Disclaimer: I don't own South Park but I wish I were a part of it.

This is dedicated to Lamia Astaroth for picking up 'Can't Fight This Feeling' after a few years. Thanks for making me feel like writing something for the first time in forever. :)

The Invisible

I was sitting at the kitchen table, as always, with Kyle as he calmly ate his toast and drank his orange juice. The kitchen was abnormally quiet, even with Mom humming as she made her coffee. I kept stirring my oatmeal around in my bowl, wishing I could add some sugar or anything to make it taste like something more edible than cardboard mush. But Mom doesn't keep anything sweet in the house except these health nut cookies for Kyle when he needs sugar for his low blood levels.

Suddenly there's a knock on the front door and my brother becomes a flash. His chair screeches along the tile of the floor as he leaps from his spot, his orange juice gone in the blink of an eye and the corner of some toast is discarded on the plate with trembling crumbs. He's pulling on his thick sun burnt jacket and flying out the door with a hurried goodbye to our mother.

I catch a glimpse of a brown coat before he closes the door and I sigh. It's not depressive or degrading, just a simple sigh because I feel so invisible.

Everyone knows Kyle as the smart one in the family; that his hobbies include studying for exams and challenging himself with Calculus problems way past the standardized scale that any sophomore should know. I'm a bit more forgotten, not having the red-headed temper and determination that both my mother and brother have, nor the lawyer status of my father. I'm just Ike Broflovski. I was pretty useful as a football once or twice.

But I was smart enough to jumpstart kindergarten; to get ahead of the other children in first and second grade because I already understood so much. I'm doing pretty well as a sixth grader, even though I'm only ten. Mom's really proud to have such smart children, but I never get the distinction that's reserved only for Kyle.

It kind of makes me fade into the shadows. I don't mind because I can observe things that other people, busy people focused on important things, wouldn't notice.

Like how my brother is in love with his best friend.

I don't have to be a super sleuth to notice something like that. I mean, he is pretty discrete most of the time. Our mother, for instance, takes the way he hauls out of here in the morning as signs of an energetic teenager ready for school with his friends.

Except I know that Kyle walks only with Stan. That's what excites him.

I know things, small things - because I'm barely acknowledged - I can pick up on easily. The way Kyle meanders about the house before he sits down to study, the way he scratches his nose impatiently with the tip of his pencil just moments before the phone rings; like he's got his gestures down to some magical science. When the phone is for him, it's Stan, it's always Stan, and Kyle rushes to the phone and tackles the receiver as if he were playing actual football. The smile that appears on his face when he says 'Hi' and then disappears upstairs for a private conversation would give himself away if mom wasn't busy cooking and dad wasn't bothered with the television. I know this kind of behavior isn't geared towards best friends; I'm old enough to know that much.

Even when Stan's over and they do their thing like play video games and watch TV, they have this air about them that reserves their relationship as something more than a long lasting friendship. The way they grin at each other like something really funny was just said but neither of them has said a word, the nudges are lingering and the teasing is more intimate. They never notice me, even as I cross them to get to the kitchen. I don't think I register on their radar. Why do I observe this? I don't know, I guess because my brother fascinates me.

Sure, my mother nags Kyle a lot, but he's revered like a God when he brings home those A's. He's not the most popular kid in school, but he's respected and people like him. Kyle, who does everything right, is hiding something so wrong.

Not that I think it's wrong, I have no qualms about sexual preferences or anything. Love is love. I mean wrong in the way that mom may seriously disown him because of how it goes against our religion, wrong in the way that he's not openly sharing these feelings to the world. I wonder how much that must suck for him; to keep something that makes him happy so secret.

And I know for a fact that it does, that the younger Marsh is the variable in which my brother's moods fluctuate between happy-go-lucky to depressed-emo-kid. I take in the days when there's no phone call, when it's Sunday and Stan can't see him because of church, or after school when Kyle comes home and you know that it isn't just a long hard school day that's making him look so down.

I like the days better when he's happy, but…

It happens one night when our parents go out, one of those rare times Dad takes Mom out to the movies or to a dinner. I'm pretty much home alone, left in the wake of parents who are confident I can handle my own so much as I don't open the door to strangers and to keep it locked. Like I'm an idiot.

I get pretty thirsty after sitting in my room and reading for awhile. Going downstairs to get some water, while really wishing we had some soda, I hear faint noises from the living room. I freeze, slowing my steps. There's light laughter and some shuffling and I'm so curious but I'm also so afraid. I take each step down carefully, as if I were hunting small woodland creatures and I didn't want them to run from me.

Turning the corner of the stairs and searching the living room with wild roaming eyes, I see Kyle crushed against our couch, beneath the weight of Stan and his thin, taut body, kissing each other wildly.

I gasp, giving myself away. The rabbits scurry, stopping their motions and eying me with surprised fear.

"Ike," Kyle breathes, in this super stunned way, and I can see the irises overtaking the green of his eyes, huge and round and I know he's finally seeing me for the first time. Seeing me see him with his hands up his best friend's shirt and his curly red hair pulled taught from the pale boy's hands.

He doesn't know what to make of me, of my semi-startled expression. It's not like I don't know about the things he does. Well, HE doesn't know I know, but to see it? He's afraid I'll start screaming bloody murder at the shredded mental state that he stamped upon his younger brother's memory. But I'm actually pretty calm, even with my heart pounding a mile a minute from the awkward circumstance.

"Ike," he begins, pleading as his hands become free, "Ike, please don't say anything to Mom or Dad about this, please."

He's leaning forward now, Stan having completely removed himself from his dominated stance. I gaze from my brother to his lover, who's just as frozen as I am, waiting on my response.

I shrug the whole thing off, "Tell Mom what? I was never here," I say, raising my hands up in front of me as I turn around to go back upstairs. I'm trying to shake the memory as I don't think he'll pick up on my double entendre.

I hear Kyle's shuddered breath of relief just before he adds, "So I've noticed."

And maybe it doesn't make sense in context, but overall it makes me laugh.