Chapter Text
Within the inner workings of the Broflovski household, there had always been somebody who didn't quite fit.
Like an old photograph kept in the back of a drawer: still there, still technically important, but never part of the pictures hanging on the wall.
Years before Sheila, before South Park, before Kyle or Ike, Gerald had another life for a while. Another relationship. Brief, complicated, and eventually reduced to something Gerald completely left behind in another state.
But the relationship itself had also left something behind. A son.
By the time Gerald settled into the life that became the Broflovskis, that son already existed somewhere outside of it all, old enough to understand he wasn't really included in the version of family Gerald built afterward.
A stable house. A marriage. Holiday traditions. Dinner at the same table every night. Two sons, raised together.
And somewhere far outside of that orbit was Doug Remer.
Gerald had always paid attention to him in the technical sense. Birthday cards. Phone calls that became less frequent over the years. Visits when schedules allowed it. But there was a difference between being acknowledged and being woven into a family, and Remer had grown up understanding that difference perfectly.
Then BASEketball happened.
Overnight, the son Gerald rarely talked about became impossible not to talk about.
Suddenly there were magazine covers sitting on the kitchen counter. Television interviews Sheila politely watched beside Gerald while Kyle rolled his eyes. Gerald started bringing Remer up in conversations more often, sometimes awkwardly forcing him into discussions where he didn't naturally belong.
It felt reactive. Like Gerald had only become interested once the rest of the world decided Remer finally mattered.
“That’s my oldest son”, he'd say now, with a pride that arrived years too late.
And every single time, Kyle’s stomach twisted with something ugly.
Because deep down, deep down where the thoughts he felt too mean to say out loud, part of Kyle still thought he was the oldest son.
Kyle had been there every day. Kyle lived in the house Gerald came home to every night. Kyle sat through family dinners and school conferences and vacations and arguments and ordinary Tuesdays. Kyle was part of the structure of Gerald’s life in a way Remer had never been.
Remer visited. Kyle belonged.
And that realization always came tangled together with guilt almost immediately afterward, because none of it was really Remer’s fault. It wasn't Remer’s decision that Gerald had built an entirely different family somewhere else. It wasn't his fault that Kyle had gotten the version of Gerald that stayed.
But sometimes, when Gerald got overly excited talking about games or television appearances or magazine articles, Kyle felt something sour creep into his chest anyway.
Like suddenly he was sharing a title he'd never realized he was protective over until someone else started claiming it again.
And everyday, Kyle thought, “Why isn't he proud of me?”
Winter break was around the corner, which meant South Park Highschool had collectively given up on trying. Even the teachers looked exhausted, looking the other way when students acted up, just to avoid tedious paperwork.
Kyle sat hunched over his lunch tray, absentmindedly picking away at the styrofoam and rolling it between his fingers before discarding it without second thought. Across from him, Kenny kept trying to steal fries off Stan’s tray whenever Stan wasn't looking, and Cartman was actively scamming a freshman out of their pudding cups.
Stan finally caught sight of Kenny and shoved his hand away. “Dude.”
The conversation drifted aimlessly between movies, Christmas presents, and increasingly stupid ideas for how to spend the next few weeks. Stan suggested renting movies, board games, things that mainly only he would enjoy. Kyle found it endearing.
He kept peeling at the styrofoam plate in distracted stripes, shoulders tense in a way Stan noticed almost immediately.
“Dude, if you keep picking at your tray there’ll be nothing left.” Stan said finally.
Kyle looked up automatically. “What?”
Stan pointed across the table. Small curls of ripped styrofoam had started piling beside Kyle’s fries.
Kyle glanced down at his hands like he genuinely hadn't noticed. “Oh.”
“Anyways,” Stan began, dragging out the syllables, eyebrow raised like he was trying to dissect Kyle’s brain apart to figure out what was on his mind. “What about your place, Kyle? Can we come over?”
Kyle paused, his already tense shoulders tightening slightly. It was nothing dramatic, something most people wouldn't have noticed at all. But Stan did, because Stan always noticed weird little shifts in Kyle’s mood before anyone else seemed to.
Kyle stared down at his tray for a second too long, thumb pressing another dent into the styrofoam edge.
He’d known this conversation was coming eventually.
The second his mom mentioned Remer and Coop were visiting for the holidays, Kyle realized very quickly that his entire life was about to be turned upside down. While his dad couldn't keep Remer’s name out of his mouth, Kyle managed to avoid bringing it up in front of the guys, keeping his ever-growing secret a little longer.
There was no way around this. Remer wasn't exactly subtle, and South Park was small enough that two nationally recognizable athletes showing up in town for two weeks would become public chatter within a day.
Still, Kyle had kept putting it off. Partly because the situation itself was awkward to explain.
It wasn't actually much of a secret, obviously. Sheila knew. Ike knew. Kyle had known for as long as he can remember. But Remer still carried this strange feeling of hidden family history every time he came up in conversation, mostly because Gerald almost never talked about him. Until recently.
What was Kyle supposed to say?
Oh yeah, before my parents got married my dad had another kid he only started caring about after he was on ESPN.
None of it really fits into conversation.
And Kyle already knew how the boys felt about BASEketball. Stan found it lame, Cartman acted like he thought it was the dumbest sport invented, yet he'd still invite Kenny over to tune into each game. But, Remer was still famous, which meant that once the name came up, the conversation would stop being about Kyle entirely. Nobody cared about “Kyle’s half-brother.” They cared about Remer, the BASEketball guy.
And Remer bringing Coop along didn't make it any better. In fact, it made it much, much worse.
Because no matter how loud or attention-seeking Remer got, people still seemed to gravitate toward Coop first.
Across the table, Stan was still watching him carefully, clearly waiting for an answer.
“What?” Kyle asked finally, snapped out of his thoughts.
“... Can we come over to yours during break?” Stan repeated.
Kyle sighed softly through his nose. “I’m sorry, guys, not this time. My older brother’s visiting.”
Kenny spoke immediately. “You don't have a brother.” He mumbled, though it came out more like a question than a statement.
“Yes, I do.”
“No you don't!" Cartman scoffed. “He’s just lying.”
Kyle looked up, clearly already irritated. “I think I would know, fatass.”
Stan blinked. “Wait, seriously?”
Kyle nodded once, still absently scraping his thumbnail against the tray. “He’s my half-brother. From my dad’s side.”
“Oh, so your dad has a second, secret, more-Jewish family.”
“That doesn't even make sense, Cartman.”
Stan leaned forward slightly, quickly bringing the conversation back to the point at hand. “You never told us that.”
“There wasn't really a reason to.”
“How old is he?’
“Twenty-three.”
Kenny stared at him for a moment. “Oh, so he's, like, grown.”
“He was born before my parents got married,” Kyle explained, though the words caught in his throat like he didn't want to say them.
Stan’s expression changed slightly, curiosity softening into understanding.
“Oh.”
Kyle shrugged like it wasn't a big deal, even though the topic always made him feel strangely defensive. “He doesn't live here or anything. He just visits sometimes.”
“What’s his name?” Stan asked, absentmindedly picking at his tray with his fork.
Kyle hesitated again. “Remer.”
“Oh, like the BASEketball guy?”
‘Not just like the BASEketball guy,’ He corrected. “He is the BASEketball guy.”
For about half a second, the table went still, before Cartman burst into a nasally laughter. “Now he's definitely lying!”
“Literally, why would I lie about this?!” Kyle scoffed.
Kenny was still staring at Kyle uncertainly, trying to figure out if this was some elaborate joke. “Wait, seriously?”
Cartman shook his head immediately. “No way. No fucking way. Your brother is not Doug Remer.”
“Half-brother.”
“Whatever! There’s no way.”
Kyle was really getting irritated now, mostly because this was exactly why he hadn’t wanted to bring it up in the first place.
“Stan asked what his name was!”
“Yeah, and then you said something insane!”
“Dude,” Stan said slowly, still trying to process it, “your half-brother invented BASEketball?”
“Uh, he helped, Coop invented it too.” Kyle corrected.
“So is Coop visiting, too?”
Kyle felt his stomach sink a little at the question. Of course that was the part anyone cared about.
Kyle already knew how this was going to go once people found out both of them were in town. South Park loved spectacle too much to ignore it. He doubted people didn't already know, considering Gerald couldn't keep his mouth shut about it. It would spread everywhere, through parents and siblings and overheard conversations until random people started slowing their cars around the Broflovski household, trying to catch a glimpse of them.
“... Yeah,” Kyle admitted finally, rubbing his thumb against the edge of his tray. “Coop’s coming too.”
Cartman barked out a disbelieving laugh loud enough that a couple kids at the next table glanced over. “No fucking way.”
Kyle couldn't tell if Cartman sounded more jealous or skeptical.
Stan, meanwhile, just looked completely thrown off about the idea. He leaned back slightly in his chair, eyebrows raised. “Joe Cooper’s gonna be staying at your house?”
“For the holidays,” Kyle corrected quickly. “They’re not moving in.”
“That’s insane,” Stan said.
“It’s really not.” Kyle looked down at his lunch as he spoke, suddenly very interested in rearranging the fries on his tray. He could already feel embarrassment creeping up the back of his neck now that the conversation had fully shifted into this territory.
Kenny shook his head, probably the most openly excited any of them had gotten so far despite barely contributing to the discussion until now. “Do they just show up in limos and shit?”
Kyle stared at him flatly. “No, they’re flying in.”
He rolled his eyes and reached for his chocolate milk, mostly just to have something else to focus on. The whole conversation was leading the way Kyle knew it would. The boys were more interested in “Joe Cooper and his partner, Doug Remer” than they were “Kyle’s secret older brother.”
He understood why, logically. The sport had gotten huge ridiculously fast. Their faces were everywhere now – commercials, magazines, late-night interviews, posters at the mall, trading cards… the list goes on. Even people who thought the sport itself was stupid still recognized them instantly.
Still, hearing his friends react like this made the entire situation feel even stranger.
Because to Kyle, Remer wasn't a celebrity. He was just Remer.
Cartman leaned back in his chair, balancing dangerously close on two legs. “So if we came over, we could meet them?”
Kyle looked up immediately. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not turning my house into a zoo!”
Cartman pointed accusingly across the table with a half-eaten mozzarella stick. “You’re lying about it, or else you'd let us come over! You can’t hide celebrities from me, Kyle!’
“They’re not celebrities!”
“They have trading cards!”
Before Kyle could continue arguing, the bell rang. The cafeteria immediately dissolved into chaos. Chairs scraped loudly against the floor as everybody stood at once, trays slammed into trash cans, and conversations got swallowed beneath the noise of kids flooding towards the exits.
Kyle grabbed his backpack quickly, relieved the conversation was finally ending before Cartman could start asking even worse questions.
Unfortunately, Stan caught up beside him almost immediately once they spilled into the hallway.
“So,” Stan started casually, adjusting the strap of his backpack higher onto his shoulder.
Kyle groaned under his breath. “You too?”
Stan smiled, finding it amusing how he didn't even need to finish his sentence before Kyle already knew what he was talking about. “I’m just saying, that's kinda insane.”
“It’s weirder when he’s actually at the house,” he admitted after a moment.
Remer teased him relentlessly. Most of the time it was harmless older-brother stuff, but sometimes he really pushed Kyle’s boundaries. Kyle had never really gotten used to being the easy target whenever Remer visited, having spent every other day of the year as the older brother, instead of Remer.
Stan glanced over at him. Unlike Cartman, he didn’t seem impressed so much as curious, which somehow made the conversation easier to survive.
“What’s he actually like?”
Kyle let out a quiet laugh through his nose. “Annoying.”
“Sounds kinda normal for an older brother.”
“Yeah, well, he’s really committed to it.”
Stan laughed, and Kyle had to look away for a second before his brain started doing weird things with it.
“Are you nervous about them visiting?” Stan asked.
Kyle opened his mouth automatically, already preparing to deny it out of reflex. Then he hesitated, considered that Stan was his best friend, and remembered he could trust him with his feelings.
“A little,” he admitted. “I don't really know Cooper, so it's a little weird.”
“You’ve never met him?”
“Um, kinda?” Kyle shrugged. “I mean, technically I have, but only like, one or twice. In passing, and stuff.”
“Is he like Remer?”
Kyle really hoped not. That thought came fast enough to surprise him a little.
The truth was, he was too young to really remember the few times Remer dragged Coop to Colorado, so most of what he knew about Cooper came from the media he consumed. Interviews, games… none of which settled his nerves.
Kyle had noticed something a while ago, during one of the games Gerlad forced everyone to watch together in the living room. As the Beer’s opponent would line up to make a shot, Coop would smirk a little, say something under his breath to Remer, and then Remer would nail a perfect psyche-out with Cooper’s help.
He and Remer worked together too naturally. Watching that game, Kyle got the uncomfortable feeling that Coop understood Remer better than anyone else did, like he knew exactly when to egg him on and when to rein him back in.
And somehow that intimidated Kyle more than Remer ever did, like Cooper understood exactly what to say to make people stumble without even raising his voice.
Which meant Kyle had spent the past several days quietly worrying that once Remer and Coop arrived, they’d turn the teasing into a team activity.
“Um, I don't know.” Kyle said, snapping out of his thoughts once they approached Stan’s locker.
“He’s probably normal,” Stan said while shoving books into the mess of his locker haphazardly. “Or at least more normal than your brother.”
Kyle snorted, leaning against the locker beside him, arms folded loosely now. “That’s a low bar.”
“I’m sure it'll be fine.” Stan reassured.
Kyle nodded automatically.
Hopefully Stan was right. Because if Coop turned out to be exactly like Remer, Kyle was unsure if he could last two full weeks with the two around.