Good Lives

 

Good Lives

Part Four

"I've got nowhere to go

I've got nowhere to go

So don't move so slow

I can't take it"

~ "I Can't Take It," Tegan and Sara

When Kyle showed up at Stan's house the next day with his Gamesphere and two bottles of sugar-free soda stuffed into his backpack, there was nothing on his face to indicate that he was dwelling on their intimate parting last night—which meant that that special pleasure, and the apprehension and embarrassment that went along with it, was all Stan's. As he shut the door behind his best friend, in fact, hovering anxiously behind him as he slipped off his shoes and hung up his autumn jacket, he noticed that Kyle was grinning: a rare sort of grin that only appeared when something really good had happened (or, alternately, on the rare occasion that Cartman had got what he deserved).

"What?" he said when Kyle looked his way.

"What do you mean, 'what'?" Kyle asked, dropping his backpack on the ground and collapsing into the Marsh's couch.

"You just look really happy about something," Stan said, and instead of sitting on the couch next to Kyle he paused in front of him and swayed back and forth with his hands in his pockets, probably looking as awkward as he felt.

Kyle shrugged and averted his eyes, the corners of his mouth still stretched from ear to ear. "Nothing much," he said. "Except…I'm not supposed to be here."

Stan frowned. "I thought you were only grounded until the game yesterday."

"Well, I was," Kyle said.

"So?"

"So now I've got another month."

"What—?" Stan's shoulders tensed unconsciously, and he wondered for a moment whether Kyle's parents had seen him deliver that last, impromptu kiss. "Why?"

Kyle's grin flattened into a smirk, which he delivered upward with an impishness that threatened to turn Stan's already tempestuous stomach. "For coming home after midnight, reeking of beer."

Stan crossed his arms over his chest. "Oh."

"I mean, it's not like it really matters," Kyle said, pulling the Gamesphere out of his backpack and beginning to reattach the cords to the body of the machine as it rested in his lap. "They don't distrust me enough to watch the doors—and if they start doing that, I've got a window. I mean… it's stupid. I'm seventeen years old, they can't just keep me locked up. Right?"

"Sure," Stan said. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been grounded. When he was ten, maybe.

"I already told you I was coming over, and it's stupid to bail just because of their dumbass rules," Kyle was saying, lifting the bottles of soda out of his bag and kicking its empty husk to the side. "I'm not gonna spend my entire senior year shut up inside my house." Kyle's big green eyes were on Stan again. "Right, Stan?"

"Uh-huh," Stan said, and he took the soda into the kitchen to stick it in the fridge.

He was happy that Kyle was happy, although he didn't really understand what about getting grounded for petty offenses put him in such a great mood. But there was something about Kyle's sudden disregard for his parents' rules that made him a little nervous.

It was just… un-Kylelike. That was all.

When he came back into the living room, Kyle was hooking his video game system up to the TV. "Everything okay?" he asked, pausing long enough in his ministrations to look over his shoulder.

"Yep," Stan said. "Great. Why?"

"I dunno, you seem kind of out of it." Kyle stood up and tugged on the flaps of his ushanka (which, Stan had noticed as soon as he walked in, was pulled firmly over his red curls). "You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Stan said, plopping down onto the couch now that Kyle was no longer there. "Just… homecoming dance tonight. You know."

Kyle cocked his head. "You don't want to go?"

Stan's eyebrows raised in alarm. "No, I'm going. Who said I didn't want to go?"

"No one," Kyle said, a little awkwardly. If he'd been a little a closer Stan would have touched him, maybe; grabbed his hand and pulled him closer to diffuse the tension. So much as looking at Kyle's hands, however, hanging limply at his sides with his long, pale fingers and nails bitten to the quick, made his own fingers twitch with nervousness. There was half a room between them.

"Well, I mean," Kyle said, trying to sound as confident as he had a few short minutes ago, "of course you'd want to go. You and Wendy are up for king and queen, aren't you?"

Stan looked at him blankly for a moment before he threw his head back against the couch and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. "… Shit. Yeah, I guess we are."

"You didn't know?"

"No, I knew, I just… I guess I haven't really been thinking about it." He lowered his hands and looked plaintively at Kyle, and in another moment Kyle was sitting next to him on the couch, pulling his knees to his chest and crossing his legs at the ankle. "I've been… busy."

"I know you have."

"Dude, this is just… it's surreal." Stan shook his head slowly. "I mean, homecoming king? How do I even do that?"

"It's not like you need to do anything to be homecoming king." When Stan looked at him questioningly, Kyle shrugged. "You don't have any duties or anything. It's just a popularity contest. It means people like you."

"Yeah, but…" Stan stared down at his hands, big and calloused from weeks of football practice. "You tell someone you were homecoming king and they assume all this stuff about you—like, that you're this certain kind of person. Popular and confident and… is that what I am? The guy who gets picked to be homecoming king?"

"I dunno, are you?"

"I guess I must be."

Kyle leaned against him. It was a simple, compassionate gesture, something he could have done easily a couple of months ago without either of them giving it second thought, but now, even through their layers of clothes, it had a physicality to it that Stan couldn't ignore. "I think you're thinking about this too much."

"I know I am if you're saying it," Stan muttered in response, and even as Kyle laughed softly and punched him on the arm Stan thought about taking Kyle's chin in his hand and kissing him on the mouth. But his parents were upstairs—he could hear his dad's heavy footsteps on the floor above their heads—and Shelley was probably in the basement, where she'd moved after she graduated community college and started having to pay rent. It was just too ordinary a setting—a sunny, mid-autumn Saturday afternoon—for him to really believe it was possible to kiss his best friend just because he felt like it. So even though Kyle was looking at him expectantly, Stan leaned away from him and crossed his arms over his chest. "What are you doing tonight, anyway?"

"I dunno," Kyle said after a moment. "I guess I'll just go home and hang out with Ike. Assuming there's nothing good on TV." He laughed. "I sound really lame, don't I?"

"You don't just sound lame." Kyle rolled his eyes and punched Stan in the arm again, harder this time, as Stan swatted at the back of his head and let his hand drop to rest on the back of Kyle's neck, his arm dangling awkwardly between them. His heart was beginning to pound, so much so that he was sure Kyle could feel his pulse through the tender flesh on the inside of his wrist, but when Kyle looked his way he bent down abruptly, grabbing one of the controllers that had been idling on his living room floor and selecting his character for the first round.

"You'll have fun tonight," Kyle said eventually, leaning over and doing the same.

"Yeah," Stan said. "Sure I will."

Two hours later he was sprawled in the same spot next to the great mass of Eric Cartman, clutching one of his mom's throw pillows to his chest and trying to ignore the fact that the leg he had thrown over the side of the couch kept brushing against Kyle's arm. The game was pretty good, for a racing game—Kyle had always had decent taste in games—but his heart just wasn't in it. Kyle and Cartman, who were both much more competitive than he was, had taken to facing off in round after round as Stan gripped the pillow and watched the digital clock on the DVD player.

It was about 4:30 now, which meant he had an hour and a half left with his friends before he had to kick them out and start getting dressed for the dance. He'd noticed a blue dress shirt and a black tie and pants draped over the chair at his desk that morning—his mom's doing, clearly, since he'd barely thought about homecoming since he'd asked Wendy to go with him last week—and although he knew he should had been excited to spend the evening hanging out and dancing with his girlfriend, he couldn't help but dwell on the conversation he'd had with Kyle before Cartman had arrived. The more he thought about it, both the dance and the title—what was up with that, anyway, calling high school kids royalty because they happened to be popular?—began to seem like so much unnecessary spectacle. And Stan found himself wondering, more than once, why it would be such an awful thing for him to skip out on the dance entirely and fuck around all night with his friends.

"Kyle, you dirty Jew, you're cheating, you're cheating, you have to be fucking cheating—"

"Shut up, Cartman, I'm trying to concentrate."

"I'll murder you, Kyle, I swear to God; I'll lead you to the gas chamber myself—"

"That's not fucking funny, fat boy, and you know I'm going to beat your ass at this game—"

"Kyle—Kyle—I mean it—I'm warning you, Kyle—"

"Goddammit, Cartman, stop fucking pinching me! What are you, five?"

It was stupid that he felt so conflicted about going to this homecoming—his last South Park High homecoming, of which he was apparently supposed to be a crucial part—when the last three had been so effortless. He'd bought a corsage, and danced around the makeshift dance floor in the cafeteria with Wendy, and suffered through the awkward meal at Benny's afterwards with her and Bebe and whoever Bebe was dating at the time because he'd had to—it hadn't even occurred to him that there was anything else he could have done, because this was just what you did. But now that he was a senior, and it already felt, in a way, as if everything was coming to an end… why did he have to do it? Why did he have to do anything?

Kyle had never gone to homecoming. Kyle had always seemed totally comfortable doing whatever was true to him, without caring how it might make him look. And Cartman—whatever else could be said about him—was exactly the same way.

Stan rolled over and looked at his overweight friend, whose tongue was sticking out of the side of his mouth in concentration. "Dude, Cartman, you aren't going to the dance, are you?"

"Nope," Kyle said before Cartman could respond. "He couldn't find a date this year."

"Hey, screw you, Kyle," Cartman said poisonously, kicking Kyle in the small of his back with a bit more strength than was necessary. "I'm not the one who hasn't been to a dance since middle school."

"Because they're retarded and I hate dancing," Kyle retorted, shoving Cartman back with just as much animosity. He'd had two left feet since they were kids—perhaps not because Jews had no rhythm, as Cartman had always insisted, but because he was too conscious of both his own movements and those of the people around him to really enjoy or understand the point of something like dancing.

"Or because a girl hasn't so much as looked at your scrawny ass since Bebe Stevens dumped it in the seventh grade," Cartman said, to which Kyle breathed out harshly through his nose, like he was tired of hearing it. "'Sides, I am too going to the dance tonight. Butters is gonna help me spike the punch."

"Aw, at least you got Butters to be your date," Kyle said, his voice shaking with repressed laughter even as he twisted to get away from Cartman's manic foot. "That's—that's so sweet—"

"Eat a dick, Kyle—"

"You guys," Stan said wearily. Cartman snorted and Kyle sighed, and they all slipped into a relative silence as the former two came to a climax in their game; Kyle won, just barely, and as he cracked up with the sheer joy of victory and chugged the sugar-free soda straight from the bottle Cartman snarled out a string of filthy epithets and thrust his controller into the cushy armchair at his left, which was sitting empty.

"Why're you even asking?" he asked, and it took Stan a moment to realize that Cartman was talking to him.

"I dunno," he said. "Curious. I guess. Whatever." Kyle leaned against his leg and grasped his ankle, apparently in support, but Stan was so surprised by the sudden contact that he almost yanked the leg up onto the couch with the rest of him.

"Sure. Sure, okay." Cartman was quiet for a moment. "Because you usually give a shit what I do."

It was downright benign, for a Cartman barb, but for some reason it hurt. Stan frowned at him. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Just what I said." When Stan kept frowning at him, Cartman's jaw twisted, and he said, "Look, am I supposed to think that you're going to hang out with me and Butters or whatever?"

"I—"

"Because we all know that you and Wendy are going to go off and do whatever the fuck it is you do when you're being everyone's favorite couple, and if you happen to see me it'll be like, 'oh hey Cartman, how are you,' like you barely know me or something."

"Cartman," Kyle said quietly, in a warning tone, but Cartman interrupted him. "You know what, Kyle, shut up. You're going to take Stan's side no matter what I say, so just shut up. I don't need to hear it."

He crossed his beefy arms over his chest and stared unblinkingly at the TV screen, ignoring the awkward silence that he'd created between the three of them—and it might have stretched on indefinitely had someone not slammed the front door open and sauntered into the room.

It was Kenny.

"Don't get up on my account," he said when none of them made any response to his entrance but to stare at him. "I only come bringing gifts. Oh, and tidings of great joy."

"Gifts?" Cartman said, while Stan, stumbling over his words in his haste to speak, said, "Kenny! How are you—what—how's it going, dude?"

"I'm great, Stan," Kenny said, kneeling down next to Kyle. "Fucking peachy." And he did look like he was in a good mood, grinning up at them from under his tousled bangs; he was happier than he'd been last night, at the very least, and it seemed that any ill will that he'd had toward Stan—or Wendy—had all but disappeared.

"You said you had gifts?" Cartman said impatiently, bringing their attention back around to what was important.

"Right you are, fat boy." Ignoring Cartman's grumbled protests at the nickname, Kenny dug his hands into the depths of his hoodie and brought out four laminated cards, which he gave to each of them in turn. "I started thinking about it after I went home last night. I'm not going to let some asshole cheat me out of booze again, so I figured I'd spend a little of my savings—and it would suck to be boozin' it up alone, so I thought…"

"Savings of what? Monopoly money?" Cartman asked, but Kyle, who had been inspecting the card with a frown, made an alarmed noise and looked up at Kenny again, his eyes nearly popping out of his head. "Kenny—are these—" He shook his head. "Are these fake IDs?"

"Yep," Kenny said.

Cartman gave a delighted shout of laughter and wrapped a beefy arm around Kenny's neck while Stan peered at his new ID. It was his school picture from last year, his name, except it claimed he had been born in May of 1989 and was a resident of the state of Missouri. He glanced down at Kyle, who was still staring at his likeness with a kind of wonder. He wasn't voicing his concerns or insisting that Kenny shouldn't have had them made, the way he might have before he'd started wanting to break all the rules, but he was still flushed and seemed more than a little overwhelmed by the illegal document he had in his hand.

Stan brought his new ID up to his lips to hide his smile. Kyle hadn't changed too much.

"We won't be able to use them much in South Park or anything," Kenny was saying as he struggled not to asphyxiate in the crook of Cartman's elbow. "Except at convenience stores and gas stations; they don't give a shit in there. There isn't gonna be a bartender in town who won't know that we're all underage. But who wants to hang out in South Park anyway? Denver—Boulder—even fucking Middle Park—" He jammed the heel of his hand into Cartman's fleshy cheek, stopping him from administering what would have been an egregious noogie. "Jesus, Cartman, lay off."

"Kenny, seriously, I love you, man. This is the best thing you've ever done for me, ever."

Kenny snorted and caught Stan's eye. Stan grinned, a funny sideways grin, and said, "Do we owe you anything?"

"Nah," Kenny said. "Nothing. Consider it a gift." The first substantial gift, probably, that he'd ever been able to give. His gaze travelled back to Cartman, then to Stan again, and then finally to Kyle, who was sitting bolt upright with his ID held away from his lap, as if he was unwilling to become too comfortable with it. "So how about it?"

"How about what?" Stan said.

Kenny grinned. "The Raging Pussies are playing at a bar tonight in North Park. Free with cover."

"Really?" Kyle exclaimed.

"Kenny," Cartman said. "Seriously. You are the best person I have ever, ever—"

Stan's eyes fluttered closed, and he pinched the bridge of his nose with clammy fingers. "I have to go to the dance," he said.

"Aw, fuck that, dude," Kenny said. "Skip."

He said it so easily. Stan looked down at his sloping shoulders and rough, dirty hands, his crooked grin, and felt an unfamiliar twinge of jealousy arrest his features. But then he gathered himself, and sighed, and said, "No, I really have to—Wendy would kill me if I didn't, so…"

Kenny shrugged. "Suit yourself," he said, and flung an arm around Kyle's shoulders. "I'll just take Kyle."

"What," Cartman said.

Stan imagined Kyle's smirk was the slightest bit uncomfortable as he dislodged Kenny's fingers from his shoulder. "You're not 'taking' me anywhere. Unless, of course, you plan on paying for all of my drinks."

"Pffff. Like hell, Broflovski. I'm not that generous."

"What the fuck, Kenny?" Cartman demanded. "Why am I suddenly not invited?"

"Oh, yeah, like I'm gonna run interference between you and Kyle all night. I'll leave that to Stan."

"Then just go with me! Fuck Kyle!"

"Yeah, that'll happen."

"I don't see how the fuck you're going to get to Middle Park without begging me for a ride—"

"—Unless I steal the keys to my dad's pickup like, I don't know, an hour ago. Way ahead of you, fatass."

"It's okay, Kenny. Cartman has a date with Butters anyway."

"With Butters, you say?"

"Suck a fuck, Kyle—"

As they were arguing, Stan slipped between Cartman and Kenny and, unnoticed by his friends, drifted upstairs; he wandered down the hallway to his room, unsure of anything but the fact that he couldn't handle being there any longer, but when he'd shut his door behind him and sat down at his desk, where his clothes for that evening were still draped over his chair, he got out his phone and dialed her number, as purposefully as he would had he intended on doing it all along.

Wendy picked up on the third ring. "Stan!" she exclaimed—her mood, like Kenny's, much improved from last night. "Hi—I'm just—Red is just finishing up my hair, so—" She covered the mouthpiece and said something to someone on her end, probably Red, just as Stan felt his heart drop into his gut. "What's up?"

"I, um—I dunno," Stan said. "Nothing really, but I guess I was just… wondering how you were getting along—"

"Great!" Wendy said. "I'm great, I can't stop looking at my dress; it's gorgeous—not too ostentatious, I think, but it's got this sparkly fabric stuff in it that's really—and oh my God, you don't want to hear about my dress—sorry—but… I'm pretty excited, I guess! Annie wouldn't shut about the nomination, so now that I'm thinking about it… we could win tonight, you know?"

"I know," Stan said.

"And…" Her voice dropped a little. "And Stan, I just want to do something normal. You know?" There was a shuffling down the line, as if she was pacing around Red's bedroom, or wherever she was. "I… I don't know about you, but for me, but the last month has been kind of long and stressful; there's been all this weirdness, and… I just really need this tonight." She paused, and when she spoke again her voice was even softer. "What about you?"

"Yeah," Stan said. His throat had gone dry with shame, and he coughed a little. "Yeah," he said again. "I'm looking forward to tonight, too."

Wendy laughed. He'd always liked her giggles: they were soft and private, somehow, as if she reserved them expressly for him. "Great," she said. "Great. I'll see you in a few hours."

"Pick you up at six-thirty," Stan said, and then he hung up.

---

Her words had come to him when he was lying in bed at night, adjusting the volume knob on his radio so that he couldn't hear the sound of his parents shouting over the static. They'd come to him when he was sitting on the bench outside the sports bar in town, flicking his lighter idly and waiting for the right man to step outside and flash a wad of bills at him when he was ostensibly reaching for a cigarette. But when Wendy Testaburger sat next to him on the stoop under the back stairs at school, where he usually hid out when he was cutting class, he was so shocked that he got up and left without saying a word.

"Kenny," she said to his back, but he managed to lose her in the crowd, thinking to himself that he might as well go to his Spanish class after all.

The next day she cornered him at his locker between classes, and the day after that she appeared next to him as he leaned against the bike rack after school and smoked; she never said anything after that first time, looking up at him from under her dark eyelashes and tucking her hair behind her ear, but still he bolted before she could open her mouth, infused with a nervousness that made his hands shake as he smoked cigarette after cigarette after cigarette.

He'd heard people say Wendy was scary before, and wondered at it: how this pale, delicate-looking girl, whom he'd always known better as Stan's girlfriend than any characteristic unto herself, could strike anyone as something other than ordinary. He'd never disliked her. She was pretty—not his type, but attractive enough—and despite her thin wrists and small hands, whose bones looked like they would snap under the slightest blow, she'd always had a passion to her over-the-top liberal diatribes that had put his estimation of her closer to his estimation of Stan and Kyle than the rest of this stupid town.

But then—as he'd come to realize over the last couple of days—she'd never really looked at him before. There was an intensity to her gaze that was somehow disquieting, and when it was fixated on you, you couldn't help but shiver for the weight of it.

He was used to people looking past him. It wasn't a huge deal or anything: it was just the way things were. He'd wondered idly before, waiting at Stan's side for him to finish a conversation with an acquaintance or two, how it would feel to be that guy: the kind of person who couldn't walk down the hallway at school without running into someone who knew and liked him. The kind of person people sought out and wanted to befriend, rather than the guy no one really wanted to acknowledge. It would be… fun, maybe. Fulfilling, even if he didn't really know what that meant, either.

But that was an idle fantasy. This was a real person, a real girl with her own untold thoughts and agenda peering into him with her huge creepy violet-hued eyes, always searching, always questioning, and that—the thought of being observed and judged by someone who didn't look quickly away when he returned their gaze—was more discomforting even than the fact that he'd barely made a dime since she'd started following him around. It was the visceral reaction he felt every time he caught sight of her, not anything she might want to say to him, that really, truly freaked him out: the disarming, sickening feeling of cracks beginning to form in his worldview.

Kenny McCormick knew people, or thought he did—he knew, more than any of his sheltered, privileged classmates, how weak and ignorant and selfish his fellow man could really be. He'd endured. He'd observed. He'd seen his parents look at him from across the room like they were too drunk and tired to remember who he was. He'd felt his brother smack him just because he could, too hard to be entirely playful. But now that he had been so totally disarmed by the simplest of actions—meeting a person's eyes from across the room and forming the connection that comes of acknowledging someone and being acknowledged in return—he was beginning to suspect that he really didn't know anything at all.

---

The day before Halloween was cold and brazenly windy, an overcast Tuesday that reflected the souring post-homecoming attitudes of the student body. Wendy Testaburger stood on the crumbling stone steps at the entrance to their high school, her coat whipping around her legs as she held her loose hair out of her eyes, and even as she answered Heidi's queries about her plans for tomorrow and laughed at Red's barbed quips, she was craning her head around almost without thinking about it, raking her eyes over every windbreaker-clad body on the lawn in search of a slight boy in a faded black hoodie.

I'm getting obsessed with this, she thought, even as she declined Bebe's offer of a ride home in her convertible. It was turning into a compulsion, this argument—disagreement—unspoken thing she had with Kenny McCormick. Every day now she wondered if she should just stop—that all she was really doing was pissing him off, and that there was so much of her own life that she was letting pass her by (Stan, her friends, school) because she just couldn't let this go. But then she would catch a glimpse of him in a crowd, turned slightly away from everybody else with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his eyes covered by the sweep of his hood or his untidy dirty-blond hair, and before she knew it she would be moving toward him like a moth to a flame, pushing in-between people without thinking to apologize, and if he happened to see her, and glared, and vanished, she would stand stock-still and breathe out slowly through her nose, pushing down that averted feeling of purpose that came so naturally to her, and think Next time. I'll get him next time.

"And oh my God," Annie was saying, "I could swear he was looking at me today. You guys think he might like me? 'Cause I think he might—"

"Annie, sweetie," Bebe said, "I told you not to waste your time with Kevin Stoley."

"Kevin? I don't care about Kevin; I'm talking about Jason."

"Jason? That kid's been balding since like the first grade."

"Shut up, Heidi, I think he's really cute—"

"Yeah, uh-huh. If you're into the Mr. Garrison look."

"Wendy," Annie said plaintively, drawing her abruptly into the conversation. "Do you think I'm crazy for thinking Jason is cute?"

"Uhmm," Wendy said, weighing her actual opinion with the possibility that Annie might take what she said to heart. "He's not my type, Annie, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't be yours."

"See?" Annie said to Heidi, who snorted and rolled her eyes. "Wendy thinks it's fine!"

"Wendy's just too nice for her own good," Red said, throwing her arm around Wendy's shoulders and squeezing lightly with her fingertips. "Homecoming queeeen."

"Stop," Wendy said, fighting down a rising blush. "Like that means anything now that homecoming is over."

"So ungrateful," Bebe said, and she grinned to let Wendy know she was kidding. Wendy had wondered a couple of times whether the win would strain their relationship at all—but Bebe wasn't the type to dwell on the past. She had already dumped the boy that she'd gone to the dance with. "It's as if you don't even care that we all think you're the perfect couple."

"Stop," Wendy said again, a little more forcefully. "We're not perfect—we're not," she said, when her friends made noises of disbelief. "Stan and I have problems sometimes, we just—we don't really… talk about them."

"Really?" Red demanded. "Like at homecoming?"

"Did you fight?"

"Tell us!"

"Wh—no, we didn't fight," Wendy said, flustered by the sudden attentiveness of her friends' eyes. "He was… he was a little distant, but that was all."

"Uh-huh," Bebe said, although the hand with which she gripped Wendy's elbow was surprisingly supportive. "Well, I'm heading out; I'm sick of this place. You sure you don't want a ride, Wendy?"

Wendy said she was sure, and as her friends walked away, their chatter audible even after their words had faded away, she gave the yard another cursory glance, this time looking for her boyfriend as well as Kenny.

It had occurred to her once—only once—that she could ask Stan to help her. Kenny was one of his best friends, after all—his best friend, probably, after Kyle—and he already knew the situation. He did not know that she and Kenny had had that angry, heated, almost-violent meeting under the bleachers after the game, but that wasn't anything she would be unable to tell him. If she had to.

But there was the fact that Stan had shut down her concerns immediately after she had voiced them, which made her wonder whether Stan might not disagree with what she was doing, were he to know. Kenny apparently hadn't said anything to him—and if he had, Stan was remaining firmly out of it.

This was between she and Kenny McCormick, anyway. Wendy did not need her boyfriend to fight her battles for her once the going got a little tough, and she was going to fight this one out to the end. It was not because she was hesitant to give Stan an excuse to be mad at her, or because she was wary of tipping the balance of what had been, as of late, a cautious, more distant relationship. This was just one crusade she couldn't expect Stan to understand. That was all.

She caught sight of him then, suddenly; he was leaning against the wall of the athletic wing near the football field, hunched over with his hands cupped around his shadowed face, trying to light a cigarette against the force of the wind. She set off at once, slipping in-between groups of dispersing kids as she made her way down the side of the building. She was about fifty feet away when he saw her; scowling, he pushed away from the wall and stomped off toward the bike racks, sucking furiously on the cigarette that he'd managed to light. Wendy changed her course and followed him. He zigzagged in-between people and kept his head down, pulling his hood more tightly over his head to hide his face, but she kept on him, following him easily thanks to the fact that he didn't have much of a crowd to lose her in. When he reached the gnarly old tree that stood opposite to the bike racks, he stopped; standing stock-still for a moment, he seemed to quiver on his feet, before he leaned purposefully against the tree and waited, his shoulders hunched. As she drew nearer Wendy noted the ugliness in his eyes, the dark cast to his features, and felt chilled even through the rush of accomplishment that she'd felt at her victory.

"This doesn't mean I give a shit what you have to say," he said when she stopped a few feet in front of him. "But I can't handle you following me anymore."

"Hi," she said in response.

His groan exploded out of his mouth in a terse cloud of smoke. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Why won't you just leave me alone?"

Wendy shrugged. "I guess because everyone else does."

"Bullshit," he said, but the way his jaw had tensed before he looked away was much more telling. "So, what," he said, his voice thick with malice, "you just do things because no one else does? That's stupid. Pretty fucking stupid way to live your life."

"I think it's admirable," Wendy said.

He snorted at her unabashed admission to her own ego. "Don't you think that some things don't happen because they shouldn't?"

"No," Wendy said, more forcefully than she'd intended to. "You're talking about fate. And I don't believe in fate. It's always possible to change something if you put the right amount of work into it."

"Whatever," Kenny said, clearly tired of this philosophical back-and-forth. "Look," he said through another exhalation of smoke, "if you've been following me around to give me shit about the way I make money, you can just fuck off. I'm not interested."

She stood up a little straighter. "Maybe that's not why I'm here."

"It is, though." She didn't say anything, so he lit a new cigarette off of the end of the one he'd just finished before tossing it onto the ground below their feet. "Why else would you suddenly be so interested in me?"

She sighed and ran her hands through her hair. "… Look, I didn't mean to… stalk you or anything. I'm just… I'm bad at letting things go."

"Yeah, no shit."

"I know I can be a little overbearing," she said, as if he hadn't spoken. "And… maybe a little bit of a know-it-all. But I don't see why it's so hard for you to believe that someone would care what happens to you."

"Oh, you don't?"

"I already told you why I think it's dangerous," Wendy said quickly. "And obviously you don't believe me, or you don't care. But don't you have any self-respect? Doesn't it drive you crazy for people to use you like that?"

"Oh, Jesus Christ."

"I'm serious!"

"Yeah, I know you are. That's what makes this so fucking funny."

Wendy opened her mouth, then closed it again, her eyes darkening above her slowly reddening cheeks.

"See, I don't know if you knew this about me, Wendy," Kenny said, his stony expression twisting into a sardonic smirk that was, somehow, even worse, "but I am poor as fuck. My parents are poor as fuck. My siblings are poor as fuck. My whole fucking neighborhood probably has the net value of your cute little four-bedroom home. So I have no problem, none whatsoever, with making money any way I can. Smart as you're supposed to be, I thought you'd understand that."

"I do," Wendy said, even as he tossed his head and made an odd sound in the back of his throat, half snort, half sigh. "No, listen, I—I might not empathize, but I do understand that my parents could give me virtually anything I wanted while yours can barely manage to provide for you. I know I'm privileged, all right?" She scowled at his unchanging expression. "But… why not get a job or something? There are plenty of places in South Park that could stand to hire part-time help, and—everyone already knows you—"

"Yeah," Kenny said derisively. "They sure do." When she didn't say anything, he sighed and rubbed the back of his neck and said, "You really think anyone in this town would hire me? Me, with my drunk dad, and my shithead brother, and my mom, who's tried to steal something from every big chain store in town?"

"I—"

"They'd rip up my application the minute I left. If they didn't do it right in front of me and laugh me out of the store." His lip curled, and he retained that ugly expression as his gaze flickered back to meet hers. "Wouldn't you?"

"No," Wendy said. "I wouldn't."

The corners of Kenny's mouth turned up. It left him looking like he was laughing at something that he didn't find very funny. "I think you'd probably feel differently if you'd ever had to earn your own money."

"You don't know that."

"And you weren't some high school girl who has to involve herself in everyone else's problems because she doesn't have any of her own."

Wendy breathed out sharply through her nostrils. "I would at least give you a chance."

"Yeah fucking right you would."

They stood there without speaking, Wendy with her jaw locked and her eyes fixated on the line of trees across from the football field to their left, and Kenny with his insides squirming with anger and regret, half-sure that he'd mouthed off to his friend's girlfriend just a little bit too much and she was about to burst into tears. When she sighed, and gathered her hair over one shoulder, and said, "Kenny, I'm sorry," he cut her off by blurting out, "I wouldn't get a job here even if I could."

Her eyebrows raised just a fraction, and she looked at him. Her eyes were clear. Not a tear in sight. "No?"

"No, I…" He sighed, frustrated. "I'm not saying that I think I'm above the law, or I think I'm too good to have a real job or… whatever. But I don't want that, you know? To get a shitty job around here just to get by, and then just stay here after graduation. Because I'd already have an income, and it would be… easy."

Wendy watched his face for a moment in profile, his features set with the same defiant expression that she'd seen on Stan's face so many times before, or her own when she looked in the mirror and swore to herself that she was better than this place. It awed her—and made her feel a little ashamed—to think that even with all of her conceited attempts to helpKenny, she could watch him make that expression and know exactly what he was thinking.

"Where would you go?" Wendy asked quietly. "If you could."

Kenny looked at her for a moment like he hadn't understood a word she'd said, and then he laughed. "No fuckin' idea," he said, and for once he wasn't making fun of her. Wendy watched him light another cigarette, humming a fragment of a Doors song as he shoved his pack and lighter back into his pockets, and wondered if this wasn't the first time she'd ever heard him laugh.

---

It occurred to Stan halfway through the afternoon of the 30th of October, when Kyle was on top of him on top of the couch in the Broflovski's living room with his tongue in his mouth and Stan's hand pushing the tail of his shirt up his back, that this wasn't enough anymore.

His jaw tensed at the realization. Kyle broke the kiss, lips still brushing lips as he pushed Stan's bangs back over his head and whispered, "What's wrong?"

"Nnn," Stan mumbled, so shocked and horny that he'd temporarily forgotten how to put a sentence together. "Nothing. Don't worry about it." And then he kissed Kyle again, so deeply and intensely that neither of them spent the next half hour thinking of anything else.

But later, when he was sitting at the island in the Broflovski's kitchen with his feet gathered onto the chair with the rest of him, picking absently at the drawstring to his jacket while Kyle made coffee and grumbled about his dad forgetting to take the clean dishes out of the dishwasher, he stared holes into the back of Kyle's head, and his shoulders, and the nape of his neck, where escaped tendrils of red hair curled over the shock of white skin between his hat and the collar of his shirt, and wondered at how the feeling wasn't going away.

He'd never really given much thought to how Kyle looked before. They'd known each other for so long that it was a bit of a moot point: Kyle just looked like Kyle. But there was no denying it: Kyle lookedgood recently. Whether they were making out or just hanging out like this, Stan had felt a compulsion to look at him. He didn't know whether the change was in him or in Kyle—and he could have made a decent case for either—but definitely, undeniably, something was different. He'd only ever kissed Kyle at all—the second time, not the first time, which had been desperate and inevitable in a way that it made him uncomfortable to think back on—because it had seemed so harmless. They'd already done it without their world imploding, without Kyle hating him. And he'd wanted to.

Now, watching Kyle, he was remembering the way his friend would steel himself, half-wary and half-expectant, when he realized Stan was about to kiss him. The prickle of his dry lips, the self-conscious way he would push his hair out of his eyes. The heaviness of his breathing, the tension in his thighs, when Stan would pull him on top of him and Kyle would ball his fists in the back of Stan's shirt when they needed to be closer, close, close, and Stan had felt something hot and bewilderingly hard pressing into the side of his gut even as he'd been appreciating the shape of Kyle's mouth, the delicate arch to his back.

Stan scratched his head nervously, closed his fingers on a fistful of hair, tightened them until it hurt: he needed to focus. He needed facts—

Although really, truly, the fact of the matter was that he made Kyle hard, and Kyle made him hard, and it could have been something they joked about had it not been so sudden and raw and real.

What do I want? he thought, and was disquieted by the fact that the answer, which should have been obvious, didn't come to him at all.

"Coffee?" Kyle said, and Stan jumped despite the fact that he'd been boring holes into Kyle with his gaze for the last several minutes.

"Yeah," he said, and didn't drink from the mug that Kyle passed him right away, opting instead to let the heat of the porcelain warm his hands. Kyle leaned over the opposite side of the island, his chin resting in his palm, and they looked at each other for several long moments until Stan, visibly uncomfortable, took a sip of his coffee, which was hot and choked his nostrils with the scent of hazelnut.

"You look weird."

Stan glanced up at him again, flustered. "Huh?"

The corners of Kyle's lips turned up as he took a sip—lips that, until recently, had been pressed against his as his hands crept upward, exploring the smoothness and the warmth of his friend's bare skin (focus, Stan, you need to focus). "You look like you want to say something."

Stan shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. Drank more coffee. "I dunno," he said. "I'm just… y'know. Thinking about stuff."

"Stuff?"

Stan glanced out the window, where the sky had begun to deepen into twilight. "It's nothing."

Kyle pursed his lips, and it seemed like he was about to say something in response, but a thump from the living room made both of them start. A moment later, Ike Broflovski appeared in the doorway, where he stood and regarded the two of them with speculative eyes. He didn't register any surprise that Stan was there.

"What's up?" Stan said, while Kyle turned and shut the glassware cabinet behind him, which he had left hanging open in his search for clean mugs. "Oh, hey, Ike. I didn't even know you were here."

"I was doing homework," Ike said, as if it should have been obvious. "Now I'm hungry."

He crossed to the refrigerator, either unaware or unwilling to acknowledge the weird atmosphere that had been building in the room, and after half a minute of standing in front of it he apparently couldn't find anything of interest, since he turned away again and took a seat at the side of the island that wasn't already occupied. Stan and Kyle both watched him, apparently unwilling to look at each other, as he pulled the fruit bowl toward him and started rummaging through its contents. Stan followed his movements idly at first, wondering in the back of his mind whether he'd be able to get Kyle alone one last time before he left, but when Ike glanced up at him he turned his head abruptly, feeling somehow ashamed. Ike found a mostly unbruised apple and bit into it, the crunch loud in the tense, cramped space of the kitchen.

"What homework are you doing?" Kyle asked, unwilling just to ignore this intruder on his and Stan's after-school moments.

"Nothing interesting." Kyle looked plaintively at his brother. "Can I have some coffee?"

"No."

"But there's a ton left in the pot."

"It stunts your growth. And you're puny already."

"Aw, c'mon, Kyle. I won't tell."

"Doesn't matter. You still can't have any."

Ike pouted at him, but relented, dropping his chin onto the small arms he'd crossed over the counter. Kyle slid the second mug away from Stan, who was shrugging his fall jacket over his shoulders and glancing meaningfully at the back door. "You going, dude?"

"Yeah," Stan said. His gaze drifted to Kyle, almost long enough for it to be significant, then dropped abruptly to his backpack at his feet, which he knelt to pick up. "See you tomorrow, all right?"

"Sure," Kyle said. Cup pressed between his hands, he followed Stan with his eyes as he blew through the rickety screen door and around the side of the house.

Ike was watching Kyle watching Stan, even after he was out of sight. "Can I have some coffee now?" he said finally.

Kyle snorted and turned to put Stan's mug in the sink. "What, because Stan left? Give it up, Ike, I'm not letting you have any."

Ike's stuck out his small pointed chin, his mouth flattening into a hard line. "So you won't care if I tell Mom and Dad that you and Stan have been making out on the couch every day for the last three weeks?"

Kyle dropped the mug. It shattered on the tile and splashed leftover coffee all over his socks and the cuffs of his jeans, but he was past noticing; there was only his own burgeoning panic and the smug look on Ike's tiny face. "… What?"

"You thought I wouldn't notice? Jeez, Kyle, you must think I'm stupid or something."

Kyle grabbed a dishtowel from the handle of the oven and dropped into a crouch to clean up the spilled coffee and the broken mug, but once he was down he was frozen there, leaning against the cabinets on the underside of the island. His pulse was roaring in his ears, aggravated by the caffeine, and although his head was spinning a million miles a minute the only thought that came into his head was shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit.

"Kyle?"

Why did we do it in the living room when Ike or my parents could come in at any moment? That was just where they hung out. That was where it happened. Going anywhere else would make it seem premeditated. But why couldn't we just hang out in my room? If we knew we were going to—? His room was too private. The possibility of being interrupted was what kept them from going too far. So why didn't we just stop, since this was bound to happen eventually…?

Well, that was the thing. They couldn't.

"I won't tell Mom and Dad, okay?" Ike's voice had come from somewhere above his head. When Kyle didn't respond, his brother dropped to his knees next to him and pried the dishtowel from his clenched fist. "I promise. I wasn't even gonna say anything, but you were kinda being a jerk, so I…"

As Ike mopped up the mess and chatted away at him, Kyle grasped his forearms, unsure of what else to do with his hands. He could feel himself trembling, both because of Ike's revelation and the ones that were going on in his head, and his face and neck—goddamn he hated being a redhead—were turning bright red.

"… Kyle?" Ike craned his head to look directly into Kyle's face. "Hello?"

It was not, after all, as if he was opposed to doing more than kissing Stan. If Stan had shown signs of wanting to do something more—intimate—it would have been… fine. He would have gone along with it.

He wouldn't have known the first thing to do, of course, having had his first real, proper kiss less than a month ago, but everyone had to start somewhere. After all, Stan hadn't done any of this stuff before with another guy either, even if, with Wendy, he had something to compare it to—

And that was an area of thought so dangerous that Kyle rubbed his face furiously to keep his thought process from going any further.

"You can pretend I didn't say anything if you want, but don't freak out on me, okay? I hate it when you…"

It was embarrassing. It was embarrassing as all hell, and it made his insides squirm and prickle with shame to think of it, but he wanted more. He wasn't just ambivalent to it, he wanted it, and he would not be able to rid himself of this itch, this ache, until he got it. He wanted to touch Stan. And he wanted even more for Stan to touch him.

"It doesn't really bother me, I swear. I don't care if you and Stan are gay together or whatever—"

"We are not," Kyle said loudly. "We're not… 'gay together'—"

"Oh, yeah, sure, that's why you spend all your time sucking face with him."

"We're not," Kyle said, sighing. "It's not like that. We—it just kind of happened, and—okay, we're not going to have this conversation. You're eleven."

"And seven months," Ike said irritably. "And I'm starting high school next year. I'm really not stupid, okay?"

"I know. I know you're not. But this is different."

"I don't see how," Ike said stubbornly, and when Kyle shrugged like that proved his point, he blurted out, "Have you guys had sex or anything?"

Kyle thought he might have popped a blood vessel. "No," he managed to force out. "No. Not even close. And we won't. Jesus, Ike, just… don't talk about it. Just don't."

Ike frowned at him. "It seriously doesn't bother me," he said. "The gay stuff. And I don't think Mom and Dad would care too much either, after a while. I always hear them, you know, saying how it worries them that you never bring any girls home—"

"I am so sick of hearing that," Kyle snapped, so harshly that he seemed to have forgotten he was talking to his little brother. "Whether I like someone or not, it has nothing to do with Stan. And Mom and Dadcan't know, because they would tell Stan's parents and Stan is still dating Wendy!"

Ike had fallen silent during Kyle's outburst, and now watched his brother with wide eyes that were just the slightest bit fearful. Gradually his eyebrows furrowed, the way they did when he was struggling to figure something out, and his fingers tightened on the shards of Stan's mug that he held in his small hands. "Doesn't that bother you?"

Kyle closed his eyes. There was something telling in his face, he knew, something that he himself would cringe to recognize, and he had to struggle not to let his little brother see it. "... I told you you didn't understand."

---

Stan was a little confused by Kyle's reluctance to go to his house after school the next day, but not bothered; they hung out by the bike racks, joking and saying goodbye to their friends and acquaintances as they left, and by the time dark storm clouds began rolling by overhead and Kyle suggested they go back inside to avoid the rain, the school and the surrounding grounds were largely deserted. They traversed the long, empty hallways with their hands stuffed in their jacket pockets, avoiding the elderly janitor and communicating in low voices that nonetheless bounced over the walls in short crescendos and decrescendos of sound, and while they talked at length, about nothing and everything, laughing and ripping on other people and even on each other, in the subtler, gentler way they'd learned how over the course of their long friendship, mostly they listened to each other's silences, dreading and anticipating that the other would turn those hesitations into words, into something weighted and real.

"It's weird being here with everyone gone," Stan said, more for something to say than anything else.

"Mm." Kyle sunk slowly onto one of the tiled steps, his hand wrapped loosely around the banister to his right. "Pretty soon we'll all be gone for good."

Stan paused, watching Kyle stare distantly at the ceiling for a moment, then backtracked several steps, rejoining his friend at the base of the stairs. Kyle always got kind of maudlin and philosophical when it rained. "What, you mean we'll all be dead someday or something?"

"Wh—" Kyle snorted and Stan grinned sheepishly, a little embarrassed but pleased that he'd managed to make Kyle laugh. "I mean, yeah, sure, obviously, but I'm just talking about… this place. Our class. We're all leaving this school at the end of this year, and once we graduate… we'll never be able to come back."

"Sure we will," Stan said, sitting on the step next to Kyle as Kyle looked at him, eyebrows raised. "What? Dude, don't be so dramatic. We'll all come back for breaks and stuff, or at least the summer. We'll all see each other again."

"Well, sure," Kyle said, picking at his cuticles. "But it'll be different." When Stan didn't say anything, he continued: "We'll all go to different colleges, most of us. We'll know different places and people and have different experiences, and… everything will change."

Stan was still quiet, watching the toes of his sneakers. "I thought that was a good thing," he said finally.

"Well… well yeah, usually," Kyle said, frowning. "No—no, it is. In a lot of ways, I can't wait to get out. But it's just… unbelievable."

"I know," Stan said.

"Most of all," Kyle said, as if he hadn't spoken, "it's hard to think that this time next year, I'll be living in a place I've never been before with a bunch of people that I haven't even met. And that I won't see you every single day."

Before he could think about what he was doing, Stan's hand was grasping at Kyle's, resting limply on the step between them. Kyle started, but he didn't pull away, running his thumb over Stan's knuckles with an experimental lightness.

"Don't say that," Stan said.

Kyle gave Stan a sideways look, half-affectionate and half-cynical, as he responded. "Why not?"

"Because I've been spending the whole year so far trying not to think about it."

Kyle didn't answer, interlacing his fingers with Stan's, and the two of them sat there in silence, both self-consciously ignoring the fact that they were holding hands despite the fact that they could feel the heat of each other's skin in their touch.

---

"We should get out of here," Stan said.

The emergency lights had come on, buzzing eerily in the relative vacuum of the dim hallways. They got clumsily to their feet, and when Kyle tried to let go of Stan's hand Stan just gripped it tighter.

"Um," Kyle said, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment and something else. "Okay. But—"

"My house." Stan appeared to have made a decision about something. His jaw was set with something like determination, although he still glanced at Kyle as if to gauge his reaction. "That's okay with you, isn't it?"

"Sure. Of course it is." He was still grounded, technically, but even if he came home late, his mother's wrath didn't seem so important.

They blew out of the front doors with their arms braced against the storm. Kyle pressed his hat to his head while Stan finally let go of his hand to wrap his jacket more securely around himself, both lamenting the fact that neither of them had his own car. They left the school grounds behind them, stumbling through puddles, bumping into each other in the rain. The streets were deserted aside from the occasional car with blinding headlights, no one else pushing through the wind, no kids out trick-or-treating, and the windows they passed were dark or dimmed, curtains shut against the rage of the storm outside; as Kyle traced his friend's footsteps, his fingers hovering a scant few inches from the curve of Stan's hand, he felt almost as if they were the only people in the world.

Kyle pushed into the Marsh's kitchen while Stan struggled to lock the back door behind them. Their heaving breaths were loud and ugly in the stillness that permeated the house.

"Jesus," Kyle muttered as he plopped down at the table and yanked at his sodden shoes. "Christ. This weather is fucking crazy, dude."

"Sure is," Stan said, and the tightness in his voice brought Kyle crashing back to reality; this was not old Stan with him, who would laugh and make fun of Kyle for his fucked-up windswept hair even as he cranked the heat up and brought him a blanket; this Stan was quiet, and stoic, and tender somehow even as he maintained this coldness, this awkwardness between them that was becoming harder and harder to bear.

"Jesus," Kyle said again, although the quaver in his voice wasn't from the cold. "I'm completely soaked." He began stripping off his socks, his jacket, and finally his hat, feeling Stan's eyes on him the whole time.

"I can lend you something," Stan said, his voice ringing in the stillness of the house. They were alone, more completely and totally alone than they had been in days, in weeks, and Kyle felt that itch, that need, beginning to build beneath his skin.

"That's okay," he said, and he could hear it in his voice, the way it shook; Stan hadn't moved, standing in the middle of the kitchen looking at him, and when it seemed like he couldn't avoid it any longer Kyle got to his feet, his wet clothes clinging to him at every sensitive juncture. "Stan—"

Stan yanked him forward by the front of his shirt and kissed him; Kyle didn't hesitate, didn't miss a beat, and kissed him back, his arms wrapping definitively around Stan's neck. They almost fell over, Stan reaching back and grabbing the counter to steady himself, but the angle only served for them to gain more pressure, to get closer together. Stan broke the kiss to free Kyle of his t-shirt, pulling the offending article up over his head, while Kyle pressed his face into Stan's neck and worked at the buttons of his shirt with trembling fingers.

"Are you okay?" Stan whispered, laying his cheek against the side of Kyle's sodden head. "You're shaking."

"I'm fine," Kyle said, giving up on the shirt halfway and wrapping his arms around the bare upper half of Stan's chest, which was flushed and beginning to prickle with sweat. "I'm just really cold."

Stan laid a kiss on Kyle's temple, quickly, like he couldn't help it. "C'mon."

They fell into the couch in the living room, where Stan shed his shirt and settled against Kyle's chest, between his legs; Kyle held onto him like a drowning man, both terrified and exhilarated by Stan's weight on top of him, the intent behind his kisses. He tightened his thighs around the shape of Stan's hips between them, and Stan pressed the palm of his hand against the crotch of Kyle's jeans.

"Wait," Kyle whispered, his hands curling against Stan's chest. "Wait."

"What?" Stan whispered back—but he didn't stop, finding the hard shaft of Kyle's penis where it was pressed against his leg and applying the slightest bit of pressure, so that his breath hitched and his hips jerked at the contact. Kyle wanted this. Kyle wanted this as much as he did.

"I just—" Kyle sat up, flushed and disheveled-looking, and Stan brushed his red curls out of his eyes with the hand that wasn't, by this time, kneading stubbornly at the point between his legs. "I've been thinking that I—" He took a deep breath and let his eyes flutter closed, obviously having trouble putting a complete sentence together but unwilling to tell Stan to stop. "That I want to pay you back."

Stan pressed his lips to the joining of Kyle's neck and shoulder, and when his friend's chest pulsed with a suppressed gasp he began struggling with the buttons on Kyle's jeans. "For what?" he mumbled, before laying a kiss in the hollow above Kyle's collarbone, as lightly as he could bear.

"For… you know. For what you did before."

It took Stan a moment to figure out what he meant. He sat up and looked at his friend. "… Really?"

Kyle nodded, unable to speak.

They stumbled up the stairs to Stan's bedroom, constricted by their wet jeans and their trembling, ecstatic nervousness. Kyle made to drop to his knees, but Stan pulled him onto the bed with him, watching his best friend shift between his own loosely-bent legs as his back and shoulders knocked against the flimsy headboard; his own body, weak and almost useless, felt less real to him than the feather-light brush of Kyle's fingertips against his stomach as they came to rest on the waistband of his jeans.

"You all right?" he whispered as Kyle paused.

"Yeah, sure," Kyle said, his voice wavering with nervousness even as he tried to grin. "'Cause, you know, I do this all the time." He freed Stan's erection, gently, his fingers drifting down the length of the shaft and back up again, while Stan found his gaze lingering on Kyle's lips, the curve of his cheek; there was something about his face that Stan loved, really loved, in that moment, even though he didn't know how he would even begin to articulate it.

"Kyle," he said, muddled, and unsure as to why he'd even needed to say Kyle's name.

Kyle didn't look up. "You swallowed when you did it for me," he said almost bluntly. "Didn't you?"

"I…" Stan's tongue felt thick and lumbering in his mouth. He felt like that blowjob he'd given Kyle had happened years ago, not weeks; the person who'd brought himself to do that, for the most selfish reasons imaginable, was different from the person he'd been beforehand, and different from the person he was becoming, was about to become. "Yeah, I… guess I did."

"Okay," Kyle said, as if steeling himself; he lowered his head the slightest bit—then stopped, looking up at Stan with a heavy-lidded gaze, his lips parted in hesitation. "… Stan?"

"Yeah?"

"Has Wendy ever done this for you?"

The question shot Stan through with panic, but he was too tense, too horny, to want to examine why. "No," he said, his voice coming out in a croak. "Never."

The corner of Kyle's mouth twitched; he mumbled something that might have been "good" before he took San's dick into his mouth.

Stan let the breath he had been holding out in a strained gasp; it was wetness, and heat, and the strange and wonderful feeling of Kyle's tongue brushing demurely against his shaft. He looked dumbly at his best friend, who he'd sat next to in preschool when he was four and had shared toys and video games and adventures and hopes and dreams with since then, and whose mouth was now sliding, slowly, up and down his penis, his hair hanging in his face as his one visible eye was closed tightly in concentration, and Stan was hit suddenly with the absurdity of it all. He felt terror and derision and longing in quick, hot flashes, and underneath it all he felt something bubbling up, a sweet, painful fulfillment that he was almost afraid to let touch him. "Oh my God," he mumbled, his words punctuated by quick, hot gasps; "Oh my God—oh my God, Kyle—"

It was dark in the room, but Stan could swear Kyle's face flushed darker; he sucked harder, his hand coming up to caress Stan's balls, and Stan bit his tongue, and grabbed a fistful of Kyle's hair and pulled, wanting more, more—

And then they heard a noise on the stairs, and the swell of a female voice calling Stan's name; Kyle sat up abruptly, staring at Stan with wide, panicked eyes, and Stan just had time to tumble both of them and his comforter over the side of the bed opposite the door before it was flung wide open, the noise loud and garish in the still hush of his bedroom.

"So you are here," Shelley said shortly. She had a flashlight in one hand and her cell phone in the other. "The power went out."

"Oh yeah?" Stan said, fighting to keep his voice steady.

"How the fuck don't you know that?" The beam of the flashlight wavered on the wall opposite them, but Shelley seemed unwilling to intrude upon Stan's space just yet. "Is there someone in there with you?" she said suspiciously.

"Nnn… no," Stan said, trying his best to ignore Kyle's hot breath against his bare chest. "Just me. Alone."

"Oh." She was quiet for a moment, during which he could practically hear the cogs in her brain turning. "Ew. Gross, Stan."

"So learn to knock," Stan muttered. He felt Kyle's lips twitch into a grin.

"Shut up, turd," Shelley said heatedly, the beam of the flashlight bobbing up and down against Stan's pulled curtains. "I was gonna make you dig Dad's generator out of the crap in the basement, but I guess I'll do it. Since you're busy."

"Uh-huh," Stan said with considerable strain—as Kyle had just slipped his hand down the front of Stan's boxers and brushed his thumb against the head of Stan's dick, still slick with his own saliva.

"Oh my God," Shelley said loudly. "Are you still doing it? You're disgusting, Stan. I—" She heaved a sigh that covered the elevated sound of Stan's breathing. "Mom's gonna be home in a half hour, and you better have pants on, and be ready to help me with the goddamn generator by then. Or I'll pound you. Understand?"

"Sure," Stan mumbled. "Yes. Just get the fuck out."

Almost as soon as the door clicked behind her Stan grabbed Kyle's shoulders and flung him roughly onto the floor, the discarded comforter tangling with their legs. The floor beneath them shook with their weight, and indeed Shelley Marsh glared at her brother's bedroom door before she decided to let it go, but Stan had already put it out of mind that he even had a sister; all he cared about, all he knew, was Kyle's subtly muscled torso, the angular curve of his hipbones, the swell of hardness between his legs. They each struggled out of their wet jeans, Stan still kicking free of the sodden denim as Kyle wrapped his thighs around Stan's hips, and as they found a frantic rhythm Stan reached between them and grabbed both of their cocks, making Kyle exhale sharply with an unabashed desire. Through his increasingly ragged breathing Stan found Kyle's mouth with his own, and in the moment before he came he felt his best friend's harsh breath form the syllable of his name.

---

Wooo look it is an M-rated story.

I'm not as thrilled with this draft as I could be, but I just wanted this to be done, because it's been so long since I updated and writing these two is so exhausting.

For those of you who find it unrealistic that Wendy could have dated Stan for that long without ever going down on him: do you really think she would? And, that said, do you really think Stan would have the nerve to ask her?

As for what I was hinting at with Cartman early on in this chapter: he's certainly got a different relationship with Stan than he does with Kyle, or even Stan and Kyle together. I just wanted to put that into play a little bit in this story. Since this is more of a realist narrative than the surrealist comedy/satire that the show itself is, I kind of wanted to portray Cartman as less of a murderous sociopath and more of an actual teenage boy, as awful as he still might be. I mean, he's still a person (allegedly).

Annnnnyway. Next time we have lots more Wendy and Kenny (and if I haven't sold you yet on the two of them I'm sorry, but I just have so much fun making them bitch at each other), and maybe Stan and Wendy will actually have a conversation face-to-face. Maybe. :D I have too much fun. Review, please, as always; I swear to God and Satan and Baby Jesus that it'll make my day.