This is sort of a filler chapter. I had to get it out there so that I could get onto the last one which, I assure you, will be much better.
And, yeah. This story is pure fluff. Cartman-fluff, but still.
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"So then he said 'Bitch, are you for real?' and I said 'Mark, sweetie, quoting Dolemite stopped being cool years ago,' and then he said-"
"ARGH!" Cartman cried, letting loose an exclamation of unadulterated anguish. "Do you ever SHUT UP?"
"You shut up," Bebe snapped at him. "I didn't give you permission to talk, did I?"
They were seated on Bebe's bed, his legs crossed, her feet resting in his lap while he held her toes apart, waiting for her Stormy Sea Foam polish to dry. Cartman said the Stormy Sea Foam looked exactly like all her other shades of white (he'd been amazed that anyone could own that much nail polish, when she'd pulled the box out. She could have painted her room with it and still had some left over). Bebe said he was clearly colorblind; it looked nothing like her Mocha Whip.
Cartman had discovered painting nails was a very involved process. First she'd made him buff them. Then he'd had to put on the clear under coat, then let it dry, then put on the first coat. It was actually harder to not get the polish all over her toes than he'd thought it would be, and she kept bitching at him for wasting all her polish remover.
"I think we're almost ready for the final coat," she announced, lifting her foot a little and inspecting it. "Ooh, but first, I've got something for you."
Cartman blinked at her as she hopped off her bed and made her way to her dresser, where her shopping bags were piled. She walked carefully on her heels, her toes curling upward so that they didn't get messed up.
"While you were getting me my second cup of coffee, I saw the most awesome store. They let you print whatever you want on a shirt," she said brightly. Cartman watched warily. Nothing good could come from his. Bebe reached into one of her bags, pulled out a shirt, unfurled it, and turned around so that he could read what it said.
"... Oh, no. HELL NO. I am not wearing that, whore!"
"You will if you want Wendy."
--
"So, you guys are gay," Kenny said, looking from Stan, to Stan's bandaged leg which was resting in Kyle's lap, to Kyle.
"Not gay," Stan said quickly. "Kyle-sexual."
'Denial,' Kyle mouthed to Kenny. Kenny took a long sip from his soda, then asked, "What's the bat for, Kyle?" He nodded toward the blunt wooden object that was resting against the lunch table.
"Gift from Cartman," Kyle said, his eyebrows drawing down. "I'm going to return the favor."
It was at that moment that Cartman appeared. He was wearing a shirt that read 'BEBE'S BITCH' and the most murderous scowl any of them had seen on him (lately). "If any of you say a word," he growled, glaring especially hard at Kyle, "I will sneak into your bedroom in the night and cut off your dicks, which I will then pickle and sell to the Japanese."
Kyle looked at the bat, then at Cartman's shirt, then he shook his head and muttered, "Worse than anything I could do." Cartman sat down and was just about to take a bite of his ham-bacon-pork chop sandwich when Bebe materialized at his shoulder.
"There you are! Who told you you could take a break?"
"You have to let me eat, bitch!"
"I don't have to let you do anything," she countered. She glanced around the table at Stan, Kyle, and Kenny, all of whom where gaping at her, obviously wondering what she had on Cartman that was letting her get away with this. Her eyes lingered a moment on Kenny, and then she turned back to Cartman. "Now come and peel my grapes," she commanded, heaving him out of his seat - a considerable feat, considering he was a good hundred pounds heavier than she. She lugged him away; he looked back as he was dragged off and stretched a hand out longingly toward his sandwich, a silent look of heartbreak on his face.
"Just a few more hours," Cartman hissed at her as he sat down and started peeling her grapes. The only thing that kept him going was the thought of Wendy - that, and Bebe's imminent demise. "Then I'm through with this shit, and you have to tell me how to win over Wendy."
"Yeah," Bebe said. "About that. I've changed my mind."
Cartman squirted himself in the eye with grape juice.
"WHAT?" he raged at her, one of his eyes turning red.
"I want something else," she said calmly, taking a sip of her drink.
"WHAT?"
"Kenny."
"Kenny! Whore, you can't just change your mind on a whim!"
"Actually, I changed my mind on Saturday. I just wanted to get my full three days out of you before I told you."
The sound Cartman made was rage in its most vocal form.
"Bitch, you can't do that!"
"Let me explain something about bargaining with you," she said. "I'm the one who has something you want. You have nothing. Therefore, I have all the power here. And if I want to change the contract, then I can change the contract." She sipped her soda. "Kenny McCormick or no deal."
Cartman snarled. "I am going to kill you one day."
"Oh no you aren't," Bebe said briskly. "See, funny thing about girls - they don't go for the guy who killed their best friend."
So now he had to get Kenny on board. Well, that wouldn't be too hard, really. He didn't see how the town's biggest whore could turn down a date with the town's second biggest whore.
"Kenny! You are going to..." Cartman trailed off. He'd returned to their lunch table to find Kenny crumpled on the ground, his skull bashed in by the baseball bat. He blinked at the impoverished boy's prone form, and then he glanced at Stan and Kyle.
Stan shrugged. "Long story."
"God damn it! Kenny!" Cartman snapped, grabbing him by the front of his bloody shirt and shaking him viciously. "Get back here NOW! You can't just die whenever you feel like it! Stop being so motherfucking selfish!"
Kenny's head just flopped back rebelliously. Cartman snarled. "It always has to be about you, doesn't it?"
It was nearly eight o'clock when Kenny finally came to. Cartman vaulted off the broken bed he'd been waited on and barked, "Took you long enough, asshole!"
"Huh?" Kenny asked, always the intellectual. "Cartman? What are you doing here?"
"You have a date with Bebe in fifteen minutes," he said, stuffing the box of chocolate and flowers he'd bought earlier into Kenny's hands. Kenny looked at him blankly.
"Bebe? Bwah?"
"Go go go!" Cartman snapped, shoving him out the front door. "Here, you're too poor to pay for dinner, so here's a twenty - don't think I'm doing this for charity, I'm going to make you work it off later - and she better have a motherfucking good time, you poor piece of shit!"
He pushed Kenny right out of his own house and slammed the door closed behind him. Kenny stood on his front step, holding the candy, flowers, and twenty, and trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
--
"Oh Cartman - oh, man," Kenny said the next day at lunch, when Cartman had hunted him down and demanded to know how it had gone. "Dude, you remember when Chef almost got married to that succubus? Well, dude, I totally get what he was talking about now! I mean, we went back to her house - and first we had sex, obviously - but then we just hung out, and I didn't want her to shut up! God, I didn't know there were chicks out there who were interesting to talk to."
"Yeah, yeah," Cartman said irritably. "Look, I don't care about your pussy feelings, I just want to know if she had a good time."
"And," Kenny went on, sounding awed, "the sex was fantastic, too. She does this thing with her tongue where-"
"GOD DAMN IT JUST TELL ME IF SHE ENJOYED HERSELF!"
"Oh, she enjoyed herself, all right," Kenny said, smirking.
"Thank you," Cartman snapped, feeling greatly disturbed as he stomped away to find Bebe. She was with a cluster of girls, bragging loudly. Cartman wrinkled his nose and hauled her away mid-sentence.
"Hey!" she snapped. "I was just getting to the good part!"
"Time to hold up your end of the deal, whore," Cartman said, crossing his arms. "Tell me how to get Wendy to like me."
Bebe snorted and ran a hand through her hair. "Yeah right, Cartman. Like I was ever going to tell you anything."
Cartman didn't blink for a full ten seconds.
"WHAT?"
"What did you expect? Wendy's my best friend. You really think I'm going to betray her trust, tell you her secrets and plot against her to help you out?"
"You tricked me!"
"I only did to you what you do to people all the time. You deserved it and more, Cartman."
--
Cartman stopped by juvenile hall to visit Romper Stomper every couple months or so. He'd re-ignited his friendship with the other boy when he'd gone back to juvenile hall for a week for hiding Butters in that bomb shelter. He'd decided having Romper Stomper as a friend would be very beneficial, and it had been: earlier this very year a now-fourteen Trent Boyett had been released from juvenile hall, again. Cartman had broken Romper Stomper out with his Mission Impossible: Breaking and entering play set, and he and Trent had gotten into a vicious fight that landed them both right back in juvenile hall, thus saving them from Trent for another four years.
"Hey Romper," Cartman greeted him when he shuffled his way to the glass. "How's Disneyland?"
"Pirates of the Caribbean broke down again," Romper said.
"What, again?"
"It's my favorite ride," he said, giving him an imploring look.
"Ugh," Cartman huffed. "Fine, I'll crap out a repairman next time I come by," he said irritably. "But I need you to do something for me first."
"Yeah, what?"
"I need you to go to this address," Cartman said, writing Kenny's address down on a piece of paper and holding it up against the glass, "and I want you to kill the blond whore with the big tits. Don't kill the other blond whore by mistake, he'll just come back and bitch at me."
"Kill?" Romper Stomper repeated, frowning at him. "That's not cool, man."
"She screwed me, Romper. I'll never get the girl I love because of that slut. I'm going easy on her."
"Death is 'going easy'?"
"Yes. Is that hole I cut in your cell still there?"
"Yeah, they never filled it. They just put a sheet over it." Such was life in South Park.
"All right, do it tonight."
He sighed. "Fine. But you owe me for this."
"I'm getting you your ride fixed, aren't I?" he demanded.
Romper Stomper snuck out of his cell at seven-thirty, scaled the wall, and hitchhiked into town. No one even tried to stop him. He saw the guards falling over one another laughing, and assumed Cartman had supplied them with S'Mores Schnapps. Cartman always took care of the details.
The house was easy enough to find. It was about a fourth the size of the houses on either side of it and there was, for some reason, a row boat on the front lawn.
Romper Stomper went through the back door and stomped through the house - no one seemed very concerned that someone was breaking and entering. In fact, when he passed a twenty-something man in the living room he just glanced at him, shrugged, and resumed watching TV. He edged his way down the hall and opened the door that had 'Kenny' scrawled across it in crayon.
He blinked when he spotted the occupants, two blonds in various states of undress on a broken bed. Kenny was kissing Bebe along her stomach, and Bebe was giggling. The lower he went down her belly, the louder her giggling became. "Um," Romper Stomper said, and they both ignored him. He tried clearing his throat, then rapping against the door, and when that didn't work, he picked up the lampshade and chucked it at Kenny.
"Hey!" Kenny said indignantly, turning around to face him and rubbing the back of his head. "What was that for?"
"I'm here to kill you."
"What, can't it wait?"
"Not you," Romper Stomper said, waving him off. "Her, and- hey, where did she go?"
His question was answered almost immediately when Bebe, who'd slid off of the bed and snuck behind him, smashed the lap against his head while shouting, "Just TRY and kill my boyfriend on my watch!"
Romper Stomper slummed forward and proceeded to not move. Kenny blinked and climbed off the bed, coming over to inspect him.
"Hey, I know this guy. It's Cartman's delinquent friend... woah, he actually did try and have you killed. What a sore loser."
Bebe frowned down at Romper Stomper's prone form, biting her lip. "I... feel terrible."
"Why? Don't worry, you didn't kill the guy."
"It's not that. It's- Kenny, does Cartman actually like Wendy?"
"Well, yeah. Why?"
"I... I figured it was just another one of his stupid schemes! I mean, no way am I going to let anyone fuck with my best friend. But if he actually does like her..." she bit her lip harder. "And then he goes and gets us together, and I... Kenny... we've got to help Cartman out."
"Aw," Kenny whined. "Can't we just have sex?"
"Well, naturally. I meant we've got to help Cartman afterward."
--
Romper Stomper had failed. He'd seen the newspaper deadline about the 'dangerous delinquent' - he would beg to differ, since he hadn't even managed to off that slut - being recaptured and returned to juvenile hall.
So Cartman had taken to lounging on his couch, moping about how he would never have Wendy and that bitch Stevens wasn't even going to get what was coming to her. Clearly, life could not get worse.
And then the door bell rang.
"Fuck off!" he shouted toward the door, instead of calling for his mother to answer it.
"Open up, fatass," he heard Kyle call.
"Screw you, Jew!"
The door swung open and in marched Kenny, Kyle, and Stan, led by Bebe. The three boys looked less than pleased to be there.
"All right, Cartman," Bebe said briskly. "Move over, give us some couch room."
"What do you assholes want?" Cartman asked, standing up to scowl at them.
"You helped us out, so we decided it was only fair we help you out," Bebe explained.
"We're only here because she made us come," Kyle explained. Bebe gave them a sidelong glare.
"You guys owe him! You two especially, Stan and Kyle!"
"He hit me in the leg with a baseball bat!" Stan said.
Bebe rolled her eyes. "You know what I think, Stan? I think you're faking - or at the very least exaggerating - that injury so that you have an excuse to cling to Kyle."
"That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," Stan said, tightening his grip on Kyle's waist.
The four of them made their way to the couch and sat down, much to Cartman's annoyance. He made a face at the way Stan promptly propped his leg back up in Kyle's lap and linked his fingers around his abdomen, and the way Kenny slung an arm over Bebe so that it rested right between her breasts. Cartman glared at the four of them. He did not seem at all pleased that their happiness was a result of his quest to win Wendy over. In fact, it seemed to depress him. Which was to be expected, after all: Cartman didn't like helping other people, even by accident.
"Okay," Bebe said, folding her hands. "So what where you planning on doing to win Wendy over?"
"Why should I even trust you, whore?"
"You shouldn't," she said matter-of-factly. "If you do anything to hurt my best friend, I'll stab you in the back."
"You''re so hot when you're vindictive," Kenny praised. Judging by the look on Cartman's face, he begged to differ.
"So?" Bebe prompted. "What was your general plan of action regarding Wendy?"
Cartman muttered something and crossed his arms, glaring.
"... Dude," Stan finally ventured, "you don't even know how?"
"It was all supposed to come together!" Cartman snarled.
Kyle snorted. "Dumbass."
Cartman looked on the verge of murder. Unfortunately, he didn't have his baseball bat with him.
Still, the fact that the four of them where sitting there, staring, seemed to prompt him to come up with some sort of idea. He paced for a moment, and then his face lit up and he turned back around to face them, smirking in a self-satisfied sort of way.
"Here's what I'm going to do," Cartman said. "I'm going to throw her into Stark's Pond. Then I'm going to dive in and valiantly save her, and she'll swoon into my arms."
"Sounds good," Stan said.
"Oh my God," Bebe said, rolling her eyes. "You boys are so stupid; that is a horrible idea."
"What? It's great!" Kenny said.
"Look, Wendy knows how to swim. The only thing you'll accomplish by throwing her into the lake is thoroughly pissing her off, and possibly ruining her watch. Also, Wendy is a feminist. She boycotts Disney movies because she says they brainwash little girls into buying into the 'You are not complete without a man' mentality. She is not about to find you trying to sweep her off of her feet romantic. At the most, she'll find it an insult to her gender."
"God damn hippie freak," Cartman muttered. Amazingly, he possessed the ability to sound incredibly fond of her even while insulting her.
Kenny nudged Bebe. "But you'd want me to rescue you from the Stark's Pond Monster, right?"
"Actually, honey, you'd probably drown in the attempt," she said, patting his arm comfortingly.
"So what, then?" Stan asked.
"Invite her to your house for Thanksgiving," Bebe said after a moment of consideration. "She'll find that much more impressive than an invitation to the movies."
--
TBC