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Good Lives	By : shuffmcpuff Category: +S through Z > South Park > Slash - Male/Male Views: 1683 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I'm pretty sure Matt and Trey don't give two flying fucks that people write fanfiction about their characters. For the record, though, I don't own South Park, and I certainly don't make any money from writing about it.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
This story has been knockin' around on FF.net for a while now, but I figured I would post it here as well, on account of the sexin' (almost. Eventually). It's really long and complicated and gives me headaches and fits of high school nostalgia like nothing else, but I love writing it, so. Hopefully you AFF.net people will enjoy it as well. :)
Good Lives
Part One
"Promise that forever we will never get better at growing up and learning to lie."
~ "Good Lives," Eve 6
If there was one truth that the citizens of South Park, Colorado saw as absolute, it was that things could always get worse, and if there was anything else that they collectively deemed pretty near close to certain, it was that Stan Marsh and Wendy Testaburger were meant to be. They were bright, good-looking, college-bound kids, the pride and joy of South Park High School for their individual achievements, and they'd been together since about the third grade ("the third fuckin' grade," Randy Marsh would say down at the bar, when he was drunk enough to start bragging about how much better his kid was than everyone else's). There had been little hiccups in their relationship here and there, upsets, the occasional break-up when they were in middle school and felt as unsettled about each other as kids do about everything at that age, but for the last couple of years it had been smooth and easy: the perfect, flawless adolescent relationship. Stan and Wendy were as tight and wholesome as a couple of teenage kids could be—which was saying a lot for a town like South Park, in which Liane Cartman's customers lined up around the block and a good number of the town's girls had been employed at a slutty restaurant and bar since the age of eight and a half.
Now that the kids in Stan and Wendy's grade were all about to enter their last year of high school, their relationship had become the stuff of legend. Every new couple pledged to one another that they would be "another Stan and Wendy." If a student ended it with their significant other, it was because she "wasn't as great as Wendy." If someone was found to be cheating, he just "wasn't as loyal as Stan." The two of them seemed to walk the hallways of South Park High School under an accompanying spotlight, seemingly unaware of their notoriety or the appreciative looks that even the teachers would give them when they passed by. They were the ideal, and by the time the new school year was only a couple of weeks old the rumor mill was already spinning on their behalf: kids were saying that Stan and Wendy were already engaged, that Stan had proposed to Wendy over the summer, that Wendy had lost her virginity to Stan in the back of Stan's dad's SUV after the first football game of the year.
Frankly, it all made Kyle Broflovski a little uncomfortable.
It wasn't that he was jealous of his best friend's relationship. Or, God forbid, that he harbored a secret passion for Wendy behind Stan's back. (Not to say that he disliked her. In fact, she was probably the only girl in South Park that he could say he liked much at all.) But Stan's life had turned into something resembling one of those retarded teen movies that they made fun of when they saw the trailers on TV. Stan had the right relationship and the right looks and the right life, and there was no way that he, Kyle Broflovski (red-haired, Jewish, diabetic, probably a little skinnier than he should have been) could fit into a scenario like that. He and Stan had been best friends forever—literally, he couldn't remember a time when he hadn't had Stan to rely on—but he still wasn't used to the idea that there were some things that they were unable to share.
Obviously, Kyle was used to the idea of Stan having a girlfriend. He and Wendy had been together for as long as they'd had Garrison for a teacher (which was—Jesus—coming up on nine years now). But in the last couple of years, as Stan and Wendy had begun to metamorphose into Stan-and-Wendy, he and Kyle had become, necessarily, that much less Stan-and-Kyle. Watching Stan with someone else had forced him to step back and get a little perspective, so that it had become impossible not to notice nowadays how much better-looking Stan was than him. How much more people actually liked him.
And in dwelling on these thoughts he couldn't help but wonder—only once in a while, in depressed patches and fits of melancholy—whether Stan would actually be a lot better-off without him as a best friend, and if they really belonged together at all.
The second he was hanging out with Stan again, of course, all of his doubts disintegrated and things were exactly the same as they'd always been. And he still had Cartman and Kenny, to the extent that anyone ever had, or wanted, Cartman and Kenny. But whenever he was alone—and he was alone a lot these days, more than he ever remembered being alone before—he had begun to feel as if a vice was slowly tightening in his chest, making it difficult to concentrate on anything but the ways in which he just wasn't good enough.
But shit. Maybe that was just high school.

It was Saturday, the fifteenth of September, and the three of them, Stan and Kyle and Cartman, were at Stan's house. They were always at Stan's house these days when they hung out, since Stan spent so much time with Wendy that he seemed to want to make up for it when he was free; besides which, they had nowhere else to go. Mrs. Broflovski had long since banned Cartman once and for all from their premises for his anti-Semitism and his tendency to break into Kyle's room in the middle of the night, and Cartman himself had grown so sick of the nudges and raised eyebrows that Stan and Kyle would pass back and forth when his mother was upstairs "fixing the furniture," as he liked to think, that one day he had physically thrown them both out the front door and barked at them never to come back.
They were playing Kyle's new Gamesphere game—or Stan and Kyle were, at least (after falling dramatically behind in the first five minutes, Cartman had proclaimed it a "stupid Jew racing game" and stretched out on the couch with a bowl of Cheesy Poofs, forcing Kyle to squeeze awkwardly into the opposite corner while Stan perched on the armrest). Stan was winning. Ignoring the elbow that Kyle was surreptitiously jamming into his stomach, he screwed his brows up tight, gripping the controller so hard that the cheap plastic creaked under his hands. Just a little further… a little further…
"No," Kyle said, his voice escaping in a groan; "no, no, no…"
"Yes," Stan exulted; "fucking yes, dude—!" And then he fell off the couch, but it was too late; Kyle let out an irritated moan and threw his head back against the wall as Stan punched the air victoriously from his position on the carpet, the controller still clutched in his fist. "I fucking owned you, Kyle—"
"Nice job, Stan. Putting that Jew rat in his place," Cartman quipped through a mouthful of Cheesy Poofs. He kicked Kyle in the side when the redhead turned angrily to sock whatever part of Cartman he could reach. Stan had just pulled himself into a half-sitting position, ready to pull his two friends apart if they showed any danger of damaging his parents' stuff, when the front door flew open.
It was Kenny.
His shoulders were heaving like he had run all the way there. The three of them stared at him, nonplussed, for a moment, before Cartman shoveled another handful of Cheesy Poofs into his mouth, breaking the silence with his loud, sloppy chewing.
"Oh, hey, Kenny," Stan said, sitting all the way up.
"We thought you were dead," Cartman said, as Kyle began selecting his character for the next bout.
"You wanna play, Kenny?" Kyle said, his eyes on the screen. "Stan just finished wiping the floor with my ass, but I bet if you—"
"Stan," Kenny interrupted, "your parents have to adopt me."
This spurred them into silence again. When Stan, sitting crossed-legged on the floor in shock, didn't respond, Kenny turned to Kyle, who started a little. "Or you, Kyle," he said; "I'll convert to Judaism or whatever, I don't even care—"
"Wait," Stan said, shaking his head. "Wait—Kenny—seriously?"
"Kenny," Cartman said, looking at Kenny ashen-faced, "that isn't funny, man. You join the Broflovski's Jew coven—I might have to kill you. Like, for good, bro."
"Fuck off, Cartman—"
"Listen," Kenny said, and to their surprise he pulled his omnipresent hood back, revealing bugged-out blue eyes and a certain tightness to his jaw. "You have to help me, or—or else my parents are gonna make me sell my body."
No one quite seemed to know what to say to that, aside from Kyle's proffered "dude."
"Like anyone would want your organs, Kenny," Cartman said, returning his attention to his junk food. "Prob'ly all—shriveled up and malnourished—"
"No, Cartman," Kenny said through clenched teeth, "my parents are making me become a prostitute."
Cartman looked at him for a moment before saying, "So?"
"Yeah, so?" said Stan from the floor.
"'So?'" Kenny said despairingly, sinking to his knees in front of them and grabbing at his own tousled hair. "Stan—they're making me—I'm gonna have to—"
"Kenny," Stan said slowly, holding Kenny's gaze, "you were already a prostitute. When we were eight. Remember?"
"You got arrested for giving Howard Stern a blowjob for ten bucks," Kyle said, switching the game off with his controller.
"Yeah, but that was—actually, that was your guys' fault," Kenny said, looking at Stan and Kyle accusingly (Stan frowned and Kyle shrugged), "but that was different—I had my own TV show and—God, don't you guys get it? What kind of family forces their own kid to whore themselves off for cash?" He got to his feet again, seemingly unable to sit still, and began pacing around Stan's living room. "They were all, 'okay, Kenny, now that you're almost a man, you're too old to be a freeloader, got to start earning the family some money.' So I was like, okay, sure, I'll look for a job or whatever, but my dad was like—" Here Kenny slipped into a pretty apt imitation of his father's twang. "'Dammit, son, if there was any work out there don't you think I'd be employed?' And then they started talking about how the electric bill had to be paid and they needed some money fast, so it would be better for everyone if I just started selling myself at the strip club down the street. And I was like, 'haha, wait, really?' And my mom was like—" (here he slipped into a high-pitched facsimile of the voice he'd affected for his dad, wringing his hands as he paced back and forth in front of the TV) "'Now, Kenny, we've talked about this, and your father and I have agreed that this is what's best for you. We were gonna just sell you into white slavery, but then we decided that we want to know you're alive because we love you,' to which my dad said, 'Wait, honey, I thought we decided we wouldn't make a profit off him that way,' and then they started yelling at each other and my mom got the crowbar out so I just left and…" Kenny had apparently run out of steam, his shoulders heaving again, so he sank back to the floor again, not quite looking at any of them.
Stan and Kyle continued to watch him, speechless, but Cartman's only reaction was a snort. "Jesus, Kenny," he said, "way to bitch about a great opportunity." When Kenny's gaze drifted his way, he continued: "I mean, what, Kenny, are you a fag or something? You get to bang mad bitches and get paid for it, what's so bad about that? Man, I'd do it myself if I lived in the ghetto like you."
"Cartman—" Kyle said, exasperated.
"What?" Cartman said, spraying Cheesy Poofs in Kyle's direction. "S'not like anyone else's gonna want to have sex with Kenny. Kenny smells like spoiled milk. And chicks are afraid of having his, you know, his welfare babies—"
"Cartman—" Kyle snapped, more harshly this time.
"Cartman, you pig-fucking tub of lard, shut your fat fucking face," Kenny said in a hollow voice.
"Ey!" Cartman said irritably. "Don't call me fat, you poor piece of shit! I was just saying—"
"That I'm poor? Yeah, I heard you," Kenny said, getting to his feet. He seemed to have lapsed back into his characteristic apathy, although he still had that tight set to his jaw. "I always hear you, you inbred retard. I don't even know why I—" He cut himself off, pulling his hood back over his head. "Fuck it. See you guys around."
"Dude, Kenny," Stan said, rubbing the back of his head. "If you, like… need us to do something for you or whatever, I guess we could—"
"Nah," said Kenny. "S'alright, Stan, you don't have to do a thing. It's cool."
"Oh," said Stan. "Um… all righ—"
"Although," Kenny said, pausing at the door. "You know what you could do, Stan? You could go fuck yourself, you and your perfect fucking life. Could you do that for me, Stan?"
Stan's eyes were as wide as saucers. "Uh—"
"And fuck you, too, Kyle, for your goddamn self-righteous pretension. And you, Cartman—you don't deserve to live. You know that, right?"
"Kenny—" Kyle tried.
"And you know what else?" Kenny said, throwing the front door open and swinging around to glare at them. "I'm not getting any pussy, and I probably won't, ever, because everyone will know I'm getting my ass pounded on a regular basis by fat old closeted rednecks!"
And he slammed the door behind him.
Cartman's mouth hung open. "… What?"
"Jesus Christ," Stan muttered to himself.
"Wait." Cartman looked around at Stan and Kyle, clearly alarmed. "Kenny's gonna have sex with guys?"
"He'll have to have sex with everybody who pays him," Kyle said wearily. "That's what 'prostitute' means, lardass." ("No way," said Cartman, looking as if Christmas had come early. "No fucking way.") "Stan, you want to play another round?" When Stan didn't answer, Kyle nudged him with his foot. "Dude, don't worry about Kenny. He's just pissed right now; he'll get over it."
"Sure," said Stan, rubbing the back of his head again. "No, dude, I don't think I want to play another round."
"Stanley?" This was Sharon Marsh, who then stuck her head into the room from the kitchen. "Dinner in ten. You're welcome to stay if you want, Kyle."
"Thanks, Mrs. Marsh," Kyle said, glancing furtively at Stan as he rose to unhook the Gamesphere.
Stan's mom frowned as she scanned the living room. "Isn't Kenny here? I thought I heard his voice. He sounded a little upset."
"Oh, we were just coaching our friend Kenny through a difficult time," Cartman said smarmily, looking up from his phone (which, Kyle thought grudgingly, had probably just sent out a mass text about Kenny's new occupation as a fudgepacker). "In twenty, you say, Mrs. Marsh? And what will we be having this evening?"
"Very funny, Eric," Sharon said sarcastically. "I'm sorry, but you're not welcome at our table anymore. Not after last time."
Cartman seemed ready to defend his right to a free dinner, but Mrs. Marsh was already ducking back into the kitchen. Scowling, he turned to complain to Stan, but Stan had rocketed to his feet and was aiming for the staircase with long, purposeful strides. "Stan, goddammit—"
"Going upstairs," Stan said, and then he had.
"This is bullcrap," Cartman said heatedly, rounding on Kyle. "As one of Stan's oldest, closest friends, I deserve certain rights, like—"
"Cartman," Kyle said, "just get the hell out."

"… Stan?"
He was curled up on the bed with his back to the door. Kyle entered the room gingerly, stepping around Stan's football stuff and backpack and all the rest of the ordered mess of Stan's bedroom before taking a seat next to his prone form on the bed, crossing his ankles and leaning his head against the backboard. The silence stretched on uncomfortably between them, as Stan didn't acknowledge his presence and Kyle struggled, and failed, to come up with something rectifying to say to him. His inability to tell what was bothering his friend without having to think about it was making his palms sweat, and it began to seem, as he sat there, that Stan was a stranger whose bedroom he had stumbled into unannounced and unwanted.
Is this what it's going to be like? Kyle thought to himself, staring blankly at Stan's familiar posters on the opposite wall. Will we just keep growing apart until we don't have anything left to say to each other?
"I fucking hate this town, Kyle," Stan said quietly, so much so that it took Kyle a moment to realize he had spoken.
"I know you do, dude," Kyle said hurriedly, trying not to sound relieved. "We both do. But we'll both get into good schools, and at the end of this year we can leave and never come ba—"
"It does something to you," Stan mumbled, as if Kyle hadn't spoken. "Living here. I mean, I used to think my dad was just an idiot, but lately I've been looking at him and thinking… did he used to be just like me? Did he used to know how insane all the stupid bullshit that happens here is? Until one day he decided just to go along with it, 'cause he realized there was just no point in trying anymore, and he just ended up forgetting what it was like to care…"
"Stan," Kyle said, "I'm pretty sure your dad is just an idiot."
"Still, though," Stan said, rolling over to look at Kyle with eyes that were dark and hollow—and at least, Kyle thought, he was the only one Stan would allow to see him like this. Him, and Wendy. "I'm terrified it'll happen one day. That I'll look around and nothing will have changed, but I'll just be like, 'oh, well. That's life.'"
"That won't happen," Kyle said. "Not to you."
"But—"
"It won't."
Stan looked at him for another moment before he flung himself facedown onto the bed. "What happened with Kenny downstairs, though," he muttered, his voice coming in a muffled trickle of sound from the crook of his elbow, "that was fucked-up."
Kyle didn't say anything. "I mean," Stan continued, rubbing his forehead against his arm, "he came to us for help—which he doesn't do, ever—and we didn't—I didn't—bat an eye. What he—what his parents are doing—that's not normal." He said it like he was convincing himself. "We could have done… something…"
"Kenny'll be all right," Kyle said, repeating his sentiment from earlier. "He's not stupid, and he's pretty resourceful; he'll get around it somehow." And, he wanted to say, he didn't mean what he said about you, either, but he couldn't quite get the words out.
Instead he laid a hand on the back of Stan's head, which felt right, even though they'd never really had a touchy-feely sort of relationship. Stan sighed and didn't move away as Kyle closed his palm on a handful of straight black hair. "Do you think my life is perfect?" he asked, his voice coming out in a quiet mumble. "No one's life is perfect, dude," Kyle said honestly. "I mean, yeah, you've got it pretty good. But you're a person, not just some football-playing robot. If something was ever bothering you… you know you could come to me, right?"
"Yeah," Stan said after a short silence, during which Kyle's heart had slammed against his ribcage with uncertainty. "I know. Thanks, Kyle."
"Don't worry about it," Kyle said. "So… um… you okay now?" he said, a little awkwardly.
"Mm-hmm," Stan said, angling his head a little into Kyle's hand. "I just have a headache."
They might have stayed like that for an hour for all Kyle knew; Stan was so still that he may have fallen asleep, and Kyle, silent and motionless aside from the repeated motions of his fingers through Stan's dark hair, struggled to crush down an impending wave of unbearable sadness. It was stupid, he thought, attempting to banish the lump that was forming in his throat, because he couldn't work out why he suddenly felt like crying. Unless he was sad because Stan was sad, and he had these tears in his eyes because Stan wouldn't allow himself any.
He was just regaining control over his labored breathing, having finished wiping his eyes with the hand that wasn't, by this time, clutching Stan's head to the side of his hip, when a commotion on the stairs brought Kyle back to Earth. In another moment Shelley, Stan's twenty-one-year-old sister, appeared in the doorway, her figure partially silhouetted by the light from the hallway.
"Tuuu-rrr-rrrds," she said in a sing-song voice (she had never abandoned her childhood vocal tic, even with an associate's degree from Middle Park Community College and a job at the local J-Mart under her belt). "Jeez, what are you doing? Dinner's ready. Mom's been calling for- e- ver—"
She stopped, seeing the two of them on the bed, and Kyle got a queer feeling as she looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time since they'd known each other. He saw her eyes narrow, and the thought came to him that if she tried to come over there and do anything to Stan he would rip her fucking head off.
Finally she spoke, in a very different tone from her usual grating honk. "What are you doing to my brother?"
"He has a headache, Shelley," Kyle said hoarsely. When she didn't say anything in response he added, "We'll be down in a couple minutes."
Were she still an angry twelve-year-old, she might have tried to smack something out of him that was more satisfying. It had always worked pretty well on Stan when they were kids, to the point that she had considered up until she graduated high school that violence was definitely always the answer. As things stood, though, she was an adult now, and her brother and his puny friend were getting there. Shelley stood on the threshold, chewing the inside of her mouth and staring at Kyle's miserable face, before she muttered "You better" and left them in the dark.

If you could see the four of them now, you wouldn't believe they were friends—and if they hadn't been together since birth, as far as anyone could remember, they probably wouldn't look twice at each other if they were passing on the street.
Stan was fit, handsome. He had a place on the football team. He looked the way a small-town, blue-collar kid would look in a TV special: a kid you could trust to do the right thing, who would go off to a good school on a sports scholarship at the end of the half-hour and really make something of himself. He knew how to smile when he had to and had a confidence to his posture and an intelligence to his gaze that made people think they could put their trust in him. He was popular with girls even though they knew very well how unavailable he was. He was just popular. People loved him without his having to try.
Cartman was still a fatass, but he was tall now, too, and his bulk sat on him in ways that made it seem like some of it might be muscle. He wasn't what you'd call good-looking, but he didn't need to be: the cunning, manipulative streak he'd cultivated as a child had blossomed into a smarmy yet irresistible charisma. He was the same fat asshole he'd always been around most of the senior class, who knew his true nature too well for his questionable charm to affect them, but he practiced it regularly on teachers and younger students, with typically stunning results. The fact that he was a starter on the football team with Stan didn't particularly hurt. He was the only one of them other than Stan to have had a girlfriend, and although none of the relationships lasted very long, the possibility existed, to Stan and Kyle's horror, that his boasts of sexual prowess were not entirely imaginary.
Kenny was something else altogether. If Stan looked like a TV star, Kenny was a lanky runway model, all full lips, sculpted cheekbones, and large, heavy-lidded eyes that smoldered from under his mop of unwashed dirty-blond hair. He had become, against all odds, stunningly handsome, and the fact that his old orange parka had just fallen apart when he was about thirteen underlined the fact that he looked nothing like the scrawny death-prone kid he'd been in elementary school. Were he not a McCormick, trailer-trash poor and reeking of failure, he might have been coveted for his looks, but his family's reputation preceded him. All the girls at school saw in him, when they saw him at all, were grimy blue jeans and a low income, and to everyone else he was just Kenny, that McCormick kid.
Kyle was the only one who hadn't really changed. He still wore his green ushanka every day to hide his mess of curly red hair. He was as pale and thin as he'd always been, although he'd been able to build some scant musculature from his years playing basketball. He still had a hot temper, especially when it came to Cartman, and he wasn't much better at controlling his emotions when he got too riled up. When he looked at himself in the mirror—briefly, out of necessity, like when he had to brush his teeth or something—the big-eyed, sharp-chinned face he saw there was invariably that of a child's.
He sometimes felt the way he had the night before his Bar Mitzvah, kind of twitchy and petulant and completely disbelieving that he could just wake up the next day ready to be a man. Only now it was worse, because it was real, and no one else seemed to want to defer adulthood the way he did. While everyone else had been getting their first jobs and smoking their first cigarettes and having their first awkward sexual experiences in the backs of their parents' cars, Kyle had spent high school doing the same things every day that he'd always done, without it occurring to him that someday everything would have to change.
And he never felt more childish than he did when he found himself tagging along with Stan and Wendy at school.
"You're being unrealistic, Stan," Wendy said in her bossiest tone. Her long black ponytail flew out behind her as she strode down the hallway, her boyfriend in step beside her and Kyle trailing self-consciously behind. It was the Monday after Kyle had had dinner at the Marsh's house, the seventeenth of September, and Wendy was trying to explain to Stan why he should have started his college search a year and a half ago.
Stan gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I dunno. I think I've got a couple more months to decide where I want to apply."
"That isn't nearly enough time," Wendy said sharply. She was going to Harvard. She told everyone so, even though she couldn't actually send in her early decision application until December. "There are just too many variables. School size, class size, the combination of concentrations offered, location, whether it's private or public—there's no way you can find a school that offers precisely what you're looking forin a couple of months, and even if you do, you'll probably be competing with people who've been a little more proactive with their applications."
"Jesus, Wendy, chill," Stan said, pausing in front of his locker. Wendy clicked her tongue irritably as he spun his combination. "I've got plenty of time. It'll be fine."
"You should still show a little more interest in your future," she said sternly. "Like—Kyle. Where are you applying to college?"
Kyle looked up from his shoes, startled at being brought suddenly into the conversation. "What?"
Stan snorted into his locker as Wendy sighed and repeated her question. "Where are you thinking of going to school? Your grades are some of the highest in the senior class, so you must have some idea—"
"Um. Thanks," Kyle said, pretending he hadn't noticed Stan mouthing 'humor her' at him. "But I don't really know yet… my list is still pretty extensive…"
Wendy rolled her eyes and muttered something that sounded like "honestly" under her breath. "Do you have any preferences, at least? Something to show Stan that he's fucked if he doesn't start his college search soon?"
"Well, I don't know," Kyle said again, feeling a little awkward. He hadn't really discussed this with anyone yet. "I was thinking I maybe wanted to go to a city school… NYU or University of Chicago or something?"
"Good schools," Wendy said with approval, her aggression diminished now that she and Kyle were on the same page.
Stan was staring at him. "You're going to school out of state?"
"I don't know, dude," Kyle said yet again. And then, because Stan was beginning to irritate him with his stare: "You're the one who always talks about how much you hate South Park."
"Well, yeah," Stan said slowly, slamming his locker door shut, "but I was thinking—I don't know, CU or something—"
The bell rang. Wendy gave Kyle a wave and Stan the briefest of smiles (they were both staunchly anti-PDA) before striding down the hallway to her next class. Stan and Kyle, who had a study hall together, wandered leisurely in the other direction, the conversation dropped but pondered separately on either side as they discussed the chances of the South Park Cows so much as attempting the semi-finals in Stan and Cartman's last year on the team.
Wendy, for her part, turned into her AP physics class in a bit of a fog. She felt a little bad about nagging Stan the way she had—he sometimes told her, not unkindly, that she got on his case more than his mother did—but she was afraid, especially now that their high school days were running short, that Stan would get stuck in South Park. He hated this sad, eccentric little town more than most people did—Kyle was right about that—but he had been so complacent as of late, so listless and non-opinionated about everything, that she couldn't help but push him harder than she should have.
She knew they wouldn't go to college together. She had never really kidded herself that they would: Stan's grades weren't bad, but they fell far below the example that Wendy set at the top of the class. But having to leave him behind—watching him squander his talents on a low-level job because he hadn't taken his future seriously—that would hurt worse than any separation they would have to weather for the sake of their educations.
Class had technically started, but their bipolar physics teacher usually didn't amble in until five or ten past the hour, so Wendy sat at her desk, brooding. She didn't notice when Leopold "Butters" Stotch, who sat in front of her, twisted around in his chair in an attempt to catch her eye.
"W-Wendy," he said nervously.
Wendy frowned at him, startled. "Butters?" she said. "What do you want?"
It came out a little more harshly than she'd intended, and Wendy had to lean over her desk to grab him by the sleeve when he turned aside dejectedly. "Wait," she said hastily, "I didn't mean—we just don't normally… talk."
"I know," Butters said, and he seemed to draw himself together, squaring his thin shoulders determinedly. He hadn't changed much since elementary school. Aside from the fact that he'd grown a little taller and had a slightly neater hairstyle, he was the same too-innocent, too-gullible kid she'd largely ignored since preschool. "I know that, Wendy, and I feel real bad, because I haven't been straight with you. And…" He seemed to falter, but only for a moment; despite the blush that had spread across his cheeks, he managed to stutter, "I l-like you a whole lot, Wendy, and I just… I just wanted you to know."
Wendy stared at him. She'd always kind of assumed Butters was gay. "… Really?"
"Uh-huh," he mumbled.
"Why?"
Butters shrugged, unperturbed by her frankness. "Well, you're real nice to everyone, and fair. You're pretty, but not like those nasty women on TV. And… you're the smartest person I ever met, prob'ly."
She stared at him for another moment, half-expecting him to go on, but Butters, red and chewing furiously on the inside of his cheek, appeared to be done. "That's… that's nice, Butters," she said awkwardly, unused to turning people down. "But… I'm dating Stan. I have been for, um, a while."
"Oh! Oh, I know that!" Butters exclaimed. A few kids looked around at them and looked away again once they saw it was just Butters. "Everyone knows that, Wendy! I don't want—" To her relief he lowered his voice to a near whisper. "I don't want to date you, o' course. I mean, I know I can't. It's just… I just wanted you to know."
Wendy felt her lips curve into a smile. His affections were touching, if somewhat unwanted and completely out of the blue. Maybe Butters had been practicing all day what he wanted to say to her. Maybe he'd been wanting to tell her since the first day of school.
Butters turned away, beet-red and muttering to himself under his breath, and Wendy decided not to tell Stan. There was no harm in it. Stan and Butters were friends, sort of, and it wasn't as if people told her they liked her very often. After all, she and Stan…
Well, Butters was right, Wendy thought with a twinge of embarrassment. Everyone did seem to know that they were dating, even the younger students and people she hadn't talked to for years. She often felt like people were talking about her behind her back. Wendy was practical; she didn't get caught up in gossip, and she and Stan were both too mature to pay much attention to anything as petty as a bunch of rumors. Sometimes, though, when she was with her girlfriends and they were consoling one another over boys that they'd loved and lost and begun to despise, Wendy couldn't help but feel left out. It was almost like she was missing something vital, something that she needed to experience, even though her friends would always turn to her and tell her how lucky she was to have a boyfriend who loved her.
Soon she found herself wondering, as she sometimes did in her idle, quixotic moments, how it would feel to ache for someone that she saw everyday but couldn't bear to speak to. I love Stan, of course, she thought, hiding her reddening face behind her hand, but sometimes…
Their teacher kicked the door open at that point, however, and Wendy forced anything that didn't have to do with advanced physics out of her head, cracking open her textbook and clutching her pen.
She was not one of those girls who whiled away her classroom hours doodling in the margins of her notebooks, thinking about her relationship problems and what she would watch that night on TV. She was a hard worker who succeeded at everything she put her mind to, and bi-weekly professorial meltdowns and surplus admirers or not, she was going to get an A-fucking-plus in this class.

Stan found Kenny smoking a borrowed cigarette against the bike rack after school. There were a couple of freshmen hovering nearby who seemed to want to claim their bikes, but were too frightened of the tall, hooded senior and his cigarette to ask him to move. Kenny, judging from the vague smile Stan could see playing about his face in between drags, probably knew they were there, but he didn't seem to care enough to acknowledge them.
Plastering an affable grin to his face, Stan approached his old friend, sticking his hands in his pockets so Kenny wouldn't see they were sweating. "Hey, Kenny."
"Oh, hey, Stan," Kenny said, exhaling as he spoke. The bags under his eyes were lighter than they'd been on Saturday afternoon. "Want a cigarette?"
"Oh, yeah, I'll just stroll into football practice with it."
"Well, good, 'cause I only got one." Kenny stretched tall, like a cat, before sliding along the bike rack a couple feet. The freshmen hurried forward while they had their chance and began untangling their bike locks, sending Stan and Kenny glances on the sly as they did so.
Stan stepped closer. Kenny took another drag and held his gaze. "Listen," Stan said quietly, "I'm really sorry about the other day. We should have been there for you."
"That's all right," Kenny said casually. "I kinda sprung that on you. Felt a little bad for putting you off your Gamesphere game."
Stan's jaw worked around an angry retort. "I just want you to know," he said finally, wondering if Kenny's gaze usually lingered on his expensive letter jacket, "that I—and Kyle too, both of us—are always ready to help you out if you need it." He forced a laugh. "I mean… it's been a while since we've gotten into any stupid bullshit—"
"Well, I appreciate that, Stan," Kenny said, cutting him off, "but I'm taking care of my own stupid bullshit this time." Seeing the stricken look on Stan's face, he added, "C'mon, cheer up. You gotta get all that extra practice in for the big game."
"You know what, fuck you. Give me a cigarette."
Kenny's eyebrows raised a fraction. "I told you I only had one."
"Yeah, and you're also a fucking liar. Give me a goddamn cigarette."
Kenny shrugged and took a crumpled cigarette out of the pocket of his hoodie. Stan jammed it between his lips, feeling the freshman kids' eyes on him, and before he could react Kenny leaned forward and pressed the lit cherry of his cigarette to the end of Stan's, exhaling softly. His eyes, too close, lingered on Stan's and then dropped as he pulled away, amused. Stan finished the drag and glanced to his right. The kids were gone.
"Did you have to do that?" he muttered.
"Stan," Kenny said, his wry smirk not quite reflecting what was in his eyes, "you could get down on your knees and suck my dick right here and nobody would say a fucking thing. Or believe them if they did. Well, Cartman, maybe, but it's not like anybody believes the shit he says." He took a long drag and exhaled slowly, turning his head so that he didn't blow smoke into Stan's face. "Sorry to break it to you, Marsh, but you're as straight-laced as they come."
Stan tried to come up with some witty response, couldn't manage it. Tried not to cough when the smoke made his throat burn. "So," he said finally. "You're really… okay?"
There was a short pause as Kenny looked at him sideways and formed one of his funny little smiles. "I'm handling it," he said.
"Good," Stan said. "Good."
"Hey, fags!" This was Cartman, who had walked up and slung a beefy arm around Stan's shoulder like he wasn't obviously interrupting a serious conversation. Given what Kenny had done not a minute before, Stan couldn't help but flinch at the slur. He felt his face reddening, either from shame or because he'd felt shamed in the first place. He wanted to leave.
"So Kenny," Cartman was saying, his arm weighing Stan down like a pudgy yoke. "You lost your ass virginity yet, or is there still time for me to follow you around with my camera phone? It's got all these fancy video settings, see, and I was wondering if it'd be better to use the normal one or the night vision—you know, for that extra bit of authenticitah—"
"Cartman!" Kyle appeared from out of nowhere on Stan's right, making him jump nearly out of his skin. "Leave Kenny alone! You're just pissed because no one cared about your fucking text message campaign."
"Well, clearly the people need hard digital proof," Cartman said, pulling his phone out of his letter jacket pocket with the arm that wasn't crushing Stan's shoulders in a vice grip. "C'mon, Kenny, get fudgepacking."
"You queen, Cartman," Kenny said calmly, crushing his cigarette butt into the ground with his shoe while Cartman spluttered. "I'll see you guys," he said, flipping Cartman off as he left.
"That piece of shit," Cartman snarled, watching Kenny trudge away across the parking lot. "Just for that, I will follow him around with my camera phone! He thinks I'm fucking kidding…"
"Cartman, you need to get over your camera phone," Kyle snapped. "No one follows your fucking vlog."
"Ey! The Cartman Vlog is fucking Internet gold," Cartman said, waving his phone around as he spoke. "I'll have you know, Kyle, that I get well over two hundred hits a day."
"Probably all hairy German guys looking for your mom's BDSM site," Kyle said, grinning at Stan, but his grin faded a little when Stan failed to respond.
Cartman looked at Stan too, scowling. "Stan, will you please tell your Jewfag friend that—" He sniffed, and his eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "Are you smoking?"
"Kenny gave it to me," Stan said blankly.
"Well, bitch, you better swallow it before we get to practice," Cartman said, snatching the bent cigarette from Stan's hand and taking a drag before slapping it back into Stan's palm. "Speaking of, we got five minutes. Hurry your ass up."
"You okay, Stan?" Kyle said quietly as Cartman sauntered away toward the football field.
Stan glanced at him and knew he was thinking about Saturday night. Was irritated, despite himself, that Kyle would bring something like that up in the glow of the afternoon sunshine, where the tug of Kyle's fingers in his hair was nothing but a slightly embarrassing memory. "Yeah," he said shortly. "Fine. Doin' good."
"Well," Kyle said. And paused. "Well," he said again. "You should probably… um… you should probably get to practice."
"Yeah," Stan said slowly, and didn't move, turning the half-smoked cigarette over in his fingers. He didn't want to be late—he cared about football—he cared about practice. Even if he kind of wanted to skip out, just this once. Hang out with Kyle, even if he found he was having trouble meeting Kyle's eyes. Chase Kenny down and tell him he didn't fucking feel like going to practice and did he want to steal something or set some cow shit on fire or whatever—that would wipe the fucking smirk off his face.
But thinking about actually doing it, finding Kenny and hanging out with him in his sad, dilapidated house or whatever the fuck Kenny did after school these days… that was about as appetizing as the thought of watching Cartman's vlog. And really—come on, Stan. Come on. Football. The game.
Gotta get all that practice in for the big game, Kenny had said.
Stan sighed and put the cigarette out.

The weeks, as they do at the beginning of any school year, crawled forward slowly. Wendy continued to nag Stan about starting his college applications, while Stan, looking a little wan and weary as of late, maintained that he would be fine. Cartman told Kyle and Wendy in confidence (separately, with Stan standing next to him and glowering at him both times) that Stan had been screwing up a lot at practice recently. Kenny had as good as dropped off the face of the earth, so little did any of them see him after school or in-between classes, to the point that Cartman had lost interest in his camera phone campaign entirely. Butters and Wendy were a little friendlier in physics class, but Butters never mentioned his crush on her again, and whenever he saw her with Stan he didn't bat an eye, to the point that Wendy was almost frustrated that the whole episode hadn't come to something a little more… dramatic.
Maybe it was because Bebe was going through a nasty breakup with a junior named Boris and Wendy couldn't help but wonder why her life was never that exciting. Maybe it was because she was frustrated and, yes, a little bit bored with her public school education, so eager was she to prove herself with something a little more challenging. Or maybe it was because Stan had been so depressed and unfocused lately that she was sure some good old-fashioned melodrama would have snapped him out of his funk.
"Dude, Wendy, I don't know," Kyle said when she cornered him at his locker. It was the twenty-seventh of September, a Thursday, and Stan was home sick. Wendy wouldn't have been concerned—she was fundamentally opposed to clinginess—was it not for the fact that he had practice that afternoon and a game the next day. This was unprecedented. If Stan was slacking off on football, there was clearly something wrong. "He's just been in a weird mood lately. Maybe it's senioritis—maybe it's 'cause you won't shut up about his college applications." He gave her an accusing look. "He's not stupid, all right? He'll do it when he feels like it."
"Don't blame this on me," Wendy snapped. She regretted it immediately, especially when Kyle gave her a sharp-eyed look that seemed to mirror her own, but talking to Kyle without Stan between them was making her more nervous than she'd thought it would. She couldn't help but feel frustrated. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap, but—come on, Kyle, you must have noticed something." He didn't answer, tossing a dog-eared copy of The Catcher in the Rye into his locker. "I mean, you spend as much time with him as I do, so—"
He slammed his locker shut, looking even less friendly than he had before. "Like hell I do."
Wendy realized she'd hit a nerve. Stan and Kyle were best friends—best friends, to the point that there'd barely been room for anyone else when they were younger. She and Bebe didn't spend as much time together as they used to, since she had Stan and Bebe was always dating somebody, but Stan and Kyle were different. They were closer than brothers. They seemed to read each other's minds sometimes. She had long since come to terms with the fact that as close as she and Stan were, he needed Kyle just as much, and vice versa. It was just the way things were.
"Kyle, wait," she said hurriedly, because he looked like he was about to walk away. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be… to be insensitive, or… I mean, I'm just—"
"It's okay," Kyle said, rubbing the back of his neck. He really wasn't bad-looking, Wendy thought, if you ignored his lackluster dress sense and the fact that he was a little too skinny. It didn't really make sense that he never went out with anyone. "I've been kind of worried about Stan too, honestly, all his mood swings and everything… so if you want me to… to ask him about it or whatever, I could…"
She was watching his lips, chapped but well-formed, and the tendrils of red hair that had escaped from under his worn-out green hat. There were probably several girls in this school that were perfectly willing to date him. Maybe it was that guarded look he always seemed to have that kept them away, or the fact that he stuck so close to his friends…
"Wendy?"
Kyle was looking at her inquisitively (his eyes were downright luminous, the most incredible green). She hadn't heard a word he'd said. "I'm sorry," she said, feeling a little flustered, "but I wasn't—um—what did you just say?"
"Nothing," he said shortly, shouldering his backpack and looking away. "I have to get to class, but—I'll take care of Stan, okay? I think he's just going through some stuff."
"Sure," Wendy said, and she leaned against the locker next to his, opting not to watch Kyle walk away in case she liked what she saw. Jesus, Wendy, she thought, running her hands through her long dark ponytail with nervous fingertips. Her insides were prickling with anxiety and outright shame.
Being flattered by Butters' admission was one thing, but checking out Stan's best friend when Stan wasn't around—and making a complete ass of herself in the process—was something else altogether. She wasn't even attracted to Kyle (awkwardly cute as he was), and she was not the kind of girl to mentally drop out while someone was talking to her. And for god's sake, Wendy, she thought, wringing her hair neurotically in her hands, Stan—your Stan, the boy you've loved for years—needs help. For whatever reason, he was seriously upset, and she hadn't even been bothered to ask him about it, or see if there was anything she could have done to make it better…
Wendy had a class to get to, so she started walking, but without much thought to where she was going or what she would do when she got there. Clearly she needed to be a better girlfriend. If Stan had become complacent as of late, so had she. She'd gotten used to his always being there, like a particularly attractive piece of furniture. Stan deserved better than that.
What's more, there was an unease crawling over her skin now that she couldn't seem to dissipate. Even if they couldn't go to college together, it had never occurred to her that what she and Stan had could end. Now their relationship seemed malleable: Stan could break up with her over something trivial, over something she didn't even understand, and that would be it. She might have fantasized about romantic strife, but there was nothing beautiful about this feeling. It was ugly, and it hurt. As she turned into her classroom, Wendy resolved that she would use every feminine wile she had at her disposal to restore her relationship with Stan to what it was supposed to be.

Of course Kyle had noticed something. He'd been noticing something for weeks. It was part of his duty as Stan's best friend to know everything about him, from his changes in mood to his favorite dessert to the combo he used the most often when they were playing one-on-one fighting games on his Gamesphere. And she had the nerve to come up to him and berate him about noticing things, when all she'd done for Stan since the beginning of the school year was nag at him about the shit she thought was important…
Kyle liked Wendy—he really did—but damn could she be self-centered sometimes.
He was doing what he could, even if "what he could" was pretty much fucking nothing. Stan came back to school that Friday and was partially responsible for a humiliating loss against North Park High. Wendy had been invited to Bebe's for a sleepover party, so Stan spent the night nursing his wounds with Kyle, Cartman, Token, Clyde and a bunch of the other guys (Kenny was still mysteriously absent). They went over to the Marsh's after the game to watch late-night TV and consume extra-buttery popcorn and smuggled beer by the can. When 1 a.m. rolled around and most of the guys were either passed out or had left to crash the girls' party, Stan, who was slouched over on the couch, let his head fall onto Kyle's shoulder, his face blank in the light of the TV screen. Kyle rested his head on top of Stan's until he was sure his friend had fallen asleep and tried desperately to understand. The next morning, they went to dick around at Stark's Pond, where Stan ignored Kyle's feeble attempts at a meaningful heart-to-heart in favor of the stupid shit they always talked about. Wendy had seemed especially desperate to spend Saturday with her boyfriend, taking him off Kyle's hands around noon, but by late Sunday afternoon Stan had sought his company again, standing in the Broflovski's doorway with a two-liter bottle of soda and asking if Kyle wanted to hang out and um I don't know watch a movie or something.
"Sure," Kyle said, opening the door a little more to let him in.
Stan trudged inside and handed the soda off to Kyle, who went to put it in the fridge; when he came back into the living room Stan was curled up on the couch with his face pressed into one of Mrs. Broflovski's pillows, looking like he was on the verge of death. Kyle sighed. "Stan," he said.
"Mm," Stan said.
"Are you ever going to tell me why you're so depressed?"
There was a short, pregnant pause as Stan shuffled around on the couch a little. "'M not depressed, dude," he said, his voice muffled by the pillow.
"Uh-huh," Kyle said, mostly to himself, and headed back into the kitchen to get snacks.
They sat in front of the TV in relative silence for about a half hour, watching a rerun of Terrance & Phillip for a few minutes as they both wondered why they'd liked this show so much when they were nine, and when Kyle discreetly changed the channel they found a show about people who'd had really hilariously awful skateboarding accidents, which they both liked a lot better. Stan looked a little less out of it when he was snorting with laughter at a guy who'd managed to snap his femur in half by falling off a railing, but at every commercial break he seemed to sink back into himself, his eyes closing halfway and drifting away from the TV like they weren't really seeing anything. Kyle just grasped Stan's ankles, which Stan had flung onto his lap after he sat down, and pretended everything was normal.
Eventually, Kyle figured they should watch a movie like they'd planned and slid onto the floor to pick a DVD. Stan turned the volume down on the TV from behind him. "Dude, what do you feeling like watching?" Kyle said over his shoulder.
"I dunno. You pick."
Kyle sighed again, feeling more than a little frustrated with this whole situation. "How 'bout we both think about it?"
"Sure." Stan fell silent, and Kyle focused on the DVD rack, pulling a couple of titles out to peruse them further. A comedy might cheer Stan up… although a couple hours of some fake gratuitous violence probably wouldn't hurt, either…
"You should let me suck you off," Stan said, as if he were commenting on the weather, or asking Kyle to pass the bag of chips that sat on the floor between them.
Kyle, still trying to decide between an action flick and a dumb comedy, looked around without really processing what Stan had said. It sounded like a joke, and not a very good one; it was something Cartman would say to taunt him, or get someone like Butters or Clyde or Kevin to say while Cartman lurked in the background with his camera phone. He found himself glancing nervously to the stairwell despite the fact that teaming up with Cartman to humiliate him was just about the last thing he could imagine Stan doing. Well, until now. "… What?"
"I said you should let me suck you off," Stan said again, propping himself up on one elbow. He looked a little uncomfortable now, like it had occurred to him that he was suggesting something a little out of the ordinary, but he also didn't look like he was kidding. Not in the slightest, Kyle realized with a jolt—and all of a sudden he was in panic mode, his pulse pounding furiously in his ears.
"Stan," he said weakly. "Wh… what—"
"Don't just say no," Stan said hurriedly, sitting up and clutching the seat of the couch on either side of him. "Think about it first. Please, Kyle."
A key turned in the front door and Kyle jumped about a foot. To his complete and utter horror, he turned to see Sheila Broflovski's sizable behind shove into the house, followed by the sizable rest of her, beehive hairdo and all. "Oh, good, Kyle, you're home," she said, sounding a little out-of-breath. "Sorry we've been gone so long, but there was just terrible traffic. Can you help Ike with the groceries, please?"
Ike Broflovski, tiny for a boy of eleven, stumbled past his mother, loaded down with what looked like half the food stock at J-Mart. Kyle jumped to his feet and lightened his brother's load, pointedly ignoring Stan as he did so, and when he'd gone into the kitchen to set the plastic bags on the counter he heard his mother engage Stan in conversation. "Oh, hello there, Stanley."
"Hey, Mrs. Broflovski," Stan said politely.
"How are your parents? And your sweet little girlfriend Wendy?"
"They're all okay," Stan said, and Kyle heard him stand up. "Shouldn't I go help Kyle and Ike put away the groceries?"
Kyle nearly dropped a jar of peanut butter that he was in the middle of shoving in the cabinet. Ike looked at him questioningly.
"Aren't you sweet," Mrs. Broflovski cooed. "I'm sure that's not necessary, Stanley, but you're certainly welcome to stay for dinner."
"Geez, why does Mom have such a boner for your friend?" Ike muttered, and then looked at his older brother in amazement when Kyle nearly tripped into the fridge. "Man, Kyle, what's with you?"
"Nothing," Kyle said, straightening. "Fuck. Fuck." He whipped around so fast that Ike flinched. "Finish this up for me, would you?"
"What?" Ike protested. "Kyle—"
"I'll make it up to you," Kyle said, striding back into the living room. He grabbed Stan's arm and dragged him toward the stairs.
"Kyle!" Sheila snapped. "I told you to—"
"Me and Stan'll be down later for dinner, Ma," Kyle said, and Stan shrugged at her as they went.
"Kyle—"
"Later, Ma!"
"Whoa," Stan said as Kyle slammed his bedroom door behind them. "You just… like… blew your mom off, dude. That was great—"
"Stan!" Kyle cried, whirling around. "What the fuck?"
"Oh," Stan said, and looked at Kyle for a while, and when Kyle didn't say anything back he said, "Well?"
"Ugh!" Kyle collapsed on the side of the bed and held his head in his hands. "I don't—" he said, and then stopped. "I don't understand. Why would you—why would you even—"
"Don't think about it too much," Stan said, in a voice that would have been reassuring had it not been so tense. "I just—I feel like I need to do this, okay, so—I mean, all you have to do is sit there—"
"Oh, no, Stan, fuck that," Kyle snapped, looking up at him. "If we're going to do this, you are going to explain it to me. So fucking talk."
He realized too late, his stomach shrinking in on itself, that he'd made it sound like he had already consented, but Stan didn't appear to notice, frowning and swaying on the spot with his arms crossed tightly over his chest.
Finally, in a voice that creaked as it escaped his lips, he said, "I don't… care about things like I used to. I'm unhappy and tired and anxious and so bored. I'm bored of my family, and football, and school, and even Wendy—it's all the same, every goddamn single fucking day, and I'm so sick of it all I just want to…"
His eyes wandered over to Kyle's dresser, where Sheila had propped up pictures of Kyle and his friends in cutesy department store frames that moms begin to buy when their kids start getting older. Stan and Kyle and Cartman and Kenny on the day they graduated elementary school. Stan and Kyle grinning and shouldering their backpacks on the first day of high school. Kyle holding Ike tenderly the day the Broflovskis had brought him home. "Dude, I'm just sick of myself. I want to do something about it. Something—I don't know, something different."
Kyle gaped at him with his mouth open a little. Blinked. Tried to swallow. "… So when did 'doing something different' become 'sucking my dick'?"
Stan blushed despite himself. "It was… it was something Kenny said to me… kinda stuck in my head," he mumbled, "and… just kept thinking… look, it doesn't even have to be you, really." He paused without seeing Kyle's furrowed brow, the peculiar curl to his lip. "But you're the only one I know I could trust."
His words hung heavily in the air between them as Stan swayed back and forth, rubbing his arms and trying not to look at himself in the mirror on Kyle's closet door, and Kyle stared at his feet, thinking. His name was a glaring omission from Stan's list of grievances, and although it would be easy enough to convince himself that Stan was not tired of him, would never be tired of him, the very notion was a gnawing, miserable hole in the pit of his stomach: what if he and Stan began to grow apart? What if their conversations became stilted, and their silences awkward, and it became obvious that Stan saw the time they spent together as a habit, a chore—
"Okay," Kyle said.
He was biting the inside of his cheek too hard. That was the reason for the stinging in his eyes.
"Really?" Stan said softly.
"I said 'okay.'"
But he still yelped and drew back on the bed when Stan dropped to his knees in front of him. "Now?"
"Like you're gonna want to go downstairs and face your mom without getting your rocks off," Stan murmured without meeting Kyle's eyes.
So they did it. When Kyle wanted to curl his fingers in Stan's hair he clutched at his comforter instead, and when Stan was done he got up without a word and went down the hallway to the bathroom that Kyle and Ike shared.
Kyle was stretched out on the bed with his eyes shut tight when he heard Stan come back into the room. The mattress creaked as Stan sat down on the edge, and they sat in a now-familiar silence as they each waited for the other to speak.
"Your mom wants you to come downstairs," Stan said finally. "Ike told me."
Kyle didn't say anything.
Stan breathed in a little too harshly. "Kyle, if you want to, we can just pretend—"
Kyle kicked him in the side to indicate that he should shut up.
They were quiet for some long seconds more, Stan positively twitching with restlessness, before Kyle's eyes opened and he said something that Stan couldn't quite make out.
He stared at Kyle, not a little apprehensively. "Huh?"
Kyle looked back at him plaintively. "I said, 'come with me?'"
The only time they touched for the rest of the night was when Stan brushed Kyle's hand on the way down the stairs.
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