Today in SPBB distractions

[sekritomg]

What am I doing, and why?

Title: Love Boat (With Men) [1/?]
Rating: R
Pairing: Stan/Kyle, Kenny/Butters, others, randos
Summary: Stan, Kyle, Cartman, Kenny, and Butters all find themselves on a gay cruise. The cabins are small, and the the Speedos are smaller. Yet everyone is struggling with enormous agendas. And by agenda I mean penis.
Note: Here is a WIP that I cannot and do not promise I will ever finish, or even continue, but I like it and I like the idea, so here we are.

It’s three hours into a six-night Caribbean cruise from San Juan, around Grenada, Barbados, St. Barths, and back again. Three hours in, and Kyle’s already made a new friend.

“Stan!” Kyle shouts from across the solarium, the one place Stan honestly never expected to run into Kyle on this boat. Kyle hates salt water. Kyle has crippling anxiety about developing melanoma, and an even deeper fear of letting anyone see him with his clothes off.  But here Kyle is, standing over there in a Speedo with a really tall guy who looks like he’s been tanning on a weekly basis since he was 8. Tan guy allows himself to be grasped by the forearm and dragged over to the side of the solarium where Stan’s been sitting with a copy of Eating Animals and listening to In Rainbows on his iPod.

Stan straightens up in his deck chair and folds the book shut. “Hey dude,” he says, making perfectly clear his relationship to Kyle is about as casual as possible. “Who’s this?”

“This is, um.” Kyle puts a finger to his lips, like Stan’s just asked him a really deep question.

“Chad,” says Chad.

“Yeah,” says Kyle. “Stan, meet Chad.”

Stan looks up at Chad. He glances at Chad’s abs; he remembers he forgot to buy a new ice cube tray before he left. “Hi.” Stan deliberately pauses to pick up his glass of water, take a sip of his water, and put his water back down before extending a hand. “Stan Marsh,” he says.

“Hey Stan Marsh,” says Chad.

“Hey Chad,” Stan echoes. He’s not sure where this is going.

Then Kyle clears his throat. “So,” he says, finally dropping his death grip on Chad. “You weren’t planning on going back to the room anytime soon, were you?”

“No.” Stan lowers his eyes. “Why?”

“Because I think thinking…” Kyle just trails off.

“What?” Stan has never felt so embarrassed to be sitting in his life, but he knows that if he stands, he’ll come up to maybe Chad’s shoulder, if he’s lucky. “Oh. You want to have sex with this guy?”

Kyle turns about seven shades of violet in the space of five seconds.

Meanwhile, Chad starts laughing, deep and throaty. Stan is careful not to lurch up and sock him. “Yeah, I’m gonna fuck your little friend,” Chad says, putting a hand on his abs to demonstrate further how utterly hilarious he finds this, how hard he’s laughing. When he stops, he wipes his eye demonstratively. “It’s a hook-up cruise, dude, lighten up.”

“Yeah Stan.” Kyle licks his lips, but Stan can hear how mortified he is. It’s subtle, but Stan can tell. “Lighten up.”

They walk away sort of giggling together, and Chad slaps an arm across Kyle’s back. Stan has to bury his face in his book to keep from rushing over and pulling Chad’s arm out of its socket. Then, slowly, Stan peels his eyes from the page and peers at Kyle as he walks away, at the way Kyle’s royal blue bathing suit creeps up into the cleft of his ass, at how the flesh on the back of Kyle’s thighs trembles just a bit as he walks, barefoot, arm in arm with another man.

Kyle’s not like this, not usually. He’s brisk and erudite, a nervous accountant whose prized possessions are a pair of silver candlesticks his parents gave him when he graduated from college, and his Blackberry, onto which Kyle’s eyes have been glued for the past three years, when he hasn’t been sitting up late Saturday nights in his sterile two-bedroom apartment drinking red wine with Stan and fretting about his lack of prospects. Stan’s prospects, on the whole, aren’t much better, but he’s had an affair or two, mostly with older men who don’t understand that Stan doesn’t appreciate being called “boy” before, during, or after sex. Never, actually, and that’s a deal-breaker. But younger guys are so vapid, and Stan can’t deal with it anymore.

The only reason Stan’s allowed himself to be dragged along on this cruise is for Kyle, who really isn’t vapid at all, but one glass too many of pinot noir and Stan knows he’s not going home, because Kyle is going to sit at the counter until dawn blowing his nose into Stan’s shirt and lamenting that if he doesn’t get to have sex before he’s 30, and get married by 35, he’ll hang himself. Inevitably, Stan will come thisclose to saying, “You know, dude, we could have sex right now, and I’ll put my place on the market in the morning.” But then, when Kyle inevitably decides what he really wants are microwave White Castle sliders, Stan’s courage dissolves into self-pity, and they end up just sitting there trying to talk each other out of depressive slumps, instead of banging, which is what Stan really wants. Well, banging, and he wants to sell his condo. And move in with Kyle. And maybe he practiced signing his last name Marsh-Broflovski so many times in high school that when he’s writing checks these days he almost has to stop himself. Whatever, details.

Then Kenny had to come along with this cruise idea. All he told Kyle was, “Oh, sure, everyone gets laid on the hook-up boat. You’ll love it.” Kyle was sold. And now Stan is sitting in the solarium trying to hide behind a hardcover, until Kyle and his first hook-up, his first-ever hook-up, disappear from view and Stan breathes a sigh of relief. Half-naked men and a few ladies are beginning to invade the area, and Stan hears them laughing, flirting, pushing each other’s shoulders with one hand and a drink in the other and saying, “Get out!” and “Oh god, I’ll just die if I run into my ex” and “thank god I brought enough KY.” Stan didn’t bring any KY, just a suitcase full of books and some aloe for when Kyle gets horribly sunburned, which he will. Stan hopes Chad will be careful with Kyle, will treat Kyle like the special person he is. He hopes they’ll talk a bit, that Chad will ask Kyle what he does, where Kyle went to school, about Kyle’s taste in theater and art. But Stan knows that it’s only a five-minute walk back to their cabin and while he’s been daydreaming about Kyle, the deed’s probably already been done. It’s the first, but not the last, time Stan feels sick to his stomach on this trip. He puts his headphones back on and splays his book over his face, and soon he falls asleep.

~

Eric reeks of some cologne so noxious that Stan is grateful he’s not inside, trapped with the stench, forcing him to vomit where he stands. As it is, he’s lucky to be on deck, where he can just lean over the rail if he has to and barf right into the sea. Of course, there are lifeboats everywhere, and there are decks below them, terracing out like Anasazi cities staggering up red cliffs. The air is thick with salt, balmy and warm, but not aggressively so. Eric’s drinking something that is bright blue with red striations in the glass, a kind of fluted hurricane monster, with a skewer of pineapple rings and cherries, topped at the end by a sprig of mylar.

“What the fuck are you drinking?” Kenny asks, broaching the topic that’s been on everyone’s mind.

“It’s called a Blue Moon,” says Eric, taking a big gulp of it. When he speaks, his teeth are already tinged purple: “It’s curacao and brandy, and—”

“Oh, that sounds pretty good,” says Butters. He’s drinking what seems to be a Shirley Temple, although Stan is positive there’s vodka or something in it. The color of the drink, pinkishly bloody, is like the color of Butters’ shirt, which is only tucked into his off-white corduroy cut-offs at the front. Butters looks like a candy cane and it’s not sexual in the least, although Stan isn’t going to tell him this. Stan’s worn jeans and a black T-shirt to every non-work function of his life since he was 15. No one would ever take anything Stan thought about fashion seriously. “Can I try your drink, Eric?” Butters asks.

“No, Butters. Get your own.”

“But I already got a drink.”

“Hey, no, here.” Kenny puts one hand on Butters’ ass, and takes his drink with the other. “Here, baby, I’ll finish this. You go.”

“Kenny,” says Butters. There’s a note of warning in his voice. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Hey.” Kenny drops his hand from Butters’ behind, handing the drink back. “Fine, do whatever you want. I’m just trying to be accommodating.”

“Accommodating? Is that a clinical term?”

“It’s just what people do when they love each other. You remember what love is, Butters, right?”

“Actually.” Butters’ eye drifts toward the bar. There are so many guys there that Stan can’t be certain who Butters is focusing on, but he’s clearly looking at someone. The only thing to look at on this ship is men. They’re surrounded by an expanse of ocean, and it’s still too early for sunset. “I’m gonna go,” Butters says, leaving his glass in Kenny’s hands after all.

“Bring me back a report,” Kenny tells him, sipping the drink.

Butters doesn’t leave without pecking Kenny on the cheek. When he’s gone, Kenny says, “You guys have got to help me.”

“Help you what?” asks Stan.

“Not on your life,” says Eric.

“Oh, fuck you, I haven’t even asked yet.” Kenny finishes the end of Butters’ drink in one swig and reaches over to set it on a high table. “But if either of you happen to come across any parties in search of a three-way, well. You can point them in my direction.” Kenny wrinkles his nose. Stan realizes he’s picked that up from Butters. “Our direction.”

Eric snorts. “If I find anyone looking for a three-way, Kenny, why the fuck would I invite you?”

“Oh, like anyone on this ship is going to fuck you.” Kenny says this without any hatred or malice in his voice, just a kind of morose certainty. Stan can’t help but agree with it.

“It’s all right,” Stan says to Eric, patting him on the shoulder of his baby power-blue button down, tucked into black slacks around serious bulk.  “You’re going to be just fine.” Stan tries to sound as though he believes this.

The pits and lapels of Eric’s shirt, unbuttoned to the peak of his chest hair, are soaking, and he’s perspiring off the tip of his nose. When he came out here his hair was slicked back, but as he sweats, sections are beginning to come away in chunks, peeling into Eric’s face. He can’t help looking battle-scarred, and he hasn’t even done anything yet.

Eric shakes Stan’s hand off his shoulder and sneers, “Don’t fucking touch me.”

“Fine.” Stan wipes his hand off on his jeans.

“Where’s your fuck buddy?” Eric asks.

“Roommate.”

“Cabinmate,” Kenny corrects.

“Well, look at you, Kenny, with your nautical vocabulary.” Eric rolls his eyes, and dips into his Blue Moon, eating the drink off his ring finger. “Did you learn that from your days sucking guys off at the docks?”

Stan clears his throat. “I don’t think there are any docks in Colorado.”

“No, seriously,” Eric says through a mouth of blue slush. “Where’d the Jew run off to? Crying in the sauna?”

“I think he’s, um, socializing.” Stan wishes he had a cigarette so he could blow a mouthful of smoke into Eric’s eyes, just to watch them water. Of course, Stan doesn’t smoke, but he’s considered starting, for dramatic effect. It’s a very cinematic scene already, with plush seas extending to the horizon around them, and a thousand shiny boys in neon swimsuits laughing and hooting all around, glasses clinking, the tail end of the day’s sun reflecting off the polished decks.

“Oh.” Kenny winks. He likes to camp, finds it funny. Or Butters finds it funny, sometimes, hard to tell. “Good on him.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t be jealous,” says Kenny.

“Why shouldn’t I be? I mean, I’m not, but if I were—”

“Oh, you like him,” says Eric. “Seriously.”

“I’m going back to my room.” Stan would like to punctuate this statement by crushing a cigarette under his heel, or tossing it over the deck.

“You guys coming to dinner?” Kenny asks.

“I don’t know.” Stan shrugs. “What time is it?”

“Didn’t you read the ship bulletin when you got to your cabin?”

Stan gapes at Kenny. “The what? No, I don’t give a shit about that.” He tucks his book under his arm, and pats his front pocket for his iPod. “But, sure, I’ll see about dinner.”

“You know, they have 24/7 room service, you can get anything you want all day.” A bead of sweat hangs at the tip of Eric’s nose. Stan waits for it to drip onto Eric’s shirt while he gushes about room service. Then Stan walks away.

~

Stan looks at Kyle’s profile against the pillow: strong aquiline nose, thin lips, what Stan’s heard referred to as “high cheekbones.” He isn’t entirely sure what this means, but he thinks it’s code for their prominence. Kyle’s certainly do stand out. He’s got nice lips as well, although of course they’re a bit dry, as back home it’s been winter for months now. Kyle went out and got a haircut just for this cruise, the priciest haircut of his life. Stan received copious e-mails about it at work last Tuesday: I think I’ve ruined my life! I look like a boy hooker. Stan wrote back, sure you look hot. It’s true that the contrast of Kyle’s old hair and Kyle’s new hair is fairly sharp; two weeks ago he wore it all curling around his ears, down his neck and falling into his eyes. Now it’s just shorn into choppy Augustan waves; it makes Stan think of the Prima Porta. He doesn’t find it too hot or too hookerish, just mild and unchallenging.

Not until Stan sits down on the shared bed does he realize that Kyle has been awake the whole time, aware he was being looked it, inspected. He curls with the comforter between his thighs and says, “How’s it going?”

“I should ask you that question.” Stan pats the comforter against Kyle’s rump, where his thigh and hip meet.

“Just fine,” Kyle says.

“Just fine? Not great?”

“Oh, they say no one’s first time is great.”

Stan has to resist contradicting. His first time had been with his piano teacher. Stan had been 15 and this woman could not have been younger than 35, but it was difficult to tell on account of her being so mousy, her thick nude stockings bunching at her ankles like loose skin. Something had possessed Stan to pick at them, which required inching her skirt up a bit and holding a chord with his left hand for so long that his finger joints began to ache. She had the body of a woman who’d never been out of doors; it reminded Stan of slowly proofing dough. It had been great, so great Stan had continued taking lessons well into his last year of high school, when he started sleeping with a sophomore named Bryant who refused to wear underwear.

Bryant was a character. He brought his tennis racket to school each day, and walked through the halls strumming it like a guitar; Bryant didn’t actually plan tennis. Stan offered to teach him, and Bryan demonstrated a real disinterest in learning by going down on Stan in the steam room before they made it onto the court. He also wore yellow every day, every single day. Stan doesn’t know what Bryant is doing now.

“Are you hungry?” Stan asks. He pushes some of Kyle’s loose hair from his ear. “Do you want to go to dinner? Or … do you want to want to talk about it?”

Kyle sits up. “I want to go to dinner.”

“Take a shower first?”

Sniffing under his armpit, Kyle makes a face. Then he says, “No, that’s all right.” He gets up and runs to the bathroom, slamming the door. Stan is able to glance just the sparsest hint of Kyle’s naked ass, all stretched out and gummy.

Their cozy cabin smells of sex, and Stan can feel sweat in the sheets, which are heavy and soiled before Stan’s gotten a chance to sleep in them. He tries to straighten the comforter out while Kyle dresses, and a torn, sticky wrapper flutters from the sheets onto the floor, then another one. Stan goes to throw them away, and he spies the condoms already in the wastepaper basket, sepia-toned and smeared with what Stan knows must be Chad’s semen. Stan hopes he runs into Chad at some point on this boat, preferably after Stan’s been drinking, so he has a defensible reason for kneeing the guy in the groin.

“Are you changing?” Kyle sticks his head out of the bathroom, and the rest of his body follows. He puts a hand to Stan’s waist and stares down at the trash with him. “So yeah,” he breathes, shaking his head. “I got laid finally.”

“Yes.” Stan’s not sure what Kyle would like him to say about it. “You did.”

“I did, yeah.”

“Are you glad?”

Kyle sits on the bed to pull on his shoes, a pair of green topsiders he’ll wear without socks. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay, we don’t have to talk about it.” Stan reaches for his iPod so he can demonstrate for Kyle how they’re not going to talk about it.

“Are you sure you don’t want to put on something better?” Kyle’s got on a pair of white jeans and a cottony mint sweater he’s rolled up to his elbows. This reminds Stan of Easter-egg hunts, but it looks good with Kyle’s hair, and curiously juxtaposes the lingering scent of crotch in the room.

“I’m fine in this,” Stan says.

“Well, it’s just that you always wear that.”

“Guess what? I didn’t really bring anything else.

Hopping off the bed, Kyle goes straight to the small closet, where he starts riffling through Stan’s clothing. “Nice boxers,” he says, unfurling and then refolding a pair of pink ones with rows of black-and-white Scottie dogs.

“Thanks.”

Slamming the closet shut, Kyle moans and says, “Stan, why did you even come on this cruise?”

It’s something Stan’s been asking himself for weeks now. “I though it’d be fun?”

“You’re not a fun person. You don’t like to have fun.

Stan has to steel himself against that accusation. “I have fun doing things all the time. I like relaxing and sitting in the sun and going to parties as much as anyone.”

“I don’t think these are your kinds of parties,” Kyle says. He’s fussing with one of his shoes, the left one, trying to wipe something off the toe. Stan doesn’t want to know what it is. “You’re, um. Pretty indie about shit.”

“I would never use that term for anything.”

Kyle straightens up and inspects his fingernails. “All right.”

“Well, why did you come?”

“To get laid.” Kyle rolls his eyes. “And for Kenny I guess.”

“Why, are you planning on sleeping with him?”

“It’s none of your business who I sleep with.”

Stan shuts his eyes, just for a moment, because he can’t even look at Kyle standing there in white pants that outline everything perfectly.

“Well, I’m going to dinner.” Kyle picks up his room key, a charge card with the cruise company logo on it, from the bedside table where it’s been sitting next to Kyle’s retainer and contact lens cases. “You have 10 seconds to decide if you’re going to come with, or if you’re going to sit here acting better than everyone else on the boat.” He slips the card into his back pocket.

“I hear there’s 24/7 room service,” Stan says.

“You’re impossible.” Kyle has to push Stan out of the way to get out the door. Stan sighs, puts down his iPod, says, “Hold up, dude,” and leaves.

Comments

[negniahn.livejournal.com]

only way this could be better is if there was more of it. PERIOD.

[sekrit-omg.livejournal.com]

I am trying to write SPBB fic. I am 5500 words in and I have not even gotten the story begun. The draft is due in 9 days. So, yes, I might write more cruisefix soon, really soon.

[negniahn.livejournal.com]

WRITE IT

WRITE IT I WANT TO READ IT

IF IT IS HALF AS GOOD AS THIS THEN IT IS SUPERLATIVELY WONDERFUL

no seriously this is beautiful, every fucking part, all the descriptions. I have been Stan, sitting in that chair, so many times it is unreal. no sense of control. gotta make food gotta eat food

[negniahn.livejournal.com]

by "it" I mean BBfic by the way, okay, I don't mean you should totally fuck yourself over and write more of this right away. I'm really, really curious to see what you have / what you're gonna have for BB.

that said you also have to finish this and I will be like, obnoxiously reminding you to, probably. so you have that to dread. <3 <3 <3 <3

[sekrit-omg.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'll keep all of this in mind. What I mostly have for BB so far is people sitting around talking. Tell don't show! I think that's how it should be done.

[negniahn.livejournal.com]

Given your subject matter, I expect you could end up with some very effect showing and not telling scenes as they come along. But yeah if your story starts out with a more gossipy, conversational air, then that's a demonstration in itself, especially if it diminishes as a result of whatever events play out.

[sekrit-omg.livejournal.com]

I am going to approach this story with workmanlike efficiency.

[mesangecoeur.livejournal.com]

Oh please oh please oh please continue.

[sekrit-omg.livejournal.com]

Seems likely that I will, someday.

[mesangecoeur.livejournal.com]

I have a bit of a thing for angsty, one-sided love. It makes me so sad and totally tears me up, but I love it.
............Especially if it has a happy ending.
But oh, Kyle. Why?

[aliassmith.livejournal.com]

If you're going to get distracted from your BB at least you're doing it beautifully ;D

[sekrit-omg.livejournal.com]

I'm sure there will be a happy if complex ending.

But oh, Kyle. Why?

Because if it were easy, that'd be boring.

[sekrit-omg.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[formerdinosaur.livejournal.com]

This is fantastic and I need more. LIKE, I knew it would be fantastic, and I had to stop myself from just leaving you a pointless keysmashing comment as soon as I saw it on my friends list, but I don't think I realized just how badly I NEED THIS STORY until I started getting close to the end and panicking. AH I had no idea this was going to be Kyle's first time!! DDD: It's perfect and terrible (for Kyle and Stan) and I love it.

My favorite details so far were Cartman's drink and Stan's piano teacher. And just all of the outfits, including Stan's too butch for this non-outfits.

My favorite part was actually Butters!?!???!!? holy crap, I always love the way you write him.

I promise to write a bunch more Testaburger Manor after big bang if you write more of this! (I actually wrote some the other day, and figured out the ending!!)

[sekrit-omg.livejournal.com]

I had a lot of fun writing this, like, it's super fun, but it's got to be the least essential SP fic ever written. How many times has this plot been done? Honestly. Well, now it's happening on a cruise ship.

Kyle represents the 28-year-old virgin in all of us.

Why is everyone's favorite part always Butters? The most whatever of all of their whatevers? I mean, honestly, what is it about him?

I promise to write a bunch more Testaburger Manor after big bang if you write more of this!

Sounds fair. I accept.

[formerdinosaur.livejournal.com]

Wellll, Kyle and Stan pining for each other has of course been done, but you do it in this way that makes me insanely invested, so you could rewrite this plot in a hundred different locations and I'd be delighted and grateful.

Like, Kyle just lying there on the bed and letting Stan look at him. After he's done this thing that he had expected Stan to stop him from doing (maybe??). Oh my god. and then he puts on his mint green sweater and white pants ;_________; and complains about Stan's clothes. and bravely faces the cruise ship buffet, wah.

It's probably more accurate to say that your Stan and Kyle are always my favorite parts, but Butters is often the best like, accessory. You have a restrained, subtle Butters who is nonetheless very recognizable.

I'm having a slow writing day, bleh. But I will finish the fan art post when I get home, so that's something.

[sekrit-omg.livejournal.com]

I wonder how many locations I can write this plot in? Or that I have written this plot in? Huh. I mean, I guess if you're going to write this plot, you might as well pick your setting out of a hat. "Oh, I'm writing about Kyle and Stan pining for each other ... when they are working together on an archaeological dig ... in Central America. Kenny is the chief ceramicist and Kyle is gunning for his job, oh ho ho. Little do they know that, um. The entire dig site has been compromised by, like. A drug cartel? Led by ... Christophe?"

You know, okay, you can sit there judging Kyle for his taste in bold pastels, which are in this season, and also he'll have you know that resortwear is a perfectly legit way to dress on a cruise, all right, but -- where was this going? Right. Kyle's far too picky to be doing all this just for the hell of it. Hmmm. Something tells me he's going to hit that buffet hard.

I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore.

I had a good writing weekend. I wasted all of today playing games and like, doing my laundry.

[w0rmsign.livejournal.com]

ah no it cannot end theeeeere.

ugh, Kyle's first hook up is kinda gross :s

I bet Stan always look great in his jeans and black tee though. Loved his need for a cigarette as a prop :)

Also I'm always really intrigued by the way you write Kenny.

Would like to know more!

[sekrit-omg.livejournal.com]

I have a feeling all of Kyle's hookups will be of a similar type and caliber.

Okay, I think more is on the way, except for this pesky big bang, holy crap.

[w0rmsign.livejournal.com]

I have a feeling all of Kyle's hookups will be of a similar type and caliber.

lul, I'd expect no less :]

[oaktree-river.livejournal.com]

Ooh, this is awesome ! And so different (in a good way.)

[sekrit-omg.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Glad you like it.