The chapter you've all undoubtedly been waiting for.

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The doorbell was ringing.

Kyle actually hated his house's doorbell. It was shrill, sort of like his mom's voice when she was ordering him around. It was particularly grating when he was trying to dust the top of a bookcase. He'd been cursing ancient literature for the particular way dust clung to it when the bell rang suddenly, startling him so that he fell backwards off the chair he'd been standing on.

Kyle cursed louder.

"Kyle!" he heard his mother call from the other room. "Could you get that!"

"Dust, Kyle. Answer the door, Kyle," he mimicked irritably. "Make up your fucking mind."

He hauled himself back onto his feet, put down his rag and Windex, and started toward the door as the bell rang again.

"I heard you the first time! Christ..." he yanked the door open, and his irritable expression immediately brightened. "Stan!"

Stan was standing on his front porch, his neck tilted up so that he was staring at the storm drain. When he heard Kyle his head snapped back down, and he winced and rubbed the back of his neck. "Hey."

"Hey yourself. What're you doing here?"

"Um, well..." Stan said, burying his hands into his pockets. "I got done with... what I had to do. Are you busy?"

"Hell no. Come in," he said, holding the door open. Kyle closed the door behind him, and Mrs. Broflovski shouted from the other room, "Who was it, Kyle!"

"It's Stan!" Kyle hollered back. They could hear her grumbling.

"She doesn't sound pleased to see me," Stan observed.

"She's just pissed because she lost her slave labor," he said cheerfully. "Hungry?"

"Not really," Stan said, who'd just watched Kenny gorge himself, after all.

"Suit yourself," Kyle said, shrugging, and made his way to the kitchen. Stan trailed after him and sat down at the table while Kyle dug into the refrigerator.

Stan really hadn't been hungry, but there was nothing like smelling food and suddenly wanting it. And he was a teenaged boy. He always had room for something. "Hey, Kyle?" he said, twisting around in his seat. "Leave out the stuff, okay? I'm going to make a sandwich too-"

Kyle set down the one he'd been making in front of him. Stan looked at it blankly.

"... I can make my own."

Kyle shrugged and turned back to the counter. "I was already up." Stan stared at his back for a while.

"... Thanks."

"Sure."

Stan picked up his sandwich and took a bite, then lifted his eyebrows. "This has mayonnaise on it."

"So?"

"So you hate mayonnaise."

"But you like it, right?" Kyle said, pulling up a chair. He'd grabbed a carton of milk in addition to his sandwich, which he was drinking directly from. Stan was sure Kyle's mom would have a fit if she saw. "So what were you doing this morning, anyway?" He asked conversationally.

"Er..." Stan said, momentarily panicked, and then he took a large bite out of his sandwich so that his reply was muffled.

Kyle lifted an eyebrow. "Stan-"

"Kyle!" Mrs. Broflovski shouted. "Where are you!"

"In the kitchen, Mom!" he shouted back, keeping his eyes on Stan. Until she appeared in the doorway, that is, wearing a 'God Hates Fatty Foods' shirt and carrying a picket sign with a similar message. Then he couldn't help but stare.

"Kyle, I'm leaving for the protest now. You be good while I'm gone."

Stan could tell Kyle was fighting the urge to roll his eyes. "Yes, Mom." He didn't say anything else until they heard the front door close, when he turned to Stan and grinned.

"Wanna play Gamesphere?"

Kyle was the only kid in South Park that had a Gamesphere, which had been outdated for the past four years, ever since the Gamepyramid had been released. Kyle had the unfortunate inability to stay on top of trends, be it collecting Chinpokomon or turning metrosexual.

"Sure," Stan said, because it sounded like a nice way to avoid Kyle's questions about what he'd been doing for the past week.

He flopped down on the couch while Kyle plugged it in and set it up, and tried becoming one with the upholstery. He only spent energy when Kyle, grinning at his sluggish posture, chucked the control at his head. Stan caught it and made a face at him, to which Kyle snickered then kicked him unceremoniously.

"Move your lazy ass over and give me some room."

Stan grunted and made a show of taking up as much room as was humanly possible.

"I'll sit on your lap," Kyle threatened.

Stan scrambled out of the way as fast as was humanly possible, his face burning.

Kyle lifted an eyebrow, but he'd gotten the couch space he'd wanted so he didn't question his friend on his odd behavior. Instead he plopped down, switched on the game, and started flipping through the menus. It was some game where you had to stop the Three Stooges from joining together and turning into a single entity and that takes over the world.

Video games had gotten steadily stupider over the past few years.

While Kyle engrossed himself in the game, Stan watched him out of the corner of his eye and absently pushed buttons. Stan wished he could just... be more like Kyle. That he could just brush off all these accusations, that he could just not care the way Kyle did.

Stan was vaguely aware of Kyle yelling at him to jump. He did, sluggishly, and his player's head was torn off. He died, twitching and gushing blood in a very undignified, pixellated death.

"Damn it, Stan," Kyle said, "if you're going suck that badly, I'm switching this from two player to one-on-one."

"I'm not really up for video games," Stan muttered, dropping his controller. Kyle sighed and chucked his own at the console. (Stan wondered, briefly, how Kyle hadn't broken it yet.)

"All right," he said, crossing his arms. "Then what do you want to do?"

Stan glanced at him, then quickly adverted his gaze to the couch cushion. What he really wanted to do was just stop thinking. About Kyle, about how Kyle didn't like him in the least, and about how Kyle was so obviously more secure with their friendship than he was, if this sort of thing didn't rattle him.

"... go spit over the highway overpass," Kyle was saying. There was a pause. "Or take a horse-drawn carriage ride through the park and see all the picnickers."

Stan blinked and finally looked him in the face. "What?"

Kyle smirked. "Just checking to see if you were paying attention." Stan said nothing. "Though, ya'know, if you want to, we could grab a taxi and go through Colfax Point. See all the hookers. That's probably the closest equivalent this town has."

Stan sighed and stretched his legs out. "Maybe I should just go home."

"No!" Kyle said quickly. Stan glanced at him. "C'mon man, between that stupid project and you getting sick we haven't gotten to spend any time together this week."

Stan shifted a little guiltily.

Kyle got off the couch. "Let's play a board game."

"Oh, come on, Kyle. Board games are lame," Stan said, groaning. Kyle ignored him and walked to the hall closet, opening the door and switching on the light. He starting digging through old boxes his family kept stuffed in there.

"Checkers?"

"Lame."

"Scrabble?"

"You always cheat."

"I do not."

"You make up words. You can't even use them in a sentence."

"I can so."

"'Stan is a dumbass who doesn't know what "quaquaversal" means' doesn't count as a sentence!"

"Scrabble is out, then," Kyle said, shoving the box back in. Stan heard him laugh suddenly. "Hey, what about Ants-in-the-Pants?"

"Kyle, come on."

"Strip poker?"

Stan gave himself whiplash. "What? NO!"

"Mellow out, Stan. I was just kidding." Kyle's back was turned toward him, so he couldn't see the bright red color Stan was turning. "A-ha! Monopoly!"

"That's a stupid game," Stan muttered.

"Shut up," Kyle said brightly, hauling the board out and walking back over, plopping down on the floor and leaning his back against the TV. Stan watched from his place on the couch as Kyle unfolded the board and starting going through the brightly colored paper money.

"Most of the 500s are missing... I think Ike and Filmore were playing stockbroker again."

"Filmore?" Stan repeated blankly.

"Yeah, Ike's dorky friend. They spend most of their time arguing, though." He lifted up the rules and scooped the playing pieces up in a fist. "What do'ya want to be? The shoe?"

"Kyle-"

"Or the iron? You could be my hired help and I could call you slave boy."

"Shut up, Kyle." Stan flushed and slid off the couch, picking out the battleship because it was the only way he could think of to get Kyle to do so.

"Great," Kyle said cheerfully, slipping the rubber bands off of the chance cards and shuffling them. "Okay. We will, of course, be playing with the traditional Jew rules."

"... Traditional Jew rules?" Stan repeated, feeling lost.

"Yes," Kyle said with a perfectly straight face. "Meaning, I will be starting the game off with the railroads, utilities, and Boardwalk. Because Jews control everything."

"Really?" Stan asked.

Kyle cracked up. "No, not really. Shit, Stan, what's wrong with you today? You can't take a joke."

"I'm not the one with the problem," Stan grumbled. Kyle frowned at him.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's just... damn it," Stan said, climbing to his feet and scowling at the floor a little. "It's just - Christ, Kyle. Why aren't you pissed off?"

"Um - should I be?"

"YES!" Stan exploded. "I've been avoiding you practically all week, I've been blowing you off and getting out of seeing you, and it's like... It's like you don't even care if we hang out!" He turned away, glaring at the wall. The idea that Kyle could just be so indifferent toward him annoyed the crap out of Stan - and it hurt, too.

"Of course I care," Kyle said, sounding stung.

"Then why aren't you angry! Usually that sort of thing pisses you off more than anything else!"

"I just figured this whole thing was still bothering you."

"There!" Stan said, wheeling around and jabbing a finger at his chest. "Right there! That's the entire problem right there!"

Kyle arched an eyebrow, looking generally baffled.

"Why doesn't this bother you?" Stan cried, seizing the front of Kyle's shirt in his hands and dragging him up to his knees. "WHY?"

Kyle sighed and shifted so that he wasn't kneeling on the Monopoly board. Then he reached up, griped Stan by the back of the neck, gave him a somewhat apologetic look, and pulled Stan down to where he was. And then he was kissing him.

What struck Stan first was that kissing Kyle was entirely unlike kissing a girl. Not bad, not even particularly weird, just completely different. Like Kyle didn't have long nails that dug into his scalp. And he hadn't heavily applied liquid plastic to his lips so there was no mess, just skin. And he didn't smell like anything weird, like some fake fruit scented shampoo combination like mango and passion fruit or banana and pomegranate. He just smelled like a person.

And it was nice. Preferable, even.

All of this Stan noted in the span of two seconds, and then Kyle let go of Stan's neck and he stood up straight and stared at him for a while.

"Oh," he said.

Then he turned and left the room in a bit of a daze.

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TBC