Outside the window, the painted sunset was descending upon the main strip of South Park's town. Stan only vaguely glanced out at the pinks and oranges spiraling throughout the air to touch on the cracked backbone of a society who's only interest was a cheaply disguised candy store 'blow out' sale. This fleeting glance was discarded before it had really taken in the stores barely visible around the treetops cutting the suburbia off from a version of reality. He casually hoped that his missing in action friend, Kyle, had taken his advice and not attended the candy sale. In the back of his mind, though, he knew nothing he ever said registered once that particular mind was set in stone. Thus, the activist only gave a half hearted flicker of aquamarine towards the outside realm he had been avoiding as much as his Jewish counterpart had been avoiding him.

Rather, he slipped out of the midnight hideaway he had been holed up in as the weeks of summer drifted by in a searing heat almost to the point of peeling paint from the fragile homes he was so accustomed to. He hadn't honestly wanted to leave the room, but he knew inciting the creature he so desired seeing into it was harder then convincing Kyle to stop when he said go. For that reason alone, he walked only a few feet down a hallway that appeared to stretch from one side of humanity to another altogether. There was no difference to his eyes; they saw the same wallpapering and the same dull lighting. There was, however, quite the change within the chess game of his mental standing. A hand touched the black side with a grinning queen ready to strike, and all he could so was abandon his pawns and knights for the safety of his king. Yes, this was the feeling of dread and vulnerability which transcended from the harsh wooden door of the guest bedroom. Each time he approached this obstacle, he had found himself intrigued into peering inside to see what had become of the tiny room housing it's tiny murderer. This time, this time, was different. His hand rested on that golden knob, and he could just very well taste the flooding ice enchanting him into a stupor of which he had only felt recently.

Oh, how this fire burned throughout his senses.

Shivering in a truly captivated manner, Stan twisted the knob and shoved the door open into the bleak chamber which used to be a pristine bedroom. A stale scent of decay washed over his mouth in the flavor of burnt cigarettes, ash, and charred paper. Smoke lingered in the air, hanging down from the ceiling in a cloud of despairing opulence tortured into poverty. The once crisp sheets of his mother's flowery collection were tangled about the foot of a queen sized bed forever weighed down by junk and one sleeping monster. These sheets were faded as if washed constantly, which they were, and continually stained with grease, spit, and tobacco. An overflowing ashtray was on the floor, still burning with the remains of a habit banned from the house from the moment Kenny McCormick lit up in the kitchen and put his smoke out on his inner wrist. This smell cut across the sight, littering the image with the memory of one corner room caked in filth. Somehow, in only a few short weeks, this guest room had shifted from a room of pleasing, cookie cutter appeal to the disgracing ick of the poor boy's personal escape from the world. Peering into this, Stan saw all the magazines scattered on the floor, took in the trash building up in the corners, observed the moldering clothing sticking out from under the bed skirt, and inhaled the stank of smog and unwashed everything. He recalled the clean days of this room versus the almost sickening thing it had become. He thought of this and he could only grin in a truthfully pleased way.

How could he not? In only a few days, his lover had made himself so completely at home. Knowing this, Stan smiled through emotional intoxication as he stepped through the shadows into utter darkness. Utter, freezing darkness.

The door clanked shut when his fingertips dropped away from the metal. His feet found their way through the maze of disaster cut out of piles of trash and worn out clothes. Shards of broken glass sprinkled the creaking floorboards, sparkling from the glitter gracing cracked long necks and flat sides. Droplets of blood created a ribbon's bow about the edge of the bed he approached with absolute silence. Before him, he saw the collected mass of mental instability but all his mind could form was the elegant curve to Kenny's cheek where it laid on a silken pillowcase. He overlooked the crying fits he could see in the corner, where fist marks scuffed along the window sill overlooking the ruins of the McCormick place. He turned away from the screaming matches with the walls when the end table set had become one single. He even stepped clean over the broken remains of the second one, where it had be slammed repeatedly into the floor with the cries of are you happy now to no one alive. This reflection of the dawns and dusks spent reaching out to have his hand smacked away was all discarded. Down those memories, those painstaking hours of fiery consumption, fell to the icy mouth of a river never full. They vanished as the activist's fingers touched the soft sheets hugging the body of his beloved.

Stan didn't feel the need to say anything. The moment after his fingers found the sheets, so did the rest of him. He crawled into the bed without any regard for permission or allowance. His body was immediately swallowed up in the scent of powder rooms laced with cocaine; the same sensation of seeing the checkmate and knowing only how to make it less painful. Warmth washed down into the frozen veins constricting his heartbeat into a slow repeat. A soft sigh danced over his lips as Stan found the flesh he was craving more than the air about his head. He snuggled up to the poisonous snake he loved so dearly. His hands ran passionately over the sleeping Kenny, finding every succulent inch there was to find. To his completely surprise, however, there was more to find then before. A stunned quiver cascaded over his fingers as he wet his lips in a hungry acceptance of this new body laying in perfect innocence. His hands swept tender lips over the wide hips of his angel, feeling the width and taking in the growth arching into his palms. Squeezing those plump things, and causing a mighty tiny whine at the pressure, Stan found his fingers drifting over the rest of his pet. It seemed as though his pet had glutted himself on cream, for Kenny's slight curves had blossomed into full ones in the few weeks since the boy had moved in.

Prompted by pulsating curiosity, Stan swiped the lingering sheets from the full thighs of his lover. The blond cringed in the sudden cold, his arms hugging himself as his legs bent up in lovely lines. Muted shock swam through the blanketed mindset of the activist, leaving him in a half daze poised only in a cocked grin. Shivers trailed over his arms as his fingers found the pleasant bulge of Kenny's wider waistline. The weight was enough to tug at his ratty shirt and to spill a few inches over the hemline to his jean shorts. A small strip of squishy belly was visible, and to it Stan seemed inherently drawn. Pushing his fingertips into the weight gathered at his middle, he felt the increase of at least a dozen pounds. His fingers eased down, then he just grinned as he felt along the plumped up middle of his cutely whiny Ken. The angel thrashed about in soft body movements, stretching out his fat thighs and attempting to curl up. He couldn't, of course, for his hips were snatched up by the greedy hands of his lover. Pouting, then, Kenny covered his eyes with one arm, while Stan rubbed his hands over that heavy middle having grown into a full belly.

" Damn, Ken," he exclaimed in a mild tone which revealed nothing of the pounding bliss radiating throughout his mindset. The tone in his voice, however, was betrayed by the aqua of his eyes baring exactly what he was thinking. To those glowing orbs, Kenny peered around his plump wrist.

" What?" the angel mumbled through an exhausted yawn.

" Uh. . ." the brunette's voice trailed away as he gently, lightly, ever so sweetly poked his darling's belly. Two piercing sapphires looked down at the arch of his waist stretching out his shirt so dramatically. Yet, for all the cutting glory of those eyes, Stan didn't feel the need to sugarcoat what was going through his mind. He certainly stumbled on the words, unsure of how this conversation would end up, but he didn't steer off topic, " You've. . .ah. . . gained some weight,"

" Big deal," Kenny spat out without concern. He turned his attention towards the ink stained jeans of his activist lover instead. He played with the button, pulling on it in a less than coy manner. Stan felt his eyes lowering to see the dirt smeared hands teasingly undoing his jeans. There was no need to address the perverted nature of the motions, though, so he merely arched an eyebrow at the disturbingly empty expression of the blond.

" It doesn't bother you?" he idly questioned, touching the edge of the jeans he knew were growing much too tight to be comfortable. Looking up at him from the lightly cold sheets, Kenny tilted his head upon the pillow. Blond locks fell into his eyes, pouring shadows over the blue hue gazing upwards to the emptiness that was the apathetic attraction overhead. The two stared emptiness into inconsiderate. For the first time, Stan felt his heart ache in something close to lustful need, just from one simple turn of cheek and flicker of blue.

" Should it?"

There was something about the way Kenny said those two words which stopped the discussion before it had really started. A second, weighing as much as a century, halted in Stan's memory when those words struck the frozen waters within him. He felt the ice cracking as sure as he felt the crawling warmth slipping over his hands from the hips of his angel of death. He couldn't explain what it was in that moment which was different from everything before and everything after, but how he knew it was a difference he would never forget as long as he breathed. That second, that solitary second, was a breath of faint smoke and a look of shattered innocence of every primal thought ever to cross a mind. That second restarted time to the very beginning. The beginning of what, he knew he knew not, but he knew this was the honest beginning to a story which had started long before he had realized it was a tale to be told. This moment, this single moment, painted only in two minute words of no real purpose or importance, began the quest he was certain would end in the same manner which it began. Tasting it in the silence poised in memories past, in the eyes baring the universal darkness, he was quite sure fate was starting right then. After this, after he exhaled, nothing would be quite the same.

Stan exhaled as slowly as he possibly could.

" Dunno. Jus'. . .making conversation," he lightly offered, knowing nothing else to say to the boy staring up at him. Kenny gave him a moment to reflect upon his answer before he slightly smiled his own insulting smile of sheer cattiness. A spark jolted up Stan's spine in a delightfully agony, causing him to flinch under his own flesh.

" 'Bout my weight?" Kenny jeered, puckering his lips in an utterly playful way. His lover couldn't really explain anything about his decision to strike up this line of talk, having forgotten almost entirely why he thought of doing so. He could only shrug a little and grant the poor boy a weak, sheepish smile. Kenny ignored the response, the emotions flying away from the curves of his face as if they had never been there to begin with. He simply adjusted his body so that his head with rested near the inside of the activist's jeans. There, he tugged on the undone pants and chewed on the edge. The gesture was ignored, cast away as a common occurrence, while Stan gently tucked back some of the messy blond locks. His thumb stroked alone Kenny's full cheek in a sort of apology, feeling along the smooth, silken skin in slow movements.

" Kinda a weird topic, huh?" he meekly admitted, tracing a heart over Kenny's chest where he felt his heart beating in steady sensations. The words which crept over his skin from the depths of a dead frost, however, made his whole body freeze. Beneath his fingertips, he felt no heartbeat accompanied with them. There was only the hollow grave buried within his dying, crying angel, peering straight up from the corners of hell to watch Stan sink into the sunken waters pooled in those stabbing words.

" 'Specially since I jus' killed my family. You'd think you'd wanna talk 'bout that," Kenny breathed out, the little pin needles of his voice thrusting down throughout the stiff body laying beside him. Every muscle making up the activist's body tightened into bone. His lungs clung to the biting air lingering around his shivering eyes. All he could was draw in a slow, uneven, churning breath of this smoke spotted air, as his eyes darted quickly away. The memories creeping over the shattered realm of the guest room, however, caused him to look at nothing and everything in the very same motion.

" . . . I. . . didn't think you'd wanna talk about that," he cautiously stated even as his voice faltered inside his strangled throat. A vision of that maniac child, his head thrown back in wild laughter, catcalled from the very back of his mind. It took everything inside Stan to grit himself to that image; the one he wished had never existed. Thankfully, that appeared to be a shared desire, for Kenny said nothing else in that depraved, haunted mirage of a voice.

" Good call. I don't,"

" Right," Stan bluntly said, swallowing harder than ever before. His eyes found themselves staring directly where he didn't want to look, which was at the blood stained parka thrown on the floor before the window peering out towards the rest of their childhood's ruined. He saw that thing just before Kenny slowly eased his body into a sitting position. Cracks were among his sapphires, showing the sobbing rage behind them, but only for one flash of screaming sanity. Wetting his lips, the angel pushed back Stan's uncombed hair, so that his empty face of such frozen lines could be seen without having to pry.

" I don't wanna talk. I don't like talkin'," the utterance was so soft, so pure, it almost felt a sin to overhear it. To it, Stan could only nod gingerly, his tongue painting embers upon his lips. A dirty hand moved him onto his backside, so that his aqua stones could see the untouched ceiling bathed in a blanket of forbidden smoke. He stared up at it, then up into the tearstained, brutalized face of a child growing up too fast for his mind to keep up pace. Sapphire desperation gazed into his very soul, tasting foul against the boy he used to love. Into this person, Stan looked, seeing the withering pleasure creating the emptiness gracing a face he had seen smile so gracefully only a few short weeks beforehand. Broken desire washed into the pools of tainted haunts inside the both of them in the moment when Kenny straddled the pained lover who looked up into him like he could really see through sapphire shields, " I need you right now. An' I don't need words. 'Kay?"

" 'Kay."

When Kenny pressed his lips down over Stan's mouth, they were trapped within the game board execution masquerading as one delicious union. Pinned to the sheets, pinned beneath the smoke forcing him into a delirious daze, Stan felt himself slipping away in a wicked temptation he had since refused. There was no refusal then, for he tasted the drowned liquor memories of his beloved in that first embrace. Pressure eased away into a sense of illusion which would never be shaken from that moment. Stan couldn't honestly say to whom he made love that evening as the darkness sank South Park into the evening without moonlight. A summer's eve it was not, for laughter could be heard only in the deepest searching memories from times spent long ago in the days when Stark's Pond was still open for swimming. Those discarded youths, now youths no longer, were the only movements outside the curtains of pure white which held out reality. That evening, in all places among the insiders, there was a haughty quiet punctured by the moaning satisfaction of one soul.

This one soul clung hungrily to Stan, his kiss tasting like burnt dreams. There was something sinister in the manner Kenny kissed him that evening. Everything about it was primal, like the striking of a match over the feast of animals; something ill conceived and not recommended for survival. This was how he felt as he was shoved down into the sheets and his soul swallowed straight from his mouth. The way his angel pulled back, his wet, hot tongue slipping along his cracked lips, spoke volumes to the tragedy he had agreed to. He saw Kenny swallow down his very heart and he found he could only pant in allusive emotions so hard to name he gave up without trying.

What Kenny alluded to was not what he took. His need was much more physical than he had ever stated, but it wasn't something Stan disagreed with. He felt two hands on his hips, their fingers pushing into his flesh, and digging underneath, and he did not refuse. He allowed Kenny to get under his skin in the best sort of way. He felt heat dancing over the soft curves of his lover. Every second engaged in the passionate embrace of this monster set his dead insides ablaze in something of fire frozen in place. Stabbing, little thrusts bled him of his stiff resistance, so that his own hands had snatched up Kenny's waist. He slammed that little witch down into the sheetless bed. His mouth consumed the throat of the hysterical monster he adored the same way which Kenny grabbed up his hair and held him in place. Their skin blended and bent together, rocking in time to the fast racing of hearts pounding in chests struggling for air in a world too fiery to breathe. Pain traced beautiful lines throughout the activist's eyesight as he ran his tongue over the stretched neck of his darling. Bitter blood and salty sweat laced his tongue like a drug he couldn't drink enough of. Down his teeth sank, through the fleshy barrier, so that he could taste everything that made Kenny his perfect match.

Every swallow he took of that rich elixir caused Kenny to cry out in his lovely Southern drawl for more. Hands caught up Stan's shirt, ripping the fabric from seam to seam. The broken thing was discarded as dirty fingers pulled a tattered shirt from a plump body. Somewhere between these motions, Stan tore his mouth away from that throat so as to let their burning, frozen bodies to push wholly into one another. Every stroke of rough fingertips over his bare backside made Stan pant that much harder into his lover's neck. Blood spilled onto the white sheets, as his head was pulled away from the wound. He was kissed full on, so that the blood lingered in the gluttonous embrace. That was only enough to make them both switch their hands from one another to themselves. The zippers made a sound so useless, it was lost to the happy giggles and wild abandon filtering into the hazy realm Kenny had created.

The tight jeans of the two lovers fell to join the rest of the discarded clothing cluttering the room. No words were used to express what was already agreed upon. There was a bottle of strawberry lubricant on the lasting end table, placed there in the first few hours they had become roommates. The top of this enchanting thing was flipped off, to the floor with everything else, as the clear liquid oozed over Stan's hardened cock. Two dirt stained hands latched onto his shoulders, sapphires glazed over in anticipation begging him to hurry quicker. Then, the most elegant, brashest sound crashed into the silence of the descending evening. Kenny threw his head back and he screamed with every ounce of his soul as Stan pushed into him. The penetration echoed throughout the chamber of the pulsating room, nails dragging the sound over Stan's very flesh in popping blood lines. He thrust to the feel of that pain, seeing his lover lost in the fierce motion. Every thrust was something hard, something vicious, something that was nothing like the love making which had come before. Their voices painted this in the crying, screeching shouts bouncing off their entangled bodies. Kenny's back bent in every quaking seizure which gripped his body as Stan hugged his lover's body to his panting mouth. The deeper he went, the louder everything got, to the point where his mind was blanked to the noise building into the vicious movements of a game already won. Fingers cut through his back, eating up his skin, while his mouth pressed down into Kenny's chest. He tasted the way that heart skipped beat after beat, skipping to the sensation of every thrust inside the body of that boy.

" Harder! Harder! Harder!" Kenny shrieked, his voice directly next to Stan's ear. That voice was wet, hot, and the taste of the sweat Stan was drinking in. His tongue ran over the tensing skin of his lover, his eyes squeezing shut, as he pushed that much deeper into the tender inside of his angel. The blond outright screamed, the pain bearing down in the sound, rocketing Stan to his bones in icy reality. Yet, those fingers plunged down into his hips, jerking them forward as he thrust his cock into the tightened walls of the other's ass. The pressure was overwhelming, white washing every thought, but that voice careening throughout the furious embrace, " I said harder! Harder! Harder!"

" I can't get any deeper, dammit!" Stan cried out, his cheek shoved deep into the weight gathered at his lover's waist. His words were nearly consumed by the shrieking pain of the blond as he shoved inside as hard, as deep, as he could. Fire dripped from his brow as he gasped, choking on his every attempted breath, " I can't go any harder, Ken!"

He received nothing other than that one word in fierce answer. Before he could scream out, before he could even thrust once more, his shoulders were shoved backwards. Kenny slammed him down onto the mattress hard enough to blind his lover for the force and the sensation of his head cracking down into the wall. Above him, he saw the fluttering image of a flushed face overthrown by the passions of an incubus. Below him, he felt the bed jolting in the motions of their bodies intertwined in a fury of emotions overflowing upon their very flesh. Blood dripped into his face as he tried to find Kenny amongst the air he just could not swallow. Then, as he screamed, his head smashing back into the pillows, he felt that body slide down his shaft. The first was a seductive introduction to Kenny's body in the thralls of sex. The way that body arched over his cock, those thighs squeezing his hips for positioning, was the most overwhelming sight Stan had ever seen. He cried out, screamed out, as that sexed angel moved up his shaft, his face overturned in rose blush and poised in a perfect little 'O'. Kenny's hips tilted, his back curved a slight bit more, and he shoved Stan's hands down on the fat weight of his gorgeous hips.

Kenny used Stan in every, single sense of the word when he slammed his body down on that erect cock.

Every thrust was wholly met by Kenny's own, creating the deepest, hardest motions either of them had ever experienced. White bursts of excitement exploded in Stan's mind, jolting down into his toes and up to his fingertips digging through the flesh of his beloved's hips. Screaming danced over his body, creating the music they danced to, in this forever replaying music tape of pleasure. Pounding sensations beyond the realm of wonderful rocked throughout the activist's fragile, breaking mind just before the edge came up faster than ever. He felt that body over his, those hands holding his own down, and he heard nothing but the beautiful raising of Kenny's voice into the universe. The second he heard that cry striking the walls, he felt his body tear into a thousand pieces of bottled up everything. All emotions burned into that one frightfully glorious second of sheer physical ecstasy when his body truly became one with the angel's. Pulsing joy cascaded through his being, down to his core, and throughout every thought he had ever thought. When he was laying on the bed, his eyes lost in a blanket of sparkling glitter, Stan knew that he had never experienced anything quite like that rush.

The first thing to swim up in front of his exhausted, spent orbs was the image of Kenny pulling himself off of Stan. That wicked deviant ran a finger over the activist's stomach, rubbed the sticky expression of pleasure between two dirty, naughty fingers, and licked the traces away in his sick hunger for physical emotions. Like the addict he was, Kenny laced his fingertips over Stan's cock, fingering the head there. Nothing more could be done, though, for Stan only shivered and smiled in utter satisfaction. To that, Kenny leaned over him, his face a picture of perverse gratitude, before he laid a gentle kiss upon the brunette's lips. A lingering of blood made that innocent kiss anything but. Exhaling in his own spent heat, Kenny fell to lay beside Stan, his head on the activist's shoulder.

For one moment, they laid there, breathing in deep, and attempting to bring their hearts into a normal range of excitement. During this, Kenny tilted his head as he had beforehand. He peered up at his lover with those perfectly pained sapphires, still so desirable for all their broken shadows.

" I don't like bein' alone," he breathed out in a voice as fleeting as the touches of darkness upon their glistening skin. Stan felt his heart aching to hear that whisper coming from someone he treasured as much as he truly did that boy. It was all he could do not to lay a gentle kiss on that troubled mouth. Yet, he withheld, for he could nearly taste what was needed right then, and a kiss it was not any longer.

" You don't have to be," he assured him in the smallest of timbre's. His voice quaked in fear of a rejection he didn't even need to fear. There was nothing here to be shoved aside, any reason for those stark cold walls to enclose over his lover. Still, he heard his voice breaking along every edge, creaking with his longing not to be misunderstood and for his true emotions to surface behind unmoving waters. From the way that Kenny looked over him, not over at him, but rather over him, into the meaning for all which he said in that hollow sound, he felt a sense of relief. As with the fear, though, he knew this emotions to be a jolting manifestation of a sensation that he conceived mentally, not emotionally.

" I don't have anywhere else to go," the poor boy mumbled into the side of the haphazard pillows. His every gesture drew lines down the body of the other, searching him for the answers already presented in the ill placed emotions. Yet, Stan could feel nothing outside of the gripping chill of a forgotten time by a moonlit realm sparkling with glitter. In this, he heard himself speaking words already spoken, his hands gently cupping a beautiful face framed by tangled hair.

" Stay with me. Here."

" What?"

" Stay at my house," Stan felt a crack heal as a wound twisted itself throughout his soul just at the very suggestion. He had made this assertion once before, but only then did he feel the claws dragging along his backside at the way those sapphires consumed his every thought. Widened with a misplaced tone, Kenny's eyes did not seem to be the overjoyed gems needed. Even his voice, in fact, rang true of that frightening wicked sickness clouding everything within Stan like smoke hanging by an innocent ceiling. Taint was wrought in every inch of that beaming face, in all the stuttering uncertainty to that voice.

" F-Forever?"

Above his head, Stan saw the queen's piece clutched in a hand stained in freshly split blood and christened with sapphire rings adorned with diamond glitter. This piece was such a delightfully horrid spectacle, for it's double edged guillotine's blade attached to the bottom, swinging just over his outstretched neck. Such was the coying sweetness of the voice trickling out of Kenny's puckered lips and tickling their way over Stan's flickering feelings. How it played lovely tricks in the faded light of the ending evening, twirling around just where the pointed blade couldn't be seen for all the heart throbbing careful wording. For every touch of death in this game, though, there was but a faint desperation for honesty that was beyond real. The aqua orbs of crystallized snow took in the play, took in the true danger to his admission, and he took the chance to finding where the striking horror lurking in that angel's soul hailed from. He ignored that swinging pendulum threatening his sanity as he stroked back Kenny's hair, so as to see the searching need in those shattered eyes, and he kissed him as he did it. He kissed him with every ounce of passion within the frozen blood within so that he heard and he tasted and he felt and he knew what he answered was more than the truth. It was a truth that was perfectly fine ignoring the blood and smoke and fire forever dirtying the hands of the angel he loved more than anything.

He feared Kenny. And he knew it then more than he ever would, despite all that he couldn't have known then. He felt that fear rising in every strike out, every new ante, and every checkmate; haunting the edge of even his most innocent words and statements, like a disease needing to be eradicated. This changed everything. This moment changed everything between the two of them, the two freaky four missing, and everyone else they knew. Stan knew it changed everything, and he said it anyways. He feared his precious angel, and that changed everything, and he said it anyways.

" I don't want you to be alone," he whispered under his breath so the heavens wouldn't hear him. He felt two hands ease up to grip his own, against those plump cheeks, as though Kenny heard those words without being able to handle what they meant. Stan pressed his forehead into that of his beloved and he looked directly into the sweetness inside the sinister sapphires, " Stay in my room. With me."

Checkmate. Down the blade swung.

And how Kenny's lips pulled into that Cheshire smile at the bloodshed.

" You're too good fer me," Kenny teased in the casual turn of his little accent, as if he couldn't see the way he won this game so flawlessly. The touch of toying to his words was enough to avoid the pitfalls of execution, however. A small smile worked it's ways over Stan's mouth to the point he felt himself wetting his lips in what might be called seduction.

" Don't say that," Stan answered calmly, running a hand down to rest on his lover's hip. Kenny turned his body into the activist's, melding their dual warmth into a single pulsating sensation of fire trailing the devastating touches of burning ice. Their heart beats found the tempo of the way their breath caught in their throat just from looking aquamarine and sapphire stones. The poor boy gripped the other's shoulder as his hip was grabbed in the same manner of personal, mental intoxication, " I love you is all."

" I love you too. More than you know."

Something ignited to those words; something similar to smoke ablaze with the choking touches of gun powder. Black, thick clouds engulfed Stan's memories, blanketed every form of thought he attempted in the way of dragging up the sudden light bulb flash created by the way that phrase rolled off Kenny's smiling lips. A wagging of tongue, though, was all which he could make out from the way those ring studded fingers tapped on the queen's position directly beside the king. The tilted, shimmering, glitter engraved sword of a warrior was drawn back by this laughing queen, swinging down in a sheer flutter of blinding emerald lightning, just before that overwhelming sensation of misplaced horror rose up in Stan's throat. He felt himself recoiling to the way blond swung around a swell of hips and the hemline twisted up to reveal a leg he knew better than the name he called out in his sleep. His mouth formed that beautiful expression even then before he was hearing a rock song cancelling out her. The phrase crashed down through the waters of a still night long ago, never to be seen again, as Stan jerked away from the way Kenny was laughing under his breath, his blond hair twisted about eyes of such a darkened blue, they were nearly black.

With a half hearted roll of the eyes, though, Stan didn't have the chance to see those pretty things melt back into their stunningly bright shade of blue. All he saw was the phone vibrating on the floor, near his jeans' pockets where it had fallen from. He didn't need to see anything else to know exactly who was on the other end of that connection. Something about the way the world felt just a touch more fiery told him who was waiting for him to snatch the quivering thing from the floor and answer already.

" Hang on a sec," he grumbled out as he shifted his body around so he could grab the phone off the floor. He heard slight groans and adorable whimpers underneath from his lover, which only made him prolong his rescue mission, " It's Kyle."

" It's always Kyle," was the bitter retort snapped back at Stan as he finally returned to his fallen position on the mattress. The activist glanced momentarily at where the poor boy was glancing away and towards the doorway. He couldn't explain the look gracing those full cheeks as he flipped open the phone to hear what he assumed was going to be an earful.

" Hello?" Stan asked, as if he didn't already know who's voice he was about to hear bursting into his mind. Even as a slight smile crossed his mouth, even as he readied to jerk the slender thing away as the screaming began, even as he chuckled under his breath, he felt it. That deathly quiet awfulness, unadulterated sickness, spiraling from his friend into his own pools of ice. It darted over the silence, eating alive all the charm and pleasure of the perceived complaining fest. All of the jest was wholeheartedly removed without a sound needed to erase it from existence. And still, when those few words, that one phrase, struck the air, the sensation of embers searing away the bubbling flesh of an unprepared lamb was so very raw and real and unforeseen, Stan could hardly believe it himself.

Horror itself wasn't comparable. Fear, no. Terror, no. Repulsion, no. Nothing, no, nothing, could ever compare to the disease crawling in that phrase as it spilled into the air like an illness overcoming reason and sanity.

" I fell asleep on Cartman's bed."

There was no pitch, no tone, no timbre, no anything to the way Kyle said it. His voice was a hollow ditch fit for the grave, dragging bloody shovel heads in the form of a cross where the soul ought to have been. This cold creature cut along Stan's body with enough force to jerk him into a sitting position the same way in which an electrical shock might of. Jagged wounds, once healed in their sewed up, liquored down mannerisms, felt frightening close to the knife poised in that Jew's empty voice. Just one breath, one more breath, was enough to slice through every slick trick to defense, to find the heart, and gouge it from the body in a greedy need to hinder all little, lost lambs lifeless. This was what found Stan that evening when the sunset swallowed up the remaining light of the South Park suburban version of picture perfect hell. Twisted metal words ground their pointed edges against the activist's darkest corners of his every thought, and he sat there, in the decrepit guest bedroom, soaked in a freezing sweat, unable to respond to their painful return.

" What?"

" You heard me."

" When?" Stan begged, knowing there could only be one answer given. He still asked, praying against all prayers that this was one of those nights when the past found Kyle unwilling to return to the present. He prayed that this was one of the nights when he would listen to the child of yesteryear sobbing in his ear. He shouldn't have hoped, though. Every passing second, those pointed blades drove their sickening tips underneath his skin, fleshing out the tearstained, blood red sheets of the days when someone else would be calling to tell him this. He heard that highly accented deadpan voice, heard the weak crying in the background, and he knew how foolish it was to ask something like 'when'.

" Today," Kyle just barely breathed out the word, for it was the greatest sin he could have ever said. Stan knew without needing to hear it, so he didn't dare ask him to repeat it. He just gripped up Kenny's fragile, dirty, little hand with those painted bubblegum pink nails flickering with glitter. All about his head, he heard the soft pounding of a parental fight that didn't survive to really exist in this moment. He heard that, and he saw long, skinny fingers with naked nails, and he fell into the trap of this tangled tango.

" You haven't done that since you were twelve," Stan plainly, emptily stated. His voice collided with the ground as a bottle breaking when it slipped through the hands of a small boy sobbing into the arms of someone he didn't even like. The pieces littered the floor in tiny, gleaming flecks of gems, catching and tossing the light all around the memories of middle school.

" I know."

" Are you okay?"

Stan needn't have asked. Before he tightly shut eyes, he saw those terrified emerald eyes glistening with tears, staring up at him from another time and another place. Hands bound in bandages clung feverishly to a bloodstained shirt stretched over a full stomach as that mouth cried out what his eyes already said. Stan saw all this as that devoid voice said what he already knew.

" No."

And what was left unsaid changed everything.