Work Text:
7:05, 7:08, Jesus Christ, 7:15 already? Fuck that, fuck this. What he ought to do is call in sick and go buy a gun – so why doesn’t he? Why hasn’t he already?
A king-sized bed is ridiculous for one person; the emptiness of it is just so fucking acute, even when you’re curled up on your side facing the other way. He cracks an eye open. 7:26. Fucking hell. God damn it. He squeezes his eyes shut, pretending he’s not there, that he’s dust, gone, forgotten.
He googles “where to buy a gun in denver.” Bighorn Firearms (Jesus Christ) closes at three, the far less stupidly named Denver Bullets Inc. at six. He could make that if he hustled to get out of work on time. But the mess, the sound, the slim but terrifying possibility of surviving with brain damage… What seems like his best bet comes with so many cruel caveats.
The only thing that gets him out of bed is breakfast, the last Keurig pod mixed with the cheapest vodka money can buy, poured into an innocent-looking CU travel mug. Even on a good day, it feels like it would be impossible to reply to frantic emails from people about their dementia-ridden loved ones masturbating at the dinner table whilst sober, not to mention some of his coworkers.
Sandy, the Development Specialist who was no doubt Miss Popularity in high school, goes around the office every morning saying hello to everybody.
She pokes her head into his office, and when she sees how bad he looks today, she exclaims, “Oh, Stanley!” (He has no idea why she calls him that and sort of wishes she wouldn’t, but he can’t bring himself to tell her after three years of it.) “You look awful! Are you sick?”
“Just been having a hard time sleeping lately,” he says in his most convincingly neutral tone possible, trying to smile but knowing it’s not working out so well. (Kyle’s voice pierces through his head like a rusty nail: “You’re a terrible actor, you know that? I can always tell when you’re lying, so quit lying!” As if being naturally deceptive like him is better. Fucker.)
She starts telling him about motherfucking essential oils, again. She’s part of a pyramid scheme and wants him to buy some, probably because she knows he’s gay and thinks that means he’d be into it. (Stan has a very hard time believing she has asked their boss to buy essential oils, seeing as Roy is a fifty-something dude who drives a pick-up truck and wears a cowboy hat on Casual Friday’s.)
The whole time she’s going on about this, he’s nodding along with the fakest smile on his face, absolutely melting on the inside and imagining himself blowing his brains out over and over again.
“Well, I’ll leave you to it!” she chirps.
Once she’s out of earshot, he lets out an enormous sigh, feeling completely depleted.
It’s not even nine yet.
There will always be an undercurrent of hopelessness to a job that tries to help people suffering from an incurable disease, one that turns them into a helpless, unrecognizable person. Once upon a time this all felt like a crusade for justice, for kindness, of helping people and doing the right thing. It felt good to say, “I work for the Alzheimer’s Association,” and listen understandingly as people told him their family’s own experiences with the disease.
A lot of the job is actually logistical bullshit, paperwork and filling out forms and getting shit in order, sometimes having to stay late and feeling swallowed up by the bland mediocrity of the office environment. Something about this place is a thousand times worse than being alone in his room in the dark. His flask is empty before eleven (yeah, a fucking flask, isn’t that terrible?), and when he throws open his file drawer to get the bottle hiding in the back, he finds it practically empty. Well, great. Fantastic.
He leaves a few minutes early for lunch to drive to the liquor store a few blocks away. It’s a ramshackle hole-in-the-wall that has somehow managed to survive. But even here, buying $10 vodka at noon means he’s got it stamped all over him:
ALCOHOLIC, ALCOHOLIC. SHAME, SHAME, SHAME. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? FAGGOT, PUSSY, WEAKLING. SHAME, SHAME, SHAME. WHY DON’T YOU JUST KILL YOURSELF ALREADY, FAGGOT?
In the car, he clutches the brown paper bag to his chest and wills himself not to cry. It turns out not to be too hard actually; only a single tear drop slips through, and it feels like it’s made more of stress than sadness. In fact, he hasn’t cried at all in the two weeks since Kyle left, even when he’s really wanted to. It’s not something he can really feel proud of, though.
He takes a deep breath, and weirdly, it feels kind of good, like it’s the first time he’s gotten any oxygen in all day. But now comes the humiliating task of pouring vodka into his two flasks in the parking lot of a cheap liquor store at noon. He then takes his degradation a step further and squeezes himself into the space on the floor in front of the passenger seat, hoping nobody will walk by and see him drinking straight from the bottle like a man dying of thirst. It’s worth it though: even the burn down his throat is a massive relief, the real relief coming barely a second later: everything is suddenly substantially softer, like fleece. Still dark, still miserable, but he can at least get through the day now.
He’s actually a little drunk. He walks to the crappy burrito place up the street, gets chicken tacos to go, then comes back and eats them in his car way too fast, anxious about getting back to work on time, about all the calories he’s comsuming. Kyle’s bitching about carbs rings through his ears: “I can’t believe how many carbs there are in the American diet. Americans really think shit like bagels are good for you. Remember when we were kids and they put grains at the bottom of the food pyramid like it was the most important thing? I can’t believe that was ever even a thing. The FDA is in bed with all these food industries, how can anyone not see that?”
And on, and on.
Stan never mentioned that he knew about Kyle’s late-night food binges, but now he really wishes he did.
Work is busy enough to be distracting, which is a relief. He feels a little lighter, a little less horrible, and less anxious, too, having half a bottle of vodka stashed in his desk. But then five o’clock rolls around and all he can think about is the fact that he’s consumed like a billion calories today, so he goes to the gym. It’s a big joke, going to the gym, which he does four or five times a week without fail, even now that Kyle’s gone. It’s a joke because he’s not health-conscious, fit, and active; he’s just a fucking mess paranoid of the evidence of his dysfunction showing up on his body. Which itself is hilarious considering he’s got scars on his body way more damning than anything anyone might assume from some pudge.
It still kinda hurts to think about – not that he tried to kill himself, but that he did it in such a stupid, teenager-y way. No, he hadn’t heard of “down the street, not across the road” until after he got out of the hospital and Eric Cartman told him.
They wrapped his wrists up in bright white bandages, glaring markers of his shame. Kyle’s eyes bugged out when he first saw them when he came to visit (with his fucking mom, of course). Stan and Kyle sat on the edge of Stan’s bed, alone in his room, both of them staring at the linoleum floor in terrible silence. It was around dusk, shadows growing in the room, the mountains looming outside.
“Why did you do it…?” Kyle eventually asked, his voice small, so unlike him.
The guilt and shame of hearing that, Jesus Christ, it made Stan literally sick to his stomach. He hung his head and squeezed his eyes shut, the chasm of understanding between him and Kyle never so wide or so painful. Stan knew he had hurt him by doing this. That was all Stan seemed to know how to do, hurt people. Killing himself was a way to put an end to that, but nobody understood that.
“I don’t know,” Stan finally said, mumbling. “I’m sorry.”
Kyle’s anger was inevitable. He didn’t raise his voice, nor was his tone even all that scathing, but the embers of his rage crackled hard: “You don’t know? How can you not know?!”
Stan buried his face in his hands and shook a little, exhausted by this.
“I just don’t, okay?” he said through his hands.
He actually started crying then, his little sixteen-year-old self, locked up in the loony bin. He couldn’t help it – that feeling of brokenness was so fucking amplified next to Kyle with his AP classes and 4.0 GPA and relative sanity, who could get through the day without booze, without the unbearable pain of being alive.
Kyle just held him as he cried. The mixture of gratitude and self-hatred Stan felt was nearly intolerable.
Sweaty and starving, Stan can’t say that the gym did him any good. In fact, as he takes the elevator up to his apartment, he has this terrible sense that he failed to do the single most important thing today because he felt the need to go to the gym. Now it’s like seven, and the gun shops are all closed. It’s not that he plans to kill himself tonight, or tomorrow, or even this week, but that it just feels like having a gun on hand would give him some peace of mind. That way, he’d be able to use it when he wanted to. In the meantime, he could also look into other, cleaner methods. Hanging is an option, but the whole neck-breaking thing creeps him out in a way that brain matter somehow doesn’t; drugs seem confusing and unreliable; and jumping off a building and turning his death into a public spectacle is absolutely not going to happen.
The apartment is dark. Truth is, it’s nothing new for Stan to come home to an empty apartment, but it’s been absolutely harrowing these past two weeks. The place feels almost haunted, the silence endless without Kyle marching about the place like Napoleon, ranting about healthy eating, politics, and “American decline.”
There’s nothing to eat. He should’ve gone grocery shopping like four days ago but just can’t bring himself to. So he pours himself a drink and considers committing the sin of take-out again. Sitting there at the kitchen table, he finds himself imagining smashing the glass and slicing his arms up with the shards. No, a sharp, clean knife. He wonders how hard it’d be to do it the right way. Doing it the wrong way was actually pretty easy.
God, how his mom had cried last time. She’ll cry a lot this time, but what can he do? How long can he go on like this? He lost his whole world because he’s fucked-up and broken and can’t stop drinking, can’t stop being miserable and anxious and riddled by self-loathing. It’s a shadow telling him everybody hates him, or dread like hail pummeling him, day in and day out. Whatever form it takes, it’s part of him. Anti-depressants, mood stabilizers, benzos, therapy — none of it ever works in the long-run.
He’s just broken, that’s all.
The next day he’s able to leave work at four-thirty, and he promptly heads over to that gun shop in Lincoln Park. He’s nearly on the verge of a panic attack thinking about the people there suspecting he’s a suicidal and denying his purchase.
Amazingly, however, the process is incredibly streamlined and fast. The sales guy is extremely helpful but also extremely excited that this is Stan’s first gun, which is very weird. The background checks don’t take long at all, and within the hour, Stan is officially a gun owner.
Well, God bless America…?
He walks to his car with it, completely fucking flummoxed by the fact he was so easily able to buy this thing. Nobody tried to stop him; in fact, they encouraged him! Now he has this thing in his hand that he could just… end his life with. Just like that, and everything would be over. It’s completely at his discretion, and that’s both empowering and terrifying. He’s never felt like this, ever, in his life, and that alone is kind of unsettling. But there’s a calm to it too, the placid awareness that he can now simply check out if things get too rough. And that’s enough for him to feel something approximating “okay” for the moment.
He goes home and orders take-out again (a ridiculous amount of Korean BBQ because why the fuck not) and eats it in front of the couch watching King of the Hill. Afterwards, he feels pretty disgusted with himself and casually contemplates throwing it all up, something he has never done but has thought about from time as a sort of curiosity. He still to this day throws up so much from anxiety he’s developed a kind of ability to tolerate it. It’d be pretty stupid though, throwing up forty dollars of Korean BBQ…
It gets darker out and darker in the apartment, the only light the light of the TV. His attention waxes and wanes, and he’s so comfortable on the couch, he starts getting sleepy.
Then, the front door swings open with such violence he’s shaken into ultra-alert terror. He sees that unmistakable form in the doorway, shadowed by the light in the hall. Kyle comes in like a tornado, slamming the door shut behind him and slapping the wall for the lights, breathing like a madman. It’s completely fucking terrifying, and Stan cannot imagine why he’s here in the first place.
When Kyle spots Stan just sitting there on the couch, he stops in his tracks, just staring at him for a moment with this wild and broken expression. Then, slowly, he crumbles to his knees, clutching his head as he breathlessly says, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
Stan wonders if there’s been some kind of mass shooting or something, but he’s too afraid to ask. So he just sits there doing nothing, saying nothing, and feeling his heart fracture for it, because he can feel Kyle’s anguish so keenly.
After a few moments, Kyle manages to compose himself. He walks over to Stan very slowly, dragging his feet with exhaustion. He looks like hell.
“Where is it,” Kyle says, a demand, not a question.
Stan isn’t sure what he’s talking about, and he’s still far too intimidated to ask.
“The gun!” Kyle says, sharply and suddenly.
Can he read his mind, Stan wonders? How did he know?
The answer hits him hard over the head: online bank account. God, he didn’t even think of that. How could he not have thought of that? Is he fucking stupid or something?
Trying to muster up some dignity, Stan says, “It’s really none of your business.”
“Yes it is! Yes it is my business! You buying a gun is my business!!” Kyle yells, a good fifty decibels above Stan.
“How the hell is it your business?” Stan says, trying to stay calm, but above all not to cry, not now, not in front of him. “You left. Remember?”
“So, what? You’re gonna kill yourself? Is that what you’re gonna do?”
“Fuck you,” Stan spits back, full of malice.
Kyle nods at that, smug and mean, but he’s also trembling slightly. His sense of control is failing him; Stan can tell. This has probably been a pretty scary experience for him. But it’s hard to have any sympathy for that when he storms in here being a dick about it, shaming Stan for wanting to kill himself like he’s a freak for it.
“I’m in a very difficult situation now,” Kyle says, voice tense.
“Oh, are you?” Stan replies sarcastically.
“I don’t know if I can trust you on your own.”
“I’ve been alone the past two weeks! The past few months! And now you’re so concerned about it?! Fuck you! Fuck you and your shit!” Stan says, nearly shouting now.
It’s actually sort of surprising – maybe even disappointing – when Kyle doesn’t shout back. Instead, he seems to literally swallow his anger. It leaves him looking exceptionally weary, so much older than thirty-six.
“Look,” Kyle says – fucking hell, when he starts things with “look” like that. “Believe it or not, I still care about you very much and would be incredibly sad if you died.” That sounds weirdly rehearsed and also completely insincere. “But like, look, Stan. You bought a gun. To kill yourself with. I can’t just ignore that. I have to do something about it, even if it makes you hate me.”
In his shittiest, nastiest tone possible, Stan says, “So you’re saying you’re gonna commit me? Is that it, Dr. Broflovski?”
“Yeah. That’s it,” Kyle says. “Please don’t make me have to call 9-1-1.”
For some added degradation, Kyle makes him show him where the gun is. After asking whether it’s loaded (obviously not), he picks it up daintily, with just his thumb and index finger. Stan has to roll his eyes at this; it’s totally weird considering all the times Kyle handled a rifle as a kid, probably something from Sheila. Kyle takes the silencer and the bullets too, handling them like they’re radioactive, disgusting, dangerous. It’s horrible, just horrible, Kyle looking at his darkness on display with such repulsion, such fear and disgust. It makes Stan want to grab the gun and shoot himself right now, but Kyle would try to fight him and what if he got hurt, etc. etc.
God, though. Fuck him for this. Fuck him so much.
“You should probably pack some stuff,” Kyle says quietly, which is so intensely humiliating that Stan really feels subhuman before him, degraded and worthless, less than nothing.
None of this feels real anymore as he throws some stuff in a duffel bag, which is a blessing, he supposes. He checks his phone and sees that Kyle called like thirty times and left a bunch of voice mails. He’s kind of curious to hear what they say, but there isn’t really time.
It’s gotten colder out and has started snowing a little. There is complete silence on the way to the hospital. It feels an awful lot like he’s the child and Kyle’s the parent, punishing him for bad behavior. And Kyle’s driving all composed and in-control, like he’s getting off on finally vanquishing Stan and putting him in his place. It’s fucking disgusting. What a disgusting human being, using the law to imprison him like this. Fucker.
The hospital parking lot is weirdly serene, no ambulances wailing, lots of empty spaces. Kyle parks the car and then just sits there a moment, staring straight ahead and saying nothing.
“I’ve never been as scared as I was today,” Kyle finally says, his voice worn out, weighed down by the truth of what he’s saying. “It would have destroyed me, you know. Completely and utterly destroyed me. You don’t even know. You have no idea.”
“You can’t have it both ways,” Stan mutters. “You can’t throw me away and expect me to want to live.”
Kyle’s eyes are blurry with unshed tears, and his movements are so slow, barely anything.
“Stan, you know… I’d do anything to try to help you. I know you’re miserable a lot of the time, and I know that’s why you drink. I want nothing more than for you to be okay, and I know it’s not your fault that you’re not,” Kyle says. “But Jesus Christ, this has destroyed me. The drinking, the fighting, the hostility between us. I hate it, I hate it so much, but I don’t know how to stop it.”
“Yes. I know. I’m broken.”
Kyle suddenly grabs his shoulder – the first time he’s touched him – and says, “You’re not broken. You’re mentally ill.”
“Same thing.”
“It’s not the same thing,” Kyle argues, eyes wide and alive all of the sudden.
Stan looks away, hanging his head.
“I can’t get on alone,” he murmurs, defeated. “I just can’t. It’s impossible for me.”
Stan nearly expects some kind of lecture, but Kyle just looks terribly sad. He reaches up to pet Stan’s hair, and his fingers are so gentle it’s crushing.
“I’m sorry,” Kyle says.
“How can you be sorry?” Stan says in disbelief, jerking away from Kyle’s touch. “You’re the one that left!”
Here it comes, the ugly crying: like an avalanche he can’t escape, suddenly he’s sobbing. The sobriety is creeping in too, and he’s beginning to feel out of control, panicked at the thought of detoxing. And here’s Kyle, telling him he’s sorry, as if he has any idea as to the pain he’s caused, the pain he’s continuing to cause.
“Oh, Stanley—” Kyle says in that soft voice Stan hasn’t heard in ages.
It makes Stan cry even harder, and he’s embarrassed about it, mad that he could be dead now instead of crying to his soon-to-be ex-husband in a hospital parking lot. But then Kyle unbuckles Stan’s seatbelt, pulling him into his lap, and Stan knows he should resist, but he isn’t strong enough to reject human touch, not now and not from the person he loves so heartbreakingly much.
Stan sobs uncontrollably, pathetically, wailing like a child. He clings to Kyle’s knees while Kyle pets his hair and rubs his shoulders.
Between sobs, Stan says, “You’re part of me, you’re all I have, I can’t live in this world without you.”
“You act like you hate me,” Kyle says quietly.
At that Stan cries even harder, because it’s true. He can be a mean drunk – yet another defect, another reason to eliminate himself.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Stan says, shaking his head, crying.
“It’s okay. Ssh, it’s okay,” Kyle says, still trying to soothe him.
Eventually, Stan manages to calm down, but he stays in Kyle’s lap, wishing time would end so he could have this forever.
“Stan…” Kyle says. “Things have to change. It can’t ever be like it was.”
“I know.”
“You can’t self-medicate with alcohol,” Kyle says. “It’s not a solution.”
“I know.”
“I love you so much. So incredibly much. I always have, I always will,” Kyle says. “It’s a fucking tragedy for us to love each other so much and just destroy each other. I’m not saying it’s all your fault, but God, it’s not right.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You need help, dude, help I can’t give. And you have to try to help yourself too. Otherwise you’ll never get anywhere.”
“Okay.”
Stan feels completely meek at this point, curled up in Kyle’s lap like a dumb kid, broken and ready to agree to anything if it means Kyle will take him back.
“I feel like I’ve been dealing with this shit my whole life,” Stan says. “I wish it would just go away.”
“I know,” Kyle says. “Me too.”
The car has gotten pretty cold by now.
In that soft voice again, Kyle says, “You still need to go to the hospital.”
“I guess.”
“I’ll come see you,” Kyle says. “Every day.”
“Will you?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” Stan says, fresh hot tears prickling his eyes again.
It’s dark out, cloudy, no moon. Quiet, dreamlike. Stan is so, so tired. It’s hard to think that things might ever be better, but Kyle takes his hand and squeezes it, giving him a tiny, encouraging smile, and that’s enough to keep him going, for now.