So I was looking through my old computer and found this thing, which I wrote YEARS ago and never submitted. Uh...read if you like tragic Style, I guess.

Thirteen missed calls. Three unopened texts. One unheard voicemail.

Stan groans at the glare from his phone and harsh noon light streaming through gaps in the blinds. He's only just woken up, but can tell this hangover is going to be one of the more impressive ones. After a fitful grope for his blanket, he catches the hem and draws it up to his neck. With a deft flick of his thumb, he checks to see who had wanted to get in touch with him so badly.

All the calls are from Kyle. Stan rolls his eyes, wincing as the action causes his head to pound. He taps the little envelope icon. The three texts are from Kyle too.

From: Kyle 9:56 PM - You're a total ass. But I'm coming over anyway, because you don't need to be alone right now.

Stan sets his mouth into a thin frown. He was the total ass? His memory is a little foggy, but hadn't it been Kyle who'd forced him to leave? He struggles to remember through the painful, alcohol-induced haze.

"Stan, are you drunk again?" Kyle asks, speaking like the question leaves a bad taste in his mouth. Stan's hand, roaming up the smooth expanse of Kyle's lithe chest, doesn't pause.

"Just a little..." he slurs into Kyle's ear, biting the fleshy lobe and reveling in the shudder that rocks his boyfriend's thin frame.

"Jesus Christ! You've been wasted every day this week! And it's Saturday, for fuck's sake!"

"Don't be such a bitch, Kyle," Stan smirks, threading his hands through those violent curls.

"I wouldn't have invited you over if I'd known you were gonna be plastered!" Kyle hisses back, shoving Stan's hands away, "you're worrying me, dude."

"Why?" Stan tilts his head to the side almost comically, "I can drink if I want."

"Yeah, but do you really wanna end up like your dad?"

His fist collides with Kyle's jaw before the redhead even has time to blink. The smaller boy tumbles to the floor, hunched over an open textbook and loose paper. Blood from his split lip drips onto half-complete Biology homework, obscuring his name with its inky crimson splatter.

"That's not funny, asshole," Stan says softly, shocked with himself but too drunk and too angry to acknowledge the obvious damage he's done.

"Get the fuck out of my house, Stan," Kyle responds quietly, picking himself up with the dignity that not even years of abuse from Cartman could erase. His eyes blaze, emerald fires stoked with pain and fueled by anger.

"Gladly," Stan grumbles and slams the door on his way out.

Stan's heart lurches in his chest. So. Maybe he had been a total ass after all. But maybe he'd made the whole thing up. He couldn't have actually punched Kyle, could he? He loves Kyle, he could never even imagine hurting him. They're soulmates, boyfriends, lovers, Super Best Friends.

With hesitant fingers and a sick feeling in his stomach, he checks the other two text messages.

From: Kyle 4:42 AM - aswerplesew qwods

From: Kyle 4:47 AM - hrekp hhrutqwooods

His eyebrows furrow. Kyle isn't one to send nonsensical messages at four in the morning. Nor had he, to Stan's knowledge, ever actually arrived at Stan's house the previous night. He bites his lip and punches in the password to his voicemail.

"You have one unheard message," the female voice of the machine says smoothly, "First unheard message, sent today at four thirty-five AM;"

At first the line is silent but for a slight rustle. Then a sharp, rasping breath. A horribly wet-sounding cough.

Stan strains to listen as a tinny voice floats in and out of the speaker, more chokes and gasps than actual words.

"St...nnhh. Ple...wuh...wuhs...ple...se.."

Then nothing but haggard breathing and eventually, silence.

Stan drops the phone, his hangover suddenly forgotten.

The search party branches out in all directions, covering the town. Friends, family, classmates. Stan is frantic as he checks all Kyle's usual haunts. His eyes are wide with panic, red with tears. Kenny stays by his side, helps him look, tries to get him to calm down. His voice, soft and muffled through his parka, soothes Stan's nerves for a small amount of time before that old fear rises up within him. But Kenny is adamant and keeps at it, uttering his words of hope and happiness. Across the street, Mrs. Broflovski cries into a handkerchief in front of the police.

The search moves from the town to the wilderness. First Stark's Pond, then the mountainous woods that lay beyond. All around, people cup their hands to their mouths and yell Kyle's name. Stan feels like he's in a nightmare. He sees a hollow of a tree that he knows is far too small to hold a human, even one as slight as Kyle. But he looks anyway. It holds nothing but a few stray pine needles.

It's Ike who eventually finds Kyle.

Tromping through the woods in his oversized blue coat and orange muffler, his intelligent eyes follow the signs of broken twigs and disturbed snow. It leads him to a small dip within the forest floor, a ditch flanked by a snowbank, dirty with blood.

Ike stands over the snowbank and stares into the ditch, and he sees is red and white.

"I found him," his voice is small and choked and he barely even realizes he said anything. He can hear the crunch of snow and leaves as the search party continues moving through other parts of the forest.

"I found him," he repeats, a little louder, "I found him!"

His voice is loud now and it rends the air in desperate terror. Then there's the sound of alert chatter and boots stumbling forward as fast as they can through the snow. Stan arrives first.

Kyle is half-buried in the snow, naked body twisted at some odd angle that makes him look like an abused porcelain doll. His back is to them, so painfully white and angular against the bloodstained snow.

Silently, Stan slips down into the ditch, even as Kenny catches up and tries to stop him. He sinks to his knees and puts his hand to Kyle's shoulder. Cold, so cold. Frozen blood everywhere. His lover's unclothed hip jutting sharply into the air, his thighs streaked with blood long dried.

Gently, Stan murmurs Kyle's name and turns him over, hugging him close to give him warmth. Kyle offers no resistance and lays inert against Stan's body, his thin, white arm slung out to the side, still clutching the cell phone in his hand. Stan's fingers try to roam through Kyle's hair to comfort him, but the unruly locks are caked with frozen blood and dirt.

The police eventually patch the whole scenario together. Kyle, walking through the frigid night to Stan's house, had been attacked, dragged into the woods, stabbed, raped.

Thirteen stab wounds.

His assailant had left him to die, unclothed and bleeding, in the unforgiving mountain chill.

All eyes turn to Cartman, of course, but he has a solid alibi and no evidence pointing toward him.

At Kyle's funeral, Stan breaks down, railing against the larger boy who he knows must be guilty, punching him and screaming in his face and eventually sobbing at his feet. But Cartman just takes the abuse without a word, dead eyes turned toward Kyle's casket.

They never catch the culprit. A drifter, the police surmise. Moved onto the next town to murder someone else's boyfriend and dump their body, a terrible gift in the snow.

Stan always dreams about him. He closes his eyes and sees his boyfriend's pretty freckled face, laughing, sobbing, fuming, crying, rolling his great green eyes in the exaggerated way that Kyle did so well.

He never knows what scene will be the one to play out each night. Sometimes he and Kyle are sitting at the edge of Stark's Pond, leaning against one another, hands linked. Other times he's drunk and towering over Kyle, and the redhead is dripping blood and rage. Then sometimes, rarely, and he's thankful for the rarity, he sees a dark night and a pale, terrified face, the flash of a knife and split lips sobbing out his name.

Most often, Kyle is just at the bus stop, waiting for him, waving casually as he approaches. Stan hugs him, holds him, sobs into his jacket, apologizes because it's all his fault and he knows it. Kyle doesn't blame him. But Kyle doesn't comfort him either.

But it's okay. For that short time each night, Stan has him back.

Until he wakes and is left with nothing.

Nothing but thirteen missed calls. Three opened texts. One voicemail.