Chapter Text
“You know, when we agreed to help you with this, you didn’t tell us there were fifty billion boxes to go through,” groaned Kyle while Wendy scooted yet another sealed box in his direction.
“Can you quit with the complaining, please?” Wendy sighed as she struggled to slice open her own box. “Going through all this old crap will make moving a lot easier for me, and I really do appreciate you guys helping out. All the girls were busy today.”
“South Park’s not gonna be the same without you,” Stan piped up from the attic’s corner where he was currently sorting through a box of weathered, dog-eared books that had clearly seen one too many reads.
“We all have to move on eventually,” Wendy, distracted, said with her head still halfway bent into her own box. Stan, who was beginning to side with Kyle’s frustrated point of view, sighed and lifted a heavy encyclopedia, wondering if he should sort it into the donation pile or not.
Wendy hadn’t exactly been clear with her directions when she’d enlisted Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny to help her organize and donate a large quantity of her childhood and teenage belongings before she moved across states to graduate school. Stan tried to make himself remember that he was fortunate that so many of his old friends had stayed close together for college; their eventual split was inevitable, but it still weighed heavily upon him. Soon, everything would be different. Wendy would be gone.
“What the hell is this?” Cartman’s voice suddenly rang out with laughter, and everyone turned their attention to where he was standing in the corner of the attic with a glittery princess dress costume draped across his bent arms. “There’s a whole box of them,” he snickered. “Didn’t realize you were into this kinda thing, Wendy.”
“Oh, grow up, Eric!” Wendy simmered with pink cheeks. “Remember when I helped Bebe out with her stage costumes when she was doing theatre for a while? Those are just the ones she let me keep.”
“Real nice,” said Kenny, who’d been lying on his back across the attic floor and not contributing at all for the past half hour, when Cartman abruptly dropped the shimmering pink dress on his head. “Sorry, but I think my days of dressing up as a princess are over,” he said from underneath the mound of fabric. “Unless you pay me.”
“Can we grow up for five minutes and get this over with?” grunted Kyle, elbow-deep in a box that appeared to contain Wendy’s childhood toys. Stan briefly wondered why she wasn’t getting more help from her parents with this endeavor.
“Good offer, Ken, but I don’t feel like paying you today. Besides, you’re ugly as hell in a dress,” Cartman joked, prompting Kenny to drag the dress off his face and pull an exaggerated offended expression at him. “However,” Cartman continued, extending his voice into an impressive drawl, “I will pay . . . Stan fifty bucks to wear this one.”
Stan, startled, froze while Cartman dug around in the box for a moment and then held up a soft blue dress with a mostly sheer, glimmering upper half from shoulder to shoulder. It sprawled from his hands like a waterfall while Kenny exploded with laughter, and Kyle and Wendy looked lethal with annoyance.
“Leave him alone,” Kyle snapped defensively. “And get back to work.”
“Damn, let the man speak for himself,” teased Cartman, waggling the dress back and forth while he stared Stan down with a mischievous grin. “C’mon, Stan. An easy fifty bucks! What do you say?”
Stan, appalled, just kept looking at him and wondering why on Earth Cartman would ask him to do such a ridiculous thing. Then again, this was Eric Cartman—bully extraordinaire. In terms of maturity, he really hadn’t progressed much since elementary school.
“Stop it. You’re making him uncomfortable,” Wendy intervened next. “I guess I don’t really need those dresses anymore, though . . . Bebe probably doesn’t want them, either. I’ll just donate them.” She extended her arm for the box, but Cartman kicked it out of her reach.
“Aw, you guys are no fun,” he muttered with what sounded to Stan like genuine disappointment. He couldn’t fathom one reason why Cartman would actually be pissed at him for not trying on the dress unless he’d really been expecting to make his life miserable over it. For some reason, that thought bothered Stan more than it should.
Kenny would’ve worn the dress for free no matter what he said, and even Kyle often took Cartman up on his ridiculous dares and challenges. The one time Cartman presented him with a goofy trial, everyone came to his defense like he was a little child in need of extra protection. Stan set the encyclopedia in his lap and said in his calmest tone, “I’ll wear the dress if you promise to pay up, asshole.”
There was a single second of silence before Cartman exploded with giddy laughter. “No way, dude! You’re not as lame as I thought! I promise, I promise.” He threw the dress at Stan before Stan could argue another word, and once it was in his hands, Stan realized how cheaply made the fabric was. It felt almost like plastic, and since it had been used for stage plays, it probably was.
“Stan, you don’t have to do this,” Kyle was saying while Wendy bemoaned something under her breath about wasting time, but Stan was determined now. It was just one lame dare, and an easy fifty dollars if Cartman held up his end of the deal. That was a big if, but Stan at least wanted to prove he wasn’t some crybaby loser who couldn’t do something dumb with the guys.
“Take your time, princess!” Cartman called out while Stan rolled his eyes and took the dress behind one of the taller stacks of boxes so no one could see him changing. His original plan was to slide it simply over his clothes, but as soon as he tried to wiggle inside and felt the tight fit, clearly tailored for a woman’s figure, he decided instead he could forgo his shirt as long as he stayed in his jeans.
The sheer material was snug and scratchy across his bare chest and shoulders, and as soon as Stan had tugged it as far as the long sleeves would go down his arms, he started to feel a little ridiculous. This was a costume dress for some silly drama club’s amateur play. He felt his face burning, but if he backed out now, Cartman would only make the mocking twice as brutal.
With a heavy sigh, Stan fought with the dress’s cinched waistline for many minutes before he was able to unroll the long skirt down over his clothed legs. He was certain he must have looked incredibly foolish with the dress bulging over his belt and jeans, but whatever. At this point, he just wanted to be done with the dumb prank and get his reward.
“C’mon, princess, we don’t have all day!” Cartman’s voice sang from around the wall of boxes. “Come out from your tower and meet your prince!”
“Shut the hell up,” grumbled Stan, kicking at the billowy blue material surrounding his feet before he sucked in his courage and stepped out. “There, I’m beautiful,” he deadpanned, holding his arms straight out, T-shaped, so his friends could get the full display. “Now, where’s my money?”
Kenny was laughing his head off in seconds, and even Kyle concealed a chuckle behind his palm while Wendy shook her head and said, “Boys are unbelievable.”
But Cartman, the one Stan had expected to have the biggest, meanest reaction of all, wasn’t saying anything. He was only staring—and staring in a way that had Stan squirming in discomfort, like he was a newly discovered species behind the bars at a zoo. “So, where’s the fifty dollars?” he barked out once it became clear that the joke somehow hadn’t landed the way Cartman expected. Stan, feeling hopelessly idiotic, stood stick-still while Cartman’s eyes raked down his body from head to toe. I must look even worse than I thought.
“You make a pretty hot girl, Stan!” Kenny was still laughing, but the humor was fading fast for everyone else, who’d returned their attention back to the boxes.
“Well, give the money to me later, I guess,” Stan said with little to no confidence as he began to shrink back behind the box tower. Never in his life had he been so ready to remove an article of clothing. He could already feel the awful, sticky fabric collecting sweat underneath his armpits.
“Hey.” Cartman’s voice paused him. “Come to my place tomorrow. To pick up the money. And.” Cartman’s voice stalled for a moment, and Stan noticed he was still looking at him, specifically at his waist. Stan felt his face burn hotter. “And bring the dress,” Cartman finished quietly. Stan looked quickly to the rest of their friends for backup and saw no one else was even listening anymore.
“What the fuck? No way, man. You already had your fun, and besides, it doesn’t belong to us.”
“Wendy’s donating it, anyway. Just bring it. Jeez. Unless you don’t want the money.” The final threat wasn’t even intimidating, but spoken softly, as Cartman’s eyes dawdled all over Stan’s body. When his gaze finally made its way to the sheer substance barely hiding Stan’s shoulders, upper half of his chest, and collarbone, Stan felt for a moment that he was utterly nude.
He felt so stupid and ugly, like he might start crying any second. “Whatever, fine,” he said, because if he didn’t say something soon, he really was going to cry and make a worse laughingstock out of himself. “I’m taking this stupid thing off now.”
Clawing his way out of the dress was even more difficult than forcing his way into it, and he was pretty certain even once he was back in his regular T-shirt that he could feel Cartman’s eyes on him from across the room. The others had returned to the chore and normal conversation, but Stan could hardly focus on the stack of books he had been organizing before because he knew he was being watched. He sensed the gravity of Cartman’s eyes all over him like the layers of dust lining Wendy’s attic, but every time he glanced up, the other man rapidly looked away.
What the hell is going on?
Stan swallowed a thick, upset sensation gathering in his throat. He knew he wasn’t much to look at, but he’d never considered he could look so hideous in a costume that even Eric Cartman would be speechless and need to see it again just to find the correct words with which to make fun of him.
Stan blinked away the pressure in his eyes to fight off the tears again. He knew Cartman was a conniving piece of shit, so he didn’t even know why he cared so much. It wasn’t like he cared how he looked in a dress. His body was decently toned, but it wasn’t anywhere close enough to feminine to be appealing in such a getup. Maybe he was just hurt because Cartman didn’t usually target him specifically. He didn’t know how Kyle could put up with feeling like this every day, but then again, Kyle was a much better rival for Cartman than Stan ever could have been.
He tried to sort the bad feelings into the stack of Wendy’s old books and concentrate again on the task at hand, but every single time he looked up, he noticed Cartman watching him. The realization was unnerving, yet somehow Stan forced himself back into standard banter with his three other friends until, after a couple of occupied hours, he’d almost returned to a sense of normalcy.
It wasn’t until close to sunset when everyone was saying their “see you laters” on Wendy’s lawn that Cartman stealthily leaned closer and said by his ear, “Don’t forget to come by tomorrow evening with the dress. I’ll even up the price to one hundred.”
Stan was horrified when, without looking, he felt Cartman push the dress back into his hands. He hadn’t even realized the other man had taken it from the attic.
“Can you just let that go, please? I don’t even want the money,” Stan whispered back, swiping the dress away from Cartman just to be done with it and grazing past him as fast as he could before the conversation could stretch any further. “You don’t have to keep making fun of me, you piece of shit.”
“I’m not making fun of you,” were the last words Stan heard from Cartman before Stan shouted out a final goodbye to Wendy and let himself back into his car parallel parked on the street outside her house.
Then he sat for a moment with his chest pressed against the wheel and the dress crumpled on his lap while he tried to understand the tone he’d heard in Cartman’s voice—plain, emotionless, clear.
He couldn’t place it, but Cartman hadn’t exactly sounded insulting in the way he’d expected.
I’m not making fun of you.
What the hell did that mean? Of course he was. Why else would he want Stan to come over with the dress again? Stan looked down at the gaudy, water-blue fabric pooled across his lap while humiliation scorched and branded every inch of his body. Well, fine then, he thought with a rare kind of anger pulsating behind his forehead from ear to ear. I’ll show up and make him look like a fucking idiot. He’s losing one hundred dollars, and I’m not a coward. Kyle and Kenny could face Cartman with no trouble, and so could Stan—even if the idea of tomorrow already had his hands shaking around the wheel all the way home.