This story contains both het and slash. And even a little bachelorhood. It's also a multi-chapter fic, which is rare for me.

Standard disclaimer applies. Hope you enjoy.

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It all started when Stan asked a girl out.

"Oh," she had said, surprised. She bit her lip, and curled a strand of hair around her finger, and glanced quickly at his face before looking at the ground.

"Um... no," she said. "We'd better not."

"What?' Stan said, crestfallen. "Why not?"

"Er," she said. "Well... you're a really nice guy, Stan, but... I think cheating is wrong."

"Oh," he said. "Sorry... I didn't know you were seeing someone."

She blinked. "I'm not."

"But you just said-"

"Stan," she interrupted, "I can't go out with you. Wouldn't your boyfriend be mad?"

It took nearly ten seconds for the full impact of her words to hit him.

"Wha... WHAT? I DO NOT HAVE A BOYFRIEND!"

"Oh," she said, pressing a hand to her mouth. "Did you two break up? I'm so sorry."

"'Break'... NO! I've never had a boyfriend!"

She gave him a confused look. "What? No... The redhead?"

"What redhe-... Kyle?"

"Yes, that's right," she said. "You are such a cute couple."

"We are not a couple! I mean, Kyle? Kyle?"

She shrugged. "Well, admittedly, he is a bit of a nerd. But he has those gorgeous cheekbones..."

"I don't care about Kyle's cheekbones! I'm not interested in ANY of his bones! Oh, God."

"If you say so," she said, in a I-want-to-end-this-conversation-and-get-away-from-you-before-your-crazy-gets-on-my-shirt tone of voice.

Stan let her go. He was in a daze. He wandered to his next class period, missing the final bell because his brain was buzzing. He showed up to history nearly five minutes late, and Mr. Dorcas looked up from the overhead and scowled at him while he dropped into his seat. Stan hardly noticed. He was looking at Kyle, who sat several rows over in the front, and trying to figure out how anyone could think they were anything but best friends.

Mr. Dorcas was the only teacher that still made them sit in alphabetical order. This meant Stan was never able to talk to Kyle in that class. It also meant there was nothing separating Kyle and Cartman, and since the school year had begun they had fought over squirrel monkeys, Jews, plaid, Jews, whether Tristão da Cunha or Francisco de Ulloa was the better sixteenth century explorer, and did he mention Jews?

History was the only class where they were anywhere near each other. Every other teacher had caught on very quickly during their freshman year and now they always put them on opposite sides of the room. Mr. Dorcas, however, liked egging them on. Every since the police had busted up those cock, dog, and bovine fight rings during the summer, he'd been looking for ways to rile them up.

Stan wished he could talk to Kyle. Then he could tell him how misinformed that girl had been, and they would have a good laugh, and he could forget about the whole thing.

Kenny (who, obviously, sat directly behind him) leaned forward in his seat and hissed, in a voice low enough so that Mr. Dorcas wouldn't hear, "Dude, can't you do that on your own time?"

"Huh?" Stan said, blinking and turning his head enough to look at Kenny, but not enough to turn around in his seat and get barked at.

"You've been eye-fucking Kyle since you walked in. It's creepy."

Stan sat stock-still for a moment. Then he shouted, "I AM NOT FUCKING HIM!"

The classroom was immediately, unnervingly silent. Mr. Dorcas looked up from the overhead again. Wendy gave him a confused look. Cartman and Kyle stopped mid-argument and looked over.

"... Yes, Mister Marsh. Mussolini has been dead for seventy years. There is no need to reassure us."

Stan could actually feel his face turn red.

Kenny clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder. "He cut you off? That's rough, man."

"I'm not- WE'RE not-" Stan was trying to formulate words. Some girl that didn't know him too well, that was one thing. But Kenny? How could Kenny think he and Kyle were... like that?

Something sinister was afoot, Stan decided.

"If Mister Marsh is done with his outbursts-" Stan slid down in his seat a few inches "-we will be beginning our section on dictators."

He began rambling about the usual - communist countries and Fascist leaders and oppression. Then he announced that he would be splitting the class into groups of four and assigning them a dictator for them to research, write a paper on, and present to the class in a week. But here was the thing: they were supposed to explain how the dictator had been beneficial.

Stan lifted an eyebrow. Between this and the last project, which was to make posters about how women's suffrage was the worst Amendment to date, he really had to wonder about Mr. Dorcas.

"Donovan, Tweek, Stevens, Pirrip, you will be researching Fulgencio Batista. Testaburger, Valmer, Depp, Tedlock, you will have Kim Jong-il. McCormick, Cartman, Broflovski, and Marsh, you'll do Hitler. I trust you haven't had any illicit affairs with him, Mister Marsh?"

"Hold on," Kyle said. "You want me to write a paper on how Hitler was good?"

Mr. Dorcas adjusted his square glasses. They tended to mislead his students into thinking he was weak or just, or anything but a sadistic sociopath. "If you have a problem, Mister Broflovski, you can always take an 'F' for your group."

Kyle made a noise that was half rage, half disbelief.

Kenny leaned forward again. "So why'd he cut you off? You forget your anniversary or some couple-y shit like that?"

"Wha... There is no anniversary!"

"Mister Marsh. Mister McCormick," Mr. Dorcas said, who'd been in the middle of assigning Stalin to Craig, Butters, and two girls Stan had had class with for the past eight years but couldn't for the life of him remember their names. "Go to the principal's office."

Stan swore under his breath while he crammed his stuff into his backpack. Kenny just grinned and strolled out. He never bothered to carry around school supplies, and just stole what he needed out of Stan's bag. Kyle caught Stan's eyes on his way out, and he felt his face heat up and had to look away.

Kenny was halfway down the hall when Stan left the classroom, and he hollered at him to wait up.

"All right dude," he hissed. "What the fuck?"

"What do you mean?" Kenny asked, lifting an eyebrow.

"Why do you think... I am not dating Kyle! I am not gay!"

Kenny's other eyebrow went up. "You aren't?"

"No!"

"Oh."

"Oh? OH? What do you mean, oh?"

"Well, you've always been pretty bent, man."

"WHAT!"

"Though," Kenny said, "If you aren't, I sort of regret those flyers now."

"Flyers?" Stan repeated quickly. "What flyers?"

"Oh, it was nothing really. Just your picture with F.A.G. stamped underneath it. And then I jotted down a few phrases like 'Football After-Game,' and 'Fucking Ass without Grease'..."

"WHAT?"

"And I doodled some stick figure porn underneath that."

"WHY?"

"Why?" Kenny repeated, scratching his chin. "Never really thought of why before. Revenge, I suppose."

"Revenge?"

"Yes. When we were twelve and the circus rolled into town and I missed the three-breasted woman because Cartman got it into his head that he could make ten million dollars selling Mephisto's genetic experiments to the circus manager, that fat little man whom I suspect was into bestiality judging by the way he reacted when Cartman mentioned their four asses, and then the animal lover in you reared its ugly head and you dragged me along with you to stop him from selling them into a life of ass-rape and general humiliation even though I didn't give a fuck. And then you and Kyle got into a screaming match with Cartman and he dropped the rope he was using to lift the hippo out of its cage and it fell on me and broke my leg in three place, three mother fucking places, and then you put me on suicide watch so I couldn't just overdose on some Tylenol and come the next day good as new, and I had to sit on my couch for three months with that unbearably itchy cast and watch soaps and my family had to go back onto half-waffle dinners because of the hospital bill."

Kenny paused to breathe. Stan stared at him.

"... That was four years ago! You still haven't gotten over that?"

"You'd think someone would, wouldn't you?"

"Look, just how many people did you show the flyers to?"

"I only handed out a couple."

"Well, that's goo-"

"And then I ran off a stack of photocopies and left them in the library... and submitted one to the yearbook... and stapled a bunch to phone poles downtown."

Stan gaped at him for a while. He closed his mouth. Then he opened it again and made a gurgling noise.

"Kenny," he finally said, "you spend way too much time with Cartman."

"Well, who am I supposed to spend time with while you and Kyle suck face?"

"We do not suck face!"

"Dude, I don't really want to know what you suck."

"You - I'm - gah!" Stan said.

"I'm ditching the office and going to smoke," Kenny said. "Coming?"

"Smoking will kill you, you know."

"Bah." Kenny dismissed his warning with a wave of the hand. "Been there," he said. "Done that."

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TBC