An Unanticipated Symmetry
Chapter Ten -- I Forget That I'm A Mess When You're Around

A/N: I thought this chapter would give me issues, but I actually had a LOT of fun writing it xD Well, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Please review!

I guess Kyle decided not to act on Craig's advice right away because it wasn't until a week or so later that he said anything more to me on the subject. We were hanging at his house after school, per usual, when he announced that he had something to tell me.

"But I want you to promise you won't freak out, okay?" He was sitting up on the kitchen counter with hopeful eyes.

"Why would I freak out?" I replied, despite the fact that I already knew what he planned to tell me. I had thought it over and decided that I was fine with the fact that Kyle was gay. I mean, why wouldn't I be? He was still the same person, still my best friend. Craig was right, I just needed some time to get used to the idea.

I was even sort of okay with the whole issue of him liking me.

"I don't know, I just kind of have a feeling that you will." Kyle bit his lip, looking at the ground. I waited. After another few minutes, he announced reluctantly, "I like boys."

Now that he had actually told me I didn't really know how to react. He glanced up at me, looking worried, so I gave a reassuring smile. "It's cool, dude," I said. "Really."

He grinned as well. "Thanks, Stan. It means a lot to me… that you can understand. I wanted to tell you sooner, but I guess I didn't know how you would take it."

"Kyle, you're my best friend. Of course it doesn't matter," I promised softly, taking a subconscious step towards him.

"And that's why you're my favorite," he replied, reaching out and draping his arms over my shoulders. I lost my balance slightly and began to fall forward, sticking out my hand to catch myself. Instead of coming into contact with the cool tile of the counter like I expected, they landed on something warm and denim. I glanced down to find my hand resting on Kyle's thigh.

My face immediately heated up, and I was sure that it was bright red by now. To make matters worse, it didn't even occur to me to move my hand, as all that I could think about was our close proximity to each other and the fact that his lips were still twisted into the most beautiful smile I had ever seen.

"I – uh – I–" I stammered, not even sure what I was attempting to say as my eyes kept flicking back and forth from his eyes to his lips.

Before I even knew what was happening our mouths were brushing together in a feather-light whisper of a kiss. My stomach flipped and my heart felt like it was trying to leap out of my chest through my throat.

Then I realized what was going on and pulled away, snatching my hand back like I had been burned. Kyle opened his eyes, which were initially glazed over with want but soon widened in horror at what he had just done.

It had to have been him. There was no way that I initiated that kiss.

"I have to go," I mumbled in a rush, backing away from him before turning and practically running out of the house, pausing only to grab my coat from the hall closet.

I was surprised that he didn't try to stop me.

Somehow I managed to keep my mind completely empty until I made it all the way home, up the stairs, and into my room with the door locked behind me. It was then that all the thoughts barraged me at once.

Hadn't Craig warned him not to do that? Hadn't Kyle heard me when I had said that I wasn't gay? Hadn't he realized that I just want to be friends? Hadn't he learned last time not to push change on me too fast? Hadn't he figured out how fucked up my emotions make me?

Why in hell had his lips felt so good on mine?

Too many questions. Too many thoughts. Oh god. I can't handle this. I need… I need Raven.

As if on cue, the bird chirped from his cage by the window. I glared at him with hate in my eyes. I can't be Raven. He took Raven away from me.

Kyle took Raven away from me.

Kyle.

Oh god.

I sank to the ground, my back still pressed against the door, seeing as until now I'd been paralyzed from the moment I entered the room. It was all too confusing, and my brain hurt, and my insides hurt. My stomach was churning. There were too many feelings.

My vision went blurry, and I felt a slight wetness on my cheek. I reached up, vaguely noticing how badly my hand was shaking, and felt the area under my eyes.

Goddamn, I was actually crying. I don't cry.

Raven doesn't cry.

But I'm not Raven. I'm Stan. And Stan doesn't have the same kind of emotional nothingness that Raven has. Stan doesn't know how to not feel. Stan hurts inside.

Being Stan sucks.

Kyle likes me. Kyle kissed me. Craig told him not to do that. But he did it anyways. I don't want to pull a Clyde and never talk to Kyle again. I don't know what I would do without Kyle.

Kyle took it real hard when you up and dumped him like that. He was bitter and angry. These past months are the happiest I've seen him in a really long time.

Goddamn you Ike get the fuck out of my head. I don't need that shit added on to everything else right now.

I guess now I know why Kyle was so upset after we stopped being friends last time. Jesus, I didn't even think about that before.

How long has he liked me, anyways?

Do I like Kyle?

Yes.

Do I like Kyle?

No. I don't. I can't. There's no fucking way.

It's not allowed.

Too many fucking thoughts. Too many fucking questions. I don't want this. I don't need this. I can't take this. I just want to sleep.

I want to sleep, and sleep, and sleep, and never have to wake up and deal with all my problems.

The next morning my alarm woke me up and I immediately turned it off again, pulling the blankets up over my head. My mom came in twenty minutes later to see why I wasn't getting ready for school and I told her I didn't feel well, I feel nauseous, please, please don't make me go to school. She frowned, felt my forehead, and didn't make me get up.

I stayed in bed hiding under my blankets all day.

The next day I tried it again. She put her hands on her hips and flat out refused.

"Look, Stanley, I don't know what's wrong with you," she told me, using her mom-voice. "Everyone deserves a mental health day once in a while, so I let you stay home yesterday. But you can't just ignore all your problems by staying in bed all day. So you are going to get up, get dressed, and drag your butt off to school." I didn't move. "Now, mister."

I sat up finally, giving her the most hateful look I could muster. It didn't phase her in the least.

Hardly a half-hour later, I was sitting in first period, dreading having to see any of my friends today. I looked like shit, that was undeniable. But not the kind of shit I looked like as Raven. I was a flat-out mess. My face was pale, my eyes were sunken into their sockets, I was as jittery as if I had just drank twenty cups of coffee. I was being paranoid – about what, I have no idea, but every sound was making me jump.

I felt like I was going to throw up. And I hadn't even seen Kyle yet. Why couldn't mom have just let me stay home again today?

"Hey, Stan," Craig said as he slid into his seat beside me in Chemistry. I jumped about a mile into the air. He gave me a weird look. "You okay? You're not looking so good."

"I'm fine," I mumbled, shifting my gaze to the ground. "I just… I'm fine."

"Okay," he replied, sounding uncertain, but he didn't bother me about it anymore.

Oh shit.

Did Kyle tell him?

Craig had asked Kyle to let him know what happened with me. Would Kyle have told him about us, and the kiss, and… fuck.

I really didn't want people to find out about that.

"Have you seen Clyde around at all?" Craig asked after a while of me silently freaking out. "I need to talk to him."

I slowly shook my head no, my eyes wide as I ran all the worst-case scenarios through my head.

Being regular Stan when I was going through an emotional crisis like this was rather detrimental to my mental health.

"Are you sure that you're okay, Stan?" Craig sounded really worried now. I was too paralyzed by my own fears to respond. He leaned in closer and dropped his voice to make sure he wasn't overheard. "Kyle told me what happened."

Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK.

"He's pretty upset about the whole thing, too," he continued, eyebrows knitting together. "Are you mad at him? I think you should talk to him. I really don't know how easily he'd take it if you just stopped being friends with him."

I opened my mouth but no sound would come out. "I… don't know," I finally managed, my voice strained.

"Look, it's not his fault, okay? Sometimes things just… happen. And it's better to just pretend that they didn't and move on with your lives. But I really think that you should try and keep your friendship with him."

"I don't fucking know, okay, Craig?" I roared, finally turning to face him, my eyes smoldering with sudden anger. Why couldn't he just leave me the hell alone?

Well, if people weren't looking at us before, they definitely were now.

"I don't want to not be friends with Kyle," I continued in a quieter voice. "But I don't know how easy it's gonna be for me to be around him, after…"

"Okay. I get it," Craig said simply. "I won't make you talk about it anymore. Just… think about it." He turned away from me and I knew that the conversation was over.

Kyle stared at me with hopeful eyes the second I walked into English. "Hey, Stan," he said cautiously, surveying me.

I glanced at him, but I couldn't keep my gaze there for long before my eyes shifted to his lips and I remembered the feeling of them pressed against my own and my face began to burn. "Hey," I mumbled in reply, quickly averting my eyes as I sat.

He frowned, and didn't try to talk to me for the rest of the period. I was grateful for this.

The day had dragged on agonizingly slowly and I was overwhelmingly glad when it was finally over. But of course I had to be delayed even further because I have the shittiest luck ever.

This time, however, it was Clyde causing me trouble. I discovered him on my way out to my car, looking significantly less cheery than the last time I had talked to him.

"Hey, Stan," he sighed, frowning.

Well I couldn't exactly leave him like that. The dude was fucking miserable. I had to at least find out why.

"What's wrong with you?" I replied, trying to make my question as sincere as possible and unfortunately failing horrendously.

"I broke up with Bebe," he mumbled, averting his eyes.

Well that was certainly surprised. He had seemed so happy to be going out with her.

"You broke up with her? How come?"

"It just… it didn't feel right. I don't think that I was going out with her for the right reasons. It's like, every time I kissed her, there just wasn't that feeling, you know? That feeling you're supposed to get when you kiss someone you like."

"I see," I said slowly. "Have you ever gotten that feeling with anybody else?"

He flushed and shifted his gaze to the ground. I had to try very hard to keep my jaw from just dropping open.

"W-with Craig?"

Clyde's eyes immediately snapped back up to my face, bugging out in horror. "He told you about that?" he squeaked.

"No, of course not," I answered quickly.

"Then how did you know?"

"I… it doesn't matter, okay?" If Clyde was upset about the prospect of me knowing, I couldn't imagine how much he'd freak if he knew Craig had told Kyle, of all people. "But did you? Feel something? …With Craig?"

"No," Clyde said a little too forcefully. "I – I can't have."

"Look, man," I started, even though I had pretty much no idea what I was about to say next. Words just kind of started spilling out and I had absolutely no clue where they were coming from. "I know you didn't want to feel anything. But just because you didn't want to doesn't mean that there was nothing there. You know? Maybe you just need to, like, push the fact that it was Craig you were kissing out of your mind and just think of the pure feeling itself. And then you can realize that maybe you did feel something, and maybe it was okay that you felt something. And then you can try and deal with everything else once you can finally admit that to yourself."

Clyde's defensive shell had been melting away as I talked, and he now stood before me raw, empty, real. I could see the pain and the longing in his eyes like they were being drawn out for me by a master artist, the confusion storming his head.

"I think you're right," he admitted quietly once I was done. "I… I was so scared by the fact that there were so many fucking sparks when he kissed me that I ran. I told him to stay away because I didn't want to feel something that strong. Something that powerful. And I knew I only asked Bebe out because I was trying to reassure myself that it wasn't just him, that it could happen with someone else. And obviously that failed miserably."

I nodded, satisfied, my good deed done for the day, so that now I could go back to being the self-pitying little fucker I had been prior to my little nudging of Clyde in the right direction of his epiphany.

"But how did you know all that?" he asked with unabashed, amazed disbelief. "Even I didn't know all that. And it's what I'm going through. It's almost like you went through exactly the same thing… and you know exactly how I feel."

"W-what?" I sputtered, letting out a startled laugh. "Psh. Don't be ridiculous."

He gave me a look that said I wasn't fooling anyone, least of all him. I sighed, my turn to drop my eyes to the ground.

"Kyle?" he asked.

I nodded dejectedly.

"Happens to the best of us," he continued in a sympathetic voice. "Maybe you should act on your own advice. I'm going to go talk to Craig. I suggest you hunt down Kyle and do the same."

A/N: Ahahaha. Stan's whole mental breakdown... I think I enjoyed writing that part a little bit too much xD
Anyways, I hope that this chapter answered some of your questions. This fic is wrapping up quite nicely, even though it may not seem like it because Stan is an idiot... but I'm pretty much exactly at the point I wanted to be for the ending when I started writing this, and that's a good sign, because it (hopefully) means that the last two chapters will be smooth sailing.
Reviews would be lovely, please and thank you =)