Chapter Text
“Stan! Come on sweetheart, up, up!”
Stan snapped into the waking world groggily, his head pounding with a migraine only induced by a hangover. At least last night he hadn’t been a complete idiot; he’d tucked his bottles to the side of the wall, obscured by his mattress.
He’d barely been given a moment to look into the woman’s entry into his room before the curtains were being thrown open and he was wincing. Jesus- Kenny was annoying but at least he didn’t do that! The sun was so bright it felt like the radiant star was in his room.
“Mom-” he groaned, hand shielding his eyes. Either his mother didn’t notice he was hung over or she was so used to him being that it was normal to her. Still, it meant she just stared at him, motherly gaze of disapproval making him feel like a misbehaving, insolent little boy again. “Stanley Marsh-” fuck me, here we go, “-were you up late playing video games again?”
He stared dully at her. Was she being serious? He glanced over at his Xbox which was caked in dust from being virtually untouched for weeks. If she just looked, instead of laying into him she’d see! The accusation was so stupid it actually annoyed him, with how he’d been kept up from their screaming.
“No, I was doing school work.” He said tiredly, not trying to sound rude but failing miserably. If anything, he was starting to sound like Kyle, the boy dedicated to doing school work late at night. He braced, ready for the shouting to start. But it didn’t, leaving him feeling stupid as he willed his tensed muscles to relax.
Instead, she sighed at his tone, but she didn’t push the exasperated boy anymore, moving from her stage of annoyance to that of indifference. The same behaviour that made Stan wonder if she regretted marrying his dad and having him. But, a small flicker of a tender, motherly looking flash in her hazel eyes assured him that maybe the only thing she regretted was her marriage. “...Alright. But you need to start going to bed earlier, sweetheart.”
If anything her tone was pissing him off. It was her fault he was always exhausted: all her and his dad’s screaming and throwing things. He squeezed his eyes closed. He wanted her to leave, to turn on her heel and march out the door, and just…let him get up in his home. To leave him to shovel all his emotions to the pit in his stomach and beg it finally filled up the seemingly bottomless pit so then - and only then - he could get up.
“Sure, mom,” he said, instead of asking her to leave so he could sink miserably into his mattress.
“You need to get up, Kyle is here to pick you up.”
Oh- he completely forgot about Kyle. On the one day he would’ve appreciated Kenny actually waking him up, he left him with a firmly locked window and probably ten lectures between his mom and Kyle. Where was the idiot? He even had a sandwich for him.
“Mnngh,” he managed pathetically, seriously considering flopping back down on his mattress before his mother grabbed his arm. Her nails dug into his wrist, failing to lift him. He wasn’t exactly light, not since he’d started working out for rugby in his final year of middle school and had put on weight from his muscles. Still, she got her irritation across to him, dropping his hand down. He hid it under the blankets.
“I don’t know why you’re so tired all of a sudden,” she sighed, maternal disappointment dripping depressingly in her voice. He hated hearing it. It was horrible; she barely even had to say anything for him to know she just hated him. Any assurance in her eyes had disappeared. “I swear, these days it’s like you don’t even care. Do you care?”
“I don’t know!” He finally snapped out, turning to his mother who was picking through the things on his floor, nose wrinkled in disgust. Where were all those accusations coming from? She was always going from 0 to a hundred faster than he could keep up with. The worst part was, he didn’t know the answer for his lack of determination to drag himself from the mattress.
All she was doing was yelling at him and he hadn’t done anything wrong! He’d just woken up and was being attacked. He just wanted to be left alone now. She’d put him in such a poor mood that he didn’t even want to see Kyle anymore. Or…he just wanted Kyle to spend the day in his room with him, like they were having a sleepover. It hadn’t even been a week since he’d stayed over at Kyle’s, but he was already missing the feeling of Kyle having zero understanding of Stan’s personal space whilst sleeping.
The look of disgust on her face deepened as he still didn’t move, mind wondering to his happy space - Kyle - and being snapped back violently. He couldn’t bear to look at her anymore. He closed his eyes once more, face hurting with how the look of anguish curved his lips down. God…he felt like shit.
“Stan,” she sighed, the same way she did to his dad. She apparently couldn’t stand to look at him either, then. The lines of her face seemed to deepen, aging her with bitterness and old love turning to anger. “Just hurry up and go to school.”
She slammed his door on the way out, as if she was the teenage child and he was the parent.
He just stared at the door and got ready, like she’d told him to do. It was their mini argument, like his mother liked to practice with him for her fights with his dad. They were always so similar, especially as the shitty year dragged on. They always followed a script, one that required no acting from his mom and an entourage of fake smiles and attempted lies from himself. He could practically argue with himself in the mirror playing her role. But he chose to scream at himself in the mirror in different ways, a whole different argument he could never win.
But, more than all the other things his mother said, he could guarantee the same questions: ‘why are you tired,’ ‘why aren’t you doing well in school’, ‘what happened to the happy little boy you used to be?’
The part that hurt the most was that Stan didn’t know.
There was so much he didn’t know.
He tugged on his beanie over unwashed hair, sprayed deodorant to mask the smell of alcohol and nightmare sweat. He hid the bottles amongst all the others in the bottom of his closet, hiding his terror at how big the collection was getting. It froze him, squatting as he tried to neatly assemble them all. He needed to get rid of them all soon.
The last step to his halfassed morning was to brush his teeth and slap water in his face to at least wake up and choke down ibuprofen. He shouldered his bag, after slamming books in it half guessing from how torn apart and dog eared they were.
Finally, he walked down the staircase, catching sight of the boy standing in his kitchen. Oh thank God, having Kyle there meant he wouldn’t have the worst passive aggressive tension with his mother and his father who he knew was still upstairs.
He mosied down the staircase to Kyle, his best friend looking at him strangely, a nervous look on his face. What the hell happened to him? Stan just left it to nerves, he was probably still anxious after his near-death experience yesterday.
Looking back on it, Stan hadn’t even thought about it until he’d seen Kyle.
“Hey, dude,” he greeted tiredly, casually opening the fridge to find his water and food. He tucked it into his bag, throwing in a Gatorade. He had rugby after school.
“Hi,” Kyle muttered, eyes dancing back to his mom who was preparing to leave for work. Stan barely paid her any mind, ignoring her when she was in a mood. It sounded horrible, but it was the last thing for his sanity. He’d been doing it since he was little. He headed for the door, briefly glancing behind him.
“Bye mom, love you,” he said, gently touching her arm as he walked past.
Distantly, making him feel like he wasn’t there, she mumbled a quick, distant “bye, Stan. Say goodbye to your father.”
He paused, instinctually shooting a look at Kyle as if his best friend would be confused by such a normal seeming suggestion from his mother. She never said goodbye to his dad, less told Stan to.
“What?”
He uttered quietly, terror creeping into his voice, feeling quite stupid as his mouth hung open. She turned to him, a strange look in her eyes. What the fuck was going on?
“Go say goodbye to your father,” she repeated, distanced eyes boring into his pupils. Stan continued staring, familiar with the expression of receding from reality from how often the same look stared back at him in the mirror.
He felt sick. What the fuck was going on? The embedded human instinct passed down from his ancestors made him antsy from how much he knew something was off.
Kyle grabbed his shoulder, mouth opening to say something to him. His lips moved, but Stan’s head was under water.
“Right…give me a second, Kyle,” he said quietly, struggling to speak loud enough that he wasn’t sure Kyle had heard him. He walked upstairs, every step feeling like he was taking another step back from the real world, like physically walking into the dreaming world. But Stan didn’t have dreams; only nightmares.
He pushed open the door, to see his fathers sleeping form. He didn’t enter the dark room, only hovering by the door frame. “Uh. Bye…dad,” he said, words foreign in his mouth. Some days, he only thought about the man as Randy, fully disassociating himself from his blood relation to the man from the way it lit up fiery, hot disgust within him.
His dad gave a disgruntled groan - Stan felt that viscerally - and Stan, mission accomplished, bobbed his head quite stupidly and closed the door. He was pretty sure he’d woken him up.
Oh. Had his mom just sent him to wake Randy for the sole reason of being an asshole by waking him up? So he was being used for dirty work. Stan couldn’t find it within himself to care. His dad deserved it. His dad deserved worse. His dad deserved nothing at all.
“Your mom is acting so weird!” Kyle said, the instant they stepped out of earshot down the driveway. Stan snorted, half relieved he wasn’t going crazy and the ginger was just as disturbed as him. It did make him worried about if she’d said something to Kyle though, with the way he’d looked at Stan when he’d come down the stairs.
It was a nice morning, albeit getting colder as the days went on. The sun, undetermined by the icy temperature, lazily dawdled just above the horizon, casting a gold glow along the snow lined trees and ice peaked rooftops. It was pretty. It lit up the teen walking on the pavement next to him, casting a soft golden glow on one side of his face, the other shaded in gentle blue undertones.
His eyes drifted back to Kyle lazily, delayed by a second.
“I know,” he shrugged. “She’s just tired.” It was easier for him to decide she was tired than to figure out what was wrong.
“Is everyone in your family eternally tired?” Kyle asked incredulously. “You’re starting to look worse than Kenny.”
Stan snorted. “Kenny is a contradiction: the more he sleeps the worse he gets.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Kyle raised an auburn brow, opening his parents car with a beep and the sound of gears turning. “It's paradoxical insomnia; he thinks he has insomnia so he doesn’t try to sleep but not sleeping then really does give him insomnia.”
“The fuck?” Stan mumbled, head shaking. Confusion made his brows knit together, feeding Kyle’s amusement. “Too many big words, too early in the morning.”
“It’s eight o’ five.”
“Deadass?” He asked and the ginger nodded, before he let out a whistle between his teeth. They were leaving it last second to not be late. He was surprised Kyle was even still picking him up. It made Stan slightly giddy to know that Kyle, his best friend, would rather risk his perfect score than abandon him.
Kyle laughed, about to pull open the driver's side door. Stan tutted, quickly opening the passenger side door and jumping the middle console to almost fall face first into the drivers seat. Whilst he did it, his beanie dipped into his eyes, leaving him effectively blind and falling face first.
But a hand steadied his shoulder, careful hands pulling up his beanie so Stan could grin, amused, up at Kyle.
“You’re ridiculous, Stan,” Kyle said. It sounded like he was attempting to be mean, with his usual irritated sigh-ey tone, but instead it was said with the hint of a sing-song laugh, the sound music to Stan’s ears.
“I’m not the one who spun out a car-“
“Stan-“
“Jesus, can you smell that? It’s the smell of burnt rubber.”
“Stan.”
“Oh man, you almost robbed me of living another day of David Attenborough.”
“Stan-“ Kyle was just trying over and over again to get a word in to just argue otherwise - Stan could see the stubbornness in his vibrant eyes.
“Just get in the passenger seat.”
“Dude!” Kyle finally burst out, green eyes wide as he gave a smile of disbelief.
“Do you want to be late to school?”
There it was: Stan’s final card in his hand of convincing Kyle to not drive the car. He was just worried. Plus, if he crashed he’d turn the car on himself, any way he could. A look of betrayal immediately flashed in Kyle’s eyes, defeated and knowing he’d lost.
“Fuck you,” Kyle muttered, scuffing his doc Martin’s, miffed. He shut the car door, slinking around the other side to finally get in.
“Was that so hard?”
“Shut up.”
“Oh, someone’s a little angry.”
“You’re such a dick. I don’t want to talk to you,” he continued, crossing his arms across his chest and going stagnant for a few seconds. Then he gave an aggravated sigh, bending to mess with the seat, shifting it back and forward. He gave another pissed sigh.
“You’re so. Fucking. Short,” Kyle growled, punctuating each word with another jerk of the seat adjustment controls. Stan gave a laugh of surprise.
“I thought you weren’t talking to me,” he said aloofly, giving the same annoying grin that Kyle hated.
“Well you made the seat stupid!”
“It’s not my fault you’re built like a bean stalk, and I don’t need ten yards of leg room,” Stan offered, waiting for Kyle to finally get his seat and then click his belt before he began to drive.
“My brother is adopted and he looks more like my parents,” Kyle groaned, Stan only enjoying it. Kyle must’ve been the only person alive to complain about being 6’3”. Though, some semblance of truth lingered in his words; Ike, now twelve years old, was a little shorter than Sheila, with eyes coincidentally like her and hair the same texture as their dad’s. It was hilarious to Stan.
“Imagine having a baby just for them to be 6’3’ and a ginger with a ‘fro,” Stan smirked and it was Kyle’s turn to hit his shoulder.
“Imagine having a baby just for them to be short and a dickhead.”
“I’m not short!” Stan burst out in laughter. He was 5’11 (6’0, if the wrong person asked), and muscular, which, in his books, made up for the height. “How come you don’t harass Kenny for his height?”
The parka wearing boy was a whopping 5’6”, something that they all quietly knew was contributed to by his lack of food growing up. Kenny didn’t say it outright, but his sideways glance was one of knowing. Just another one of their foursomes inside knowledge on one another that wasn’t spoken, just stayed inside their minds.
“Same reason you don’t harass Cartman for being short too: there’s better things to make fun of,” Kyle shrugged, saying something different than the real reason, though Stan heard the smirk in his voice.
“I think there’s better things to make fun of me other than being short.”
“What, like being stupid? Or ugly? Or possibly overweight.”
“You’re asking for me to beat you and show that these are muscles,” he frowned, faking genuine curiosity. “Wait, you know what muscles are, right?”
Kyle shot him a withering look.
“And here I was thinking you were teasing me,” Kenny smiled, Stan slightly worried with how genuine it was, as he took a sandwich from Stan. “I would’ve taken your whole fridge, I hope you know that.”
“Why would I lie about that?” He asked first, before he did a double take. “Wait, what?”
Kenny went to answer, lowering his hoodie to talk clearly, before he frowned. He blinked once at Stan, eyes ticking back to their English teacher and back. Neither of them had any idea of what she was on about, as she prattled on about the metaphors about love and the foreshadowing of the protagonist’s eventual suicide spurred on by his own spiral of misery. It was a depressing book by the sounds of it, but Stan wouldn’t really be able to tell anyone that because he hadn’t read it.
He could only really think, good for him.
“I think Cartman traumatised me.”
“Don’t we all?” Stan chuckled scornfully and Kenny gave him a final smile before he pulled the mask of his hood back up. He rocked on his chair, balancing precariously on one leg in such a way that made Stan glad he was light.
“Thanks, Stanerino,” he gave him the thumbs up, winking. Stan expected him to tuck the sandwich away like he’d done yesterday but instead he turned back to the front, taking down his mask all the way to take a big bite into his sandwich. He showered their desk with crumbs, devouring the thing in three huge bites.
Stan just stared.
As much as Stan had watched Kenny struggle for food over the years, he’d never seen him choke down food like that. He always saved half of his meals, neatly preserving them, or brought them home for his little sister. He never scarfed it down like that.
“Jesus, Kenny,” he breathed, as Kenny sheepishly wiped the crumbs from their shared desk.
“Sorry,” he said, not sounding apologetic. “I was hungry.”
“No shit,” Stan breathed. “Did you chew?”
“Nope.”
Stan made a noise in the back of my throat. “Please don’t choke and be the second person to have a near death experience with me sitting next to him.
Kenny’s mouth gaped in a perfect ‘o’.
“What did you and Kyle do?”
“How do you know it’s-nevermind…Spun his car. Well…his parent’s car.”
“What!?” Kenny blurted out, eyebrows knitting together as he crossed his arms. His voice held hints of sadness, not for them but for the thought he’d missed it, ever the adrenaline junky. Forlornly, he whispered, “without me?”
”Sorry, we weren’t exactly planning to crash the car.”
Kenny frowned, before he got a look on his face. Oh God. What was he about to say? He had the look on his face, the one that meant he was about to either say something unfunny or something inanely inappropriate or a mixture of the two.
”What did I say about not sucking off a man whilst he’s driving?”
If he’d been eating, he would’ve choked. Instead, he choked on the breath of air he’d been drawing in, quite pathetically. When he recovered after a second of coughing, he only gave a monotone, “dude.”
Kenny shrugged. “Just looking out for you, man.”
”Sure you are,” Stan said dryly, sarcasm dripping like venom behind his incisors, idly drawing figure eights on his very blank exercise book page. He didn’t even own the book the teacher was prattling on about.
Why do I even have an exercise book for English?
His mind was wandering everywhere but whatever the teacher was on about, at that point.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kenny said dubiously.
“Well, you, when I needed you to, didn’t come bash on my window.”
Kenny groaned, hand slipping over his face. “I knew I forgot something. I was too busy having sex with your mother,” genuine regret slid into his voice, his commitment to the bit scarily realistic. It gave Stan a weird sort of whiplash as his brain had convinced him that Kenny wasn’t about to say something stupid. Maybe he was the stupid one for thinking that.
“Uh-huh. Where were you actually?”
Kenny glanced up, fiddling with his hood until it did actually slide down - looking like it was purely on instinct with how Kenny’s mystic blue eyes slid over to him. And shit, he looked tired.
But, for a second, he smiled, showing off the gap in his teeth that hadn’t always been there, cheeks flushing redder and eyes sliding aside in nervous avoidance. “Yknow, just Butters.”
For a boy that could talk in detail - and did, excruciatingly so - about all the sex he had, when it came to him talking about genuinely liking people he went to water. If he did like Butters like that.
Usually, it was hard to tell: Kenny never liked anyone like that. Not for anything more than sex. As far as Stan could tell, Butters didn’t even know, ever the dense yet naive moron. But, when it actually came to Butters, Kenny really was head over heels. He blushed when the boy came near, talking about him endlessly whenever he was brought up, defended him in any argument - even when Butters wasn’t even there.
“Have you told him yet?”
Kenny flushed brighter, shaking his head to fluff out his shaggy hair, motion erratic like there was a wasp down the neck of his parka. “Told him what?”
”You're not serious,” Stan groaned. This shtick had been going for years, with Kenny pretending his debilitating crush wasn't the most painfully obvious thing.
”Have you told Kyle?”
”What?” Stan asked, voice raising above their classroom volume whisper talk to a full volume word that turned heads his direction. He felt his face heat as he ducked his head, shooting a look at Kenny.
Where did that come from?
”You know I’m not gay,” Stan finally muttered. It felt like he was telling Kenny that a lot these days, with how much he had to remind him. He didn’t have a problem with Kenny being gay or anyone really, it just…he wasn’t. He shuddered practically thinking of what his dad would say, mind flashing back to the memorized expression of his father’s disgust all those years ago.
”Oh, of course,” Kenny said cheerfully, a fake smile being hidden as he pulled his parka up over his mouth. Stan didn't get a chance to say anything before Kenny was huffing. "I would ask but I...have some other things going on."
He was surprised he just admitted it, especially with the bitterness in his voice.. Neither he, Kenny or Kyle ever admitted when they liked people. Sure, they’d all asked girls out in the past, but none of them got invested, especially not Kenny. Except for Cartman. He was capable of reaching stalker levels of investment.
"Is Karen alright?"
Kenny nodded. "Yeah. Just...home things," he murmured, adjusting his hood up properly. "I was just staying the night cause he was grounded-" when wasn't he? "-so, sorry about not waking you, princess."
His nose wrinkled in disdain. "Don't call me that. It's fine, anyway. Nice not having a morning of a gremlin shattering my window."
Stan didn't expect Kyle to be in the locker room when he came out of the shower.
Training had been tiring, the harsh winds not helping with the feeling of sharp stabbing in his stomach. To try and rinse the cold burning the ends of his nerves he'd showered, the room empty with how everyone had gone home straight after. He was in no hurry like them.
Instead he zoned off watching the water swirl down the drain until he decided the school's water bill was high enough, switching off the leaking tap, listening to the drip, drip, drip. He tied a towel around his waist.
Quietly, he stepped out of the fogged area, turning the corner.
"Fuck!"
His heart thudded in his chest, one hand raised in a fist, the other stopping his towel from falling from his sharp hips. He breathed out, hands raising as he visibly deflated. "Don't do that to a guy when he's not wearing pants!”
At the same time, he was pretty sure he'd scared Kyle.
The ginger's eyes were wide, shoulders up by his ears. But then he relaxed, eyes rolling, before they glanced at Stan, eyes travelling slightly down his neck and back up again. Stan felt his face heat. Kyle adjusted his hat back down, a look on his face something Stan tried to read before his glasses fogged.
"Damnit-" Kyle grumbled, taking them off to wipe them on his woollen vest. "I wasn't trying to scare you, idiot, I only just got here." Stan walked past him to pull on boxers, letting his towel drop. He followed with his shirt.
“Yeah right.”
“No Stan,” Kyle said dryly, making Stan already feel smug at the irritation in his voice, “I want to see your dick and I watched you shower.”
Damn, maybe he was gay, this was the second time he'd been changing from his underwear with his best friend's in the room. The thought, humored for a second, instantly made him dress faster, refusing to look back at Kyle until he was done. Was it so bad if he was gay?
Not that he was...but...
As a small thing.
He knew Kenny wouldn't care - obviously, and he didn't give a shit about what Cartman thought. It...was just Kyle.
"Why are you here?" Stan asked, cutting off his laugh, realizing he hadn't even questioned Kyle randomly showing up in the boys changerooms despite doing virtually no sports. Unless chess counted.
"I wanted to ask you if you wanted to come study at the library with me?"
"And you won't study at home because...?"
"I keep getting distracted. You don't have to, I was just-"
"Nah, I'll come," he shrugged, "I've got nothing better to do. I also don’t think I’ll be any less distracting."
"Trust me, Ike keeps inviting all his friends over, and between you and Kenny, I don’t want to hear half the horny shit he has to say. " he laughed, pushing a stray bit of hair back under his ushanka, adjusting his glasses. "Anyway, how was training?"
"Okay," he shrugged, deflating again, his pride at being Kyle’s super best friend pushing to the back of his mind. "I didn't do too good."
"Bullshit!" Kyle immediately said, the pair walking out the bathroom. "I watched your training."
Stan immediately felt self-conscious on every mistake he'd made, every miss-step and every wrong decision replaying in the back of his mind. He stared at Kyle, betrayal sharp on his face.
"You're joking."
"Nope, and before you ask, yes, I did see you fumble the ball and drop it, but I can’t play any sport to save my life."
Stan groaned, knowing it was probably payback for being an asshole about the car. Didn't make it any less soul crushing. The reminder of Kyle’s failures as a perfectionist does arise a small chuckle from him but it’s dwindled by his humiliation.
"It's fine, you just looked tired," Kyle said softly, voice making the strain across his shoulders feel like it was dissipating for a brief few seconds. "Did you want to come to mine tonight?"
Oh, he was a God send. He couldn't ask for better, to get a full night of rest. It meant he didn't have to drink himself to sleep and have to listen to a hundred year old man (screw it, legend) talk about the Amazon rain forest or the unreachable depths of the ocean. In a way, he wanted that: his few hours of half-awake silence where his brain stopped working and he didn't feel like he existed. But spending the night with Kyle was better.
"Yeah," he confessed quickly, too lazy to come up with some sort of half-assed reason for why he wanted to come and pretend he was reluctant. He wasn't. He was so eager to; to watch movies on the couch and eat a nice, hot meal that wasn't reheated and be around a family that didn't hate each other. If he tried hard enough, he could pretend he was part of the family, with how often he was there.
Kyle's brows shot up his face, a little smile ghosting at his face. Stan could feel his own expression, face neutrally set like it was formed from tone.
"That was fast," he remarked, letting Stan drive without much argument.
"I know," Stan sighed, voice cutting off like he was about to say more but his words fell flat. He couldn't tell Kyle about his stupid parents, because it would make the concern-prone boy worried for no good reason.
But still, his expression said it all.
Silence fell between them, the street lights sailing past driving lights across Kyle's face, illuminating his grey green irises an artificial viridescent green. The lights didn't hit Stan, just travelling over his knuckles on the coarse wheel.
"Hey, Stan?" Kyle finally said, the question making Stan's hands tighten, tension back again. A deeper shadow passed over his face as a yellowish street light lit up the curve of his nose bridge and the length of his cheekbones.
"Yeah, dude?" he said, matching Kyle back with the almost whispered volume. Kyle was worrying him, all the unknowns about what he was about to ask putting him on edge.
"Is everything okay with your parents?"
Stan was going to have to tug his hand from the wheel if he continued clenching so hard. He rolled his shoulders, hearing the painfully loud crack of his socket popping.
"Yeah. Just...their same usual shit," he smiled, the expression forced. "It's just...a bit tiring. They say they're gonna get divorced then they don't," he said simply, a summary of his whole life for the past few years.
"You know you can come crash at mine whenever, right?"
"Yeah, yeah, I-" he risked glancing from the road to look gently at Kyle, genuine gratitude turning his smile real, "-I know, dude, but I still...love them and I don't want to not see them. It's like...I hate them for yelling and acting like I'm not there, but...they're still my parents, and maybe I'm the idiot for thinking that means anything-"
He was fucking rambling.
“You’re not an idiot,” Kyle said quietly; hand reaching across to touch his arm, just for an instant until his best friend thought better of it and dropped his hand away, fidgeting with his vest. “It’s hard to hate your parents, isn’t it?”
It was a strange thing for Kyle to say. It sounded too real coming from his mouth, the bitter sound of understanding heavy on his tongue. “But…you know where to find me.”
Stan nodded slowly. What was he supposed to say to that? God he was really becoming a man of few words as his thoughts became louder and his sentences quieter.
But when the look he gave Kyle felt like it spoke a thousand words and he smiled, he knew that even if he didn’t speak, Kyle could read it off of him.
He’d always know where to find Kyle.
They were the only ones in the library. They were huddled near the back, Kyle snuggled in a bean bag and Stan perching on a lounge chair leaning against the table. Kyle was furiously typing away, leaving Stan afraid to sleep and break his intense train of thought. Stan himself was working through homework, having finished biology eagerly and now he was just stuck with his shitty math homework.
Occasionally, he'd sigh and glance up at Kyle, watching the boy's narrowed eyes, impossibly fast key-board clacking only pausing momentarily as he glanced aside and then back, as if it hadn't happened. His focused face was something too. His irises would tilt up to the roof in habit, tongue teasing between his teeth, one hand idly tapping the sleek metal of his computer.
Stan had been staring at a blank screen for far too long, unsure of how to write his assignment. Where did he start? Did he even know how to write any of this? In a moment of distraction, he picked up his phone to see a response from his mom, after he'd told her he was studying with Kyle and staying over.
It was a dry text, just a quick, 'ok, don't stay up late. Do you need clothes for tomorrow?'
Though, the offering of clothes was maybe a peace offering, a disguised apology for the morning. Kyle was right: everyone was tired in his family, always, but...it didn't mean he could just accept the measly apology time after time. But he just nodded softly, shooting her through a soft good night text and watching her respond with a small heart reaction.
Cool.
He smiled to himself.
Glancing back up, he checked the abrasively ticking clock on the wall. Damn. No wonder everyone had left: it was almost 11pm, bordering on closing time. Stan didn't want to interrupt Kyle, but desperate times (him being hungry) called for desperate measures.
He stood, towering over Kyle, casting a dark shadow over the boy. Kyle, finally, snapped out of his focus, went to say something. Stan didn’t listen to a single word of it, only feeling his grin grow wider. Suddenly, Kyle clocked what he was about to do, Stan only smiling wickedly down at him. Kyle threw his computer aside, too slow to get up as he let out a string of protests.
”Stan. Stan don’t, don’t, dude-“
He didn’t get to say anything else before Stan was flopping on him, only lightly cushioning his fall with his arms. Kyle screamed, eyes widening as he raised a hand to try and push up against Stan’s chest in vain. He fell on Kyle, squishing him into the beanbag.
The teen writhed beneath him, weakly slapping his shoulder as he was pinned down. “Stan!” He shouted, “Jesus Christ you’re fucking heavy.” Stan only leered down at him, eyebrow quirking up.
“Can we go?”
Kyle sighed, irritation sharp in his eyes as he stared intently into Stan’s eyes, but he was betrayed by the soft quirk of the sides of his lips as he stifled a laugh, Adam’s apple bobbing slightly.
”You…oversized toddler,” Kyle finally said, a look of utter disbelief at his childishness taking over the smile. Stan hated the tight feeling in his chest, unsure where it was coming from, but it did make him get up, sitting up enough for Kyle to push him off with a loud - selfishly loud - smirk.
He finally stood again, the feeling fading as quickly as it had come.
What the hell was that?
But he did partially know. Recognized it as a frequent visitor during his late night binges and one of the feelings he shoved down painfully fast, like suppressing the nauseous urge to vomit.
But he caught the soft laugh slipping from Kyle’s mouth as he gently pulled him up, tugging too hard so that he tumbled into Stan’s chest. The feeling shot him again harder, violently making his heart thud at the feeling of Kyle’s nuzzling into his chest, arms wrapping around him.
“You’re so stupid, Stan,” he mumbled. He was just tired, there was no other way he’d behave the way he was, all cuddly and soft. Deep down, he knew this was how Kyle was; unapologetically honest to a fault when it came to people he was close with.
And that involved hugging.
For as long as he could remember, Kyle was physically affectionate. He idly touched Stan’s back or his arms, hugged him a lot, slept half on him at sleepovers. It wasn’t like Stan was special, he did it to Kenny too but…it just felt like more. He wasn’t complaining, he was used to it, if anything, it would feel weird if Kyle social distanced.
So Stan hugged him back, strong arms wrapping back around him. It was funny, where Kyle was tall but skinny, Stan was shorter and thickly built. Still, Kyle had told him nonchalantly he was a good hugger so he didn’t second guess squeezing him, head on his shoulder.
”Come on, before you fry your brain, Einstein,” he mumbled, seconds away from pulling back from their normally - yet somehow unnatural for anyone else - long hug. Before he could, a quiet voice was chiming in, a hand tapping his shoulder.
”Sorry, young man, but you and your boyfriend need to leave, the library is closing.”
Stan immediately withdrew, face heating and a stammer leaving his mouth. “I-we’re not-we’re friends we don’t- I mean I’m not-“
“Thanks.” Kyle said curtly, voice clipped and vague, grabbing Stan’s wrist and guiding him on. They’re quiet the full way through the library, Stan quickly pulling his hand back. Kyle tugged his ear flaps down, eyes guarded. The lights powered down as they passed them, Stan eventually pushing open the door.
“I’ll drive.” Stan muttered and the keys were slapped into his hand without argument. His thoughts were dangerously offline, streamlined into objectives: make it the car, get in the car, drive the car to Kyle’s, pass out.
The outside air was cold and refreshing, replacing the recycled shit that felt like monoxide in his lungs. But, the second he got into the car, reality came crashing in.
Boyfriend?
The thought made his skin crawl but he didn’t know in what kind of way. Would he date Kyle? Next to him, his best friend slid into the car, switching up the heater and rubbing his cold hands together.
“Boyfriend,” Kyle laughed, “can you imagine?”
Stan could.