Truth be told, Kyle agreed that the entire matter was bullshit. However, he sincerely, severely wished that Eric would stop declaring that it was so loudly and vehemently, radiating with annoyance sat beside his bed in the ward.

"I mean," Eric continued on his rant, "what fucking genius made it so that only family members could stay?! What the fuck?! It's bullshit, I tell you!" Kyle couldn't help noticing the way a feeble elderly woman was watching them warily from the bed opposite. He tried to flash her an apologetic smile, though it probably came out looking more like a pained wince. "And you'd think I'd be allowed! I mean, sure, I'm not family, but I'm not a friend either! And you know what that bitch at reception called me?! Just a boyfriend! Just?! Can you believe the fucking nerve of these people?!" Eric massaged his temples in a lord-give-me-strength kind of way. "Shit, she's probably just jealous because I have a boyfriend and she doesn't. She can't get ass like I can, so she bars me from seeing my hospitalised boyfriend. Fuck!" Kyle flinched as Eric's fist came down hard on his chair's armrest. "Fucking bullshit!"

Just then, Kyle worried at his lip as a man came up behind Eric's chair, resting a hand on it and glaring down at the riled brunet within. "Sir, if you can't calm down then I'm going to call someone and ask for you to be taken away." Kyle felt sympathetic towards the poor man. He was just there trying to give flowers to and check in on his mother in the curtained-off bed next to his, and instead he was getting an earful of Eric, who obviously wasn't as sympathetic, if the way he rose threateningly from the chair was any indication, glaring over his shoulder at the man in a way that made him cower back.

"No, no, please!" Kyle begged, quickly reaching out to grab Eric's arm and pull him back down before he could reach his full, terrifying six feet and four inches, desperate not to get him kicked out because the matter – the entire bullshit matter – was that he had only just gotten there. "I'm sorry, he gets like this sometimes! He's had a rant so he'll be fine now, I promise, I'm so sorry!"

The man still seemed none too convinced that Eric was done, especially when the brunet was still looking at him like he was trying to think of the perfect angle at which to bash his head in, but he didn't seem able to go against the wishes of a pitiful, pleading patient – either that or he was tremendously afraid to call the staff and end up finding out which way was the perfect one for caving in skulls – so he nodded tersely and backed away.

"Will you fucking behave?!" Kyle hissed after the man had disappeared behind the curtain once more. "If you keep having your tantrum then I won't stop the next person who threatens to have you thrown out!"

"Tan-tantrum?!" Eric sputtered, before scoffing in disbelief. "Tantrum?! I am experiencing justified rage against this homophobic hospital!" He shouted that last part over his shoulder, apparently in the hopes that his voice would reach out of the doors of the ward and echo through the winding corridors of the building, filling all the discriminatory staff within with a crippling guilt.

"Eric, for God's sake," Kyle groaned, forcibly pulling him back around by a hand at his shoulder. "This hospital is not homophobic! And the receptionist was not jealous! This institution has protocols, that's all. It sucks, but that's just the way it is."

"It shouldn't be that way!" Eric huffed, obediently settling back into his chair, but pouting and crossing his arms as he did so, looking very much like a stroppy child sent to the naughty step. "I mean, I was right there in the waiting room, ready to see you whenever, but instead I had to call your fucking mom and tell her to come see if you were fine because I fucking couldn't!" He scoffed disdainfully. "Protocols? Bullshit!"

"Yes, yes, it's bullshit," Kyle sighed tiredly, exhausting memories returning to him of his mother worrying and fussing over him in the hospital hours earlier as though he were on the brink of death instead of just suffering from a few bruises and cuts and a somewhat nasty stab wound. "But just…just settle down, okay? I thought you came here to check on me, not vent your problems."

"I did!" Eric hurriedly sat forward in his chair again, urgently taking up Kyle's hand. "I did, it's just…" He sighed, his gaze softening, his crumpled brows turning from irate to worried. "…I could've been checking on you a whole lot sooner, y'know? It pisses me off. I had no idea how you were. I was…" He looked down and said the next part quietly, as though he didn't want even Kyle to hear. "…I was so fucking scared."

Kyle breathed a frustrated sigh, unable to remain as mad at Eric as he wanted when his anger was indeed – at least a little – justified. He reached out and carded his hand through Eric's hair in a way that he hoped was understanding and reassuring. "I know," he said. "I know. It would've been nice, for you to be here for me after what I've been through, and I'm disappointed that I got my mom instead of you. But that's just the way the hospital works, Eric. You can't change the system, or beg for an exception."

"Hey, that could've worked," Eric retorted, looking up again. "Your mom was all on board about it too, and you know how she hates being on board anything that involves me." Kyle nodded, because he certainly did know, all too well, how much his mother openly disdained his boyfriend. "We could've gotten me in, I bet, if the guy we were talking to hadn't had such a stick up his ass. Oh, it's not in the rules! Oh, it goes against protocol! What a Goody Two-Shoes," Eric rasped, flicking a hand at the memory of the senior member of staff they had tried to bargain his way into Kyle's ward with. "I bet he licks his boss' shoes. Not only that, I bet he sucks his fucking ass too."

Kyle sighed sympathetically and shrugged. "He was just doing his job, Eric," he said, rubbing his thumb into Eric's hand to keep him calm and prevent him from blowing up again.

A pause, and then a sigh. "Yeah," Eric agreed resignedly, shoulders slumping as he softened, either at Kyle's touches or words, or both. "Yeah, I know."

Though Kyle wasn't as venomous about it as Eric, he still felt the same. He honestly would have liked for Eric to be there. He had a certain strength about him, and such safe-feeling embraces that Kyle would have appreciated when he had been brought into the hospital, scared and bleeding and hurting all over. Stan, who had been out with him that night to see a movie with him, and who had found him beaten and bruised and bleeding against a shadowed wall of the cinema, hadn't offered the comfort Kyle had needed. Rather, he had been panicking enough for the both of them, repeating a mantra of "Ohmygod!" as he had worried whether to haul Kyle to his car or call an ambulance. He had chosen the former eventually, and had ran a light or two in the drive, but ultimately had been separated from Kyle at the hospital. There had been surgery, and by the time they had stitched Kyle up, visiting hours had been over. Stan had called Eric, in the hopes that his position as boyfriend would be given more leeway, but they had quickly found out that that wasn't the case. Only family, apparently, were limitless.

The thing that left Kyle sore was that Eric practically was family. He had known him since before he could remember, had been dating him for several years, and had been living with him for the last two of them; they had met each other's families and celebrated holidays with those families; they shared everything from food to bank accounts; they had stuck their dicks in each other's butts, for Christ's sake! And yet they weren't family enough. The whole hospital fiasco had proven that. They weren't family enough, and it was driving Kyle crazy because that was a detriment to them. He wracked his brains as he laid there, trying to think of some way for Eric to be recognised by any and all institutions as the family Kyle felt that he was…Then he stopped, and he gasped, as the answer came to him.

Marriage.

Of course. He had forgotten marriage entirely. Honestly, he and Eric were none too bothered about marriage. They had agreed long ago that they didn't need go bankrupt and get stressed out planning to dress up fancy and go through a long, boring ceremony witnessed by friends just there for the reception and family they hadn't spoken to in years. They had come to the conclusion that marriage was just a waste of time and money, and they could do very well to just skip it altogether. How stupid they had been, Kyle realised in that moment, because of course such a built-up, crazed-about thing wasn't a waste. Marriage carried with it, among other benefits, the recognition of family – visitation rights – which was exactly what they were in need of. Kyle felt silly that it had taken him that long to figure it out.

"Eric," he said, urging the man out of his miserable stupor.

"Yeah?" Eric looked inquisitively up at Kyle, searching his eyes for the answer as to why the redhead looked like he had just had an epiphany. Kyle drew a long breath, steadying himself for a proposition he had sworn he would never make.

"We should get married."

Like Kyle had suddenly sprouted three heads, like Kyle had explained the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, like Kyle had proclaimed all of a sudden that he had actually been a woman all along – that was how Eric looked at him after he had uttered those four world-changing words. There was a pause – the longest silence the other ward residents had ever heard out of Eric Theodore Cartman; the longest silence Kyle had ever heard out of him, for that matter – before Eric eventually managed to utter, "M-married? What do you-?"

Kyle held his hand up, halting his questions before they could begin, so that he could waste no time and just get straight on to answering them. "If you marry me we'll be family, and if you're family then you'll get visitation rights," he explained, plain and simple. "The same goes for me. There are also other benefits to marriage. I know we discussed it a while ago and agreed that we didn't really care, but, you have to admit, being married would be a practical solution to our problems. The hospital isn't going to change its protocols anytime soon, so we may as well go ahead and change our relationship status."

There was another pause, long and silent, and making Kyle wonder whether Eric was keeping up but just disagreeing, or unable to wrap his head around what Kyle was saying in the first place. It became obvious that it was the latter when Eric replied unsurely, "Marr-…Sorry, is…is this a proposal?"

Kyle shrugged. "If you'd like. Yeah, I suppose it is."

Yet another pause, in which Eric had settled down so much that the others in the ward, like the elderly lady across from Kyle, could shut their eyes and doze off. "...It's a bit unromantic, isn't it?"

Kyle scoffed. "When have I ever been otherwise?"

"Shit, I don't even have a ring, I…" Eric leant forward and clasped Kyle's hand tighter in his, looking determinedly into his eyes as he promised, "I'll get you a ring! I'll go to the jeweller's and…Shit, do we even have a jewellers? I've never seen one. I mean, I was never looking for one, but…"

"Eric, I don't need a ring," Kyle laughed, finding Eric amusing and endearing all in one. "I take it that you agree though?"

"What? I…" Eric laughed, short and a little disbelieving, as though everything he had ever dreamed of but had never dared to hope for was playing out before his eyes. "…Yeah, I…Yeah. Yes. Yes!" he exclaimed, making Kyle wince from the pain he felt in his stitched-up gut as Eric practically leapt on top of him, wrapping him up into a massive hug. "Yes! Oh, my Christ, you want to marry me!"

"Yes, I want to marry you!" Kyle tried to heave Eric off of him, before settling back with a disgruntled huff and just deciding to sit out the pain until Eric was all hugged-out. "I know you find it hard to believe, since you're such an ass that nobody in their right mind could tolerate, but I do love you, you know."

"I love you too, Kyle!" Eric exclaimed, finally loosening his grip as he pulled back to look Kyle in the eyes, so that Kyle could see the promises of his affections dancing there. "I promise, I'm going to make you the happiest man alive!"

"I was happy anyway," Kyle chuckled.

"Happier!" Eric insisted, and then he swooped in for a kiss before Kyle could protest further.

When Eric returned for another visit the next day, he did so with a ring: a gold, shiny band with a clear, sparkly diamond sitting prettily upon it that Kyle simultaneously hated and loved. He watched, half-exasperated and half-excited, as Eric slipped the ring onto his finger, telling him about how their town did have a jewellers after all, and Eric only seemed half-annoyed when Kyle pointed out that he had slipped it onto the wrong finger.

"I technically proposed so why am I the one wearing the ring?" Kyle complained, but only half-heartedly, as he held up his hand with fingers splayed, admiring how the ring shone in the daylight peeking out from behind the curtain-drawn window.

"Like hell I'm going around wearing a diamond ring," Eric scoffed.

Kyle furrowed his brows as he shifted his gaze to Eric, to fix him with a displeased look. "I don't want to either!"

"Well you should've thought of that before you proposed," Eric replied dismissively, leaning back in his chair, crossing his arms and his legs.

"But the proposer isn't supposed to wear the ring! Besides, I thought you would've wanted to wear a ring."

"I do. That's why I got this one for me." Eric held up his own hand, twiddling his fingers to show off the glint of his own engagement ring.

"What?!" Kyle cried, shooting up in bed to get a better look at it. He immediately regretted doing so when it pulled at his stitches, but carrying on anyway to demand to know, "How come mine has a diamond and yours doesn't?!"

"Because it's funny." Eric grinned. "Look at you, with your gay, little diamond."

Kyle, because he could do nothing else, being that he was laid out in a hospital bed being held together by just a few stitches, only groaned out of aggravation, so loudly that he stirred the child in the bed by the door out of their comic book. And then, because he realised that he was engaged to that magnificent grin and its owner, Kyle could do nothing but smile happily, and then laugh. Laughing pulled at his stitches, and it hurt, but he didn't care – not when Eric was smiling at him in that real, genuine way; not when his ring matched Eric's, save for a diamond; not when a proposal he had sworn off ever making was quickly becoming the best one he had ever made.

Author's Notes:

This came about from me wondering, "Who would be the one to propose out of Cartman and Kyle?" I couldn't imagine either of them to do it though, not if it was solely sentimental and not at all practical. But were it to come about that they needed marriage...Well, that is where this story has spawned from. Kyle drew the short end of the stick here though. I'm sorry, Kyle! Please forgive me!
Thank you for reading this, and I hope you liked doing so as much as I liked writing it.

Disclaimer: South Park does not belong to me, but to its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone.