Broflovski Family Enthusiast

Two months after he and Gerald had told Mr. and Mrs. Broflovski they were together, his older sister Maggie called them. Gerald had been the one who picked up, sure that it was his parents or Randy. He'd first reacted with confusion, before slipping into the same polite voice he always used when he was trying to kiss ass. He'd briefly covered the speaker to mouth "I think it's your older sister" before a bit more polite small talk about Colorado weather, probably to give Stuart time to adjust to that bombshell.

Finally, Gerald handed Stuart the receiver, then grabbed some of his work files, and sat down next to him.

"It's been a while," Stuart had said. "Ten years? How'd you even get this number?"

"You still cut right to the chase," She'd said with familiarity he felt she hadn't earned just yet. "Friend of a friend."

Which meant either Randy or the Broflovskis gave it to someone. Randy was loud enough for it to slip, but Mrs. Broflovski used to be a teacher and had the network for it. He supposed in the end it didn't really matter.

They talked a bit. Small talk, and then…

"The man before…."

"Gerald." Stuart said, finishing the sentence for her. "You were still at home when we started hangin' out."

"Right." A pause. "I heard some things. Things I'm sure aren't — that it's just the two of you splitting rent, because I know how expensive it is out there —"

So that had been her reason for calling. To find out if her little brother was some kind of godless deviant, guilty of grave sin.

"— Yeah, it's expensive. But that's not the only reason we're sharin' a place."

The line went quiet for long enough that he could hear a kid yelling somewhere on her end, and a TV. Gerald, who'd already been half-listening as he'd been going over a case file next to Stuart after handing the phone to him, suddenly sat up.

"…I'll pray for you," she finally said, like it was the kindest thing she could possibly do. That was the worst part. "Both of you. I mean that."

"Yeah, of course you will."

"Stuart. You know what you're doing. What it is. You were raised in the same house I was."

His throat went tight. He tried for something diplomatic. "Wasn't raised with much of anythin', Maggie after Mom was gone. You'd remember that if you'd stuck around for it," is what came out instead. Gerald reached his hand over, just in case Stuart needed to take it.

There was a long period of silence, but Maggie didn't hang up.

"Is that why?" she finally said. "I've heard that sometimes, same-sex attraction is far more likely when the father doesn't —"

"— The fuck?!" Stuart said, loud enough that Gerald jumped. "Are you fuckin' kidding me?!"

"…Right then," she said in a way that made it clear what she'd decided. The reason Stuart was with the one person in the world who'd always made sense to him, no matter how different they were, was because of that bastard.

Then she'd asked, stiff and formal, if he was happy. He'd said yeah, reaching over to hold Gerald's hand. She'd said she was glad, while sounding like someone who wasn’t glad at all. They'd hung up not long after, and then he'd bitched about the whole thing to Gerald.

"Hard to say what's worse," Gerald said with a wry grin, "your sister thinking shitty parenting makes people gay, or my mom bringing up fisting in the middle of Le Bernardin."

They spoke maybe two or three times a year after that. Just like the first time, it was almost always a fucking ordeal. But she cared, in her own bent way. Yeah, she thought he was going to hell, but hey. By her Good Catholic standards, he'd probably been hellbound long before he'd ever gotten to know Gerald in the biblical sense.

Stuart spoke to his older brother Pat a bit more regularly, which wasn't saying much. He'd first called about two weeks after Maggie. That time Stuart got it himself.

"So Maggie gave me this number."

Of course she fucking had. Probably figured if she had to suffer through it, Pat might as well get a turn.

"She did?"

"Yeah. Didn't say nothin' else, though. But Dad's been runnin' his mouth that you're some rich jew's kept boy." A pause. "He didn't say it that nice, neither. Said somethin' other than 'jew'." A pause. " …That true?"

It pissed Stuart off at the time. He was doing fine for himself as a journeyman — better than fine. Gerald's new salary just happened to be about double that.

…Except, there was one place where he had a leg up on Gerald.

"He ain't so rich when he's a hundred grand in the hole from that fancy fuckin' school," Stuart said, sharp and defensive. And even though he wanted to say something about the whole 'kept boy' comment, Gerald was working in the other room. So once he did, the smug asshole would probably want to have to have a whole fucking conversation about it, and how all the handyman work he did around the apartment more than made up for any differences in income… and that was really the last fucking thing he wanted.

"That so?" A beat, and Stuart felt a fleeting feeling of relief. "Real shame. Was just gonna say, if things were good out there, maybe you could float your big brother a little somethin'. Times've been tight."

Of course that was what this was about. That set the pattern, more or less, for the next decade. Pat called when Pat needed something. The calls always started somewhere else — Dad, the town, somebody who'd died or gotten arrested — and always ended in the same place, with Pat asking, never quite directly, if Stuart could help him out. As Stuart and Gerald both started climbing the ladder at their jobs, the asks got bigger and the lead-up got shorter.

Stuart sent some, the first time. A few hundred. He and Gerald had fought about it. Probably one of their worst ones.

"He's using you, Stuart." Gerald said in his insufferable lawyer-voice. "He doesn't call to talk to you. He calls to invoice you."

"Yeah, well." Stuart had heard himself say it before he could stop it. "Not everybody gets to grow up with a goddamn pharmacist daddy and a college fund, Broflovski. Some of us help our family out when they got nothin' instead of lookin' down on them."