Fruit Juice - South Park

6: Peaches

"So what's the move tonight?"

While not quite a buffet, the first restaurant Cartman had turned off into resulted in huge success. After spending the day up until that pount running exclusively off of energy drinks and chips with enough sodium to kill a medieval child in cold blood, large plates piled to the brim with whatever hearty pastas and greasy fried food they could get their hands on felt like the group's first meal following an eternity of starvation. Two hours later, the group emerged from the confines of the grease bucket with stomachs full enough to skip dinner altogether. Lingering outside the car and soaking up the last few hours of afternoon light the sun has to offer, Kenny lit a cigarette, nobody making a considerable effort just yet to rush into the vehicle.

"Well, we can go down to the beach at any time," Kyle suggested, the parking lot's rigid asphalt making contact with the bottom of his white raeboks as he dawdled his feet in a repetitive motion. "Maybe we could see if there's a cool spot we can bring some shit down to and chill for a while?" he furthered shrugged, moving his attention to seek the reaction of the others.

Stan offered an affirmatory shrug in return. "I saw the stairway thing earlier that takes down there, it's super close to our place," He began to add on to Kyle's proposal, "there's no point staying cramped up in that little place for the while night." is delivered to further prove his point.

Kenny let out a low hum of approval, exhaling with a brisk smoke cloud he quickly blows away. "It's not like Cartman took us to a place with a thumping night-life, either." He had continued.

"Pft, we wouldn't be able to get in anyway, no fake IDs and I doubt this town is liberal enough to let you slide in without one." Stan chuckled, riffing off of Kenny's jab.

Kenny exhaled again. "Take one for the team and bribe the bouncers, Cartman?" He laughed, tapping the excess ash from the cigarette's end.

"Haha! Funny." Mumbled Cartman, utterly deadpan in his expression. Despite his monotone retort to being the joke's expense, his underlying manner seemed far from soured by the conversations direction.

"Let's uh, beat it before the restaurant owners think we're loitering or something." Stan coughed, opening the lone passenger seat door to pull the seat foward and hop into the doorless backseat. Kyle, hot on his trail joined him, shifting awkwardly to make his way to his preferred side of the vehicle behind the driver's seat.

With a final puff of his cigarette, Kenny extinguished the butt on a nearby power pole, and shuffled over to the external driver's side. "Oh shit, you drove here, not me," blurted Kenny to Cartman, an absence of keys his pocket reminding him of the prior roles. "give 'em anyway, I'll take us back." he finished, opening the driver's door and motioning for Cartman to toss him the keys. Cartman obliged, already decidedly half way into the passenger seat.

The drive back to the airbnb was disputed, for the most part. The old pickup was too old to have auxiliary capabilities, so Cartman had taken the liberty of burning a few CD's before the start of the trip to fill the constant silences in their drives from place to place. This particular drive was fairly quick, postponing the argument of 'techno pop crap' or 'suicidal metal" for another day. Holly Beach laid exactly due north of the southern Mexican Gulf; the first hints of lavender appearing in the western sky casted an indigo glow stretching from one direction of the ocean to the other. Kenny, having called shotgun at every opportunity he wasn't driving, extended that habit to claiming the first shower of the evening. Cartman followed closely with his insistence on occupying the immediate bathroom slot after that.

Stan and Kyle had opted to forgo the showers, agreeing to leave them until tomorrow morning before the inevitable day spent in the ocean. Instead, they'd began retrieving whatever blankets and cushions they could find both around the house and in anyone's luggage to sort out the sleeping situation. The mattress they had stolen out of the bedroom was a queen, meaning that two people could have technically slept quite comfortably on it. Using his shins, Kyle had shoved the head of the makeshift bed against the bottom edge of the primary stretch of couchseats. This particular sofa had a corner piece on the far right, that in itself partially resembled a mini single bed. Wandering then to the mattress's opposing left side, he showed it against that piece too, as Stan threw the last few cushions wherever he saw fit.

"So, we could get one person lying horizontally on the seat part of the couch, with their head up against the armrest part, then the other person could take that long righthand piece, hopefully avoiding the other person's feet in their face," Stan spoke his thoughts aloud, taking a step back from the monstrosity he had created, "then whoever two are left can take the mattress however they like." he finished, satisfied with the layout.

"Man, you guys really put a lot of thought into this, huh?" Kenny murmured, emerging from the stairwell with a towel around his neck. Oh, and he was shirtless.

Kyle pointed arbitrarily to the dining room table. "Your bag's probably there." He said nonchalantly, long resigned to keeping track of everyone's shit. As quickly as the tranquil squeal of a running showerhead had disappeared only minutes prior, it's swift return indicated Cartman's turn in the bathroom, and subsequently, out of earshot for any conversations the remaining three boys might want to have without him.

"So..." Kenny ushered the commencement of what would have to be brisk conversation, "have either of you figured out why Cartman dragged us to what seems to be like, a genuinely nice and cool place to spend a week yet?" he asked in volume slightly below his normal speaking voice, as if the boy in the upstairs shower would be able to sense they were talking about him.

"Maybe he's gonna announce a cancer diagnosis, or some other terminal disease." Chuckled Stan, only now realising that by manipulating the couches in the way he did, he's rendered them inconvenient to actually sit upon.

"I guess... it kinda makes sense? If you forget it's Cartman we're talking about here-," Kyle stated, immediately clarifying what he meant, "-er, the trip, not the cancer theory, although that definitely would be in character for Cartman," he also chuckled. "I mean that's what people do right? They graduate and then go on trips across the country to get wasted for a week before... coll...ege," Kyle's voice betrayed him by cracking on that last word; a stark reminder to Stan and Kenny to steer clear of reopening his scholarship wound with mention of tertiary education.

Finally finding his burgandy bag, Kenny gave the zipper a firm tug and reached for what garment was closest, retrieving a white muscle t-shirt with a graphic on it. "... there's no way Cartman would ever do something that selfless though," Stan muttered, quickly averting his eyes from the trail they were making down Kenny's unclothed slim figure, clad in only small residual water droplets.

Kenny pulled the item over his head in one sweeping gesture, "Real subtle, Stan," he mused, watching him flush ever so slightly, much to Kyle's confusion. "But... yeah, I still don't get it either," he geered the conversation back towards his initial question. "We might have some better luck cracking him open with some of this in his system," Kenny had chosen a black backpack from the heap, and brought it over to Stan and Kyle to get a better look at. The jangling clang of banging glasses pretty much gave away the reveal, as he pulled the zipper open to show a menagerie of booze bottles he'd probably obtained from God knows where.

"Oh yeah!" With a glance at the inner contents, Stan had made a motion to one of his bags. "I brought some stuff also."

Kyle hummed as well. "Me too, enough to last the week all up, hopefully."

"Then there's also whatever Cartman brung," Kenny mentioned, turning back to his initial bag. "Oh, fuck! I thought I had it in a cloth!" Came his abrupt curse of surprise, setting the backpack down on the table to rummage through.

Stan adjusted for a better look. "What? Did you forget something?" He asked, brow furrowed.

"My-," Kenny stuttered, with no noteworthy emotional tone other than flatout confusion. "My... fuck, my bong smashed." He retrieved what resembled the small remnants of the glass base.

"You don't have a back-up?" Stan pressed, watching Kenny pull out whatever glass pieces be could find, presumably to discard in ghe trash.

He shook his head. "Didn't think I'd need another one," he sighed, "I could always make one tomorrow, I'll just have to buy a gatorade at some point, or fish one of those iced coffee bottles of yours out of the truck, Kyle."

"Oh, I've got plenty more, I'll finish one for you tomorrow," Kyle offered.

Considering the fact that nobody picked up on the absence of water streaming sounds overhead, they were outright lucky not to have been taking about Cartman in the current moment, with all eyes appear on him as be descended the stairs. Thankfully in more clothing than Kenny emerged in.

"So, are we ditching this place or what?" Cartman smirked.