A/N: A short lead-up to the events of "Isolated Incident." All Stan and Kyle here, folks. Both a prequel and a sequel.
"Man." A sigh. "This is great, isn't it?"
"Yep." He flashes a grin. "Life is good."
"A toast!" As they clink glasses, a firework streaks across the sky, and explodes in time with the small ring of glass hitting glass.
Smiling softly, eleven year old Stan Marsh says, "To best friends."
"Forever," adds eleven year Kyle Broflovski, offering a tiny grin.
"Forever."
They drink their sodas while vibrant sparks continue to bathe the velvet black sky. Neither can think of how they'll be starting middle school soon, how this night won't be forever. But it doesn't matter.
Right now…everything is perfect.
The boy is thirteen, young enough, though his eyes are exceptionally mature in their emerald cold, but not in the sense that they are wise, but worn and weary. His hair is wild, blood red, and flounces with each step. He walks with the jaunted pace of the dead, until something withdraws him from his daze.
"Dude, wait up!"
He flinches away from the sound of his closest companion's voice. He does not turn toward it, only pauses mid-stride. A different voice eats away relentlessly at the corner of his mind.
"Hey, wassup?" Another boy laughs, clapping a comforting hand on his friend's shoulder. The redhead makes a small, indecipherable sound of discomfort. This new boy is perhaps an inch taller, with a much more juvenile slant to his edges. In contrast, his eyes are a restful, roiling blue, and comforting in the cage of black bangs that fall before them. He laughs again, out of breath. "Wake up, dude, I've been looking all over for you."
"Ah," the other says in general disinterest. He keeps his face turned down.
His friend examines him, leaning in to get a better look; however, their auras refract off each other, so the closer he comes, the farther the other backs away. "Are you…?"
His breath is cool on the redhead's burning face.
"Fine," he mutters the appropriate response as prompted.
The brunette bobs his head. "So guess why I've been trying to find you?"
"Why?" It's low and murmured.
"Because." Something flutters above the redhead's disheveled head, and unwillingly lures his gaze up.
A scarf dangles in front of his face.
"Wh…" The word dies in his throat. "What is this?"
"Isn't it cool?" the boy asks, grinning. "I got it for you, dude." His friend eyes him guardedly for a moment, untrusting, before faltering slightly.
"It's green," he breathes. His voice is barely a lick of a whisper.
"Yeah." The other seems slightly embarrassed with his next sentence, and at the same time, it feels like it's been alive in his mind and on his tongue for a long time: "It matches your eyes."
The red-haired boy rises up, shocked. Their souls collide with tremendous force, and suddenly they're submerged into each other eyes: limpid, age-old emerald green, and the soothing plunge of oceanic blue.
Quietly, the brunette asks, "Do you like it, Kyle?"
"Stan," the other chokes in disbelief. But he can't wrench himself from the blue's damning grip. He can only nod and say how he truly feels:
"I love it."
The boy Kyle is now fourteen, though he hasn't grown much, if not at all, in a year. He's still thin, worn, and has the build of a corpse. The moons under his eyes have darkened significantly from lack of sleep. There's a perpetual look of discomfort on his face as he hesitates in the threshold of high school.
"We made it," his friend Stan declares in triumph beside him. "High school." He breathes out, as if riveted by the taste of it in his mouth. "Top floor, look out!"
He checks Kyle for a reaction, but instead sees the bowed head of lush red curls beside him. Kyle doesn't look up or respond in the slightest to what Stan says.
"Kyle?"
At the needle prick of his name, Kyle appears to flinch.
"Hey." Stan forces a smile and punches his friend's arm.
Emeralds roll out from under the coils in his face, and Kyle spares him a brief glance. "Yeah?"
His voice is not one that either recognizes.
"You're okay, right?" Stan swallows at the possibility that Kyle isn't.
Time rushes by for a moment, before the shorter boy answers wearily, "Yeah. I'm just…tired."
"Oh…oh yeah, me too, man."
Kyle nods, and it's over. They push into the crowded hallway, with insistent stares at their backs. Stan doesn't notice, and Kyle makes a point of not looking.
Meanwhile, his heart is a rabbit sprinting in his throat.
In the same year, Stan begins to note that the Kyle he once knew is diminishing. He tries not to, but it's impossible to ignore. From time to time, he finds himself feeling vulnerable to all the changes that high school is bringing. Briefly, he feels like his life is coming undone, and soon the control he once thought he had will vanish. Like his friends.
Around Christmas, his longtime colleague Kenny McCormick is diagnosed with clinical depression, which is a hideous thing in such a pretty boy. Within two months, Kenny is gone, being experimented on in the clandestine of a psych ward, which is something that the activist Stan disapproves of heavily.
When he tries to tell this to Kyle, though, the only movement he detects in a blink over withered orbs.
Stan's ex-girlfriend, a female as dark as he is in hair and fair darker in temperament, takes a liking to Kyle. Stan decides that it doesn't bother him, but, at the same time, knows this is only because Kyle has lost all interest in anything.
Then, Stan begins to realize what a horrible person that makes him.
Unbeknownst to his best friend, Kyle is unable to place exactly what is happening to him. He cannot decide whether he's saturated by his emotions, or completely devoid of them, but either way he feels incomplete. And when Wendy takes hold of his hands during passing period from third to fourth, he knows that he can never feel the same for her. For any woman.
So he begins to appreciate how handsome Stan has become, how strong he is and how his eyes, the color of water, spark in warm flame whenever they're together. Kyle, for the lessening life of him, begins to wonder if Stan is more than a friend.
He begins to wonder if he's in love…and if it's worth holding out for.
When they're sixteen, the boys, now both much older in their own, separate ways, are in the library after school when Stan says to Kyle, "Kyle, look at me."
And Kyle wants to. Stan doesn't have to ask anymore.
But he doesn't.
"Kyle?"
"No."
"Please?" It's pathetically low and pleading, and a puncture in Kyle's side. He doesn't have the energy to flinch, so instead allows his heart to blacken a little more. It weighs him down like a coal.
A hand rests on his shoulder and flames arise to every contour of his body.
"Don't touch me," he murmurs, though makes no effort to move Stan's hand.
"Kyle." Softer now, gentle. It caresses the back of his neck and he shudders.
The letters of Frankenstein begin to swim and muddle into witchcraft incantations. READ, he commands himself, but it has no effect.
"Dude…I've been so worried about you lately." A lean thumb and forefinger grasp his chin and moves his head toward Stan's. The two friends hesitate at such a close, intimate distance, momentarily unable to conjure any words at the beauty of the other's face. Familiar eyes seem to connect for the first time, and it's so invigorating that Stan's at least able to push out a whispered, "You haven't been yourself…"
"O-oh." Kyle's grip tightens on the paperback. "Well, AP classes, you know…"
It's more than he's said in a month.
"Yeah." Stan nods, biting his lip. "Y-yeah, I know." And, for a second, two hearts miss the same beat as his eyes fall to the outline of Kyle's mouth. Their foreheads connect almost by magnetic instinct, and a larger pair of hands eases the book from a smaller pair's lockjaw grasp. Freed, Kyle seems to undergo a blast of strength; he finds new ground on Stan's shirt.
Stan's hands overlap his yet again, guiding them to the center of his chest, and remain. Swallowing, Kyle feels the thud of the heart he so desires beneath the fabric.
There is nobody else at the tables surrounding them. The librarian has vanished into the backroom.
"Kyle," Stan says, and even Kyle can scarcely hear it. They stare at each other for eternity, knees to knees, hands to hands, forehead to forehead. The brunette of the duo releases Kyle's tensed fingers to guide his own under the other's chin. "Kyle…" he repeats, surrendering completely and lunging forward.
His forefinger transfers from the smooth skin to a raised, hot ridge, and both of them freeze barely an eyelash away from the other.
"Oh God." Stan's breath catches, and tears spring in his eyes as the possibilities of how the scar came to be cross his mind. "Oh Christ, y-your neck…"
Kyle wrenches back and nearly stumbles from his chair. Not bothering to put anything back, he scrapes his materials into his backpack, staggering toward the exit. He attempts to hide the shame, but feels he ultimately fails.
"W-wait!" Stan is right behind him, the faster one. He grabs Kyle's arm just as the boy is about to leave, but the gesture is no longer carnal. The muscles are tense beneath the skin.
Stan's voice quivers. "Who did that to your neck?"
"Let go," Kyle whispers, slamming his eyes shut. He feels ready to collapse.
"Oh God, Kyle," Stan chokes. He spins his friend around and pulls him right to the warmth of his torso. "Please tell me what's happening to you."
Kyle stares at him brokenly. Misery throbs in those dead green eyes. "Please don't make me."
"I want to help," Stan is closer to tears than he's ever been. "Kyle…please…"
Ripping himself away, the redhead runs out before Stan can recapture him.
Once they're both worlds apart, the two boys begin to cry.
The next day, neither mentions it. They never will again.
From then on, Stan makes a point of reminding Kyle that they're best friends, and inadvertently checking his neck whenever he can.
And from then on, Kyle listens to the constant ticking of his life's clock, wondering who he'll take down with him when it's time.
It is nine months later. There is a party that Stan somehow manages to convince Kyle to go with him to.
The party is at the Marsh residence, as Stan's parents are divorced and have been MIA for the past two years. Kyle might've envied his best friend for growing up alone, but can hardly feel a thing anymore.
Alcohol doesn't do a damn thing to change it either way, but he drinks, anyways.
By eleven, he's never felt so hollow in his life. He wonders why he didn't try drinking earlier.
By twelve, Stan has kissed him.
He didn't intend for it to happen. Neither did Stan. But, similar to Kyle, Stan feels positively empty at the bottle's mercy. And likes it. Head full of tequila, he's able to forget about everything that's happened since high school began. He's no longer Stan, and Kyle is even less himself, so it seems almost inevitable what happens that night.
Kyle is slumped against the foot of Stan's bed when the door opens. He cannot recall the time or how he came to be in such a position, but turns away from the razor of light that cuts across his face. Over the drone of music, he can distinctly make out the hollow thump of his heart, which is the only evidence that he's still barely alive.
Stan enters the room, cursing when he stubs his toe against the door frame. He has misplaced his shirt and himself, evidently, as he squats before Kyle and shows him his eyes.
Even in the dark, Kyle can see the dilation of the pupils facing him, and can smell the sweet scent passing over his ajar lips. He forgets who he's facing for a moment, and it takes a few peeks through his clouded mind to remember that it's Stan.
The look they exchange alerts the other exactly of what's going to happen tonight. Stan and Kyle, swap shattered stares, each a stranger to the other.
Reaching up, Stan traces his fingertips over Kyle's scar. It's all he can think to do. Both of them shudder at the contact.
The two friends, both seventeen and drunk and lost, then kiss without second thought.
Kyle can hardly coerce himself to kiss back. But he does.
Stan can hardly find the strength to hoist Kyle onto the bed. But he does.
Neither says a word.
Even when Kyle's shirt is gone, too.
Even when they're making love.
Even when they're so alive, it's painful.
Even when it's over.
Even when they fall asleep and awake the next morning, with Kyle lying on Stan's bed, fully dressed, and Stan outside on the porch, never to tell Kyle of what happened to them.
Even then.
There was nothing to say.
They don't leave the silence until Monday swings around. Once or twice, Stan will check on Kyle, but cannot stand the sight of the ruined child anymore. Kyle won't remember how or why it takes two full, lonely days to sleep off his first intoxication; not that it would matter.
His time has been whittled down to the final seven weeks.
Seven weeks later, Stan feels a small pang of optimism.
He doesn't know why, but that day, as he goes to school, he understands that today is going to be a good today. That things are about to change. He eagerly awaits Kyle outside of his locker, then sees him approaching with ten minutes to spare. Smiles.
Kyle doesn't smile back.
And Stan doesn't see the gun.
Seven weeks later, Kyle Broflovski, a highly disturbed boy of seventeen, gunned down four students and a teacher before burying a bullet in his temple. He was DOA.
Only one of his five victims survived.
The day he was buried, only his parents showed. The entire town would remain in shock from the devastating blow Kyle had dealt to the community for years. Further digging indicated that he'd been suffering from long-term bullying, which ultimately divided the township between those who believed it and those who believed that Kyle was simply a troubled teenager who'd snapped under stress.
Those on his side would sneer at that crap, and insisted that his bullies be prosecuted under the law. A year after his death, bullying would become a criminal offense, to ensure such a travesty could never happen again.
Some still insisted that it was a wasted effort. The boy had left no suicide note, so how could anyone ever know what he wanted? they said. How would anybody ever know how he'd been in life, and what could have caused this?
Shortly after the shooting, somewhere in the hospital, a patient opens his eyes. There's a recently-extracted bullet on the sterile table beside him. This boy is handsome, dark-haired, and has a stark contrast of skin tone against his lush black mop. He can't be more than seventeen or eighteen years old, though a look of raw, youthful terror on his face suggests a much, much younger face. Various IV tubes snake out of his arm, and the steady pace of a heart monitor gradually changes its slow tune as he fully awakens.
He glances around, trying desperately to recall the last event in his mind. A siren pierces through his memory, and, once the haze passes, Stan Marsh asks the first thing able to enter his mind:
"Where's Kyle?"