Chapter Text
The air was cold and fuzzed with Winter early mornings, the kind that scare the sun away and take the warmth with them and left Stan waking up to a numbingly cold world.
What…
It took him a few seconds to groggily diagnose the wrapping at his window, clattering the glass in its frame like an earthquake was rattling the house. But no, it was just the boy with the personality most like an earthquake: unpredictable and destructive. Fun in a macabre way, if you viewed it the right way round.
“Come on, Marshy boy, rise and shine!”
Stan groaned, lazily raising a hand to flick open the lock. If he didn’t, Kenny McCormick wouldn’t cease his knocking or he’d break the window. It would just be a case of which happened sooner.
Just like the sun, Kenny brought the light into the room. Stan was only given a moment to admire his unachievable levels of brightness before Kenny was falling in the second story window and flopping on his bed.
“Morning sexy,” Kenny grinned, voice muffled until he tugged down his parka. His nose wrinkled at their proximity as he watched the dirty blonde hair spilled out onto Stan’s pillow, Kenny’s upturned nose inches from his.
God, this fucking idiot.
Stan rolled over with a loud groan, sinking back into the sheets and trying to tug his comforter around with the annoying human paper weight next to him.
“You’re such a freak, dude,” Stan mumbled, not unkindly. Honestly, it was the nicest he could manage with Kenny breaking in his window at 6:30 in the morning. It’s said with the fondness that comes with over a decade of friendless that gives Stan the pass to call Kenny some of the filthiest, worst names humanely possible and not have the boy give a flying fuck.
But Kenny’s had always been aloof like that.
“Aw, thank you,” Kenny snorted, patting his back - slightly too low for Stan’s liking, prompting his brows to knit together in a frown. “Welp, moping time is over! Upsy daisies.”
“It’s called sleeping, Kenny,” he lamented, as Kenny closed the window. He used to worry about the boy’s almost suicidal climbing of the tree outside but he’d proved quite tactile (and scarily experienced) at climbing to second story windows.
One of the most signature things on Kenny’s face were his eye bags. Sometimes, he was even worse than Tweek, the coffee-holic who was permanently wired. He was practically allergic to sleeping, looking at his gaunt face just making Stan tired.
“Excuses, excuses,” muttered Kenny, Stan hearing the smirk on his face. He was pretending he wasn’t the boy with a weapons arsenal of excuses that should be considered military grade. But still, it wasn’t convincing Stan to get up.
What’s the point?
The thought was dark, almost throwing off Stan before he settled into the idea. Let it hold his hand and be the thing that almost determined him into waking up with the comforting knowledge that it will all be over one day.
Stan tugged his sheets over his head, clamping his eyes closed. He was too busy willing Kenny into pissing off. Maybe falling out of the window non-lethally. Besides, Kenny had the endurance of a toddler: he could be hit by a truck and live but trip over and break his spine. He’d survive a trip out the window.
Before he could put his plan into motion, Kenny crawled over his body, landing on the floor. He let out a whistle between the gap in his teeth. Stan winced at the noise, feeling a headache forming behind his eyes.
“Jesus, dude, do you own a laundry basket?”
“Kenny, you don’t own a fucking window,” he shot back, feeling the unimpressed scowl on Kenny’s face. It was a dick move, but hey, so was crawling through Stan’s window to wake him up at the crack of dawn.
“I own a window, just not the glass!”
“So, you own a hole in the wall.”
“Potayto potahto. The glass is optional,” Kenny shot right back, voice shifting as if he were picking up clothes. As if to prove his theory, Kenny threw something feeling like clothes on top of him. “Those ones smell the least,” informed Kenny cheerily, patting his back suspiciously near his ass again.
Stan only listened as Kenny packed his bag for him - for the fourth day in a row - pushing down the embarrassment. He didn’t want to get out of bed. He was exhausted, and ironically so. He’d been kept up until midnight by yelling and then he’d just given up and watched a David Attenborough documentary about turtles and whales half drunk. It was his own fault, but it was worth it, for not spending a night staring at his ceiling fan.
All he remembered was that, in summary, the turtles were dying and that he’d finally drifted off to the last song of a beached whale.
A weight sat on his bed again.
“Kyle’s waiting for you,” Kenny finally said, his last tactic for getting him out of the bed. “He said he can drive us.”
“His mom let him take the car?” Stan questioned, pulling down the sheets from his head just to shoot Kenny a doubtful look, making sure the parka clad boy knew that Stan was familiar with his manipulative tactics. He swore, if Kenny was lying about Kyle-
“They’re out of town until next Sunday, remember?”
Stan ran fingers through his hair, finally sitting up to grab the shirt off the end of the bed. “Yeah?” He offered, half-distracted by attempting to shove his head through the arm hole. Kenny made a noise in the back of his throat.
“Okay, dude,” he scoffed, sitting back on his paper covered desk, legs swinging childishly. Leave it up to Kenny to be the least mature. “He’s holding a party on Saturday, if you remember that either.”
“Are you actually being serious?”
As he finally got his head through the hole, he stared over at Kenny, who was for once, not grinning at him. He nodded, fiddling with the drawstring of his hood, which was back up. It’d become a habit as soon as the blond was out of the womb to just keep the hood, almost as if the habit was in his DNA. It had evolved, too. If Kenny was in the corner of someone's eye, like a cryptid caught for an instant on camera, he’d pull the hood down. Then, once you turned to even glimpse the rare form, his hood would be back up seemingly without Kenny lifting his hand.
Stan wished he had mastered the art of disappearing as well as Kenny.
“Dead,” Kenny affirmed and Stan groaned. “And Wendy will be there.”
He groaned even louder, finally getting out of bed to tug on his pants. Wendy. Of course, Wendy. The girl who will judge him for watching turtle documentaries drunk and attempt to pull him out of his wallowing only to be hurt and surprised again when it doesn’t work. The girl to treat him like a psychology case study and wondered why they’d broken up again.
But how was he supposed to tell her that her, someone he was told to love, had become someone he saw as a chore? A writing at the top of a to-do list that said, written in sparkly pink, ‘Thursday - Break up with Wendy Testaberger.’, because fuck, why not continue the break up streak?
He wanted to like her, he did, but he was too sure that the part that could was broken.
“Bold, Marshy-boy, changing in front of me?”
Marshy boy.
Best-friend or not, he was seriously considering punching Kenny.
“We’re literally going skinny dipping at Stark’s soon before it’s too cold. Annual tradition,” Stan shrugged, finally pulling on jeans and standing, walking around the room to hunt for his beanie. Shit, Kenny was right: he really didn’t use his laundry basket. He would if it weren’t in his parents room where he would be screamed at for fucking breathing.
It was Kenny’s turn to groan, but quietly, like he didn’t want Stan to hear. What? Kenny was never one to be quiet like that, he was vocal about everything, albeit muffled into incoherence. Stan looked at him, puzzled. But Kenny wasn’t meeting his eyes.
“I forgot about it,” he muttered when he met Stan’s eyes.
They’d been doing the ice plunge for years. It’d become a tradition in fifth grade when someone - Stan couldn’t remember, but he had a firm idea that it was probably Kenny - had decided to jump in the freezing lake and everyone had joined in. It was absolutely moronic and honestly surprising that no one participating had fucking died from hypothermia.
Through the years, they’d all had their instances of bitching about the cold. All of them, except Kenny. He was always the first stripping and fucking running for the water like his life depended on it. Now he just looked like he was dreading it.
“Right,” Stan said slowly. Then he blinked and Kenny was standing, a grin on his face, like nothing had happened. Had he imagined the whole thing? He took his bag from the floor, finding his beanie at the same time to pull it over his greasy hair.
“C’mon Stan-erino, we’re gonna be late.”
Stan couldn’t help but huff out a laugh and half grumble, “we’re not going to be late, it's barely even seven.”
Kenny only shrugged and winked, opening his door.
Stan was glad his parents were already out. He’d been rudely interrupted from his fun with David Attenborough by his dad leaving at one in the morning and then again at four when his mother left to do God knows what. Sometimes - and that was a rare sometimes - he’d wished Shelly was still home. But no, she’d pissed off to college and left him with the both of them.
Bitch.
But it meant he didn’t need to explain why the resident ratbag of South Park was somehow in the house without the door so much as being touched to his parents. Easy. Kenny happily bounded down the stairs, beelining for the kitchen.
Stan had been given a second to even glimpse his kitchen before a muesli bar was being used as a projectile and decked at his head.
“Kenny-” Stan laughed, catching it, “are you trying to ruin my face?”
Kenny glanced over his shoulder, brown fur of his parka obstructing his vision. “Nope, Mr ‘star of the football team’, I knew you’d catch it.”
“Right,” he narrowed his eyes as he comically struggled to peel the stupid plastic of the bar. Wow. Star of the football team and he can’t open a fucking muesli bar.
“Uh-huh. Full faith in you.”
“Thanks, dude,” he said dryly, finally opening the blasted thing and biting into it. As usual, it had the consistency of biting into wet sand.
Kenny nodded, saluting him from across the kitchen where his hand was digging through Stan’s mothers special biscuit stash. Stan couldn’t care enough to stop him, hell, he encouraged it. He encouraged throwing the whole thing across the room and stomping on the pieces.
“You’re welcome.”
They both laughed at the weird solemnness, breaking the silence as Kenny shoved cookies in his bag, probably his only lunch for the day. Stan found his lunch in the fridge, made by him the night before when he could actually bring himself to. Whilst he was at it - in retaliation from the muesli attack - he threw another sandwich at Kenny.
He, on the other hand, didn’t catch it, only picking up the wrapped sandwich off the floor with a sheepish grin, zipping it into his bag. He could see the guilt in Kenny’s eyes as he took it, seeing how the necessity overtook his shame.
Stan wanted to say something, to reassure him that it was literally just one sandwich, but he didn’t know how to say it without being condescending and the words were trapping in the ridges of his throat.
“Thanks, dude,” Kenny quietly said, tucking it in his bag. He turned his back again, fiddling with his hood to make sure it was up. It was a habit Stan had never second guessed. But now, just seeing the motion mixed with his unnaturally untalkative behaviour he was starting to think that he’d overlooked it.
He didn’t know why it was leaving an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach.
Before he could let it linger he swallowed thickly, shouldering his bag and heading for the front door, hearing Kenny trailing behind him. He bent to put on his shoes before he turned to Kenny who was looking down at him vacantly.
“Dude?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you wear your snow covered shoes in my room?”
“Could you guys take literally any longer?”
“Did you not see us running or?” Stan smirked, greeting Kyle with a wave. The ginger crossed his arms, mastering the Broflovski unimpressed stare, inherited from a generation of try-hard lawyers.
Stan slid into the passenger seat, barely out of breath after racing Kenny for shotgun (and beating him miserably). Forlornly, Kenny slunked into the backseat, crossing his arms and pouting.
“Fucking star of the rugby team,” Kenny grumbled, slamming the door closed. “Next time I’m not waking you up.”
Kyle shot a look at Stan, as if to say, ‘again’? But Stan just ignored it. Much like with Wendy, he didn’t need Kyle’s perfectionist self looking down on him from the self created pedestal he stood on that Stan could only hope at climbing without a lethal fall.
“Kenny, stop fucking pouting, you’re literally seventeen.”
Kenny gave him a filthy look.
“Who came in your cereal?”
Stan glanced down at his phone, scrolling through something he didn’t care much about, just something to help him zone out of the stupid discussing occurring. The same conversation that repeated in a different front every other day for years until they were absolutely intolerable.
He let it fade into the static, where he didn’t have to feel at all.
Then he got to a photo of a turtle and frowned. The steady, accented voice of David Attenborough filled his head, his mind relaying all the late night information about the rapid extinction of turtles. It was depressing. He’d never really seen a turtle anywhere but at the zoo, but he didn’t want them to die.
“Dude, what’s with you and turtles?” Kenny leaned forward, hand on the back of his seat, eliciting a small remark from Kyle to put on a seatbelt.
Stan shrugged, face heating from the small embarrassment. It’s such a childish - fuck, honestly girlish faggy shit - to be worried about a creature too slow to actually save itself from extinction. He could just imagine what his dad had to say.
“Dunno. Just popped up because this one’s now endangered,” he mumbled, voice quietening by the second. He looked at its silly little eyes and the curve of it’s bird-like beak and felt really…really fucking sad.
They’re just little creatures - they didn’t deserve to die.
Did it know it was the last one left?
“Oh,” Kenny muttered, sitting back. “I was starting to think you just got off to David Attenborough’s raspy voice.”
Stan turned in his seat, all too aware of how red his face was.
“How do you know that?” He seethed. It feels like his dirty vice had been revealed, but instead of the real problem - drinking, if he was being honest - it was watching nature documentaries that had been revealed.
“That you get off to-”
“No!” He groaned whilst Kenny grinned. Was he trying to be a stand in for Cartman in the few moments they didn’t have to see the dickhead.
“I turned off your computer and the video was open. Thought you were watching gay porn or something.”
“I’m not gay,” he sighed, hand slapping to his face. He tried to relax, embarrassment still lingering in such a way that he could feel his organs convulse with the internal cringe.
“Why are you watching nature docos, dude?” Kyle asked, not judgementally. It was a breath of fresh-air, to just know Kyle was the kind of friend to just…leave him to his turtles.
“Watched something a few months ago in bio about Tasmanian devils, and I’ve just watched a few to pass time…”
Stan glanced out the window. As much as he trusted the both of them, he didn’t trust Kenny to not say something if he admitted that ‘just a few’ was actually ‘a few every night to help me sleep’.
Kyle shrugged.
Stan sighed, pulled out his phone and stared at a photo of a beached blue whale.
“Kenny woke you up again this morning.”
It was a weird statement, one that made Stan glance over at Kyle twice in a double take. They all knew that Kenny had started crashing Stan’s beautiful yet achingly limited sleep to make sure he wasn’t skipping school.
“Yep,” he said cheerily, popping the ‘p’ sound. They were sitting at lunch, waiting for Kenny to come back from his smoke break, relishing the moments of Cartman being away sick. Stan hadn’t seen Kyle grin so wide when he found out.
The cafeteria was quiet, most people seemingly catching the same cold plaguing Cartman. Even from where Stan was sitting he could see that Clyde was missing from Tucker’s gang, Bebe’s sycophantic lyrebird voice gone. Henrietta from the goth kids was quietly absent, too.
Kyle just stared at him for a second, and Stan registered he wanted him to continue.
“I may have stayed up late playing video games,” he said sheepishly, finding it easy to fake. As much as Kyle was his best friend, Stan knows he didn’t want to hear about all his shit with his parents. Kenny didn’t care, why would Kyle?
So what, his parents might get divorced? They’d been in the stage of ‘on the edge of getting divorced’ for years that it was old news. Something Stan was over, just another annoying thing similar to Cartman and Kyle’s bickering.
“Seriously?” Kyle groaned. “You’re literally sacrificing your future to play what? Call of duty?”
Stan clicked his teeth with a grin, a sick satisfaction seeping into a smile that Kyle took the lie without so much as a questioning look that he may have been lying.
“Yep,” he said again, infuriating Kyle, practically lighting a forest fire under his ass to just make him yell at Stan. It’s a relationship he’d long since accepted. When they'd hit high school, Stan had confronted the fact that Kyle would always be the perfect one, and that he could comply and be the sporty yet stupid one. It was easier to lodge them into weird archetypes than to think too hard about being left behind when Kyle went to college.
“Dude!” Kyle seethed and Stan laughed. It was pretty funny, riling up the ginger so much. “You’re throwing away your future for what? Shooting a few people?”
“Hah! Dude, taking a break isn’t going to end my life, unlike you,” he rolled his eyes. Kyle really was a perfectionist to his stressed, overworked core. “I still have football.”
“It could!” Kyle argued, eyelashes fluttering with the exaggerated, huge roll of his eyes in their sockets. “What if you get injured, Stan? Then what?”
The mere circumstance ran his blood cold. If he got injured it would all be over, really. He would have nothing going for him, no sports to lean back on.
Still, he laughed weakly, more for himself than for Kyle.
“Then I’d just kill myself,” he shrugged nonchalantly, eyes dropping from Kyle’s noncommittally. He traced the reflection of the warped metal table with his cold hand.
“That’s…that’s not funny, dude.”
When had the conversation tilted this way? Veering off the path of light hearted and silly to the full car crash of reality and the future. But he reaped what he sewed, the consequences for lying too easily earlier.
“Calm down, Kyle, it’s…fine.”
It’s fine you’re leaving me behind, it’s fine you’re going to a fancy college across the country, it’s fine you’re better than me, it’s fine you actually want to live, it’s fine you have a future.
It’s fine, he’s fine, they’re all absolutely fine.
Kyle paused, his own small smile from Stan’s antic fading. Stan felt the strain of his own, corners of his lips aching at the stretch.
“It doesn’t sound fine, dude,” Kyle said quietly, mood shifting so fast Stan was ricocheted side by side on a roller coaster of emotions before he settled with nothing.
“Yeah well, what can I say? It’s chill, it’s fine, it’s one hundo percent gucci,” Stan smiled, the forced motion not meeting his blue irises. “I think you’re just mad I get to be a football star and you’re going to be a boring old lawyer at fucking Harvard.”
The conversation shifted on, the flame of visible hopelessness flickering out of view into Stan’s closed off mind, Kyle settled by his off-putting smile that faded into genuinely believable. And still, Stan felt the sick sense of relief that he’d gotten away with it again.
After school, Stan piled back into Kyle’s car. He was tired. Class was boring, adding information to powering the static. Exhaustion was clear on his face, etched into the sharp of his face in a way he couldn’t hide.
Even as he got in the car, Kyle glanced over at him, adjusting his glasses, not looking the slightest bit tired despite the fact that he definitely had the hardest classes humanely possible.
“Hey Kyle,” he smiled. Despite their conversation a few hours ago, it was nice to be sitting with Kyle. He was growing too numb to be stressed about how he looked and what Kyle thought of it. He just liked Kyle.
“Hey, dude,” Kyle grinned back, the look he shot at Stan making him feel warm, if just for a second. “You look tired.”
“I had shit classes.”
Kyle sighed, reaching over to pat Stan’s shoulder in consolidation. “If it makes you feel any better, I had AP physics.”
“Aw thanks, Kyle,” he said, making Kyle smile before he added, “all that does is make me feel really fucking stupid.”
Kyle’s smile turned to a frown and he pulled the car into drive. God it was nice to drive and not have to listen to the scream of students and weird conversations on the bus.
“You’re a dick, you know that right?”
“Yup,” he said for the third time, passing the masterclass on how to annoy Kyle. He groaned again, as Stan pulled out his phone to scroll. Almost as a lecture from the universe to put his phone down and actually hold a conversation, the first thing he saw was yet another endangered notice - this time for a species of bee. Sad.
He put it away.
The second he glanced over at Kyle was the same instant the boy pulled off his lime colored ushanka, freeing his messy red curls from their confines. He ran his fingers through it, offering a distracted glance over to Stan, looking like he was half expecting Stan to make fun of him. Instead he met the unreadable expression on Stan’s face from his undiagnosable emotion.
“What?” Kyle asked, voice tight in his throat. It was no secret amongst the four of them that Kyle hated his hair to the point he had worn his hat for years straight, and sure, it was one of the several things to mock him for.
But Stan wasn’t coming up with ammunition to add insult to injury. Nope, he was just looking. Much like Kenny - minus the missing mouth - seeing Kyle without his hat was rare. He was just observing the changes.
“Are you growing it long?”
“Fuck no. Do you know how much maintenance that takes?” He asked, response sounding like he’d at least considered it.
Shame. It would’ve looked good.
Stan was fucking glad he thought before speaking because where the fuck did that thought come from. Well…the irrational thought wasn’t completely…irrational. It probably would look down, but Stan wasn’t going to say that just to risk sounding gay as fuck.
“Nah. I was thinking of bleaching mine,” Stan said instead, pulling off his own beanie. It was hot in the car, with how Kyle had cranked up the heater just to pull off his jacket one handed anyway.
Kyle laughed abrasively. It was the kind of laugh that Kyle had no control over, a laugh that was loud and unapologetically so. It was one of Stan’s favourite things about Kyle, his loud (probably annoying to others) laugh. But it was also a laugh that Kyle didn’t like having. He often laughed silently, the only thing giving him away was the hidden smile and shaking shoulders. So it was nice that he was fine to laugh with Stan.
“Dude that would look like shit,” he snorted, reaching over to run his hands through Stan’s hair, sacrificing a glance over to him that made Stan grin.
“So?” Stan shrugged. “I’ll just buzz it off or dye it back.”
“Do you want to lose your hair?” Kyle argued, trying to take his mature stance on the situation, but his traitorous grin was giving him away. “You would look terrible with a buzz cut, too.”
“Ok buddy, you have a ginger afro.”
Kyle reached over and slapped him, which, deserved, but also, ow.
“It’s not my fault!” Stan snorted, bumping Kyle’s shoulder back. Kyle turned to him, his horrible habit of turning the wheel with his head coming into play as the car swerved violently, dipping precariously towards the side of the road, almost to the point of no return on the slippery roads. The moment of humour disappeared instantly as Kyle made a panicked noise of pure fear in the back of his throat and Stan swore, grabbing the assist grip in a white knuckle snatch. The car spun wildly, snow covered trees and road blurring as they spun.
“Oh fuck, Kyle-”
Quickly, he reached across, panic coursing in his veins, one hand pressing to Kyle’s forehead to guide his head back so he would sit up straight. Brace position or whatever the fuck, he didn’t care what he was doing, he just had to make sure Kyle was fine- Fuck, to even reach across properly, he loosened his seatbelt, autopiloting to make sure that Kyle would be fine. Still, Kyle’s greyish green eyes didn’t tick to him, blown wide and deadly focused on the road. Paralyzed. Frozen with fear.
“Don’t brake, don’t brake!” He knew Kyle would try to - already seeing the tense of his arm muscles - his hard words breaking through Kyle’s stagnation to make him panickedly take his foot off the break. “Steer into it-” Kyle’s shaking hand almost wrenched the wheel - “gently! Gently!”
Whilst Kyle focused on not freaking out and crazily jerking the wheel, he shifted the gear to neutral.
Finally, the wheels gained traction on the iced road, until they ended up against the curb, facing the other way around. They both stared at each other, stunned into silence. Kyle looked sick, face going slightly green.
“Fuck!” Kyle finally breathed, probably the only appropriate thing to say.
On the other hand, quite inappropriately, Stan laughed, adrenaline coursed through his veins. The nervous noise filled the car, his finger gripped in his hair as he watched the up and down motion of Kyle’s chest, assured that he was actually breathing.
Somehow, he wasn’t afraid. The adrenaline in his blood stream was only caused from shock, his survival instincts rendered null for a reason he didn’t know. But he did know that if the car had crashed, his only concern was Kyle. Besides, he vaguely remembered, when learning how to drive, that most drivers subconsciously hit on their passenger side rather than the driver, a morbid fact about survival instinct. Well, he would’ve been glad he wasn’t driving, much rather Kyle living. Hell, the only reason he’d been worried was for Kyle.
“Why are you laughing!?” Kyle snapped, Stan not taking Kyle shouting at him to heart as he saw the terror in his eyes. He breathed heavily, already pale face blanching white. A feeling bubbled in Stan’s chest, rising and falling unevenly as he struggled to get a breath in without letting out a nervous, strangled laugh.
“I-nerves, dude? Idon’tfuckingknow,” he said all in one breath as he finally got it all out. Kyle let his head thud against the wheel, jumping when an obnoxious beep suddenly barked out of the vehicle. His eyes widened, then he gave a look of pure exhaustion, then the teen just laughed: loud and shoulder shaking, in the kind of way that told Stan he had no control over it.
“Jesus Christ! Why did you bump my shoulder?”
“There’s no way I’m taking the blame for that, you can’t fucking drive!” Whilst Kyle wasn’t watching he clicked on his seatbelt silently, pretending he hadn’t done anything. He was right, this wasn’t the first time Kyle had made a mistake like this. There was a reason his parents didn’t let him drive.
“I know!” Kyle snapped, recovering from his laughing, “you know I’m bad at driving, why’d you slap me?”
“Kyle-” Stan breathed through a laugh, “I cannot believe you.”
Kyle finally unlatched his fingers from the wheel, hands shaking as he wrung out his hands in his lap. It was disorientating in the very least, to see Kyle going quiet from fear. He wasn’t someone who went quiet easily, always a ranter, whether it be on his passions, like the new science report he was writing, or if it was complaining for a whole period straight about Cartman, he didn’t really shut up. And, in the moments where he was silent, Stan was retaught how much he hated it.
“It’s okay, dude,” Stan finally said, quietly. The only sound in the car was his voice and the hum of the heater pushing stale hot air into their lungs. “How about I drive?”
“But my mom-”
“I’ll be careful,” Stan swore, not rubbing in the fact that he wasn’t the one who had almost murdered them both. Opening his car door in an offering to swap sides. Kyle finally sighed, glancing down at his trembling hands.
“Fine.”
Stan swapped sides with him, settling behind the wheel with the unnaturally quiet Kyle in the passenger seat. He knew they’d almost just crashed the car and died, but he couldn’t figure out why Kyle was so quiet. They’d almost crashed the car several times. Much like Stark's pond, they’d done dumb, dangerous shit all the time growing up. Hell, they’d done burn outs in Kenny’s parents beat up car until the parka wearing boy had been fucking flung out of the vehicle!
So it didn’t make sense that Kyle was so worried.
But Stan couldn’t bring himself to ask. As per usual, he couldn’t find the right words that wouldn’t make him sound like an asshole. He couldn’t imagine turning to Kyle and asking, “hey dude, why are you so shaky after almost crashing your parents car and maybe dying?” He’d just sound like an asshole.
The rest of the drive to his house was uneventful, but every street he grew closer his paranoia heightened. He couldn’t sit still. He drummed on the wheel with his fingers, biting the inside of his mouth. He finally pulled up in the driveway, hesitating with his hand on the door.
“Are you good to drive home? I could drive you then walk or-”
“Nah, I’m good. I don’t have a stupid asshole to push me.”
“Fuck, just tell me you hate me,” Stan chuckled tiredly, feeling the exhaustion fully settling at the vision of the dark green house. In actuality, he wanted Kyle to ask him to come over. It was selfish, using his shock of almost being in an accident to try and get away from home because he couldn’t handle a bit of yelling. But an opportunity was an opportunity, he guessed. But Kyle probably had an ungodly amount of homework and Stan…he didn’t really have homework but he did have some David Attenborough to fall asleep with.
“Bye, Stan,” Kyle said with a rueful smile, as Stan finally got out of the car, waving stupidly. “I’ll drive you tomorrow morning.”
“Try not to die on the way home, okay dude?”
“Fuck off,” Kyle laughed, before Stan closed the door and was left in the cold snow, boots crunching as he headed for the door of the dark blue house, dread replacing the warmth.