Chapter Text
January 2012
Kyle finally closed his laptop and set it onto his bedside table.
That case study was brutal, he thought with a sigh, undoing the hair tie keeping his messy red locks out of his face. It fell onto his shoulders as he flopped back into his pillow. He stared at the ceiling for a bit as he let his brain decompress from that particular stressor.
Tonight was the perfect night to have the window open. The breeze fluttered through his studio apartment and played with his clothes, all hanging near the door at the far wall. His blue curtains billowed upwards, forming flowing curves as they blocked the television opposite his bed. The apartment was cluttered, but it kind of had to be. There wasn’t enough room to put his video games in the closet, or to keep all of his appliances in the kitchen. Kyle liked to keep a clean space nonetheless; everything had been dusted and wiped down within an inch of its life in the past few days. Cleaning was a good way to de-stress.
Kyle felt like his whole life had been nothing but stress lately. He’d signed up willingly for the most pressing stress in his life: his Juris Doctor degree program. While the workload was intense and he wondered if he was making the right choice with his career at times, it would all be worth it when he had that degree in hand and could finally start studying for the bar. Being a lawyer like his dad had always been his goal, after all. Only two more years!
Being in a beautiful area like Stanford, California really helped offset some of that academic pressure. It was such a shift from his hometown in almost every way! People were so much milder and less inclined to burn the town down over, like, the Starbucks making their cups orange or something. The weather, while it could throw unpredictable and violent rainstorms at you, was always varied and more livable than 11 straight months of snow. No one was trying to rope him into crazy schemes or half-baked plans…
The TV, set to Comedy Central, droned through tacky late-night commercials as Kyle sat up with a slight frown. Right. Half-baked plans. The phone call he got from Kenny immediately jolted into his mind, reminding him of his latest stressor.
When Kyle and his two best friends, Stan Marsh and Kenny McCormick, graduated from South Park High School in 2008, their lives took markedly different tracks. Stan married his lifelong sweetheart Wendy in an intimate, lovely ceremony the year after, and the two of them moved into the suburbs of Denver and started studying at the University of Colorado - Stan was working on a Marine Biology degree, Wendy on Environmental Sciences. Their lives were very sedate, and they seemed quite content with that.
Kenny, on the other hand, didn’t move into higher education, taking odd jobs around South Park until he miraculously won a massive payout in the state lottery two years ago. Since then, he’d been able to move himself into one of the largest mansions in South Park, set up investments that had paid off in spades and made him even richer, paid to renovate his parents’ house, set up funds to put his much-beleaguered sister Karen into whatever school or trade she desired, and reconnected with an old flame of his, Tammy Warner.
Kenny called today to inform Kyle that he and Tammy were getting married in what he called a “big fucking deal ceremony” in July, in South Park, with basically the entire town in attendance. Of course Kyle agreed to be one of Kenny’s groomsmen, even if he thought this might not be the greatest idea. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Tammy - sure, he’d been suspicious of her intentions when Kenny first got back together with her, but she’d proven herself to be a real rock for him, helping him to deal with parasitic relatives trying to leech as much money from Kenny as possible. He just… always worried about how Kenny threw his money around. Even though he knew Kenny was keeping track of it.
...That wasn’t the entirety of it and Kyle knew it. He worried about going back to South Park. He’d never liked the town much. Found it absolutely suffocating. Even bigger than his desire to be a lawyer was his desire to get the fuck out of dodge the earliest he could. He did miss his two closest friends and his parents, but he didn’t miss a damn thing else about South Park.
The TV moved away from commercials, fading into an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Kyle was usually up for the late-night airings of the show - he truly did an insane amount of homework that took him deep into the evening - and it was usually a nice capper to his days. His mind was still occupied with thoughts of Kenny’s wedding (would the weather cooperate with his chosen location of Stark’s Pond? Who else would be in Kenny’s wedding party? What if he was paired with some girl he used to know in elementary school when walking down the aisle during the ceremony? Oh Christ, he just remembered Kenny’s favorite color was chartreuse, was he going to have to wear a neon suit -) as Stewart began to speak.
“There’s been a major uproar about the Stop Online Piracy Act, and today, a coordinated effort from major websites like Wikipedia, Twitter…”
Kyle began to zone out again, thinking about the wedding. His parents would probably let him stay at their place. They were still living in his childhood home, as was his younger brother Ike, now a high school senior whose sole life ambition was to become a top historical expert on his home country, Canada. Kyle couldn’t fault him there, honestly: Ike would be a fantastic professor. He meant to ask Kenny if Ike was going to be in the wedding, since he and Karen were close -
“To help explain the youth’s reaction and immense distaste for SOPA -”
Kyle’s eyes flitted up for a moment, and immediately every thought going through his head came to a crashing halt. As usual, Stewart was at his desk, and the camera panned out to show it in full. This was an in-studio segment, as opposed to the more famous “field pieces” that involved correspondents going out into the world and, for lack of a better phrase, fucking with their interview subjects. Kyle’d seen many of these before - Jon on the left, a correspondent on the right. The correspondent plays the expert in this scenario, but the expert-correspondent will always take things in an extreme, ridiculous, or unexpected direction.
That all was expected.
Kyle just couldn’t believe who was in the seat opposite Jon. A vein in his forehead began to throb, and his jaw dropped. There was no way. This couldn’t be…
“- we have our Senior Youth Correspondent, Eric Cartman.”
June 8, 2012
“Dude, can you be a little less… intense?”
Kyle blinked, his green eyes darting to his side.
Kyle hated large gatherings as a rule. He learned many times during his youth that any gathering of many people could turn into a large-scale mob on a dime, and four years of going to Stanford campus events hadn’t done anything to dislodge that idea from him. Kenny’s “pre-wedding” party, held at Skeeter’s with a packed-to-the-brim barn full of faces from Kyle’s past, was going to be an anxiety-inducing situation anyways.
Stan Marsh, standing at his side with his hands shoved in his jean pockets, didn’t seem perturbed at all. Kyle liked to think of his general state as a still, shining reservoir of calm, punctuated every so often by a stab of exasperation. Kyle just brought out the exasperation, and he tried to force his shoulders to sink down in a more relaxed state.
“You know why I’m like this,” Kyle shot back at him.
This was a casual party, but some, like Kyle, still made a bit of an effort to dress up. He’d tied his unruly hair back into a low ponytail, thrown a blazer over a Strokes tee, and dug out his best pair of boots in fear that the balmy 70 degree weather might give way to a sudden snowfall. Stan looked as he always did, shaggy black bangs nearly hitting his eyes and wearing the same blue hoodie he’d been attached to since high school; Wendy, to his right, went more in Kyle’s direction, with lightly-curled hair, a yellow-and-blue sundress, and sensible heels. She’d be fucked if a storm hit -
Wendy rolled her eyes. “Is this about Cartman?”
“It’s always about Cartman,” both Stan and Kyle said in unison - Kyle, shocked that he even had to say it; Stan, sounding even more exasperated than usual. If Kyle hit one more of his buttons, he might even pinch the bridge of his nose, like he used to in elementary school.
Wendy gave Kyle a sympathetic look. “You haven’t seen him since he moved, have you?”
“Of course not,” Kyle said. “Why would I go see that fucking asshat?”
“I know you don’t want to hear this, but he’s made some real huge changes in his life,” Stan insisted. Kyle knew that Stan knew he didn’t want to hear this, because Kyle said some version of that phrase every time they’d had this conversation since January. Kyle called Stan immediately upon seeing Cartman on The Daily Show to ask what the actual fuck he was doing there, and Stan mentioned a bunch of superficially relevant but unimportant facts - "he’d been doing stand-up in New York for years now, someone must have seen his show and picked him up, you should really try and see his sets, Kyle, they’re very enlightening."
Kyle tried calling Stan again a month or so later, when he got the wedding week itinerary from Kenny, and asked again what Cartman could possibly be planning. Once again, he got uninteresting and obviously opaque answers - he was trying not to lose a very coveted job and was very stressed out about the idea of taking a week off so shortly after being hired. Like fuck he was, Cartman had to be up to something.
Everyone was hell-bent on telling Kyle otherwise, with seemingly reasonable explanations - he hadn’t seen Cartman in over ten years. Things were very different for everyone now. Why would Cartman make a scene at his literal best friend’s wedding anyways? What could he possibly gain from that, Kyle? You should go see his show - Kyle didn’t want to pay to see that fucker’s show! All of these explanations couldn’t erase that Cartman had been a total piece of shit to him growing up.
“Maybe you should just talk to him tonight,” Wendy suggested gently. “I get it, he was an absolute ass to me in school too. But I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
Kyle’s grimace stretched across his face in a grim line. He did put a bit more weight on Wendy approving of Cartman, but their history wasn’t nearly as littered with near-death-scenarios, vile shit-flinging, and emotional meltdowns. Kyle assumed that, the moment that racist blob saw him, that switch in his rotten brain would flip and he'd be hurling insults in no time, dream job be damned.
When Wendy didn’t get a response, she simply sighed, looking around the room. “Bebe told me she was going to be here, too.”
“She came down from Oregon?” Stan asked.
“Yeah, said she wouldn’t miss it for the world. I forgot how close she and Kenny are.”
“Man, does that mean Clyde is here?”
“Oh! Probably! I haven’t seen him since middle school…”
Kyle started to tune out Wendy and Stan’s conversation, instead taking in everyone around him. He did recognize a good amount of the faces here - there were ones he’d obviously recognize, like Kenny’s sister Karen, talking animatedly to his brother Ike near the stage, where a DJ was playing quiet upbeat music. There were some that took him a few moments to place, like Damien Mephisto, who he hadn’t seen in… god, fifteen years? Or more? He was ordering a drink with a tattooed, pink-haired woman that Kyle was certain he’d never met. Each new face and the following moments of comprehension filled Kyle with more apprehension. He’d never really felt like he fit in beyond his small group when he lived in South Park. Plus, this was a large crowd. All it would take is some dipshit like Stan’s dad to come in here and scream about ManBearPig or something -
“Kyle, square up,” Stan jokingly told him, snapping Kyle out of his thoughts. He gave Stan a confused look.
“What’s that -”
“Eric!” Wendy said, not paying attention to either Stan or Kyle to greet their new interloper. Kyle’s eyes settled on Cartman as he gave Wendy a hug - she let him hug her?!
He looked the same as he had on TV. Cartman was still overweight, but not as morbidly obese as he had been in the past; his cinnamon-colored hair was shaggier than when they were kids, with thick sideburns and a long, artfully messy appearance. His casual wear was a light blue button-down with the sleeves rolled up and dark blue jeans… with boots. Cool, both he and Kyle were preparing for the worst. Kyle could just hear Stan telling him how they had so much in common, to try and push him into liking a dude who’d tried to kill him multiple times.
Cartman pulled away from the hug and noticed the other two men. Something in his countenance changed, and he grew a little stiffer when he saw Kyle, but didn’t stop expressing warmth outwardly. Good. Let him squirm.
“It’s been a while,” Cartman said, offering a hand to Kyle. “Feel like I need to reintroduce myself.”
Kyle eyed his hand suspiciously, and could practically feel Stan rolling his eyes in response. Kyle took it, though, making his grip a little tighter than it needed to be. “Kinda. How the hell did you get on The Daily Show?”
“So we’re starting like this,” Stan muttered. Kyle shot him an aggrieved side-eye.
Cartman was unfazed, letting go of the handshake and subtly trying to flex his fingers. Maybe Kyle’s grip had been a bit more crushing than he expected.
“I’m Eric Cartman, nice to meet you too,” he said dryly before putting his hands in his pockets. “And they didn’t really need to, given my work and all.”
Kyle narrowed his eyes. “I know they have to background check for TV.” The implication was obvious - how did you get past it?
“Jesus Christ,” Stan blurted out before turning to Cartman. “Dude, I’m sorry, Kyle hasn’t listened to a word I’ve said about you for months.”
Cartman shrugged. “Eh. Makes sense. I don’t like watching my stand-up, either.”
This jokey nonchalance only incensed Kyle further, and he crossed his arms over his chest. No one really paid him heed, though, as Wendy offered to go get some drinks. Both he and Cartman demurred, and Stan decided to follow her as she got something, presumably, for herself. Cartman settled next to Kyle and sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“Look, man, we have a lot to talk about,” Cartman said.
“What could we possibly have to talk about?” Kyle snapped.
Cartman’s eye twitched a bit, but he pushed forward. “Everything that’s happened since I was thirteen years old, Kyle.”
Kyle glanced over confusedly at Cartman. “...you pronounced my name right.”
“Once again, I am not thirteen years old anymore,” Cartman reminded him forcefully. Like Kyle was the one being unreasonable here. “I don’t want to spend all of Kiineh’s big engagement party -”
“But you can’t pronounce Kenny’s name?”
“He doesn’t have a gigantic rod up his ass about nicknames,” Cartman blithely replied, leaving the obvious follow-up unsaid. Kyle bristled. Maybe he wouldn’t be so uptight about all this if people would stop acting like he was behaving completely unreasonably!
“Anyways, I don’t want to spend his big engagement party mollifying you,” Cartman admitted, before he started narrating the changes billowing over Kyle’s face. “Yeah, I know you’re going to be pissed about that, you’re turning all red because you aren’t the problem here, it’s everyone else, and hearing me suggest that you need to be talked down is rich coming from me. That about right?”
Kyle blinked, anger dissipating. He supposed that Cartman, in his new line of work, would have to know how to read people. And he’d never been bad at that - on the contrary, he’d been far too good at it growing up. He could get anyone to believe anything, no matter how many times it backfired on them previously.
Kyle danced around Cartman’s pointed question. “...Look, I don’t want to make a scene here either.” He let his hands fall to his sides, glancing at the ground before taking a hard look at Cartman.
Cartman appeared so neutral. He wasn’t bursting at the seams in anger, his eyes weren’t squinted in sadistic joy, he just… stood there, hands in his pockets, bangs falling into his mismatched eyes, looking at somebody that he used to know. The dry wit was new, but, again, he had to cultivate that for work. Kyle got the distinct feeling that, no matter what he said, Cartman’s response would be nonplussed at best.
“I don’t want to know any more about you,” Kyle told him honestly. “Let’s just get through this week.”
“Fair enough,” Cartman said with a shrug. “It’d be nice if you didn’t claw my eyes out.”
“I’ll do my best,” Kyle acquiesced.
“That’s the Kyle I know,” Cartman said jokingly, but something beneath his words sounded… almost melancholy. Kyle didn’t question it. He was probably upset that someone was calling his bluff on all this, that a cushy gig wasn’t enough to convince Kyle to let bygones be bygones. Why would it? Cartman hadn’t given him any reason to move on and sidestepped explaining by saying he didn’t want to ruin Kenny’s night - there were like two hundred people here, no one would fucking notice if they stepped outside for a smoke for ten minutes -
“Ladies and gentleman!” A voice boomed out over the speakers of Skeeter’s. Wendy and Stan jostled into Kyle and Cartman’s space quickly, and Wendy handed beers to both Cartman and Kyle.
“I didn’t -” Kyle protested.
“Shut up and drink,” Wendy muttered to him, stony eyes as hard as flint. Kyle immediately drank, much to the apparent bemusement of Cartman, whose eyes widened at her words.
“Presenting the future Mr. and Mrs. Kenny McCormick!”
On the stage at the front of Skeeter’s, as everyone applauded, Kenny and Tammy, holding hands and looking as marvelously gaudy as Kyle expected them to, strutted out. Kenny was in a powder blue tuxedo, reminiscent of the kind of outfits he wore to school dances throughout their youth, but much better tailored and with much higher-quality fabric. His blonde hair was cropped close to his head, and his gray eyes glittered in the bright stage lights. He looked truly happy, Kyle thought before he looked at Tammy.
She, too, looked like she didn’t want this moment to end. Her fashion had always been a bit locked in time, and her current look was no different - she was in a light blue minidress with black tulle underneath, with black pumps that added three inches to her height and lace fingerless gloves. She’d pinned a baby blue fascinator in her brown and blonde hair, and her Pete Wentz-style eyeliner made her ocean eyes pop.
Kenny took a microphone from a nearby stand as the applause and cheering died down. Cartman had been one of the people whooping it up for the two of them, as had the distinctive voice of Butters, who Kyle couldn’t place in the throngs of people around them.
“Thanks all,” Kenny said brightly, not letting go of Tammy’s hand. It was sickeningly sweet. “We’re super stoked you could all be here, and wanted to thank you for all the support you’ve given us over the last few years. I think everyone knows how much of a rock Tammy has been for me since we got back together… so obviously it was time to give her a rock in return!”
Tammy showed off her frankly gigantic engagement ring, to the approving delight of the crowd. Kyle had to laugh a bit at Kenny’s hopelessly corny joke. If anyone else characterized their engagement like that, he’d find it distasteful, but Kenny had a way of sounding absolutely charming even when saying the dumbest things.
“We hope y’all have a great time tonight,” Tammy said, leaning close to Kenny to be heard through the microphone. She still retained some of the heavy southern twang in her voice she had in childhood, but it was softer now. “There’s gonna be live music going until midnight, and Kenny and I are gonna be opening up the dance floor really soon! Make sure y’all get food and drinks and come see us before you party too hard!”
Overall, a lovely and short speech. Everyone clapped and cheered as Kenny dipped Tammy to kiss her, and Kyle felt a little bit of an ache in his chest. He’d never felt anything like how much Kenny loved Tammy, or how Stan loved Wendy. Some people were late bloomers in that regard. Normally Kyle didn’t dwell on it too much. But in this moment, he did feel a bit like a fifth wheel. Seventh wheel, if you counted the unholy union of Cartman and His Job.
…he should not count that. Even for Kyle, that was a ridiculous overstatement.
Everyone quickly went back to what they were doing - quite a few people started moving towards the dance floor in anticipation, a road crew started setting up the stage for the live band.
“I’m so glad Tolkien’s band came into town for this!” Wendy told Stan excitedly as they started drifting towards the dance floor with a small wave of people splitting off to go to the bar. Kyle took a small sip of his beer, about to follow Stan and Wendy before the man and woman of the hour pushed their way towards him.
“Kyle! Eric!” Kenny called, pulling Cartman into a tight side hug with a laugh.
“Oh-em-gee, y’all look too cute!” Tammy shouted at them, quickly enveloping Kyle in a crushing full hug. Pulling away and putting her hands on Kyle’s shoulders, she practically beamed at him. “I’m so glad you were able to come in, we were the most worried about you two, honestly.”
“Yeah, our big adult friends doing big adult things,” Kenny joked as he moved to give Kyle the same endearing side hug.
“I’ve been doing homework for 20 years, I don’t think I’m an adult yet,” Kyle deadpanned, getting a laugh from Kenny and, surprisingly, Cartman. It didn’t sound derisive, so Kyle let it slide.
“Y’all are staying at the lake house this week, right?” Tammy suddenly asked, pulling herself away from a hug she’d just given Cartman.
“Lake house?” Kyle and Cartman asked almost in unison. Kenny glanced at Tammy in a slightly annoyed way, and she winced; they both recovered quickly.
“Oh shit, that was a surprise, I totally forgot, baby,” Tammy admitted in a soft voice.
“It’s okay, I was going to ask them tonight anyways,” Kenny waved it off. “Yeah, but anyways, Tammy and I built a house on Stark’s Pond that just finished up, the view is fuckin’ spectacular. And I thought, why not make it like old times, the four of us hangin’ out before the big day?”
Kyle could think of one big reason why that sounded less than ideal, but he didn’t say anything immediately.
“I didn’t know you were building a house,” Cartman said in shock.
“It’s just like the lake house in the movie,” Tammy said with a swoon.
Cartman looked a bit… concerned… about that. Kyle half-expected him to look at an invisible camera somewhere with a confused expression. “...the Keanu Reeves one?”
“Honestly, it’s pretty sick,” Kenny said by way of confirmation. “We can’t figure out how to make the mailbox a time portal, but it’s just a matter of time.”
“I’ll have to talk to my parents,” Kyle interjected before Cartman could completely lose his mind over Kenny spending his money to make the lake house from the movie The Lake House. “But I’m sure they won’t mind a change in sleeping arrangements. I’d love to see the place.”
“How are your parents?” Cartman asked in a completely normal tone of voice; Kyle ignored him.
“Awesome!” Tammy cheered, clapping her hands together. “What about you, Eric?”
“...let me think on that,” he said in a slightly subdued voice.
Kyle watched, slightly intrigued but more confused, when Kenny’s body language completely changed and he gestured for Eric to follow him off to the side. Tammy, too, shifted just a bit before turning her attention to Kyle.
“I forgot that Eric might have to work this week,” Tammy told Kyle, putting a finger to her lips.
Kyle raised an eyebrow. “...like, for the show?”
“Oh, no, his stand-up,” Tammy replied. “The grind never ends, apparently.” She shrugged. “Hard to get someone who’s never stopped to stop. Kenny and Eric, they’re peas in a pod like that.”
Kyle nodded, though he couldn’t shake the feeling of being annoyed at Cartman scheduling work during the week of Kenny’s wedding. He couldn’t be that hard up for money!
He probably planned a few outs to not have to deal with you. Made sense. Cartman couldn’t be nearly as even-keel about all this as he was portraying. There was a plan somewhere - if it wasn’t to humiliate Kyle or to start up their old fighting, plans to avoid him made complete sense.
He and Tammy chatted for a bit about a few things - Ike, his travels, his parents - and though it all felt logical and understanding, it also felt a bit forced, like Tammy had to think of things to prompt conversation. It was probably just his anxiety about all of this.
Yeah, that was it. Definitely.