Kyle woke up that morning and watched Stan sleep.

Creepy much?

Kyle couldn't help himself. He adored the way Stan's breath heaved and grew in his virile chest and then released through a soft, almost inaudible exhale. He tried not to think about how awkwardly they had to say goodnight to each other and he tried not to think about the kind of terror eye-contact would be the rest of the day. He was too consumed in Stan and all of Stan's air and his breath and his chest and his dreaming and his mouth and his nose and his long, dark lashes. There was far too much distracting him from the painful, lonely reality of the oncoming, purple sunrise through his curtain-masked window. His curls hugged his freckled face as he thought about touching at Stan's ebony hair while he slept.

"I love you,"

He blushed…

Those words always triggered a nostalgic feeling in him; a story he read so many times to himself, to his mother and to his brother that he had memorized it as a child. His tired eyes closed as his full lips parted and he whispered,

"In the year of bated breath and lover's debt, there lived a man and his beautiful wife. And though they toiled in circular disintricacies and stayed the coming of any age time mustered, they loved each other dearly, to the threat of every deathbed and beyond,"

He paused, recalling the exact lines, "She spent her days singing songs about the house as she did everything in her power to create the best home she could manage of the sagging willows and bastard reeds she gathered for the husband she loved so much. And always, though he never knew the verses precisely, though he always knew the words to give her, though they sometimes meant the same with their smattered syllables and back traced fingers on the parchment beneath the pillows, always there were sweets on the table," He felt his own thin digits run across the side of his forehead distractedly, "He brought them in her sleep, in his wake, kneeling on the floor for the morning. Always, arms thin but full, eyes wide but view narrow, their blessings as few as one with every beautiful and dismembered as the enchantment he suffered. A blissful zealot,"

He silenced for a moment to listen to the rhythm of Stan's breathing again, then picked up,

"She smiled when he made his prayers between her legs, when he tasted the divine upon her mortal tongue, and when he loved her from the inside out. She always wished at the top of her pitches for his ultimate happiness, always thought of how fortunate she was to love so readily and be loved so readily in return. 'Someday', she'd say, 'someday I will make a copy of you', though she did not know she was unable. 'Someday,' she'd say, 'I'll make you something perfect,' …"

He sighed, "When he'd fall asleep, dead of night or dark of day, she'd whisper her songs into his open ears until she too fell unconscious. She always rattled in the spiral of his ears, a broken figurine in an unlined case, but it tickled pleasantly; the bells, the tottering footfalls, the sliding doors and water on granite, all sounds and all things bubbling at the base of his neck. They kept the vermin at bay," He breathed deeply, "they stood before the shrine, wet and desolate; his hands always played a part in the rhythms and functions of what, to any man, were as clear as water under a full moon. Clean and quiet, with the scent of sandwood,"

He felt his brows crease, "But she could not bear perfection for him, unknown to him, and slowly her songs fell away. Her fingers limp and body numb, that evening heralded no whispers for she could barely breathe with so much wire twined like ivy about her whitewashed neck. She wanted so badly to give him a copy of himself, she wanted so madly to make something perfect…she waited for his return, arms thin but full, eyes wide but view narrow. When he saw her, she was bound and brittle, is thin arms fell and the floor was filled with the taste of pomegranate; he tried and tried and tried, his eyes so wide and view so narrow that in the end he saw nothing,"

Kyle opened his eyes, turning over and pulling into a sitting position, all of his weight on his calves and knees. He lowered his head to Stan, his fatigued eyes closing again and hands lying absently in his lap,

"In the end, he knelt as he always would for her, waiting for her whispers, waiting and waiting and waiting for her whispers to return. Head tilted, ears to lips; he smiled as he waited for her, so happy to just be home with her, waiting for her whispers,"

Kyle lifted his head, tilting it slightly as he admired more angles of Stan's beautiful face,

"When he grew impatient, he was a craftsman. His fingers laid across the lacquer of her throat and the ripple of the wire, and when he tasted them he tasted the silver of the moon and the gold of the carp just beneath that reflection, there, just beneath that sleeping pulse, there was perfection,"

The End.

Stan murmured something incoherent, deep in R.E.M sleep. Kyle envied him, as he would have preferred greatly to be in the depths of a restful and shrouding dream rather than bowing to what he considered the deity of his every fantasy and wishful thought. Kyle leaned back, letting his comfortably hot legs unravel under the covers as his back rested against the wall his bed was pressed against. The rays escaping the human eye, and those spreading onto him that he knew so well and explained to professors and writers were still magic to him as they weaved through the glass of his window and the thin threads of his curtains. His dreamy stare was stuck on his best friend, and for the first time in a long time, he thought of absolutely nothing. Not about discomfort, his desperate wish to be fit for a dress as beautiful as his mother's wedding gown, not music, not stories, Bernadette and her sadness, all of the things he couldn't stop from happening or his own attempts at perfection. He just watched the gold and violet slowly crawl onto Stan's features, so at peace and so at rest. He was thinking he was so content he could die when he felt his eyes water. His breath hitched, his heart giving a sudden violent thump in surprise as his dexterous hand rose to his face; his cheeks weren't hot, there was no warning in the back of his throat as there usually was and he wasn't really sure what to do.

The tears fell in sync with each other, racing down his high cheekbones and slowing as they eventually dripped from his jaw. He wasn't sobbing, he wasn't making a noise at all, really. But every time he blinked another fell and they were silent and quick, and he still couldn't concentrate on anything. His mind was still blank, his body mandating itself, maybe trying to warn him about a sadness he was not confronting or a great sadness to come. Perhaps that sadness would come as quickly and quietly as the tears the warning manifested into, but again, he couldn't bring himself to think on it much and so, he didn't really care. He let his head fall back against the wall, turning his tear-stained face towards the gap between the curtain and the window. The refracted light wrapped him in what he thought might have been a divine embrace.

Don't think. It told him.

Darkness and pain is all around, and the stress, anxiety and terrible expectations you must meet are ruining you.

It made his heart feel like lead and his eyes feel hot as more tears came from him. He breathed out and it was shaky and graceless, but the sometimes toxic rays of the rising sun told him he looked beautiful.

Bask in your pain and fall as if it meant nothing. Do not hesitate to put your armor down and allow the arrows to puncture you; the blood will mask the scars and if you find you can smile in the end, then the pain will be worth what you lost.

Was he thinking? He couldn't tell. Was he pretending that electromagnetic radiation was speaking to him? Was he just tired? Was he sad? Was he lonely? What is it that he lost? Or rather, what is it that he will lose?

He looked out the window, through the leafless trees that gave the sky the appearance of broken glass as he reminisced…

"Kyle! Kyle, wake up, Kyle, please!"

The redhead's consciousness responded as a scratchy groan; his hand rubbed in his hair as he reluctantly opened his eyes,

"What is it, Stan?"

He saw through the corner of his glazed eye that the time was two-zero-three in the A.M. That barely registered, though, before Stan's body came crashing onto his. He blushed, fully awake now with his voice raspy and uncertain,

"S-Stan? What's wrong?"

The boy's athletic arms were wrapping around Kyle's thin body and gripping him severely, his callused fingers digging into Kyle's back as he wet the front of Kyle's night-shirt with heavy tears. Kyle's hands found their way onto Stan, one in his hair and the other close by, holding the base of his neck. He knelt his head down, his brows knitting,

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know," Stan murmured, "but I was awake and I don't know what's wrong with me lately, Kyle, but I just…when you're not here I'm so…lonely…and you fell asleep and, Kyle, I'm sorry I woke you up, but I just couldn't-"

Kyle pushed the boy further into him, more violently against him,

"Don't be stupid, Stan. It doesn't matter what time it is, you can wake me…"

"Th-…thank you…"

"Do you know why you've been feeling lonely?"

"I don't know…you make it better, though,"

Kyle shifted under Stan, initiating the boy to shoot up anxiously, visibly expecting to be thrown off in disgust. Kyle fixed the pillow behind him so it would align with his entire back, then he leaned back again, his arms spread and welcoming. Stan crawled into the space between Kyle's legs, his back curved half-against Kyle's left side and his heated face fit into the crook of Kyle's neck. His legs were jointed at his knees that met over Kyle's right thigh, his arms lying in his lap.

"That's all that matters, then," Kyle replied in delay.

Stan smiled against his skin, "I think I can go to sleep now, but don't go to sleep until I fall asleep, okay?"

Kyle simpered, closing his exhausted lids as he promised, "Whatever you need me to do, Stan, but you'll owe me for this,"

He heard a slight laugh escape the boy and he felt his smile purify in pride.

"Thank you,"

"I know there's been something on your mind, Kye. You know I can always tell."

"Not you; you never fall."

"Don't threaten me with a sore ass, you're the one who decided you like that, not me."

He chuckled to himself at the memories; Stan truly was divine.

"Don't be retarded, you are my buzz."

"You're just cute."

"You'd be okay with just…leaving? I mean, I'd be all alone without you, dude."

"You're just fucking amazing."

"Then I think you look beautiful."

He blushed, the bird in the cage of his heart singing out gorgeously in response to the memory.

"Can I…can I touch you?"

His blush deepened, his hand crawling up to his bumping heart as he murmured to himself, "Stan…"

"Really? That's what I love about you,"

"…Stan…"

"I love you,"

He gave himself a mental slap; No, Kyle! That was you deluding yourself, you were heated, you were confused and he whispered something…it wasn't that. It wasn't that.

Kyle could not save the world; he was bitterly, well aware of that. Kyle couldn't save Bernadette from her pain, he couldn't make Cartman a good person, he couldn't control his mother and he certainly could not belong to Stan. He was not born to wear that dress and so he could never have what he wanted most. Rather than wrapping wire around his neck, though, rather than complaining or bruiting, he could only perfect. He wiped at the tears still rolling down his lack of expression, refusing to let them take territory. He could never belong to Stan.

I want that…God, I really…really want that…

But Kyle could not have that. Because Stan was far more beautiful than him, because Stan was far more social than him, because Stan was everything he wasn't. Because he could not wear a dress, because he could not bear him a child, because he wasn't shaped like an hour glass because he was not what Stan was looking for. His heart cracked, paining his chest in terrible resolution; he could do nothing but be the best friend he could be for Stan. Like the woman could only perfect their home and her love for him, Kyle was only capable of perfecting so much of himself. He was at his optimum; he could do no more. He could only be Stan's best friend. And so he vowed to the radiation showering him through the clear barrier of silicates that he would remain Stan's best friend for the rest of their lives. And when the day came that Stan considered himself too old or too straight to sleep in the same bed as Kyle on the weekends, Kyle would cherish the soft, lulling rhythm of his breathing forever imprinted in his memory. Because beneath that mask of calm, lucid, sleeping breath there was roaring, wild perfection.