Chapter One: Broke Bitchin

A/N: Hey, y'all. Have a lesbian SP stripper AU, because everyone needs a queer girl stripper AU in their life! Anyway, this is a Style fic with a dash of Bunny and a big, heaping spoonful of coming-of-age drama for Stan. I'm not sure how many chapters there will be, but this fic is going to be at least 50,000+ words. Many of the characters are genderbent, Stan and Kyle included. Also, Stan's name is supposed to just be Stan, which will eventually be explained later on in the story. Questions and comments are appreciated! Thanks.

Stan Marsh checked her iPhone for the tenth time since she'd arrived at Davie's Chuck Wagon. Kenny was late. Stan had already been seated at a booth, had properly warmed the brick red seat that was old and spilling out stuffing and was on her third round of consulting the menu despite knowing that she was going to order a patty melt and fries. The conversation she was about to have made her antsy; she almost wished she selected a bar as their spot to meet or at least had thought to toss some weed in her purse. Everyone was tired of hearing about her fucked-up relationship with her ex, and this conversation probably wasn't going to be much different.

Stan knew that Kenny would be late. She'd even considered being late herself so that she wasn't forced to wait around for Kenny but had ultimately decided against ditching her punctuality. The few times that Kenny arrived when they said they would, it was usually because an emergency demanded it. This meeting of minds honestly had nothing to do with a real emergency, but Stan had been a total mess when she'd contacted her friend the previous night via Skype, so she wouldn't have been surprised if Kenny had thought something more severe was going on: the slick cobalt hair that usually ran down Stan's back, one of her most complimented features, had been pulled up messily when she'd called, resembling the lumps of hair that characterized troll dolls; she'd had mascara-smeared raccoon eyes and under eyes that were as fat and puffy as a Corgi butt, and her skin had been noticeably pink between the wine coolers and non-stop crying. Four hard lemonades in and her deteriorated relationship with Wendyl had seemed as severe as the Canadian War to Stan. The entire fifteen-minute conversation she'd had with Kenny had been conducted between choking sobs and long, dramatic swigs of fruity booze. If she'd called anybody but Kenny, Stan would have been mortified…but this was Ken, a person whose everyday life had all the trappings of a perfect stand-up routine between the near-death experiences and over-the-top nightlife. There was a certain comfort in confessing to someone whose life was objectively more of a hot mess than your own, even if only applied on weekends.

Stan was on her third refill and her fifth stink eye from the crotchety waitress serving her when Kenny bustled into the building, dressed out in that orange parka of theirs that they frequently wore on their "homeless days," which had always an uncomfortable way of describing the lazy aesthetic to Stan, considering that Kenny had been homeless at one point. Kenny all but pranced over to where Stan was sitting, narrowly avoiding dinging the tray the aforementioned waitress was toting to a different table. Stan was starting to think that someone would spit in their food, or at least skimp on the grilled onions on her burger. The smell of good weed and gas station amber incense flooded Stan's awareness as Kenny settled in next to her and laid their head on Stan's solid shoulder.

"What's your fuckin' problem?" Kenny asked, as they grabbed the laminated menu in front of them and started to scan it halfheartedly. "I thought you were on the verge of some 2007 Britney shit, the way you were acting."

"Glad to see you too," Stan replied. "And…okay, don't get pissed, but—"

"Is this about Wendyl?"

"Well, yeah, but—" Stan silently willed the waitress over, already feeling like the conversation was going to go somewhere shitty.

"Oh my fuckin' God." Kenny popped up from Stan's shoulder and leveled a stern look in her direction.

"It's Wendyl-related," Stan added, an edge of desperation weening its way into her voice. It wasn't the first time she'd bickered with someone about how she was dealing with her breakup. "But not about Wendyl! Dude, it's about my apartment…"

"What about your apartment?"

"I don't have enough money for rent."

"Okay, I've been there, easy. You can talk to the landlord, get a couple of extra days. Wait, don't you have a full-time job?" Kenny questioned. They tilted their head in a comical way, Carolina blue eyes looking as big as a bobblehead behind that orange hood. Kenny's mouth was nowhere to be seen; they usually had the parka strung up ridiculously tight. Stan would have laughed at the image if the subject she was bringing up didn't make her want to piss herself. Wendyl had always been a stickler for finances, and she'd lived with her parents prior to living with Wendyl. It was her first time living alone and she was decidedly failing.

"I do, but, you know, Wendyl moved out."

"But wasn't that a couple month ago?"

"Three," Stan corrected. She smothered a groan. The waitress was still nowhere to be seen.

"Didn't you get a roommate?"

"I didn't think about it until now. Wendyl was paying rent for a while, so I just forgot, okay? He said he'd pay for three months, and I just didn't realize it had come so quick."

"I guess we haven't talked in a while, huh?" Kenny snorted and began to unwrap their silverware. "Darlin, you threw a fuckin pity party the whole time, didn't you? Oh, you sweet, sweet dumbass."

Silence. The answer was so obviously a yes, that Stan didn't even know why she'd bother stating it out loud. Her and Kenny began their friendship when they were young enough to take a crap in their pants and not be publicly humiliated. Their moms had been friends with each other for even longer, bonded together over their mutual understanding that they could have, should have done better in the marrying department. When Stan's mom was young, they'd put the boys together in the living room (always Sharon's middle class three bedroom two bath house, because Carol's house was well on its way to being a meth lab even then)and strung a rainbow of toy trucks and rattles out for the duo to play with. Kenny and Stan would always stare at each other dumbly, trading smiles, shoving each other's fingers in their mouths, gnawing with soggy gums. Later that would evolve to cowboys, then bottle rockets, then Jackass and IHop and boys, and that one time Stan had ended up sobbing, holding a pregnancy test under her piss stream while Kenny consoled her, sitting on the edge of the sink counter and kicking their dirty work boots, complaining about how those tests were too expensive for poor folk, and thank God for having a penis, and don't worry, they could put together enough money to dodge their Catholic parents and abort that sucker, unless Stan wanted it. Ken had offered her a sip of vodka out of the flask they kept, casually adding in that she figured they'd be drinking either way, whether it was in celebration or agony. Stan, to everyone's relief, had not been pregnant.

In most ways, they understood each other instinctually, reflexive as kicking someone when your knee was whapped. This was one of those moments, and Kenny didn't bother to prod for an answer, just tutted a bit as their neck craned, looking for someone.

"Where's our waitress?" they asked Stan, tapping a long, floral acrylic nail against her knife. "I'm fucking starving."

"I got here way earlier," Stan said. "I think she's kind of pissy I've been taking up her table so long." She paused. "She seemed like kind of a bitch anyway."

"Well, that's not gonna do. I'm about to gnaw my hand off. Which one is she?" Kenny asked.

Stan nudged her chin the direction of their waitress, named Rhonda, a woman with a big mess of teased red hair that was clearly dyed with a cheap box of Revlon; she had a big spot on the crown of her head that was lighter than the rest of her hair, and it wasn't natural. Stan had a soft spot for red heads, but the real deal gave her way more goosebumps. She'd had more than one fantasy about the prickle of Dexter's auburn stubble in places, and she'd always envied Christina Hendricks and her mane and all those soft, pleasant-looking curves. Rhonda's red hair was early 2000's Myspace vivid, except in that one spot. Kenny nodded in affirmation and got up in their six-inch orange heels that matched their parka perfectly, making the homeless assertion even dumber. Kenny never looked homeless, they just looked fucking weird. Non-stop. It was all just in different flavors. Who owned orange heels?

Kenny started waving lightly in Rhonda's direction. Rhonda was leaning against the counter and dipping a tea bag in a coffee cup idly.

Fifteen seconds went by, and Rhonda had not noticed Kenny. Bad call. Kenny was never rude exactly, but they also never really shied away from what they wanted. Kenny wanted Rhonda to notice her. Now, earlier would have been better, but Kenny had been a waitress before, a damn good one, and she got that accommodating an ass-load of people sometimes didn't work as cleanly as a person wanted. She made a show of waving full-body, arms flailing. Stan scooted further back into the booth, stock-straight against the seat as if that'd hide her from everyone's attention. People around them were eyeing them as they shoved forkfuls of potato into their mouths—not everyone, but plenty. Stan was torn between wanting to bail and dip out the front door and stifling a full-bodied laugh. For now, she was stuck clamping down on her lower lip with her front teeth, holding in the guffaw that would surely guarantee that Rhonda would coat her burger with a big, gnarly loogie.

One minute in, and Rhonda's eyes had met Kenny's, and she was still dipping that tea bag, her lips one dark, straight line, highlighted with rouge. Kenny was practically gyrating, bouncing back and forth on her feet as she waved. Her heels clicked lightly as she moved her weight from one of the balls of her feet to the next, noticeable even over the twangy country that was coming from the jukebox in the corner. Rhonda finally relented and pushed the cup of tea over to one of the customers sitting at the counter near the grill, then made her way over to Stan and Kenny's table.

"Are you ready?" she asked deadpan. The order pad came out pointedly. Kenny finally sat down, smiling pleasantly at Rhonda, and crossed one leg tidily over the other under the table. Stan was silent.

"I want some orange juice," Kenny said. "A lot of pulp if you have it."

"We've got Minute Maid."

"That's fine," Kenny said. "And I'd like the Chuckwagon breakfast."

"How do you want your eggs cooked?"

"Sunnyside. I like `em soft and wet." Rhonda tutted and scribbled something down. Her gaze flickered over to Stan. "And you?"

"Uh, can I get the patty melt? With onion rings?"

"That'll be extra."

"Okay," Stan said. Mentally, she could just envision her bank account sucking in air. She didn't check her account much. It wasn't that she was exactly bad with money, at least she didn't think so. She'd just gotten out of the habit when she and Wendyl moved in together. They'd merged their finances on Wendyl's terms, of course, and she'd gotten used to handing over X amount of bill money. She would pretty much do whatever she wanted with what was left. Stan hadn't bothered saving.

Probably stupid, but she figured her and Wendyl would be together forever Disney-style, eventually old and crotchety and sitting in rocking chairs with a sunset in the background and a breakfast casserole in the oven. Not that either one of them really knew how to cook, and Stan couldn't exactly peg Wendyl as the rocking chair type.

It didn't matter now. Lost in thought, Stan hadn't noticed that Rhonda had left almost right after the word 'okay' had left her mouth. She was only brought back to earth after Kenny had finished shooting a text and was pointedly staring at Stan, whose glazed eyes were gazing off at nothing. Nothing happened to be a 60-something's big, leather-coated back she realized when Kenny's voice finally captured her attention.

"—I think they'd really like you. I mean, it's not like a very Stan-thing to do, but you'd be able to get out of there real quick. Al would love you. Of course, Al pretty much loves everyone, but you'd probably be up there. I know it sounds crazy to you, but—"

"What?" Stan interrupted.

"What d'ya mean what?" Kenny replied. The orange juice was placed in front of Kenny. Rhonda turned on her heels and immediately left without saying a word.

"I honestly didn't hear anything you said."

Kenny removed the straw bobbling in her cup of juice and set it aside, then took a long gulp. "I said that you could strip."

"Okay, Kenny, come on."

"I'm serious." Kenny's voice was level and easy, a stark contrast to her display earlier, as if she was suggesting something as mild as Stan begging for money from her parents or eating strictly peanut butter sandwiches for the rest of the month. Totally ordinary. Stan mashed her lips together and glanced up, locking her eyes with Kenny's. Definitely dead serious. Stan shoved her fists in her Letterman coat and let the silence hang for a moment.

She kind of hoped that Kenny would return to their phone, get caught up looking at one of like a hundred pictures Butters would send that day. Butters just downloaded Snapchat, and his sunny enthusiasm was made even more blatant when you saw his feed. Clouds shaped like familiar objects, donuts, a short line at the grocery store; Kenny's boyfriend shared everything. Kenny was probably looking at pictures of ladybugs as they calmly discussed stripping.

Ha.

"Look, I know that you grew up with a silver spoon—"

"Kenny, we ate Hamburger Helper half the time—"

"With hamburger, but that's not even what this is about, Stan. Look, I don't think you really know what it means to be broke, which is awesome, and I love you, but part of this whole being piss broke thing is having to scramble some, and sometimes the scrambling ain't fun." They took a sip of juice. Stan's mouth was already open, set to protest, and Kenny silenced her with a firm index finger held up in front of Stan's face.

"Sweetheart, I don't care what you say, you know I'm right. Point of the matter is, you don't have to do this, but it's probably the best idea I can think of right now. Not saying you need to be a career stripper, but it wouldn't hurt for a few months. You could get back on your feet, you could pay rent, you'd have enough bucks to throw around and buy your Jamesons without having to feel guilty about anything but your liver. You could probably even afford a couple of dates, get over Wendyl." Stan's heart literally throbbed at those words. "Sounds like a pretty good deal, if you ask me."

"Kenny, I don't know how to strip!"

"Nothing you can't learn. You're fit. You've got good tits. You'd be fine. You've fucked a dude, right?"

"Yes, I've fucked a dude, Kenny."

"There you go, you're golden."

"I'm not going to fuck a dude on stage, Kenny!" Stan spat.

Kenny rolled their eyes. "Of course you're not going to fuck the guy on stage, that's for the private rooms."

Stan kicked at Kenny's ankles.

"Man, I'm kidding! I'm totally kidding! Look, I'm just saying, if you can ride a dick, you're good. Sure, there are strippers that do all the fancy pole stuff, but guys will pay you money as long as you can thrust your pussy at them and pretend you're interested."

Rhonda approached right as Kenny went off about thrusting pussies and slid the plates in front of them wordlessly. The ketchup bottle at the table was just about empty, and Stan had wanted to ask for more, but she resigned herself to ketchup-less fries as the waitress slinked off, clearly upset that those kinds of customers showed up way before their standard arrival of right before closing time.

"I don't know the first thing about stripping," Stan added helplessly. "Even if I do know how to…bump." Kenny's eyes had an almost manic look to them, self-satisfied. Not exactly smug, but bright. Thrilled. Like he'd found the correct answer, coming up with a nugget of gold out of shit, and sharing it and making things right was just about as good as a night with Butters or a weekend spent at one of those douchy electronic music festivals they loved so much. Kenny did have kind of a savior complex thing going on every now and again, had clung to playing as Mysterion long after the other kids had gotten bored with playing superheroes. The sad thing was that their solutions were often spot-on. Despite the impractically long nails and a tendency to neglect sleep in favor of going out to gay bars in airbrushed makeup and glittery dresses with deep v-cuts, Kenny had always been realistic. Painfully so, at times.

"You'll be fine," Kenny said, waving off Stan's concerns with a flick of their wrist as if they could literally force their friend's reluctance away with one nonchalant gesture. "Al would take care of you. I used to perform there; we're friends." Kenny being friends with the pimp, club owner, manager? Whatever. It didn't mean a whole lot in Stan's eyes. Kenny had plenty of friends, more than Stan could keep up with, and Stan wasn't exactly antisocial. Kenny could chat up someone in a fucking Chili's restroom and consider them a friend. Stan's standards were a bit more exclusive. "I could introduce you to him. And Red's there! You remember Red?"

Red had called Stan a bitch last she remembered because Stan was "lucky enough" to go to prom with Wendyl, but she didn't bother to point that out to Kenny. Stan finished off the last of her burger and rubbed her greasy hands on the thighs of her stonewash jeans. At least she knew that Red was functional—not a crack whore, definitely capable of doing things other than slinging her tits and ass around career-wise. She wasn't like Wendyl by any means, didn't have that kind of nerdy bookishness that characterized Butters. She wasn't a high achiever like some of the other people Stan was in contact with, but she was about on Stan's level. Stan liked to think she was at a pretty good level, except when she was in a place of self-loathing, and then what she wanted became dizzy and desperate, hard to grasp, something between total self-annihilation and needy for hugs and unrelenting soothing. Ol' Bertha was probably more stable than Stan anyway, albeit angrier.

"Yeah, I remember her."

Kenny slurped up a wiggly, drippy piece of egg white and rubbed the excess clinging to their lips with their arm. "I know this wouldn't be what you want to do, but Stan, how much does your job at the shelter pay?"

"Like nine dollars an hour." Stan shoved a cooling fry in her mouth.

"You wanna know how much Red makes? We talk sometimes. Like hundreds, Stan. She told me one night she walked away with fifteen hundred dollars. You could knock out your rent in a day, easy. You're hotter than Red." Kenny finished chewing on a grisly piece of steak and swallowed. "Don't tell her I said that."

"You said over a thousand dollars?" Stan wasn't sure if she could believe that—not that she didn't believe Kenny, Kenny didn't lie, but she didn't know if Red had been telling the truth exactly. Then again, wasn't this whole thing some big cliché anyway? Girl goes broke, or needs to pay for her school, or needs money desperately to put food on the table and pay her rent, and she starts to strip? There had to be some grain of truth in that trope, in the thought that strippers were loaded.

"I didn't see the fifteen hundred, but I did see her tip everyone out one night when one of my shows was there. She had a fistful of cash, Stan. It had to be hundreds, at least."

Stan gnawed on her lip. The thought of getting naked on stage made her want to vomit her patty melt, give their waitress something else to be mad about. There was another part of her that was buzzing, though. It only made her stomach squirm more, the combination of grease and soda now poignant and sickening. She couldn't tell if she was excited at the prospect of being able to pay rent without texting Sharon or Wendyl, or if she was stomach sick at the fact that she was actually considering Kenny's crazy idea.

"I'll be right back," Stan called, as she removed herself from the booth and sped towards the bathroom, one hand placed firmly on tightly clenched lips. There was another woman in the restroom. Stan leaned over the seat while still standing, the brief moment of concern for the other guest in the bathroom long-gone, and emptied herself into the bowl. She was at it for a good minute, groaning between each heavy contraction of her stomach.

Shit, she just paid for that burger. Well, at least it didn't get in her hair. As Stan examined the damage she'd done, bits of chunky vomit scattered lightly across the seat, some even on the wall, she thought back to the source of her anxiousness, and the conversation she'd just had with Kenny. Was she seriously going to go check out the strip club? What would her mom think? She'd probably chastise Stan, then would comfort her with some of her favorite strawberry waffles and a hug. Her mom was a bleeding heart. She'd always been a big softie, even compared to the other mothers in South Park, the small town where Stan and Kenny had grown up.

Wendyl, on the other hand, was not a softie. Wendyl was the opposite.

What would he think? A small part of Stan still quietly hoped that getting back together was on the table, even if it wasn't obvious at that moment.

The door to the bathroom creaked open, and the clicking of smart heels could be heard against the tiles.

"You okay, sweetheart?" Kenny asked from outside the stall, already knowing the answer.

"I'm all right," Stan lied. She grabbed at fistfuls of toilet paper and swiped at the trail she left on the wall.

'Am I seriously thinking about being a stripper?'

Stan quickly realized that the answer to that question was yes—by the end of that same night, as she was washing vegetables for her dinner. (Too expensive. She needed to start buying frozen veggies, but she couldn't bring herself to do it quite yet.) Shit, she was seriously considering being a stripper. Yes, she would text "Big Gay" Al, who owned a club named Utters, and she would meet up with him and go through some sort of trial run. Why Kenny opted to use that specific phrasing instead of calling it an interview, Stan didn't have a clue, until it came to her in a sharp, jagged kind of way, abrupt as Dali arousing from his keys slipping from hand to platter.

She had to try out, like a person would for a sports team, or a play. She had to be good enough at getting naked and appeasing horny dudes. A faint wash of nausea flooded her as she realized this; the paring knife slipped from her left hand and onto the cutting board. She stood there, blank, finally bringing her fingers up to pinch the bridge of her nose.

Inhale.

How I'd let this happen?

Exhale.

What would Wendyl think? What would her mom think? Would they even be able to find out?

Inhale.

Fuck, how'd I let this happen?

Kenny suggested it like it'd be so easy. In-out, a few months, and Stan would be fine. She released her nose and returned to chopping. Maybe she'd send the text after she got the veggies she was going to roast in the oven, knowing that at least if shit hit the fan, she'd have dinner to sulk over.

Five minutes later and she had a tidy pile of asparagus, onion, and tomato tucked away into some aluminum foil, coated in olive oil and garlic. Her salmon was sitting on the counter, covered in coarse salt, waiting to be tossed in a pan and made to sizzle. At least dinner would be good tonight. She plopped on one of the kitchen stools and pulled out her phone. The number Kenny gave her was saved in her contact list, inconspicuous as ever—Al. Just Al. If anyone every crept through her contact list, there was no way they'd have any idea about Al's true identity. Maybe they'd think he was a Tinder date or a former classmate.

Stan started a new text message. Her thumbs lingered over the buttons, her mind reaching desperately for what to say. What was proper 'ask for a job stripping' protocol? It wasn't like she could pull up LinkedIn and find an article on the subject.

Hey, is this Big Gay Al?

Scratch that. Probably rude to start with 'big gay'.

Hey, is this Al? I'm looking for a job. Kenny McCormick told me you're hiring.

That…was okay?

Hey, is this Al? I'm looking for a job. Kenny McCormick told me you're hiring. I'm wanting to strip. Here's a picture.

Stan attached a fully clothed one, something that showed a little bit of boob. It was a sweater that Wendyl always loved her in, and she knew it made her blue eyes look even bluer.

She returned to the kitchen and got to work on the salmon, placing it skin down, focusing in on the popping sounds the skillet made of the silver skin crisping up. Waiting for Al's response felt almost as dizzying as the time she had first asked Wendyl out, via text, to the junior high prom. It had taken her all 3rd period to compose the message with her best friend Gary, making a point to add one winking emoji instead of three, and the whole time her heart felt like it was dangling precariously on a single claw in a crane game, dangerously close to slipping out and falling into the plushy snake pit.

Her pulse felt like it had come to a cruel stop as she worked the spatula under the piece of fish, scales rubbing off into the pan. She hadn't added enough oil, and it was starting to stick. The phone was blank, painfully so, and she kept glancing at the gadget, unable to resist the temptation of checking for a response she knew wasn't there yet. Her ringer was on; she would be alerted the moment she was contacted.

What if Big Gay Al didn't respond?

She took her plate of half-scaled fish and vegetables to the living room and settled on the couch. Her phone was left in the kitchen, placed on the countertop next to the stove. Stan flipped the TV on, and Dee from Always Sunny in Philadelphia greeted her, squawking about the indignity of her role in the gang's plan.

Click.

Animal Planet, puppies. Better, so much better. She forked a piece of her fish and shoved it in her mouth, chewing noisily and settled her attention on the TV. Fuck, corgis were cute. The fish was tolerable. This was all going to work out; she could still cook a pretty good piece of salmon, right? It was good enough for her, anyway. Her mom liked her cooking.

On the screen, a corgi was running around, chasing a ferret, yipping as the ferret skittered in and out of its grasp.

Bzzzt.

The plate of food just barely made it to the coffee table safely before Stan launched herself from the couch. She skittered over to the phone and tried to unlock it. Her fingers fumbled the password more than once, drawing a groan of exasperation from her and more jerky, desperate thumb movements. On the fourth try, she finally got the screen open. She clicked on the text message icon, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Shit. Shit.

yeah i love ken doll! are u free Wednesday? I can squeeze u in that afternoon

Stan went over her schedule mentally, but who was she kidding? It wasn't like the shelter couldn't let her out for a few minutes. She didn't have anywhere else to go. It would take a while to fill up her calendar. She'd done the whole social isolation routine again, and she knew from experience that it would take a while for her to make nice with her friends and make them aware of the fact that she was out of her den of solitude and Halo Top low-calorie ice cream.

Yeah, Wednesday sounds good.

Her heart was still racing.

According to Carmen Electra's Aerobic Striptease, Stan needed to utilize her lower back muscles properly to thrust and swing her hips in the most effective, muscle-toning manner. According to Kenny, Stan just needed to patent her fuck-me look and throw on the highest heels possible. The path to stripper success was elusive, despite trying to use the library's surprisingly extensive alternative dance cardio section and Kenny's on-the-job knowledge as some sort of guide map.

Stan wasn't sure that either of them was right. She felt like a newborn deer trying to make use of its still sticky, scrawny legs as she flounced around in the heels that Kenny picked out for her. They were rhinestone-coated, gaudy things, 6 inches tall and topped off with a clear plastic strap that looped over the top of Stan's foot. They were "as gorgeous as they were tacky" according to Kenny, who insisted that Stan would be able to get through the door and land the job just by merit of her excellent shoe selection.

"You can tell who's a seasoned stripper based on what she swears," Kenny had told her, passing Stan the Amazon package as if they were handing over the One Ring. "Al will notice."

It was the night before Wednesday and Stan waddled in front of the mirror, cursing herself for not going against Kenny's word. What good was a nice pair of heels if you couldn't move in them? She'd been working on what was supposed to be a tryout performance for the past couple of days, and she still struggled to stay balanced and walk, let alone stride, dance, or strut. What she'd quickly come to figure out was that being a stripper was uncomfortable. Or at least looking like one was.

Stan ran her hands down her thighs in the mirror slowly in a forced, practiced motion, making a point to gaze straight at the mirror, trying to pull off hooded eyes. Selling sexy was challenging. Her lids were smeared with heavy eyeline drawn into a cat eye, a go-to look that was both manageable and moody, and her charcoal hair was puffed with mousse, thick and wavy, crafted with the tips she snagged from the latest Cosmopolitan she'd picked up at Walgreens. It was like acting, and maybe that made sense. Maybe she was supposed to be a character on stage. Even Kenny, outlandish as they were, did not quite match up with their drag stage persona Princess Kenny.

Princess Kenny demanded attention and adoration from everyone. She was hedonistic, she was bossy, she commanded the room and made it her bitch. She was gloriously for the people, but she was for herself even more so.

Not Kenny. Kenny, the real Kenny, was keen on attention too, like Princess Kenny in some respects, but they always preferred attention from a specific person—Butters. Always Butters, as Kenny wore a sweaty tank after leaving their job at the car shop, Butters sitting on their knee, tie just off-kilter, exhausted from grading papers and crafting lesson plans. And Kenny, surprisingly, was one of the least selfish people Stan knew, at least when it came to family. He grew up as the token "poor kid" in their school, and now he was doing well, making decent money, hit on consistently by both men and women. Most things just rolled off of him; Butters and Kenny were disgustingly in love. They did shit like order pizza every Tuesday night, because they had their show, and they could zing off each other's top three pizza topping orders without taking a moment to consider the subject. Kenny's life was a tornado, but his home life with Butters was an oasis, dead in the center, the eye of the storm.

It took a few days, but Stan decided on using Sapphire as her stage name. It seemed stripper-y, basic, easy to remember. It was ripe with potential for openers coming from lame dudes she could talk into a lap dance, slurring about how her beautiful name matched her even prettier eyes.

Admittedly, getting dolled up for the job was working wonders on her self-esteem. Not that she really had too negative of a perception of herself on a regular day, but she thought she looked especially nice when she was coiffed and ready to get naked professionally.

Stan swirled in the mirror, marveled at her breasts spilling out of her fringy, aluminum silver push-up, her stripper name, the new identity she'd be crafting. The whole thing was ridiculous, but she felt the vaguest twitch of excitement at the prospect of throwing on an outgoing, flirtatious, hyper-feminine persona—something so different from how she normally behaved: level, easygoing, moralistic when it came to animals and children, capped out with the occasional bout of severe, unwavering doom. Stan didn't know who Sapphire was going to be exactly, but she liked to think that Sapphire was the type that would be different, could manage Stan's problems with the grace that came from being able to parade around like a pageant queen with twice the heel height and half the clothing.

It was finally Wednesday, the day of Stan's tryout, and Stan had not anticipated that traffic would be a problem. Traffic was a problem. Traffic sucked royally. In fact, there wasn't much going on that wasn't putting her panties in a twist, because despite prepping for her interview to the point of make sure to remember to grab a string cheese for a snack (as if she was doing something as mundane as heading to her first day of school), she was really, really late. She pulled into the parking lot ten minutes after the time she and Al agreed upon, worried her multiple layers of face makeup were at risk of sliding right off because of how hard she felt like she was sweating.

Despite the stress, the heavy breathing, the few ebony flyaways that dotted her crown and signaled that she had not used enough hairspray, she felt good. She still was a little stiff, but Kenny had watched her routine, and had decisively informed her that they'd seen "way worse". Normally phrasing an evaluation like that would have been a cause for concern, but she knew it was authentic. Potentially there were girls that were even more robotic than her, and that was a cause for comfort. She didn't want to be the best. She just wanted to make some money and not be the worst.

Stan grabbed her tote full of work supplies (blotting pads, roll-on glitter, makeup, various Bath and Body Works sprays, a curling iron, the works) and heaved it over her shoulder. The strip club was nearly on the opposite side of town from where she lived and that made her feel good: the drive would be farther than she preferred, but maybe she'd be less at risk of seeing people she knew? Either way, the parking lot was spacious and fairly empty (probably because it was the early-afternoon) and Stan easily found the location and a parking spot near the back door. She spritzed herself once more with Oahu Coconut Sunset, which made her smell like a Pina colada had a baby with some mild suntan lotion, and exited the car in a flurry, checking her bag as she flounced towards the back door.

She didn't pay attention to what was ahead of her as she strode towards her interview, too caught up in the moment, and bumped heads with bad luck right as she was about to enter. Literally, because another individual was exiting the door just as Stan was confirming that she did, in fact, remember to pack some Naked juice to drink afterward in her bag, and they crashed into each other. A paper coffee cup went flying and managed to hit Stan's chest, splattering the expensive fringe bra she was so proud of wearing. The coffee was so hot that the places the nearly boiling drink splattered felt tender and warm. Stan immediately recognized that she probably had some burns, and she just hoped that they wouldn't affect her chances. Somehow, magically, Stan had managed to remain standing after the crash, even though she was still getting used to walking in shoes that felt like stilts.

The other person was even less lucky.

The woman that Stan had crashed into lost both her coffee and her balance, falling knee-first onto the cement stairs leading out of the building, and the drink splattered her too, soaking her t-shirt. The crash was loud and sounded painful; it was punctuated by a deep fuck when the woman landed.

Stan was starting to the think that the day couldn't get worse.

"Oh my God, dude, I'm so sorry! Fuck! I'm so sorry!" Stan cried. She made a move to help the other woman up, long streaks of coffee still wet on her chest, the paper cup entirely abandoned.

The other women lingered on her knees for a moment, then finally lifted her head to level an incensed look at Stan, her nose twitching and her lips pursed, as if it took all her self-restraint not to…attack Stan? Yell at her? She didn't know, but the other woman gave off a militant kind of vibe. It felt like she was a ticking time bomb waiting to unload years' worth of aggression.

She was also, much to Stan's discomfort, beautiful.

One side of her head was shaved slightly, one of those alternative undercuts that gave off major gay vibes. The rest of her hair was thick and could only be described as a fairytale princess kind of mane—copper curls everywhere, as explosive as that look Stan received and as gorgeous as something she'd see in one of those hair-cut magazines they had at salons. It looked as wild as fucking Braveheart. The woman's curls were perfect. Her eyes were a pretty, diluted sort of green, the color of a creek, almost water. They didn't match with her stern brows, or the Blush and Blu t-shirt she was wearing, or the way she seemed to embody the color and sharpness of a Mondrian painting, but Stan liked them.

The longer Stan stared, the more at a loss for words she was, which only seemed to make things worse. The redhead's eyes narrowed.

"Watch where you're going, dumbass!" she finally spit. The other woman pushed herself up off the stairs and crossed her arms tightly. Her knees were scratched and bloody; there were going to be some scabs. Stan tried to come up with some sort of response, but she couldn't find her words, just glanced at the other person's body for injuries. She was starting to feel nauseous. The redheaded woman pushed past her, muttering under her breath, something about fucking newbies and coffee and other things that were out of Stan's earshot.

Stan fumbled inside her tote again. At least she remembered a Tide-to-Go pen.