"I'm sorry. That was too emotive. To forward. I should probably have… I don't know. Confessed, maybe."

"You did confess. I don't think many things confess those sorts of feelings then a sudden lunge and a make-out session in the snow. You'd need neon signs and can-can dancers to make it any more obvious than that. And those sort of gimmicks are Cartman's shtick."

"I mean with words. I should probably have… Told you, you know. Confessed it to you with words. Told you how I felt. How I've always felt. Why… Why I needed you to be away from me. Why I couldn't be around you. Why I was so scared."

"Yeah, telling me would have been nice. It'd certainly have saved us a shit load of resentment, awkward silences, and long, pointless drives."

"I never resented you."

"Well I damn sure resented you! You told me to go die!"

Stan laughed, looking out across South Park, blinking at the map of lights in the distance. They were sitting close to the ledge, sitting in the snow, on the ice. It was freezing, Kyle was freezing, sitting there in his damp t-shirt, wrapped up in his trusty coat. His duffel coat. It was fucking freezing. But it was beautiful. "You're never going to let me live that down."

"Damn straight. I'll haunt you with that until the day you die. Then I'll have them carve it on your tombstone. You're going to bear that cross until the day you die."

"I don't even care. Just so long, just so long as you're there with me. Every step of the way. Still… I am sorry. I shouldn't have just sprung that on you. I can be too forward. My mom tells me I wear my heart on my sleeves sometimes."

"That's okay." Kyle lifted his left sleeve, lifted up his patch. "I wear my religion on my elbow, so I guess we're even."

Grinning, Stan lifted one knee to his chest. "So, do you think we can be Super Best Friends again?"

Kyle leant forward, frowning at the sky. A cloud shifted, a gap opened up. The moon shone through. Kyle bit his lip. He always forgot how much he loved the sky, loved the stars and the moon, and how it always looked grey, but never really was. Underneath the snow and clouds was the navy and black, the purple. There was Mars and Venus, when he could see them. There probably wouldn't be stars and skies like this when he left for college. There would be too much light at night, light pollution. Darkness and the midnight sky was one of the only great things South Park had to offer. One of the sparse few positives this crazy shithole had to offer.

"Probably not, no. Kenny's my best friend, he had been for a while. He stood by me after… After all the shit that went down between us. I think that part of our lives is well and truly over. Dead and buried." Kyle smiled. "Broken and cracked. I don't think we're doing anybody any favours trying to resuscitate it. But-" Stan, who had been midway through either a cringe or a wince, or an innovative combination of the two, froze. "But that doesn't mean we can't be something."

"What… What sort of something?"

"I don't know yet. A new sort of something. A… A progressive sort of something."

Stan swallowed. "An awful 'let's nod at each other in the corridor and slowly stop speaking to each other again' sort of progressive something, or a wonderful sort of progressive something?"

"I don't know. It depends what you think a 'wonderful progressive something' is."

"A wonderful progressive something is a 'will you let me pick you up in the mornings' sort of something."

"Oh yeah, you can do that. I really fucking hate that bus, after all."

"It's a 'will you let me buy you a coffee' sort of something, too."

Kyle was still starting at the sky. He could feel Stan shifting, moving closer. He could feel their shoulders brushing. The heat. He could feel the heat. Stan's heat. He felt warm. Even in the freezing cold night, in the snow and ice, in his t-shirt, damp with icy wetness, he felt warm. "Maybe. Maybe we can be that sort of something."

"Maybe we can be a 'can I hold your hand and kiss you in the park' sort of something too?"

"Yeah, maybe… Maybe." Kyle smiled, blinking the stars out of his eyes. Stan had reached out, reached across. He was pressing his palm against Kyle's, lacing their fingers together. And Kyle was letting him. He was just letting him. Because he didn't want to be Stan's Super Best Friend. Not again. He didn't want to be the guy Stan just ignored silently in the corridor. They'd done that for so long already. They'd done both of them for so long.

He didn't want to be a memory. He didn't want to be that kid Stan had once known, once had a crush on. He didn't want to not have Stan, not again. He wanted Stan. He needed him. They needed each other. Stan and Kyle, together. This was how they were supposed to be. It's how it needed to be.

Stan was grinning at him. Kyle smiled back. "Yeah, maybe. We'll see." He paused, smiling down at their hands. "Although let's not go to the park though."

"Why? What's wrong with the park?"

"Oh, nothing. The park itself is fine. It's just Kenny keeps on flashing people there. He's started dressing as a vicar and everything. I'm just getting a bit tired of seeing his fucking wang is all."

"Well that is a conversation for another night."

A/N -

Christ that was long. At it went on longer then it should have. And on a tangent of its own. I should have probably jacked this in a dozen chapters ago; this was not good at all. But I have a compulsion about leaving things unfinished. As bad as it is, it'll come to a conclusion. Still, it's over now. That's that.

Thank you for reading and sticking out this mess for 26 paragraph length chapters that went absolutely nowhere. Quite a feat. Thank you, a whole, whole lot, for reviewing it and actually saying some pretty nice things. I probably would have jacked all this fanfiction stuff in if I didn't know there were at least some people out there who were enjoying it, and not hating it. So thank you, a whole, whole bunch, for the reviews, encouragement, and favs.

I don't know when/if the next fic will be. Life is giving me a bit of a rollicking at the minute, and I've got a terrifying two months of academic nightmare coming up. So I really have no clue. Still, hopefully the next one will be better. And have an actual plot. And decent chapter lengths. And all those things that I should do but don't, because I suck total candyfloss.