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sekritomgTitle: Fake Hipsters (6/?)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sekrit_omg
Rating: R
Pairing: Stan/Kyle; others
Summary: You can take Stan out of South Park, but you can't take the South Park out of Stan.
Note: Thanks tomoondarri. Just, really.
Stan jogged all the way to Cartman’s house, about a half mile from Kyle’s, where he stopped and panted for several minutes. His life was beginning to feel as if it were spinning out of control. Who did he call in these times of crisis? He pulled out his phone and began to scroll past names. College friends, college friends … well, they couldn’t help him now. He scrolled past Craig. When had he gotten Craig’s number? He hadn’t had Craig’s number since two phones ago. Weren’t his plans for the day to go to Denver? He reached Kenny’s name, and hit send.
“Yo,” was Kenny’s comfortable greeting. “Where you at?”
“Um.” Stan tried to catch his breath. “Standing in front of Cartman’s.”
“Really.” It sounded like Kenny was chewing something. “What the fuck are you doing there?”
“Are you chewing something?”
There followed some definite chewing noises. “Yeah, carrots. Why?”
“No reason.” Stan paused. “So, Kyle flipped out on me.”
“No kidding.” Chewing.
“And I really didn’t know where to go.”
“So you ran to Cartman’s house?”
“Well, we were supposed to go to the Apple Store,” Stan explained.
“Who, you and Cartman?”
“No, me and Kyle. But then he got upset at me, and so I flipped out and didn’t know where to run, and I ran in this direction.” That was one of the scant upsides of Kyle’s strange condition — Stan knew Kenny was not going to ask what Kyle was upset about, because Kyle became unjustifiably upset about so many things, it was hardly worth his time. “So, do you want to go to the Apple Store?”
Chewing noise, chewing noise, swallowing noise, deep breath. “Can’t. I gotta go to some Lamaze shit.” Stan rolled his eyes, a gesture lost on Kenny, since he wasn’t there in person. Kenny, however, must have taken Stan’s silence as Stan not having heard him: “I said, Lamaze. Hello? You can come with me and Trish to Lamaze.”
“What the fuck is that shit even about?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I’m probably going to leave in the first three minutes of the thing and smoke up behind the community center. You want in? I got some great stuff here. It’s a shame to waste it on baby class boredom.”
Stan hissed. Why would Kenny want him impinging on a family moment? “Thanks, but no thanks. I gotta get to the Apple Store and get rid of this iPod.” He waited for Kenny to ask about it, but he didn’t . “Because I dumped Loren,” he continued.
“Oh.” And then it sounded like Kenny was taking a bite out of something. “Who’s that?”
“My ex-boyfriend.”
“Since when do you have a boyfriend?”
“Well, if you want to be technical about it, since I just said he’s my ex, since never.”
“Oh,” Kenny said stupidly, and a female voice began shrilling in the background. Kenny hung up.
Luckily for Stan, Cartman was in a particularly dynamic mood. “Yeah, I need to get out of here,” he said as he shoved Stan out of the door. It was weird how they didn’t even say hello. Stan had just asked, “Do you want to go to the Apple store with me?” And Cartman apparently did.
“My mom is such a cunt,” he grumbled, fumbling his key into the ignition of her car. It was one of those great heaving masses of bobbling key chains and a dozen or so small, circular bike keys and lord knew how many tangles. “God, I hate that bitch. Does your mom do that shit to you?”
“What shit?”
“I don’t fucking know.” Cartman turned around as he carefully reverse-glided the car out the driveway. He shifted into park. “She’s just always like, ‘Oh, Eric, blah blah blah, I’m a whore, why don’t you be a good boy and lick my cunt?’ ”
Stan’s nose twitched, and he wiped it. “Your mom wants you to lick her cunt.”
“I don’t fucking know what that bitch wants from me. Parents are such total assholes. I didn’t ask to be here. I didn’t tell that drunk whore to spread her legs. She should be doing shit for me, and when I tell her to shut her fucking face, she should do what I say.”
“Yeah,” Stan agreed. “Parents suck.”
For a moment, Stan stared at Cartman’s big, red cheeks and fingerless gloves. He was rapping on the steering wheel, obviously impatient. “So, where the fuck is the Apple store?”
“Cherry Creek. Just get on the road to Denver,” Stan explained, half-heartedly indicating the direction he knew Eric was going to drive in. “Then, um, when we get near the city I’ll tell you how to get there.” He paused while his friend slipped the car in drive. “Just trust me. I know the way by heart.”
Cartman simply rolled his eyes.
~
They fought about what music to listen to on the way there, Stan insisting all the way that Sublime was like, totally lame.
“It’s so passé,” he complained, cheek against the frosted window of Liane Cartman’s red Volvo station wagon.
“It is not. Sublime totally kicks ass.”
“Yeah, in 1994.”
“Well, it’s not like you have a better suggestion.”
Stan shifted, and stuck his fingers in his back pocket. The little iPod was there, cool and sleek and smooth. But he hesitated, because he didn’t want to look at the stupid thing again until he was getting rid of it.
“This song is so awesome,” Cartman insisted. “It’s all about, like, um, riots and stuff.”
Stan wondered if this was what he’d be listening to if he were an asshole straight dude in a fraternity.
“Whatever.”
“Whatever? Whatever? Did you just say ‘whatever’ to Sublime? I think you just said ‘whatever’ to Sublime! Oh my god, dude. You have, like, no musical taste. Chicks totally dig a guy who listens to Sublime. This one time? I totally banged this chick to Sublime.”
Stan shut his eyes. “That’s great, Eric.”
“I know. It was so totally awesome.”
“At least I wasn’t listening to Sublime the only time I ever had sex,” Stan muttered.
Cartman scoffed. “Yeah, right. That wasn’t the only time I ever had sex; it was just the first time.”
“It’s still lame,” Stan argued.
“Whatever, Stan. At least my first time wasn’t with Butters.”
That caught Stan’s attention. “What?”
Cartman switched lanes. “I said, at least I’ve never been fucked in the ass by Butters.”
Stan blinked. “How do you know that?” he barely managed to croak out.
With a snort, Cartman rolled his eyes. “Butters tells me everything.”
“Oh, my god.” Stan put his head in his hands.
”It’s okay, dude, it’s not like I ever told anyone. I mean, I totally could have. I thought about it. But let’s face it: No one would believe that shit.”
“I think this is the worst day of my life.”
“Worse than the day you let Butters screw you up the asshole?” Stan could swear he saw Cartman smirking through this question.
“Look, you know, we were kids. It was all, like, trying to sort things out, and … and…”
“Oh my god, dude,” Cartman said, somewhat wistfully. “I’ve dreamed about this moment for so long, you have no idea. I just wish … well, I guess I wish I weren’t driving, so I could see how miserable you look knowing that I’ve known all this time that you actually let Butters — Butters, of all people! — fuck you in the ass.”
Stan tried to sit up straighter to reassert himself. “It’s not so absurd!” he protested. “I’m gay, fat ass, and that is sort of what we do—”
“Oh, really?” Cartman crowed. “I hadn’t noticed! I find this information shocking. I think I need some music. Like, to help me process.”
Before Stan could protest, or form words, or shove Eric’s hand away from the dial, the volume was at maximum capacity, locking both of them into another half hour of driving to outdated college rock at an unbearable frequency.
~
He could not fucking believe they wouldn’t take back his fucking iPod.
“It’s engraved, sir,” the clerk told him dourly. “You can’t just return an engraved iPod.”
“Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do with it?” It was at this moment that he felt his back pocket vibrating.
“Oh, shit,” Stan gasped, feeling overwhelmed. He turned to Cartman, who was giving him a look of visible annoyance at simply having to be there. Then he whipped right back around to the man behind the counter and said, very sweetly, “Please?”
“Hey, queer,” Cartman pointed out, as if Stan couldn’t hear. “Your damn phone is mooing.”
“Here!” Stan shouted, pulling his phone out of his pocket. He thrust it into Cartman’s face. “Deal with it!” he cried over the electronic animal noises.
“All right, fine.” Cartman opened the phone and Stan heard him ask, “What?” as he shuffled away.
“Sir,” the clerk began again, clearing his throat. “We cannot take back this iPod. It’s engraved, it’s open, it’s been played. It’s loaded with music. It’s yours.”
“But you don’t understand!” Stan was feeling desperate. “My ex-boyfriend gave it to me!”
“Wow, that was awfully nice of him,” the clerk deadpanned.
“No, no,” Stan corrected. “We were dating when I got it. I dumped him like a week later.”
“Wow.” The man did not flinch. “You’re an asshole.”
“Oh, like you have fucking any idea,” Stan growled. He saw Cartman sidle back up to him out of the corner of his eye. “He’s an asshole.”
Cartman cleared his throat, proffering the cell. “Here, buddy. Someone wants to talk to you.”
Stan took the phone with hesitance, bringing it slowly to his ear.
“Hello?”
Instantly, he was rewarded with, “You bloody fucking asshole!”
Stan swallowed. “Hi, Loren.”
“You fucking piece of shit!”
“Did you have a nice Christmas?”
“We’ll just be going,” Cartman said to the man behind the counter, tugging Stan away from the returns desk, phone clutched to his ear.
~
There was nothing Stan could do but stay on the telephone and be berated by one pissed-off ex. After about five minutes of this, Cartman threw his arms up in exasperation, and exclaimed. “Well, screw you, hippie! I’ll be at the GameStop if you need me.” Stan didn’t want him to leave, but he knew that if he stopped to beg Cartman to stick around, Loren would just get on his case about how he was with some other dude. If that happened, no amount of explanation would help end the accusations of cheating and heartbreaking and callousness. Besides, Stan wasn’t really sure how to explain Eric Cartman to anyone who didn’t know him, and just why it was inconceivable that they ever had or ever would have sex. Still, as annoying as screaming was, Loren wasn’t wrong; Stan had cheated on him with delightful regularity, just about as often as he could. So he held his tongue, and felt miserably put-upon while his ex-boyfriend gave him the dressing-down he maybe-probably-didn’t deserve.
Stan really didn’t want this to last all day. He could barely get a word in, so he took the time to think about Kyle. How did Kyle find out about him and Ike? For that matter, why did Kyle care? Kyle was definitely having sex when he was 15 — well, maybe not having sex, but he had definitely had sex. So he figured Kyle’s attitude toward 15-year-olds having sex must be generally positive, right? If Stan had been having sex when he was 15, instead of masturbating to Kyle’s yearbook picture with the lights off and door locked, would someone have cared? He supposed it all had to do with who he would have been theoretically boning. Still, he had no idea why Kyle was so pissed off, so emotionally torn on this. Granted, Kyle wasn’t stable, but he had always been relatively cool to Stan, so … was he just being possessive? Was it even possible that he was—
“Are you even listening to me?”
Stan pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he got an idea. “You know what?” he snapped. “No.”
There was a pause, then a shriek of ,“Well, fuck you, Marsh!” and with that, Loren hung up the phone.
“Christ.” Stan shut his phone, and shoved it back in his pocket.
There was a directory a few feet away, Stan shuffled over to it, hands on his hips, scanning around for the GameStop. To his dismay, it was one floor down and somewhat far away, and Stan was inwardly cursing Cartman for wandering off when Cartman showed back up, grabbing Stan by the shoulder and whirling him around.
“We have a problem.”
“What?” Stan snapped. “I am not in the mood for problems, Cartman! What is the fucking problem?”
“My keys,” he said mournfully. “I think somebody stole them. Or I left them somewhere.”
Stan’s jaw dropped. “You’re sure?” he asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Well, that’s just fucking great!” Stan cried. He whipped around, looking for somewhere to sit. He wobbled over to the nearest bench, dodging the moderate amount of post-holiday shoppers, and fell onto his ass, only to be joined by Cartman. “This is just fucking awesome, Eric, like all I need is to be stranded at a fucking mall in Denver with you and this fucking iPod.”
“Chill out, dude.” Cartman yanked his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll just call my fucking mom. She’s got spare keys.”
“Like I really want to wait for her to get her ass out here and drive us home!”
Cartman silently gave Stan the finger while he talked to his mother: “Well, sorry, bitch! Sometimes people make mistakes, okay?” Stan could hear Liane’s concerned blathering on the other side of the phone. She probably wasn’t saying anything too upsetting, just a lot of, ‘That was very naughty, Eric,’ and, ‘You have to be more responsible, poopsiekins.’
“Just be fucking here to get us,” Eric concluded. “Yeah, all right, we’ll wait by the fucking car.” He shut his phone, making an audible noise in his fury. “God! I cannot stand that ho!”
~
“You need to chill out, seriously,” Cartman announced as they made their way past the Express for Men. Stan remembered shopping at Express for Men. He was so naïve then, about what was attractive and what was cool. He hoped he looked better now. He hoped. “You need to stop being such a whiny gay baby,” he heard Cartman say, and he stopped in front of the pretzel cart. “What?” Cartman asked, stalking back toward Stan. “You’re being a whiny fucking gay baby. So your damn ex called to bitch? Whatever, what do you care? Just be like, ‘Fuck you, ho, I’m done with you now,’ and move on.” Cartman crossed his arms.
“I find so much wrong with what you just said. One, like you would have any idea what kind of stress this dumping situation has got me in—”
Cartman rolled his eyes. “Oh, like I’ve never had to dump some fucking cumbucket bitch before, you whiny gay baby.”
“I hardly believe that. … And I am not a whiny gay baby!”
“Oh, let’s see about that.” Cartman began to count off on his fingers. “Are you being a baby? Yes. Are you whining about some stupid bullshit thing? Yes! Are you gay? Are you ever! So yeah, I’m gonna have to stick with my initial statement.”
“Fuck you, Eric, seriously. You can’t fucking go around calling people gay whiny babies whenever you damn well feel like it.”
“I said ‘whiny gay baby,’ not ‘gay whiny baby,’ ” Cartman corrected. He coughed. “For the record.”
“Shut up!”
“All right, that’s fine.” Cartman threw his hands up and made a disgusted expression before continuing out to the parking lot, repeating ‘whiny gay baby’ under his breath as he left.
As much as he would like to have refused to follow, Stan was incredibly eager to get home, so he set off on a slow, stilted run after his shopping companion.
When he’d finally caught up, Stan panted, “Slow down, asshole.”
“Oh, oh I’m an asshole.” Cartman did not slow down. “You’re been, like, PMSing since you got in the car with me.”
“I do not PMS, Cartman!”
“Whatever, Stan. PMSing, fagging out, whatever the fuck is wrong with you, just cut it out right now. I got enough shit to worry about between you acting like a bitch and my fucking slut mom giving me a hard time.”
Stan was still trying to catch his breath while keeping up with Eric’s long-legged stride. “You must be insane. Your mom is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah,” Eric agreed. “To her fucking boyfriend. That guy just seriously pisses me off.”
“Your mom is dating?”
It seemed like Eric wasn’t even listening to Stan anymore. “I don’t even know how she got some dude to do her anyway, it’s not like she’s hot anymore. Not like your mom.”
“What?” Stan thought he could feel his eyes bugging out of their sockets.
“I mean, your mom is super hot.”
“What?” Stan repeated. He was sure his face was turning red.
“Calm down, Stan. If you weren’t gay, you’d understand.”
“If I wasn’t gay? What? No. How about, she’s my mom!” Stan paused. “And she’s like 50!” he added.
“Yeah, I’m just saying, she’s totally like a MILF.” Cartman rolled his eyes as Stan continued to make noises of outrage. “Okay, fine, that’s fine. Don’t take my compliments. I won’t start telling you your sister’s hot, either.”
“Oh, no no no. Please, just stop, Cartman. Please, please. Just stop.”
“What? You’d think a guy would be flattered that another guy totally thinks his mom and sister are hot.”
Stan felt queasy. “You just don’t get it at all, Cartman. Just not at all.”
They walked the rest of the way to the car in relative silence. Stan’s attention was caught between being frankly perturbed by Cartman’s mind-boggling insistence that the women in his family were ‘hot,’ and being downright grateful that he had the everyday normalcy of Cartman’s attitude to distract him from the things that were really eating away at him. And the thing was, he didn’t feel even halfway bad about Loren. Even Loren was just another distraction from Kyle. Oh sure, he wished he hadn’t been yelled at, but then, if he hadn’t been yelled at, he wouldn’t be filling his mind with the little indignities that came with being screamed at over the phone from a thousand miles away by your ex-boyfriend, who really just did not understand how very painful it was to put up with his sappy bullshit every moment of your relationship, and how dare he, and so on.
Relative silence meant that there was no talking, but Cartman was always making some sort of noise, generally making little grunts as he thundered through the salty slush of the parking lot. Stan imagined what it must be like to be intimate with Eric Cartman, how he must have grunted in his sleep and when on the receiving end of oral sex, and in all sorts of other places. Loren was the kind of man who gave willowy little gasps of sighs, shuddering gently like a hollow-boned creature, maybe that bizarre lizard-bird Stan sometimes saw in dinosaur books as a kid. Cartman, on the other hand, was quite like a water buffalo, Stan assumed, very noisy and prone to making guttural noises up until the moment they reached his car and he belched out, “Oh, fuck me.”
“What?” Stan asked.
Cartman pressed his nose up to the glass and pointed down at his seat. “There’s my keys,” he said sadly, like there was some regret in his voice.
“So?” Stan asked. “Open the door.” With ease, Cartman was able to retrieve his car keys from the seat. “Dude. All that stress,” Stan lamented.
“Whatever.” Cartman snapped his fingers, and nestled his behind in the cloth of the bucket seat. “Come on, let’s bail.”
“Bail?” Stan asked. “Aren’t you at least going to call your mom?”
Cartman snorted. “She’s got nothing better to do,” was all he gave as an excuse. He revved the engine a couple of times before lighting up a cigarette. Stan opened his mouth, but Cartman just said, “I know, you quit. God, you’re a preachy bitch.”
“I didn’t even say anything,” was the last thing Stan said for the duration of the drive back to South Park.
~
Cartman dropped him off at home, but not before toying with Stan’s meager request to avoid driving past the Broflovskis’ at all costs. “Why?” Cartman asked between the thin twists of smoke pervading his nostrils. “You’re like 4 sometimes, Stan, seriously, Jesus Christ.”
“Aw, you know what? Just fucking drive however you want.”
“Oh-ho, no, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, buddy?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” Cartman paused to extinguish yet another cigarette, his fifth of the ride, out on the dashboard. “What the fuck are we even talking about?”
“Just do me a favor and don’t drive by Kyle’s, okay? I’ve had enough shit for the time being.”
When he was getting out of the car, Stan dug the iPod out of his pocket, and tossed it in Cartman’s lap.
“Thanks for the time!” he said sarcastically.
“What the fuck is this?” Cartman asked, scrambling to get the device out from between his legs. “What am I going to do with a gay blue iPod?”
“I don’t know, I sure as fuck don’t want it. Sell it on eBay or something.”
Cartman turned the thing around, inspecting it carefully, and Stan noticed his sour expression softening gradually, until he got to the back. “Loren? Aw, sick! What the fuck do you think I want this gay iPod for?”
“It’s not a gay iPod, fat ass!” Stan snapped. “An iPod can’t be gay!”
“Yeah, right, and that’s why it says ‘Heart Loren’ on it, like that’s not gay?”
“Well, how do you know it’s not for a girl? And for that matter, how do you even know what gender Loren is?”
“Because he spells his fucking name like a fucking faggot fairy!” Immediately, Cartman corrected himself: “Sorry, a fucking homosexual fairy, sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Stan shrugged. “I fucking hate him, call him a faggot all you want.”
“Well, thanks for the iPod, Stan,” Cartman sneered, fishing another cigarette out of his pack. “Merry fucking Christmas and shit.”
“Oh, fuck off, Cartman, it’s a perfectly good iPod!”
In response, Cartman rolled up the passenger window and sped away, brandishing a finger.
~
Despite his best effort, Stan did not stomp angrily up the stairs quickly enough to avoid his mother.
“Aw, what now?” he moaned, pulling off his gloves. “Can’t I have one fucking moment of privacy?”
Sharon blinked at him. And then she snapped: “You’ve barely spoken to me or your father since you’ve been home! You haven’t even come out of your room except for Christmas dinner and to open presents!”
“Yeah, and I’m so fucking glad, ‘cause they were so fucking awesome,” Stan replied.
Sharon crossed her arms. “You’ll thank us when you’re older! A lot of people wish their parents would set them up with a retirement account.”
Stan rolled his eyes. “A lot of people would also see that their cheap-ass parents were just looking to hide taxable income from the IRS.”
Evasively, Sharon said, “Well, what about the clothes, Stanley? All of your T-shirts are falling apart.”
“Oh my God, will you just stop trying so fucking hard to hold on the tentative grasp you have on my childhood? Jesus Christ, other people let their kids grow up!”
“I think a good number of them don’t.” Shifting her weight, Sharon said, “That reminds me. I invited the Broflovskis over for dinner tomorrow night.”
Stan blanched. And then he shouted, “What?”
“Well, I don’t know when the next time you’re going to be home is!” Sharon snapped, and it definitely sounded like she’d been holding this in for a while. But then, of course, she softened: “We haven’t seen your sister for three years,” she said pitifully. It was true, none of them had. “I would just like it if for a couple of weeks, we could be like we used to be.”
Stan grunted. “How did we used to be?”
“Familial, I guess,” Sharon wagered.
“We were never like that, Mom.”
She pushed some of his hair out of his eyes, and he flinched. “You were such a mild boy,” she told him, like he wanted to be told how he used to be when he was lame and scared and pathetic. “We’re proud of you, you know. Why won’t you let us be part of things? The least you can do is come to dinner tomorrow. Kyle will be there, it’s not like you have to be with the grown ups.”
Stan sighed. “Am I not a grown up?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m pissed at Kyle. Kyle’s a douche.” This was more or less a lie — he wasn’t pissed at Kyle, he was afraid of Kyle; Kyle wasn’t a douche, he was just overreacting. But Sharon didn’t need to hear anything introspective at the moment, as far as Stan was concerned.
“It’s 6:30 tomorrow night,” she said, with some finality. “Can we expect to see you then, honey?”
Stan shut his eyes. “Sure,” he breathed. “Just leave me alone until then.”
“Okay,” she agreed quietly. She turned to walk away, but stopped for a moment. “You know you can tell me anything, right?” she asked tentatively.
He grunted in acknowledgment, and waited for her to go away before making his way up the stairs.
Author:
sekrit_omgRating: R
Pairing: Stan/Kyle; others
Summary: You can take Stan out of South Park, but you can't take the South Park out of Stan.
Note: Thanks to
moondarri. Just, really.Stan jogged all the way to Cartman’s house, about a half mile from Kyle’s, where he stopped and panted for several minutes. His life was beginning to feel as if it were spinning out of control. Who did he call in these times of crisis? He pulled out his phone and began to scroll past names. College friends, college friends … well, they couldn’t help him now. He scrolled past Craig. When had he gotten Craig’s number? He hadn’t had Craig’s number since two phones ago. Weren’t his plans for the day to go to Denver? He reached Kenny’s name, and hit send.
“Yo,” was Kenny’s comfortable greeting. “Where you at?”
“Um.” Stan tried to catch his breath. “Standing in front of Cartman’s.”
“Really.” It sounded like Kenny was chewing something. “What the fuck are you doing there?”
“Are you chewing something?”
There followed some definite chewing noises. “Yeah, carrots. Why?”
“No reason.” Stan paused. “So, Kyle flipped out on me.”
“No kidding.” Chewing.
“And I really didn’t know where to go.”
“So you ran to Cartman’s house?”
“Well, we were supposed to go to the Apple Store,” Stan explained.
“Who, you and Cartman?”
“No, me and Kyle. But then he got upset at me, and so I flipped out and didn’t know where to run, and I ran in this direction.” That was one of the scant upsides of Kyle’s strange condition — Stan knew Kenny was not going to ask what Kyle was upset about, because Kyle became unjustifiably upset about so many things, it was hardly worth his time. “So, do you want to go to the Apple Store?”
Chewing noise, chewing noise, swallowing noise, deep breath. “Can’t. I gotta go to some Lamaze shit.” Stan rolled his eyes, a gesture lost on Kenny, since he wasn’t there in person. Kenny, however, must have taken Stan’s silence as Stan not having heard him: “I said, Lamaze. Hello? You can come with me and Trish to Lamaze.”
“What the fuck is that shit even about?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I’m probably going to leave in the first three minutes of the thing and smoke up behind the community center. You want in? I got some great stuff here. It’s a shame to waste it on baby class boredom.”
Stan hissed. Why would Kenny want him impinging on a family moment? “Thanks, but no thanks. I gotta get to the Apple Store and get rid of this iPod.” He waited for Kenny to ask about it, but he didn’t . “Because I dumped Loren,” he continued.
“Oh.” And then it sounded like Kenny was taking a bite out of something. “Who’s that?”
“My ex-boyfriend.”
“Since when do you have a boyfriend?”
“Well, if you want to be technical about it, since I just said he’s my ex, since never.”
“Oh,” Kenny said stupidly, and a female voice began shrilling in the background. Kenny hung up.
Luckily for Stan, Cartman was in a particularly dynamic mood. “Yeah, I need to get out of here,” he said as he shoved Stan out of the door. It was weird how they didn’t even say hello. Stan had just asked, “Do you want to go to the Apple store with me?” And Cartman apparently did.
“My mom is such a cunt,” he grumbled, fumbling his key into the ignition of her car. It was one of those great heaving masses of bobbling key chains and a dozen or so small, circular bike keys and lord knew how many tangles. “God, I hate that bitch. Does your mom do that shit to you?”
“What shit?”
“I don’t fucking know.” Cartman turned around as he carefully reverse-glided the car out the driveway. He shifted into park. “She’s just always like, ‘Oh, Eric, blah blah blah, I’m a whore, why don’t you be a good boy and lick my cunt?’ ”
Stan’s nose twitched, and he wiped it. “Your mom wants you to lick her cunt.”
“I don’t fucking know what that bitch wants from me. Parents are such total assholes. I didn’t ask to be here. I didn’t tell that drunk whore to spread her legs. She should be doing shit for me, and when I tell her to shut her fucking face, she should do what I say.”
“Yeah,” Stan agreed. “Parents suck.”
For a moment, Stan stared at Cartman’s big, red cheeks and fingerless gloves. He was rapping on the steering wheel, obviously impatient. “So, where the fuck is the Apple store?”
“Cherry Creek. Just get on the road to Denver,” Stan explained, half-heartedly indicating the direction he knew Eric was going to drive in. “Then, um, when we get near the city I’ll tell you how to get there.” He paused while his friend slipped the car in drive. “Just trust me. I know the way by heart.”
Cartman simply rolled his eyes.
~
They fought about what music to listen to on the way there, Stan insisting all the way that Sublime was like, totally lame.
“It’s so passé,” he complained, cheek against the frosted window of Liane Cartman’s red Volvo station wagon.
“It is not. Sublime totally kicks ass.”
“Yeah, in 1994.”
“Well, it’s not like you have a better suggestion.”
Stan shifted, and stuck his fingers in his back pocket. The little iPod was there, cool and sleek and smooth. But he hesitated, because he didn’t want to look at the stupid thing again until he was getting rid of it.
“This song is so awesome,” Cartman insisted. “It’s all about, like, um, riots and stuff.”
Stan wondered if this was what he’d be listening to if he were an asshole straight dude in a fraternity.
“Whatever.”
“Whatever? Whatever? Did you just say ‘whatever’ to Sublime? I think you just said ‘whatever’ to Sublime! Oh my god, dude. You have, like, no musical taste. Chicks totally dig a guy who listens to Sublime. This one time? I totally banged this chick to Sublime.”
Stan shut his eyes. “That’s great, Eric.”
“I know. It was so totally awesome.”
“At least I wasn’t listening to Sublime the only time I ever had sex,” Stan muttered.
Cartman scoffed. “Yeah, right. That wasn’t the only time I ever had sex; it was just the first time.”
“It’s still lame,” Stan argued.
“Whatever, Stan. At least my first time wasn’t with Butters.”
That caught Stan’s attention. “What?”
Cartman switched lanes. “I said, at least I’ve never been fucked in the ass by Butters.”
Stan blinked. “How do you know that?” he barely managed to croak out.
With a snort, Cartman rolled his eyes. “Butters tells me everything.”
“Oh, my god.” Stan put his head in his hands.
”It’s okay, dude, it’s not like I ever told anyone. I mean, I totally could have. I thought about it. But let’s face it: No one would believe that shit.”
“I think this is the worst day of my life.”
“Worse than the day you let Butters screw you up the asshole?” Stan could swear he saw Cartman smirking through this question.
“Look, you know, we were kids. It was all, like, trying to sort things out, and … and…”
“Oh my god, dude,” Cartman said, somewhat wistfully. “I’ve dreamed about this moment for so long, you have no idea. I just wish … well, I guess I wish I weren’t driving, so I could see how miserable you look knowing that I’ve known all this time that you actually let Butters — Butters, of all people! — fuck you in the ass.”
Stan tried to sit up straighter to reassert himself. “It’s not so absurd!” he protested. “I’m gay, fat ass, and that is sort of what we do—”
“Oh, really?” Cartman crowed. “I hadn’t noticed! I find this information shocking. I think I need some music. Like, to help me process.”
Before Stan could protest, or form words, or shove Eric’s hand away from the dial, the volume was at maximum capacity, locking both of them into another half hour of driving to outdated college rock at an unbearable frequency.
~
He could not fucking believe they wouldn’t take back his fucking iPod.
“It’s engraved, sir,” the clerk told him dourly. “You can’t just return an engraved iPod.”
“Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do with it?” It was at this moment that he felt his back pocket vibrating.
“Oh, shit,” Stan gasped, feeling overwhelmed. He turned to Cartman, who was giving him a look of visible annoyance at simply having to be there. Then he whipped right back around to the man behind the counter and said, very sweetly, “Please?”
“Hey, queer,” Cartman pointed out, as if Stan couldn’t hear. “Your damn phone is mooing.”
“Here!” Stan shouted, pulling his phone out of his pocket. He thrust it into Cartman’s face. “Deal with it!” he cried over the electronic animal noises.
“All right, fine.” Cartman opened the phone and Stan heard him ask, “What?” as he shuffled away.
“Sir,” the clerk began again, clearing his throat. “We cannot take back this iPod. It’s engraved, it’s open, it’s been played. It’s loaded with music. It’s yours.”
“But you don’t understand!” Stan was feeling desperate. “My ex-boyfriend gave it to me!”
“Wow, that was awfully nice of him,” the clerk deadpanned.
“No, no,” Stan corrected. “We were dating when I got it. I dumped him like a week later.”
“Wow.” The man did not flinch. “You’re an asshole.”
“Oh, like you have fucking any idea,” Stan growled. He saw Cartman sidle back up to him out of the corner of his eye. “He’s an asshole.”
Cartman cleared his throat, proffering the cell. “Here, buddy. Someone wants to talk to you.”
Stan took the phone with hesitance, bringing it slowly to his ear.
“Hello?”
Instantly, he was rewarded with, “You bloody fucking asshole!”
Stan swallowed. “Hi, Loren.”
“You fucking piece of shit!”
“Did you have a nice Christmas?”
“We’ll just be going,” Cartman said to the man behind the counter, tugging Stan away from the returns desk, phone clutched to his ear.
~
There was nothing Stan could do but stay on the telephone and be berated by one pissed-off ex. After about five minutes of this, Cartman threw his arms up in exasperation, and exclaimed. “Well, screw you, hippie! I’ll be at the GameStop if you need me.” Stan didn’t want him to leave, but he knew that if he stopped to beg Cartman to stick around, Loren would just get on his case about how he was with some other dude. If that happened, no amount of explanation would help end the accusations of cheating and heartbreaking and callousness. Besides, Stan wasn’t really sure how to explain Eric Cartman to anyone who didn’t know him, and just why it was inconceivable that they ever had or ever would have sex. Still, as annoying as screaming was, Loren wasn’t wrong; Stan had cheated on him with delightful regularity, just about as often as he could. So he held his tongue, and felt miserably put-upon while his ex-boyfriend gave him the dressing-down he maybe-probably-didn’t deserve.
Stan really didn’t want this to last all day. He could barely get a word in, so he took the time to think about Kyle. How did Kyle find out about him and Ike? For that matter, why did Kyle care? Kyle was definitely having sex when he was 15 — well, maybe not having sex, but he had definitely had sex. So he figured Kyle’s attitude toward 15-year-olds having sex must be generally positive, right? If Stan had been having sex when he was 15, instead of masturbating to Kyle’s yearbook picture with the lights off and door locked, would someone have cared? He supposed it all had to do with who he would have been theoretically boning. Still, he had no idea why Kyle was so pissed off, so emotionally torn on this. Granted, Kyle wasn’t stable, but he had always been relatively cool to Stan, so … was he just being possessive? Was it even possible that he was—
“Are you even listening to me?”
Stan pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he got an idea. “You know what?” he snapped. “No.”
There was a pause, then a shriek of ,“Well, fuck you, Marsh!” and with that, Loren hung up the phone.
“Christ.” Stan shut his phone, and shoved it back in his pocket.
There was a directory a few feet away, Stan shuffled over to it, hands on his hips, scanning around for the GameStop. To his dismay, it was one floor down and somewhat far away, and Stan was inwardly cursing Cartman for wandering off when Cartman showed back up, grabbing Stan by the shoulder and whirling him around.
“We have a problem.”
“What?” Stan snapped. “I am not in the mood for problems, Cartman! What is the fucking problem?”
“My keys,” he said mournfully. “I think somebody stole them. Or I left them somewhere.”
Stan’s jaw dropped. “You’re sure?” he asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Well, that’s just fucking great!” Stan cried. He whipped around, looking for somewhere to sit. He wobbled over to the nearest bench, dodging the moderate amount of post-holiday shoppers, and fell onto his ass, only to be joined by Cartman. “This is just fucking awesome, Eric, like all I need is to be stranded at a fucking mall in Denver with you and this fucking iPod.”
“Chill out, dude.” Cartman yanked his phone out of his pocket. “I’ll just call my fucking mom. She’s got spare keys.”
“Like I really want to wait for her to get her ass out here and drive us home!”
Cartman silently gave Stan the finger while he talked to his mother: “Well, sorry, bitch! Sometimes people make mistakes, okay?” Stan could hear Liane’s concerned blathering on the other side of the phone. She probably wasn’t saying anything too upsetting, just a lot of, ‘That was very naughty, Eric,’ and, ‘You have to be more responsible, poopsiekins.’
“Just be fucking here to get us,” Eric concluded. “Yeah, all right, we’ll wait by the fucking car.” He shut his phone, making an audible noise in his fury. “God! I cannot stand that ho!”
~
“You need to chill out, seriously,” Cartman announced as they made their way past the Express for Men. Stan remembered shopping at Express for Men. He was so naïve then, about what was attractive and what was cool. He hoped he looked better now. He hoped. “You need to stop being such a whiny gay baby,” he heard Cartman say, and he stopped in front of the pretzel cart. “What?” Cartman asked, stalking back toward Stan. “You’re being a whiny fucking gay baby. So your damn ex called to bitch? Whatever, what do you care? Just be like, ‘Fuck you, ho, I’m done with you now,’ and move on.” Cartman crossed his arms.
“I find so much wrong with what you just said. One, like you would have any idea what kind of stress this dumping situation has got me in—”
Cartman rolled his eyes. “Oh, like I’ve never had to dump some fucking cumbucket bitch before, you whiny gay baby.”
“I hardly believe that. … And I am not a whiny gay baby!”
“Oh, let’s see about that.” Cartman began to count off on his fingers. “Are you being a baby? Yes. Are you whining about some stupid bullshit thing? Yes! Are you gay? Are you ever! So yeah, I’m gonna have to stick with my initial statement.”
“Fuck you, Eric, seriously. You can’t fucking go around calling people gay whiny babies whenever you damn well feel like it.”
“I said ‘whiny gay baby,’ not ‘gay whiny baby,’ ” Cartman corrected. He coughed. “For the record.”
“Shut up!”
“All right, that’s fine.” Cartman threw his hands up and made a disgusted expression before continuing out to the parking lot, repeating ‘whiny gay baby’ under his breath as he left.
As much as he would like to have refused to follow, Stan was incredibly eager to get home, so he set off on a slow, stilted run after his shopping companion.
When he’d finally caught up, Stan panted, “Slow down, asshole.”
“Oh, oh I’m an asshole.” Cartman did not slow down. “You’re been, like, PMSing since you got in the car with me.”
“I do not PMS, Cartman!”
“Whatever, Stan. PMSing, fagging out, whatever the fuck is wrong with you, just cut it out right now. I got enough shit to worry about between you acting like a bitch and my fucking slut mom giving me a hard time.”
Stan was still trying to catch his breath while keeping up with Eric’s long-legged stride. “You must be insane. Your mom is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”
“Yeah,” Eric agreed. “To her fucking boyfriend. That guy just seriously pisses me off.”
“Your mom is dating?”
It seemed like Eric wasn’t even listening to Stan anymore. “I don’t even know how she got some dude to do her anyway, it’s not like she’s hot anymore. Not like your mom.”
“What?” Stan thought he could feel his eyes bugging out of their sockets.
“I mean, your mom is super hot.”
“What?” Stan repeated. He was sure his face was turning red.
“Calm down, Stan. If you weren’t gay, you’d understand.”
“If I wasn’t gay? What? No. How about, she’s my mom!” Stan paused. “And she’s like 50!” he added.
“Yeah, I’m just saying, she’s totally like a MILF.” Cartman rolled his eyes as Stan continued to make noises of outrage. “Okay, fine, that’s fine. Don’t take my compliments. I won’t start telling you your sister’s hot, either.”
“Oh, no no no. Please, just stop, Cartman. Please, please. Just stop.”
“What? You’d think a guy would be flattered that another guy totally thinks his mom and sister are hot.”
Stan felt queasy. “You just don’t get it at all, Cartman. Just not at all.”
They walked the rest of the way to the car in relative silence. Stan’s attention was caught between being frankly perturbed by Cartman’s mind-boggling insistence that the women in his family were ‘hot,’ and being downright grateful that he had the everyday normalcy of Cartman’s attitude to distract him from the things that were really eating away at him. And the thing was, he didn’t feel even halfway bad about Loren. Even Loren was just another distraction from Kyle. Oh sure, he wished he hadn’t been yelled at, but then, if he hadn’t been yelled at, he wouldn’t be filling his mind with the little indignities that came with being screamed at over the phone from a thousand miles away by your ex-boyfriend, who really just did not understand how very painful it was to put up with his sappy bullshit every moment of your relationship, and how dare he, and so on.
Relative silence meant that there was no talking, but Cartman was always making some sort of noise, generally making little grunts as he thundered through the salty slush of the parking lot. Stan imagined what it must be like to be intimate with Eric Cartman, how he must have grunted in his sleep and when on the receiving end of oral sex, and in all sorts of other places. Loren was the kind of man who gave willowy little gasps of sighs, shuddering gently like a hollow-boned creature, maybe that bizarre lizard-bird Stan sometimes saw in dinosaur books as a kid. Cartman, on the other hand, was quite like a water buffalo, Stan assumed, very noisy and prone to making guttural noises up until the moment they reached his car and he belched out, “Oh, fuck me.”
“What?” Stan asked.
Cartman pressed his nose up to the glass and pointed down at his seat. “There’s my keys,” he said sadly, like there was some regret in his voice.
“So?” Stan asked. “Open the door.” With ease, Cartman was able to retrieve his car keys from the seat. “Dude. All that stress,” Stan lamented.
“Whatever.” Cartman snapped his fingers, and nestled his behind in the cloth of the bucket seat. “Come on, let’s bail.”
“Bail?” Stan asked. “Aren’t you at least going to call your mom?”
Cartman snorted. “She’s got nothing better to do,” was all he gave as an excuse. He revved the engine a couple of times before lighting up a cigarette. Stan opened his mouth, but Cartman just said, “I know, you quit. God, you’re a preachy bitch.”
“I didn’t even say anything,” was the last thing Stan said for the duration of the drive back to South Park.
~
Cartman dropped him off at home, but not before toying with Stan’s meager request to avoid driving past the Broflovskis’ at all costs. “Why?” Cartman asked between the thin twists of smoke pervading his nostrils. “You’re like 4 sometimes, Stan, seriously, Jesus Christ.”
“Aw, you know what? Just fucking drive however you want.”
“Oh-ho, no, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, buddy?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” Cartman paused to extinguish yet another cigarette, his fifth of the ride, out on the dashboard. “What the fuck are we even talking about?”
“Just do me a favor and don’t drive by Kyle’s, okay? I’ve had enough shit for the time being.”
When he was getting out of the car, Stan dug the iPod out of his pocket, and tossed it in Cartman’s lap.
“Thanks for the time!” he said sarcastically.
“What the fuck is this?” Cartman asked, scrambling to get the device out from between his legs. “What am I going to do with a gay blue iPod?”
“I don’t know, I sure as fuck don’t want it. Sell it on eBay or something.”
Cartman turned the thing around, inspecting it carefully, and Stan noticed his sour expression softening gradually, until he got to the back. “Loren? Aw, sick! What the fuck do you think I want this gay iPod for?”
“It’s not a gay iPod, fat ass!” Stan snapped. “An iPod can’t be gay!”
“Yeah, right, and that’s why it says ‘Heart Loren’ on it, like that’s not gay?”
“Well, how do you know it’s not for a girl? And for that matter, how do you even know what gender Loren is?”
“Because he spells his fucking name like a fucking faggot fairy!” Immediately, Cartman corrected himself: “Sorry, a fucking homosexual fairy, sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Stan shrugged. “I fucking hate him, call him a faggot all you want.”
“Well, thanks for the iPod, Stan,” Cartman sneered, fishing another cigarette out of his pack. “Merry fucking Christmas and shit.”
“Oh, fuck off, Cartman, it’s a perfectly good iPod!”
In response, Cartman rolled up the passenger window and sped away, brandishing a finger.
~
Despite his best effort, Stan did not stomp angrily up the stairs quickly enough to avoid his mother.
“Aw, what now?” he moaned, pulling off his gloves. “Can’t I have one fucking moment of privacy?”
Sharon blinked at him. And then she snapped: “You’ve barely spoken to me or your father since you’ve been home! You haven’t even come out of your room except for Christmas dinner and to open presents!”
“Yeah, and I’m so fucking glad, ‘cause they were so fucking awesome,” Stan replied.
Sharon crossed her arms. “You’ll thank us when you’re older! A lot of people wish their parents would set them up with a retirement account.”
Stan rolled his eyes. “A lot of people would also see that their cheap-ass parents were just looking to hide taxable income from the IRS.”
Evasively, Sharon said, “Well, what about the clothes, Stanley? All of your T-shirts are falling apart.”
“Oh my God, will you just stop trying so fucking hard to hold on the tentative grasp you have on my childhood? Jesus Christ, other people let their kids grow up!”
“I think a good number of them don’t.” Shifting her weight, Sharon said, “That reminds me. I invited the Broflovskis over for dinner tomorrow night.”
Stan blanched. And then he shouted, “What?”
“Well, I don’t know when the next time you’re going to be home is!” Sharon snapped, and it definitely sounded like she’d been holding this in for a while. But then, of course, she softened: “We haven’t seen your sister for three years,” she said pitifully. It was true, none of them had. “I would just like it if for a couple of weeks, we could be like we used to be.”
Stan grunted. “How did we used to be?”
“Familial, I guess,” Sharon wagered.
“We were never like that, Mom.”
She pushed some of his hair out of his eyes, and he flinched. “You were such a mild boy,” she told him, like he wanted to be told how he used to be when he was lame and scared and pathetic. “We’re proud of you, you know. Why won’t you let us be part of things? The least you can do is come to dinner tomorrow. Kyle will be there, it’s not like you have to be with the grown ups.”
Stan sighed. “Am I not a grown up?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m pissed at Kyle. Kyle’s a douche.” This was more or less a lie — he wasn’t pissed at Kyle, he was afraid of Kyle; Kyle wasn’t a douche, he was just overreacting. But Sharon didn’t need to hear anything introspective at the moment, as far as Stan was concerned.
“It’s 6:30 tomorrow night,” she said, with some finality. “Can we expect to see you then, honey?”
Stan shut his eyes. “Sure,” he breathed. “Just leave me alone until then.”
“Okay,” she agreed quietly. She turned to walk away, but stopped for a moment. “You know you can tell me anything, right?” she asked tentatively.
He grunted in acknowledgment, and waited for her to go away before making his way up the stairs.
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-19 05:50 (UTC)I can't wait until the next chapter! (moar Kyle, plz)
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Date: 2009-12-19 22:26 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-19 10:32 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-19 22:27 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-23 20:51 (UTC)lol
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Date: 2009-12-24 04:00 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-28 04:47 (UTC)<33333
no subject
Date: 2009-12-28 07:07 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-07 04:15 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-08 04:45 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-09 03:50 (UTC)I think you toned him down enough to make him recognizable as Cartman, with all his particular tics, but the particular way you portray him makes it possible to imagine how be became what he is now by maturing.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-10 04:34 (UTC)