Authors Note: One more chapter left after this one. I may also do an alternate ending. In that case, two more chapters. :)
Chapter 7- The long, long ago.
My blood is pounding thick and hot in my veins, throbbing in painful anticipation by the time Kenny and I reach Hell's Pass in record time. The empty corridor on floor three echo's with our stomping footsteps as we parade as quickly as possible past the counter with the protesting nurse and through the door displaying the numbers 135.
Seven pairs of eyes snap to ours, startled by the abrupt intrusion that I'm sure must have sounded like a stampede of wild elephants.
"Kyle!" I yell out instinctively, but as my eyes fall to his, I realize that they're closed.
I blink.
"What the hell is this?" Kenny grunts, clearly outraged and turns to Wendy. "He's not awake! He looks fucking dead to me!"
"Kenny!" She gasps, her pretty smile falling.
"He opened his beautiful green eyes just a few moments ago," Sheila starts calmly. "I'm afraid it's not like the movies where they just pop up and everything's normal, boys. It's going to take some time for him to fully adjust."
As she speaks, I make my way to the bed and place my hand on top of his like always. He doesn't even flinch, and as Sheila and Gerald go on explaining what had happened and what the doctor said to expect, I couldn't focus on anything but the sleeping figure in front of me.
I had let him down. Even if he hadn't known I had sat by his side for hours on end, talking and soothing him in his unconscious state, it was important to me that I be there when he awoke for the first time. I wanted him to see first hand just how dedicated I am to him. Friends or no friends, conscious or not, I would always be there. Now it was too late.
Unnoticed, I maneuver my way through the Broflovski's and Kyle's friends, leaving the room quietly.
What's going to happen if everyone's so excited about him being awake that I never get a chance to be in there alone again? What if I can't explain myself and my reasons for being there, can't have a moment just to look at him and thank the Lord he's alive?
"A miracle, isn't it?" The lady behind the check in desk asks.
Snapping out of my deep state of mind, my blank eyes fall onto her smiling face.
"I'm so happy he's coming through. Such a cute boy." She continues. "Are you friend or family?"
The words make my throat constrict and my heart feel like it's being ripped out of my chest with a fork.
"Best friends," I could say. "Best friends forever. Since preschool."
Only that would be a lie. We weren't best friends. We weren't even worst friends, like him and Cartman. Not even rivals, enemies. If we were, I'd still have contact with him, no matter how unpleasant. I could touch him in fights. But I don't even have that. He's made sure I'm so much of a nothing to him that it's like I were dead. He can't see me, he can't hear me. Even in Gym class, even on the same team, even if I was right next to him, I did not exist. His eyes never even glanced toward me, not for a second, not for a moment. Never. I had even been so bold as to "accidentally" trip him. His face hit the grass, but he picked himself up and brushed off his clothes, then jogged off with a smile toward one of his new friends as if he had simply been clumsy and tripped over his own shoes.
I am invisible to him
"… Neither." I finally voice.
"You okay, Darlin'?" The lady asks, a bit hesitant and concerned.
I'm really not. Emotionally I'm not, but it isn't a very bright idea to tell a staff member of serious medical situations that you aren't okay, so I nod and walk away, dragging my feet along the thin, hard carpeting.
I should feel… so happy. The only problem is that I never feel what I'm suppose to feel. Romance for my best friend, depression because he's gone, hopeful when he was in a coma, afraid now that he's not. What's wrong with me? Am I sick in the head? What kind of a bastard wishes someone would stay in a vegetated state forever?
I do. I just want to be by his side, and the only way I can do that is if he's helpless to tell me he doesn't want me there. Now that he's coming to, I'm afraid my time spent near him again is limited to a week at best.
I'm going to lose him all over again.
Ignoring the concern of the woman in front of me, I turn and sprint away, making it to the exit on the opposite side of the corridor just in time to spill the contents of my earlier lunch onto the freshly manicured grass.
What am I suppose to do now? What am I suppose to say when he realizes what happened and recognizes the people around him? I don't know what to do. I don't know if I should bother going back in, not only now, but ever. He hates me.
He hates me.
Another convulsion of nausea hits, expelling more pinkish-brownish, chunky liquid from the depths of my stomach. It's foamy and warm and tastes as fowl as it sounds, though a trace of its original sweetness is there.
And I swear right here and now, I will never eat another chocolate ice-cream cone as long as I live.
------------------------------------
"… I need your help with something. You're the only one I don't feel totally weird about admitting this to, so don't be an asshole and rip on me, alright?"
"Jesus, Kyle, you make it sound like you're sprouting tits."
"Dude, sick!"
I float up the stairs behind him, past the second floor bathroom and into his familiar room. The walls are painted green, and I wonder when he did that.
"I have to paint someone." He announces, poising a small box over his bed and overturning it. Six tubes of paint bounce onto his neatly made sheets.
"…Huh?"
"Yeah, I know." He agrees, busying himself with the paints. More like fidgeting nervously. "My art teacher is a total hippie. She even makes us call her 'Miss Sunshine'."
He looks up at me with an adorably shy smile and gives a short, quiet laugh. I can literally feel my heart warm up like melted honey under that gaze.
"You need a… a-"
"Human canvas." He fills in, arranging and rearranging the order of the colored tubes. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Silver.
He clears his throat, waiting nervously for me to respond in some way, but I'm glued to the spot. He was asking permission to touch my body. Did I want that, especially after he had admitted his attraction toward me not even one week ago?
I take a moment to absorb him. His thin, boyish body. His soft gaze focused carefully away from mine and his eyebrows knit in hopefulness…
… Fuck yes, I wanted it.
All I wanted was to be close to him. The closer, the better. Since his return, I had noticed how near we stood to one another, how our thighs grazed each others, just barely, when we sat. How we faced each other from opposite sides of the bed when we slept over with one another. Had it always been this way? I had never taken any notice. We were fourteen now, too old -my mom said- to be sleeping in the same bed. But we felt comfortable that way and never bothered to alter that habit with age.
Being completely honest, I admit I've wondered lately what it'd be like to be even closer. To actually touch him purposely. On the hand maybe, on the cheek. His thigh, his lips.
My fingertips tingle with yearning, So I fold them into my palms and squeeze tight to keep from reaching out.
"… Sure, dude. I mean… I could do that for you."
His eyes meet mine and a smile curves his lips. I smile back, and he kneels to the ground and pulls a sheet out from under the bed.
"… How do we-"
"Just take off your shirt and sit on the sheet so this crap doesn't stain the carpet. Do you have any idea what the penalty is for a crime like that in this house?" He shakes his head and spreads the sheet smooth over the floor.
Complying to his command, I pull my shirt over my head and toss it into a pile on the floor, then stand awkwardly by the doorway.
"I said sit down, you douche." Kyle spats, dropping the jumble of paint tubes to the floor and sitting himself, Indian style, on part of the sheet.
"Ass master," I hiss, obeying nonetheless.
Grabbing for the blue paint, he pauses as he shakes it up, pondering.
"Maybe the pants should go, too."
"Huh?"
"It's going to drip," Kyle answers, holding the tube up for inspection. "Paint doesn't come out of clothes."
"Ooh." I squeak, honestly feeling like I had just learned something.
Sitting up on my knee's, I stick my pelvis out and begin undoing my pants. I realize, as I loop my thumbs through the top and wiggle them down my thighs, that this show is in direct display of Kyle's viewing pleasure, and he's watching intently. Falling back on my ass, I pull them off my legs and add them to the pile of clothes a few feet away.
Kyle swallows hard, shifts his gaze to my top half and gives one nod. "Okay."
I watch as he pours color onto his index and middle finger, then tighten as the coldness touches the skin of my collarbone and he smears it into warmth.
"What exactly do you have to do?"
Kyle's eyebrows arch high in acknowledgement, but his eyes and fingers continue their work, now across my chest cavity.
"Anything my 'beautiful, unique little heart desires'."
"Your teacher really said that?"
Kyle snorts.
"Well… How's she gonna know you actually did the assignment?" I wonder aloud. "It's not like you're taking me in to pin up on the wall, right?"
His finger twirls a half inch or so from my right nipple. To my chagrin, he pulls it away and snaps the blue closed, then reaches for the silver.
"We have to write a one page essay on the experience and how the colors and patterns and all that turned out and how it made us feel."
"Oh my God, dude."
"Yeah."
A squiggle of silver is caressed down my hairless treasure trail.
"Wait," It suddenly dawns on me. "That means you could have just bullshitted your way through the essay and skipped this whole thing."
Silence.
"Kyle?"
"Dude. Yeah maybe, okay?"
I blink.
"Kyle," I start carefully. "Kyle, there is no assignment, is there?"
"Yeah, there is."
I stare at him hard, unbelieving. I know him inside and out. I know when he's not telling the whole, honest truth.
Dots of green are circled around my belly button, and then he bites his lip and curls his fingers into his palm. His eyes lower.
"I'm suppose to do something artistic and write an essay about it, but the exact assignment isn't absolute."
That must have been one of the hardest things he's had to admit, up until that point at least. He chose to do this. He wanted to paint me. And I had to admire his balls for going through with it.
"You have some huge balls." I blurt.
His eyes snap to mine, searching for some kind of hidden meaning or insult maybe. I smile and in return, I get one back. Feeling my own balls grow to massive proportions, I make a request.
"Maybe I should paint you, too." I keep my eyes glued to our knees, which are touching, and rub the top of my arm in fidgety nervousness. "You know, part of your report could be the contrast of the colors we end up. Maybe you could make up something lame like… how we're all rainbows inside."
Peeking up at him through my bangs, I'm surprised to see him smiling.
"I'm sure 'Miss Sunshine' would eat it up." He agrees.
I nod and swallow dryly. "…Kay. So why don't you… uh," I point to his shirt, too embarrassed to ask him to strip.
Kyle sits up on his knees, identical to the way I had earlier. His thin wrists cross each other at the hem of his shirt, and then he lifts it, exposing his stomach, his chest, his shoulders, and then tosses it aside. We stare at each other awkwardly, excitedly, and completely out of my control, I look down at his pants. All I can hear is my blood coursing my veins wildly as I watch his fingers slide down his torso and he slips his thumbs under his fly, undoing his pants button in an almost teasing way.
I'm hot, and my throat is dry, and I'm in such physical excitement over watching my best friend take off his clothes that my heartbeat seems to be pumping solely in my nether regions. It's awkward and thrilling, embarrassing and delicious, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
The paints are opened and we begin applying colors and shapes and patterns and pictures to one another. He lets me touch his face, his cheeks and chin and nose. I make an orange spiral around one half of his chest, slow and precise with the short, smooth edge of my nail. I zero in, circling smaller until it glides directly over his nipple. His fingers come to an abrupt halt on my skin, and his eyes close as a small, gratified noise emits deep in his throat. Encouraged by this, I slop my hands with more paint, three colors at once this time, and apply it down his abdomen on either side of his belly button until I reach the top of his hipbones. His own artwork is becoming less shy and a lot more bold as he works color up my thighs. I feel fingers slip a little under the leg of my boxers, right on the sensitive inside of my leg. A sharp breath is sucked in through my teeth. Gripping around his hips, I caress my hands up his sides and around his back, then forward again around his ribcage.
Kyle sits up on his knees, moving in between my wide spread legs. Our breathing is in sync with one another; hard, shallow gulps of air through our mouths. Making war stripes, he runs all four of his fingers down my cheeks and his thumbs across my jawbone.
And then he's there, kissing me so fiercely it makes my head spin. I fall over when he lets go, but he follows suit, crawling on top of me and again finding my mouth with his. He sucks at my lips, the upper then the lower repeatedly, taking them between his, almost like he's devouring me. I follow his heed, allowing him to do what he will and responding only to his probes. He's the leader, and I have no complaints following along.
My body takes on a mind of it's own, telling my hands to reach down and squeeze his rear. My reward is a delighted grunt and the front of his boxers rammed into mine. This expels an even louder, surprised moan from myself and a rush of adrenalin down my body. I push him over, rolling on top of him and ignore the colors that shoot from the tubes of paint crushed under our weight. I grab his wrist and guide his hand down my torso and beyond the elastic of my boxers. He squeezes me in his palm, exhaling my name on a whisper as I sneak a feel into his…
…
"Stan?"… "Stan!"
I jolt awake wincing at the strain I feel in my neck from falling asleep in such an odd position. The dream had seemed so real, probably because it had really happened in the long, long ago. But the sad truth is that even though I had actually lived it once, it was in fact only a dream this time around, because I find myself now in the familiar waiting room of the hospital.
Wendy smiles at me. "Hey, sleepyhead."
In return, I smile back, soft and tiredly.
"Everyone finally left. They're tired and want to get rested up so they can be here when he's actually awake enough to start responding. Ready to go in?"
I yawn deeply, then nod.
"Just want to be alone with him?"
"Yeah."
She nods. As I stand she gives me a hug, and then we say our goodbyes.
Inside the room, Kyle looks just as he always has, only now he's turned onto his side and is curled up slightly. It makes me smile to see him in a more normal position. I don't think anyone sleeps perfectly straight on their back, at least not for long. It must feel good on his body to finally be able to turn.
To my completely amazement, not long after I sit in the usual chair facing his bed, I see movement. His long dark eyelashes flutter open and in an instant, the vivid green orbs they surround look straight at me.
Emotion wells up inside me. He hasn't looked at me for so long and, I thought, never would again. And just like that, here we are, face to face, my hand over his, looking into each others eyes. He blinks slowly, but I'm unable to. I can't look away, now even long enough for that. Opening my mouth, I try to speak, but my throat is too tight and the tears are too ready to start falling.
They come anyway, filling up my eyes and then splash out as I blink. The knot in my throat becomes looser.
"I miss you, Kyle." I cry.
Through my river of tears I watch his eyebrows crease together and his lips part slightly. He wants to say something, but all that comes out is a weak moan, close to a sob, and with a sigh, he slips back into the dark waters of his unconscious mind.
-BratChild3
