Full Summary: When his dad loses his job, Stan Marsh is forced to transfer from his beautiful home in Aspen to the hick mountain town of South Park. On his very first day, he gets on the bad side of Kyle Broflovski and Eric Cartman, two sociopathic frenemies who have the rest of the school in fear. Coming between them could be social suicide... or the best mistake Stan has ever made.
Author's Note: The real premise of this story is "What would Kyle have turned out like if Stan had never been in his life?" It was born of a discussion between me and my friend while watching "You're Getting Old", in which we noticed that, in the absence of Stan, Kyle and Cartman appeared to be friends. I theorized that maybe Kyle's militant sense of right and wrong was influenced by Stan's moral compass, since Kyle and Cartman seem to have so much in common aside from that, and she challenged me to write this. So. Yeah.
Anyway, this story is primarily a Style (Stan/Kyle) fanfiction, but it will also contain Cartman/Kyle and Bunny (Kenny/Butters). And sex. And cursing. And underage drinking, but duh.
Disclaimer: I don't own South Park or any of these characters. Every last one of them belongs to Trey Parker and Matt Stone. I am also not profiting from this story in any way, shape, or form. Except creatively.
Prologue - Before
Stan let Gary drive because he was still a little hungover from last night. Yeah, Gary drove like an old woman, which meant that the four hours it should take to drive from Aspen to Denver were going to be quadrupled, but for once Stan didn't mind. He had a headache and didn't even want to be in the car to begin with.
"Remind me again why Christophe's mom couldn't go and get him herself?" Stan asked, one arm thrown over his eyes to block out anything that might even vaguely resemble sunlight.
He was curled up on the passenger side, the seat as far back as it could go so he could curl his long legs up to his chest and rest his cheek on his knees. He felt like shit and they had already had to pull over once so he could vomit in the snow along the side of the road. Stan would have preferred to be in bed right now, enjoying what rest he could get before Shelly woke up and started screeching.
"Um," Gary said, not taking his eyes off the road. His hands were even at noon and three on the steering wheel. Mormans, man. Stan couldn't stand him sometimes. "Something about Christophe being a godless heathen and not her son anymore."
"Well," Stan grunted as yet another car passed by them, honking and flipping them off. "She's not wrong."
Gary laughed.
Stan closed his eyes and took a moment to examine his life choices. The party had been at Baahir Hakeem's house, though it hadn't been Baahir Hakeem's party. In fact, he had looked both stunned and frightened to open the door, expecting a quiet night of whatever it was losers like him and Gregory Yardale did in their spare time, only to find basically everyone who mattered at Aspen High School standing in his front yard. It had been BYOB, so the richest among them had brought gigantic kegs while the poorest had six packs shoved under their coats. Then again, it was Aspen, so 'poor' usually meant 'cheap' rather than actually poor. Even Stan, who lived in one of the more modest houses in the town, could afford some chianti or scotch or whatever if he begged his parents for cash.
Anyway, the surprise house party had been at Baahir's house and Stan was pretty sure that Gregory Yardale had come onto him last night. Stan hated Gregory Yardale. Gregory was a foufy, blond-haired queermo who considered himself to be so highly educated that he couldn't bear to have a conversation that wasn't about literature or politics or political literature. He was on the fast track to Harvard and liked to brag about his SAT scores at every available opportunity. He was also pretty deep in the closet, unlike Stan, who had been out and about since he was fourteen.
Stan didn't remember much from the party – or want to, really – but he was definitely sure he remembered Gregory Yardale feeling him up under the guise of being his designated driver and helping him to the Audi in the driveway. Which… well, Stan didn't really know how to feel about that, besides gesturing for Gary to pull over again so he could get rid of whatever was left in his stomach.
Between Gary slowing down to let every car behind him go past and Stan needing to stop several more times before his vomit turned into pathetic dry heaving, it was past noon by the time they finally made it into Denver. Stan dozed off in the car while Gary headed into the Fillmore Juvenile Detention Center, leaving the radio on and the heater running. He barely had time to dream before someone punched his widow almost hard enough to shatter it, drawing a surprised shriek from his throat.
"Stan Marsh, you little bitch, open ze door!" The Mole shouted, a lit cigarette hanging between his lips and fury in his eyes. But then again, he always had fury in his eyes. Stan just figured it was a byproduct of being French.
He unlocked all the doors and sat up with a sigh as Gary climbed into the backseat and Christophe got in the front. The Mole's license had been suspended and then outright ripped out of his hands after the second time he had totaled another car just for having an 'I Break for Jesus' bumpersticker, but that didn't stop him from demanding to be behind the wheel of any car he was in. Nevermind that it – along with grand theft auto – was why he had been thrown in juvie to begin with.
"How's Trent doing?" Stan asked, rubbing his eyes and reaching over to shut off the heater. It was freezing outside, but they needed to crack all the windows so they didn't die of secondhand smoke. "And when does he get out again?"
"On ze eighteenth of April," said Christophe indifferently, backing out of the parking space so quickly he nearly collided with the car parked directly across from it. "He is getting out two years early for good behavior."
Gary, who was sitting on the hump with all three seatbelts stretched across his body, explained: "He's finally stopped beating up every kid named Kyle, Eric, or Kenny for practice."
Stan rolled his eyes. Trent Boyett, the fourth member of their gang, had spent five-year stints in Fillmore since he was five. Every single time he got out, he hopped the nearest bus into South Park, seeking out some boys who, he claimed, owed him their lives.
Personally, Stan wished Trent would stop getting himself in so much shit because he was the toughest and baddest kid at Aspen High School and he had single-handedly shut up anyone who might comment on Stan's sexuality by beating the first kid to try into a coma. Which, okay, would have been one of the reasons Trent was in juvie if anyone had had the balls to point fingers at him. The point was, of the three boys he called his sort-of-friends, Trent was the one that Stan considered himself closest to out of necessity.
With Christophe behind the wheel, they made the four-hour drive to Aspen in two and a half. Gary was a sickly pale color and Stan had seen his life flash before his eyes enough times to know it had been incredibly pathetic, but they made it in one piece.
"Thank you for coming to pick me up," Christophe said in a rare show of human decency. Then he took a long drag of his cigarette and said, "Now go and take a shower. You look like my ass hole."
Stan was flipping off the car long after it had raced away.
The house was quiet when Stan walked back in, which was unusual for the middle of the afternoon. His mother would usually be doing chores or whatever it was housewives did with their Saturdays and his sister would usually be parked in front of the television, wearing pajamas and stuffing food past her headgear. However, the television was off, as were all the lights that Stan could see except the one in the kitchen.
He gravitated toward it like a misguided moth, blinking when he saw that his entire family was present and accounted for. His father was sitting at the table, his face in his hands, Shelly was sitting on the counter wearing her usual scowl, and his mother was standing at his father's side, her hand on his shoulder. The women looked up as Stan walked in.
"Oh, honey, there you are," said Sharon Marsh, wringing her hands together. "Sit down. We have some… bad news."
Stan's temples throbbed a migraine warning. "Can I have some aspirin first?"
Shelly was closest to the cupboards so it was she who threw the pill bottle at his head. Stan's years of reflexive flinching helped him avoid it. He retrieved the bottle from the corner of the couch and then returned in time for his mother to hand him a glass of water to wash them down with.
His father still hadn't moved from his place at the table.
Stan gave the pills a couple of minutes to kick in before he finally took a seat opposite his father and asked, "What's going on?"
"Well." Sharon's eyes flicked to Randy for a moment before returning to Stan and she smiled in a way that Stan was sure was meant to be reassuring. It just made him even more wary. "It's – Let me just come right out and say it. Stan, your father lost his job at the office."
Stan waited, but his mother didn't continue.
"So?" he asked. "He can just work at a different office."
"No, he can't," Sharon said and now her voice had gone from soft to irritated. "Your father lost his job because he went to the office drunk, sexually harassed two of his co-workers, verbally abused nine of them, and punched his boss."
Stan's headache exploded in his skull again. He pinched the bridge of his nose and clenched his eyes shut, trying to ward it off. Of course that was what happened. Of course. Because his dad was an alcoholic idiot and Stan had the worst family.
"In my defense, I was having a rough day and Florence said that having a couple of drinks during lunch couldn't hurt," he heard his father say.
Stan was momentarily gratified that he at least sounded miserable until he opened his eyes and realized that his dad looked like a fried turd right now. He wasn't sorry. He was just hungover.
Stan clenched his eyes shut again. His father was a geologist with the United States Geological Survey. Stan had been born in Lakewood, Colorado, where Randy and Sharon had settled to be close to the Denver Federal Center. However, after Randy had won the Nobel Peace Prize for his theory on moderation, he had used the money from his various interviews and accolades to buy the family a house in Aspen just in time for Stan to start middle school. Sometimes – especially in the winter – the commute was, quote, "a real wet bitch", but his father considered it worth it to brag that he lived in a town with the most expensive real estate prices in the country.
And now his father wasn't just an alcoholic idiot. He was an unemployed alcoholic idiot.
"What," Stan asked when he found the strength to lift his head again. "Are we going to do for money? Mom, you don't have a job."
Stan and Shelly had never worked a day in their lives either, but Stan didn't dare call anyone's attention to that for fear that his parents might need him to pitch in here.
"Yes, well," Sharon said, her voice still steely. "I'm not really qualified for any jobs that would really bring in any money, so we're going to have to cut a lot of corners. One car instead of three. And—"
She took a deep breath and blew it out, falling silent. Stan looked at his father, who had gone back to holding his head in his hands, and then at Shelly.
"We're moving, turd," Shelley snapped. "Well, you are. You're moving in with Grandpa because dad blew most of his fucking money on booze and all that crap we have in the garage and we can't afford to live here anymore."
Stan wished he could chalk the dull ache in his temples up to the headache, but he knew that wasn't true. This was an ache that spread from his temples to his skull to his shoulders, like there was an invisible weight bearing down on the upper half of his body. This was the way Stan always felt whenever he was forced to step back and realize that this was his family and this was his life.
"Can I please be excused?" he asked, but didn't stick around to wait for a response.
That night, Stan snuck out of his house.
He had snuck out of his house the night before as well, but everything looked different now that he knew this was the last time he would ever sneak out of this house in this town.
Grandpa Marsh lived in South Park, a backward town so small and irrelevant that it wasn't even on the map. Stan had never set foot in South Park in his life, but he was more familiar with Grandpa Marsh than he wanted to be because the old man seemed to have adopted Stan as his favorite grandchild, even though he referred to Stan exclusively as Billy. His uncle Jimbo lived in South Park as well and had never left it. According to Randy, Uncle Jimbo liked "guns and Ned", who Stan assumed was like his husband or whatever.
So, basically, there was nothing about South Park that screamed 'perfect place to finish your senior year'. Stan had already applied early decision to the University of Southern California, New York University, and even to Yale just to get as far away from his family as possible. How would those be affected by him transferring schools halfway through the year?
It was a long walk to Gary's house, but the cold air gave Stan plenty of time to feel sorry for himself. By the time Mrs. Harrison opened the door, Stan had mustered enough energy to smile.
"Stan, it's so nice to see you," she said warmly. She said everything warmly, no matter who she was talking to. She was pretty much the only adult that Stan had ever felt guilty thinking mean things about because she was so kind that it made him feel guilty. "You're just in time for board games. As always, we're one person short of even teams."
She stepped to the side to let him into the house. Her husband was sitting on one side of the coffee table with David, Mark, and Amanda. On the other side was Gary, Jennifer, and an empty pillow. The game of choice this Family Home Evening appeared to be Sorry! Stan found that one very fitting.
"Hi, Stan," the family chorused in unison, laughing at themselves immediately after.
Usually, being around Gary's family made Stan feel a lot better about his own. His family sure had their problems, but at least they weren't creepy Mormons. Tonight, however, seeing them all so happy made Stan's mood take a nosedive. He gave them a wan smile and then marched up the stairs to Gary's room.
He was sitting in the computer chair slowly twisting himself around when Gary entered. Stan might have been the closest to Trent out of necessity, but Gary was actually his best friend. Sure, Gary was a total Melvin sometimes, but he didn't put up with any of Stan's shit and, as long as Stan didn't rip on his religion, they got along great. Gary knew that Stan could be a jerk sometimes, but never around his family. He just sat on the bed and looked at Stan, waiting for him to start.
"We're moving," Stan said immediately. He grabbed a tennis ball off the desk and threw it at the wall, catching it when it bounced back. "My dad fucked up at work and they fired him, so we're selling the house for money and moving in with my grandpa. In South Park."
"South Park?" Gary echoed, eyes wide. "Trent's South Park?"
"Apparently. I mean, unless he's actually just been wandering around the base of the Rockies punching people all these years."
Gary smiled, but it faded just as quickly as Stan's did. "That sucks. They're really going to make you transfer schools over winter break?"
"They've got no choice," Stan said, echoing the words his mother had said when she had come to check on him before he'd 'gone to sleep'. "Aspen's expensive to live in to begin with and Aspen High School is – well, whatever, South Park Community School is a hell of a lot cheaper. And living with grandpa instead of buying a new house cuts even more costs. This is the best choice for everyone."
"Except you," said Gary.
"Except me," said Stan. He threw the tennis ball again. "I fucking hate my dad, dude."
"No, you don't. I mean, if it weren't for your father, you wouldn't even be alive—"
"Gary, I swear to fucking God, if you don't stow the respect your parents bullshit right now, I'm going to bounce this off your head next."
Gary immediately fell silent, which made Stan feel the barest twinge of guilt. Luckily, it was drowned out by the overwhelming sense of self-pity. He wanted to throw things. He wanted to throw things and rage and bitch about how Shelley was going to Berkley and only home for the holidays, so this was no skin off her nose, but this was Stan's entire life they were upheaving. Six more months and he would be gone too. Six more months and they could move anywhere they fucking wanted and Stan wouldn't give a shit because he'd be—
"Fuck," Stan said vehemently. "Do they even have the money to send me to college anymore?"
He dropped the tennis ball and buried his face in his hands. Vaguely, he heard Gary shuffling around somewhere behind him and then felt a hand on his shoulder, but Stan ignored it. He knew that eventually Gary would call Christophe, but he also knew that Gary wouldn't do it until Stan had wallowed to his heart's content. The Mole was the worst person to have around when you were feeling sorry for yourself. He lacked a little thing like empathy and always ended up making you feel worse than you did before or ranting about fucked up shit like how his mother tried to abort him with a clothes hanger.
Yeah, shit that Stan just didn't need to know when he was busy trying to get over a breakup or something.
"When are you moving?" Gary asked, barely above a whisper.
"Next weekend."
"But you'll call and stuff, right?" The hand left his shoulder and pulled his hat off his head so Gary could ruffle his hair instead. "I mean, you're not going to make a bunch of new friends in South Park and forget all about us, are you?"
Stan lifted his head so he could reach up and snatch his hat back. "Dude, if you'd heard even one of the stories my dad tells about growing up in that place, you'd know how stupid you sound right now. I'll be lucky if I make any sane friends at all."
Gary laughed as Stan adjusted his hat on his head and he couldn't help chuckling a bit in return. His chuckle made Gary laugh harder, which made Stan laugh harder too, until they were both laughing so hard that they were tearing up and neither of them had any idea what the hell had been so funny.
Stan finally got a hold of himself and swiped a gloved hand across his eyes, a smile lingering on his face.
"This is going to suck," he said, more lightly now, turning the chair to face the computer. "Do you have Skype on this? I'm going to need you to monitor me and make sure I don't start going crazy. I swear, there's something in the water down there..."