, I don't feel drunk at all."

Kenny laughs, loudly, and ruffles what he can of Kyle's hair. Mostly he just ends up jerking the ushanka around, leaving it slightly askew when he's done. "That's adorable. Don't you think that's adorable, Stan?"

"Watch who you're calling adorable," Kyle protests, kicking Kenny in the leg.

Stan doesn't say anything. He doesn't even know what to say anymore. Not that he really has any hope of getting Kenny to lay off by ignoring him, but he crosses his arms and steadfastly avoids looking in his direction anyway.

Kenny being here is making him feel all self-conscious and twitchy and on-edge. He's not entirely sure why – well, okay, it probably has something to do with his recent discovery regarding that picture. Maybe a little bit to do with that phone conversation. Anyway, Stan definitely wouldn't classify it as a pleasant feeling. It's sort of like the one you get when your English teacher reads some shit you wrote out loud to your class as an example of what she wanted you to do on an assignment; it's not objectively a bad thing, might even be considered good, but there's still that uneasy sense that you're being judged.

"What've you assholes been doing all night, anyway?" Kenny asks, letting things drop for the moment. Stan relaxes a fraction.

"Watching TV, mostly," Stan says, shrugging. "Nothing super interesting."

"Uh huh," Kenny says.

Kyle chooses that moment to drop his head onto Stan's shoulder like it's no big deal. Breathing gets sort of difficult, all of a sudden. Stan glares at one of the coasters on the coffee table, afraid to take his eyes off of it and accidentally make eye contact with anyone else in the room.

"Look, nobody asked you to be here," Stan snaps. "We were just watching a movie. And, actually, I'd like to finish it, so you can feel free to shut up at any time."

"Dude, Stan, chill. I don't mind hanging out with Kenny."

"Yeah, whatever, fine. It's just – " Just what? Weird? Disturbing? That Stan feels like he's been caught doing something he shouldn't be? Jesus Christ. Stan doesn't even know what the fuck anymore. It's just that it really feels like Kenny is here to meddle…and Stan can't really feel justified in complaining about it because he doesn't want to even think about what Kenny's trying to meddle in, much less talk about it. "Forget it."

"You'll thank me for coming later," Kenny says. He's looking straight at Stan. "I guaran-fucking-tee it."

"Yeah, you know what, I'll 'thank you' for pouring me a shot of that rum for now."

"See, I knew you'd like this," Kenny says, grinning smugly and pointing at him with the neck of the bottle. He get up from the couch and goes into the kitchen. Stan hears one of the cabinet doors open and shut.

"Are you guys fighting or something?" Kyle asks, head still on Stan's shoulder.

Stan sighs. "Not really, no. Sorry. I swear I'm not being a huge fucking jerk on purpose; I don't know what my problem is."

"It's not anything I did, is it?"

Kyle sounds worried. Stan gets that. He's been worried this whole time that he'll get drunk and say something, do something stupid, but he hasn't, and Stan can't even imagine what he's so worried about when there's pretty much nothing Kyle could do that would make Stan think less of him, anyway.

"Dude, no," Stan says, tilting his chin down just a little so that he can look Kyle in the eye. "Not even a little."

Kyle seems to contemplate this. "So…you're just being weird because you're weird?"

Stan shrugs. Close enough.

"Yeah, I – I don't know, it's a thing. I've just got a lot on my mind, I guess."

"Well, okay," Kyle says, and he sounds satisfied enough.

There's a noise from the kitchen, and then Kenny's back, carrying two full shot glasses in one hand and the bottle of Captain Morgan's in the other.

"All right," Kenny says, the couch dipping under his weight as he drops down next to Stan. He hands him one of the shot glasses. "No chaser, but you didn't need one anyway, did you?"

Stan looks down at the amber liquid, then back at Kenny. "Nah, dude."

"What, I don't get one?" Kyle asks.

"No," Stan and Kenny say in unison.

"You don't want one, anyway," Kenny assures him, and Kyle sticks out his lower lip in a truly pathetic pout.

Stan tilts his head and looks over at Kyle. "Yeah, and what happened to 'alcohol tastes like shit' and 'I hate drinking' and all of that bullshit?"

"I don't know, peer pressure? Whatever, fuck you guys, I'm turning the movie back on." He reaches for the remote and hits 'play'.

"Well," Kenny says, giving Stan a sideways look, "cheers."

#

They finish Transformers and move on to Transformers 2, which like all sequels is inferior to the original, but even as he feels himself starting to push the boundary between 'tipsy' and 'drunk,' Stan is well aware that this movie really is a special kind of crap. He can't even appreciate the parts with Megan Fox, although maybe that's a little bit because he's bitter about how useless she was to him during his crisis earlier that night.

Not that that's really over. Just, it's been a couple hours, he's a little more inebriated, and it's slightly easier to ignore.

Kyle's head slides down, off Stan's shoulder, and into his lap. Stan comes damn close to having a heart attack right there, but then Kyle makes a sort of snuffling noise and squirms slightly to get comfortable, and Stan slowly breathes out. He's just asleep.

The position feels compromising for some reason, anyway. Stan extricates his right hand from where it's pinned underneath Kyle's shoulder and spends an awkward moment wondering where to put it before deciding, fuck it, and setting it lightly on Kyle's back.

"So," Kenny says conversationally, watching Stan through slitted eyes, "finally making a move?"

Stan's head snaps around. "Excuse me?"

Kenny's looking at him with this kind of horrible, condescending sympathy, like Stan's the one kid in kindergarten who still can't quite manage to write his name yet. Like he's trying so damn hard to shape that last fucking letter 'n' but it keeps coming out wrong and Kenny can't understand why because it's not that hard of a letter to make, anyway. "Well, I mean, I assumed that's what all this – " he waves a hand, gesturing between Kyle, Stan, and the empty bottle of whiskey, " – was about."

Stan gapes at him. "What the fuck gave you that idea?"

"You know," Kenny says tiredly, "the whole playing dumb thing might have been cute at first, but it's really starting to get old."

Stan snaps his mouth shut, works his jaw for a second, trying to decide what to say. "How is it possibly getting old?" he finally asks. "I haven't even – I didn't – I wasn't playing dumb, all right?"

"Don't tell me you've never thought about it before, Marsh. I know for a fact that you have."

"What, you a mind reader or something?"

Kenny shrugs. "Sometimes you get chatty before you pass out."

"And say what? 'Did I ever tell you I wanna stick my dick into Kyle?'" Oh god. Did he really just say that right now? Stan shoots a panicked glance down at Kyle, who's thankfully still asleep, and lowers his voice. "Because I swear to god, dude, I've never thought that."

Kenny looks thoughtful. "Once," he says, "you told me that Wendy had 'beautiful fingers,' but that Kyle's were better. Which, okay, a little weird already. But I said, 'yeah, but at least Wendy's fingers might decide to give you a handjob sometime,' and you, right before you crashed on the rug, you said, 'Sure, but so could Kyle's.' I feel like there was really only one possible way for me to take that."

Stan frowns. He sure as hell doesn't remember having that conversation, but at this point, it doesn't mean that he doesn't believe Kenny's story. "Maybe I was joking," he tries. "I can joke. And, okay, you fucks all joke about it enough that it's not like I haven't tried to figure out if I'm missing something before, anyway."

"Yeah, and did you?" Kenny shoots back. "Figure anything out?"

"I…look, fine, there's been some…stuff," Stan admits, leaning forward to rest his forehead in his hands. He could keep trying to avoid this whole conversation, but Kenny is a persistent motherfucker and Stan doesn't think he'll be able hold out all night. "For example, there's the thing with, um, like, porn or whatever. Sometimes I notice things other than, you know, boobs, or, I mean, more generally, that is, the girl. Just…sometimes. But, like, okay. I guess I'm starting to think – maybe – that I'm not very good at telling the difference between my excuses for things and how I actually fucking feel."

"Oh, good, now we're getting somewhere," Kenny says. "Go on."

"What do you want me to say? Any thought I ever had I blamed on what was obviously a perfectly normal subconscious response to getting shit all the time from, oh, say, Cartman, or you, or – or lately even Wendy."

"I knew she said something to you!" Kenny cries. At Stan's look, he adds, "You were just acting so weird after she dumped you."

Stan rubs a hand over his face, pinches the bridge of his nose. Wendy dumping him is possibly the last thing he wants to talk about, next to this. He tries to think of something else to say and glances down at Kyle, passed out in his lap, and that's pretty much completely Stan's fault. "Am I a really shitty person?"

"What for?"

"Ugh, god. I don't fucking know." This time, Stan presses both palms into his eyes. He can't look at Kenny right now. "How long have you known?"

There's a pause, and then Stan feels a hand touch his shoulder. "A while."

"I see." Stan draws in a shaky breath and squeezes his eyes shut even tighter. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Aw, come on. Isn't it more fun this way?"

"No."

"Well, fine. But be honest. How well do you think that conversation would have gone?"

Being completely honest, Stan figures he probably would have punched something – likely Kenny – and cringes.

"Right, you win, point taken." He toys absently with the flap of Kyle's hat, and Kenny's gaze follows the motion. Stan flinches, halfway to snatching his hand back before he decides it's not worth it to bother.

"So, what're you going to do about this?" Kenny asks.

"I don't know. Get drunk?"

"'Atta boy," Kenny says, slapping him on the back.

"Jesus," Stan says, pushing Kenny's arm away. "Why are you so gung-ho about this anyway? I mean, so you figured me out, big fucking deal. Who says it's got to mean anything?"

Kenny cocks his head at him, giving him a considering look. "I don't think you're gonna get turned down, if that's what you're afraid of," he says.

As much as he'd like to pretend he doesn't care, Stan can't ignore the sudden increase in his heart rate at that statement. He swallows against the lump that's formed in his throat. "Oh, what do you know," Stan mutters.

Kenny smirks. "What can I say? I'm shockingly perceptive."

How are they possibly having this conversation? He's basically having a confession dragged out of him; what the hell is that? And why can Kenny handle all of this better than Stan?

It isn't fair. Stan still just feels a creeping sense of unease about the whole thing; he hates not being normal. Hates thinking about just how normal he isn't even more.

"But…dude. Isn't this weird? I mean, seriously, don't you think it's weird?"

"Stan," Kenny says, "this is South Park. Relatively speaking, this shit is on a, like, white-picket-fences level of normal."

Kenny pours himself another shot and downs it. Stan just watches in silence, trying to decide if he feels any better or not.

"Are you glad I came yet?" Kenny asks after a minute.

Stan shrugs.

"Hey," Kenny says. He nudges Stan's foot with his, looking at him out of the corner of his eye, but long enough for the gaze to be significant. "Some advice: don't think too much. Look, I'm gonna take off, but –" he pushes up off of the couch and hands Stan the rum, "here."

Stan accepts the bottle wordlessly. Kyle is still asleep in his lap, some of his hair peeking out from underneath the brim of his hat, and Stan sort of wants to touch it. He tugs experimentally at one curl, then lets it spring back into place.

"Oh, one more thing, Marsh," Kenny calls, his voice coming from the direction of the door. Stan twists around to look at him. "I gotta know – did you ever figure that picture out? You know, the one with the – " he lowers his voice conspiratorially, "ass."

Stan cracks maybe half a grin at that, which is at least something, and gives Kenny the finger. "You're an ass."

"And proud of it," Kenny agrees. He throws on his parka, winking as he pulls up the hood. "Good luck," he says, and a second later he's out the door, leaving Stan alone with Kyle and the steady sound of rain beating against the windowpanes.

After a moment, Stan looks down at Kyle, who stirs in his lap and presses his nose into Stan's thigh. Mr. Garrison, Stan thinks quickly. Cartman shitting out of his mouth.

If nothing else, Stan can say that he is glad that Kenny re-upped his alcohol stash. He hadn't thought he'd mind emptying out the last of it, but then, he hadn't thought that he'd be the one drinking any of it, either. Well, so much for that plan.

What Stan really needs right now is more to drink.

#

When Kyle finally wakes up, it's an hour later and Stan is on his way out of the bathroom.

"Holy shit, dude," Kyle says, when Stan almost runs into him in the doorway. "There you are! I was seriously about to start freaking out."

Standing there in the threshold of his bathroom, Stan regards his friend seriously. He puts a hand on each of his shoulders and frowns.

Kyle's cheeks are sleep-pink and his hat is askew. He blinks a couple of times, eyes slightly unfocused, though whether that's from the alcohol or having just woken, Stan can't tell.

"O…kay," Kyle says, twisting uncomfortably under Stan's palms – or maybe his gaze, it's hard to say. "Now you actually are kind of freaking me out."

"I," Stan declares solemnly, "dumped Kenny's rum down the sink."

This was a decision he had made after consuming about five more shots in the space of an hour, yes, but that's hardly relevant at the moment.

"Oh," Kyle says. "How come?"

Stan leans closer to Kyle, conspiratorial. Kyle pulls his face back an inch or two, eyebrows shooting up, but he doesn't pull too far away. That's good. "Are you still drunk?"

"I don't know," Kyle says, looking away. "Well, I mean, things are still kind of – " he makes an indistinct motion with his hand, " – you know, so, yeah, probably. Did you just brush your teeth? You smell, like, really minty."

"Yeah," Stan says. He did it mostly because he was all too aware of the smell of alcohol on his breath. It had been kind of gross. But Kyle is being totally diversionary. Stan has a point, which he is going to remember, and then he is going to say it. "Hey. I like you, dude."

Yes! That had been it.

"Huh?" Kyle actually does take a step back – and away – this time. Which, what? That had been a compliment. "I…like you too?"

Stan frowns. He'd sort of been hoping for a different response. Maybe Kyle misunderstood.

"No, like, dude," Stan says, because Kyle is clearly not getting it. Not that Stan is particularly articulate at the moment, but Kyle knows him better than anyone else and has years of experience in translating varying inflections of 'dude,' so. It's not like his words are entirely meaningless.

Except Kyle only looks frustrated and confused. He huffs out a breath, grabbing Stan by the wrist and pulling him out of the bathroom. "Come on," he mutters.

Stan lets himself get pulled. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the blur of old school photos passing by – still framed, still lining the hallway, even almost a decade after they were taken – and it occurs to him: life just never makes sense. It sure as hell didn't back then, and it's not like it's gotten any more comprehensible in the intervening years.

"Why'd you pour Kenny's rum out?" Kyle asks, fingers pressing warmly against Stan's skin.

Stan thinks about that before he answers. He feels himself being pushed down onto the couch a moment later, a sensation he registers only vaguely. Kyle sits down beside him. "Because, uh, drinking is bad?"

Wait, no. He'd prepared this answer and everything.

"You," Kyle says, poking Stan in the chest with hazy certainty, "you do not think that. You have been telling me the opposite of that all night. All of it. The whole night."

Stan thinks some more. Everything had seemed so clear when he had just been, like, introspecting, but now that he's trying to articulate it, it's grown muddled. "Okay, well. It's good for you. Or it was. Or it will be? I don't know. I just started drinking and then I thought, I don't need to drink to be around Kyle. So I stopped. And I got rid of it."

Stan nods. That totally made sense.

Kyle blinks. "Wait. Huh?"

Then again, maybe this will require some more hands-on convincing.

Stan grabs Kyle firmly by the shoulders. "Why," he asks seriously, "do people drink? Like, just, why, dude?"

"Fuck, I don't know," Kyle says. "You're asking the wrong person. Um. Okay. Well, in my case, there's, what? Peer pressure?"

Stan has completed a thorough and definitely accurate analysis of Kyle's drinking motives in the past half-hour and found that they are complex and interesting, much unlike the option that Kyle is offering up now.

"No," Stan says firmly. "You definitely did not drink tonight because of peer pressure. Anyway, that doesn't matter. That's not why I drink."

Kyle tilts his head to one side and frowns. "I know. I mean, I know that's not why you drink. I main – uh, I mean – main-t-ai – maint – Jesus! I still think it was peer pressure for me, though."

Who is Kyle to argue with Stan's super-definitely scientifically sound drunk ideas?

"No!" Stan says, louder this time. "I…will tell you why you drank tonight when you are ready to hear it. But. That's not the point. Yet. I think."

Kyle frowns harder, reaches up to his shoulder and rests his hand on one of Stan's. "Why do you drink?"

Oh, right. That had been his point.

"Because!" Stan shouts triumphantly, lifting his unoccupied hand to point a finger wildly in Kyle's face. "I am a liar."

Kyle looks puzzled, wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes and across the bridge of his nose. "So…you don't drink?"

"No, no, no." Stan waves him off. "I don't mean that. I mean I am when I'm not. Just – you have no idea, dude."

Distantly, Stan's sober self is aware of and very uncomfortable with this fact, but his sober self has more or less been being a piece of shit for years, too, and it needs to stop.

"I really don't," Kyle agrees, eyes green and confused. Mostly green.

"Okay, so. It's like this," Stan says. "Before you drink, you think, hey, everything sucks. Or not everything, necessarily, but, like, there's a lot of shit in South Park that totally blows."

Kyle nods cautiously, like he realizes he can't not accept this as truth, but he's not quite sure he knows – or likes, maybe – the direction Stan could be heading with this.

Stan holds Kyle's gaze as steady as he can manage, trying to telepathically tether Kyle to it so he can't break their eye contact. He licks his lips. "And then you drink. And after, you know, after you're wasted or whatever, you realize that everything only sucked because you let it suck. Like, life would suck way less if people were honest. Except fucking nobody – nobody – is ever honest. And I am – I am the worst. I am like – that, that book we had to read. Hold on. Remember? Rye catching…fields? Fuckin'…phonies."

"Holden Caulf – aulf – cough-field?" Kyle translates, with considerably more success than Stan had been having.

"Yes!" Stan cries, a flurry of erratic pointing underscoring this acknowledgement. "Dude, what was, like, the literary point of that story?"

The deepest analysis they'd managed in English class had been that in a modern day cinematic reimagining, Robert Pattinson would have been all wrong for the role, damn it, you little bastards.

"Transference?" Kyle guesses, enunciating the word slowly enough that he manages not to stumble over it. "Like, fixating on how everybody else is lying about who they are? When really the, you know, the main guy is totally doing the same thing. And he's maybe even worse about it than the rest of them."

"Right, exactly," Stan nods. "So – so, you know. I drink because I'm cynical and I'm lying. That book guy should've tried it."

"I think he did," Kyle says. "It didn't fix anything."

Stan frowns. Yeah, that sounds about right. Except…except. "It doesn't usually. But I think maybe it can, as long as you remember how it feels to, like, not lie to yourself, even…after." He lowers his voice, leans forward a fraction. "I don't ever remember, dude. This time I have to, though. Okay?"

Kyle's mouth twists. He looks like he wants to pull away, but he doesn't; if anything, his hand closes more firmly around the hand Stan has laid on his shoulder. "You're sort of weirding me out, dude."

Stan's eyes try very, very hard to be serious. "I am being philisopilal," he explains. "I mean, um. Deep! Hey, I think we're finally getting somewhere." He pauses, takes a breath. "Can I ask you a question?"

Kyle huffs. His cheeks are pink. "What d'you call that?"

Stan ignores this. Typical Broflovskian sarcastic deflection technique. "What are you so afraid of?"

Kyle looks at him warily. "What do you mean?"

His eyes are wide, unblinking seas of green, green, green. His lower lip trembles and Stan, uninhibited and honest, reaches out and touches it with his thumb.

What does Stan mean? Kyle is scared of something right now, even.

"You keep saying," Stan says softly, moving the pad of his thumb to the corner of Kyle's mouth, his cheek, his jaw, "that you think you're going to do something stupid."

Kyle's gaze has attached itself to Stan's hand, following its every move as if connected by an invisible string. His breathing has grown noticeably louder. Shallower. Rougher. "I…did. I – I mean, but – I don't. Want to talk about it, that is."

"So don't," Stan says. He didn't plan what to do next, so he does this thing he's been wanting to do all night – except, really, he's been wanting to do it for years – and reaches over and takes off Kyle's hat, gently, and slides it onto his own head. The fur lining tickles his ears.

Kyle stretches a hand out to tug one of the flaps, but he doesn't pull it away, just down, more securely onto Stan's head. He doesn't look happy, though.

"Dude!" Kyle leans away and tugs self-consciously at his own hair. "Give it back."

Instead, Stan rests his hand against Kyle's jaw, cupping it briefly. "I don't wanna," he says. He slides his hand upward and captures a lock of Kyle's hair, glinting gold in the room's dim light. "You know your hair's not dumb, right?"

The days Stan can see Kyle's hair, rogue curls rebelling against the hat's assault, he always remembers when, where, how the light fell on it: like he's got some sort of photographic memory for just this particular thing. Soft tendrils at the nape of Kyle's neck. Bangs poking out from under the brim when he needs a haircut. It feels like a creepy thing to notice, even now, which is why he doesn't mention it. But it's like – it's the one part of himself that Kyle is always, always hiding, and Stan, who knows everything about Kyle (or at least should, because they're best friends) – had wanted to have that, too.

Kyle shoves at his shoulder. "Stop fucking with me, dude. I'm – Stan, I'm serious."

"I'm not fucking with you," Stan says. "Kyle, I swear, I'm not. I wouldn't."

"Okay, sure," Kyle says, and then suddenly he's laughing, pressing his face into Stan's shoulder and gripping his elbow tightly to keep from falling over completely. When his breathing starts to slow down and even out, he lifts his head, nose brushing against Stan's earlobe. "I like – your nose," Kyle says, still slightly breathless.

"My nose?" Stan wrinkles it, crosses his eyes to look down at it.

"I mean – your ear." Kyle presses his nose into Stan's neck and Stan shivers, thinks that he really likes Kyle's nose, however big Kyle likes to complain that it is.

"Holy – holy shit, dude," Stan gasps.

Touching Kyle had always seemed comfortable and normal when they were kids, but at some point it had gotten weird, uncomfortable. He'd figured that it had been because they were getting older, that guys just didn't touch each other that much, and it was the adjustment to that, or puberty, or whatever making it feel wrong. Except now that strange strained feeling isn't there anymore; all of his inhibitions are stripped away, and it's just Stan and Kyle, and every touch that passes between them is suddenly electric to Stan.

Kyle pulls away. "I'm sorry," he says, looking worried, his posture defensive. He squeezes his eyes shut. "I – see, this is what I meant, dude. I'm not trying to be weird, I just…fuck. I knew that I was going to do something stupid. I told you."

"Wait," Stan says, breath hitching, something warm sparking in his stomach. "You can't be serious. Like, all this time, you said 'stupid,' and what you really meant was – "

"Don't say it!" Kyle hisses. "I'm not – I'm fucking not, okay?"

Stan's hand finds its way to Kyle's knee, his palm warming with the touch. "Wait, but – you're gay?"

"No!" Kyle shouts, blushing furiously red, but as the blood drains out of the tips of his ears and into his cheeks, the embarrassment quickly shifts to anger. He narrows his eyes at Stan. "Or whatever, who fucking even knows. It's all bullshit, anyway. I never would have thought about any of this if you hadn't, like, said stuff." He reaches up as if to adjust his hat, hand hovering uncertainly in the empty space nest to his ear for a moment, then rubs at the back of his neck in frustration. "God! And I know you didn't mean any of it anyway, so…just, fuck you, dude." He turns away to glare at the long abandoned bottle of Jack Daniels. "And, and all of this shit, too, for making me think….Jesus Christ. I can't even."

Kyle slumps back on the couch, burying his face in his hands. Stan leans over him and frowns. "What'd I say?"

"Oh, who cares," Kyle says, voice muffled behind his hands. "Most of it was fucking years ago, anyway. I was a total retard for letting it mean anything in the first place, and I'm especially one for even thinking about it, like, still."

Stan kneels on the couch, the cushion sagging under his weight, and wraps his fingers around Kyle's wrists. "Dude, I don't know what I said, okay? But, like, if it's anything like what I'm thinking now…" Stan tugs lightly on Kyle's wrists, pulling them away from his face. Kyle doesn't resist, but behind his hands, his eyes are tightly shut, and he makes no move to open them.

"If it's anything like what I've been thinking all night, you have no idea what you're thinking," Kyle says. He extracts himself from Stan's grasp, pulling his arms gently free of Stan's fingers.

"Dude, no," Stan insists. "I'm thinking, like, so much more clearly than normal. For example, I totally figured out the reason you wouldn't ever drink around me, and that'd been stumping me for a while, dude. I mean, all night, even."

Kyle huffs, waving a dismissive hand in Stan's direction. "Yeah, right," he says. "I heard your guess. It totally sucked, dude."

Stan shakes his head, feeling more certain now than ever. "I don't think so." He maneuvers across the couch to get closer to Kyle, who's wedged in the corner between the armrest and the seatback, and places a knee between Kyle's legs. Kyle's eyes snap open, but he doesn't try to pull away any more. "Hey, but even if I'm wrong," Stan continues, placing an arm on either side of Kyle and gripping the sofa for support, leaning in close, "if I do this, your thing probably can't be any worse by comparison."

Their noses are practically touching. Stan's shirt is sliding off Kyle's shoulder again, a couple of his longer curls brushing against the pale skin exposed there, and Kyle's hat is on Stan's head. Stan reaches a hand up to adjust it and almost laughs at the absurdity of it all.

"You're just going to regret this in the morning," Kyle protests. His voice is ragged and desperate and Stan's stomach twists. Kyle's eyes flutter shut, though, and he leans closer to Stan.

"I don't regret it now," Stan says softly, close enough now that his lips brush against Kyle's as he speaks. "So, like. Just don't let me forget that."

"Stan," Kyle says, a strangled impatient plea, and then he closes any remaining distance between them and crushes his mouth to Stan's, tangling his fingers in the hair at the nape of Stan's neck, pulling, and it's furious and frantic and not at all gentle. It's incredibly, incredibly hot.

Stan reaches up to cup Kyle's jaw, fingers grasping it roughly, because holy shit he does want this, he really fucking does. And still, as sudden and mind-blowing as this is it still isn't enough; he wants more, needs more.

"Fuck," Stan mutters, pulling back slightly, resting his forehead against Kyle's. The room is spinning around him, a dizzying, unbelievable feeling. "This is okay, right? This is like, you're okay with this, aren't you?"

"Jesus, Stan," Kyle says, the tips of his fingers digging hard into Stan's neck. "Just, you know, shut up, okay?"

They kiss again and Kyle's teeth scrape against his bottom lip, his breath tasting like alcohol and Tic-Tacs.

Where did Kyle get Tic-Tacs, anyway? Where did he learn to kiss? And, like, why the fuck did Stan ever think this was a bad idea in the first place? Trying to rationalize his attraction to Kyle had been, or is, at least in this particular moment, fairly obviously the biggest waste of time Stan has ever managed.

Kyle's thumbs press into the hollows of Stan's hips and Stan stretches himself out on the couch and rolls them over, pulling Kyle tighter to him, on top of him. His tongue swipes over Stan's lips, and when Stan licks them himself a second later, he tastes the bitter flavor of whiskey.

Shit.

Stan is hard. He's spent so much time not admitting to himself how much he wants this, and now that he can feel it – he wants it. He wants it so much.

Goddammit.

"Wait, dude, look," Stan says, strangled. He leans back on his elbows, whimpering when Kyle's fingers skim underneath the hem of his T-shirt. But he needs to say this, can't let himself get distracted again. "You're – you're drunk."

"So what?" Kyle snaps impatiently, fingers drifting to Stan's waistband. "So are you."

Kyle's hands slide down to Stan's belt buckle and it takes everything Stan has to do it, but he reaches down to still Kyle's hands before he manages to slide the tail of his belt free of the loops on his jeans. "Jesus Christ, dude. I don't want you to regret this in the morning, either. I would be, like, the shittiest friend ever if we – look, I'm not gonna, fucking, like, take advantage of you, okay? You made me promise."

Kyle fists his hands in the front of Stan's shirt, hissing out a breath. "Goddammit, Stan. Don't fucking – don't jerk me around, all right? What d'you even want?"

"I – you," Stan says, and maybe it's only because he's drunk and consequences never seem to exist when he's drunk, but it's not some wild earth-shattering thing, admitting that. It's just Stan, Kyle, and…something real. Which feels weird, sure, but it's strangely easy, too.

Kyle's fingers twist painfully in the fabric of Stan's T-shirt. A second later, Stan has Kyle's tongue in his mouth, the warm weight of Kyle pressing down on top of him. His hips buck up, and god, Kyle is hard, too.

Stan's chest aches with how much he wants this, with knowing Kyle wants this too, but…but, god.

"Dude, dude." Stan puts his hands on Kyle's hips, staying him, desperately trying to hold him at some kind of distance so that Stan can think. "God. We can't. I want to, dude, Kyle – but, I mean. It'd be so bad if I don't remember it, and you – you shouldn't yet, either."

Kyle hisses in frustration, burying his nose in the juncture between Stan's shoulder and neck. "Yeah, and what about not doing this d'you think is going to help you remember?" He raises his head, just enough to look Stan in the eye. "Just – Stan, you have no fucking idea how much, like, effort I've put into not ever thinking about this. It was really fucking hard, okay? I don't think I can keep doing it anymore."

"Okay," Stan says. "I, like, kinda don't want you to, anyway. It's just, if we do this right now – I'd feel so fucking, like, dirty. I mean, this wasn't supposed to be a, a – seduction."

He feels warmth rising in his cheeks, face reddening, unable to shake the latent guilt at the notion that maybe it had been. Except he totally hadn't known it, so objectively there can't be any way it actually counts.

"I'm way more sober than I was earlier," Kyle tries. "Like, I'm practically not even, uh…impaired."

But his eyes are glassy and his movements are slightly off, and Stan Marsh knows a drunk person when he sees one. Plus, Stan himself is also definitely, definitely a drunk person. One who has forgotten nearly every moment of his life he's been wasted for, at that.

"Hey, hold on!" Stan says suddenly, sliding out from underneath Kyle and jumping up off the couch. "Dude. I have an idea."

He hurries into the kitchen, knocking his elbow on the doorframe on the way in, but the twinge of pain at the contact is dull and he hardly notices it. There's a – yes, there, in the drawer under the microwave – and Stan opens the drawer, rifles though its contents (Ziploc bags, chip clips, expired coupons) until he finds what he's looking for. He navigates his way back to the living room, more carefully this time, and holds his find out to Kyle.

"A marker?" Kyle says dubiously.

"Uh, this isn't just any marker. This is a permanent marker."

"Which would be great if we were drawing dicks and mustaches on each other's faces, I'm sure, but…wait, we're not, are we?" Kyle asks, a hint of panic creeping into his voice.

"No, dude." Stan uncaps the pen, sticking the lid on the end and offering it to Kyle, who accepts it wordlessly. Stan holds his arm out, wrist up. "Okay, so. Just write something. It's permanent, right, so it won't rub off or anything. And, uh, even if I don't remember shit in the morning, you can be like, 'Oh, well, just look at your arm, Stan, that should explain things.'"

Kyle considers this for a moment, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth. He stands up from the sofa. "All right," he says. He reaches out with one hand to grasp Stan's wrist, resting the cap of the pen against his lips, looking down at Stan's arm thoughtfully. He worries the cap between his teeth for a moment, then tugs Stan's arm closer, brings the marker down and begins to write.

The felt tip is soft and the ink is cold, just a little, against Stan's skin. He shivers.

"Hey," Kyle says, fingers tightening around Stan's wrist. "Hold still. I don't want to mess up."

"Okay," Stan says. He looks at the little frown of concentration on Kyle's face, feels his stomach twist because he really wants to kiss it. He waits until Kyle pulls the pen away and caps it, then leans in and does: a chaste peck at the corner of Kyle's mouth because Stan just can't help himself.

Kyle blushes. "I couldn't think of anything to write that wasn't, like, super corny," he says.

Stan looks down at his forearm. Some of the letters are starting to bleed together a little, but the message is still decipherable: You really are quite good-looking, Stan. It's corny maybe, sure, but Kyle's probably discovered that big romantic gestures – like writing a girl a song and serenading her beneath her window, for example – aren't really his thing, anyway. Stan smiles.

Kyle fidgets, tugging at his ear, which has gone red. "Dude, I've always totally sucked at this kind of thing."

"Hey, whatever, I'm, like, totally flattered and shit. Here, give me your arm, I'll do you," Stan says, waving at Kyle, who obliges and tosses the marker to him. Stan pulls the cap off with his teeth and begins to form careful letters on Kyle's arm, the dark ink looking like an obscene smudge against the paleness of Kyle's skin. He knows exactly what to write.

When he finishes, though, seeing his message glaring back at him from Kyle's arm, he feels a sudden tightness in his throat. "'Kay," he says around the pen cap, averting his eyes. He takes the lid out of his mouth and sticks it back on the marker.

Kyle holds his arm up to his face, considering it beneath long, pale lashes. "Dude," he says. "Really?"

Stan shrugs. "Uh, yeah. I mean, but you know that."

Kyle just laughs nervously. "Oh. I mean, yeah, well, I knew either that or, uh I dunno. That you thought I was a piece of shit."

Stan frowns. "Wait, what does that mean?" he asks. "When have I ever said that?"

Kyle tries to wave the comment off, but he still won't make eye contact with Stan. "Um, it's been a while. You know what, never mind. It doesn't matter anymore."

There's something he's not saying. Stan doesn't know what it is, but he knows he needs to try to reassure him anyway.

"Hey, okay," Stan says, capturing Kyle's arm again. "If it'll make you feel any better, here."

He pops the lid off the marker again and adds, beneath the 'I love you': NOT a piece of shit. He underlines 'NOT' twice.

Kyle looks down at his arm, a strange smile forming on his face. "You know, it's funny," he says.

"What is?"

Kyle looks up at him. "Remember when we were ten, and you were drunk, you know, that first time?"

Stan looks back.

"Right, no, of course you don't." Kyle collapses heavily onto the couch. He looks up at Stan with wide, earnest eyes. "But, I mean. That's what you said, that time. And I spent, like, eight fucking years trying to make sense out of it, dude."

Stan steps over to the couch and settles himself next to Kyle. "Which thing did I say?"

Kyle drums his fingers against the armrest. "The second thing," he says, "and then the first. And then the second thing, and then, uh, I walked away. And then, um. You said the first thing again."

He looks at Stan warily, bracing for a reaction.

"Oh," Stan says. He wishes he had something more profound to say, but his mind is all foggy. It's nearly four in the morning, he realizes, when he looks down at his watch, realizing a second later that the thing he's feeling right now is exhaustion. He rests his head on Kyle's shoulder and allows his eyes to fall shut for a moment. "I'm sorry. I kind of thought everything was a piece of shit back then. You were like, the least shitty thing there was, though. If anybody was a piece of shit, it was definitely me."

Kyle yawns and rests his head on top of Stan's. "Nah, dude. You're my best friend."

It's so matter-of-fact, the way he says it, that Stan can't help but grin. "Best friends are immune from being pieces of shit?" he asks.

"Totally," Kyle says, yawning again. He settles himself against Stan on the couch, a couple fingers finding their way underneath Stan's collar. "Good night, dude."

#

Stan wakes up at an obscenely early hour, alone on the couch, his neck and left wrist both bent at an unnatural and extremely uncomfortable angle.

It's dawn, or something like it; if Stan looks out the window, he can see a grayish, barely-there glow rising up from behind the mountains. There's no rain anymore, just residual water dripping from the gutters and ankle-high puddles scattered along the sidewalk. It's eerily quiet.

Stan stands up and stretches, feeling a stab of pain in his neck at the movement. There's a dull, consistent throbbing between his eyes, but it's hardly the worst hangover he's had. He runs his tongue over his teeth and finds them smoother than he'd expect after a night of drinking. Must've brushed his teeth right before he passed out, then.

His head feels strangely heavy and warm and Stan reaches a hand up to touch it. He's wearing a hat. He runs his fingers over the fabric, along the seams, and down to one of the flaps. Not just any hat, then: Kyle's hat.

Unsurprisingly, he has no idea how that got there. He squeezes his eyes shut. Okay, so. What's the last thing he remembers?

He remembers Kyle coming over, dripping wet from the rain; remembers getting Kyledrunk, but – obviously Stan started drinking at some point, too, he just doesn't have a clue as to why. He feels around in his pocket for his cell phone. It wouldn't exactly be a new thing to find a slew of ridiculous and embarrassing texts in his outbox following a night of drinking.

There's nothing, though, except for one incoming call from Kenny, received a little before midnight. Stan looks at the screen for a moment, trying to decide what to do next, wonders if Kenny had had anything important to say, and then – oh, shit.

No, okay, no. Stan reaches up and pinches the bridge of his nose.

He doesn't have any distinct memories of what occurred after he started drinking, but he has a feeling that whatever it was that happened might have worked its way into his dreams somehow. Because now that he thinks about it, the dream he was having right before he woke up had involved a lot of kissing and touching and…well, it probably hadn't happened on Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride, but otherwise Stan is about 97% sure that he made out with Kyle last night.

Stan glances behind him at the empty couch. Christ. He didn't scare Kyle off completely, did he?

He walks over to the foot of the stairs and stands there for a moment, staring up them like they're Everest or something, then turns around to look at the welcome mat by the front door. There's one pair of shoes there, his own. Kyle's are nowhere to be found.

Stan shifts his gaze over and to the right, to the coat tree standing to the side of the door, and sees that Kyle's jacket, at least, is still there. He takes a couple of steps and presses his nose against the little square window on the front door, but the front porch is empty.

If Kyle put his shoes on, Stan figures he's probably outside, but if he left his coat, he probably hasn't gone far. Stan slides his own shoes on and heads for the back door.

Kyle is sitting on the back porch railing, facing out toward the backyard and the mountains beyond it, the faint line of orange forming on the horizon.

Stan lets the door bang shut behind him. He clears his throat and rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck, tries and fails to think of something adequate to say. "Hey."

It's the most worthless greeting possible at this point, probably. Stan braces himself for Kyle's response.

Kyle's voice is soft. "Hey." He doesn't turn around, just kicks his dangling feet a couple of times. "So. I guess this is what a hangover feels like."

Stan crosses the porch, the damp wood creaking beneath his feet with each step. He leans against one of the porch's support beams, a foot or two from where Kyle is sitting, and gazes up at the awning above them. "Yeah, well," Stan says, mouth twisting. "I'm sorry."

Kyle snorts. "What for?"

"I don't know," Stan says, picking at a piece of splintered wood on the railing. "For, like, making you do anything you didn't want to do, I guess."

"You…didn't." Kyle looks over at him. "Um. What do you remember?"

Stan coughs. "Uh, well, you know. Not a lot. Stuff. I – did we like – ?" He waves a hand between the two of them, unable to get the words out.

Kyle drums his knuckles on the railing and swings his legs a little harder. He doesn't look at Stan. "If you mean 'did we make out?' Then yeah, that happened."

"Oh, okay," Stan says. He nods once. "Good."

Kyle shoots him a sidelong look, eyebrows raising. "Good?"

Stan's stomach lurches dangerously. "Well, I mean, unless you don't think so," he says, laughing nervously. He reaches up to brush some hair out of his eyes, but his hand finds Kyle's hat instead. He takes it off and looks at it. "Hey, come here."

Kyle gives Stan a hesitant look, but he slides along the railing anyway. He looks down at his own hands. "I guess I might not have, like, minded or whatever," he says.

The tips of Stan's ears grow warm. "Well, maybe I didn't either," he says. He holds onto the flaps of Kyle's hat, one in each hand, and leans forward, carefully sliding it back into its rightful place on Kyle's head.

Before he can pull away, though, Kyle catches Stan's arm and twists it around. He looks down at it intently, like he's reading some secret code in the freckles or something. "Huh," Kyle says.

Stan's breath catches. "What?"

Kyle twists Stan's arm so that he can look at it, and it turns out that there actually are words written there, after all. The handwriting is definitely Kyle's. Stan reads it and can't help letting a slow smile break out on his face. It's maybe a little lame, but really, whatever. "You think so? I mean, you're not bad yourself or anything, either. Did I write anything on you?"

Kyle smiles uncertainly and touches a finger to the inside of his own arm. "Yeah. You, ha, um…love me, apparently." He holds out his arm and shrugs with one shoulder, as if to indicate that he's in no way responsible for the words written there.

It's not like Stan could argue that he was, anyway. He recognizes his own handwriting when he sees it.

Seeing the words written out like that, undeniably from his own hand, Stan also realizes that there really isn't any point in trying to deny it, whether to Kyle or to himself.

"Yeah, I…yeah. What do you think?" Stan feels a little bit like he might throw up.

"I think it's weird, dude."

Stan's stomach sinks. He doesn't know if he can even speak through the tightness in his throat. "Oh," he manages to croak out.

Kyle pulls on the flaps of his ushanka to tug the hat down. He finds Stan's gaze and holds it. "Maybe I decided I don't exactly mind weird."

"Oh," Stan says, stomach uncoiling, and he feels a warm, pleasant sensation spread through his body. He hoists himself up on the railing next to Kyle. Their shoulders end up just barely touching, and Stan rests a tentative hand on Kyle's back. "So, uh. What should we do about that, do you think?"

Kyle puts a hand on Stan's shoulder.

Looking out at the distant mountains and the orange-pink sky above it, they watch the sun rise.

- fin

#

A/N: Um, okay, some concluding comments. As this is both my first South Park fic and was, at the time I started it, my first attempt at writing in general in a few years, I had absolutely no intention of letting it get this long. Hopefully it managed to be some kind of coherent (or at least enjoyable) story anyway, though considering how little actually happened in so many words, that possibility is pretty dubious. Regardless, if you made it all the way through, I hope you liked it! Feedback is the most amazing thing in the world and nothing makes me happier than reviews, so please let me know what you thought!