Remembering the Boundaries
Chapter One:
Light taps of finger pads against a right thigh was the only outward sign of Kyle's inward stress. The same pattern over and over, one finger after another tapped against the fabric of his jeans, their light weight allowing only the most minuscule acknowledgement physically on his body. Yet, these fingers were the only thing keeping the redhead in his place on the couch and not running straight out the door. And only he and Stan knew it.
Tap, tap tap, tap, they padded against the tense thigh. One after another, Kyle's focus stayed heavily on the movements, barely having the sense to flip page after page of his now-hazy textbook. Words unfocused and eyes blurring them together further and further with each sound of the room's only coupling making out on the carpet to the right of the redhead's seat.
Each kiss seemed to last forever, and each moan was in slow motion. And with each sound, the fingers began their pattern from the beginning once more. Just as the session of lips pressed together continued against the yells of a too-focused Cartman on his new video game and Stan's ever-lasting crunches of the endless; crinkly bag of chips, the tapping continued with just as much fever and devotion.
This continued, just as it did for each gathering of the small group that included a girl hanging off the only blond of the group. Each tap a distraction to pull him from the envious thoughts swirling through his mind just as rapid and forceful as the day they began.
Tap, tap tap, tap, tap...
It was bearable, but only just. Crossed legs, tense with the pull of muscle to keep from becoming just as jittery as his fingers. Just as the same pull kept the rest of his body from bolting from his seat and out of the awkward setting. Awkward only to him, he knew, but still too full of the stiff air for him not to feel suffocated by proximity of the couple.
With each movement stifled with a forced tight stiffness, it hurt when the sudden scream of victory from the red-coated teen in front of the TV had Kyle starting harshly. "Goddammit..." he said out of habit alone.
He felt eyes on him before he glanced up, noting the concerned look of his best friend and facing it with a frown of his own. Stan only shrugged in reply, before turning back to the game he'd been playing against Cartman. Kyle sighed softly, his tapping having stopped with the unexpected scare. Distraction no more, green eyes surveyed the random page of his textbook slightly more steadily than they had prior.
The words, logically, made sense apart from each other, but with a muffled laugh continuing nearby, Kyle found each word's meaning lost. Muddled definitions changed quickly to jumbled letters and lost placement of sentence structure. Blurred and uneven paragraphs daunted on him as he tried in vain to make sense of the pages. Fingers touched the edge of the paper uncertainly before flipping the book forward quickly.
The next page began with a sentence he could read, but with a mewl of affection from the only girl in the room, it too became too hazed to read. Instead, the page took away the letters completely, this time replacing them with bold; black lines. He squinted, the beginning edges of the words he knew to be there was all that remained of the text.
"Oh..."
The low sound had his concentration on the sound in the room amplifying as his eyes lost track of where they were once settled. A blink cleared only so much before warm palms pressed against his eyes comfortingly. The rubbed them with a small amount of roughness in the gesture, a bit of frustration finding its way into the familiar movement.
A few more blinks later and Kyle found the book legible once again. But by now, it was too late to try to catch up on his reading. With a lost placement in the chapter and a lack of notes-other than the hastily scribbled name and date-told him it was time to leave Cartman's house and forego staying the night once again.
And if anyone but Stan noticed his lack of hours spent in his friends' company, they had never made it known. Just as he doubted they would anytime soon.
Taking only a little time to check his phone's lack of messages and stage a quick reply that never actually occurred, Kyle placed his belongings in the messenger bag that had been swung over the couch's arm. And with a grace that betrayed his current mentality, he pulled the strap of his bag over his opposite shoulder and stood from the couch to walk to the front door.
He ignored Stan as he did this, walking slowly to the door so as not to arouse much suspicion, knowing the other was watching his movements with the same sad knowing look he always did. Normally, he'd at least try to let Stan what was on his mind, but this time he couldn't bring himself to admit how bothered he was with the entire situation.
He was supposed to be applying to colleges and keeping close to his friends while they still had the time to do so; not running off on them and letting some of his grades slip right before the end of the year. He knew it wasn't fair to them, and to his mother who'd watched over every paper he'd ever written with great care for his college choices to vary for whatever career he chose to pursue.
And here he was fucking it all up in one swoop in the final semester of high school he'd ever take. All because he was uncomfortable and in absolute envy over every single girl with which Kenny found himself. And it was all because he was an absolute fucking idiot about his feelings.
Girls with his friends, even ones with which he found himself crushing on, had never been so bad. It was the fact he had acted on those emotions that tore him apart.
It'd been a cold winter's afternoon, school called off early for an ice warning. Snowflakes flew in flurries, hitting Kyle's forehead as he looked up at the cloudy sky. Him and Kenny being the last to still use the bus, they had the walk home to themselves. Kenny was quiet, an earbud in one ear as he listened to his teen angst music.
He paused in his walk, still looking to the sky. All day he'd watched the other in secret, had seen him tell another conquest how she wasn't his girlfriend, that he wasn't interested in her that way. It'd opened a possibility. Maybe he was interested in someone else. Or, at the very least, open for someone else in his life. Right?
His heart pounded in his chest, pulse beating in his ears as he glanced at the blond. Kenny stopped as if he could sense his eyes. He gave him a curious look, "Kye?"
There was a second of silence among them before Kyle looked away. His cheeks burned. "Kenny..." he started.
"What is it?"
The confident part of himself drove away the nervous part. He refused to continue being this emotional mess. He had to know. Words escaped him though, not knowing exactly how to spill his feelings without sounding like the mess that he was. So he acted instead.
With a step, the small distance between them was closed. His lips chastely met Kenny's warm ones. A peck, small but assuring in what it had to say. It sent a jolt nevertheless, pulse fast as the shock slowed. He saw the shock in the other's eyes first before he saw the sadness. Kenny looked away as if he couldn't stand to look at him.
He felt broken. His legs felt wobbly then, and his entire being felt as if cold water had been splashed against him in the cool air of the outside. He shook.
"I'm sorry, I just-"
"Kyle," Kenny interrupted. "I don't feel that way-I mean-I like you..."
"As a friend," was left unsaid but known by them both. Kyle nodded, frustration with himself panning out over the dampening emotional spiral. He felt dizzy. He would do anything to turn invisible at this moment.
"I just had to know," it was half to Kenny half to himself.
Would their friendship withstand? Did he just ruin something he once thought an unbreakable bond? His logical side knew the embarrassment wouldn't last, that Kenny wouldn't hold it against him. But every other side of him screamed otherwise.
Kenny spoke again just as he started to walk away, words keeping Kyle still in place. "This doesn't-it doesn't change anything." Kenny said assuredly, but with a noticeable voice break in the middle, as if it had been him who'd kissed the other. "I just can't think of you like that, Kyle. I never could."
The words hurt worse than they had any right to, and his frame trembled further. He needed to go home. His throat felt like a knife had been sawed into it, rendering speech useless. He nodded in its stead, staying faced away from the other.
He swore to himself the wetness in his eyes was from anything but tears. Everything except them.
Except that it wasn't something small, not at all. It was far from anything Kyle had experienced with his brief adoration of either gender. It was more than a crush. And even though he acknowledged this, he'd never truly admit just how fully he felt for the perverted asshole.
And it was with this embarrassment and absolute envy that found Kyle slamming the door just a little too harshly when Kenny finally spoke since he'd entered the house, "Where'd Kyle go?"
And it was with this same embarrassment that Kyle found himself unable to go back inside to grab his forgotten coat. He'd just have to hope Stan would pick it up for him later and give it back to him personally. In any other house he might've come back inside the next day, but being that this was Cartman's house and therefore not a regular person's house he refused outright to enter it and ask for his coat back. In fact, he could already hear Cartman asking him to say something stupid in order to be allowed his possession returned to him.-The jackass. Not that Kyle wouldn't also do it to Cartman had the other boy done the same at his house, but still.-The jackass.
Walking fast, it took little time to get to his house from Cartman's, being as it wasn't even three minutes away on a bad day. But even with him being as cold as he was, he halted just outside the door, and just in time to hear a voice yell, "Kyle!"
His hand tightened on the coarse texture of his bag's strap, body turning back to the front yard from which he'd just entered. "Hello?" he said to the outside, wondering if his mind was playing a joke on him.
But it wasn't, "Dude, you forgot your jacket!" Kyle recognized the voice easily this time as Kenny's. And it wasn't but a second later that the blond entered his line of sight with the aforementioned coat in hand.
"Thanks." Kyle said steadily, walking down his stairs to take the fabric from the blond's hand. But one tug later found Kyle staring at the hand that had yet to let go of the coat. "You can let go now," he prompted.
"Not until you tell me what's been up with you lately." Kenny demanded.
"What do you mean, we see each other everyday, you know what's been going on," Kyle responded without missing a beat.
"Dude, you know what I mean," Kenny supplied, tugging the jacket completely free from Kyle's grasp.
Kyle gave him an agitated look, only to have the same look given in response. "Nothing, classes are just bullshit right now."
The confident reply wasn't enough however, as Kenny saw through it immediately. "They are, but they've always been shitty. That doesn't cover why you keep leaving early. Dude, it's our last year together, and you've spent more time on homework and at your house alone than with your best friends. What the Hell is wrong with you?"
Kyle knew he hadn't meant anything bad by the response, logically. But his mind wasn't thinking logically, at least, wasn't latching onto what he knew as logical. The information flew away in a fit of emotion just as it tended to do when he argued. "What do you care? You've been spending everyday lip locked with every girl in school. I've hardly heard you say two words in a week."
Kenny gave an aggravated look, one Kyle felt himself beginning to already respond to-until the look disappeared to leave a sad one in its place. Kyle sighed at it, looking away, knowing he'd said the wrong thing with the gesture alone. "Kyle..."
The sound was so sad, so solemn that he cringed with the word. He knew what was coming next, a long ass speech that made both of them feel so shitty that they couldn't look at each other for a week or two. At least, Kyle couldn't bring himself to do it.
There was an intake of air before, BANG. Kyle's head jerked up faster than he'd thought humanly possible, eyes widening to take in whatever it was that made the loud noise. A pang of nerves pushed through his entire body at once, eyes meeting the wide; surprised ones of his friend. Blood was flying as a visible shock went through Kenny's entire system.
Kyle could only watch in horror as the sound of quick tires against concrete was released. And with it the car sped away, the bullet in Kenny's chest and skid marks on the road the only signs a drive-by shooting had been the cause of what was about to be the other's death.
With reflexes alone Kyle grabbed the jacket from the shaking palm, pressing the fabric against the hole in Kenny's body. Blood filled it quickly, the orange tint fading to a dirty red. Pressing harder, Kyle looked into Kenny's wide eyes.
"You're okay-You're g-gonna be okay." he said in what sounded like a quiet voice. But his ears still rang from the shot, and he was sure Kenny was too in shock to notice anyway.
"You're gonna be okay, Kenny." he assured again anyway. "I promise."
It was all he could do, hold down the blood until his someone-anyone who'd heard the shot-came running to see the cause. So, he waited, about to pull his hand from the wound to grab a phone when a hand on his shoulder had him starting. Both hands still frozen, he looked up to see Ike standing behind him. He was saying something-but what Kyle wasn't sure. His mouth was moving too rapidly to make sense of it and the ringing in his ears now covered every noise the world could make.
It wasn't until an ambulance showed and two masculine arms pulled him away from the body that Kyle began to hyperventilate.
-0-
When Kenny woke, a stiff soreness met each of his limbs. It was as if he'd spent an entire day doing nothing but exercising without rest. Each muscle was strained and each limb was pushing into the cushion beneath him so heavily they felt unable to move from their spot. Not that, with the pain, Kenny would have done so anyway.
With this bodily awareness, his ears began to pound, and each sense came into being once more. This began slowly, the loud buzzing of his ears lowering, tongue moving around a dry mouth hesitantly, eyes flickering back and forth beneath heavy lids.
And with each sense beginning to become aware came a mindfulness that hadn't been there before this moment. It hurt. Thoughts fuzzy and uncontrolled, each tried to grasp at the questions floating in his mind only resulted in unreachable, airy results.
What was going on?
His brain searched for the answer, wondering just how he ended up wherever he was feeling the way he did. But when the thoughts just gave him more questions, he tried to get answers another way.
Eyes were heavy, literally and otherwise. Feeling as if lifting them was lifting a full sandy weight, blue eyes opened to squint in the white light. He blinked in quick and rapid succession, a buzzing in his ears settling as the light subsided. He breathed out, eyes opening more fully. Head lulled to the side, eyes taking in a rounded form just in front of him.
Blinking again, he found the form taking a more human shape. The buzzing pushed away from his ears, leaving beeps from what he assumed to be a machine in its wake. The shape became completely human, blurred colors now dedicated lines.
The first thought that came fully was just how appreciative he was for that ass. The closest arm strained against invisible weight, pushing against it and moving toward the ass in front of him. Satisfied, a nearly numb hand found the rounded area, and groped it fully.
"Ah!" Kyle stated, starting as he stopped mid-conversation with Stan. "Are you guys fucking with me right now?" he asked, a hand pushing at the one squeezing against his buttocks. "I'm seriously not in the mood, seriously, what the fuck, Cartman?"
"What?" Stan asked, eyebrows furrowing before his eyes turned toward the area behind Kyle after the redhead drew attention to it.
Kyle turned, reddened cheeks turning white as he took in the all-too-awake Kenny on the bed behind him. "Kenny!" But that meant-He turned to either side, and finding no one else, his blush returned. What the Hell was Kenny playing at? He didn't know whether to ignore the gesture from before or to call attention to it angrily.
Kenny shouldn't mess with him like that, not after saying what he had...
But then Kenny spoke, and Kyle's anger only left shock.
"Who's Kenny?"