Nonsense About Romance

written by domolovesyou - illustrated by Noxicosis and Synnesai

CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Notes

References to my life, random ass things I like (and/or dislike, I can't remember) and past South Park episodes, as well as anecdotes which have been completely generated from my brain. Mucho thanks to Justin for betaing :)

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Chapter One: The Reading of Chef’s Will

There had been a problem at Chef’s house.

Not that Chef was the problem, actually. Chef was dead. He’d been dead for years now. (Kenny often met up with him in Hell, though, and told the others how he was doing. They always looked forward to hearing the updates.)

But apparently the contractors and the lawyers and the rest of the people of authority in the United States (all of who were completely useless) only just realized, now, that Chef was dead. They found his will, inside of which had been cooped up in Chef’s unused bank account for a good eight years now, and had been infested with rats now that you mention it. (And some of them ate a guy standing nearby to death, but we won’t talk about that.) Then they read it and realized that Chef indeed had some things left and he had people he wanted to give those things to.

Which was why Kenny, Cartman, Stan and Kyle were now at the official reading of Chef’s will.

It was long and boring, and reminded Cartman painfully of the reading of his Great-Grandma’s will years ago. (Mostly because, whenever he thought about it, he thought about how much money he got and then bought the amusement park and then lost it all and then Kyle was fucking happy because God liked fucking him over. If he ever got the chance to go to heaven, Cartman was going to kick that hippo cat thing in the balls.) The four of them had heard that they’d been mentioned in Chef’s will and had gotten excited; but now that they were actually here, there was nothing to be excited about.

“‘Finally, to the four children who always came to me for advice whenever they needed it…’”

Their ears perked up. Suddenly, sitting there in the stuffy room wearing the suits that all four of their mothers had forced them to wear was going to be worth it. Kyle prodded Stan awake, and Cartman was muttering something under his breath, which sounded like, “Money, money, please be money, Chef!” (Apparently he hadn’t heard the part where Chef had bequeathed all his money to his parents. His mother had said something about him owing her “tree fiddy.”) Kenny just looked eager to get anything, really.

“‘I bequeath to you…’”

The will-reader frowned. “I’m not sure if this is entirely appropriate,” he said. “And I’m not sure if it’s legal at all, either.”

“What is it?” the four boys demanded.

The will-reader looked embarrassed, but cleared his throat and held the paper up (so as to cover up his red face.) “‘I bequeath to you my porn collection, as I am hoping by the time I am dead (or when the goddamned life insurance managers figure out that I’m dead) you are old enough to understand the wonders of sexual exploration and intercourse. This is my treasure, and has been since I was your age. I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did.

(And no, those aren’t cum stains on the front cover of Go Hard On This.)’”

There was a silence.

Then:

“WOO-HOO!” yelled Kenny, jumping up from his seat.

~

“Man,” said Stan as they walked out of the building. “Dude, that sucked.”

“I know,” grumbled Kyle. “It’s not even legal for me to get that porn yet. Why won’t you share any of it with me, Kenny?” he whined to Kenny, who was busy squealing with glee, holding the trove box of porn against his chest, as if it were a Pillow Pet. (Stan had bought one once, but then it became alive and tried to eat Sparky. Everyone stayed clear of Pillow Pets after that.)

“Because it’s legal for me!” Kenny said gleefully. His words were actually sounding more distinct beneath his parka because his voice was so high and happy. “Hah hah hah hah hah, I can read porn!” he sang, in a manner not unlike Cartman’s.

“It’s legal for me too,” said Stan. “You should give some of that to me.”

Kenny rolled his eyes and pulled the collection closer to his chest, obviously having no intent in listening to what Stan had suggested. “Yeah right, Stan,” he said. “You live with your mom all the time, her tits are hot enough for you. My mom doesn’t have quality tits.”

“Ugh, dude.” Stan turned away in disgust.

“There’s your sister, dude,” Kyle pointed out.

“Yeah, but she’s my sister. And she’s flat.”

Cartman had been quiet throughout the conversation this whole time, but he couldn’t take it anymore. “WHY DIDN’T HE LEAVE ANY MONEY FOR ME?” he complained. “Why? Would it have been so hard to write, ‘Dear loveliest and most awesomest Eric Cartman, I bequeath to you one million dollars’? Would it have been hard.”

“Uh, dude, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Chef cares more about his family than he cares about you,” said Kyle. “Well, cared.”

“But still! I mean, look at me! Do you see how awesome I am?” said Cartman. “Isn’t it hard not to give me a million dollars when you die? I swear to god, when you guys die, if you hippies don’t give me a million dollars in your wills, I will beat the living shit out of your gravestone.”

“Like I’ll be there to care,” snorted Kyle.

“I think you’ll die before us,” said Stan.

“My will was just about not letting my hospitalized body show up on international news,” said Kenny, shrugging.

Cartman kicked a nearby pebble and grumbled to himself, “Fucking assholes.”

Stan had been the one to drive them here in the car he had gotten for his sixteenth birthday; the four of them were climbing into the car now. Kenny called, “Shotgun!” but Kyle got there first, and when Kenny tried to point out that he’d claimed it, and then tried to wrestle Kyle out of the position, Kyle pointed out that his seat was always shotgun and even if Kenny called it, it would never belong to him. They continued to wrestle until Stan (who was bigger than Kyle and stronger than Kenny) pulled Kenny off of him and told him to get his slutty little ass into the back.

“My ass may be slutty, but at least I’m getting some!” he hollered to Stan as he dealt with Cartman, who kept trying to shove him away, saying that he didn’t want to sit next to some poor trash.

“Cartman, you sit next to him all the time, deal with it,” said Stan. “And Kenny, I’m waiting for the right person—”

“The right person. Right,” scoffed Kenny. “Is that your way of saying that you’re just a failure when it comes to your sex life?”

Stan gave him the finger. “Fuck you.”

“I’m sure anyone would want to sleep with Stan,” said Kyle as helpfully as he could.

“Thanks, Kyle,” said Stan.

Kenny rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything.

Kyle glanced into the rearview mirror and saw Cartman with his arms crossed, a pissed off look on his face, staring out the window. “Dude, are you still sulking because Chef didn’t give you any money in his will?”

“Yes! I was going to use that money on something useful!” Cartman said.

“And what exactly is your definition of ‘useful’?”

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Jew-rat.”

“I can understand anything; unlike you, I’m actually not failing English class.”

“Then I’m sure you can understand that it’s useful if I buy bombs to destroy all the synagogues in the world.”

“Dude, that’s not fucking useful! That’s genocide! What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

“Jews are a stain in the human population.”

“No, you’re just a racist asshole!”

“Told you you wouldn’t understand,” said Cartman.

“Ugh, this is so frustrating,” Kenny interrupted, staring at the treasure box of porn magazines on his lap. “I keep really wanting to open this and read these right here, and—”

“Dude,” said Stan. “There is no way you’re masturbating in my car.”

“That’s the problem!” Kenny whined. “Pleeeeeeease?”

“Cartman, can you please get Kenny to shut up?”

Cartman took the baseball bat which had randomly been sitting on the floor of Stan’s car, and promptly knocked him out. Unfortunately, the baseball bat had been metal and Cartman was still pissed off at not getting any money, and the metal plus his brute strength ended up in the death of Kenny McCormick.

Cartman stared at Kenny’s dead body for a while, and then said, “… oh well. I’ve murdered people before,” and then resumed sulking.

With Kenny dead and Cartman throwing curses at God under his breath, Stan decided to strike up a conversation with his best friend to make the mood a little bit lighter. “So, you really think anyone would be up to sleeping with me?” he asked.

“Well, duh,” said Kyle, gesturing to him. “What’s not to like?”

“True,” said Stan, grinning. “I am good-looking, I am smart, I am nice, I am a decent person—”

“Horribly modest, too,” said Kyle.

“And girls have asked me out,” finished Stan. “So obviously I am the epitome of perfection. Right here.”

“But every time those girls asked you out, you said no,” said Kyle, furrowing his eyebrows. “If you want to prove that you can sleep with someone, why don’t you say yes? Seriously dude, you haven’t been in a relationship since Wendy in middle school (until you threw up on her really badly that one time and she refused to go out with you since) and you’re available and girls keep asking.”

Stan shifted his gaze away a little. “It would be mean,” was his excuse. “If I don’t like them, I shouldn’t say yes.”

“That’s not a good reason.” Kyle frowned. Stan seemed to be hiding something from him. Kyle wasn’t sure, though. “You don’t have your sights set on someone, do you?” he asked.

“No, no!” said Stan quickly. “Nah, I just... I guess I’m not really into the dating scene.” He shrugged. And Kyle believed him, because he could always believe his best friend.

“Anyways,” said Stan. “If I really feel the urge to get laid, I can just jack off. I should probably steal Chef’s porn right now since Kenny’s dead.” He glanced to the backseats.

“It’s bullshit that I’m too young for it.” Kyle sighed. “Although I don’t know, Chef could have some pretty messed up stuff in there…”

“What are you talking about? It’s Chef!”

“Exactly. It’s Chef,” said Kyle. “He pretty much slept with every woman in this town. He probably had loads of sex experience. Who knows what kinks he could have?”

“True,” said Stan, and then said with a grin, “Remember that time he slept with Cartman’s mom? I’m pretty sure that they would make the greatest couple ever.”

“Yeah, they’re both sluts enough,” said Kyle, and the both of them laughed.

“Shut up guys, my mom’s not a slut!” shouted Cartman from the back.

“Dude, your mom even fucks with you, she’s a slut!” said Kyle.

“Take it back, you bitch!”

“Don’t you remember when even you were saying that your mom fucked you?” said Stan. “Because you wanted an iPad?”

Kyle shuddered. “Don’t bring that up,” he said.

“You have to admit, that was kinda funny,” said Stan.

“If you were in my position, you wouldn’t have thought so!”

“Well, I might have.”

“Do you want your mouth taped to a Japanese guy’s ass?”

“Ugh, are you guys ever going to stop having faggy conversations?” said Cartman.

“The moment you stop being a fatass,” said Kyle cheekily.

Chapter Two: Boys Have Dicks

Stan dropped Cartman and Kenny’s body off at their respective houses, and then Kyle came over to his. Cartman would have come, except apparently he needed to “find another goddamn way to make some fuckin’ money” and Kenny was… well, it was Kenny’s body, so it wasn’t like he could do much. Stan kept the porn collection in his car and made a reminder to himself to give it back to Kenny sometime, since he actually wasn’t too interested in it.

The next day, Sunday, would have passed as their Saturdays usually did, except apparently Kyle had to go to some rally with his mother out of state so Stan couldn’t hang out with him. Kenny was still dead, so the only other person he could invite over was Cartman, which he didn’t mind at all.

Actually, at some point Cartman had become one of his best friends. Well, not in the way that Kyle was. And in a way, Cartman always was one of his best friends, like Kenny (on account of how much time they spent together.) But Stan got to trust Cartman in the way that close dudes became even closer dudes, and that even if Cartman would send him a letter saying that he hated him, or ended up on television because he bought an amusement park to taunt him, it was just a Cartman thing. Other than that Cartman thing, he was Stan’s friend.

Which was not precisely why, though it had some influence, when the two of them were playing the GameTetrahedron on Stan’s living room carpet, Stan asked him, “If I told you a secret, would you promise not to tell anyone?”

“Why yes, of course Stanley,” said Cartman in the most innocent voice he could pull, which was so innocent that it wasn’t innocent at all.

Stan rolled his eyes, but said, “Seriously. Would you?”

“How many years have you known me, Stan?” Cartman snorted. “Of course I’d tell someone. I’d tell the whole world.”

“Thought so.” Stan sighed. “Never mind.”

They continued playing. Cartman was irritated. Finally he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Okay, tell me your faggy little secret!” he exploded.

“But I know you’ll tell people. You know I know you’ll tell people.”

“But I want to know what it is!” Cartman whined.

“Then you’ll have to tell me a secret of your own, first,” said Stan. “That way if you tell people mine, I’ll tell people yours.”

Cartman narrowed his eyes. “How do I know that after I tell my secret, you won’t tell me yours?”

“I wouldn’t do that! I’m not like you!”

“Okay, I have an idea.” Cartman paused the game on the screen and set his controller down. “How about we both write our secrets down on a piece of paper and then show each other?”

“Good idea.” Stan put his controller down as well.

They tore out a page from an old notebook on Stan’s coffee table (Stan was pretty sure the notebook had the words, “SHELLEY’S DIARY” on it, but decided not to worry about it), tore it in half, grabbed two pencils, and then each scribbled on his piece. When they were done, Cartman handed his off to Stan and snatched his, saying, “Gimme, gimme, gimme!” eagerly. Stan rolled his eyes.

Stan’s piece of paper read,

Nice try, fatass.

“Hey!” said Cartman, turning around and waving the paper in Stan’s face. “What the hell is this?”

“I knew you weren’t going to write your secret on this piece of paper,” said Stan smugly, holding Cartman’s up. “‘You’re an animal licking fag’?”

“What? It’s true!”

“It’s an insult, not a secret.” Stan tore the paper up. “Fine then, I’m not telling you.”

Cartman’s resolve was crumbling. Stan could see that. Cartman fidgeted in his spot, gripping Stan’s piece of paper angrily in his hands, then said, “Okay, fine… I’ll tell you what I wanted the money for.”

“Money? What money?”

“The money that wasn’t in Chef’s will, dumbass,” snapped Cartman.

“Oh. Right.” Stan had forgotten about that.

“I… wanted to buy something.”

“Bombs to blow up the synagogues, like you’d been talking about?”

“No, but I really should get on that,” said Cartman. Then he waved a chubby hand. “That’s not what I was talking about. You see, I wanted to buy something. For this girl.”

“For a girl?”

“That I liked.”

“You like someone?” said Stan, surprised.

“Liked, asshole, liked! I don’t like anyone right now!” said Cartman, though Stan was sure he was lying. He rolled with it though. “See, there was this girl I really used to like. And I thought that she might appreciate it if I bought her something.”

“Like a dress, or jewelry?”

“I was thinking more of a country.”

Stan’s mouth fell open. “You were going to buy her a country? An entire country? What country?”

“Israel, duh,” said Cartman. “I was going to use the money to buy grenades like the Jew suggested, but instead of blowing up all the synagogues in the world, I was just going to help the Palestinians get rid of the people in Jerusalem first, and then buy the country. Then I was going to blow up all the synagogues.”

“Dude…” Stan’s eyes were wide. “The things you’d do for a girl. So then what? Why don’t you like her anymore? Didn’t you like her just yesterday?”

“Aye, shut up pussy!” said Cartman defensively, and Stan was sure that he definitely still liked the girl.

“So who is she?” he asked. “Who’s this girl that you’d buy a country for?”

“Ah-ah,” said Cartman. “I already told you my secret. I’m not telling you anymore.”

“I thought the secret is who the girl was.”

“No, the secret was that I wanted to destroy and then buy a country for her.”

“Fine.” Stan sighed and then sat down on his couch, as they had been standing this whole time and his legs were hurting. “Um. Promise you won’t say anything to anyone else?”

“Not a soul,” promised Cartman.

“Not Kenny or Butters?”

“Not Kenny or Butters.”

“Not even Kyle?”

“Why would I tell that Jew Kyle? I’d love to hold it against him that I know something about you that he doesn’t,” said Cartman smugly.

“Well, um,” said Stan. “Well, I like him.” And when nothing seemed to register on Cartman’s face, he emphasized, “You know, the way you liked that girl.”

-Noxicosis-

Cartman stared at him. Then he slowly sat down on the couch next to him. Stan waited in anticipation for a response. And then—

“Ahahaha!” cried Cartman, rolling around on the cushions. “Ahahahaha oh my god ahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OH MY GOD YOU LIKE KAHL OH MY GOD HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAksdfffffff—”

He ended up rolling off the couch and onto the floor, thus literally rofl-ing. His laughter had gotten so loud and obnoxious that Shelley, who was currently on spring break from South Park Community College, actually had to come downstairs from where she’d been playing video games with Larry (who’d come back from the dead after Poseidon had let him—but we don’t talk about that), to yell, “SHUT UP, TURDS!” to them.

Cartman finally stopped and sat up, wiping tears from his eyes. He’d actually been laughing so hard that he was literally weeping so it looked more like he’d just had a crying-fest, not a literal rolling on the floor laughing session. Stan glared at him as he came back to join him on the couch.

“I don’t understand what’s so funny about this,” he said.

“It’s just that—someone actually likes that ginger Jew.” Cartman snickered. “You really like him? Oh my god, I have to tell him.”

“You promised you wouldn’t,” Stan reminded him. “And if you do, I’ll tell everyone that you wanted money to do something romantic.”

The smile slid off of Cartman’s face. “Oh, right,” he said. “Fine. Then can’t I just say something that I know that he doesn’t—”

“No.”

“But that’s all the fun in you telling me your secret!”

“And it’s going to stay a secret,” said Stan firmly. “Not even a hint that you know it. That’s what makes it more secretive.”

“But—”

“No.”

“Ugh. Fuck you,” said Cartman, and crossed his arms. “What do you even see in him anyways? He’s just a sneaking little ginger with no soul and wanted to be black one time. Black. Can you believe it? Like Token. Who could like a guy like that?”

“I thought you were just gonna rag on me for liking a dude,” Stan muttered, and then said, “Well, you know, it’s Kyle. You told us that we’re fags together all the time. I think it’s something to do with that.”

“What, that you two are such butt pirates together that it’s making you have feelings for him?”

“Something like that,” said Stan, shrugging.

“And I’m not ragging on you for liking a dude because I’m not a homophobe, fag,” said Cartman. “So get your dumb assumptions out of your little head.”

“Thanks for the support, fatass.”

~

The first thing Kenny decided to do in Hell was to find Chef and thank him for all the porn. Seriously. Kenny had been running out of finding new ones and his dad’s were all… Well, his dad wasn’t very skilled at controlling the position of his dick in relation to his magazines every time he masturbated, suffice to say.

He ran into Chef coming out of Princess Diana’s house, on 66th and 66th street.

“Chef!” he said.

Chef beamed when he saw them. “Hello there, children,” he said. “Died again?”

“Yeah. It was Cartman’s fault.” Kenny shrugged it off like it was nothing. “What’ve you been up to?”

“Oh, you know, this and that with Princess Diana, if you know what I mean,” Chef said with a wink.

Kenny laughed. “Yeah.” He’d always been the one who understood and appreciated Chef’s jokes best. “So anyways, your lawyers finally got around to finding your will,” he said, as the two of them walked along 66th street.

Chef chuckled. “It’s about time,” he said. “If they found it any later, they’ll probably have to get you from college to get you to hear it. How old are you children now?”

“Eighteen.”

“Not a virgin anymore, right?”

“Oh, please,” said Kenny. “I’ve been getting blowjobs since I was nine. Though I guess yeah, every time I resurrect, my body’s a virgin,” he said thoughtfully.

“Not in the soul, though. Not in the soul.”

“Anyways, I just wanted to say thanks for all the porn,” said Kenny. “Really. I mean, why would you need porn, Chef? You’ve got girls lining up at your doorstep to sleep with you! I wish I could do that!”

“There are just some things that I like doin’ by myself. Girls don’t know how to do everything,” said Chef, and Kenny voiced his agreement. “Besides, you’re not bad of a looker, Kenny. I bet girls want you, too.”

“Yeah, except they’re all about the romance and none of them want to have sex until we’re married.” Kenny rolled his eyes. “They just feel sorry for me because I die all the time and think I need some cuddle buddy to hang out with. Please.”

“Well, like I said,” said Chef. “Girls don’t know how to do everything.”

They hung out for a bit longer (Kenny didn’t know how long; clocks were banned in hell a few years ago after Satan had broken up with Benito Mussolini and had kept counting how many hours had passed since they’d been together before deciding that he didn’t want to know) until Kenny randomly disappeared and woke up in his bed, back on Earth. He sighed and climbed out of bed; it was Monday morning already.

High school hadn’t changed much for any of them, because it was South Park and having things conveniently inconvenient for them just seemed to be this town’s fate. Mr. Garrison wasn’t their teacher anymore, but it didn’t mean they learned much still—Lu Kim, the retired owner of City Wok (he’d retired after he found out that he wasn’t truly Chinese and was actually a psychiatrist with a split personality disorder. It was the fact that he was Chinese when he wasn’t Asian at all that had broken him) had become their math teacher. It was a bit difficult because Mr. Lu Kim kept speaking in an Asian accent that no one could understand, and Kenny had never been very good at math.

“All I know is, one titty plus two titties equals three titties,” he whispered into Kyle’s ear, who sat in front of him.

“Shut up, Kenny,” Kyle whispered back. They had this class together; Cartman had it second period, and Stan, fifth.

“Do you think you could figure out the function of my dick when it’s erect?”

“Kenny, oh my god, shut up.”

“But Kyle, you’re smart enough! I really want to know!”

Kenny was grinning behind his hood. Unfortunately, just before Kyle could turn around to snap at him, Mr. Lu Kim cleared his throat very loudly and said, “May I have your attention, preese?” He was looking pointedly to Kyle and Kenny. “Sank you. Now, as I was saying, I am going to hand out a worksheet for you all to do. You must compreet it before the end of crass. You can work with partners, but don’t be too roud.”

He handed out the worksheets, and then walked to his desk in the back, making a point to bump into Kevin (who was Japanese) on his way there.

As Kenny and Kyle got to their worksheet (it didn’t need to be said that they were going to work together), Kyle said, “I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t mention your dick to me again, dude. I’d rather not think about it.”

“Oh?” A smirk made its way onto Kenny’s face. “Is that because you’d rather think about Stan’s dick instead?”

Kyle pressed his face closer to the worksheet, though his red face was visible. “Shut up,” he said.

Kenny didn’t stop smirking. Kyle had told him in the beginning of the year that he’d harbored a fag crush on Stan for a few years now, and since the crush wasn’t going away, he needed someone to talk to. Obviously Kyle couldn’t tell Stan, and he would never tell Cartman even if his life depended on it, and Kyle wasn’t the type to hang out with girls. Kenny had been the single choice, because he was Kyle’s friend and he was so sexually accepting (literally. His sexuality was yes, not boys or girls, really) so it wasn’t like Kenny would even give a fuck.

Kenny just chewed on the end of his pencil. “You should really do something about it, you know,” he said, giving the only suggestion he’d been giving ever since Kyle had told him. “You can’t hide it from him forever.”

“I know.” Kyle let out a large groan. “Argh, I am so hopeless.”

“If I had a dick for every time I heard you say that, I’d have a lot of dicks.”

“And you’d need a hand for each one of them,” Kyle mumbled.

Kenny shot him a look. “Hey, excuse me.”

“Sorry. I’m sure girls would rather flock over to your dick covered body,” said Kyle, and then groaned again and put his head in his arms. “I can’t tell Stan, though,” he said, muffled against the crook of his elbow. “I mean, what if he hates me? And even if he doesn’t, it’s gonna be awkward between us forever! Our friendship would be ruined!”

“If I had a ball for every time I heard you say something like that, I’d have a lot of balls, too.” Kenny looked up in thought. “Would I rather have a lot of balls, or a lot of dicks?”

“If this is all you can say to me about this,” said Kyle, bringing his head back up, “I think we should get started on this worksheet.”

Chapter Three: Extracurricular Shit

Yeah, so Kyle had liked Stan for quite a while now. For a frustrating while. Every time Stan laughed, Kyle laughed, and every time Stan was in a bad mood, Kyle would feel himself feeling quite depressed as well. At first he thought they were just super best friend feelings, but then he realized they were super best friend feelings. As in, Big Gay Al super. (Emphasis on the “Gay.”)

It was kind of embarrassing, when he thought about it. Not embarrassing that he liked Stan, but that Stan was a dude and Kyle never knew that he was… that way. He wasn’t even, really. He’d actually thought he was asexual for his whole life (except for that Rebecca issue, and the teacher that Wendy had killed, but he was pretty sure that Kenny’s libido was contagious when they were in elementary school) on account that school and sports were more important to him. Until his revelations on how he felt about Stan.

He wished he didn’t have feelings.

There was no way that Stan could like him back, though, and he was talking to Kenny about this as they sat on the bleachers after school. (Stan had football practice, but he usually drove the three of them back. He would drive Cartman home too, without either asking, but Cartman usually had newspaper, which tended to end later.) Thankfully, the object of his affection and their conversation were too far away for Stan to hear them.

“Yes, yes, I get it, Kyle,” said Kenny, who indeed get it. “Stan probably likes girls and you wouldn’t have a chance with him but hot damn he does look fine in his football jersey and pants.”

“Dude,” said Kyle, though he couldn’t disagree. Stan did.

“What?” said Kenny, and then sighed. “See, all you guys have fun with your love lives. You have Stan, Stan probably has you,” he ignored Kyle’s glower, since Kenny suggested all the time that Kyle could have a chance with it was evident that he couldn’t, “and Cartman has somebody, I heard him talking about it with Stan today.”

“Oh, yeah. I remember that.” Cartman had looked all pissed off at lunch because he’d said that he wanted to tell Kyle something but then Stan interrupted and then he and Cartman had an argument and Stan mentioned something about “that girl” and Cartman had stormed out of the cafeteria, shouting, “YOU GODDAMN PUSSY-LICKING FAG!” (Which of course was a contradictory statement.)

Kenny sighed again. “I wish I had someone.”

“You have multiple someones.”

“But see? That’s the problem!” Kenny put his chin in his hands. “I either fuck girls who don’t want a relationship, or girls who ask me out don’t want to fuck. Why can’t I have a girl who wants a relationship and wants to fuck?”

“There are plenty of girls who want that,” provided Kyle.

“Yeah, but then those girls are all… I don’t want them.” Kenny looked at Kyle for a moment. “If I went for a dude though, there’s no doubt he’d want to fuck. Like you want to fuck Stan.”

“I don’t—”

“Oh right, you want him to fuck you.” Ignoring Kyle’s indignant look, Kenny continued, “And if he were romantic enough, he’ll want to stay in a relationship with me… I got it!” He snapped his fingers. “I should go for a romantic dude!”

“Don’t you think most gay guys will think you’re straight and playing them, though?”

“Why?”

“Well you always sleep with girls…”

“I could get with a guy, too. The relationship part won’t be any different.” Kenny shrugged. “The sex probably isn’t different, either. The hole’s just somewhere else.”

“Oh god.” Kyle put his head in his hands. “Kenny, why am I even talking to you.”

~

When football practice was over, Stan jogged over to Kenny and Kyle at the bleachers. He took off his helmet and grinned. “How’d I do?” he asked.

“Like we paid attention,” said Kyle.

“Yeah, we were too distracted by your ass,” joked Kenny, and then Kyle kicked him, making Kenny go, “Hey!”

“Kenny, you need a girlfriend,” said Stan, chuckling.

“You’re out of luck, because apparently he wants to get a boyfriend.”

“Not you Stan, don’t worry.” Kenny glanced at Kyle when he said this, but Kyle kicked him again, causing Kenny to fall to the bleacher floor.

“Anyways,” said Stan, not bothered by this at all. “I’m going to go wash up and change, and then meet you back by my car.”

“Sounds good,” said Kyle, and then Stan nodded and ran towards the locker room doors.

“I’ll just lay down here on the ground, thanks!” Kenny called through his parka and the floor.

As he walked into the locker room, Stan was greeted by the other players giving him comments about his performance out on the field today, and thanked them modestly, ducking his head down and going over to his own locker. It wasn’t like compliments were unusual or anything, and his teammates were his friends and all, but he wasn’t as comfortable with them as he was with his other friends, and he tended to pick favorites when it came to people.

And as always, Kyle was his favorite. Stan felt his stomach leap at the thought of him. It hadn’t done that much until recently, but it felt like Stan was used to it since it seemed like it’d done that before. Only now was he feeling overly self-conscious, and only now were his insides jittery whenever he was around Kyle. He did his best not to make it obvious though. Mostly because he didn’t want Kyle to know.

He showered, still thinking of Kyle. His thoughts had been plagued with Kyle recently, ever since a little while ago the epiphany came to him one day and he just thought, “Oh, I like Kyle,” as if he’d just realized the sky was blue or the grass was green or that Mr. Slave had a serious issue with his anus. He wondered if he’d ever done anything in the past that would make him feel like he liked Kyle, or if Kyle had done something that had made Stan like him, but this liking-Kyle thing felt natural to him, like the blue sky and the green grass and Mr. Slave’s anus issue.

Turns out that when Stan had been younger, his puking problem had been his way of venting out his sexual frustration, albeit a bit weird since there was nothing attractive about upchucking. But now that he was older, his puking problems had stopped when he started masturbating, and as long as he did that on a regular basis, he wouldn’t have to puke whenever he liked someone again. Stan didn’t mind so much because it felt good, of course (though his stomach was still weak on roller coaster rides and roller coasters.)

He had the urge to jack off now, which was definitely not because he was thinking of Kyle (okay, it definitely was) and he was glad that he was in a single shower—though, he supposed, if he’d went into the group shower with the rest of the guys, he wouldn’t be thinking of Kyle thus not having the urge to jack off anyways. But he did what he had to do, and felt a little embarrassed fifteen minutes later when he came out to his car and saw the person he’d been thinking about when he had been coming into his hand.

“Hey,” said Kyle, smiling. “You look all freshened up and less jock-y now.”

“Shut up.” Kyle always called him a jock since he played football, though Kyle played basketball in the winter. “You’re a jock too.”

“I’m not a jock, but I get as much exercise as you two,” said Kenny, with a devilish grin.

“You are so nasty,” said Stan, getting into his car.

He started it up, and as usual Kyle sat in the front with him. Kenny didn’t complain this time, though, as he sprawled across the backseat and said something that sounded like “way more fucking comfortable than my bed” and was out in minutes.

“Do you know how he’s liking the porn?” Stan asked Kyle as he made their way out of the school’s parking lot.

Kyle rolled his eyes. “Oh, he’s definitely enjoying it. He tried to show me a page in math today, but then we had a quiz. I don’t even think he’s allowed to bring it to school.”

“Of course he isn’t,” scoffed Stan. “I thought you knew all the school rules.”

“Just because I’m smart doesn’t mean I know everything.”

“Really? I’ve always been under the impression that you do.”

“Why?”

“Well, for one, it might be because of your race—”

“Hey, don’t turn into Cartman and throw those stereotypes at me!”

“But Jews are smart, dude,” said Stan. “You’re like, the spitting image of one.”

“Excuse me—”

“I bet if you look up ‘Jew’ in the dictionary, it would have a picture of you in all your green ushanka glory.”

They stared at each other for a moment (well, it was more like Stan grinned ahead but kept his eyes on the road as Kyle stared at him), then both burst out laughing at the same time. Kenny grumbled in the back and threw one of the porno magazines he’d brought to school with him in front. It covered the windshield and Stan and Kyle shrieked as Stan tried to drive around, and they ended up crashing into a fire hydrant.

(Oh, and Kenny died. But we don’t talk about that.)

~

The main reason Cartman liked school was what he had after it. Which was the school’s newspaper (the Hooker). He hadn’t wanted to do it initially—he thought it was for pussies who didn’t know what real journalism was—but when he heard that Wendy Testaburger was going to be in the club, he signed up immediately.

They were an awful duo—read: they were an excellent team when it came to leading and co-leading the club and always came out with incredible articles, but between all that, there was a lot of arguing and fighting and stress. A lot of the newspaper members said that sometimes, the result just wasn’t worth it.

Wendy had been made Editor-In-Chief, and Cartman had been made Second to Editor-In-Chief, which had made him furious because girls couldn’t be leaders. Girls wouldn’t boss him around. The day a woman bossed Eric Cartman around was the day Justin Bieber got a voice like Kanye West’s.

It was that Wendy was in charge of him that fueled most of their arguments this year. Mostly because their conversations after school often went like this:

“Cartman, go help Red with the layout for the next issue.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I refuse to.”

“Why?”

“I refuse to take orders from a gil.”

“What? Are you serious? Are you gonna pull this misogynist crap on me again? Do you see me as only a girl?”

“Oh, sorry. I refuse to take orders from a queefin’ ball-sucking hippie who’s a whore and a girl.”

“Eric Cartman, you are the most worthless, horrible, rudest, racist, useless person ever on this entire planet! I can’t believe that you’d actually say that to me!”

“Suck it, ho, I’m sayin’ it to you.”

“You can go die in a fire!”

“As long as I don’t have to take orders from you, I’m coo’ with that.”

“Ugh, I cannot believe you, you fat son of a bitch.”

“Hey, don’t call me fat!”

“You’re fucking fat Cartman! Face it! You know you’re fat, just stop pulling this shit on me!”

“No, you stop pulling this shit on me! How can you expect me to do something that you tell me when I am a man and you are a WOMAN?”

That was usually when someone usually came in to break the argument up, or to tell them that they should be doing something more productive, or that they were being really loud and inappropriate so could they please shut up. Then both of them would yell at this third person at the same time and that third person would go off trembling and maybe crying a little bit.

Afterwards, they’d be a bit more civil to each other since they got their daily shouting match out of the way. They got along quite well after the club meetings, actually, because then they weren’t cooped up in a room together and Cartman wouldn’t feel as pressured, like he usually did, which was pretty much the same amount of pressure Tweek felt twenty-four seven.

“So do you think you can figure out the layout tonight? Red says she has too much homework today,” said Wendy.

“That bitch was lying, she’s probably screwing her boyfriend or something,” said Cartman.

“Hey, don’t be mean, she’s my friend!” said Wendy. Then, after a moment’s pause, “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“See? I’m always right,” said Cartman proudly.

“No, you’re just a dickhead who’s too honest for his own good.”

Cartman blinked at her. “Was that supposed to be a compliment?”

He was sure his eyes failed him for a moment, but it looked like Wendy blushed. “No!” she said. “I said that you’re a dickhead. Should I say that you’re deaf, too?”

“If I’m deaf, then you’re blind. That way, both of us are physically inept.”

“… I don’t understand your logic behind that, but okay,” said Wendy. “So anyways, do the layout tonight?”

“Only because that ho Red’s not doing it,” said Cartman.

“Don’t be mean,” scolded Wendy; but she was smiling. “Sounds good then. See you tomorrow, Cartman!”

Cartman watched as she walked off to her group of friends who were waiting for her in the hallway. He realized that he was smiling himself when he walked out to the front of the school, where his mom was waiting for him in her car.

“Good day, sweetie?” she asked him as he climbed in.

“Just put some bitches in their places,” he answered, thinking of how much he liked Wendy.

Chapter Four: Faggy McGay Fag

At some point, Cartman had stopped being really fat. Not that he was skinny or buff or average at all—it was more like he had become round rather than flabby and fat. It wouldn’t have been inaccurate to call him fatass, though, since he did still have a fat ass, and he ate like one, too.

He was currently eating all of Stan’s popcorn as they sat in front of his TV, playing video games again. “Think you can chew any quieter?” said Stan, kicking from atop the couch. He was stuck with Cartman again, because Kyle was too busy doing homework and Kenny was God knows where. Perhaps he was with God himself.

“Shut up, fag, I’m the guest, you’re supposed to treat me nicely,” said Cartman, and then giggled.

“What?” Stan gave him a dirty look.

“Just thinking how it’s actually true that you are a fag.”

“I’m not a fag!”

“You have a gay little crush on Kyle, Stan.”

“Just because I have a gay little crush doesn’t mean I’m a fag!”

Cartman didn’t understand Stan’s logic there, as he turned and blinked at him. Then he resumed eating his popcorn, saying, “Whatever.”

“I’m not a fag!” Stan insisted. “I like Kyle, but I’m not going to turn into one of those stupid teenage girls who pine after boys all the time.”

“How long have you liked Kyle, anyways?” said Cartman, munching on as many piece of popcorn that his large mouth could fit. “Maybe he used his manipulative Jew powers to get you to like him.”

“Shut up.” Stan scowled. “I don’t know, maybe for a few months? It’s not like it’s a bad thing, though, since he’s Kyle and all—”

“Eugh.” Cartman made a face. “Don’t say that again. Those words make me shudder.”

Stan grinned. “And I think he’s cute and sexy and sweet with that dark ginger hair of his—”

“AYE! SHUT UP!” Cartman had put his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. “KYLE IS A DIRTY JEW RAT,” he sang to himself in a mantra. “KYLE IS A DIRTY JEW RAT.”

Stan watched him in disbelief, and then took the opportunity to snitch the popcorn bowl from him. Unfortunately, since this was Cartman, he failed as Cartman put his elbow in the bowl which was heavy enough to keep it down.

When Cartman finally uncovered his ears and stopped singing to himself, Stan said, “Are you just going to sit in my house and watch me play Call of Duty? Shouldn’t you be finding something better to do?”

“Nah,” said Cartman brightly. “I think it’s swell that we’re hanging out together, Stanley, with no soulless gingers or poor white trash around.”

“… do you want something from me, or something?”

“No, no, it’s fine!” said Cartman innocently, in that not-innocent-at-all Cartman way of his.

Stan raised his eyebrows again, but didn’t ask any further questions.

Cartman struggled with himself to ask his next question, as if he’d been resisting asking but his curiosity couldn’t handle it. “So before you liked the pussy Jew, did you ever like that ho?”

Stan rolled his eyes. “What ho?”

“You know what ho.”

“No, I don’t.”

“That ho.”

“How specific.”

“You know which goddamn ho I’m talking about!”

“There are a lot of goddamn hoes in the world, Cartman.”

“That skanky bitch hippie cunt!”

“Oh.” It dawned on Stan whom he was talking about. “You mean Wendy.”

“Yeah, that ho.”

“No, I didn’t like her,” said Stan, shrugging. “I haven’t liked her since the sixth grade. No big deal.”

This didn’t seem to be a good enough response for Cartman, as he forced himself to ask another question. “Has the ho, you know, been involved with anyone?”

“Why do you want to know?” Stan asked suspiciously.

“So I can warn whoever she likes or who likes her that she wants to help hippies and women take over the world!” said Cartman. “Now tell me who she likes! Respect mah authoritah!”

“I don’t know,” said Stan, mildly bewildered at Cartman’s reaction. “I think she dated Token in sophomore year, but she’s been single since then, I think?”

“Goddammit,” said Cartman, pulling out his iPhone that his mom had gotten him last year after much whining and kicking and screaming and crying, despite that Cartman had been sixteen. “You are completely useless, Stan.”

Stan ignored him as Cartman went on Facebook on his phone and creeped on Wendy’s profile. It currently read:

Interested in Men

Relationship Status Single

“That bitch,” Cartman whispered.

“What?”

“Her profile says that she’s a libertarian! I didn’t know she was a fucking libertarian!”

Stan thought that somehow, Cartman’s saying this sounded both fond and endearing of Wendy, but was sure that he was imagining it.

“Of everything, she calls herself a fucking libertarian! That’s like calling yourself a black Jew Mexican Asian cat-killing hippie ginger!”

“I swear to god, if you rag on Jews or gingers one more time, I’m going to kick your ass,” said Stan.

“Aww, defending your butt-buddy?” Cartman teased.

“You can shove all your insults up your ass,” said Stan, reaching down and successfully stealing a piece of popcorn from him.

They continued on in silence for a little while, but Stan suddenly wanted to talk about Kyle along with the fact that he liked him, now that he had someone to talk to. The problem with telling someone your secret was that it suddenly felt like the basis of your relationship. Unfortunately for Cartman, the basis of his and Stan’s relationship was Stan’s faggy crush on Kyle.

“Do you think that it’s possible he likes me back?” Stan asked Cartman.

“I don’t think it’s possible for someone with no soul to like anyone. But you guys are fags,” added Cartman thoughtfully.

“He hasn’t liked anyone ever though. At least, he’s never told me.” Stan was suddenly fearful. “Could it be possible that he doesn’t want to tell me about his love life? Do you think he’s keeping secrets from me? We’re supposed to be best friends!”

“I wouldn’t put it past that sneaky J—ow!” Stan had just kicked him very hard in the head. “What the hell was that for?”

“I did say that if you ragged on Jews again, I’d kick your ass,” said Stan, and then sighed. “Kyle’s probably straight, though, or asexual. We never talked about it, but I always assumed that he wasn’t gay.”

“Kyle’s not man enough to like pussy.”

“And you’re saying that you’re a man?” When Cartman nodded, Stan scoffed. “You once had Kyle suck your dick, Cartman. Kyle suck your dick.”

“Because I knew he was repressing his sexuality, duh.” Cartman said it with an air as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I knew deep down inside he was a cock-lover and he enjoyed it.”

“Even if he were a cock-lover, he wouldn’t enjoy yours.”

“I’ll have you know that my dick is plenty enjoyable, thank you very much.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Stan, and then gave him an unwarranted kick. “I’m not gay. I only like Kyle.”

“And that’s what makes you faggier than all other fags.”

~

Kenny hadn’t been with God, actually (though God certainly knew where he was.) He was at home, with the porn Stan had dropped off at his house a few days ago after that bastard Cartman had killed him. He’d been using it as masturbation material since then (the porn, not Cartman. Ew.) and Chef had been right—it was a great collection. The greatest. There were naked women and titties everywhere, fucking each other or having naked men fuck them. When Kenny saw those naked men, somehow his orgasms were infinitely more epic. He reasoned it was because he could picture himself in their positions.

He rolled over on his bed and sighed, his limp dick falling back down from his hands. Non-stop masturbating was fun, but his fingers were getting tired and his wrist was cramping up. He wondered if Stan still had John Edward’s book on How to Sixty-Nine with Yourself. Then he remembered that Stan and Kyle had laughed at it when they found it again back in sixth grade, and then burned the book in fond memory of John Edwards. Kenny thought that they were pussies to not read it. It would be enlightening, learning how to sixty-nine yourself.

His hand went for his dick again, but as he lazily glanced over to the porn mags in Chef’s old box, he felt that he couldn’t get hard anymore. Was there even such thing as masturbating too much, or having too much porn? Kenny certainly felt that way right now, since Kyle and Cartman weren’t eighteen yet, and Stan had expressed no interest in Chef’s bequeathal as he had been the one to dump the whole thing on Kenny’s doorstep (though Kenny swore that a few were missing—it seemed like there were empty gaps. Then again, his dad could have looted through it before Kenny came back from Hell.) But he wasn’t feeling up to reading the porn anymore.

He wasn’t even feeling up to girls anymore.

Which was weird. Maybe it was because he was feeling let down by all the possible girls he wanted to go out with, or who wanted to go out with him. He felt jealous of Kyle’s fagginess because it was easy for him. Even though Kyle would never have the balls to do anything, all he had to do was tell Stan that he liked him and wanted to be fucked by him and whatever, then Stan, if he was up to whatever gay relationship Kyle wanted, probably wouldn’t mind since they were “Super Best Friends” and all, and they would have loads of sex. They were guys; of course they would.

Kenny suddenly didn’t want a girlfriend anymore. He wanted a boyfriend. Usually he’d be okay with being single, but he’d rather be in a relationship right now. He was likeable and good-looking, right? Why was he single, then? And even though he leaned more towards girls, there was nothing wrong with guys, either. “I’m pansexual,” he said out loud, and then chuckled. That wasn’t an inaccurate statement.

Well okay, maybe it wouldn’t be that easy, because even though he wasn’t ugly and was pretty likeable, he didn’t shower as often as most and smelled bad. And on occasion, he’d pick up the habit of smoking, just because it was fun. Oh, and he died. A lot. That could be a turn-off.

He closed the lid of the porn box and put it under his bed, saving it for a rainy day. As he pulled the hood of his parka up and zippered it shut so he could go to sleep, his mind was set on finding a dude to like.

~

“Sup, guys.”

No one looked up as Cartman waddled over to them at the bus stop. He had his backpack in one hand, and a large duffel bag in the other. He looked at the three of them, disappointed.

“Aren’t you guys gonna ask what this is?” he asked, swinging out his duffel bag.

“Is it a statue of yourself?” said Stan boredly.

“No.”

“Is it a statue of Mel Gibson or Hitler?” asked Kyle.

“No.”

“Is it the prototype of some complex torpedo that you plan on using to bomb a country?” said Kenny.

Cartman stared at Kenny. “No!” he said, in a response that so clearly meant “yes.”

“What country are you planning on bombing, Cartman?” said Kyle sarcastically, rolling his eyes. “Let me guess: Israel.”

“He wants to—” Stan started, but then Cartman ran over and covered his mouth to cut him off.

“Ah ah ah,” he said to Stan with a grin. “You remember our promise, right Stan?”

“Promise? What promise?” said Kyle, looking between them.

Cartman gave him a smug smile. “A promise between me and Stan because we share secrets and you don’t know them, you dirty Jew.”

“That’s not true! Stan’ll tell me anything!” Kyle flared up.

The bus came at that moment (Shelley had the car today so Stan couldn’t drive them) and the four boys got on to the back. Stan and Kyle sat with each other as Cartman and Kenny sat behind them. Kyle felt nervous every time he was in some enclosed space with Stan, like that one time in seventh grade when they’d been accidentally deported to Egypt and Cartman was a dumbass enough to want to steal the treasures from the pyramid tomb so Stan and Kyle walked in first, but before Cartman and Kenny could enter, the pyramid had slammed shut as a result of a booby trap and Stan and Kyle were trapped in there for two hours until giant sand-eating bees came out of nowhere and nearly destroyed the whole tomb.

Kyle wasn’t sure if he’d been more nervous then, or now.

He tried to shake the feeling off and make his nervousness as undetectable as possible. So what if the whole side of Stan’s warm body was pressing against his? So what if he could see Stan’s long legs in front of him, clad in dark blue jeans? It was no big deal. Not at all.

“So what was Cartman going to do with Israel?” he asked, knowing that Stan would have told him sooner or later even if he made a dumb promise with Cartman.

“Oh, um, you know,” said Stan. “He wants to get rid of the Jews.”

Kyle rolled his eyes. “That assface. When’s he ever gonna give it up? Me and my people aren’t going to die to some fat fuck like him.”

“Aye! I can hear you!” There was a kick on the back of their seat.

“I know you can! You are an assface and a fat fuck!”

“Shut up, you—”

“Jew, and then Kyle calls you fat, and you guys continue debating whether it’s worse being Jewish or being fat.” Kenny rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, we get it. We just shouldn’t waste narrative space with something you guys have been arguing about for the past fifteen years.”

“Wow, dude,” said Stan. “What crawled up your ass and died?”

“You know that porn stash Chef gave us?” said Kenny.

“Yeah? I thought you’ve been making love to it every moment you can.”

“I have,” said Kenny, and then sighed. “But like. It’s all girls, you know. All girls.”

“Kenny, don’t you be turning into one of them fags—”

“And I’m in the mood for dudes now.”

“Aww no. Awwwwww no,” said Cartman, getting up from his seat and struggling to walk into the aisle. “That’s it, I don’t want to be sittin’ next to this fag anymore. Screw you guys, I’m out.”

“I thought we didn’t like homophobes,” said Kyle.

“Yeah, but having Kenny gay? That’s almost worse than having one of you two guys gay,” said Cartman, indicating Kyle and Stan, which made no sense because Cartman knew Stan’s current love interest. Then again, even though Stan could be deemed with the title “fag”, he wasn’t exactly “white trash” or “poor” like Kenny was.

Cartman hopped from the back of the bus to a bit further up front, ignoring the bus driver’s shrieks for him to sit his ass in a seat. He ended up sitting with a bunch of girls, which Stan, Kyle nor Kenny took much notice of.

“Dude,” said Kyle. “Don’t tell me you want to bang dudes, too.”

“I’m not all about the bangin’ Kyle! I care about other stuff than that!” When Stan and Kyle merely gave him a look, Kenny added, “Well, on the side, anyways. Banging is nice, but remember what I told you about wanting a relationship?”

“No,” said Stan, but Kyle said, “Yeah, I remember. That applies to guys, too?”

“What’d he say about wanting a relationship?”

“Apparently all girls want to either have sex with him but no relationship, or want a relationship with him but have no sex,” said Kyle. Stan raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “They’re religious people who think Kenny’s a little angst cake who needs his soul saved and someone to take care of him.”

“Oh,” said Stan, like that made sense. “So, what? You’re gonna resort to gay porn now?”

“No, I’m getting a dude,” said Kenny. “I just need to find a dude to get. How about either of you two?” he said with a mischievous grin, though he knew that Kyle would say no and wouldn’t let him take Stan.

And Kyle did give him a look, while Stan laughed and said, “Nah, dude, nothing against liking guys but you’re not my type.”

“Ooh, you have a type now,” teased Kenny, his eyes darting to Kyle, who blushed. Luckily, Stan didn’t notice.

“How about we help you find someone to go for?” Stan suggested. “Like Kevin. Kevin’s nice.”

“Kevin’s also an OCD neat freak,” said Kenny. “I don’t think he’d be happy hanging out with me.”

“Tweek?”

“I wouldn’t be happy hanging out with him.” Kenny shuddered. “Though sex with such an energetic dude does sound nice, but I don’t think I can stand him any other time.”

“He made a good replacement for you that one time, though,” said Kyle, and Kenny shuddered again.

“Don’t remind me.”

“Craig?”

“Asshole,” dubbed Kenny, and they all nodded.

“Clyde or Token?”

“Clyde always smells like tacos, and Token’s… Well, he is rich,” said Kenny thoughtfully. “I don’t know if he’d be willing to hang out with me though. He might think that I only want him for his money and his good looks.”

“Wouldn’t you only want him for his money and his good looks?”

“Yeah,” said Kenny, so that was out of the question.

“Oh, I know!” said Kyle, raising himself up on his seat so he could scope out the bus. “How about Butters? He’s loyal so he could be into your relationship, and he’s kind of a pushover so you could probably convince him to have sex with you. Cartman does that all the time.”

“Ew, I don’t want to touch something Cartman touched.” Kenny crinkled his nose.

“Oh, it was just that ball-sucking incident, don’t worry.” Kyle waved him off. “I’m pretty sure Butters is clean. If he isn’t, his parents would have grounded him by now.”

“True.” Kenny looked thoughtful. “And he is cute.”

“Yeah,” agreed Stan and Kyle, proving their heterosexuality even more.

“You know what?” said Kenny. “I think that is an excellent idea. I’m going to try to get Butters, and so help me Satan if I fail.”

Chapter Five: More Extracurricular Shit

Kyle wasn’t too nervous when he walked up Stan’s front lawn. He had, after all, been to the Marsh’s house plenty of times before. He’d been there so often that he didn’t even need to ring the doorbell to enter, when at least one person was occupying the house. And Stan wasn’t extremely surprised when Kyle traipsed into his living room and plopped his backpack on the floor, and stood in front of him to block the TV screen.

“Move over, I almost killed that asshole,” said Stan, trying to look around him.

“Dude, we have a physics test tomorrow and you’re here playing Halo,” said Kyle, snatching the controller out of his hand and throwing it to the side. “I’m making you study whether you like it or not.”

“Aw,” said Stan, and scowled at him. “Party pooper.”

“Yes, I’m a party pooper and you’re a lazy ass,” said Kyle, dragging his book bag over closer to the couch as he started sitting down. “Now move over.”

“No.”

“I’ll sit on your feet then.” Kyle sat on his feet and Stan yowled in pain.

“Ow! Give me a little warning next time! You’re fucking heavy!”

“I did warn you,” said Kyle, grinning. “And yes, I am. Now move.”

“Fine.” Stan grumbled and tucked his long legs under him, then scooted a little bit over as Kyle started pulling out his notes from his backpack. “So what are we doing? What are we studying? What’s this test going to be on?”

“Light and color pigments,” said Kyle fondly, as if light and color pigments were the best sections of physics. Which they were.

Stan grumbled again and muttered something about “gay physics” and “gay lights” and “gay color pigments,” that Kyle put his notes down and gave Stan a look. “Well what exactly do you propose we do to help us study?”

“We can look over your gay notes, it’s fine,” Stan mumbled, and they started work.

Obviously Stan didn’t have the attention span that Kyle did, since Kyle noticed that Stan kept tapping the pencil that Kyle had lent him against the worksheet, and caught him absently staring at the clock a few times, or at his GameTetrahedron which Kyle had unceremoniously turned off to keep it from tempting him. Though this didn’t work, since Stan was clearly continuously tempted. Finally, Kyle said, “We can take a break if you want.”

“Yes.” Stan got up from the couch and stretched. “I’m so tired from studying so much.”

“You’ve barely been doing anything.”

“Whatever.” Stan waved him off and walked into the kitchen. “I’m getting something to eat, do you want anything?”

“Sure,” said Kyle, going over to join him. “Nothing too sweet, though.”

“Have I ever forgotten about your diabetes?”

Stan was looking through his refrigerator when Kyle came in. He held up a loaf of bread. “Want a turkey-and-cheese sandwich?”

“Sure,” said Kyle, peering in as well. “Let’s have some lettuce and tomato too. You can’t have a good sandwich without lettuce and tomato.”

“You make a point.” Stan got out the lettuce and tomato. “What else? Mayonnaise?”

“Yeah. Oh, and get that mustard over there.”

“Mm, mustard. And peanut butter and jelly.”

“Peanut butter and jelly? Man, I see the peanut butter part, but why the jelly?”

“Jelly’s really good with cheese and mayonnaise. You’d be surprised.”

“Okay, whatever. How about onions? Onions might also be good.”

“And chips. And—wait—I think I have some coffee mix and rice cakes too.”

In the end, they ended up getting almost anything that could be cut into a relatively small enough size to go on a sandwich. And even that wasn’t enough, because Stan was looking through the pantry when he was done because that was where the spices were kept. Kyle stepped back and said, “I’m looking forward to eating this sandwich.”

“It’s gonna be a pretty badass sandwich.” Stan pulled out pepper, salt and sugar. “To add even more taste,” he said, to Kyle’s disgusted face.

“Well okay, but don’t put too much sugar on mine,” said Kyle.

“Oh—wait, I have cinnamon! Look!” Stan pulled out a large container of cinnamon. “I didn’t even know we had this! It feels like we never used it.”

“Dude, you know what we should do?” Kyle said excitedly. “We should do the cinnamon challenge!”

“Oh my god, dude, we should!” Stan closed the pantry door and put the container on the counter. “You and me both?” he asked.

“I don’t know about me, actually. I don’t think I could handle it vey well.”

“That’s okay. I’ll do it by myself then,” said Stan. “Are you just gonna watch?”

“We should record it,” said Kyle. “And then post it on Face—”

“You better not say Facebook.”

“—YouToob for everyone to watch!”

“That’s what I thought you were going to say,” said Stan.

They found Stan’s dad’s video camera, and then brought a spoon and the large box of cinnamon to the bathroom “In case I need to throw it up,” said Stan, which was very likely. Then Kyle turned on the camera and started recording, giggling at what his best friend was about to do.

“So Kyle and I were looking through my kitchen when we found this cinnamon,” said Stan into the camera, “and then we decided that we should do the cinnamon challenge. Unfortunately, Kyle being the pussy he is chickened out—”

“I have diabetes!”

“—so you’re only going to get the pleasure of watching me.”

Stan gave a charming little smile into the camera, and then said to Kyle, “Ready?”

“I think I should be asking you that,” said Kyle.

Stan took out a spoonful of cinnamon, then took a deep breath and looked at the video camera again. “Here goes,” he said, and then put the whole spoonful in his mouth.

Kyle watched with some trepidation as Stan struggled to swallow, then struggled to breathe, and seemed to get some of it down his throat before he turned purple. Then green. Choking on his laughter, Kyle directed the video camera to the toilet as Stan ran over to it to puke, and made little sobbing noises as he tried to get all the cinnamon out of his mouth.

“Are you laughing?” Stan said from his face halfway in the toilet bowl, and Kyle silently nodded, covering his mouth with his one hand and shaking because he was trying to suppress it so much. “This bastard Kyle is laughing,” Stan said to the camera, pointing over to him. “My best friend.”

“I can’t help it! You look funny when you throw up!” said Kyle.

“This bastard,” Stan repeated, and then puked a little again.

Kyle giggled.

~

Kenny understood why Kyle was considered the smart one in their group, because his suggestion to get Butters to like him was genius. Of course, Butters was completely oblivious and couldn’t tell what Kenny was doing at first, but that made everything easier because Kenny was being really obvious and if he’d been found out so soon into this attempt at courtship thing, his resolve for a relationship would have crumbled. But Butters was slow on the uptake, thus doing wonderful things for Kenny’s confidence (though not so much for his patience.)

All throughout the school day he did what he could to flirt with Butters—talk with him and make conversation with him, which was surprisingly easy. Butters did seem a bit confused at first because while they were pretty good friends and talked now and then, Kenny started behaving the way he behaved when hanging out with Stan and Kyle and Cartman, except with a bit more romantic intent. Butters probably thought Kenny was just being a nice guy, though, and didn’t question him and treated Kenny the way he always treated him, and everyone else. Butters was predictable like that.

After school, Kenny hung back because he knew Butters had Dance Team (seriously, could you get any gayer than that?) and even though Stan didn’t have football practice today, Kenny didn’t mind walking home. He knew Dance Team practices were in the cafeteria, having spied on them before.

“Oh, hi Kenny!” said Butters when Kenny walked in. “Are you joinin’ the Dance Team? Then I won’t be the only boy!”

“Nah, sorry,” said Kenny. “Just wanted to watch.” He gave him a smile though he wasn’t sure if Butters could see it behind his hood, but apparently he could because Butters returned a smile to him.

Bebe, who was on the Dance Team too, gave him a dirty look. “Get lost, Kenny, we know that you just want to stare at our tits.”

“Unfortunately, Bebe, that’s not why I’m here today,” said Kenny, looking her up and down. “Though I wouldn’t protest. But I’m actually more interested in Butters than you girls,” and here he winked at Butters, which Butters completely missed.

Bebe scoffed. “Yeah, right,” she said, though seemed a bit more convinced when Kenny laid on his stomach on the ground, propped up his elbows and stared at only Butters.

Butters, on the other hand, looked surprised at being the object of such attention, but nonetheless pleased. “I’m really good at dancin’!” he said to Kenny, beaming. “Before I was too scared to, ‘c-cause of the tap-dancing incident,” Kenny snorted, he remembered that, “b-but these girls helped me out!”

He gestured to the girls, with their big tits and all, who were glaring at Kenny as if they expected him to say something crude and perverse about them “helping” Butters. But he just smiled and said, “I bet they did,” and proceeded to watch the Dance Team practice.

Butters, as he had boasted, was as good of a dancer as these girls, and in some cases better. Kenny didn’t know anything about dancing, but he could definitely say that Butters’s movements were much more visually appealing, and Butters was just more appealing in general. Kenny’s lips curved when Butters bounced to the middle front, and Butters happened to notice and his cheeks turned a very attractive shade of red. Kenny had to bite his lip from laughing out loud: Butters really was too oblivious and clueless for his own good. It was adorable.

When the dance practice was over, the girls and Butters said good-bye to each other and Butters went over to a cafeteria table and picked up what Kenny assumed to be his water bottle (it was covered with Hello Kitty stickers.) Kenny came up behind him and said, “You did a great job,” and Butters jumped and turned around to look at him.

“O-Oh, I didn’t know you were still here, Kenny,” he stammered, cheeks still red, and Kenny was pretty sure it was mostly not because of the dance practice. “I thought you left.”

“Well I said I came here to see you, didn’t I?”

“I-I just thought you were usin’ that excuse so you could—could look at those girls.” Butters blushed again and took a hearty sip of water probably to distract himself, though it didn’t seem to work as he ended up choking on it instead.

“Are you okay?” asked Kenny worriedly, and when Butters nodded despite looking rather suffocated, Kenny said, “Good.” He patted Butters on the back as Butters managed to breathe again, and then said, “I wouldn’t use you as an excuse, Butters.”

“You wouldn’t? Really? I-I thought you might.”

“Do I really seem like that bad of a guy to you?” asked Kenny.

“O-Oh no!” said Butters quickly. “No, that’s not what I meant! I just—thought—” and he broke off stuttering, turning red again.

“What?” said Kenny, genuinely interested.

“Well uh, you don’t usually pay much attention to me, th-that’s all,” he heard Butters mumble, shuffling his feet.

Kenny rolled his eyes. “I pay plenty of attention to you,” he said. He was bluffing, but he was going to be paying more attention to Butters from now on so he might as well make him think that he had always been doing so all along. “You just don’t notice.”

“I-I don’t?”

“Of course you don’t,” said Kenny with a teasing grin. “You’re Butters.”

“Hey!” said Butters indignantly, but then he saw the smile hidden on Kenny’s face and couldn’t help smiling himself. “I-I guess that’s true, what you said,” he admitted. “I know I don’t notice a-a lot of things.”

“I like it,” said Kenny, and then pinched his cheek. “I think it’s cute.”

He’d never really called a guy cute before but the words flowed out of his mouth like liquid, and Butters turned a bright shade of pink and said, “H-Hey Kenny, you don’t think I’m like a girl or nothin’, do you? You’re not supposed to call boys cute, only girls.”

“Pah, I can call you cute if I want.” Kenny pinched Butters’s cheek again and smirked. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with calling guys cute. I think plenty of guys are.”

“M-My dad says that only girls are cute,” said Butters. “Boys are supposed to be handsome an-and stuff.”

“Did your dad say you’d get grounded if you called a boy cute?”

“... yeah.”

“Well then,” said Kenny cheerfully. “I guess I’m grounded.”

“Oh, no!” Butters’s eyes went wide with fear. “Kenny, you can’t be grounded! You didn’t do anything wrong! You didn’t know—”

He broke off when Kenny laughed at him, and his little blond eyebrows furrowed in confusion as Kenny said, “I was joking Butters, geez. Your dad can’t ground me. He’s your dad, not mine.”

“O-Oh right,” said Butters, turning pink again. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Kenny slung an arm around his shoulder in a very bro-way, except more like Butters was a girl-bro (if such thing existed) that he was flirting with. “If I get grounded, I think you should get grounded too,” he said in a low tone, with a smirk. “So we’ll both be grounded together.”

“Why do you wanna get grounded with-with me?”

“Who else would I want to get grounded with? Cartman?”

“Oh yeah, no one wants to get grounded with Eric,” said Butters.

“Exactly,” said Kenny. “C’mon, Butters. I dare you to get grounded.” A Cheshire grin weaved across his face. “I dare you to call me cute.”

That definitely caught Butters off-guard. “W-What?” he said, looking alarmed. “Why?”

“Don’t you think I’m cute?” said Kenny.

“W-Well, I do think you’re mighty good-lookin’ and all, Kenny,” said Butters, “especially when you put your hood down, but I don’t know if-if you’re cute, really.” He wasn’t looking him in the eye. “I’m thinkin’ you’re more handsome, really,” he mumbled.

“Oh, but that’s no fun, you’re not breaking your dad’s rule then,” said Kenny, though he was pretty sure that Mr. Stotch’s intention was that Butters shouldn’t remark on any male’s attractiveness, at all. But being called handsome was hardly—eugh, Kenny cringed at that thought. “How about think of another way to describe me that your dad says you can’t?”

“I-I don’t know,” said Butters. “My dad says that I shouldn’t ever—shouldn’t ever call anyone sexy at all, boy or girl.”

“Do you think I’m sexy?”

And here Kenny lowered his hood so that Butters could see his face well, and even though the school cafeteria was fucking freezing, it was worth it to see the shock on his face and the pink rising in Butters’s cheeks.

“Y-Yeah, I think you’re sexy,” he stammered.

Kenny zippered his hood back up, but his smile was visible. “Good,” he said.

~

“Goddammit, ho, this is an inaccurate statement! Women aren’t supposed to have the capability to uphold a position of power, not are!”

“Cartman,” said Wendy with what seemed to be as much patience as she could manage. “This is an opinion column. You can’t change the opinions of the person who wrote it.”

“Who is the fucking retard who wrote it?”

“I did.”

“You’re a fucking retard!” said Cartman, and then threw the article draft down and sighed. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “You’re breakin’ my balls here, Wendy.”

“If I literally could, that would be wonderful.”

The two of them were cooped up in the newspaper room, being the only ones who actually came to the meeting today. Usually Thursday meetings weren’t mandatory, which everyone took as a chance to not attend, to avoid the fire-breathing monsters that were Cartman and Wendy. Though that often resulted in problems, because having no one around to break them apart and to stop their arguments usually ended up in other things breaking, like that one time Cartman stepped on a desk causing it to completely fall apart, or that other time when Wendy threw a computer out the window. (It was a PC, though, so no one really cared.)

It was annoying, Cartman decided, to edit papers because while there wasn’t a massive amount of grammar mistakes as one would expect from people from South Park High School, some of them had the most skewed views of issues or got the facts wrong. For instance, fewer minorities should be integrated into school systems, not more. And everyone in the government was currently a “fucking retard” (as Cartman liked to say) and that they shouldn’t have a democracy anymore, but a unitary autocracy wherein Cartman was the leader and they would listen to everything that he said.

Of course, no one agreed with his opinion on this because everyone was a fucking retard. But this was not the case.

“Cartman,” said Wendy, in that same strained patient voice. “Can you please stop chewing on your pencil and wishing it’s a chicken pot pie and actually help me edit these articles?”

Cartman glared at her. “I’m not wishing that my pencil’s a chicken pot pie.”

“Oh really? By the look on your face, I would have thought otherwise.”

“And why is that, ho?”

“Because you like eating all the time!”

“So what? It looks like you hardly eat at all!” Cartman gestured to Wendy’s admittedly attractive body. “At least I’m healthier than you! I’m not a fucking anorexic!”

“I’m not anorexic, Cartman, I just care about my figure! And there’s no way you could be healthier than me, eating too much is bad for you, you know!”

“Is not!”

“Is too!”

They glared at each other, and then huffed and faced opposite directions. Wendy continued editing her articles. Cartman resumed chewing on his pencil.

“Damn,” he muttered to himself, out loud. “I gotta take a shit.”

Wendy crinkled her nose and looked up. “Ew, did I have to know that? And did you have to say ‘take a shit’? Why don’t you say that you need to go to the bathroom? Or that you need to evacuate your bowels?”

“‘Why don’t you say that you need to go to the bathroom or evacuate your bowels?’” Cartman mimicked. “For your information, bitch, I am a man, and men don’t use any pussy language like that.”

Wendy scoffed. “It is not ‘pussy language,’ and men should. Men should be proper and respectful, at least around women, because—”

“See? See? Now you’re pulling that sexist shit on me!” said Cartman, pointing to her.

“It is not sexist shit! It’s common courtesy!”

“Guys don’t use common courtesy around each other! When I’m with other guys, I say, ‘Man I gotta take a shit,’ and they don’t freak out about it!”

“Well I am not a guy, if you haven’t noticed!”

“I have noticed!”

They glared at each other and then folded their arms and turned their backs on each other again. Cartman blew his brown bangs out of his eyes irritably. Stupid bitch.

“Hey, ho,” he said after a while, when they had been sitting in silence and doing work. Well, Wendy had been doing most of the work; Cartman was just sitting there and offering moral support, if anyone were to ask. “When’s your birthday?”

Wendy glanced up from revising the second-to-last article and gave him a suspicious look. “Why do you want to know?”

Cartman held his hands up. “Hey, hey, is there a law that says that I can’t ask hippies when their birthdays are? Jesus Christ.”

Wendy rolled her eyes and returned to her work. “It’s in the summer.”

“Goddammit,” Cartman muttered to himself. Summer wasn’t for another several months, and by then they’d be going off to college or whatever and he probably wouldn’t see her then. He wouldn’t have an excuse to buy her something then, without coming off as being kind. Well, even if he got her something for her birthday, he would come off as being kind, but less kind than if he were to just get her a gift at random.

“And it’ll be too late to blow up Israel by then,” he muttered to himself, because his deal with the Palestinians only lasted until May.

“What? You’re blowing up Israel?”

“I said I was growing an animal pen,” said Cartman without missing a beat.

Wendy gave him a funny look, but didn’t ask any further. If fatass was blowing up a country, she didn’t want to be held responsible for being able to have possibly prevented him.

Chapter Six: Dyslexia Is Not Funny

Kyle Broflovski omg Stan did the Cinnamon Challenge funniest shit ever omg

[Plug-in needed to view Flash]

- Kenny McCormick, Wendy Testaburger, Eric Cartman and 25 others like this.
Kenny McCormick stan you idiot omg
Kenny McCormick omg i’m laughing so hard
Kenny McCormick i think i’m going to die laughing
Kenny McCormick kEnNy DiEd LaUgHiNg (ThIs Is KaReN)
Eric Cartman do it agn!!!!!!!111
Token Black stan you pussy
Clyde Donovan token you couldnt do it either rmbr?
Token Black shut up clyde
Tweek Tweak GAH AHAHAHAHA gah! HAHAAH
Stan Marsh kyle you bastard you said you werent going to post on facebook
Kyle Broflovski SORRY I COULDN’T HELP IT LOL
Randy Marsh I want 2 try stan can u help me do it 2
Stan Marsh no dad go away
Eric Cartman stan u r such a idiot evn i wouldnt do this
Wendy Testaburger Cartman, while I agree that Stan is an idiot for doing this, you are more idiotic than him.
- Kyle Broflovski likes this comment.
Eric Cartman kyle gtfo
Stan Marsh guys stop liking this
Kyle Broflovski You have to admit that this is pretty funny :P
Stan Marsh yeah it is
Craig Tucker lol n∩n(.__.)n∩n
Token Black craig do u have to include the middle finger every time you comment on something
Craig Tucker no n∩n(.__.)n∩n
Butters Stotch what’s the cinnamon challenge?

“Loser,” Stan said as he came into Kyle’s room. He, like Kyle with Stan’s house, didn’t need to ring the doorbell to enter, and sometimes took advantage to visit him whenever he liked. He hadn’t been doing so recently, of course, because of with his nervousness of now liking him at all, but resisting the temptation could only last for so long.

“Wha—! Oh, it’s you,” said Kyle from checking his Facebook. “And I am not a loser.”

“You are.”

Stan peered over his shoulder to read the comment thread, and chuckled. “Oh, Butters,” he said. “Do you know how Kenny’s doing with him?”

“Do I want to know?” said Kyle, crinkling his nose. “Either it’s a completely hopeless case, or Kenny’s screwed him eight ways to Sunday by now. Literally.”

“Okay, imagining Kenny and Butters having sex is not a mental image I need,” said Stan, pushing himself off from leaning on Kyle’s swivel chair. “And you should get off Facebook.”

“Facebook’s fun! I still don’t see why you boycott it,” said Kyle, now going to the Tetris Battle game application and starting to play it. Farmville had gotten boring after a while and Yahtzee! was stupid, but Tetris was nice and old fashioned and always challenging. Kyle was on rank 50 right now.

And Stan liked to distract him to make him mess up, like he was doing now. “Oops,” he said, “accidentally” kicking Kyle’s chair and making him drop a Tetris piece, when he’d been planning on holding it.

“Hey! You did that on purpose!”

“Ooo, stop the presses,” said Stan sarcastically. “C’mon, get your ass off the computer. We should go do something more fun.”

“This is fun!”

Stan kicked his chair again and Kyle accidentally moved a piece a little farther to the left than he had planned. “Hey!” he said again. “You keep screwing me up!”

“Sorry,” said Stan teasingly.

In the end, Kyle did end up winning the round though still seemed pissed off that Stan had screwed him up. Stan rolled his eyes and got off Kyle’s bed as Kyle debated ragequitting, or kicking more asses so he could get to rank 51.

“You know what?” Stan said. “I really am sorry for making you mess up. And for your forgiveness, I’ll take you out and treat you to something good.”

“You’re making me sound like your girlfriend,” Kyle grumbled.

“With all this time we spend around each other, you may as well be!” said Stan cheerfully. He was very aware of the implications of what he had just said, but as long as he kept the tone not serious, then Kyle wouldn’t take it seriously. “Anyways, I came over in the first place to drag you out to the mall. Now I actually have an excuse to.”

“But I want to play Tetris Battle!”

“No, you want to get a life. Now get your ass off Facebook,” Stan dragged Kyle’s swivel chair away from the computer, “and go find a life at the mall.”

“You can’t make me!” Kyle jumped off his chair and leapt to his computer again, starting a new round of Tetris Battle. Letting out a sound of frustration, Stan yanked on Kyle’s jacket which he successfully took off, then his shirt, then his ushanka, releasing Kyle’s mess of dark orange hair, and even tugged Kyle’s shoes and socks off too.

“Don’t make me take your pants off,” he warned (though obviously, would have taken those off first if it wouldn’t rouse suspicion.)

“I have ten seconds left! I’m beating this bitch by five lines!” Kyle hollered. They may have heard Mrs. Broflovski scream at Kyle to not swear then, but didn’t pay any attention to her.

“And it’ll take me two seconds to pants you!” said Stan.

“No!”

Kyle moved around as Stan dived at the waistband of his jeans, and kept worming around until Stan finally caught him by a belt loop. Stan had only unbuttoned the top button, though, when Kyle leapt up and said, “Yes! I won! RANK 51, BITCHES!”

“You seriously need to get a life,” said Stan, letting him go and, amused, watched Kyle post his win on Facebook, with the comment, “LEVEL 51 FUCK YEAH.” His best friend needed to stop making love to Facebook so much.

“Oh, shut up,” said Kyle, finally tearing his gaze away from his computer and looking around his room. All of his clothes that Stan had pulled off were strewn around. “And what exactly were you hoping to accomplish by stripping me?” he asked.

“I was obviously trying to get into your pants.”

Stan didn’t notice Kyle’s cheeks redden, and Kyle didn’t notice that Stan had pointedly looked away when he said this. “Because if you’re naked, then you’d stop playing Tetris Battle to get your clothes back on?” he said, more seriously.

“Please,” scoffed Kyle, buttoning up his pants and picking up his jacket. “I wouldn’t stop playing Tetris Battle for the world.”

“Even if you needed to save my life?”

Kyle sat back on his chair and kicked Stan on his back on his bed. “Especially if I needed to save your life,” he said.

“You are so mean.”

At that moment, Ike appeared in the doorway, and said, “Hey, Kyle, Mom was wondering if—whoa, what is going on here?”

Stan and Kyle glanced at each other, and then took note of the positions they were in. Kyle was shirtless and standing up, about to put on his white tee back on. Stan was currently lying on his bed and holding Kyle’s hat hostage.

“I thought I heard some noises,” said Ike, “but I did not expect this.”

“Ike, it’s not what it looks like—”

“Save it, bro.” Ike put a hand up. “It’s okay if you want to have gay sex every now and then, but just warn me next time, okay? And keep the door closed, you wouldn’t want Mom catching you.” He left, and Stan and Kyle gaped at where he had been standing.

“How does it look like we just had sex?” said Kyle incredulously.

“I think it’s the whole you’re half-naked thing,” said Stan, flopping back down on the bed. “That might have been what implied it.”

“But still! That doesn’t make any sense!”

Kyle grabbed his jacket but didn’t button it, then turned to Stan and stuck out his hand.

“What?” said Stan, playing with his ushanka.

“Give me my hat.”

“Oh, but I like it,” said Stan. “Do I have to give it to you?”

Kyle kept his hand out. “Give it.”

“But I want to keep it.” Stan pouted. Kyle didn’t relent. “Hey, how about we trade hats today? You can wear mine and I’ll wear yours, and we’ll be Kan and, uh, Style! Yeah, that’s good. You be Kan and I’ll be Style.”

Kyle still had his hand out and didn’t seem to think the idea was as amusing as Stan did, so Stan finally sighed and put the green ushanka back in Kyle’s hand.

“Thank you,” said Kyle, patting it on so it fit around his head nicely. “And I don’t think your hat’s big enough to keep my hair down. It’ll just grow frizzier and then your hat will pop off.” Kyle’s hair was usually flat when he took it off because his hat kept it pat down so much, but during the times Stan would sleep over, in the mornings it would return to resembling the red poofball on Stan’s hat.

“I think it looks nice that way,” said Stan, because he did. It looked cute. “Though I like your hat, too.” He flipped the flaps of Kyle’s ushanka, and Kyle batted him away.

“Since when did you start saying gay stuff to me?” he said, only joking.

-synnesai-

“Since forever,” said Stan, also joking.

They left Kyle’s house, as Stan had wished, and to the mall, which they only had to walk to. (Really, they could walk to nearly anywhere in their town, except for their high school which was closer to North Park.) There wasn’t anything special about the mall, other than that it was a regular hang out place for most of them. It had been built back when they were in freshman year, after a bunch of crab people had randomly fallen from the sky and destroyed half the town. They built the mall while they were rebuilding the South Park community center.

They were coming out of Spencer’s after giggling at all the sex toys there (and inappropriately stuffing dildos in the tamer parts of the store) when they saw Cartman at FYE across from them, apparently looking through the pop music section. Which was weird because the only pop music Cartman liked was Lady Gaga.

“What’s he doing there?” Stan wondered aloud.

“Don’t know,” said Kyle, also staring at him. “Do you think we should ask?”

“Couldn’t hurt, could it? I mean, it’s not like it’s Hollister, it’s only FYE...”

They walked up to Cartman. He didn’t seem to notice them until Kyle said, “Hey, fatass, what are you doing here?”

“Be quiet, Jew, I’m looking for a CD,” was his only response.

Stan and Kyle glanced at each other. “What CD?” asked Stan.

“Some CD by a band called One Direction or some shit like that.” Cartman kept looking through the O section, sighing, and then looking through the CDs again.

“What the hell’s One Direction?” asked Kyle.

“Isn’t that the British boy band with the kids who won the X Factor or something?” said Stan. “Simon Cowell’s their manager, I think.”

Kyle looked at him with an are you serious you actually know this shit sort of expression, and even Cartman turned around to stare at him. Stan felt embarrassed.

“I don’t listen to them! Shelley’s obsessed with them!”

“Right, Stan,” said Cartman, going back to his rifling through the CDs. “And I’m a giant orange llama wearing Fidel Castro’s boots.”

“It’s true!” Stan insisted, but apparently Kyle and Cartman were not convinced of his non-fagginess.

“So, Cartman,” said Kyle, “why exactly are you looking for a CD by some gay British boy band that ‘Stan’s sister is obsessed with’?”

“Because, Kyle, unlike you I actually have a heart and soul and I was going to get a CD for W—”

And then he stopped. Kyle and Stan looked confused.

“For what?” said Kyle.

“Nothing,” said Cartman quickly, rifling through the CDs a bit faster.

“No, Cartman, tell me! What are you getting the CD for?”

“It’s none of your business, Jew!” said Cartman. “Jesus Christ, you can’t ever let people have what they want, can you? First you kill Jesus, then you caused 9/11, and now you’re demanding to know every little second of my life!”

“That’s because you actually don’t have a heart and soul and you could be plotting something evil! And I was not the one who killed Jesus and I already said I was sorry in sixth grade, and—”

“Let it go, dude, it’s not like it matters,” said Stan, resting a hand on Kyle’s shoulder as Kyle seethed. “Like, what could Cartman possibly do with a boy band CD anyways?”

“Thank you, Stan,” said Cartman, and then paused and considered Stan for a moment. “Hold on, can I talk to you privately for a moment?”

“Why do you want to talk to him privately?” asked Kyle.

“Keep your Jew nose out of this,” Cartman sneered, then turned to Stan again. “Can we go talk?”

Stan folded his arms. “Apologize to Kyle first.”

Cartman looked as if Stan had just asked him to leap across Mount Everest five times while carrying William Howard Taft’s bathtub on his back. “What?” he exclaimed.

“Apologize to Kyle.”

“But—”

“You were being an asshole and you know it.”

“But—”

“And remember what I told you about our promise?” Stan hated bringing it up in front of Kyle when Kyle was there, but Stan had to remind Cartman that he’d insulted the guy that he liked. Though he would have wanted Cartman to apologize even if he only liked Kyle in a platonic way, Cartman knowing his feelings about Kyle seemed to work as a tool on him.

Cartman grudgingly turned to Kyle, glanced up, but didn’t seem to be able to meet his eye. “S—” he started, and then tried again. “S— Sor— S—”

“Good enough,” said Stan.

Kyle looked awestruck. “How did you get him to do that?”

“Long story,” Stan replied. “Okay, Cartman, we can go talk privately now.”

“Tell me whatever he tells you!” Kyle called after him, and Stan nodded, knowing that if it had anything to do with his and Cartman’s deal, he wouldn’t.

“What is it?” he asked Cartman once they were out of earshot from Kyle.

“It’s about the girl I wanted to blow up Israel for.” Cartman fidgeted.

Stan nodded. “Yeah?”

“It’s the ho.”

“What—oh.”

Stan stared.

“You’re serious?”

“Yeah.”

“You really like Wendy?’

“Yeah.”

“Wendy?”

“Yes, goddammit!” said Cartman. “And then yesterday when I went to the bathroom to take a brown, I heard her talking to her friends going on about how much she loves some faggy band called One Direction except she doesn’t have any money and her parents won’t let her borrow so she can buy an album and she said she really wanted their album so I was going to buy one for her, and—” he broke off and sighed.

Stan gave him a look. “And you don’t have any money either?”

“I spent it all on my iPhone apps! Look, they’re all kickass.” Cartman took out his phone and waved it in Stan’s face.

“So you’re trying to get Wendy something that you obviously can’t buy, and that’s why you’ve been needing money,” said Stan.

“And I was hoping that I could borrow some from you.”

“What?”

“Pleeeeeeease?” said Cartman, kneeling down to a begging stance. “Please please please please please? I swear to god I’ll pay you back, Stan, I swear it—”

“You won’t,” said Stan, taking out his wallet. “But I’ll lend you the money anyways.”

“Yes! Oh Stan, I love you!” Cartman nearly took to crying as he hugged Stan for his generosity. “I love you Stan! I take back any moment I said that I hated you! I love you!”

“No, you don’t,” said Stan, but Cartman didn’t bother to listen; he kissed the twenty dollar bill and ran back to the pop CD O section to get the album he was going to buy for Wendy.

“What did he want?” Kyle asked as Stan walked back.

Stan shrugged. “Money.” It was pretty close to the truth. And he felt that he shouldn’t tell Kyle about Cartman liking Wendy because it still pertained to the exchange of Cartman not telling Kyle that Stan liked him.

“Oh, yeah.” Kyle rolled his eyes. “That’s predictable.”

They went back out without Cartman, who had gone over to the sales desk gleefully to buy the One Direction CD for Wendy, ignoring the odd look that the cashier was giving him. Stan and Kyle were getting hungry, so they wandered over to the food court and saw Butters, sitting by himself.

“Hiya fellas!” he said when Kyle and Stan walked over to him.

“What are you doing here, Butters?” Kyle asked.

“Oh, I’m—I’m just hangin’ out with Kenny. He went off to get us some drinks.” Butters gave them a cheerful grin.

Stan and Kyle exchanged a look of raised eyebrows. “Is he now?” said Kyle.

“Yep!” said Butters. “I-I didn’t really think Kenny paid a whole lotta attention to me before, but he said that he always did! Kinda funny that I didn’t notice till now, huh?”

“Yeah,” said Stan. “Real funny. Say Butters, you don’t mind hanging out with Kenny, do you?”

“What? Of course not! Kenny’s a really nice guy, I just thought he hung out with you two an’ Eric more,” said Butters. “But he’s really nice to me and he’s really funny and likes tickling me a lot!” He giggled, as if Kenny had just tickled him at that moment.

“Riiiight,” said Kyle. “Well that’s good, as long as you’re okay with it.”

Butters looked confused. “What do you mean?” but before Stan or Kyle could answer to possibly warn him about Kenny’s coming-ons, Kenny himself had come with two sodas in his hand, and a pile of napkins.

“Oh, hi guys,” he said to Stan and Kyle as he sat down. “You come here with Cartman?”

“No, we’re on a bro-date,” Stan joked. “Though we did see him earlier.”

“In FYE,” added Kyle. “Apparently he was buying a CD buy some boy band named One Direction. Can you believe that?”

“Oh, I listen to One Direction!” said Butters brightly. “Liam’s my favorite!”

Stan snorted. Kyle muttered to him, “At least he’s not in denial like you are.”

“I don’t listen to gay British boy bands!” Stan said defensively, but Kyle just said, “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” and Kenny watched their banter, amused.

“You guys don’t mind if we sit here with you, do you?” said Stan. “Unless,” he added, and raised a suggestive eyebrow to Kenny.

But Butters, who didn’t notice, said, “Sure, fellas, go ahead and sit with us!” Stan and Kyle took their seats; Kenny rolled his eyes but didn’t seem annoyed.

“I’ll go get the food,” Stan said to Kyle. “Chick-Fil-A, right?”

“With mustard,” said Kyle, and Stan nodded, though he probably would get it with mustard for Kyle even if he didn’t say anything.

As Stan started to walk off, Kenny considered something and then said, “Butters, go help Stan order.”

“Aw, I’m sure Stan will be able to order food by himself,” said Butters, eating his teriyaki chicken.

“He’s dyslexic.”

“Really? Oh gee, I better help him then!”

Butters ran off, and Kyle chuckled. “Having fun with him, are you?”

“Yeah, yeah, I am. I wanted to get you alone, too,” said Kenny. “Dude, are you ever going to tell Stan? I mean, seriously. He’s already treating you like a girlfriend, wanting to order and pay for your food and shit—you just have to tell him that you actually want to be his girlfriend and then voila, instant happiness for everyone!”

“Not for him, since I’m not a girl and he probably wants a girlfriend, not a boyfriend,” said Kyle pointedly. “And just because he’s paying for me doesn’t mean I’m like his girlfriend. Butters probably paid for your meal.”

“Yeah, but that’s because I’m poor.” Kenny pulled out his empty parka pockets to prove it. “Seriously, dude, do you see the way you moon over him? And have you seen how he moons over you too? I wouldn’t be surprised if he has the hots for you, actually, all you gotta do is confess and he will too—”

“I am not going to—” Kyle started, but was interrupted when Stan came back with a Chick-Fil-A tray without Butters and said, “There weren’t any chicken strips, so I got you a sandwich instead.”

“With the buttermilk ranch sauce. Thanks.” Kyle started on his sandwich as Stan drank his Coke.

“Stan, what did you do with my future boyfriend?” asked Kenny.

“Left him by the ordering menu. He was trying to convince me that I was dyslexic and couldn’t read, so I managed to convince him that he was dyslexic and that ‘chicken tenders’ actually read as ‘salads.’”

“Nice one,” said Kyle, chuckling, but Kenny glared at him and got up from the table.

“You shouldn’t take advantage of Butters like that, dude,” he said, before leaving to go bring Butters back.

Stan looked bewildered, but Kyle assured him, “Don’t worry about it, he did the same thing and got Butters to leave by telling him that you were dyslexic.”

“Oh,” said Stan, like it all made sense. “Okay. Why was he trying to get Butters to leave?”

Kyle bent his head down to take another bite of his sandwich and so that Stan wouldn’t see his reddened cheeks. “No reason.”

Chapter Seven: Hello Kitty and Brown

Kenny’s house wasn’t exactly the ideal place to hang out, so after he and Butters had hung spent more time together over the week, he ended up going home with him. Fortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Stotch didn’t seem to suspect any ulterior motives of Kenny, even though he was sure that his reputation as being a slut had gone around to the adults too. Then again, it wasn’t like the adults in their town really cared about the teenagers’ lives.

He would have invited Butters over to his house if conditions were different, but they weren’t and his mom and dad could often be found brawling around this time of night. His parents loved each other, Kenny and his siblings knew, they just had emotional issues when they were drunk. When they were sober and/or hung-over (there were the rare times when they were sober and not hung-over), they were perfectly friendly to one another and pretty much everyone else in the whole world. But, you know, they were Kenny’s parents, and as Kenny’s parents, it was almost expected for them to drink all the time.

“Sorry for intruding,” said Kenny as he took off his shoes and stepped into Butters’s room.

Butters didn’t seem to mind at all. “It’s fine!” he said happily. “I’m happy you wanted to come to my house!” Kenny had been the one to suggest it today in school, after all, accompanied with the words, “If my house wasn’t a shithole, I’d invite you there instead.”

“Yeah, well, any house is better than my house. Just kidding,” Kenny added when he saw the worried look on Butters’s face.

“Y-You sure about that?” said Butters. “I don’t know much about your family or nothin’, Ken, but if you ever need a place to stay—”

“It’s cool,” said Kenny, though wishing he hadn’t said that the moment he did. It would actually be pretty fun staying over at Butters’s house. It was sort of like babysitting, except the baby was your age and you sort of lusted fo him. Then Kenny felt like a pedophile using the babysitter analogy, so he quickly waved it away.

“So whaddya wanna do?” asked Butters, looking around his room. “I have, um, Hello Kitty Adventure on my computer! A-And I Spy! Or we could play a board game, or cards or somethin’! Sorry I don’t have cool video games like Stan an’ Kyle do, my parents say they’re bad for me.” Butters looked apologetic at this.

“Oh, don’t worry about it, everyone’s special,” said Kenny. “And I don’t care, what do you want to do? I’ll do whatever you tell me.” He smiled.

Butters blushed, suddenly overwhelmed by being put into such a position of control. “Oh, I dunno, we can play—Hello Kitty Adventure?” His suggestion sort of drifted off, as if he were embarrassed by saying such a thing.

It was cute. Kenny’s smile grew wider. “Okay, let’s do it.”

Butters hollered down to his parents that he and Kenny were going to use the computer (which Kenny thought was ridiculous, because Butters was eighteen already, he didn’t need his parents’ permission to use the family computer! He should have a computer of his own, actually, Kenny thought to himself) and then led the two of them into the study room. Kenny watched with some sort of fascination as Butters told him how to play, though the game wasn’t very interesting, only cute, like Butters.

“And then you try an’ get My Melody across the bridge before Badtz Maru can get her!” said Butters, configuring the keyboard controls so that the little cartoon bunny whose name Kenny presumed was My Melody hopped across the bridge. “There!” said Butters happily. “Now you try!”

Kenny tapped the arrow key a few times and got the little bunny across. Butters beamed.

“You got it!” he said. “Now, the next level is the pond level, with Kerropi the frog...”

He showed Kenny how to hop on lily pads with some cartoon frog, and then how to dive under fences with some cartoon dog. It all seemed very entertaining to Butters, as he laughed and giggled at all the right parts you were supposed to during the game plotline, and Kenny had to wonder, Is he really in my grade?

Then Butters sat down next to him, because the office chair was big enough to hold the two of them (both were relatively scrawny) and Kenny remembered that yes, Butters was in his grade. Butters had grown quite a bit over the years, though he never lost that little boy aura that he always had. But his legs were longer and his body was warmer and he was, indeed, a teenage boy, even if he had the personality of a ten-year old.

As Butters controlled some little cartoon mole through a garden, Kenny’s eyes drifted down, and he put his hand on Butters’s thigh. Butters didn’t seem to notice, until Kenny was stroking his thigh, hoping to earn some reaction.

“Oh!” said Butters, and Kenny got the reaction that he wanted. “W-What are you doin’, Kenny?” His face was slowly turning pink.

Kenny grinned. “Nothing, don’t worry about it,” he said innocently. “What are we doing with that cat?” He nodded toward the computer screen.

“Oh, this cat is Mimi, Hello Kitty’s twin sister,” said Butters, moving the cartoon cat with the arrow keys. “We want to put her in the living room...”

Butters went on, and Kenny continued stroking his thigh. Kenny decided to tease him a little more by slipping his hand to the inner part, between his legs. As he slowly moved up, Butters stopped with his computer game explaining, and said,

“K-Kenny, what’re you doing?” He said ‘what’re’ so quickly that it sounded like ‘water.’

“Nothing,” Kenny said again. “Really, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Continue on.” His hand was sliding farther and farther up. “What are we doing with that mouse?”

“Mouse?” Butters lifted up the computer mouse.

Kenny used his free hand to point to the computer screen. “That mouse,” he said, pointing to the cartoon one.

“O-Oh right! Well he wants to play sports with Mimi, so—”

Kenny’s hand moved a bit too far and his fingertips lightly touched the vee of Butters’s pants, making Butters jump and leap out of the seat. He looked at Kenny, wide-eyed, and Kenny felt a little disappointed that he couldn’t go on.

“You know, Ken,” said Butters, “I-I don’t like falsely accusin’ or anything, b-but I’m startin’ to think that you don’t want to play Hello Kitty Adventure anymore.”

“Sorry,” said Kenny apologetically, conveniently leaving out saying, it’s because I want to do naughty things with you. “I guess I was just getting bored. Is there anything else we can do?”

“Well you shoulda told me that earlier!” said Butters. “Yeah, there’s something we can do. You wanna help me play Words with Friends?”

“Sure,” said Kenny, and Butters opened up the page to his Facebook.

Kenny had played Words with Friends before on his own Facebook account, but the words he usually made were like “sex” or “penis” or “pussy” or “boobies.” Usually his opponents got fed up with his immaturity and refused to continue their game with him, because somehow he always found some way to incorporate a dirty word every time it was his turn. Watching someone else play, though, was something he had never done before, and he really didn’t know what to expect out of Butters.

But apparently Butters was better than he led on, because Kenny watched him play against Clyde, using words like “quixotic” and “enigmatic” and “raconteur.” Kenny didn’t even know what the fuck those words meant, and he didn’t even know Butters knew them. Ten moves in, Butters had already reached a score that Clyde couldn’t even hope to get, and shortly after the game was over and he’d won.

“Yay!” said Butters happily, doing a little dance and spinning in his chair. “I win! I win!”

“You did win,” said Kenny, staring at the screen which read Butters: 527 Clyde: 48. Then he looked at Butters and grinned. “I guess this means you get a prize then.”

“A prize? I get a prize?” said Butters, eyes wide. “Oh geez, I’ve never gotten a prize for winning Words with Friends before!”

“It’s a special prize from me,” said Kenny, grinning. “It’s the Kenny McCormick prize.”

He didn’t think Butters was ready for kissing yet and didn’t want to scar the poor kid for life (especially if his breath stank), so he just settled with a simple hug as Butters’s prize, as much as it pained him to do something so tame. But Butters seemed happy by this, so Kenny decided that he could be happy with it too.

~

A few hours later found him walking home from Butters’s house, at around 9:30 in the evening. He’d been unceremoniously kicked out when 9:00 rolled around, which was apparently Butters’s bedtime, no exceptions (even though he was eighteen!) and Butters even said that he had to abide to his parents’ rules but that he was really sorry that Kenny couldn’t stay over for any longer. Kenny knew that it wasn’t anyone’s fault and that Butters’s bedtime was just protocol, but still.

He walked around the streets, kicking pebbles and not quite feeling up to going home yet. Spending so much time with Butters had made him horny, which was odd because there wasn’t anything sexy about Butters, really, and he had been the one teasing Butters, not the other way around. But Kenny was suddenly just itching to masturbate, so despite being out in public, he found a nearby alleyway and did what he had to do with class. He couldn’t even think about girls or titties or Chef’s porn because he had just come back from spending so much time with Butters.

Kenny walked back out and made his way down the street, passing Shakey’s Pizza. It occured to him suddenly that he hadn’t had dinner; Butters had offered him some earlier but at that time he hadn’t been hungry. But now he was, and he scoped out to the dumpster to see if there was any free food he could nick for a little bite.

As his eyes passed over the window of the restaurant, though, he caught sight of Cartman sitting at a booth by himself, looking angry about something. Kenny furrowed his eyebrows and frowned. What was Cartman doing here all alone? Usually he went with some unwilling friends, or a business client or something, or even his mom. It wasn’t often when you found Cartman alone. Though he was with food, and Kenny wouldn’t be surprised if Cartman considered food his friends.

He entered the restaurant and strolled over to Cartman’s table. “Hey,” he said, sitting across from him.

Cartman glanced up from what appeared to be a clipboard and said, “I’m not sharin’ anything with you.”

“Well, we can’t always get what we want,” said Kenny cheerfully, and then stole a piece of Cartman’s large pizza pie. Cartman looked like he was about to try to stop Kenny, but Kenny had devoured it all in two bites without any interruption.

He licked the tomato sauce off his fingers, surprised. A Cartman not trying to protect his food was not a normal Cartman. Something was up. “What’s with you?” he said.

“Nothing. Everything’s just so damn expensive,” Cartman grumbled. Kenny leaned in a little bit closer—it seemed like Cartman was looking through a women’s catalog and was calculating a bunch of prices.

“What’re you doing that for?” he asked.

“I’m trying to see how much all of this would cost if I used all of my money, all of my mom’s coupons and the most amount of money I can find from her,” Mrs. Cartman had started hiding her wallet after an incident in ninth grade when Cartman had stolen it and then it accidentally gotten lit on fire by some fire-breathing Arabians, “donated my kidney and pretended to be old for special benefits, and then got all of my limbs amputated so they’ll feel sorry for me and charge even less.” Cartman sighed. “And it’s still too goddamn expensive!”

“What is?”

“This gay necklace thing.”

Cartman held up the catalog. Kenny inched closer to see it clearly. The necklace was extravagant, and Kenny, though not a chick, would say that it was pretty.

“And why are you getting that gay necklace thing?” he asked.

“Because I am, okay? Now shut the hell up and let me do my work!”

Cartman resumed scribbling on his paper again and punched in numbers on his calculator, and Kenny watched him as he stole some more of Cartman’s pizza. He got away with the second one, but as he picked up the third one, Cartman said, “Don’t even think about putting that in your mouth unless you want to wake up with AIDS.”

“Okay, okay, calm your tits,” said Kenny, putting the slice down.

“My tits are fucking calm! I’m just trying to figure out how much money this fucking thing is so I can get it and make everyone fucking happy because apparently one fucking gift isn’t enough ‘cause only one gift means you didn’t put enough fucking thought into it and who the fuck cares ARGH!”

Cartman buried his head in his arms. Kenny stared at him.

“Man,” he said. “You are worse than when Kyle bitches about St—”

He froze and didn’t let himself say anymore. But Cartman had heard it all and looked up and said, “When Kyle bitches about what?”

“Nothing!” said Kenny, but what he had been about to say was not getting past Cartman.

“He bitches about something, doesn’t he? Tell me what he bitches about!” Cartman leaned across the table, and then his eyes widened suddenly in realization. “Wait, you weren’t about to say that he bitches about Stan, were you?”

“No!” Kenny denied again, but Cartman’s mind was set. He had figured it out.

“Those fags,” he whispered to himself. “Those fucking retarded fags.”

“What?” said Kenny, suddenly confused.

Cartman looked at him. “You just said that Kyle bitches about Stan. What exactly does the fag bitch about?”

Kenny sighed; it was too late to try to take anything back. “Yeah,” he said. “He always talks about how much he likes Stan and how hopeless he is and how he’s never gonna tell Stan and everything. It’s so gay.”

“But Stan likes him back,” said Cartman.

Kenny could feel his eyeballs popping out of his skull. “Really?” he said. “You’re not fucking with me here? Stan actually likes Kyle?”

“Yeah! He told me a few weeks ago!” said Cartman excitedly. “He was saying how he liked Kyle the same way I like that hippie-bitch!” Kenny was too amazed at the prospect of Stan liking Kyle back that he didn’t even blink an eyelash when Cartman admitted this. “Jesus Christ, those two fags are hopeless!”

“They are,” said Kenny thoughtfully. “What do you think we should do about it?”

An evil grin formed on Cartman’s face. “We should never let them know,” he said with the air of someone plotting murder. “We should never let those find out. But we should always tease them about it, saying things like, ‘Oh Stan, don’t you think Kyle looks gay today?’ or ‘Oh Kyle, don’t you just want to touch Stan’s luscious hair?’, waving it in their faces like they’re little puppies and what we know is a dog treat is a dog treat that we’re never gonna let them have so they can starve—”

“Oh shut up, Cartman, don’t be such a dick,” said Kenny, and Cartman stopped. Kenny mulled over the thought, taking another pizza slice since Cartman’s focus was more on the Stan and Kyle predicament. “I think we should tell them that they like each other,” he said. “And try to get them together.”

Cartman scowled as his dream of torturing Kyle and Stan forever fell flat. “But that’s no fun.”

“Dude, that’s because your idea of fun is inflicting pain on Kyle.”

“Inflicting pain on Kyle is fun!”

Kenny rolled his eyes, but didn’t bother to jump to Kyle’s defense as that was usually Stan’s job. He continued thinking about it, how he expected himself to be less surprised than he currently was, because he’d actually never really considered Stan liking Kyle back before. It really wasn’t his problem, but knowing that his two close friends of several years had faggy little crushes on each other was a hard thing to comprehend.

Cartman put his pencil down, yawned, and then said, “I gotta go take a brown now. Don’t steal any of my pizza while I’m gone.”

“I won’t,” Kenny lied, deciding to let his thoughts go. “And what the fuck’s ‘taking a brown’?”

“It’s what I’m saying instead of ‘take a shit’, or ‘shitting,’” explained Cartman. “I feel that it’s more mature.”

“And since when do you care that you’re mature?”

“Shut the fuck up, I didn’t ask for your opinion.” He hopped out of the booth.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with you liking Wendy, does it?”

“I don’t like that ho!”

“You just admitted it to me five minutes ago.”

“Well you heard me wrong!” Cartman stormed off to go to the bathroom.

“And ‘brown’ isn’t any more mature than saying ‘taking a shit’!” Kenny called after him.

Chapter Eight: Sex Is Better With Ketchup

“Ugh,” said Kyle, dragging his stuff into Stan’s room. “This place stinks.”

“Oh, shut up, you’re used to it,” said Stan, following him inside.

Kyle was to sleep over at his house tonight, mostly because it was a Friday and neither of their parents had any reason to say no. Their sleepovers were usually frequent, of course, though it had been a while since they had last had one, and Stan had mostly been holding out on asking him over due to any awkwardness that would ensue inside of him. But it had been a while. Besides, Kyle had invited himself over today, it wasn’t like he’d actually asked him. So it wasn’t awkward at all. No. No way. Well, it was never awkward, so why should it be awkward now?

Stan tried to reassure him of this as Kyle took his usual place on the ground next to Stan’s bed.

“Man, it sucks that we aren’t small anymore. Then I wouldn’t have to sleep on this cold, hard ground,” he joked.

“Yeah, you’d share the bed with me instead.” Stan rolled his eyes, though his insides definitely did jump when he said this. “I guess technically you still could, since we’d probably fit.”

“I doubt it.” Kyle glanced dubiously over at the twin bed, which was nearly as old as them.

“You sure about that? Let’s try it.”

Stan climbed into his bed and then patted next to him for Kyle to sit. “C’mon dude,” he said. “It’s not like we’re lying down or anything.”

“Oh—Oh right.” Kyle walked over to him and sat down. They fit snugly side by side, though when Stan stretched his left leg to the side his foot banged horribly against the headboard.

“Yeah that’s not gonna work if we sit like this,” he said. “Let’s face the other way!”

“Won’t that be kind of gay?” said Kyle, starting to get up (though secretly, of course, he didn’t mind at all.)

“It’s only gay if you make it gay,” said Stan, grinning and tugging him back down. He turned around so that his back was against the headboard now and his legs were stretched out and only mere inches away from the edge of the bed. Kyle sighed and put himself in a similar position. Their legs were warm against each other.

“Okay, yeah, this is really gay,” said Kyle, quickly getting back off.

Stan felt a little bit hurt. Did Kyle not want to sit next to him? “Don’t be a dick, dude,” he said, though without any rancor nor amusement in his voice.

“I’m not,” Kyle said quickly. “It’s just—yeah. Want to help me get my stuff out?” he said, changing the subject.

Stan assisted him with rolling out his sleeping bag, which Kyle had done so well and that Stan had always been jealous of. He could never roll his own sleeping bags. Every time he went on camping trips with his family, he would always get Kyle over to roll up his sleeping bag for him. Kyle often called him a hopeless case, which Stan had to admit that he was.

“So,” said Stan when they were done, sitting on Kyle’s green sleeping bag (he had grown out of his Terrance and Phillip one). “Let’s go downstairs and play video games.”

“We can if you get your fat ass off so I can put my pillow down,” said Kyle.

Stan snatched his pillow from him and hugged it. “No,” he said. “This is my pillow now.” He instinctively buried his face in it and smelled it. It smelled like Kyle’s hair.

Kyle rolled his eyes and gave him a look. “Stop being so petulant and give it to me.”

“Ooh, all high and mighty now that we’re using big words?” Stan gave it back.

“‘Petulant’ is not a big word.”

“Sorry not everyone can have the same level of intelligence as you.”

“That’s right,” Kyle said smugly as Stan got up and they made their way out of his room. “That’s because I’m smart and everyone else is a dumbass.”

“Glad you think so highly of yourself.”

“Higher than you, of course.”

Kyle glanced at Stan as they walked into the living room and Stan looked at Kyle, and suddenly they dove at each other and started wrestling, falling to the floor. Kyle was laughing as Stan attempted to shove him down, but Kyle managed to get up and trap Stan into a headlock and wouldn’t let go.

“Say Uncle!” said Kyle victoriously. “Say Uncle!”

“Never!” Stan wheezed.

One of his hands touched the small of Kyle’s back and he squealed and leapt off of Stan immediately. Stan fell down behind him and started tickling Kyle’s feet, and as Kyle giggled, he made his way up to tickle Kyle’s legs and back too.

“Not... fair... ahaha... aaa,” Kyle gasped between his chokes of laughter. “I’m... ticklish... and you’re... not... Fair...”

“No, it’s not,” said Stan, grinning and ultimately winning their wrestling/tickling match.

He let Kyle go, though, and then turned on his GameTetrahedron. They hopped onto the couch with game controllers in their hands, and Kyle reached over and wiggled his fingertips on Stan’s neck. Stan looked at him funnily.

“What are you doing?” he said.

Kyle looked embarrassed and his cheeks reddened. “Nothing,” he said quickly, retracting his hand. “Just seeing if your lack of ticklishness has changed.”

“It will never change,” said Stan, grinning, and Kyle kicked him in a measly attempt to get him to fall off the couch.

They played a racing game for a little, which was dumb, and then Tiger Woods PGA Tour 27, because Tiger Woods had recently been caught in another scandal and the goal was to make it through Tiger Woods’s life without encountering crazy men claiming that he had an affair with them. After that, Stan got bored and asked Kyle if he wanted to play Guitar Hero, but Kyle made a face and shook his head.

“Ew,” he said. “Nah. Bad memories.”

“But we beat the game.” Stan looked at the disc fondly. “How about for old times’ sake?”

“Stan, never say that phrase again, and no,” said Kyle. He threw down his controller. “I’m bored. Let’s play something more fun.”

“We can throw ketchup-filled condoms at cars?” (Kenny had taught them that game.)

“Good idea.”

They went into the kitchen where Mrs. Marsh was and took the ketchup, saying that they needed it for an “experiment”, and Mrs. Marsh, trusting Kyle more than she did Stan, wasn’t suspicious at all. Then they stuck into Stan’s parents’ bedroom to try to find the condoms.

“Dude, it’s so gross thinking that my parents have sex,” said Stan, crinkling his nose. “That they have condoms.”

“Sex is technically more pleasurable without condoms,” said Kyle, rifling through Mr. Marsh’s underwear drawer.

“Do I want to know how you know that?” asked Stan.

Kyle turned red, though the lights in the room weren’t on (so they wouldn’t rouse suspicion) so Stan didn’t see him. “I learned it in health in ninth grade,” he said. “You should have been paying attention.”

“Oh, yeah. I was probably asleep, wasn’t I?” said Stan thoughtfully. “And we learned about it back in elementary school, though I can’t remember anything from that... All I remember is that I did something stupid to make my dick hurt a lot.”

“I think that was when we put condoms on for the first time,” said Kyle. “And the chicks were being pussies about everything because they were scared that we could give them an STD.”

“That would make sense.”

“Nothing makes sense around here, though.”

“You have a point.”

They found the condoms that they washed thoroughly even though they were unused (but both were still very disturbed that they were Mr. and Mrs. Marsh’s), then went outside with the package of condoms and ketchup, and to the ledge that overlooked passing cars.

As they filled the condoms with the ketchup, Stan said, “So did you know that Kenny’s hanging out with Butters tonight?”

“Yeah,” said Kyle, working on pouring ketchup into his condom. “I wonder if he’s gonna have sex with him soon.”

“Maybe,” said Stan. “I don’t know. I mean, even though he’s a horndog all the time, he’s got to have some feelings, right? Remember how he got all angry at me at the mall?”

“Well yeah, that’s true. Then again, that was a pretty dick move.”

“You would have done the same thing.”

“I would.”

They both tied their condoms shut like they were balloons, and as two cars passed by, they dropped the condoms on their windshields. One of the condoms splattered and the driver shrieked and swerved to the side, but the other just bounced off (though they did hear that driver cursing at them.)

“Man,” said Stan. “I can’t make a ketchup-filled-condom like you can.”

“That’s because I work with precision and know the exact amount of ketchup to make it fall and explode the moment it lands.”

“Really?” said Stan.

Kyle snorted. “No. You just suck ass at this. I’ll make the bombs, you can throw them down.”

They worked like this for a while, earning some amusing reactions like when a bear came out of nowhere and mauled one of the cars that had been hit with ketchup (luckily the driver had been a Visitor, so it wasn’t like he could die), or when another actually pulled over to the side of the road and started screaming at them. He was old and could barely speak though, so all they saw was a tiny bald little man flailing around and making angry gestures at them.

“Hey look, there’s some idiot walking over there,” said Stan, peering over the ledge. A guy was indeed strolling along the side of the barren road in the cold spring air, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

“Let’s see if I can hit him!” said Kyle, tying up a condom shut, and then aiming and firing.

He hit the guy in the face. The man hollered, “You damn teenagers!” to them, but Stan and Kyle barely cared at all.

“Yes!” said Kyle, falling back onto the snowy ground and laughing.

“Ten points to Gryffindor!” said Stan, laughing as well.

“Dude,” said Kyle, getting back up. “This never gets old. How long’ve we been outside?”

Stan checked his cellphone. “About a half an hour,” he answered, closing and pocketing it. “How much ketchup do we have left?” He knew that if they ran out of condoms, they could always just run to the convenience store for more, though it’d look a little gay if they went in together. But they didn’t need to worry about his parents wondering, because Stan was pretty sure they had another secret stash elsewhere that he’d prefer not to know about.

Kyle shook the ketchup bottle. “There’s some left. Wanna go back to your house? I think your parents might get worried if we’re out too long.”

“My parents won’t care,” said Stan, rolling his eyes, but said, “But okay. Just one more, okay?”

He took a condom from the condom case, and the ketchup bottle from him and started filling it up. “This time, mine isn’t going to be retarded,” he said.

“Like that’ll happen,” said Kyle sarcastically, watching him. Stan poured ketchup nearly to the brim, tied it, weighed it carefully, and then dubiously held it over the cliff edge.

“I swear, this one’s gonna work,” he said, though his voice suggested some hesitance.

“Stan, I’m doubting your skill as a condom tier.”

“Dude, I’m positive it will.”

“Oh, a Harley rider’s coming!” said Kyle excitedly, looking down the road. “Drop it on him! This guy actually deserves it.”

Stan waited until the Harley rider was only a few meters away from the cliff edge, his ketchup-filled-condom dangling precariously from his hand, then—splat! The condom landed straight on his bald head and ketchup sprayed everywhere. Stan and Kyle watched with awed amusement as the rider pulled over to the side, swore, and then looked up to see their grinning faces.

“Fuck you!” he said, throwing both his middle fingers up at them.

“Fuck you too!” they called back, showing their own middle fingers. “FAG!”

The Harley rider continued swearing at them, but Kyle decided that they had enough fun with him already. “C’mon dude, let’s go,” he said to Stan, who had started making faces at the motorcyclist just to earn even angrier reactions.

“What?—Oh, okay,” he said, bringing his fingers from pulling on his eyelids and following Kyle back into town.

“You’re so immature,” said Kyle.

“Well I could have pulled down my pants and showed him my ass, but I wasn’t feeling like Cartman today. Or Kenny,” Stan added thoughtfully.

Back at Stan’s house, they played more video games, but after a while Kyle said that he was starting to get tired so Stan relented, though he wasn’t a bit tired at all. The things he did for him.

“I swear, you need to stay up more and be less of a wuss,” he said as Kyle came out of the bathroom while brushing his teeth. Kyle tossed his jacket off and tossed it on top of his sleeping bag, and then shoved Stan onto his back on his bed.

“I stay up plenty of times,” he said through his mouthful of toothpaste.

“Yeah,” snorted Stan. “Studying.”

“I’m Jewish, I can’t help it,” said Kyle, before trudging back to the bathroom. Stan heard him spit in the sink, and then wash his mouth with one of Stan’s cups, though it was the cup that Stan rarely used because Kyle always used it every time he came over. Technically, Stan supposed, the cup could be called Kyle’s.

Stan brushed his teeth afterwards then went over to turn out the light when he saw Kyle all fit and snug into his sleeping bag. He looked kinda cute like that, with his frizzy red hair started to poof a little bit after being let out for so long, and only half of Kyle’s face peeking out because of the cold Colorado air. Kyle peeked out and gave him a funny look.

“What are you staring at?” he asked.

Stan quickly wiped his face of expression in case his staring might have looked a little bit too suspicious... or creepy. “Nothing. You’re just funny-looking,” he added, before shutting off the light.

“Ha-ha. And you’re clearly better looking than me,” said Kyle’s voice in the dark, deadpan.

“How would you know? You can’t see me right now.”

“And thank god for that,” said Kyle.

Stan dangled his leg off his bed and searched around to kick him. He felt himself kick some part of Kyle, and heard his best friend yelp. “Ow! That was my nose!”

“You’re Jewish, I can’t help it.” Stan smirked, even if only his ceiling could see it.

“Dick.”

“No you.”

“Then I’m a longer dick than you.”

“That means you’re a bigger one.”

“Yeah, but I’m still longer.”

“Well you are circumcised.”

“... that’s true.”

“Would you rather be a bigger dick, or not a dick at all?”

“You’re sounding like Kenny,” said Kyle.

“I’m just wondering!”

“Not a dick at all, then. Now, if you don’t mind, goodnight.”

Stan heard him roll over in his sleeping bag. “Goodnight, Kyle,” he whispered, feeling himself smile.

Chapter Nine: Making a Name of Cinnamon Buns and Dentists

The Stan and Kyle liking each other conundrum stayed on Kenny’s mind for the next couple of days. Anyone who would say that he didn’t care for his friends because of the way the four of them might seem clearly didn’t know him well. So yeah, Stan and Kyle were good friends and Kenny and Cartman did understand each other more than Stan or Kyle understood either of them, and yeah Kenny did care more about himself than he did for them. But he still valued their happiness. It’s one of those things you can’t help after you’ve been friends for so long.

It was an issue, both because he wanted Kyle to get over his bitching, and since he knew this, because he did want them to get together (though Cartman had said, “I don’t want to see those fags makin’ out and shit all the time,” which Kenny didn’t understand. He thought it’d be pretty hot, actually). The day after, he still couldn’t believe what Cartman had told him. It was always likely that Cartman had lied to him, right? Though he couldn’t imagine why he’d do that.

He brought in one of Chef’s pornos to school the next day, and in the one class he and Stan had together (English), he pulled it out and showed it to Stan.

“Aw, dude, not in here!” said Stan when he saw it, glancing away.

Kenny grinned. “Don’t worry, no one’s looking.” This was true, since their teacher was too busy ranting about how she was pretty sure her husband was cheating on her with another man, which was another way of saying that none of the other kids gave a flying fuck and were talking and doing whatever they wanted, too.

But: “Seriously, dude, this is school,” said Stan.

“Don’t be a pussy. Besides, Chef was the one who gave this to us, and only you and me can use it.” Kenny flipped open to a random page and felt himself get a little bit aroused, though not as aroused as when he thought about Butters nowadays. “Look! Tits and girls!”

Stan laughed and seemed to try to get himself interested, but after a few of Kenny’s attempts and his own forced chortles, Stan said, “Sorry dude. I guess I’m not really into tits and girls right now. Tell Chef I’m sorry that I’m so useless.” And then he chuckled.

That was when Kenny concluded that Cartman was right about Stan liking Kyle, because while Stan hadn’t been big on dating recently, he was pretty sure that any teenage boy who wasn’t into another teenage boy would have come at seeing the porn magazines Chef had given him. Kenny hadn’t only because he knew that there was something that he liked more than this porn, and he was pretty sure Stan was the same way now.

He couldn’t talk to Cartman in school about it because the Super Best Fags were always around them when they were together, and talking to Cartman privately would seem suspicious. Besides, it seemed like Cartman was still much too busy trying to buy that necklace, though Kenny didn’t know why or what for. He didn’t think he wanted to know that, though, so he didn’t ask.

These things were still on his mind when he stayed after school with Butters again today (Butters always offered for his parents to drive him home, but Kenny usually said that Stan was driving him or that he was walking. He wished he could accept Butters’s offer, but he’d seen the way Mr. and Mrs. Stotch had looked at him that one time when he’s gone over, and was pretty sure that they didn’t like the way he looked after that. At least, the way he smelled). When Butters’s dance practice was over and they were walking out of the school, talking and laughing with Kenny’s arm lightly strewn around his waist—Butters didn’t seem to think this odd at all—Butters asked him.

“Wanna come over again today, Kenny?”

He’d asked this all brightly and Kenny was sorely tempted to say yes, but after his first night at Butters’s house, he realized that Butters wasn’t one to care about others’ appearances, unlike his parents.

“No, it’s okay,” he told Butters. “Actually, I was going to ask if you wanted to come to my house today.”

“Y-Your house?” Butters’s eyes went wide at this. “Are you sure ‘bout this, Kenny? Didn’ you say that your house was all dumpy an-an’ stuff?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll not like it. I assumed that you wouldn’t because no one else likes my rat hole of a house, but since you never even came over, I don’t think I should assume that.” Besides, Butters was like a giant flower of optimism. He kept saying nice things whenever Kenny complained, like “look on the bright side” or “at least Eric’s real smart!” so it was dumb of him to have thought that Butters would have minded.

Even though the other guys usually avoided his house when they could. But Butters wasn’t one of those guys.

“Oh. Well all right then!” said Butters happily. “I’m glad you want me to come over, Kenny! I thought you just wouldn’t want me snooping around y-your stuff!”

“Nah, snoop through my stuff all you want,” said Kenny, waving his hand. “I don’t have anything to hide.”

So they walked to Kenny’s house, which was a good mile away from the school. Well, technically it would’ve been longer if they had taken the main road, but whenever Kenny walked home he usually cut through the forest, which didn’t take very long. Though he’d died a few times because of wild animals, but he just ended up waking back up in his bed, anyways. Sometimes he debated if after school he could just kill himself so he could get home faster, if Satan was in a good mood that day.

“Are—Aren’t there bears in this forest, Kenny?” asked Butters fearfully as he followed behind him.

“It’s okay, I’ll protect you,” Kenny assured him. They heard a branch snap and then Butters leapt up in fright, clinging to Kenny’s shoulder as if Kenny really could protect him. (He, amused, thought of when they were in superpower!mode, and Butters was an evil villain and Kenny was Mysterion. A superhero protecting a villain. It did sound pretty kinky.)

“W-What’s that?” asked Butters.

“Probably like, a squirrel or something,” said Kenny.

Butters relaxed. “Oh, okay,” he said, taking his hands off of Kenny. “I like squirrels! They’re cute!”

“Yeah.”

Kenny sort of missed having Butters touching him.

When they got to his house, Butters said, “Hey, this isn’t so bad! Where are your parents?” He looked around the living room.

“Mom’s probably grocery shopping, Dad’s probably out looking for a job since I heard them fighting about that last night.” Again. “Hey Karen,” Kenny said to his sister who was watching the broken television.

“Hi Kenny,” she said. “Kevin’s out at the auto shop and won’t be back till tonight. We gots the Poptarts though.”

“Cool. More dinner for us.”

Kenny led them upstairs. Butters asked, “You eat Poptarts for dinner?”

“Yeah,” said Kenny, turning to him, surprised. “I thought you knew. Doesn’t everyone else in town know?”

“Well I heard about it but I wasn’t so sure!” said Butters. “I thought they were just exaggeratin’ or-or whatever.”

“Nah, it’s okay. Poptarts are good.” Kenny pushed the door open to his bedroom. “They fill us up, too.”

“Aren’t they unhealthy?”

“Well yeah, but when you’re poor all you eat is unhealthy so it’s not like it makes a difference.”

Kenny chuckled to himself, but when he turned back around, he saw Butters rubbing his knuckles together and fidgeting nervously.

“I-I can get you some better food for you an’ your family to eat,” Butters said, not looking at him.

Again, Kenny was surprised. “It’s cool,” he said. “I don’t want to trouble you. The guys have offered before—actually, they haven’t,” he mused to himself, “but it’s not like we want it. We’re fine like this.”

“B-But Eric always says how you’re poor so you’re unhappy, and you don’t have a lot, an’ I was just thinkin’ that I can help you out of it so—so I should!”

Kenny laughed. “You’re hearing things from Cartman, Butters,” he said. “It’d be a lot better for my family if we had a little bit more money, but we’re not unhappy. And besides, this helps us toughen up.” Though he still wouldn’t say no to free stuff or on-hand money. But what he’d told Butters was true.

“Oh. Well. Okay.” Butters didn’t seem to know what to make of that.

He looked around Kenny’s room, as if inspecting it. He didn’t seem to mind the littered around trash or the grimy carpet or the walls with peeling paint. “What’s that?” he asked, walking over to Kenny’s bed and picking up a magazine. “Hey, why are there pictures of naked women in here?”

“That’s porn, Butters,” said Kenny, amused.

Butters dropped the magazine and jumped back as if burned. “M-My dad says that I’ll be grounded if I’m caught watchin’ porn.”

Kenny rolled his eyes. If Mr. Stotch were his dad, he didn’t know how he would live. “I’m not watching it, technically,” he said. “I’m reading it.”

Butters relaxed. “Well okay,” he said. “Reading is good for you, right? Though I dunno how you’d read pictures.” He glanced back at the magazine dubiously.

“It’s easy,” said Kenny, picking it up and sitting on his bed. He patted on the space next to him and Butters joined him. “You just stare at the pictures for a long time,” he said, leaning over to Butters so that his shoulder was touching the crook of Butters’s neck and collarbone.

Butters blushed pink, which was obvious against his pale skin. “Y-You’re a little too close to me, Kenny,” he muttered, his breath hitched at their proximity.

Kenny pretended not to hear him, and flipped the page to reveal a naked woman with huge boobs clutching her neck provocatively. “See?” he said. “Reading.”

“Th-This doesn’t feel like reading.” Butters was still extremely nervous at Kenny’s touchiness. “I-I mean, what’re you supposed to read?”

“Her face, her body, her legs,” said Kenny, his eyes still focused on the magazine as he became more aware of the parts of Butters he was pressed up against. Butters’s small thighs were warm, and his soft silky angel-blond hair was brushed up against Kenny’s cheek. Kenny suddenly noted how small Butters was—a bit taller than the average teenage girl, but only a bit.

“O-Oh. It doesn’t seem very interesting, though.”

Butters’s words snapped him back to reality. Kenny regained control of himself and pulled away from Butters before he could let his imagination run wild. This was fun and nice, yes, but he wasn’t too sure if Butters was enjoying this as much as he was. (If at all.) He needed to get more of Butters’s trust before he could make a move on him.

“That’s okay,” he said to Butters, closing the magazine and bending down to pull out Chef’s box that he kept under his bed. “I have more.”

“You have more of these?” said Butters. “Gosh, Kenny, is this all you read?”

“Yeah.” A thought suddenly struck Kenny. “Hey, Butters, you know what porn is, right?”

“Yeah!” said Butters. “It—It’s that stuff that you’re not supposed to watch, or look at, o-or—it’s just bad stuff!”

Clearly he didn’t. “Your parents just told you not to watch it, didn’t they?”

“Well you can only watch it, right?”

And clearly no one had ever explained to him what reading porn was. Oh well. That made things more fun.

He brought the box up onto his bed and started fingering through them, looking for the hottest ones to show Butters. “Oh, this one’s really fun to read,” he said, pulling out a copy of Making a Name of Cinnamon Buns and Dentists, to which he’d had one of the best orgasms ever. “And this on. Oh, and this—the back cover’s my favorite of this one.”

“Kenny,” said Butters, “these all have pictures of naked women in them!”

“Is there something wrong with naked women?” asked Kenny, raising an eyebrow at him.

Butters blushed and rubbed his knuckles together, as if afraid he’d said something wrong. “No! I-It,” he stammered. “Naked women make me feel all—all uncomfortable an’ stuff.”

Kenny pushed his box aside and leaned in closer to Butters. “A good uncomfortable?” he asked, tracing patterns on Butters’s pants. “Or a bad uncomfortable?”

“Y-You’re making me feel uncomfortable right now!” Even though he said this, Butters didn’t make any move to push him away and Kenny didn’t make any move to stop. “A-A bad uncomfortable I guess, since right now I’m uncomfortable ‘cause of you, b-but this one feels good!”

Kenny took his words nearly as a love confession, and inexplicably a smile spread across his face.

“Sorry,” he said, pulling back now. God, he was almost as bad as Kyle was with Stan.

“Kyle’s what with Stan?” said Butters.

Oops. He’d probably said that out loud.

“Oh,” said Kenny, starting to think up a lie, when he saw the innocent and oblivious look on Butters’s face. And then he reasoned that there was no way that Butters would think badly of them, or do anything stupid, because this was Butters. Cartman was a manipulative little shit and Kenny just wanted them to spill the beans, but Butters knowing wouldn’t affect anything. Besides, telling him a secret would give more reason for Butters to trust him.

“I probably shouldn’t be telling you this,” he started, but before he could go on Butters had covered his ears.

“If you shouldn’t tell me,” Butters said loudly, “then I shouldn’t listen! La la la la I can’t hear Kenny—”

Kenny laughed and took Butters’s hands off his ears. “No, it’s okay, you can listen,” he said. “It’s just that this is a secret so you shouldn’t tell anyone else, okay?” He put his finger to his lips.

“O-Okay.” Butters looked nervous. “Can you let go of my hands now, Kenny?”

“Oh!” He hadn’t noticed that he was still holding them. Suddenly feeling embarrassed himself, Kenny let go and self-consciously put his hands in his own lap.

“So what’s the secret?” Butters asked curiously.

“Oh, right,” said Kenny. “Well basically, Kyle has a gay little crush on Stan and Stan has a gay little crush on Kyle, but they don’t know and Cartman and I know.”

Butters widened his eyes. “Really? Why does Eric know?”

“Dunno, Stan told him for some reason or something.” Kenny shrugged. “So I want them to get them to tell each other—well, for Kyle to tell Stan, really, since Kyle’s more girly and he has to man up some time. Kyle’s never gonna tell, though.”

“Then they’ll never know?” Butters looked terrified of the aspect.

Kenny patted his back. “Don’t worry about it,” he said to Butters. “We’ll find a way to get them together. Eventually.”

~

The next day he and Cartman actually did have an opportunity to talk about it, since Kyle had gotten sick and stayed at home and Stan was moping around because he didn’t have his Super Best Fag around and didn’t pay a lot of attention to Kenny and Cartman. He mostly hung out on his own and looked like a part of him was missing, as if no one could ever possibly replace Kyle Broflovski. Which, to him, was probably true.

Stan had resorted to the library for lunch, which was a dumb resolution but there was nothing they could do about it. Kenny and Cartman were the only ones of their group at the lunch table, which probably wasn’t exactly the best situation considering that they still hated each other. Even though they were friends.

“Don’t look at my food, Kenny, eat your own!” said Cartman after Kenny glanced at him mindlessly.

“I’m not looking at your food, Cartman,” he said, rolling his eyes and picking at his tiny sandwich. “Though it wouldn’t hurt for you to give some to me.”

“Aye! I’m not giving any of my food to a goddamn poor kid!”

“Why am I even hanging out with you,” Kenny muttered to himself as he slowly took out his bologna slice and started nibbling on it.

Cartman wolfed down on his two large burgers, five large packs of fries and twelve packs of ketchup, along with drinking his two liter chocolate milk. As he inhaled a bag of chips, Kenny said to him, “So... about Stan.”

“Yeah?” Cartman stuffed seven chips into his mouth at one time.

Kenny made a face, and decided to look more at his food instead. “And Kyle.”

“Oh.” Somehow, Cartman managed to swallow all of his food down. “You wanna talk about their fag situation, don’t you?”

“Don’t you?” said Kenny. “I mean, if they like each other they may as well just get together, and—”

“And if they get together, they’ll always be together and kissing and hugging and calling each other names like ‘Snuggly Buffiebums’ and ‘Teensy Tootikins,’ and it’ll just be me and you, Ken.”

“Did you get those nicknames from what your mom always calls you?”

“Aye!”

But Cartman didn’t say yes or not to that and Kenny smirked; he thought so. Then he sighed and took another bite of his bologna. “Anyways, it’s not like it’s gonna be any different than the way things are now,” he said. “I mean, look at Stan. Ignoring the fact that he likes him, he’s moping around just because his best friend isn’t here?”

“Yeah, well, that’s just the way fags work. It makes me want to take a brown.”

“Dude,” said Kenny. “Stop saying that.”

“It’s more mature than ‘taking a shit.’”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes it is!”

It was at that moment when Butters came over to them, beaming, with his tray of school lunch food in his hand. Kenny couldn’t help feeling envious. Butters was tiny, and he still ate more than him. “Heya fellas!” he said, plopping down on the bench next to Kenny.

Cartman eyed him. “Who said you could sit here?”

Butters flushed pink and glanced at Kenny, then back at Cartman. “I-I just thought—since Kenny here an’ I—”

“Don’t worry about him, you know how Cartman always is,” said Kenny warmly, and then smiled. As lame as Butters was, he certainly made better company than fatass. “You can sit here. And you shouldn’t even need our permission, anyways.”

“Yes he should,” said Cartman.

“It’s a free country,” shot Kenny.

“Yeah, it’s a free country for anyone who’s not poor, a minority, or a loser like Butters.”

Butters looked hurt, and Kenny snapped at him, “Shut the fuck up, Cartman. Remember that time when I moved away for a little and you were the second poorest kid here?”

“Yeah,” muttered Cartman.

“And remember how Butters was the one who told you this?”

“That’s because he’s out to get me!” he said accusingly.

“I’m not!” Butters said indignantly, and Kenny gave him a look.

“Seriously, dude? You think Butters is out to get you?”

“Okay, no,” Cartman admitted, and then opened his mouth as if to say something more but broke off, grumbling to himself.

Kenny rolled his eyes and tuned to Butters now that he had someone much more pleasant to talk to. “Do you want a cookie?” Butters offered brightly.

Surprised, Kenny nodded and said, “Sure,” and Butters gave a cookie to him. Kenny chewed on his cookie and praised God or Satan or whoever for Butters being way too nice for his own good. Seriously, he should’ve spent more time with Butters a long time ago.

“What were you guys talking about before?” asked Butters.

Cartman didn’t look up from his lunch, and he hadn’t been expected to say anything—the question was obviously meant for only Kenny. “We were talking about Stan and Kyle,” Kenny said.

“Oh, about how they like each other an’ stuff?” said Butters.

“Wait,” said Cartman suddenly, turning to Kenny. “You told him about this?”

Kenny shrugged. “Well yeah, I mean...” He trailed off; he wasn’t going to mention around Butters that he was flirting with him. That would be too forward. “I think he’s trustworthy enough,” he said. “And even though I told him, if he tells anyone else, it’s not like they’ll believe him, right?”

“Yeah!” said Butters enthusiastically, not quite aware that Kenny had sort of indirectly insulted him.

Cartman seemed reluctant to agree to that too; but before either Kenny or Cartman could say anything more on the Stan and Kyle issue, someone else swept into their conversation.

“Cartman,” said Wendy, with a breadstick in her hand. “Do you think that you’ll be able to come to newspaper after school today?”

Cartman snorted. “When do I ever not come?”

Kenny observed the two of them with interest. Butters chattered along happily to him, completely unaware of the chemistry that seemed to be between Cartman and Wendy.

“Funny,” he said to fatass, causing the pair to look at him and stopping Butters from his rambling. “I thought you liked to go home after school and watch TV and eat Cheesy Poofs.”

Cartman shot him a dirty look, and then asked Wendy, “Why? Is everyone else unable to come?”

Wendy sighed; she seemed to be aggravated. “Yeah,” she said. “Technically there wasn’t supposed to be a meeting today, it’s all last minute, and when I told all the other editors,” (they had one for each newspaper section), “they said they couldn’t make it.”

“I’ll kick those guys’ asses later,” muttered Cartman.

“Do you think you could do their work for them?”

Wendy’s look was pleading and Kenny was sure that Cartman was going to give in, but Cartman merely snorted and said, “No, those bastards need to do the work themselves.”

“But the final copy’s supposed to be done by tomorrow!”

“Then it’s their fucking fault.”

“No, Cartman, it’s not! It’s ours because we’re the editors-in-chief and anything bad that happens is completely our responsibility!”

Kenny rolled his eyes as the two started bickering over the newspaper and its deadline, and turned to Butters. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go find a more peaceful place to sit.”

They left, leaving Cartman and Wendy still arguing heatedly until they both ran out of steam (but Cartman still refused to do the other students’ work). Wendy, seeing that Kenny and Butters’s empty seats were an invitation for her to stay with Cartman a bit longer, sat down where they had been and brought up something entirely unrelated.

“So,” she said, cutting off Cartman as he continued rattling off reasons why he wasn’t going to do anyone else’s work. “The other day I was at my locker when I saw someone had tried to put a CD in it.”

“So?” said Cartman, not looking up from his food. “Why’re you telling me, shouldn’t you be telling all your ho friends?”

“I did!” Wendy snapped, and then calmed down and regained her composure. “Anyways, it kind of broke and it doesn’t work, but it’s by my current favorite band and I was just wondering if you knew anything about it.”

“Why would I know anything some gay boy band CD?”

Wendy stayed silent, but she looked at Cartman speculatively. Then after a moment, she got up and said brightly, “Well thanks anyways, Cartman!” and left him.

Cartman stared at the place she had been. An odd tingling sensation started inside of him. Then it stopped, and he realized something and suddenly yelled at absolutely no one:

“Wait, where the fuck did everybody go?”

Chapter Ten: Some More Side Shit—Er, Brown

The sad thing was that Cartman had been planning to stay after school today because he thought that there was going to be a newspaper meeting. Of course, what Kenny had said about watching TV and eating Cheesy Poofs was completely appealing to him and was what he would have done all those other days when he didn’t have a meeting. But Cartman was actually finding himself looking forward to staying after school... which was gross. What was he, some kind of girl?

“Eugh,” he said to himself as he stepped into the classroom. Wendy was already there, as expected: she was always here earlier than him. Even though he was pretty good with going to all of the meetings, she was the one who actually liked about the newspaper, actually had dedication. Cartman didn’t really give a shit about it since though he cared about journalism, Wendy sort of outdid him when it came to being passionate and being good at it.

Not that he’d ever admit that Wendy was better than him in anything.

“I didn’t know that you were so excited to come,” she said dryly, glancing up from her editing work. When Cartman looked at her, he couldn’t help notice the way her white long-sleeved shirt showed off all her curves.

“It’s not like I ever chose to stay with you, ho,” he said.

Wendy looked like she was going to say something again, like she had at lunch, but apparently chose not to and went back to her work. Cartman went over to one of the computers so he could play one of his flash games. Like he said before, he wasn’t going to do the others’ work for them.

But staying in this room alone with Wendy made him nervous, as it always did, which was why he usually was more irritable when they were like this. Especially when they were quiet. Cartman was itching to make conversation with her: it was one of his favorite things to do, even if they were arguing. Especially if they were arguing.

“Any new things goin’ on in your life, ho?” he asked lightly.

Wendy scoffed. “Nothing that I’m going to tell you.”

Cartman scowled to himself; what was wrong with talking to him? “You’re such a bitch, you know that?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Wendy, flipping a page and going to work on the next. Then she looked up at Cartman. “What about you? Anything new in your life?”

Cartman was about to tell her no and/or say that there was nothing that he was going to tell her, but then the Stan-and-Kyle-fag-thing flitted through his mind and he decided that that was a better answer. Well, what better way to get a girl’s heart than to tell her that her ex-boyfriend turned out to be gay? Then he could offer a shoulder to cry on, and then tell her that Stan didn’t deserve her, that he would be better... Though Cartman wouldn’t say it in those words, exactly. Besides, evidently the CD album thing failed, and Cartman had told that sales lady that he was a pregnant Mexican woman with four limbs chopped off and a donated kidney, and she still wouldn’t reduce the price of that goddamned necklace from $3,000!

He nearly seethed at thinking about it.

“Cartman?” Wendy asked concernedly, when he didn’t answer.

“Oh,” said Cartman, pushing his thoughts aside and turning to her. “Remember that fag boyfriend you used to have back in like, sixth grade?”

Wendy frowned, as if she couldn’t remember. Then her face lit up. “Oh, Stan?”

“Yeah,” said Cartman, and then snorted. “Turns out he really is a fag. With that Jew Kyle, too. Can you believe it?”

He expected Wendy to exclaim something like, “What? Are you serious?” or even break down crying and sobbing because the guy she used to date was gay. But instead Wendy just looked thoughtful.

“Really?” she said. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.”

Cartman resisted the urge to scream, “Goddammit, you’re supposed to be crying, bitch!” but managed to suppress it, because he was sure that if he wanted to win Wendy over, that wasn’t exactly the best way to go about it. “Uh, yeah,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say.

“So you say they’re together?”

“Nah. They’re too up in their asses with fag love to realize it.”

Wendy brightened up at that. “Ooh, then we should get them together!” she said eagerly. “If they like each other but don’t know, that sounds like the cutest thing ever! Especially since it’s two guys. How do you know that they like each other, Cartman?” she asked interestedly, not sounding suspicious at all.

“‘Cause Stan told me,” said Cartman, rolling his eyes. “And then Kenny told me that the Jew likes him back. Kenny wants him to tell Stan, but apparently Kyle’s too much of a pussy to say anything...”

“No, he shouldn’t tell Stan!” said Wendy.

“I know, right? That’s what I said, that we should just keep it a secret from them that they have gay crushes on each other and go along our merry ways because fuck if I don’t want those guys to act all gay and shit around me—”

“No, no,” said Wendy quickly. “I don’t want him to tell Stan yet. But I don’t think we should tell them either. I think that we should get them to confess their love for each other in the most perfect, romantic and flawless plan ever.”

Cartman stared at Wendy. “What the fuck are you going on about?”

“Doesn’t it sound fun?” She was beaming now, and though the circumstances were for the dumbest-ass reasons ever, Cartman couldn’t deny that she looked even prettier. “If we got them together? I’ve never played matchmaker before... “

And Cartman never wanted to play matchmaker, especially for those assholes he called friends. But he mumbled, “Sure,” and continued listening while Wendy rattled off a plan that was with no doubt forming in her mind.

But he did notice that she said “we” every time she said what would be done to get Stan and Kyle together.

Maybe, he thought, it wasn’t going to be so bad.

~

Cartman was staying after school today, Stan and Kyle had a sleepover they didn’t have the tact to invite him to, but Kenny didn’t feel so alone because today at lunch, after he and Butters had left fatso with Wendy, he asked Butters, “Wanna come over again today?”

And Butters said, “Gee Kenny! I’d love to!”

Kenny was happy that he did, though it seemed kind of extreme that Butters would “love” to go to his house. “You don’t think it’s gross?” he asked him.

“W-Well I can’t say it’s the cleanest place ever an’ all, but... it has its character! And I like spending time with you,” said Butters, before blushing.

This made Kenny happier, and strangely, horny. Okay, maybe it wasn’t strange because he could get horny from just about anything. But seeing Butters’s pink face just... did things to his insides. “You’re always so optimistic, aren’t you,” he said absentmindedly, putting his elbow on the table and pinching one of Butters’s cheeks.

Butters blushed even more; Kenny could feel his skin heat up from beneath his fingers. “Well, you’d be happier if you’re optimistic!” Butters said. “A-At least, that’s what I’ve always thought,” he added bashfully, as if afraid that he’d just offended Kenny, if Kenny were a pessimist.

Kenny wasn’t, though—his life’s philosophy was just to take things and go with them. So he did just that and said, “I think your optimism is cute,” and Butters reminded him, “You’re gonna get grounded for saying that again.”

Goddamn, why was Butters so cute?

Butters didn’t have dance practice today, so the two of them just walked to Kenny’s house right after school. Kenny would have preferred the comfort of Butters’s, but he felt that his house was safer in the sense that their privacy wouldn’t be invaded, because Mr. and Mrs. Stotch usually made him feel nervous like he had done something wrong. Which he hadn’t, but he felt it was best to steer clear of them. There was always the possibility that they would ground Butters from seeing him, and Kenny certainly didn’t want that.

Kenny tried to tame the feelings that had come during lunch time, but found that he couldn’t—he hadn’t jacked off in a long time. The pornos had been in their box for nearly a week now. He was feeling sexually frustrated, and it was worse when he was in his room, because this is where he actually did his thing.

“What’s wrong, Kenny?” Butters seemed to notice his stagnant silence.

Kenny did his best to put on a carefree smile and turned to him. “Oh, it’s nothing.” He couldn’t jump Butters now. Butters was too innocent—well okay, he’d probably be innocent forever—and though Kenny’s original intention had been to corrupt him (positively), he’d feel guilty if he even tried anything now.

Butters didn’t seem to buy it. “I know it’s not nothin’ all right,” he said, marching up to Kenny and meeting his eyes. Though when he did this, he suddenly got embarrassed and dropped his gaze. “I just know when somethin’s wrong with somebody,” he said, staring at the dirty floor. “And you may say it’s nothin’, but I know—I know something’s wrong with you and something’s botherin’ you in that heart of yours, Kenny, and I—”

It was the way he was talking to him so honestly that Kenny just loosened up his hood, stepped forward to close the tiny gap that was between them, took Butters’s chin in his hand, and raised his face up. He was about to make the decision when he saw that Butters was staring cutely at him, and his pink lips were puckered out expectantly, even though his eyes were as round as saucers.

“What?” Kenny teased to him, breath dancing along his face. “You expecting a kiss from me or something?”

-Noxicosis-

Butters opened his mouth—Kenny couldn’t tell if he was about to say yes or no—but he didn’t inquire any further because at that moment, he did, indeed, kiss him.

It was quite the experience because everyone Kenny had kissed (and fucked) before had at least kissed/been fucked by someone else before. Butters obviously hadn’t (though Kenny wasn’t planning on fucking him... right now); he made tiny little noises when Kenny’s expert lips worked on his, tracing, shaping out Butters’s small soft lips, and he tasted like something sweet which would have grossed Kenny out if it were any other person, but this was Butters so it seemed to make sense.

Butters pressed back, hesitantly, as if he couldn’t believe that Kenny was kissing him—but in a good way. Kenny had never thought of Butters liking him before, and wondered if he should have. He thought that it would have been just natural, that he’d continue acting more and more intimate with Butters until something like this happened, and then they’d be like exclusive fuck buddies or something. A little jolt of guilt went through his body that he’d never considered Butters’s feelings before—but right now he didn’t think it mattered because Butters was actually kissing him back. And as Kenny pried his lips open with his tongue, he’d be damned if it didn’t seem like Butters was enjoying it.

Butters let out a tiny little squeak when Kenny’s wet tongue rubbed against the inside of his mouth for the first time. It felt weird and different, but extremely good and almost instinctively Butters’s hands went to Kenny’s hood, which was still up though loose enough that Kenny’s mouth could still kiss him. He pulled it down to fasten his arms better around Kenny’s neck, and very faintly felt Kenny’s hands rest gently on his waist. Kenny was holding him so well that it was like he was used to it, but Butters didn’t mind—he didn’t know what he was doing, and it was nice that Kenny did.

Suddenly he felt his throat hitch and realized that his lungs were all pent up too. Butters broke away gasping, quite sure that he was either red in the face from the kissing, or blue in the face from not breathing.

Kenny looked dazed and confused at first, as if he couldn’t believe what had just happened. But when he caught sight of Butters, a smile crept onto his face.

“You’re supposed to breathe through your nose,” he informed him.

Butters felt himself go redder as he tried to catch his breath. “O-Oh,” he said. And then quite delayed, he said, “Y-You kissed me!”

“Yeah,” said Kenny, looking up in thought. “I did.” Then he looked back to Butters. “You... didn’t mind, right?”

“No—No, of course I didn’t mind!” said Butters. “I really liked it, even though—well.” He rubbed his knuckles together.

“That wasn’t your first kiss, right?”

“Of course not!” said Butters defensively. “I had my first kiss back in elementary school! Remember? She was my bottom bitch!”

“Oh right, yeah,” said Kenny. “You were a pimp. I forgot about that.” He paused in contemplation. “But that was your first kiss with a guy, wasn’t it?”

“Well—” started Butters, then he broke off and looked at the ground nervously. “Yeah,” he mumbled.

“Then I’m glad to have stolen your man-kiss virginity from you,” said Kenny. Suddenly he wasn’t feeling horny anymore, or aroused: all he knew was that he just wanted to keep kissing Butters. Forever. “Come on, let’s make out again.”

“What?” said Butters, wide-eyed. “We were makin’ out?”

Kenny laughed. “Of course we were.”

“But... But my parents say I’m not allowed to make out with anyone till I’m—till I’m in college! I’m gonna get grounded!”

“Well,” said Kenny, taking Butters’s slender wrist and bringing him closer. “We don’t have to tell your parents everything we do, do we?”

Chapter Eleven: Wendy’s Plan

Wendy was positively beaming when she came into school the next day. Other people had noticed and asked her why, but she hadn’t really answered, just said, “Oh, it’s nothing.” But later that day she came up to Cartman in the hallway and said, “Hi Cartman!” all chipper like they were best friends or something.

“What do you want, ho?” he asked, closing his locker and hitching up his backpack.

Wendy rolled her eyes, but it almost looked endearing. “I was thinking about the plan for getting Stan and Kyle together,” she said. “And I think we really should do it.”

“I still don’t see why the hell you want to do it so much,” said Cartman. He’d never understand girls and the constant sand that was in their vaginas. Or, in Wendy’s case, the something nice in hers. Like a popsicle.

Okay, thinking about Wendy’s vagina was not going to help him with anything at all.

Wendy shrugged. “I don’t know, I just think it’s cute!” she said. “Don’t you think it’s cute? Best friends getting together and all that? Especially when it’s two guys, like Stan and Kyle.”

“Eurgh.” Cartman made a nauseated face. “Don’t say that. You’re gonna make me puke all over your hippie outfit.”

“Then I’ll beat you up again.”

“Right,” said Cartman sarcastically, though he wasn’t looking at her and knew she wasn’t bluffing. (That first time had scarred him for life from picking fights with girls (although he certainly wouldn’t say no to a midget.))

When he glanced at Wendy again, though, she seemed just as cheerful as before and didn’t even seem serious about beating him up. “What are you still doing here?” he asked rudely.

“Oh, well I just thought I’d tell you about my plan to get Stan and Kyle together,” she said. “But since you clearly you don’t want to join me because you clearly don’t want them to be happy...”

“Wait!” said Cartman as she started walking off. “I don’t want those fags to be happy, but—” He stopped himself before he could say something like I want to join you because that would make him sound even more like a fag. “I just want to know,” he snapped, ignoring Wendy’s questioning gaze.

Wendy tossed her hair back, but wasn’t bothered at all. “Okay,” she said to Cartman as they started walking down the hallway. “Here’s the deal: We can definitely get them together, but there’s gonna be a lot of people involved. And the plan’s not exactly complete, I’m still working on what-ifs and stuff and when we’ll run into trouble.”

“Okay.” Cartman could understand that; every time he came up with his genius plans, he had to figure those out too. But all of his plans usually came through perfectly in the end. Aside from that time he had tried to be the star of a Cheesy Poofs commercial, or tried to make friends with real men and ended up the poster boy for some pedophile association, or tried to persuade Donald Trump to buy him a yacht made out entirely of potatoes.

Yeah, well, okay. All of those failed because everyone else involved was retarded.

“But anyways, I’m still trying to figure it out... we’ll need to tell a lot of adults, including some school officials, parents, families, random strangers, Obama, some people at the hospital...”

“What kind of plan is this?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got most of it all thought out.” Wendy patted his shoulder in reassurance. “I just need to work on a few things. Well, see you Cartman!” she said, and then went into the classroom they just passed by.

Cartman stared after her, then mumbled, “Fuck it,” under his breath. This was stupid. Why was he going to help her? Why did he even want to help her—okay, he knew that. But was she really worth it to help Stan and Kyle together?

In Wood Shop, which he and Stan shared together (Kyle was taking an extra math, and Kenny said he’d take anything but shop), he noticed that Stan was oddly happy today. When he asked him about it (i.e. “What d’you have that dumb look on your face for?”), though, Stan didn’t give him a proper response. But that goddamned smile lasted him all throughout the period.

At lunch, Cartman was surprised to see Wendy at his and the guys’ usual table. When he arrived, she looked up from filing her nails and said, “Oh!” as if she’d been waiting for him.

He could have asked her why she was here, but he was pretty sure he knew why. He grunted, and started on his food as Wendy started talking a mile a minute.

“So I’m pretty sure the plan’ll work, though it’s pretty complex and I don’t know if they’re going to react the way I hope they react, but since it’s Stan and Kyle I’m sure they will. The harder part’s just going to be setting everything up, ‘cause we’ll have to let a lot of adults know what we’re doing and then they’re going to want to know why, and we’ll have to tell them about the Stan and Kyle situation, which they may not find worthy enough to agree with us... but you never know, we’ll have to try! And I think since this is South Park, we’re pretty open-minded and anything can happen, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Cartman mumbled, not bothering to mention that she didn’t even explain what this plan was, yet.

She opened her mouth, about to say more, but then Kenny and Butters suddenly appeared with their lunches and looked at Wendy.

“What’s she doing here?” asked Kenny.

“What, she can’t be here?” said Cartman.

But Wendy smiled at Kenny and said, “I’m just talking to him.”

“Where’s your lunch?” he asked as he and Butters settled down.

“Oh, I have lunch earlier today,” she said, waving her hand. “I already ate. I have a study hall right now, and no one knows that I’m here, so—”

“Wait, you’re cutting class?” said Cartman, and Wendy blushed, very visibly. “Oooooooh,” sang Cartman. “Wendy Testaburger’s cutting cla-ass.”

“And what, fatass, you’re going to tell on me?”

“No,” said Cartman quickly, turning back down to his food. “I was just saying.”

“Yeah, Wendy,” said Kenny, suddenly curious. “Why’re you cutting class to sit here with us?”

“Because—er—”

Wendy looked at Cartman suddenly, but Cartman knew that it was pointless not to tell Kenny, especially since her plan might actually be easier to go through with more people on board. “She has this gay plan to get Stan and Kyle together,” he said, picking at his third case of fries. “She wants me to help.”

Kenny dropped the apple he had slowly been working on. “Wait, you told her about them?”

“Well you told Butters!”

“But that’s because—”

Kenny stopped. Cartman had probably told Wendy for the same reason he had told Butters.

Damn.

“Well fine,” he grumbled. He’d enjoyed it when it was just a secret between him and Butters (who had been happily eating his macaroni and cheese and not paying attention o what they were saying, unless it was directed at him) and Cartman just sort of knowing on the side. Now it was the four of them. “What’s this plan you have?” he asked Wendy, almost begrudgingly.

“Can’t say,” she said, shaking her head. “In case it might not work. I’m still trying to figure it out.”

“Can’t you just tell us what it is even if it won’t work?”

“No, because that might jinx it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That makes perfect sense,” Cartman snapped, intervening. “If you tell someone your plans when you know that they’re not perfect yet, then you might not make them perfect after that because you can hear what other people’s stupid opinions are, and when you say it out loud you might not think it makes sense, so you have to keep everything to yourself when you’re plotting stuff or otherwise you’ll look like a complete dumbass.”

Kenny stared at him.

“... that makes no sense.”

“That’s what I was going for,” said Wendy, looking completely bewildered at what Cartman had just said. “But anyways... Do you want to help, Kenny?” Then, taking note of the boy beside him and feeling guilty that he’d been left out, she added, “And Butters?”

“What? Oh sure, I’d love to help!” said Butters, catching all of them by surprise.

“Great,” said Wendy, clapping and folding her hands together. “We’ll need more people, anyways. The more heads, the better. And you might be able to help me figure out any loopholes once I think the plan’s set.”

“I’m good at that,” boasted Cartman.

Kenny rolled his eyes, but Butters said, “I think your plan’ll be great, Wendy!”

Wendy smiled at him appreciatively. “Glad you think so.”

“It better be good,” said Cartman, but he was pretty sure that he was going to be impressed with whatever she came up with.

~

Lunch after that was pretty awkward since Stan and Kyle had come at that moment, laughing about something and looking overly happy. Kenny had no idea what was up with them since Kyle hadn’t talked to him in a while about that problem, but he wasn’t going to bother. Besides, Kenny was glad that they were so happy, because that would just make this whole thing easier.

Part of him wanted to be annoyed with Wendy that she was planning to set them up, but he couldn’t be. He had to admit, setting them up together sounded fun. It was going to take a lot of work, but it was kind of exciting, knowing everything behind the scenes and what was going to happen beforehand. Well, technically, he didn’t know what was going to happen beforehand because Wendy was being a dry cunt and apparently Cartman understood her, or something.

He could never get on the same wavelength as Wendy. She was smart and that was admirable, but she seemed to have the same way of thinking as Cartman... which was kind of scary, actually.

He talked about it with Butters, who, as always, seemed like he’d forgotten unless Kenny brought it up.

“What? Oh yeah, I’m kinda lookin’ forward to it too,’ said Butters. “To see Stan an’ Kyle being happy with each other and all.”

“Yeah,” said Kenny. “Do you think her plan’s gonna work?”

“Well she seems pretty confident it’ll work... and if anythin’ goes wrong, I’m sure Eric’ll find a way for us to get out of it,” said Butters.

“You don’t mind taking part, do you?”

“Oh no!” said Butters, shaking his head rapidly. “Not at all! I’m real excited, it sounds like it’s gonna be a lot of fun!”

“Yeah.”

Kenny was still observing him—Butters seemed so happy talking about this, like he really cared about it. Actually, he seemed like he really cared about everything that Kenny had said to him today, but when Kenny didn’t start the conversation, Butters didn’t say anything at all.

“You feeling okay, Butters?” he asked.

“I’m fine!” Butters’s eyes went wide at Kenny’s question. “Why? What’s wrong? Is there somethin’ on my face?” He looked into the window of a nearby shop they were passing to get to Kenny’s house.

“No,” said Kenny, putting a hand on his shoulder and turning him back. “You just haven’t talked a lot today.”

“I-I haven’t? Gee, sorry Kenny!” said Butters, sounding way too apologetic than he should. “I’m real sorry, I prob’ly should’ve talked more, shouldn’t I? Sorry—”

“It’s fine, Butters,” said Kenny patiently. “I was just wondering.”

“Wonderin’ what?”

“Why you don’t say anything unless I talk to you first.”

“O-Oh.” Little spots of pink appeared on Butters’s cheeks at this. “W-Well I’m real happy just bein’ around you, Kenny, and I really like it when we’re just hangin’ around each other and stuff. I mean, I like talkin’ to you too, but it’s just nice bein’ with you, you know?”

Why was Butters like this? Why had Kenny chosen to go for Butters, to like Butters out of all people? (Then he remembered it was Kyle’s fault.) But still, even if he hadn’t, even if he had gone for someone else, he was one hundred percent sure that there was no one who could match Butters’s level of adorableness, of genuineness, of—of everything that Butters was. Of Butters.

“S-Sorry, Kenny,” said Butters again, when Kenny didn’t say anything.

“Don’t be sorry.” Kenny loosened up his hood, took Butters by the wrist, and made an impulsive decision. “Come on, let’s walk faster, I want to get to my home sooner.”

Butters opened his mouth to apologize, but Kenny cut him off before he could. With a kiss. It was chaste and not like the long make out sessions they had yesterday (which had ended quite disappointingly when Butters had caught sight of the demented but still working clock in Kenny’s room and realized he had to run home before it got too late) but left Kenny elated like whenever he kissed Butters, all the same. Butters didn’t say anything after the kiss, and stumbled a few times on their way back home, but they did get to Kenny’s house sooner than they would have if they hadn’t walked faster.

When they got into his room, Kenny turned Butters around and kissed him again, walking forward and pressing Butters against the side of his bed. Butters flinched and let out a tiny little yelp as the hard wood hit the curve of his back, and Kenny murmured, “Sorry,” before hitching Butters’s thighs a bit up so Butters could take the hint and sit on his bed. He did so, as Kenny’s hood fell down, and they sat there kissing for several minutes, Kenny’s mouth and lips and tongue doing all sorts of things to Butters, as Butters made tiny little squeaks of appreciation and leaned in only a little bit, letting Kenny take full control of the kiss.

After a while, he was getting aware that Kenny’s hand was traveling downward; it had been clutching the back of his head at first, with Butters sitting cross-legged on the bed and responding to whatever Kenny was doing to him with his mouth; but now Kenny’s fingers were on the back of his neck and curling around the soft skin there gently. Butters let out a small whimper as their mouths opened against each other again and Kenny slid his tongue along his teeth, and his grip around Butters’s neck tightened. Butters would have been worried that Kenny was trying to kill or suffocate him or something, except his mind was too fuzzy right now and he knew that Kenny wouldn’t do that.

They broke apart after a bit to get some air, Kenny looking more attractive than ever with his face a tiny bit red—though Butters was sure he was worse. His face felt like it was on fire... in a good way. The rest of his body felt like it was on fire too, because being around Kenny made him feel hot. During the day he’d felt just extremely giddy and a tiny bit nervous when he was around him, but when Kenny was kissing him and doing all those stuff with him, Butters would feel his pulse quicken and heat race along his skin.

“We—We aren’t stoppin’, right?” said Butters.

Kenny laughed. “Of course not,” he said, readjusting himself on the bed. “I thought you might need a break, but I guess not.”

“Oh—Oh!” It hadn’t occurred to Butters that Kenny had been thinking of him. “Oh, no I’m fine! Thanks!”

Kenny laughed again. Butters liked the sound of it—it was like Kenny didn’t have another care in the world. And then he leaned in and kissed Butters again, except he leaned in so far that Butters found himself falling back on Kenny’s bed and having a mess of Kenny’s golden blond hair right in his face.

When Kenny tore his lips away, he breathed against Butters’s mouth, “Sorry ‘bout that.”

Butters was flustered, but didn’t care at all. “It’s okay,” he said, and Kenny took this as a sign to continue, and kissed him again.

As their kisses became more intense—more intense on Kenny’s part—Kenny’s hands were traveling southward. At first Butters thought he was going to take him by the waist again, but no: first it was his thighs, then it was his butt (he squeaked at that), and then it was between his legs and Butters gasped against him that they had to break apart again.

“W-What—?” he tried, but Kenny shushed him and put his head in the crook of Butters’s neck.

“Don’t question,” he said, as his hand slowly moved to the front of Butters’s pants. Then his hand slipped in.

Butters yelped. “What’re you doing?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t like it,” said Kenny, pulling Butters’s pants down, though only a little, not even to his knees. Then his hand moved between Butters’s legs again, and then—

“That’s my wiener!”

Kenny chuckled. “Yes,” he said to Butters. “It is your wiener.”

“But what are you doing—aah.” Butters nearly melted as Kenny’s grip around it tightened and his fingers started stroking. It was the... weirdest thing ever, but he couldn’t say that he didn’t like it: the more Kenny stroked him, the more his brain started slipping away and he was falling into mindless ecstasy.

“You’re not—You’re not gonna keep doing that?” he asked Kenny faintly, hoping that yes, he would.

Kenny brought his head up and looked Butters in the eye, his blue gaze clouded with pleasure. “I’m Kenny McCormick,” he whispered. “I’ll do whatever the hell I want.”

Chapter Twelve: Continuing To Act Like Fags, As Always

Lunch was a more frustrating affair the next day, since Stan and Kyle had come earlier and Cartman, Wendy, Butters and Kenny had been planning to talk about their plan during lunch, but obviously couldn’t with them around. It was only when Stan got up and he said he had to pee and Kyle said that he’d go with him (“What’re you, a bunch of fags?” said Cartman, to which Stan snickered and Kyle rolled his eyes) when they actually had the time.

“Seriously,” said Wendy, watching them. “You could’ve fooled me. Even if you didn’t tell me, I’d think that they were going out now.”

“That’s Stan and Kyle for you.” Kenny sighed, and then rested his elbows on the table. “So, do you have your plan all figured out?”

“Yup!” said Wendy brightly. “And even Cartman thinks it’ll work. Right Cartman?”

Cartman mumbled something which might’ve been in the affirmative. She had told him earlier this morning and he had to admit that it seemed pretty flawless. He couldn’t find anything to pick over that could cause a mishap.

“Okay,” said Wendy, pulling out a notebook from her backpack and placing it on the table. She flipped open to a page where there were a bunch of scribbled notes in her neat handwriting, which was somewhat of an oxymoron but that was the way Wendy was. “This is how the plan’s gonna work:

“So first, Kenny, you have Mr. Lu Kim third period, right? Well you have to throw something at his head but make it look like Kyle did it, and then Mr. Lu Kim will give Kyle detention and send him to the office. At the same time, Stan’s mom is going to pretend to have cancer so she’ll be sent to the hospital, where the hospital workers know she’s pretending, and Mr. Marsh’ll contact the school so then they’ll call Stan so he’ll be on his way to the office too. So they’ll run into each other and Kyle will get his form for his detention, and then Stan will probably tell him about his mom in the hospital and Kyle will want to go with him since he cares more about Stan than he cares about school, so he’ll cut and Stan’ll drive them to the hospital.

“During all that, Mrs. Broflovski will also be at a rally protesting the banning of closets, since Obama’s decided to make closets illegal, which is supposed to be symbolic of their gayness... Anyways, so she’ll be protesting while all of this is going on with some other actors—yeah, we’ll need actors for this—and Stan and Kyle will still be at the hospital. Mrs. Marsh’ll tell Stan that she’s fine despite that she’s a fake cancer patient, and will ask Stan and Kyle to get her some water. As they’re in the hallway getting the water—we’ll have to make sure that she gets a room in the right place for this, but—they’ll pass a TV set when just at that moment there’ll be a news report on Obama’s banning of closets and the protest rally, so they won’t suspect that shit’s just happening out of the blue.

“Then Mrs. Broflovski will burst into the hospital at that moment, leading the whole rally, and I guess the news reporters and Obama too if they want to come, and she’ll yell out something like how she and her family won’t take the ridiculous banning of closets and when she sees Kyle and Stan she’ll shove them into a closet—we’ll need to make sure that there’s one nearby too—out of protest, and then lock it and we’ll wait.”

Kenny stared at her.

“Wait for what?”

“Wait for them to confess their undying love for each other, of course!”

“Uh, Wendy?” said Butters hesitantly. “Doesn’t that seem a-a bit... too elaborate?”

Wendy tossed her bangs out of her face. “Of course it is. That’s why I’m so sure it’ll work. The best plans are elaborate.”

“But,” said Kenny. “How’re you gonna get everyone to do that? I mean, Mr. Lu Kim, their families, our teachers, the hospital workers, the news reporters—”

“It’s good, I got all the bribery and blackmail material.” Wendy patted her backpack, like she’d been talking about her schoolwork. “And with their parents, we just need to work on their hearts and make sure they really give in. I don’t think it’ll be a big problem.”

“Kyle’s mom—”

“—is a big fat bitch, yeah I know, Cartman,” said Wendy, rolling her eyes. “But that’s what I need you guys for. Kenny, you’ll tell their parents since you probably know them best and they probably like you best.”

“Got it,” said Kenny, not bothering to argue with her on that. Even though Cartman looked a little bit offended, he doubted Cartman could say anything against it. Just ten seconds ago he’d called Kyle’s mom a bitch.

“I’ll take care of any other extra people involved, like kids and strangers and stuff, since I’m good with people,” said Wendy professionally, flipping a page in her notebook. “Butters, would you mind telling all the school adults and the hospital workers? I think you seem really nice and polite, so they’ll probably be willing to listen to you.”

“Sure!” said Butters happily. “I’ll-I’ll work my magic on them!”

“Great. I’ll help you out with that.” Wendy smiled at him.

“What’m I gonna do, bitch?” Cartman interrupted.

“Oh yes, Cartman,” she said, as if she’d forgotten about him. “You probably have the most important job. You’re gonna have to tell the news anchors, the protesters, and most of all, Obama what this is all about. I have all the blackmail and bribery material if you need them.”

Cartman nodded. He would have said that he could probably dig shit up on them on his own, but knew that there wouldn’t be enough time to do it.

“Why’re you giving that responsibility to Cartman?” Kenny asked warily.

“Because,” Wendy said to him. “I know Cartman, and I know he’s fat and rude and everything—”

“Hey!”

“But he can be pretty damn persuasive if he wants to,” she said. “He’ll throw a tantrum and won’t let go. And if we need to resort to it, he’s definitely the best liar out of all of us. They wouldn’t believe you, Kenny, because of your appearance—no offense—and I don’t think Butters is the type to lie and no one believes me when I do. And if we need to do anything illegal, he’s probably best at that, too.”

“Wow.” Kenny’s eyes were wide. “You really want Stan and Kyle together, don’t you?”

“What can I say?” Wendy shrugged. “I’ve kind of always wanted to be a fag hag.”

Kenny laughed, but Cartman was beaming with pride at all that Wendy had just said. Did she really think that about him? Okay, she definitely did, but she’d said it in such a positive light. As if it all was a good thing.

“Oh no, Wendy, you just fed Cartman’s ego,” said Kenny, looking over at him. “You’ve created a monster.”

“Aye! Shut the fuck up!” Cartman said, but Wendy smiled at him.

“I hardly regret it,” she said, before getting up from the table and smoothing out her skirt. “Anyways, I should probably get back to my lunch table before my friends worry about me and think I’m turning into a guy, since I’m actually not skipping class today.”

“Wendy?” Butters suddenly asked, and all three of them looked at him. He looked startled at gaining such a response. “When... When’s this all happening?” he asked her.

“Oh, right.” Wendy put a finger to her chin. “Next Monday? That’ll give us three days to do what we need to do, and I think that’s plenty of time.”

“Okay,” said Butters, and Kenny and Cartman agreed.

Wendy beamed, and said, “Looking forward to it, you guys!” before leaving. Kenny was completely sure she was talking mostly to Cartman, even though she had said “you guys.” When she left, Butters glanced around.

“Hey, where did Stan and Kyle go?” he asked.

“Probably doing some faggy business together,” said Kenny, rolling his eyes. “Just wait, they’re gonna come back talking and laughing about something and won’t tell us what about because ‘we had to be there.’”

“God!” said Cartman suddenly, throwing down his burger. “Why do they have to be such goddamn fags?”

“Don’t complain, Cartman, you’re spending more time with Wendy this way,” Kenny teased.

Cartman grumbled something but didn’t say anything in protest to Kenny’s statement. Kenny was mostly amused at this, because he knew that Cartman knew that he was right.

~

The plan went underway after school. Wendy went with Butters to go talk to anyone who was in authority (Kenny had the faint feeling that she’d try to do most of the talking but wouldn’t sway anyone’s opinion, and then Butters would talk and that would really get their hearts going. Kenny wouldn’t blame them) and Cartman had gone home, surprisingly, to call the President of the United States. Kenny couldn’t quite go bother either Stan or Kyle’s families yet, because it was likely that both of them were at their respective houses and it wasn’t like he was going to tell their families the plan when they were right there.

Wendy and Butters reported the next day that they had gotten Mr. Lu Kim on the job but were still working with the other teachers—apparently Butters got into so many mishaps with his parents that somehow they were under the impression that Butters was a troublemaker, and in sophomore year Wendy had held a protest against fast food in their school cafeteria that led to a few injuries, a drowned kitten and a dead student (that had been Kenny, though, so it wasn’t like it was a big deal) and hadn’t won, so it left a bit of a stain on her reputation. But they were working on it, she said. Butters, at least, would win them over.

Meanwhile, Cartman had gotten Obama to agree in a jiffy. Kenny had expected that he’d have the hardest job, but he actually told Kenny the next day that, not only had he persuaded Obama, but he’d also gotten the people at the South Park News Station and some popular protest leaders to join in on the plan. He didn’t say how, exactly, but Kenny had suspicions that it had something to do with Wendy’s blackmailing material.

On Saturday, Kyle was at Hebrew School so Kenny decided to go over to the Broflovski’s and get the harder family over with. He knocked on Kyle’s front door, and Mr. Broflovski opened up.

“Oh, hey Kenny,” he said. “Kyle’s not home, but you can come in if you want.”

“Thanks,” said Kenny, stepping in. “I wasn’t looking for Kyle, actually, I was wondering if I could talk to you and your wife.”

“Us? Really?” said Mr. Broflovski. “Well okay, I’ll go get Sheila.”

He went upstairs, and Kenny wandered into the living room where he saw Ike watching reruns of Terrance and Phillip. “Hey little dude,” said Kenny, sitting down next to him.

“I’m not little,” Ike said. “But hey.”

“You are to me,” said Kenny, joining him in watching TV.

“Let’s look for treasure, Terrence!” said Phillip.

“Let’s!” said Terrence.

“Hey,” said Kenny suddenly. “Want to be let in on a secret?”

Ike muted the TV and turned to him, beady little eyes glinting. “Tell me,” he said, without any shame.

Five minutes later had Ike laughing like no other, after Kenny had told him the plan. “Really?” he said, wiping his eyes of tears and sitting back up. “That’s what’s going to happen? You know, I’d say that it’s ridiculous but I can actually see Mom doing that.”

“Yeah,” said Kenny. “Wouldn’t be surprised if she forgets that this is all for show.”

“But seriously? Kyle and Stan like each other and they don’t know about it?” Ike frowned suddenly. “But I thought...”

“You thought what?”

He shrugged. “I dunno, just seemed like Stan’s been over more lately or Kyle’s been going to his house more. And there was that time when I saw Kyle shirtless and Stan on his bed.”

“Doesn’t mean they have something going on, dude,” said Kenny, just as Mr. and Mrs. Broflovski came down the stairs.

“Well it’s nice to see you, Kenny!” said Mrs. Broflovski, coming over to him and giving him an unexpected hug. He supposed mothers were just like that. “What is it that you wanted?”

“I don’t know any other way to say this, Mrs. Broflovski, so I’m just going to be frank,” said Kenny, getting up from the couch. “Your son is gay.”

Mrs. Broflovski stared at him.

“My little Kyle’s gay?”

“Well it’s not that hard to believe,” Ike piped up, but his parents ignored him.

“Well,” said Mrs. Broflovski. “I suppose it’s a bit of a disappointment, since I’d been expecting grandchildren... you better not be gay, Ike!” she said to her second son.

Ike jumped back and put his hands out. “You don’t need to worry about that from me, Mom, I like girls all the way.”

“Guys are pretty nice too,” Kenny said to him, and then turned to Kyle’s parents again. “Yeah, anyways, that’s actually not the point... It’s more like he’s gay, and he likes Stan, and Stan likes him back and neither of them know. So we have this whole plan to get them together, and you guys are kind of involved...”

Mrs. Broflovski’s face softened, which was also unexpected. “Oh, sweetie,” she said, putting a hand on Kenny’s shoulder. “It’s so nice of you to do this for Kyle’s happiness. And I want him to be happy too, even if it’s with another man.”

“It’s Stan, though, so it’s an even better man,” said Mr. Broflovski positively.

“Hush, dear. Anyway, I’ll be happy to do whatever you need me to do in your little plan, as long as it doesn’t involve anything illegal...”

Kenny was about to tell them the whole thing, but then Ike jumped in and said, “Kenny, do you need to tell Stan’s family about this too?”

“Yeah?” said Kenny, raising his eyebrows at him.

“Then I’ll tell them the plan for you, since you already told me,” said Ike, nodding toward his parents. “And you should probably get going to Stan’s house, since he and Kyle are probably going to come back from playing paintball soon.”

“No, sweetie, Kyle’s at Hebrew school, remember?” said Mrs. Broflovski.

Ike looked guilty, like he’d said something he hadn’t meant to say. “Uh...”

As Kenny left the house, he was sure he heard Kyle’s mom shout, “WHATWHATWHAT? KYLE’S SKIPPING HEBREW SCHOOL?”

Stan’s family provided the same ease as Kyle’s did, though it was less unexpected. In fact, when Kenny told them that Stan liked Kyle, Mrs. Marsh stuck out her hand to Mr. Marsh and said, “Fifty bucks, Randy.”

“Fine,” Mr. Marsh grumbled, stuffing his hands in his pockets and searching for his wallet. “Don’t even know how you knew, since Stan’s never showed any signs of being gay...”

“Mother’s intuition,” said Mrs. Marsh proudly, before turning back to Kenny and saying, “So what can we do to help?”

So that had gone okay. Kenny went back home with his hands in his pockets, feeling a bit proud of himself. The job had been easier than anyone would have anticipated, but he’d done it well and in time.

He was thinking of taking a detour to see if he could hang out with Butters today when suddenly a truck came speeding down the road. It hit him just as he crossed the street.

And Kenny died.

Chapter Thirteen: Those Bastards

Butters didn’t know where Kenny was.

Well sure, he usually didn’t know where Kenny was when Kenny wasn’t around him. Kenny could be at school. Kenny could be at home. Kenny could be playing basketball with his other friends. Kenny could be somewhere smoking. (Butters had seen him do it once.)

Kenny could be doing anything, really. He was an enigma. That was the reason Butters liked him so much. Well, one of many reasons. It wasn’t like there was one sole thing that made you like someone. And it usually didn’t matter where Kenny was because Butters knew that Kenny had his own things to do—but today was Monday, the day of the plan, and Butters, Cartman and Wendy were in front of the school so they could discuss their schedule. But Kenny hadn’t shown up yet and Butters was worried. Where did Kenny go?

~

“Man, you will not believe the shit we’re going through,” laughed Kenny as he walked along the paths of Hell.

He hadn’t wanted to die again, especially now, and he was pretty sure he was missing a lot of things right now since Hell’s time didn’t quite work like Earth’s did. But then he had run into Chef again, and felt like Chef should know about everything that had been happening.

“Do I want to know?” said Chef, amused, as they passed Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston’s house.

“Actually, yeah, I think you do,” said Kenny. “I like Butters, it seems like Cartman likes Wendy, and all of us are trying to get Stan and Kyle together, who we know like each other.”

“I thought you dig chicks?”

“I dig chicks and dicks,” Kenny informed him. “Anyways, I’m pretty sure Wendy likes Cartman too, and they’re probably going to get together after Stan and Kyle do. Or before.” He shrugged. “And Butters and I are pretty much together, too.”

“And this is all thanks to me?”

“Thanks to you, your will, your porn, and your retarded lawyers who didn’t find your will until a few weeks ago.”

“Well,” said Chef, laughing. “I didn’t expect for this to happen, but I guess it did. What’re you gonna do with the porn now?”

“Probably give it to some random hobo on the street. I dunno. Or my sister, she’s seemed sexually frustrated for a while.”

“Your sister’s a lesbian?”

“Nah, pan,” said Kenny. “She’ll think anyone’s sexy, as long as they’re sexy.”

“Then she’s gonna like my collection a lot.” Chef chuckled. “Well, I suppose it’s time for you to go back up, isn’t it?”

“Why?” said Kenny, surprised.

“Well you said that you were helping your friends get Stan and Kyle back together, weren’t you? Anyway, you can tell me what happens next time you die.” Chef laughed at him. “It looks like you’re starting to disappear, so I think you have more important things than me right now.”

“Thanks, Chef,” said Kenny, feeling himself fade away as he looked to Chef’s smiling face.

“No problem, Kenny,” said Chef.

~

The first bell for school had rung signaling that they should get their asses to class, stat; and still Cartman, Wendy and Butters were waiting outside in front of the school. Cartman was cursing Kenny out and Wendy was shivering in the cold, but Butters was sure that Kenny was going to show up, he knew it.

When Kenny finally arrived, running down the street and out of breath, the first thing that Cartman did was march right up to him and wring his neck.

“WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN, YOU MOTHERFUCKER?”

“Sorry,” said Kenny, wrenching himself out of Cartman’s grasp and putting his hands on his knees, panting. “I... died... and... just... came... back...”

“You died?” said Butters, his eyes widening.

Kenny nodded and looked up at him, still a little bit breathless. ‘Yeah,” he said, and at Butters’s frightened expression, “It’s okay, don’t worry. No one usually remembers, anyways.”

“Really?” Butters hadn’t even been aware. “Then—Then I’ll remember from now on!”

“You don’t have to,” said Kenny, but he was touched at the sentiment.

Cartman made puking noises, but Wendy smiled and said, “At least you’re here. Now we can actually get through with this thing.”

“Now we can,” Kenny agreed, before the second bell rang and all of them cursed and ran off to class.

When third period rolled around, Kenny was nearly hopping in his seat with excitement. This was it. At precisely 10:03 he was going to hit Mr. Lu Kim with his rubber eraser and put the blame on Kyle.

The moment the clock struck 10:03, he did just that and Mr. Lu Kim whipped around. “Who was that?” he demanded.

No one said anything. Then a kid from the back said, “It was Kyle.”

“What!” said Kyle indignantly, but Mr. Lu Kim said, “Kyle, you have been a bad boy! Detention! Go to office right now!”

“But I didn’t throw that!” said Kyle indignantly.

“Yes you did!”

“No, I didn’t!”

“You didn’t even see me!” Kyle protested. He whipped around to his friend. “Kenny, did you see me throw that?”

Kenny shrugged. Then feeling that maybe he wasn’t acting the part enough, said, “Yeah, I did.”

“What? No, you didn’t—”

“Kyle! Go to office right now! I do not want to hear you excuse!”

Kyle grumbled to himself, but got up from his desk and walked out the door, and Kenny grinned. The clock read 10:05. Exactly when Wendy had predicted.

Several minutes later, he asked to go to the bathroom and Mr. Lu Kim let him. He doubted that anyone would care if he didn’t come back to class. Instead, he headed straight for the office where he knew Stan and Kyle were.

On his way, he met with Wendy and Butters; they had English this period. “They in there?” Wendy mouthed to him as they approached the glass window, Kenny in front.

He nodded and they watched as the office ladies, whom Wendy and Butters had managed to successfully persuade in the end, relayed the news to Stan that his mother had cancer. Kenny, and he was pretty sure the other two too, felt a little bit guilty for lying to him... but it was all for a greater cause.

They heard loud footsteps coming to them and turned to see Cartman trudging toward them.

“Shh!” said Wendy, putting a finger to her lips.

“Sorry!” whispered Cartman irritably. “My history teacher was being a cunt so I told her I had to take a brown and ran for it before she could yell at me.”

“Oh my fucking god Cartman,” said Kenny exasperatedly. “Stop trying to make ‘taking a brown’ happen! It’s not going to happen!”

“Yes it is!”

“No it’s not! It’s just as bad as saying ‘taking a shit’!”

“Why are you saying ‘taking a brown’ instead of ‘taking a shit’?” asked Wendy curiously.

“I thought you didn’t say ‘take a shit’,” snapped Cartman, but he didn’t see the smile on her face as she turned away.

They watched as Stan and Kyle glanced at each other, and then raced off around the corner just as Stan and Kyle came out of the office, Stan rambling out about something and Kyle continuously saying to him, “It’s okay, Stan, it’s okay...”

“I swear to god those are faggier than Ricky Martin dressed in jorts in the middle of July,” muttered Cartman, shaking his head.

They were about to follow them to Stan and Kyle’s car, when suddenly the end-of-third period bell rang, and they realized that they wouldn’t have a means of transportation to follow them, anyway. The four of them looked at each other.

“What do we do now?” asked Kenny.

Wendy’s mouth curved into a smile.

“I have an idea.”

~

It turned out that the majority of Wendy’s plan after that went exactly as she had planned. Okay, so after they stole Mr. Lu Kim’s airplane behind the school and arrived at the hospital, they found out that the hospital receptionist had accidentally given Stan and Kyle the wrong room number at first so they walked in on a man attempting to soothe a crying pregnant woman by pouring lemon juice on her head. And so when Stan and Kyle walked by the TV set several minutes later on their way to get Mrs. Marsh some water, they missed the majority of Obama’s speech on banning closets—but they still got the gist.

The best part, Cartman would argue, was when Mrs. Broflovski stormed into the hospital with all of her anti-anti-closet protesters right behind her, screaming, “THAT’S MY SON AND HE’S NOT GOING TO SUPPORT YOUR BELIEF SYSTEM!” while pointing at the fearful Kyle, and then literally picked him up—as the rest of the protesters got to Stan—shunted him into the nearby closet that they’d found earlier, with Stan, and then slammed the door, saying, “TAKE THAT, OBAMA!”

Then after that some of her protester-friends came over to her and reminded her it was all just an act, to which she said, “Yeah, yeah, I knew that.”

Then everyone waited.

Waited.

Waited.

And waited.

And stared, at the closet door where behind it was Kyle and Stan.

“What the fuck?” everyone heard Kyle say. “Dude, what are we doing in here?”

“I think it’s one of your mom’s ways of protesting,” said Stan dryly.

“So,” said Kyle. “Now that we’re in here...”

Everyone held their breath and stared. Obama, the doctors, Stan and Kyle’s families, the protesters, the news anchors, the reporters, the teachers who had come over from the school, some of the students who had stalked the teachers, Cartman, Wendy, Kenny and Butters. Even the passing hospital patients, who were curious as to what the fuck was going on and why the hell everyone was staring at a closet.

“Oh hey,” came Stan’s voice, and then the doorknob rattled. “I think it’s open.”

And he and Kyle stepped out.

Everyone stared at them. They were still holding their breaths.

Cartman was the first to react.

“You fucking fags!” he shouted. “You fucking fags weren’t supposed to do that! You were supposed to stay in the closet and confess your un-fucking-dying love for each other and make out and shit but no, you—” he rounded on Kyle “—you Jew had to ruin EVERYTHING, did you!”

“What?” said Kyle, completely bewildered. “What the hell are you going on about, Cartman?”

“This was a ploy to get you guys together,” said Kenny, stepping in.

Kyle went bug-eyed. “What?”

“Yeah!” joined in Butters,

“But we’re already together!” said Stan.

“What?” said the near two hundred people who had been involved.

Stan and Kyle blushed.

“Yeah,” said Kyle. “We... We got together a week ago, but we thought that we shouldn’t tell anyone in case nobody would accept us.”

“Oh bubblah!” Mrs. Broflovski ran over to hug her son. “We’ll accept us no matter if you’re gay or not!” she said to him. “As long as we can rely on Ike to give us grandchildren!”

“Glad to know I’m good for something,” Ike muttered to himself.

“You should have told us,” Kenny told Kyle. “Or else we wouldn’t have wasted our time doing all of this.”

Cartman was still pissed off.

“Seriously? Seriously you guys?” he exploded. “You mean we all did this work for nothing? You mean you fucking assholes didn’t think of telling us before? Now that stupid bitch’s plan is ruined, all of her work was wasted, you guys wasted her time and it’s all your fucking faults—”

He didn’t get a chance to say anymore, because at that moment, Wendy grabbed him by the collar and planted a firm kiss on his lips. Cartman was surprised, but kissed back as some people, including his friends, looked on, while others were laughing and crying and cheering that Stan and Kyle were together because apparently it was a very exciting event.

A few minutes passed of Cartman and Wendy still kissing and Kenny and Butters was talking to Stan and Kyle, and eventually all the adults dispersed like only adults in South Park do.

“Well,” said Stan, glancing at Cartman and Wendy. “I definitely didn’t see that one coming.”

“If you’d paid more attention to us, you would have,” said Kenny.

“Sorry,” said Kyle, embarrassed. “And sorry for not telling you guys earlier. I know why I didn’t want to tell anyone else, but I should have told you, Kenny.”

“Nah, it’s fine.” Kenny waved his hand. “You were too busy being happy with Stan, weren’t you?”

Kyle’s cheeks turned red. “Yeah,” he said.

Cartman broke out of his make out session with Wendy then to call over to them, “You guys are still a bunch of fags!” Wendy just pulled him down again so they could resume kissing.

Kyle rolled his eyes, but Butters laughed.

“Yeah!” he said to Stan and Kyle, pointing at them. “Yeah, you guys are a bunch of fags!”

“Dude,” said Stan, reaching over to put his arm around Kyle’s waist. “You and Kenny are fags, too.”

“What?” said Butters “No we aren’t!”

Kenny chuckled and put his arms around Butters’s shoulders.

“Yeah, I think we are,” he said into Butters’s ear lovingly. “We are fags.”

The End

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