Originally written for the South Park Big Bang 2014 with lots of amazing art by Burnawayy, Kennymcshamrock, Marie, and nilvisk; there's a link on my profile page. Cover image by Kennymcshamrock.

NOTES: Stan is a handful of months from his 30th birthday, and hates his life and being an adult. Once a year he gets away from it and reconnects with the one thing he still has left of his childhood, the only time in his life when things made sense: Kyle. And even that connection is fading away. He would give anything to go back to those simpler days, fix a few mistakes they both made along the way, and most of all relive it and pay more attention this time. One strange night, he gets the chance to. Chapters are numbered out of order for a reason.

Beta: howtodisappearcompletely
Character(s): Stan, Kyle, Kenny, Cartman, Tweek, Craig, Butters, Sheila, Ike
Rating: PG-13 / T
Warnings: Drug use, three "off-screen" character deaths.

9

When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look, but it was gone,
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown, and the dream is gone…
(Roger Waters)

Another meteor streaked across the star filled sky, dropping toward the pines ringing Stark's Pond before disappearing in a brilliant flash of light. Stan looked over at his once super best friend just as Kyle used his ridiculous broken Bic lighter to light a cigarette. A two-inch flame roared in Kyle's face. Stan winced as he looked away (too late) from the glare.

"Ow, Kyle!" Stan said, staring at the ground and into the brilliant afterimage that hellish flame had seared into his retina, trying and failing not to sound genuinely annoyed. "There goes my night vision for a while!"

"Oh, yeah." Stan heard Kyle exhale. He couldn't see anything around him, only that garish snapshot of Kyle's face filling his vision in sickly green and violet; blinking brightened it momentarily and he squeezed his eyes shut, hard. "Sorry about that, dude."

Stan bit down an angry retort and settled back into his chaise lounge, staring off past his Nikes. His vision slowly began to return; across the pond, pine trees rose above their own weak inverted reflections.

Kyle took another drag on his cigarette. The smell of tobacco filled the night while Stan tried to get past his annoyance. He couldn't see the stars, and Kyle had completely missed one of the brightest meteors he had seen in years. And he was being his usual antisocial, dickish self.

Then again, it had been years since one of their annual campouts to watch August's Perseid meteor showers had been anything even approaching what could be called 'fun'.

An uneasy silence descended while Kyle finished his cigarette. Stan could begin to see the brightest stars again, but there'd been no new meteors. More and more, he was realizing this would probably be their last campout together, his final link to a past he remembered fondly finally being broken. He finally spoke.

"I'm gonna get a beer." He swung his leg around, putting both feet on the ground, preparing to stand up. "You want one?"

He knew what Kyle's answer would be even before he finished asking the question. "I want to smoke another joint."

Stan looked toward the ground, Kyle's face in sickly green and neon yellow and that hellish flame still hovering just above the dirt and pine needles under his chair. "We only have one left." He really wanted to be able to get high first thing tomorrow morning, 'wake and bake' with Kyle one last time before they parted ways and returned to their lives, perhaps for the last time. "Maybe we can smoke half of it now, and save the rest for morning?"

Kyle nodded. Stan reached into his shirt pocket and removed their last joint and gave it a long look before handing it over. He remembered to close his eyes before Kyle lit it, took a deep drag and passed it. Stan took a deep toke off it and handed it back, squeezing his eyes shut tightly as the smoke burned inside his chest. They took three hits apiece before Stan leaned down to press the glowing tip against the metal leg of his lounge chair, extinguishing it and handing it back to Kyle.

"Here, put that in your cigarette pack. It'll be safer than in my pocket." The effect of the pot was just beginning to hit him, like a soft blanket being drawn over his thoughts.

Kyle took it and did as he was asked, removing another cigarette. Stan stood and looked away. "You want that beer now?"

"Sure." Behind him, Kyle's lighter lit up the night.

Stan walked away toward what was left of their campfire; his SUV and Kyle's old yellow tent were on the other side of it, barely illuminated by the glow from the dying embers. He crouched down beside the fire; a few small flames fumed above orange coals. He added a dozen small branches to the fire, sighing as he felt his buzz coming on stronger along with a wave of depression he'd been battling for two days in anticipation of tonight. He was almost certain this would be the last of their August meteor-watching campouts, and if it was, he would mourn the loss of this final connection he felt to the Elysian days of his childhood.

Once the branches began to burn, he stood up and walked to his SUV. It was a huge vehicle, a Ford Expedition, bigger than he really needed, purchased a year ago with most of the $30,000 he'd won in the lottery. His shadow fell across the back hatch as he opened it, and as he reached inside to lift the lid of his cooler it hit him: A black wall of depression he'd been trying to hold at bay crashed through his defenses and overwhelmed him. He had never felt as far from his childhood as he did right now.

He opened the ice chest and removed two cans of Budweiser. There was still over a case and a half of beer left; they might not be able to get high tonight, but they could get as drunk as they wanted to.

He lingered for a long moment, looking into the cooler and wondering how his life had come to this. It had been exactly a year since the last time he had seen Kyle. Somehow they were both still clinging to this annual ritual, one that Stan knew he was going to have to finally let go of. Ahead lay the horror of middle age, and he didn't want to think about what came after that.

Stan recalled a meteor they had seen when they were about eleven; it had been brighter even than the one he'd seen a few minutes ago, briefly lighting up Kyle's backyard like a flashbulb. They'd looked at each other in wonder, and then cheered, and hours later crawled into Kyle's tent for a couple hours of whispered conversations and broken sleep, followed by pancakes and laughter at the Broflovski kitchen table.

Stan shook his head and took out one of the unopened twelve packs and slammed the back hatch. He figured he'd save himself another trip to the cooler in five minutes. He carried the beer past the tent, past the fire which was burning brightly again and casting moving patterns of light and shadow on the nearby trees, and sat down in his chair next to Kyle. He had expected Kyle to be bored and staring off into space, but instead he was sitting up, smoking yet another cigarette and looking intently at something on the other side of Stark's Pond through Stan's binoculars.

"Look over there, Stan," Kyle said, handing him the binoculars and taking the beer Stan held out to him. Stan aimed the binoculars where Kyle had been looking. A dim orange light flickered in the pine trees off in the distance, and other, smaller white lights slowly moved near it. Kyle opened his beer. "That's a campfire…and at least two motorcycles, and I think I see a tent. It looks like there's someone else camping out over there."

Stan lay back down in his chair, opening his own beer and setting the rest on the ground beside him. He emptied half the can in three swallows. "I wonder if they've seen us," he mused, wishing he hadn't tended their own fire a minute ago.

Within moments, it became obvious they had been seen. Two pairs of headlights began weaving their way through the trees toward them as their drivers circumnavigated the pond and drew closer.

"I hope they aren't looking for trouble," Kyle said, lowering his beer can to his lap. The roar of engines grew louder as two four-wheel all-terrain vehicles approached their campsite.

"Yeah." Stan replied. A moment later, he was blinded by their headlights as the two ATVs, each carrying two people, drove up to them and stopped a dozen feet away.