You Can Never Go Back

Chapter 12: My Heart Can't Break 'Cause the Beating Stops

By: Jondy Macmillan

A/N: Soooo, I'm planning on going back and fixing up some minor grammatical errors and issues in the previous chapters. But I do want to clear up one thing- I'm surprised no one's pointed it out yet. Kyle's diabetic. I do know that. Alcohol is mad sugar-filled. I only know that because my Daddy's also diabetic. (Which brings me constant joy knowing that I'll probably be so someday too. Damnit.) Anyway, I've seen my father get awful drunk, quite often. So the way I figure, Kyle's not the kind of person who'd be really careful about that sort of thing anyway. I mean he would, but he'd have that you only live once mentality. Unless you're Kenny. Which reminds me, I am working on the next chapter of Breathe Me. No, really. I just kind of got distracted by the fact that I want to write a fic about Stan's little Raven issue. Because I've decided goth Stan is kind of hot. Uhm. Yes. Onto the fic.

Oh! And thank you everyone for your fabulous reviews! I know I don't reply as much as I should, but I really do appreciate it, especially the reviewers who come back again and again. Ya'll make my day.

Christ. So, I've decided I have to do something. My first priority is patching things up with Stan. Kenny can wait for a little while, and I have to formulate some kind of plan before approaching Cartman. Stan's not exactly my easiest option, seeing as he's been hot and cold about the whole renewing our friendship from the get go. I seriously doubt him having a boner for me is going to help that, but I figure if I just accept Wendy's invitation to dinner, I'll at least have backup in getting my BFF back. I can work on the 'love' thing later.

I call her up. She's absolutely ecstatic to hear from me, which makes me feel like the lowest cretin. The words 'I'm-sorry-but-your-boyfriend-confessed-he-loves-me' nearly slip from my lips, as a way of saying goodbye. Telling Wendy wouldn't exactly be conducive to ensuring Stan remains my friend, so I clamp my mouth shut and flip my cell closed. The words bubble up from my throat anyway, and I say them to my empty room, to the faded posters on my wall. I need to tell somebody. I haven't even told Kenny, not in so many words. I mean, how do you just go around saying it?

"Stan Marsh is in love with me," I whisper to my posters again, and it sound absolutely ludicrous. Stan Marsh, the golden boy of South Park, the former pitcher of the baseball team and all around good guy, is in love with me. Me, the college flunkout. Okay, so maybe I had potential once. And maybe he's not really South Park's golden boy anymore. That was a high school thing, and it's not like he's really achieved much more than me now. But I'm sure if I give him some time, he'll make something of himself.

I hope I'll make something of myself too.

"I'm gay," I try, the words sounding bitter and wrong on my tongue. You know, there has to be a solution to all of this. I'll figure it out. I have to.

Maybe if I find a girlfriend. I brighten. That's actually a good idea. Yeah, I could find a girlfriend.

My hopes are dimmed seconds later. What girl is going to want to date me? In the nearly three months I've been here, not a single lady has expressed an ounce of interest in me. Unless you count Bebe, which I don't.

I walk to Stan's apartment building. It takes a good half hour, and the street around me sparkles. Everything's been coated over by a solid sheet of ice, on top of the already frozen ground beneath. Even the tread on my boots isn't holding up to the slip-n-slide of asphalt. It's March, and South Park is still vying for the position of coldest place on Earth, competing against Moscow and Antarctica. The street lamps pool across the sidewalk, illuminating patches of crystalline shine that could easily be mistaken for puddles rather than death traps. One misstep and I'll spend most of summer in crutches. Dude, I hate this town.

The walk up to the seventh floor has never seemed quite so long. I end up standing outside Stan's door for nearly half an hour before I can push myself into knocking.

I could still turn around.

Deciding to man up, I knock. After a minute or so, the door creaks back. There's Stan. He's all disheveled black hair and rumpled clothes. I can see bags under his eyes. Shit.

Quietly, he asks, "What are you doing here?"

"Wendy invited me to dinner."

"Fuck," he curses softly, "She acts like she lives here."

I don't say anything about how lucky he is to have a girlfriend who'll make him dinner in the first place. I hold my mouth tightly closed, studying him. It looks like he's been having trouble sleeping. I may have been up all night contemplating my sexuality, but something's really doing a number on him. I wonder if it's the fact that he confessed to me. That couldn't really have been that important, could it?

If he was telling the truth, then obviously it could. I'm such a moron. I just still can't believe he wasn't being drunk and stupid.

"Can I come in?"

Stan looks startled. I think he forgot I was still standing on his welcome mat, waiting for an invitation.

"Kyle!" I hear Wendy cheer from the kitchen. She's dressed in this tiny black suit. I guess she has work soon. It is a Thursday, after all.

A horrifying thought comes to me unbidden. She's not going to leave me alone with him, is she?

She turns and smiles at me, running her fingers quickly under the faucet before coming to give me a quick kiss on the cheek. I can see under the suit she's decked out in this cleavage bearing black shirt that clings to her in all the right places. Stan's a lucky bastard. Even though she technically doesn't live here, I think she spends more time cooking and cleaning in Stan's apartment than he does.

"Wendy," I begin.

She cuts me off, saying brightly, "I have to go to work now, but I made chicken parmigiana. It's on the stove, cooling down. Help yourselves boys!"

Why that sneaky bitch.

"I don't know if you leaving is such a good idea," I mutter.

"Kyle," she admonishes, "I need to go make some money. You play nice."

She grabs her car keys off Stan's coffee table, kisses him on the lips, and then flies out the door.

"Shit," I say, loud enough that Stan can hear.

"You don't have to stay."

"I think I do," I say, "She's probably got a camera set up outside to make sure I don't leave."

"Knowing Wendy," a smile graces his lips briefly, "Probably."

He grabs two paper plates and two glasses of Coke, setting them up on the table in front of his flat screen.

"Wanna watch baseball?"

"I'm not that big a fan," I admit.

"But you always came to my games in high school."

I'm embarrassed, "That's because you were playing."

"Oh."

We eat in almost total silence.

It's when Stan's disposing of our plates and setting our glasses in the sink that I decide to speak up.

"Stan."

"Yeah, dude?"

"I don't want things to be like this."

"Like what?"

God, he's frustrating.

"Awkward," I enunciate the word.

I can tell he's about to make some smart aleck reply. He opens and closes his mouth. Then he says, "I guess I don't either. But dude…"

"Say whatever you're thinking. It's a little too late to get shy," I tell him. Mostly because I don't want to watch him stand there and stutter over how to phrase things for the next half hour. Sometimes Stan has all the articulateness of an elementary school aged Butters.

"I- nothing," he blinks, shame creeping up and over the back of his neck in the form of a hot red blush. He changes the subject, "So you smoke."

"I- what?"

"When we were in the alley with Kenny, you smoked a cigarette."

Shit. He noticed.

"I kept my promise," I say, "Mostly. I only smoked a few times after high school."

"A few times too many."

"You smoked too," I point out.

"But I didn't break a promise."

Well. Now he's looking at me like I just shot his puppy. I think he can tell that I'm getting kind of upset by the way he's looking at me, because all of a sudden Stan goes, "Wanna cookie?"

I'm thrown by all these twists in our conversation. I manage to shrug. Sure, why not?

I watch, quiet, as he reaches up to the very top shelf, shirt riding up ever so slightly. I can see the sharp curve of his hipbone. I never really noticed a guy's hipbone before, but Stan's is nice. There's this dark line, shading downward, towards the sloping area beneath his stomach, where this little dark patch of hair starts and…

What the fuck did Wendy put in that food? Shit.

The shape of his muscles is outlined as his tee strains up, shoulder blades rippling through the thin material as he pulls down his prize.

"Aha! I knew I hid it up here. Wendy's too short to reach," he tells me triumphantly. He pulls down a carton full of Oreos, clutching them to his chest like a trophy.

Once he makes his way back to the couch, he sets the down in front of me. I grab one, twisting it apart and licking off the white filling.

"So how's your mom?" he asks. I can tell he's totally grasping for conversation starters, anything that doesn't have to do with the tension between us.

"I don't know. I haven't seen much of her."

That's not exactly a lie. She caught me on the kitchen table nearly a week ago, and that was pretty much the last I saw of her in between going to work and carting Ike around to wherever his little heart desires. I do know that she has been buzzing around the house for days, talking about something the few times I saw her. I zoned out every time. So kill me.

"Oh. Bet she's with mine then," he muses.

"You know what our parents are up to?" I ask, mildly interested.

"Yeah, something about the town being overrun with circus clowns intent on eating everyone's brains."

I knew that guy I saw at the bus stop on the way here had been a little weird, but I figured the red nose was from a cold or something. Now I get it.

"Jesus. You ever get the sense we're getting more and more out of sync with this town?"

"Like how our adventures stopped when we got into high school?" Stan said with a chuckle.

"Something like that. Everything my mom does just seems so…unreal, now."

"Yeah."

It kind of sucks that the town of South Park remains every bit as crazy as it was when we were kids, but we're so distanced from it all now.

"By the way," Stan quirks an eyebrow, "Cartman called."

"Moses," I curse.

"He said to tell you that you're a Jesus killing asshole and to stop screening his calls."

"He's such a prick."

Stan smiles fondly, "He can't help it. He hasn't been laid since…well, probably never."

I have to stop myself from asking what Stan's excuse is, because he's getting all sweaty and horizontal quite frequently and still ends up acting like a complete butthole. Oh wait. I'm his excuse. Maybe. I'm glad I was blessed with the ability to hold my tongue sometimes. As long as Eric Cartman isn't on the premises, anyway.

I decide I have to broach the subject. I'm a man. I have to be brave. Never mind that I'd rather tell Stan thanks for the meal and go find a brain eating clown to off me before I can say something that'll royally fuck up our whole relationship.

"Stan, about the other night."

My voice rings out clearly in the wide open space of the apartment. In fact, I'm positive it's echoing all the way down to the ground floor. Stan's gone completely pale, and he looks even worse than when he first opened the door.

"Kyle-"

"No. Let me say this," I take a deep breath, "I'm not gay."

"Neither am I," he snaps.

"Okay, well I'm not bisexual, either."

That shuts him up.

"You were always my best friend, and it seemed like we were finally getting that back. I don't want to mess that up."

My heart's racing. Damn. If this is even half how Stan felt when he told me he loved me, I can see why the whole topic makes him twitchy. I feel like Tweek Tweak, the way my nerves are jingle jangling around like I've had one too many cups of coffee.

Stan's not saying anything. Fuck.

"How do you know you're not gay?"

What? Okay, not the response I was expecting.

"Because I like pussy."

That was totally the most sensible answer I could think of.

"You've never tried anything else."

"I don't want to," I retort.

"Okay. Let's put it this way," he's looking out the window, over his amazing view of the tiny lights of downtown South Park, "I've been in love with you since we were ten years old. I didn't tell you, because I didn't want to fuck up our friendship."

His voice is dry, and I can tell he's being ironic. So not funny.

"After our friendship did get fucked up, I wished more than anything else that I'd told you. I thought maybe, just maybe if I'd said something, anything about how I felt, you would've called me. You would've felt guilty for abandoning me."

"I did feel guilty, Stan."

"Since you came back…I don't know, Kyle. It just felt like I couldn't hold it in any longer. Our friendship is already fucked up. I know you want to go back to being super best friends, or whatever, but I kind of don't think that's possible anymore."

"What?"

My mouth is dry. My heart is beating so hard it might pop out of my chest in a moment. Or maybe it'll just stop, and I'll die, right here, on his carpet.

"You heard me," his cobalt eyes are on me, taking me in. I've never been looked at like that before. I'm not entirely uncomfortable with it though, "Kyle, I love you. I've loved you forever. I don't think I'm going to stop loving you any time soon. It hurts, knowing that you don't feel the same way. Maybe if I'd told you before our fight, I would've been okay just staying friends. But now…I can live without you. It hurts like a bitch, but not as much as it does being near you and knowing that I can't have you."

I yelp, "Stan."

"I'm serious."

"Everyone's serious. Everyone's so fucking serious about this love me or leave me crap," I'm yelling, and I know he's taken aback by it. I'm just so fucking angry. I can feel warmth and wetness in my eyes. Shit. I'm not going to cry. I furiously wipe a hand over my eyes and scream, "Goddamnit. Why don't you realize that I can't live without you?!"

Oh. Now the people downstairs definitely heard.

"Kyle."

"That's not the way I meant it," I say, stunned at myself.

"It sounded that way."

"But it's not. Living without you- my best friend- was like hell. I felt numb, all the time."

"Me too."

"But not for the same reason?"

"No."

"Motherfucker."

"Maybe you should think about it?" he suggests, and I can tell that even though he thought he was so ready to let me go if I didn't love him back, he's not as certain as he seems.

"Maybe I should," I sigh, knowing that the outcome won't be the one he wants, "You too."

"My answer won't change."

"I doubt mine will either, Stan."

"But it could."

I think of making out with Kenny. There was no denying that I was physically attracted to him while he was grinding up on me. I wonder if I could feel the same way about Stan. I consider it for a second, thinking it would be so easy to step forward and take him into my arms, to crush my lips against his. It might be nice. It might be more than nice. But I'm not gay.

I can't be.

"It could," I finally agree, mostly because I need him to give me enough time to make him want to stay my friend. That's too important for me to give up on it.

"Then think about it. I'll give you a month."

"That's all?" I squeak.

"Yeah."

"Okay," I bite my lip, "But you have to give me something back."

He looks at me, dubious, "What?"

"No cheating. If you really love me, would you cheat on me?"

"I would never," his cheeks color.

"How do you know?" I press him, remembering our conversation about sex, "How do you know if you were to do something with me-"

I pause and gulp. Sex with Stan. Eurgh.

Sadly I don't find the idea as disgusting as I would like.

"-If you were to do something with me, how do you know you would feel something?"

He shrugs helplessly, "I would."

"How do you know?"

"Because I've always felt something, just being with you."

He's such a romantic, it's pathetic. I feel my belly getting all warm and fuzzy. No. Stop that right now, I tell myself.

"So then for this whole month, don't cheat on Wendy."

"But I can still be with her?"

"That's up to your own conscious," I say, "There's no guarantee that I'm going to decide I'm in love with you."

"Kyle," he's looking at me, his gaze so intense that I want to shrink into the carpet.

"Mmm?"

"Decide you want me," he says, his voice small.

Oh, Moses. I'm going to cry again. No. Guys don't cry. I mutter, "I'll try."

Then I leave, because I can't stand looking at him anymore.

A/N: Aw. Sad. Kyle's so confused. Don't worry. He loves Stan. He just needs some kind of catalyst. Ahem. I'm going to shut up now. I don't like this chapter very much, mostly because it didn't really go how I wanted it. Except for the end, it feels like filler. Oh well. I know things still seem kind of muddled, what with everyone loving Kyle, but I swear I have a plan. Things shall work themselves out. And the next chapter shall be less crappy. We'll have more Stan, more Craig, and more Kenny. No Cartman in the next one though. I don't think...

Now. How would ya'll feel about a fic where something disrupts Stan and Kyle's friendship (oh, you know I'm all about the style) when they're YOUNG, making it so that Stan ends up as Goth Raven and Kyle and CARTMAN end up as best friends. No Cartman/Kyle in this one though. I haven't really figured out where Kenny would fit in yet, although he would. It might even be another K/K/S one, eventually ending in style, unlike Breathe me which will eventually end with K/K. Does this sound like an idea, or is there anything out there like this? (if there is, totally tell me so I can read it). Or should I just finish this, hunh? I know you're all going to say yes to that last one, so pssh. Tell me what you think.

Oh, and review!