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sekritomgTitle: Things are Getting Kind of Gross
Author: Me,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sekrit_omg!
Pairing: S/K, B/K/E
Rating: PG13
Summary: True, Stan shrieked like a little girl the first time Kyle woke up without any eyes, but Kyle tried not to make fun of the poor guy — if he could have seen his own reflection, he might have shrieked, too.
Note: I wrote this forburnawayy, and I was waiting for her to come back to post. But it does me no favors on my computer being read by no one ... so.
I'll post a link when I put it on FF.net in all its formatted glory.
The way it went in South Park was, if you went looking for answers you would probably end up in way over your head, and … well, it was complicated. It was complicated, and Kyle was tired, and he didn’t know why he didn’t have any eyes, but it didn’t seem to make any less sense than Kenny dying and coming back all the time, or that his younger brother’s jaw came unhinged when he talked. So whatever, man. Whatever, and he resigned himself to it being like this. True, Stan shrieked like a little girl the first time Kyle woke up without any eyes, but Kyle tried not to make fun of the poor guy — if he could have seen his own reflection, he might have shrieked, too.
“Your eyes!” Stan cried, running his fingers over the empty sockets that used to hold Kyle’s eyes. “Your beautiful green eyes!”
“I think they were brown,” Kyle corrected.
“Oh, my, no, they were green.”
“I think I know the color of my own eyes, Stan.”
“Are you suggesting I don’t know my boyfriend’s eye color?”
“Like it matters!” Kyle pushed Stan off of him. “How am I supposed to see now?”
The answer was apparently, ‘You aren’t.’ Not wanting to be seen without eyes, Kyle stayed in bed. Stan left the radio on for him, and Kyle listened to NPR. He tried to call in sick for work, but the first few times he reached for the phone, he picked up the alarm clock. When he found the phone, he realized he didn’t know what number he was dialing, and had no way of finding it in his directory. So he seethed, and tried to cry during “This American Life,” but as he also no longer had tear ducts, this only resulted in a dry, aching feeling, and shortness of breath.
Kyle didn’t know if it was daylight or twilight when Stan returned, but he returned with a pair of sunglasses. “No one will know,” he said, sliding the gigantic frames onto Kyle’s face. “Everyone will just think you are very glamorous.”
“Everyone will think I’m a gay shithead,” Kyle corrected.
“You are a gay shithead,” Stan agreed. “But you’re my gay shithead, eyes or no eyes.”
~
Kenny heard Kyle was feeling down, and came to see him. “New look?” he asked, unaware of the irony.
“This is not a look,” Kyle insisted. “Did you know that UVA rays can destroy your retinas even at night?” he lied, making up things as he strung words together. “Now that the ozone layer is so depleted, the sun’s harmful glare can hurt your corneas even indoors. I’m just being precautious, like I’ve always done. Because, you see, that’s me, the same old Kyle Broflovski who hasn’t changed at all.”
“Can I eat some of the same old Kyle Broflovski’s kosher bologna?” Kenny asked.
“Sure, but bring me a slice.”
Kyle and Kenny ate kosher bologna sitting on Kyle and Stan’s bed. With trepidation, Kenny braced himself for Kyle to smack him for eating messily, and dropping pieces into the sheets. Kyle seemed not to notice.
“What brings you by?” Kyle asked.
“Stan says you’re going through menopause.”
“He said that?”
“No, that’s my freelance interpretation.”
“Kenny.” Kyle sighed. He did not roll his eyes. “That’s not what that word means.”
“I’m taking vocabulary to unprecedented new levels. I’ll have you know I got a 17 on the ACT once. I ain’t stupid.” Not stupid, maybe, but Kyle didn’t have the heart to inform Kenny that 17 was not such a great score. “So what’s wrong? You didn’t quit your job, did you? Because don’t get me wrong, I’ve been looking for an unemployment buddy to while away the hours with. It’s just…” Kenny shoved a thoughtful piece of bologna into his mouth. “…don’t you have anything better to do?”
“No, I don’t.” Kyle took off his sunglasses, and let Kenny stare are him with intrigue and horror.
“Oh my god,” Kenny breathed. “That’s like something out of a nightmare.”
“I wouldn’t know. I can’t see it. But yeah, this whole thing has vaguely resembled a nightmare. At least I’ve figured out how to get into the bathroom without tripping over the toilet and dying.”
“Dying might be better. Put your sunglasses back on.”
Kyle did so. “Stan screamed when he saw.”
“Like a woman?”
“Like a baby.”
“Oh, that Stan, always with the drama.”
Kyle’s mouth tensed, and he fell back onto the pillows. He hoped that Kenny would not notice that he’d been wearing the same outfit for four days. “But what do you think about the sunglasses? Does it make things better? Does it make me look … normal?”
“I think it makes you look like you’re trying to pass for female in 1962,” Kenny answered. “And you’re not doing a very good job. But that’s just me. You know who knows all about crossdressing?”
Kyle thought for a moment. “There are so many options.”
“I’ll give Butters a call for you, buddy. He owes me a favor.”
“And why would that be?”
“I got his cat out a tree for him.” Kenny paused. “And I fucked him.”
“And he owes you a favor?” Kyle gaped.
“Hey, it’s not me. The ladies are just clamoring for Kenny McCormick out there. I don’t gotta be giving it out for frees to anyone who wants a little.”
Kyle sighed; some days he could barely believe Kenny’s selective mangling of the English language. Kyle also could not believe that Kenny’s services were in demand by anyone who did not want a tricky case of gonorrhea. “Fine, call him,” Kyle said.
“Okay, will do.” Kenny grinned. “Do you realize that if you wanted, Stan could fuck your eye sockets? He’s always complaining to me about how you guys never do anything fun. Maybe you should let him!”
Kyle was thankful he could not cry, and dismayed at how his eye sockets were stinging.
~
Butters lived up the road, in a studio flat on the top floor of someone’s house. Thinking about Butters’ apartment, it seemed unlikely that he and Kenny had fucked there, because the bed was actually a fold-out couch, and it was sticking halfway into the galley kitchen. On the other hand, Kenny’s apartment was much worse — he shared it with his older brother, neither of them knew how to replace a light bulb, and the yellow-tinged windows were all barred even though it was on the fourth floor. Kyle hoped and prayed that he could get a job that did not require the use of eyes, but he did not want one of those blind-people pity/outreach jobs. It was only a few days into his eyeless odyssey, and he knew he would never cut it as a pharmaceutical rep again. Currently he was letting day after day of his paid vacation cushion him until unemployment. The thought of having to give up his moderate-to-do lifestyle and slum it like his high school friends depressed him.
Stan led Kyle up the street, hand protectively at the small of his back, mumbling obstacles and instructions into his ears: “Bike, go left. Dog, step over. Greenpeace rep, give her the finger.”
Kyle didn’t know where to direct his finger, so he kept his hand clenched.
~
“Oh, that Kenny.” Butters slumped his shoulders, hands on his knees. He looked defeated, like his day couldn’t get any worse, and that was before this missing-eye drama. “I ain’t an ophthalmologist, I’m studying to be a podiatrist, and they’re different. And it’s only my second year!” Butters sniffed. “And he could call me every once in a while.”
“Um.” Stan looked at Kyle, and Kyle turned away. Stan was not insulted; he knew Kyle didn’t know where he was. “But can you help us?”
“I’ll help you if you tell Kenny he’s gotta return my phone calls. I might be a medical student and they do work us hard, but I do got time to wonder why I can’t meet a guy who won’t disappear after I let him be intimate with me. Not to mention I’m a medical student, and I know a case of gonorrhea when I see it, or in this instance, feel it.”
“Okay,” Stan agreed. “But you know he doesn’t listen to anyone other for Cartman.”
“That don’t surprise me. Eric never calls back either.”
“Shit, Butters.” Kyle pushed his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose. “I’ll trade you antibiotic samples for eye advice and we can just bypass Kenny entirely. Does this mean in some extended way Cartman’s got gonorrhea?”
“Oh, but I want you to talk to him. Someone’s gotta chew that boy out.”
“I think I can make him feel guilty,” Stan offered. “It’s all in the eyes — sorry, Ky — and a bit in the mouth. The right glance can make even the most hardened among us ache for me.”
“I don’t think it’s going to work,” Kyle grumbled.
“Why not?” Stan asked. “It works on you.”
“It does not!”
Stan lifted his brows and softened the arch of his mouth, lips going slack. “But I try so hard,” he moaned.
“I can’t see, douche bag. Try again.”
“Luckily for us Kenny can see,” Butters thrilled. “Oh, you’re gonna make him feel so bad about it!” He bashed his knuckles together, tittering with his bottom lip caught between his teeth.
“Irregardless,” Stan said. “Please just tell us what’s wrong with Kyle’s eyes.”
“Okay.” The fledgling medic slid off his stool and rolled up his sleeves. “You gotta remove your glasses.”
Kyle did so.
“Golly!” Butters gasped. “When you said you had something wrong with your eyes, I thought you meant you were having trouble seeing.”
“I am having trouble seeing.”
“But having a problem with you eyes is different from having no eyes at all! I ain’t never seen anything like this, fellas. Ever.”
“Well, what would you know?” Kyle snapped. He snatched his sunglasses off of his lap, and struggled to place them back on the bridge of his nose. “You’re a second-year, Butters, and you don’t know crap.”
“Well, I did try to tell you. I do feet, not eyes.”
“Studying feet is worthless!” Kyle cried. He threw his hands up in the air. “Who needs feet? I don’t. I need eyes!”
“Aw, I’m sorry,” Butters cooed. He reached out to pat Kyle on the knee; Kyle slapped his hand away. “Gosh, you must be in an awful grouchy mood.”
“He is in a grouchy mood,” Stan confirmed. “But I would be, too.”
“I’m right here! Don’t you talk about me like I’m not. I’m blind, not deaf!”
“You know what I think?” Butters asked. “I think you fellas should go talk to a real ophthalmologist. Luckily, I know one. You know what you could get? Two glass eyes. At least you’d look normal.”
“I don’t want glass eyes!” Kyle clutched his chest, panting. “I want my eyes!”
“Well, having a protracted freak-out ain’t gonna help,” Butters chided.
Stan sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Kyle’s health insurance doesn’t cover optometry or whatever, dude, and it’s going to run out on Friday, anyway, when he’s no longer employed.”
“Doesn’t your insurance cover him?”
Stan shook his head grimly. “No, it never has.”
“That just burns me up. It’s so—”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have a discussion about politics right now.” Stan pointed down at Kyle with his elbow. “We need help, man. “
“I want to see a real doctor,” Kyle declared. “Someone who’s actually graduated from medical school. Someone who actually knows about eyes.”
“I take offense!”
“You’re not a real doctor, Butters. I want a real doctor.”
“Well, that’s a good inclination, but how’re you gonna pay for a real doctor?”
“Maybe we could get some real insurance?” Stan proposed.
“Yeah, that could work. In the mean time, maybe you could learn Braille or something?”
Kyle whined and put his head in his hands. “I cannot believe this is happening to me.”
“Now we have to figure out how to pay for some insurance. Is this a preexisting condition?” Stan asked.
“Luckily, you know someone who writes policies,” Butters asked. He shuffled over to this kitchen, hobbled around the couch he used for a bed, and groped the pull on a drawer that stuck when it was halfway open. “Here.” Somehow, Butters retrieved a small rectangle of cardstock from his narrowly accessible drawer. Grinning, he presented it to Stan.
“What?” Kyle asked. “What is he getting for me?”
“That’s Eric’s business card,” Butters announced. Stan eyed it suspiciously.
“Oh, just take it. It ain’t diseased. He’s usually in his office between the hours of 9 and 5, but he won’t be in now, ‘cause he takes a three-hour lunch break.”
“Thanks, Butters.” Stan pocketed the card.
Kyle stood up and pushed his glasses up his nose again. “I have never more devotedly wished I were dead,” he declared.
On his way out of Butters’ building, Kyle slipped on a plastic bag that had been abandoned in the vestibule. Stan, clutching his hand, landed on top of him in a heap at the foot of the staircase. With mirth and embarrassment, cheeks reddening, he laughed a shallow, nervous laugh. Kyle moaned and curled up into a ball, shielding his mouth while waiting for Stan to get off of him.
~
Before visiting Cartman, Stan confiscated Kyle’s meager pile of drug samples. It momentarily occurred to him that perhaps this was redundant, as Kyle would have no way of discerning what was what, and a course of 20 doxycycline in one mouthful was more likely to clear up Kyle’s lingering adult acne than kill him. That, or give him a yeast infection. Later, after dinner and a sweaty glass of lukewarm lager, Stan came to the conclusion that there was nothing standing between Kyle and ingesting everything in the rolling carry-on suitcase he often used to pedal pharmaceuticals. So Stan decided to stand there, and put the suitcase on the top wire shelf of the closet, where Kyle could not reach even before he lost his eyes.
“Maybe he’ll help us,” Stan said the night before their appointment. He did not believe his own rhetoric.
“Yes, maybe he’ll help us,” Kyle agreed, “provided he’s figured out some obscure way to use it for leverage against me, or some other convoluted premise too exhausting to outline here.”
Stan inched closer to Kyle in the dark of their cramped bedroom. He was sure something smelled faintly of bologna, but couldn’t pinpoint it. “Do you know, I think when we were younger, I was the cynical one, and you always had one last chance left in you.”
“No, you were the gay one who played stupid songs on the guitar and puked on women and in hospitals. I’m still willing to give anyone another chance; that’s why I’m still friends with Kenny. But not Cartman. Cartman can suck my cock.”
“Okay. Well, be careful. I hear he has gonorrhea.” Stan pecked Kyle on the cheek and removed his sunglasses, folding them carefully and leaving them on the nightstand. He had to reach over Kyle’s chest to do this.
~
For the sheer satisfaction of it, Cartman kept Stan and Kyle waiting outside of his office for 45 minutes. Even the receptionist seemed to have a delighted look of glee on her face when she pointed to the leather loveseat across the room and told them Cartman was running behind.
“But I have an appointment!” Kyle protested. “Look at me, lady! Do I look like a guy who has time to sit around reading six-month-old issues of Time Magazine while I wait for Cartman to get it together to tell me he won’t insure me?”
“I assure you,” she replied, adjusting her nametag. Her name was Bridgette. “All of our magazines are up-to-date.”
“It’s irrelevant because I can’t read anything anyway!”
“Come on.” Stan sighed, leading Kyle to the couch with a gentle hand to the small of his back. “I’ll read to you.”
As it happened, Cartman’s office only stocked copies of the National Review, which Stan tried to read to Kyle in a sarcastic voice, letting the ludicrous tacks of the magazine speak for itself: “Liberal fascism: Do the ‘grassroots’ activists of the left want to make abortion mandatory?” He snorted. “Good god. Cartman is a fucking cliché of himself sometimes, man. Who believes this shit?” Stan glanced up to see Bridgette the receptionist giving him the evil eye. He coughed, awkwardly, and tossed the magazine onto the coffee table. “I mean, ‘grassroots,’ in quote marks. It’s like, man, maybe you don’t agree with them — with us, I guess — but come on, it’s not like you can fake a grassroots movement.”
“Oh, sure you can,” Kyle said. “Just like you can fake being politically conscious and then not vote.”
“That was only that one time. My concern is real! I care!”
“Indeed. Perhaps you care too much.”
“What is that supposed to mean, Kyle?” Stan asked.
Kyle crossed his arms. “Oh, nothing.”
“Sometimes you say these things and they don’t even make sense.”
“You’re not being very nice to me!” Kyle cried. “Be nice to me, okay? I need just one person to be fucking nice to me!”
“I’m fucking nice to you. If I were you, I’d be nicer to me, because I’m the guy you need to help walk you across the street without being hit by a car. And since when can blind people not give blowjobs, again?”
“You cannot fuck my eye sockets,” was Kyle’s curt reply.
Stan rolled his eyes. Kyle duly missed it. “Um, I didn’t ask to.”
“But you’ve been thinking about it! You want to!”
Stan averted his gaze from Kyle, only to catch Bridgette the receptionist scowling at them and forming a makeshift cross with her index fingers.
“What, working for one podiatrist-banging homo is decent, but two guys talk about eye-socket-fucking in your waiting room, and that’s not cool?” Stan called across the room.
Dropping her fingers, Bridgette declared, “I am but a conduit for the lord, to whom thou shalt answer in the end.”
“Oh.” Kyle sniffed. “Dandy.”
~
Cartman was all business, happy to play along. As he blathered about co-pays, Kyle clung to Stan’s arm, wondering if it was merely the assumption of Jew gold that led the fat fucker to consider him a valuable client.
That was the thing about Cartman: He was 90 percent talk, 10 percent action, and everyone had him pegged as a doer, and sometimes an evildoer. But he spent his life behind a desk, making charts and graphics and pamphlets. He always had. Even as a schoolboy his medium had been the chalkboard.
“But I can solve your problem, and just for a small fee—” Cartman paused, letting his tongue savor the diphthong. “—of 360 dollars…” He smiled broadly, his corpulent lips curving involuntarily. “…per month.”
“What?” Kyle stood up and slapped his hands on the near, flat surface of Cartman’s desk. “I don’t have 360 dollars, you fat piece of crap! I have to quit my job because I can’t travel for work, and I can’t work until I get my eyes back, and I can’t get my eyes back until I see a doctor to tell me where to find them, and I can’t see a doctor until I get health insurance, and I can’t get health insurance because I have no money because I can’t work because I have no eyes!”
“Welcome to the United States healthcare system,” Cartman croaked.
“It’s not fair. I’ve never harmed anyone in my life, and now I’m going to be crippled forever! It’s not fair! Why do bad things happen to good people?”
“As for why bad things happen to good people,” Cartman began, snapping the cap off of his pen, “that is one of the greatest mysteries of our time. But I can tell you why bad things happen to Jews, Kyle, and it’s because through your veins flows not blood, but an oozing black tar-like substance that burns the skin of us normal people on contact.” He coughed, and scribbled something on a form neatly ordered with Roman numerals and justified edges. “So obviously any medical working professional coming into contact with your fluids would need to be doubly covered—” Cartman made a small check mark in a box on his form “—not to mention you’re a fag and you have AIDS—” he added another check mark “—and you’re incredibly unpleasant to socialize with. New estimate for full-coverage health insurance: 575 dollars per month.”
“I don’t have AIDS,” Kyle refuted. “And for your information, we know about Butters.”
“What’s there to know about him?” Cartman asked. “He’s a boring little woman saddled with student loans? That’s not news. Try again.”
“No, Cartman. We know you slept with him,” Stan said.
The giddy spark died from Cartman’s eyes. “Let’s keep this business, gentlemen. You know, professional.”
“How many times?” Kyle asked.
“Did you know he was also fucking Kenny?” Stan asked.
“Did you ever fuck Kenny?”
“Did you guys ever all fuck together?”
“I have an idea,” Kyle announced. “Let’s all get together and have brunch.”
“Shut up, you stupid Jew!” Cartman snapped. Then he took a deep breath, and adjusted his collar. “There’s no need to get testy. After the words clitoris, tolerance, don’t, and low-carbon-emission fuels, the worst word on the planet is brunch.”
“Oh, but I know the best place for bagels and lox,” Kyle insisted. “It’s just been so long since we all got together and had girl talk.”
“That sounds really nice,” Stan added for emphasis, his tone dripping in an unusually feminine lilt. He arched his brows and slacked his lips. “Why don’t you want to have brunch with us? I was going to make a quiche — chocolate and bacon, just for you. That is so hurtful, Eric.”
“Ah,” Cartman hissed. “Goddamn you guys.”
~
Kyle’s eye sockets were not empty, Stan found that night. They were still coated with the sheer, thin slime that formerly covered his eyes. “A self-lubricated orifice,” Stan purred, stroking Kyle’s hair and nudging against his thigh. “It’s like a revelation. It reminds me of being with a girl, the lack of prep time. Of course, I enjoy prep time, in case you’re wondering.”
“Oh, good, well forget calling them eyes, then. Let’s go with face vaginas from now on.”
Stan dropped his hand from Kyle’s ear. “Well, that’s one way to kill the mood.”
“Sorry.” Kyle grabbed for his sunglasses, first managing to pick up a discarded condom. He tossed it on the floor. “That was disgusting. But I don’t feel bad. You can look at me, during. You can see what you’re kissing. I’m taking it on trust that you’re still hot.”
“I am,” Stan assured him. “But I have this feeling that even if I weren’t, you’d still be here.”
“Well, yeah, because where am I going to go, Detroit?” Kyle sighed. He adjusted his soft dick inside of his boxers. “Can you hand me a Kleenex?”
Stan did. “At least you wouldn’t be able to see how dismal it is.”
“Do you ever have that sinking feeling that your entire life is over?” Kyle blew his nose.
“A couple of times,” Stan admitted. “Each time I thought the world was ending. When Wendy dumped me in fourth grade.”
“But not during high school?”
“No, but I did when I graduated high school. I cried and cried and cried when my dog died.”
“He was really old,” Kyle recalled. “I think it was for the best. He was really sick, he couldn’t walk, he barely ate.”
Stan grabbed Kyle’s right hand, resting on his chest, and squeezed. “He was such a stupidly happy dog, he still lifted his head whenever I came home from college. My parents were like, ‘He’s still conscious of everything going on around him, you don’t have to do this,’ but I think it’s unfair to let an animal suffer. Lying on the laundry room floor unable to move wasn’t the life Sparky really wanted or anything.”
“Are you saying I’m like your dead dog, that if I can’t see I should just lay down and die?” Stan and Kyle did not have a laundry room.
“Absolutely not,” Stan said. “I am saying that you are not like my dead dog. I loved my dead dog, but he was still just a dog. You’re my life. Even when you had eyes, helping you find your way around was what gave me purpose.”
“I feel that’s only because you hate being a real estate agent.”
“I do hate it. Where do you think I learned that guilty look? People are so emotional about houses. And here we are, renting. We could buy a house, Kyle. Or at least an apartment. Or a nice ranch, with one floor, and a laundry room. This is a good time to buy, if you can get a loan, you know. I have access to foreclosures. We could live the dream, man. The delightful middle-class suburban dream. An investment. You like investing. Jews love investing. I can see it in your, um.” Stan paused, sat up, let go of Kyle’s hand. “Listen, so you don’t think I’m full of bullshit—”
“Stanley, I know you’re full of bullshit.”
“I just want you to know that whatever you think is the case, it’s not your eyes that convey the emotions, but the muscles around your eyes. You can’t see me, but I can read you. I can read that you’re unhappy.”
“I do hate to be the downer in your drink, but of course I am unhappy, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to get that. I don’t think buying a house is going to make me happy, either. Let’s just hope a licensed practitioner of ophthalmology can help us.”
~
He couldn’t.
Butters had given Stan a referral to one of his instructors, a semi-retired ophthalmologist whose office, in a shed out behind his house on a neglected little street outside of the town limits of Middle Park proper, was decked-out in eye charts with block letters, the top rows of which even Stan could not read from across the room. “Those are some very small letters,” he announced sheepishly.
“What are small letters?” Kyle asked.
“On the vision chart,” Stan explained. “On the wall directly across from you there are a number of yellowed 1970s-issue vision charts.”
“And who made you an appraiser of vision charts?”
Stan walked across the room to check out the copyright at the bottom of one poster. “This one, 1973,” he announced, grinning.
“I don’t believe you,” Kyle scoffed. “I want to see for myself.”
“Good luck with that,” Stan said. “Why don’t you just trust me?”
“That’s what you said before you stuck your dick in my eye socket!”
“It was okay.” Stan shrugged, and sat back down on the exam table, grasping Kyle’s nearest thigh, his left. “I don’t think you enjoyed it much.”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” Kyle grumbled. He turned away from Stan, and they sat in silence until Butters’ ophthalmologist friend showed up.
With plastic gloves, he stuck his fingers in Kyle’s eye sockets. “And you always had eyes before?” he asked. “This is very odd.”
“Oh, good, that’s news,” Kyle groaned. “Please get your fingers out of there! You’re really hurting me.”
“Sorry, son.” The doctor sighed, snapping rubber against his skin as he peeled his gloves off. “When did this happen?”
“Couple of weeks ago, I think, but of course I can’t tell you for sure because I can’t see a calendar.”
“The evening of March 27,” Stan tried to explain, “I came home from a showing and Kyle had just returned from a trip out of town.”
“I was a pharm rep,” Kyle explained. “And I traveled a lot. You know the drill. For Glaxo-Smith-Klein. I came home; I was very tired. I dropped off watching TV, and Stan woke me up. I couldn’t see, you know, blah blah blah … and Stan screeched like a banshee.”
“Oh, I did not screech, and certainly not like a fucking banshee.”
“Like some sorta woman, anyway.”
“Shut up, Kyle. Like you’re one to talk about banshee-screeching. You pretty much woke up the whole neighborhood the first time I—”
“So,” the ophthalmologist interrupted. “How did you get a job peddling products for Glaxo? No offense, but you don’t look old enough to be a pharmaceutical rep. You look about 17.”
“Oh.” Kyle cleared his throat. The ophthalmologist very kindly did not point out that he was talking to a wall. “None taken. I only look 17 to you? How flattering. My father settled a liability suit for them out-of-court, so he knew a couple of people in the sales department. I minored in bio, too, so I sort of had an in. Two ways.”
“And you boys are friends of Leo’s?”
“Yeah.” Stan nodded. “From way back.”
“College?”
“No,” Stan answered. “Kindergarten through high school.”
“That’s a long time,” the physician remarked. “He’s a good kid. He passed my anatomy class with flying colors.”
Kyle snorted. “Well, that explains his recent popularity.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” Stan shook his head. “Private joke.”
“Tell you what.” The ophthalmologist sighed, and removed his wire-frame glasses. He was not short, but Stan was preternaturally tall, and seated on the exam table next to Kyle, he towered over this doctor by at least two inches. Figuring speaking directly to Kyle was a lost cause, he talked up to Stan, who looked down patiently, hands in his lap. “I don’t know what to tell you boys. It’s a shame, a real shame, for a smart young man to lose something so precious. But there’s no pathology to follow here, and I do hate to say it, but I can’t find any trace of eyes ever having been in your face. Perhaps they’ll grow back, but with the stunted state of stem cell research, there’s nothing I can do to force it. Your insurance, though, I think, will cover two nice glass eyes for you. What color were they?”
Overlapping, Kyle said brown and Stan said green.
“Heterochromatic?” the doctor asked.
“No, godammit!” Kyle cried out. “My eyes were brown!”
“But would you like a nice set of green eyes?”
Kyle shook his head. “I want my eyes back,” he said in a fragile voice. “You don’t understand. I can’t leave the house by myself. I can’t read, I can’t write, I can’t cook—”
“Kyle.” Stan sighed. “You could never cook.”
“—I can’t piss without spraying the bowl, I can’t drive, I can’t shower by myself because what if I fall? I can’t play a song on my computer. I can’t look at the internet. I can’t do anything anymore. I need to see.” Kyle reached into Stan’s lap and grabbed one of his tan, strong hands with deep, blue veins. “I can’t depend on Stan to do everything for me, and then when we make love he can’t even look into my eyes. Can’t you help me?”
He sighed, deeply, and tried to make his voice gentle, but the doctor still answered, “I can make you a gorgeous pair of brown eyes, or green eyes. Considering your insurance, you could probably get both. You will look like a movie star.” And here his voice became very soft, and low: “But try as I might, I can’t make you see out of them.”
“Thank you,” Stan said. He wanted to give the doctor his hand, to be polite, but Kyle was leaning against him, making it difficult. “I think that’s probably the way we’ll go.”
“Thanks,” Kyle rasped in a snotty, viscous tone. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and his lashes trembled with each heave of his chest. His lids clenched around nothing, merely sticking to themselves and somewhat to the salmon flesh of Kyle’s muscles. He gritted his teeth as his face stung and his nose ran and Stan put both arms around him, kissing his paper-thin lids clasped to nothing.
“You just let me know.” The doctor looked into Stan’s eyes; they were the rich blue of a fresh bruise before it fades to autumnal yellow.
“We will.” Stan looked down at the doctor, smiling. “Please bill our insurance. We will write you a check for the remainder, our co-pay of 30 dollars.”
The doctor nodded, solemn and concerned. “Is he going to be alright?” he whispered, looking up at Stan.
“I can hear you,” Kyle hissed. “I’m blind, not deaf.”
“Thank you,” Stan repeated. “I think we just need to sit here for a moment.”
“Of course.”
The ophthalmologist shuffled out, and Stan and Kyle were left alone in the shack with an exam table and eye charts behind his house.
Continued here.
Author: Me,
sekrit_omg!Pairing: S/K, B/K/E
Rating: PG13
Summary: True, Stan shrieked like a little girl the first time Kyle woke up without any eyes, but Kyle tried not to make fun of the poor guy — if he could have seen his own reflection, he might have shrieked, too.
Note: I wrote this for
burnawayy, and I was waiting for her to come back to post. But it does me no favors on my computer being read by no one ... so. I'll post a link when I put it on FF.net in all its formatted glory.
The way it went in South Park was, if you went looking for answers you would probably end up in way over your head, and … well, it was complicated. It was complicated, and Kyle was tired, and he didn’t know why he didn’t have any eyes, but it didn’t seem to make any less sense than Kenny dying and coming back all the time, or that his younger brother’s jaw came unhinged when he talked. So whatever, man. Whatever, and he resigned himself to it being like this. True, Stan shrieked like a little girl the first time Kyle woke up without any eyes, but Kyle tried not to make fun of the poor guy — if he could have seen his own reflection, he might have shrieked, too.
“Your eyes!” Stan cried, running his fingers over the empty sockets that used to hold Kyle’s eyes. “Your beautiful green eyes!”
“I think they were brown,” Kyle corrected.
“Oh, my, no, they were green.”
“I think I know the color of my own eyes, Stan.”
“Are you suggesting I don’t know my boyfriend’s eye color?”
“Like it matters!” Kyle pushed Stan off of him. “How am I supposed to see now?”
The answer was apparently, ‘You aren’t.’ Not wanting to be seen without eyes, Kyle stayed in bed. Stan left the radio on for him, and Kyle listened to NPR. He tried to call in sick for work, but the first few times he reached for the phone, he picked up the alarm clock. When he found the phone, he realized he didn’t know what number he was dialing, and had no way of finding it in his directory. So he seethed, and tried to cry during “This American Life,” but as he also no longer had tear ducts, this only resulted in a dry, aching feeling, and shortness of breath.
Kyle didn’t know if it was daylight or twilight when Stan returned, but he returned with a pair of sunglasses. “No one will know,” he said, sliding the gigantic frames onto Kyle’s face. “Everyone will just think you are very glamorous.”
“Everyone will think I’m a gay shithead,” Kyle corrected.
“You are a gay shithead,” Stan agreed. “But you’re my gay shithead, eyes or no eyes.”
~
Kenny heard Kyle was feeling down, and came to see him. “New look?” he asked, unaware of the irony.
“This is not a look,” Kyle insisted. “Did you know that UVA rays can destroy your retinas even at night?” he lied, making up things as he strung words together. “Now that the ozone layer is so depleted, the sun’s harmful glare can hurt your corneas even indoors. I’m just being precautious, like I’ve always done. Because, you see, that’s me, the same old Kyle Broflovski who hasn’t changed at all.”
“Can I eat some of the same old Kyle Broflovski’s kosher bologna?” Kenny asked.
“Sure, but bring me a slice.”
Kyle and Kenny ate kosher bologna sitting on Kyle and Stan’s bed. With trepidation, Kenny braced himself for Kyle to smack him for eating messily, and dropping pieces into the sheets. Kyle seemed not to notice.
“What brings you by?” Kyle asked.
“Stan says you’re going through menopause.”
“He said that?”
“No, that’s my freelance interpretation.”
“Kenny.” Kyle sighed. He did not roll his eyes. “That’s not what that word means.”
“I’m taking vocabulary to unprecedented new levels. I’ll have you know I got a 17 on the ACT once. I ain’t stupid.” Not stupid, maybe, but Kyle didn’t have the heart to inform Kenny that 17 was not such a great score. “So what’s wrong? You didn’t quit your job, did you? Because don’t get me wrong, I’ve been looking for an unemployment buddy to while away the hours with. It’s just…” Kenny shoved a thoughtful piece of bologna into his mouth. “…don’t you have anything better to do?”
“No, I don’t.” Kyle took off his sunglasses, and let Kenny stare are him with intrigue and horror.
“Oh my god,” Kenny breathed. “That’s like something out of a nightmare.”
“I wouldn’t know. I can’t see it. But yeah, this whole thing has vaguely resembled a nightmare. At least I’ve figured out how to get into the bathroom without tripping over the toilet and dying.”
“Dying might be better. Put your sunglasses back on.”
Kyle did so. “Stan screamed when he saw.”
“Like a woman?”
“Like a baby.”
“Oh, that Stan, always with the drama.”
Kyle’s mouth tensed, and he fell back onto the pillows. He hoped that Kenny would not notice that he’d been wearing the same outfit for four days. “But what do you think about the sunglasses? Does it make things better? Does it make me look … normal?”
“I think it makes you look like you’re trying to pass for female in 1962,” Kenny answered. “And you’re not doing a very good job. But that’s just me. You know who knows all about crossdressing?”
Kyle thought for a moment. “There are so many options.”
“I’ll give Butters a call for you, buddy. He owes me a favor.”
“And why would that be?”
“I got his cat out a tree for him.” Kenny paused. “And I fucked him.”
“And he owes you a favor?” Kyle gaped.
“Hey, it’s not me. The ladies are just clamoring for Kenny McCormick out there. I don’t gotta be giving it out for frees to anyone who wants a little.”
Kyle sighed; some days he could barely believe Kenny’s selective mangling of the English language. Kyle also could not believe that Kenny’s services were in demand by anyone who did not want a tricky case of gonorrhea. “Fine, call him,” Kyle said.
“Okay, will do.” Kenny grinned. “Do you realize that if you wanted, Stan could fuck your eye sockets? He’s always complaining to me about how you guys never do anything fun. Maybe you should let him!”
Kyle was thankful he could not cry, and dismayed at how his eye sockets were stinging.
~
Butters lived up the road, in a studio flat on the top floor of someone’s house. Thinking about Butters’ apartment, it seemed unlikely that he and Kenny had fucked there, because the bed was actually a fold-out couch, and it was sticking halfway into the galley kitchen. On the other hand, Kenny’s apartment was much worse — he shared it with his older brother, neither of them knew how to replace a light bulb, and the yellow-tinged windows were all barred even though it was on the fourth floor. Kyle hoped and prayed that he could get a job that did not require the use of eyes, but he did not want one of those blind-people pity/outreach jobs. It was only a few days into his eyeless odyssey, and he knew he would never cut it as a pharmaceutical rep again. Currently he was letting day after day of his paid vacation cushion him until unemployment. The thought of having to give up his moderate-to-do lifestyle and slum it like his high school friends depressed him.
Stan led Kyle up the street, hand protectively at the small of his back, mumbling obstacles and instructions into his ears: “Bike, go left. Dog, step over. Greenpeace rep, give her the finger.”
Kyle didn’t know where to direct his finger, so he kept his hand clenched.
~
“Oh, that Kenny.” Butters slumped his shoulders, hands on his knees. He looked defeated, like his day couldn’t get any worse, and that was before this missing-eye drama. “I ain’t an ophthalmologist, I’m studying to be a podiatrist, and they’re different. And it’s only my second year!” Butters sniffed. “And he could call me every once in a while.”
“Um.” Stan looked at Kyle, and Kyle turned away. Stan was not insulted; he knew Kyle didn’t know where he was. “But can you help us?”
“I’ll help you if you tell Kenny he’s gotta return my phone calls. I might be a medical student and they do work us hard, but I do got time to wonder why I can’t meet a guy who won’t disappear after I let him be intimate with me. Not to mention I’m a medical student, and I know a case of gonorrhea when I see it, or in this instance, feel it.”
“Okay,” Stan agreed. “But you know he doesn’t listen to anyone other for Cartman.”
“That don’t surprise me. Eric never calls back either.”
“Shit, Butters.” Kyle pushed his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose. “I’ll trade you antibiotic samples for eye advice and we can just bypass Kenny entirely. Does this mean in some extended way Cartman’s got gonorrhea?”
“Oh, but I want you to talk to him. Someone’s gotta chew that boy out.”
“I think I can make him feel guilty,” Stan offered. “It’s all in the eyes — sorry, Ky — and a bit in the mouth. The right glance can make even the most hardened among us ache for me.”
“I don’t think it’s going to work,” Kyle grumbled.
“Why not?” Stan asked. “It works on you.”
“It does not!”
Stan lifted his brows and softened the arch of his mouth, lips going slack. “But I try so hard,” he moaned.
“I can’t see, douche bag. Try again.”
“Luckily for us Kenny can see,” Butters thrilled. “Oh, you’re gonna make him feel so bad about it!” He bashed his knuckles together, tittering with his bottom lip caught between his teeth.
“Irregardless,” Stan said. “Please just tell us what’s wrong with Kyle’s eyes.”
“Okay.” The fledgling medic slid off his stool and rolled up his sleeves. “You gotta remove your glasses.”
Kyle did so.
“Golly!” Butters gasped. “When you said you had something wrong with your eyes, I thought you meant you were having trouble seeing.”
“I am having trouble seeing.”
“But having a problem with you eyes is different from having no eyes at all! I ain’t never seen anything like this, fellas. Ever.”
“Well, what would you know?” Kyle snapped. He snatched his sunglasses off of his lap, and struggled to place them back on the bridge of his nose. “You’re a second-year, Butters, and you don’t know crap.”
“Well, I did try to tell you. I do feet, not eyes.”
“Studying feet is worthless!” Kyle cried. He threw his hands up in the air. “Who needs feet? I don’t. I need eyes!”
“Aw, I’m sorry,” Butters cooed. He reached out to pat Kyle on the knee; Kyle slapped his hand away. “Gosh, you must be in an awful grouchy mood.”
“He is in a grouchy mood,” Stan confirmed. “But I would be, too.”
“I’m right here! Don’t you talk about me like I’m not. I’m blind, not deaf!”
“You know what I think?” Butters asked. “I think you fellas should go talk to a real ophthalmologist. Luckily, I know one. You know what you could get? Two glass eyes. At least you’d look normal.”
“I don’t want glass eyes!” Kyle clutched his chest, panting. “I want my eyes!”
“Well, having a protracted freak-out ain’t gonna help,” Butters chided.
Stan sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Kyle’s health insurance doesn’t cover optometry or whatever, dude, and it’s going to run out on Friday, anyway, when he’s no longer employed.”
“Doesn’t your insurance cover him?”
Stan shook his head grimly. “No, it never has.”
“That just burns me up. It’s so—”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have a discussion about politics right now.” Stan pointed down at Kyle with his elbow. “We need help, man. “
“I want to see a real doctor,” Kyle declared. “Someone who’s actually graduated from medical school. Someone who actually knows about eyes.”
“I take offense!”
“You’re not a real doctor, Butters. I want a real doctor.”
“Well, that’s a good inclination, but how’re you gonna pay for a real doctor?”
“Maybe we could get some real insurance?” Stan proposed.
“Yeah, that could work. In the mean time, maybe you could learn Braille or something?”
Kyle whined and put his head in his hands. “I cannot believe this is happening to me.”
“Now we have to figure out how to pay for some insurance. Is this a preexisting condition?” Stan asked.
“Luckily, you know someone who writes policies,” Butters asked. He shuffled over to this kitchen, hobbled around the couch he used for a bed, and groped the pull on a drawer that stuck when it was halfway open. “Here.” Somehow, Butters retrieved a small rectangle of cardstock from his narrowly accessible drawer. Grinning, he presented it to Stan.
“What?” Kyle asked. “What is he getting for me?”
“That’s Eric’s business card,” Butters announced. Stan eyed it suspiciously.
“Oh, just take it. It ain’t diseased. He’s usually in his office between the hours of 9 and 5, but he won’t be in now, ‘cause he takes a three-hour lunch break.”
“Thanks, Butters.” Stan pocketed the card.
Kyle stood up and pushed his glasses up his nose again. “I have never more devotedly wished I were dead,” he declared.
On his way out of Butters’ building, Kyle slipped on a plastic bag that had been abandoned in the vestibule. Stan, clutching his hand, landed on top of him in a heap at the foot of the staircase. With mirth and embarrassment, cheeks reddening, he laughed a shallow, nervous laugh. Kyle moaned and curled up into a ball, shielding his mouth while waiting for Stan to get off of him.
~
Before visiting Cartman, Stan confiscated Kyle’s meager pile of drug samples. It momentarily occurred to him that perhaps this was redundant, as Kyle would have no way of discerning what was what, and a course of 20 doxycycline in one mouthful was more likely to clear up Kyle’s lingering adult acne than kill him. That, or give him a yeast infection. Later, after dinner and a sweaty glass of lukewarm lager, Stan came to the conclusion that there was nothing standing between Kyle and ingesting everything in the rolling carry-on suitcase he often used to pedal pharmaceuticals. So Stan decided to stand there, and put the suitcase on the top wire shelf of the closet, where Kyle could not reach even before he lost his eyes.
“Maybe he’ll help us,” Stan said the night before their appointment. He did not believe his own rhetoric.
“Yes, maybe he’ll help us,” Kyle agreed, “provided he’s figured out some obscure way to use it for leverage against me, or some other convoluted premise too exhausting to outline here.”
Stan inched closer to Kyle in the dark of their cramped bedroom. He was sure something smelled faintly of bologna, but couldn’t pinpoint it. “Do you know, I think when we were younger, I was the cynical one, and you always had one last chance left in you.”
“No, you were the gay one who played stupid songs on the guitar and puked on women and in hospitals. I’m still willing to give anyone another chance; that’s why I’m still friends with Kenny. But not Cartman. Cartman can suck my cock.”
“Okay. Well, be careful. I hear he has gonorrhea.” Stan pecked Kyle on the cheek and removed his sunglasses, folding them carefully and leaving them on the nightstand. He had to reach over Kyle’s chest to do this.
~
For the sheer satisfaction of it, Cartman kept Stan and Kyle waiting outside of his office for 45 minutes. Even the receptionist seemed to have a delighted look of glee on her face when she pointed to the leather loveseat across the room and told them Cartman was running behind.
“But I have an appointment!” Kyle protested. “Look at me, lady! Do I look like a guy who has time to sit around reading six-month-old issues of Time Magazine while I wait for Cartman to get it together to tell me he won’t insure me?”
“I assure you,” she replied, adjusting her nametag. Her name was Bridgette. “All of our magazines are up-to-date.”
“It’s irrelevant because I can’t read anything anyway!”
“Come on.” Stan sighed, leading Kyle to the couch with a gentle hand to the small of his back. “I’ll read to you.”
As it happened, Cartman’s office only stocked copies of the National Review, which Stan tried to read to Kyle in a sarcastic voice, letting the ludicrous tacks of the magazine speak for itself: “Liberal fascism: Do the ‘grassroots’ activists of the left want to make abortion mandatory?” He snorted. “Good god. Cartman is a fucking cliché of himself sometimes, man. Who believes this shit?” Stan glanced up to see Bridgette the receptionist giving him the evil eye. He coughed, awkwardly, and tossed the magazine onto the coffee table. “I mean, ‘grassroots,’ in quote marks. It’s like, man, maybe you don’t agree with them — with us, I guess — but come on, it’s not like you can fake a grassroots movement.”
“Oh, sure you can,” Kyle said. “Just like you can fake being politically conscious and then not vote.”
“That was only that one time. My concern is real! I care!”
“Indeed. Perhaps you care too much.”
“What is that supposed to mean, Kyle?” Stan asked.
Kyle crossed his arms. “Oh, nothing.”
“Sometimes you say these things and they don’t even make sense.”
“You’re not being very nice to me!” Kyle cried. “Be nice to me, okay? I need just one person to be fucking nice to me!”
“I’m fucking nice to you. If I were you, I’d be nicer to me, because I’m the guy you need to help walk you across the street without being hit by a car. And since when can blind people not give blowjobs, again?”
“You cannot fuck my eye sockets,” was Kyle’s curt reply.
Stan rolled his eyes. Kyle duly missed it. “Um, I didn’t ask to.”
“But you’ve been thinking about it! You want to!”
Stan averted his gaze from Kyle, only to catch Bridgette the receptionist scowling at them and forming a makeshift cross with her index fingers.
“What, working for one podiatrist-banging homo is decent, but two guys talk about eye-socket-fucking in your waiting room, and that’s not cool?” Stan called across the room.
Dropping her fingers, Bridgette declared, “I am but a conduit for the lord, to whom thou shalt answer in the end.”
“Oh.” Kyle sniffed. “Dandy.”
~
Cartman was all business, happy to play along. As he blathered about co-pays, Kyle clung to Stan’s arm, wondering if it was merely the assumption of Jew gold that led the fat fucker to consider him a valuable client.
That was the thing about Cartman: He was 90 percent talk, 10 percent action, and everyone had him pegged as a doer, and sometimes an evildoer. But he spent his life behind a desk, making charts and graphics and pamphlets. He always had. Even as a schoolboy his medium had been the chalkboard.
“But I can solve your problem, and just for a small fee—” Cartman paused, letting his tongue savor the diphthong. “—of 360 dollars…” He smiled broadly, his corpulent lips curving involuntarily. “…per month.”
“What?” Kyle stood up and slapped his hands on the near, flat surface of Cartman’s desk. “I don’t have 360 dollars, you fat piece of crap! I have to quit my job because I can’t travel for work, and I can’t work until I get my eyes back, and I can’t get my eyes back until I see a doctor to tell me where to find them, and I can’t see a doctor until I get health insurance, and I can’t get health insurance because I have no money because I can’t work because I have no eyes!”
“Welcome to the United States healthcare system,” Cartman croaked.
“It’s not fair. I’ve never harmed anyone in my life, and now I’m going to be crippled forever! It’s not fair! Why do bad things happen to good people?”
“As for why bad things happen to good people,” Cartman began, snapping the cap off of his pen, “that is one of the greatest mysteries of our time. But I can tell you why bad things happen to Jews, Kyle, and it’s because through your veins flows not blood, but an oozing black tar-like substance that burns the skin of us normal people on contact.” He coughed, and scribbled something on a form neatly ordered with Roman numerals and justified edges. “So obviously any medical working professional coming into contact with your fluids would need to be doubly covered—” Cartman made a small check mark in a box on his form “—not to mention you’re a fag and you have AIDS—” he added another check mark “—and you’re incredibly unpleasant to socialize with. New estimate for full-coverage health insurance: 575 dollars per month.”
“I don’t have AIDS,” Kyle refuted. “And for your information, we know about Butters.”
“What’s there to know about him?” Cartman asked. “He’s a boring little woman saddled with student loans? That’s not news. Try again.”
“No, Cartman. We know you slept with him,” Stan said.
The giddy spark died from Cartman’s eyes. “Let’s keep this business, gentlemen. You know, professional.”
“How many times?” Kyle asked.
“Did you know he was also fucking Kenny?” Stan asked.
“Did you ever fuck Kenny?”
“Did you guys ever all fuck together?”
“I have an idea,” Kyle announced. “Let’s all get together and have brunch.”
“Shut up, you stupid Jew!” Cartman snapped. Then he took a deep breath, and adjusted his collar. “There’s no need to get testy. After the words clitoris, tolerance, don’t, and low-carbon-emission fuels, the worst word on the planet is brunch.”
“Oh, but I know the best place for bagels and lox,” Kyle insisted. “It’s just been so long since we all got together and had girl talk.”
“That sounds really nice,” Stan added for emphasis, his tone dripping in an unusually feminine lilt. He arched his brows and slacked his lips. “Why don’t you want to have brunch with us? I was going to make a quiche — chocolate and bacon, just for you. That is so hurtful, Eric.”
“Ah,” Cartman hissed. “Goddamn you guys.”
~
Kyle’s eye sockets were not empty, Stan found that night. They were still coated with the sheer, thin slime that formerly covered his eyes. “A self-lubricated orifice,” Stan purred, stroking Kyle’s hair and nudging against his thigh. “It’s like a revelation. It reminds me of being with a girl, the lack of prep time. Of course, I enjoy prep time, in case you’re wondering.”
“Oh, good, well forget calling them eyes, then. Let’s go with face vaginas from now on.”
Stan dropped his hand from Kyle’s ear. “Well, that’s one way to kill the mood.”
“Sorry.” Kyle grabbed for his sunglasses, first managing to pick up a discarded condom. He tossed it on the floor. “That was disgusting. But I don’t feel bad. You can look at me, during. You can see what you’re kissing. I’m taking it on trust that you’re still hot.”
“I am,” Stan assured him. “But I have this feeling that even if I weren’t, you’d still be here.”
“Well, yeah, because where am I going to go, Detroit?” Kyle sighed. He adjusted his soft dick inside of his boxers. “Can you hand me a Kleenex?”
Stan did. “At least you wouldn’t be able to see how dismal it is.”
“Do you ever have that sinking feeling that your entire life is over?” Kyle blew his nose.
“A couple of times,” Stan admitted. “Each time I thought the world was ending. When Wendy dumped me in fourth grade.”
“But not during high school?”
“No, but I did when I graduated high school. I cried and cried and cried when my dog died.”
“He was really old,” Kyle recalled. “I think it was for the best. He was really sick, he couldn’t walk, he barely ate.”
Stan grabbed Kyle’s right hand, resting on his chest, and squeezed. “He was such a stupidly happy dog, he still lifted his head whenever I came home from college. My parents were like, ‘He’s still conscious of everything going on around him, you don’t have to do this,’ but I think it’s unfair to let an animal suffer. Lying on the laundry room floor unable to move wasn’t the life Sparky really wanted or anything.”
“Are you saying I’m like your dead dog, that if I can’t see I should just lay down and die?” Stan and Kyle did not have a laundry room.
“Absolutely not,” Stan said. “I am saying that you are not like my dead dog. I loved my dead dog, but he was still just a dog. You’re my life. Even when you had eyes, helping you find your way around was what gave me purpose.”
“I feel that’s only because you hate being a real estate agent.”
“I do hate it. Where do you think I learned that guilty look? People are so emotional about houses. And here we are, renting. We could buy a house, Kyle. Or at least an apartment. Or a nice ranch, with one floor, and a laundry room. This is a good time to buy, if you can get a loan, you know. I have access to foreclosures. We could live the dream, man. The delightful middle-class suburban dream. An investment. You like investing. Jews love investing. I can see it in your, um.” Stan paused, sat up, let go of Kyle’s hand. “Listen, so you don’t think I’m full of bullshit—”
“Stanley, I know you’re full of bullshit.”
“I just want you to know that whatever you think is the case, it’s not your eyes that convey the emotions, but the muscles around your eyes. You can’t see me, but I can read you. I can read that you’re unhappy.”
“I do hate to be the downer in your drink, but of course I am unhappy, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to get that. I don’t think buying a house is going to make me happy, either. Let’s just hope a licensed practitioner of ophthalmology can help us.”
~
He couldn’t.
Butters had given Stan a referral to one of his instructors, a semi-retired ophthalmologist whose office, in a shed out behind his house on a neglected little street outside of the town limits of Middle Park proper, was decked-out in eye charts with block letters, the top rows of which even Stan could not read from across the room. “Those are some very small letters,” he announced sheepishly.
“What are small letters?” Kyle asked.
“On the vision chart,” Stan explained. “On the wall directly across from you there are a number of yellowed 1970s-issue vision charts.”
“And who made you an appraiser of vision charts?”
Stan walked across the room to check out the copyright at the bottom of one poster. “This one, 1973,” he announced, grinning.
“I don’t believe you,” Kyle scoffed. “I want to see for myself.”
“Good luck with that,” Stan said. “Why don’t you just trust me?”
“That’s what you said before you stuck your dick in my eye socket!”
“It was okay.” Stan shrugged, and sat back down on the exam table, grasping Kyle’s nearest thigh, his left. “I don’t think you enjoyed it much.”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” Kyle grumbled. He turned away from Stan, and they sat in silence until Butters’ ophthalmologist friend showed up.
With plastic gloves, he stuck his fingers in Kyle’s eye sockets. “And you always had eyes before?” he asked. “This is very odd.”
“Oh, good, that’s news,” Kyle groaned. “Please get your fingers out of there! You’re really hurting me.”
“Sorry, son.” The doctor sighed, snapping rubber against his skin as he peeled his gloves off. “When did this happen?”
“Couple of weeks ago, I think, but of course I can’t tell you for sure because I can’t see a calendar.”
“The evening of March 27,” Stan tried to explain, “I came home from a showing and Kyle had just returned from a trip out of town.”
“I was a pharm rep,” Kyle explained. “And I traveled a lot. You know the drill. For Glaxo-Smith-Klein. I came home; I was very tired. I dropped off watching TV, and Stan woke me up. I couldn’t see, you know, blah blah blah … and Stan screeched like a banshee.”
“Oh, I did not screech, and certainly not like a fucking banshee.”
“Like some sorta woman, anyway.”
“Shut up, Kyle. Like you’re one to talk about banshee-screeching. You pretty much woke up the whole neighborhood the first time I—”
“So,” the ophthalmologist interrupted. “How did you get a job peddling products for Glaxo? No offense, but you don’t look old enough to be a pharmaceutical rep. You look about 17.”
“Oh.” Kyle cleared his throat. The ophthalmologist very kindly did not point out that he was talking to a wall. “None taken. I only look 17 to you? How flattering. My father settled a liability suit for them out-of-court, so he knew a couple of people in the sales department. I minored in bio, too, so I sort of had an in. Two ways.”
“And you boys are friends of Leo’s?”
“Yeah.” Stan nodded. “From way back.”
“College?”
“No,” Stan answered. “Kindergarten through high school.”
“That’s a long time,” the physician remarked. “He’s a good kid. He passed my anatomy class with flying colors.”
Kyle snorted. “Well, that explains his recent popularity.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” Stan shook his head. “Private joke.”
“Tell you what.” The ophthalmologist sighed, and removed his wire-frame glasses. He was not short, but Stan was preternaturally tall, and seated on the exam table next to Kyle, he towered over this doctor by at least two inches. Figuring speaking directly to Kyle was a lost cause, he talked up to Stan, who looked down patiently, hands in his lap. “I don’t know what to tell you boys. It’s a shame, a real shame, for a smart young man to lose something so precious. But there’s no pathology to follow here, and I do hate to say it, but I can’t find any trace of eyes ever having been in your face. Perhaps they’ll grow back, but with the stunted state of stem cell research, there’s nothing I can do to force it. Your insurance, though, I think, will cover two nice glass eyes for you. What color were they?”
Overlapping, Kyle said brown and Stan said green.
“Heterochromatic?” the doctor asked.
“No, godammit!” Kyle cried out. “My eyes were brown!”
“But would you like a nice set of green eyes?”
Kyle shook his head. “I want my eyes back,” he said in a fragile voice. “You don’t understand. I can’t leave the house by myself. I can’t read, I can’t write, I can’t cook—”
“Kyle.” Stan sighed. “You could never cook.”
“—I can’t piss without spraying the bowl, I can’t drive, I can’t shower by myself because what if I fall? I can’t play a song on my computer. I can’t look at the internet. I can’t do anything anymore. I need to see.” Kyle reached into Stan’s lap and grabbed one of his tan, strong hands with deep, blue veins. “I can’t depend on Stan to do everything for me, and then when we make love he can’t even look into my eyes. Can’t you help me?”
He sighed, deeply, and tried to make his voice gentle, but the doctor still answered, “I can make you a gorgeous pair of brown eyes, or green eyes. Considering your insurance, you could probably get both. You will look like a movie star.” And here his voice became very soft, and low: “But try as I might, I can’t make you see out of them.”
“Thank you,” Stan said. He wanted to give the doctor his hand, to be polite, but Kyle was leaning against him, making it difficult. “I think that’s probably the way we’ll go.”
“Thanks,” Kyle rasped in a snotty, viscous tone. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and his lashes trembled with each heave of his chest. His lids clenched around nothing, merely sticking to themselves and somewhat to the salmon flesh of Kyle’s muscles. He gritted his teeth as his face stung and his nose ran and Stan put both arms around him, kissing his paper-thin lids clasped to nothing.
“You just let me know.” The doctor looked into Stan’s eyes; they were the rich blue of a fresh bruise before it fades to autumnal yellow.
“We will.” Stan looked down at the doctor, smiling. “Please bill our insurance. We will write you a check for the remainder, our co-pay of 30 dollars.”
The doctor nodded, solemn and concerned. “Is he going to be alright?” he whispered, looking up at Stan.
“I can hear you,” Kyle hissed. “I’m blind, not deaf.”
“Thank you,” Stan repeated. “I think we just need to sit here for a moment.”
“Of course.”
The ophthalmologist shuffled out, and Stan and Kyle were left alone in the shack with an exam table and eye charts behind his house.
Continued here.