I Sing Songs About the Past
A South Park FanFic
Oneshot
"Kyle. I love you."
I froze up. It wasn't like I didn't expect this soon, but it was still pretty random.
I should have known it would be around now. I mean, apart from that one little break, we'd been together for three years now, and he'd never said it.
When I was five, and we met on the first day of kindergarten, I never would have thought we'd grow up to be together...in this way.
"Hey, I'm Stan."
I looked up from where I was playing with my blocks on the floor. All the kids in there were bigger than me, and this one was no exception.
"Kyle." I answered, looking back at my blocks. I didn't want someone else making fun of me.
"I like your hat."
That suprised me. My hands reached up to tug at my hat flaps. Even back then I had a little Jew-fro. Nowhere near as huge as it was now, but still, I'll bet I had the biggest hair in the place.
"I like yours." I told him. It wasn't a lie. I wanted the little red poofball.
"Thanks." He sat down beside me and picked up two blocks, beginning to make a tower beside mine. "Wana switch?"
I was noddding before I could stop myself. He pulled off his hat. He only had a few curls of ebony hair back then. When I didn't move, he took off my hat too.
"So fluffy!" Came an excited, muffled voice. And then someone threw themselves at my hair.
It was Kenny. He was an outcast too. He played alone. Recently, he'd been joined by the new kid. A fat kid, with cute chubby cheeks.
After Kenny attacked my hair, we had all laughed. I couldn't believe I could still remember this, but I did. Stan was running his fingers through his hair nervously. The words had barely escaped from his lips when he started looking nervous.
I smiled, and he looked a little more hopeful.
I remembered that look.
Around three years ago. We were hanging out at Stan's and things had gotten quiet.
I had known by then for a long time. That I was gay, I mean. I had also known that I liked Stan. I wasn't in love with him or anything, not yet, but I wouldn't mind if he felt for me.
I looked up from the floor. I'd been twiddling the analogues on Stan's XBox controller. He was watching me. I blushed.
"What's up?" I asked, looking back down.
"You can come sit up here, you know."
I obliged, sitting beside him on the bed. Only now, I had nothing to occupy my hands, and so my fingers started drumming. On the bed, on my knees, on my hat.
Stan caught my wrists, and the sudden touch made me jump. I'd been lost in my own world, but now my world consisted of only Stan's eyes. They were amazing. Deep pools of blue. Not typical blue, baby blue, but dark blue, navy.
"Kyle." Stan said. He always did that. Before he said something, he said my name. As a seperate sentance. Like it was important that it was me he was talking to, like he had to establish that.
"What?" I asked. I wasn't nervous. I had no clue what was going on. I was just wondering why he hadn't let go of my wrists.
Then he kissed me.
It was just a small kiss, just one to let me know what was going on. I jumped up, backing into the wall.
"W-What the-?"
"Shit! Shit,shit,shot! I'm sorry!" Stan cried, his hands over his face. He stood up, too. His hands began to run through his hair, pushing his poof-ball to the floor.
My mind had needed time to adjust. But now that it had clicked, and I'd realized that Stan must feel for me, a huge smile was starting to form.
Stan saw the smile. Stan looked hopeful.
I strode across the room and allowed him to take me in his arms.
I wonder why he hadn't said it that day, that day we admitted to eachother what we both already knew. Or maybe on the dates we went on after. Even when we had been sitting watching TV together. Why now? Why wait three years.
Thinking it over, it wasn't like he hadn't tried before.
Stan dropped the last box on the floor and turned to me, dusting off his hands.
"All done. Now all we have to do is unpack." He laughed. Stan and I weren't nervous around eachother anymore. It had been a year since that first kiss, and we were moving into our first apartment. Together.
I laughed too, looking around at the many boxes, stacked at random points around the small rooms. There were no doors, only archways, so I could see everything from the centre of the living room.
"Kyle."
There he went, doing it again. By now, I had learned to listen when he did that. I stopped staring around and looked him in the eyes. I thought he was going to give a speech about how this was our new home/new life...which I was kind of pissed about. Wasn't I the one with the extensive vocabulary, the one who had the capacity to keep a speech going? I was always the one with the speech, and Stan always the one to listen.
But I listened anyway.
"I think I...I mean, I know I-I-"
A knock at the door. Stan jumped. I frowned and glanced at my watch.
"Who the heck...?" I wondered to myself. I walked down the hall to the door. In truth, I was a little relieved. I knew what Stan had been about to say, and I wasn't fully ready for it. Yes, I knew it had been a year, and of course I knew I loved Stan, but...Saying it was such a scary thought. That meant he knew how I felt and could easily break my heart if he felt like it.
When I opened the door, I was surprised to find Kenny standing there. His hood was down and he was rubbing the back of his neck, like he was nervous.
"Hey, Kyle." He grinned at me.
"Oh, hey, Ken, what's up?"
"Was wondering if you needed any help?" He asked. He brought his hand from the back of his neck. Some red substance covered his fingers. I breathed in through my teeth, but turned away, hiding it from him.
"Yeah, sure, come on in." I told him, stepping aside.
"Can I..." He looked nervous again. He must have seen me notice his injury. "Can I use your bathroom first?"
I pointed him in the right direction, told him the toilet paper was in a labelled box. He headed down the hall, swerving to avoid boxes. The back of his bright hoodie was stained dark with blood.
I shivered, picking my own route through the boxes to join Stan back in the living room.
"Who was it?" He asked.
"Just Kenny. He's gona help us unpack. If you don't mind?" I asked sheepishly. We lived together now, I supposed I had to ask.
"Yeah. Yeah sure."
"Oh, and Stan?" I turned and took his hand. "Don't mention his jacket."
"Why?" Came Stan's reply. But then Kenny entered the living room, eyeing the boxes. Stan took a hitching breath of his own, but Kenny ignored him and threw his bloodstained jacket on top of a pile.
"So what's first?" He grinned, turning to us with his hands on his hips.
I shivered, and Stan's eyes narrowed. "Kyle, you don't have to say anything. I just...I thought you were ready to say it by now, I mean...I've been ready for a while."
I nodded, then I shook my head. "No, Stan, it's not that, it's just..." I looked around, and it felt like the first time. Only this time, there was no Kenny to interrupt us. And all the boxes were mine. Stan's stuff was already set up. Had been for a while.
"I know. Maybe I should have waited."
I shook my head again. I left the boxes and pulled Stan to the sofa. And all the while in my head, the guilt was stabbing away, making me remember.
Stan was never around. I understood that I was-technically- the woman in the relationship right now, and that he had to work to keep up rent, keep us fed, stuff like that. But I was lonely, cooped up in the apartment all day. My only companion other than Stan was Kenny.
He came over often. Mostly because he fought with his parents often. A lot of the time, he had an injury. When he first started coming over, he would hide them from me and go clean them up in the bathroom, but now he wasn't so shy. He told me what had happened and how he got them, he let me help clean him up.
I became like a mother to him, or something. I'd feed him, do his laundry. He didn't look like the poor kid anymore. He just looked a little rough, what with all the black eyes. But he looked well cared for other than that.
One night, he came over looking particularly worse for wear, and you could tell he knew it because he'd broken out his old parka and zipped it right to the top.
As I was cleaning him up, I found myself telling him how much I loved having him around. How lonely I was when he wasn't.
And then he kissed me.
I don't know why I didn't stop it right then. I guess I was too lonely, plus I couldn't deny what I felt for Kenny. But it was never love. Never.
I was stupid to think we could make something like that work. Really naive. Eventually, Stan caught us. It was in the worst possible way, too. We were in bed together. Our shirts were off. Kenny had just unbuckled his belt. It was obvious we weren't just heatedly making out. No, we were going all the way, and Stan knew that.
Kenny left without a fuss. He looked a little flustered, but he told Stan he was sorry, and that he'd call in the morning, before he shut the front door.
The sound echoed in the silence he left behind.
It was just me. And Stan. Me, shirtless on the bed, tears in my eyes, an apology already on my lips but going nowhere. And Stan, standing in the doorway with a bar of my favourite kind of chocolate dangling in his hand.
I pulled on my shirt and gathered some more in a bag. I didn't bother putting on socks. I just shoved my feet in my shoes and left, knowing that he wanted to see the back of me as quickly as possible.
He didn't try to stop me, and I suppose that's what cinched it for me. It was over.
"I never wanted you to leave, you know."
Stan's voice reverberated off the walls of the living room. His arms were around me, stroking my stomach as I lay heavily on his side, my back to him.
"I wanted to stop you. I wanted to tell you to forget about it and just give you your freaking chocolate." He told me.
"Then why didn't you?" I asked.
"Because I wanted you to be happy. I assumed you were following Kenny."
I shook my head violently, my carefully contained curls coming loose and bouncing around my head. "I never saw him again after that. Not once. We talked on the phone. Told eachother how sorry we were. But I never saw him."
Stan wrapped his arms around me a little tighter. "I know. I saw you around, and you were never with him. That and the fact you looked so sad gave me hope that maybe you still loved me even a little."
"Not a little. A lot." I turned to him.
"I freaking love you, Stan Marsh. Always have...Always will."
