They're still ten.
Damn, it's been a while since I've been in this fandom.
()()()
"Kyle, let me in."
"Go away, asshole." His voice is muffled from the door separating them.
Stan is frustrated. He doesn't feel rightfully so, though—he is an asshole, and everything is his fault. As usual. "Kyle, please. I know I fucked up, and I'm sorry, but I need you to forgive me. I'll die alone." He tries joking. Kyle loves jokes, especially self-depreciating ones.
"Good." Kyle doesn't sound too heartbroken over that idea. Or cheered up. Kyle is a stubborn cockmunch, Stan decides, but then reneges that thought. He's been way worse lately, and he's come to try and pacify that. Maybe he can't. Kyle, after all, has not ever been known as a moveable stone.
Leaning into Kyle's front door, Stan brushes his forehead against the chilling oak. He fists his small, chubby hands into his blue button-down shirt, the same one Kyle detachedly said would look best on him tonight. He runs the other hand through his short black hair, mildly regretting not wearing his trademark blue hat with the red poofball. Wendy said it made him look "juvenile," and never mind that he was still ten. He figured he could look as childish as he wanted, but apparently not when he was with a girl. Girls were weird. And Kyle said it wouldn't match with his clothes, anyway. When was Kyle ever so concerned with fashion?
Interestingly enough, Kyle speaks first. "Are you wearing the hat?"
Stan sighs. "No, I'm not wearing the hat. I left it at home. Sparky's probably chewing on it right now."
"It'd look stupid with a dress shirt and khakis, Stan," Kyle observes.
Stan huffs. "Dude, it's cold as balls out here. Are you going to let me in or let me freeze to death while we discuss my poor wardrobe decisions?" He's shivering already—he didn't think he'd need a jacket tonight, since his mom dropped him off at the entrance of the school for the dance, and he'd planned on spending most of the night indoors, anyway. Indoors, and not wandering aimlessly on the sidewalks of South Park and standing like a lost puppy on his best friend's doorstep, jilted and exhausted with everything.
"I'm not going to let you in until you tell me why you're here," Kyle says. "I thought you were at the dance with Wendy."
"I was," Stan replies. "But she stood me up for Token. I was there maybe fifteen minutes when she said she'd rather go black than go back to me." He'd laughed at that, thinking she was kidding. But Token—that rich sonfabitch—had swept Wendy off her feet under Stan's nose with his weirdly deep voice (for a ten-year-old, anyhow) and left him standing alone, staring into his glass of punch like a looking-glass, wondering why he was still playing her games. "So I decided to come here. Because you're not a douche like she is."
"So what you're telling me is I'm playing second fiddle to a girl you've been dating on-and-off since kindergarten?" Kyle snorts. "Please, spare me. Besides, you told me earlier this week that you were going to forget the dance and come play video games with me. Remember?"
As much as he hated to admit it, Stan had indeed made that promise—right in front of Cartman and Kenny, too, so he couldn't plead the Fifth with witnesses. Wendy had chewed him out for something he couldn't even recall for the infinite time, and Stan had decided he was sick of her (as was the tried course of their relationship), so he'd approached Kyle about having a dude's night that Saturday. "Dances are gay, right?" He'd said as he walked with Kyle between classes.
He remembered Kyle flinching. He couldn't pinpoint why, but Kyle had given him a tight smile and nodded once. "Yeah, they're gay."
Stan reorients himself after a long minute and answers. "… Yes, I remember."
"Then why did it cross your mind to come here?" Kyle spits. He's pissed. Stan's stomach finds a home in his feet. "Why do you think I'm going to keep pretending you don't throw me out of your life every time she comes around and chooses to latch back onto you? Guess what, Stan—I'm fucking not. All I hear is Wendy this, Wendy that—until she gets rid of you again, and then I have you for maybe a week before she snaps you up in her jaws. I'm sick of it. If you're going to keep doing this, you can find a new Super Best Friend." Stan has never heard so much anger in Kyle's tone, and he's seen him dutifully enraged. He's seen him shoot back poisonous barbs at Cartman. He's seen him walk and talk and seethe with his red, hotheaded hatred. Yet Kyle was one of the most lax, forgiving people Stan had ever met, and he didn't know how Kyle could be so irate one second and willing to let go the next. Maybe it was maturity. Maybe it was the early stages of bipolar disorder. Maybe Kyle was nuts.
All Stan knew was that he could never do something like that. He always looked to Kyle to help him through erasing grudges and moving on, and he couldn't imagine doing it without him.
Stan draws out the silence between them, cautiously gauging his next words. He feels like he can't be too careful, even though he knows Kyle isn't made out of rice paper. "Because I don't know what I'd do if you weren't my friend, Kyle," Stan confesses. His voice cracks and nearly shatters, a vase on the perpetually frozen ground of this remote Colorado town. "You're so much that I'm not. Wendy is replaceable. I mean, she's just someone I go out with every once in a while. I'm sorry she seems more important to me than you are. She's… she's not my best friend." Stan's hand curls into a fist on the door. He wants to slam into it, somehow break down the door, like his superhero alter-ego Toolshed could have done in an instant.
But right now, he's not Toolshed. He's just Stanley Marsh, wearing an outfit too immaculate for his personality and feeling too damn cold for his own good. The cold edge in Kyle's voice doesn't help, either.
"That's not enough, Stan," he responds bitterly. Stan could have foreseen that one. "Why do you always leave me for her? Why am I always number two?"
"You're not," Stan concedes weakly. "Kyle, you're my number one. Always. This time, I promise—no, I swear that I will never hook up with her again."
He hears a snort on the other side of the door. It's still just as closed as its been for the last few minutes. A brisk, arid breeze finds its way through the seams of Stan's shirt and into his bones. Within seconds, he starts shivering, though he isn't sure if it's out of disgruntlement or chills.
"I mean it, Kyle," he says with sustenance. "I'm through with her. For good. Forever and ever, at least until Cartman starts losing weight. And we both know that won't happen. That's how long I'll stay away from her."
"You stay away from her even if Cartman becomes fucking anorexic, you hear me?" Kyle's snap is as sharp as the cold surrounding Stan. "I'm so sick of being without you, Stan. All I want to do is have you back permanently. Is that so much for me to ask?"
Stan considers this. Then he wonders why he even balked in the first place. "Of course not," he reassures. "Ky, I know you're pissed, but can you please let me in? I'm freezing."
The hush of the nighttime fills the gap between them, bridging the yawning chasm with the sounds of the rustling trees and the crunching rubber of a car passing by in the street behind Stan's back. There is a brief tapping on the closed door, as if Kyle is drumming his fingers against it, pondering his next action. Then, achingly slow and unbelievably relenting, comes the click of a lock, and the door swings open.
Kyle is standing there, his green ushanka slightly lopsided on his head, a wisp of his strawberry alarm clock hair peeking out at Stan. He's wearing the Terrance and Phillip pajamas Stan got him for his birthday this year. His steady green eyes are misty and bracketed in red, as if he'd been crying. Along with the stomach living down there, Stan's heart drops as well.
"Jesus," Kyle remarks as the frigid air rushes in and hits him. "You're right. Get inside." He beckons for his friend to come in, and Stan doesn't think twice. He dashes indoors, but for some reason, Kyle doesn't close the door behind him. He leaves it standing ajar, staring outside, as if waiting for someone who will never come.
Stan glances at the television in the living room. The screen is paused. "Were you watching a movie?" he asks.
"Sixteen Candles," Kyle answers distantly. The door is still open. Stan is confused. "My parents bought it, thinking it was a Jewish movie. I figured I'd check it out or something."
"Dude, are you going to stand there all night?" Stan inquires. "You're letting all the cold air in."
"My parents are idiots." Kyle doesn't move. "A menorah has nine candles, you know."
"Hello, earth to dumbass," Stan says.
"Stan, do you promise that you'll never go back to Wendy?" Kyle asks. He tosses the door absentmindedly between his hands, watching it swing back and forth from the hinges. Stan briefly wonders if Kyle is indeed nuts. "Because I have something I need to get off my chest."
Momentarily thrown for a loop, Stan shrugs. He comes off as more cavalier than he means to be. "Well, yeah, I meant it," he rejoinders. "I'm not going to make bogus vows with my Super Best Friend." He says it with conviction, and in his heart, he knows he is right. From this moment on, he decides, Kyle is first. Kyle is not number two.
And when Kyle turns around, his swollen eyes smiling at Stan with an emotion he can't place, Stan's organs realign themselves back to their proper place. And, for once since arriving at the dance, Stan feels he's back in his, too.
"I think you look really good in that, dude."
Kyle closes the door behind him.
()()()
Well, at least he's not a stubborn cockmunch. At least not at this moment. Kyle Broflovski has never been known to be a moveable stone.
But he is moving now. And Stan is glad.