i will try to fix you

Stan and Kenny had managed to adopt a cat while in their shared dorm, mostly at Stan’s behest and under the guise of it being an emotional support animal. Stan didn’t realize the validity of this pledge until they actually had the cat, but he suspects Kenny had, because they made some kind of comment at the shelter about Stan needing one (an emotional support animal) now that Kyle was gone. Stan took offense to this, but prioritized reminding them that Kyle was not, in fact, gone and was only four hours away at another college and also was not an animal, he was their best friend.

Unrelatedly, Stan had wanted to name the cat Kyle. But upon this announcement, Kenny had just stared at him, saying nothing, for long enough that he was forced to choke out a ‘just kidding.’

So, Broflovski the cat had become a staple of Stan and Kenny’s college lifestyle. She had lived with them for over a month, Stan was still yet to mention the name to Kyle, unrelatedly.

Broflovski was not very much like Kyle. She was extremely friendly and had a habit of peeing on Stan’s shoes, neither of which were traits he associated with the real Kyle, not that she was named after him, because she wasn’t, and if she was, it was like an ironic joke.

Not that Stan’s college friends would have really gotten it, or the girls Kenny tended to bring over. Kenny insisted that all they did was practice together, but Stan had his doubts. Kenny was heavily absorbed in the apparently cutthroat and at times surprisingly profitable world of competitive Scrabble, and Stan had questions as to how Scrabble practice could involve so much muffled laughter. Still, it seemed to be- as Kyle put it- a “healthy outlet” and could, Stan guessed, sometimes be fun.

He expressed this to Kyle one night over the phone, they were playing the online Scrabble app that Kenny had been quietly pushing onto them both for months. It was called Wordbuddy. Stan was yet to win a match, but he didn’t mind all that much.

Kyle, on the other hand, was merciless both towards Stan and the app’s AI, which he played against frequently and seemingly with no shortage of emotional investment. He was yet to play Kenny. In group texts, Stan was often subject to both Kenny’s pestering Kyle to “scrabble me bro” as well as Kyle’s somewhat unsubtle dodges, the reason for which Stan was still uncertain.

The point was that Broflovski was a good cat, Stan thought, feeling cheerful as he laced up his Pumas which, these days, smelled like normal shoe smell and only a little like urine. The Pumas were maybe a little ugly anyways, he thought. Broflovski was cuter.

“Broflovski, you are so cute. You beat these shoes any day,” he voiced to her.

Kenny overheard from the next room, yelling slightly over the hiss of the running sink and sounding, as usual, slightly delighted, “your ugly shoes?”

“Um. Yeah,” Stan replied, a little embarrassed.