Chapter Text
The early September air is chilling Stan to the bone, but he doesn’t close his window. He stares out at the perfect view of the farm he gets from it, watching the birds peck at each other for feed and the crops sway in the dimming afternoon’s breeze. He leans his head out the window and inhales carefully, watching his breath fog. It’d been sweltering out on the fields when he’d helped his father harvest the last of their corn. Music pumps into his ears from his busted MP3 player, glass beach’s lively guitar distracting him from focusing on the sound of his mom’s tense words and his father’s ridiculously-fake accent that drifts up from the kitchen below. Holy shit this place is depressing.
“Stan!” His mom calls, “Dinner’s ready!”
“Coming!” Stan calls back, staying exactly where he is. The stench of something ominous has been wafting through their house since Randy’d come inside. Of course his dad’s the one cooking today. He usually is. Stan’s stomach squirms at the reminder of what that entails.
“Now, turd!” Shelley yells as she passes his door.
“I said coming!” Stan replies, shutting his window. He flips the latch and avoids his sister as she stomps down the stairs. Her boyfriend must’ve pissed her off again. Experience tells Stan to steer clear and mind his business.
“About time!” Randy says cheerfully, setting a hot pot on the table. “What do you think?” He asks as he takes the lid off with a flourish, revealing something that looks way too much like a pot of steaming vomit.
Stan wrinkles his nose, eyeing his father’s expectant look and the mess in the kitchen left in his wake. “What is it?” He asks, because if he doesn’t Randy will be moody, and this house can only take so much.
Randy perks up. “I call it the Randy Special!” He grins, open-mouthed and looking from Stan to his mom to his sister. “Huh? Huh?” He prods.
Shelley sits down silently, ignoring him. Her thick eyebrows are furrowed deeper than they were before; she’s going to have a permanent line there soon, Stan thinks to himself.
“…Right,” Stan eyes the bowl being served to him as he himself takes a seat. “But what is it?”
“Ah-ah!” Randy holds up a finger with an eyebrow waggle, “A magician never reveals his secrets!”
“You’re not a magician, Randy,” Shelley snaps. She doesn’t have her retainer anymore, not at 20 years old. Instead she wears hot pink braces and her once obvious lisp has tapered down into something barely noticeable.
“Shelley!” Randy frowns, serving himself his own bowl of…whatever. “Cooking is magic.”
Sharon sighs, and Stan looks to his bowl, accepting the request for silence. Randy and Shelley fall silent as well, but not without an exaggerated glaring match. It feels like all his mom does these days when she’s not screaming at his father is sigh, roll her eyes, pinch her nose, and mumble to herself angrily. She doesn’t smile that much. Not anymore. Not since everyone else around them moved away and her South Park friends stopped visiting. It used to be that there were at least three other farms around theirs; they all left once they realized how bad the summer droughts were, how short the seasons here were, how bad business gets after a year or so. Not the Marshes—not if Randy had anything to say about it, which he did. Maybe it was for the better. They were able to buy the other nearby farms and merge them with theirs, and now they sold weed and normal crops—plus the few cattle they kept all around the 420 Valley. Still, Stan wished they’d packed up and left with everyone else. Maybe then his mother wouldn’t sigh so much, Shelley wouldn’t be so angry all the time, and Stan would be a little bit less of a social reject.
Dinner is tense and quiet. Stan mixes his disgusting soup around with his spoon and doesn’t lift it to his lips once. Shelley, braver than him—always, a comfortable constant in the mundane of Stan’s life—attempts to enjoy a few spoonfuls, but isn’t able to choke down more than two or three before she makes a frustrated noise and leaves the table. Her pinecone scent burns his nose with its agitation as she stomps upstairs.
Sharon sighs, defeatedly muttering, “I thought she’d outgrow being angry and moody all the time. She’s already in college.”
Stan glances at her sharply. She knows why Shelley is mad all the time. She has to know.
“That’s just how she is,” Randy shrugs, slurping down his food. Sharon rolls her eyes at him. “Come on, Sharon. I mean, she hates weed! Who hates weed? Psychopaths, that’s who.”
“Don’t call my daughter a psychopath.”
“She’s my daughter too, Sharon. I can call her whatever I want.”
Sharon straightens in her seat, shoulders tightening. “Oh, really?” She challenges, voice tart.
“I’m full.” Stan excuses himself, “I have to finish my homework.”
Neither of them spare him a second glance, but Randy’s sitting up straighter, and the kitchen is filling with the scent of sharp wood, meaning that Randy’s starting to get annoyed. He quickly heads to his room and plugs his headphones in again. He doesn’t actually give two shits about his homework, because—as if it weren’t enough to live an hour away from the nearest town—Randy had switched Stan from public to homeschooling after eighth grade. He grades his own homework now, so whatever. He checks the time on his bedside clock. Seven-thirty. Maybe if he manages to sleep early he can escape the overwhelming smell of a bar counter, sticky and heady, with the underlying notes of musty laundry.
———
Stan is jerked awake from a dreamless sleep to the sound of a loud clatter and whispered sounds. He assumes it’s just a few raccoons or something. Maybe a squirrel or a ground hog. Nothing to worry about, really—they don’t eat the weed as much as they do Stan’s carrots, which aren’t exactly thriving right now. He’s about to fall back asleep when it registers that those whispers are voices. He stiffens, eyes wide in the dark.
Then he hears a loud, “Jackpot!”
“Shh!” Another voice rushes, “You’re being loud.”
“Dude, we’re in the middle of fucking nowhere. All these farmers sleep at like seven PM.”
Stan slowly sits up, checking his alarm clock. It’s like, two in the morning! He shuffles towards his window, craning his neck around the nearby tree’s branch. He’d left it open before nodding off, something that he’s sure to get scolded for tomorrow morning. Now, though, he’s glad he did, because with the help of the moonlight he can make out the faint outline of three people—boys; his age, he thinks—standing in the middle of the weed field next to Stan’s room window. There’s a really fat one with a bag, a tall skinny one with glasses, and a shorter one in a giant jacket. They look at the plants, quiet for a minute.
“How do you even pick this shit?” The fat one asks, turning to the one in the jacket.
Ah, thieves then. Welp. Not like Stan actually gives a shit about the farm. Not this part of it, anyway.
The one in the jacket holds up his hands, “Don’t look at me dude. I get hash, not actual leaves.”
They both turn to the tallest one. He hisses, “Do I look like someone who smokes weed enough to know?! You’re the ones who came up with this stupid plan. Figure it out.”
The fat one’s reply is lost on Stan, but it must’ve been some kind of insult because the tall one nearly tackles him to the ground.
Stan doesn’t know what compels him to do what he does next. Maybe it’s the way their words are sharp but their stances stay comfortable, like the bickering is more a familiar habit than a threat of a fight. Maybe it’s something in the back of his mind that wants to help these kids do something to piss off his dad. Maybe it’s something else entirely—something lonely and jealous—but Stan finds himself doing it anyways. He leans out the window.
“Hey!” He calls lowly. “Psst!”
The three boys jump, backs against each other, turning this way and that, trying to find where the voice is coming from.
“Over here!” Stan calls a bit louder. “Near the tree! The window?”
The one in the jacket spots him first, and his eyes nearly bug out his skull. “Shit.”
“Busted,” the fat one sing-songs under his breath.
“Shut up!” The tall one hisses. He does a lot of hissing, Stan notices. He—the boy—looks at the fat one, nudging him forward.
The fat one rolls his eyes. “Fine then,” he mutters. Then, he holds his hands behind his back and sways on his feet, like a little kid. “I’m sorry for waking you up, but we were on our way home and,” he looks around, feigning an innocent look to go along with his exaggeratedly naive tone, “I think we’re lost.”
Stan looks at him for a second before he rolls his eyes. That act’s not fooling anyone. He starts climbing out his window but freezes when he sees the boys about to bolt. “Wait!” He says urgently. “You guys want some, right?” At the boys’ blank stares he adds, “Weed?”
“Yeah, so what?” The fat one calls, ignoring the outraged growl from the tall one.
“So, I can get you some.”
“Really?” The tall one asks, looking at Stan in surprise.
“I—” Stan nearly slips and readjusts his grip. “Yeah.”
“You’re not gonna shoot us or anything, are you?” The one in the jacket asks. “I don’t like getting shot.”
Stan lands on his feet with a thump.
“Shut up, Kenny,” the tall one says. “This is all your fault anyway.”
“No one even asked you to come, Jewboy,” the fat one snarks. “But you just love sticking your big nose where it doesn’t belong, don’t you?”
“Shut up about my nose,” the tall one glares. “I only came along to talk you out of doing this in the first place. Now look where you’ve gotten us.”
“Right, you only came with to tell us to stop,” the fat one smirks, “that’s why we’re standing in the middle of a weed farm right now. Great job. We’ve been stopped.”
Sensing some sort of argument brewing, Stan quickly grabs a weed stalk. “Look,” he says loudly, grabbing all three boys’ attention. He shakes the stalk. “You don’t wanna be picking them right now. It’s gonna take forever. Besides, they’re not ready yet.”
The fat one quints at him. “How do you know?”
Stan looks at him like he’s stupid. “I live here. It’s my farm.”
“Well shit,” the one with the parka—Kenny, that’s what the tall one had called him—flops his arms lamely. He glances at Stan with twinkling eyes Stan is realizing are purplish-blue. “No chance we can get a bit of weed for free? You guys have a stash, right?”
“‘Course we got a stash. I’ll get you some,” Stan replies without thinking. He glances at the boys. “But I wanna know who you are first.”
“Yeah right as if!” The fat one scoffs. “So you can report us to the police for underage weed consumption first thing tomorrow morning. No thanks!” He holds his hand up and flicks it, turning around.
“What?” Stan asks, eyebrows rising. “No, dude. I don’t care about that.”
“Still no,” he gives Stan his back, crossing his arms.
“I mean, I know that one’s Kenny,” he says, pointing to Kenny. The boy in question just gives him a goofy smile, like having his name known doesn’t bother him. The other two don’t budge. “Come on, do you want me to keep calling you ‘the fat one’ in my head?” At the boy’s squawk, Stan frowns. “I don’t like it. I feel mean.”
The tall one covers his snicker with his hand, but not fast enough.
“For your information,” the…shit—the fat one glares, “I’m not fat. I’m just big-boned.”
“…Right.” Stan nods. “So what’s your name?” He glances at the tall one. “You too.”
After a moment of terse silence Stan sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, do you guys want the free pot or not?”
“Why are you so willing to give us weed for free?” The tall one demands, voice and eyes sharp.
“Because this is my dad’s favorite part of this stupid farm, and he’d hate to see it messed with, and I fucking hate him, so whatever makes him upset makes me happy. And he fucking deserves it.” Stan watches the three’s reactions. The tall one looks uncomfortable, the fat one looks put off, and Kenny barks out a laugh.
“Hey, I like you man. You’re funny.”
“Thanks.” Stan quirks his lips. He turns to the other two. “Either you tell me your names or none of you are getting anything.”
“Come on,” Kenny pleads. “It’s free! Who turns down a free offer?”
“Ugh, fine! Jesus, Kenny, you’re so poor.” The fat one bursts. Before Stan can figure out what that’s supposed to mean, he turns to him. “I’m Eric Cartman.”
“Kenny McCormick,” Kenny grins. “Now gimmie the hash.”
“I’m not telling you anything,” the tall one shakes his head when Stan turns to him. “I already think this is a bad idea,” he says to his buddies when they frown.
“Kyle Broflovski,” Cartman smirks, eyes lighting up at Kyle’s choked noise of indignation. “Don’t mind him, though. He’s on his period.”
“Cartman!”
“Hey, I understand it’s a sensitive subject, Kyle, but you have to be more open-minded about your condition!”
“I don’t have a condition!”
“Stash’s back over there,” Stan says, following Kenny’s cue to ignore the boys sending death glares at each other. He points to the barn a ways away from where they’re standing.
“But that’s locked,” Kyle blurts. “We tried it.”
Stan scoffs. “Yeah no shit. Wait here.” He scales the tree again and slips into his room. He slowly walks down the stairs, carefully opens his parent’s room, and sneakily takes the keys from his dad’s jacket pocket. Clenching his palm against them to stop the jingling, he shuts the door softly behind him. He’ll take the front door, no need to awkwardly go down the tree again. He loops around to the side of the house where the three boys are thankfully still there.
He jingles the keys at them with a smile. The boys grin back, Kenny pumping a fist in victory. “Yesssss.”
“Come on,” Stan waves for them to follow. He’s stupidly delighted when they all do, even Cartman.
“There we go,” he says when they reach the barn, flicking on the light. It’s filled, one half of the barn a drying station, the other half a mess of half-formed blends and notes about new mixes to try. Against the wall to the right of the door are rows and rows of shelves packed full of jars, each filled to the brim with hash. They’re labeled, of course, and organized by blend. Stan should know, he’s the one who has to organize them.
“Holy shit, dude,” Cartman says.
“What’re the labels for?” Kyle asks, crouching down to read from the lowest shelf.
Stan answers, “Different blends.”
“Which ones are we allowed to have?” Kenny asks. Then to himself, “I can’t fucking believe this is real. No way finding weed is this easy.” He grins at the other two. “All we had to do was get out of South Park.”
Oh, they’re that far out? Stan frowns. They drove all this way just for some weed? How’d they even hear about Tegridy?
“Oh it’s real alright,” Cartman grins, eyeing the jars like he’s eyeing a particularly big birthday cake. “Imagine how much money we could make off of selling this stuff!”
“Hey,” Stan cuts in. “Don’t resell my dad’s weed, dude.” He pauses. “At least not right now.”
“Why the fuck not?” Cartman squints.
“Because then he’ll find out, and I’ll get fucked, and you guys won’t be able to get weed ever again. And because I said so.” He adds at the strange looks that earns him.
Cartman rolls his eyes. “That’s—” Kyle gives him a stern glare. “Fine,” he scoffs. “I’ll let this perfectly good business opportunity go to waste.”
“Which one’s best?” Kenny asks, and under the harsh barn light his eyes look really purple. Stan’s kinda mesmerized.
“Hm? Oh, the blends you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Try the Marshan. Yeah, the ones with the blue. Or Purple Skunky Kush, it’s a classic.” Stan points at the jars he’s talking about.
“Dude, sick,” Kenny holds a jar up to the light. “The actual weed is like, purple. What’s your dad put in this shit?”
“Hell if I know.” Stan grins. “Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s not like, crack or anything, right?” Kyle asks, suddenly serious. “It’s not laced with any other drugs we might not know about?”
“What? No, man.” Stan shakes his head. “None of that. Trust me, it’s all weed. My dad keeps his shit pure.” Ever since the incident, especially.
Kenny pockets the jar in that giant jacket of his and shoots Stan a grateful smirk. “Thanks, man. You mind if I smoke here?”
He glances at the ground. “Uh, yeah. I don’t like the smell. Sorry.”
“You live on a weed farm but don’t like the smell of weed?” Cartman scoffs.
“Hey I gave you what you asked for, didn’t I?” Stan says a bit snappishly. “Hurry up and pick a jar.”
“We should go,” Kyle says suddenly, pocketing a jar of Super Hindu Haze. “It’s like three in the morning. By the time we get home, Ike’s gonna be getting up for school. My mom would skin me alive if she finds out I snuck out. And to get weed no less,” he adds.
Cartman sighs long and weary. “Kyle, how many times do we have to tell you, you don’t get to rain on our parade just cuz your mom’s a bitch.”
“Don’t call my mom a bitch!” Kyle snaps.
“She kinda is, dude,” Kenny shrugs.
“If anyone’s mom’s a bitch, it’s Cartman’s!” Kyle accuses loudly, face flushed.
“Ey!” Cartman rounds on Kyle, pudgy face twisted in anger. “The hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean,” Kyle glares. “Or do I have to spell it out for you? There’s no way you’ve gone this long without knowing.”
Kenny just sighs and shares a fond look with a confused Stan. This happens often, the gleam in his eyes communicates.
“Guys,” Stan jumps in, “You’re getting a little loud. The door’s still open.”
“He started it!” Cartman huffs.
“Are you serious right now—?!”
“Hey!” Stan shouts. His voice rings in the barn, and the boys quiet down. “You got your shit, now go. Enough that you woke me up. I’m not gonna be able to fall back asleep.”
“Shit. Sorry, dude,” Kyle sighs, rubbing his face. “We’ll get out of your hair.”
They shuffle out of the barn, and Stan makes sure to lock it behind him.
“So,” Kenny asks, “We allowed to come back here if we like the weed?”
“Kenny!” Kyle grits. “The guy just kicked us out!”
“I’m counting on it,” Stan grins at Kyle’s surprised stare. “Just come a bit earlier.”
“What time, exactly?” Cartman asks, looking thoughtful now.
Stan scratches his head. “Well, my parents sleep around eight—”
“Damn,” Cartman huffs. “Farmers, man.”
“—but my sister sleeps later than that. At like, eleven.”
“So?” Cartman drawls.
“So like, twelve or one? Throw a few rocks at my window or something and I should be able to tell you if you guys are good or not.”
“You got it, Tegridy.” Kenny winks.
“Don’t call me that,” Stan frowns.
“It’s the name of the farm, isn’t it?” Kyle asks, craning his head back like the sign is hiding from him.
“It’s not my name.”
“Then what is your name?”
“Stanley Marsh. Uh, just Stan is fine, though.”
Kenny nods, giving him a mock salute. “See ya, Marsh.”
“See you,” Stan murmurs as he watches the three boys turn back the way they came. He stands outside in the just-now-realizing-how-chilly-it-is air until his teeth start chattering and he hears the roosters start to cock-a-doodle-doo their good mornings. He climbs back up the tree to his window, careful not to slip because of the dew, and drops onto his bed with his shoes still on, half-convinced he dreamed the whole thing. Like, no way a person has purple eyes, right? No way he actually meets people who could become his friends. He doesn’t fall back asleep, and spends the rest of the next day in an awed sort of haze that even Randy comments on. He still feels like he’s dreaming as he waits for everyone to go to sleep later that next night.
A rock crashing into his bed and the shattering of glass helps confirm the encounter as a reality, much to Stan’s pleasure and frustration: Pleased that the boys are back, but frustrated that they fucking broke his window by throwing a fat fucking rock at it. The glass is gonna be a fucking pain to clean. For now he just shoves the ragged remains on the sill out.
“Here we go,” Stan mutters to himself, sticking his head out the window.