Perchance to Dream
Disclaimer: See Prologue
Summary: Kyle's fall, and Stan's rise, continues.
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At School VIII
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For the first time since I was a freshman, I've looked forward to attending school lately. Cartman hasn't found a freshman replacement for Kyle yet, so I've spend the last two weeks eating at the jock's tables at lunch. They've even stayed at Jumpin' Java in groups until closing, which has kept Kyle away, me busy, and money flowing into Greg's bank account, and every other Friday, into my bank account.
The only times I even saw Kyle anymore was at lunch, when he would sullenly sit in the dark corner I had occupied for so long, dressed like a hobo and picking at whatever was for lunch. He'd tried to talk to me a couple times during my lunchtime smokes, but after I told Cartman it was bothering me, it stopped. Now, I assume he was beaten within a few inches of his life, but I can't be certain, nor would I care even if I could be.
They gave me an unadorned letterman's jacket a week ago, and I've started wearing it to blend in more when I hang out with them at lunch. It gives me a sense of purpose and belonging that I've been lacking for quite some time now. Of course, it's hard to feel like you belong when, on days like today, there's nobody in the halls. Of course, there is an interesting din coming from the gym, so I think I'll go check that out. From the sound of it, there's at least a hundred people there.
Scooting down through the Science wing, and around past the trophy cases in the Commons area, I make my way into the gymnasium to a truly astounding sight. It looks almost like someone started an impromptu rugby game and they're in the middle of a scrum. And on the bottom of that scrum, being whaled on by the Cartman, Craig, Token, Clyde, Kevin and – to my shock – Butters, is Kyle. I can see his tangled red hair poking out, but not much else. He looks like he's taking quite a beating, assuming that red puddle Kevin is kneeling in is, in fact, blood.
"Stan!" I hear Kyle shout from underneath the pile. Apparently he can see me, even though I can't see him. Everything quiets down, and every eye in the room turns uncomfortably on me as the guys step off him enough to let me stare Kyle down. From what I can see of him, which is now just his head, he's gotten his nose busted and both lips split open.
"Stan, help me!" Kyle pleads, and I stare at him, hopefully without pity. I can't tell, I don't have a mirror.
He's gotta be off his rocker if he thinks I'll help him. Why would I first risk losing all I've won back these past couple weeks in a six-on-two fight with my strong athlete buddies, and second, get beat up myself by said strong athlete buddies for someone I don't like?
"You gonna come help your butt-buddy out, Stan?" Heidi asks, rather discouragingly. Her question is then parroted by a few other girls, the Goth kids, and a few freshmen. The guys glare at me questioningly, Kyle looks at me pleadingly.
I shrug, and scoff. "I don't care what you do with Brofagski. He's not my problem, and he's NOT my butt-buddy, Heidi!" I say, directing the last remark at the red-headed girl who insinuated Kyle and I were actually fucking.
"Stan?" Kyle asks, confused.
"Keep going, guys," I say, taking a peek at my watch. "You've still got…a good twenty minutes before class starts, plenty of time to beat on him a little more." That said, I turn around and head off to the cafeteria to grab a quick breakfast before classes start. I grin a little as a loud smack indicates the beating has resumed behind me.
There's no trace of the incident after first period, where I have to quickly remind Cartman to wipe some of Kyle's blood off his knuckles before the teacher walks in. He grins at me as he does so. The rest of the morning passes by without any mention or sight of Kyle. I don't mind, it keeps me free to think about much more appealing things. Like frolicking rabbits, sunny fields of clover, and roller coasters.
At lunchtime, though, things predictably unravel, mainly because I catch a glimpse of Kyle. They really worked him over this morning. His face is three different colors, his clothes are varying shades of red and purple, and he looks like someone just shot his dog, then ran it over, set it on fire, pissed on the ashes, and then made him lick it off the pavement. Part of me pities him. The rest of me reminds that part that Cartman and his gang had done just as bad to me for the past three years, and gay puppy love aside, Kyle had no pity for me while I was undergoing crude facial reconstruction.
Interrupting my berating of myself, Cartman smacks me upside the head.
"Ey! Quit staring at the fag Jew, Marsh. He's not in any condition to fuck your ass anyway, trust me. Notice how he's limping sort of?" Cartman asks, forcing me to pay more attention to Kyle's walking habit as he moves over to the dark corner. There is a definite limp there.
"Yeah, I see it," I say. "What'd you do, sit on his leg Fatass?"
He glares at me. "No, moron, I sat on his leg and punched him five times in the nuts!"
I grin at him. "Did he scream?"
He grins back, viciously. "Like a girl."
"Yeah, seriously, it sounded like a girl by the third or fourth punch," Clyde jokes, proceeding to fake-scream in falsetto like he's being stabbed that has everybody who'd been in the gym this morning dissolving into laughter. I sneak a glance over to the dark corner to see Kyle bury his head in his arms in shame, because everyone is laughing at Clyde's imitation of him.
Once everyone has calmed down, I tap the table with my pack of cigarettes to let them know I'm heading outside before class. With a dismissive wave, they let me leave and get back to talking about what they're going to do next to the Jew fag, and I distinctly don't remember Cartman making any mention of shoving a golf ball up his exhaust pipe.
I only barely get my smoke lit and to my lips before my solace is broken by someone "Psst"-ing at me. How juvenile.
"Psst! Stan, over here!" Gee, three guesses who that could be.
"No, Kyle," I say, continuing to stare straight ahead. "You wanna talk to me, get your ass over here and fucking talk to me." A few puffs later, I feel a weak punch on my shoulder.
"What the fuck was that about earlier?" Kyle hisses in my ear as I recoil.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" I ask, scorn evident in my voice.
"The 'I don't care what you do with Brofagski' shit!" he exclaims, clearly displeased. "They were beating the shit out of me! Cartman –"
"Sat on your leg and punched you in the nuts five times, I've heard," I interrupt, with ever-deepening scorn. "Hence, the limp you've got going there. Pansy. I never limped."
"Ya know, that's another thing that's making me mad about all this," he starts off. "You knew exactly what they were doing, and you STILL did nothing!"
"Well neither did you!" I snap back. "You never did anything to stop the beatings they put on me, which were a LOT worse than what you just got back there, to be frank. I would have two thirds of the defense sitting on me and the rest punching and kicking me. You had six people and you're whining like a little five-year-old girl about how much it hurt. Bitch you don't even know the meaning of the word pain."
"Oh and I suppose YOU do?"
"Compared to you? Yes! Like I would have been any good against any of them but Butters in the first place, get real," I retort. "You'd already been on the bottom of that pile for probably a good ten minutes before I even got there. You'd have been useless to me anyway, so what would have happened is that we would have BOTH gotten our asses kicked, and it would have done nothing to help either of us."
"Wrong," Kyle says. "It would have helped me, and it would have helped you."
"How, exactly, Brofagski?" I ask. "How does it help me to give Heidi evidence that we're butt-buddies, which we are NOT and NEVER WILL BE? How does it HELP me by punching my re-found friends?" At this point I can't keep staring straight forward anymore, and I swing my head around and stare at him accusingly. "What fucking benefit do I get out of doing something stupid like that, Broflovski?"
He's unsurprisingly unable to meet my gaze and stares down at his shoes, and mumbles something.
"What was that? I don't think I heard what you said."
"I…it wouldn't," he says, sighing in defeat.
"Exactly. No benefit for me, so why do it?"
"To show you care about me?" he asks, his voice suddenly small and lacking any bluster.
"Right," I say, nodding along like it totally makes sense, the nonsense he's babbling. Except you're forgetting the bit where I don't care about you one tiny bit."
He looks a little more crestfallen, but tries again. "Because it's what a decent human being would do?"
"Oh fuck you," I say. "You're not going to guilt trip me into helping your fucking pussy ass in the future. If not helping you all of a sudden makes me some sort of sub-human scumbag, then by damn, I'm gonna be the happiest sub-human scumbag on Earth."
"GOD YOU SUCK!" Kyle shouts, and limps off. I chuckle and finish my smoke before heading back inside.
Kyle's forced to run extra laps for "dragging behind" because of his limp in P.E., and is then yelled at for delaying the class activity, while everybody else sniggers behind their hands. He's forced to play in goal for soccer because he can't run or kick, but my team still gets plenty of goals because he can't even move to block shots. There's no love lost between him and his team after class, either, since they lose 10-3.
It's all and all a really good day, through the final bell. After that, I do my usual go-to-my-locker, get-my-work-clothes, change-clothes-in-the-bathroom routine, where I find the icing on the cake of this day.
As I'm going about my usual strip-and-switch, I hear a sniffling from the last stall in the row. Of course, having been in that position, I'm not going to pry, but it's not my fault that I can overhear what the guy's saying.
"H-he…," sniff, "said he loved me, in the DA's office, when we got justice for Indy…, sniff, "what happened to him?"
Kyle. Crying. Because I don't love him. Oh, can life get any better? I don't THINK so! I have to contain myself from laughing while I finish up, but as soon as I'm safely out of the bathroom, I start chortling and I don't stop until I'm five blocks away from Jumpin' Java.
I remember what he was talking about. For fuck's sake, we were NINE! If he's treating that as an admission of feelings for him, he's fucking crazy. I was supporting him and trying to help him get over Indiana Jones being raped by those two psycho movie directors. I loved him as a friend back then, but still. NINE YEAR OLD BOYS do not have gay feelings for each other. Nine year olds don't even know what gay feelings mean. Beyond the fact that they make your transgendered teacher absolutely batshit crazy, but they don't know or act on any feelings.
Outside of coercion or pedo shit, nine year old boys don't kiss nine year old boys. I didn't love-love Kyle then, I never have, and if he thinks I did then, he deserves the beatings he's getting. He deserves them like the prison sentences Spielberg and Lucas got for all the rapes they committed.
This is the best day yet!
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Notes: Happy first birthday, PtD! The first and hopefully only. The story isn't going to be 40 chapters as I originally planned, because honestly, that's way too long, and at one update a month, it would take me nearly two more years to finish. I would be out of college by then, and I do NOT want to be writing this story for that long, as much as I love it.
In other news…I'm glad I've gotten this story to be my most reviewed and my most viewed now. I hope y'all will keep reading until the end.
Cheers!
Phoenix II