Chapter Text
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KYLE
THURS SEPTEMBER 7TH, 2.50 PM
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Not that he's going to admit this to anyone, but Kyle hates junior year. He knew it'd be a step up, but had been warned generally and not specifically. The teachers had assumed he'd be just fine, so Kyle had thought so too. But he's not like Kenny, he can't just brush past with a hope-for-the-best mentality, because for some reason, he can never get to the point of success Kenny always reaches. Every. Single. Time.
People tend to think that Wendy is his academic rival which, yeah, especially during the time that she and Stan dated (no correlation there, okay?), but they don't see how much Kenny's test results irk him, given they're usually a good 10% breathing room below Kyle's. It's because Kenny doesn't even study, and still clears that A. Kyle fears what would happen if Kenny did study, given this knowledge.
“You okay?” Kenny asks from next to him, pausing in his energetic scribbling. He rocks his stool, so Kyle coaxes it gently back on four legs before this idiot cracks his head open.
“I'm fine.”
He's not fine. He's really fucking not fine. But he has plenty more chance to make this right, given all the spare time he has nowadays. His teachers, his parents, the school council, the debate team, the basketball team, and the eco-activist committee don't have to know, his comeback will be so swift.
Adjusting. He's just adjusting. That's all. To this new life. To this new school year.
To this new distance between him and his ex-best-friend.
On one hand, he and Stan actually got somewhere – academically and that's all – during class, despite the fact that Kyle was still reeling from the fact that Stan was texting Gary.
Gary, of all people? Since when has Gary – dorky, nerdy Gary – been relevant again? He hates that he can't ask Stan about it. He hates that he didn't get a chance to snoop in on what they'd been texting about.
But most of all he hates that he still cares. It very nearly distracts him from his Chemistry exit task, alongside Kenny's persistent humming, serving almost impossible.
“So, you and Stan were nice ‘n’ chatty last class,” Kenny bumps Kyle's shoulder as they walk through the halls after school, the sea of students clamouring to get out and onto their buses nearly drowning him out.
“Don't run away with it, dude,” Kyle rolls his eyes. “We're still not friends. It's totally transactional.”
“What, laughin’ together like the world is sunshine and rainbows? That's transactional?”
“‘S called an ice-breaker. Uncomfortable laughter. — Seriously, I just want him out of my face.”
“‘Bit overkill, even for you,” Kenny notes, but lightly, fleetingly, reminding Kyle that the teasing isn't impersonal and he needs to calm the fuck down before he gives away too much.
“Yeah, well…” Kyle trails off, not really having a point to make, for once. God, he's really losing his touch.
“Holy shit,” Kenny halts, causing some other kid walking behind to nearly crash into him, who grumbles a mouthful and stalks ahead.
“What? Kenny, you can't just stop in the hall…” Kyle begins, soft but firm, until he follows Kenny's eyes.
Apparently, Stan and Gary don't only text, they talk. Like, they interact, in person. Kyle is still reeling over it: last time he checked, Stan couldn't even order his own goddamn burger, but now he's, what, outgoing?
But Kyle knows exactly what he's doing. He's the bad guy now, and Stan will push that narrative on and on.
Barely, Kyle pulls his eyes away, flicking them back to Kenny. “So, it's him,” Kenny murmurs under his breath.
“What?”
“Hm?”
“Him? Whaddaya mean?”
“Oh, uh… I don't think I can tell ya. Sorry,” Kenny shrugs.
Kyle flares up. He's supposed to know. That's how things should be, for fuck's sake. “Quit being all evasive, Kenny. It isn't a good look on you,” Kyle tugs on his sleeve to get him moving, given they've stood there still like a pair of imbeciles for two minutes.
They're occupying a corner of the hall. Gary's back presses into the side of a set of lockers. To this day, he still mirrors Stan's hands stuffed into his pockets.
To this day, still an asshole.
And somehow, there's more, and Kyle can only watch and privately despair as Gary reaches out at once, brushing a lock out of Stan's face, and their gazes linger, softening sickeningly. That's the perfect description to put to it, because Kyle definitely wants to throw up. Gary may as well have reached out to him instead and yanked his heart right out. Given it to Stan, claiming it to be his own.
It sounds like something he'd do. It's completely irrelevant that Kyle barely knows the guy enough to be able to make this assumption.
“Kyle? C'mon, I've gotta get to work,” Kenny tweaks his elbow, and the softness in his voice gives Kyle a sudden inkling that he knows something. Kyle's being obvious again about what isn't even true. Only just refraining from shoving Kenny away, or outright screaming, he follows him out in miserable tow.
In his car, he tries not to wilt against the steering wheel in his white-knuckled grip as he toils it over and over. Surely they can't be a thing, right? So suddenly? And as a pairing no less like chalk and cheese?
He replays it again: the hair thing. Trying to view it from all different instances, perspectives, reasonings. It could be a perfectionist thing like Kyle himself has, or even a more brotherly favour, like how Kyle treats Kenny. But the way they looked at each other…
The same way that Stan had looked at him.
It can't have been going on for long, right? Something so casual, so public… so quickly? Sure, Craig and Tweek have been the talk of the town, common knowledge since they were ten, Kenny and Butters came out around early middle school years, but that was different. That had taken deliberation, surely, a weight of pros and cons. Consideration, consciousness, care?
…What could possibly make Stan's eyes soften in that same way for Gary?
“Someone's deep in their mind,” Kenny teases him lightly, nudging him from the passenger seat.
“Shut up,” Kyle snips, not tearing his gaze from the road. Scouring his faint reflection in the windscreen, strewn against the bleak Fall scenery outside. He glares at it like it holds the answer to his fifty-thousand conundrums.
“C'mon, why ya actin’ like you're in a soppy music video?” Kenny nudges him again, and in a fleeting moment Kyle wants to throw him out the moving vehicle.
“I'm too tired for your bullshit, Kenny.”
— – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – — – —
After dropping Kenny off, Kyle spends the whole evening not caring about what Stan and Gary could very possibly potentially be up to. He cares so little that his indifference is very close to distracting him from his English essay. Very close. He's not going to break, not yet. There's no time to.
The second he drops his pen to the completed, barely adequate paper, his gaze naturally shifts to his bed.
Sleep. It's not like he's deprived, or anything, but it's calling out to him. After packing away his book, pen, highlighter, and ongoing suspicion of the happy little couple earlier, he dives for the mattress.
But it's off, sorely deprived of the lingering warmth of the sunlight. All that greets him is a cold that's so mountain-town intense it's damp to the touch, his sheets almost chillingly painful against his forearms and ankles.
And it's missing his body warmth.
“You're fucking freezing!” Kyle shrieked.
“Fucking what!? No ‘m not, Ky! ‘S summer!”
“I know! So why did you nearly turn me to ice?” Kyle snickered.
Stan giggled groggily, shuffling closer. Their arms pressed together, the chill seeping through his skin and into Kyle's bones. At that moment, all he cared about was if that meant Stan was getting Kyle's warmth in exchange.
“Better?” Kyle hummed.
“Yeah. I think my, um, lips are still too cold, though?”
“Oh, really now?”
Nevermind. Now, Kyle can't remember even feeling tired at all. Maybe he's just freezing his balls off. Grabbing a sweater, he decides that all he can do for himself is bury his head into a textbook, into the sand and away from any reminders, or anything that could spark a reminder vicariously.
Not long into reading, he finds himself swivelling in the chair like Kenny was, as usual, when he was over the other day. His knees are tucked under his chin like Stan whenever he sits anywhere.
...Studying isn't always a sitting-down job anyway. If he gets his blood pumping, maybe his brain will be forced into motion too, for better retention.
One, two, three, four, five.
One, two, three, four, five.
One, two, three, four, five.
It's 9am. Ten more minutes.
If he can make it around his room one-hundred times in ten minutes, he'll stop thinking about him.
One, two, three, four, five.
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten…
One, two, three four five.
...eleven twelve thirteen fourteen…
One two three four five.
...fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen….
Losing his count, he falls back onto his bed. Doesn't matter, he'd never make it to a hundred in sixty seconds, anyway. He's tried and practiced enough to know that.
Picking his textbook back up, his eyes flit over the words, trying to slam them into his brain, shove anything that's everything else away.
But it was too easy to digest the contents, so his mind wandered effortlessly again.
...How can he miss someone who hasn't truly been there for so long? And how did he slip away right in front of Kyle's eyes?