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Kenny was a very tactile person when given the opportunity - a childhood like hers tended to have that polarizing effect, leaving the person soaking up every touch or shying away from all contact. If she had bothered to learn about the general, unspoken sense of boundaries, she clearly didn’t think they were something important enough to follow. She made her own; pulling Kyle between her legs on the bleachers to give him a back massage during gym, slinging her long arm around Stan’s broad shoulders while they walked to the park, threading their hands together and swinging them in the hallways. These were casual, platonic ways to show her affection, though the only other people she seemed to dole them out on was her sister and Butters.
Stan thinks it’s kind of weird but harmless. Kyle thinks she’s touch-starved and symptomatic.
“I’m just saying, dude,” Kyle says, stretched on Stan’s bed with his head propped up on one fist. He flips the page of his notebook with the other hand, but he’s not really focusing on studying, eyes straying to the phone propped up on a textbook beside him every few minutes. “If we don’t set boundaries now, she won’t learn. She’ll escalate.”
“Why does it sound like we’re talking about our kid?” Stan pushes his body gently side to side in his desk chair, one foot balanced on the side of the desk and one on the ground. He’s got a half-finished essay open on his desktop, partially minimized so he could watch a muted game livestream at the same time. “She’s not, like, standing over our beds while we sleep, Kyle. She’s just... touchy.”
Kyle makes a frustrated noise, the pissy little groan through clenched teeth and a locked jaw that he always makes, and it's enough to make Stan stop swirling his chair around. “That might be good for you, Stan, but I’m not touchy.”
“Sure you aren’t, dude,” Stan mumbles, but Kyle hears and looks up from his notes to shoot him a glare anyway. Stan doesn’t turn away from his computer. The conversation ends there, and they go back to half-assing their study time in silence.
Some part of Stan, the Stan that proudly marked the four-foot-two-inches line on the pantry doorway with his name, put hours into dutifully learning new video game mechanics, and happily fell asleep to tweeny pop music, ached. For best friends, self-proclaimed and peer-reviewed and locked-in practically since their diaper days, they’d started spending most of their time in silence. Good silence, sometimes, but less often than the bad silence - the it’s not even worth it to put in the effort with you , kind. He missed the way they used to be, but mostly he missed the idea of themselves he’d originally held for their future.
Antidepressants and biweekly therapy sessions only go so far, and the world is still shit when the self-imposed distractions fade away, which isn’t what Kyle wants to waste time thinking about. Even just to entertain Stan. Stan wants to wallow; Kyle wants solutions.
There’s a sharp, harsh thump on the outside wall that makes Stan flinch and Kyle squawk, hand jolting across the page he’d been highlighting and leaving a streak of yellow slashed across the text. He looks pissed, his color-coded note system fucked up. They both move at the same time to press against the window.
Kenny waves at them happily from the ground, dropping two more rocks from her palm to fall harmlessly in the snow by her scuffed boots. Stan bumps Kyle with his shoulder as he throws open the window and leans out just a little too far, hands gripping the windowsill for stability. “What the fuck have I told you about the rocks, Kenny! If you break my window again my mom’ll be pissed!”
Whatever Kenny shouts back is muffled by her obnoxiously yellow scarf, tucked high up in the hood of her jacket, but the accompanying shrug says enough.
Kyle mouths boundaries at Stan. Stan heaves a sigh before calling down, “The front door’s open.”
Kenny shoots them a thumbs up and crunches her way back to the paved path leading to the Marsh’s door. Stan leans back and closes his window.
“She only acts like that with you, you know,” Kyle says accusingly. “Because you keep letting her.”
Kyle lets her get away with just as much, but Stan doesn’t want to get into it right now. “Will you lay off? Christ.”
Kyle crosses his arms, moving to sit with his back fully pressed against the wall. “Fine,” he says, and Stan wishes he could figure out what Kyle’s deal was with Kenny lately. His deal with everyone, really.
The bedroom door pushes open before they can say anything else.
“Sorry, Stan.” Kenny lightly tugs the scarf from her face so she can talk clearly, freckled cheeks flushed red from the cold. She still wore the comically, tragically oversized parka of her youth, only now it was just a little too short - bony wrists flash unprotected in the gap between gloves and the edge of her sleeves and the overstretched hem sits a little too high on her stomach, bunching her shirt. “Kevin used up all our phone minutes for the month.”
Stan shoots one eyebrow up. “Already?”
“He’s got a new girlfriend.”
“That’s so inconsiderate,” Kyle says.
“That’s Kevin.” Kenny shrugs.
“What’s up, dude?” Stan asks, moving to straddle his desk chair. He crosses his arms and rests them on the back. Kenny grins.
“So get this,” she says, spreading her arms out and flexing her fingers. “Puddin’ had babies!”
There’s a beat of silence. Kyle blinks hard, pinching his nose. “That thing’s going to give you rabies, Ken.”
“I’m with Kyle on this one,” Stan says. “You know I love animals, dude, but keeping that thing can not be sanitary.”
“I’m fine,” she insists, her previous energy dropping with her arms at their lackluster reaction. “She stays in the shed, anyway. When her legs finished healing up soon I’m sure she’ll be off with the babies.”
“Well,” Stan starts in an effort to be supportive. “That’s great then, Ken. Did you name them?”
“Naming them will only make you more attached,” Kyle warns them.
“Move over, captain buzzkill,” Kenny says, rolling her eyes and bouncing on to Stan’s bed. Her sneakers stay on and Stan almost cares enough to tell her off for it, damp as the soles are. She twists her body to throw her head back on his pillows and prop legs on Kyle’s lap despite his indignant noise. Stan smiles and lets the shoes slide.
“Fuck you.” Kyle says, lacking malice. A hand half raised in rejection of Kenny’s sudden move falls to her leg instead.
“Maybe,” she winks. Kyle pinches the fishnets peeking from under the particularly large gash in her jeans and pulls it up just high enough to slap going back down. She grins again and Stan stifles a laugh. “Oh, keep doing that and it’ll be a maybe definitely.”
“You’re unbearable.” Kyle rolls his eyes. “What are the names?”
“Thought you said I shouldn’t name them?”
“You shouldn’t,” he insists, blandly. “But I know you did anyway.”
Stan opens his mouth to make a joke at their expense, something about you two could compete with Craig and Tweek for cutest couple at this rate, before closing it fast enough to hear his teeth click. His friends don’t notice.
Kenny holds up six fingers. “Well, she had eight, but with the cold…”
“Oh,” Stan breathes. Kyle pats her knee.
“It happens. But the last six, they’re real scrappy. So,” she smiles. Stan wishes, quietly, that he could walk over there and join the pile they’d made on his bed. It’d be weird, wouldn’t it? He’d already sat down in his chair, so if he got up now, he would make it seem like a thing. It didn’t have to be a thing. Weak. “We’ve got Drill-Bit, Bolo, Zip, Brick, Didi, and Stuart.”
Stan uncrosses his arms. “Did you name a possum after your dad?”
“No, dude,” she snorts, tilting her head to face him from his pillow. “The rat, y’know? Stuart Little. She’s a runt, but she hung on when the other two didn’t, so she’s got something going.”
“Your female possum runt Stuart.” Kyle nods, all faux seriousness. His bad mood from earlier, like all the times someone else crashed their best friend time, seemed far off. His phone was shoved to the side still, the obsessive checking seemingly forgotten.
“I’m glad you approve.”
“You’re welcome,” Kyle says magnanimously, finally shoving Kenny’s legs off his lap. “Now. Since we’re obviously,” his eyes cut to Stan and his computer screen, still broadcasting some liverun of World of Warcraft. “Not going to get anymore work done, let’s eat. Stan’s mom left some lasagna for us.”
“Yes,” Kenny hisses, rolling with her body weight after her legs and popping up on her feet with a bounce. “Your mom’s the best, dude.”
“I guess,” Stan shrugs, standing. He’d felt his mood slowly plummeting throughout the conversation, but Kyle was laughing, and Kenny was humming a song under her breath, and he didn’t want to be the one to ruin the mood. Like always.
Alcohol and SSRIs don’t mix well, but he’s got a bottle of peppermint schnapps and two beers stashed in his underwear drawer anyway. Kyle gives him an earful every time he catches him drinking anywhere, but that doesn’t stop him from cheering him on when the night progresses into an upbeat buzz, if he’s lucky. Sometimes it degresses, and he just gets another condescending dressing down by the friend who takes two shots and hits the table.
Stan hesitates at his doorway, watching his friends head down the stairs. He wants to, but he doesn’t go for the stash. He wants to, but when he makes his way downstairs, he doesn’t lean close to where Kenny’s propped herself on the table instead of the chairs. He sits by Kyle as he swats at her, again mouthing boundaries at Stan. Stan chuckles weakly into his forkful of pasta. He wants this, forever, in a bubble where he can feel okay, but the older he gets the less he knows how to keep it.