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when kyle was 16, his parents (mostly dad) decided that he had to understand how money are earned by hard and honest work, so they cut off his pocket money and gave him an advice to finally find a part-time job. kyle didn’t mind it much, so after a week or two of choosing the right option he decided to stick to something as peaceful and less stressful as possible, so he chose to get a job at the local library as an assistant. he already had experience in working with literature and students books – he was tutoring his classmates for a year by that time, plus the librarian was his mother’s friend so he didn’t expect any difficulties to get into his way.
until cartman learned about kyle’s new work and decided it was his moral duty to go into the library that he has never visited before and pester kyle every goddamn day. because kyle couldn’t do anything to stop this since he wasn’t allowed to start conflicts as a worker there. it also was prohibited to shout at the library so most of the time he was cursing and threatening cartman in a whisper. neither was he allowed to kick him out because the librarian truly believed that every child has the right to be in this sacred temple of knowledge.
and it was terrible.
every day kyle was expecting another trick from cartman – either it was total reorganising of the books on shelves from alphabetical order to matching colours, or a request to find a very rare book that only was in the library in one copy somewhere in the farthest corner of the room at the highest shelf – only to realise cartman absolutely knows this book has been missing for, like, three years by now.
kyle: Can you please stop bothering me?! You don’t even read books!
cartman: Sure I do! But paper books are sooo last century, I’m into e-books now.
kyle: THEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THE LIBRARY EVERY DAY, YOU SADISTIC ASSHOLE?
cartman: Making your life even more miserable and complicated than it already is?…
kyle: Why am I even surprised? I should’ve really guessed.
AND THEN one day kyle sees cartman in the library and mentally prepares for another portion of mocking, but surprisingly for him, cartman doesn’t even look at him, says simple and brief “hi” and goes straight to the reading hall, grabbing one of the books on the shelf. kyle can’t help but feel curious, because he’s never seen cartman so concentrated and serious – at least not the last few weeks. he sneaks up to him from the back:
kyle: What, have you finally realised what you’re actually supposed to do at the library?
cartman, shivering a little: You’re not supposed to scare the shit out of your customers too, huh, Kahl?
kyle: What even is this book? Knowing your tastes, I won’t be surprised if it’s, like, fucking Mein Kampf or something like that.
cartman, rolling his eyes: It’s none of your fucking business. And I wouldn’t read Mein Kampf, who do you even think I am?
and then kyle grabs cartman’s book and with surprise sees that it’s one of his most favorite books (i’m not sure what exactly it is but my personal hc is that kyle is really into dystopias and stories with political controversial subtext…), and he really can’t help but start discussing it with cartman. after, like, a whole half an hour of kyle infodumping him with the history behind this book, he realises they actually have pretty similar taste, and cartman’s analysing skills are so great he really understands all of the hidden messages in books, and they, well…. eventually start hanging out in the library discussing books they’re reading rn. to the point where kyle almost forgets about his other duties at work ‘cause he gets really consumed by all these discussions with cartman.
and he tries to tell about this to stan and kenny but they both just laugh because these two nerds who have finally found a conversation partner are fucking hilarious.
+ bonus about their preferences: they both are really into morally grey and/or generally antagonistic characters. and although it’s totally predictable for cartman, he was really shocked when he realised kyle adores “bad” and “immoral” characters as well (we aaaaaall know why…)
also i think kyle is more of a “plot” person who really enjoys reading about how the world in the book works, meanwhile cartman mostly prefers digging into characters, relationships between them and their psychological traits and traumas, yk? and it really helps, because each of them often notice little details the other might’ve missed.