Best Friends Forever
Authors Note: I'll say this now, for it'll be very apparent and unsurprising through out the story. All four of the boys are become involved with homosexual relationships but at their tender ages of ten-eleven, they are young and generally don't understand their feelings… And 10-11 is really young to find out that you're gay… XD... If they even are at all… But that's just the oddity of my story. I.e., there will be quite a bit of slash.
There may also be a prologue in the future, but I just haven't been able to write one. It won't effect the story though, sooooo yeah.
Enough rambling! Enjoy the story!
Chapter One: The Anatomy of Good-bye
Kyle didn't have a Jewish nose. Or hawk nose as it was probably more commonly referred to as. Instead, it was slender and straight down to the tip and spotted at the bridge with faint freckles.
Such an observation caused Stan to tilt his head in perplexity, and right on the beat, Kyle proceeded to pursue in the exact action in the opposite direction. Stan's eyebrows furrowed in reaction, and then he let his head lean to the same side as Kyle. But just he thought that, Kyle had the same idea in mind. They fell into a pattern, a game almost, and their tilting heads never stayed in line.
There they were, frozen at Stark's Pond by the circular patch of ice that made up the small pond. Nestled between evergreens and sheltered by the Coloradoan mountains just outside of South Park. It had always been a popular spot for the four friends—Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny—as young children, and so they continued the tradition by stopping by every winter for a skate or a campout.
When their game finally became a banality, they stared at each other with their faces twisting in sheer puzzlement as details they never noticed in each other appeared. It was a vile thought, but it gripped them in with sinewy force so strong, they couldn't help but lean into and bump nose against nose. The confrontation was erroneous, they decided, so they pulled away.
Stan had pondered upon whether or not other kids had unwanted thoughts of locking lips with their best friend as had he had now. Curiosity was teasing and pricking at the tender, soft pink skin that made up his lip, and it trembled in anticipation. He thought that perhaps if he was swift enough, he could leave a ghost of a kiss upon his friend's lips, and maybe he wouldn't even feel it as curiosity would fill at that.
Kyle's freckles became the snow that sprinkled down on South Park and buried them in ice crystals. The single stray curl of the red "jewfro" he persistently hid beneath the green Ushanka he always wore was the fire of temptation burning inside Stan's mind like a shriveling candle wick. Stan leaned in one more time to go in for the kill. Their noses touched once more and without Kyle's protests, he began to lower his lips.
"Oh meh god, you guys are such fags," Cartman's high-pitched squeak crept up on the from behind furtively.
Quicker then flies, Stan broke apart from Kyle and stumbled backwards into the pickling needle pines of a snow-covered evergreen. A mild blush swept across his face, as a reaction to being caught osculating with Kyle.
"Where's Kenny?" Cartman suddenly demanded in a clamor.
Once Stan got himself together, he moved from within the tree's branches out towards Kyle and exchanged questions with him without words. Kyle merely raised an eyebrow as if to shrug without the use of his shoulders, seemingly unaffected by his best friend's attempt. Stan nodded slightly in reply and turned to their overweight, obnoxious "friend" and answered, "We don't know, Cartman."
Everything would have been left uncertain at the moment, and they would have been left to only ponder upon their friend's mysterious recent disappearances. But the perjurement he made burned in his stomach as guilt and so words blurted from Kyle's mouth, "He's probably out using Butters."
Eyebrows raised and confusion built upon their silence until Stan spoke. "Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?" he asked.
"You haven't heard?"
"Apparently not," Cartman stated bluntly with his usual arrogance, but a hint of worry was present in his speech, and their discussion suddenly became serious.
Kyle shifted his weight to his left foot nervously and turned his attention to his feet as he shuffled them slightly in the snow. "It's just what I heard… That Kenny's been 'using' people… I mean, that's just what I heard. I don't know if it's true or not…" he replied in a low voice, still staring at the ground.
Another silence commenced between them. A large gust of wind blew over the frozen pond and swirled through the evergreen's branches, burning the boys' faces as it passed. Cartman clutched his tangerine-colored scarf into a closer loop around his neck.
Out of the silence where he always found his words, Stan uttered, "Christ, Kyle. Kenny's eleven!"
What was horrible about Stan's exclaim was that they all knew he doubted it.
When did we loose you to the sky and the planets?
Are you alone out there,
catching shooting stars?
Because you know we'd help you find the ground again.
If you'd only told us how,
how to bring you home.
They had all silently agreed to find Kenny. But as they strolled down the pavements spotted with millions of microscopic snowflakes, each made of six symmetric arms and such careful patterns that it was a wonder as to how such beauty came naturally, they knew well that they wouldn't find their friend in the angelic haven of the world that only children believed in. Kenny was growing up too fast. The four wandered down the streets lined with two-story houses and separate garages with an empty space trailing behind them in their missing friend's spot. They wondered how long that space would be vacant.
Out of the gloom and into the sun, Cartman stopped and bent down to gather a heap of snow and round it into a sphere within his yellow-colored gloved palms. A snowball was born on that day at 3:52 p.m. on December eighteenth as a last attempt to replenish the winter spirit. All was lost however when the snowball was pulverized into Kyle's back, slide down his orange polyester jacket, and disbanded into separate flakes without any protest or laughter.
"You guys suck, you know? You never want to do anything anymore. You just want to kiss each other now," he spat. "Fags!" He added with disgust.
Without even turning around to glance behind at Cartman, Kyle responded, "Shut up, fatass! We weren't going to kiss!" His words were filled with honest hate, but without looking his overweight friend in the eye, he did not seem convincing.
Cartman immediately dropped the subject and fell to silence.
Their footprints disappeared into the dusk as darkness fell upon them on at the mere sixteenth hour and a half. Street lights reflecting celadon-colored artificial light led them home from an unsuccessful search in woe and disappointment. As pale lavender clouds rolled into the sky, they wished upon the brightest star in the sky that Kenny would be safe tonight from the demons that thrived in the streets at night.
The boys uttered their good-byes and went their separate ways—Stan to Kyle's house naturally and Cartman down the path to his own nearly empty middle-class home. He watched the boys enter the Broflovski household, greeted by Kyle's mother Shelia with a relieved smile to find that her son returned home before the sun went down entirely. For him, he still had quite a way to continue to traverse—down one middle-class neighborhood, into the shoddier area, across the train tracks by Kenny's house, and finally back into the warming sanctuary of his own social class—till he reached his own house. The walk would be lonely and undesirable, but nonetheless, necessary.
Cartman hiked up an unavoidable small hill in his path, but not without difficulty and heavy breathing. At the acme, he was welcomed by a distant figure planted on the edge of the curb with his head bowed down to the road. As Cartman approached the small creature closer, the street light reflected down upon him and revealed a familiar orange parka with its hood up. Frozen in disbelief, he felt his muscles tense and his chest pound. The feeling was all in the moment and an opportunity lie just paces before him.
He threw on an average face with strong accented diagonal eyebrows and a wicked grin and called out to his friend, "Kenny!"
The tiny figure perked up and turned around to find the origin of the unmistakable voice of Cartman. His hood, usually buttoned up his throat and tied tightly to conceal a portion of his face, was open loose over his messy blond hair. No words slipped past his lips opened just to a finger's width. The skin only trembled.
Finally in front of Kenny beneath the street light, he could see the how unusually ruffled his hair was—bed head—he tried to shake off the thought. His parka was unzipped despite the chill of the snow lightly powered on the ground. As it seemed, he had rushed outside to this stop from… a nap or worse?
"Where the hell have you been?" Cartman interrogated in such a harsh manner that it was clear to tell that it was purely out of concern.
Kenny faltered and flicked his blond bangs out of his eyes without use of his hands, "Just around here…" he looked away quickly and then turned back to face his friend. "Why?"
Right on cue, a soft sprinkling of snow fell from the purple clouds overhead and fluttered to the ground. The world around them became a snow shaker and they were trapped inside. Kenny moved his gaze upwards to the sky, and his hood dropped from his head and revealed his full head of blond hair. Snowflakes fell upon his face and became the freckles he never had.
Cartman kept quiet for a moment, thankful that the unexpected snowfall gave him a chance to think of a decent way to attempt to speak the truth without slipping from his personality, the charade that found he had become. The real Cartman was still alive though, buried beneath hatred and Anti-Semitism and all of the lies that consumed him. When he finally drifted from his musing, he answered in a low whisper, "We just missed you. That's all."
"Yeah?" Kenny didn't trust Cartman's eyes which were prolonged with sadness and a glint of warm-hearted affection, but he liked to believe that his friends really did care about him. Being loved was such a different feeling, and sometimes he didn't know how to respond to it. Sometimes a love towards him was only a mixed signal though, and that ruined his heart. For now though, he tried to love again.
Without another word, the two began down the uneven street towards Kenny's rundown bungalow. As they walked in perfect rhythm, Cartman could have sworn that their hearts would beat at the same time. He felt close to the friend he had always considered lower because of his social status. But, he had never noticed how kind Kenny had always been in the past, despite his friends' lack of noticing this. Although he wasted what little money he owned on pornography, he had still be the sweetest of the group.
A quick glance down at Kenny's lonely left hand, gloved in brown, and even Kenny felt the thud in his heart. He stared at Cartman who only stared back and smiled softly. Just to spite and perhaps even degrade Cartman, he took his right hand in his left and their fingers laced together. He swung both of their hands out far in front of them in time as they walked, just to poke fun of their awkward situation; laughing playfully all the way to his house. Just before his front lawn, he untied their grip and smiled again.
He turned and left to his doorstep where he turned around and added just before disappearing inside, "I'm okay, Cartman!"
Minutes after Kenny had left, Cartman still stood before the McCormick's front yard. His hand twitched with a strange sensation coursing through his veins.
A freight train roared past across the wooden tracks and kicked up his blue coat.