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Even though Kenny, Kyle, Stan and Cartman all applied to be elves at the mall, only Stan got the job.
“Aren’t elves supposed to be, like, short or something?” Kyle asked, as they walked out through the Dillard’s exit. It was dusky, getting colder as late November neared the heart of winter.
Stan, the tallest of any of them, shrugged, looking sort of guilty.
“I feel like there’s some kind of stereotype Cartman’s missing out on here, but I can’t…” Kenny trailed off.
“Well, there’s still the Christmas tree place, guys,” Kyle said, trying to look at it positively.
Dead leaves had collected beneath the running boards of Cartman’s enormous four-door truck. Kyle actually needed the boards to get in, for the step up. He was getting a ride home from Cartman, Kenny would ride with Stan in the opposite direction.
In the truck, Kyle in the passenger side of the lofty, one-seated cab, Cartman grunted, messing with his phone while driving.
“Goddamn it, that pussy Stan, just because he’s cute he gets to be a fucking elf.”
“Well. It’s not that great of a job, anyways,” Kyle tried to remind him.
“Have you seen the chicks they hire at that place? Not great, my ass. He’s going to be rolling in it. He’s going to be up to his knees in cookies for Santa.”
“Ew,” said Kyle, “he’s not going to be playing Santa.” Kyle didn’t think so, at least.
“Everyone knows girls will give it up to anyone at work. Eight hours on a shift, stuck in some gumdrop house with nothing else to do but eye each other- oh you need some help with the mop, need me to show you how to use it?”
“Cartman- ew,” Kyle re-iterated. “I was actually hoping to make some money this winter.”
“Of course you were,” Cartman clucked his tongue.
Kyle just gave him a bored look, though Cartman seemed too distracted, alternating glances between his phone and oncoming traffic, to notice at all. “You can kid yourself all you want. That is prime breeding ground.”
“Cartman, ew! Let’s stop talking for now,” Kyle groaned, as they passed the animal shelter by the pond, towards Kyle’s house.
“Thanks for the ride,” Kyle said when they got to the curb outside, and hopped out of the car with as much dignity as he could manage before Cartman sped away.
“I’m home, Ma,” he called, kicking off his wet sneakers by the front door and hanging his coat on a hook on top of three other coats, picking up one of Ike’s that had fallen to the ground.
“Oh good, Bubby,” his mom was in the kitchen. “Maybe you can call Ike down for dinner?”
This was one of Kyle’s least favorite tasks, because he felt like it made Ike like him less.
“Okay, but he might not come,” Kyle warned her.
He went up the stairs to knock on Ike’s door. Music was playing and he could hear it quietly from through the walls- Linkin Park- the same stuff Kyle had liked in middle school.
“Ike,” he said, knocking quietly. “Mom wants you to come downstairs for dinner.”
After a pause, Ike opened the door, just a crack. “What’s she making?”
“I don’t know,” said Kyle.
Ike closed the door again, then, hard.
Well. Kyle had tried. He went back downstairs, ready to wash his hands and start on his calc homework.
“Ugh, Kyle, that handwriting,” his mom said, looking over his shoulder at his folded spiral notebook.
“It’s just my notes. Nobody but me is even going to read it,” Kyle pointed out to her. “Plus, we just type everything now, even my AP’s are going to be typed.”
“Still,” she said, “and could you finish setting the table?”
Kyle was sat at the table, with his notes over a placemat. It was basically already set. “I’m working on this.”
Ike actually did come down for dinner after Sheila yelled up the stairs at him repeatedly.
After the finishing of the calc homework, thirty minutes of CNN over his dad’s shoulder, and another failed conversation with Ike, Kyle went up to his room for bed. The lightbulb on the fan had been out for a week, and Kyle had neglected so far to mention it to anyone. He was kind of enjoying the way it made his room completely dark, like a little cave, though he knew he would need to change it eventually. Didn’t lightbulbs these days last for like a million years? He wondered how long the one in his fan had been there.
He switched on his desk lamp and pulled his knees up to his chest in bed. He checked his phone. No new texts, just one Kenny had sent earlier in the day before they had gone to the interview.
Ru going to dress like an elf for the intreiivew?
Kyle imagined that this was an earnest question, though in the end, none of them had dressed as elves. He sighed.
The next day, he, Kenny and Cartman drove over to the Christmas tree place in the lot next to the Verizon store. Maybe because it was early in the season, there weren’t many trees there, though the lot was decked out with woodchips on the ground and red ric rac strewn overhead.
An older guy with a mustache looked them over as they walked up.
“Um, excuse me, are you guys hiring?” Kyle asked. “Or just maybe looking for some extra help?”
The man narrowed his eyes. “We are,” he said. “I need people who can come in for the season, boots on the ground and wheels up.”
“Well,” said Kyle, not sure that it was fully true, “that’s definitely us.”
“Your names?” the man asked.
Eventually after a handshake that Kyle was pretty sure had been too soft on his part, and a several few rounds of suspicious questioning, the man had pulled three pieces of paper from a clipboard behind the register and passed them over.
“I’m also going to need you to sign these liability waivers,” he said. “You understand the kind of work we do here, yes?”
“Sure,” said Kyle.
Kenny frowned down at the waivers, but eventually signed. Cartman stood holding his pen, squinting. Kyle signed his fast.
Walking away from the Christmas tree stand in the eight A.M. sunlight, Kyle felt ecstatic. They were supposed to start on Wednesday, after school.
“I can’t believe it, I didn’t expect that to be so easy! And we have the whole day ahead of us!”
Kenny had snorted, but he suggested they go next door to Walgreens and buy some packs of Zyns in celebration, clearly excited, too.
The rest of the day had passed in a haze, and the week seemed to carry on much the same. Winter break was coming up, and Kyle thought he might actually build some muscle doing the job, too, lifting the trees from a squat and leaning them onto a table where Kenny cut them with a circular saw. He had met his other coworkers, a cashier named Jennifer who had already attached little felt Rudolphs to her apron, and an older man named Daryl who seemed to be constantly running things back and forth to his truck.
That weekend, after getting off shift, Kyle got a ride from Kenny to the mall. They had stopped on the way for fast food, and Kyle had a peppermint chocolate milkshake coating the inside of his mouth as he nursed it in the parking lot. The first flakes of snow were starting to fall, lit all around by headlights, as was usual after four P.M. these days.
Kenny was planning to spend his first paycheck to get new shoes, which Kyle might have suggested was financially irresponsible had Kenny’s shoes not literally been falling apart. There was only so much he could do with black gaffer tape to keep the soles of his brother’s old Converse together.
“They’re kind of cool, though,” Kyle said as they went in.
“Dude. No the fuck they are not.”
They had originally been pink Converse, maybe girls’ shoes, but Kevin had colored them black with a Sharpie at some point. Now they were a faded purple-y color.
“I’m gonna get some shoes I actually like, like good shoes,” Kenny told him, perusing the mall map.
Kyle looked down at his own sneakers, black running shoes with triple-tied laces. They were kind of ugly, he realized.
Kenny led them into a shoe store called “Journeys” with a faux spray-painted exterior. Kyle kept his milkshake straw glued to his mouth as he followed him in. The mall was going to close in less than an hour and he sort of hoped this didn’t take too long.
Thankfully, Kenny seemed to know exactly what shoes he wanted, and seemed to feel too awkward about trying them on in front of the staff to want to ask for multiple sizes. Kyle barely had time himself to eye the wall of shoes in front of him before deciding some things were better left alone.
Kenny chose to leave the store with the new shoes on, dropping his Converse in the trash with one hand as he walked, slightly clunkily, in the puffy sneakers he had chosen, white with fat tongues and fat laces.
“You know what we should do?” he asked.
“What?”
“We should go talk to those girls at the elf place,” Kenny suggested, admiring his reflection in the glass-plated doors of Victoria’s Secret.
“Okay,” said Kyle.
When they got to Santa’s wonderland at the center of the mall, the workers were already starting to close up, turning off strings of Christmas lights and sweeping the walkways. Predictably, Stan was there, wearing a green pointed hat with a spiky white trim. He was actually in a gumdrop cabin, coming right out as soon as he noticed the two of them.
“Hey guys,” he said.
“Hey,” said Kenny. “You have any coworkers you’d want to introduce me to?”
“Awe, Kenny,” Stan chastised him. Kyle liked that, Stan was never willing to stoop down to their level either. Okay, well, he did sometimes, but not as often, and he wasn’t so gross about it.
“You could go talk to Mina,” he said, pointing out a girl in striped tights, “she’s cool.”
Kenny set off in her direction, twisting around the wooden barriers that made up the line.
“Hey,” Kyle said to Stan.
“Hey,” Stan said back.
They all left the mall together, Stan called something out to his manager, a young 20-something woman, and laughed before changing out of his elf costume in some back room and joining Kyle and Kenny.
“Jesus, you smell amazing,” Stan told Kyle in the parking lot.
“Really? Is it this?” Kyle asked, holding up his milkshake.
“No dude, you smell like Christmas trees, like, really good,” Stan said, near him in the cold.
“See ya, dude.”
Then, Kenny and Kyle peeled off in Kenny’s car.
“So. I heard something really interesting from that Mina girl,” Kenny said after a few moments of silence.
“Oh, yeah?” Kyle asked.
“Yeah.” Kenny said.
“What is it?”
“She says she caught Stan sucking off their coworker in the back room.”
“She WHAT?” Kyle spat the last of his milkshake onto Kenny’s floor mats. Thankfully, Kenny didn’t seem to notice. He’s precious about his car.
“Yeah. And she said she talked to him afterwards and, get this, apparently the guy said Stan is really, really good at it. She asked me if him and me were a thing.”
“Holy shit,” Kyle said.
“I know.”
“What the fuck.” Kyle felt a mounting sense of excitement.
This feeling, he located with dismay, was the anticipation of repeating this to Stan at school during first period.
It was the kind of information, the kind of gossip so bizarre and dirty that it would live in quiet infamy among the few of them. Only, now it was about Stan himself. Kyle found he was dumbfounded. An air of transgression, a sense of danger had invaded the car. Kenny was wide-eyed, nodding and looking at the road.
“Can’t say I haven’t thought about trying it myself, but…” he trailed off. Kyle could tell he was half-joking, knew that this could very well be the last time either of them spoke about this. Kenny might tell Cartman, but unless he did, it probably would never be brought up again.
The rest of the ride was quiet, just Chris Brown playing quietly through Kenny’s speakers.
“Thanks for the ride home,” Kyle said, getting out of the car and stepping onto his front stoop.
“No problem,” Kenny called, rolling the window down quick with the practiced ease of someone who had a habit of yelling at girls on the sidewalk. Then he drove away, leaving Kyle feeling slightly lost in the snow.
The next day, on Monday, Kyle found that Stan was completely different sitting next to him in class. He didn’t actually look different, nothing about him was different, but Kyle couldn’t keep his eyes off of him. When Stan spoke to him, it actually didn’t register at first.
“Dude?”
“Sorry,” Kyle said.
“So. I know we haven’t had a lot of time to grind lately, but the XP event is almost over and I think if we log some hours tonight, we should be able to get the unlocks,” Stan said, leaning over his desk to talk to Kyle, kicking his backpack a little.
“You think we’ll be able to?” Kyle asked.
“We gotta try, Kyle,” Stan urged.
While Kyle appreciated the normalcy of this talk, he was starting to feel a little bit out of body. His Stan, the Stan he played games with, the Stan he had told everything to, had sleepovers with when they were kids, the Stan who, just last week had fallen off the tire swing in front of the Donovan’s and bruised his arm up, he was also, somehow, a champion swallower, and an elf.
“Okay,” said Kyle. “I should be able to get on after work.”
On the phone later, the effect of the dick-sucking info was less prominent. Not having to look at Stan helped, and hearing Cartman, oblivious as he was to the new reality that had descended, bark orders at everyone every twenty seconds actually helped. Stan, as always, was party leader. He occasionally said brutal things to other players in the chat, and his laugh always sounded deeper over his cheap microphone. He was normal. Normal Stan.
On Friday, the last day of school before winter break, Stan offered to drive Kyle home.
“Okay, thanks,” Kyle said, and headed towards Stan’s car.
They stopped at Dairy Queen, where Kyle got another peppermint chocolate milkshake.
“Oh, wait,” Stan said, leaning over from the driver’s seat as he passed Kyle his milkshake.
“What?”
“Extra napkins,” Stan mumbled, pulling them out of the bag and handing them to Kyle to wipe his hands with.
It struck Kyle then, as Stan pulled forward to pay at the next window, that Stan was being sweet.
“Oh my god,” he said.
“What?” asked Stan, turning to him, looking like he was ready to earnestly defend him from sticky hands.
“You like me,” Kyle said, the words slipping from his mouth, his milkshake a swinging weight in his right hand.
“What?” Stan looked back again, wide eyed, turning the wheel. It was too late now.
“You- you’re- Kenny told me. About at your work, you’re like- doing stuff,” Kyle put his foot in his mouth then, breaking off. He promised he was never going to talk about it.
“Uh-” Stan choked. He pulled the car into a handicapped space right off the drive through. Then he put his head onto his arms on the wheel, leaning over. “Oh my god. How did you hear about that?”
“From- Kenny said your coworker told him. She said, um,” Kyle felt bad now for bringing it up, “she said you’re really good.”
Stan looked up, his face totally red. “Well how the fuck would she know?”
Kyle nodded once.
“Ugh. I only ever- my coworker, this guy Michael, he asked me if I wanted to try. I only did it once. Well. Twice, actually,” he looked away. “Okay. Three times.”
“Oh,” said Kyle. “So, you like this guy, Michael?” he asks, because they’ve always talked about their crushes.
“Uh,” said Stan. “This is gonna make it worse, maybe, he’s like thirty.”
“Oh,” replied Kyle, feeling open-minded. “That’s not so bad.”
“No-” Stan sighed. “I- I don’t like him, Kyle.”
They finally made eye contact, and Kyle knew then that he had been right. Stan liked him.
Suddenly, everything about his gaze was different. Kyle felt he had slipped again into another reality, one now where Stan’s eyes were deep enough to seep into, where Stan was vulnerable to him in the driver’s seat, holding his milkshake and cringing slightly.
In this new reality, Stan wasn't a cool boy, even in his elf costume, and wasn't a mysterious slag in the changing rooms either. Stan liked him. This was a reality where Stan had been right there with Kyle, alongside him the entire time.
“Uh,” said Stan, red in the face again. “You haven’t been meeting any girls at your work?”
“No,” said Kyle.
“Cool,” said Stan, and looked away.
“You, uh, we can go to mine,” Kyle told him, not wanting him to feel rejected. “You can come over, I mean.”
“Okay,” Stan said, and swallowed.
At Kyle’s house, it was apparent upon walking in that Kyle’s mom was cooking again, frying something in oil.
“Come help, Kyle!” his mom called from the kitchen.
“Mom!” Kyle yelled from the front hall. “I have homework!”
“Sorry about that,” Kyle whispered, turning to Stan, who looked sort of guilty.
They went up to Kyle’s room.
“Uh, honestly, dude, at first I was really bummed out that you guys didn’t get the elf job with me,” Stan told him.
“Awe. So your angst led you into the arms of another man?” Kyle asked, and swung into his desk chair. He switched on his desk lamp, then looked up when he realized the implication he had just made.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean,” he told Stan, who was still standing.
“No. You. I.”
“It’s really- you- I was jealous too.”
Linkin Park started, then, to blare from behind the wall.
“Of the elf job?” Stan mumbled.
“No-” Kyle said. “Of- your coworkers. You, you looked so-” He stopped then. This was too embarrassing to keep going.
“What?”
“You looked good in the elf costume, honestly.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, dude, you always look good no matter what. You can be in an elf costume and still be, like, the coolest guy in the room.”
“Well,” said Stan, sounding morose. “Thanks.” Then he sat down on the edge of Kyle’s bed, facing him.
“I mean it!”
An awkward silence descended.
“Is- is it fun?” Kyle couldn’t help himself, he had been wondering. They used to tell each other everything.
“Is what fun?”
“The- the dick sucking thing.”
“Oh.” Stan seemed spooked. “Uh- it can be fun. It depends, I think, on how much you- like if you’re in the right mindset, or like, if you want the other person- um to enjoy it.”
“Oh,” said Kyle. It didn’t sound that fun. He felt his own face getting hot. “Do you want to try it?”
Stan looked genuinely shocked then, eyes wide. “You want me to suck your dick?”
“No,” said Kyle, realizing that wasn’t what he had meant. “I mean, I’ll do yours.”
“Oh.” Stan took a deep breath in.
“You have to tell me how to do it,” Kyle told him, suddenly curious. He got on his knees and started to go awkwardly towards Stan on the bed.
“Uh- okay. So.” Stan interrupted himself to start to unbuckle his belt.
“Wait. Let me do it,” Kyle used both hands to undo Stan’s old brown leather belt, trying to do it in a way that seemed fast, manly.
“Okay,” Stan whispered.
Kyle didn’t look up at him, just found his button and then the rough metal of his zipper. He pulled it down, holding his face low, close to the fabric. Beneath the jeans, Stan’s briefs were soft, and there was the smell of fabric softener and ball sweat. It was sort of charming.
“Do you think you can get hard?” Kyle asked.
“I already am,” Stan said.
“Oh.” Kyle said, realizing this should have occurred to him.
Stan then lifted his butt up to shuffle out of his jeans. Kyle realized that it was true, the full outline of a bulge in Stan’s underwear was tenting forwards, towards Kyle.
“Um.”
“You don’t have to do this, dude,” Stan said, though it had been Kyle’s idea.
“I want to,” said Kyle. He pulled down Stan’s underwear, glad that it was dark in the room for the both of their embarrassment.
“So, you can kind of just- I hate to say this but don’t use your teeth, or- you can use them- actually on me- I don’t- I don’t mind.”
“What? I’m not gonna bite you.”
“No- don’t bite- um you can just kind of-” Stan paused, cringing. “You can just lick the tip, um slowly.”
“Jesus, I feel like this is like, do you know that Chris Brown song?”
“Y-yeah,” said Stan. Kyle started in, licking lightly, like Stan was an ice cream cone or something. “I don’t think that’s a Chris Brown song- the one that’s like ‘or nah?’”
“Yeah,” said Kyle, still licking.
“That’s Ty Dolla Sign.”
Kyle started to put his mouth around the tip. It was obvious to him the moment he saw Stan’s dick that it was bigger than his own, but now he could feel it. He tried to get his mouth wet, sucking lightly.
“Cause there’s that line, like- oh fuck-” Stan whined. “Like, uh ‘girl make that ass clap for young Dolla Sign-’ so I think that’s Ty Dolla Sign. I’m going to come.”
“Already?” Kyle asked. He pulled off and finally looked up at Stan, whose eyes were screwed shut, lashes fluttering.
“Yeah.”
Kyle tried to get all of Stan in his mouth, like he’d seen in porn, choking and swallowing as he felt the tip hit the back of his throat. Stan came then in his mouth, and it tasted like licking a Stan flavored battery.
“I think I-” Kyle gagged again and hung his head.
Stan still hadn’t gone totally soft, but he acted as though he had, sliding down to the floor to join Kyle.
“Y-you’re really good at that. Um. I think I wanna quit being an elf and work at the tree place with you guys, do you think they’ll let me? Or you could be an elf with me,” Stan looked worried.
“I want to be Santa," Kyle told him.
“Okay,” Stan said, and nodded, eyes round and shining. “And I’ll be your amazing elf.”
The End.