Work Text:
Feelings are messy things, in all their forms. Whether they are negative or positive, expressing them is complicated. Emotions are fragile, not like a seed, or like crystal, but fragile like a bomb. Expressing any of them 一 especially those that have been stored away for a long time 一 requires caution or else everything explodes and splatters like magma.
Stan Marsh knew this. Of course, he wasn't an explosive person, preferring to keep feelings rather than express them. It was an efficient way of not dealing with them for a while, and several had already gone through this treatment, replaced by a brutal mask of indifference.
Anger, hurt, and other things were gathering dust under Marsh's facade of disinterest. Almost all of them had stopped bothering him over time, except for one, who poked him to the core every day.
How he felt about his one and only super-best friend, Kyle Broflovski.
It was inexplicable, burning and strange. It burned like hell, and the supposed butterflies in his stomach made him want to throw up (it's a good thing he managed to control it over the years, because it would be obvious).
"Stan? Damn, Stan, can you hear me?" Broflovski called him again and again, until he woke up from his semi-cadaverous state.
"Hm?"
"Are we going to do the work at my house or yours?"
" Hmm… " Stan thought about two possibilities: going to the farm, where his father would be for sure, or going again to Kyle's house, which he hadn't set foot in for years? The second option was too attractive to pass up. "I'll take yours. Two hours, maybe?"
"All right, see you later." He said goodbye and then left, leaving the other alone.
His chest burned like hot coals, and it felt like hot lava spurted down his throat. Damn, how could he be so stupid? It felt like a little girl seeing the boy she likes at school. He felt like throwing up thinking about it.
He grabbed his backpack and left the room, suffocating through the crowd. Heat seeped into his skin as well as his clothes, creating a sense of unrelenting discomfort.
He would have to swallow it all. Not that it was unusual. Just another ordinary day for Stan Marsh.