When he was eight, Kyle's favourite show was Story Time with Stan. Every day after he got home from school, he would rush to the television and sit cross-legged on the rug in front of it, clutching a sofa cushion to his chest while he glued his eyes to the screen for the next twenty minutes. The thing was, there was only one thing in particular Kyle actually liked about the show, and that was its presenter.
He didn't quite have a grasp of what being dreamy entailed, but if Kyle had to guess then he would have said that Stan fit the bill. He had eyes like Kyle's favourite sky, and straight, dark hair he was envious of, and a really nice smile that crinkled at the edges, and a contagious sort of laugh, which he would let loose often whilst talking with his fuzzy, furry, feathery friends on the show in between reading stories.
More than anything, Kyle liked how nice Stan was, always happy and cheery. Kyle didn't get much of that in school, where everybody was painfully aware of his big nose, and he had to wear the same old green hat so that they weren't just as aware of his curly hair like a big, red sheep on his head, so he was grateful for the moments of happiness Stan gifted him with in the afternoons, no matter sun, rain, or snow (the last of which he got a lot of, living in Colorado – far too much – and he often imagined what being in sunny California with Stan would be like).
Kyle knew that his crush was a little strange, it being on a grown-up. And he knew that others might have laughed at him for watching a show aimed at really little kids, littler even than him. Even he found it weird that he could watch a whole twenty minutes of lame stories being read, but the moment his mom went to his book shelf at night he started up whining, "Mooom, I'm too old for bedtime stories, go read to Ike!" And the worst part of that was that he wasn't old at all – not as old as he needed to be to get a plane by himself and fly to meet Stan and ask him out for ice-cream.
As it was, the closest Kyle could get to Stan was a few feet in front of the television (he would go closer, except then his mom would yell at him about ruining his eyes), so that was what he put up with. And it was enough, really, to make him bubble up inside with a fizzy rush of excitement, and put a wide, wobbly smile on his face as Stan read stories to him, and him alone (forget the nation, it was just Kyle he read to, and just Kyle he smiled for, and just Kyle always, no one else).
One day, Kyle's smile was wider and wobblier than usual, and it was because of Marsh's Mail, a segment that took place just a few minutes before the episode ended. A bird puppet would fly through a window with crayon sky and cardboard clouds beyond it, and it would twitter and twatter and make an awful lot of bloody noise, but Stan smiled warmly at it all the same and didn't treat it like it was as annoying as Kyle thought it was.
"Thanks, Chikadee-y," he laughed, taking envelopes out of the bird's mouth, and normally Kyle would have made a bunch of fuss that such a tiny bird couldn't carry such big envelopes, but for Marsh's Mail he shut up and paid attention. "Wow, we've got a lot of mail again today," Stan remarked eagerly as he opened the first one up, his face beaming like the night-light Kyle pretended he didn't still need. "Let's see what it says."
It was perhaps a little ridiculous to hope, considering thousands of kids watched the show just like him every day and hundreds of them sent mail in, but still Kyle clutched his cushion tighter and leant in closer to the screen and held his breath – and it hitched when Stan looked up at the screen, with those eyes of the brightest blue and that smile that made Kyle's heart skip, and he said the unbelievable words, "Well, looks like eight-year-old Kyle Broflovski from South Park, Colorado has something to say."
Even though he had just said his embarrassingly too-old-for-that-show age out loud on national television, even though he had pronounced his name Bro-flow-v-ski (which was forgivable, really, since nobody got it right, not even teachers he had been with since preschool), even so Kyle gasped out loud as his eyes widened and his heart started up ping-ponging around in his chest while fireworks whizzed in his tummy, because Stan had said his name, Stan knew he existed, and this was a dream, he was dreaming, it couldn't be-
But it could. Stan kept on reading, in that laid-back, friendly voice Kyle adored, "Dear Stan, I really, really love your show. It's my favourite thing on TV and I watch it every day. I think you're really nice and I wish you could be my BFF in real life." Kyle burrowed his face into his pillow as his face flushed at the embarrassment, because, oh Moses, had he really written that? How cheesy! Stan probably thought he was totally lame and-
He was laughing. Stan was laughing, and it sounded better than when he got his acoustic out and had Stan's Sing-Song during the end credits, because it was satisfying. Stan looked happy, and Kyle had made him happy with his letter, and-and-and-
Kyle could die right there quite happily, eight-years-old with his life ahead of him or no.
"Thanks, Kyle, that's really nice of you," Stan said, looking into the camera as he spoke, looking right at Kyle, and maybe his cheeks went all the more redder for it, but Kyle stared right back, nearly wanting to cry from how amazing the whole thing felt. "It means a lot to me that you like the show so much, and we on the show like you too." Stan winked then, and Kyle's heart pretty much gave up altogether.
"We," he had said, which included him. Stan liked him. Oh, God. Stan liked him. And maybe not in the way he liked Stan, yeah, but all the same, Stan liked him.
Kyle was pretty much a goner for the rest of Marsh's Mail. He heard Stan reading out others' letters, but he wasn't really listening, too hung up on the fact that Stan had said his name, clicked the sharp 'K' off of his perfect, straight, white teeth and shaped the 'eye' part with his pretty lips and rolled the 'le' off of his pink tongue, and just – all of it was great. The whole thing had him so excited that, after Marsh's Mail was done and Stan had said, "See you next story time, guys," after he had finished strumming the ending song and singing it softly with the puppets, Kyle wasn't able to resist falling backwards, still hugging the cushion, and rolling back and forth across the rug, giggling euphorically and probably looking like a total weirdo in doing so, but whatever, no one was looking (he hoped).
When he was done, Kyle just laid on his back on the rug in front of the television while it played some commercial or other, breathing in and out with great excitement. Right in that moment, his life was pretty perfect. Yeah, maybe he would never meet his crush in person, never get to go on an ice-cream date with him and tell him that his favourite flavour was strawberry and hear him laugh and tell him that that was great so nicely; but maybe that was okay. Maybe all Kyle really needed was an afternoon with a tummy like fizzy soda and a heart like a drum and a wide, wobbly smile.
Author's Notes:
I've always wanted to write something for Style, but I've never been able to think of anything. Until now, that is. Strangely, I can't remember how or when or why this cute little idea popped into my head. Regardless how it came to me though, I'm glad that it did.
Thank you for reading this, and I hope you liked doing so as much as I liked writing it.
Disclaimer: South Park does not belong to me, but to its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone.