Anxiety.
Not that Cartman had much of a long attention span anyway, but Kyle was getting on his nerves. He interrupted him loudly, "Oh my god shut up." He said with a flat tone. "I saved your fucking life, Broflovski. You owe me a favour."
"I don't owe you shit." Kyle made a decent effort to suppress his anger. "What makes you think I owe you something?"
"Because you do." Cartman reflected on his question, giving it some serious thought. "Because I don't help people I don't care about. If I do, it's because I know they'd do the same for me. By definition, that's called loyalty."
Emotional blackmail, Kyle preferred to call it, seeing only bad intentions. "So what if they don't want it? Or they don't feel the same way? What then?"
Cartman narrowed his eyes. "You do feel the same way."
"No, I don't. I hate you." Kyle said.
A wicked smirk laid present on Cartman's lips. "You've got a fucked up way of showing it." He uttered and then got to his feet. He dropped the towel somewhere by the sink and forgot to turn the light off as he left the room. He went back to the bedroom. "Wendy, now that's someone you hate. You hate her so bad and it's so obvious to everyone but you."
"First of all, I don't hate her. Secondly, if it's so obvious, why hasn't Stan said anything to me?"
Cartman dropped his phone on the bed and could be heard muttering, you clearly don't know him, in the background.
"What did you say?" Kyle asked irritably.
"I said you clearly don't fucking know him then, do you?" Cartman's head popped in view and there was more gravel in his voice. "Jesus fucking Christ, listen. Stan doesn't care. Stan doesn't care about anything. How can you not see that already." He vanished to go back to doing what he was doing, which was walking around the glass and pondering what he should be doing it with. "Wendy's always been too good for him, I don't know why it took her so long to see it, in my humble opinion."
Kyle couldn't understand where this was coming from. "What the hell are you talking about? All you ever do is talk shit about her?"
"Well, yeah. Stan's my fucking friend, I'm obviously on his side. That's literally retarded. I think Wendy's a stupid bitch for what she did, but I get why she did it. Stan isn't aware of anything going on outside his own head, so it's his own fault. Maybe it'll teach him a lesson. Like, I get it. You're depressed. But can you at least make the fucking effort to listen to me talk about something? It's fucking rude and I think, what's the point. What is the point? Right? We both know it, just no-one says it."
It pained him to say it, but Kyle understood very well. "Right." He agreed quietly.
"Whenever this happens, you know what happens? Me and you sit back and let Kenny do all the work." It made Cartman feel good to finally confront his thoughts out loud. "And that's because you and I, we feel the same about it. We're built different."
"Is that what you really think?" Kyle asked him.
"Yeah, that's what I really think. You wanna know what else I think?"
"Go ahead." Kyle swallowed.
"I don't think you like it when other people are in relationships. I don't like it either. Everything is fucked up when there's a girl involved. Look at Wendy. Whenever she's around us, I have to watch what I say. Okay, she's hot. And she's smart, which are two reasons why I can tolerate her. You though? You don't tolerate her at all. You always deny it too, like why? Just own it. But you won't. Heh. That's a common trait of yours. Denial." Cartman snickered some more and then grabbed his phone to see Kyle's expression, which wasn't currently in view.
"Yeah, and you think about me way too much." Kyle said, just after clenching his jaw. "That's common trait of yours. Obsession." He reappeared on screen with an irritating grin on his face.
The brunette stared at it and didn't react. He studied Kyle's smile for a few seconds longer than he needed to. "At least I'm not in denial about it." He remarked, slowly grinning with him. Kyle couldn't hold his laugh and looked away when he did. This kind of reaction made Cartman a little happier. Kyle responded in the only way he knew how to, which included a few harmless insults and of course, refusing to accept that what Cartman was saying had some truth to it.
Chapter 29 - Anxiety
