Yes, it's Stan/Kyle. Like that's never been done before. If this story offends your shipping preferences, keep in mind it's South Park, and no one should be taking it seriously. Note for the slow: yes, I know there is no 'girl' in gay relationships. This story is meant to both mock that stereotype and (attempt to) amuse.

Also, the tennis ball cannon actually works. And google 'bonsai kitten.' The website is hilarious.

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--

Stan liked being Kyle's boyfriend. Sure, he could never let anything go, and he was generally firmly assured of his own righteousness, but he'd been like that since he was eight and Stan was used to it. As far as Stan could see, there was only one problem with their relationship: Kyle was always on top. Ever. Single. Time.

It completely defied explanation. He was the athlete. He was the tall one. He was... well, okay, that was all he had. But it more than proved his point! Kyle was too short, scrawny, and, frankly, Jewish to be pinning him all the time. It was a true blow to his manly pride and he was tired of it.

There was, obviously, only one way to deal with this: seduce Kyle with his manly wiles. And, armed with the probable chance of a Christmas miracle, Stan was certain he could accomplish it. It wasn't like Jews were known for perseverance, right?

--

Kyle was over at Stan's house because his parents had gone to some something-or-other, which Kyle had, amazingly, managed to talk, negotiate, and beg his way out of. He'd spent the entire morning sitting in front of the TV, complaining about the complete lack of good Hanukkah specials, watching the 24-hour marathon of A Christmas Story, and eating forty-six - and Stan still couldn't believe this part - kosher candy canes.

"Isn't that sort of - I dunno - sacrilegious?"

Kyle shrugged. "It was all stolen from the Pagans, anyway."

More importantly: "What have you had, four dozen? Aren't you worried about going into a diabetic coma?"

"They're sugar-free," Kyle said, unearthing a package and pointing at the label to prove it.

"Ah," Stan said, and watched Flick stick his tongue to a flagpole for the fourth time that morning before he got up to get a soda.

His mother cornered him in the kitchen.

"Are you boys planning on sitting on the couch all day?"

Stan shrugged. "Pretty much." He didn't think it would go over well if he told his mother he was waiting for the rest of the family to leave the house so he could corner Kyle and have his way with him.

Unfortunately, his mother didn't seem to like his answer any more. She gave him one of those "Just-because-you've-got-two-weeks-off-school-is-no-reason-to-never-change-out-of-your-PJs" looks and said, "In that case, I want you to go pick out a Christmas tree for us."

"Why me?"

His mom's nostrils flared. Stan thought she always looked - and acted - like a charging bull this time of year.

"Because your father is putting up lightsand your sister is shopping and I am cooking and cleaning while you watch repeats, Stanley!"

"All right, all right, fine!" Stan said, retreating. He abandoned his search for a drink and reentered the living room, finding Kyle absorbed in a commercial for dancing cactuses and polishing off his forty-seventh candy cane.

"Hey man, we have to go get a Christmas tree."

"Don't you mean a nondenominational fir tree?" he asked with amusement as the TV reminded them to finish their unspecified holiday shopping. Stan rolled his eyes and Kyle laughed, and then he said, "Why do I have to come?"

"Because you have no fond Christmas morning memories for the tree salesmen to pander too, so you can cut through all their bullshit."

"I'm not that immune to the Christmas spirit."

"You made that mall Santa cry last year."

"Well, yeah, but still."

Stan tugged on his coat. "You coming or what?"

Kyle shrugged and turned off the TV. "Sure, why not."

Their progress was slightly derailed when they found Randy Marsh hopelessly tangled in Christmas lights and dangling from the roof by his ankle. Kyle, though having no problem with breaking a grown man's spirit, insisted that it wasn't very Christmasy to willfully leave family members in life-threatening situations.

--

Stan stood back and watched as the Christmas tree lot continued to burn.

"What, exactly, did you tell the manager?"

Kyle shrugged. "Only that he could increase his sales if he started selling menorah-trees. You'd think nobody had ever heard of sarcasm before."

They watched silently for a while as the giant, mechanical, waving Santa caught fire, which leapt up its arm and spread to its head. It slowly began to tip over, gathering speed, and crashed into the remainder of the lot, causing a fiery explosion.

"Maybe we should flee the scene of the crime," Stan suggested.

"Sounds good."

Stan started the car and sped away while Kyle fiddled with the heater.

"But you know," Stan said, "that was the only Christmas tree lot in South Park. I don't want to drive all the way to Middle Park for a stupid tree."

"So get a plastic one."

"Kyle, you just don't understand Christmas."

He snorted. "So just cut one down."

"I can't do that!"

"Sure you can. We live in the mountains, dude, there're fir trees everywhere."

"I meant, that's illegal! I think."

"Look, there's one right there. Pull over."

Stan did so. "Seriously, we can't just take a tree," he said while shutting off the ignition. Kyle had already hopped out and was digging in the trunk for an ax, however, so Stan wasn't sure if he was ignoring him or just hadn't heard.

It occurred to Stan that he was whipped. Completely. His already threatened masculinity took another hit.

"What if there's something wrong with it?"

"Like what, termites?" Kyle asked, adjusting the hatchet in his hand so it would be easier to hack at the base.

"Like anything, knowing this town. It could have been planted over the grave of a murderer and its roots could have sucked up his evil soul. Or it could be something else in disguise."

Kyle paused in his chopping and glanced up curiously. "What would disguise itself as a tree?"

Stan shrugged. "A masochist with a lumberjack fetish?"

Kyle snickered and delivered one more whack; the rest of the trunk splintered and tipped over gracefully. "All right," he said, straightening. "Tie it to the roof of the car."

"Why don't you do it?"

"Because Jews have no upper body strength."

Stan grumbled about many things, like how Kyle had had no trouble chopping it down and using his ethnicity as an excuse to get out of things he didn't feel like doing while he secured the tree and looped the rope into double knots so that it wouldn't go flying off and break somebody's windshield.

On the car ride back Kyle switched through the radio stations and complained that if he heard one more butchered rendition of 'Winter Wonderland' he'd shoot himself.

"Hold on, stop at my house. I need to change my pants, these got kind of charred." He opened the door before the car had even come to a stop. Stan sat back and slowly, his brain processed the situation.

Kyle's parents weren't home. As in, the house was empty.

Stan shoved his weight against the car door and stumbled out onto the snow, spared a moment to right himself, and then sped after Kyle. He reached out and grabbed him by the wrist, and (with hardly any effort, because Kyle really was pretty skinny) swung him over his shoulder, held onto him by the back of his knees, and marched up the front steps, attempting to kick down the door.

His foot connected with a very hard, very unyielding door. Stan frowned and gave it a few more kicks. He stared at it a while. Then he shifted his grip on Kyle and tried jiggling the door knob.

"...what are you doing?" Kyle eventually asked.

"Um," Stan said. "I was going to carry you inside and ravish you, but the door appears to be locked."

Kyle snorted. "Stan, my parents aren't home. They aren't going to leave the house unlocked all day; my mom's way too paranoid."

"Oh," Stan said. "Well. Um. Do you have a key?"

"Obviously."

Silence. "... So are you going to unlock the door?"

"Maybe if you'd put me down."

Stan did so, tugging uncomfortably on his collar. He supposed there was no graceful way out of this situation.

"Still," he said. "It was very spontaneous and manly, right?"

"Sure, Stan."

Stan felt the sarcastic tone of voice and exaggerated eye roll were really unnecessary.

--

They spent the rest of the day hauling Christmas ornaments up from the basement, unearthing the tree stand, and untangling the tree lights. They had to redecorate twice; the first time because Sharon Marsh had come in and told them they couldn't just throw the ornaments on and actually had to put some thought into it, and the second because Kyle accidentally knocked the tree over. He'd been shifting through the boxes and lifted one which had been stacked upside-down, which opened on his head. It had held all the ornaments Shelly and Stan made while in preschool and kindergarten and Kyle, momentarily blinded by construction paper and glitter-and-glue, had reached out for something to hold onto and ended up grabbing the tree just as Stan was attaching the top star.

Kyle, who immediately spotted a way out of decorating, milked it for all it was worth and accepting Mrs. Marsh's invitation to stay for dinner. Though Stan complained, loudly, that Kyle hadn't even gotten a paper cut, he ended up more or less decorating the thing himself. Kyle opted to sit on the couch and praise Stan, in amused tones, for his artistic vision.

After dinner they excused themselves to Stan's room; Kyle wasted no time in straddling him, resting his forearms up above Stab's head for support while he proceeded to suck on his neck.

Stan felt this was as good as a time as any to take the upper hand; after all, Kyle still had glitter in his hair. He was in no position to be sitting on him. Stan decided he'd just roll over - it would be easy enough to overpower him, everyone knew Kyle didn't grow muscle by carting around textbooks.

Unfortunately, due to his proximity to the edge of the bed, any rolling on his part resulting on him falling off onto his ass. Kyle cracked up, still on the bed, still very unpinned.

"It's not funny, Kyle."

Kyle stopped laughing long enough to say, "Yes, it is."

For someone who was taking college-level math classes, Kyle sure seemed to have a problem comprehending simple fact.

--

Stan started the next morning off by pounding on Kyle's door. He wanted to get to him before he was sucked into another Christmas special.

No one answered. Stan knocked harder.

Kyle eventually wrenched the door open, still half-dressed, and gave him an irritable look.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?"

"Eight," Stan said promptly.

"All right," Kyle said. "Let me rephrase that: what the fuck do you want?"

"Shopping," he said. When Kyle continued to stare at him, he elaborated. "I have to go early to beat the rush."

"God dammit," Kyle muttered. "How do I keep getting sucked into this Christmas crap?"

"Oh, come on," Stan said. "What were you planning on doing today, sleeping?"

"Yes."

"You can do that any time."

"Fine," Kyle grumbled. "At least let me get dressed." He started to move away, then stopped and frowned.

"Where's your car?"

"There wouldn't be any parking, dude. We're walking."

"Great..." he said without enthusiasm.

The main street was, predictably, packed. Kyle wandered around like a zombie until Stan bought him a double shot of expresso, at which point he finally stopped walking into phone poles and trying to cross the street when the light was red. Stan spent two and a half hours window shopping, torn between the fact that he had no idea what to get his parents and sister and toying with the idea of prank gifts that were both hilarious and bound to get him grounded and beaten to a pulp by Shelly.

All the stories where blaring their holiday music, which had been heavily edited so that it was more "PC." While Stan was contemplating smart pills from India (or so the packaging swore), Kyle hummed along absently.

Have yourself a merry little holiday of your personal preference,

Let your heart be however you so desire, because we recognize an individual's right to feel however they wish about whatever they wish,

From this arbitrary point in time,

Our troubles will be momentarily ignored...

Stan shook the bottle in front of his face. "What about these for my dad?"

Kyle went momentarily cross-eyed. "Those are sugar pills."

"Yeah, but I think they're supposed to be more like a placebo... brilliant marketing strategy, actually, selling something only stupid people would buy to stupid people..."

"I think a good rule of thumb would be to never buy a gift from the As Seen On TV store, Stan."

"I guess..." Stan said, just as Cartman and Kenny appeared.

"Hey fatass," Kyle said.

"Hey assrammers," Cartman snapped, the fat remark making him irritable, as was expected. "So Kyle, if anything could make you recognize the inferiority of your kind, it must be Christmas. Are you withering in envy of our superior holiday?"

"I don't have to shop, or clean, or cook," Kyle said, who was still in a state of post-coffee bliss and willing to be a little forgiving. "I love this time of year."

"You see, it's Jews like you that are ruining our economy."

Stan realized that this was the perfect opportunity to be comforting and masculine in the face of Cartman's verbal abuse. He immediately chucked the smart pills back onto the shelf and moved closer to Kyle. Unfortunately Kyle wasn't cooperating, and instead of getting upset, he just got pissed.

"Yeah, right. I'm fucking thankful I don't have to spend the day with a bunch of fat alcoholics from Nebraska and my mom's latest 'boyfriend.'"

"You Jewish son of a bitch!"

They got into a fist fight, which spilled out onto the street and into oncoming traffic. A truck swerved to avoid them, and ended up slamming into Kenny, sending him crashing through a shop window and into a TV display.

"You bastard!" Kyle shouted, though he was talking to Cartman, who'd just punched him in the nose.

"Oh sorry," he said nastily, "I was just aiming for the biggest target- OW! You asshole, that fucking hurt!"

--

"I'm going to kill him."

Stan sighed. After hauling Cartman off his boyfriend - a feat in of itself - he'd had to give him ten dollars so that he could go buy a sandwich and eat it in front of a homeless person. It had been harder to distract Kyle - in fact, Stan hadn't quite figured out how yet. Which was why, twenty minutes later, he was still talking about how he was going to butcher the "racist waste of air." Which was definitely ruining the mood.

"You've been saying that for years," he said. "I feel obliged to point out that he is still, in fact, breathing."

"That's only because I haven't decided how."

Though Kyle sounded more homicidal than vulnerable, Stan decided to go with the optimistic option, and do something smooth and boyfriend-ish.

"... Stan, what are you doing?"

"Stroking your hair in a reassuring manner?"

Kyle gave him a funny look. "Well, all right. If it makes you feel better."

"No, damn it, I meant- forget it," he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

Kyle was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Don't really know how you're suppose to stroke my hair when I'm wearing a hat, though."

"I said never mind."

"Hey, you're the one that brought it up."

"Let's go home," he said, casting a final glance at the Bonsai Kitten kit on the shelf.

"I could use some actual breakfast," Kyle agreed. "Or," he said, checking his watch, "lunch."

On the way back, Kyle licked his split lip and started complaining about Cartman again. And Stan went back to sighing.

"You know," he said, "you could try and not jump on him every time you see him. Unless you're trying to make me jealous," he joked.

Kyle stopped walking.

"Kyle?" Stan asked, turning back and frowning.

Kyle pressed a hand to his mouth. "I think I'm going to be sick."

And then he was. All over Stan's shoes.

Stan decided the mood was definitely unsalvageable.

--

The next morning, Mrs. Broflovski was the one that opened the door.

"Er," Stan said, taking a few speedy steps backward. She'd always been a bitch, but menopause had made her crazy as well. It was wise not to cross her. "I wanted to see if Kyle wanted to go for a walk."

To his surprise, she smiled and stood back to let him in. "That's a good idea. The fresh air would be good for him. He's spent the entire day moping around the house."

Stan doubted she would be endorsing the idea as much if she knew he just wanted to get Kyle somewhere secluded. He found him in the kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee.

"Dude, maybe you shouldn't drink so much coffee. It's stunting your already-stunted growth."

Kyle gave him an irritable look. "What do you want?"

Stan adopted a tone of mock-hurt. "What, aren't you glad to see me?"

"You insinuated things. Horrible, terrible things."

"What, you still haven't gotten over that?" Stan asked in exasperation. Kyle shuddered and took another swig of coffee. "Let's go for a walk. The fresh air will be good. Or something like that."

"Decorating, shopping, early morning death marches... Stan, do you realize that normal teenagers sleep in during winter vacation?"

"Normal teenagers also don't stay up all night clutching a bat because they think Terry Pratchett is the monster in their closet."

"That doesn't sound like never speaking of it again to me, Stan."

"Come on, it will be fun. We could see the local wildlife-"

"I'm pretty sure your uncle killed everything within a hundred-mile radius."

"-build a snowman-"

"Because that always goes over well."

"-have, you know," he said, dropping his voice a little, "some time to ourselves."

"We could just as easily shamelessly grope each other inside on the couch with he heater on than outside in subzero temperatures."

"Kyle!" he hissed, looking around in a manner that would have been paranoid if they were dealing in any other woman. "Your mother-"

"-Is in a good mood because she just succeeded in getting 101 Ways to Kill Yourself taken off the air."

"Sure but - wait, what? I loved that show! With the dancing Randy the Razor blade that sang that song, It's down the street, not across the road, fucktards..."

"Yeah, I know. But Mom had issues with a show that promoted suicide. I say if somebody's stupid enough to take advice from TV, it won't be long before darwinism removes them, anyway."

"You want to stay inside all day while she gloats?"

Kyle frowned at him, then he sighed and swallowed the rest of his coffee in one gulp. "Fine."

Of course, once they were out in the woods, things still didn't go as Stan had hoped. He'd planned on holding Kyle's hand, but Kyle sneezed in it, which was just gross, and he'd pushed Kyle up against a tree with the intention of kissing him breathless, but instead he shook a bunch of icicles loose and nearly lost an eye. Kyle seemed as oblivious to his advances as ever, and obviously didn't know anything about romance, because he took the first opportunity he got to dump snow down the back of Stan's shirt.

Forty minutes and a furious snowball fight later, Stan was brushing dirt and ice off his knees and trying to find his gloves when he looked up and noticed mistletoe.

"Hey, check it out," he said, nudging Kyle, who was still wiping off his face.

Kyle glanced up briefly. "Oh. Mistletoe."

"Yeah," Stan said, edging closer.

"A lot of it, too."

"Um, right," Stan said, wondering what relevance that had.

"It's too bad."

Stan, who'd just been leaning in, froze and gave him a bemused look. "What?"

"Mistletoe's a parasitic plant. That much will kill the tree."

Stan leaned back with an exasperated sigh. He wondered if all Jews were this good at sucking the fun out of Christmas traditions, or if Kyle just tried harder.

"I'm going to get some."

Kyle lifted an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because, all right? Jesus."

Luckily, the tree was one of those that was just built for climbing: at about hip-level the trunk split into two and it had many smaller-yet-sturdy branches that served as hand and footholds. And Kyle was right; there was a lot of it. Stan snapped off a branch and dropped back to the ground with ease.

Kyle had a somewhat thoughtful look on his face, and Stan thought he was finally connecting evergreen plant with heavy make-out session until he said, "Touching the berries will give you a rash just like poison ivy. If you're sensitive to it, that is. Which, you know. Most people are."

--

Stan glared at his mutinous, traitorous, determined-to-stand-between-him-and-his-brilliant-plans-to-woe-Kyle, swollen hand. It was red and puffy and it itched. Oh God, it itched.

"Stop scratching it like that," Kyle said, reentering the living room with the promised bottle of calamine lotion. "You're going to break the skin."

"Gah. GIVE ME THAT." He grabbed the bottle, unscrewed the lid, and dumped nearly the entire thing on his hand.

"You're making a mess," Kyle said. "Mom's going to be pissed. Also, you really don't need that much."

"Why didn't you warn me before I touched it?"

"I know a lot of useless trivia, Stan, but that doesn't mean I can remember it all off the top of my head."

Stan grumbled.

Kyle shoved him out of the way and sat on the couch, fished the remote out from under the cushions, and spent the rest of the day channel surfing. He only stopped on one station long enough to snark.

"If water kills them, why did they land on a planet where seventy percent of the surface is water? And how is Signs a Christmas special, anyway?"

--

The next day the swelling had gone down, and so long as Stan kept his gloves on he didn't have to answer his family's questions. He really didn't feel like explaining the situational stupidity to them. His morning started off less-than-well - Shelly grabbed the comics the same time he did, and in the resulting fight she punched him in the face and nearly gave him a black eye. Scowling and cursing under his breath, he discovered they were out of cereal and only had skim milk left. Thoroughly disillusioned and hungry, he was digging through the refrigerator when he realized it was Christmas eve.

So this was it. If he couldn't charm Kyle with his manly wiles by midnight, then there would be no Christmas miracle, and he would go on being on the bottom for the rest of his life. Spurred by this thought, he dressed in record time and sped to Kyle's house, only to have his mother answer the door again.

"Kyle's at Kenny's, Stan." The expression on her face said quite clearly what she thought of her son spending time with Kenny McCormick.

And sure enough he was there, duct taping soup cans together while Kenny and Cartman looked on. Stan cleared his throat and he looked up and grinned.

"Hey, Stan."

Kenny raised a hand in greeting and Cartman made an acknowledging noise in the back of his throat. Stan gestured to the soup-can-duct-tape mess. "What is that?"

"Tennis ball cannon."

"Tennis ball... I'm sorry, what?"

"Cannon."

Stan gave it a skeptical once-over. "It looks like a bunch of tin cans to me."

"Well, it is. See, you use a can opener to take the top and bottom off the cans, then you tape them together, and you leave the bottom on the last can and drill a little hole in it. Then you pour in lighter fluid and a tennis ball-"

Kenny produced both.

"-and you shake it up until the lighter fluid evaporates." He clamped his hand over the opening and the bottom and did just that. Stan frowned.

"Where'd you get the stuff to make it?"

"Kenny's backyard. It's like a junk yard back there."

"At least we don't leave our shit in the front yard," he said defensively.

"Why?"

Kyle gave Stan a confused look. "Why what?"

"Why are you making a tennis ball cannon?"

"Because. I mean, it's a tennis ball cannon."

"He's actually using that Jew super-brain to do something cool for once. Don't deter him, Stan," Cartman said.

"All right," Kyle said, removing his hands and checking the opening. "It's ready."

"I get to fire it first," Cartman said immediately, yanking it out of his hands. Kyle scowled at him.

"Fine. You just need to set the hole at the bottom on fire."

Kenny fished a plastic lighter out of his pocket and tossed it to him. Cartman tried to light it, with no success.

"Ey, it's not working."

Kenny shrugged. "It's nearly out of butane. I picked it up off the the street. Try shaking it."

Cartman grumbled about poor people and picking up trash, but after a few tries he got it to light.

The cannon jumped in Cartman's hand - Kyle could have explained about the conservation of momentum, but nobody actually cared about these sort of things - and the tennis ball went flying and broke the window of a house four houses down the street.

"Sweet," he said, looking at the broken window pane.

"It'll go about fifty meters," Kyle said.

"We're in America, not Jew-land, Kyle. Speak English."

Kyle glared at him. "Fifty yards. Like... a football field and a half."

"Hey, if we get on the roof, I bet we can get it to go farther," Stan said eagerly, who was a boy and so could not resist the charms of anything that exploded for long.

"We'll need more tennis balls, though," Kyle said.

Cartman snorted. "Why don't we just go get that one back?"

"Because, dumbass, you don't go knocking on someone's door and ask for the ball that broke their window."

"We don't ask for it, Kyle, we demand it, because it's ours, not theirs."

"I'm sure we have more in the backyard," Kenny interrupted, probably wary of another fight because the last one had resulted in his death. Kyle, Stan, and Cartman (with a little difficulty) climbed onto his roof while he shifted through the junk stacked in mounds in his backyard. When he was done, he'd uncovered four tennis balls, two baseballs, and a golf ball.

Cartman shot a bird, a little old lady crossing the street, and the paper boy off his bike before Kenny wrestled it away with a muffled "Quit hogging it, fat tits."

"Damn it Cartman, I didn't build it so you could gun people down!"

"Why did you build it?" Stan asked.

Kyle shrugged. "Fatass bet I couldn't. Which reminds me, you owe me five bucks."

"Yeah right, like I'm actually going to pay you."

"What!"

Stan frowned. "Why did you want Kyle to build a cannon?"

"Today's Christmas eve, right?"

"Right..."

"So I'm going to shoot Santa out of the air," he said matter-of-factly, scrutinizing the sky.

"What!"

Stan gave Cartman a look of pure disbelief. "Dude, why would you do that again? You nearly killed Christmas last time!"

"Because dumbass, then I'll have all the toys! I can't believe I didn't think of it years ago."

"Cartman, you are only person in the world who's enough of an asshole to think that's a good idea."

"It's a great idea. And don't you bitch at me. Everyone knows you Jews won't be satisfied until you've crucified Santa the way you crucified Jesus."

"Cartman-" Kyle seethed, and was looking ready to get into another fist fight when Kenny lit the tennis ball cannon. The end exploded, blowing his right arm off at the elbow. The force knocked him off the roof, and he fell onto one of the car engines scattered around his yard, dying almost immediately.

Stan, Kyle, and Cartman were silent for a while, and then Kyle said, "Well, yeah, that can happen."

"You son of a bitch! You wanted me to blow my arm off, didn't you? You tried to turn me into a cripple!"

--

Between the tennis ball cannon, Cartman deciding he would ask for his own personal toy-making elf instead of blowing Santa out of he sky, and the arrival of Mr. Hanky, Stan had no opportunity to be alone with Kyle. They spent the day wandering around town and, in Cartman's case, verbally abusing collectors for the Salvation Army and overworked store clerks. Once they lit the Christmas tree in the town square, Stan had no choice but to admit defeat. He had failed, and his sex life was doomed.

Christmas proceeded as normal. He got a bunch of stuff he hadn't asked for, but his parents had still decided he'd needed. His Grandfather cursed out Santa for not delivering sweet, sweet death; Uncle Jimbo came and took his father and Shelly on the annual hunting trip, which Stan was excused from because he "screamed like a sissy tree-hugger and scared all the animals away whenever they blasted something's head off." His mother went into cleaning hyper-mode and eventually drove him out of the house because he was breathing to loudly, or being purposely unhelpful.

Stan would have gone somewhere, but everything was closed for the day, and everyone had to spend the day with their families.

Except Kyle, of course.

"Door's open!" he hollered when Stan knocked. He found Kyle in front of the TV with his back against the couch, playing some shooter video game. Sometimes Stan really wondered about Kyle's mother. She would get up in arms about sex, drugs, and bad language, and then she'd let her son spend hours playing a game where you got extra points if you shot paraplegics.

"Hey," he said. "What's up?"

"Stan!" Kyle said, sounding both pleased and surprised. His momentary distraction from the game got his player's head ripped off, and he frowned at the TV and turned off the game.

"What're you doing here? Doesn't your family make you go on some group outing?"

Stan shrugged. "Dad, Shelly and Uncle Jimbo went to murder some animals, Grandpa wanted me to murder him, and Mom said she'd murder me if I didn't stop getting in the way of her vacuuming."

Kyle laughed at his description.

"I was being literal."

"I know," he said, still laughing. "That's why it's funny."

"Where's your family?"

"Dad and Ike went to the library and Mom's in the kitchen cooking something you wouldn't be able to pronounce." He stood up and gave him a shameless grin. "Want to go up to my room?"

Which was, of course, code for 'Do you, football quarterback, want to be dominated by a guy who not only knows who Erwin Schrödinger was, but understands his contribution to quantum physics?' Stan sighed a little, resigned. "Sure."

Kyle gave him a somewhat questioning look, but he grabbed his wrist and nearly dragged him up the stairs regardless. He kicked his bedroom door shut behind him, but didn't bother to lock it - his mother was in the habit of barging in periodically, but she also tended to stomp her way up the stairs, so they always heard her coming. Besides, Kyle had explained once, shrugging, she would have been more suspicious if they were doing their homework with the door locked than if she opened the door and found them rumpled, sweaty, and winded. She was just that sort of woman.

Kyle grinned and sauntered up to him, slide his hand up to the back of his neck and yanked him down to a kissable level, and grabbed his collar to keep him there.

Stan sighed again, in a way he felt was very inconspicuous and suffering in a very silent, gallant manner, but Kyle scowled and pulled away.

"All right," he said. "I give up. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What do you mean?" Stan asked, surprised.

"I mean lately you've been acting like more of a spaz than usual," Kyle said irritably, removing his hands from Stan's shoulders.

"I do not act like a spaz!"

"Mmm-hmm," Kyle said, making that noise that was universally recognized as "I know you're wrong but I'm agreeing with you because if I don't you're going to make a big deal out of it."

Stan frowned at him. "I don't." Kyle could be such a smug smart ass.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Kyle repeated, ignoring the comment. Stan switched to the offensive.

"You're the one with the problem!"

Kyle looked taken aback. "Me?"

"I mean, you're completely screwing with the natural order of things here! You like listening to Scottish folk music with the base turned up and you're a Hank Azaria fanboy and you balance your checkbook. I mean, you're so fucking GAY!"

"Hey-!"

"And I'm the calm, rational, tall, athletic one! How the hell did you end up on top? It defies explanation!"

"You're raving," Kyle said. Then he said, "Wait, what?"

"You think of me as just some girl, don't you?" Stan said, who'd always sort of feared it, that Kyle didn't take their relationship seriously, and was just fucking around.

"Dude, what?" Kyle said, and genuinely tried not to laugh. "I think I'd have noticed by now if you were a girl. I mean, sure, the occasional flares of estrogen are suspect, but jesus..."

Stan glared.

"That and your irrational fear of waterfowl."

"'Irrational'? I was four and I went to throw bread at the ducks in Stark's Pond and hit one in the head and knocked it out and the others ripped it apart with their fangs and devoured it!"

"That was years ago. You'd think you'd have gotten over it by now."

"I was four and they were vampiric, cannibalistic ducks!"

Kyle shrugged. "I'm just saying."

Stan frowned a little. "So... you don't think of me as a girl."

"No, man!"

"Then way are you always on top?"

For the first time Kyle seemed genuinely concerned. "Are you telling me you don't like it?"

"Well, I... that is to say... that's completely beside the point!"

Kyle sighed. "You're lazy."

Stan blinked. "Excuse me?"

"It's because you're lazy. You make me do all the work, and that is why I am 'always on top.'"

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"... Oh," Stan said. He tugged on his collar uncomfortably. "Well. I guess I could, um, pick up the slack?"

Kyle smiled and kissed him, light and casually, and then he pulled away again and grinned at him.

"But, you know, if you want to wear a skirt, I'd be totally into that."

Stan punched Kyle, who was pinching his noise so that he wouldn't snort up milk from laughing so hard.

--

End