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sekritomgContinued from here.
Kyle spent the rest of the week pointedly avoiding Stan while he and Craig planned their protest. All they really did was paint signs; all of Kyle’s blandly brandished crisp block letters and all of Craig’s were profane and sloppy. They attempted to think of a rallying cry or protest song of some sort, but their two attempts were interrupted, the first because Craig crawled on top of Kyle and began dry humping him, and the second because they couldn’t think of anything that rhymed with ‘threat level orange.’ Craig’s suggestion, “I have a remarkable scrotum,” made Kyle giggle appreciatively, but was ultimately rejected.
On Friday afternoon, Kyle took his brother out for pizza. He didn’t know why he was doing this, because his mother had figured out about Craig anyway, given that they spent three nights straight together. Still, despite the fact that Sheila was still one step ahead of her son, Kyle felt the need to at least maintain the illusion that he hadn’t snuck out of the house the night his whirlwind affair had begun. Perhaps it had to do with his guilt at having hooked up outdoors, where the eyes of the town could potentially leer at him. Like it mattered — it was pretty clear by now that if anyone had seen them, they didn’t care. And if they did care, their little secret was rendered invalid the next day anyhow, when Craig told everyone he met in a 30-minute lunch period that he and Kyle had in fact swapped spit out of doors and were thus an item.
Despite the fact that Ike’s threat was entirely unnecessary Kyle would have felt horrible, just horrible, to deny him a slice of pizza. Ike loved pizza, almost as much as he loved thumbing through Kyle’s DVD collection and helping himself to whatever he wanted. He wasn’t really allowed to do this, of course, but Kyle considered himself aptly fit to meter out justice to his little brother in great, heaping teaspoons. Hence the trip to the Pizza Gultch, and the swift and brutal ass-kickings that Kyle distributed on something like a weekly basis. Kyle did not make the connection that this was why Ike found his fading bruises so enthralling — to him, his brother was a bringer of doom rather that its victim. Perhaps Ike considered this his own little piece of vengeance; the topic didn’t come up at pizza.
Instead, Kyle simply glowered at Ike, feeling resentful despite the fact that neither his mother nor his father had directed him to do this. Ike, being what Kyle thought of as retarded, ordered his pizza with ham and pineapple on it. Kyle liked his plain. “Mom and Dad would never let you eat that,” he taunted, folding his slice up New York-style, a habit he’d picked up from his parents somewhere along the way.
“You eat whatever you want,” Ike pointed out, picking the pieces of pineapple off of his food.
“What are you doing that for? I had to pay for that pineapple!”
“I don’t like the pineapple on the pizza,” Ike explained. “I only like it when it tastes a little like pineapple juice.”
“You’re a little freak,” Kyle replied, baffled.
“You’re a big freak!”
Kyle rolled his eyes.
“Where’s Craig?” Ike asked, now removing the ham from his pizza and eating the little chunks one-by-one.
“He’s obviously not here.” Kyle blinked. “Now you’re picking off the ham?”
“But I’m eating it,” Ike reasoned.
“If you just wanted ham I could have just bought you a ham!”
“Mom wouldn’t have liked that very much.”
“Oh, like I give a crap what Mom likes.” Although it wasn’t true; Kyle gave a great deal of crap about what his mother liked.
Ike asked for a second piece of pizza. “Um, what?” Kyle asked. “Eat that fucking pineapple and maybe I’ll consider it.”
“But I don’t like it,” Ike whined.
“Fucking eat it!”
“Jeez. What crawled up your ass and died?”
“Nothing crawled up my ass!”
“Uh huh.” Ike put a piece of fruit in his mouth and began to chew on it demonstratively, making slurp-y squishing noises, smacking his lips on purpose. “I think then maybe your problem is, nothing crawled up your ass.”
“What!?” Kyle dropped his pizza.
“I think if you and Craig did it, it would really take the edge off.”
“There is no edge!” Kyle shrieked, and just as soon as he said this, he covered his mouth. Ike just rolled his eyes and continued to shove pineapple past his lips, gobbling the little chunks out of his own palm and gnashing on them as disruptively as possibly.
Kyle leaned in and pressed his lips up to Ike’s smallish ear. “Listen to me, you little brat. Eat your fucking pizza, and never fucking talk about me like that again or I will make sure you shoot your own testicles out of your nose.”
Ike just nodded and finished his pineapple. Kyle went ahead and ordered him a second slice.
~
Back at home, Kyle lied his way out of Friday night dinner. Generally he didn’t bother fibbing about where he was going or what he was doing, because he didn’t care if his family knew that he didn’t give a crap about Shabbat or them. Generally he only went if Stan wanted to tag along, and there was no Stan around this week. In the car ride after pizza, Ike quietly asked if maybe Craig wanted to come to dinner, but Kyle didn’t dignify that with an answer. His plan had been to say nothing to his family and go over to Token’s, because Token was having people over, although Kyle was now unsure if this was just going to be the guys, or the whole grade, or what.
But when his key was half-plunged into the lock, his father swung the door open preemptively, and seeing both of his sons together, his eyes became a little softer, and he asked where they’d been. “Kyle took me for pizza,” Ike gushed, pushing past Gerald and running upstairs, probably to play internet poker.
Kyle looked up at his father, who was still an inch or two taller than him, and saw the most soul-crushingly warm expression on his face. “That was really nice of you,” Gerald said softly, putting a hand on his oldest son’s shoulder.
Feeling immensely horrible, he shook and said, “I can’t eat dinner with you guys. I, um. My blood sugar is really high. I kind of feel like crap.” So the first thing was a lie. The second, well, the second thing was true. Kyle wrapped his arms around himself and slowly stomped upstairs, figuring that he didn’t want to go out anymore because 1) he’d seen enough of Craig to last him through next week, 2) he didn’t particularly want to talk to Stan at all even if Stan would be there, which he might not be, 3) Kenny would be there regardless of who else was, assuming he weren’t dead, which he was, still, and 4) Eric Cartman would probably be there. But he felt he at least owed his father a lie about why he was planning on spending the evening lying in bed reading William Shatner’s TekWar. He made a point to turn his phone off.
~
Saturday did not bring improvements in the weather, which was still gray and thick with moisture, despite the lack of any snow since Tuesday night’s small powdering. Kyle set his alarm for 1 p.m., at which time he figured he’d need an hour to get up, eat some cereal potentially, and drive his signs and himself over to City Hall.
To his great dismay, he was barely able to sleep past 11 a.m., when he heard things slamming into his window. In the tail-end of his dream he thought this might be Stan, except Stan looked exactly like Ike in this dream, squinty little eyes, dirty fingernails and all. It was frankly a disturbing idea, since he and Stan were playing doctor at one moment, in which Stan was carefully pressing on Kyle’s nipples with a tongue depressor and saying, “That’s not right at all.” Then, in one shift with no distinction, Stan (the Stan who looked like Ike, rather) was slamming himself into Kyle’s window.
Kyle hazily sat up and pressed his face to the glass, expecting to see either Stan or his brother or maybe both. Maybe they were the same now. The coldness of the window pane gave Kyle a bit of a shock, and he realized that Stan was wearing Craig’s hat and clothing. Then he really woke up, and figured out that it was just Craig after all. He opened the window and stuck his head out.
“What the hell, dude?” he asked.
Craig paused, looked sheepish, and pocketed something. Kyle glanced down to the ground, where he realized that Craig had not been throwing rocks at all; he had been throwing gum balls. The measly layer of as-yet unmelted snow two stories below his window was in fact dyed in little circlets of acid pink and sewer blue, not to mention the nauseous yellow of the situation.
“Do you want breakfast?” Craig asked, hands cupped around his lips.
“Craig, what?”
“Your phone was off!” he shouted. “My mother is making breakfast!”
“Oh, dude, no,” Kyle sighed. “Hold on, I’ll let you in.”
~
Craig kissed him at the door, which caused Kyle to blush madly and glance around the room to make sure his parents weren’t around. Clearly they were sleeping, which is what Kyle intended to be doing himself at this time. “Please tell me you never get up this early on weekends and never will again,” he said.
“I’m just, you know,” Craig muddled by way of explanation. “The protest and all.”
“Ah, yeah,” Kyle agreed, shutting the door. “Can’t miss that.”
“Well, don’t tell me you were going to just sleep through it.”
“It’s not for four hours!”
”Uh huh. You should eat breakfast with me.”
Kyle brought Craig upstairs and he began to put on his clothes. “I’m not going to eat with your family,” he said, putting on deodorant under his shirt.
“Well, why not?” Craig asked.
“I just don’t want to. They’re not really very nice at all.”
“I know.”
“So you can hardly blame me.” Craig frowned and did what he did when he was frustrated, and sat down on the floor.
“I thought it would be nice if you met them.”
“I know them!”
“My mom is making a whole nice breakfast for you.”
“Oh, no.” Kyle sat down next to Craig and put his arm around the other boy’s shoulders. “Tell her I have too many dietary restrictions.” Craig looked hurt by this. “Look, um, I don’t mean to be, uh.”
“A bitch?”
“Yeah, that.”
“It’s not a problem for me,” Craig said. “I think it’s cute.”
“Aw, dude.” Kyle smiled and pressed his lips to Craig’s cheek. “Why don’t you have some cereal with me?”
“First don’t you need to put on pants?”
Kyle looked down at his black underwear and sighed, but it wasn’t a particularly emotional sigh at all. “Yeah. First I’ll put on pants.”
Kyle put on jeans because he only owned jeans. Actually, no, he owned some dress pants. But unlike Craig, who seemingly owned only dress pants, Kyle did not like to wear them for no good reason, and he felt that slumming around South Park was less of an occasion than a cruel, cruel fate. So jeans it was, and he slipped them on in front of Craig, who sat on his bed in perpetuity, humming appreciatively at what Kyle was sure he assumed was a show for his own benefit.
They indeed had cereal, and Craig pronounced every option “stupid.” In the end he settled on oatmeal, which he felt was the same as cereal. This resulted in a conversation about what, if any, the differences between oatmeal and cereal were. Predictably, Kyle had something akin to a right answer, which was that they were essentially the same, and that oatmeal was basically hot cereal. Kyle’s boyfriend found this answer both intriguingly adorable and idiotic, maybe idiotically adorable.
Having finished eating with a couple of hours to spare, Kyle asked Craig what he wanted to do. “Ike’s not around so we can get the TV to ourselves,” he suggested. “I bet I could take your ass in Halo.” Craig, being both crass and perverse, told Kyle exactly whose ass would be taken, and it wasn’t in the context of gaming. Kyle shrugged and, again, allowed himself to be seduced to another plateau of indecency. But he still refused to allow Craig access to the one place Craig really wanted into. Craig feigned disappointment, but he was equally fine with frottage.
~
City hall was set back toward the end of a wide open space — but then, much of the town was. Urban planning, for all of its advances over the past century, was irrelevant in a place this barren. If it had been landscaped at all, or festooned with any kind of decorum, there might have been some temptation to call the area a “plaza,” but this just wasn’t the case. There was a flag pole, and a couple of benches. The building had a domed roof that created the illusion of grandeur, or fullness, but there was little inside the building. The rotunda was basically empty, and upstairs there was a smattering of civic offices.
Having gotten up so ridiculously early, Kyle and his wayward companion were alone when they arrived, with 10 or so minutes to spare before the start time of their so-called protest. For lack of anything better to do than stand or sit around, they opted for the latter.
“I hope a lot of people come,” Kyle said.
“I’m not so sure I do,” Craig countered. “I mean, it’s not like we have a plan or anything.”
“Oh, you don’t need a plan for this shit.”
“No?”
“People come, they’re pissed, you kind of egg them on. The whole thing does itself.”
“I guess it’s a good thing this town is full of bored rabble-rousers,” Craig sighed.
“Yes,” Kyle agreed. “Although this might be the first time I ever thought that.”
They sat talking about nothing, really, some television Craig liked. He apparently watched a lot of TV. “Don’t you ever read?” Kyle asked.
“I read all kinds of things,” Craig answered.
“Like what?”
“You know what I read, dude.”
“Then how come all you ever talk about is TV?”
“People don’t understand fancy-ass things like blogs,” Craig explained. “I only watch TV because I’m bored. And people understand TV. It’s the great common element of our time. And besides,” he added. “I don’t think there’s anything particularly endearing about reading Star Wars novels.”
“Whatever.” Pause. “Where are we going tonight?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really think about it.”
“Dude. You asked me out.”
“We’re out right now.”
“I want to go somewhere.”
“Why don’t you just come over and we can watch something on my computer.”
“Uh, no.”
“Pizza?”
“I had pizza last night.”
“It’s pizza. You can eat it every night.”
“That’s sick!” Kyle exclaimed.
“Well, don’t look at me, it’s not like you eat anything anyway, because you’re an anorexic ho.”
Kyle blinked. “A what?”
Craig snorted. “Okay. Well. Let’s go see a movie—”
“Mmhmm.”
“—and go to Token’s.”
“Didn’t Token have people over last night?”
“No,” said Craig. “Tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah, so I’ll take you to a movie, then to Token’s. How does that sound?”
“Fine.”
“Just fine?”
“No, fucking super.”
“Okay.” Craig smirked and put an arm around Kyle’s shoulder. “Sounds good to me.”
The entire time they had been sitting there — all 15 minutes or so — plenty of cars had driven by, but no one had appeared to protest Frank Granger. For that matter, no one had arrived to protest anything. Kyle was getting worried, but Craig seemed perpetually chill, swinging his legs under the bench, kicking dirty little chunks of frosty mud and grass all over the pavement.
Kyle felt someone unpredictably lean his weight against the bench, and he whipped around to see Stan, who was frowning intently. “So this is your rally,” he said smoothly, sitting down on the bench next to Kyle, who joined Craig in just staring at him.
“What are you doing here?” Kyle choked.
“Yeah,” Craig added, tensing the arm he had around Kyle.
“Coming to your protest?”
“Oh, okay.” Kyle blinked. “Why?”
“Because I’m your friend?”
“Is that a question?” Kyle pursed his mouth. Craig raised an eyebrow.
“No.”
“Look, dude,” Stan said. He removed his blue mittens and stuffed them both in the same pocket. “Maybe it’s a foreign concept but I care about what’s important to you.”
“How nice,” Craig slurred. “You should have brought along all of your little breeder friends.”
“I really don’t like being called that.”
Craig rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
“Well.” Kyle picked up a rolled up poster board from the ground under his segment of bench and handed it to Stan. “You can have this one.”
Stan undid the rubber band and gawked at the poser. “ ‘Prostates are hot,’ ” he read. “I’m sure people will be really moved by this.” He tapped on Craig’s messy illustration of an arrow pointing behind the colon on a makeshift anatomy diagram.
“Do you want to be helpful, or not?”
“Craig, dude. Lay off.”
“Whatever, Stan.”
Kyle cringed. “You guys,” he said quietly. He closed his eyes.
“This protest is pathetic,” someone taunted cheerily, and all three boys turned to see Kenny in his black hoodie and greasy jeans, hands in pockets.
“Dude!” Stan cried, jumping up to hug his friend across the back of the bench. “You’ve been gone forever!”
“I know,” Kenny said drolly, tentatively embracing Stan. “My brother found me not dead yet.”
“What are you talking about?” Craig asked.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Stan said.
“Tell me.” Craig tugged on Kyle’s jacket collar.
“It always takes longer when they interfere before I actually go, you know,” Kenny continued. “But any chance to have something rammed down my throat, you know, with the ventilators.”
“What?” Craig asked again.
“It’s nothing,” Kenny sighed. He surreptitiously removed a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it quickly, inhaling deeply. “Fuck, that is awesome,” he sighed.
“Is there something I’m missing here?” Kenny asked, gesturing back and forth between Kyle and Craig with his cigarette.
“Is there ever,” Stan groaned.
Kyle looked at Craig, whose arm was still around his back. “Don’t look at me,” he said moodily. “You’re the one with privacy issues.”
“Well, Kenny,” Kyle said carefully. “I think Craig and I are dating.”
“You think?” Craig and Kenny asked at the same time.
“I’m pretty sure,” Stan mumbled.
“That’s so cute!” Kenny exclaimed, bringing his hands flat together with a loud smack. “Who’s going to carry the children?”
“Children are idiots,” Craig breathed.
“Oh, no, this is too cute,” the blond boy continued. “Willing to throw me a few details?”
“Sure,” said Craig.
“What? No!”
“All right, fine.” Kenny put his cigarette between his lips and parked himself down on the bench next to Stan, filling it to capacity. “Anyway, here I was all ready to help you protest, but it seems like the only thing being protested here today is young love.” The three other boys all gave Kenny a stare. “Well, if my services are not required,” he drawled, standing up, “I think I should remove myself to the military surplus store down in Conifer.”
“What the hell are you going there for?” Kyle asked.
“How the hell are you planning on getting there?” Stan chimed.
“Eh, I’ll hitch.” Kenny flicked his cigarette to the damp ground. “I don’t know, Chris asked me to meet him.”
“Chris?” All three boys on the bench asked at the same time.
“You know, ze Mole,” Kenny clarified. “Christophe, if you will. Although I wouldn’t. Later, tools.” Kenny trudged away, but he gave a final upside-down wave behind himself as he left.
There were a few minutes of silence following Kenny’s departure.
“No one is coming, are they?” Kyle finally said drearily, leaning into Craig.
“Yeah, no.”
“Well, what are we going to do now?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Go home, take a shower. Find a movie.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Still lying on Craig’s torso, Kyle turned to his right. “Stan?”
“I guess I’ll go home.”
“Do you need a ride?”
“No,” Stan said, standing up and stretching. “I’ll walk.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” he said quickly. “See you guys later tonight, maybe. Craig.”
“Stan.”
And Stan walked away.
~
Kyle dropped Craig off, turning down his attractive offer of a joint shower. The idea was a little engaging for him, he had to admit to himself, but Kyle did not doubt that there would be other chances to hook up in the bathroom. Craig promised he’d borrow his father’s truck and pick Kyle up later. Kyle assented to this and returned home completely grossed out, his first attempt at political uprising having been a complete failure.
Predictably, his mother was sitting with a book on the living room couch, and she heard him come in. “What’s wrong?” she asked pointedly, wasting no time reading his demeanor.
So Kyle explained to her about the protest, and she took his face in her hands and gazed across at him, their eyes nearly entirely level. “Don’t worry about it,” she said.
“I just wanted to do some good,” he sighed, bending over to undo his shoelaces.
“Kyle,” she said slowly. “If there is one thing I have learned as an adult, besides how to talk to Canadians, it’s that you can force weak-minded people to follow you if you want — if you know how to agitate them right.”
“That’s what you’ve learned,” he said, unimpressed.
“No, you didn’t let me finish. I’ve learned that that’s what you can do, if you want. But it won’t make a difference.”
“So, what you’re saying is, don’t try.”
“No! That is not what I’m saying. What I’m saying, bubbe, is that you need to put more time into planning these things and less time into being angry and abrasive. It’s not good for you, Kyle. You might get things done by being an angry loudmouth, but you’ll distance people.”
He brought a finger to his lips, contemplating this. “So, it’s better to be a crafty, insidious bastard like Cartman than a raging asswipe.”
“I’m proud of you,” Sheila said softly, kissing him on the forehead. “You’re such a smart boy. You can do good things, I know.”
“Thanks,” Kyle said sadly, removing himself to bathe.
~
Craig took him to see some stupid action film, and indeed he paid for both of them, and drinks. They shared a package of Jujubes, as per usual, but unlike before, they spent most of the time swapping spit, literally. Kyle was beginning to feel at ease with Craig’s voracious nature — it almost seemed like he was lapping saliva out of Kyle’s mouth, trying to trade slimy chunks of gelatinous candy back-and-forth in a battle to end up with the most pieces. It felt like Craig was trying to lick the plaque off of Kyle’s teeth or something, the way he consumed the other boy’s mouth with insatiable hunger and erratic twists of his tongue.
They’d never kissed before Tuesday night, and with this development there was one less boy in the grade Kyle hadn’t kissed. He didn’t know why he’d been holding out on Craig for this long. Apparently Craig’s fixation hadn’t been apparent enough to strike him. And it was probably the unspoken codes of friendship that kept them apart on drunken nights out in the forest — the same rules that kept him off of Stan, no matter how intoxicated he got or how hopelessly bereft he felt some days. Anyway, besides Stan, the only guy standing in the way of his complete set was Cartman. And that was not happening, at all, ever. Sometimes he wondered if he could drunkenly fall on top of Clyde — if he could drunkenly end up getting precariously close to a kid in a wheelchair — maybe it could happen.
But, no, he’d make sure it wouldn’t. This thing with Craig was really solid, and Craig was a really good … well, it occurred to him that Craig hadn’t let him down so far, almost literally. If the idea of someone basically drinking the spit out of his mouth in a movie theater had appeared before him on paper, he’d have dismissed it out of hand. But this was pretty decent.
~
Kenny’s older brother was a complete loser who worked as a checkout boy at a liquor store. He never brushed his hair, and never bought a new pair of sneakers despite the fact that his soles had been peeling off of those things since the boys were in middle school. Unlike Stan’s older sister, who was roughly the same age, Kevin did not graduate and move away to attend a mediocre state school in some other town. The matter of whether or not he graduated was actually somewhat up for debate, if anyone (Kenny included) had found it a topic worth debating.
But because of Kevin McCormick, many of South Park’s under-aged residents were able to drink on weekend nights. So even though he was a complete loser, would probably be shot to death in a bar brawl before he turned 30, and had never been able to hold onto a girlfriend past her inevitable abortion, there was a special place for him in many of the hearts of the celebrants in the basement at the Blacks’ that evening.
Kyle was not surprised to find Kenny crouched on top of the keg when he descended the stairs, Craig leading him by the hand. The first thing they heard was Kenny’s voice ringing out clearly, “Tap this shit!” Then he made devil’s horns with one hand and raised it into the air. “Only a $5 buy-in! Send your good wishes to this desolate wretch, my friends! It’s what God would want! Merci beaucoup! In the port of Amsterdam!”
“I don’t get him,” Craig said in his nasal way, indicating Kenny with a slight of his shoulder. “What he’s saying is dumb. And he’s overcharging. Again.”
Kyle shrugged this off. “He has his way.” Which was about when Kenny lost his balance and fell backwards off of the keg, tumbling down to the ground.
“I meant to do that,” he cried, but his words were muffled and no one made them out. No one checked to make sure Kenny was okay. Kyle wouldn’t buy any beer from him. Kenny got the kegs from his brother for free, and they split the profit. Besides, it was probably something weak, something that tasted like soap or piss or something.
Craig took off to talk to Token, and Kyle sat down on the couch by himself. He looked around: No girls, anywhere. But he saw Clyde and Tweek talking across the room, the latter wiping his nose as furtively as he possibly could, drooling slightly, albeit unwittingly. It had been a long day, and he was hardly in the mood to rage, as they said, so Kyle laid his head back on the couch and began to let his mind empty, until—
“Hey Kyle!”
“Jesus!” A slight body in a purple leotard sat down and put an arm around Kyle. “Oh my god, Butters, I can see all of your junk.” Kyle gagged almost as soon as he said this. “Why the fuck are you wearing that?”
“I don’t know,” Butters said, adjusting himself. The sound of glass hitting glass resonated, and Kyle noticed a nearly full bottle of Goldschlager.
“Ugh, please stop. Here.” Kyle handed Butters a pillow. “Cover yourself.” Butters did.
“Listen,” Butters said. “I just wanna say, well, I feel awful bad that you were mad at me this week.”
“What?”
“You know.” He’d obviously had a few drinks before coming, that much was obvious. “We were fighting, and you and Eric don’t get along, I just—”
“Sheesh, Butters, dude. It’s okay, really.”
“So I was thinking.”
“What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking, I don’t want to fight with you. I feel just awful, real terrible, so — maybe we could make up?”
“Uh.” Kyle nodded. “Fine.” He glanced around. “Where is, um, Eric?”
“He’s studying with Wendy.” Butters picked up the bottle of alcohol. “He’ll be here later I guess.”
“It’s not upsetting that you’re here wearing a faggy little tutu thing and he’s, er, studying with a chick?”
“Aw, heck no. I’m not possessive. So.” Butters unscrewed the bottle and handed it to Kyle. “Friends?”
“Um, yeah.” He took a swig, and almost gagged. “Butters, this shit is disgusting.”
“Oh, I know you don’t care.”
Butters was right. He didn’t. He cared so little that he took another sip. He smiled at Butters. Butters smiled right back, kissing him on the cheek. Then he took the bottle back from Kyle, and they passed it back and forth for some time, although neither of them could say how long that was, exactly.
~
After that he and Butters finished the bottle, and then he went to go talk to Kenny for a while. Kenny gave him a cup of beer for free, and then for some reason he was talking to Pip about crepes or some French shit like that. Still, Pip had a bottle of gin, and Kyle helped himself to some of that. After telling Pip that France was the armpit of the Earth and that he was a worthless piece of crap, Kyle didn’t remember much until he found himself kind of hugging the banister on the staircase, feeling wonderfully sick to his stomach.
A pair of arms wrapped around him, and a black-haired boy lifted him away from the railing. “Aw, awww,” he moaned. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times — don’t mix hard booze with beer.” Now that he felt kind of safe, Kyle just shut his eyes. “I know that look. Come on, dude. Let’s get you to a toilet.”
They plodded up the stairs, but were stopped at the landing by Craig, who was standing sturdily with arms crossed, scowling.
“He’s, um, you know, he’s like.” Stan stammered. “He’s gonna barf,” he finished quietly.
“I can take it from here,” Craig offered, extending his arms. “Come on.”
“I was just gonna.” Stan handed the dizzy red-haired boy over to Craig. “Drive him home or something.”
“Who the hell are you? You’ve been drinking that disgusting piss Kenny passes off as beer for the past hour and a half!”
“I’m cool,” Stan gasped. “I always take care of him, don’t I?”
“Whatever. Not any more you don’t.”
“Oh.” Stan looked down and behind at the revelers in the basement. “Don’t try to tell me you’re sober.”
“Actually, I am.”
“Good job.”
Craig rolled his eyes and picked Kyle up, the smaller boy curling into his chest.
“Craig,” Stan called after him. The other boy paused and kind of looked over both his shoulder and the top of Kyle’s fairly substantial hairdo. “Aren’t you going to give me the finger?”
Craig scoffed. “What are you talking about?” he asked.
“You know,” Stan said, raising both of his middle fingers and kind of bouncing his hands up and down for Craig’s benefit.
“I don’t have time for this shit, Marsh,” Craig said conclusively, setting off again to get Kyle to a bathroom.
Kyle spent the rest of the week pointedly avoiding Stan while he and Craig planned their protest. All they really did was paint signs; all of Kyle’s blandly brandished crisp block letters and all of Craig’s were profane and sloppy. They attempted to think of a rallying cry or protest song of some sort, but their two attempts were interrupted, the first because Craig crawled on top of Kyle and began dry humping him, and the second because they couldn’t think of anything that rhymed with ‘threat level orange.’ Craig’s suggestion, “I have a remarkable scrotum,” made Kyle giggle appreciatively, but was ultimately rejected.
On Friday afternoon, Kyle took his brother out for pizza. He didn’t know why he was doing this, because his mother had figured out about Craig anyway, given that they spent three nights straight together. Still, despite the fact that Sheila was still one step ahead of her son, Kyle felt the need to at least maintain the illusion that he hadn’t snuck out of the house the night his whirlwind affair had begun. Perhaps it had to do with his guilt at having hooked up outdoors, where the eyes of the town could potentially leer at him. Like it mattered — it was pretty clear by now that if anyone had seen them, they didn’t care. And if they did care, their little secret was rendered invalid the next day anyhow, when Craig told everyone he met in a 30-minute lunch period that he and Kyle had in fact swapped spit out of doors and were thus an item.
Despite the fact that Ike’s threat was entirely unnecessary Kyle would have felt horrible, just horrible, to deny him a slice of pizza. Ike loved pizza, almost as much as he loved thumbing through Kyle’s DVD collection and helping himself to whatever he wanted. He wasn’t really allowed to do this, of course, but Kyle considered himself aptly fit to meter out justice to his little brother in great, heaping teaspoons. Hence the trip to the Pizza Gultch, and the swift and brutal ass-kickings that Kyle distributed on something like a weekly basis. Kyle did not make the connection that this was why Ike found his fading bruises so enthralling — to him, his brother was a bringer of doom rather that its victim. Perhaps Ike considered this his own little piece of vengeance; the topic didn’t come up at pizza.
Instead, Kyle simply glowered at Ike, feeling resentful despite the fact that neither his mother nor his father had directed him to do this. Ike, being what Kyle thought of as retarded, ordered his pizza with ham and pineapple on it. Kyle liked his plain. “Mom and Dad would never let you eat that,” he taunted, folding his slice up New York-style, a habit he’d picked up from his parents somewhere along the way.
“You eat whatever you want,” Ike pointed out, picking the pieces of pineapple off of his food.
“What are you doing that for? I had to pay for that pineapple!”
“I don’t like the pineapple on the pizza,” Ike explained. “I only like it when it tastes a little like pineapple juice.”
“You’re a little freak,” Kyle replied, baffled.
“You’re a big freak!”
Kyle rolled his eyes.
“Where’s Craig?” Ike asked, now removing the ham from his pizza and eating the little chunks one-by-one.
“He’s obviously not here.” Kyle blinked. “Now you’re picking off the ham?”
“But I’m eating it,” Ike reasoned.
“If you just wanted ham I could have just bought you a ham!”
“Mom wouldn’t have liked that very much.”
“Oh, like I give a crap what Mom likes.” Although it wasn’t true; Kyle gave a great deal of crap about what his mother liked.
Ike asked for a second piece of pizza. “Um, what?” Kyle asked. “Eat that fucking pineapple and maybe I’ll consider it.”
“But I don’t like it,” Ike whined.
“Fucking eat it!”
“Jeez. What crawled up your ass and died?”
“Nothing crawled up my ass!”
“Uh huh.” Ike put a piece of fruit in his mouth and began to chew on it demonstratively, making slurp-y squishing noises, smacking his lips on purpose. “I think then maybe your problem is, nothing crawled up your ass.”
“What!?” Kyle dropped his pizza.
“I think if you and Craig did it, it would really take the edge off.”
“There is no edge!” Kyle shrieked, and just as soon as he said this, he covered his mouth. Ike just rolled his eyes and continued to shove pineapple past his lips, gobbling the little chunks out of his own palm and gnashing on them as disruptively as possibly.
Kyle leaned in and pressed his lips up to Ike’s smallish ear. “Listen to me, you little brat. Eat your fucking pizza, and never fucking talk about me like that again or I will make sure you shoot your own testicles out of your nose.”
Ike just nodded and finished his pineapple. Kyle went ahead and ordered him a second slice.
~
Back at home, Kyle lied his way out of Friday night dinner. Generally he didn’t bother fibbing about where he was going or what he was doing, because he didn’t care if his family knew that he didn’t give a crap about Shabbat or them. Generally he only went if Stan wanted to tag along, and there was no Stan around this week. In the car ride after pizza, Ike quietly asked if maybe Craig wanted to come to dinner, but Kyle didn’t dignify that with an answer. His plan had been to say nothing to his family and go over to Token’s, because Token was having people over, although Kyle was now unsure if this was just going to be the guys, or the whole grade, or what.
But when his key was half-plunged into the lock, his father swung the door open preemptively, and seeing both of his sons together, his eyes became a little softer, and he asked where they’d been. “Kyle took me for pizza,” Ike gushed, pushing past Gerald and running upstairs, probably to play internet poker.
Kyle looked up at his father, who was still an inch or two taller than him, and saw the most soul-crushingly warm expression on his face. “That was really nice of you,” Gerald said softly, putting a hand on his oldest son’s shoulder.
Feeling immensely horrible, he shook and said, “I can’t eat dinner with you guys. I, um. My blood sugar is really high. I kind of feel like crap.” So the first thing was a lie. The second, well, the second thing was true. Kyle wrapped his arms around himself and slowly stomped upstairs, figuring that he didn’t want to go out anymore because 1) he’d seen enough of Craig to last him through next week, 2) he didn’t particularly want to talk to Stan at all even if Stan would be there, which he might not be, 3) Kenny would be there regardless of who else was, assuming he weren’t dead, which he was, still, and 4) Eric Cartman would probably be there. But he felt he at least owed his father a lie about why he was planning on spending the evening lying in bed reading William Shatner’s TekWar. He made a point to turn his phone off.
~
Saturday did not bring improvements in the weather, which was still gray and thick with moisture, despite the lack of any snow since Tuesday night’s small powdering. Kyle set his alarm for 1 p.m., at which time he figured he’d need an hour to get up, eat some cereal potentially, and drive his signs and himself over to City Hall.
To his great dismay, he was barely able to sleep past 11 a.m., when he heard things slamming into his window. In the tail-end of his dream he thought this might be Stan, except Stan looked exactly like Ike in this dream, squinty little eyes, dirty fingernails and all. It was frankly a disturbing idea, since he and Stan were playing doctor at one moment, in which Stan was carefully pressing on Kyle’s nipples with a tongue depressor and saying, “That’s not right at all.” Then, in one shift with no distinction, Stan (the Stan who looked like Ike, rather) was slamming himself into Kyle’s window.
Kyle hazily sat up and pressed his face to the glass, expecting to see either Stan or his brother or maybe both. Maybe they were the same now. The coldness of the window pane gave Kyle a bit of a shock, and he realized that Stan was wearing Craig’s hat and clothing. Then he really woke up, and figured out that it was just Craig after all. He opened the window and stuck his head out.
“What the hell, dude?” he asked.
Craig paused, looked sheepish, and pocketed something. Kyle glanced down to the ground, where he realized that Craig had not been throwing rocks at all; he had been throwing gum balls. The measly layer of as-yet unmelted snow two stories below his window was in fact dyed in little circlets of acid pink and sewer blue, not to mention the nauseous yellow of the situation.
“Do you want breakfast?” Craig asked, hands cupped around his lips.
“Craig, what?”
“Your phone was off!” he shouted. “My mother is making breakfast!”
“Oh, dude, no,” Kyle sighed. “Hold on, I’ll let you in.”
~
Craig kissed him at the door, which caused Kyle to blush madly and glance around the room to make sure his parents weren’t around. Clearly they were sleeping, which is what Kyle intended to be doing himself at this time. “Please tell me you never get up this early on weekends and never will again,” he said.
“I’m just, you know,” Craig muddled by way of explanation. “The protest and all.”
“Ah, yeah,” Kyle agreed, shutting the door. “Can’t miss that.”
“Well, don’t tell me you were going to just sleep through it.”
“It’s not for four hours!”
”Uh huh. You should eat breakfast with me.”
Kyle brought Craig upstairs and he began to put on his clothes. “I’m not going to eat with your family,” he said, putting on deodorant under his shirt.
“Well, why not?” Craig asked.
“I just don’t want to. They’re not really very nice at all.”
“I know.”
“So you can hardly blame me.” Craig frowned and did what he did when he was frustrated, and sat down on the floor.
“I thought it would be nice if you met them.”
“I know them!”
“My mom is making a whole nice breakfast for you.”
“Oh, no.” Kyle sat down next to Craig and put his arm around the other boy’s shoulders. “Tell her I have too many dietary restrictions.” Craig looked hurt by this. “Look, um, I don’t mean to be, uh.”
“A bitch?”
“Yeah, that.”
“It’s not a problem for me,” Craig said. “I think it’s cute.”
“Aw, dude.” Kyle smiled and pressed his lips to Craig’s cheek. “Why don’t you have some cereal with me?”
“First don’t you need to put on pants?”
Kyle looked down at his black underwear and sighed, but it wasn’t a particularly emotional sigh at all. “Yeah. First I’ll put on pants.”
Kyle put on jeans because he only owned jeans. Actually, no, he owned some dress pants. But unlike Craig, who seemingly owned only dress pants, Kyle did not like to wear them for no good reason, and he felt that slumming around South Park was less of an occasion than a cruel, cruel fate. So jeans it was, and he slipped them on in front of Craig, who sat on his bed in perpetuity, humming appreciatively at what Kyle was sure he assumed was a show for his own benefit.
They indeed had cereal, and Craig pronounced every option “stupid.” In the end he settled on oatmeal, which he felt was the same as cereal. This resulted in a conversation about what, if any, the differences between oatmeal and cereal were. Predictably, Kyle had something akin to a right answer, which was that they were essentially the same, and that oatmeal was basically hot cereal. Kyle’s boyfriend found this answer both intriguingly adorable and idiotic, maybe idiotically adorable.
Having finished eating with a couple of hours to spare, Kyle asked Craig what he wanted to do. “Ike’s not around so we can get the TV to ourselves,” he suggested. “I bet I could take your ass in Halo.” Craig, being both crass and perverse, told Kyle exactly whose ass would be taken, and it wasn’t in the context of gaming. Kyle shrugged and, again, allowed himself to be seduced to another plateau of indecency. But he still refused to allow Craig access to the one place Craig really wanted into. Craig feigned disappointment, but he was equally fine with frottage.
~
City hall was set back toward the end of a wide open space — but then, much of the town was. Urban planning, for all of its advances over the past century, was irrelevant in a place this barren. If it had been landscaped at all, or festooned with any kind of decorum, there might have been some temptation to call the area a “plaza,” but this just wasn’t the case. There was a flag pole, and a couple of benches. The building had a domed roof that created the illusion of grandeur, or fullness, but there was little inside the building. The rotunda was basically empty, and upstairs there was a smattering of civic offices.
Having gotten up so ridiculously early, Kyle and his wayward companion were alone when they arrived, with 10 or so minutes to spare before the start time of their so-called protest. For lack of anything better to do than stand or sit around, they opted for the latter.
“I hope a lot of people come,” Kyle said.
“I’m not so sure I do,” Craig countered. “I mean, it’s not like we have a plan or anything.”
“Oh, you don’t need a plan for this shit.”
“No?”
“People come, they’re pissed, you kind of egg them on. The whole thing does itself.”
“I guess it’s a good thing this town is full of bored rabble-rousers,” Craig sighed.
“Yes,” Kyle agreed. “Although this might be the first time I ever thought that.”
They sat talking about nothing, really, some television Craig liked. He apparently watched a lot of TV. “Don’t you ever read?” Kyle asked.
“I read all kinds of things,” Craig answered.
“Like what?”
“You know what I read, dude.”
“Then how come all you ever talk about is TV?”
“People don’t understand fancy-ass things like blogs,” Craig explained. “I only watch TV because I’m bored. And people understand TV. It’s the great common element of our time. And besides,” he added. “I don’t think there’s anything particularly endearing about reading Star Wars novels.”
“Whatever.” Pause. “Where are we going tonight?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really think about it.”
“Dude. You asked me out.”
“We’re out right now.”
“I want to go somewhere.”
“Why don’t you just come over and we can watch something on my computer.”
“Uh, no.”
“Pizza?”
“I had pizza last night.”
“It’s pizza. You can eat it every night.”
“That’s sick!” Kyle exclaimed.
“Well, don’t look at me, it’s not like you eat anything anyway, because you’re an anorexic ho.”
Kyle blinked. “A what?”
Craig snorted. “Okay. Well. Let’s go see a movie—”
“Mmhmm.”
“—and go to Token’s.”
“Didn’t Token have people over last night?”
“No,” said Craig. “Tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah, so I’ll take you to a movie, then to Token’s. How does that sound?”
“Fine.”
“Just fine?”
“No, fucking super.”
“Okay.” Craig smirked and put an arm around Kyle’s shoulder. “Sounds good to me.”
The entire time they had been sitting there — all 15 minutes or so — plenty of cars had driven by, but no one had appeared to protest Frank Granger. For that matter, no one had arrived to protest anything. Kyle was getting worried, but Craig seemed perpetually chill, swinging his legs under the bench, kicking dirty little chunks of frosty mud and grass all over the pavement.
Kyle felt someone unpredictably lean his weight against the bench, and he whipped around to see Stan, who was frowning intently. “So this is your rally,” he said smoothly, sitting down on the bench next to Kyle, who joined Craig in just staring at him.
“What are you doing here?” Kyle choked.
“Yeah,” Craig added, tensing the arm he had around Kyle.
“Coming to your protest?”
“Oh, okay.” Kyle blinked. “Why?”
“Because I’m your friend?”
“Is that a question?” Kyle pursed his mouth. Craig raised an eyebrow.
“No.”
“Look, dude,” Stan said. He removed his blue mittens and stuffed them both in the same pocket. “Maybe it’s a foreign concept but I care about what’s important to you.”
“How nice,” Craig slurred. “You should have brought along all of your little breeder friends.”
“I really don’t like being called that.”
Craig rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
“Well.” Kyle picked up a rolled up poster board from the ground under his segment of bench and handed it to Stan. “You can have this one.”
Stan undid the rubber band and gawked at the poser. “ ‘Prostates are hot,’ ” he read. “I’m sure people will be really moved by this.” He tapped on Craig’s messy illustration of an arrow pointing behind the colon on a makeshift anatomy diagram.
“Do you want to be helpful, or not?”
“Craig, dude. Lay off.”
“Whatever, Stan.”
Kyle cringed. “You guys,” he said quietly. He closed his eyes.
“This protest is pathetic,” someone taunted cheerily, and all three boys turned to see Kenny in his black hoodie and greasy jeans, hands in pockets.
“Dude!” Stan cried, jumping up to hug his friend across the back of the bench. “You’ve been gone forever!”
“I know,” Kenny said drolly, tentatively embracing Stan. “My brother found me not dead yet.”
“What are you talking about?” Craig asked.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Stan said.
“Tell me.” Craig tugged on Kyle’s jacket collar.
“It always takes longer when they interfere before I actually go, you know,” Kenny continued. “But any chance to have something rammed down my throat, you know, with the ventilators.”
“What?” Craig asked again.
“It’s nothing,” Kenny sighed. He surreptitiously removed a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it quickly, inhaling deeply. “Fuck, that is awesome,” he sighed.
“Is there something I’m missing here?” Kenny asked, gesturing back and forth between Kyle and Craig with his cigarette.
“Is there ever,” Stan groaned.
Kyle looked at Craig, whose arm was still around his back. “Don’t look at me,” he said moodily. “You’re the one with privacy issues.”
“Well, Kenny,” Kyle said carefully. “I think Craig and I are dating.”
“You think?” Craig and Kenny asked at the same time.
“I’m pretty sure,” Stan mumbled.
“That’s so cute!” Kenny exclaimed, bringing his hands flat together with a loud smack. “Who’s going to carry the children?”
“Children are idiots,” Craig breathed.
“Oh, no, this is too cute,” the blond boy continued. “Willing to throw me a few details?”
“Sure,” said Craig.
“What? No!”
“All right, fine.” Kenny put his cigarette between his lips and parked himself down on the bench next to Stan, filling it to capacity. “Anyway, here I was all ready to help you protest, but it seems like the only thing being protested here today is young love.” The three other boys all gave Kenny a stare. “Well, if my services are not required,” he drawled, standing up, “I think I should remove myself to the military surplus store down in Conifer.”
“What the hell are you going there for?” Kyle asked.
“How the hell are you planning on getting there?” Stan chimed.
“Eh, I’ll hitch.” Kenny flicked his cigarette to the damp ground. “I don’t know, Chris asked me to meet him.”
“Chris?” All three boys on the bench asked at the same time.
“You know, ze Mole,” Kenny clarified. “Christophe, if you will. Although I wouldn’t. Later, tools.” Kenny trudged away, but he gave a final upside-down wave behind himself as he left.
There were a few minutes of silence following Kenny’s departure.
“No one is coming, are they?” Kyle finally said drearily, leaning into Craig.
“Yeah, no.”
“Well, what are we going to do now?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Go home, take a shower. Find a movie.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Still lying on Craig’s torso, Kyle turned to his right. “Stan?”
“I guess I’ll go home.”
“Do you need a ride?”
“No,” Stan said, standing up and stretching. “I’ll walk.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” he said quickly. “See you guys later tonight, maybe. Craig.”
“Stan.”
And Stan walked away.
~
Kyle dropped Craig off, turning down his attractive offer of a joint shower. The idea was a little engaging for him, he had to admit to himself, but Kyle did not doubt that there would be other chances to hook up in the bathroom. Craig promised he’d borrow his father’s truck and pick Kyle up later. Kyle assented to this and returned home completely grossed out, his first attempt at political uprising having been a complete failure.
Predictably, his mother was sitting with a book on the living room couch, and she heard him come in. “What’s wrong?” she asked pointedly, wasting no time reading his demeanor.
So Kyle explained to her about the protest, and she took his face in her hands and gazed across at him, their eyes nearly entirely level. “Don’t worry about it,” she said.
“I just wanted to do some good,” he sighed, bending over to undo his shoelaces.
“Kyle,” she said slowly. “If there is one thing I have learned as an adult, besides how to talk to Canadians, it’s that you can force weak-minded people to follow you if you want — if you know how to agitate them right.”
“That’s what you’ve learned,” he said, unimpressed.
“No, you didn’t let me finish. I’ve learned that that’s what you can do, if you want. But it won’t make a difference.”
“So, what you’re saying is, don’t try.”
“No! That is not what I’m saying. What I’m saying, bubbe, is that you need to put more time into planning these things and less time into being angry and abrasive. It’s not good for you, Kyle. You might get things done by being an angry loudmouth, but you’ll distance people.”
He brought a finger to his lips, contemplating this. “So, it’s better to be a crafty, insidious bastard like Cartman than a raging asswipe.”
“I’m proud of you,” Sheila said softly, kissing him on the forehead. “You’re such a smart boy. You can do good things, I know.”
“Thanks,” Kyle said sadly, removing himself to bathe.
~
Craig took him to see some stupid action film, and indeed he paid for both of them, and drinks. They shared a package of Jujubes, as per usual, but unlike before, they spent most of the time swapping spit, literally. Kyle was beginning to feel at ease with Craig’s voracious nature — it almost seemed like he was lapping saliva out of Kyle’s mouth, trying to trade slimy chunks of gelatinous candy back-and-forth in a battle to end up with the most pieces. It felt like Craig was trying to lick the plaque off of Kyle’s teeth or something, the way he consumed the other boy’s mouth with insatiable hunger and erratic twists of his tongue.
They’d never kissed before Tuesday night, and with this development there was one less boy in the grade Kyle hadn’t kissed. He didn’t know why he’d been holding out on Craig for this long. Apparently Craig’s fixation hadn’t been apparent enough to strike him. And it was probably the unspoken codes of friendship that kept them apart on drunken nights out in the forest — the same rules that kept him off of Stan, no matter how intoxicated he got or how hopelessly bereft he felt some days. Anyway, besides Stan, the only guy standing in the way of his complete set was Cartman. And that was not happening, at all, ever. Sometimes he wondered if he could drunkenly fall on top of Clyde — if he could drunkenly end up getting precariously close to a kid in a wheelchair — maybe it could happen.
But, no, he’d make sure it wouldn’t. This thing with Craig was really solid, and Craig was a really good … well, it occurred to him that Craig hadn’t let him down so far, almost literally. If the idea of someone basically drinking the spit out of his mouth in a movie theater had appeared before him on paper, he’d have dismissed it out of hand. But this was pretty decent.
~
Kenny’s older brother was a complete loser who worked as a checkout boy at a liquor store. He never brushed his hair, and never bought a new pair of sneakers despite the fact that his soles had been peeling off of those things since the boys were in middle school. Unlike Stan’s older sister, who was roughly the same age, Kevin did not graduate and move away to attend a mediocre state school in some other town. The matter of whether or not he graduated was actually somewhat up for debate, if anyone (Kenny included) had found it a topic worth debating.
But because of Kevin McCormick, many of South Park’s under-aged residents were able to drink on weekend nights. So even though he was a complete loser, would probably be shot to death in a bar brawl before he turned 30, and had never been able to hold onto a girlfriend past her inevitable abortion, there was a special place for him in many of the hearts of the celebrants in the basement at the Blacks’ that evening.
Kyle was not surprised to find Kenny crouched on top of the keg when he descended the stairs, Craig leading him by the hand. The first thing they heard was Kenny’s voice ringing out clearly, “Tap this shit!” Then he made devil’s horns with one hand and raised it into the air. “Only a $5 buy-in! Send your good wishes to this desolate wretch, my friends! It’s what God would want! Merci beaucoup! In the port of Amsterdam!”
“I don’t get him,” Craig said in his nasal way, indicating Kenny with a slight of his shoulder. “What he’s saying is dumb. And he’s overcharging. Again.”
Kyle shrugged this off. “He has his way.” Which was about when Kenny lost his balance and fell backwards off of the keg, tumbling down to the ground.
“I meant to do that,” he cried, but his words were muffled and no one made them out. No one checked to make sure Kenny was okay. Kyle wouldn’t buy any beer from him. Kenny got the kegs from his brother for free, and they split the profit. Besides, it was probably something weak, something that tasted like soap or piss or something.
Craig took off to talk to Token, and Kyle sat down on the couch by himself. He looked around: No girls, anywhere. But he saw Clyde and Tweek talking across the room, the latter wiping his nose as furtively as he possibly could, drooling slightly, albeit unwittingly. It had been a long day, and he was hardly in the mood to rage, as they said, so Kyle laid his head back on the couch and began to let his mind empty, until—
“Hey Kyle!”
“Jesus!” A slight body in a purple leotard sat down and put an arm around Kyle. “Oh my god, Butters, I can see all of your junk.” Kyle gagged almost as soon as he said this. “Why the fuck are you wearing that?”
“I don’t know,” Butters said, adjusting himself. The sound of glass hitting glass resonated, and Kyle noticed a nearly full bottle of Goldschlager.
“Ugh, please stop. Here.” Kyle handed Butters a pillow. “Cover yourself.” Butters did.
“Listen,” Butters said. “I just wanna say, well, I feel awful bad that you were mad at me this week.”
“What?”
“You know.” He’d obviously had a few drinks before coming, that much was obvious. “We were fighting, and you and Eric don’t get along, I just—”
“Sheesh, Butters, dude. It’s okay, really.”
“So I was thinking.”
“What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking, I don’t want to fight with you. I feel just awful, real terrible, so — maybe we could make up?”
“Uh.” Kyle nodded. “Fine.” He glanced around. “Where is, um, Eric?”
“He’s studying with Wendy.” Butters picked up the bottle of alcohol. “He’ll be here later I guess.”
“It’s not upsetting that you’re here wearing a faggy little tutu thing and he’s, er, studying with a chick?”
“Aw, heck no. I’m not possessive. So.” Butters unscrewed the bottle and handed it to Kyle. “Friends?”
“Um, yeah.” He took a swig, and almost gagged. “Butters, this shit is disgusting.”
“Oh, I know you don’t care.”
Butters was right. He didn’t. He cared so little that he took another sip. He smiled at Butters. Butters smiled right back, kissing him on the cheek. Then he took the bottle back from Kyle, and they passed it back and forth for some time, although neither of them could say how long that was, exactly.
~
After that he and Butters finished the bottle, and then he went to go talk to Kenny for a while. Kenny gave him a cup of beer for free, and then for some reason he was talking to Pip about crepes or some French shit like that. Still, Pip had a bottle of gin, and Kyle helped himself to some of that. After telling Pip that France was the armpit of the Earth and that he was a worthless piece of crap, Kyle didn’t remember much until he found himself kind of hugging the banister on the staircase, feeling wonderfully sick to his stomach.
A pair of arms wrapped around him, and a black-haired boy lifted him away from the railing. “Aw, awww,” he moaned. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times — don’t mix hard booze with beer.” Now that he felt kind of safe, Kyle just shut his eyes. “I know that look. Come on, dude. Let’s get you to a toilet.”
They plodded up the stairs, but were stopped at the landing by Craig, who was standing sturdily with arms crossed, scowling.
“He’s, um, you know, he’s like.” Stan stammered. “He’s gonna barf,” he finished quietly.
“I can take it from here,” Craig offered, extending his arms. “Come on.”
“I was just gonna.” Stan handed the dizzy red-haired boy over to Craig. “Drive him home or something.”
“Who the hell are you? You’ve been drinking that disgusting piss Kenny passes off as beer for the past hour and a half!”
“I’m cool,” Stan gasped. “I always take care of him, don’t I?”
“Whatever. Not any more you don’t.”
“Oh.” Stan looked down and behind at the revelers in the basement. “Don’t try to tell me you’re sober.”
“Actually, I am.”
“Good job.”
Craig rolled his eyes and picked Kyle up, the smaller boy curling into his chest.
“Craig,” Stan called after him. The other boy paused and kind of looked over both his shoulder and the top of Kyle’s fairly substantial hairdo. “Aren’t you going to give me the finger?”
Craig scoffed. “What are you talking about?” he asked.
“You know,” Stan said, raising both of his middle fingers and kind of bouncing his hands up and down for Craig’s benefit.
“I don’t have time for this shit, Marsh,” Craig said conclusively, setting off again to get Kyle to a bathroom.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-30 17:49 (UTC)I think feeling sorry for Butters is a lost cause, though.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-31 00:07 (UTC)I suspected as much! Poor Butters.