A/N: *sigh* I fear I have fallen out of love with South Park fic.
BUT. We will soldier on...
Kyle sat on the edge of the hotel bed with his head cradled in his hands, barely able to see for the pounding in his temples. He needed either to cry or to vomit or perhaps a little of both. Danny looked on uncertainly from where he sat on the opposite bed, clearly at a loss of what to do. He wrung his hands, shifted to make the mattress squeak, cleared his throat reflexively, while Kyle sat as still as stone.
"So," Danny began slowly, "you think you saw your dead ex-boyfriend. In Tijuana."
Kyle could not make himself look up. He didn't need to see another pair of eyes telling him he was crazy.
"I did see him," Kyle intoned, quiet and solemn as a prayer. He heard Danny breathe a sigh and then,
"Okay," Danny said, diplomatically, "Okay, but didn't you tell me that this has happened to you before?"
Danny paused there, to let the words sink in, but Kyle merely stayed silent and let them slip right through him.
"And those times weren't real. Right?" Danny prompted. Kyle lifted his head to look into Danny's face, which actually was nothing like Kenny's and how could Kyle have ever seen a resemblance?
"This was different," Kyle replied, voice hard, as though daring Danny to refute it. Unfortunately, Danny was not the firm's youngest highflyer for nothing. With Danny, dares were always on.
"How?" he asked, brazenly and Kyle could not answer that in any way that would have been at all convincing. Back in La Revo, the Kenny face had melted back into the crowd too fast for Kyle to follow it. On that fleeting glimpse alone, Kyle couldn't be certain. The only explanation which Kyle could have given, 'because my heart stopped', would not have held weight as legitimate testimony. Kyle had nothing and Danny seemed to know that he had won. He reached forwards to rest a comforting hand on Kyle's shoulder, his thumb just brushing against the column of Kyle's throat.
"It's this day, you know? It's making crazy with your faculties, man," Danny soothed, "But come on. Use your logic. I know you got that by the bucketload. Forget this Mexican crap. When people die, they die. They don't come back. You know that."
Danny's tone was gentle, but Kyle could barely keep his teeth clamped down on the bitterness he wanted to spit forth in response, because Danny simply did not understand about Kenny and how the hell was Kyle supposed to explain that shit to someone who didn't already know?
"You have to move past this," Danny cooed, his voice sliding warm and slick as honey. Kyle belated sensed the air around them stiffening with intent and when Danny's thumb suddenly stroked too soft, Kyle shrugged the hand away in one quick jerk, disguising the movement as a lunge towards the phone on the desk. He snatched the receiver and held it up, wild and ready, like a weapon.
"I need to call someone, man. You'd better go," Kyle blurted and could hear for himself the panic spiking through his own voice. Danny heard it too, so when he approached, he did so cautiously.
"Woah, there. Easy," he said, "Who are you gonna call?"
Kyle's response was automatic. Default.
"My friend St-"
"Stan?" Danny supplied swiftly, "Your friend Stan with the heavily pregnant girlfriend? You're gonna call him at," here Danny paused to check his watch, "You're gonna call him at two in the morning? Seriously?" he asked.
That made Kyle hesitate. Wendy had been struggling with the pregnancy recently. The whole thing had been unplanned, and while there had never been any question of not keeping the baby, the words 'too soon' were constantly on the tips of everybody's tongues. Wendy put on a brave face but Kyle knew, from the things that she let slip to him sometimes when Stan was not in the room, that deep down she was terrified. Wendy was terrified, she said, by no longer being able to recognise her own body, by being forced, as a result of constant bouts of nausea, to take leave from her job and idle away her days at home, waiting for Stan to finish work. It would be so easy, she said, for everything that she and Stan had to fall to pieces.
They were both terrified of failing.
Kyle pressed his lips together into a thin, indecisive line, imagining Stan and Wendy curled protectively around one another in bed so many miles away.
"Don't be crazy," Danny continued, "Okay? Look. Just put the phone down."
One of Danny's hands had found its way, unnoticed, back to Kyle's shoulder, but as he reached for the phone with the other, a gut reaction kicked Kyle suddenly to life. He shoved Danny away from him hard, his every muscle taut and resistant to the touch.
"Seriously, dude," Kyle warned, "This is not a time to capitalise. You try to and I'll probably break your jaw. Get it?"
Danny looked so taken aback by the strength of Kyle's reaction that for a moment Kyle thought that Danny might punch him in the face, because you couldn't just push a guy and expect him not to retaliate. But then, the fight seemed to drip out of Danny's muscles and he held both hands up in defeat.
"Okay, man. Okay. I'm not trying to take advantage, dude. Really. I was just trying to be a friend, you know?" Danny said. "I mean, I thought we were friends," he said, and looked so hurt and awkward that Kyle felt himself soften a little in the face of it. But he did not put down the phone.
"We are friends," Kyle assured, "We are. I just- I need to- you know," Kyle stammered, because really there was no easy way to tell Danny that he was not and would never be a part of the reality which Kyle shared with his childhood friends. "I'll see you in the morning," Kyle promised instead and felt no remorse as he watched Danny leave the room and close the door behind him.
As Kyle dialled the familiar number, his hands were shaking like crazy. Two rings, and then Wendy's voice rasping groggily down the line.
"Hello?" she choked and Kyle turned his back on the phone, the coiled wire snapping taut across his hips, as if turning away could block out his guilt at waking her.
"Hi, Wendy," Kyle said softly, apologetically, "I'm so sorry to disturb you like this."
Wendy exhaled a sleepy breath, stifled a yawn.
"Kyle?" she asked.
"Yeah. It's me. Listen, Wendy, is Stan-"
"Dude," Stan's voice cut in, in an abrupt, scratchy snatch. Kyle had to swallow down unexpected nerves, the kind which arise when something monumentally important is about to happen, like checking the list for results of that final exam, or answering the phone call about the job interview you had three days ago.
"What's up? Are you okay? Did something happen?" Stan quick-fired, husky but alert. Kyle bit at the inside of one cheek and stared fixedly at the pastel splodges of the generic garden painting framed above the hotel bed.
"I'm fine," he tried to say, but it came out barely audible and he had to repeat himself. On Stan's end of the phone Kyle heard the sound of a door closing, the static-y jump of Stan's footsteps.
"Fine? Dude, bullshit. It's the middle of the night, it's the second of November and you're on the phone to me," Stan hissed, speaking low. Kyle's teeth cut painfully into the flesh of his cheek. The impressionistic petals and cobblestones of the painting began to blur before his eyes.
"Now," Stan demanded, his voice rough like stubble. No-nonsense. "What happened?"
Kyle took a deep, steeling breath, as if to jump into icy water. He gasped,
"I saw Kenny, dude. I saw him. I know it was him," and then held his breath.
Stan was silent back at him for a long time and Kyle had to sink down into the desk chair behind him or lose half his height to the floor. In his ear, Kyle heard the thick exhale, the creak of sofa springs, which told him that Stan was sinking with him. Of course, Kyle thought gratefully, of course, because Stan was bound to understand this where nobody else could.
"Kyle," Stan sighed and sounded so sad, so inexplicably disappointed.
"What?"
"Man...listen, Kyle," Stan said, on the breath of a second sigh, "Don't take this the wrong way, but I think that maybe, you know, it's time that you spoke to someone about this."
"Other than you?" Kyle asked. Stan's painfully gentle tone had left him baffled.
"No. Like...someone professional," Stan said wearily, as though it was something he'd been thinking about a lot, something he'd long been planning to say. The words slammed into Kyle like a slap in the face.
"You mean, like a therapist?" he yelped.
"Yeah. Because, dude, what's it been now? Like, five years?"
"Four."
"Okay. Well, the point is, you have to move past this."
"What if it was really him?" Kyle bit out stubbornly, his voice rising to bounce hollowly off of the unresponsive hotel walls. There was silence on the end of the line. When Stan spoke again, his words were quiet. Pleading. Pitying.
"Dude. Kyle. Don't do that to yourself. Okay? Just don't."
Kyle felt himself go cold and hard all over.
"You don't believe me," he accused. Stan clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
"No, dude. No. It's not like that," Stan argued. "I believe you saw someone who looked like him, or, I dunno, imagined that you saw him, but dude. Come on. Why would he be there? If he was alive, you know? Why would he be in Mexico? Why would he see you and not come talk to you? Why...you know, why?"
Kyle's gaze fell on the gentle green glow of his old cell phone, plugged in and charging on the bedside table. Kyle had kept it for the past four years. His phone company wouldn't let him upgrade without changing his number, so Kyle had hung on the old one, just in case.
"Just you and me, baby. Hey?" Kyle heard Kenny's voice whisper in his head.
"Kyle?" Stan was saying down the phone, "Kyle?"
"Yeah?"
"What time is your flight tomorrow? I'll come see you when you're back. We can talk."
"Eleven," Kyle murmured, on autopilot.
"Alright. Well, get some sleep, dude. I'll come see you tomorrow," Stan said, "Okay?"
Kyle just stared at the cell phone, its green light tantalising.
"Okay?" Stan repeated, in Kyle's ear.
"Okay," Kyle echoed.
"Sleep well then, man. You know this makes sense. I'll see you tomorrow," Stan told him, "Bye, dude."
Kyle did not return the farewell. He didn't say anything. He just hung up the phone, discarding it in favour of the old cell, which beckoned him to the bedside table from across the room. Kyle tugged the cell free of its wire and opened a new text message with slow, determined fingers.
'I know it was you,' Kyle wrote, 'I know it was you.'
He sent the message, fully aware that the words would now materialise in the sent folder of this old cell, to lie there with all the other unanswered words that he had sent to Kenny since Kenny had died. Although there was no reason to believe that this message would be answered any more than the others had been, Kyle settled himself in the chair by the window, where he could peer through the chinks of the blinds at the mostly extinguished glimmer of candlelight. He sat with the cell phone clutched in one hand. And waited.
* * * * *
Bebe's parties were epic. They were the kind of parties which drew everyone home again even when they were held smack in the middle of a semester. If Bebe was throwing a party, anyone whose college was within reasonable travelling distance of South Park would dare the pilgrimage back to the hometown just for the chance to participate.
On the night Kenny died, people had returned to South Park in droves, like migrating birds, and Kyle was mercifully amongst them.
"I'm so glad you're back," Kenny breathed, clutching at Kyle tightly in a bedroom upstairs, sheltered from the seething mass of the party below them. It had been a long time since Kenny had last died and he knew that he was way overdue. His next death was just around the corner and he had not expected to get this chance to see Kyle again before the reaper struck him down.
"I told you I'd always come back for you, dude. Didn't I?" Kyle said, reaching out for Kenny's face with both hands, in an attempt to hold it steady before his drunken vision. Kenny brushed the questing fingers aside and linked them safe between his own, where they continued to flex restlessly.
"Right. And I'll always come back for you," Kenny echoed, to which Kyle gave a little snort of bemusement.
"You aren't going anywhere," he said, as if that should have been obvious, and Kenny's hands had jerked free of Kyle's before Kenny had given them permission to.
"What do you mean that, like, metaphorically or literally or," Kenny spat.
"What?"
"I fucking know where my life is heading, Kyle. Okay?" he snapped. It came out so sharp and Kenny hadn't meant it that way. But Kyle was too drunk and unwilling to acknowledge the jagged edges to Kenny's words. Later, he would not even remember them. As it was, he stared at Kenny through a haze of confusion.
"Dude. I didn't-" Kyle began, but Kenny shook his head because he didn't want to hear empty apologies.
"My point is that if I do go somewhere, I'll come back for you. Alright? I will," Kenny said, suddenly desperate for Kyle to understand.
"Fine, dude. Whatever," Kyle said mildly. Then, he smiled a slow, shamelessly wanton smile.
"Let's make out," he purred and ran ten long fingers over Kenny's ribs, nudged a knee between Kenny's thighs, leant forwards to press kisses to his jaw. But Kenny caught the hands, stepped back from the knee and left Kyle's lips parted open to nothing. The pressure gripping Kyle's fingers increased to near-painful proportions, the discomfort making Kenny's face snap into sudden clarity before Kyle's bleary eyes.
"I love you," Kenny swore.
And those words would be the only thing that Kyle would ever truly remember of that awful, messy, garbled night, other than the fact that Kenny had died and not come back again.
* * * * *
The next morning, Kyle awoke to sunlight slicing across his face from between the chinks of the blinds and the chill fingers of the air conditioner ruffling through his curls. The cell phone, still resting limp in Kyle's hand, showed nothing on its screen but the name of Kyle's network provider. The persistent knocking, which had woken Kyle in the first place, sounded again and Kyle unfolded himself from the chair to go answer it, his every cramped muscle screaming as he did so.
Kyle was not surprised to find Danny standing on the other side of his door, Danny who was clean and dressed and clutching the tall handle of his wheeled carry-on case.
"Dude. What are you," he said, glancing Kyle up and down and registering the distinct lack of luggage, the still-dark room, last night's creased clothes clinging to Kyle's body, "What are you doing? We have to leave in like, ten minutes."
Kyle leant one arm against the doorframe and heard the soft rustle of rumpled cotton as his open-cuffed shirt sleeve whispered over his skin. He stared at Danny mildly.
"I'm not coming," Kyle stated.
From the look Danny gave him in response, Kyle might as well have just announced his sudden conversion to Scientology. Every line of Danny's face was frozen in dismay.
"What?" he gulped.
Kyle sighed, shifted his restless weight from one side of the doorframe to the other.
"I can't leave," Kyle explained, with a shake of his head, "Not without checking to see if it was him."
"What about work?" Danny protested.
"You can tell them I got sick here," Kyle countered.
They stared at each other for a long time, until, sensing the futility of arguing with a desperate man, Danny's shoulders drooped reluctantly.
"Fine," he sighed, "Fine. But, listen. Before I go, at least describe this guy to me. Maybe I saw him too last night. And if I did...then you'll have something more to go on."
Kyle's fingers tightened around the old cell he still clutched in his hand. It had been the first cell Kyle had owned that had a half-decent camera in it.
"I can do better than describe him," Kyle said. He flicked through the vague, smudgey images still stored in the phone until he found his favourite picture of Kenny, in which he was smiling and bright and whole-heartedly alive. The picture showed him exactly as he was in Kyle's memories. Kyle offered the phone to Danny, who took it, stared at the screen and caught his breath.
As all the colour drained from Danny's face, something leaden stirred at the bottom of Kyle's stomach.
"What?" he asked, reaching instinctively to take the phone back before any harm could befall it, but Danny held it away from him.
"Dude," he whispered, and turned the phone around so that the screen faced Kyle. "This is the barman from our first night in La Revo. The one who stared at you the whole time we were there."
A/N: The only reason this chapter got written is because of your wonderful reviews. They are what keep me posting! A big thank you in particular to all those people without accounts who review my stories, often so wonderfully, and I have no way of contacting in person. You guys are seriously awesome.
Work is about to get seriously hectic, so I'm not sure what's going to happen with this fic now. I don't want to leave anything unfinished, but my writing time is going to get seriously limited in a few days, so updates may get slow. Just wanted to warn you...