Gerald sat at his desk, staring mindlessly out the window. From his seat, he could look out on the lawn, seeing the shrunken figures of Kenny and Kyle; his son and his son's apparent boyfriend.
Really, his son's announcement of his sexuality didn't shock him, not entirely at least. But when he also added who he was showing his affection to... Gerald felt a history book thrown slam his face. A heavy one at that.
What Kyle—or no one for that matter—didn't know was that he was following in his father's footsteps almost exactly.
Why, he even had the same taste in men as Gerald did.
Tall, blond, rugged around the edges... All the traits of a McCormick.
Did Kenny know how much he resembled his father?
Did Kyle know how much he acted like HIS father?
Gerald didn't know; but every time he looked at the two, he found himself lost in memories of days long ago, days far different from nowadays.
Before Kyle was born, before he met Shelia in college, before anything was set in stone.
Back then, he wasn't the big time lawyer Gerald Broflovski with a cushy office and a handsome beard.
No, then he was dorky Gerald 'Jewcier' Broflovski, the resident nerd and token Jew of the town.
Times were simpler, no fancy iPhones or computers to occupy and stress out the modern teen while sucking away the love for nature.
The town was even smaller, but everyone knew each other from grade school. The generation grew up in that pissant town, and they'd raise their kids in the same place.
But that was long before they thought about families and careers and children; that was when they were teens themselves.
Gerald remembered it perfectly, standing in Kyle's shoes over thirty years in the past. Randy was to him as Stan was to Kyle, the sporty son of a bitch best friend no one could replace. He had Sharon—they were high school sweethearts after all—just as Stan had Wendy. They never had a replacement for Cartman, Liane simply making her way around as the school slut. But there was Stuart; and Stuart was a piece of work.
Scruffy face, dull blue eyes, and a buck-tooth smile that had its own charm. Stuart McCormick acted similar to his son, cocky and obnoxious yet loveable and well-liked. Innuendo was his best friend—before alcohol—and he always went out of his way to put a smile on people's faces.
Gerald especially.
He couldn't remember just when the curious thought sparked, the thought of being with a man rather than a woman, but the friendship soon shrouded itself in a tense closeness that teetered between platonic and romantic.
Randy had Sharon, so Gerald hung out with Stuart more. No big deal.
But one night while the two were lazily skipping stones by Stark's, it happened.
"Betcha I can get my stone farther!" Stuart chuckled, tossing the flattened grey rock up and down, grinning at Gerald in the waning sunlight. His denim sleeves were pulled up to his elbows, splotches of mud painting his skin and clothing, even a few smudges on his stubble. From under the brim of his John Deere cap, his eyes glittered, shining like stars.
"Oh yeah?" Gerald smirked, picking up a damp stone, looking at it in the light. A smile curled on his lips, determined that he'd picked the perfect rock. The very thought brought a gleam to his forest green eyes, gaze shifting to look at his friend, "I'll take you up on that one."
"And what'll the loser do?" Stuart raised a brow, "I don't want ya to do anything too humiliating, Ger,"
"Haha," He rolled his eyes, breeze running through his chestnut brown curls, "How about whatever the winner wants?"
"Deal," Stuart winked, "So you goin' first or me?"
"I..." Gerald hesitated, feeling a sudden heaviness in his chest, "...think you should go first." He spoke quickly and quietly. That always had to happen.
The blond laughed, slapping his knee before he flung the rock. The stone glided across the surface of the still pond, skipping once...twice...
"Three times!" He cheered triumphantly, bouncing up and down with childish enthusiasm, "Beat that, Jewboy!"
"I WILL!" Gerald challenges, gripping the stone tightly. He stated off at the water, trying to turn his situation into a maths problem in hopes to better the odds. He wasn't exactly a master at stone skipping.
He glanced over at Stuart, who watched him with crossed arms and a smug smirk. He motioned his head, as if to say "Go on..." without speaking.
Gerald gulped, shutting his eyes and taking a deep breath. He just had to throw it, right?
"YAAAH!" He shouted, throwing the stone with all his might.
PLOP!
Gerald opened his eyes, watching the water ripple, rock sinking to the bottom of the pond without even one skip. He lost.
"Nice try, Ger," Stuart mused, "But next time try makin' it skip, yeah?"
"Shut up!" Gerald huffed, cheeks turning red as he glared at the grassy ground.
Stuart kept laughing, patting Gerald's back roughly and leaning over to him.
"So looks like I win, yeah?" He purred.
"Sadly, yes," Gerald retorted.
"Oh don't be a sore loser," The blond rolled his eyes, "Anyways, gonna live up to that bet?"
Gerald's head snapped up, the boy staring the other straight in the eyes. He furrowed his brow, smirking himself when he dared, "Do your worst!"
Without warning, Stuart smashed his lips to Gerald's, grabbing his head and weaving his fingers in the curls. He packed as much force as he could into the kiss, making it rough.
But Gerald didn't mind, not at all. He kissed back, even, much to Stuart's surprise. The brunet reluctantly brushed his hands up the blond's torso, unsure what to do.
It was a situation neither of them expected, at least in terms of mutual consensus. They thought it was just a funny fleeting feeling that wasn't returned, not something living in both of them.
They pulled apart, awkwardly staring into each other's eyes, both of them turning scarlet.
"O-oh..." Gerald choked out at last, shying back.
"Fuck..." Stuart blinked, "Fuck we're QUEERS..." Bluntness was a common McCormick trait.
"N-no we're not!" Gerald shook his head. Confusion polluted his mind. He just wanted to deny it, a part of him just wanted to shove it somewhere hidden far away, but there was no possible way. Even if no one saw THEY still knew.
"Man we just like... Kissed..." Stuart blinked wildly, the thought sinking in, "That's pretty fucking queer last I checked!"
"You kissed me, asshole!" Gerald yelled.
"I know but ya weren't supposed to..." He slapped his forehead, "Oh forget it! We're a couple of fags!"
"W-well even if we are... A-aren't we fags... Together?" He really didn't understand the concept.
"Well..." Stuart paused, thinking a second, "I... Guess... We... Are..." The alien feeling subsided, a grin sprouting on the blond's face as he accepted it, "Gerald, we're a couple of rainbow shittin' faggots!"
"UH..." He didn't know if it was a good or bad thing; especially with thy wording.
"Come 'ere!" Stuart slung an arm around the brunet, pulling him in a hug.
That was the start of it all.
No one knew. Gerald made sure of it. It was something he couldn't tell his parents, or his friends, or the rabbi.
NO ONE.
That was the summer, he recalled, summer was when it started. Just a few light shenanigans, nothing all that sexual.
At least not at first.
The both of them knew it wasn't a definite, that notion damned the whole thing. But they lived in the moment, working around their lives, leaving out the backdoor of their personas and letting their relationship progress.
Maybe they cared about each other, maybe they liked the escape from abusive parents—Gerald mentally and Stuart physically—but either way it happened.
That was when a lot of things were used to ease the pain. And when Stuart's drinking problem started.
Gerald lay in bed, sheets over his naked body. Adjusting to this level of the relationship wasn't easy, often rocky for him. But things weren't all diamond spangled rainbows for the 'catcher' of the pair.
Stuart sat on the edge of the bed, guzzling down one of the Millers he looted from his father's stash the night before. Slowly but steadily, he'd been drinking more frequently, starting with just one a week, it soon turning to three a day minimum.
Gerald didn't like where it was going, he really didn't.
"So..." He said, looking at the blond from the corner of his eye.
Stuart glanced over, taking the can from his lips.
"Sorry, ya want some?" he shook the can.
Gerald shook his head, "You drink too much of that shit."
"Yeah well you spend too much time reading books but I don't bitch about that," Stuart muttered, taking another sip.
"Hey, books build knowledge, I need that for law school," Gerald frowned.
Stuart chortled, "That's cute, you're such a perfect lil' Jew."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" He sat up.
"Ya just sound like what ya parents keep sayin' s'all," The blond shrugged, "Stupid law school and shit."
"It's not shit, it's what I'm going to do," Gerald narrowed his eyes, "I'm at least planning on doing something with my life!"
"Yeah yeah yeah, you and your plans," He snorted, "I bet I wasn't in your stupid ass plan."
"N-no..." he admitted, "But still, looking to the future's important."
"Well I think it's a fuckload of bullcrap," Stuart replied bluntly, "But whatever works for you..."
He took another long gulp to finish off the can. In that moment, Gerald knew it was the beginning of the end.
Graduation came and went. Stuart dropped out. Gerald got accepted into Princeton.
The relationship wore thin, growing more threadbare by the day. It went from emotion, to sex, to just escape. The passion—or whatever the feeling was—faded, leaving them both bored and annoyed with one another. People starting to at least appear to pick up on things, it harder to keep a secret when the parties kept fighting.
The end was near. They both knew it.
The rough part that ruined everything, though, was how it happened.
"No! You're not fucking leaving!" Stuart yelled, speech slurred. He sat in his father's lawn-chair, glaring at the brunet with a drunken glaze over his eyes.
"Stuart, I have to," Gerald stated, "We can still call and all but—"
"BUT NOTHIN'!" Stuart became a different person when he drank, he became something Gerald hated associating himself with. That something came out more and more those days, saturating that bad habit Stuart still had to in the present. "YOU LEAVE AND YOU GONE FIND SOME HO N FORGET ME!"
"Stuart, I thought we weren't doing anything permanent..." Though they discussed it while the man was sober, he knew that reasoning with him would prove pointless. He couldn't win.
"FUCK DAT YOU PANSY!" The blond hiccupped, "WE END IT WHEN I SAY!"
"You DID say it," Gerald reminded him, "Neither of us were happy about it bu—"
"BUT NOTHIN'!" He threw the beer bottle, aiming it at the Jew's head.
Gerald ducked, the bottle still missing by a solid six inches. The glass shattered against the wall.
"SHIT!" Stuart stamped his foot.
Gerald stood up, glanced at the wreckage, and then at the blond. Horrible as it was to leave on that note, things were getting VIOLENT. And although he didn't have a day to apologise, he'd have to be gone by the morning.
With no hope to properly reconcile, Gerald turned and headed for the door.
"Good bye, Stuart," He murmured, and then slammed the door.
That was it.
Neither of them—at least Gerald—felt feelings for other men. It was just a fling, a phase, an experiment. A failed one.
They grew apart, yet their children ended up so close together, close enough to scare them.
Gerald, at first, worried that Kyle was making a mistake, following some curse between the Broflovskis and McCormicks. But after a little observation, he saw that things weren't the way they were for him and Stuart.
Kenny cared deeply for Kyle, always giving the redhead loving looks that spoke louder than words. They joked and teased, but it never crossed the line out of playful and into offence. Kenny quit his bad habits, or at least tried to, just for Kyle. And Kyle gave his all to be worth it for Kenny.
That was why, Gerald figured, he liked them together. Maybe the dealings between him and Stuart were just passing, but a very real romance lived on in and between their boys. Spooky as it was, it somehow gave Gerald a light of comfort, something to make him happy.
It didn't matter about him or about the past; what did matter was that Kyle was happy with Kenny. And all a father ever wanted was for his son to be with someone he cared for.
Gerald caught himself smiling as he watched the boy sporting an orange parka tackle the redhead in a green ushanka.
They were happy, and that was enough for him.
A/N: ...more things I don't really know why I wrote but did anyway. Ahaha. I don't know, a very talented artist on Tumblr posted lots of drawings of the young SP adults and there were a few shots of Gerald and Stuart and...well I went off of it.
If I had more time and knew ahead of time that I'd be able to work on it, I'd do a huge fiction of flashbacks with this relationship (It's like K2 before Kenny and Kyle were born LOL). Maybe one day I'll elaborate on the older generation back when they were younger, but that day is not in the near future, from what I can see.
I hope you enjoyed! I know it was a bit loose... I wasn't sure about it myself (I wrote it really really late at night too) but that's because I have the deep urge to elaborate on ALL OF THIS. Alas, I have no time. Anywho, thanks for reading, drop a review if you enjoyed it so much. I'm slightly sad that I finished this only because I have a fuck-ton of K2 stories that are half-done but I haven't gotten to. I'll finish those long before doing anything more with their daddys.
Okay, thanks again! Leave a review! I hope this look into the past interested you in a way! Til next time! ~CQO