This is my favorite chapter thus far. It's just so... well. I'll let you read.

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"Sure," Token said.

"Of course," Red said, combing her fingers through her hair. "Isn't it your anniversary soon?"

"You two are totally made for each other, too," Heidi said.

"Ob-obvi... obviously, Stan," Jimmy stuttered.

"Yeah," Clyde said. "Why do you ask?"

"Duh," Sally said.

"Wuh-well shucks, Stan, everyone knows that," Butters said, wringing his hands a little.

Stan sat at a lunch table, his head resting on his folded arms, and waited for Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman to return from the lunch line.

I don't believe it.

All morning, he'd asked everyone he came across. People he remembered from elementary school. People who knew him, who'd seen him agonize over Wendy.

And they'd all said Yes.

Everyone! They hadn't even hesitated, they'd all just nodded and said Yes, of course you're dating Kyle Broflovski, like they were discussing the color of the sky.

Stan slipped his arms out of the way and banged his head on the table a few times, until someone's hand landed on the back of his neck. He glanced up at Kyle, who had his tray balanced on one hand and was giving him a half amused, half concerned look.

"Dude, there are easier, less painful ways to kill brain cells." Stan smiled feebly and Kyle sat down next to him, Cartman and Kenny dropping into place across from them.

"So," Kenny said immediately, "how many people think you and Kyle are going at it every night, and twice on Fridays?"

Stan muttered something and glared at a nearby tree. Kenny snickered.

"I don't want to say 'I told you so,' but - no, actually, I do want to say it."

Stan redirected his glare to Kenny. "I've just been... asking the wrong people! That's it! They're all gullible..."

"Stan, you need to let it go, man," Cartman said, glaring and smacking Kenny's hand away from his food.

Stan glared at him, too, than turned around and scanned the campus for someone he hadn't asked yet.

"Hey - Craig! Craig!"

The boy turned around and flipped him off.

"Yeah, yeah," Stan said, waving him over. "I want to ask you something."

"Dude-" Kenny said as he walked over. Stan made a 'shut up' motion at him. He and Craig had football practice together and, outside Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman, he was the person he spent the most time with. Stan figured if anyone could vouch for his heterosexuality, it would be him.

"What is it?" Craig asked.

"Do you think Kyle and I are dating?"

Craig blinked and looked at him, then looked at Kyle, who shrugged helplessly, then back at him. "If this supposed to be some sort of trick question?"

"What? No! Just answer the question."

"Well, yeah," Craig said. "I thought you were going to ask me a hard question. Like about our math homework."

Stan stared at him. Craig waited for him to say something, and when he didn't he said, "Is that it?"

"Yeah, that's all," Kenny said, when Stan still didn't reply. Craig returned to his own group and Kenny shook his head.

"It's almost not funny."

Kyle cleared his throat and starting talking about his mother's latest crusade, which was joining a group that was trying to make fast food restaurants serve healthier food.

"... so when I said that if mothers really wanted their kids to eat right they should fix them healthy food instead of giving them ten bucks and expecting someone else to do it for them she told me to stop being sexist and go wash the dishes." He finished off his drink. "On the bright side, now she's gone all day."

"Those dried up skanks are full of shit. There's nothing wrong with fast food," Cartman said, slapping Kenny away from his food again.

Kyle snorted. "You could be their poster child, Cartman."

"Up yours," Cartman said. "Everyone knows that group was started by some Irish bitch that rounded up all her drunk friends one evening."

"Hey," Kenny snapped, still rubbing his hand, "shut up about the Irish, Cartman."

"Yeah? Why should I?"

"Because I'm Irish, dick."

Cartman had the look of someone whose one-night stand just told them they had AIDS the morning after. "WHAT?"

"Dude, my last name is McCormick. It's not my fault if you're too stupid to figure it out."

"Oh God, you're a potato fucker? A bagpipe-playing, kilt-wearing, sheep-chasing drunk?"

"That's the Scottish, lardass."

"Just when I thought I had a refuge from the hippie and the Jew," Cartman went on as if he hadn't said anything. "This explains everything. Your poverty and your drunk parents and-"

Kenny slugged him.

"-your solving all your problems with bar fights," Cartman snarled, clutching his jaw.

"Damn, Kyle," Kenny said. "I suddenly have so much more admiration for your restraint."

The bell rang. Cartman and Kenny left for their next class, still hurling obscenities at each other. Kyle dumped his trash then returned to where Stan was still sitting, staring dumbly at the ground.

"Man, you'd better hurry before you're late."

"Right," he said absently.

"See you later, then," he said, grabbing his backpack and strolling off to some advanced physics class. Stan got up and walked to his elective class numbly.

His journalism class was the only one he did not share with any of the other three; in fact, save one person, there was no one in that class from his elementary school. Everyone else had burned themselves out on reporting during fourth grade. The one exception was Bebe Stevens, who wanted to learn everything she could about the news and reporting crimes to better prepare herself for law school. She'd wanted to be a marine biologist until the Jamboo incident, when she'd decided she didn't want "bat shit insane eco-terrorists" harassing her and/or shooting her in the head.

Though Stan usually sat on the opposite side of the room, he grabbed the desk next to her immediately and leaned over.

"Bebe, do you think I'm gay?"

She blinked, looking momentarily thrown off, then she scowled at him and crossed her arms. "Oh, I'm not falling for that again."

"Huh?"

"I'm sure Kenny told you all about it," she said testily. "He came up to me acting all concerned and said he thought he might be gay, and wanted to kiss me to check. So I let him, and then that sneaky, two-faced, underhanded asshole slipped me the tongue and grabbed my chest!"

Oh, Stan thought. That's right. Kenny and Cartman hadn't been able to stop laughing about that.

"I don't want to kiss you, Bebe."

She looked wary a moment longer, then sighed. "Well," she said grudgingly, "I guess you're more trustworthy than that pervert. Okay. What was it you wanted to ask me?"

"Do you think I'm gay?" he repeated. She frowned a little.

"Well... no."

Though he'd said he wouldn't, he could have kissed her right there and then. At last, someone who was making sense-

"Really, just because you're dating Kyle doesn't mean you like all men. Forcing labels on people like that is so pointless. Everyone's gay for someone. For example, I'd do Jessica Rabbit... if she weren't a cartoon character. But then, who wouldn't do Jessica Rabbit?"

Stan stared at her for a while. Then he said, "What."

"You're so lucky, by the way. Kyle has the greatest ass in school... no, in this entire town."

"What?"

"And he's the only circumcised guy around, too. Way more aesthetically pleasing, if you ask me."

Stan, who had not asked her and could have lived his whole life without knowing that, gave her a horrified look and made an accompanying horrified sound. The overall impression was that of a man who wished desperately that life had a rewind/erase button and said button was in his possession.

The teacher began calling role and Bebe turned in her seat and faced the front, flipped open her notebook, and started taking notes.

Stan just kept gaping at her. He did this the entire period, and continued after the bell rang. His teacher finally had to shake him out of it and tell him to go home.

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Kyle was woken up by something rapping on his window. He screwed his eyes closed and burrowed deeper under his thick comforter, but the tapping grew louder if anything. When it became to loud to ignore, Kyle stretched his hand out from under his blanket and groped around his night stand. His fingers finally brushed his alarm clock, and he closed his fist around it and hurled it at the source of the tapping. There was the sound of breaking glass, and then beautiful, beautiful silence.

He curled back up under his blankets and spared a few, fleeting thoughts to how he would wake up on time without his alarm clock, but eventually decided to worry about it when he was more lucid. He was nearly asleep again when he noticed the cold draft and that damned tapping restarted. Except now it was more of a pounding.

Kyle ripped the blanket off his head and glared at Stan, who was hanging on the other side of his broken window, clutching his alarm clock.

Grumbling, he kicked the blankets off and crossed the room. The floor was freezing, and the cold air pouring in through the clock-shaped hole in his window combined with the fact he always slept in nothing but boxer shorts was making him shiver.

"Stan," he hissed, "what the fuck are you doing here at-" he cast a quick glance at the clock Stan was still clutching "-four in the morning?"

"Falling off and breaking my neck, in a minute, if you don't let me in," he hissed back. "I've been clinging to your sill for nearly ten minutes and it's freezing balls out here! My fingers are going to go numb and I'm going to slip and-"

He yelped when Kyle swung the window open and ducked just quickly enough to avoid getting beamed in the head. Stan climbed in, glaring at him, and latched the window behind him.

Kyle shivered and rubbed his arms. Stan was the one whining about being cold, but at least he had a coat and boots. "What did you want?" he repeated, figuring the sooner he dealt with Stan's midnight crisis, the sooner he could return to his warm bed.

Unfortunately, Stan didn't say something prompt and easily fixed, like "I want a sandwich," or "Do you have the english homework?" Instead he frowned, looked down at his shoes, and finally muttered, "I couldn't sleep. I just - you know - couldn't stop thinking."

He started pacing, not that there was much room for it. Kyle had a meticulously organized backpack, but his room was littered with clothes, video games, and his extensive porn DVD collection which he was able to keep in his room because he'd replaced all the labels with those of boring documentaries like The Plow That Broke the Plains and Lost in La Mancha.

"It's just... the entire school. I asked everyone, man! I asked those library trolls that never see the light of day, and the goths who loath school drama with an unholy, irrational passion, and those kids who play Dungeons and Dragons in the computer room, and they ALL thought we were dating! I asked kids I don't even know! I even asked the fucking teachers!"

"Well-"

"It's this town, man! Everyone that lives here is so completely out of touch with reality! Why am I always the only one that looks at anything rationally? Realistically?"

Here he stopped and gave Kyle a pleading look, and when Kyle finally realized he was expecting some sort of response (because it was four AM, after all, and his thought process had slowed accordingly) he said, "... lead poisoning? Too many day time talk shows?"

Stan crossed the room and gripped Kyle by his shoulders. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then he said, a little desperately, "The entire school, dude."

"You already said that," Kyle pointed out.

"I'm not gay," Stan said, shaking his arms a little.

Kyle patted him on the shoulder. "I believe you, Stan. Now will you please stop sneaking into my bedroom in the middle of the night and clinging to my boxer-clad body?"

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TBC