From the Queen of England to the Hounds of Hell

by hollycomb

AU - Ten years after the execution of Terrance and Phillip, the war with Canada has not ended. Stan and most of Kyle's friends are planning to join the army after high school graduation, bound to be drafted anyway. Kyle doesn't believe in the war, but he's not willing to let Stan go without him.

10. Chapter 10

A/N: This got a bit long, but there was a lot I wanted to convey before the epilogue, where things change dramatically. Thank you to all who reviewed the last chapter and have supported this story, and thanks as always to julads for the feedback on my drafts. Very interested to hear what you guys think of this chapter.

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Kyle had been afraid that the slow progress of physical therapy would frustrate and anger Stan, but Stan was suddenly saint-like in his acceptance of his limitations, which Kyle supposed he should have expected. They were not the limitations he had railed and fought against. These were temporary, and Stan got to see himself improving every day, little by little. He was working hard with a noble purpose: Kyle should have known that this would make Stan happier than he had been in years, even if he could barely stand for a few seconds, with the help of two nurses, before sinking down to his wobbling knees.

They went to the hospital together almost every morning, Kyle for his shift and Stan for his physical therapy. By Kyle's lunch break, Stan would be done for the day, worn out, and they would have lunch together in the cafeteria, usually something brought from home. After Kyle's break, Stan would begin his volunteer shift. He was still in his wheelchair, and something about this made him particularly lovable to the patients he visited, but maybe they would have loved him anyway. He read to old people and played cards with other vets in long-term recovery, did puppet shows for bored little kids and flirted gamely with their exhausted mothers. Stan was like the hospital mascot all of a sudden, and Kyle knew why: he was feeling guilty for his own good fortune, hurrying to try to catch up with what he felt he owed the world now.

Kyle felt the same way, most days. After his shift ended, he would meet Stan in the front lobby and they would head home together, usually stopping at the market for some kind of treat that they couldn't really afford. The route home didn't feel as long as it once had, even with Kyle walking slow alongside Stan's chair instead of running, which he'd taken to doing in the mornings before his shifts, after drowsy sex with Stan. The weather had gotten nice, cool and breezy, the air smelling of changing leaves. The sun was going down earlier, and it was always very dark by the time they got home, welcomed back by the smell of dinner. Ned was teaching Tweek how to cook. Sharon had gotten a nursing position in North Park and was often late getting home, so they usually ate without her. Kyle's father had left for New York at the end of September. The former Broflovski residence officially belonged to Cartman, and Kyle walked over to discreetly spy on it at least once a week, but so far hadn't seen any changes, aside from Cartman's massive Jeep parked in the driveway. He seemed to be living there alone. The broken front window still had cardboard taped over it.

"Have you thought about what you want to do for your birthday?" Kyle asked Stan when they were in bed one night after dinner, still just cuddling lazily, though Kyle could see that Stan was beginning to get hard from anticipation. "It's only two weeks away," Kyle said, and he laid an encouraging hand over Stan's erection.

"It'd be nice to be able to take a step without Julie and Pierre holding me up," Stan said. Julie and Pierre were his physical therapists. As far as Kyle could tell, they had some kind of good cop-bad cop routine going on. Stan loved Julie and deeply resented Pierre. "I guess that's all I really want," Stan said, reaching down to give Kyle's ass a squeeze. "And maybe a cake."

"Of course we'll have a cake!" Kyle said, sitting up. "I thought maybe we could do a proper party."

"Proper," Stan mimicked, grinning, and Kyle tackled him. "But, listen," Stan said once he had Kyle pinned. He'd gotten much more mobile in bed, able to do a little labored crawling on his knees that at least allowed him to get in and out of his chair with more dignity. "I think I'm ready for another milestone, in the meantime."

"Yeah?" Kyle said, and Stan nodded. He was playing with Kyle's hair, which Sharon had recently cut. Stan had taken it personally, complaining that she'd trimmed Kyle's curls too severely.

"I think I could try being on top," Stan said. "Of you. During sex."

Kyle laughed at that phrasing, then felt badly. He leaned up to kiss Stan on the mouth, sighing at the thought of being able to lie back and let Stan do the work. Bouncing in Stan's lap was good, it was great, but Kyle had been curious about what other positions would feel like.

"Okay," he said. "Let's try. Just don't push yourself too hard. You've got rehab in the morning."

"We'll see," Stan said, and he nuzzled at Kyle's cheek. Kyle could see that he was nervous, delaying, ducking Kyle's eyes. "I feel like pushing it pretty hard," Stan said when he finally met Kyle's gaze. "If that's okay with you."

"It's okay," Kyle said. "I'd like that." He didn't even blush: he'd gotten so good at talking about sex, all of the scariness now stripped away. If he wanted to ride Stan's cock, he asked for it, unless Stan asked first. He'd even asked Stan to give him a rim job a few nights ago, and had been giddy when Stan eagerly complied. Kyle had never felt so close to anyone before: not even to Stan, not like this. They were rarely apart except during Kyle's shifts, and even then Stan stopped by the reception desk between patient visits to kiss Kyle's cheek and ask him how it was going, as if it was ever going very differently from how it had been half an hour before. Half of the nurses who worked the desk thought Stan was the sweetest thing, and the other half thought he was a nuisance.

Stan was shy about assuming the position, distracting Kyle with kissing that felt both overly emboldened and distracted. Kyle had peeked into some of Stan's physical therapy sessions, and watching him take small steps toward mobility was both heart-wrenching and uplifting. So was this, Kyle realized, swallowing up the heavy breaths that Stan was already pushing into his mouth. It was different from regular sex-breathing: he was working hard to stay up in his knees long enough to push his dick into Kyle, who angled himself as helpfully as possible. Kyle groaned with special gratitude as Stan slid into him. It felt different and yet the same, and Kyle was glad for that, and for all the new things still to come. He'd been fantasizing, sometimes even while bouncing in Stan's lap, about being on all fours and having Stan hugged around him from behind, primal and protective at the same time.

"That's okay?" Stan said, panting. Kyle nodded and drew Stan's face down to his, kissing his cheeks, which were damp with sweat.

"Don't overdo it," Kyle said. "Just - lay in me for a while. I'd like that."

Stan lowered himself onto Kyle, his knees sliding outward. He hid his face against Kyle's neck, and Kyle cradled him there, petting his trembling shoulders. He didn't want to whisper encouragement, afraid it would seem condescending. He only squeezed around Stan's dick in slow but greedy pulls, smiling when Stan groaned.

"One day," Stan said, lifting his head. "I'm gonna fuck you as hard as you want. Someday."

"I know," Kyle said. "Don't rush it. We've got time. And anyway - my ass is still an amateur. I'm serious!" Kyle said when Stan laughed. "I like going slow. It's less intimidating."

"I'd never want to intimidate you," Stan said. He was up on his elbows now, his breath coming more evenly while he played with Kyle's hair. "And, God, just this. Feels so good."

"It really does," Kyle said, arching. Stan groaned and kissed his mouth, pumped his hips, and came rather quickly. He scooted down to take Kyle into his mouth as if in apology for this. They'd been at it for less than a month, and Stan had made some progress at lasting longer, but not much. Kyle usually didn't mind. He found Stan's nascent attempts at self control flattering, a reflection on his own ability to be arousing, and Stan could usually get it up again in under a minute if Kyle wanted him to.

When they were finished, Stan was exhausted, and Kyle helped haul him up toward the pillows, Stan's feet scrambling tiredly against the mussed blankets. He brought Stan to his chest and held him there, still throbbing in a kind of vague, whole-body way from his release.

"What kind of cake?" Kyle asked when he felt Stan start to drift off.

"Hmm?"

"I want to make you a cake," Kyle said, thinking of the one Wendy had brought to the house shortly after Stan had moved home, and Kyle's absurd jealousy of it. Kyle had eaten most of it himself in an angst-filled gorge. "Really, Stan, seriously. It sounds dumb, but it's important to me. I want to make your birthday cake this year."

"Fine, dude," Stan said. "How about - pumpkin spice. With cream cheese icing. Could we get the stuff for that?"

"I think so." Kyle kissed the top of Stan's head, nodding to himself. "Yeah, absolutely."

The following day was a Sunday, Kyle's only day off from the hospital. Stan still had physical therapy, but on Sundays his therapists came to the house after lunch to do their exercises in the backyard, since the weather was nice. Stan and Kyle slept late, dry humping each other into wakefulness around ten. Kyle skipped his run in lieu of taking a bath with Stan, who could get out of the tub himself now, but only with supervision, keeping a tight hold on Kyle's arm as he slowly rose from the water. Despite this struggle, Stan was half hard when he dropped into his chair, and Kyle knelt on the floor to slurp Stan's cock into his mouth, which was not uncommon after they'd bathed together. Kyle even loved the slight remainder of soap on Stan's skin, the clean scent that seemed to fade as Stan got harder in his mouth and the natural musk of him filled Kyle's nose. Kyle was still damp, shivering more from pleasure than the slight chill in the bathroom, and he came in his own hand while he sucked Stan off, feeling triumphant, as if they had transcended their previous awkward bathing experiences. He licked his lips after Stan had finished, climbed into his lap and kissed him for a while.

"You're cold," Stan said, pulling a towel around Kyle's shoulders when he felt him trembling.

"Not really," Kyle said. The cooler morning temperatures had been lingering until almost noon, but Kyle felt warm enough, pressed against Stan's skin. He let Stan dry his back and shoulders with the towel, thinking of where he might find 'pumpkin spice' for a cake.

When Stan's therapists arrived, Kyle headed for the market. It felt good to walk under the high sun without being scorched by it, the harshness of summer already a feverish memory. There was little about his life lately that didn't feel good, and it made him nervous at moments, but he was beginning to relax into the security of having come through the storm, at least in the light of day. Sometimes at night he still woke from bad dreams and felt panicked, nudging Stan's legs with his knee under the blankets, wanting him to nudge back. Stan was a deep sleeper, and Kyle supposed this was good: he didn't need to be exposed to Kyle's persisting paranoia that all of this could be taken away from them in an instant, as quickly at the war had once changed everything.

The black market was still going strong, though Bebe was running on a platform for restoring Main Street to its former respectful glory, and this notion seemed to have widespread support. She was proposing free business licenses to the merchants at the market, and cheap rent in the buildings that were now being renovated and repainted by Canadian-funded efforts that offered jobs to local townspeople who needed the work and the money. The restoration of normalcy in town was also something Kyle was a bit wary to accept. It made him feel foolish, too, to see that the Canadians so far just seemed to want to help them recover, even if it was under their strict supervision. As a Broflovski, he still had guilt, and he wanted to do something good to make up for it, like Stan's efforts to entertain all of the patients who were still stuck at Hell's Pass. Kyle certainly didn't want anything to do with government, but he'd been thinking more about college since getting his portion of the house money from his father, and medical school, though it seemed so far-fetched.

As he'd suspected, none of the smaller booths that dealt in spices had anything pumpkiny on offer, and he eyed the Supermarket, nervous about approaching. He saw Craig at the front, still manning the 'customer service' desk. He looked less furious than he had the last few times Kyle had encountered him, paging through a newspaper and chewing on a toothpick. His hair had grown back somewhat, making him look less like a convict. Kyle approached nervously, not sure how to handle this. They had mailed him Stan's letter of thanks before leaving Hell's Pass.

"Hi," Kyle said when Craig looked up from his newspaper. Craig gave Kyle his single-eyed stare, and Kyle began to wonder if he was tempting fate. Surely the news that Stan and Kyle were 'together' had gotten to Craig by then, since the black market was the main gathering place for South Park gossip. Kyle had no doubt that Cartman had found out somehow, and he couldn't even begin to fathom how or when he might lash out at them for having the nerve to have evaded his control. Even with the Canadian overseers in town, Cartman was still a formidable power in South Park, especially considering his implications that he'd had Canadian supply sources all along.

"Did you get the letter?" Kyle asked when Craig just went on staring at him, turning the toothpick over in his mouth.

"No," Craig said, and Kyle understood that he was lying, but he said nothing. He wasn't going to force Craig to discuss it. "What do you want?" Craig asked. He put the newspaper down noisily.

"Pumpkin spice," Kyle said. "Or any kind of pumpkin seasoning you might have. I got cinnamon and vanilla from the bake shop-"

"That shop charges twice as much as we do for spices," Craig said. He stood from his stool and stretched, pinching his eye shut irritably as he did. He looked less dirty, maybe because he'd shaved. "I've got pumpkins," Craig said. "Canned. What do you need them for?"

"A cake."

"Oh," Craig said. "For Stan. It's October, isn't it?"

"You could come to his party," Kyle said. "Craig, God, everything he has is because of you, I don't how to thank-"

"So don't," Craig said. "Good for him. I suppose I could have spent that money on a robot eye in a few years, but I'm really not all that enthused about sticking another piece of experimental technology into my skull, so, whatever." There was an awkward pause, and Kyle wondered if he should just walk away. Craig pointed toward the grocery section of the Supermarket. "Go to the canned goods," he said. "Find your pumpkins, pay at the register, and get out."

"Well, I'm still grateful," Kyle said, unable to let it go, though he knew that he should. "That day. If you hadn't been there, I don't know-"

"Yeah, okay," Craig said, sharply. "I suppose I've seen enough of my childhood acquaintances roll over for Cartman's dick for one lifetime."

"Oh. Um, you should come over sometime, Tweek would really-"

"Go!" Craig said, pointing, and he grabbed his newspaper, crumpling his fist around it. "Get your damn pumpkins and leave me off your social calendar. If you're stalling because you're afraid to run into Cartman, don't worry about it. He hasn't been here in weeks."

"Really?" Kyle knew hovering was ill-advised, but in some strange way he had actually missed Craig. "You know, he bought my house."

"Yes, that was a charming move. Broflovski, how many more ways do I have to say it?" Craig looked torn up for a moment, and Kyle was taken aback. "I hate the sight of your face. To the point that I'm restraining myself from slapping it. Please leave me alone."

"Jesus, fine," Kyle muttered, surprised by how much this hurt. He wandered away, found the canned pumpkin, and avoided looking in Craig's direction as he left. He felt guilty, as if he had come to the market to provoke Craig, or to brag, to show him that he'd been wrong. Kyle wondered if Craig knew that Wendy was in Denver, taking her pre-college courses and staying in an apartment with five other college bound girls, like something akin to an actual adult. Stan had gotten her address and had written to her, and Kyle wanted to do the same, but he had no idea what he would say.

He consulted with Ned about the cake, and refused to let him and Tweek take over completely. Kyle needed to do this himself, for reasons that were hard to explain. Stan was busy with his own mission in the weeks leading up to his birthday: he wanted to graduate from the wheelchair to a walker that he could at least use to get from room to room in the house. He was determined, and Kyle was worried that he would fall short of his goal, and that this would ruin his birthday.

"I'm going to invite Bebe and Clyde," Kyle said when they were on their way home from Hell's Pass, a week before the party. The weather had cooled significantly, and Kyle was wishing that he'd brought a jacket to work. "Unless - do you still hate Clyde?"

"No," Stan said. "I mean, I never hated him. Well, maybe I did, but you can guess why."

"Sure."

"Invite them if you want. God, I keep thinking - it's stupid, but I keep wishing Butters could be there. Kenny, too."

"Kenny is very possibly still alive somewhere," Kyle said, resentfully. "With my car. I guess he decided it was his to keep after he couldn't find Karen and Ike."

"Maybe he's still searching," Stan said, and he gave Kyle a sheepish glance, looking up at him from his chair. "You never know."

"That's the worst part," Kyle said. "I feel like I'll never know what happened to him. To Ike, I mean. To hell with Kenny."

"Don't say that, dude. We bonded, you know, up north. All four of us. I kind of thought - if they both made it back, I thought Kenny and Bebe might end up together. I looked out for Butters, and Kenny was really protective of Bebe. Which annoyed her, I think, but his heart was in the right place."

"I just don't understand how he got home," Kyle said, though he really hadn't given it much thought since Kenny left with the car. "He wouldn't explain it to me."

"A lot of what went on is hard to explain," Stan said, and Kyle felt a little wounded. They still hadn't talked much about Stan's experiences in battle. For the most part, Kyle didn't really want to know, but he wanted Stan to feel like he could confide in him, that Kyle wasn't just some sheltered child who wouldn't understand.

Kyle sent out invitations to the party the following day, glad that regular mail service had resumed and he didn't have to deliver them by hand. He only invited a few friends, not wanting Stan to feel too overwhelmed. Without thinking much about it, he wrote one out for Butters, but didn't have the nerve to do anything sentimental like leaving it at his grave or casting it into the strong wind that had begun to scatter fallen leaves in the evenings. He also didn't have the nerve to throw it away, and felt stupid when he considered hiding it in a book. In bed that night, he showed it to Stan, and flushed when Stan read it out loud.

"Dear Butters," Stan said. "We would be delighted to have you at Stan's twentieth birthday party this Friday, October 19th. You were always so thoughtful about gifts." Stan paused there to swallow, and Kyle felt badly for making him upset. "We miss you - a lot, and know you'll be there in spirit. Love, Kyle and Stan."

"Sorry," Kyle said immediately when Stan looked up at him. "I don't know why I did that."

"It's nice," Stan said, and he folded the invitation once before tucking it down between the headboard and the mattress. "That's. Thanks for that."

"Well," Kyle said, feeling stupid anyway. He launched himself onto Stan's chest and buried his face there, sighed. "I miss him, too," he said, wondering if this would be news to Stan. They might not have bonded at war or been very close as teenagers, but something about South Park was forever altered without Butters. Stan pet Kyle's hair and was quiet for a while.

"I think I'd like to work at the shelter again," he said. "Wendy's got Gregory working there now, and I guess Christophe and his mom help out, but. I miss those guys. The animals, I mean."

"Of course you do," Kyle said. "When you're done with your therapy - you know, you could go volunteer there, instead of the hospital. You don't have to wait around for me."

"But I like to," Stan said, and he brought his hand down to back of Kyle's neck, his palm warm and dry, enough additional comfort to make Kyle's eyes slide shut. "I like walking - well, not walking, but. I like being there on your walk home. Now that it's getting dark early. It's not like I could do anything for you if something happened, but I like knowing you're safe."

"Nothing's going to happen to me," Kyle said, clutching at Stan's shirt, wanting the closeness of him to make this true.

"It's just this time of year," Stan said. "The way it starts to smell like dying leaves, or, I don't know. I guess I still associate this month with Halloween, and scary stuff, and - it's something I picked up during the war, probably, this sense that I've got to be on guard, that something might always be coming for me. For us."

Kyle was alarmed but not surprised to learn that Stan shared his lurking sense of dread. He sat up and nibbled at Stan's neck, not wanting to dwell on it.

"I do like it when you come home with me at night," Kyle said. "I won't lie." He mostly loved the chance to talk about how Stan's day had gone and whatever else was on his mind, and it was nice just wandering through town together again. It had been a long time since the streets of South Park had felt like something that they were truly a part of, a place that belonged to them.

After a few icy days that smelled of the oncoming winter, the day of Stan's party was slightly warmer, and Kyle was glad. Ned had built a fire pit in the backyard, and Jimbo had scavenged some nice looking polished wood to make the benches that circled around it. Kyle was hoping to end the party there, with coffee and cake, though the cake hadn't turned out exactly as he'd hoped. It had fallen a little, but not catastrophically, and the icing at least tasted good. He'd taken the day off from the hospital to work on it and the other party preparations, and he felt the afternoon pass by more quickly than it usually did, his hours burned away by cleaning and helping Tweek with the cooking. It was the kind of thing he'd get sick of after too long, but for the time being with was nice to be occupied with household things, getting ready for company.

Stan was home by two o'clock, retrieved from the hospital by Jimbo, who had also brought a truck bed full of logs that needed splitting. Kyle helped him unload the truck while Stan took a nap, tired after an especially long therapy session.

"He can almost get himself into the truck now," Jimbo said as they hefted logs into the backyard. "Almost."

"He wants to walk around tonight," Kyle said. "I'm afraid he pushes himself too hard sometimes - I wish they hadn't let him bring the walker home yet."

"Nah, it's alright," Jimbo said. "They called it his birthday present."

"Ha. Well, Sharon's insurance pays for it, I imagine, so. That's odd."

"Don't be grumpy," Jimbo said, poking Kyle's ribs after they'd dumped the logs, both of them out of breath, only half the bed emptied. "If he gets tired, he can sit."

"I guess," Kyle said. He wasn't sure why he was making such a big deal out of this party. Maybe it was because he couldn't remember the last truly happy birthday that either of them had enjoyed. Kyle tried to recall his eighth birthday, but only had some vague memories of water guns in the backyard and his mother asking him to make a wish on his candles. He remembered his bar mitzvah well enough, but didn't like to think about it. Even more sparsely attended than Butters' childhood birthday parties, it had been too soon after the death of Randy Marsh for anyone in attendance to muster a celebratory mood, especially Stan. Kyle mostly remembered lots of his mother's political cronies clapping politely and being pressured to dance with Wendy, who had been the only girl his age in attendance. The single bright spot had been afterward at his house, lying in bed with Stan and sniffling pathetically while Stan wiped his cheeks with his thumbs.

"I don't even know why I'm crying," Kyle had said, though he did: his mother had come home for the party but would leave again in the morning, and Ike had spent the day in the attic, as always. Everything felt ruined, not like the beginning of anything.

"You don't have to know why," Stan had said, and he'd scooped Kyle fully into his arms for the first time since Randy had died, letting him muffle his sniffling against Stan's dress shirt. Kyle had felt a twinge of unexpected happiness, and it grew until he started to wonder if it would be nice to have this all the time: Stan in his bed, telling Kyle it was okay to feel lousy and holding him tight like he meant it. Immediately it had seemed like a dumb question, or at least something Kyle already knew the answer to. Of course it would be nice. It would be wonderful, he decided, the best and worst thing he could foolishly hope for.

Remembering what it had felt like to chastise himself for wanting Stan at thirteen, Kyle hurried into the house as soon as they were finished stacking logs. He needed a shower before the party, but he dropped into bed with Stan instead, curling up next to him. Stan moaned when he felt Kyle's presence, and he slid his arm across Kyle's back, his eyes still closed.

"Maybe this was a dumb idea," Kyle said. "I hate parties."

"I like them," Stan said. "And that cake smells good. Don't worry about it, dude. It'll be fun."

"Happy birthday, by the way," Kyle said, because he'd forgotten to say so before Stan left the house for therapy. Stan opened his eyes a little and grinned.

"Now I'm in my twenties," Stan said. "Weird. I feel like I'm sixty or something."

"Me too," Kyle said. He pressed his face to Stan's and closed his eyes. "But, you know. Sex with you makes me feel young."

"You are young, dude. You're nineteen."

"Well - exactly."

"I'm the one with a walker. At best."

"Not for much longer," Kyle said, hopefully.

They dozed off for a while, and though Kyle felt irresponsible leaving Sharon and the others to finish getting ready, he couldn't manage to pull himself from the warmth of a mid-afternoon, mid-autumn nap with Stan. The daylight was fading by the time he dragged himself into the shower.

Gregory and Christophe were the first to arrive, thirty minutes early. They had a gift for Stan, wrapped very neatly in newspaper, a delicate, rose-like bow made of strips of newspaper on top.

"Gregory doesn't have enough to do," Christophe said when Kyle took the package from them. "He's making crafts out of newspaper now."

"I have plenty to do," Gregory said. "Bebe's campaign keeps me busy all day, and then there's the shelter, those animals produce staggering amounts of waste - but, look, it's Stan's birthday. It's a special occasion, worthy of crafts."

"This is really nice," Kyle said, bringing it into the living room. "Thanks, guys."

"It's a pair of shoes," Christophe said. "Which is tacky, I'm afraid. It was Gregory's idea."

"You completely approved when I suggested it!"

"I told you I had second thoughts, no?"

"That's fine," Kyle said. "Stan will love it. Come in and get a drink."

Bebe and Clyde had arrived before Stan emerged from the bedroom, still looking sleepy but in good spirits, moving slow with his walker. Everyone chattered good wishes at him in a nervous rush, trying not to stare too much as he made his way to the chair that Kyle pulled out for him at the kitchen table.

"Well, I'm spent," Stan said once he was seated, his cheeks red from embarrassment and exertion. "Thanks for coming, everybody. Goodnight!" He reached for the walker, and it took everyone a beat or two to get the joke and laugh. Kyle hurried to press a beer into Stan's hand, though he didn't seem overly perturbed, and he took Kyle's beer-free hand and kissed it. "Thanks," he said quietly, and then it was Kyle's turn to go red across the cheeks, happily.

They all settled around the table as Sharon and Ned sliced up the centerpiece of the meal, a fat pork tenderloin that had cost plenty at the market. The kitchen table was pleasantly cramped even before Sharon and Ned took their seats. Kyle was pressed between Stan and Christophe, feeling a little drunk by his second beer and remembering that he hadn't eaten since breakfast. He loaded his plate up without guilt, going light on the pork and heavy on the garlicky mashed potatoes.

"Have any of you heard from Wendy?" Stan asked when the conversation about Bebe's campaign began to lag. "I wrote to her, but I haven't heard back yet. I guess the mail's still slow coming from Denver," he added, as if to make it clear that he wasn't upset with her about this.

"She's doing fine," Bebe said. "She really likes her program, but of course she gets into little tiffs with her roommates. She's very particular about how things are, you know, typical only child. I'm sure she'll write back once she gets more settled. I'm mostly worried she'll get sick. I keep reading stuff about that flu that's going around."

"That's spread to Denver?" Sharon said. "I thought it was further north."

"What flu?" Stan asked.

"It's a semi-serious outbreak," Gregory said. "Affecting a lot of people in what's left of the major cities in the west - I think for healthy adults it's just a setback, but there have been deaths, mostly the elderly and some young children."

"And of course there's all kinds of conspiracy theories about the Canadians poisoning our water and so forth," Bebe said. "Which is ridiculous."

Kyle looked to Jimbo, who had once been fond of radio programs that advertised conspiracy theories such as that. He was shaking his head.

"Nah," he said. "If they wanted to kill us off, they wouldn't go after old people and kids. That's a shame, though. Hope it doesn't make its way down here."

"I'm sure it will eventually," Sharon said. "They're working on an inoculation - the hospital in North Park hopes to have it by Thanksgiving."

The meal was good, Tweek dashing around refilling drinks and fetching beers like a waiter. Kyle felt a bit badly for letting him take on that role, but he knew Tweek liked to feel as if he was earning his keep. He seemed happy enough, sipping from the cafe Americano that he seemed to drink with every meal, gesturing with his hands to tell Bebe some story. Kyle was getting tired, despite his nap, probably because of the beer. He got up to make a fresh pot of coffee to serve with the cake, and asked Ned to start a fire outside so they could have dessert there.

Stan managed to get to the fire pit with his walker, but Kyle could see that he was exhausted as he slumped down onto one of Jimbo's benches. Kyle sat beside him while the others trailed out with their cake and coffee, having given Stan a kind of unofficial head start. Stan blew out his breath and stretched his hands toward the fire, leaning into Kyle's embrace when he offered it. Stan was shaking from the effort of walking so far, and he felt overly warm, despite the chill in the air.

"You okay?" Kyle asked, softly enough so that Bebe and Tweek wouldn't hear as they took seats on a bench opposite theirs. Stan nodded and pushed his elbow more firmly into Kyle's lap.

"I love you," he said, turning to murmur this into Kyle's ear. "You're amazing."

"You're drunk," Kyle said, beaming. Stan shrugged.

"Yeah, but it's my birthday. I can be drunk, it's okay. And I do love you, Kyle, I really do."

"I know," Kyle said. He pecked Stan's cheek and looked over to catch Bebe watching them while Tweek rambled on about whatever. She smiled at him, and Kyle looked back to Stan. "Love you, too, dude. Happy birthday."

Stan opened his presents outside and declared that he loved the shoes, the quilt that Bebe and Clyde had apparently made for him together, the gleaming hunting knife from Jimbo, mittens from Ned, and a new winter coat from his mother. Kyle was pleased by the practical nature of the gifts, possibly because he was pretty tipsy himself and everything seemed great, just perfect. He even decided that his cake was delicious after Stan praised it at length and ate two big pieces.

After the presents were open and the cake was finished, Gregory said he felt like they should be singing campfire songs. He was joking, but Jimbo took the opportunity to start in on some old patriotic songs. Kyle was surprised when everyone joined in. Even Christophe sang along in a muttering, half-drunk way, and by the time they'd gotten to 'America the Beautiful' Jimbo and Clyde were both in tears. Stan was basically asleep with his head on Kyle's shoulder, humming along at random moments, his arm snug around Kyle's waist under the blanket that Sharon had draped over them. He consented to the wheelchair when she brought it out, insisting that he'd done enough walking for one night.

"Pretty good party," Kyle said when he was climbing into bed with Stan that night, after the guests had gone and only Tweek remained in the kitchen, doing the dishes.

"Mhmm," Stan said in agreement, rolling toward Kyle. They huddled together under the blankets, both naked. "I think I'm too out of it to do anything," Stan said, his eyes falling shut as Kyle smoothed his hair down.

"I know," Kyle said. "You can have your birthday sex in the morning. Any requests?"

"Hm. Maybe I could milk you. Like, you know. Before. I did look forward to it, before, Kyle, I did. Even when I couldn't come. I still - you were my reward for still being alive at the end of the day."

"I'm glad," Kyle said, a bit unnerved by the reminder that Stan had recently needed to consider his specific reasons to live. He kissed Stan's forehead and his eyelids. "Milking, um. That sounds great. I always loved it, too."

"Then I'll fuck you," Stan said, mumbling, and he tensed up with a grunt when his chip fired.

"Careful!" Kyle shrieked. He sat up, immediately wide awake, and appraised Stan, who was only sighing tiredly and trying to pull Kyle back into his arms. "Are - are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Stan said. "I've slipped up before, during therapy, when stuff hurts. It's okay, dude, really. I'm in the clear."

Kyle settled back down around him, and Stan was quickly asleep, but Kyle had a hard time calming down after hearing Stan curse for the first time since the surgery. He put his fingers against Stan's pulse at intervals, and reached down to squeeze Stan's ass until Stan moaned with annoyance in his sleep and shifted his legs against Kyle's. It seemed too dangerous for either of them to declare Stan 'in the clear,' now or ever. Kyle didn't get to sleep for hours.

When he woke, it was to an odd feeling that he couldn't place at first: Stan was getting back into the bed, pulling the blankets back over himself as he scooted toward Kyle. The toilet was running as if it had just been flushed. Kyle turned his cheek as Stan spooned up behind him.

"What- are you okay?" Kyle asked, feeling as if he was dreaming.

"Yeah," Stan said. He was whispering, but Kyle could hear a measure of giddiness in his voice. "Dude," Stan said, and he bit gently at Kyle's earlobe. "I had to pee, so. I got up, went in, and did it. I had to sort of throw myself against the door frame, and balance on the sink, and, you know, I still had to - sit. But I did it, though. There and back again. I just did it."

"That's awesome," Kyle said, rolling over in Stan's arms. He squirmed against Stan's chest, glad that things had gone well in there, and that he could go back to sleep.

"I can't believe how vindicating that was," Stan said. He sounded as if he was trying to contain gleeful laughter, and his hand was moving on Kyle's back in a wide awake way. "Like, I feel like I just climbed a mountain. Or ran a marathon. I didn't even use the walker, Kyle!"

Kyle began to understand that Stan wouldn't be sleeping anytime soon, and that he wanted company to celebrate this small but significant victory. He arched up to give Stan a congratulatory kiss, waking a bit more when Stan returned it breathlessly, licking into Kyle's mouth. Soon they were pawing at each other in their usual pre-sex way, grinding their growing erections against each other's thighs. Kyle clambered on top of Stan, wanting him to lie back and relax after so many milestones.

"I'll never pee on you again," Stan promised, and Kyle laughed into his mouth.

"It didn't even bother me, really," Kyle said.

"That is such a weird thing to say, dude."

"No, it's not! I mean - I hated that it upset you so much. But it was just, you know, a minor inconvenience."

"Not to me," Stan said, and he flipped Kyle onto his back with surprising strength. Pre-dawn light filtered in around the edges of the curtains, and Kyle could see that Stan was serious, and that he shouldn't laugh. "I need to be able to take care of myself," Stan said. "And you, sometimes. When you need me to. If you do."

"I do," Kyle said, nodding. He spread his legs around Stan's weight, suddenly wanting sex very badly, whereas a few minutes before he'd just wanted more sleep. "Please, I do need you. Please, Stan."

He wasn't sure why he was begging, when Stan clearly had plans to give him what he wanted anyway, but it felt good to ask and receive. Stan lasted longer than he usually did, going slow and taking long breaks to kiss Kyle's mouth and neck. Kyle let his head loll on the pillow and moaned shamelessly, his legs wrapped around Stan's back. This was his favorite thing, he decided: barely awake, pressed under Stan's weight, filled up with him, waiting to arch into the next set of shallow thrusts. He came just from the rub of Stan's hard stomach on his cock, and Stan cursed softly in Kyle's ear as he reached his own climax. His chip didn't seem to go off, maybe because it was kind of a non-word, somewhere between shit and fuck. It didn't sound dirty, anyway, just amazed.

They lingered in bed, clinging to each other under the heat of the blankets, the temperature having dropped overnight. Kyle thought about how they would soon have a fire in the room during the night, and how different it would be this winter. They could make a bed of blankets and pillows near the hearth and have each other right there on the floor by the glow of the fire. Kyle rubbed his smile against Stan's neck, still unwilling to get out of bed, cuddled too comfortably into his daydreams.

"Do you think we'll have to move upstairs?" Kyle asked when they were finally on their way to the hospital, Stan wearing his new coat. He'd left the mittens behind for the time being. "After you're climbing stairs, I mean," Kyle said.

"I guess we could," Stan said. "But my old bed is small, and we'll need the fireplace in the winter."

"I was just thinking that, too," Kyle said. "About the fireplace, I mean. But what about Tweek? He's up in your dad's old office, with no fireplace."

"So are Jimbo and Ned, in Shelly's old room."

"Yeah, but they've got Jimbo's body fat, plus, it's the two of them. Tweek's all alone."

"He could move down to the living room for the winter," Stan said. "Hey, and listen - I want to go see Craig soon."

"Seriously?" Kyle said, thinking of the encounter at the market, Craig's warning about the slap he was holding back.

"Yeah, as soon as I can walk up to his door. Before Thanksgiving, I think, if I stay on this pace. Then we could invite him to Thanksgiving."

"Weren't you listening last night?" Kyle asked, laughing. "I mean, I guess we could still ask Craig to come, I'm sure they'd want him there, but Thanksgiving is going to be a communal thing. Bebe's planning on winning this election, and then she's marrying Clyde on Thanksgiving. The whole town's invited, basically."

"Oh, right." Stan snorted. "Clyde would get married on Thanksgiving."

"He so would, yeah. It's perfect."

Stan continued to make progress with his therapy, and by the start of November, when the first real snow came, he was making his way around the house without even needing the walker, though he did take frequent rests between tasks. He still couldn't walk to the hospital, but Jimbo had begun driving him and Kyle to and from Hell's Pass once the roads got icy, though they were much more well-maintained than they had been the winter before. Stan's last real use of the wheelchair was while waiting in line to vote on election day. It seemed like the whole town had turned out, and the line was long. There was only one race, with most local government positions assigned to Canadian officials, but it felt like an important one to the people of South Park: the incumbent mayor who'd let the town go to shit during the war versus Bebe Stevens, adorably gap-toothed war hero who had invited them all to watch her wed her high school sweetheart, also a war hero, in a few weeks' time. Not surprisingly, she won by a landslide. Kyle had never seen Gregory look as thrilled as he did at Bebe's victory celebration, marching Bebe around with his arm around her shoulders as if she was a daughter he was proud to have reared so well.

"Craig didn't come to the party," Stan said when Kyle was driving them home. They'd borrowed Jimbo's truck, and Kyle was wishing that he had one of his own, with big snow tires, comfortably high off the road. He'd been thinking about cutting into what he'd come to think of as his college fund, wondering if he could get a decent truck for a couple thousand dollars.

"Of course Craig didn't come," Kyle said. "He's in love with her fiancé. He doesn't want to see her celebrate a victory of any kind."

"I wish Craig could just get over Clyde."

"Easy for you to say," Kyle was offended on Craig's behalf, still able to feel a certain kind of empathy for his situation, though Kyle had ended up with his own childhood best friend after all. Stan reached over to squeeze Kyle's thigh.

"I bet Wendy's already over me," he said. "I bet she's met some really sophisticated people in the city."

"Denver isn't known for its sophistication, but maybe. I hope she's healthy, anyway. I think that flu is a full scale epidemic now."

"Damn. People are dying of it?"

"I think only the weak and infirm are susceptible to the worst of it, but apparently it's got the whole city in a panic." They'd had a bad case of the flu at the hospital that week, and Kyle had been obsessively washing his hands on a whole new level. Everyone at the reception desk had been wearing surgical masks, which made for a morbid workday.

"About Craig, though," Stan said, to Kyle's disappointment. He'd been hoping to steer the conversation elsewhere, still dreading the grim reception that Stan's attempt to thank Craig for the money would receive. "I want to go see him tomorrow. Now that I can walk up to his door, like we said."

"Fine," Kyle said. "But don't expect to be welcomed in with open arms."

"I don't expect anything, I just want him to know how I feel about what he did for us."

Kyle had trouble sleeping that night, though he wasn't sure what he was afraid of: that Craig would take back the money somehow, reach into Stan's spine and rip out what he'd paid for? He'd never thought of Craig as particularly cruel, but he was broken in some way, and Kyle could relate to how he might want to lash out. If Kyle had been preparing to watch Stan and Wendy host a Thanksgiving wedding he would certainly have felt less than charitable to anyone who dared to be happy in his presence.

Kyle called in sick to work the following morning, which was cold and biting, and was glad that Jimbo had no jobs that required the truck. Stan couldn't have made it to Craig's house on foot, and Kyle wouldn't have wanted to do so himself. The sky was overcast and the wind was freezing.

"I think I'm going to buy a car," Kyle said as they drove toward Craig's house.

"Seriously?" Stan said. "That's expensive, though. It'd cut into your school money big time."

"What school?" Kyle said. "Where am I going for college, exactly? There's nothing in South Park, and I don't want to leave you here." This had been eating at him for weeks, and he wasn't sure that it was the best time to have this discussion, on the way to Craig's lair.

"Dude, you wouldn't have to leave me," Stan said, reaching over to squeeze his shoulder. "I'd come with you, and get some job to support you while you study. It'd be great. We don't have to stay in South Park forever, you know."

"But that's so crazy!" Kyle said, feeling guilty for the volume of his voice when Stan flinched. "Sorry, it's just - I've always felt so trapped here. The idea that I can just decide I'm free to go is terrifying. And I can only imagine all the fun political discussions a Broflovski from Colorado would get into on a college campus."

"You wouldn't have to enroll with that name," Stan said, and he squeezed Kyle's shoulder again, so firmly that Kyle looked over at him. "You could be a Marsh," Stan said. He smiled in a sweet, nervous way that made Kyle want to pull over and hug him.

"I would love to be a Marsh," Kyle said, and he turned back to the road before his eyes could start to water. "That's not a bad idea. I mean, it's fantastic, it's-"

"It's legal under Canadian law," Stan said. "Has been for years."

"Stan, we can't get married!" Kyle said, but he was smiling, thinking about a tiny ceremony with their friends, Stan's ring on his finger. "I mean we can, I want to, yes, but right now I just really want our own car."

"It's a pretty practical expense, I guess," Stan said. "Especially if we're gonna leave town together eventually."

"I still get so scared to hope for another great day here," Kyle said. "Trying to imagine more than that - I'm such a wimp."

"You're not a wimp, you're cautious, and you've been through a lot. It's okay to be afraid to accept that things might actually be okay. I can relate, Jesus. Every time I wake up I have this moment before I'm really awake when I'm afraid I won't be able to move my legs, or feel my dick-"

"Oh, Stan. I know-"

"But I can, and that's why I have to thank this guy," Stan said as they pulled up to the curb near Craig's house. The driveway needed shoveling, but otherwise it was a more well-kept property than the one Craig had grown up in, not far from Kenny's side of the tracks. Craig's mother and sister still lived there, and Craig lived alone, as far as Kyle knew. He was nervous about the fact that they hadn't brought the walker, but Stan made it to the front door steadily enough, Kyle's hand closed in his. Ned had made Kyle a pair of mittens, too, and they were both wearing them. Kyle felt childish as Stan rang the doorbell, as if they were two spoiled kids coming here to trick or treat and Craig would rightly tell them to get out of his yard.

It took a while for Craig to come to the door, and when he did Kyle was relieved not to find him in an open bathrobe and his underwear, which had been his fear. Craig was wearing a thin sweater that was actually rather stylish, jeans and socks.

"Oh, Christ," he said after staring at Stan and Kyle for a moment. "What's this?"

"Craig," Stan said, and Kyle realized with alarm that Stan was about to cry. "I - I want to-"

Stan broke off there and stepped forward. Kyle wanted to grab him and pull him back, for his own safety, but Stan had already thrown his arms around Craig. He pulled Craig into a crushing hug, moaning slightly, sniffling. Craig met Kyle's eyes over Stan's shoulder. He looked stunned and a little frightened.

"Thank you," Stan said when he pulled back, holding Craig by his shoulders. They were about the same height, but Stan was bulkier, especially in his coat. "Look at me, Craig, look at this. I'm standing here because of you. You did this for me. You gave me back my life, man."

"Well." Craig glanced at Kyle, then back to Stan. Kyle had never seen him at a loss for words before. "Come in. You guys should come in."

The rooms of Craig's house were dark but finely decorated, and he led them through a den that featured a large, glowing aquarium full of fish. Kyle wanted to stop and examine it, but he followed Craig and Stan into the kitchen, where Craig offered Stan a roll of paper towels. Stan looked confused for a moment, then tore one off and wiped his face with it. He was crying quietly but profusely, and his nose was dripping, too.

"Nice place," Kyle said when Craig flipped on the lights in the kitchen. Kyle had only seen such sleek appliances and spotless countertops in movies. "You must have a maid," Kyle said.

"Yeah," Craig said. He looked uncomfortable, but not unhappy, eying Stan as he blew his nose loudly into the paper towel. "She comes on Tuesdays. I overpay her, but. She used to work at the brothel, and she didn't like it. You guys can sit down." He gestured to the kitchen table, a black square surrounded by four black chairs that were polished and new looking. "Do you want a drink?"

"Craig, you don't have to wait on us," Stan said, laughing. He walked to Craig and gave him a friendly clap on the shoulder. "How've you been, man?"

"Fine," Craig said, tightly. "I'm going to have a glass of wine. Will anyone join me?"

"It's like ten in the morning," Kyle said.

"I'll take one," Stan said.

Kyle consented to having a small glass himself, since he'd fibbed his way out of work and could go home and nap after this. They sat around the kitchen table and made awkward small talk about the market. Kyle was glad that Stan had refrained from bringing up Bebe's election and the fact that the market's more established booths would soon relocate to shop fronts on Main Street, but then Stan did something even worse. He brought up the wedding.

"I'm sure you've heard about it," Stan said while Kyle's heart began to race. He was trying to figure out how to signal to Stan to shut up about this, but he supposed it was too late. "On Thanksgiving, at City Hall. Reception in the ballroom. I haven't been in the City Hall ballroom since your bar mitzvah," Stan said, looking to Kyle, whose eyes widened.

"Um, yeah," Kyle said. He glanced at Craig, who was twirling his wine glass slightly, holding the stem between his thumb and forefinger. He had very elegant, very pale hands. "That was up there with the worst days of my life."

"My mom wouldn't let me attend," Craig said, presumably referring to Kyle's bar mitzvah. "She blamed your mother for my father's death."

"Oh," Kyle said, feeling the color drain from his face. He finished his wine. For a moment there he'd been pleasantly surprised by this visit, but perhaps Craig had only meant to lure them into a false sense of security before spitting in their faces.

"She forgets," Craig said, sitting back in his chair, "That she was on the mothers' committee or whatever Sheila Broflovski's original platform was. She forgets that she was all for sticking v-chips in me and Ruby's brains."

"Well, my point is," Stan said, clumsily trying to change the subject, "That you should come. Clyde told me he wanted you for best man."

"Clyde wants me for some very specific purposes, yes," Craig said, his voice sharpening. "That doesn't mean I'm required to appease him. Or her. No, I won't be going to that joke of a wedding. It's so incredibly vain, thinking the entire town should attend."

"It's not that they think the whole town should come," Kyle said. "They really want us to. I know it's infuriating at times, but they really are as earnest as they seem to be, those two. It's exhausting to the rest of us, but it's real."

"Where's Testaburger these days?" Craig asked, apparently not willing to discuss Clyde and Bebe's shared earnestness.

"In Denver," Stan said. "Doing some pre-college courses. Look, if you don't want to come to the wedding, that's cool. But Tweek is coming with me and Kyle, and he'll be all by himself when we're dancing and stuff."

"We're going to dance?" Kyle said, and he realized he shouldn't have emphasized this part. It would come off as bragging to Craig.

"Sure, dude," Stan said. "We can slow dance, anyway." He turned back to Craig. "Kyle's got no rhythm, and I've got the legs of an eighty-year-old man."

"For always?" Craig said, frowning. "Or just-?"

"Just until my muscle strength gets back to normal. It'll take a few more months. But I can walk for almost eight minutes now."

Something about that specific number, and the fact that Stan hadn't rounded it down to five or up to ten, made Kyle lay his hand on Stan's knee under the table. He was afraid he was radiating joy, even here, nervous as he was, and that Craig would take it personally, but he couldn't help it. Eight minutes. Stan smiled at him, looking slightly confused.

"Tweek," Craig said. He closed his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "I shouldn't have let that happen."

"You can't save everyone," Kyle said, and he was startled when Craig's eyes snapped open angrily.

"Tweek's fine," Stan said. "I mean, maybe not, but he seems to be doing really well. I think he's just lonely. If you don't want to come to the wedding, you could at least come over to the house sometime. Craig, you're our friend. I know I shut pretty much everyone out when I was in the wheelchair, but it doesn't mean I wasn't thinking about you guys, wondering how you were."

Craig scoffed. He moved his wine glass around on the table, and Kyle noticed that he had barely sipped from it.

"What's your next stop after my house?" Craig asked. "Cartman? Is he the only one left, other than me, who needs to be brought back into the fold so you two can feel good about yourselves?"

"Cartman's a lost cause," Stan said, as if that had been a serious question. "It's not about the fold, dude. I guess I can see how we come off like busybodies, but I just - you saved my life, okay? I just need you to know, whether this annoys you or not, that if you ever need anything, you can come to me for help. That's all. We'll leave you alone if you're busy."

Craig said nothing, staring at his wine glass. Kyle was tense, waiting for the final blow to fall, some awful thing said by Craig that would tarnish all the good his money had done.

"Your fish are cool," Kyle said, blurting this out before he could really decide if he should break the silence or not. "Can we look at them?"

Craig stood, and Kyle braced himself to take a glass full of wine in the face. Instead, Craig headed toward the den, beckoning for them to follow. For a moment Kyle thought they were being thrown out, but Craig walked to the fish tank and bent at the waist to examine its contents. Stan and Kyle did the same, Stan still sipping from his wine.

"This is my favorite," Craig said, pointing to an ugly brown fish that had suckered itself to the front wall of the tank. A collection of brightly colored, jauntier fish darted in and out of an elaborate coral structure behind it. "The noble tank cleaner," Craig said, putting his finger against the glass. The fish had no reaction. "He's unpleasant to look at and ignored by the others, but he doesn't care. He goes about his business and gets the job done."

"He's not unpleasant to look at," Stan said. "He's just brown."

"Well." Craig straightened, frowning a little. "Being 'just brown' in a tank full of neon and angel fish is another thing entirely."

He seemed defeated, and Kyle wanted to say something to make him feel better, but he kept trying to think in terms of fish metaphors and came up with nothing. He stood and thought about touching Craig's back in a reassuring fashion, then refrained, afraid Craig might rip his arm off like a wild animal if Kyle didn't approach him in the correct submissive fashion.

"The point is," Stan said, as if this had all been one conversation, "It's great to see you, and you're a great person. I know you don't need me to tell you that, but I want to say it anyway. You're awesome and I'll always be grateful to you." Stan hugged Craig again. Craig didn't return the hug, but he also didn't push Stan away, though he held on to Craig long enough to make Kyle a little jealous. "We'll get going," Stan said when he stepped back. "You can come over for dinner tonight if you want. Or any night."

Craig did not show up that night for dinner, which was probably a good thing, because Tweek made hot dogs and a sweet potato mash that turned out runny. A few days later they received a letter that wasn't properly mailed, just stuck in their mailbox with Tweek's name written on the front. Kyle thought it might be from Craig, but he didn't ask, not wanting to be nosy. Tweek seemed slightly more upbeat after receiving it, whatever it was, and he started going out of the house on occasion, though the winter had fully arrived and it was snowing almost daily.

With the Main Street shops reopening under new regulations, there was less price gouging on food and Kyle was able to lessen his work schedule to four days a week at Hell's Pass. He had plenty to do around the house, between keeping the fires burning and the driveway shoveled. He was shopping around for a vehicle, not wanting to make the decision too hastily. He missed his father, who would have had opinions about buying a vehicle. Stan's physical therapy sessions had been reduced to once a week, but he still depended on Jimbo for daily rides to the animal shelter, where he'd resumed his volunteering duties.

"Would it be irresponsible if I brought home a pet?" Stan asked one night when Kyle was dozing in his arms near the fireplace in their room. They had a habit of piling pillows and blankets there after dinner, having sex atop the pile and then burrowing into it before transferring the whole thing to the bed when the fire died down.

"What kind of pet?" Kyle asked, not sure how he felt about something furry sharing their quarters and competing with him for Stan's love.

"I don't know," Stan said. "A small dog? Or a cat, there are a couple of cats who are so into being with people. It just kills me that I can't give them more attention."

"Ask your mom," Kyle said. "It's still her house."

"Yeah, but you're my - partner." Stan snorted and squeezed Kyle closer. He was lying against Stan's chest, stretched out on Stan like he was a bed. "Is that the right word for it?"

"You might call me your fiancé," Kyle said. He'd had some whiskey after dinner, and he'd been thinking about this, too: nomenclature. "If that marriage suggestion was serious."

"It wasn't a suggestion," Stan said. He bent his knees and pressed his thighs to Kyle's sides, hugging him with his legs, too. "It was a proposal."

"Oh." Kyle somehow hadn't expected that response. He was running his fingertips through the dark hair on Stan's arm, still too fucked-out for a proper thought process. Sex seemed to get better on a daily basis, especially now that they could cycle through a few different positions, which helped Stan last longer. That night, they had finished with Kyle on his hands and knees, Stan behind him and thrusting hard, holding him tight around his middle. It was Kyle's favorite, their usual finale. "Well, of course I'll marry you," Kyle said when he realized that he'd left Stan hanging, lost to his sex-dazed thoughts.

"Would you call me your husband?" Stan said. He sounded like he wasn't sure if he wanted that or not.

"Yeah," Kyle said, still playing with Stan's arm hair. "Would you really let me take your name?"

"Of course, dude! I'd effing love that."

Kyle was all for being a Marsh, but he had mixed feelings about no longer being a Broflovski. Though the name essentially amounted to a powerful cultural stigma, it was one of the last connections Kyle had to his mother, and to the way their family had been when she was alive and fully present, before the war. The Broflovski household might have caved in on itself, but they hadn't always been a disaster. Kyle's parents had loved him and Ike so completely, and he had known that, growing up. He'd once been a confident, even slightly arrogant kid, and before the war he had tormented Cartman more often than it had happened the other way around. But even then, Stan had been part of Kyle's burgeoning sense of self. Kyle had always been proud that someone like Stan wanted to be around him.

They crawled into bed, slept well, and in the morning Kyle had hazy memories of making plans to marry, but neither of them pursued the subject in the days that followed. It seemed irrelevant, because Kyle felt firmly in place at Stan's side already, and he also had a pervading sense that it wasn't yet the time to make major decisions. He dragged his feet on buying a car, and Stan didn't bring any pets home from the shelter. Kyle felt like they were both waiting for some kind of sign that the probationary period of their life together was over. Maybe it would seem permanent when Stan could walk wherever he pleased without struggling, or after Bebe and Clyde's big wedding, or maybe at the end of the winter, when new starts and possibilities naturally seemed closer. Kyle didn't mind this sense of stalling, since his waiting place was so cozy, but it irked him that he couldn't decide what exactly they were waiting for or how they would know when it had come.

On the morning of Thanksgiving Ned and Tweek made a big breakfast for the whole family, and Kyle was glad to wake up to it, though he knew he would overeat again at the feast Bebe and Clyde were throwing after their wedding ceremony. Kyle had some of everything on offer: bacon, pancakes, waffles, chicken sausage and eggs. He also drank coffee, which he normally didn't do, and he was feeling wired after the meal, and a bit anxious about the evening ahead. Stan still had plans to dance, and Kyle hoped they wouldn't end in wobbly-legged embarrassment.

"I really hope Craig shows up tonight," Stan said when they were having a bath together after breakfast, Kyle lying back against Stan's chest, his legs open as widely as possible as Stan 'washed' between them thoroughly.

"Mhmm. Well, he won't, and let's not discuss him while your hand is on my dick."

"Eh, I don't know," Stan said, still stroking Kyle. "I think you might be surprised."

"I do hate to think of him alone on Thanksgiving. Nnh - harder, please?"

"You want to come?" Stan asked, murmuring this in Kyle's ear. "In the bathwater?" he said when Kyle nodded. "That's so dirty, Kyle."

Kyle laughed, but was aroused all the same, and he pressed his hips up when Stan slowed his pace.

"I wish I could carry you to the bed," Stan said, and he let got of Kyle's cock entirely, reaching down to squeeze his thighs with both hands. He pulled them apart a bit wider, until Kyle's knees lifted out of the water. Stan was breathing hard, and Kyle was, too, feeling how stiff his nipples were when the water sloshed around them, exposing them to the cold air outside the tub.

"You will," Kyle said. "Someday, yeah. I'd like that."

"I know you would," Stan said, speaking into Kyle's ear. He was hard, too, his cock jammed against the small of Kyle's back. "You like it when I take over, don't you?"

"Yes," Kyle said, nodding, his eyes closed. "Yes, I do, yeah."

"Why is that?" Stan sounded more genuinely curious than seductive.

"Because - nnh." Kyle didn't want to say the wrong thing, to make Stan feel like the only thing he'd ever really had to offer Kyle were the things the surgery had restored. "Because you like it," Kyle said, softly. "And I like, um. Giving up control to someone who wants to take good care of me. Not all the time, just. In bed, you know? Like that night when you told me you were going to milk me. Just - yeah. That's what I like. Tell me how you're going to make me feel good, then do it."

He wasn't sure he'd articulated that very well, but Stan seemed pleased, his hands roaming over Kyle's chest, pausing to toy with his nipples. They got out of the bath and dried off hurriedly, still half-damp when they fell into the bed. Stan turned Kyle onto his stomach and gave him a long, slow fuck that left him drooling and sleepy, lying in a puddle of his own come. They moved onto the dry side of the bed and curled up together as their sweat dried and the cold in the room reached them. There was no fire, but Kyle was too drowsy to get up and make one. He slept for most of the day, waking when Stan kissed his neck and whispered that they should get ready for the wedding. For a moment Kyle was so groggy that he thought Stan was talking about their own wedding, and he caught himself imagining his mother in attendance, wiping at her eyes.

It was dark early that night, and very cold. Kyle wanted to stay in and eat turkey by the fire rather than attending a big party, but he knew that wasn't an option. He was wearing his best suit, which had the unpleasant effect of reminding him of his mother's memorial service. It was also too small, the sleeves barely coming to his wrists and the pants a little tight at the waist.

"I'm getting fat," he said on the drive to City Hall, bundled up in the truck bed with Stan and Tweek. Sharon, Ned and Jimbo were riding in the cab.

"You are not," Stan said, and he laughed as if the idea was absurd. "It's muscle, from your running."

"I haven't been for a run since October." The feeling of freedom and tranquility had greatly diminished when the weather got cold.

"We'll start up again in spring," Stan said, tucking Kyle more snugly against him. "Me and you, together. Tweek, you could join us."

"No, uh – no, thanks!" Tweek was shivering inside his coat, despite the blankets Sharon had packed into the truck bed for their journey. "I can't really run, um. I have a heart defect."

"I didn't know that," Stan said.

"It's not a big deal," Tweek said, muttering. He seemed kind of down, and Kyle wondered if he was dreading the evening ahead, his first public appearance since retiring from the brothel. It had been shut down after Bebe offered the girls working there better jobs in town, mostly physical labor like clearing snow from the sidewalks on Main Street and garbage collection. They'd all jumped at the chance to change careers, and Liane had transformed the place into a boarding house, still bartending down in the kitchen for the regulars.

City Hall was crowded when they arrived, and they hurried into the court room where Bebe and Clyde would be wed, hoping to find a seat. There weren't many left, and Jimbo and Ned opted to stand at the back while Sharon squeezed in with some other South Park mothers. Tweek was narrow enough to find space toward the front, and Kyle had resigned to simply standing when he saw someone waving to him. It was Wendy, and Kyle grabbed Stan's hand when he saw Token sitting beside her.

"Look!" Kyle said, waving back when Token lifted his hand and grinned. "Oh, wow, look who it is."

"Wendy," Stan said, and he sounded very relieved to see her, in a way that pricked at Kyle's old jealous tendencies. "And Token, Jesus. Hey!"

"We saved you seats," Wendy said, standing when Kyle and Stan came to the aisle where they were sitting. "Well, sort of, if you don't mind squeezing in." She laughed when Stan grabbed her for a hug. "Hey, yeah," she said, patting his back and smiling at Kyle from over his shoulder. "Great to see you - oh, God." She moved back and peered up at Stan. "You look-" She was nodding down at Stan's feet, her eyes getting wet. "So great."

"How've you been?" Token asked when Kyle moved around Stan and Wendy, giving them a moment.

"Fine," Kyle said, and he hugged Token hello, feeling a bit awkward about it. He hadn't seen Token since his family moved away at the start of high school, and he looked especially grown up in the American officer's uniform he was wearing. "I mean, really good," Kyle said. "It's been really good. You're an officer?"

"Was," Token said, and he shrugged. "I guess Clyde's going to wear his dress uniform during the ceremony, so. I figured, what the hell. Probably the last time I'll get to wear it."

"You look great in it," Stan said, coming forward to hug Token. They gave each other soldierly slaps on the back while embracing. Kyle turned to Wendy, feeling timid. She smiled and touched his tie.

"Looking nice," she said. "How's it been?"

"Great," Kyle said. He didn't want to brag, but he wasn't going to lie. "You're okay in Denver? No flu-like symptoms?"

"Oh, no." Wendy rolled her eyes. "My roommate had it, but I barricaded myself away from her, and now I've got the inoculation."

"We've just started giving it out at Hell's Pass," Kyle said. He'd already had his, and so had Stan and Sharon. "Well, I'm glad you're okay," he said, meaning her health, and he flushed when he heard himself.

"I'm fine," Wendy said, and she pulled him into a hug. "Trying not to cry," she said, whispering this into Kyle's ear. "He just. Seeing him walk."

"I know," Kyle said, and he hugged her back, tightly.

The music began while they were still making small talk, Clyde and the rest of the groom's party streaming out from a side door and coming to stand in front of the empty judicial bench. The judge they'd selected for the ceremony was standing in front of it: a tubby man who looked too young to be wearing a black robe. Kyle was disheartened but not surprised to see that Craig hadn't changed his mind about being Clyde's best man at the last minute. Clyde's best man was his father, and the only other groomsman was Gregory, who looked annoyingly good in a suit. Kyle straightened his jacket and sat down between Wendy and Stan. The seating was snug, and he could feel the heat of Wendy's thigh against his, but it was only weird for a moment. She reached over to hold his hand, and Kyle gave her a smile, glad for it. She looked beautiful, in a pale blue dress that came to her knees and made her gray eyes look wintry in a jewel-like way.

"We've missed you," Kyle said, speaking quietly as the din in the room began to die down. "Are you coming back to South Park soon?"

"For Christmas," Wendy said, nodding. "But after that I'm headed to Ohio, to Oberlin. I got in, and they're letting me start taking a few classes during spring semester."

"Oh, that's awesome." Kyle was a bit envious, and also sad to hear that she wouldn't be coming home. "I'm really happy for you," Kyle said, and he squeezed her hand.

"Me too," Wendy said. She squeezed back before letting go. "For you, I mean, you and Stan. I really am."

"Hmm?" Stan said, hearing his name and leaning across Kyle.

"Nothing," Wendy said, grinning. "We're talking about you."

"Oh, alright," Stan said. He smirked and rested his arm on Kyle's thigh. They were close enough that it was necessary. Kyle didn't mind, and as the music for Bebe's entrance began, he laid his hand over Stan's.

Bebe wore a white dress with blue accents and carried a bouquet of dark red roses. Kyle thought the choice to wear patriotic colors was pretty tacky, but Bebe pulled it off with grace, her hair still neat and chin-length, two little braids pinned back into a tiara-like crown at the back of her head. The ceremony itself was quite basic, mostly legal language, but Clyde blubbered through his lines anyway, crying openly. When they were pronounced man and wife, Bebe turned to the crowd and beamed, lifting both arms jubilantly, Clyde's hand in one and her bouquet in the other. Kyle laughed when he saw the thick blond hair under her arms.

"Oh, lord, Bebe," Wendy said, but she was smiling as she applauded along with everyone else.

The basic City Hall ballroom that had served as a kind of cavernous stage of humiliation during Kyle's bar mitzvah had been transformed into a space that glowed with warmth and smelled like cinnamon, apples and roasted meat. Kyle was hungry, despite the big breakfast, and he was not ashamed to be among the first people who made for the buffet. There was a whole town to feed, after all, and he didn't want to miss out.

"Are you okay?" Kyle asked Stan as they waited in line to fill their plates. Token and Wendy had drifted off to say hi to more people who'd missed them.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Stan said. "I got a break to sit during the ceremony, and we'll sit when we eat, and then I'll be rested up for dancing."

"Why are you so obsessed with that?" Kyle asked, embarrassed by the thought of dancing. He wasn't even good at the slow kind, and the last time he'd tried it had been in this very room, with Wendy, during his bar mitzvah.

"Because - I don't know," Stan said. "It's just one of those things."

Kyle knew what Stan meant: it was one of those things he thought he'd never do again. Kyle kissed Stan's cheek, moved past the salad and took a generous scoop of stuffing. He loaded up on turkey, gravy, potatoes and some fresh cranberry dressing, and was embarrassed by the weight of his plate as he searched for a place to sit, though also excited about devouring it. He saw Tweek sitting alone at one of the tables that were arranged around the space that had been left in front of the stage for dancing. He was picking at a plate that seemed to contain nothing but turkey and gravy.

"What have you got against starch?" Kyle asked, sitting down beside him. Stan followed, taking the seat at Kyle's other side.

"Huh?" Tweek looked up from his plate with a frightened expression, as if Kyle was seriously trying to pick a fight over Tweek's aversion to empty calories.

"Your plate - never mind. Are you okay?"

"I'm okay," Tweek said, eying Stan, who was shoveling stuffing into his mouth. Kyle turned and took a moment to admire him, momentarily distracted by how arousing he found Stan's appetite to be. There was something so delightfully normal about it, after all the abnormal things they'd been through.

"What'd you think of the ceremony?" Kyle asked. Tweek shrugged.

"Um, Bebe looked pretty. Clyde cried a lot!"

"He sure did." Kyle felt bad leaving Tweek to pick at his turkey in silence, but he couldn't wait any longer to dig in, so he did. Sharon, Jimbo, and Ned joined them at the table, which had ten seats. Stan waved Wendy and her parents over, and soon there was only one empty seat, on the other side of Tweek. Kyle was too busy eating to notice that someone had taken it until he looked up from his plate and saw that the person was Craig, clean shaven, well-dressed, and looking more handsome than Kyle had ever seen him, eye patch and all.

"You came!" Tweek was saying, for possibly the third time, clutching at Craig's arm. "You seriously came!"

"Yes, Tweek," Craig said. He had no food; Kyle wasn't surprised. "I'm fashionably late, but I'm here. Stop remarking on it. People are staring."

"Oh, shoot, we're not staring, soldier!" Jimbo said. "Just glad to see ya. Been a long time since I seen you outside of the Supermarket."

"Well, there is no more Supermarket," Craig said. "Bebe offered us a business license and a lease that was more than fair, but Cartman was a little bitch about it - excuse me," he said, glancing at Sharon and Wendy's mother. "And now we've split up the business. I'll be opening a small specialty foods store near Main Street, and Cartman - well, God knows what his plan is, but he certainly got his share of the money."

"That's good!" Tweek said, still holding on to Craig's arm. "Cartman, ah. He wasn't a good business partner."

"He wasn't," Craig said, and he touched Tweek's hand. "Eat your dinner, for God's sake. You're so thin."

"Aren't you going to get a plate, hon?" Sharon asked. Craig shrugged.

"Maybe," he said. "Buffets make me twitchy. You never know who might have touched your dinner roll while reaching for his."

Craig was looking across the room rather pointedly, and Kyle turned to see why. He jerked with surprise when he saw Cartman at the bar, not only because he had never expected Cartman to show up to this, but because Cartman looked like absolute hell even from a distance. He was unshaven, his beard patchy and his hair longer than Kyle had ever seen it, greasy and touching his ears. He was wearing a suit, but it didn't look especially clean.

"Oh, God, he came?" Wendy said. "Stan's letter said he bought your house," she said, turning to Kyle, who blushed, not sure why this was so embarrassing in mixed company.

"Yeah," Kyle said. "I haven't seen him - he looks bad."

"He just came for the free bar," Stan said, and Kyle stiffened when he heard the barely concealed hatred in Stan's voice. Stan was holding his knife and fork in fists on the table, staring at Cartman. Kyle hadn't considered that Stan might be able enough to inflict whatever physical damage he could on Cartman. It was the first time Stan had been in the same room with Cartman since Kyle told him about the deal that Craig's money saved him from having to make. Kyle touched Stan's shoulder, and he shook his head when Stan turned to him.

"Just ignore him," Kyle said. Stan huffed and turned back to his plate, forking a potato like he wanted to kill it.

Kyle tried to refocus on the dinner conversation, but he was acutely aware that Cartman was in the room, and he kept checking the crowd from the corner of his eye, expecting Cartman to blunder over and say something humiliating that would start a fist fight with Stan. Though he'd regained an impressive amount of strength, Stan was still fragile, and Cartman would be able to hurt him if he wanted to. Kyle remembered the frightening weight that had borne down on him in Butters' bedroom the year before, how easily Cartman had held him to the bed and how pathetically outmatched he'd felt when he struggled. He turned around slightly, not wanting Stan to notice how nervous he'd become, but Stan held his gaze in a knowing way when he turned back to the table.

"The music's starting," Kyle said, hoping to distract him. Stan leaned over to kiss his cheek.

"Let's wait for a slow song," Stan said. Kyle nodded and glanced across the table at Wendy, hoping she hadn't noticed that. She was talking with Gregory, who had his arm around Christophe's waist. Kyle had never seen them be affectionate toward each other in public before, and it took him a moment to notice that Christophe seemed pretty wasted. He was smiling down at Wendy with hooded eyelids and swaying a little in Gregory's grip.

"We're going to head home," Gregory said, glancing at Christophe anxiously. "Though I hate to miss the cake."

"'Ey, moneybags," Christophe said, saluting Craig. "You're showing your face among the common people?"

"Forgive him," Gregory said, leading Christophe away. "He's been – it's a difficult holiday for him."

Christophe said something in French that sounded derisive, but he allowed Gregory to walk him away, toward the coat room in the lobby. Kyle heard him muttering about colonialist pigs before the music drowned him out. He glanced over at Stan's wine glass, which had been refilled three times since they'd taken their seats. Stan still liked to drink, and not always in a purely festive way. So did Christophe, it seemed, and Craig, and Cartman was stumbling around somewhere, shit-faced. Kyle again felt left out of something that he never would have chosen for himself anyway, and he signaled to the waiter. At least if he got a little drunk, dancing with Stan in front of everyone wouldn't feel so strange.

Despite the large meal, it only took a few glasses of wine for Kyle to start to feel tipsy. Stan had more, too, and Craig and Wendy both got louder and more prone to throwing their heads back in laughter as their glasses were refilled and the older people headed for the dance floor or outside to smoke, in Ned's case. Jimbo and Sharon were dancing together, and something about this bothered Kyle. He elbowed Stan, who'd been talking to Token about his officer training.

"Do you think if we danced," Kyle said, hearing how drunk he was when he spoke, "That, um, Jimbo and Ned would like, be inspired? To dance in front of people, I mean?"

"Maybe," Stan said, and he slung his arm around the back of Kyle's chair, tugging it closer to his own. "Look how happy they are," he said, and he nodded to Bebe and Clyde, who were in the center of the dance floor. The music was still lively and spirited, a fast song, but they were swaying together as if they were hearing something slower, smiling at each other and kissing chastely. Kyle whirled toward Craig, wanting to shield his good eye from seeing this, but he had his back to the dance floor, maybe intentionally. He was talking to Tweek, who was laughing like a school girl at whatever Craig was saying, his hands pressed over his mouth.

"Look how happy Tweek is, though," Kyle said, speaking into Stan's ear. Stan nodded and shushed him, grinning.

"You're loud," he said, tugging on Kyle's tie. Kyle shrugged.

"I always am." He'd meant that to sound seductive, but Stan laughed and turned back to Token.

"Tweek lives with us," Stan said.

"Wendy told me," Token said. "That's, uh. Thanks for that. We left town right after his mother died. I felt bad about that. He needed – someone."

"He does our dishes," Kyle said, shouting this over the music. Stan snorted and put a finger over Kyle's mouth.

"We're gonna go dance or something," Stan said, scooting his chair back. "Kyle's kind of tanked."

"I'm not tanked!" He'd only had a few glasses – two or three? – but he did feel unhinged in a way that he hadn't since last year, since Butters' party. Distantly, he began to wonder if someone had put something in his drink. He turned to survey the room as Stan pulled him up from his chair. Cartman was nowhere to be found.

"You okay?" Stan asked as they made their way to the edge of the dance floor, Stan's hand steady on Kyle's back. Kyle nodded and clutched at his arm. It didn't matter where Cartman was or wasn't: Stan was here, with him. Nothing bad could happen as long as that was true.

The band finished what they were playing and started another song. It wasn't especially slow or romantic, but the guitar chords were a lazy strum, and people were pairing up to sway together. Stan took Kyle's hand, and Kyle found that he was glad to be pulled onto the dance floor after all, not embarrassed. No one was looking at them, anyway, not even when Stan held Kyle so close that he could rest his tired head on Stan's shoulder. He closed his eyes at moments, trying to listen to the singer's lyrics so he could remember the song and find it on an audio tape at the black market later, if someone was making a bootleg recording. But the black market was gone – the war was over. It finally seemed true.

"Falling asleep?" Stan asked, and Kyle lifted his head.

"No," he said, though he had been, a little. He touched the back of Stan's neck, ticking his hairline, and grinned when he felt Stan shiver. "Are you alright?" Kyle asked, remembering Stan's legs. "We could – we don't have to do the whole song."

"Yeah, we do," Stan said. "I'm fine, we were sitting for like three hours."

"We were?" Kyle said.

"Yeah, dude." Stan kissed Kyle's forehead. "Sorry I let you get so sloshed. I didn't realize—"

"I'm not that sloshed," Kyle said, and he hugged himself to Stan again, his face partly hidden against Stan's neck as they turned in slow circles amid the crowd of other couples. "And anyway, it's Thanksgiving. I can get a little, uh. Tipsy."

The next song was faster, but Stan pulled Kyle back when he tried to move off the dance floor. When Kyle saw the nervous hope in Stan's eyes he laughed and let himself be pulled. He was careless enough to not mind his own lack of rhythm, and the other guests who were still at the reception seemed largely to be in the same state as Kyle, or worse. Kyle could see that Stan was wearing out toward the end of the song, and he dragged Stan back to the table by both hands, still sort of dancing.

"I'll get our coats," Kyle said when Stan fell gladly into his seat. Jimbo and Ned were not dancing themselves, but they had returned to the table and were talking together in an intimate way, Jimbo's elbow on the table, chin in his hand as he smiled dazedly at Ned, who was saying more than Kyle had ever seen, though he couldn't make out the words. Sharon was talking with Dr. Testaburger and Wendy, and she gave Kyle an encouraging smile when she heard him mention the coats. Kyle was ready to be home, to collapse under the blankets with Stan for sex or sleep: he was prepared for either one.

He realized as he headed toward the coat room that the reception hall was only a quarter as full as it had been during the dinner service. People were trickling out, to their cars or to the fleet of taxis Bebe had enlisted to take drunk guests home. The coat room was actually the clerk's office near the court room where Bebe and Clyde's ceremony had taken place. The ballroom either didn't have one or didn't have a big enough one – Kyle wasn't sure, since it had been warm enough on the weekend of his bar mitzvah that they hadn't rented one along with the ballroom. Thinking of that afternoon, he felt suddenly strange, and annoyed by how disorganized the coats were. He found his and Stan's easily enough, and Sharon's overcoat with the embroidery around the collar, but Jimbo and Ned's drab military-style jackets were harder to locate.

Just as he was finally digging them out of a pile of less dignified coats near the back, he heard the door to the clerk's office close. The whole room was lit only by the clerk's desk lamp, but even before he turned to peer through the shadows between them, Kyle sensed who was standing in front of the door. Cartman seemed almost as big as the door itself, hulking there like an enemy from one of the video games they'd played together as kids, blocking the only exit.

"What do you want?" Kyle asked, rising with all five coats bundled into his arms. They were heavy, and his legs felt unsteady from a combination of too much drinking and sudden, all-consuming fear. It was quiet in the clerk's office, which was down a long hallway from the ballroom, far enough to block out the sound of the music now that the door was closed.

"Maybe I'm just looking for my coat," Cartman said. When he took a step away from the door, Kyle could see that he was unsteady, too, very drunk. Cartman caught himself on a bookshelf and laughed. "Look at you, Jesus," he said as he came closer. "I can see you shaking from here."

"I'm not," Kyle said, though he was. "I can smell you from here, God. Did you plug up all the shower drains in my house already?"

He wasn't sure that made sense, but it was supposed to be a dig about the fact that Cartman's body odor was almost as thick as the reek of whiskey that was rising off of him as he came closer. Kyle realized too late that he should have moved instead of standing his ground, because now he was trapped in the back corner of the room, Cartman closing in on him.

"Your house?" Cartman said. "You don't have a house, bitch." He growled and flinched backward when his chip fired. Kyle took the opportunity to try to dart around him, but Cartman caught his shoulder and tossed him back into the corner, upsetting Kyle's balance. He fell hard on his ass and bit down on his tongue to keep from cursing. The last thing he needed was a v-chip blow. He scrambled to recollect the coats and tried to stand, but Cartman was looming over him, his hands splayed on the wall behind Kyle.

"Get away from me," Kyle said.

"No," Cartman said. "I want to see how much – hah, how much I can do to you before you start screaming for help."

Kyle leaned back and kicked at him desperately, hitting him in the knee and then the inside of his thigh, not quite connecting with his balls. To Kyle's surprise, two glancing blows were enough to send Cartman crumpling toward the floor, and Kyle vaulted over him, losing only one of the coats. He bolted for the door, his heart thundering in his ears, so loudly that he didn't notice Cartman's sobbing until he was within reach of the doorknob.

Confused, Kyle turned back. He hadn't really kicked Cartman that hard, and certainly not hard enough to make him cry like that, high-pitched and whining like a little boy, his head pressed to the floor, fists jammed over his eyes. Kyle decided it wasn't his problem and turned for the door again.

"Butters," Cartman cried, and Kyle paused, the doorknob half-turned. "Butters, ah, God, Butters, he – Kyle, you fuh, fucking- ngh!"

Cartman jerked violently, struck by his v-chip. He lifted his face from the floor, and Kyle shrunk backward he saw Cartman's expression, frightened by it. Cartman didn't look enraged or even remotely dangerous. He looked irreversibly broken, and Kyle was struck by the absurd feeling that he had just kicked a helpless child.

"He died for your piece of crap boyfriend," Cartman said, still crying hard, his face a mess of tears and snot. "For Stan. Effing Stan! So you guh – got what you wanted again, Kyle, you sneaky Jew, like always, you get everything. And what the hell did I get? I didn't even – he never told me, until – and now he's dead, Kyle, and I've got nothing. Fucking – nnh – nobody!"

"Cartman," Kyle said, and the taste of that name in his mouth reminded him how ridiculous it would be to try to comfort Cartman after everything he'd said and done. Kyle turned and left him weeping hysterically against the floor, collapsing into in a puddle of his own tears.

Kyle hardly remembered where he was as he made his way back to the ballroom, hugging the coats to his chest. He was shaken, but returning to the warm light of the party and the sound of laughter and music calmed him somewhat. He hurried to their table, which was one of the last ones that was occupied, most of the remaining party guests dancing shamelessly in a semi-cohesive group, Bebe and Clyde at the center of them.

"You okay?" Stan asked when he looked up at Kyle and saw his face. Kyle nodded and handed Stan his coat, realizing as he did that the one he'd dropped had been his own. He didn't care; it was old, a tattered relic from high school, and Kyle certainly wasn't going back for it. "You sure?" Stan asked, and Kyle nodded again, moving to give the others their coats.

"Tweek went home with Craig," Sharon said as Kyle helped her into her coat. "He's – oh, honey, what's wrong?" she asked when she turned to him.

"Nothing," Kyle said. He forced a smile. "I'm – I got sick in the bathroom. Too much wine."

"Oh." Sharon touched his cheek. "You do feel a little warm."

"Where's your coat?" Stan asked, coming over to them as Jimbo and Ned shrugged their jackets on.

"I think someone must have stolen it," Kyle said. "I looked through all of them, and. It's gone."

"Gee, I wonder who might have taken it," Stan said, and he scoffed. "Jesus. As soon as I'm well enough, I'm kicking Cartman's fat ass." Stan grimaced at the curse, and Kyle and Sharon groaned reproachfully.

"No," Kyle said. "Let's just – forget him."

"I saw Liane earlier," Sharon said. "She seemed remarkably fine, considering what she's been through. I wish she would have accepted more help, ah. Before resorting to what she did."

"Is she still here?" Kyle asked.

"I think so," Sharon said, looking around. Kyle did too, and he spotted Liane near the back of the room, giggling with the bartender.

"I'm gonna get some water for the ride home," Kyle said.

"Good idea," Sharon said.

Kyle hurried over, hoping that the bartender could accommodate this request. He didn't really care about getting water, though it would probably help clear his head and prevent a hangover.

"Hey," Kyle said to Liane when he got there, and she turned from her flirting, looking surprised to see him.

"Hello!" she said. "Sheila's little boy, oh, look at you! All grown up." She touched Kyle's cheek, and he flinched away as politely as possible.

"Eric needs you," Kyle said, annoyed with himself but unable to suppress the feeling that something should be done. "He's in the coat room, he's. Upset."

"Oh." This seemed to sober her quickly, and she nodded to herself, hugging her clutch purse to her chest. "Yes - thank you, Eric is very - he has a low tolerance for alcohol, the poor dear."

"Yeah," Kyle said. He could see that she understood more than that, but he wasn't interested in discussing it. He turned to the bartender, who gave him a plastic cup of water as Liane headed for the coat room, her heels clacking nosily down the marble hallway.

On the drive home it was just Kyle and Stan in the truck bed, and Kyle pulled the frosty blankets over his legs while Stan closed him into his coat, sharing it with him. Despite the bumpy road and the freezing air, it was a romantic way to travel, and Kyle pressed his face to Stan's throat to keep his nose and cheeks warm.

"Check out the stars," Stan said. "You never used to see them this bright, remember? When we were kids, I mean, in town. There was too much light pollution."

Kyle peeked up at the sky, not as interested in the stars as he was in hiding inside Stan's coat, for comfort as much as warmth. He was still shaken by being cornered and threatened by Cartman, and even more so by what he'd seen afterward, how easily his lifelong enemy had toppled. Kyle was already having a hard time believing how fearful Cartman had become in his imagination in the past year and even earlier in the evening, when really he was small and sad. He hadn't even left South Park, but the war had thoroughly crippled him. Kyle was still too angry to feel sorry for Cartman, but he felt a vague sympathy for the boy he had been, and how the war had doomed him to invest in all of his worst qualities.

In bed that night, Kyle was too tired and fuzzy-headed to do much more than kiss Stan under the blankets, and Stan seemed to be in a similar state of sleepy half-arousal, his fingers combing through Kyle's curls while they pressed together with aimless, fading energy. Kyle fell asleep with his head resting on Stan's bicep and his ankle pushed between Stan's. His dreams were a muddled combination of whimsy and horror, and when he woke from them he nuzzled himself more deeply into the heat of Stan's body, glad they would be able to sleep late. He already had a bit of a headache, and was wishing that one of them had thought to make a fire.

Kyle woke early, to the sound of Stan crumpling up some newspaper for kindling. When the fire was going strong Stan launched himself back into the bed in a way that made Kyle laugh, and he held up the blankets, gathering Stan back into his arms. They took turns inside each other that morning, something they had done only once before, and Kyle was still slightly uncomfortable doing the thrusting, afraid that he might stab at some awkward angle that would compromise Stan's carefully reconstructed nerves. He was still hard when he pulled out, and he didn't have to ask to get what he wanted: Stan flipped Kyle over and slid in, already slick. Kyle groaned, nodding as Stan sunk into him, allowing his spine to liquefy. He came all over himself in less than a minute. He'd been waiting for this feeling, not wanting to let go until Stan was inside him.

"Would you want to get married like that?" Stan asked when they were back under the newly warm blankets, sticky and spent. "The way Bebe did, I mean."

"No!" Kyle said. "Not in a dress."

"I meant - you know what I meant," Stan said when Kyle grinned.

"Nah, it's too much." Kyle thought of the coat room. No matter what, he did not want a coat room involved when they got married. "I'd just like something small. In the backyard, maybe in the spring, when it gets nice. For my birthday, even - we could get married on my birthday!"

"We could," Stan said, and the way he was smiling made Kyle realize how stupidly exuberant he'd sounded just then, but he wasn't really embarrassed.

Life began to normalize for them in December, and Kyle gradually stopped waiting for the bottom to fall out. Token had decided to stay in town, having lost his position with the Air Force after Canada took over. He and Stan quickly reconnected, and they were making plans to build an elaborate hothouse and packaging facility on Jimbo's property near the mountains, so that they would have a leg up on the purely government-funded start up farms. Stan still spent most of his work hours at the animal shelter, but at night he was often up late in the kitchen with Token and Jimbo, going over blueprints, legal restrictions and sales strategies. Kyle would wait for him in bed with a book, keeping himself hard under the blankets, often ready to burst with anticipation by the time Stan joined him.

Kyle helped them with the farm plans when he felt like it, but he wasn't especially interested in the project and had his own work to do. The library had been outfitted with five brand new computers that had access to a Canadian internet provider, and Kyle waited in the long lines to use the computers almost daily, doing research on colleges and about anything else that had crossed his mind in the past ten years, when he'd had no unbiased access to world news. Most of what he found was still at least a little biased, but the range of perspectives was much more broad than the local newspapers and whatever radio signals they had been able pick up when they'd had working power lines or batteries to spare. He was nowhere close to deciding on a college, but he had lots of notes, and wasn't in a hurry to decide. He wanted to apply for the fall semester the following year, after their little backyard marriage ceremony. Sometimes he jotted plans for it in the margins of his college research: he would want some small element from both of their religions involved, though neither of them was particularly devout, and Kyle would want Christophe to be his best man, while Stan would probably want Token. Kyle felt a bit silly for even thinking seriously about marrying at twenty, but if the war had taught them anything it was that life could be too short for hesitation, and Kyle had no doubt that he wanted to spend the rest of his with Stan.

On the morning before the first night of Hanukkah, Kyle dug out the menorah that he had taken from his parent's house after their things had all been packed up. Most of the furniture and decor had been sold at the market, and Kyle and Gerald had divided the more sentimental objects. Kyle had been surprised that Gerald had let him keep this, and also surprised by how much he'd wanted it. He set it on the mantle over the fireplace in his and Stan's room, toasted a stale English muffin in the kitchen and ate it on the walk to town. Stan had left for the shelter while Kyle was still half-asleep, under the impression that Kyle had an afternoon shift at the hospital. Kyle wanted to surprise Stan by picking him up from the shelter later in the car he'd arranged to buy in town: a seven-year-old Cadillac, in pretty good shape and only two thousand dollars. Christophe had gone to look at it with him a few days before, proclaimed it to be a good deal and promised to help Kyle with the few repairs it needed, for a fee. Gregory was trying to get him to open a garage, and had been researching engine repair-compatible prostheses, which apparently weren't as crazy as they sounded.

In the meantime, the car was in good enough shape to drive, and it had been outfitted with new snow tires to encourage the sale. Kyle couldn't help grinning like a kid with a new toy as he drove around town in it, aimlessly at first, and then back to Main Street to pick up some candles. He found some that would fit in the menorah at a shop that made homemade soaps and candies as well. The shop was called 'Malleable,' and Kyle found the concept of a texture-based product line a bit unnerving and strange, but he was glad for the candles. He didn't want to make a big deal out of the holiday: he just wanted to light the menorah after dinner and gaze at it while he was curled up in bed with Stan.

"Seriously?" Stan said when he turned from locking up the shelter and saw Kyle leaning against the Cadillac, his arms stretched out along the roof. "Where'd you get that?"

"The owner was selling it in town," Kyle said, and he leaned into Stan's congratulatory hug. "I kept seeing the sticker on the way to the hospital, freezing my ass off when I walked past it, and I just thought, well. It's my kind of car."

"Huge backseat," Stan said, peering into it.

"That's not why I bought it," Kyle said, giving Stan a mitten-cushioned thump on the ass. He had thought about sex in the backseat, certainly, but he liked the car for other reasons. It made him feel grown-up and kind of stately, even with the peeling cranberry paint job.

On the drive home, Kyle was in the kind of truly good mood that still felt a bit alien when he paused to acknowledge it, looking forward to the evening at home. He was proud to be driving Stan around himself, since he still couldn't manage the walk from the shelter to the house. Stan did jumping jacks in the bedroom sometimes, mostly to impress or entertain Kyle, but his stamina still hadn't fully returned.

"Who's that?" Stan asked as they came close to the house, and Kyle craned his neck to see another new car parked in the driveway.

Only it wasn't new at all: it was Gerald's old car, the one Kyle had given to Kenny.

"Shit," Kyle said, and the v-chip took him off guard. Stan reached over to steady the wheel.

"He's back?" Stan said, quietly. "Kenny?"

"Looks that way," Kyle said. He didn't want to discuss it further until he'd heard whether or not Kenny had come back alone. Stan went silent, too, and they both jogged for the front door after Kyle parked the car.

They didn't have to wait long to learn the circumstances of Kenny's return: Ike was there in the front room, near the fire, looking skinny and haggard, his hair hanging in his eyes. Only when Kyle ran toward him did he notice Karen stretched out on the couch, her eyes closed as Sharon knelt beside her, reading a thermometer. Karen somehow looked underfed and hugely fat at the same time: she was pregnant, Kyle realized, observing this from over his brother's shoulder as they hugged each other tightly.

"Ike," Kyle said, wanting to cry but too stunned to even begin to deal with his emotions. He pulled back to stare into his brother's face, then turned to look at Karen. "What-?"

"A hundred and two," Sharon said. "We should get you to the hospital, sweetheart," she said, laying a hand on Karen's wrist. Karen opened her eyes but seemed as if she wasn't seeing anything, her lashes glued together at the corners with some gummy substance.

"We don't have any money," Ike said. His voice was different, deeper, or maybe just congested, and he coughed hoarsely after he spoke.

"I've got money," Kyle said, grabbing Ike's shoulder. "Ike, Jesus, where - what. Come here." Kyle hugged him again, feeling how bony he was this time. "Where were you?" he asked as Sharon and Stan helped Karen up from the couch.

"Denver," Kenny said, entering from the kitchen. He was carrying a thermos, and he brought it to Karen, taking Stan's place at her side. "Part of some radical group, until the group disbanded. I found them this morning."

"We supported Canada," Ike said, speaking bitterly before coughing again. "And that's radical?"

"Oh, forgive me," Kenny said, glaring at him. "I should speak more kindly of the organization that turned my pregnant teenage sister out on her ass once they got the outcome they wanted."

"Let's all calm down," Sharon said. "Karen needs medical attention, and Ike - I think you do, too, honey, c'mon."

"I can't," Ike said. "I'm dead."

"Seems like you're not," Sharon said, looking to Kyle.

"We lied," Kyle said.

"I knew he was alive," Stan said. "Mom - I should have told you."

"It hardly matters now!" Sharon said. "Kids, come on, let's get in the car. Kyle, you and Kenny come along. Stan, stay here and start on dinner. Jimbo and Ned are working late."

"It's the first night of Hanukkah," Kyle said, not sure why he was speaking or what he'd meant to convey by announcing this. No one responded except Stan, who came forward to kiss him.

"It's a miracle," Stan said, squeezing Kyle's shoulders.

"Yeah," Kyle said, though it felt more like a blindside.

They took Kyle's new car, and Ike rode up front with him, Sharon and Kenny in the back with Karen, who was alarmingly silent. Kyle noticed as they pulled out that the Volvo looked like shit.

"How long has she been sick?" Sharon asked.

"She was sick a month ago," Ike said. "But she got better. Then I got sick, and - she's been bad for a couple of weeks."

"What the hell were you doing staying in the city?" Kenny asked, smacking Ike in the back of the head in a way that made Kyle tense up with the need to defend him. "Huh? Answer me!"

"I didn't know how to get home!" Ike said. He was tearing up. Kyle reached over to touch his knee. His pants, shirt, jacket - everything about him was filthy, and Kyle could smell the stink of his body odor more distinctly now that he was closed into the car with it.

"Why didn't you write to me?" Kenny asked Karen, his voice softening.

"You were in the war," Karen said. She seemed delirious, not quite focusing on Kenny's face when she spoke to him. "You were - fighting us, fighting Canada. You left me and mom to fight for the enemy."

"The enemy?" Kenny said. His eyes were red-rimmed; he didn't look very clean himself. "America was the enemy?"

"Look what they did!" Ike said. "And how were we supposed to mail a letter? We didn't have money for a fucking stamp. We were stealing food just to get by after the Underground broke up."

"The Underground?" Kyle said.

"The group we were staying with. We supported Canada, and we kept each other safe, waiting out the Canadian victory. For a while, you know, it was great. They took care of us, treated us like people, I got to be alive. We were supposed to go north with them after the war ended and Canada won, but I didn't have papers. They said they'd come back for us after they'd spoken to the border patrol about granting me amnesty - we were waiting."

"Waiting," Kenny said, and he scoffed. "You're lucky I found you."

"You were in Denver the whole time?" Kyle asked, looking at Kenny in the rear view. He was unshaven, and looked even more feral than he had when Kyle spotted him at the edge of the woods that day.

"I was all over the place," Kenny said. "But the only real leads I had were in the city. I found them squatting in an abandoned building on the outskirts, halfway to Thornton. Someone told me a bunch of teenagers were living there, some of them really young. I hoped it wasn't you," Kenny said, touching Karen's greasy hair. "Kid, I - I wanted to find you someplace safe."

"You left us," Karen said, but she crumbled against Kenny's chest when he put his arms around her. He whispered that he was sorry, and Kyle tried to tune it out, feeling as if he was intruding. He squeezed Ike's knee.

"God, I'm so glad you're alright," Kyle said. "You've probably got that flu that was a big problem a couple of months ago, but they have medicine for it - you guys are going to be fine."

"Karen's pregnant," Ike said, his voice thick with the tears he was holding back, rough from his cough.

"I know," Kyle said. "It's. It'll be okay."

At the hospital, Kyle was able to get Ike and Karen admitted quickly, and if the admitting nurse was stunned to hear the name Ike Broflovski, she didn't show it. Kenny went back with Karen during her examination, and Kyle stayed with Ike, unwilling to leave his side. It felt better than Kyle had anticipated, back when he'd allowed himself to anticipate it: he wasn't alone with the Broflovski legacy anymore. He had his brother back, and he was going to take care of Ike now, the way he'd always wished he could when Ike was locked up in the attic.

"I'm sorry I ran away," Ike said while they waited for the doctor. Ike was sitting on the examining table, hygienic paper crinkling under him as he shifted nervously.

"It's okay," Kyle said. "I mean, it's not, but I understand."

"I didn't think she could get pregnant," Ike said, meeting Kyle's eyes shyly, as if he expected to be punished. "She barely even got her period, we were eating so little."

"Dammit, Ike," Kyle said. "You look - your cheekbones are about to slice through your skin. You couldn't find a way home, in all that time?"

"I didn't want to go back to the attic!" Ike said. "I wanted to go to Canada, to get us a real life there and write to you and dad after I had my own place, and my baby, my wife - I wanted to show you that I could do all that without you protecting me, locking me up." His voice trailed off as he spoke, and he looked down into his lap. "I know it sounds stupid, now."

"It doesn't," Kyle said. "Not - purely, anyway. Oh, God, I have to call Dad. You have to talk to him, as soon as we're done here."

"Where is he?" Ike asked.

"New York. He left after the war ended."

"Oh." Ike looked down at his lap again. "He just left? He left you alone?"

"No," Kyle said. "I'm - I live with the Marshes now. We sold the old house." He decided not to mention who had bought it just yet. "I have money, from that - I'll share it with you." Kyle felt his hopes of going to college shrink by half, contracting into a small, sharp thing at the pit of his stomach, and then to an even smaller, sharper one when he considered the baby and who would provide for it.

The doctors that examined Karen and Ike determined that they both had a bad strain of the flu that had all sorts of anti-Canadian nicknames. Occupation Sickness and Canadian Fever were the most common, though most rational people didn't believe that the flu was part of a conspiracy to weaken the population. Ike was treated and given a prognosis of full recovery, but Karen's situation was worse, her immune system compromised by the pregnancy. Kyle didn't know all the details, and he kept Ike clear of Kenny for as long as he could, fearing a physical confrontation. They were able to get Gerald on the phone, and Kyle could hear him weeping along with Ike and promising to come home soon. Kyle spoke to him briefly and wished him a happy Hanukkah.

"What?" Gerald said, still sniffling. "Oh, right. Yes, that's amazing, that's incredible. You boys are together on the first night-" He broke down again, and Kyle passed the phone back to Ike.

Kyle went home with Sharon around nine o'clock, leaving Ike and Kenny at the hospital with Karen, who would have to be closely monitored until she gave birth. She was over eight months along. In less than a month, Kyle would have a niece or a nephew. Ike would be a father at fifteen.

"Are you alright?" Sharon asked as they drove home through a light snow fall, passing a few sparse displays of Christmas lights.

"I guess," Kyle said. "I feel like I'm dreaming."

"He was alive all that time," Sharon said. She sighed. "I guess some part of me must have known. Sheila held it together a little too well after his 'death.' She never would have been that coherent if she'd really lost one of you boys."

"Yeah," Kyle said, trying to remember his mother's behavior around the time of Ike's funeral. She'd been humiliated, he remembered, by the drowning story. It made her seem like a neglectful mother, she feared, and Kyle had been angry with her for the lie. The story was that he had been watching Ike when it happened. Kyle wouldn't have let Ike come to harm, even at eight years old, but now he had, and what was left of Ike's life would never be what it could have been if Kyle had just made sure that he stayed put in the attic until the end of the war.

"Honey?" Sharon said, recapturing his attention.

"I'm alright," Kyle said. "I'm just - hungry."

Stan had made butter noodles and salisbury steak with some leftover gravy from one of Ned's more nuanced meals. Sharon took her plate into the den, where Jimbo and Ned were sitting by the fire. Tweek had stayed with Craig every night that week, and the few possessions he had were slowly migrating to Craig's house.

"I feel like I should go back to the hospital," Kyle said as Stan watched him eat. He was sitting close, rubbing the back of Kyle's neck.

"Kenny is there," Stan said. "He'll look after them overnight."

"Ike could come home, but he won't leave Karen," Kyle said. He shook his head, staring at his plate. "My dad's coming back, but it will take him a while to get here. Ike wouldn't let me tell him about the baby. He wants to tell him in person."

"I guess that makes sense," Stan said, looking queasy. "Will they go to live with your dad in New York?"

"I don't know. It's not like he's got his own place. He's staying with my aunt, and she's got two kids who still live with her. I don't know if they're going to extend their hospitality to a couple of extra teenagers and a squalling infant."

"I just hope Karen's okay," Stan said. "She looked kinda rough."

"Yeah. Weird to see Kenny again, too. I think he wants to kill my brother."

"We won't let him," Stan said, his fingers sliding up into Kyle's hair.

"This is good," Kyle said, though everything but the gravy was bland and needed salt. "Thanks for cooking."

"I did my best," Stan said, and Kyle turned to kiss him, suddenly desperate to feel the heat of Stan's mouth against his, and the comfort of the way the Stan knew to kiss him when he was upset: softly but deeply, with both hands on Kyle's cheeks. Stan would keep him sane through this, whatever this turned out to be.

Kyle went out to the car after dinner to fetch the candles he'd left on the backseat. He stood in the driveway for a while, watching the snow as it began to come down harder. Across the street, the neighbors had put out a glowing Christmas star on their front door. In recent years, nobody had dared to decorate so garishly. The use of power to fuel the glittering lights would have been communally protested during the war. Kyle watched the star as it blinked its happy message through the night: it was an announcement that something good was coming, that it was only a matter of time. Christmas, he assumed, though the star itself was nondenominational. He went inside to light his menorah.

By the fourth night of Hanukkah, Karen's condition had worsened, and Kyle again felt like he spent most of his life at the hospital. Ike was determined to stay at her side while Kenny frantically tried to locate their mother, who had left town a few months after Karen ran away with Ike. Kenny was convinced that Carol must have left word with someone about where she was headed, but Kyle wasn't so sure, and wasn't too surprised that she seemed to have simply disappeared. He did what he could for Ike and poor Karen, but during his shifts he was sometimes privy to the muttered conversations of her doctors, and they didn't seem optimistic about saving the baby.

In the end, it was Karen who couldn't be saved. She went into emergency labor three days before Christmas, while Kyle was working the reception desk in the cardiac department. Ike had finally gone home for sleep for a while and shower, and it was Kenny who told Kyle what had happened.

"My sister is dead," Kenny said, pale-faced and standing in front of Kyle's desk, his eyes hollow and unfocused.

"No, she's not," Kyle said, automatically, feeling as if someone would have informed him. "Kenny, she's-"

"The baby's okay so far," Kenny said. "Six pounds and something ounces. I stopped listening at that part. You should tell your brother."

Kenny turned and started to walk away. Kyle called out to him, but he wouldn't respond, and Kyle was too overwhelmed with concern for Ike to chase him down. He felt like Kenny had to be wrong, but when he took a break from the desk to check on Karen, she was no longer in her room. Kyle tried to concentrate on the explanation her nurse was giving him, something about lung failure and blood loss during delivery. The nurse's words slipped across Kyle mind nonsensically, and he could only concentrate on one thing.

"Where's the baby?" he asked.

Baby Boy McCormick was in the nursery, sucking on a pacifier. He had a little tuft of black hair: Ike's hair. Kyle would have to tell Ike about Karen. He'd spent the past week watching Ike sit at her bedside and kiss her frail hand, whispering to her and spoon feeding her when she was too drained to lift her arms. Ike had been the only one who could make Karen smile up from her hospital bed, and whenever she'd touched her swollen belly Ike had laid his hand over hers. Now Kyle had to explain that the girl Ike loved, the one person who he'd ever had anything like a life with, was gone. Kyle couldn't do that yet, or maybe ever. He had to talk to Stan.

"Stotch Animal Welfare Center," Stan said when he answered at the shelter. "How can I help you?" he asked. Kyle could only breathe sharply into the receiver: once, twice. "Hello?"

"Stan," Kyle said.

"Dude! What's wrong?"

"It's - she died, Stan. Karen died."

"Oh, Jesus, no, that's - I'm so sorry, that's - that poor little girl, God. How's Kenny? Jesus, how's Ike?"

"Ike doesn't know. I have to tell him. Kenny walked away."

"Kyle, you sound - you need to clock out, okay, and I'll close up here and come to the hospital. I'll - do you want me to pick up Ike on the way?"

"Then you'd have to tell him," Kyle said. His lungs felt pinched, and he wondered how painful it had been for Karen, and if she'd known that she was dying, leaving her baby behind.

"Do you want me to tell him?" Stan asked after a heavy pause.

"I - I can't ask you to do that, he's my brother-"

"I can't bring him there and not tell him. Kyle, let me do this for you. You don't sound okay."

"The baby, Stan. There's this baby."

"It - she didn't lose it?"

"No, it's there, here, in the nursery, and I don't know what to do, they were asking me if I wanted to go in and, and visit with it, I don't know what to do-"

"It's okay, Kyle. I mean - just, calm down. I'm coming, okay? I'm coming, and I'll bring Ike. I'll tell Ike, if that's okay with you."

It wasn't okay with Kyle, but the idea of having to tell Ike himself, over the phone, was less okay. He went into the men's locker room after he hung up with Stan and splashed cold water on his face, but he still felt overheated with panic and unable to get his mind to focus completely on what had happened. He went into an empty shower stall and pulled the curtain shut, sinking down against the wall. He sat there for a long time.

By the time he emerged night had fallen, and Kyle's sense of overwhelmed confusion persisted. His ability to concentrate on what was happening came and went: Stan was there, holding him, Ike was on the floor, sobbing, the baby was elsewhere, alone. Kenny was nowhere to be found, as if he had disappeared along with Karen, along with his mother, the whole McCormick family deleted in one day. Stan made Kyle eat something, a snack bar sandwich with chewy bread that was tasteless in his mouth. When he was finished, the sandwich sitting heavy on his stomach, Kyle returned to the floor and held Ike. They were in the waiting room near the nursery. Kyle wasn't sure how long they had been there or what time it was. Sharon had appeared at some point.

"Patrick," Ike said thickly, and it was either the first word he'd spoken in Kyle's presence or the first time Kyle had been able to pay adequate attention to what Ike was trying to say through his grief. Ike's head was in Kyle's lap, his forehead pressed to Kyle's thigh. He was shaky and hot across the back of his neck, every breath heaving out of him painfully. "She wanted to call him Patrick. If it was a boy."

"It is a boy," Sharon said, sinking down to touch Ike's back. "You have a son, Ike. Karen would want you to be comforted by that. Unless." She glanced up at Kyle uncertainly. "Honey, we could talk about adoption, if you think-"

"No," Ike said. He sat up and turned his wrecked face to Kyle's. Ike had the darkest eyes, a deep brown that bled into his pupils. Kyle hadn't seen the baby's eyes; Karen's had been very light blue. "He's a Broflovski," Ike said. "Patrick, he's one of us. Right?"

He was asking for Kyle's permission to keep his baby. It wasn't as if Ike could support anyone on his own, and even if he had money, he wouldn't know what to do with an infant, or with himself now that Karen was gone. Kyle nodded and pulled Ike close again, letting Ike's head rest on his shoulder.

"Of course," Kyle said. "He's our family. We'll take care of him."

By the time Gerald was able to get back to South Park, Karen had been in the ground for two weeks and Patrick had been home with the Marsh family for just as long. Kyle tried to get Ike to go with him to the train station to pick up their father, but Ike hadn't been leaving Randy's office much at all, and he refused. He'd appropriated the cot that Tweek had once slept on, without even allowing Sharon to change the sheets. She'd been doing most of the work with the baby, but she couldn't keep passing on nursing shifts without risking the loss of her job, and soon someone else would have to take over with Patrick during the day. Ike was not a likely candidate, and Kenny had shown up for Karen's funeral but hadn't been reliably present since then.

"So, are you back?" Kyle asked once Gerald was in the passenger seat of his car, a small travel bag resting in his lap.

"What do you mean?" Gerald asked. He looked old; Kyle somehow hadn't realized how gray Gerald's hair had gotten in the past years.

"I mean, are you going to stay?" Kyle asked.

"Well." Gerald fidgeted. "I'd rather Ike came back with me to New York. I've gotten a position at a firm there, and it - it hurts me to be back here, Kyle. I'm on medication for this trip."

"Huh? Like - what?"

"Depression medication, and something for anxiety." Gerald glanced at Kyle, who felt badly about the look on his face when he realized his father was embarrassed to admit this. "I've been okay without the pills since I left, but hearing about this, about your brother - his loss, well. It's hard for me to be here, but I'll be glad to leave with Ike. He'll recover from this, and he'll enjoy New York-"

"Dad, he has a kid," Kyle said, furious with his father for not knowing this, though it wasn't his fault.

"Pardon me?"

"Ike got Karen pregnant. She had the baby before she died. Patrick Broflovski. Your grandson."

Kyle gave Gerald an apologetic look when he heard how harsh he sounded. He hadn't slept much recently. The baby cried all night long, and Kyle could hear it from the crib in Sharon's room where Patrick stayed at night. Even when he couldn't hear it, he was straining to, always on edge.

"We didn't want to tell you over the phone," Kyle said when Gerald stared at him, open-mouthed.

At the house, Ike was still closed up in Randy's old office, which had become like the attic once was, only Ike had shut himself away from the world voluntarily this time. Kyle lingered in the doorway while Gerald tried to convince Ike to take some of his depression meds. Ike refused, and he also refused to get up and go into Sharon's room when Gerald was ready to meet Patrick. Kyle went with him instead, and held the baby while his father stood staring, seemingly dumbstruck.

"I can't believe this has happened," Gerald said after almost a minute had passed, Patrick making soft noises in Kyle's arms, only partly awake.

"It's really not that crazy when you think about it," Kyle said. "They were teenagers, and no one was giving them the attention they wanted. So they found each other, and, you know. After sex comes baby."

"I don't just mean the baby," Gerald said. He sounded close to tears, and he reached out to stroke Patrick's thin black hair with his fingertips. "I mean all of it, Kyle. Your mother, the war. Everything."

"I know," Kyle said. The progress of his life had been increasingly difficult to parse, to the point that he woke up every morning and made a catalog of all that had happened, to make sure that it was still real in the light of day. The most important component of his cataloging was the fact that Stan was always beside him when he woke. Karen's death and the arrival of Patrick in the household had effectively killed Kyle's libido for the time being, and at the end of the day he just wanted to be held. Stan knew this instinctively; Kyle didn't have to ask.

Dinner with Gerald was tense, because Ike refused to come down. Kyle had been bringing him meals in his room, and he had to persistently prod Ike into eating anything at all. Sharon gave Patrick his bottle at the table, and Kyle caught his father staring at the baby as if trying to make sense of some mystical creature.

"Ike says he won't come to New York with me," Gerald said when everyone else had cleared out of the kitchen after the meal, giving them privacy.

"Ike doesn't do much of anything," Kyle said. "He's still in shock. She was, you know. His first love, not to mention the mother of his child."

"This was - the girl who cleaned our house, right?"

"Yes, Dad."

"Kenny's sister."

"Uh-huh. We don't know where Kenny is. Jimbo saw him walking along the side of the road a few days ago, but he wouldn't accept a ride. He's closing us out just like Ike."

"It happens," Gerald said, looking down into his empty coffee cup. "When your mother died - ah."

"It's fine," Kyle said. He was exhausted, his patience for everyone wearing thin. "I mean, look. Ike will come around eventually. If you want to go back to New York, I understand. I can send him after you when he's recovered from this."

"It's not that I want to go back to New York, Kyle. Well, I suppose that's not true, I do. But I need to, also. I can't be here, and I don't think Ike should be either. But. That baby."

"Patrick." Kyle hadn't bonded much with his nephew in the past few weeks, but he did give Patrick his bottle and change his diapers when it was his turn, and though it was strange to consider, he was a little person, not just 'that baby.'

"I just can't see me and Ike in New York with a baby," Gerald said. "But, God, I hate to leave this on Sharon. And you."

Kyle shrugged. This was what he'd expected from his father, but it still hurt. It was an expression he'd heard once, something Jimbo had said about being 'left holding the baby.'

"I'm going to bed," Kyle said, standing to bring his coffee cup to the sink. "Do you have everything you need?"

"Everything I need?"

"In the living room, for sleeping. Sharon left blankets and a pillow-"

"Oh, yes, that's fine." Gerald stood and looked at Kyle in a distantly sympathetic way, and Kyle held his father's gaze just to prove he could handle how sad his eyes were. "And Stan's doing well?" Gerald said, as if he wanted to end this conversation on a good note.

"Yeah," Kyle said. "He's - everything I need, he's so good. He keeps me sane."

"He's a good boy," Gerald said, his voice tightening. Kyle was glad when he left the kitchen. He rinsed out his father's coffee cup and headed into the bedroom, where Stan was waiting, tending the fire.

"Stay right there," Kyle said when Stan started to rise. Kyle didn't even need the blankets they usually piled near the hearth: he fell onto Stan with a long sigh, pressing him down to the floor with kisses. It didn't take Stan long to figure out what Kyle needed, and he rolled Kyle onto his back, kissing his neck, sucking at his skin. Kyle moaned, and didn't care who outside the room might hear.

They'd never had sex on the floor, without the cushion of makeshift bedding, and Kyle liked it. He needed it, raw and soft at the same time, gasping against Stan's mouth while he snapped his hips and Kyle clenched around his cock. Stan came first, and Kyle held his ass in place with one hand, jerking himself to completion with the other.

"God," Stan said, still inside Kyle, licking his neck. "I've missed you."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry, I get it. There's a lot going on." Stan slid out and put one arm under Kyle's shoulders, the other under his knees.

"Oh – Stan, don't," Kyle said when he realized what was happening.

"Shh, it's fine, I can do it."

He lifted Kyle off the floor and carried him to bed. It was only a few steps from the fireplace, but it seemed like a Herculean task to Kyle, and he knew how proud Stan was to do this for him: he felt it. They kissed on top of the blankets until Kyle started crying and couldn't stop, everything he'd held back since Ike's return pouring out of him and onto Stan's lips and cheeks. Stan stayed close, kissing Kyle's face and whispering that it was okay. Kyle fell asleep in Stan's arms when he felt as if he had nothing left in him that needed to come out, exhausted. The last thing he knew was that Stan was drawing the blankets up over them, tucking him in.

In the morning Kyle woke with a single, persisting thought in his head, and he sat up in bed until Stan noticed and sat up beside him.

"We forgot to celebrate the New Year," Kyle said.

"We had champagne," Stan said, rubbing his back.

"We did?" Kyle didn't remember that. He must have been drunk. All morning he'd been fretting about what a bad omen it was not to mark a new year.

"Yeah, just me and you, in here. Seemed kind of soon after the funeral to do anything more than that."

This statement haunted Kyle in the weeks to come: everything seemed too soon after the funeral, until Karen's death became a symbol for all the people he'd lost, including the ones who were still technically alive. Gerald returned to New York at the start of February, and Ike would not go with him. He said he wanted to stay in South Park for Patrick, though he rarely consented to even hold the baby, too broken up by the fact that Patrick would peer up at him with Karen's pale blue eyes. Kyle assumed this would fade: lots of babies started out with blue eyes and lost them as they grew older. Sharon went back to working six shifts a week, the household economy crippled enough by the price of formula and diapers. Stan spent the most time with Patrick while Kyle tried to get as many shifts as possible at Hell's Pass. He grew to like being out of the house, away from the baby and from the specter of his brother that haunted Randy's old office.

On Valentine's Day, Sharon had a ten hour shift and Kyle begged to have the day off, hoping to do something to mark the occasion with Stan. His request was granted, but he spent most of the day trying to quiet Patrick, who had a cold and was crying so much that his little voice was ragged. When he finally wore himself out it was almost four o'clock in the afternoon, and he was still bundled into Kyle's arms, his cheeks pink under his drying tears. Kyle was in an arm chair in the den, watching Stan chop firewood out in the yard. It was the first time he'd attempted it, and Kyle kept expecting him to tire, but Stan kept collecting more logs after Kyle was sure that he'd had enough. By the time Stan came in he was red-faced and short of breath, and Kyle really needed to do something with the sleeping baby, because he was starting to get hard from the smell of Stan's sweat.

"Sweet boy," Stan murmured, bending down to kiss Patrick's forehead. Kyle shushed him and stood.

"I'm gonna put him in the crib," Kyle whispered. "Wish me luck."

"Good luck."

"You sure chopped some wood," Kyle said, backing away. Stan beamed at him and shrugged off his coat, letting it drop to the floor.

Kyle was able to successfully transition Patrick to his crib without waking him, which almost never happened. On the way back to the stairs he stopped in front of what had become Ike's room to listen. There was no sound, which wasn't surprising. Ike slept for most of the day and stayed up at night, puttering around the second floor like a mouse. He'd reverted to the only life he knew: hiding during the day and sneaking about at night.

Downstairs, Stan was sitting on the hearth in the den, drinking a beer. It was ridiculous: he needed water, or at least some juice, if they had any, which they probably didn't. Kyle was impressed by the fact that Stan was chugging a beer anyway, the sleeves on his flannel shirt rolled up to his elbows, his face still flushed from the work. He looked like he would be hot to the touch, and he was when Kyle dropped into his lap.

"Fuck me right here," Kyle said when Stan's teeth pressed into the soft flesh on his neck. He expected Stan to laugh and tell him that was crazy, but he cradled Kyle's back as he pressed him to the floor, and Kyle groaned when Stan worked the front of his pants open before tearing his own zipper down.

"Your chip didn't go off," Stan said, his face hovering over Kyle's, his lips just barely evading Kyle's attempts to kiss them.

"Huh?"

"You said – you cursed, said you wanted me to eff you, only. You said the real word, and your chip didn't – did it?"

"I guess not," Kyle said, and he captured Stan's bottom lip between his teeth, drawing Stan down to him. "I guess it's not a bad word anymore, to me."

It was insane to have sex there on the floor, when Jimbo and Ned might have walked in at any moment, never mind Ike, but they did it anyway, and Kyle cried out brokenly when he came, feeling as if he owned the whole house, the whole town, as if he had a place in the world that no one could intrude on or take away from him. Stan carried him to their room afterward, despite Kyle's protests that he must have been too tired to do so. Kyle knew by then that Stan could carry him, and he wanted him to.

He started to feel comfortable at last, proud of himself for outsmarting his v-chip the way Bebe had, without even meaning to. He cursed more often, in the shameless way he had as a kid, and hoped Stan would follow his lead, but Stan grew more cautious in the presence of Kyle's irreverence, avoiding even 'damn' and 'hell.' Stan started working more seriously on the hothouse infrastructure and passed the animal shelter duties on to Tweek, who was glad to have a job, though this one didn't pay. Tweek didn't need money: he was living with Craig, who had mountains of cash and was making more with his specialty store. Kyle grew tired of his job at Hell's Pass and cut down on his shifts until he only had two a week, increasingly annoyed by his co-workers and unable to keep up with the constant policy changes. He preferred to stay in and take care of Patrick, who was less fussy and more cognizant, finally capable of staring up at Kyle as if he knew him rather than just howling at him like he was an infuriatingly inadequate source of comfort. His eyes had turned dark brown, like Ike's.

Ike wasn't as willing to recover from Karen's death as Kyle had hoped he would be, and Kyle tried to be patient, imagining what it would have been like to lose Stan at that age. At the end of April he quit Hell's Pass altogether, with Stan's blessing. Stan and Token had projected big gains for their first marijuana crop, the hothouse already halfway constructed, and Kyle had a full time job at home, looking after Patrick and Ike. Sharon had a 'friend' in North Park who she stayed with some nights, and Kyle was glad to give her a break, hoping her friend was a charming man. She deserved something nice for herself, away from the demands of the household. She still spent most nights at the house, and one afternoon in spring Kyle woke to the sound of her panicked voice in his bedroom.

"Oh, God, okay," Sharon was saying, standing over his bed. Kyle squinted up at her, confused and annoyed. Patrick was asleep under his arm, whining a little. He settled down when Kyle stroked his hair. "I didn't know where he was," Sharon said. Something about the way she was looking at Kyle made him scoff.

"Um, well, he's here," Kyle said. "He's fine."

"I know." Sharon looked around the room as if she expected to find something dangerous that the baby might have hurt himself with. "Just. Kyle, I didn't know you had him."

"So?" Kyle said. He didn't want to be pissed off at her, but he was, increasingly. "I can – I mean, I don't see what the big deal is. He's my baby."

Sharon stared at him, and only when he saw the look in her eyes did Kyle hear what he'd said.

"I mean," Kyle said, forcing a laugh. Why had he said that? She'd misunderstood him, anyway. "I mean, he's. My relative, so. It's okay if I have him. So."

"I know," Sharon said, too hurriedly. "Is Stan – is he working?"

"He's at the farm with Jimbo and Token." Kyle hugged his arm around Patrick more firmly. "Patty's going to take his nap here," he said. "With me."

"Alright," Sharon said, but Kyle could see that she wanted to take his baby – Ike's baby – away from him. He watched her go, and stared at the door after she had, waiting, ready to be challenged again.

Things were fine – fine, he told himself – but in the background, in a way that he couldn't put his finger on, something was off. Stan kept accusing him of saying weird things when Kyle knew he hadn't – he hadn't asked for the pineapple, he'd asked for the book, and it was Stan who imagined that Kyle mixed up Christophe's name for Ned's, Stan who had accidentally replaced the tube of toothpaste with the cream they used for lube. Kyle was worried about Stan. He seemed different, suspicious and confused, and Kyle kept meaning to talk to Wendy about it, because she would know what to do, but Wendy was gone – she was somewhere else, but not dead. Just somewhere else, in another town. Kyle couldn't recall where exactly, and he didn't want to ask, because everyone was looking at him like he didn't know anything, lately.

Except for Patrick, who was Kyle's new favorite person. Kyle was giddy with the growing knowledge that Patrick was his, that he had made this baby somehow, in a way that he still couldn't explain – but that didn't matter, because Patrick was real and warm, and he needed Kyle more than anyone ever had. Everyone else in the household was making less and less sense, but Patrick always looked up at Kyle with complete acceptance, his brown eyes as bright and intelligent as Kyle's brother's had once been. He thought he saw Ike sometimes, around the house and in the backyard, but that was just wishful thinking. Ike had been dead since Kyle was eight years old.

"Dude," Stan said, and Kyle felt like he was waking from a dream. The fireplace was cold, but the room was warm. It was spring, the snow had melted, and suddenly Kyle knew what Stan was about to say. "Our – it's May, you know, um. It'll be your birthday in a few weeks."

"Our wedding," Kyle said, and he wasn't sure why he felt sad when Stan's eyes filled with tears. Stan was just happy. Kyle was, too, though he didn't feel like crying.

"I want you to go to a doctor," Stan said. He wiped at his cheeks with both hands. "So we can. So we can see – before we – so we can—"

"A doctor? What for?" Kyle sat up in bed. He wasn't sure why he was in bed, or what time it was, or why these things might matter. "Where's Patrick? Is the baby okay?"

"Yeah – Kyle, he's fine. I'm – would you listen to me for a sec?"

Kyle had trouble with listening. He knew this, distantly, but when he could concentrate enough to consider it, he felt he was in the right. There wasn't much worth listening to, and he didn't need as much instruction as people seemed to think he did.

The weather got warmer, and Patrick got bigger. Kyle clung to him, because the baby's progress toward personhood seemed to be the only thing that made sense anymore. Kyle kept thinking he saw his dead brother – lurking the kitchen at dawn, crying in the bathtub, even reaching for the baby – and he saw Stan, too, though he knew Stan was at war. He dug through his notebooks until he found the place where he'd stashed Stan's letters, and they calmed his pounding heart as he paged through them. The letters made sense: Kyle remembered the letters, and if he imagined Stan in his bed at times, that was okay, because the letters seemed to promise that Stan would be there someday, for real.

Finally, on a mild weekend morning that might have been his birthday, Kyle heard the front door open and just knew. Stan was home. He bolted upright in bed and pressed his fists over his mouth, waiting. He had waited long enough, and had read the letters so many times. He could see, now, that Stan was telling him that he loved him in every letter, that Stan would belong to him if he ever made it home from the war. And now he had.

Stan came into Kyle's room – was this his room? It was some very familiar room, the room where Kyle had been sleeping. Kyle ran to him. He wasn't afraid anymore. He threw his arms around Stan's neck and wept, thought it didn't feel like crying, not really. He was laughing, too, not sad.

"You're home," Kyle said, choking out the words. Stan felt stronger than he had when he'd left, and he seemed to be in shock, his arms at his sides. "You're home," Kyle said again, wanting Stan to accept it. Of course it would take him a moment. "How was your trip? Where's your uniform? Did you change on the train?"

"Kyle," Stan said. He sounded frightened, and that made sense. After what Stan had been through, normalcy would be hard to readopt. Kyle held him tighter and kissed his neck in friendly pecks. There would be time to talk about the letters and what they meant. Kyle would keep his kisses chaste until then.

"You're home," Kyle said again, leaning back to beam at Stan. "I can't believe it. You're really here." This was just how he'd always imagined it: Stan walking through the door, sturdy in his arms, shaken by what he'd seen but not permanently damaged by the war. Kyle would heal whatever small things had been hurt.

"Kyle," Stan said again, and his shell-shocked expression crumbled. He shook with sobs, his head dropping to Kyle's shoulder and his arms going tight around him, as if he was scared that Kyle would slip away. Kyle kissed Stan's ear, surprised by how torn up he was, though he supposed he shouldn't be. His poor Stan had just come back from war, had seen God knew what.

"It's alright," Kyle said, petting Stan's hair. A baby was crying somewhere – whose baby? Theirs, right, and Kyle would think that through later. He closed his eyes and pressed his face to Stan's wet cheek. "Everything's alright now," he said, though a nagging fear in the pit of his stomach kept trying to convince him that it wasn't. To hell with that thing, a holdover from his paranoid childhood: Kyle knew better now.