Chapter Text
It was a typical Saturday in South Park.
Stan had been spending his day laying in bed, stewing in his own sweat and boredom in the August heat (as hot as it gets out in South Park. Which isn’t that bad, considering), when his friends burst in through the door with a “Dude, we’ve gotta save those astronauts stuck in space”.
The presence of Craig within the usual group was surprising until his genuine appeal to the cause reminded Stan that space is on the list of the 3 entire things that that guy gives a shit about. The other boys’ reasoning ranged from self-serving (Cartman), to self-righteous (Kyle), to just happy to be there (Kenny). There may have been a bet involved. Frankly, Stan had stopped paying full attention after the initial hook.
He was happy to have a reason to stop mindlessly staring at his ceiling though. Whatever distracted him from his misery for a while would do. And so, with a “sure, let’s go”, he was whisked off into their usual weekly shenanigans.
By Sunday morning, the boys had gotten into contact with Elon Musk.
They had initially settled on him as the most likely to use a fraction of his ridiculous wealth on saving the astronauts for good PR. Listening to the man talk as he showed them around one of the SpaceX locations, the boys very quickly realized they needed a more vain angle for him to go along with it. At least, in time for whatever bet they had going on (Stan still wasn't entirely sure).
They had also grown incredibly sick of him.
By the time Elon punctuated his third outdated reddit meme by literally “letting that sink in”, the boys had decided they wanted him gone, in one way or another.
“Every time I hang out with you guys some stupid shit happens, but I didn’t think it could get this bad,” Craig said, watching Elon Musk pitifully carry the sink back out of the room, his smug grin implying the damned thing will make another appearance soon. “I’m literally at a space center and this is somehow the worst day of my life.”
“No wonder this dude got booed at that Chappelle show,” Cartman frowned. “Jesus Christ.”
“I almost pity the martians that will have to listen to this shit someday,” said Stan.
“You think this guy is making it to Mars? Dude. He wishes.” Kyle responded, shaking his head. “I wish. At least he’d be further away from us.”
“... Hold on, we can work with that.” Cartman said, snapping his fingers in thought. “We can convince him to go up there to take the astronauts’ place!”
“Dude. What.”
“No, listen, you guys! People think being in space is cool.” Cartman turned to Craig. “Craig, you think astronauts are, like, super cool right?”
“Yeah.”
“And Craig barely thinks anyone is cool! Besides his gay boyfriend. And me, of course.”
“Ew.”
“If someone this cynical thinks being in space makes people cool, imagine what the kind of easily amused morons who go to Dave Chapelle shows would think!” Cartman continued, ignoring the look of disgust on Craig’s face as if he simply couldn’t see it. “We get him to go out there and switch places with the astronauts! He’ll invest half his fucking net worth to think he’s being cool and funny.”
“He does think big jumps make him cool,” added Stan. “Going to space is a pretty big jump.”
It was worth a try, both for their original goal of getting the astronauts home and for their new goal of getting Elon Musk as far away from them as possible.
By that afternoon, they had set up a test rocket launch to convince the billionaire that being thrown into space will make him very cool and funny.
“The cool-ifying effect of space will be demonstrated by our friend Kenny, who is totally already as funny as you, Mr. Musk,” Kyle explained, pointing to the passenger boarding the rocket.
“Yeah, Kenny’s cool. He’s got that dog in him.” said Cartman.
“What dog?” asked Elon.
“Uh, Laika.” Stan answered. “You know, the space dog?”
“Laika would have done numbers on Twitter,” said Craig. Cartman immediately elbowed past him.
“X! Laika would have gotten sooo many likes on X.” His voice became quieter as he turned to Craig. “Idiot.”
“Excellent point,” said Elon Musk. “Maybe I should rename ‘likes’ to ‘Laikas’! That would be cool and funny, right?”
“Yeeeah, sure,” said Kyle, sharing a grimace with the others behind Musk’s back. “but not as cool and funny as Kenny is about to be. Are you ready, Kenny?”
“Mmph!” Kenny responded from inside the shuttle, his voice muffled by his undersized space helmet. Only his eyes were visible to the world. His old parka had given him plenty of practice for this, by the looks of it.
“Okay! Prepare for launch in 3… 2… 1… Blastoff!”
A cloud of dust and debris erupted from the rocket as it lifted off.
“To the moon, Kenny! Like, uh, dogecoin, or whatever.” said Cartman, pointing at the leaving rocket to keep Musk’s attention focused. “Watch this, he’s gonna be so awesome.”
Kenny soared majestically into the sky for about 30 more seconds before the entire spacecraft exploded in trademark SpaceX fashion.
The boys’ wide eyes watched bits of the rocket (and of their friend) rain through the sky in the form of fiery debris.
“Oh my god, you killed Kenny! You bastards!” Elon Musk gleefully cried out, unfazed by the explosion as if spacecraft failures were something he saw every day. “I’ve always wanted to say that. What an absolute classic meme.”
The boys continued staring into, well, space.
“God, you’re so old,” muttered Cartman.
“I’ve got to say, that was indeed very funny and cool.” said Elon. “You’ve convinced me. I’m in.”
By Monday, he was off.
With the astronauts returned safely to Earth, and Elon Musk safely quarantined away from everyone in space, the boys returned to South Park just in time to witness whatever batshit B-plot the adults in the town had cooked up in the meantime. Something about buying Tesla Cybertrucks as a status symbol, especially now that their prices were dropping in Musk’s absence. Thoroughly confused and uninterested in car loans, the boys decided to chill out and play video games instead.
Stan was mindlessly strumming chords on his guitar, watching Kenny and Cartman try to kick each other’s asses in Smash Bros. Kyle hadn’t arrived yet - he was apparently busy with schoolwork. Their senior year wasn’t even due to begin for another two weeks but he was already at it.
The sun was beginning to set outside. Gazing through the window, Stan spotted the twinkle of what was either the first star of the night, or Elon Musk’s new home orbiting the Earth. His hands started playing the beginning chords of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” before he’d even realized.
“Ground control to Major Elon, ground control to Major Elon,” Cartman sang, mispronouncing the name to fit the original rhyme scheme. “While you’re gone in space, Kenny will fuck your mom…”
Kenny’s character nearly fell off the stage as he burst out into laughter.
“Dude, that’s gross.” Stan said in between his own giggles. “She's like 80 years old.”
“So what? Kenny still would.” Cartman replied without taking his eyes off the screen.
“Yeah, probably.” admitted Kenny. “I’ve never seen her, but that kind of money can buy looks.”
“You would consider the money, you poor piece of–”
The rest of Cartman’s sentence was muffled by the sound of a door slamming open.
“Guys!” Kyle looked out of breath as he leaned on the doorframe. “We got tickets to the festival!”
“The what?”
“The music festival! Everyone’s talking about it!”
Kyle informed them about what had happened outside of their currently car-obsessed town.
Having wasted no time after Elon Musk’s liftoff, his ex-wives and ex-girlfriends formed a coalition and gained possession of all his assets within a day. They decided to pour a generous amount of it into a huge “good riddance” party, in the form of what sounded like the biggest music festival the U.S. had ever seen.
And everyone was indeed talking about it.
“I heard Kendrick is planning to play ‘Not Like Us’ 36 times in a row!”
“This one article said Lady Gaga and Chappell Roan are going to sword-fight on stage.”
“I heard Katy Perry isn’t going to be there!”
The boys couldn’t go two steps through town without hearing another rumor about some wild performance or sightings of bands already setting up at the festival grounds near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It was almost enough of a hot topic to drown out the sound of Cybertrucks and other cars veering violently through the streets. The boys evaded a car crash or two without comment on their way to the basketball court, where most of their classmates had gathered. The chatter there was not too different.
“I heard they’re gonna bring out the band Poison and make them fight the Cure to the death.”
“I heard the ERB guys are gonna be there and they’re bringing Mark Zuckerberg to do his verse! Ew.”
“And then Dan and Phil are going to walk out on stage holding a gay pride flag and— Oh, hey guys!”
The gossip was paused for a minute as greetings were exchanged.
“I heard they sent you guys tickets for putting Elon Musk on that sp-sh-shuttle,” said Jimmy. “Very nice.”
“Lucky!” cried out Bebe, not even looking up from intensely refreshing a page on her phone. “Every ticket website has been lagging for hours, it’s impossible to buy anything.”
“The Ticketmaster offices are apparently literally on fire right now,” Token frowned at his phone.
“Oh, good riddance.”
“Are you guys going?” Craig turned to Stan and the rest. “I don’t want to be on the same flight as you.”
“Oh, I’m going.” replied Cartman. “You can’t ruin this for me, Craig.”
The other boys looked at each other.
“Are we? I want to go.” shrugged Stan. It had been a minute since he’d really wanted to do something, but he’d spotted some bands he liked on a list he’d quickly looked up while walking here.
“Yeah,” agreed Kyle with a sigh, excited but clearly already moving around parts of his schedule in his mind. “Kenny?”
“I don’t know, is Elon’s mom going to be there?” asked Kenny, raising his eyebrows as he grinned at the screen of a phone he was holding.
“Stop googling MILFs on my phone, Kenny!” Cartman snatched his phone back. “Of course you’ll go, it’s free.”
“That’s a solid argument, honestly.” Kenny laughed. He pointed to his wrist, where bracelets from two previous festivals had been hanging for a long while, judging by the state of them. He refused to take them off until they fell apart entirely. “But I also love music festivals, are you kidding? I need to expand my bracelet collection.”
They stayed around for a while, looking up flights to Florida and discussing whether they could get those paid off too, before a text notification caught Stan’s attention. He groaned as soon as he read it.
“I gotta get home,” he sighed. “Dad’s on his bullshit again.”
“Too much weed or not enough weed?” Cartman asked.
“I don’t know yet. He crashed his car into mom’s car to convince her to replace them with Cybertrucks or something.”
“Lame.”
“Yeah. Can someone drive me home?” Stan asked, just as the sound of another car charging into a pole rang out somewhere behind him. “Actually, I think I’ll walk.”
The sun had completely set by the time Stan made it back. He made a beeline for his room, ignoring whatever was happening with the adults.
He flopped down on his bed. A twinge of genuine enthusiasm went through him when he thought about the trip this weekend. For the first time in a while, he smiled up at the ceiling.
It would be nice to escape and just have a good time for a bit. Sure, there was the commotion downstairs to eventually deal with and half a week to waste away before the music festival, but it was nice to have something to look forward to before the summer ended.
Stan closed his eyes after looking through the confirmed artist list one more time. Melodies flooded his head as he dozed off for the night, following him into his dreams. This would do until he got to hear them all live.
A distant droning whirr interrupted the soundtrack of his dreams at some point in the night. Stan turned over and kept sleeping.
Kyle really wanted to sleep in.
He had just finished running around solving the weekly problem, learning a lesson, improvising a little speech about it and all that. And then catching up on the work he’d put off for it. He deserved a bit of rest. Roll credits, let him sleep an extra hour.
His phone clearly disagreed, blaring his ringtone right into his poor, tired ears.
Kyle blindly pawed at the heinous thing, managing to answer the call with his eyes closed. He got to enjoy blessed silence for half a beat before—
“Motherfucker.” Cartman’s voice rang out through the speaker.
Kyle hung up and went back to sleep.
Not even a minute later, his phone started ringing again. His eyes remained firmly closed as he answered.
“Oh, come on, that wasn’t even directed at you, Kyle! Fucking mothers is more Kenny’s thing, apparently—”
He hung up again.
Kyle yawned, dropping another angry call (this time the insults were directed at him) before finally opening his eyes as he answered Cartman for the fourth time.
“Kyle?” a slightly softer, more polite voice asked.
“What, Cartman.”
“Have you checked the news today?”
Kyle opened the news tab on his phone. And only a few paragraphs in, he was the one cursing.
“Oh, what the fuck!”
Overnight, every single Cybertruck in the country had apparently activated on its own and, in grief over their creator being off in space, autopilot driven into a volcano. Because of course fanatical hero worship to the point of car suicide would be programmed into their AI.
Before anyone could think to laugh at those who had just lost their newly purchased vehicles, the smoke from the volcanic fires clouded up the entire U.S. into one big no-fly zone. This left anyone who was, say, looking to fly to Florida for a music festival this weekend, in a bit of a pickle.
“Can’t have shit in South Park,” Kenny announced, sitting down on the couch in Kyle’s living room for their emergency trip planning meeting.
“Maybe this will at least kill an airline or two.” Stan sighed.
“No, the government will just bail them out again,” answered Cartman. “unlike Cybertrucks, they’re unkillable.”
“Hm,” Kenny hummed sadly.
It was barely 9 a.m. and Kyle was already knee deep in research and calculations. So much for a rest day.
He could solve this, god damnit.
“We could drive,” he finally announced. “It’s like a 30 hour trip at minimum but we could definitely make it if we started driving right now.”
Kyle willed away the part of him that screamed about how tiring a drive like that would be. Him and his friends wanted to go, and he was focused on making that possible right now.
“No, yeah, we totally could,” agreed Cartman, eyes darting around his phone screen. Kyle figured he was doing his own version of the route calculations, based on his muted tone. He looked up as he snapped out of his focused state. “Yeah, let’s just drive this bitch!”
“Yeah!” agreed Kenny.
Kyle smiled at the hopeful mood before the second round of calculations began in his head.
“Okay, but I don’t have a car right now,” said Stan, slumping back down. “My dad crashed every car we had yesterday, remember?”
“Oh, right…”
“I don’t have one either. Dad took the truck out the other day and we don't know when it’ll be back.” shrugged Kenny. “Kyle, you have your dad’s car though, right?”
“No,” Kyle sighed, not liking where this was about to go. “My dad replaced it with a Cybertruck.”
“Hahah, that’s fucking stupid.” Cartman chuckled, before the reality of their situation started setting in.
The only car this group had now was Cartman’s fucking BMW.
Kyle could see the moment the dots connected in Cartman’s head. He blinked, looking up at the group with a grin.
“Well. Looks like you guys are in need of a ride. We can discuss a price if you want to join me—”
“I have the tickets, fatass.” Kyle immediately shut him down.
“Hey! Let me finish!”
“No!” Kyle was not going to let him have this. He was midway through a retort when Stan suddenly piped up.
“Craig.” he blankly stated. “One of the tickets is Craig’s. He might have a car.”
The gang shuffled over to the Tuckers’ house at a comical speed.
“No way.” Craig cut in as soon as he understood what he was being asked. “I am not going on a road trip with you guys. Some ridiculous shit always happens. I’m staying home.”
“Well, what about your ticket, dude?” asked Stan, just a hint of desperation in his voice.
“Get rid of it, I don’t care, it’s dead to me.” He paused for a second. “Give it to Butters, actually. I owe him one.”
Kyle’s cry of “For what???” went ignored.
“Butters? Isn’t he still in Virginia?” Kenny pointed out.
“Oh, yeah, he got grounded over there.”
The Stotch family had left for a family visit two weeks ago. And came back a week ago. Without Butters.
Apparently while there, Butters was grounded by his grandfather, whose grounding authority overpowers that of Butters’ dad. So he was forced to stay in his grandparents’ house for a while, doing chores and missing out on a camping trip he’d been excited for, if Kyle remembered right.
“I think he’s supposed to come back today,” said Craig.
“Yeah. By plane.” Kyle recalled.
“You’ll figure it out. It’s his ticket now. Not my problem anymore.”
Figuring he’ll be left alone now, Craig closed the door, sealing all of their fates with it.
“No way are we giving that ticket to fucking Butters.” Cartman said, to most everyone’s agreement.
“I don’t know, he does have that big-ass tent that would be good for the festival,” Stan mused.
Kenny and Kyle mumbled variations of “oh, right, yeah, that’d be cool” as they reconsidered. Cartman scoffed.
“Really? Imagine how much money that shit would sell for at the door, you guys!” He crossed his arms. “Well, as the only one with a vehicle, I have to put down some ground rules. And I say fuck Butters, we’re selling the ticket!”
“No, no, shut up.” Kyle raised his voice. “Just because the car is yours, it doesn’t make us your entourage. You are not setting any fucking rules!”
“Well, clearly, I’m adding the most to this trip so far! You need to respect my authority!”
“Nope, no way. We are not doing this shit!”
As Kyle and Cartman continued to argue, they didn’t notice the other two moving farther away, realizing it might be a good idea to leave before the Tuckers started aggressively flipping them off for making a racket on their front steps. Kenny turned to Stan with a shrug.
“I’ll go get my stuff. Meet at Cartman’s in an hour?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll text these two. And Butters, I guess.” Maybe they could meet up with Butters somewhere along the road. Stan waved, turning to walk his car-less ass home again. “See you in a bit.”
It took longer than an hour, but eventually they were all standing in Cartman’s driveway. Kyle felt apprehensive as he took a good look at the car that would be their prison for the next few days. It was a large SUV, as fancy as Cartman could whine out of his mom as a birthday gift. It was well maintained too - the fatass loved his “baby”. It was a nice car, overall. It was not the problem here.
“Hell is other people,” Kyle sighed.
He heard Stan huff out a laugh beside him.
“Oh come on, dude. We’ve been stuck around each other in worse places over the years.” He opened the back door for Kyle with a reassuring smile. “How bad could this be?”
It was pretty bad.
Granted, Kenny hadn’t even been entirely conscious for most of the trip so far. He’d managed to call shotgun and got comfortable in his seat pretty quickly. He diffused a brewing argument about travel rules early on by asking what bands or artists everyone was looking forward to, figuring that keeping up a nice vibe was more important at the time. Happy with the excited chatter about the upcoming festival, he let the ambience of the engine roaring and Cartman cursing out every other driver lull him to sleep.
Kenny hadn’t exactly gotten a full night’s sleep the previous night. He was woken up by the roaring of hundreds of cars, hellbent on driving themselves out of town. He couldn’t blame them for wanting out, or even death, but the sounds of collateral damage didn’t sit right with him. He ended up spending a few hours masked up, moving stray animals and a few people out of the way of the Cybertrucks on their way out. The sun had started rising by the time he got back to bed.
The sun was up high now, shining down on him even through the thick clouds. The weather was okay, and traffic was even lighter than usual, with all of the Cybertrucks having fucked off.
“Cows,” Stan pointed out. Kenny opened his eyes to see.
Sure enough, there was a group of cows grazing outside the window.
“Nice.” He closed his eyes again.
The conditions for a pleasant trip were technically there. And they tried, even with the various moods they all seemed to be in. They were excited to get to the festival, after all.
It took no more than 30 minutes to break the pleasant atmosphere.
“What are you doing?” Kyle angrily called out. Kenny opened his eyes and immediately looked at Cartman, guessing that’s who he was talking to.
“Lighting up a smoke?” Cartman was doing just that. “You’ve seen me do it a million times, Kyle, don’t tell me you’ve decided to become a square about it now.”
It was a habit he’d picked up at some point along the years. Kyle wasn’t fond of it, sure, but Kenny figured that wasn’t the problem here.
“Dude. You can’t smoke with us in the car.”
“It’s my fucking car, Kyle! I’m graciously letting you guys tag along with me, but you can’t tell me what to do.”
“It’s not just me! Stan has asthma, dumbass.”
“Dude, what?” Cartman blinked, glancing over at Stan in the rear-view mirror. “You have an ass disease?”
“No, man. It’s my lungs.” replied Stan.
“You have ass-ma in your lungs??”
“You know damn well what asthma is, fatass!” Kyle yelled. He reached out an arm over the center console in an attempt to grab the cigarette. “Put that shit out.”
“Hey, I’m driving here!” Cartman yelled back, momentarily letting go of the wheel to swat the hand away, only to grab hold of it again once the car started veering out of its lane. Kenny winced as Kyle’s hand got really close to getting burned. “Jesus Christ, okay! I’ll put it out! Get off me, you asshole! Fucking ass lungs…”
Kyle leaned back down to his seat. The smell started dissipating as soon as the cigarette was put out.
“If Stan has ass lungs, does that make his mouth an asshole?” Kenny mused.
He smiled as Cartman broke into raucous laughter immediately, repeating bits of the joke once or twice.
“Dude!” Stan chided, but Kenny could hear the hint of a smile in his voice.
“Don’t encourage him, Kenny.” said Kyle, but even he was giggling.
Vibe secured. Kenny let his eyes drift closed again.
“Cows,” Stan said, breaking Kenny out of his slumber.
There were, indeed, cows.
“Sick.” Kenny said, and went back to sleep.
The scenery outside the window hadn’t changed much by the next time he awoke. The mood inside the car seemed to be tepid at best.
“Kyle, are you seriously putting on a sweater right now?” Cartman jeered, looking over at the rear-view mirror again. “It’s like 90 degrees outside.”
“Yeah, outside! You’ve been blasting the AC at us this entire time and I’m cold. Not everyone has a hundred pounds of lard on them to keep them warm, fatass.”
“Hey!” Cartman barked. “God, you sound like that lame cousin of yours.”
Kyle blinked. Oof. That one hit a bit close to the heart, huh.
“You asked about the sweater, asshole!” he huffed. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Yeah, right. Like you can keep that mouth shut when there’s menial shit to complain about.”
Kenny didn’t want to get involved in this one. He was about to go to sleep when—
“Cows,” said Stan, seemingly ignoring the others in favor of the window.
Kenny looked, and there they were. Cows.
“Nice,” he nodded, and then nodded off.
The car was parked the next time he woke up.
They seemed to be at a gas station. Kenny was alone in the car. A glance at the clock told him they had been driving for a few hours by now.
He stepped out of the car, and found Cartman smoking nearby. Kenny waved.
“Hey, sleepyhead.” Cartman said, breathing out smoke. “It’s your turn to drive. I wanna eat and I don’t trust either of those assholes with my car.”
“Sure.” Kenny shrugged. It was about time to properly wake up anyway.
“Cool.” said Cartman. He put out the cigarette with his foot and handed Kenny the car keys, taking his bag of food into the passenger seat with him.
Kenny stretched his legs for a bit before making a much needed trip to the bathroom.
Kyle was waiting by the car when he came back. He broke off half of his sandwich and handed it to Kenny. He seemed to be in good spirits, so Kenny guessed the conversations he missed while sleeping didn’t get bad enough to really wear on him yet.
They sat down inside the car after eating. Kenny yawned, adjusting the driver’s seat. He heard a knock on the window.
Stan was smiling at him from outside, holding up an energy drink.
“Fuck yeah.” Kenny said, rolling down the window. “My hero!”
“Figured you’d need something to wake you up.”
“Did I miss anything while I was out?”
“Some cows, a couple horses, a bunch of crashed cars on the side of the road. A few fires.” Stan shrugged, opening the back door and getting in. “Nothing crazy.”
Kenny felt pretty good, honestly. He was fed, he was caffeinated. Dare he say, he was loved. Even the energy in the car seemed better with everyone at least a bit less hungry and cramped.
He started up the car, and they were off again.
Ten minutes into the drive, Cartman and Kyle started arguing about snacks or something.
“I need to watch my blood sugar,” he heard Kyle grumble in the face of an insult.
“Yeah, you watch your jew blood.” said Cartman. He jumped when Kyle kicked the back of his seat. “Hey!”
“Don’t you guys have the same blood type?” asked Kenny.
“Yeah, but mine lets me eat whatever I want, not like his stingy-ass blood.” Cartman answered, biting into one of the various snacks piled on his lap.
“You could use some limitations, fatass.” Kyle shrugged.
“Hey!”
And they were off again.
It was going to be a long drive, Kenny realized.
“Cows,” said Stan.
Eric was going to have this trip his way or no way.
He was having a great time eating his second bag of Cheesy Poofs, but his brain kept interrupting his enjoyment by reminding him of whatever the fuck Kyle was on about, stopping him from having a fantastic time. Stupid rules, stupid healthy diabetes snacks, stupid fucking sweater and hat combo in summer.
Eric breathed out. It was okay, it was only a matter of time before these rules of his fell apart. Eric would make sure of that.
Starting with the music.
Kyle insisted on the driver being the one to pick the music. That, coupled with him wanting the whole group to drive in turns, means he was trying to take control of the aux. Eric’s aux. In Eric’s car.
As if.
It started falling apart as soon as Kenny sat in the driver's seat. Giving him the keys was step one, after all.
“Kenny’s at the wheel, so he gets to pick the music, Cartman. We all listened to three hours of your pop girl playlist without complaining.”
Eric grumbled as Kyle badgered him into switching out his phone for Kenny’s. For now. He put Kenny’s liked songs on shuffle and bided his time.
Kenny was nodding along happily as he drove. A couple songs went by without so much as a comment, lulling them into a false sense of security. They sat through Santana’s “Smooth” before it kicked in.
A deplorably corporate riff blasted through the sound system before it started speaking at them.
“Want a break from the ads? With Spotify premium, you can…” The ad kept going, but Eric didn’t pay attention to the rest of it. It had done its job.
Glancing at the rear view mirror, Eric could see the realization dawn on Stan’s face. He wished he could see Kyle, but he would make do with imagining the color draining out of his cheeks.
“Dude.” Stan finally stated.
Eric offered no comment. If this is what they wanted, he was going to let them suffer a little bit.
Eric finally spoke up when the second ad rolled around not even 3 songs later.
“You wanna live like this for the rest of the day, Kyle? He doesn’t even have Spotify premium.”
He could hear Kyle grumbling, almost growling behind him. Music to his ears. Well, before he gets to put on Gaga again, at least.
“It’s still his turn to pick.” said Kyle. “Put on one of his playlists from your account, then.”
Time for step two. Eric connected his phone back up to the system and opened Kenny’s profile. He couldn’t hold back a laugh once he saw the available choices.
“You want to do the honors, Kyle?” he said, turning to look behind his seat as he handed his phone over to the ginger. “Pick any playlist you want. Go ahead.”
Kyle frowned in suspicion, looking down at the screen. On it, Kenny’s collection of two entire playlists was staring back at him, lovingly labeled “Sex” and “Sex 2”.
Kyle grimaced, saying nothing in hesitation. He didn’t want to listen to Kenny’s sex playlists any more than the rest of them did. Eric could tell.
Stan leaned over to see what had Kyle so perplexed.
“And you just let the ads run through that? Dude.” He laughed.
Eric let himself watch Kyle squirm for a few seconds before beginning step three.
“You know, Kenny, if you wanted a surprise,” He turned back to Kenny, putting on his sweetest voice. “I’ve actually been working on personalized playlists for all of you guys.”
“Really?” Kenny asked, genuinely interested. “You made me a playlist?”
“Yeah! I even updated it for the trip. Do you want to hear?”
“Yeah, sure!”
“Cool, cool!” He reached back and took the phone from Kyle, who was looking at him in disbelief. He managed to snap a quick photo to commit this moment to memory. “I’ll just take this back then, annnd here we go.”
Eric tabbed back to his own profile and selected “Nascar and Chill: a Kenny playlist”. The cover was a cropped photo of Kenny’s hand holding a drink, his festival bracelets bright on his wrist. They had been less raggedy back when Eric took this photo.
Kenny was perfect for this plan not just because he couldn’t afford Spotify premium - his music taste was also key. Kenny was easy to please. As long as the song had a beat, he could dance to it (or possibly fuck to it. Eric did not want to imagine what was in those sex playlists).
Kenny was dancing in his seat, a smile on his face as a Britney Spears song played. It took a couple more songs for Kyle to speak up again, as expected.
“God damnit, Cartman. This is just your music again!”
“Excuse you, Kyle. I made this for Kenny, and it’s what he wants to listen to. It’s his turn to choose!”
Kyle looked to Kenny for support.
“I love this song,” Kenny sheepishly shrugged.
Kyle sat back down and said nothing. What could he say, really? This was going perfectly.
A few songs went by without much commentary on the music. Eric and Kenny sang along to whatever bits they knew the lyrics for.
There was a moment of silence as the previous song faded out, and the tacky opening beat of “Cotton-Eyed Joe” resounded through the car. Kenny wheezed, glancing at Eric in bewilderment.
“This isn’t your music, Cartman,” Stan questioned.
“Yeah, duh, it’s for Kenny. I mixed in some white trash classics.”
“Fuck you.” said Kenny. He was still smiling though.
A few more songs went by - some very much Eric’s jams, others he sat through for the plan, and for Kenny’s amusement. And for Kyle’s dissatisfaction.
“This is actually kind of thoughtfully made.” Stan said, confused.
Bingo. Step four was up.
“Of course, I take playlist creation very seriously.” Eric responded, turning to Stan. “You’re curious about what I put in yours, aren’t you?”
“Kinda,” Stan replied after a moment of thought. He couldn’t resist the curiosity. Eric knew this.
Eric heard just the slightest noise of exasperation behind him and grinned. Kyle thought he made the rules here, did he? Please.
“Well, you’re driving next, we can put it on then.”
And voila. He had control of the music for the day.
He could feel Kyle's eyes boring into him even through the car seat between them. Good.
Eric was getting to that festival the way he wanted, and the rest of them would simply be here for it.
“Cows,” Stan pointed out for the hundredth fucking time.
“Yes, Stan, we know there’s fucking cows!” Eric responded. “We’re in Kansas, they have more cows here than Kenny’s house has rats! Jesus Christ.”