Chapter Text
“Seriously Kahl? Where do you get off dating my ex? Haven’t you ever heard of the bro code? You don’t go out with a friend’s ex. It’s, like, seriously fucked up of you to date Heidi.”
“Okay, one, you two dated three years ago, get over it. And two, we’re not friends, Fatass. I don’t like you.”
“Kahl, we are friends,” Eric argued, a pleading look in his eyes as he tried to reason with him.
“Not really,” the ginger muttered, folding his arms across his chest, his mouth downturned and set into a deep frown. “Last week you tried to get me deported.”
“Well it didn’t work! Seriously, it was just a prank, I don’t know why you’re getting so worked up about it.”
“ICE came to my house and ripped me away from my fucking parents and I had to spend the night in a literal cage while they sorted things out. Do you know how terrifying that was? To be yanked out of my home in the middle of the night and tossed in a cage like some kind of animal!”
Stan, Kyle, and Eric stood at the bus stop, waiting to be picked up and driven off to South Park Middle. Last night Kyle had changed his Facebook status to “taken by Heidi Turner” and now Cartman was having a conniption over it.
Stan had one earbud in, listening to music as he loosely paid attention to their argument.
“Stan,” Eric turned, directing the conversation towards him, “isn’t it messed up that Kyle’s going out with Heidi?”
“Dude, he can go out with Wendy for all I care. An elementary school relationship doesn’t matter. It’s seriously not that deep,” Stan replied with a shrug. He didn’t really understand why Cartman was getting so worked up about this. He’d just spent half of yesterday talking about how he wanted to ask Patty Nelson to go to the eighth grade formal with him. Stan had assumed he’d long since moved on from Heidi.
“Of course you’d side with your Jew ass boyfriend you fucking fag!” Eric shot back at him, continuing his hissy fit. Stan simply closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose in annoyance. This was seriously starting to give him a headache.
The sound of feet crunching through snow approached them and Stan turned his head to see Kenny approaching the bus stop.
“Kinny!” Eric called out, flagging him down. “Kyle dating Heidi is seriously messed up right?”
“You’re dating Heidi?” Kenny asked, gray eyes flicking over to the ginger.
“Uh yeah, we’ve been hanging out a lot lately and last night she asked to make it official,” Kyle replied a bit awkwardly.
“Nice,” Kenny told him. “She’s got a sweet ass.”
“Kiiinnyyyy!” Eric whined.
“Gross dude, don’t look at my girlfriend’s ass,” Kyle added.
“She wasn’t your girlfriend when I looked,” Kenny replied with a shrug.
“Does nobody care about this serious bro-code violation?” Eric whined.
Stan, Kyle, and Kenny all glanced back and forth between each other and then back at Eric. “No, not really. No one fucking cares, dude,” Kenny told him.
A few minutes later the bus rumbled down the road, screeching to a halt in front of them. Stan was the last to board. He watched as Kenny and Eric took their usual seat together and then headed for the seat he and Kyle usually shared, but Kyle walked straight past it, instead opting to sit with his new girlfriend.
Stan frowned, sliding into the seat by himself, and popped in his second earbud so he could ignore the world around him fully. At the next stop Marjorine got on the bus, and happily slid in next to Stan.
“Wow, it sure has been awhile since we’ve sat together, hasn’t it been Stan?” She commented.
“Mhm,” Stan replied, unimpressed.
She went on, talking about her weekend. PC Parent and Strong Mother had taken Marj and the quints out to the county fair. Stan couldn’t even begin to imagine just how many tantrums the PC toddlers must have thrown, he was a bit surprised that Marjorine seemed to have enjoyed going out with them. If he’d been around that much crying he’d probably have to start hitting the whiskey again.
He hadn’t drank it for long, only for a few weeks in the fourth grade after his mother had taken back his shithead of a dad for the billionth time. Stan couldn’t take that man while sober, so he’d raided his father’s booze cabinet. Sharon had quickly found out, and was even quicker to blame Randy. They ended up divorced for real that time, which Randy blamed him for. He and his dad didn’t talk now, which was fine by him.
As the bus pulled into the parking lot and opened its doors, Stan made no attempt to keep up with the chatty blonde. Marj was his friend and all, but Stan got enough of her in band practice and board games club. Her painfully cheerful attitude and tendency to repeat her boyfriend’s jokes until they were beaten into the ground made her a bit much to handle for long periods of time.
Stan made his way straight to his home room without stopping to socialize with anyone. He was one of the first ones there and over the next ten minutes his classmates began trickling in through the doors.
No more than thirty seconds after the teacher began calling roll, the overhead speaker clicked on and there was a voice telling him to report to the office.
“Oh god damn it,” he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration as he wondered what mess Cartman had gotten into this time. Usually whenever he got in trouble he’d call either Stan or Kenny to the office as a “witness” to vouch for him that he hadn’t done anything wrong.
Stan got up from his desk, grabbing the hall pass from the hook next to the door, and headed down the hall to the office contemplating what mess would be awaiting him when he arrived.
Much to his surprise, when the secretary ushered him into Principal Victoria’s office, Eric Cartman was nowhere to be found. Instead there was only some blond dude he’d never met before, sitting with his hands folded neatly in his lap. He looked like a total loser.
“Uh.. you needed me?” He asked.
“Yes, thank you for coming, Stan. Please, have a seat,” Principal Victoria said.
Doing as he was told, Stan took a seat next to the blond, eying him warily out of the corner of his eye.
Principal Victoria gestured over to the blond. He was pretty clean cut, with his hair gelled neatly to the side, wearing a crisp long sleeved blue button up, tucked in and buttoned all the way to the top. What a dweeb.
“Stan, this is Gary,” she told him, giving him an expectant look. It was clear that she wanted him to introduce himself, so he did so awkwardly.
“Hey… uh, Stan,” he said offering up a hesitant wave. Seemingly satisfied, Principal Victoria continued.
“He just moved here from Utah. It seems that you two have nearly identical class schedules, so I was wondering if you could show him around.”
Great, now Stan was going to have this loser following him around like a puppy all day. No doubt that the guys would rag on him for it. He almost considered telling Principal Victoria that there was no way he was dragging this lame-o dweeb around all day, but logistically he knew he didn’t really have a choice.
“Yeah, sure,” he agreed with little excitement.