Archive of Our Own

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December 15th, 2019 - Sunday

“I want to break up with you, Stan.”

He just blinks.

“Stan. I’m breaking up with you, okay? I’m going to stay here in San Francisco, cancel my flight, and you can go without me to South Park. My parents are moving with me. Don’t worry.”

He just blinks again.

The world around him seems muffled, numb, the people nearby that were so ordinary before now blurs of greys and browns, the lights a blinding white, sounds reverberating in his skull.

His heart pounds in his ribs, and he can barely stand to watch her lips move, feeling like a dream.

A horrible one.

“I’m going to go back to my dorm and take my stuff. Then I’m going to transfer to a different college and move somewhere else, I’m not going to tell you where. And I don’t care where you go after this—back to San Fran, out of the country, anywhere in the fucking world—but I just don’t want to see you again.”

His mouth is dry as he barely manages to croak, “Ever again?”

“I… I don’t know. But at least not for a few months.”

He watches her rise from the black leather chair, her slender hands painted blue sliding over her knees to cross at her chest, looking down at Stan with a solid stare.

“Don’t try to call me, Stan. We’re done. I’m not joking.”

Only when she begins to stalk away does Stan finally close his mouth, snapping up her thin wrist up with a sudden hand.

“Wait!” he cries, “Wendy!”

Stan sees people beginning to stare out of the corner of his eye but can’t stop himself now.

She glares but her shoulders slump just the tiniest bit, face softening to give him one final word.

“Why?”

Wendy is silent for a second, then rips her hand out of his hold

Rubs it like it’s fucking diseased.

“Why?” she bites, sounding sarcastic and all too serious at once. “Why, Stan? Isn’t it obvious?”

He glances to the tiled floor, then back up to her towering above him. “N-no?”

She scoffs. “You don’t love me, Stan. And I can’t love you if you don’t love me.”  She puts her fists clenched to her hips. “It’s as simple as that.”

“Wh-what do you mean, Wendy? Of course I love you!”

At his increasing volume turning to a shout, people are staring now.

Wendy’s eyes dart about, sighing in exasperation at Stan who’s too shocked to care.

“I know you don’t. You might think you do, Stan, but you just don’t. You might look at me, kiss me, hug me, whatever, but there’s nothing under there. You’re just…” she looks up, searching for the right words before snapping her icy gaze down, spitting it out.

“Acting.”

It’s like a slap in the face for poor Stan who sits there, silent, on the airport chair, surrounded by people seeming even stranger than before.

His girlfriend of eight years—well, she was anyway—walks backward on her black boots before turning around.

She glances between the aisle in front of her and then back to Stan, her expression a mix of fury and sadness, intense solidarity and regret.

He watches his entire life stride away from him through the empty spaces, a purple blur, between people who he’s never met, who will never care that he’s just idly staring as he’s destroyed, as the one thing that brought him joy disappears out of sight behind the corner of a wall, not even looking over her shoulder of black hair anymore.

She’s moved on, out of sight, out of his life. Probably has months ago, honestly.

And he didn’t even fucking notice.

“Boarding first class,” the woman at the desk says muffled over the intercom.

People begin to move, forming a long line in front of the door to the hall over the plane.

Stan stares at the blue of his shoes, the white of the laces, forces his gaze to drag up over his jeans to his hands on his lap.

They’re shaking.

With what, though?

Shock?

Misery?

Terror?

Rage?

He doesn’t even know anymore.

Everything feels foreign as he rises to his feet, grabbing the duffel bag underneath the chair. Wendy’s is missing. She took it with her, of course. Wasn’t even planning on stowing it in the luggage compartment of the plane. She just folded all her clothes so it would be faster to move out of the dorm, to a new city, maybe a new state.

He begins to walk but feels like he isn’t really there at all. His eyes snap to movement but he doesn’t really see, can’t bring himself to even begin to care with the swirling cacophony of thoughts going on in his head.

He moves his body forward aimlessly, automatically, clutches the bag tight.

But it’s all just a surface reaction.

Just acting.

*****

“God, where is he?”

“Fuck, Kahl, stop being such a fag– Ow! Fucking fine, Kenny, you ass– Stop being such a baby, Kyle! Plane’s just a little late, happens all the fucking time…”

Kyle still goes up on the steel toes of his boots melting snow in their deep treads, trying to look over the crowd of people surrounding the baggage claim area, searching for black hair, round face.

He realizes then, eyes glancing excitedly about, that he doesn’t really know exactly what he’s looking for anymore.

And his smile falters.

It had been a year since they’d seen each other last winter break—electing all the other breaks to stay in their states across the country, working off jobs and studying and doing some “soul-searching”, otherwise known as just fucking around the entirety of their free time—and half a year since they’d heard each other’s voices, a month since they’d texted at all.

And Kyle doesn’t really know why.

Not at all.

Their conversations had been fleeting, at first excitable about their new years of university and college, about the different people, the classes, but it had all slowly… died off.

Hours turned to merely one turned to minutes a day, then trickled down to nothing entirely.

Stan had stopped even posting pictures of himself on any social media.

Not that Kyle checked that every day.

No, he would just occasionally look at it, enough to remember that the last picture had been two months ago.

Smiling with his arm slung around Wendy in a coffee shop, no hat or jacket to be found, shorter haircut no longer covering his eyes.

But his face was still mostly the same.

So that’s what Kyle tells himself to look for, standing up and rocking back and forth on his heels as all the rest of his three friends sit.

Cartman’s arms fold over his large gut, looking really no different from the well-fed polar bear of a year ago when they’d parted ways last January.

Well, at least Stan and Kyle actually went somewhere, just back to completely different parts of fucking America. Stan to San Francisco on Wendy’s desire to live in California, Kyle to Connecticut to attend God damned Yale. He’d been so excited that he’d got accepted last year. It was so much hard work, and it had all been worth it, finally.

Meanwhile, Cartman stayed and still lived with his mom doing absolutely nothing but playing games and eating Cheetos, so fucking joke's on him.

But, to be fair, a lot of other people had stayed, too, for familiarity or lack of options.

Kenny had moved to a fla–apartment, because this is America—just a little less shitty than his family’s house working some job, and Butters was still kept firmly under lock and key by his parents, allowed to only occasionally slip out to the community college.

So much had changed in a year, but even more, it had seemed to stay the same.

And now, their little group was getting back together again.

There was just one last piece missing.

A sudden surge of people to the right, from the airline wings, calls the boys’ attention.

They all look at the rush, adorned in summery clothing, looking tired and aggravated them all for the two and a half hour flight and hour-long delay. The flight had started at 7, ran late till 10, now it was fucking 11. Stan probably had to wake up at 5. Or, rather, Wendy had to wake him up then, Kyle thinks with a chuckle.

Kyle had arrived the night before, a gruelling four and a half hour flight from New Haven all the way to Denver where they were now camped out.

He’d stayed in the cheapest apartment he could find, feeling like a real adult for the first time in his life as he politely dealt with the lady at the desk who gave him his golden key in the yellow of the fluorescent lights, hands no longer held by college attendants nor his doting parents.

The people slide by, coating the conveyor belts every square inch and watching the duffel bags and plastic cases fall from the chutes. Yet more people rush in through the giant hall, filling it to capacity, flowing around the tight group of friends sat on one of the many uncomfortable benches facing the claim.

Brown hair, blonde hair, gaunt faces, old people, women with very obvious breasts.

An entire crowd of strangers, and none of them him.

“Where the hell is he?” Kyle mutters under his breath.

Kenny sighs, sauntering up to a stand a good head taller than him and slapping a hand over his shoulder. “It’s okay, buddy. He’ll get here eventually.”

Kyle pouts. The crowd’s beginning to lessen, no longer a steady stream of flesh but a trickle of odd faces every once in a while. “Maybe we already missed him?”

Kenny shakes his head and tuts but digs a hand into his worn jeans, pulling out his phone at least seven years old now.

“Okay, okay, I’ll call him for you,” Kenny mutters, swiping on the cracked screen a few times before bringing it to his ear, his hair still dirty blonde and even wilder than before, only able to afford to cut it himself. And last time he did that, it was an utter disaster for months. Even fucking Butters laughed at him, for fuck’s sake.

The phone starts ringing quietly in Kenny’s ear and half a second later, there’s a loud sound that comes from just beyond the baggage hall, to the right where the stragglers are still bleeding in.

It’s a song, starting with some techno and then devolving to a shout.

Echoing loudly off the marble flooring and the glass walls:

"To the windoooooowwwwww–"

Ah, Kyle thinks, “Get Low” by Lil Jon.

A modern classic.

And then, as it sings loud enough to make people begin to turn in confusion, "To the waAall–", Kyle’s eyes snap open.

A white smile lights his entire face and his legs begin to move seemingly without him toward the music, instead of away like all the other fearful passengers are.

Because it's Stan’s ringtone for Kenny.

Stan's.

He doesn’t know why the fuck the sound’s on, nor why it’s so fucking mind-numbingly loud, he just knows he needs to see him, right now.

And there he is, as the sound grows louder until it’s practically ear-rape, his circular face is downturned to stare, dark brows furrowed, at the phone of his screen, fingers unmoving as Kyle practically sprints toward him.

His hair is a little shorter.

Kyle forgets the laws of physics and inertia until it’s much too late, feet carrying him all the way to his friend still staring dazedly at his phone that’s making everyone balk.

Just as the absolute lyrical genius of "To the sweat drop down my balls!" begins to play, the sound becomes muffled and distorted as the object it’s confined to is knocked to the floor out of an unsteady hand, a sudden weight of a hundred and fifty pounds slamming right into his chest, making him oof audibly.

“Stan!” Kyle yells over the electronic garble that continues across the floor, the people scurrying away from the dreaded cellular device like it’s a God damned bomb.

"To all you bitches crawl–"

“K-Kyle?!” Stan says, eyes wide, and he can only tell it’s him, really him, his super best friend forever by the long red curls which press into his face as Kyle does similarly with his entire body, trapping him in a tight hug and a smile clicking in his ear.

“To all skee skee motherfucker!” Kenny shouts with Lil Jon before breaking into a fit of giggles, Butters beside him stuttering an offended, “H-Hey!” at the horrid curse but unable to stop a chuckle.

Cartman is doubled over in laughter, the entire thing fucking hilarious to him:

From the God-awful song to Kyle’s faggotry to Stan wobbling around under his own weight.

He’s obviously fucking–

Drunk?

Kyle’s eyes snap open again, removing himself from Stan’s shoulder to look him in the eye.

He smells it even in his hair, around his face still startled, not even beginning to crack a familiar grin.

And God, Kyle fucking hates it.

So his smile instantly falls to a grimace, glaring at Stan hard enough that it melts through his drunken daze, making him recoil in fear so Kyle’s warm hands slip from around his back.

Kyle puts his hands to his hips instead, adopting a bossy stance Stan doesn’t realize he’s missed until right then.

Then again, maybe he shouldn’t miss it, because Kyle was very obviously mad at him right now, not Cartman.

“Are you fucking drunk, Stanley fucking Marsh?”

“Uuuuuuuuh,” Stan breathes, even that action seeming slurred, “nnoooooooo..!”

Kyle stamps a foot on the ground and huffs, the music abruptly stopping as Kenny finally decides it’s about time to hang up.

"Can she fuck, that question been harassing me–" and then Lil Jon dies tragically.

Strangers around them break the silence they’d fallen into with a few nervous giggles and mutters, still avoiding the couple of guys now staring dead at each other in the middle of the room, phone left on the floor and being eyed by a hesitant security guard.

Kyle grinds his teeth, crossing his arms and clenching his fists so he doesn’t fucking punch Stan’s fucking lights out right about now.

“You fucking lied to me, didn’t you?”

“Wh-wha?”

Their friends begin to sprint over to them, but Kyle is fucking livid.

“You’re a fucking liar!” he shouts, drawing the attention of people quickly growing tired of their shit even as he jabs a smooth nail right into Stan’s solar plexus.

Kenny bounds over, calling, “Woah, woah, Kyle, buddy! Calm dow–”

“You said you were done drinking! And what the fuck are you fucking even doing?! Drinking before you get on the fucking plane?!!”

Cartman wheezes like he just ran a four-minute mile, “Alright, Kahl, hhh, shut the fhhuck up before security, hha, kicks our ass–”

“No, Kyle! I was not drinking before I got on the plane!” Stan says with eyes wide, hands up before they draw down the side of his jeans, Kyle eyeing him with suspicion.

All four boys watch with bated, confused breath as his wobbly fingers move down his pants much too slowly, encumbered by intoxication.

Stan digs under the cuff of his pant leg and Kenny slaps a hand to his face so hard he swears he almost breaks his damned nose.

“OhmyGodStanyoufuckingretard–”

“I was drinkin’ on the plane!” he shouts almost proudly, pulling from between his pants and sock a tiny black flask that had surely been filled with hard vodka to be so small and make him so drunk regardless. “The old lady sittin’ next to me even helped herself to some!”

An elderly woman just so happens to pass by at that exact time, giving the young man a cheeky thumbs up with her own shiny flask in palm and then walking on a shaky cane to the belt.

“Thanks, Cheryl!”

Well, if Kyle was going to knock Stan unconscious before, now he’s going to literally fucking murder him.

“You could have been arrested, Stan! You should be in fucking jail right now!”

But before he can actually assault Stan with more than just words, Kenny grabs him by the coat collar and yanks him back enough to choke him for a second. “It’s okay!” he says, Kyle seething like a wild fucking animal in his arms, “He’s a fucking dumbass, it’s okay, Kyle, we all know that!”

“I fucking hate him!”

“I know, I know, we all do,” Kenny breathes, pulling Kyle away so his nails stop brushing against the cotton of Stan’s navy shirt, a slowly bewildered Stan taking a step back and falling right on his ass with a huff.

Fucking idiot.

The short blonde of the group suddenly tilts his head to look into Stan’s glassy eyes. “H-Hey,” Butters stutters, everyone glancing to him immediately, “where’s W-Wendy?”

Stan, sitting there on the airport floor, just blinks for a second.

Then his face goes all red within seconds, his irritated eyes becoming further glossy until they burst dramatically with tears.

Kyle just rolls his fucking eyes into his skull.

“Wendy! Oh, Wendy! Whhhyyyy!”

Butters kneels down, putting a hand to Stan’s back as he wails, all the other guys a mixture of grimaces and frowns at the miserable display in a baggage claim of all places.

“What’s wr-wrong, b-buddy? What happened? O-oh g-geez, d-did the plane crash?”

Kenny goes, “Uhh, Butters, Stan’s right here, so–”

“I brought this!” flask in air, “in case that happened! Which it unfortunately did not!” he slurs, slumping on the ground and crushing Butters’ hands holding him up.

Idiot, Kyle shakes his head.

“Then what happened?” Cartman spits, folding his arms.

Renewed tears well in Stan’s eyes, sobs wracking his shaking chest so he can barely cry out, “Sh-she, Wendy, she, oh God, she broke up with me!”

Everyone audibly gasps.

Even Kyle, who's still trying to claw at Stan’s throat.

And then Cartman claps his fat hands together in giddy. “That means she’s open!”

“Cartman!” everyone instantly snaps.

Butters circles a hand on Stan’s back, pouting in sympathy. “Oh, i-it-it’s okay, S-Stan. She did it a wh-while ago and you're only realising it now that you're b-back home?”

“No!” he bawls on the gleam of the floor, “she did it in the airport a few hours ago!”

Kyle stops his scrabbling fingers, a crestfallen expression to match his sobbing friend. “That’s fucked up.”

“I know!” Stan cries, lying motionless on the floor and bawling his eyes out like a twenty-year-old baby. “I asked her why and she just said that I-I-I,” he sobs hard, “I didn’t love her!”

Kenny lets Kyle go, dropping him back fully onto his boots as he wonders aloud, " 'Didn't love her'..?"

Kyle leans forward and asks with concern, “What does that mean? You weren't in love with her?”

“Of course I was in love with Wendy! I-I loved her so f-fucking much! She didn’t see it s-somehow, I-I didn’t see that she was getting tired or whatever…”

Stan starts to wipe the tears from his face, a crowd of people grimacing and staring as they pass the fallen man.

“She said, said, I was just…” he opens his eyes, looking right at Kyle standing before him, above him but kneeling to level them more.

“Acting.”

Kyle furrows his brows. “Acting?”

“Acting like I was in love.” He sits up, tossing his hands into the air in desperation. “Acting, all these years, just acting! Like it was never real, l-like I never felt anything!”

Cartman huffs. “Well, is that true?”

Stan spits, “Of c-course it’s not! I loved that girl, with all my damn heart! It was real, it was genuine!” He lets out a miserable sniffle, slapping a hand to cover his cherry red face, “And now she’s gone, forever! I tried texting her about a hundred times, called her every ten minutes, no fucking answer! She’s probably already changed her n-number!”

Kyle and Cartman lock eyes, glances of green and brown shifting down to the dark phone on the floor before meeting again.

They both then lunge for it, Cartman closer but weighed down by his body none-too-athletic, Kyle sliding coolly on his knees enough to give himself a burn from his pants, but it’s all in vain.

“Hah!” Cartman shouts, holding the phone up in the air victoriously.

And then Kenny leans down and plucks it from his fingers effortlessly.

He hums over everyone’s shouting as he unlocks it, Stan of course without a password.

He clicks the message app and scrolls up miles of text all aligned to the right, alone and growing increasingly more coherent as time flies backward over the hours.

“Jesus Christ, Stan,” Kenny mutters, shaking his head. He reads off in an overly-dramatic impression of Stan’s higher voice as he scrolls his thumb up and down, “ ‘Wendy, sweetie, come back to me, please’, ‘What ever did I do wrong?’, ‘Was it last night? But you said you were tired’, ‘I’ll do anything, anything, just please’, ‘Wendy’, ‘Wendy’, ‘Wendy’, Wendy’... this goes on for another half hour every fifteen seconds.”

Cartman snickers. “Wow, that’s fucking pathetic, Marsh.”

“Shut up! Kenny, come on!” he whines, trying to snap his hand from his tall friend’s shifting hand.

“No, no, man,” Kenny says humourlessly, glancing down to Stan with a frown. “You’ve got a problem, dude. This isn’t okay.”

“Are you fucking kidding me!” Cartman shouts. “You, Kenny, saying it’s not okay to harass the womyns? You chase tail every other night!”

Kenny shrugs, puffing. “Well, maybe I’m trying to be a better person, unlike some people here… Anyway!” he tosses Stan his precious phone back without a care, turning on his heel, “let’s get this show on the road, boys! My dad needs his truck back before five or else he’s gonna beat the shit out of me!”

He casts a weary glance over his shoulder to Stan now sitting up fully. “That’s why you stop drinking, Stan. Before it’s too late.” He offers a half-hearted smile.

Butters gasps, pulling on Stan’s hand to get him to try to stand as he watches Kenny stride on, pushing through the crowd to the baggage area.

“Come on, m-mister! I don’t want K-Kenny to get a bl-black eye a-a-again!”

So Stan grunts and comes to wobbly feet.

Kyle eyes him distantly, arms to his side and deciding whether or not he should support his friend.

He would have, no hesitation, years ago.

But now? Now they were twenty fucking years old.

And he realizes maybe him patting his best friend on the back while he threw up into a toilet or on the bare grass was the reason why he was still like this now.

Brain damage from a developing mind abusing liquor, he shrugs as he turns on his heel, leaving only Butters and Cartman to attend to a thoroughly intoxicated Stanley.

Cartman watches the redhead leave without so much as a glance back, whistling. “Wow,” he says to Stan who barely seems to hear him, too busy trying not to pass out, “now that’s fucking cold, even for me!”

A Butters still rather short and stout does his best to bear the brunt of Stan’s stumbling weight as they try to move forward, Cartman just skulking behind them, maybe ready to catch Stan if he falls… maybe.

Stan just groans and squints his eyes shut, tear stains drying to the heavy flush of his cheeks.

Oh, Wendy…

*****

“I’m on the highway to hell!”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“You shut the fuck up, Cartman! It’s my fucking car, so either you suck it up or you’re walking the rest of the way, and I'd love to see your fat ass try to do that!”

“It’s not even your car,” Cartman spits, “it’s your dad’s car, you fucking street rat.”

“Says the dude who gets everything handed to him by his mummy,” Kenny says, smiling as he makes Butters laugh next to him.

Cartman just growls before snapping his hands up, glaring outside.

Well, he tries to anyway.

“Can you fucking move, Jew? I’m trying to look at something more attractive than you, like cow pies.”

Kyle says nothing as he leans back into his seat. Having Cartman sat right against him was highly unpleasant, but he knows he’ll literally rip Stan’s throat out if he has to look at him again.

“Wowwww,” Kenny mutters, glancing at the redhead in the rear-view mirror. “Nothing to say to that, Kyle? Not even a ‘shut up, fatass’?”

Kyle doesn’t even blink, arms crossed and staring at the floor.

“It’s okay,” Kenny says as he switches lanes. “I know you were thinking it.”

Butters looks back over his headrest on the passenger's side. “And w-what about you, S-Stan?” he asks over the music.

Stan shakes his head. “God, what can I even do?” He puts his head in his hands. “Can’t call her, can’t text her, how do I do it?”

“M-maybe you can try F-Facebook?”

“I see whose side you’re on, Butters,” Kyle says, grinding his teeth almost audibly as Butters frowns, confused.

“Hey!” Kenny says smoothly, slapping the scarred wheel in his hand, “There’s no sides here!” He tries to laugh it off.

Everyone is, of course, rather unamused.

Kenny glances to the clouds outside the window, streaked with bright afternoon light. “Gonna be a loooong fucking roadtrip, guys…”

Everyone sighs.

“Just fucking kidding, morons!” he shouts with a grin, the white snow around the truck growing steadily in height until its nearly the size of the fucking car, burying a large sign recently renovated to be green, already water-stained metal.

“South Park,” they all mutter, a chill running through their spines.

Like a curse or some shit.

Butters claps his hands together. “Whew! It’s only been half a day but boy have I missed it!” he giggles. “I can only imagine what you guys are feeling!”

And he really can only imagine.

Kyle and Stan both sit up, watching the sign pass to the right so Kyle’s forced to stare past Stan, still wobbling slightly in his seatbelt which Cartman had to do for him like he was a fucking baby. A little man baby.

The truck travels on the worn roads with ease, going around turns twice the “recommended” speed limit with how many damn times Kenny's driven here. Every pothole, every crack, it’s all still there under the crunching snow beneath the tires, just as Stan and Kyle remember it.

Sleepy little South Park really hasn’t changed a bit, has it?

“Kyle’s house first!” Kenny calls out, turning into the borough that makes Kyle fill with a strange sense of awe, nostalgia hitting him like a wave. It had only been a fucking year but it felt like a decade. All the houses, the decorations, even the pets in the windows, they were all the same.

And then he finally turns into the asphalt of Kyle’s driveway.

Kyle feels about ready to cry.

“Alright, and here we are, Kyle!” Kenny looks back, grinning as he puts the truck in park.

Kyle starts to mimic the smile, feeling real joy as he sees his house with fresh eyes for the first time in months. It’s beautiful. Large and cosy. So many memories. All his. Not even Cartman dare speaks to ruin the moment–

“Oh my God!”

Everyone turns to stare at the source of the sound.

Stan, of course. Still drunk as ever.

“She fuckin’ blocked me! Oh my God, I can’t see her on Insta– Uf!”

The zip of Kyle’s jacket hits him square in the eye, making him flinch and cry out in agony.

The weight of the heavy thing is pretty bad too, all balled up against his chest and knocking the wind from one of his lungs, left to crumple against his lap.

Kyle stands there, now outside the car after a flurry of furious movement, seething, teeth looking sharp enough to pierce right through Stan’s pliant flesh.

He doesn’t even shiver now that he’s only wearing a red t-shirt while it’s fucking snowing, pure rage filling his veins.

“Fuck. You. Stan. Marsh.” He spits every word like a disgusting slur.

He slams the door shut as hard as his body physically allows, already dented and scratched to all hell so Kenny doesn’t do anything but frown in sympathy at his anger.

“Fuck. You.”

He stomps off up his driveway, fists clenched around his waist and yelling over his shoulder loud enough his family inside can surely hear of his arrival, “You’re a fucking drunk! And you always fucking will be!”

Stan blinks inside of the car.

Kyle grabs the wooden railing, whirling on his heel to spit, “No fucking wonder Wendy broke up with you! You’re a fucking pathetic piece of fucking shit, Stan! I never want to fucking see you again, or I’m going to kill you, I swear to God!”

He runs up the stairs, tears of fury spilling only as he’s around the corner and out of sight, leaving all of them to wonder if they just imagined the slight warble in his last bites of words.

They’re all silent in the car before Kenny moves the gear, the boyish charm of Metro Station’s Shake It barely even a distraction at this point.

“Well, fuck, Stan,” Kenny says as he begins to reverse. “You’re gonna have to work hard to fix that ruined relationship, buddy…”

Cartman just snickers darkly as Stan groans, pulling that black flask out of his pocket and taking one final sip of it.

There’s only meagre drops left, but he’s desperate for anything at this point as the bitterness fills his mouth, because, fuck he’s ruined his relationship for sure now.

But, oh…

Oh, Wendy…

*****

“Kyle!” A woman calls as he bounds up the stairs, ignoring the way the house feels all too small from what he remembers. “Kyle, honey, what’s wrong?!”

Gerald shakes the paper in his hands, looking back down to it and figuring his son a lost cause. “Was he crying?” he asks gruffly.

“Oh my God!” Sheila practically wails.

She runs up the stairs to find Ike already there, the 15-year-old teenager tilting his head and knocking on Kyle’s door.

“Kyle!” his mom calls through the door.

On the other side of the locked thing, Kyle’s sitting on his bed, lying spread eagle on the small piece of furniture with fists clenched over his face.

Fuck, he doesn’t even know why he’s crying.

He fucking hates Stan, hates him to his very core, his fucking guts, his very being, all of it.

Fuck.

But the tears turn from rage to exasperation, sliding down his face into his old, clean covers he’s had since he was a child, running like a river. He can’t even hear his mom nor his brother for the blood rushing in his head, a steady thrum that makes him dizzy even as he just lays there, balling his eyes out silently.

Ike hands his mom a q-tip as he runs from the bathroom, and she undoes the simple lock to slowly creak it open.

“Oh, Kyle,” she murmurs, sounding absolutely heartbroken as she takes a step into the room. “This isn’t how your first day home was supposed to go…”

Kyle does his best to sit up on the bed, leaning against the wall to support himself. Fuck, it’s almost like he’s as drunk as fucking Stan.

 “I-I kn-kno-know, M-Mom,” he wracks shakily through sobs, unable to control the desperate, heaving breaths that claw through his lungs.

She walks over him to pull him into a warm hug, feeling the chill on his skin that makes him suddenly flush, realizing just how fucking terrible he feels.

She presses her head into his shoulder, the large bun of red hair atop her head skirting against his cheek and feeling oddly comforting.

Nothing’s more soothing than a mother’s embrace, he supposes.

“What happened?” she asks quietly, her voice reverberating throughout his skin.

Kyle shakes his head, feeling the weight on the bed shift as Ike sits next to him as well, putting a hand to his older brother's shoulder.

“I-I don’t even kn-know!” He grimaces, the tremoring sobs becoming painful inside him, physically and emotionally. “I-I-I shouldn’t even be c-crying, right now, Mom…”

He sounds absolutely miserable.

She tuts in sympathy, sliding a hand around his neck to press over Ike’s small one. “It’s okay, honey. I know homesickness can be rough…”

Kyle chokes, inhale catching in his trachea so he sputters, spit and tears getting all over his face so Ike moves slightly back. His mother only presses closer.

“It’s not even that! I w-wish, Mom! Fuc–I mean, God–I mean–”

“You can say fuck and God, honey. Just this once.”

He cries even harder at that, holding his mom’s fingers painted red across his arms, “Fuck, Mom, it’s Stan.”

She tilts her head, moving back to look him in the eyes. “Stan?”

Kyle nods desperately. “Stan! F-fucking St-Stan!” he sniffles, tears finally beginning to dry from his tear ducts, “His girlfriend broke up with him–”

“Wendy Testaburger?” Ike remembers.

“Yeah, W-Wendy. In the airport just before they left, even…"

His mother cups his face in the fleshy palm of her open hand, tilting his head so she can look him clean in his red, irritated eyes. “But why are you crying, honey? He’s not your boyfriend.”

Kyle whimpers and Ike chokes a little.

“Uh, I mean, y-yeah. B-but, he, got dr-drunk, is the thing that bothers m-me. Wasted, really. Could barely stand to, well, stand, Mom. H-he told me he wouldn’t drink at all last year, at least not enough to get more than buzzed–”

Sheila gasps. “But you’re still all underage to drink!”

“I know, Mom,” Kyle sighs, patting her hand and managing a smile through his tears that only slip every few seconds now. “But he does… he can’t help it… I just, just, didn’t want to see him like this again…”

She sighs in sympathy, pulling Kyle into a tight hug that squeezes his very bones, makes the lights dim enough he slips slightly from reality, going into himself in a world of his own introspection.

But was all that really true, though? Was it really just because of Stan’s drinking? Because somehow, some way, that seemed like a lie. A partial truth, but not nearly the whole thing.

He thinks back to just before he’d fallen into this real burst of rage, the worst fit in his life besides perhaps a couple when Cartman was being a real fucking shitstain. He’d gotten mad at Stan for ruining his moment, sure, but, no, that wasn’t completely it, was it–

He gasps just as his mom cricks him tight enough to pop a few bones, force the air from his compressed lungs, meets Ike’s knowing gaze from over her shoulder, his bony hand on his back.

Wendy.

It was because of Wendy.

It was because Stan was still interested in Wendy.

But now he wasn’t dating her anymore, right?

So…

So?

His mom lets go, giving him a smile that Ike, to the other side, mirrors, albeit with a glimmer of something in his eyes, a certain hopefulness.

Kyle grins, but bites his lip as he thinks inside his head all the while:

So he has a chance with Stan now.

Doesn’t he?

*****

“Stanley Marsh!” A woman calls as he bounds up the stairs, ignoring the way the house feels all too small from what he remembers. “Stan, come back here!”

Randy shakes the paper in his hands, looking back down to it and figuring his son a lost cause. “Was he wasted?” he asks gruffly.

“Oh my God!” Sharon practically screams.

She runs up the stairs to find Stan’s door ajar, Shelly crossing her arms at his doorway and staring in, home yesterday morning from her own winter break.

“Yep,” Shelly says, trailing off in a vocal fry, “he’s fucking hammered, Mom.”

She gasps, breathing out a ragged exhale as she strides into Stan’s dark room.

“Stanley!” she says, glancing at her son up and down as he’s laid out on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. “You’re drunk?!”

He closes his eyes, opens them one at a time and then sighs. “Yeah, Mom. I am…”

She breathes sharply, as though offended. “Stan! How many times do I have to tell you: You. Can. Not. Drink!”

The words bite into him, all too familiar for some reason. “I know, Mom. I’m sorry.”

She frowns, hand on her hip. “You don’t seem very sorry to me, Stanley!”

He shakes his head, closes his eyes. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so, so sorry.”

She sighs, slumping as the air leaves her lungs, and she can’t help but walk over to him, leaving Shelly to peer into the door at her younger brother, smirking as she feels better than him once again. She could always rely on Stan to do that for her.

“Stan…” Sharon says, sitting down on the edge of his bed. “What happened this time?”

He exhales heavily, covering his eyes from the blinding white light that Shelly flips on. “G-God… I don’t even wanna talk about it…”

His mother clicks her tongue. “Well, honey, you have to tell me.” Her easy grin makes him smile a bit.

“Or else you’re grounded the entire time you’re here.”

He huffs the beginning of a chuckle. “Alright…” He uncovers his eyes, looking at his mother with a glassy blue, unable to completely focus, “Wendy… Wendy br… she broke up with me.”

There’s a second of silence, and then Shelly leans over from the door. “Really?”

Their mother is ready to reprimand her, but Stan puts a hand up. “It’s fine. Yeah. She did it at the airport this morning.”

They’re both stunned. “What?” Sharon asks, utterly bewildered.

“Yeah. I asked her why, she said I didn’t love her or something…”

“That isn’t true though… is it?” Shelly asks.

Stan shakes his head vehemently. “Of course not. I loved her with all my heart, everything I had, every single day… She was so beautiful, and, and pretty, and… n-nice…”

Shelly hmphs. “Welp. A girl so rude she breaks up with you just before your wonderful flight back to your home town, I say she’s no good anyway. Good riddance.”

“Shelly–”

“No. It’s okay, Mom. She’s probably right…”

His mom turns back to him, running a reassuring hand on his calf. “Oh, it’ll get better, Stan… Time heals all wounds.”

So fucking cheesy…

Just what he needed.

“Now take off your damn shoes already,” she says, pulling on his sneakers covered in snow melting into his sheets, the carpet.

Stan manages a laugh. “Okay, Mom. You got it.”

She moves back a bit, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Are you really gonna be alright, honey?”

Stan pauses for a second, looking up to think. And then he smiles easily, a white, toothy grin to his mom that makes her unable to remember him as a child, sweet and innocent all over again. “Yeah. I’m fine. Thanks, Mom.”

She gives him one last pat to his leg and then rises, grabbing Shelly by the shoulder to force her out. “Dinner’s almost ready in half an hour, Stanley,” she says behind her short brown hair, tossing him a hopeful smile.

“Got it.”

The door closes quietly behind them, light flicked off under his mom’s manicured nail.

Stan gets up, sitting at his desk feeling oddly large. Probably because his brain is partial to remembering it as though he were a child, still.

He turns on his PC, listening to the old thing whir. He had enough money now from working part-time at a Starbucks in college to buy a new one. Maybe he would.

It turns on after a minute, and he immediately goes to the browser.

Types on the keyboard.

Makes a brand new account.

And there she is, in all of her usual glory.

Wendy Testaburger.

He smiles as he sees her beauty, standing on a pier, hands behind her leaning on a metal railing on a wonderfully sunny day. He remembers taking that picture, taking quite a few, actually. Never was just right for her, she’d look at it and then scoff, tell him to take another. This one was probably the fiftieth or so.

He laughs in his chair. Good times.

He scrolls further down the picture feed, brow furrowing as he slowly realizes something.

A lot of them are missing.

A lot of them.

He might be behind the camera in almost all of them, but the ones where he used to be there, in the frame… they’re gone. Without a trace. No comments telling why, no status update, nothing. Just vanished.

He gets up from his chair as he feels his head swim, unable to cry for having run dry on tears hours ago.

He reaches under his bed and feels a tinge of joy as he recovers a good old bottle of vodka. Still there after all these years. His mom never cleans under the bed, after all.

He pops the cork and drinks straight from it, leans on it as the burn runs over his tongue.

He just needs to come up with a plan, some method to get her back. Maybe he should try being sweet? Maybe pretending to be some other guy–Wait, isn’t that catfishing and isn’t that illegal?

Maybe he could call her, woe her with sweet words carefully, quietly–

No, that will never work. She’ll cuss him out the second she hears his voice.

He takes another swig, falling onto his ass on the floor, putting a hand to his face contorted in pure misery.

Wendy…

And then the doorknob turns, Stan unable to put the bottle away, let alone the cork back in, before Shelly has the door wide open, grinning at him evilly as she blinds him with yellow light again.

“I fucking knew it, Stan,” she says, shaking her head, long hair flying to and fro. “Come on, you’re really gonna do that minutes after Mom gives you a tear-jerking talk?”

Stan grimaces. “Shut up, Shelly. I’m having problems today, okay?”

“You certainly are, little brother,” she mutters, batting her lashes in condescension. She sneers. “Now, tell me,” she says, shutting and locking the door behind her as she mutters, “did you have fun meeting all of your friends?”

Stan cradles the big bottle in his lap. No point in putting the cap on now, he guesses. “What do you mean?”

Shelly tilts her head. “Your friends? You know, the ones you’ve had since you were in elementary school?” She squints, putting a finger to her lip as her eyes roll back in recall. “Wasn’t there that one that you were friends with since kindergarten?”

“Kyle?”

“Yeah,” she says, waggling her nail painted green, “that’s the one… Kyle… Brov-something…”

“Kyle Broflovski.”

“Mm, yep. The Jew-boy,” she grins. “How was it, brother? Meeting him after an entire year?”

Stan looks at the black, shiny rim of the bottle, heavily tempted but barely resisting. “Why the fuck do you care, Shelly?”

Shelly puts her hands to her hips, sighing. “Because, bro, I do care about you, you know that? I might not show it the best, but what siblings do, anyways?”

“Giving me a wedgie for years sure is a weird way of showing love…”

She waves a hand. “That’s all behind us now, Stanley. Just let me help you! Tell me, what was it like? How did you feel? I mean, hah, I’m sure you guys were always talking or texting or Discording or whatever it is you boys use nowadays.”

Stan frowns, looking at the carpet. “I, uh… no, we actually haven’t been talking that much before…”

Shelly’s face wrinkles, eyes twitching to him and the wall. “Really? But you guys were like,” she pinches her fingers together tight, “like this!”

“I-I know… we just… couldn’t find time or something,” Stan says, voice oddly high.

Shelly walks over to him slowly, coming to sit next to him cross-legged on the floor. “I know you’re lying, brother, because you’re really fucking bad at it.” She smiles. “Just tell me the truth, Stan. If anyone can hear, it’s your big sister who doesn’t give near enough shits to tell anyone.”

Stan closes his eyes. “Fine. It’s because of Wendy. She'd get… jealous, for some reason.”

His sister nods, face calm with relief. “I knew it.”

“What?”

Shelly grins at him, taking the bottle out of his fingers lax with shock. “I never liked her, you know. Too bossy, too smart.” Her green nails click on the black bottle, making a sharp tinkling noise. “And not smart in the good way, either. Smart like, a fucking smartass. Pretentious. A goody goody but, again, not in the good way.”

“What does that even mean?”

Shelly tilts her head, sighing as she slumps further onto the floor, her white shorts pooling around her legs that come to lie over Stan’s carelessly. “I mean she was also selfish, Stan. And I know I’m not innocent in that regard, hell, who is? But she was a fucking cunt–”

“Hey!–”

“She was, Stan!” she snaps, leaning forward to challenge him. Memories of that same face but filled with braces, smiling down as she poured a gallon of water on him to wake him up rekindling in his mind, making him a coward that backs down immediately.

Shelly brandishes the bottle up in triumph, smiling easily. “She was a selfish bitch."

"Oh, Shelly, don't talk about yourself like that!" Stan quips.

Shelly just sticks out her tongue, unaffected as she continues, "Well, Wendy cared only about herself. What she wanted, where she wanted to go, what she wanted you to do. Did she ever ask you how you were feeling? What you thought? Because I sure as hell didn’t, all those hours she was over right next to my room, yelling at you for being ‘incompetent’.”

Stan seethes, reaching for the bottle only for Shelly to immediately quip it out of reach. “It’s the truth, Stan. I know it’s a bitter pill to swallow, but think about it as you wallow in depression these next few days. She didn’t care about you, Stan, didn’t care about her friends, about your friends, no one. That kinda attitude might get you far in work life, but amongst people?”

Shelly presses the bottle to her glossy lips, staring at her brother panting in anger. She winks, voice made hollow as it echoes in the glass of pure vodka, “Those kinda people die alone, Stan.”

She takes a quick chug of it before Stan rends the bottle from her mouth, shaking his head in fury. “Get out, get the fuck out–”

Shelly cackles as she rises, brushing her shirt and shorts, shaking her head as that pleasant buzz runs over her. “And I’m 23, Stan, old enough to drink!” She boops him on the nose with her pointer finger, Stan snarling like a feral beast and only serving to make her laugh more.

She practically skips across the room, Stan about to applaud her departure when she stops, hand on the doorknob, to snap her gaze to him once again. “Just don’t be like her, okay?” she simpers with an oddly soft look in her eyes. “Just think of other people. Especially your friends.”

And then she’s out the door. “And the food’s ready, loser!”

The walls rattle as she slams the door, light still on.

Stan groans. He should go turn it off.

He looks at the corkless bottle in his lap, pondering it.

But his thoughts drift back to Shelly’s questions for some reason, stuck on something.

What was it?

“... Did you have fun meeting all of your friends..?”

“... How was it..? Meeting him after an entire year..?”

“... What was it like? How did you feel..?”

Stan sits there in his childhood bedroom on the carpet, staring confusedly at a bottle of vodka, and realizes he doesn’t know the answers to any of these fucking questions.

Because he didn’t really care. Not at the time.

Too busy thinking of Wendy, he realizes.

Too busy thinking of her to even feel the joy of reuniting with his friends. Too drunk and wallowing in his self-pity to even begin to care about them.

About Kyle.

It hits him like an ice cold tidal wave, what a fucking asshole he is.

Kyle was on the verge of fucking tears. So consumed by selfless fury that he could no longer enjoy himself at all, just screaming in rage at Stan as he ran into his house. Those biting words he spat, how Stan would always be a drunkard and nothing more, how Kyle made it clear just how little Stan meant to him anymore, how he loathed every fibre of his fucking being.

And it was all Stan’s fault. No one else’s. Not even Wendy’s. He couldn’t change her breaking up with him. That was long gone, it seemed.

He looks down at the bottle.

But he could change the way he reacted.

He corks it and stows it back under the bed, kicks off his red shoes onto the floor and goes to enjoy coming home to his beautiful, horrible family downstairs, vowing it off forever.

For now, at least.