Fic: "Adventures in Impaired Judgment" - Stan/Kyle - Part 4/4
Stan wakes up at an obscenely early hour, alone on the couch, his neck and left wrist both bent at an unnatural and extremely uncomfortable angle.
It's dawn, or something like it; if Stan looks out the window, he can see a grayish, barely-there glow rising up from behind the mountains. There's no rain anymore, just residual water dripping from the gutters and ankle-high puddles scattered along the sidewalk. It's eerily quiet.
Stan stands up and stretches, feeling a stab of pain in his neck at the movement. There's a dull, consistent throbbing between his eyes, but it's hardly the worst hangover he's had. He runs his tongue over his teeth and finds them smoother than he'd expect after a night of drinking. Must've brushed his teeth right before he passed out, then.
His head feels strangely heavy and warm and Stan reaches a hand up to touch it. He's wearing a hat. He runs his fingers over the fabric, along the seams, and down to one of the flaps. Not just any hat, then: Kyle's hat.
Unsurprisingly, he has no idea how that got there. He squeezes his eyes shut. Okay, so. What's the last thing he remembers?
He remembers Kyle coming over, dripping wet from the rain; remembers getting Kyledrunk, but - obviously Stan started drinking at some point, too, he just doesn't have a clue as to why. He feels around in his pocket for his cell phone. It wouldn't exactly be a new thing to find a slew of ridiculous and embarrassing texts in his outbox following a night of drinking.
There's nothing, though, except for one incoming call from Kenny, received a little before midnight. Stan looks at the screen for a moment, trying to decide what to do next, wonders if Kenny had had anything important to say, and then - oh, shit.
No, okay, no. Stan reaches up and pinches the bridge of his nose.
He doesn't have any distinct memories of what occurred after he started drinking, but he has a feeling that whatever it was that happened might have worked its way into his dreams somehow. Because now that he thinks about it, the dream he was having right before he woke up had involved a lot of kissing and touching and…well, it probably hadn't happened on Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride, but otherwise Stan is about 97% sure that he made out with Kyle last night.
Stan glances behind him at the empty couch. Christ. He didn't scare Kyle off completely, did he?
He walks over to the foot of the stairs and stands there for a moment, staring up them like they're Everest or something, then turns around to look at the welcome mat by the front door. There's one pair of shoes there, his own. Kyle's are nowhere to be found.
Stan shifts his gaze over and to the right, to the coat tree standing to the side of the door, and sees that Kyle's jacket, at least, is still there. He takes a couple of steps and presses his nose against the little square window on the front door, but the front porch is empty.
If Kyle put his shoes on, Stan figures he's probably outside, but if he left his coat, he probably hasn't gone far. Stan slides his own shoes on and heads for the back door.
Kyle is sitting on the back porch railing, facing out toward the backyard and the mountains beyond it, the faint line of orange forming on the horizon.
Stan lets the door bang shut behind him. He clears his throat and rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck, tries and fails to think of something adequate to say. "Hey."
It's the most worthless greeting possible at this point, probably. Stan braces himself for Kyle's response.
Kyle's voice is soft. "Hey." He doesn't turn around, just kicks his dangling feet a couple of times. "So. I guess this is what a hangover feels like."
Stan crosses the porch, the damp wood creaking beneath his feet with each step. He leans against one of the porch's support beams, a foot or two from where Kyle is sitting, and gazes up at the awning above them. "Yeah, well," Stan says, mouth twisting. "I'm sorry."
Kyle snorts. "What for?"
"I don't know," Stan says, picking at a piece of splintered wood on the railing. "For, like, making you do anything you didn't want to do, I guess."
"You…didn't." Kyle looks over at him. "Um. What do you remember?"
Stan coughs. "Uh, well, you know. Not a lot. Stuff. I - did we like - ?" He waves a hand between the two of them, unable to get the words out.
Kyle drums his knuckles on the railing and swings his legs a little harder. He doesn't look at Stan. "If you mean 'did we make out?' Then yeah, that happened."
"Oh, okay," Stan says. He nods once. "Good."
Kyle shoots him a sidelong look, eyebrows raising. "Good?"
Stan's stomach lurches dangerously. "Well, I mean, unless you don't think so," he says, laughing nervously. He reaches up to brush some hair out of his eyes, but his hand finds Kyle's hat instead. He takes it off and looks at it. "Hey, come here."
Kyle gives Stan a hesitant look, but he slides along the railing anyway. He looks down at his own hands. "I guess I might not have, like, minded or whatever," he says.
The tips of Stan's ears grow warm. "Well, maybe I didn't either," he says. He holds onto the flaps of Kyle's hat, one in each hand, and leans forward, carefully sliding it back into its rightful place on Kyle's head.
Before he can pull away, though, Kyle catches Stan's arm and twists it around. He looks down at it intently, like he's reading some secret code in the freckles or something. "Huh," Kyle says.
Stan's breath catches. "What?"
Kyle twists Stan's arm so that he can look at it, and it turns out that there actually are words written there, after all. The handwriting is definitely Kyle's. Stan reads it and can't help letting a slow smile break out on his face. It's maybe a little lame, but really, whatever. "You think so? I mean, you're not bad yourself or anything, either. Did I write anything on you?"
Kyle smiles uncertainly and touches a finger to the inside of his own arm. "Yeah. You, ha, um…love me, apparently." He holds out his arm and shrugs with one shoulder, as if to indicate that he's in no way responsible for the words written there.
It's not like Stan could argue that he was, anyway. He recognizes his own handwriting when he sees it.
Seeing the words written out like that, undeniably from his own hand, Stan also realizes that there really isn't any point in trying to deny it, whether to Kyle or to himself.
"Yeah, I…yeah. What do you think?" Stan feels a little bit like he might throw up.
"I think it's weird, dude."
Stan's stomach sinks. He doesn't know if he can even speak through the tightness in his throat. "Oh," he manages to croak out.
Kyle pulls on the flaps of his ushanka to tug the hat down. He finds Stan's gaze and holds it. "Maybe I decided I don't exactly mind weird."
"Oh," Stan says, stomach uncoiling, and he feels a warm, pleasant sensation spread through his body. He hoists himself up on the railing next to Kyle. Their shoulders end up just barely touching, and Stan rests a tentative hand on Kyle's back. "So, uh. What should we do about that, do you think?"
Kyle puts a hand on Stan's shoulder.
Looking out at the distant mountains and the orange-pink sky above it, they watch the sun rise.
- fin
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A/N: Um, okay, some concluding comments. As this is both my first South Park fic and was, at the time I started it, my first attempt at writing in general in a few years, I had absolutely no intention of letting it get this long. Hopefully it managed to be some kind of coherent (or at least enjoyable) story anyway, though considering how little actually happened in so many words, that possibility is pretty dubious. Regardless, if you made it all the way through, I hope you liked it! Feedback is the most amazing thing in the world and nothing makes me happier than comments, so please let me know what you thought!