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sekritomg
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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.
During Stan’s second beer after Craig left, the sound of mooing filled the bar, gaining him a handful of spiteful glances before he picked it up.
“Where are you?” It was Kenny’s voice on the phone, clear and throaty. Kenny always sounded intrigued; his voice had a little up-tick to it that Stan could visualize anywhere, any time. Like Kyle’s — even like Cartman’s. Sometimes in times of crisis Stan shut his eyes and heard Kyle speaking to him — new things, things he’d never said before. Kyle was his conscience, maybe. When Stan tried to hear Ike all he heard was baby talk. “Don’t kick the baby, don’t kick the baby” — protests against Kyle’s childhood sadism. But now Kyle was a masochist. Things were so messed up.
“Hello?” Kenny repeated. “Where are you? Stan?”
“I’m at the bar.” Stan didn’t need to specific. “Craig just left; I have been drinking, Kenny. Drinking drinking drinking.”
“Good job. We’re about to start drinking.”
“Who’s about to start drinking?” Stan asked.
“Me and the boys.”
“Kyle?”
“Mmm, I can’t get in touch with him, actually. His phone keeps going to voice mail after two rings, like he sees I’m calling and keeps shutting it off, but isn’t turning off his phone.”
Stan played Kyle’s voicemail greeting to himself; it was crisp and professional, balanced and non-threatening: “This is Kyle Broflovski. Please leave a message and I will return your call at my earliest convenience. Thank you.” Not dramatic or psychotic or weepy or harmful. Just Kyle’s confident voice, unburdened. Stan was jealous that Kenny had gotten to hear it that evening, a few times at that; if Stan had called, would Kyle have turned the phone off entirely?
“Do you know where he is?” Kenny asked.
Stan considered that Ike would know. “I saw him at dinner,” he answered. “He was pretty out of it. He’s probably at home. If he wasn’t at home his mom would have called me hysterical by now.”
“Okay. Hold on.” For a minute the call was full of muffled voices in conference. “So sit tight,” Kenny said as he returned. “We’ll be there in a few.”
“Hooray,” Stan said. He snapped his phone shut.
~
“What took you so long?” Stan asked when Kenny slipped into the booth across from him.
“What are you talking about? We spoke like 10 minutes ago.”
“Is it just you?”
“No.” Kenny poked into his vest pocket, extracting a cigarette. “Cartman’s parking. Butters is with him.” Taking a first drag, he glanced down at the four empty glasses sitting on the table. “Is that all?”
Stan snorted. “Nah. One of those was a Coke, but Craig bought me a bunch before.”
“Classy.” Exhale. “Really didn’t think Craig swung that way.”
“He doesn’t. But I took a stab at him anyway. He was not delighted. He rejected me. Me!” Stan began to laugh. “No one rejects me! I lay bitches to waste, Kenny. Do you know how many notches I have on the doorframe of my closet at school? Take a guess.”
“Okay, I can see that someone’s dranked.”
“One-hundred seventy-three!” Stan heaved his shoulders. “When I get back remind me to add another one.”
“You’re counting who? Craig, the bartender, Jesus?”
“Only if Jesus is Canadian.”
“Do not seem to recall Jesus being Canadian in my distant personal experience.” Kenny set his cigarette down on an ashtray he’d spotted at the corner of the table. It teetered a bit before settling. He stuck up a flannelled arm. “Eric! Butters!” he screamed. “Yo!”
Cartman clobbered over, Butters dancing behind him. Stan scowled at the way Butters tiptoed around defrosting messes of melted ice and pebbles of salt with grace and dignity. Cartman wasted no time surveying the surroundings, towering over the table, casting a shadow across Kenny’s puffy vest and the ashtray.
“What are we drinking?” he asked.
Kenny shrugged. “Cokes, apparently.”
“Shut up! Only that one was a Coke. And actually it was a Pepsi.” Stan pointed to the single empty glass with a pool of dirty water in the bottom and a sheen of condensation that had soaked the paper coaster underneath it. “These three were just Bud on tap.”
“Light?” Butters asked.
“Ugh, probably,” Cartman scoffed. “What else do homosexuals drink?”
“Tequila,” Butters and Stan responded, overlapping. Butters blushed; Stan turned away.
“Okay.” Kenny stabbed his cigarette against the bottom of the ashtray, and left it smoldering to death, crinkled near the filter. He hoisted himself from the booth, around Cartman and Butters. “I need a drink. Stan, do you want more, or are you satisfied?”
“I get satisfaction from nothing.” Stan looked into his wallet, and thrust a decaying 10-dollar bill at Kenny.
Kenny pocketed it. “Eric, join me?”
“Eh, why the fuck not?” Cartman shrugged.
Butters climbed into the seat Kenny had vacated. “I’ll just stay here with Stan,” he said.
“No one asked you, Butters.”
“That reminds me, Eric. Do I recall something about you owing me a drink? From that time I let you throw a party at my parents’ house?”
“Ugh. Fine, Butters, Jew me because I asked you to host one tiny party at your place. What can I get for you? A cosmo?”
“Just a tonic water, please.”
“That’s gay,” Cartman said, shuffling away.
With a shrug, Kenny followed.
“Are you straight-edge, or something?” Stan asked. “I forget if I asked you already. Did I ask you already? Sometime?”
“Maybe. Um.” Tugging his scarf off, Butters beamed at Stan. “No, I ain’t straight-edge, nothing like that. I just don’t — you know, it’s weird…”
“What’s weird? Hanging out with Cartman?”
Butters slipped out of his pea coat, folding it into a compact roll and tucking it between himself and the wall. “Nah, I see Eric all the time at school. I just feel like in a group of four people, someone should keep sober.”
“You don’t, like, have to lie to me, dude. I don’t care if you drink or not.”
“What is it with all you boys?” Butters asked. “No one cares a bit what you drink or don’t at school, then I come back and it’s like, a whole politics of drinking.”
“Maybe it’s ’cause there’s nothing else to do here,” Stan posited.
“Maybe so.” Butters cleared his throat, rolled up his shirtsleeves. “I was hoping you’d be sober yourself, actually. I was regretting we didn’t get any time to talk just us since you’ve been here.”
“We talked at your house. Maybe. I choose not to remember a lot about that evening.”
“Eh, it wasn’t so awful. Ah, yeah, maybe we did talk a little, but not really. I wanna know how you’re doing. A couple of nights of parties and bars don’t constitute a friendship. Eric says you broke up with the boy you were seeing. I’m awful sorry.”
“Ugh, I’m not.”
“Why not?” Butters cocked his head.
“Because, Butters, he was just some dumb, hot, rich guy, okay, he pissed me off and I just don’t even want to talk about it, okay? That guy was like a fucking harpy. The only time I could stand him was when I was like fucking him and even then I had to fucking gag him to make him stop talking. He was like a fucking woman. Such a fucking stupid woman. With a cock.”
“Well, I can see how that’d be a problem.”
“Yes.”
“Can I tell you about my boyfriend? His name’s—”
“I really don’t care.”
Butters recoiled. “Gosh, you’ve become a mean drunk over the past week.”
“I’ve had a shitty fucking week.”
They sat in silence until Kenny and Cartman returned with drinks. “Here you go, queer,” Cartman said as he handed Stan his drink. “One Bud Light.”
“I wasn’t drinking light,” Stan bitched. “Can someone please get these fucking glasses off the table?”
“Yeah, the guy who fucking downed four diet Cokes can do it.” Cartman shoved his way into the booth next to Stan, sucking down something out of a can.
Stan did not correct Cartman in regard to the matter of what he had been drinking previously.
“Can we toast?” Butters asked.
Uniformly, Stan, Kenny, and Cartman answered, “No.”
“There’s really nothing to celebrate,” Kenny said. He was drinking Coors straight from a brown bottle. Stan felt that Kenny looked very natural with a beer in his hand. Kenny looked even more natural with a beer and cigarette, though, so he put the bottle down to pull one out of his pack. “Life is … just, you know, how it always is.”
To this sentiment, Butters nodded vigorously, grinning. Then, for no discernible reason, he giggled into his clasped hands. “Aw, I still like you guys!” he cheered.
“That’s gay. Hey, Kenny.” Cartman grasped at the packet in Kenny’s hands. “Give me a cigarette.”
“Get your own.”
“No, Kenny, give it.”
“Get your own, Eric, we don’t even smoke the same brand.”
“I left mine in the car, Kenny, give me a cigarette.”
“Say please and maybe I’ll give you a cigarette.”
Cartman snorted. “That’s ridiculous. I’m not going to say please. Only faggots say ‘please.’ ”
“Oh, that’s not true, Eric.”
“Shut up, Butters, it is so.”
Shrugging it off, Butters took a sip of his tonic water.
“Butters, you can’t just let people talk like that,” Stan said.
“Talk like what?” Kenny asked.
“Like homophobic retards.”
“Well, I don’t think they’re homophobic retards,” Butters explained. “Although Stan is right, Eric, it isn’t very nice,” he added, narrowing his eyes at Cartman.
“Whatever, Butters. You know you’re a fag, that’s all I’m saying. If Stan still smoked he’d give me a cigarette.”
“Not if you’re calling me a fag I wouldn’t!”
“Fine, fag, whatever. If Kyle were here he’d give me a cigarette.”
“Well, he’s not.” Finally, Kenny managed to get the thing lit, and set it in the ashtray. “And he wouldn’t have any to give you anyway.”
“Yeah, you’re right, Kenny. He’s such a damn Jew with his cigarettes.” A wry smile crept across Cartman’s face. “But at least he’s not a whiny little fag.”
“That’s it!” Stan cried. “Shut the fuck up! You’re just trying to piss me off!”
The smile fell from Cartman’s lips; now his brows were arched in annoyance. “Oh, fuck me, Stan. You need to get off the rag already. What is it with you and that word? You know it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yes it does!” Stan began to pound his fist on the table. “It’s fucking insulting and it pisses me off!”
“Okay.” Kenny flicked some ash off of his cigarette. “Step off, dude.”
“No, I will not step off. It’s mean! How would you like to spend five years of your adolescence hearing people say that word with a scowl on their face and wondering if you said something, what would they do? What would you have done, fat ass? If you knew?”
“Well, um.” Cartman rolled his eyes. “Considering Butters told me you guys were fucking, I totally knew, not to mention you’re a gay little bitch, and I don’t give a shit if you’re gay, Stan, seriously. Go tattoo it on your face, see if I care. I mean, I’ll totally rip on you, it’s funny as shit, but I’m not responsible for the weird shit you make up in your head to tell yourself you’re special. Especially after you fucking ran away to
“No offense, Stan. But, burn.” Butters raised his drink. “Right?”
“I heard it.” Kenny raised his bottle and clinked it against Butters’ glass. “See, that’s what Eric has going for him, he just says it like it is. And I — wait. You guys fucked?”
“No,” Stan grunted.
“Yeah, a bunch. In high school.” Butters was beet-red.
“Why did I never see it before?” Kenny asked. “Now I can’t un-see it.”
“It’s a private matter,” Butters replied. “Was a private matter, anyway. Thank you, Eric.”
“Hey! I kept that shit to myself for like five years, Butters, seriously.”
“Yeah, but I bet you only didn’t tell because you thought no one’d ever believe you.”
“I can’t believe this.” Stan had his head in his hands, eyes clenched. “I’m going to — I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t deal with this anymore, I have to get out of here—”
“Oh, calm down.” Kenny tapped his package of cigarettes against the table. “No one’s judging you. And we’re just ripping on you, dude. Don’t take it so hard.”
“I hate this place, I hate it, I want to leave now. Why is this happening to me? Of all the decent people—”
Stan was interrupted by the jangle of a cell phone — not an animal’s strangled cry, but a tinny reproduction of “Ghetto Supastar.” Over the ringtone, Butters began to sing “
Kenny flipped the phone to his ear without sparing it a glance. “McCormick.”
Cartman reached over the table to clamp a hand over Butters’ mouth.
“Hey.” The joy drained from Kenny’s voice. “I’m just out with the guys.” Pause. The incessant muzzle of a distorted voice. Kenny sighed. “Eric, Butters, Stan. … Stan. … I’ve known him since I was 4. Or something. … No, he’s gay. No, not like — no, they’re friends, I think, it’s just irrelevant. … Yeah, I got paid today. Hells yeah. I got you covered, baby. Yeah, I don’t know. Where am I supposed to get doughnuts at this hour? The gas station? Baby, no — I don’t—”
Kenny yanked the phone from his ear, scowling and glancing at the screen.
“Baby, I gotta take this. No, it’s not business, but I’ve been trying to get him on the phone all night. Ugh, well, just be patient, I’m putting you on hold. No, it’s not like that! … Okay, Tricia, I’m hanging up. Don’t be jealous. That’s retarded. … It’s retarded and stupid and I’m not gonna do this. Okay? Good-bye. Get your own fucking doughnuts, like I want you feeding my kid that shit anyway. Good night.”
“Is that Kyle?” Stan asked. Butters shushed him.
“Hey, we wanted you to come out with us,” Kenny said casually, into the phone, clutching at his cigarette poised over a coaster, ash threatening to drop to the table. The undecipherable voice on the other side of the connection sounded panicked. Kenny rolled his eyes. “Take a deep breath,” he suggested. “Again.”
“Kyle.” Stan’s hand shot out for Kenny’s cell phone; Kenny had to dodge. “Is that Kyle? I need to talk to him, you don’t understand—”
Kenny was still on the phone, his cigarette now back in the ashtray as he plugged his free ear with a finger, trying to block out the noise of the bar, and Stan. “Dude, calm down. … I know, dude, I know just saying calm down doesn’t help. … Are you out of your fucking mind? I’m not going to give you that. … Kyle, you owe me a lot of money, and — I know you can’t pay me, I’m not asking for it. … Well you’re fucking hysterical, dude! Listen to yourself!”
“He needs me,” Stan rasped. “Kenny, give me the phone.”
“Stan, shhhh.”
“Butters, shhhh yourself!”
“If Kyle needed you, he’d of called you,” Butters noted.
“Ugh, fuck it,” Kenny groaned. He lurched to his feet atop the seat of the booth they were sitting at. “No, not you, it’s just these fuckers won’t shut up so I gotta go outside. Hold on, hold on…” After stepping over Cartman’s thighs, Kenny hopped off the seat and ran outside, little bells jingling as he slammed into the door.
For a moment Stan wasn’t sure what to do, what to ask. He had so many questions. But when he tried to get up and follow Kenny, he realized he was too drunk to stand without collapsing, and things began to get woozy. With a deft tug at his T-shirt, Butters had Stan back at his eye level.
“Just hold on a minute,” Butters said, trying to sooth, proffering Stan’s half-empty beer as a means of distraction. “This isn’t your phone call.”
“Butters!” Stan swatted at him and missed, depth perception skewed. “Fuck you!”
“I got a boyfriend, so no thank you,” Butters said matter-of-factly. “If it was meant to be your business, Kyle woulda called you.”
“It is my business! He’s my best friend! Why am I left out?”
“Run away from shit, fag, and you get left out.” Cartman shrugged. “Like you really want to get tangled up in his Jew drama bullshit anyway.”
“Will you quit it with that? I did not run away from anything!”
“Well, we all live in
“I do too live here!”
“Three months a year plus change, Stan. That’s not a lot.”
Stan hardened his mouth and tried to subject Butters to his most chilling stare of hatred; Butters did not yield, and instead took a sip of his drink. So Stan tried the same thing on Cartman.
“Oh, cut that shit out,” Cartman chided. “You’re too drunk to look serious. You look like a fucking lapdog.”
“Fuck you!” Stan replied.
“Ah, yes.” Cartman nodded. “Absolutely devastating. Well done.”
Kenny returned, clutching his cell phone in his left hand, palming it with his right, visibly shaking. “So that went pretty shittily,” he said. “Eric, dude. Can I drag you away from the bar for a minute?”
Cartman grunted an affirmative. “Anything beats watching Stan act like a wounded gay little bitch.”
“I’m not a bitch! He is my best friend, don’t you understand? He means everything to me!”
“Well, if he’s your best friend, why don’t you tell him that getting ripped on amphetamines isn’t going to cancel out the lithium, it’s more like to cause him to overdose, and—” Kenny halted mid-thought, a pang of realization hitting him. “Oh, crap.”
“What?” Stan demanded. “Kenny, what?”
“What nothing,” Kenny said hastily. “Eric, we should…” He trailed off.
“Oh, fuck me,” Cartman growled. “This again? I don’t have time for this shit again.”
“What shit?” Stan kept pressing. Lurching over Butters, he grabbed the collar of Kenny’s vest. “I am not fucking around so just tell me!”
“Maybe you wanna sober up or something first,” Kenny suggested.
“I don’t care, Kenny, I don’t—“
“What? Fuck this,” Cartman interrupted, exasperated. “Stan, your dear super best friend ever in the whole world Jewfag life partner is emotionally impaired and kind of a diva. So like over Thanksgiving me and Kenny—”
“I was there, too.”
“—and Butters went over and we found Kyle like half passed-out puking up roofies which Kenny gave him even though he knows that he’d never get paid which is maybe a bad move if you gotta send a kid to college in 18 years but hey, don’t let’s assume Kenny can plan shit out seeing as he’s like dropped out of community college to sell drugs.” Cartman put his hands on his hips. “Or, like, something.”
“Yeah, I think that about covers it.” Kenny shot Cartman a dirty look.
“Well, someone had to tell him, Kenny. So anyway, we took him to Hell’s Pass, right, but blah blah blah they had him committed or something and his bitch mom had to sign whatever and like, I don’t know, that’s the thing, the end. Good story, right? Well, unless you want that shit to go down again we should go put a stop to this crap. Time’s of the essence. Tick-tock-tick-tock. C’mon, Kenny. I can drive.”
“I’m awful sorry, Stan.” Butters grabbed Stan’s shoulder, wondering whether he should need to keep Stan from following Cartman and Kenny to the car. But Stan stayed put, look of stunned pain on his face.
“I didn’t know that,” Stan muttered. “I — I don’t know anything anymore.”
Butters slipped an arm around Stan’s shoulders. He slid his other hand into the front pocket of Stan’s jeans. “Ugh, these pants are awful tight on you. Hold on, I’m just getting your keys.”
“My keys? Why?”
“I’ll drive you home. And we should probably get some water in you. Come on, Stan.”
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no subject
Date: 2010-12-04 23:43 (UTC)Oh, and Stan is a huge dickhole but you can still sympathize with him, and Kyle's not likable but you still feel bad for him, and I sort of actually liked Cartman in this. It's implied that he's been helping Kyle out and hates it but still does it, lacking affection, out of some sense of loyalty. And Stan just isn't even in that world anymore.
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Date: 2010-12-04 23:44 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-05 03:09 (UTC)It is very gratifying to get feedback that a) people like the story and b) people seem to be getting the things out of the story that I intended. So thank you for reading, really.
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Date: 2010-12-05 04:12 (UTC)Feedback is always love, but I never do it and I felt bad not doing it for this one right around the middle of the third read-through, so there you go!
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Date: 2010-12-05 20:56 (UTC)