Summery: It's been four years since Kyle's set foot in South Park and his return at age eighteen reminds him of how things use to be and what life use to be like; now he's finally able to make sense of the feelings he had in youth. StanxKyle, different POVs
AN: OKAY HERE WE GO! Chapter 2! There's a lot of foundational information about what's been going on BUT THE STORY WILL PROCEED TO GET ACTIONY AT CHAPTER 3, I hope. STAN'S POINT OF VIEW IS NEXT. This chapter is a little longer and the next one is looking to be even longer still. Thanks for the reviews and for adding this story to your alert list. REALLY INSPIRED ME TO KEEP GOING. (Also, I realized that I had the age difference between Kyle and Ike wrong. Ike is actually 13, not 15 – I've fixed this).
Warnings: Initial OOC, swearing, slash pairing (STYLE), various POVs
Ike:
This winter had felt unusual – oddly out of shape and impudent to the typical winter; a looming eerie feeling had come from the overdue snows, the record breaking measurements, the weather machines and environmentalist who couldn't figure out what was wrong with that Colorado mountain town; it had lightly snowed for two days – somewhere in the middle of January – and no other time that winter. Somber and in a loss, the South Park inhabitants faced their first snowless November, their first snowless Christmas, their first snowless winter. With this oddity hovering over the shoulders of citizens who had their shovels still in the corner of their yard and their sledges tucked away in the garage, South Park awkwardly danced their way through the months and were, for the first time, happy at the approaching summer, a season they, at any other year, would have ostracized; it was a small piece of acquaintance to the absence of snow; anything for ordinariness, anything for fluency, and anything to avoid that daunting sentiment of change.
South Park was small – in spite of its own local hospital and airport – and, in turn, familiarity with the courses of the world around and in their town blossomed in nature; so, unsurprisingly, familiarity with one another was bound to flourish. Very similar to the past winter without snow, when Kyle had left years ago and the Broflovskis were short one boy, the South Park inhabitants faced their first empty classroom seat, their first empty spot on the baseball and basketball team and their first empty chair in church. While they were too oblivious to put a finger on what had been missing, what had caused that sense of unusualness that one fall before school had started; the Broflovskis were not as oblivious – especially not Ike.
So when Kyle had called the house last week in the dead of night, muttering about how he'd taken his final exams a week early, how he didn't have to show up to the last few days of class, how he didn't want to attend his high school graduation, and how he would be coming home for the summer before college; Ike had, despite the high June temperatures, made a quick glance out the window because, suddenly, he had gotten an odd notion that it was snowing.
"…Ike? Ike…Ike!"
The boy jerked awake, a mess of jet black hair covered by the hood of his jacket and an imprint of the desk surface was plastered on his forehead. He blinked twice into the florescent light, squinted incoherently and swallowed with one hand wiping a drool stain from his flushed cheeks.
"What?" He muttered back, still unable to fully wrap his head on what was happening.
"Class is over, if you haven't noticed – "
" – really? Well, cool – "
" – Not cool." Said Mr. Wyland.
Mr. Wyland was substituting for Mr. Derp who always lost interest in teaching the class towards the end of the year. He was standing above boy, his arms crossed across his chest with the usual glare of disapproval across his middle-aged face. Ike simply stared at the vivid red bowtie glued to the man's neck, contemplating over whether to tell the poor teacher that if he only wore something less particular and eye-catching, his students might not have as much trouble listening to the things he had to say.
"Filmore told me that you slept through the last forty-five minutes of the video," Mr. Wyland scowled, uncrossing his arms but shaking his head in order to maintain the vibe of condemnation he was shooting straight between Ike's eyes. Ike tried to send back a message of apathy by yawning.
"Filmore told you that?" Ike said blankly, stretching his arms above his head.
"Yes, Ike. But that's not the point. The point is – "
The boy coughed, interrupting Mr. Wyland's sentence and casually shrugged, shoving his books and pens into his bag, swinging it over his shoulder as he stood up. After adjusting his shirt and scruffling his hair with a hand, he made for the door; "Good talk, Mr. Wyland so I guess I'll be heading home now." Mr. Wyland called his name in protest, demanding that he stay to speak of his misbehavior, but Ike was already halfway out and in no mood for education; turning on his heels, the boy flashed a defiant smile, "Thanks for being such a great substitute teacher – you really inspire me and my peers to, you know, study harder and…cure cancer and all that."
--
The walk home was always painless and short – Ike's head drifted in and out of reality as he made the trip, finding that he's walked it (four blocks east, make a left on the first corner after the post office and a right at the immediate street and straight down) so many times that it's become second nature to him. His head wondered with the sun shining violently down on the concrete around him, the strap of his bag digging into his shoulder. The earpieces of the music player in his pocket were jammed in place in his ears with music blasting beyond the recommended volume. Had it been any other day, Ike would have been thinking about the Hockey game, the girl that sat in front of him in his art class and the strategy he would use to tackle his homework load in order to finish with time for video games – but it was different today; and he felt different. But the reason was no mystery.
Kyle was coming home.
Ike turned the corner after passing the post office, waving to "hi" to Randy Marsh who seemed to be delivering a package in side. Haven't had walked for more than a minute of turning the corner with his eyes alternating from the cloudless blue sky to his sneakers treading on the sidewalk, Ike heard the call of his name through the transition between songs and, automatically and swiftly, jerked around, simultaneously pulling a single ear piece from his ears in awareness.
"Oh, hi," Ike said with a weak smile, feeling uncomfortable in an instant, "what's up, Mr. Marsh?" Ike had never been very at ease around adults – with the exception of his teachers – and instantly stiffened, hesitant of what exactly to do next.
"Ike, buddy!" Mr. Marsh proclaimed cheerfully, slightly out of breath from the run he'd made from the post office to the street to catch the boy. "Haven't seen you around! How've you been?"
Despite the smile that the boy glued to his face, Ike could feel himself raise an eyebrow in dull pain; he hated that question and any variation of it. Ever since a young age, it had been such a distress to him that so many people found the question necessary to start a casual conversation. How has he been? How was he? As if they really cared. He would always, in courtesy, give the truism – "fine, how are you?" – knowing that they would either return the same answer and the conversation would end there in an awkward goodbye.
In the seconds following when Mr. Marsh had presented the phrase in question, Ike, in return, offered his "fine, how are you?"
"Oh, me? Uhm, yeah. Good, good!" Shoving his hand in his pockets, Mr. Marsh declared. The distance between him and Ike was roughly five feet and unquestionably filled with solid tension. Without a plan of action or any remembrance of why he'd stopped the boy, Mr. Marsh had already run out of things to say only three exchanges into the conversation. The stillness that now hovered above them as they both searched for something to say was unbearable. Ike shifted his weight gawkily between his feet, tugging at a strap on his bag. Mr. Marsh nodded slowly and adverted to the only connection he had with Ike and asked the first question in his head in regards to this: "So," – Mr. Marsh breathed heavily, lightly kicking a piece of gravel off of the sidewalk and onto the street – "have you seen Stan lately? Talked to him at all lately?"
Ike cocked his head to his side, unable to see why the man would have been curious as to something as trivial as such. Stan? What significance did talking to Stan bring to the father? His first thought was that something had been wrong with Stan but that thought was quickly followed by the recognition of Mr. Marsh's desperate attempts to avoid that awkward goodbye Ike had sensed coming since the question of "hi how are you?" had come up. But before he could answer, his thoughts were interrupted by a car that drove pass the two of them, followed by the sound of an overhead airplane. Quickly, the boy stole a glance to his wrist watch – 3:45PM. Kyle said he would be there at 4:30. His heart skipped a beat; his brother might have been on that plane, hovering hundreds of feet above this spinning earth unaware of the events beneath him; sitting alone, scanning though catalogues provided by the airline.
"No, I haven't talked to Stan." Ike finally said, revolving his eyes to the sky, searching back and forth on the blue pallet for that iota.
"Oh then I guess you haven't heard," Mr. Marsh started, quickly looking up to see what the black haired boy had turned his attention to and, when seeing nothing, turned his gaze back to the 13 year old, "about Stan's hockey game. Stan's got his first game in his summer league in two days if you wanna check it out – I know that you're a big hockey fan." Ike still hadn't removed his eyes from the sky, following the airplane closely with only word in his head; finally. "Go Bruins…!" Mr. Marsh said with a chuckle, half excitedly and half awkwardly, throwing a fist upwards. With a moment of silence proceeded his attempts to lighten the situation with a joke that lacked in joviality, the man cleared his throat and Ike responded by snapping his head back, "oh, I'm sorry Mr. Marsh, I, uhm, I have to get home now."
"Okay then," the man replied, looking definitely more relieved now that the end to this uncomfortable meeting was in full view, "see you around! Stan's hockey game in two days, don't forget."
"Definitely," responded Ike half-mindedly as he fished for his other earpiece, finding it and plunging himself into his music again. He nodded to Mr. Marsh and turned back around, towards the direction home.
"Oh, wait, I almost forgot." Mr. Marsh quickly added, "Stan wants to know how Kyle's been doing."
Between drums, electric guitars and synthesizers, Ike didn't hear him.
--
Those plastic orange chairs of the airport were more than unwelcoming. With his feet propped up on a chair in the row opposite of the one he and his dad were sitting on, he still shifted in his seat – partcially between the fact that his leg was starting to fall asleep but more because of Kyle. It's not as if they had been waiting long – fifteen minutes at most – it was just this fucking chair and this fucking brother. He could sense his father's stiff anxiety beside him as they sat without saying a word. His mother had not come with them to pick up the boy who had caused all this apprehension as she, convinced that the house wasn't prepared for his miraculous arrival, had chosen to stay behind for a last minute vacuum run and dusting. Ike sat up straighter, placing both of his feet on the brownish carpet of the National Arrivals waiting room.
When he had gotten home after school and the unnerving conversation with Mr. Marsh, Ike had faced his mother's frenzy about rearranging the bathroom, his father's questioning about whether they had the right flight number written on the fridge, and the droning sounds of his own nervous breathing. While his dignity provided that he stay as composed about his brother's arrival as possible, his hands refused to stop sweating. The product of his mother's panic and his father's frustration had been a high speed highway race to the airport that ended in 30 minutes of waiting in those plastic orange chairs.
"What time is it?" His father asked him, finally breaking the silence. Ike shrugged.
"Excited to see Kyle?" Another question. This was Gerald's outlet to his own exhilaration of seeing his son after four years.
"Sure, I guess." Nonchalance was Ike's.
Within saying this, the first person to step through from Kyle's arrival gate was a woman, though her approach had both father and son on their toes. She carried a baby in one arm, a bag in the other and walked pass them with a slight smile. Ike didn't return the smile, finding that his heart had started to beat faster and the plastic orange chair had now gotten, if possible, more painful to sit in.
It was now, after all this time that things would finally change back to the way things had been before. The next to arrive was a man, struggling with his luggage while digging through his pockets for something with the utmost concentration. Ike blinked with his arms folded across his chest with brown eyes fastened on the double doors.
In that split second between the doors' sliding open for the third time to unveil the main crowd of rushing passengers and his father's frenetic "do you see him?" as he stood up, everything that had happened within the past week blew up in Ike's brain: What did Kyle look like now? A man kissed his wife hello.
It's been four years and the boy hasn't bothered to even attach a picture to those rare emails. Three small girls skipped past, each carrying a equally small backpacks.
What did he remember about this life? It had been so long since he's been part of it. A young couple laughed as they walked. And what could Ike talk about to Kyle? What did Ike ever talk about? A middle-aged woman stopped to slip into her jacket. How long was he going to stay?
The double doors closed behind the last to leave the gate. Kyle. Kyle. His clever, ardent, idiosyncratic, red-headed big brother.
"…Dad? Ike?…"
Why did he wait so long to come back? Why did it feel like it was snowing?
