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Loneliness and pride oftentimes walked the same path.
If loneliness was the result of driving people away, then pride was the action. Pride was the refusal to admit that anyone was needed, was the stiffening of shoulders and the turn of the head that was meant to dissuade people from approaching. Pride was the self destructive element, used to disguise and conceal the truth, and yet in turn showed the world a lie that only ever led to being left alone.
Loneliness and pride.
Kyle suffered from both.
The sidewalk ahead of him is straight and unturning. Leading him home to his mother, and those college applications he has left open on tabs on his desktop. Immovable concrete. Leading him to his same bedroom walls and bed where’d he’d lay down and try to mentally absorb his chosen textbook of the night.
Why was walking alone again?
Kyle doesn't really remember why he didn’t grab Stan or someone to walk home with. He swore that was something that he would have normally done. He dealt with his own thoughts enough at home.
Huh, weird.
It’s a thought that lingers at the edge of his mind. A question he’s contemplating as he walks that’s interrupted by a sudden chill that goes down his spine. The hair at the back of his neck standing up, causing him to shiver even though it’s late spring and relatively warm outside.
He stops in his tracks. “What the-“
But before he can finish his sentence he’s interrupted by a voice. A voice he knows nearly as well as his own.
“Hey Ky, it’s me, Kenny. So uh, funny story…”
Kyle looks around, but no ones there. Not a soul to be found. No, that couldn’t have-
“Okay so, don’t get mad but I might have-”
And it apparently did come from inside his own head. Well, shit.
“Kenny?!” Kyle screeches, cutting the bodiless voice off and thankful that no one is around to hear him flipping out at seemingly no one. “What the fuck?! Why are you in my head?!”
“I was getting to that,” the inner voice of his friend explains patiently. “So, I might have thought it’d be funny to possess you but um, it didn’t work and I’m kind of stuck now and don’t know how to get out.”
Always one to think ahead, Kyle quickly backed into a side street so people wouldn’t see him talking to himself. Then leaned against the wall of the store as he let the words sink in, holding his face in his hands with a tired sigh.
“Is this a joke? Did you hide a speaker on me or something?”
“Ky, I’m poor as shit. Where would I get a microspeaker?”
Kyle’s gaze narrowed. “Is Cartman in on this? I swear I’m going to fucking kill-”
“Ky, please. You know I would never team up with Cartman against you.”
“I know that,” he says massaging his temples, “But Kenny, this doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s...hard to explain.”
“Try me.”
“Okay but it’s kind of a long story, and a dark alley might not be the best place to explain.”
Kyle stood there for a moment more, endlessly skeptical. Still, there was at least some logic in his last statement, and Kyle had never been one to go against logic.
“Fine, whatever.”
And so Kyle pushed himself off the wall and resumed his walk home.
It was a path he knew well. Immovable. The same path he always took. Which was good because he didn’t have to pay attention to where he was going as he contemplated the fundamentals of possession and how much he knew about ghosts.
Suffice to say, it wasn’t much. His biology or geography classes never prepared him for this shit.
“So,” Kenny says slowly, “how’s your day been?”
“You’re not seriously asking me that question right now.”
“What? Are we supposed to just share the same headspace in complete silence?”
“I’d rather not share the same headspace at all,” Kyle mutters.
There is a momentary lapse of silence. Kyle hoped that meant that Kenny had finally decided to give him some time to collect his thoughts.
“Ky you’re like super tense. You need to lighten up a bit.”
And apparently not.
“I do not need to lighten up!” Kyle snaps before quickly looking around for anyone who might have seen.
“Okay, okay. Geez. So touchy.”
Kyle takes a deep breath, a sudden thought crossing his mind. “Wait, Ken, you’re dead?”
Kenny doesn’t answer for a moment, and the words hang in the empty air before him. Just long enough that Kyle begins thinking that the entire thing was only ever in his head. That he’s been alone this entire time. Kyle shivers.
“Uh yeah,” Kenny says finally, “that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Kyle’s steps slow as he processes this. It’s a confirmation, but not a good one. No matter if it’s logical, no matter if it had been said before. Suddenly it’s there, written in the sky in clear black and white letters. “You’re dead?” He repeats, voice quiet.
“Yeah, but it’s not what you think!” Kenny quickly says, probably sensing Kyle’s growing horror. “I die all the time, dude! It just takes me a little while to come back.”
There were a lot of thoughts going through his head. On one hand, what Kenny was saying sounded completely illogical, on the other hand, Kenny had either found someone with the highest quality speaker to ever exist, or his voice was literally coming from inside of Kyle’s head. Kind of hard to disprove. And if he came back then that meant he wasn’t permanently dead. Just...gone for a while. Kind of as if he took a vacation...
Inside of Kyle’s head.
“Ky, you okay?”
“Yeah, sorry. I just think I need some time to process this.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll be here if you have any questions.”
“Right. Thanks.”
Well, if Kenny was asking things like that then it at least meant that Kenny couldn’t actually hear his thoughts. Which was a relief. Kyle also didn’t really feel any different and still had complete control of his body, which definitely was good. Probably because he was so strong. Aha. Take that, Kenny.
Then again...the whole Kenny dying thing was really fucking hard to wrap his head around.
“So...any questions so far?”
“No, I’m alright.”
“Cool, cool.”
Kyle did remember that Kenny used to always tell them that he couldn’t die when they were kids. But he’d always thought he’d been joking, especially since, in time, Kenny stopped saying it at all.
There’s a humming sound coming from inside his head.
“Kenny, can you please stop humming?”
“Oh right, sorry.”
But could Kenny have really been telling the truth all this time? Had he been telling the truth and Kyle himself just hadn’t noticed? Hadn’t listened? But there was no way Kyle could have missed something as big as Kenny dying all the time.
...Right?
Kyle spots his house coming up on the street and he tucks that train of thought away for later. Kenny stays silent as he crosses the pathway up to his front door, and opens it without knocking. Walking into his house he immediately spots his mother leaning over the kitchen counter.
“Did you have a good day at school, bubbe?” She says without looking up.
“Yeah,” Kyle says, just as he always does, “it was fine.”
“That’s good.” Kyle is about to move past her to his room, thinking their deep and thoughtful conversation has been concluded, when she stops him. “Oh, and I put some scholarship applications on your desk for you to fill out tonight.”
Kyle kind of wishes he would have just ran past her. Hell, had he known he would have tried scaling the window. Anything to avoid this.
“Okay,” He says slowly, attempting to think of words that might appease his mother, “but I have a lot of homework tonight and-”
She tsked. “Deadlines, bubbe. Your studies are important but so are scholarships if you want to be able to go to law school.”
“I don’t,” he bites under his breath.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” he says quickly before moving to go up the stairs to his room. “I’ll do them tonight.”
His footsteps fall heavy on the staircase, and when he gets in his room he stops and looks at his desk. Open college applications on his computer screen. Scholarship applications piled next to the keyboard. He slowly walks over and lays down his bag heavy with textbooks and assignments before he sits at his desk, putting his head in his hands.
“So…”
“Kenny, can we please do this later?”
“Yeah...sure, Ky.”
***
Kenny’s bored.
Kyle knows this because the more he tries to concentrate and get things done, the more Kenny seems determined to make sure that doesn’t happen.
“Kenny, for the love of god, please stop singing!”
Kenny stops his latest rendition of Stressed Out and groans.
“But Kyyyyle, you’ve been sitting here doing nothing for hourrrrs....”
“I’m not doing ‘nothing’! I’m cementing my future.”
Kenny scoffs. “Yeah, a future you don’t even want.”
“My mom just wants what’s best for me.”
“Uh huh.”
“It’s true!”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I’m not getting into this right now. I’m going to get a-” he pauses, a very important question crossing his mind. “Kenny, what’s it like being in my head?”
“What?”
“Like do you see whatever I’m seeing or…?”
“Oh, well I see whatever you see. And uh, I guess feel whatever you feel.”
Kyle stands up with a nod and walks over to start rooting through his closet.
“Ky, what are you doing?”
“I need to get a shower,” he says in answer.
“Wait,” Kenny says after a moment, understanding clicking into place. “I lied. I don’t see anything. Kyle, please, I’m begging you.”
“No, not happening,” Kyle says in answer as he finally comes across the bandana he had been looking for and carries it with him over to the bathroom.
“Come on, seriously?”
Kyle ignores him. Just ducks under the bathroom sink and pulls out the box of heavy duty latex gloves his mom used to dye her hair, pulling them on with a snap.
“Kyle, you’re killing me here.”
He then takes the bandana and ties it around his eyes, covering the world in darkness.
“And I thought we were friends.”
***
Later that night, after his shower, Kyle lies awake in bed. He’s exhausted, both physically and mentally, his bed soft and warm beneath him, and yet his eyes continuously flicker back and forth between his plain white ceiling and the ever-changing numbers on his alarm clock.
“Uh, are you going to go to sleep anytime soon or…?”
Kyle shakes his head. “Can’t sleep.”
“Is it because of me?”
“No,” Kyle says a little too quickly before he coughs as if to hide it. “No, this is normal.”
Kenny’s quiet for a moment, as if processing this.
“Oh.”
Another moment passes in silence. The universe bears down around him, leaving him alone with nothing but his thoughts. Nothing but his thoughts and these same old four walls. The ticking of the clock. Plain white ceiling. Kyle sighs and starts to get up.
“What are you doing?”
“Well if I can’t sleep, might as well get some more work done,” Kyle says with no small amount of bitterness lacing his tone. “Do something useful with my time.”
“Nuh uh. No you don’t.”
“What?” Kyle narrows his eyes, never one who liked being told what to do. “What do you mean, no?”
“I mean, no,” Kenny says, not backing down in the slightest. “Ky you need to sleep.”
“Thanks.” He rolls his eyes, “I just said I can’t, genius.”
“Dude, just stop being an ass and lie down. I have an idea.”
“What are you going to do?” Kyle says, endlessly skeptical.
“Just trust me.”
Kyle rolls his eyes again but listens, lying back down. Not a moment later, Kenny begins to hum.
“What are you doing?” Kyle says in confusion.
“I’m humming.”
“Yeah, I got that part. But why?”
“I’m trying to get you to relax, dude. You think too much.”
Kyle snorts, but allows his eyes to fall closed as Kenny picks up his humming once more. The boy has a really nice voice, Kyle realizes. He’s remarkably in tune, and even if Kyle doesn’t recognize the song, it’s soft and sweet.
It’s nice.
Without realizing it, his muscles begin to relax into the mattress and his eyes fall closed. It’s not so much a comfort of sound as music has never before had the ability to calm him, but more so the knowledge that someone’s there with him. That he doesn’t have to be alone with his thoughts.
His last thought before Kyle finally slips into sleep, is that of all the people he could have ended up stuck with, he’s glad it was Kenny.
***
That night, Kyle dreams.
Or maybe it’d be more correct to say that Kenny dreams, and Kyle just ends up privy to his unconscious thoughts.
Because Kyle has sure as hell never had dreams like these before.
It’s the flashing of different images. Gone without a beginning, without an end. A truck rushing towards him. A train. A barrel of a gun. Of being crushed. Being cut in half. With blood coating his hands. His clothes. The ground.
Kyle dreams of dying.
Over.
And over.
And over again.
He sees himself as Kenny would. Glazed eyes and blank expression. Places he recognizes. Situations he remembers. But not the blood. He doesn't remember the blood.
You bastards.
Kyle wakes up with tears running down his face and he lowers his head and lets them fall. He can’t get the images to stop from replaying, and he feels sick. His stomach twisting in a combination of the gore and the guilt that curls around in his gut.
After a moment, Kenny speaks up.
“I’m sorry you had to see that.”
Kyle chokes out a sad impression of a laugh at the words. Suffering. So much suffering. Kenny had been dealing with so much while Kyle ignored him and wrapped himself up in his own juvenile issues. And yet he was apologizing to him.
“Kenny,” he breathes out eventually, unsure of what he could possibly say. Eventually he settles on, “I’m so sorry.”
There is a pause, and when Kenny next speaks his voice is soothing, a comforting caress of a fading whisper that resounds within his head.
“You have nothing to be sorry for. No one remembers, it’s not your fault.”
But Kyle can’t help but feel responsible. All those years and he had never listened. Had let Kenny suffer alone.
Nothing could make up for that.
***
That day the morning passes by quickly as Kyle gets ready for school in relative silence. Kenny doesn’t say much either, not even when Kyle puts on the makeshift blindfold before getting dressed again. His movements are slower than usual so he ends up being the last one at the street corner where he meets the guys every morning to walk to school. Not that they couldn’t drive but, at least when the weather was decent, the school was a short enough distance away that they could walk and not have to worry about the shitty parking the school had to offer.
When he walks up Stan and Cartman are already waiting. As he approaches they both look at him expectantly.
Kyle narrows his gaze in suspicion. “What?”
“Oh nothing,” Stan says with a small shrug and a sly smile, “just normally you would have asked about Kenny by now.”
Kyle blanches. What the hell? Really? In his mental library he added ‘traitor’ to Stan’s title of super best friend. What an asshole.
Thankfully, Kenny remained silent. He thanked god for small miracles.
With crossed arms and stiffened posture, Kyle craftily answers. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Stan’s grin widens.
Oh no.
“Guys, have you seen, Kenny?” His traitor best friend says in a high-pitched tone that Kyle supposes is intended to be a representation of his voice. The nerve. “Is Kenny here yet? Is Kenny not coming to school again today?”
Kyle feels a little bit like dying. Kind of wants to scream and march right back home where there are no traitor best friends and evil worst enemies who have suddenly decided to team up on him. Of all the days for them to decide to join forces and announce their treacherous ways, it had to be the one where Kyle had a very certain guest hiding away in his head...or body. He still wasn’t too sure of the mechanics of possession.
Either way, that wasn’t important at the moment.
“So, I ask about him sometimes,” he rolls back his shoulders and lifts his chin, “so what?”
“Really, Kahl?” Cartman adds, creeping closer like a spider. A really large, really ugly spider. Made of lard. “I think all of us know that you want the po’boy’s dick.”
“I do not!” Kyle immediately looks to Stan for help but his traitor best friend is too busy snickering into his hand. Traitor.
Meanwhile, Cartman just keeps going, pleased with his audience.
“You’re just like,” he raises his voice in pitch, “Oh Kinny, I love it when you bend me over like this and-”
“Shut up Cartman!” Kyle snaps, hands balled into fists at his side.
Cartman snickers.
“Alright, that’s enough, fatass,” Stan says, finally resuming his role as best friend. Well, it was about damn time. “Besides,” he says after a moment, “it’d totally be the other way around.”
“That’s it!” Kyle turns on his heel. “I’m leaving!”
“Awe Ky, come on! We were just kidding!”
Kyle ignores him, and storms away with the sudden urge to punch someone. Preferably Cartman. Well, he always had that urge, but it was particularly strong at the moment and he had enough on his plate without having to deal with the inevitable fallout. Besides, Kenny had been suspiciously silent, not even a mock or a chuckle, and it was quite frankly horrifying.
“So…you ask about me?”
And speak of the devil.
“No!” Kyle says immediately, naturally picking up his pace as if that might be enough for him to lose the boy taking residence in his head.
“Ky, is that a blush I feel? Are you blushing?”
“Kenny, I swear to god, when you get your body back I will personally strangle you.”
“Oh, kinky.”
“Oh my god!”
But even if he’d never in his life admit it, Kyle was secretly charmed at the barrage of unending giggles that accompanied him throughout the rest of his walk to school.
***
The morning goes by, for the most part, uneventfully.
Well until second period geography comes along. The one class that Kyle shares with Stan.
He’d been sitting there, minding his own business, when he was suddenly hit in the side of the head with a note from Stan with the words, ‘Don’t be mad, I’m sorry!’ written on it, along with a bunch of sad faces and poorly drawn dogs. Kenny thought it was hilarious of course, and throughout the class keeps giggling and trying to convince Kyle to draw a pair of boobs on it and send it back.
Kyle didn’t listen, but he does at least forgive Stan. Not that he was really that mad in the first place.
Not that anyone had to know that.
Which is what led him to where he was now, heading across the cafeteria to where Stan was seated with his football friends.
“Ky, where are you going?” Kenny pipes up in confusion, “Our table’s over there.”
Kyle glances over to the table where they normally sit. The table Kenny was talking about. The one where it was the four of them and Butters, now currently left completely empty. An empty section in the packed cafeteria.
“We don’t sit there on days that you...aren’t here.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” Kyle tries his best to explain, “Stan likes to sit with his football friends but he doesn’t like abandoning me.” He gives a shrug, small enough to be unnoticeable. “This is our compromise.”
Kenny doesn’t respond to that and remains silent as Kyle sits down at the end of the chaotic lunch table, next to Stan. Stan offers him a smile before turning back towards his other friends.
Everyone at the table is talking and laughing. Pushing each other around, calling people out from across the table, having fun. Kyle watches them, trying to smile but knowing it falls short. Wanting to join in but not knowing how.
Kyle heaves out a quiet resigned sigh and opens up his geography textbook. Might as well study. Opening up to the chapter he needed to be on, his eyes begin to blanky skim over the same line when his reading, or lack thereof, is interrupted by Kenny.
“Hey Ky, do me a favor and look up for a minute.”
Brows knitting in perplexion, Kyle acquiesces and lifts his gaze to the table of football players once more.
“Yep, just as I thought,” Kenny says without missing a beat, “Clyde, totally a pop fan. Just look at the way he’s holding that hot pocket, bet he uses his brush as a microphone and everything as he rocks out to some T-Swift.”
Kyle tries to hide his snicker beneath his hand. Briefly looking back down at his open textbook, he flips to a random page and writes three words in small letters up in the margins of the page.
‘What the hell?’
“Indulge me,” Kenny says in response. “Now it’s your turn, what about Token?”
Kyle looks up at Token and considers. The kid was always so put together, eyeing everyone at the table with amusement and attempting to insert logic into whatever chaos was happening. He looks back down at his book.
‘Classical?’ he writes.
“Spsh as if, that’s just what he wants you to think. As if he’s all put together. I bet when he goes home behind closed doors, he’s a real heavy metal type of guy. Hidden behind his fancy picture frames? Metallica posters. Vintage.”
Kyle nearly chokes on his laugh at that mental image and immediately writes the next name down. ‘Stan?’
“Oh, he’s easy. Love songs. Like those really old cheesy ones that the guy never fails to win a girl’s heart with in the movies. They’re set on repeat. Full playlists.”
At this point Kyle’s trying real hard not to break out into full hysterical laughter. Trying really hard. Stan meets his eye and gives him a smile, clearly satisfied that he seemed to finally be having fun.
Meanwhile, in his head, Kenny was still trying to talk in between his giggling.
“The best part is, I’m sure these assholes think you’re laughing with them, but little do they know that they’ll never be cool enough to join in this conversation. It’s for members of Kyle Broflovski’s mind only, and I’m not too good with sharing.”
In between his barely concealed laughter, Kyle looks down at his textbook once more, and up in the margin of the page, beneath the others, he writes two more words in deep black ink.
‘Thank you.’
***
The rest of the day passes by much the same, with Kyle attempting to go on as he would normally and Kenny gleefully determined to make sure that didn’t happen.
And in the end, despite the less than perfect beginning, it had been a good day.
One of the best Kyle had ever had.
He’s lying in bed once more, the moon high in the midnight sky, talking to Kenny about whatever’s on his mind, when a question crosses his thoughts.
“Hey, Ken, quick question.”
“Shoot.”
“If you’re possessing me, can you actually control me?”
“Uh I think so? But you’d have to stop fighting me for that to happen.”
“I’m…fighting you?”
“Yeah, at least that’s the best way I can explain it. Even if I try, I can’t really get through. It’s like I’m hitting a wall.”
Taking a moment to think about this, a dark thought crosses his mind that gives Kyle pause. A theory that would explain a lot in a situation that had very little explanation.
“Am I the reason you’re stuck?”
“No,” Kenny says quickly. “No, I don’t think so. I think if anything you’re subconsciously trying to push me out.” He laughs.
The words come without him really meaning them to.
“Well how do I,” Kyle pauses, “stop...doing that.”
“Uh wait, you want to let me in?”
“Well,” Kyle says slowly, as his mouth and brain seemed to be at a momentary disconnect, “if there’s even a chance it might give you a way out, why not?”
Kyle could think of several thousand reasons. He decided not to voice them.
“Uh right,” Kenny sounds as if he doesn’t quite believe him, but he goes on anyway, “well whenever you relax it gets a little bit easier. So, I think you might just need to trust me?”
“I...okay fine. Just give me a minute.”
Kyle closes his eyes and attempts to relax. Takes deep breaths and thinks about allowing Kenny in. Of relinquishing control. Letting someone else in so that he could take the reins and push Kyle to the side. Make him insignificant in his own body. Weak. Powerless.
“Ky, you’re tense as hell.”
“I know that!” Kyle snaps. “I said give me a minute!”
He tries again.
But this time he goes a different route. A different line of thinking. Kenny had said to trust him. Him. Kenny. Selfless and brave Kenny, who would give anything for the people he cared about. Kenny who stayed around when no one else would. Bright blue eyes. An ever-present smile.
Kenny.
“Okay...okay, I’m-” But before he can even finish his sentence he’s suddenly moving without his control with a very specific purpose and what the fuck. Kyle jumps up with particularly high pitched sound that he’s in no way proud of, taking control of his body once more.
“Did you just make me grab my own ass?!”
“I knew I only had a moment,” Kenny says through his laughter, “I had to make it count.”
***
“Kenny,” Kyle asks him the next night, “how long does it normally take for you to come back?”
Earlier the day had followed a pattern similar to that of the previous, and the night found Kyle in the same spot, laying across his bed.
“I don’t know,” Kenny says thoughtfully, “a couple days usually. Though sometimes it’s only a few hours and others…”
He trails off, as if he doesn’t want to voice the next part, and Kyle sits up.
“What about the others? Kenny, I need to know what we’re dealing with here.”
“Well,” he says slowly, “One time it took a few months.”
Kyle’s heart drops. Months? He had to be kidding, right?
“Ken, you were gone for months? I think I’d remember you going missing for that long.”
It’s a long time before Kenny says anything, and when he does the sound of his voice is somehow quiet.
“Yeah...I’d thought so too.”
***
Later that same night, Kyle dreams.
Or, as before, it might be more accurate to say that Kenny dreams. Although this is different than the death dream.
Much different.
His hands are Kenny’s and he’s pushing himself against the wall, tongue diving deep into his mouth. Flashes of bared skin and of bright apple green eyes that are his own yet unrecognizable with the burning fire of lust shining within. Sweat soaked red hair and hands that wander down, down, down.
Kyle throws his eyes open and sits up in bed panting.
“How long,” he gasps.
“Twelve inches,” Kenny replies after a moment, but there’s no trace of his usual humor in his words.
“Dammit Kenny! How long!” He’s only met with silence and he sighs. “I’m not mad, I just want to know.”
More silence.
Kyle runs a hand through his hair, and shakes his head with a small laugh. Well, it looked like he’d just have to go first then.
“It was sophomore year for me,” he starts into the silence of the night. The clock on his bedside table reads 3:36am, and really this is not at all how he planned on doing this. But hell with it. “I’d been having a real shit day, was snapping at everyone who came close. Even Stan couldn’t deal with me,” he shakes his head again, voice softening with fondness. “But you stayed. Even when I told you to get lost and to just leave me the hell alone, you sat with me and just talked. Told me this story about something or other, don’t even remember what it was about now, but before I knew it I was laughing and...and it felt as if someone actually cared, you know?” He pauses and smiles into the darkness, imagining even if only for a second that Kenny’s in front of him as he should have been. “That’s when I started looking at you differently.”
Kyle stops talking and is met with silence.
He wonders if Kenny can feel the way his heart is pounding in his chest. Wonders what the hell he’s thinking because he can’t see his expression. Wonders if he went a little too far in confessing to actual feelings when Kenny might have just thought he had a nice ass.
“Please say something,” he pleads.
“I don’t remember when it started. It was..,” Kenny pauses, “it was a long time ago.”
Kyle breathes out a breath of relief he hadn’t known he’d been holding.
“Before high school?”
“Yeah, I used to look up to you a lot, you were the strongest and smartest person I knew,” he says fondly, and Kyle knows that his smile would match his tone if he was able to see it. “Then as we got older, I guess it ended up turning into something more.”
“You never said anything.”
“I never thought you’d go for someone like me.”
Kyle can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. Selfless and beautiful Kenny, thinking that he didn’t deserve someone like Kyle. It was ridiculous. The most illogical thing he had ever heard.
“You’re an amazing person, Kenny,” Kyle says, pouring as much raw affection into his voice as he can. “And when all this is over, I’d really, really like to go out with you.”
“I uh,” he laughs nervously, “this isn’t a joke is it?”
Kyle snorts. “Kenny, please.”
“Well, this isn’t really how I pictured this going, but yeah.” His tone turns to something light and hopeful. Exceedingly cheerful. “Hell yeah.”
“Good,” Kyle says with a large grin as he settles back into his bed, “I’ll be looking forward to it.”
***
The next day, after school, Kyle goes to the store so he can pick up a bluetooth earpiece. It was to be a much better option then what he was currently doing to avoid odd stares, which was continuously holding his phone up to his ear as if he was talking to someone.
Which, technically, he was. Not that anyone else knew that.
From out the corner of his eye he spots a young couple clothes shopping together and immediately is overcome with an urge to go shopping for his new future-boyfriend. His new future-boyfriend who was currently inheriting ‘future’ status because of the fact that he was stuck possessing him. He was also currently busy humming some song that sounded suspiciously like ‘Stacy’s Mom’.
“Hey, Ken?” Kyle says, looking back down at the shelves, “When we start dating, will you let me buy you things?”
The humming stopped.
“Huh? Like what?”
“You know just things. Clothes, food, or whatever.”
The reply takes a moment, and Kyle can practically picture the cute little sulking look he’d probably be wearing. Kenny always hated being treated differently for being poor. Still, Kyle was pretty certain he’d be able to convince him.
“I’m not a charity case, Ky.”
The reply is exactly as Kyle had expected and he smirks.
“Of course not. But I’d want to spoil you,” he says sweetly. “And I need to ask you this now since you’re not actually around to hit me.”
Kenny doesn’t immediately answer, but Kyle feels something wet on his cheek and he reaches up to feel tears. “Ken, is this from you?” He looks at his damp hand in bafflement. “What the hell?”
“I’m sorry, I’m just so happy.”
***
A few days later, the atmosphere in Kyle’s biology class is remarkably tense as the teacher looks towards her students with clear disappointment in her eyes.
“The grades were...lower than usual. I tallied the number of letter grades on the board so everyone can see how our class average as a whole was a D. And you can thank the one person who got an A for that, because otherwise we’d be looking at an F.”
Kyle’s looking down at his test, the number 94 written in red up top with a little smiley face and a ‘Great job, Kyle!’ beside it.
Despite what it said, he didn’t feel too great about it.
“I can’t believe I got question four wrong,” he mutters under his breath, low enough that no one would be able to hear him. “I had it right but then I switched my answer at the last minute and I-”
“Ky, you got the highest score in the class. Breathe.”
“I could have done better,” he mutters.
“You can’t always be perfect. But you worked hard as hell and I at least think it paid off. I’m proud of ya.”
At his words something in Kyle’s chest tightens, and he fights down actual tears. It’s not so much the words, because mindless praise never really got through to him, but more so the fact that, for the first time in his life, Kyle actually believes them.
He’s suddenly reminded of Kenny’s words from only a few days earlier.
I think you might just need to trust me.
Well, shit.
***
He’s standing in his living room, having just walked in. As usual his mother is going off about law school, and scholarships, and god knows what else, but Kyle is no longer listening.
Kenny is with him. Kenny who saw right through him and knew that the path he was heading down would never make him happy. Who knew that he couldn’t always be perfect, but was proud of him. Made him believe he was worth being cared about in a way his mother never had.
Balling his hands into fists, he digs his feet into the carpet below him and cements his fate.
“No.”
“What was that, bubbe?”
“I said no. No, I don’t want to go to law school, or to do any more of these stupid applications, or follow in dad’s stupid footsteps! No, I’m not doing it.”
His mother looks at him as if she’d just been slapped.
“Kyle! I don’t understand, this is all you’ve wanted-”
“No!” Kyle shouts, standing firm. “This is what you wanted! You never even bothered to ask me!”
Shelia just shakes her head, looking at him as if he’s gone insane. “Has someone been saying things to you? Or are you not feeling well? Maybe you should just go lay down for a while and we can talk about this later.”
“No,” Kyle says, losing some of his fire, “you’re not-”
“We’ll talk about this later,” she says with finality, before looking away.
Final. Resolute. Unchanging.
Immovable.
Kyle suddenly feels a lot like screaming.
Without another word he turns on his heel and stomps up the stairs, throwing open his bedroom door and slamming it shut behind him. He leans against it, chest heaving and tears leaking from his eyes, before with a strangled cry he turns to it with a raised fist.
His hand stops mid-swing.
“Please don’t.”
“Dammit Kenny, stop!”
“No, you’re just gonna hurt yourself.”
Kyle laughs, a dark humorless sound, and shakes his head.
“What does it even matter?”
“It matters to me.”
His words soak in and with a choked sob Kyle finally regains control of his hand and drops his fist to his side. He then walks over and falls back onto his bed.
“Sometimes I just feel really alone,” he says quietly, trying and failing to blink away tears as he stares up at his ceiling. “Like no matter what I do it’s never good enough. That unless everything I do is perfect then I’ll never be good enough for anybody.”
“Sweetheart, you know that ain’t true.”
Kyle scoffs at the use of the endearment. “Sweetheart?”
“Hey now, you folks know how my inner redneck comes on out whenever I gotta be all comfortin’.”
“You’re ridiculous,” but despite his best effort to stay sulky, he can’t stop the smile from appearing on his face.
“Maybe, but I got you laughing, didn’t I?”
“I’ll deny it to the grave.”
“Too bad, beat you there.”
“I…” But Kyle doesn’t finish, just curls onto his side in laughter.
“What, too soon?”
***
“Okay so what did you want to play next?” Stan asks him as he puts the game that they’d gotten bored of back into its case.
They’re in Stan’s room, playing video games as they found themselves doing most of the time when just the two of them hung out together.
“I don’t know dude,” Kyle shrugs. “Something with zombies. I want a chainsaw.”
“Um, well I have Zombie Killer 5000.”
“That has chainsaws?”
“Dude,” Stan says turning to him with a very serious expression, “you can dual wield them.”
“Sold.” Kyle reaches for the controller with a grin. “Let’s do this shit.”
And so, hours pass and the two of them get lost in mindless zombie murder, and the usual familiarity of their super best friendship.
So lost in fact, that Kyle doesn't even realize that sometime over the course of the night, Kenny had stopped talking.
***
It’s early morning by the time Kyle goes home to collapse on his bed in exhaustion.
He wakes up several hours later from a dreamless sleep, the clock on his bedside table reading 11:30am. It was Sunday, but unfortunately due to spending most of his Saturday being unproductive with Stan, he had a hell of a lot of work to catch up on today.
“Sorry Kenny,” he says, stretching with a yawn, “it’s probably going to be a boring day for you today. I actually do have to get some work done.”
But he’s only met with silence.
“Kenny?”
When he once again doesn’t get an answer, Kyle puts his head in his hands and rubs at his eyes with a groan. Apparently, Kenny was finally reborn as he said he would be. It makes sense, after all he had said that he was usually only gone for a few days when he died and it’d been over a week.
Well, good.
The air of the room is strangely quiet, and despite always hating the radio Kyle reaches over and turns it on to some stupid talk show.
Kenny would probably stop by his house later to tell Kyle the good news.
***
There’s an ache in his chest that he can’t place.
That night Kyle tosses and turns and yet can’t fall asleep no matter how hard he tries. He lies awake thinking about the reading assignments he hadn’t had the chance to get to, and that geography test he had in two days. Thinks about college and his future, and maybe even the universe itself.
Thinks about how Kenny had never shown up.
***
The next day Kyle expects Kenny to be waiting at the corner where they always met.
But when Kyle arrives, the blond isn’t there.
Worry sinks deep into his gut. Where was he?
“Hey dude,” Stan greets him, but then is given pause by the look on his face, “is something wrong?”
“Have either of you seen, Kenny?”
“Oh here we go again,” Cartman says with a distinct roll of his eyes.
“Dude relax,” Stan says easily, “he’s probably just skipping again.”
Skipping?
Kyle gives him a disbelieving look. “It’s been over a week, Stan.”
Stan looks back at him as if he’s the insane one. “No, he was in class the other day, wasn’t he?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
He’s about to answer when Cartman says something that he doesn’t even really hear, that gets Stan’s attention. Distracts his best friend enough that he doesn’t even seem to notice that, as the two of them walk, they’re leaving Kyle further behind.
“Kenny, are you there?” Kyle says quietly once they’re far enough ahead. “Seriously, you’re starting to scare me. If this is a joke, it isn’t fucking funny.”
But he’s only met with silence.
***
Kyle’s sitting in his biology class, tapping his pencil against the desk repetitively and not really listening, when Kenny shows up again.
“Shit, dude. Where the hell are we?”
Kyle’s heart stops.
Without thinking and ignoring the weird looks he gets, he abruptly stands from his desk and practically runs into the hallway. He only barely remembers to shove his phone up to his ear before he starts talking, pacing back and forth in the space between his classroom door and the one next to it.
“Kenny! What the hell dude, I was worried as shit! Where were you?!”
“Sorry, I think I might have blacked out for a little while there. How long was I gone?”
Kyle slows, a crease forming between his brow. “What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Uh, we were over Stan’s house.”
“Kenny,” Kyle says softly, halting his pacing and holding the phone closer to his ear as if that was the source of the voice, “that was two days ago.”
“Oh…”
Kyle squeezes his eyes shut and rests his head against the cool surface of the wall.
“Kenny, are there ramifications for a soul being trapped with another for too long?”
For a moment there’s silence.
“Kenny?”
“I...I don’t know, Ky.”
***
More days pass. Every night Kyle lies back in bed and he and Kenny talk about both everything and nothing until he falls asleep.
“Where do you want to go on our first date?” Kyle asks Kenny one night.
“Oh, been thinking about it a lot, have we?”
“Well, I like to be prepared.”
“Alright, how about Stan’ house.”
“Dude, we are not going to Stan’s house.”
“Okay but hear me out. We act like we’re still just friends and then all of a sudden start making out on his kitchen table. He’ll never see it coming.”
Kyle snorts. “I love how you assume that we’ll be making out on our first date.”
“Are you saying we won’t be?”
“Is it a deal changer if I say I like to play hard to get?”
“No it’s not,” Kenny says without missing a beat, “but it doesn’t matter because I already know that you’d instantly fall for my charms. Wouldn’t be able to resist.”
“Okay, sure. And how exactly would you charm me?”
“I’d sing to you of course. Serenade your pants right off.”
“Oh my god. Please don’t tell me it’s one of those cheesy ass love songs.”
“Nope. Haunted by Beyoncé.”
Kyle nearly chokes, and the next moment is nearly doubled over in laughter.
***
Time is an interesting construct.
Sometimes it passes by so quickly that moments fade into its flow and get lost as quickly as they come around. Then again, for someone like Kenny, who kept losing bits and pieces without his control, keeping track of the minutes and the days was even harder. This, Kyle was sure of.
“Ky, how long have I been here?”
It’s a question that Kyle hadn’t been expecting, and he sits up from where he had been lying on his bed, perplexion lining his brow.
“You mean in total?”
“Yeah.”
“It’ll be two weeks tomorrow, why?”
“It’s nothing,” Kenny says after a moment, “don’t worry about it.”
Kyle isn’t fooled, he knows how to read between the lines. Thinking back to a conversation they’d had over a week ago now, Kyle traces the pattern on his comforter aimlessly with his fingertip.
“It doesn't normally take this long for you to come back,” he breathes, a truth he doesn’t need confirmed, yet that he needs to have spoken between them. Needs to know they’re on the same page. “Does it?”
“No,” Kenny says, and Kyle knows that if he was in the room his voice would be small. Like when they were kids. A little orange blob of a boy with shining blue eyes that would peek out from beneath his hood, and a voice so soft and delicate it was always in danger of vanishing within the fabric of his parka. “No, not usually.”
Kyle wipes a stray tear from his cheek. He’s not sure who’s at fault. “How are you feeling?”
“I’ll be okay.” Small. Invisible. An eternal smile for others even when he himself was suffering. “I always come back. Always.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
A breath. Seconds in a day. How many moments will pass before he voices the truth?
“...I feel like I’m slipping. It’s like I’m fighting to stay awake and I don’t know what that means.”
The answer was three. Three moments here, another was way too many years. But really, who was counting?
“You have to keep fighting it. Think about Karen, and your family, and,” he clutches the comforter between his hands, fibers crushed between whitening knuckles, “and what the hell are we supposed to do without you?”
“I’m trying Ky,” Kenny says because it’s all he can say. No promise. No answer. “I’m trying.”
***
There is the moon high up in the atmosphere and the warmth of his comforter below him, and Kyle is left staring at his plain white ceiling while pretending he can see stars.
“Happy two week anniversary to sharing my body,” he says breaking the silence that had fallen between them some time ago, “I guess.”
“Hey, you do know that I don’t regret any of this, right?”
Kyle shakes his head and laughs, a sharp sound holding no humor. “Kenny, yesterday you told me you might actually be dying, I’d think that would put this pretty far in the regret category.”
“Yeah, well that part’s pretty shit,” Kenny says easily, and if he tries hard enough Kyle can picture the lilt of his smile, the contours appearing in the stark white of his ceiling where he once imagined stars. “But other than that, this has been the best two weeks of my life.”
“You’re an idiot.” He smiles anyway. “But since apparently you’re in the mood for sap, it’s been mine too.” The words hang in the air of the empty room, a hovering truth that’s as bittersweet as they come. “Okay, now you’re quiet again, what are you thinking about?”
“You know,” Kenny says eventually, slowly pronouncing every word. Every broken syllable. “You’re probably not going to remember this.”
Kyle’s gaze narrows. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll forget me, just like all the other times.”
The ceiling sits above him. No stars. No smile. Looking away, Kyle sits up on his bed.
“Look, Kenny I know I’ve forgotten all those other times. But I promise you, this time is going to be different.” The world outside is glimmering with the light of the universe above and the streetlamps that highlight the shape of the street below. Out there, sits the sidewalk. Immovable concrete. Kyle looks away, blinking away tears and hands balling into determined fists at his sides. “This time will be different,” he repeats. “You’re going to wake up, and I’m going to remember everything, and we can go on our first date, wherever the hell you wanna go and...and everything’s going to be fine.”
Tears drip off of his nose and onto his lap. Maybe his. Maybe Kenny’s. Maybe both.
“Yeah,” Kenny says eventually, “yeah, that sounds nice.”
***
The next morning, Kyle wakes up and he knows.
It’s not so much an emptiness, because he still feels the same, but there’s a certain stillness in the air. Heart the only thing unable to be silenced.
“Kenny?”
It’s a deafening silence that speaks volumes, a lack of sound so loud you can almost hear it. Like spending the day in headphones and then suddenly removing them to dead and empty air. No voice. No sound.
A faint question of whether there had ever been any in the first place.
“Kenny?!” Kyle says in panic.
There’s no response.
Throwing on the same outfit he wore yesterday, Kyle grabs his coat and runs out the door, practically sprinting over to the McCormick household.
When he reaches the familiar front door, he’s panting and probably looks like a wreck. Then again, he actually is and really doesn’t give two shits. He raises his fist to knock but before he can the door gets thrown open.
And Kyle’s heart stops.
“Kyle?” Kenny says in question, taking in his disheveled form with wide eyes. “I was just uh…” he loosely points in the direction of the Broflovski household, before he just shrugs with a small smile. “Long time no see?”
Kyle can’t stop staring. It’s as if he’s suddenly left standing at an alter, as if he’s viewing the sun for the very first time. Glimmering blue eyes watching him in concern. Golden blonde hair laced with little particles of color from the dawn. Familiar smile that the stars could never do justice.
He can’t quite believe he’s real.
“Um, Ky? You good?”
Without a word, Kyle grabs his hand and lightly pulls him forward. Kenny arches a brow, but only pauses to close the door behind him before he allows himself to be guided. Then, Kyle raises his shaking arms and wraps them around Kenny’s shoulders, leaning in and burying his face into his neck.
“I thought you were dead,” he whispers.
Kenny holds him close, rubbing little circles in his back soothingly. “Hey now, I told you I can’t die. Always come back, remember?”
Kyle nods, and they stay like that for a while. At least until Kyle’s heart regains its normal tempo and his body stops shaking. When at last he pulls away, it’s only to hold Kenny at arms length and look him over.
“How do you feel?” Kyle asks, inspecting him for any discrepancy between his memory and the real thing.
“Same as usual,” Kenny says with a small shrug. “You?”
Kyle looks away, unable to meet his gaze.
“Well, I’m okay now.”
Warm fingers meet his jaw and Kenny turns his face back towards him, eyes brimming with concern.
“Ky?”
Kyle smiles, a sad little tilt of the lips. “It was quiet when I woke up.”
For a moment Kenny seems to think this over before understanding sets into his expression. Understanding as well as something bright. Something beautiful.
Hopeful.
“Wait, so you remember-”
Kyle cuts him off with his lips.
It is fire and it is passion. Kyle takes control, raw emotion fueling his every move. The slip of his tongue into Kenny’s mouth, the sound of surprise he gets in response that only encourages him further. Fingers that weave through blond hair, hands that pull him closer. The beating of two hearts, pounding in time with the other.
When Kyle eventually pulls back Kenny’s eyes are wide and Kyle can’t help but smirk before he leans in again. This time it’s more gentle. Slightly lingering, but full of true affection. Kyle smiles into it before he pulls away once more.
“So,” Kenny says slightly breathless. “you really remember everything?”
“Of course I do. I told you I would.”
“Even the uh… dreams?”
Kyle smirks and gives Kenny a very pointed once-over. “Especially the dreams.”
Kenny eeps.
“You know,” Kyle says, meaningfully trailing his fingers up Kenny’s arm and trying not to laugh. “I’m not going to be able to see them anymore. But maybe, as my boyfriend, you can give me a demonstration.”
Kenny’s eyes go comically wide as he flounders for words.
The master flirt himself reduced to a floundering stuttering mess. Kyle mentally pats himself on the back. He always did love having the upper hand.
“We should probably have our date first though,” Kyle adds as if in afterthought. “Any ideas where you wanna go?”
And so, framed by the dawn, and a world that was filled with roads and choices that were open to endless possibilities, Kenny’s eyes light up as he throws an arm around Kyle with a giggle. “I think I have a few ideas.”