Wow, thank you everyone that has reviewed!

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Stan slid a little lower in his bed, pulling the covers up to his chin. His mother stood over him wielding a thermometer and a frown.

"You don't have a temperature, Stanley. Are you sure you're sick?"

"Er, yeah," he said, and coughed a little. "Very sick."

Mrs. Marsh sighed. "Well, I can't stay here and look after you. I have work." She pursed her lips and tapped the thermometer to her chin. "I suppose I could call in and see if Julie will cover for me..."

"No!" Stan said quickly, and then realized it was a little too loud and energetic for someone who was bedridden with a sore throat. "I mean," he went on in a hoarse voice, coughing a few times for good measure, "it's not that bad. I just want to sleep."

"Okay, honey," his mother said, kissing him on the forehead. "We have instant soup and orange juice if you get hungry; you call me if you need me. Feel better, okay?"

Stan nodded, feeling a little guilty. Mrs. Marsh left the room and Stan rolled over so that he was facing his clock. He listened to the sounds of his mother applying her makeup, collecting her things, and eventually leaving the house and starting her car. Stan waited until he couldn't hear the engine anymore, and then he waited some more.

When his clock read 8:45 he threw off his blanket, already dressed in full winter apparel. He retrieved his shoes and slipped them on without untying them first, something his mother always complained about because it wore out the heels. Stan sped quickly down the stairs, grabbed his hat off the banister and jammed it on his head, then checked quickly through the window to make sure the street was clear before he left the house.

Stan felt a little thrill of adrenaline. His friends called him a pussy because of it - Cartman in particular - but he didn't skip school or lie to his parents very often. And he certainly didn't do it so that he could go break into his best friend's house to make sure he wasn't beating off to the thought of him. Stan colored a little at the thought and sped up.

What would he do, he wondered, if Kyle was? Just thinking about the possibility made him queasy. What would he do if he knew it was a certainty?

That would be so... awkward. Stan couldn't imagine not being Kyle's best friend, but he didn't want to have to have a I-know-you-like-me-and-I-don't-like-you-I-mean-I-do-but-not-the-way-you-like-me conversation with him.

It was a short walk to Kyle's house, though in a town as small as South Park, it was a short walk to everything. Soon his house came into view, complete with Ike's bike abandoned in the yard and Mrs. Broflovski's mini van parked in the driveway.

Stan did a double take and dove behind a trash can.

I forgot about Mrs. Broflovski, Stan thought as he crouched in the snow, his heart pounding. How could he have forgotten about Mrs. Broflovski? He couldn't very well knock on the door and ask for permission to search her son's room. And if she saw him she'd call the school and his mom and the truant officers. She might even get him thrown in jail. Stan broke into a cold sweat as his mind created an increasingly improbable situation in which a cellmate tried to make him her bitch.

He was just about to turn and run for it (he was over at Kyle's house as often as not, he'd have plenty of opportunities to dig through his stuff in the future, and it wasn't a cowardly flight, it was a strategic retreat) when none other than Mrs. Broflovski walked out the front door.

Stan swore softly and crouched down lower, staying there until his curiosity took over and he glanced around the edge of the trash can to see what she was doing.

Mrs. Broflovski was in the middle of slapping a bumper sticker that said (Stan squinted) "Gluttony is a SIN" over Kyle's old, peeling Honor Roll sticker. Then she marched to the front seat, climbed in, and drove away. Stan was confused until he remembered what Kyle had told them Monday - that his mother's latest crusade was against fast-food.

He left his hiding place, wincing a moment because his legs had cramped up from crouching for so long, then glanced cautiously down the street. Kyle's mom's mini van was out of sight. Stan grinned, grateful for once for Sheila Broflovski's self-righteous attitude, then crossed the street and hopped up Kyle's front steps.

Naturally, the door was locked, but Stan knew where the spare key was hidden. Kyle had told him the summer between sixth and seventh grade, when his mother had signed him up for Jew camp (something, Kyle had assured him, that sucked major ass). His schedule had been hectic, and so instead of trying to work it out he'd just told Stan to crash at his house and he'd see him when he got home. Stan had spent the summer lounging on Kyle's bed, watching his DVDs and playing his video games.

Before sixth grade Kyle had kept it under his door mat like every other person in America, but then one day Cartman had found it and broke into his house and stole a lamp. Stan had at first assumed Cartman was simply unhinged, but then Kyle had explained that Cartman thought there was a genie inside it.

Of course, then it had turned out that there actually was. But he was lazy and sat on Cartman's couch for three months saying he would 'get around to' granting Cartman's wishes.

Whatever. Stan still said he was crazy.

So Kyle moved the key to the storm drain and Cartman threw a fit because he couldn't wish for Kyle's house to burn down, and life continued as usual. Not normal. Just usual.

Stan peeled his gloves off and stuffed them in his pocket, studying the drain and trying to pinpoint exactly where the key was. Then he jumped, grabbing the rim of the storm drain. His feet kicked out in space for a moment, then he heaved himself up and dug his hand into the mulch and ice, making a face.

His hand closed over the key the same moment he heard a metal creak. He dropped back down to the ground, picking wet leaf fragments off the key and wiping his hands on his pant leg. Then he looked up, and saw the cause of the metal creak.

Stan swore out loud.

The storm drain had bent under his weight; it had come away from the edge of the roof and dipped down. Stan looked on mournfully.

... Well, he finally thought, looking at the very noticeable damage, maybe they won't notice.

Luckily, Stan didn't break anything else on his way up to Kyle's room. He knew his way around the Broflovski's house as well he knew his own house, and that wasn't just because most of South Park had been built by the same contractor and almost all of the houses had nearly identical floor plans. He slid his gloves back on before he opened Kyle's door because his palms had started to sweat. He'd started thinking about what he may or may not find again. Stan took a breath. He'd know one way or another in a minute.

Kyle's room was laid out simply. On the left side of his bed was a desk, and on the right was a hip-high bookcase with a small, old, junky TV set on top of it. This is what Stan zoomed in on first, and knelt in front of it.

Though it was a bookcase, there were very few books in it. Instead, it was stuffed with VHS and DVDs. Kyle loved cult and independent films, genres Cartman dismissed as soft-core gay porn. Stan had always laughed it off, but (his stomach twisted up at the thought) maybe Cartman was closer to the truth than he'd thought.

When Kyle told him he was keeping porn right under his prying mother's noise, Stan had been impressed at his nerve. He'd only admitted it because Stan had been mocking his collection of old films and documentaries. Stan had immediately dropped Plan 9 from Outer Space as if it had burned him, and Kyle had laughed at his friend's squeamishness.

Now Stan ran his finger along the spines of the movies, pulling out the titles he knew held immoral sex acts under their deceptively innocent covers. He'd made Kyle tell him which they were so that he'd never accidentally pop one in. And now, he thought with a certain amount of irony, here he was, looking for them.

Once he was confident he had them all - it wasn't a particularly big stack, really, less than a dozen - he paused to mentally prepare himself for the potentially life-destroying gay porn he might be about to witness. Then Stan slid the first one out of the Surf Nazis Must Die box and pushed it in the VCR.

Two women appeared on the screen immediately, their tongues shoved down each others throats and their skirts hiked up their thighs. Stan yelped and dove for the remote, fumbling with it for a moment before slamming down on the eject button so hard he was sure it would break. He swallowed desperately, fighting his impulse to puke.

Okay, he thought. So Kyle did have gay porn. But certainly not the sort of gay porn he'd thought. He cast a fearful glance at the other eight movies and started to rethink this whole idea. Did he really want to know what Kyle's turn ons were?

Well... yeah. If he was one of them.

For the next twenty minutes Stan subjected himself to brief snatches of bondage, CFNM, DVDA, gang-bang, altporn, deep throating, a variety of things he hadn't realized were physically possible in Back Door Sluts 9, and then finished it off with some more lesbians. He pulled out the last movie and sat dumbly for a moment, trying to control both his stomach and his hormones. He felt, vaguely, like he needed to take a shower - for various reasons.

Stan finally resumed motion and pushed the movies back into the bookshelf, swallowing a little and then backing away slowly as if it were a dangerous, rabid animal.

So. At least now Stan knew Kyle's porn collect didn't include any man-on-man action. Somehow, the thought failed to cheer him up. He turned to Kyle's bed and yanked up the comforter, glancing underneath it.

He was actually surprised. He'd expected the underneath of Kyle's bed to look like the underneath of his own bed: crammed full of junk he didn't have a place for but wanted to put out of sight so that his mother would stop bugging him about cleaning his room. But it was actually bare, save for a box in one corner. Stan reached under to drag it out, banging his head on the bed frame in the process.

He didn't know what he expected. He feared something of his that Kyle had stolen away and kept as a memento, or something equally stalkerish. But what he found was nothing more sinister than a bunch of Star Trek DVDs.

Stan lifted an eyebrow. He hadn't known Kyle was into something quite so geeky, but science-fiction wasn't quite an guaranteed indication of homosexuality. Stan shoved the box back under the bed and straightened, walking around Kyle's bed to his desk.

He flipped through the books and notebooks on top of his desk first, but he didn't find any hearts with Kyle Marsh scribbled in them. In fact, he didn't find anything but math homework, which reminded Stan he still hadn't started his yet.

Stan pulled a drawer open and rifled through the contents. It wasn't anything surprising, really. Some random pieces of paper, a lot of pencils, old movie tickets and the like. No secret, I-love-Stan-Marsh notes hidden away from the world. He slide the drawer closed and opened the one beneath it, and immediately spotted a green notebook with JOURNAL stamped on the front.

His breath caught a little and he pulled it out, staring at it. If Kyle had written it anywhere, this must be it. He wondered if it would be a simple declaration, or if there'd be graphic descriptions of homoerotic fantasies. Stan's stomach turned over at the thought and he fought his instinct to throw up. If he puked on Kyle's carpet his cover would be blown.

He almost didn't want to know what it said. But he had to know if Kyle was lusting after him. Steeling himself for the worst, he flipped it open to the first page. Printed in the center in Kyle's neat handwriting was the following:

Yeah, right. Stay the fuck out of my stuff, fatass.

Stan blinked at it. He flipped through the rest of the journal, but it was blank.

Kyle really thinks Cartman's going to go through his stuff? Stan thought, putting the journal back in it the drawer, closing it, and continued his search of the room. Talk about paranoid.

Perhaps the irony would strike him later.

He went through the rest of the drawers, but it was just more of the same. Finally turning away from the desk, his eyes swept the room and landed on the last feasible place Kyle would hide incriminating evidence: his closet.

The door was stuck. When he finally managed to yank it open, a box of junk tipped over and spilled onto the carpet, and a basketball beamed him in the head. Stan scowled and rubbed his head, then went to retrieve the ball from where it had rolled.

The box, he discovered, was not full of 'I HEART STAN' banners, but rather all the gifts his family had given him for his Bar Mitzvah. Stan remembered Kyle's Bar Mitzvah. Actually, mostly he remembered everyone running out of the synagogue screaming and Kyle beating Cartman to a pulp afterward.

Stan stuffed everything back into the box and pushed it - with some difficulty - back into Kyle's tightly packed closet. He dug around the floor but uncovered nothing more sinister than a book on Blaintology, nunchucks, and a recipe book on 101 ways to cook crab.

Kyle kept his dresser in his closet. Stan considered, briefly, going through it, but that just seemed a little too... Well, just because he was breaking into his best friend's room and going through his stuff didn't mean he was going to do something weird like dig through his underwear.

He combed every corner of the closet but uncovered nothing. Nothing to suggest Kyle liked him, nothing even to suggest Kyle liked anything but average-to-highly attractive teenage girls.

So. Kyle probably didn't like him.

That was a good thing.

Right.

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TBC