And this is where the plot actually starts to pick up.

Incidentally, I love Cartman. And Kenny. And Kyle and Stan. I find I am incapable of picking a favorite.

--

--

--

"Kyle," Wendy said, "will you be my partner?"

"Why?" he asked, turning around to glance at her.

"I want to talk to you."

"Why?" he repeated.

"Just come on, would you?" she snapped, grabbing his wrist and yanking him off to the opposite side of the gym. Kyle glanced over his shoulder and gave Stan a helpless, what-you-going-to-do? shrug as he was dragged off.

Stan frowned after them. If Wendy was snagging Kyle for partner stretches, that meant he'd be stuck with Cartman, in light of Kenny's most recent not-so-unsuspected demise.

Every PE class started with running three laps around the track. The PE teacher, whom Kenny assured everyone who'd listen was a dyke, butch hair cut and all, had ignored his complaints of chest pains and told him to run it off. He'd gone a few feet before he doubled over in a coughing fit and eventually died. As Stan had predicted, smoking had killed him.

Or perhaps it was all the PE students who'd trampled over him to get a better time on their run.

Stan sighed and held Cartman's feet while he did crunches. Not that 'did' was the right word. More like 'pretend to try whenever the teacher looked in their direction.' "What does Wendy want with Kyle?" he wondered out loud.

"What?" Cartman demanding, abandoning his faked exercises and sitting up to look at Kyle and Wendy.

"God dammit, he already has you, and now he's horning in on Wendy? They should castrate all these Jew-whores at birth!"

"God, you too?" Stan snapped. "Kyle doesn't have me. We aren't gay!"

"Stan, If you two were any gayer, you'd be shitting rainbows."

Stan scowled at him. "Why do you care, anyway?"

"I don't." Cartman gave Kyle a nasty look while he said it. Not that it was anything out of the usual for Cartman to glare at Kyle.

--

"Okay," Kyle said, speaking every time he came up on his crunches, "why do you want to talk to me?"

"It's about Stan."

"Oh," he said, dropping back down to the floor.

"Kyle, I mean it," she said, poking him in the knee. He did a few more crunches and when she got tired of him avoiding her eyes, she spoke again.

"He's still jealous that we study together, you know. Every Thursday he sits on your couch and plays video games and pouts."

"I know."

"He thinks we like each other."

"I know."

"Look Kyle, I'm not going to be your..." she flipped her hand looking for the right word. "Your beard!"

"Aw, just because I'm not shaving yet doesn't mean you have to rub it in."

"You know what I mean!" she snapped. Kyle came up and instead of dropping back down again he crossed his arms over his knees and gave her a thoughtful look.

"Why do you care so much all of a sudden, anyway?"

"What do you mean?" she said quickly.

"I mean you haven't cared about 'being my beard' until now. There some guy you like or something?"

Wendy flushed a little but the PE teacher blew her whistle before she could deny it. She got up and when she spoke again, her voice had a steely note.

"I'm serious, Kyle. If you don't sort this out with Stan, I... I won't enter the science fair with you when we're seniors!" She stormed off; Kyle paled and hurried after her.

"What? You heartless temptress, you can't dangle a joint scholarship in front of a man and then take it all away!"

She ignored him and joined her team on the other side of the volleyball net. Kyle walked over to Stan while the teacher barked instruction and started handing out balls.

"So," Stan said, a slight edge to his voice, "what did Wendy want?"

"Oh..." Kyle glanced at him. "It was nothing."

"I'm sure," Stan muttered. Kyle gave an exasperated sigh.

"Dude, do we seriously have to have this conversation again? I'm not interested in Wendy. I wouldn't go out with her."

"Oh?" Stan asked sullenly. "Why?"

"Because of you, dumbass."

Stan hesitated a while, then he dropped his hands and sighed.

"You're right; I'm sorry. You're not an asshole, you wouldn't go out with a friend's ex-girlfriend."

"That's not really what I meant-"

Kyle was cut off when Cartman, who was serving the ball for the other team, spiked it into his face.

He at first he simply stood there, still in a state of shock, and then he gripped his nose. "Oh, son of a bitch!"

"Man, you okay?" Stan said, alarmed.

"Eric!" the teacher barked. "I just told you that serving the ball overhanded like that is illegal! Weren't you listening?" she shouted.

"He's being a pussy," Cartman said scornfully, crossing his arms.

The teacher crossed the gym and pulled Kyle's hand away from his face while demanding, "Let me see that."

Stan stared. Kyle's fingers came away bloody.

The PE teacher poked and prodded at his face mercilessly, then released him with a curt nod. "Nothing's broken. Eric's right. Suck it up, Kyle."

"But I'm bleeding!"

"Fine," she said. "Stanley, walk him to the nurse's office, I'm sure they'll coddle you there." She walked off again to shout at the other teams.

"Tweak, stop shying away from the ball!"

"GAH! But I don't want to bleed to death!" Tweak shrieked, casting a terrified look toward Kyle.

"No one's bleeding to death! And even if they were, they ought to take it like a man!"

"Even the girls?" someone muttered.

"Especially the girls, Bebe!" Stan heard the teacher bark as he put a hand on Kyle's back and steered him out of the gym.

--

Cartman scoffed as he watched Stan escort Kyle out of the gym. And he said he wasn't queer. The pussy was so deep in denial it was pathetic. There had never been any doubt in Cartman's mind that he and Kyle were fags. It was just such a given.

Still, he had to admit Stan had given him some doubts. He knew they both got off on quantum physics and extracurricular college-application padding. Maybe Kyle was planning on seducing Wendy. It would be just such the sort of greedy thing a Jew would do.

"What the hell did you do that for!" a nasal voice demanded, and Cartman turned to see Wendy, who had her hands on her hips and was scowling at him.

"What are you bitching about now?"

Wendy's scowl deepened, if it were possible. "Don't give me that crap, I saw you! You hit him in the face on purpose!"

"It was an improvement, if you ask me."

"God. I can at least understand you being a jackass when you two are arguing, but he didn't do anything!"

"Aw, worried about the fag?"

Wendy fumed. "Don't call him that! And he hasn't said anything to you all day! What justification could you possibly have to hit him in the face?"

"It's just the fact he exists."

"You're an awful, terrible person," she said, gritting her teeth. "God," she muttered, "what's wrong with..."

"... Me?" he said, when she didn't finish her sentence. It seemed to jolt her back to the conversation.

"You! What's wrong with you, is what I was going to say!" she snapped and moved to the opposite side of the volley ball court as quickly as she could manage.

--

"Kyle, this is the nurse's office," Stan said, tugging on his friend's elbow, as he wasn't paying much attention and had walked right past it. Kyle doubled back and Stan held the door open for him.

When they entered, the nurse was carrying a freshman girl into the back room. She was clinging to his neck and sobbing about how a deceptively nice-looking eighty year old man had mowed her down on his bike. When Kyle and Stan came into the room, he nodded toward the chairs by the door (his hands being too full to gesture) and said, "I'll be with you in a minute." Then he disappeared into the room where girls on their periods and girls pretending to be on their periods (because it was the one excuse you could use to get out of taking a test that no one would challenge) went to lie down for a while.

Kyle sat down on one of the hard plastic chairs but Stan remained standing, walking around the nurse's office which doubled as a utility closet now and then. He looked at some glass jars full of bloated dead frogs suspended in liquid that the science class had dumped there for safe keeping, and it suddenly occurred to Stan where Kenny had gotten those ones he'd chucked at cars from.

After all, Kenny ended up in the nurse's office a lot.

Stan glanced back at Kyle, who was leaning against the wall and holding his increasingly bloody sleeve against his nose. "You okay, man?"

"Yeah... God dammit, what is wrong with that asshole?" Kyle snarled, and carried on with a few obscenities. Stan wasn't quite sure what they all meant - Kyle had always had a more colorful vocabulary than him, despite having a much stricter mother.

"So, um..." Stan interrupted his tirade, and glanced at the wall clock. PE was their last class of the day and the final bell was fast approaching. Kyle broke off and looked up questioningly.

"What did Wendy want?"

"She wanted me to talk about my feelings and resorted to extortion when I refused. Typical female behavior." He shrugged.

"Oh," Stan said, and turned back to the preserved frogs. They reminded him of his impending science class, in which they would have to dissect the poor amphibians. The thought made him squirm; age had not toughened his stomach in the least. In middle school he just paired up with Kyle and made him do all the work, but now they were in high school and Kyle was in an Advanced Placement class with Wendy.

Stan shifted uncomfortably. He didn't like being irrationally jealous. He'd thought he was over Wendy, but every time he saw her with Kyle it turned his stomach.

Kyle coughed. It wasn't one of those 'I genuinely need to clear my throat' coughs, but more an 'I want your attention' sort of cough. Stan turned to face him and Kyle shifted around in his seat for a few minutes, frowning.

"Stan... there's something I should tell you."

And it was in that moment that the nurse burst back into the room.

He examined Kyle's nose much in the same way the PE teacher had, though more gently, and then he released him and nodded.

"Not too bad. You just keep putting pressure on it until it stops bleeding and you can skip the end of your class period." He glanced at Stan. "So what are you here for?"

"Er," Stan said, "nothing, I guess."

"Well then you run along to class," the nurse said, turning back to assist the girl in the back room, who'd started yelling about permanent disfigurement.

They were silent for a moment, then Kyle snickered and said, in a fairly good imitation of the nurse, "That's right, get back to class like a good little schoolboy, Stanley."

"I'd punch you if you weren't bleeding," Stan said, though he was grinning. He had one hand on the door when he thought to ask, "So... what were you going to tell me?"

Kyle smiled at him around his bloody sleeve. "Nothing. Ah. We have to get that history paper written. Make sure you're at the library tomorrow after school."

Stan rolled his eyes and let the door swing shut behind him.

There were fifteen minutes left of school, but Stan wasn't about to go back to PE. He ducked into the locker rooms instead and dressed speedily, avoiding the crowded rush he usually had to contend with, then he threw his stuff in his bag and simply walked out. The school had a horrible track record for stopping people from skipping.

The bus hadn't arrived yet, and there was no one to give him a ride, so Stan opted to walk rather than wait around in the parking lot for the next quarter of an hour. It wasn't as though his house was that far away, anyway.

Still, walking, even with a fifteen-minute head start, meant that he arrived late. When he finally pushed open his front door, his mother came into the room with a frown.

"Stanley? Did you miss the bus?"

"Um, yeah," he said. Which was true. Sort of.

"And Kyle didn't give you a ride?" she asked, and her frown turned more concerned than annoyed. "Are you two having relationship problems?"

Stan stood there and looked at her for a while. Then he turned and walked upstairs without a word.

He kicked his door closed behind him and flopped down on his bed; walking home through all that snow had tired him out. Downstairs he could hear his mom and dad discussing with worried voices why their son might have gotten into a fight with his boyfriend.

Stan rolled over and glared up at the ceiling light. He just couldn't understand it. Usually when the town went insane there was some reason for it. He knew he'd never done anything that would make people think he was into Kyle. Kyle hadn't...

He blinked as it suddenly occurred to him. Kyle... couldn't like him, right? But maybe, he thought, as the doubt settled in his gut, maybe he did. Maybe Kyle had a crush on him and everyone around him could tell, and that's why they thought they were going out.

Stan frowned as he contemplated this, cycling through disbelief, to dread, to what-the-fuck-am-I-going-to-do, and back to disbelief.

But Kyle had always been... well, the straight one. Whereas Kenny had gotten picked up for male prostitution and Cartman had been cross dressing and giving Ben Affleck hand jobs, Kyle had caught a train ride to New York City with the intent of stabbing five people to death rather than use moisturizer and wear designer labels.

No, he thought, Kyle wasn't gay. Stan was as convinced of his best friend's inherent straightness as he was of his own. Besides, if on the off chance that Kyle did have a crush on him, he would tell him. Kyle had always been very direct with his feelings, and usually based his decisions off them rather than logic. If Kyle liked him, he would have grabbed him and kissed him without thinking of the consequences by now.

He relaxed and kicked off his shoes, sending them flying in the general direction of his floor. Anyway, he knew Kyle. He was just getting himself riled up over nothing, and it was just the town being stupid and not looking at things logically, as per usual. Stan's mind wandered as he began to doze off.

"Stan... there's something I should tell you."

Stan sat bolt upright in his bed. His mouth felt dry and his heart felt like a rabbit on speed. He stared at the tread marks his shoes had left on the wall. Slowly he laid back down and pressed a palm to his forehead with a grimace.

Maybe... he would just avoid Kyle for a little while.

--

TBC