May 25, 3660

And here we are. Remember Me? After that disturbing dip in Kyle's memories, perhaps it has now become a little easier to draw a parallel of what happened to these young people who are not that young anymore. The general story I'm showing to you can be divided into two main events: the President's birthday and the bomb attack. Kyle has been thinking a lot about those two occasions; and it's no surprise, since his life wouldn't be the same if either of those events had not happened. And Christophe DeLorne, the Mole, was the fire that lit the fuse for these two situations to go down the way they did. He was not to blame, that I can guarantee (although he can't fully see that on his worst and most drunken nights), but he was certainly the gas, the flame, the push that was missing. Kyle fed of his strength at that time, you may have noticed it. I could hear it in his voice when he told me about Christophe, which didn't happen all that often because, at least I believe, he felt very exposed whenever the Mole's name came up.

Anyway, my role here is not to talk about the past.

We are in the library of Gregory's house at the moment, let's focus on what really matters. He invited Kyle to help him box some books to donate, using the argument that he could choose whatever he wanted to take. I can tell that was an excuse to get him out of the daily rush and get him alone in an intimate situation. Gregory is worried about him. Their relationship is both strange and fantastic. Gregory and Kyle have always been friends, ever since they can remember, and they've always been very similar somehow, both organized and terribly smart for their own good, passionate and rational at the same time. However, both also have a huge ego that had made it hard for them to be too close, even at the time they lived together. During childhood and teenage years, they had never been the closest friends. But something happened to them, something unimaginable that united them as brothers. More than brothers, I should say. It made them something else, something that was hard to explain, but this is the relationship in Kyle's life that makes him sure he'll never be alone. We'll get into that later.

Gregory made coffee for two. Kyle is sitting on a stepladder in the giant library, three books resting on his lap, thumbing through a fourth one in his hands. How fancy it is that Gregory has a stepladder in his own personal library? That says a lot about what kind of person he is.

"Is this one going too?" He asked the owner of the house, showing him the cover of "Little Dorrit" by Charles Dickens.

Gregory looks over his little round glasses with golden temples. It's the kind of glasses grandmothers wear, with a little golden cord around the neck. He's standing next to the table full of books, his nose red from rhinitis, holding a copy of "Tom Sawyer" open in a hand. He squints to see the book Kyle is showing him and then shakes his head.

"You want it?" Gregory asks.

"No, I already have it."

"God, I love Little Dorrit."

"Of course you do, you're British."

Kyle turns around to put "Little Dorrit" back on the shelf where she belongs and grabs the other three books from his lap, holding them under the arm to get down the stairs, using the support of one hand. There is an open box on the floor right next to the ladder, accommodating the books that will be donated. Gregory takes the cup of coffee, holding it by the saucer and meets Kyle halfway to give it to him.

"Thanks for coming, Kyle. I would have taken forever to do this on my own, it was very helpful. You always are, by the way."

And it's true. They've been working together for years and it's not uncommon for Kyle to save Gregory's ass in the Chamber. Gregory is a maximum authority position in South Park, politically speaking, but everyone knows that Kyle is his right arm and he's the one who's always left with the bigger messes to clean, giving his perfectionism and efficiency. He is the only person Gregory fully trusts to do any task. Gregory is the kind of person who believes that, if you want something done right, you have to either do it yourself or ask Kyle to do it.

"No problem. You gave me the morning off anyway." Kyle responds with a teasing smile, making room on the table full of books to sit on the tip and drink his coffee.

Gregory rests a hand on the wooden surface and puts the other one on his hip, a faint smile slowly fading from his mouth, disappearing with the dimples on his face. He's wearing some ridiculous suspenders that make him look like a child. He spends some time like that, just standing, one leg crossed in front of the other, watching Kyle carefully.

"What?" Kyle asks when he realizes he's being stared at, frowning in suspicion.

Gregory opens his mouth to answer, then closes it, then opens it again. Finally, he asks:

"How is he?"

"Who?"

"You know who. Don't play stupid, it doesn't suit you."

"I'm not. I just don't understand that question coming from you. He certainly talks a lot more to you than anyone else."

"Christophe?" He asks laughing, pulling a chair across the table after going around it. He sits down and rests both feet on a pile of books, showing off his well polished shoes and prosthetic leg. "Please. I don' know things because he tells me, I know them because I know them. I just have to look at him and I'll know how he is. But he's missing, he doesn't go to the Chamber anymore."

"Yeah, I think he doesn't want to run into Stan after what happened. Which I understand, really. I think it's for the best."

Gregory wrinkles his nose in a grimace, as if he's in pain all of the sudden. His blue eyes glisten in the sunlight that invades the narrow window in front of him, on the opposite wall. He joins his hands on his stomach and lets out a thoughtful groan.

"Do you want some sugar?" He asks Kyle, who shakes his head. "Well, I don't have a doubt that this is still an open wound for him. And for Stan too, poor thing, he hardly ever leaves the office since that weird encounter. Christophe didn't tell me much about it, but I see how restless Stan is. He's avoiding see you."

"He's always avoiding to see me. Not always, but... You know." Kyle puts down the coffee, feeling his stomach suddenly turn. "Damn, Gregory, it's been what, fourteen years? What do you mean 'open wound'?"

"Oh, dear. If that wound were ever closed, you just ripped off the stitches as soon as the Mole laid eyes on you again. That's why… I don't know, I worry about him."

Kyle rolls his eyes, straightening his back, not even trying to hide the discomfort.

"You're so dramatic."

"Oh, am I?" Gregory takes his feet off the pile of books and sits right over to the edge of his chair, resting his hands on the table. He straightens his red vest and supports an elbow on a book in front of him, because you can hardly see the dark wood of the table anymore. "And you're telling me that you didn't know how crazy about you he was back then?"

"It was not like that."

The fat black bird that Gregory keeps in a golden cage at the library begins to bristle its feathers, bobbing in the sun's heat, filling the room with a soft chirp. Gregory runs his tongue along the inside of his cheek while studying Kyle suspiciously, stroking the leather cover of the book in front of him. But he sees belief in those green eyes. He sigh dramatically.

"He was so in love with you, Kyle."

"Stop talking about those things." He responds quickly and gets up, forgetting the coffee, turning back to the stepladder. "This issue is dead and buried."

"I'm not suggesting you dig it up, I'm just worried about him. With all due respect, I can not understand what he's doing in your house. I have invited him to come stay with me, but he doesn't want it. And when your name comes up, something happens in his eyes... He tries to hide it, but I see it."

"What, Gregory?" He asks impatiently. "What do you see?"

But the blonde is collected. He licks his lips, holding his breath for a while and then gets up too, massaging the part of his thigh that is still made of flesh, where he had his leg amputated several years ago. Sometimes it hurts a little, as if the muscles are being pulled.

"Do you want to take Catcher in the Rye?" He asks, holding the book in his hand. That's his answer. Cause he knows Kyle's limits better than Kyle himself. "I never liked Salinger all that much. If you don't want it, I'll put it in the donation box."

And so, to Kyle's relief, the subject dies. For now.

Christophe is sitting on the balcony and it's night. Some fireflies as green as the moon roam around the yard. The view of Kyle's home in the mountain is the most fucking beautiful thing this town has to offer. The city seems so small, an untouchable carpet of light below them. He smokes a straw cigarette, as usual, leaning forward from time to time to spit on a tin can beside him, because the taste is tremendously strong even for his experienced mouth.

Kyle comes from inside the house. He looks so beautiful tonight. There is nothing special about it; his red hair is a bit messy, he's wearing a beige and brown thin wool sweater with a wide collar that exposes his naked collarbones. It's a little colder on the mountain than it is down there, but the smooth spring breeze feels nice. What's most beautiful about him today is the glow of his soft skin, no dark circles denouncing the lack of sleep. He looks healthy and happy. If you ask me, he has slept better with Christophe on the house. He has slept better knowing that the Mole is safe and sound. Kyle has had dreadful nightmares about him for the last god knows how many years, even before he started to believe that Christophe was dead.

I can see in the Mole's eyes that he also sees this comfortable beauty in Kyle, not particularly tidy, but real. He doesn't quite smile, but there's this spark in his eyes of someone who likes what he sees. It feels like Christophe could just look at him until the day he died, then he'd die a happy man.

Kyle brings with him two glasses of rum with ice. He gives one of them to Christophe and sits next to him, facing the sleeping city.

"Merci." The Mole thanks, taking a long sip. I'm not kidding, he even moans with the burning liquid running down his throat. When he finishes the required sip, he breathes in deeply, satisfied. "Damn, this shit is good."

"Did you actually think I would serve you something shitty?"

"Yeah."

Kyle laughed for his simplistic honesty, because he knows that Christophe isn't joking. A comfortable silence is established between them. These two never needed words to fill the void. Kyle clears his throat and licks his lips, also sipping the rum. It's his second glass of the night.

"You're very quiet today." He said, touching Christophe's exposed arm, because his sleeves are rolled up to the elbows. "Thinking about something?"

He hesitates a little to respond, taking an unhurried drag of his cigarette.

"Tweek, actually."

"Tweek?" Kyle frowns. "Huh. That's curious." He takes a pause, and it's a long one, unsure of whether this is an issue worth digging up or not. "What about him?"

"Nothing. I was just remembering him. His way of looking." Christophe closes his eyes as he takes a deep drag, trying to numb himself, then he breathes quietly, the smoke coming out from his lips and nostrils. "I misjudge him."

"You also made him a hero."

Christophe laughs somewhat bitterly, scratching behind his head in a lazy move. He looks slightly stoned and Kyle ponders for a moment if there is something other than tobacco in his cigarette. Probably the tip of some relaxing herb. Kyle has noticed that he uses anesthetic substances a lot more than he used to; he always drank a lot, but he was also a man on alert at all times and he needed all his senses working at every moment. Now, he seems to be trying to run away from something. Kyle also noted that he hardly ever sleeps. Every time Kyle wakes up in the middle of the night, he finds Christophe fully awake, smoking or reading or anything like that.

"I didn't make him anything. Tweek grew by himself. He began to see things for what they were."

"You never take credit for anything, but whenever something goes wrong, you always think it's your fault."

Christophe peeks at him with the corner of his eye, looking a bit angry. He holds the cigarette too close to his own face.

"I don't blame myself for what happened to him. I'm not that egocentric." He pauses to take a monstrous sip of his rum, supporting the glass over his crossed leg. He faces the city lights, his gaze looking vague and distant, but finally says. "Of course I wish I could have done something. Not only for Tweek."

"But how could you?" Kyle asks, adjusting his reading glasses he has forgotten to take off. He finally turns sideways in his chair to face him head on, but Christophe doesn't take his eyes off the city. Kyle takes a long pause, his eyes filling with pain. He rubs his face beneath the glasses and drink some more. "God, what a fucking day that was."

He's talking about the President's birthday, the first major intervention of resistance in South Park. The memory itself gives him goose bumps. With a sigh, Kyle continues:

"I thought you were going to die, Mole. I really did."

It's so hard for him to say this out loud. It's such a vivid scar in his soul, something that will always be a part of him because that's when Kyle started to become who he is today. That's when both of them came to their limit.

He uses the tin can as an ashtray too. Christophe holds it for a while, facing the bottom of the can in silence for a long time.

"Me too." He casually replies, blowing smoke into the air.

Again they fall into silence, but now there's some tension here. They're no longer in each other's company, because Kyle is deep in a memory of his own. I can see everything. Inside his mind, there is a long trail of fresh blood on a filthy floor, Christophe's limp body at the end of this path, in a puddle of viscous fluid that oozes from his gunshot wound. The sounds are stunning. Those were the sounds that plagued Kyle's sleep several times, those cries in the streets and machine guns, sappers, people running outside, chaos, storm. And was Kyle also smeared on the Mole's blood, also full of scratches and cuts, his forehead bleeding, his face dirty with tears earth, but he had no time to cry or to clean himself up because the only thought was in stop that damn blood that wouldn't stop coming. "Don't you dare to close your eyes, you son of a bitch, I'll hunt you down in hell if you leave me," Kyle remembers yelling, but Christophe could no longer hear anything.

That is one hell of a story. I'll let Kyle tell you. But that's not our focus right now.

"You know that..." Kyle mutters with a weak voice. "I've had my good share of shitty moments, you know. But that was the moment my life when I felt the most terrified." There is a long pause as if he's waiting for Christophe to say something, but he just spits in the can and puts off the cigarette in it, then turns his gaze to Kyle silently. Kyle then continues. "It was different. You know? I had so many regrets... And I… Being young and stupid, I saw you as this unstoppable force of nature that could overcome anything. It was like… Only at that moment I found out that you were also made of flesh like everyone else." He took another pause, this time for a sip of rum, his glass almost empty. He already feels a little drunk. "I loved you so much, Christophe. Seeing you that fragile... It only made me want you more. I also dreaded it. And I dreaded everything we wouldn't be able to experience if you died. At that moment, it was like... Like I would be alone forever if you disappear."

The Mole leans back in the chair and lets his skin absorb the words as if they were a strong dose of alcohol. The silence begins to leave Kyle nervous, but before he can react, Christophe straightens the leg that had been crossed and takes a deep breath.

"You kept me alive."

It almost sounds like an accusation. He doesn't speak aggressively, nor angry, but still it sounds like something that Kyle should not have done. And I can see that Kyle doesn't understand exactly what he means by that. Christophe rummages ice in his glass of rum and finish it by slamming it on the wooden table that exists between their chairs.

"Once again." The Mole adds.

Kyle takes off his glasses, feeling a little dizzy. He presses his palms over his eyes and takes a deep breath, trembling, still completely immersed in those memories he's been running away from for over a decade.

"And everything that came after that..." Kyle murmurs, rubbing his temples. "Damn, I did everything wrong."

There is sorrow... Or rather, there was a strong amount of sorrow between them after the President's birthday. But Christophe has never been what one could call verbal; He never talked about his feelings. Kyle doesn't know to what extent those wounds are still open. Christophe frowns for a moment and carefully looks back at him.

"Do you still think about it?" He asks.

"About it", it's what he says. "About us," it's what he means. He throws that thought in the air, dubiously on purpose, something he doesn't do very often. He's a fairly binary man who prefers to say what he means. But even so he leaves it open, perhaps with kind intentions, for Kyle to understand it how he pleases, giving him the chance to be evasive if that's what he wants. From where I I see things without the weight of the flesh, it's so easy to see how Christophe tries to protect him and doesn't know how to express that.

"Of course I do." Kyle says without hesitation. "Don't you?"

This catches him by surprise. Christophe diverts his gaze, releasing the air from the lungs like a panting dog. He is about to stand up, but stays put. He seems a bit cornered.

"Well, I'm here, aren't I? Weren't you the one who wanted me to go stay somewhere else so we wouldn't feed this shit up?"

"Yeah, that's what I wanted, but you didn't go." Kyle responds, his tone serious at first, but then he can't help but smile at the end of the sentence when he realizes how stupid he sounds.

Christophe takes about two seconds to start chuckling It's a weak laugh, shaking his head, confused but satisfied. Shortly after, the chuckle turns into an actual laugh. Kyle hits him on the arm, unable to stop smiling.

Own. That's really cute.

"I'm serious!" Kyle yells, his head thrown back, sounding anything but serious. "It's hard not to remember everything when you're here. It's impossible, actually." He takes a quiet, thoughtful little time to stare at the wood boards of his porch floor. "You… You just left. And I stood here holding on to this shit by myself."

Christophe goes from that scornful laughter to a slightly annoyed expression. He takes his lighter from the pocket and starts to play with it, lighting the fighter a couple of times because he's nervous and he needs to do something with his hands.

"And what the fuck did you want me to do, Kyle?" He accusingly asks all of the sudden. "I didn't run away. You didn't go to Europe with me because you didn't want to."

He gets up from his chair as he finishes speaking, taking a few steps on the porch, scratching his neck with his free hand.

"That is not true."

Kyle sounds truly hurt now.

"It is. It fucking is."

"I couldn't go! You know damn well that I couldn't!" Kyle gets up and approaches him, gesturing, a little defensive. Christophe turns to him with his hands on hips and his chin up, in a confronting position. Not the it was necessary, giving the fact that he's twice Kyle's size.

"Yeah. I know. I know and I never fucking asked you for anything different. I never asked you for something you didn't have to give." He points his finger at Kyle's face, pressing the lighter in his hand, talking in the strongest French accent. "But then what the fuck did you expect from me?! You were the one who rejected me for years. You. What, did you want me to behave like a little puppy running after you like..."

He stops talking, which is very good if you want to know. Because Kyle is so ready to put a hole on his face if he decides to continue.

"Like Stan? Is that what you were going to say?"

"I didn't..."

"How fucking dare you…? How can you even say that?! Well, you know what? At least Stan was never afraid to tell me he loved me."

Christophe nervously licks his lips and takes a step back. They are very close, these two, and this has become too stifling for him.

"I've told you." The Mole shrugs like there's nothing else he can do. He sounds so fragile right now. "Maybe not in your time, maybe not in the way you wanted me to, but I've said it. And it didn't change shit. So don't blame this on me, don't talk like you were left behind."

"You think I wouldn't have gone with you?! But I... Damn it, Christophe. I would have never forgiven myself."

"So why the fuck are we are still arguing about this?" He asks very tiredly. "There's nothing to be done here. You couldn't go, I couldn't stay. It's over. If there ever was a chance, we lost it."

There is a silent moment between them. The fireflies continue dancing, the wind is weak and it stirs the Mole's hair up. Kyle is protected by his body and the wind barely touches him. His eyes look so sad. Those words were everything in the world he did not want to hear from Christophe's mouth, even though he has said something very similar to Gregory that same morning. He breathes in, heavy and confused, his dizziness getting worse; Kyle covers his eyes and tries to hide the painful expression. He feels like he's been shot.

"This is why I was afraid that you stayed here. Because I knew this would happen eventually."

Christophe puts the lighter back in his pocket and passes Kyle to go back inside the house, but he then stops, his hand on the doorframe, thoughtfully pressing his tongue inside his cheek. Kyle turns toward him, his shoulders tense and his head slightly thrown back, eyes filled with sadness. Christophe stares back. He takes two indecisive steps, leaving Kyle attentive, prepared for a new confrontation.

But Christophe walks toward him, the short distance between Kyle and the door, passing one of his strong arms around Kyle's waist to pull his body against him approaches his face so quickly that Kyle can't fully understand what's going on, he just feels both his feet almost leaving the ground. He can also feel the heat, that breath of rum and smoke mixed with the natural smell of that body, that hair. Christophe's eyes so close and so aggressive they almost shoot him, bright like a wolf's.

"This right here, this is what you knew would happen." He mutters through his teeth, taking Kyle so tightly in the embrace, one hand on his back and the other buried in his red hair, breathing heavy. Their lips are so close, the bodies, warm of alcohol and lust and anger against that cold air. "This right here is what you're afraid of."

And then he mentions to release him like he was just trying to prove a point. He simply wanted to remind him of the adrenaline, the fire that spreads with any touch between them, how that fire is still very much alive. But Christophe's hands don't even leave Kyle's body. One minute he relieves his grip, but on the other, he grabs him forcefully again, using the hand on his head to keep their faces close like there's some kind of internal battle taking place. Kyle's knees are trembling and he doesn't react, but his green eyes sparkle.

"Fucking damn it, Kyle." He says, sounding so breathless and out of himself, in a tone of one who can't take it any longer, one who has made a decision and doesn't give a shit about the consequences.

And he kisses Kyle, hungrily and immediately, before he has the chance to change his mind.

Like he should have done years ago. But no one asked for my opinion.