Never Change

by hollycomb

Thirteen years after his high school girlfriend's pregnancy upended his life, Stan is still in South Park, working with his partner Bebe as a local cop. They're in the process of investigating a series of possibly connected murders when FBI agent Kyle Broflovski returns to town and informs his old friend Stan that this is his investigation now. (Stan/Kyle)

9. Chapter 9

A/N: This is the final chapter! So it's a long one, to keep the pace going into the climax. There will be an epilogue after this, and it will probably be substantial. Thanks so much to those who are reading along! Let me know your thoughts on the conclusion of the mystery, if you have some. :)

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On Halloween there was more snow than any of the forecasts had predicted. The snowfall wasn't substantial enough to deter trick-or-treaters, but most of the kids who showed up at Stan's door for candy wore bulky coats over their costumes. All of them had at least two parents hovering behind them, despite the widely circulating rumor that the Park County Ripper had died by his own hand.

Despite Stan's insider knowledge, it still felt that way to him: only a rumor, if not something more insidious. He had yet to see the suicide note allegedly left by Cartman, and he wasn't sure he would be allowed to unless Kyle broke protocol. Kyle had been communicating with him in only terse text messages since the night before, and Stan's confidence that he would be granted additional insight into the ongoing investigation was slim. By nine o'clock the trick-or-treaters had stopped showing up at his door, and the snow was still falling. He flipped off his porch light, bolted the door and settled down in front of the muted television, checking his phone every few minutes. He wasn't sure who he was waiting to hear from - not Kyle, not yet - but it felt as if important things were happening elsewhere, and as if he had been denied access to them.

The night started to feel too quiet, and he wasn't in the mood for the marathons of horror movies that were playing on TV. He flipped past the news, avoiding more reports about Cartman's suicide and its apparent connection to the Park County murders. Stan couldn't buy that Cartman had been behind the whole thing, coldly planning his attacks and collecting tongues between drunken binges at Skeeter's, but he also couldn't deny that what had happened in Cartman's house was intimately connected to the horror that had gripped the town since Ruby Tucker was killed. Somebody had written a suicide note and signed Cartman's name, wanting everyone who read it to believe that Cartman was the Ripper. It was possible that Cartman himself had done this, as a kind of final fuck you to the town where he had caused so much grief during his life, but Stan still couldn't get past the idea that Cartman would kill himself for any reason. He needed to talk to Kyle, to sit down with him and try to make sense of the finer points of what had happened, but Kyle wasn't taking his calls. The only call he got that night was from Kenny, late, and the sound of his phone yanked him from a jittery sleep.

"What happened?" Stan asked. The whole night had felt like a precursor to bad news, but Kenny was laughing.

"Nothing happened," Kenny said. "I was just calling to wish you a happy All Saints' Day, and to make sure you made it through All Hallows' Eve unscatched."

"Don't be weird right now." Stan rubbed his eyes, stood, and went to the window. It was just after midnight, and the snow had finally stopped. There was no wind, and there were no visible stars. "I'm kind of freaked out, man," Stan said. "It feels like something is going on, but I can't put my finger on what it is."

"Well," Kenny said, slowly. "Cartman blew his head off. So that's probably where the freaked-out portion of your evening is stemming from."

"Don't say it like that. Jesus, it's just. We knew him, Kenny. We spent thousands of hours with that person. And now he's- You've heard about this confession note, right?"

"Of course. Bebe told me. She's here, actually. Sleeping."

"Oh. Well, good."

"Yeah, it is good. This Cartman thing, less good, but maybe not? If it means the murders are over and done with, anyway."

"Do you actually believe it?"

"Believe what?"

"Cartman's suicide note! You think he was the one doing this, the whole time?"

"Well," Kenny said, "If it wasn't him, this whole thing's even more fucked up than we thought."

"Exactly. Bebe said she had a bad feeling at the scene, when they found Cartman's body and this note. I'm skeptical."

"What does Kyle think?" Kenny asked.

Stan was still at the window, scanning the fresh snow. He was searching the yard for something; he didn't know what it was or if it was out there at all, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he needed to keep his eyes peeled for an approaching danger. He didn't want to admit to Kenny that he wasn't sure what Kyle thought. During their brief conversation about what had happened, Kyle had sounded tired enough to decide this gruesome turn of events signified the end of all his business in South Park.

"Oh, Jesus," Kenny said. "What's wrong now?"

"Nothing- Huh?"

"I asked you about Kyle and you got silent. Did you guys fight?"

"No." It felt like a lie, though nothing resembling an actual 'fight' had happened. "He's just overwhelmed," Stan said. "You know, this is emotional for him. He hated Cartman, and- Cartman really made Kyle's life hell when we were kids. More than you know, probably."

"Me and Bebe were talking about that," Kenny said. "It must have been fucked up to see the body. Especially for Kyle, since he'd probably envisioned Cartman's grisly death once or twice, understandably."

"Once or twice?" Stan scoffed. "I've envisioned it more than that."

"Really? I mean, he was an asshole, but if it wasn't for this whole murder confession thing I would have felt pretty bad for him, in a way."

"Yeah, well you don't know everything about what he did."

"That's ominous. Why aren't you with Kyle? I bet he could use a friend right now. And a hug. And whatever else you guys do to each other in that motel room."

"He's tired. From work."

"So? Go spoon him while he rests. Look, I won't pretend to be an expert on relationships all of a sudden, but Bebe called me after she left the scene at Cartman's house, and she was pretty shaken up. I raced to her side. It was what we both needed, screw all the complications. When something this big and crazy happens, it helps to have your loved one there. And Bebe told me that Kyle said so out loud. He loves you! What are you waiting for, man? Go to him."

"He might not be alone." Stan thought of Mac; it was late, but maybe Mac was providing the kind of level-headed, sexless company that Kyle really needed right now. "I mean. He's probably asleep."

"Probably not, after seeing his childhood enemy's brains splattered all over the wall of his bedroom."

Cartman's bedroom. Stan hadn't thought of that; Cartman still lived with Liane in the same house where he'd grown up. Kyle would have had to go into that room where he was tormented as a kid, where he was Cartman's slave, and seeing Cartman's bloody, lifeless body on the scene was not the kind of closure he had needed.

"You're right," Stan said. "I don't know what I'm waiting for. He doesn't want to have to ask me for help. He never did. He's- he needs me right now."

"Damn straight, so get moving."

The walk to Stan's car seemed perilous, with everything in town so recently rattled but presently quiet, as if the landscape itself was restless and lying in wait. Stan got behind the wheel, wondering if Bebe had asked Kenny to call and prod him toward Kyle. It actually seemed more like Kenny's style than hers, but she had told Kenny about Kyle's love confession. Stan appreciated that, and liked the idea that they were together. It seemed safer that way.

His heartbeat felt narrow on the drive toward Kyle's motel, edged into a nervous corner, and he drove with both hands on the wheel. He'd taken his cruiser, not the truck. It had seemed prudent, and he realized as he approached the highway that he felt like he was headed toward a crime scene. Kenny had mentioned All Saint's Day, but to Stan it didn't feel as if Halloween was really over, or that the dead that were allowed to roam the earth for one night had been called back to the other side of the veil yet. He felt them everywhere: just out of sight, watching his car from the thick darkness beneath the pines that lined the road. He imagined Ruby Tucker out there, and David Harrison, Marc Nelson. Cartman now, too. He thought of his father, another of South Park's ghosts, and drove faster.

Stan didn't intend to pound on Kyle's motel room door as if he'd come on police business, but he was tense, his movements were jerky, and he knocked hard three times. He could hear a television and couldn't tell if it was coming from Kyle's room. There was no light from around the edges of the curtain that covered his room's front window, and only when Kyle opened the door looking confused did Stan realize how worried he'd been that something bad had happened to him while they were apart.

"Dude," Stan said, and he stepped into the doorway to hug Kyle. He stiffened a little before wrapping his arms around Stan's back.

"What are you doing?" Kyle asked. His voice was hoarse, probably just from sleep. "Did something happen?"

"No, just. I couldn't sleep, and I thought maybe you'd be up, too, and- Did I wake you?"

Kyle shook his head. He pulled free from Stan's grip and drew him into the room. His television was on, playing commercials with the volume turned down very low. There were some fragrant Chinese food takeout boxes spread out on the table across from the bed.

"City Wok?" Stan said, examining one of them by the light from the TV. It wasn't like Kyle to leave food sitting out; he usually cleaned up directly after eating.

"Nothing else was open." Kyle bolted the door and lingered there, watching Stan from a distance. "You could have called," he said. "To tell me you were coming."

"You haven't been answering my calls."

"Don't take it personally. I've been slammed with work. Crazed. My boss is in town now, and his boss is on his way. We're wrapping up the case, media is everywhere, sensitive information has been leaked-"

"Wrapping up the case?" Stan shrugged off his coat and hung it on the table's single chair. "So that's it? You're taking Cartman's confession seriously?"

Kyle scoffed. Stan wanted to reframe the question, or maybe just retract it, but it was too late.

"What else am I supposed to do with a signed confession in the form of a suicide note?" Kyle asked. "Not take it seriously?"

"That's not what I meant." Stan decided to drop the subject; they could talk about it later. "Look, I know you're stressed out. To put it mildly. And I haven't seen you, since, you know. Cartman's house, since you were there. I was thinking, I- just wanted to come over here and, like. Hold you."

Stan felt childish, saying it like that, but Kyle's expression softened, and he crossed the room to fall into Stan's arms again. This time he went limp when Stan rocked him and kissed the top of his head. Kyle's hair felt a little greasy against Stan's cheek, and he smelled of Chinese food in a not entirely pleasant way, but Stan didn't care. He wanted Kyle like this: walls down, exhaustion on full display.

"What if I gave you a bath?" Stan asked, stroking his fingertips over the back of Kyle's neck. "Would that be weird?"

"Yes," Kyle said. "And the tub here is terrible. Thank you for the offer, but could you just get in bed with me? That's all I have the energy for right now."

Stan gathered the Chinese food cartons, tied them up in a plastic garbage bag and left them out in the hallway. He bolted the door and turned to see Kyle undressing, pulling off his socks. It hit him that Kyle would have to go back to Denver now, if the case was really closed. Possibly that was real reason why Stan couldn't accept that the whole thing was really over.

"I haven't really slept since the night I spent at your place," Kyle said when Stan was snuggled up with him under the blankets, his cock hard against Kyle's thigh. Kyle was a little stiff, too, but didn't seem to be in a hurry to do anything sexual. His cheek was resting against Stan's bare chest, and he was touching Stan's chest hair like he was mapping it, carefully running his finger along each individual whorl.

"I've missed you," Stan said, and Kyle laughed a little.

"It hasn't even been forty-eight hours," he said, mumbling this against Stan's skin.

"Feels like it's been longer than that."

"I know. Well. A lot has happened."

"It must have been horrible." Stan ran his fingers through Kyle's hair. In the morning they would have a shower together, he decided. "Seeing that, I mean," he said when Kyle looked up at him. "And being back in that house."

"It was surreal," Kyle said. "I read the note twenty, thirty times. It's hard to make sense of any of it. There was a shitload of booze in his system when he died."

"Jesus. It just- him, writing a suicide note? He seems more like the type who'd film some teary, self-pitying video message to the world. And the whole idea that he could plot and pull off three murders without leaving behind any evidence-"

"Maybe he had help," Kyle said, sharply enough that Stan realized he should drop the subject again. "We haven't ruled that out, though I can't believe he wouldn't have named his accomplice in his note. Maybe he forgot to. Anyway, I'll show it to you in the morning. I've got a copy scanned onto my laptop."

"A copy of Cartman's suicide note?" Stan didn't like the idea that it was in the room with them, in a sense. Kyle nodded.

"I told you from the start that it was probably him." He shifted in Stan's arms, searching his eyes. "I told Mac, too, and some things about what Cartman did to me as a kid, so that he would understand who we were dealing with."

"Wasn't the FBI surveilling him, then? As a suspect?"

Kyle's mouth quirked. "We didn't have the resources to assign a detail to a suspect based on my hunch alone," he said. "Which reminds me, have you dissolved the safe house protocol yet?"

"No. The siblings are still in protective custody- Like you said, Cartman's accomplice might still be out there."

"Unless he killed his accomplice, too." There was something bitter in Kyle's voice that put Stan on edge. They had both lost their erections.

"Are you going to take a vacation when this case wraps up?" Stan asked. "To unwind a little, after all this?"

"Maybe." Kyle rolled over, scooting back to fit himself against the curve of Stan's body. The press of his rump renewed Stan's arousal, but he settled in for sleep when Kyle rested his head on the pillow. "There's still a lot to do," Kyle said. Stan could hear how tired he was, and there was a rattle in his words, as if he was developing a sore throat.

"Worry about what needs to be done later," Stan said. He gave Kyle a squeeze from behind and kissed his neck. "Just get some sleep. I'm here. You're safe."

"I know I'm safe," Kyle said, stiffening. "Cartman is dead."

"Well. That's true."

Kyle said nothing in response, and Stan wasn't sure how to continue, or if he should. He was tired, too, and the heat of Kyle's bare skin under the blankets was a needed sleep aide. He shut his eyes, trying to take his own advice. They could worry about the fallout of the investigation in the morning.

Like he had when they were kids, Stan felt as if he shared Kyle's dreams that night, as if the bed had transported them together to the rolling hills of a single subconscious state. This time they ventured not through fields that resembled the ones Link traversed in his video game adventures but through the darkened, snow-covered streets of South Park. They were teenagers in the dream, around the age they had been when Kyle drifted away and then on into his post-South Park life. Thinking this, and aware that he was dreaming, Stan reached over and clasped Kyle's glove-clad hand, wanting to keep him from slipping away again. Kyle's fingers curled around Stan's, but he kept his gaze pointed straight ahead as they walked, and Stan could see by the set of Kyle's jaw that he was angry about something and trying to hold it in.

"I don't need your protection," Kyle said.

"Yes, you do," Stan said, and he stopped walking, desperate to convince Kyle this was true. Kyle resisted when Stan tried to meet his eyes, turning away. "Kyle," Stan said, grabbing his shoulders. "Look at me."

When Kyle finally faced him, Stan's breath caught in his chest: he had two black eyes, and his lashes were wet with angry tears.

"You're too late," Kyle said.

Stan woke from this and other bad dreams to the comfort of having the real Kyle with him, but each time this security was quickly replaced by the thought that he wouldn't have this much longer. Kyle's motel bill would be finalized and paid by the FBI, and the Denver Bureau would be eager to have him back, in the absence of more murders by a potential accomplice. Stan tried to tell himself it was a small thing, not even very long of a distance and nothing compared to the strength of their renewed connection, but he still felt like he had in his dream, like Kyle would fade from his life as soon as he loosened his grip.

Kyle's sleep seemed as uneasy as Stan's. He tossed and turned throughout the night, huddling against Stan's chest and then rolling over to be wrapped up from behind again. Stan saw dawn peeking in around the edges of the curtains when he rolled onto his back, his arm still snug around Kyle's shoulders. He wanted to hide from the oncoming day, though preferably not in this room. The sickly sweet aroma of the Chinese food lingered, and he felt as if some kind of intangible threat was lurking in the room with them, too. Cartman's ghost, maybe. Stan hated the thought, but it felt so cruelly true that he checked the four corners of the room several times as the glow around the curtains grew brighter.

Stan wanted to linger in bed and have sex. It seemed like something they both needed, a kind of renewal of unspoken vows. Kyle got up around eight and slipped into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. Stan heard him pee, flush, and then the whine of the shower turning on. He was hurt for not having been invited to join Kyle in there, but maybe Kyle thought he was still asleep. Stan hadn't said anything when Kyle left the bed; he'd barely stirred. He didn't understand how he kept doing that. He had come over in the middle of the night, he'd declared his love, had made other blunt gestures, but he still kept silent when Kyle moved out of reach.

Kyle emerged from the bathroom with a towel around his waist and a cagey expression for Stan, as if he knew he'd done something insensitive by showering alone. Stan wanted to tell him it was okay, but it seemed wrong to try to vocalize the kind of slights and apologies that still passed between them without words. He sat in bed and watched Kyle begin to dress, wanting to ask him what the hurry was.

"I guess I should read that note," Stan said, though he was dreading it. "Cartman's," he said when Kyle turned from the narrow closet where his dry-cleaned shirts and pants hung in plastic.

"Oh." Kyle shook his head, not in disagreement but as if to clear a mental fog. "Right, um. I'll pull it up on my computer. It's pretty disturbing."

"I can handle it," Stan said. Kyle was still standing by the closet, fastening his belt. Stan felt like he was watching Kyle board a train, and he was actually very apprehensive about reading Cartman's alleged suicide note. He wasn't afraid, exactly, but the mere existence of such a thing made him nervous, as if it was a fanged creature that might spring at his face without warning. Kyle walked to the table in his undershirt and pants, and he opened the laptop on his way to the bed. Stan looped his arm around Kyle's waist when he sat beside him. He didn't want Kyle standing across the room while he read this thing.

"Let's see, um." Kyle was flicking through images in a file titled SP EVIDENCE - PHOTOS. Stan looked away, not wanting to revisit the sight of the corpses he'd seen in person. Something about Kyle's clicking through them made him think of the 'numbers' he'd seen on their chests.

"Does it say anything about the countdown?" He peeked at the laptop and saw a scan of a handwritten note. His heart lurched; something about the note was already as jarring as the photos of the victims' bodies.

"He does mention a countdown," Kyle said, nodding. "You were right. That was a good catch, though it wasn't really a linchpin or even a clue. Go ahead, read it."

Stan cleared his throat reflexively, though there was no way he was going to read this thing out loud. A memory of imitating Cartman's voice as a kid, to make Kyle laugh, threw him even further off balance. He felt a looming sense of grief as he made himself focus on Cartman's last words, not for Cartman but for a time when he had seen Cartman as only a dumb kid, someone who was the deserved butt of jokes and nothing more.

The letter was addressed To Whom It May Concern. Stan wasn't sure if this was in character for Cartman or not; he might have at least addressed his grieving mother. The handwriting was increasingly sloppy from the top of the page to the bottom, and almost illegible in places.

If you're reading this letter, I'm dead.

Many years ago, it all went wrong. As a child I yearned for acceptance, inclusion, even glory. What innocent child doesn't crave these things? Instead I was faced with rejection, revulsion, and cruelty from my peers and guardians. What could I do but retaliate just as cruelly? At nine years old I unwittingly engineered the murder of my estranged father, and I drove my half-brother insane in the process. Some would call the plan I concocted and flawlessly enacted, especially at such a young age, sheer brilliance. Certainly I never faced any consequences for my actions. The raw power of having done this and never being asked to answer for it made me want to kill again, but less indirectly this time. For years I plotted my next move, a series of murders that would shake South Park to the CORE! I chose to murder the younger siblings of my peers, and, as the most delicious twist, I would frame my half-brother Scott Tenorman for the crimes. He was already certifiably insane, and all I had to do was wait for his release from a state mental hospital. "Scott" would murder younger siblings in a ritualistic "countdown" to Victim Zero: me. I've obsessed over this plan since adolescence, even going so far as to pretend to be a useless drunk in order to strengthen my alibi. While the world saw an Eric T. Cartman who couldn't open his mailbox without tripping over his own dick, I was secretly masterminding the perfect crime. And it seemed as if it was all finally coming true: Scott was released according to schedule, my first two crime scenes were staged beautifully and without a trace of evidence left behind, and, as an added bonus, my dream of having Kyle Broflovski investigate the crimes came true, too. Kyle would certainly come to the conclusion I had so helpfully drawn for him: that Scott Tenorman had killed these younger siblings and had been foiled at the last minute before claiming me, his final and ultimate victim. I would leave instructions to have my full confession stored in a safe deposit box, only to be opened and shared with the public upon my death, thereby discrediting Kyle as a detective and proving his entire life was a lie, and that I had ultimately outsmarted him FOR ALL TIME.

Stan gaped at Kyle. "You didn't tell me he mentioned you in this. Jesus!"

Kyle shrugged. "Well," he said. "I told you. This is him. This is who he really was."

Stan returned his eyes to the letter, his stomach twisting at the thought of Cartman building a life around hurting Kyle. Something about it still felt wrong, and he read on not knowing what the hell to expect next.

It was the most brilliant plan concocted by anyone in modern history. Better even than my previous victory over my half-brother. But it all came crashing down when Scott Tenorman killed himself.

"When did that happen?" Stan asked.

"Last week," Kyle said. "Back in March, Tenorman was released from the psychiatric hospital where he'd lived for the last six years. He'd been in and out of them since he was thirteen, had been suicidal since he lost his parents, but I guess he had his doctors fooled, or maybe the reality of living outside of the hospital was much harder than he expected. They found his car in the Blue Mesa Reservoir. I had no idea, until I read this letter. It wasn't widely reported."

"Jesus." Stan turned back to the letter.

Scott spoiled everything. He ruined the plan. I was sent into a spiral of depression that was darker and deeper than anything I had ever imagined. I killed Marc Nelson in a sloppy, desperate panic. He was an older brother: he was Scott, in my mind, but there was no satisfaction in his murder-by-proxy. Not like the ones before, which felt like masterpieces in a collection of art. It was all about the PLAN. The PLAN was perfect, and Scott had played the ultimate sick joke on me after all: he scrapped my entire legacy. My final act of revenge upon Scott and our father, whose absence had ruined my life. My supervillain-level infamy. The pleasure of imagining Kyle (and his descendants, should he gay-adopt children with some fellow queer) having his soul utterly crushed when he learned how I had outsmarted him all those years ago. All gone.

I've devoted so much time, energy, and thought to my dream. Now it's all gone. Down the drain. I'm unable to cope. I've lost the will to live. I'm sure many of you will be surprised to learn that I died by my own hand. Well, I had feelings, too, you fucking assholes. I had dreams. I had goals. You all never seemed to realize that. Now it's too late. I've drunk half a bottle of whiskey, just like the alkie pig you all think I am. I stole the rifle that was used to kill my father. Now it shall kill me, too. It was all for nothing, but it's not my fault. I was a man of too great a vision to be successful in such a paltry arena as this one you call EARTH. Soon, I join my brother Scott in Hell. Perhaps we shall reign together there. Scott, in the end, I forgive you. I forgive you for ruining my life. Offer me your cold hand, My Brother in Death. Let us move on from this mortal coil as equals.

"What the fuck?" Stan shut the laptop and pushed it away, not wanting any part of it to continue touching him while it contained Cartman's note. He started at Kyle, his mouth hanging open. Kyle's face was unreadable, almost eerily calm. "What the fuck?" Stan said, again. He stared at the closed laptop as if it might answer, imagining Cartman's snorting laughter bursting from it if he opened the lid.

"He was sick," Kyle said. "Out of his mind, deranged, obsessed. It fits his profile. I'm not just saying that as someone who knew him all his life, or as someone who personally suffered him. I'm saying that as a professional, as an investigator. Do you understand now? Can you fucking accept that this is over?"

The question stung, though Stan was pretty sure Kyle hadn't included their rekindled closeness in the elements of this situation that were now over. He took his arm from around Kyle's waist. His hand was tense and cramped; he must have been squeezing Kyle's side too hard while he read that note, but Kyle hadn't mentioned it.

"Something's still weird," Stan said, squinting at the laptop. "Maybe I'm just too tired to think straight."

"I didn't sleep well either." Kyle stood from the bed. Stan felt like this was a further condemnation of their foolhardy plans to carry on together after the murders were solved: Can you fucking accept that this is over? He kept hearing it, a biting recrimination that felt as surreal as Cartman's confession, and just as somehow undeniable.

"What now?" Stan asked. Kyle was staring at him from the closet, sliding on a pressed white shirt.

"Now the citizens of South Park can rest easy," Kyle said. "No more sleepless nights."

"On the phone you said something about guilt – like Cartman was guilty for what he'd done to Scott? I didn't get that from the letter."

"I told you on the phone, I shouldn't have used the word 'guilt' or 'guilty' or whatever I said when I was half asleep. It's more like a fixation, though maybe in some deeply subconscious way Cartman felt guilt when he heard that his brother had killed himself. He certainly seemed to take it as a cosmic signal that he should do the same, so they could meet in Hell and dethrone Satan." Kyle rolled his eyes and turned to the closet to select a tie. Stan got out of bed. He was surprised by how cold the room was; under the blankets he'd felt fine.

"He didn't even mention his mother," Stan said, standing naked and cold, not ready to dress.

"Huh?"

"Cartman, in that letter. He didn't say anything about Liane."

"Well, he never had a thought to spare for the poor woman in life, why would he be thinking of her while he was lamenting his lost legacy as the perfect serial killer? Stan, that was all very characteristic. The delusions of grandeur, the self pity, the inability to hear how he would sound to normal people. Even the dig about me and my theoretical 'gay-adopted' children."

There was a sharp knock on the door before Stan could respond. He scrambled to grab his boxers and jeans, and he'd only gotten halfway to the bathroom before Kyle unfastened the chain lock.

"Dude!" Stan said, whirling around.

"It's just Mac," Kyle said, but he waited until Stan was safely closed in the bathroom before opening the door for his partner.

Stan dressed in the bathroom and splashed water on his face. He could hear Kyle and Mac talking, and he didn't appreciate the low volume of their voices. Clearly they wanted to keep whatever they were saying from him, as if he was some kind of intruder on this scene. He'd been there first, in every respect.

Mac nodded in greeting when Stan walked out into the motel room, still feeling rumpled. The Chinese food smell had mostly dissipated, but Stan associated the damp motel scent of the room with sex, generally, and it seemed weird that Mac was in this little den where Kyle had taught Stan how to properly sixty-nine.

"Kyle says you read the note," Mac said.

"I guess that's against protocol," Stan said. He couldn't tell if Mac was annoyed; he was a hard guy to read.

"Just be discreet about it, please," Kyle said. He'd put on a blazer and straightened his hair. "It will most likely be released to the public eventually, when the investigation is closed." He scoffed. "Maybe I'll write a memoir."

"It will be complicated for Kyle," Mac said. "Since he was named in the note."

"Complicated how?"

"People will want to interview me," Kyle said. "News programs, morning shows, things like that."

"Are you happy about that?" Stan asked. He could imagine Kyle sort of reveling in it; he liked to be treated like an authority. Kyle's expression hardened.

"What do you think?" he asked. "You think I want to go on TV and talk about Cartman's lifelong obsession with debasing me? I'm already getting heat from my boss because he thinks I hid a personal connection to the case that should have prevented me from being assigned to investigate it."

"Don't worry about that bullshit," Mac said. "Wilson was just taken off guard by seeing your name in that note. You had no way of knowing who the perp was or that he had factored you into his- revenge fantasy, or whatever the hell it was." Mac turned back to Stan. "Me and Kyle have talked a lot about the note," he said. "You grew up with Cartman. Do you have any insights, after reading it?"

"I need some time to absorb it and think," Stan said. He wasn't sure if he was glad or sorry about how defensive that sounded out loud. "It's pretty fucking crazy."

"We just woke up," Kyle said. Stan appreciated the 'we,' though he knew it wouldn't be news to Mac that they had shared a bed. "Stan read the note this morning, not last night. It's a lot to deal with before your first cup of coffee."

"Your thing about the chest marks being a countdown was right on," Mac said. "That's impressive. Just want you to know that we'd value your input if you have any at this stage."

"Thanks," Stan said, surprised. "But what's left for you guys to decode at this point? You think there's more going on here than what's in the note?" Stan hoped that at least Mac believed there could be more to the story, though he didn't have concrete evidence or even any flimsy theories as to why he felt that way. Mac shrugged.

"Seems cut and dry," he said. "Or about as cut and dry as possible, given the backstory with Cartman and his half-brother. Guy was a violent sociopath who had this lingering obsession over the events he set in motion as a kid, had delusions of grandeur, had a drinking problem that he wanted to style as part of his 'plan.' He finds out his half-brother offed himself, gets wasted and decides to follow him straight to hell."

"That kind of impulsive decision making doesn't fit with the perpetrator you guys had profiled, though," Stan said. "I mean, does it? The killer who cut out the tongues- he also gets drunk one night and decides to put a gun in his mouth? I don't know, that's what doesn't fit to me." Something had clicked into place as Stan spoke, and he realized what had been bothering him. "It's like a story Cartman would want us to believe," he said. "That he had this big plan, that we all underestimated him, and that everything getting ruined was just some sad circumstance that wasn't his fault. But it's not the kind of thing that was ever actually true about him. It's like, if we believe what's in the note, that he was responsible for the three murders and the only thing that foiled his grand scheme was Tenorman's death, we're buying into his delusions of grandeur."

"So you think he's taking credit for someone else's crime?" Mac said. "That it was just a bit of flair to add to his suicide?"

"That doesn't seem like Cartman either," Stan said. "He wouldn't want to be blamed for something he didn't do. I don't know, just. Something's still off."

Stan noticed that Kyle had gone quiet. He had his hands on his hips and was gazing into the middle distance, his eyes unfocused. It seemed suddenly unacceptable that there was so much space between him and Kyle, even with Mac present, and Stan tried to seem casual about walking closer.

"How about some breakfast?" Stan asked. He touched Kyle's shoulder when he seemed to be not paying attention, absorbed in thought.

"We have a breakfast meeting," Kyle said. He looked up into Stan's eyes, then quickly turned to Mac. "Jesus," he said. "What time is it?"

"Almost eight thirty," Mac said. "That's why I came knocking. Grab your computer and let's head out."

"I should get home anyway," Stan said. He felt rejected, but he knew it was ridiculous and was determined not to dwell on it. "My shift starts at noon. Gotta, um. Shower and stuff."

Kyle gathered his things, and Stan was somewhat touched when he shrugged on the coat that he'd borrowed from Stan, though it looked ridiculous over Kyle's crisply pressed suit. Kyle's shoes were all wrong for crunching over the snow in the parking lot, and Stan wanted to loan him some boots, too, though they hadn't shared a shoe size since they were six years old.

"I'll give you a call if anything comes to mind," Stan called as Kyle made his way toward the rental car with Mac. Apparently Stan wasn't going to get even the briefest of goodbye hugs. "I mean about the note," Stan said when Kyle turned back. "Uh, you know. Ideas."

"Right," Kyle said. He seemed out of it. Stan resented the idea that he might open up to Mac about last night, or whatever, on the drive to their breakfast meeting. Stan had somehow never been the one who Kyle really confided in.

"How about dinner?" Stan asked. "It would have to be late, I'm not off duty until eleven-"

"I have no idea what my schedule is going to be like," Kyle said. "But I'll let you know. Take care."

Stan was bothered by that as he climbed into his car. Take care? It felt like a brush off with potentially broad implications, and even Mac had seemed more interested in Stan's input about the case than Kyle had.

Nothing felt right for the rest of the day, and attempting to recount the contents of Cartman's suicide note for Bebe when they were alone together on patrol made Stan feel insane, as if he was making parts of it up.

"I'm not really capturing the real mood of it," Stan said when Bebe stared at him, her brow pinched. "You have to imagine it in Cartman's voice, I guess."

"That's the thing," Bebe said. "He was a bad person, but he also had this kind of clownish ridiculousness about him. It's hard to take the idea of him killing himself seriously, never mind knocking off three other people according to some kind of careful plan."

"Exactly," Stan said. "But the note- It really did sound like him. Ridiculous, but in this demented, sinister way. I could hear his voice when I read it."

"Speaking of Cartman's writing style," Bebe said. "Kenny finally heard from Butters."

"Oh? What's that got to do with Cartman's writing style?"

"He was sending Butters these weird letters. I don't know what was in them, but Butters seemed disturbed by them. He's very distraught about Cartman killing himself, too. I don't think he knows about the confession to the murders. Has that little detail made it into even the local news yet?"

"I don't know," Stan said. "It's not like anyone in the press has been allowed to see the note, but word is getting around somehow, at least in South Park."

"Well, Butters is supposed to get here tonight. Late, after our shift. Me and Kenny are taking him out to dinner. Please come. It's going to be so weird."

"Maybe I could convince Kyle to come," Stan said. "If Butters has information, if he knows about something relevant to the case from those letters. That might be the only way to get Kyle to see me tonight."

"Oh?" Bebe frowned again. "You guys fought?"

"You sound like Kenny. There's a lot of territory between feeling insecure about a relationship and 'fighting,' okay? We didn't fight. It's just. Something's making me nervous. Like Kyle is about to change his mind about all of this, and I'm not sure if it's my fault or not."

"How would it be your fault? Kyle's probably just shaken up by what happened with Cartman. He's not going to be the most emotionally available, level-headed romantic partner after reading his name in someone's murder confession suicide note, Stan. I still can't believe that was actually in there. That Cartman was still obsessed with him."

"I hate it." Stan wanted to find Cartman and rough him up for disturbing Kyle further, but Cartman was in a body bag somewhere, his remains in FBI custody. "I know you're right," Stan said. "Kyle is disturbed by this, like all of us. More so, even. I just want to be there for him, but he gets distant. He doesn't trust me to take care of him."

"Maybe he doesn't want someone thinking they need to take care of him," Bebe said. "He's headstrong. He likes to pretend he's always fine."

"Mac takes care of him," Stan said. Mac was driving Kyle around, passing him a bagel during the breakfast meeting, having concerns about how the press would want to interview him if they got hold of the note. Bebe was giving Stan a disbelieving stare when he glanced over at her. "What?"

"You're still jealous of that guy?"

"A little. What! They're really close."

"Is Kyle jealous of me?" Bebe asked, smiling.

"Maybe. Who can tell? I feel like every time I get one step closer he takes two steps back."

"Well, Stan. You really hurt him, I think. In high school, when Lola got pregnant. He must have loved you so much, already."

"So I'm being punished for that, still? After eleven years of silence? After I told him I'm in love with him?"

"No! Just, he's guarded after all that time apart, and now he's dealing with this Cartman fallout. Let him have some space if he needs it. I think you're overreacting to some kind of perceived, forthcoming Kyle flight. He's not going to run away again."

"He'll go back to Denver for work."

"Denver is not that far!"

"It's too far for me, Bebe. I'll drive myself crazy thinking about how I'm not a real part of his life. I want to cook dinner for him at the end of the day, and take his car for an oil change when he's too busy to do it, all that domestic, everyday shit. I love that shit. How would you feel if Kenny moved to Denver?"

"Will you knock it off with the me and Kenny comparisons? If anything, the distance would be good for you guys, at least at first. You have that tendency to get co-dependent."

"It's called enjoying each other's company."

Bebe rolled her eyes. Stan didn't feel like getting into a debate over it, especially since he knew she was right. His stomach was in knots because Kyle was in a hotel boardroom across town, talking to his work colleagues, and not curled up against Stan's chest with Stan's fingers stroking through his curls. The panic at not being able to be near to Kyle at a time like this was perhaps something resembling the kind of codependency they had shared as kids. Stan associated the feeling with childhood: when they were young, Kyle had always seemed to be getting taken away by outside forces, in Stan's bad dreams and in reality, too.

Stan checked his phone throughout his shift, but he didn't hear anything from Kyle. He was dragging by the end of the day, but he was too curious about what Butters had to share with the class to pass up Bebe's demand that he attend this dinner. He'd texted Kyle around five o'clock to ask if he wanted to join them, and he didn't get a response until he climbed into his cruiser to drive to the restaurant with Bebe, both of them still in uniform.

"Kyle's coming," Stan said. "He said he'll be late. God, I hope he won't bring Mac. Should I ask him not to bring Mac?"

"Were you ever this nuts over Lola?" Bebe asked.

"What do you think?" Stan muttered. "Lola was like a break from feeling this way. She was breezy, it was fun. Until it wasn't, same with the Kevins. I'm not obsessed with Kyle, okay? I just love him. I want him at dinner, that's all."

"As long as he doesn't dare to bring his partner. Got it."

The restaurant was in the historic main street district, a small Italian place that was staying open late especially for them. Kenny was friends with the owner, an older man who did catering jobs at the funeral home. It was a quarter past eleven when Stan and Bebe arrived. Kenny was at the bar, talking to the owner and drinking a beer. Butters sat beside him, drinking what appeared to be a whiskey sour with extra cherries. Even from a distance, and in the romantically dimmed lighting of the restaurant, Stan could see that Butters was fretful and very tired. He had lost a lot of his hair, but he still looked young for his age in all other departments: on the short side, baby-faced and trim. He lit up a little when he turned and saw Bebe, and he stepped off his bar stool to hug her. Stan hesitated when Butters turned toward him, then gave him an awkward hug. They hadn't been close as kids and barely spoke to each other by the time they were in high school, when Butters got really into drama club.

"You're looking real well," Butters said when he pulled free from Stan's tentative hug.

"You, too," Stan said, though it was an obvious and maybe even insulting lie. Butters was peering up at Stan with the wary expression of a battered orphan who needed rescue, looking as if he couldn't remember the last time he hadn't been on the verge of tears. It made Stan uncomfortable, and he took an instinctive step back. He wondered if Butters was staying with Linda or at Kenny's place.

"Oh, I'm just in a fog," Butters said. He sniffled and accepted a cocktail napkin from Kenny, using it to wipe at the corners of his eyes and then his nose. "It's a real shock, what happened with Eric, and Kenny says I don't even know the whole story yet."

"Let's get a bottle of wine," Kenny said. He looked slightly panicked by this whole scenario. Stan couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Kenny nervous. Even at the safe house, with his siblings on the potential victim list, he'd been relaxed and jovial. Already there was a thickening tension between the four of them, and Stan was all in favor of some wine. Bebe seemed relatively calm, but Stan noticed her keeping closer to Kenny than usual. She leaned on him at the bar, and left her hand on his waist as they walked toward their table. The way she hovered in Kenny's space, as if she was at last feeling sure that she belonged there, made Stan long for Kyle.

"Kyle's coming," Stan said when they were seated at a round table in the center of the restaurant. The waitress was the owner's daughter, and though it was after hours she was still dressed in the customary white collar shirt with a little black bowtie.

"Glad to hear Kyle can make it," Kenny said. "I guess we need his- official clearance, or something."

"Clearance for what?" Stan asked.

"Uh, the information. I told Butters that Cartman left a suicide note, but I didn't describe the contents."

"It's just so strange," Butters said, shaking his head. "Eric, shooting himself like that? I tell you what, I still can't get my head around it. It doesn't seem possible, Stan. You know?"

Stan wasn't sure why this was directed to him, but he did know what Butters meant. He nodded and accepted a glass of red wine from the waitress.

"Yeah," he said, checking the front door for Kyle. "Really threw us all for a loop, that's for sure. You were still in touch with Cartman?"

"Well." Butters glanced at Kenny. "You know, me and Eric were sorta involved, for a time."

"Involved?" Stan said.

"We had sex sometimes," Butters blurted, and he gulped from his glass of wine. "Heck, I was almost in love with the man for a while there. He'd come see me in college, but. Well. I never did like his drinking. He could get real mean, you know? I can't believe he's dead."

Butters picked up a cloth napkin and held it over his face, the silverware that had been wrapped into it tumbling to the ground. Stan picked it up off the floor while Kenny attempted to comfort Butters. He wasn't sobbing, exactly, but he was breathing heavily into the napkin.

"And it's my fault!" Butters said when he pulled the napkin away.

"Honey, no," Bebe said. "Why would you think that?"

The bell on the front door clanged, and Stan turned to see Kyle entering the restaurant. He was alone, wearing an overcoat that Stan didn't recognize. Mac was sitting in their rental car in the parking lot, behind the wheel, and he backed out onto the road once he'd seen that Kyle was safely inside. Though Stan was relieved he wouldn't be intruding on this difficult reunion, he envied Mac in the moment. He wished he had spent the day with Kyle like Mac had, and also that he was currently driving away from this spaghetti dinner from hell. Butters was already a wreck, and he didn't even know about Cartman claiming the responsibility for three murders.

"Jesus," Kyle said when he saw Butters gulping wine. "Did you tell him?"

"Tell me what?" Butters asked. He sniffled. "Hello, Kyle." There was something disdainful about the way he looked Kyle over, and Stan felt the old, unasked for protectiveness welling in his chest, though he couldn't imagine that Butters was a threat to anyone.

"Hi," Kyle said. He took the empty seat beside Stan's and drank from Stan's glass of wine when he passed it over. Their eyes met over the rim of the glass, and welcome but anxious heat pooled in Stan's gut. He wanted to spend the night with Kyle, so bad that it felt like a hunger pang, his body signaling him to acquire something he would die without. Kyle gave him a tired smile and passed the glass of wine back. "So," he said, shrugging his coat onto the back of his chair. "The gang's all here."

That statement seemed to settle over the table like a gloom, and everyone's eyes went to their menus. Stan had forgotten how adorably awkward Kyle could be in the face of a delicate emotional situation. He reached for Kyle's hand under the table, and struggled not to grin inappropriately when Kyle's fingers closed around his. Kyle's hand was cold; Stan wanted to rub it between his palms, to warm him up all over. Butters had taken on a grim, stoic expression that didn't seem like a good sign.

"Kenny told me you were back in town," Butters said, speaking to Kyle. "That's funny."

"I work for the FBI," Kyle said.

"Yeah, so I heard."

"I think we need to tell him," Bebe said. She was holding Kenny's hand on top of the table, as if they were participating in a seance and preparing to commune with the dead. "I know you wanted to eat first," she said, more quietly, to Kenny. "But it's too cruel to wait."

"What's happened now?" Butters asked, welling up again. "What's worse than Eric shooting himself?"

Kyle scoffed. Everyone turned to stare at him, and he pulled his hand out of Stan's.

"Butters, the suicide note was a confession," Kyle said. He rested his elbows on the table and pressed his palms together. "To the murders," he said. "The three people killed here in South Park. Cartman did it, and he killed himself when he realized that he wouldn't be able to pin the crimes on his brother. You remember Scott Tenorman, I'm sure?"

Stan touched Kyle's knee under the table to get him to stop talking. Butters was staring at Kyle, unblinking. Stan tried to meet Kenny's eyes, desperate for somebody to say something that would diffuse that inelegantly delivered news, but Kenny was biting his lip. He looked like he was bracing himself for dishes to be thrown.

"Well," Bebe said. "Anyhow, that's what the note said. There's some debate as to whether it's true or not."

Kyle scoffed again, and he reached for the glass of wine that the waitress had poured for him. Between the five of them, they had already emptied one bottle.

"There's no debate," Kyle said. "Not among people who know what they're doing. Yes, it's a case with several complex facets, and with some areas still left to explore. The motive is muddy, to be sure, and we can't necessarily take the killer at his word when trying to determine why he did this. But the FBI is going forward with the theory that, in the absence of any further murders, the note is proof enough that Cartman was the killer. All the information we have is uncontested by evidence to the contrary at this point. Butters, you probably knew Cartman better than any of us. Are you really surprised?"

"Dude," Stan said, softly. Kyle glared at him, and Stan was taken aback by the sudden fury on his face. Butters was making little noises under his breath, worrying the napkin he'd dampened with tears between his hands.

"That's not right," Butters said. "Eric said- In a note, he-? Those people with the missing tongues?"

"He killed them, yes," Kyle said, with no hint of sympathy for Butters in his tone. Stan wished there was some delicate way to tell him what he had missed by arriving late, that Butters and Cartman had been friends with benefits at one point, possibly more.

"Now that's one thing I find strange," Bebe said. "That Cartman didn't mention the tongues in the note. How did that fit into his brilliant plan?"

"He was trying to frame a known madman," Kyle said, his voice rising with each word. "Scott Tenorman ate his own parents, according to Cartman's design. You're really not seeing how tongues fit into Cartman's attempt to make it look like his brother did this?"

"I guess that makes sense," Bebe said, muttering. She sipped from her wine and shared a look with Kenny. "Butters," she said. "Are you okay? We didn't mean to ambush you with this as soon as you stepped off the plane, but there are whispers about it all around town. We wanted you to hear it from us."

"I don't believe it," Butters said. He was shaking his head, slowly at first and then more firmly. "Why would Eric kill those people? Craig's sister and them? How come?"

"Because he was a sadistic sociopath who thought he deserved to do whatever he wanted," Kyle said. "Butters, he treated you terribly when we were kids. You don't remember? Come on. You know what he was really like! You just said it yourself, he was a mean drunk."

"Not all mean drunks are serial killers," Kenny said, holding up a finger. "Just ask my dad."

"Well, this particular mean drunk has confessed that he was also a serial killer." Kyle glared at Stan when he squeezed his knee under the table, trying to quiet him down at least a little. "What?" Kyle snapped. "I'm the only one here who looks at what he knows about Cartman, having grown up with him, and says 'this fits?' Really? You don't have to be a goddamn FBI profiler to get even a glimpse of his his mind worked and make the fucking connection."

"Let's order food," Kenny said, and he signaled for the waitress. Under the table, Kyle pushed Stan's hand off his knee. Stan lost his appetite then, feeling like Kyle had shoved him off a cliff. He ordered spaghetti with meatballs and accepted more wine when another bottle was opened at the table.

"Did you bring the letters?" Bebe asked when the waitress had left with their dinner orders. She was talking to Butters, who was blubbering softly at intervals, his thin lips stained purple from the wine.

"Hmm?" Butters said when Kenny nudged him.

"The letters, man," Kenny said. "You told us Cartman had been writing to you? That what he said in his letters was pretty fucked up?"

"Not fucked up," Butters said, and he frowned. "Just strange. It didn't sound like Eric, really. He was never too introspective, you know? But suddenly he was writing to me about all the things he'd done wrong in his life. He never was one to blame himself for things that went wrong, but in those letters he sometimes did. That shook me up a little, but I, I- I'm ashamed to say I didn't write back. I texted sometimes, and tried to call. He would answer the phone drunk and be real mean to me most of the time, like the old days. Oh, god." Butters put his hands over his face, his elbows on the table. "I told my therapist that Eric reminds me of my dad. Jesus, but. I guess I ought to talk about Eric in the past tense now."

"So you didn't bring the letters?" Kyle said.

"They're mine," Butters said, and he spread his fingers, peering at Kyle from between them. "They're real personal, understand?"

"Well, we're going to subpoena them," Kyle said. Stan thought of giving him another squeeze under the table, but it was useless. Kyle didn't want direction from him.

"Let's calm down," Kenny said.

"I'm perfectly calm," Kyle said. "I'm just giving Butters fair warning. And, Butters, please be aware that if you destroy those letters between now and the service of a subpoena you'll be on the hook for evidence tampering in a federal murder investigation, and that's-"

"Kyle!" Bebe said. "Can you let Butters have a minute to absorb what we're telling him before you threaten to arrest him for something he hasn't done?"

Stan could see that Kyle wanted to storm out of the restaurant, and he was surprised when he didn't. Maybe he was only waiting for Mac to come back and pick him up; maybe he would have left already if he had his own car waiting in the parking lot. Outside, a lazy snowfall had begun. The fat flakes looked heavy, almost wet.

"It's a lot to take in," Stan said, giving Butters a sympathetic shoulder pat. "I feel like there are a couple of puzzle pieces we haven't found yet. And then I feel, half the time, like it's some prank Cartman is playing on us."

"It's not a prank," Kyle said, as if that was a serious suggestion. "I saw his body. He's as dead as they come."

"Kyle!" Bebe said when Butters put his napkin over his face again, whining into it. Kyle just shrugged and drank from his wine.

"You can't force me to mourn for a monster," he said. "And frankly I'm a little sickened that you all seem determined to do so."

"I'm not mourning him," Stan said. He heard himself sounding desperate, and wasn't surprised when Kyle wouldn't meet his gaze.

The food arrived, and it was consumed mostly in awkward silence, the restaurant's overhead speakers playing mellow jazz at a low volume. Kenny attempted conversation, talking about how his siblings were relieved to be released from the safe house, and how he planned to continue keeping an eye on Karen, just in case. Bebe and Stan talked about work, how the Chief would be glad to see the whole Park County Ripper-related circus leave town once the news networks were finished obsessing over the story. Kyle and Butters grunted in response to direct questions and otherwise didn't say anything. Kyle had ordered pasta in clam sauce, and Stan took a sad, small pleasure in watching him extract the meat from each clam with a fork and bring it neatly to his mouth. He thought about how bad Kyle's jizz would taste after such a meal, and wanted it on his tongue anyway.

It was a little after midnight when they all buttoned up their coats and headed for the exit, Kenny thanking the owner and waitress profusely on their way out. He had insisted on paying for the meal, and nobody really protested. In the parking lot, the snow was still coming down, an inch or so accumulated on Stan's cruiser and Kenny's old Buick. Stan hugged him and Bebe goodnight, and made a sort of awkward wave in Butters' direction. Butters had already headed for the Buick and climbed into the backseat. Kyle was lingering nearby but ignoring everyone, preoccupied with his phone.

"You're not taking Butters to Linda's, are you?" Stan asked. Kenny shook his head.

"He'll stay with me tonight," he said. "Kevin's back at my place with Karen, keeping an eye on her. Bebe's gonna spend the night, too. It'll be a real fun slumber party, for sure."

"Right. Is Butters going to do something about Linda while he's in town? I didn't want to ask."

"Probably a good call," Kenny said. "He mentioned his mom on the drive from the airport, but we didn't talk about it much. He seemed open to the idea of putting her house on the market and trying to get her set up in a community where nurses would check on her, that sort of thing. I'll help him if I can."

"Butters seems a little unhinged." Stan glanced at Kyle, certain that he was eavesdropping.

"He just got off a long flight and found out that his ex-boyfriend was a serial killer," Bebe said. "Give him a break."

Stan said goodnight and watched them drive away. He lingered at Kyle's side when Kenny's car was out of sight, not bothering to pretend that he wasn't reading Kyle's phone screen. He was texting with Mac, who had responded saying he was on his way to pick Kyle up.

"Dude," Stan said. He placed a tentative hand on Kyle's back, and was relieved when Kyle didn't move away. "I've got my car here. Let me drive you home. To the motel, I mean."

"It's fine," Kyle said. "I just need this night to be over."

"Well. It is, but. Me, too? I'm part of the night that needs to end?"

Kyle made a noise under his breath—half dismissive, half pained—and turned away from Stan. In the silence that followed, Stan felt like they were the only ones left in an emptied-out town, or on a stage in a theater with no audience. The lights inside the restaurant snapped off behind them, and the old-fashioned street lamps that glowed along historic main street were the only thing illuminating the snowflakes that continued to fall.

"Kyle," Stan said. "I know that dinner was awkward, but seriously-"

"Awkward?" Kyle turned back to Stan. He didn't look angry; he seemed sad, and Stan made himself hang back, though his instinct was to try to remedy this with a hug. "That dinner," Kyle said, pointing to the dark windows of the restaurant, "Was just like old times, really. Another reminder that I don't belong here with the rest of you, and that I never did."

"What?" Stan shook his head. "No, huh? You always-"

"Don't try to tell me what my experience here was like! There was a reason Cartman chose me as his victim, Stan. It was because I was different, and because I was terrified that my differences were all weaknesses. He sniffed that out in me because he was a born predator. It was like finding gold for him."

"But we all hated Cartman! I mean, he was a joke, we laughed at him-"

"Right, but you all still tolerated him. You let him elbow his way in, never mind how recently he'd made me feel dead inside with his latest plot to humiliate me. I know it seemed like I brushed it off easily, but I was a kid. When he hurt me, the best defense I could come up with was pretending it hadn't cut very deep. I always put on a good face for you because I didn't want you to think I was a loser. I didn't want to get ditched, or feel like a burden, or a cry baby. I didn't even want to believe it myself, how small and scared and stupid this place made me feel. But as soon as I got away from here, it was like I found out who I really was, and that I had worth, that I could feel safe and confident and-"

"You never felt that here?"

"No, Jesus! I always felt like I was on trial, like everyone was just waiting for me to snap and turn into my mother, to dare to think that I had the right to complain the way she did. You were supposed to be my best friend, and you never knew." Kyle laughed unhappily and looked away, maybe searching the road for Mac's car. The street was dark, empty. "That just confirmed it," he said. "How you guys treated me in there. Protecting Butters' feelings, because he's still one of you, right? Well, I never was, and I can't fucking tell you how ready I am go to home."

"Home." Stan wanted to sink down to his knees in the snow. This was it: they were always temporary, already ending. "Home to Denver?"

"Of course to Denver! I made a life for myself, away from here. And it's a good life. I thought, I don't know. I do want to integrate you into it somehow, you have no idea how much I wish I could fight for that, but it's like as soon as I set sight on you I'm that kid again. The lovesick, damaged outsider. When it's just me and you, I'm okay, but I'm always walking a tightrope, too. And then, when we're around the others, like tonight, I'm just watching you in your element and feeling so far away from you."

"In my element?" Stan moved toward Kyle, and he wasn't surprised when Kyle stepped backward, keeping his distance. He was putting the walls back up, framing his resignation. "I seemed like I was in my element in there?" Stan said. "Making awkward conversation and trying to stomach food while Butters fell apart over fucking Cartman? Is that what this is about, you think I'm- defending Cartman, somehow?"

"You are!" Kyle said. "All of you! Oh, you just can't believe he did it, not silly old Cartman, there must be some other explanation!"

"You can't admit it's hard to swallow? Shocking, and disturbing, and-"

"I'm not shocked! I told you as soon as I got here that I thought it was him. And frankly I'm not especially disturbed, either, aside from the fact that I'm lucky he never got around to killing me. Everything about this fits, from my perspective. And that's what I mean about South Park. You all- everything about this town, and the way you all are together, it's just something that I can't access. Even you. Especially you, because I feel so close to you and then, just. Like you're this stranger."

Stan heard a car on the road. He knew it would be Mac's. He held Kyle's gaze, watching his breath puff out into the cold air, snow flakes melting against his curls.

"I don't understand," Stan said. "You said you loved me."

"I do love you! But I'm going home tomorrow, back to the city, to wrap up the case and write my final report. I'll keep in touch, but I can't be here, Stan. And you are this place somehow, for me."

"So that means what?"

Kyle let his mouth hang open, and he shook his head when he couldn't seem to come up with the words. Mac pulled into the lot and parked. Stan wanted to fight him, to shout at him and tell him to get lost, that he was interrupting something, but it wasn't true. This was finished; he could feel it.

"Everything okay?" Mac said, rolling down the driver's side window. "Kyle? Ready to go?"

"Yes," Kyle said, still holding Stan's gaze. Stan felt an old, sickeningly familiar numbness descend. He wasn't going to fight. Kyle wanted to go, and Stan would let him. He couldn't even process everything Kyle had just said clearly enough to defend against it, and maybe it wasn't his place to try to do so.

"You're leaving town tomorrow?" Stan looked to Mac to answer this, and he nodded.

"Did you guys get anything useful from this Butters character?" he asked.

Stan shook his head. Kyle seemed to be stuck, standing there in silence and staring at Stan as if he was the one who had frozen him in place. It was funny to hear Butters referred to that way, as a character. Stan supposed that, to people from outside South Park, everyone in town seemed like another character in the Park County Ripper story that played nightly on the evening news. He assumed that was how Kyle saw him now, like a once-beloved action figure from childhood that had seemed to transform into a real man, but only temporarily.

"I'll call you," Kyle said. Stan knew that was directed at him, but at the same time it seemed as if Kyle was speaking to someone else, a stranger who represented a polite obligation. He watched Kyle walk around to the passenger side and get in. He had meant to ask him where he'd gotten that nice overcoat, but as Kyle buckled himself into the front passenger seat it seemed obvious: it was too big for him, and not as stylish as something Kyle would have picked for himself. He had borrowed it from Mac, of course.

"You still have my jacket," Stan said. It was a pointless and idiotic hail mary, and Kyle frowned like he didn't know what Stan was talking about.

"Oh, right," he said. "Um. I'll bring it by in the morning. On our way out of town."

"Actually, don't bother," Stan said. "It's old. I don't need it."

Mac looked from Stan to Kyle, then back again. Stan couldn't tell if he knew something was wrong, but he suspected Mac would hear all about it from Kyle as soon as they were alone together. Maybe Kyle would cry; maybe Mac would loan him a handkerchief.

"Well," Mac said. "In that case, I guess this is goodbye. It was nice to meet you, Stan. Let us know if anything comes up here, related to the case."

"Of course." Stan took a last look at Kyle, lifted his hand in a wave, and turned for his car. He waited to hear Kyle call out his name, throw open the car door, run to him and pound his fists against Stan's chest, saying he was just so confused, so tired, that he hadn't meant any of that about Stan feeling like a personification of South Park and all of Kyle's past miseries. All he heard was the sound of Mac putting the window up, backing out of the parking space, and driving away with Kyle beside him.

At home that night, Stan chugged two beers in the kitchen and went to bed in his undershirt and boxers without brushing his teeth. He slept deeply, and had no dreams that he could remember when he woke late the next morning. He lingered in bed until he knew he would be late for work unless he skipped a shower, tasting now-stale marinara and red wine on his dry tongue, overlaid by cheap, sour beer. He was fifty percent hollow, fifty percent ache, and he clung to the ache, knowing how much worse it was to feel hollow from head to toe. Outside, the sun had broken through the clouds and the snow from the night before glittered on the ledge of his bedroom window. He felt like he was waiting for his mother to throw open his bedroom door and tell him he would be late for school. He'd been thrown backward, and he was afraid to get out of bed and reenter the present, though the idea of returning to the past was horrible now, too. He knew from experience that the looming weight of getting through the day would only grow heavier once he'd pushed away his blankets.

His day at work provided no real distractions from the ache in his clawed-open chest, and the persistent sunlight seemed like laughter in his face, as if it was agreeing with Kyle: now that the murder investigation was over, Kyle's place was no longer in South Park, and all that remained should go back to normal, sunny days for everyone but Stan. He felt obscene for wanting to cling to the fucked up interval in his life when suddenly he and Kyle just worked, and the fact that four grisly deaths had been the catalyst seemed like confirmation that he was wrong to want Kyle all over again. The idea that Kyle had been never not been miserable in South Park hurt almost as bad as his ultimate rejection. Stan's childhood had been rocky at times, but at least for eight or nine years he'd been a mostly happy, carefree kid, and a big part of that had been the security of having Kyle always at his side. He'd thought that Kyle had once felt secure in that, too.

"Are you going to talk to me about it or what?" Bebe asked when they left for their patrol. She was driving. Stan was slumped in the passenger seat, trying to keep his eyes from glazing over while he scanned the streets that had gone gray and lifeless again.

"Talk about what?" Stan asked. Bebe was giving him an incredulous stare when he looked over at her. "No," he said, turning away again. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay, well. I'm here if you change your mind."

Like the sunny weather, Bebe's disposition seemed like a personal affront. He suspected her recent reunion with Kenny had just as much to do with her light-hearted demeanor as the end of the hunt for the serial killer. Her sudden ability to make things work with Kenny stung, and it made Stan not want to tell her what had happened between him and Kyle in the parking lot of the Italian restaurant. He obsessively checked his phone instead, never really expecting a message from Kyle but unable to fully quash his hope that one would come.

After two days of increasingly miserable waiting, during which Stan told himself hourly not to cave and be the first one to reach out, he finally heard from Kyle. Somewhat bizarrely, it was by email. The subject line was 'Hi.' Stan read the email on his phone, standing over the stove in his kitchen while some canned chicken soup simmered in a sauce pan. When he was finished, he went to his desktop computer, opened his email account and read Kyle's message again, hoping that larger text would make it easier to interpret.

I'm sorry it's taken me a few days to get in touch; I've been swamped for obvious work-related reasons, and I'm trying to get back into my life's natural rhythm here in the city.

Stan scoffed for a second time at that 'life's natural rhythm' line.

I know we left things very strangely, and I was very worked up that last night in South Park. I hadn't eaten all day and had quite a bit of that wine, but, as they say, 'drunk words, sober thoughts.' A lot of that had been building up for years, so I don't regret saying it. I talked to my therapist about it this morning (boy, was that an overdue appointment), and he suggested that I should feel at least a little proud of myself for having the courage to voice some of those old resentments and frustrations. Obviously, you aren't directly at fault for my difficult childhood in South Park, but letting myself think I was finally 'worthy' of romantic attention from you brought back a lot of the old insecurities at the same time.

So, here's where we are, from my perspective: being home has made a huge difference in my mental health already, but I do of course miss you. I wish you could be here, that you could see what I'm like outside of South Park , and I'm sure we'll have visits in the future, when work calms down for me and we've both had a little bit of time and distance to process what was, for me, (and I think for you, too), an extremely intense emotional roller coaster.

I'm going to mention something that I think might upset you, but I'll say it (write it) anyway, because I'm working on being more courageous, and also because I love you and want to see you happy: at one point, while I was in town, Kenny mentioned that you have some mandatory, work-related counseling sessions that you have to complete in relation to the discovery of Ruby Tucker's body and the associated stress. Kenny seemed to think that you were going to try to delay or get around this somehow. Stan, please don't. I think it would be really helpful for you to talk to someone, and not just about any trauma resulting from seeing the violent crime scene. I was too much of a wimp to really get into this with you in person, because I was afraid you would scoff (you're probably scoffing now), but I cannot stress how much seeing a professional on a regular basis has helped me grow past what South Park did to me. And I think it's done something to you, too. Some good things- your children, obviously -but plenty of bad, too. It almost knocked me over at moments, being there with you and realizing how much unprocessed hurt we're both holding on to. I don't know if you've given much thought to your South Park-related trauma or that you've even acknowledged it at all, but something about seeing Butters at that awful dinner, and hearing him boo-hooing about Cartman because they had some kind of vague, deranged sexual dynamic when they were younger really set me off, I think in part because I saw myself in his blubbering. Not to compare you to Cartman AT ALL (obviously), but I think in that moment Butters came to represent everything I had always feared turning into. I should probably delete this part of the email, because I don't think I'm communicating this well so far, but I'm leaving it in. We can discuss it in person sometime.

So much of what happened over the past few weeks feels like a dream already. I will never not be in a state of giddy disbelief when I remember what it was like to fall asleep in your arms. I think about you all the time, and wonder what you're doing, if you miss me, if you're okay. That's been true for eleven years.

You don't have to write a long email in response. Just text me to let me know how you're doing, and please take what I said about talking to your department counselor (or perhaps someone more qualified?) seriously. You deserve all the love and care in the world, and South Park can be so hard and cold.

Kyle

At first, the fact that Kyle had signed off only with his name was what Stan was stuck on more than anything. It wasn't as if Kyle hadn't said 'I love you' in the text of the letter, but something about him withholding that at the end, or any other kind of gentle sign-off, felt like a deliberate statement about what Stan should expect from him in the future. It was business-like. Professional.

Stan got out his phone and tried to come up with a text message that could possibly serve as a response to that email. He resented the fact that Kyle assumed Stan wouldn't want to write his own long, confessional email in response, though Kyle wasn't wrong about that. He also wasn't wrong about Stan's scoffing at the idea that he needed therapy. Stan would never claim that he was emotionally unblemished, but he wasn't sure what the hell a therapist was going to do about the fact that he'd made mistakes as a teenager and still struggled with the fallout at times. He was well aware that he'd been the architect of most of his present difficulties, but he didn't hate his life, and he wouldn't be talked into resenting South Park by Kyle just because he thought himself superior for having moved away.

Got your letter, Stan typed. He paused at the use of 'letter' as opposed to 'email,' then decided to leave it in. He liked that it sounded kind of snide, as if Kyle's email was aspiring to be more than it really was, and he was increasingly angry as he ran over the lowlights in his head. The part where Kyle was totally 'not' comparing him to Cartman when he for some reason compared himself to Butters was stuck in Stan's mind like a popcorn kernel between his teeth, taunting him with its inaccessible but unignorable smallness.

Stan sent that first text, then typed more: Interesting stuff. Hit me up when this all blows over. Stay safe.

He knew this was an awful text, glib and petty and composed in anger, and he sent it anyway. There was a tiny flicker of victory as he watched it go, and then the hurt and regret flooded in and snuffed it out. He stared down at his phone, imagining Kyle receiving the text, and he waited to see if he would get an angry phone call in response. He desperately wanted an angry phone call, wanted to hear Kyle's voice shake on the other line, wanted to lose his composure in response, to end the call apologizing for everything and begging Kyle to love him. The phone didn't ring. Kyle didn't even send a frowny face with stern eyebrows in response, which was what he had done when they were kids and Stan sent dumb messages that Kyle didn't approve of. Stan wished he still had that old phone. He wanted to dig it out and read all their old, dumb messages until he fell asleep.

The clouds and snow returned as the week slogged on, and Stan spent his evenings with canned soup and the television. He had plans to take the kids ice skating during the weekend. Wayne played hockey, and skating was one of the few family activities he still tolerated without complaint, because he could play pick-up games with the other kids his age and ignore Stan while he skated around with Evan, who no longer begged to hold his hand the whole time. He missed that, and imagined her siding with Wayne increasingly as she got older, and as she began to understand how Stan had failed them in the same intangible ways that he had apparently failed to protect and support Kyle.

A FOR SALE sign went up in front of Linda Stotch's house, and Stan and Bebe got numerous calls from Liane Cartman about reporters encroaching on her property. The news about Cartman's suicide note confession and the history between the doomed half-brothers was out, and press was everywhere. Stan couldn't get a cup of coffee at five in the morning without tripping over ten assholes who were still milking the story of the Park County Ripper. There were 'shocking new revelations,' daily on the national news, but Stan was familiar with all of the old, gory details, and none of these so-called revelations made any real sense of Cartman's alleged motive, as far as Stan was concerned. He couldn't find so much as a brief print interview with Kyle, even after the full text of the suicide note was leaked, but he did come across two articles that seemed to suggest Cartman's fascination with humiliating Kyle was homoerotic in nature.

At the end of the week, Liane asked for a police escort to the airport. She would be flying home to Nebraska with Cartman's remains, which the FBI had finally released. Stan was out on his regular patrol with Bebe, very glad not to have been given that particular assignment. The Chief was overseeing Liane's escort himself, and not just for appearances. There was a rumor going around the station that he'd always had a crush on Liane. He had been a total hard ass about every member of the press who was caught on her property; one was still in a holding cell after two days of paperwork-related delays.

"Well," Stan said, watching a plane streak across the sky at sundown, leaving a pink-hued jet stream behind. "I guess Cartman finally made it out of South Park."

"Don't be gross," Bebe said. They were leaning against Stan's cruiser, both drinking a late afternoon coffee, the doors of the car open so they could hear any calls over the radio. They watched the plane until it disappeared into a cloud bank. "Was that even one of Cartman's goals?" Bebe asked. "To get out of South Park? He didn't list that in the note."

"Who fucking knows. Did I tell you about that weird night I had with him, just after the murders started? When I drove him home from Skeeter's, the night we met up with Craig?"

"You mentioned something, but now I forget. He was weirder than usual that night?"

"Yeah. I mean, he was drunk, but he said something about making a huge mistake. He seemed so- sincere? Wistful? And this was before he'd killed Marc, so it wasn't about learning Tenorman was dead."

Bebe shook her head and sipped from her coffee. "I still feel like there's something we missed," she said. "Something the FBI wouldn't see. Some kind of key only a local could spot."

"So much for the FBI's theory that Kyle was the perfect non-yokel local for that job." Stan could feel Bebe's eyes on him after he'd spoken. It was the first time either of them had uttered Kyle's name in a week.

"Yeah, they were wrong," Bebe said. "They thought he was a click above the rest of us because he'd left town years ago, but he was just as turned around by the whole thing as any of us. Maybe more so."

"He hated being back here."

"Did he? Well, I can see that. He seemed so shaken up, from that first dinner to that last one. But you- The way he looked at you, Stan. I can't believe that he didn't get a little thrill every time you touched his hand. He always looked like he was trying so hard not to swoon."

"You're seeing things that weren't really there." Stan crumpled his coffee cup in his hand, though there were still a few sips in the bottom. "It was like a mirage for him," he said. "Like walking through an old dream. He told me so. He also told me that being with me wasn't worth trekking through all his old nightmares, too."

"He's still processing everything that happened," Bebe said. "Give him time."

Too late, Stan thought, but he didn't feel like like talking about it anymore. He was glad when the radio crackled with a call from dispatch, and he ducked into the cruiser to respond to a 17-40.

"This is Marsh and Stevens with a ten-four on your 17-40," he said. "What's the location on that? We're parked near the Old Sawmill exit, out by the highway."

"This is up in the mountains," the operator said. "But not too far from you two. That old genetics lab, someone saw smoke. Probably kids building a fire again."

"Goddammit," Stan muttered when he'd hung up the radio. He put the car's siren on and buckled into the driver's seat, sorry now that he'd taken the call. They still got calls about kids fooling around up there on a regular basis, but Stan hadn't responded to one personally since the night he and Bebe took Kyle along to check one out. He could feel Bebe studying him as he drove, and he knew she was thinking about that night, too.

"You'd think they'd be off this for the winter," Bebe said. "I know teenagers are stupid, but anybody who lives here knows those mountain roads can get bad fast at night."

"Here's hoping the snow holds off until we're done rounding up these punks," Stan said, though he wasn't at all confident that the kids would be caught; they hadn't picked anybody up for loitering near the old lab since spring break.

The sun was sinking as they made their way up the mountain toward the lab. Stan didn't want to think about Kyle, how he'd been quiet in the backseat that day, how he'd talked about missing Stan's birthday and stood close to him in the dark when they were shadowed by the hulking old building. He didn't want to wonder if Kyle had been miserable then, secretly angry, wanting to flee. To Stan the memory had become oddly precious, maybe because of the illusion that he'd been protecting Kyle then, and the fact that they'd still been on the cusp of all that was to come, drawing close to each other in a cautious but unstoppable way. He groaned, and shrugged when Bebe looked over at him.

"I miss Kyle," he said. Admitting it felt unexpectedly good, and he knew what he'd have to do as soon as his shift was over: call Kyle, apologize for the stupid texts, explain how some of the stuff in that email had hurt him. It would be a start, at least, and Stan was tired of wallowing in his misery and pretending that there was simply nothing he could do. Bebe squeezed his shoulder as he drove up the old lab's long driveway.

"It'll work out," she said.

"How do you know?"

"I don't, but I want to believe it."

"Why? I always thought Kyle sort of got on your nerves."

"Yeah, but you look at him the same way he looks at you. When Kyle walked into the restaurant, that night with Butters, everything about you changed. You looked so bright and hopeful and happy, just seeing him. Like a kid again."

Stan let the subject drop and focused on navigating the bumpy, unpaved drive, avoiding Bebe's eyes. She wasn't wrong, but he was afraid it didn't go both ways, that he would never be enough to make Kyle happy, even if he retained a nostalgia-based ability to make him swoon. When they parked in front of the lab the horizon was blazing orange with the sunset, as if there was a tremendous forest fire approaching the town. Stan sniffed the air when he climbed out, but he couldn't smell any actual fire, even from a small pile of logs lit by teenage hoodlums. There was only the scent of snow and pines, and a hint of that decaying stench that the old lab gave off.

"I guess we'll do like last time," Bebe said when she'd climbed out of the car. "I'll start walking around the building in one direction, you take the other, and we'll meet somewhere in the middle."

"I guess," Stan said. The idea of splitting up was unsettling, though it made sense and he hadn't been worried about Bebe's safety last time, with Kyle at his side.

The crunching of the snow under their boots was the only sound around for miles. Stan figured the kids who were burning stuff up here had probably cleared off already, though he hadn't seen fresh tire tracks on the way up the road. It was possible there was another access point to the old lab that he wasn't aware of, or that whomever had been here had a camp set up in the woods. It was also possible that the codger who lived on the other side of valley and regularly called about seeing smoke from a campfire was just losing his vision or imagining things.

"Radio me if you see footprints," Bebe said when she and Stan reached the massive front doors of the old lab, criss-crossed by rusted chains. Stan nodded and started walking right while she went left. Something about the sound of Bebe's retreating footsteps made his heart beat a little faster, and the quiet in the woods seemed to loom around him like an avalanche that was waiting to be tripped. It was dark enough to require a flashlight, though there was still a persisting orange glow between the clouds that had parted out over the distant mountain peaks. Stan quickened his steps, wanting this over with. He felt the ghostly presence of Kyle alongside him, and all their missed opportunities. He'd been thinking about Kyle nonstop since he went back to Denver, and about the persisting gap between what had happened in South Park and the explanation that Stan had thought he'd have when all of this was over. It was as if something had started without finishing, and it wasn't just him and Kyle. It was the whole investigation, though even the most sensational news programs had begun to refer to the circus in South Park as something that was firmly over.

Stan was almost to the front right corner of the building when he heard a sound that seemed to come from the woods. It was distant, but close enough to make him startle, and at first he assumed it was a pine branch snapping under the weight of fallen snow. Then he heard an unmistakable shuffle: footsteps hurrying across a paved surface. There was somebody in the old lab. He turned to motion to Bebe, but she had already made it around the other side of the building, out of sight.

"Hey," he said, keeping his voice quiet when he brought his radio to his lips. "I think somebody's inside the lab."

"You heard something?" she said, too loud.

"Shh, yeah. I think that might be why we can't ever find these guys. There could be a squatter or two living in there. When's the last time somebody got a call and actually swept the building?"

"I don't know, could we even get in?"

"I remember broken windows around back. I'm gonna head that way, meet me there?"

"Roger that, unless you want to call for backup?"

"Not yet," Stan said, imagining the Chief's sneer if this ended up being a wild animal taking shelter inside the old lab. "Let me get eyes on the back side of the building first. There would be signs of forced entry."

Stan moved swiftly along the building's right wall, heading toward the deeper woods that stretched into darkness behind the lab. He tried to keep his footsteps as quiet as possible, and listened for any other hints of where the potential intruder was located. He had a deep, unsettling sense that he'd been heard, too, and that whatever was in there had gone silent in response, waiting to see what he would do.

He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting when he reached the back of the building, but he was surprised to find nothing at first glance, just the woods growing darker as the sun disappeared. He pointed his flashlight at the snow, planning to wait for Bebe before he made any decisions about what to do next. Then he saw a set of fresh footsteps. They lead toward the building, right up to one of the first story windows where the boards had been torn away, glass broken. There was a hole big enough for a person to crawl through.

"Hello?" Stan said, pointing his flashlight inside. "Police! This is private property!"

The beam of his flashlight bounced over a weather-beaten and mostly empty room, a sludge of dead leaves covering most of the floor. There were tracks in the leaf sludge, too, leading out of the room and into the pitch-dark hallway beyond. The doorway that led out of the room was free of cobwebs. Stan heard a scampering sound again, from somewhere deeper within the building, then a heavy creaking that sounded almost like a working elevator, gears turning and cables moving.

"Police!" he said, shouting this into the darkness. "I need you to freeze where you are, this building is condemned and very dangerous!" He imagined scared kids huddling in the darkness as he climbed through the broken window, his flashlight propped over his gun. "I'm in," he said more quietly, speaking into his radio and scanning the four corners of the room with his light. They were all empty, but he could feel a human presence not far off. "There's definitely somebody in here. I'm gonna get them out before they hurt themselves."

"Careful," Bebe said, short of breath. "I'm on my way."

Though Stan was moving slowly, his breath seem to thin out as he crept further into the old lab, entering the dark hallway. He shined his flashlight down one end, and the beam landed against a boarded-up window. He turned in the other direction, everything in him bracing for some kind of impact, but that side of the hallway was empty, too, as far as he could see. There was an elevator shaft at the end, fifty feet away, with no doors. He could see its cables trembling, as if the elevator had just been operating.

"What the fuck?" he said, under his breath. He walked forward, trying to keep his flashlight beam steady. When he tried the radio there was no signal, the heavy walls of the lab blocking everything but a buzz of static, but he knew Bebe couldn't be far behind. He froze in place when it occurred to him that he hadn't told her which window he'd entered through, and that she might end up in a totally different part of the building if there was an opening closer to the direction she was running from.

This seemed like a good enough reason to turn back, and Stan was preparing to do so when he heard a sound from the elevator shaft. It seemed to be coming from below, a kind of rhythmic, mechanical clicking.

"Hello?" he called. "Park County police! We've got the building surrounded- you can't be here!"

There was a soft chuckle from the darkness, very close. Stan's mouth went dry, and his consciousness seemed to retract in sheer terror and then pulse back all at once, slamming into him. He spun, moving the flashlight and gun in erratic jerks, trying to find the person whose reedy breath he could now hear.

"Freeze!" Stan said. He spun in a full circle before he realized, too late, that there was a doorway behind him. A figure emerged from the dark in a blur: tall, deathly pale, and Stan saw only a flash of one wild eye before he was clubbed over the head with something heavy.

He woke up to darkness and the sensation of being dragged. His hands were empty: no, they were clasped in someone else's hands, the person who was dragging him. Both of them were breathing heavily. Stan had only been out for a second, maybe, and when he struggled he was yanked forward, hard, until he felt the edge of something at his back.

It was the elevator shaft: one kick from the wild-eyed man and Stan was tumbling down it, toward a source of reddish light.

Stan's last conscious thought was of Kyle, but not because he was sure that this was his death. Unless it was only a trick of the light, the man who had kicked him had bright red hair.

Stan woke up in slow, painful waves, wanting to deny the concrete thoughts that were beginning to take shape between his pounding temples. His cheek was pressed to a concrete floor, and everything hurt. His shoulder was throbbing, and he screamed when he tried to move his legs. The left one was bent wrong, broken. He tried moving his arms and found that his wrists were bound together behind his back. Someone was pacing nearby, breathing in a kind of wheezing panic that made Stan think the person here with him was another victim of the red-haired man who had pushed him down that elevator shaft. He lifted his neck, wincing and trying to keep his eyes open. The only source of light in the room was a storm lantern sitting against the far wall and the reddish glow from somewhere outside. Stan got the sense that they were underground; there was a sharp, mineral smell like a dug-out cave. The pacing man froze and turned to him, his lips curled back over what appeared to be metal teeth. His eyes were so wide and manic that he seemed to lack upper lids, and the shadows under his eyes were ghoulishly pronounced in the light from the lantern.

"I realized upstairs that I'd have to kill you," the man said. "I'm just trying to hypothesize about how you kill a cop, it's not part of the plan-" He dissolved into a coughing fit. "Excuse me," he said, giving Stan a full view of his metallic teeth in a kind of grimacing smile. He was missing his left ear, and something about his voice was familiar, too. "I've been ill," he said, walking closer. Stan curled in on himself, gritting his teeth when his leg flinched. "It's been hard, living here," the man said, crouching down near Stan. He had loud red hair; it wasn't just the light. "I've had to put the furnace on more than once. I suppose that's what led you here? The smoke from the chimney?"

Stan stared up into the man's seemingly lid-less eyes, which had a perpetually shocked look, not as if he were surprised but as if he was presently being electrocuted, his face trembling slightly when he focused on Stan.

"I do need to know," the man said, pulling a long, curved knife from his belt, "Why you're here. Give me that, and I'll do it painlessly."

"Who are you?" Stan asked, trying to keep his eyes locked on the man's gruesome face. He was almost sure that he shouldn't mention his partner, to keep Bebe out of danger, but he was afraid he might be dead sooner rather than later if he didn't. The red-haired man cocked his head and smiled more widely.

"You don't recognize me?" he asked. "Denizen of South Park? Have I been forgotten already? Even in light of the recent news?"

Stan tried to twist his neck to get a better look, and he screamed in pain when it seemed to shoot from the base of his skull all the way down to his left ankle. He hoped Bebe had heard that, wherever she was. The face of his attacker hovered above him in the dark like an evil moon, and when Stan looked again he knew who this was.

"Tenorman," he said. "But. You died."

Tenorman laughed and sat back a little, rocking from the balls of his feet to his heels. He was close enough that he wouldn't have to stretch his reach to kill Stan with one slash of the knife he held, but he was dragging the tip of the knife across the concrete floor as if he was stalling. Stan tried to run through scenarios in his mind, to calm his fear enough to think through his options like he'd been trained to do. It was possible Tenorman knew Bebe was in the building, and that he was waiting for her to respond to Stan's scream so that he could take care of them both.

"I actually thought I would have more problems with that stage of the plan," Tenorman said, his voice squeaking a little. "Faking my own death- that sort of thing should be difficult to pull off, right? But nobody cared enough about loony Scott Tenorman to figure out that he'd swapped a fish-eaten bum's corpse out for his own. There wasn't exactly a federal investigation into my death. The guy in the drowned car had no teeth, just like me." Tenorman tapped his metal grill with the point of the knife. Most of the front teeth had been filed into points. "And I threw in an authentic Scott J. Tenorman ear, just in case. Probably an unnecessary precaution. I should have worked off the assumption that no one would give a shit- they never did, after my parents were murdered."

Tenorman stood and began to pace again. There was something jerky in his movements, like an addict who had gone a long time without a fix. Stan looked at the doorway to the room they were in. There was nothing but reddish light from the next room, a kind of unfriendly glow. It was warm in the room, and Stan was sweating under his uniform, but shaky chills moved through him every few seconds, making his teeth chatter.

"You framed Cartman," Stan said, wanting to keep Tenorman talking until he decided whether to scream for help or keep Bebe's presence a secret. "You killed him."

"He killed me!" Tenorman roared, and Stan's heart pounded with nervous hope. There was no way Tenorman would be so noisy if he knew that Bebe could be close. Stan prayed that she could find them in this maze of dark hallways. Tenorman squatted down and walked on the balls of his feet toward Stan, gripping the knife in his hand. His eyes were huge and unseeing, his thin lips curved over his teeth in a snarl. "He killed me," Tenorman said again, slashing the concrete floor with each word. "And none of you cared."

"You were behind all of it," Stan said. Despite his panic, the overwhelming pain from his leg was making him sluggish, and he dropped into valleys of consciousness that felt like dreams until a fresh throb of splintering pain from his leg wrenched him back to reality. He was afraid to look down, afraid to see bone jutting from skin, and afraid that he was going to die like this, in a mad man's lair.

"I was owed this," Tenorman said. "All those years in and out of mental hospitals – it was all for show! I've been sane all along, according to my own system. And what other system could I trust, after yours worked in his favor? I was plotting, careful. Even the third one that was meant to look sloppy- that was perfect! I might as well tell you, since you're about to die. You're the only one who will ever know the truth. I'm just biding time here until the press clears out, until I can make a low profile trip to Mexico and never come back. Isn't it just kind of pretty, how it all played out? Can you appreciate that, having known the monster I murdered at the end of the game?"

"You wrote that note?" Stan said, grimacing. "The stuff about. Kyle Broflovski. How did you know?"

"How did I know? I devoted my life to studying my enemy, that's fucking how! Wasn't it the perfect touch? Didn't it end up convincing everyone, especially Special Agent Broflovski himself?" Tenorman laughed and moved closer to Stan, touching the blade of his knife to his own lips. "It was all worth it, too," he said, whispering. "The years of discipline. The risk of being discovered. It was worth it to see the look on little Eric's face when he knew I had him. I didn't give him the opportunity to beg, but I did tell him what I was going to do after I'd gagged him. I read him his own suicide note. I laughed so hard I cried. The best part is that nobody cares about him either. They were ready to write him off as soon as the shot rang out, because he was a pathetic, detested slob. The only hard sell was trying to make it seem like he could carry off the kind of efficient, passionless murder scenes I crafted. But he pulled off what he did to me, even as a child, didn't he? Didn't he?" Tenorman screamed this in Stan's face, pressing the knife to his neck. Stan pinched his eyes shut and shook his head, trying to come up with more questions. He'd had some training in interviewing. Tenorman clearly wanted to talk.

"The tongues," Stan said, forcing his voice out when Tenorman applied pressure to the knife, just shy of breaking his skin. "Why- the tongues?"

"Why do you think?" Tenorman asked, and he slashed Stan then, but only shallowly. Stan cried out, cowering. The sting of the cut was nothing compared to the pain from his leg, but he had thought it would be the death blow. Tenorman was breathing hard, the knife resting against Stan's collarbone now. "He made me eat them," Tenorman said, hissing each word slowly and speaking directly into Stan's ear. "I wanted to cut out my own tongue every day!"

"I'm sorry," Stan said, though he knew it was the wrong tack to take. "We really were, Scott, we felt for you-"

"Who the fuck is we? You all harbored Cartman like he was your own! And he was, because every one of you is just as monstrous as he was. You stood back and let him destroy me! I was a child!"

Tenorman was growing unhinged, getting louder. Stan thought he was hallucinating in desperation when he heard the echo of a distant shout, but Tenorman heard it, too. He sat up and stared at the doorway like a wolf that had scented prey, the blade of the knife still trembling at the base of Stan's neck.

"Oh," Tenorman said. He smiled and refocused his eyes on Stan, pulling another weapon from his belt. It was a gun: Stan's gun. "Your partner," Tenorman said. He checked the chamber and grinned more widely when he saw that it was loaded.

"Don't," Stan said, squirming. "Please, she called for backup. You won't get away- it's over."

"Maybe." Tenorman stood and cocked the gun, letting the knife clatter to the floor. Stan could hear Bebe's voice again, still distant. She was calling his name. "But maybe not," Tenorman said. "You're still just two backwoods cops, as far as I can see. This place has many tunnels, a whole network of hiding spots. I've been using it as my base camp for months without detection, and I know every crevasse, even in the dark. I could drag your bodies with me until I figure out how to dispose of them. I don't like ad-libbing. It's sloppy. But I'll make things up as I go if I have to."

"Bebe!" Stan shouted, knowing he would probably die for this. "Watch out, I'm not-"

Tenorman kicked Stan in the jaw before he could get the word 'alone' out. Stan saw flashes of light behind his eyelids and felt his head lolling, his consciousness blinking out. When he forced his eyes open again, Tenorman was gagging him with something that smelled like rancid body odor. Stan moaned, trying to make his voice work. His mind was getting foggy, his thoughts slipping around like they were on the deck of a ship, sliding off into oblivion before he could pin them down. He was groggy as he saw Tenorman creeping toward the door. He could hear footsteps. Tenorman had his gun.

"Stan?" Bebe was close now, and Stan screamed into the gag when Tenorman crouched down near the doorway, watching her. "Where are you?" she shouted. She was audibly frightened and certainly alone. Even if she had made the call for backup, it would take any cars on patrol in town at least half an hour to get this far up the mountain at night.

Stan made a pathetic, fruitless noise of agony when Tenorman slipped out into the hall with the gun. Bebe would be ambushed; she'd wanted to call for backup when they were still outside. When Stan heard shots fired in the hallway he sobbed into the gag. It was his fault.

There was an anguished, high-pitched scream, then another shot, another, another. Stan breathed in pants around the gag. He heard shuffling, footsteps, soft cursing. Then his name.

"Stan?"

It was Bebe, shaken but alive. Stan screamed into the gag again, wiggling in an attempt to get closer to the doorway and ignoring the pain in his leg. Bebe's flashlight entered the room first, and then she was there, her braid half-undone and her eyes wide with horror.

"Jesus!" she said when she saw Stan. She hurried toward him, moving awkwardly, and dropped her flashlight when she reached him, still holding her gun in her other hand. "Was there more than one?" she asked, yanking the gag from Stan's mouth. "I shot- shot someone who fired on me, I think he's dead-"

"It was Tenorman," Stan said. His chest was still jerking with dry sobs, and waves of alternating heat and cold wracked his bones, threatening to tear away his tentative grasp on conscious thought. "He- He seemed to be alone, ah- Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Bebe said. She put her gun down so she could free Stan's hands. "He shot me, though."

"What- where?"

"Here," she said, taking one of Stan's freed hands and bringing it to her side. There was blood, hot and sticky between Stan's unsteady fingers, and a lot of it. "It's okay," she said when he tried to sit up and failed. "I called for backup twenty minutes ago, two units are on their way. Did he shoot you? Is your leg broken?"

"I think so. I'm not shot, I fell, he pushed me- He's dead?"

Bebe nodded, jerky. Her face was pale, and her hand shook badly when she cupped Stan's cheek.

"I killed him," she said. "You said- Tenorman, you said?"

"He faked his death. He did it all, everything. He killed Cartman, too."

"Fuck." Bebe exhaled and winced. They both had their hands over her wound, pressing hard. "It's okay," she said when she saw the look on Stan's face. "It went in and out. I think."

"And you're sure he's dead?" Stan's eyes kept flicking to the dark doorway, waiting to see Tenorman lurching back in with his metal grimace and lidless eyes.

"I lit him up, Stan," Bebe said, and she turned to look at the doorway, too. "If he's not dead, he's sure as shit not going anywhere for now. After he shot me I emptied my whole fucking clip into him, I just- Oh, god." She curled down onto Stan, resting her head on his shoulder. "I killed someone. A murderer? Someone who shot me, so. I think I'm going to pass out."

Bebe was still conscious when they heard voices from the floor above a few minutes later. They both shouted themselves hoarse until there were footsteps in the hallway outside, three flashlight beams snaking into the room. Stan was in and out during the extraction process, and when they took him out on a gurney it had to be lifted over Tenorman's corpse in the narrow hallway. Stan threw up over the side of the gurney when it bumped up the stairs on the way up to the first floor, and he was shaking so hard that the paramedics on the scene insisted on giving him oxygen when he was rolled out to the old lab's front driveway, brought back almost to full consciousness by the welcome, frigid cold. There were three squad cars and an ambulance on the scene, and Stan could hear more sirens in the distance. He blacked out on the ride down the mountain in the ambulance, aided by painkillers. Bebe was beside him, on the bench that lined the interior of the ambulance, being treated by another paramedic and squeezing Stan's hand at moments.

He was groggy for a long time at the hospital, even while answering questions. The Chief interviewed him about Tenorman's last words personally. Stan didn't have a hard time recalling them, despite the drugs flowing from his IV. He would never forget a word of it, or what it had felt like to realize that Tenorman's raving might be the last thing he ever heard.

Bebe's bed was wheeled into his room when her gunshot wound was downgraded to stable. They could just touch each other's fingers, reaching across the space between their beds. Bebe's eyes were wet, but she was smiling.

"Told you," she said. "In and out. You okay?"

"Broken leg," Stan said. "Broken ribs, and a dislocated shoulder that they yanked back into place. But yeah." The pain meds had blanked out most of the real issues, but the cut on his neck seemed immune to this relief; it still stung, and he kept feeling it like a fresh slice. Outside, most of the new day had somehow passed, and the afternoon was darkening already. When Stan and Bebe were finally cleared for visitors, Kenny and Lola rushed into the room.

"Are the kids okay?" Stan asked, and Lola nodded. Her face was splotchy, and she held herself back for a few seconds before leaning down to hug Stan and kiss his dirty hair. In the other bed, Kenny's voice was breaking up while he held Bebe against him. She was whispering to him, telling him it was okay. Stan gave Lola a weary smile when she brushed his hair from his forehead.

"Wayne and Evan are out in the waiting room with my mom," she said. "I wanted to make sure you were ready to see them, um. That they wouldn't be disturbed, but you don't look so bad."

"Get them in here," Kenny said, wiping at his cheek with his palm. Stan was pretty sure he had never seen Kenny cry; it was as surreal as anything else that was happening. "Stan's presentable enough."

"Please," Stan said, and Lola nodded. She left to fetch Wayne and Evan, and Stan turned to look at Bebe. She had Kenny cradled against her chest, her hand stroking through his hair. "I'm so sorry," Stan said, feeling drunk from the meds but also unable to shut up. "I almost got us both killed."

"You did not," Bebe said. "You found the Park County Ripper, the real one, and you helped me catch him. Well." She gave Kenny a queasy look when he sat up. "Kill him, that is. Patrick was in here earlier, when you were asleep. He says there's tons of shit down in Tenorman's lair that links him to the murders. Including, um. The tongues. He kept them."

"I can't believe he didn't kill me," Stan said, touching his neck. "He wanted to, I could see it. His eyes. Did you see his eyes?"

"Just for a second there." Bebe said. She shook her head and looked at Kenny when he sat up to wipe at his face again. "None of it felt real to me until it was over," she said. "I was worried for Stan- I'd heard him shout when he fell, but I couldn't find him, it was so dark. When I thought I heard voices, it was so disorienting, and then Stan shouted, and then- in that hallway, in the dark, someone shot me. I'd seen him with the flashlight, but it was so quick, oh, god. And there was this moment, after Tenorman was down- I was afraid Stan was already dead."

"I had a moment, too," Stan said. "When I heard the shots- I thought they were all him firing on you, from the dark."

Bebe reached for Stan, and he stretched his arm out between their beds, touching his fingertips to hers. Kenny grunted and stepped off Bebe's bed, pushing it toward Stan's until they could grasp each other's hands fully. Stan felt like some part of him was still down there in the dark, still vulnerable to waking from a desperate dream and finding himself back in that nightmare, and he knew Bebe felt the same way. It helped to feel her hand in his and know that he wasn't alone in still mentally trying to climb out of what had happened to them.

Evan rushed in with Lola, her expression fearful until she saw Stan smiling at her from his hospital bed. She broke into a teary smile and hurried to him, hugging his good arm and throwing herself onto his chest when Lola hoisted her up onto the bed. Distantly, Stan's ribs ached, but he didn't mention it; the painkillers made it bearable. Wayne hung back, looking nervous and blinking back tears. He walked forward when Stan reached for him, still clutching Evan to him with his other arm.

"I'm okay," Stan said when Wayne took his hand. Evan sniffled and sat back to touch Stan's cheeks, patting his stubble. "Everything's all right," Stan said, and he kissed her forehead. "Bebe saved the day."

"Mom said you got shot," Wayne said, turning to Bebe. He was still holding Stan's hand.

"I took a bullet for your dad," Bebe said, and she winked. "But no harm done, in the long run. We're both pretty tough."

"Daddy," Evan said, patting his cheek. "Do you still have to be a cop?"

"Yeah," Stan said, because he also felt good, for having had even a bumbling role in capturing a killer. "But this won't happen again," he said. "We caught the bad guy."

"Where is he?" Evan asked.

"Dead," Wayne said. "Right?"

"Yeah," Stan said, and he glanced at Bebe. He could see she still wasn't okay with having killed someone, however necessary it had been. "He, um. While he was trying to get away, he had an accident."

"Your mom called me," Lola said, patting Stan's knee. "She's on her way, I'm going to pick her up at the airport tonight."

"Good," Stan said. He'd mumbled instructions about who to call at some point; he couldn't remember which fellow officer he'd asked, but apparently they had followed through, or maybe Lola had been the one who'd gotten in touch with Sharon. "She'll probably be freaked out," he said, smoothing Evan's hair down. "But everything's okay, right? You guys haven't seen Grandma in a while."

"Was it scary?" Wayne asked, dropping Stan's hand. He crossed his arms over his chest and blinked rapidly when Stan met his gaze.

"Uh," Stan said, not sure how much he wanted to say in front of Evan. "Yeah, it was scary. I'll tell you all about it, eventually."

"Cool," Wayne said, nodding. "Yeah. I want to know."

"Me too," Evan said, though she didn't sound sure.

The kids left with Lola around seven with plans to get dinner before picking up Sharon. Lola asked Stan if she could bring him anything, but he still didn't have an appetite. He hugged Lola, Evan, and then Wayne for a long time before they left, and as soon as they were gone he wanted them back. Bebe had dozed off. Kenny was still sitting in the bed with her, kissing the back of her hand when she flinched in her sleep.

"You okay?" Stan asked. Kenny looked up and snorted.

"Me?" he said. "Uh, yeah." His eyes were bloodshot and his lips looked like they'd been chewed on, maybe by Bebe. "It's just fucked up," he said, peering down at Bebe again. "Her doctor said that if the bullet had hit her a quarter inch higher it would have gone through a lung, and in the time it took to get her out of the place, down from the mountain, she could have-"

"But it didn't hit her there," Stan said. "She's lucky. We both are."

"I don't trust luck," Kenny said, and he leaned down to put his face against Bebe's neck. A few minutes later they were both asleep. One of them was snoring softly; Stan couldn't tell which.

He turned to look at the window, close to drifting off again himself. The sun was going down. Somewhere outside, news programs were fired up again, blaring the new information about Scott Tenorman and the abandoned lab that had been his secret lair while he picked off members of the South Park community in an attempt to frame his half-brother. Cartman's name would be cleared, somewhat. There was still what he had done to Tenorman as a child, and the other things, too. Stan searched the small table beside his bed for his phone, wanting to talk to Kyle. He had no idea where his phone or any of his other personal effects had ended up. His gun would be in an evidence locker by now. He closed his eyes, resolving to have Lola or his mom find the phone for him later. It wasn't like he would know what to say, even if he could call Kyle.

He woke to the feeling of a warm hand on his face. He was still heavily medicated and wanted more sleep, but the slight tremble in the fingertips on his skin drew him out from the haze. He assumed his mother had arrived, but then someone's thumb stroked softly across cheek, just under his eye, and he knew it wasn't her. He turned his face into Kyle's palm and reached up to hold his hand in place, needing this to be real, afraid it was a dream.

"Stan," Kyle said, barely audible, or maybe it was something Stan felt rather than heard. He smiled against Kyle's skin and gave his palm a dry little kiss. When he wrenched his eyes open he found Kyle sitting on his bed, Kenny and Bebe still asleep across the room. The overhead lights had been dimmed and it was very dark outside, no snow falling. Kyle wasn't crying, but he was breathing in audible huffs like it was taking everything he had to hold it together.

"You're here," Stan said, still having a hard time believing it. Kyle's return had seemed too good to be true since the first smug flash of his FBI badge. Stan pressed his hand more firmly over Kyle's and rubbed his thumb across Kyle's knuckles, wishing he felt strong enough to sit up and hold him. Kyle was wearing a fitted sweater and jeans, which seemed strange, and also like a kind of concession on behalf of Stan's fragile condition. Kyle leaned down and pressed his forehead to Stan's, his eyes fluttering shut.

"Oh my god," Kyle said, whispering. "Stan, oh my god, fuck, shit, I can't believe-"

"I know, dude, but I'm okay. I promise, I'm all right."

"It's-" Kyle's voice pinched off, and he pushed his hand up into Stan's hair, closing his fingers into the strands and almost pulling. He shook his head a little, holding himself away from Stan's chest with his other arm. Maybe he knew about the broken ribs. "Your mother is here," Kyle said, whispering. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I don't know what to say." He was almost sheepish when he peeked at Stan again, looking as if he was waiting to be chastised for something. "I was so wrong. You could have died."

"What- no, don't. None of us knew. They still haven't even figured out whose body Tenorman sunk in his car, I heard."

"Probably a transient- oh, god." Kyle sat up and put his hands over his face. "It's incomprehensible," he said, his voice muffled. "And then, that you- That it was you and Bebe who crossed his path, in that horrible place, up in the fucking mountains. He was so close to skipping town, he had everything arranged."

"I guess you've been working nonstop," Stan said, touching Kyle's thigh. "Since, uh. We found him."

"They've taken me off the case," Kyle said. He sniffled and shrugged. "Mac's still working on it, as a special advisor, so he tells me everything."

"Well, that- sucks?"

"Not really, it's. It got too personal, once Cartman's note was involved." Kyle groaned. "I just want to collapse onto you," he said. "But I can't. I don't deserve to."

"What are you talking about? C'mere, this is the good shoulder. Rest here with me for a second. You look so tired."

"I should get your mother, tell her you're awake."

Instead, Kyle settled against Stan's uninjured shoulder and gently eased himself up against Stan's side, under his arm. Stan breathed in the clean scent of Kyle's hair, which smelled a little bit like snow. He felt like they were outside of time, wandering across the open plain of a video game's world map, hiding together inside a dream.

"I'm sorry," he said, clutching Kyle closer.

"You're apologizing to me?" Kyle snorted. "I almost got you killed. What do you have to be sorry for?"

"That's a hell of a stretch, dude. Nobody almost got me killed except for Tenorman."

"He did this?" Kyle touched the bandage on Stan's neck, and he moaned when he felt Stan shiver.

"Yeah," Stan said. "But, no, listen. I'm sorry I sent those stupid texts."

"What- when? Oh, god, don't worry about it. I emailed you to tell you that you needed therapy. I think I was out of my mind with work-related exhaustion at the time."

"But your heart was in the right place. I knew that when I read it. And you're not wrong. I was just being stubborn."

"You were being stubborn? I stormed out of town and ignored your instincts. I just, I- couldn't get the mature distance I wanted from any of it, and least of all from you. I wanted to get angry at you about that. I tried."

"I tried, too," Stan said. Kyle lifted his head and pressed two fingers to Stan's lips, very softly. He looked so sad, and it scared Stan that he could still make Kyle sad and not know why, or how to stop.

"I'm tired of fighting it," Kyle said, whispering again.

"What?" Stan asked, his hands going to Kyle's waist.

"That I need you. Like it's some weakness. Maybe it is, but. There are worse things than being weak to this."

"You're not weak." Stan cupped Kyle's face and swiped away the unshed tear at the corner of his eye before it could fall. Kyle had always hated crying in front of him. "I'm the one who can't even lift my head off this pillow," Stan said. "I'd be kissing you so hard if I could."

Kyle exhaled and swooped down, his lips just ghosting over Stan's before he froze and turned toward the door. Sharon was there, tearful and holding her huge purse across her chest like a shield.

"Stan, oh, honey," she said, walking halfway toward the bed and pausing to laugh. "Kyle, I'm sorry. I didn't know, um."

"It's okay," Kyle said. He tried to slide away, but Stan held him in place, wrapping his arm around Kyle's waist and struggling to sit up against his pillows. He reached out for his mom with his free arm when she walked closer, and she kissed his hand before leaning down to hug him. Kyle started to move away again, but Sharon pulled him into the hug before he could.

"I'm so glad you're here," she said when she'd released them both, beaming at Kyle as if he had personally lifted Stan out of the hell Tenorman had kicked him into. Kyle seemed stunned, and Stan had to swallow down a laugh.

"Yes, well," Kyle said. "Me too."

Bebe's mother also arrived that evening, coming from Nevada. She was far less composed than Sharon, who joined Bebe in attempting to convince Bebe's mother that her daughter was really was okay. Kyle lingered near Stan's bed and seemed to feel awkward at times, even with Kenny, but he also seemed unwilling to leave. Stan couldn't stop touching Kyle, mostly his back and his arms, groping for him clumsily even when he was already sitting on the bed.

"I'm here," Kyle murmured at one point, speaking into Stan's ear when he was halfway between sleep and waking, numbed by the latest administration of pain meds from the nurse who periodically checked on him. Stan turned his face against Kyle's and breathed deeply enough that he could feel a fuzzy ache in both broken ribs.

"Stay here," Stan said, and then he shook his head, because he didn't expect Kyle to stay in South Park; Kyle hated it here, it haunted him. "I mean," Stan said, blinking up at Kyle. "Don't leave me?"

That seemed like a different kind of request, but it sounded so selfish out loud. Kyle smiled and kissed Stan's cheek, then his lips, very carefully.

"I won't leave you," Kyle whispered, and Stan fell asleep believing him. In the place between awake and dreaming he knew it was true, not because he could predict the future but because, though they had both tried for years to believe that he had, Kyle had never left him in any way that mattered. Stan could feel it even when he slept: Kyle was close in a way that couldn't be defeated by physical distance or the passage of years, warm against his cheek, keeping him safe in the dark.