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01.
In the 3rd grade Kenny dies for the first time. It’s past midnight and he’s running away from home (again.) He trips and falls, smashing his skull on the rocks beside the railway line; Kenny dies alone, bled dry on the train tracks. His eyes re-open before sunrise, eyelashes tacky and stuck painfully together. When he looks down there’s blood all over the front of his parka; he touches it, and it turns chalky and falls away from the fabric like dust. Kenny’s limbs feel leaden, and when he gets to his feet one of his arms feels numb, like he’s been asleep on it for too long. He shakes it out and feels oddly like he’s forgotten to do something.
Kenny gets home just in time for breakfast.
02.
At the end of the 6th grade Kenny reads about miraculous conception. Intrigued he flips through the one Renaissance art book held in the library and finds himself transfixed by images of the Virgin Mary, of angels and shiny halos. Kenny knows his family isn’t his real family. It’s nothing he’s ever seen solid proof of, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s known it all his life. He’s never seen any baby photos of himself, and he wonders if, wherever they are, they look like these; cradled in his real mother’s arms, adored and lit with gold and silver glow.
“Kyle,” he whispers, hidden behind tall shelves of dusty books, “what if I’m the son of God?”
Kyle chokes on his intake of breath, looking up bewildered from his tattered science journal, “You’re not the son of God, dude.”
“But…what if I am?” Kenny’s suddenly terrified, staring down at the open book in his lap. He feels like maybe the key to his entire life could be hidden between the pages, if only he could figure it all out. Kyle doesn’t look so convinced, staring at him sideways for a bit before going back to his reading.
A week later Kyle buys him a lily, telling him quietly that Gabriel probably didn’t have to spend two weeks pocket money on his one and Kenny better enjoy it. Kenny’s a little touched that Kyle remembers and lies awake for hours at night, just staring at the white petals glowing eerily in the moonlight, even long after it’s wilted and the petals lay fragile and near decomposed on his bedside table. The night before he finally gives up and throws the lily in the trash, he falls asleep he has a totally disturbing dream about Kyle with enormous feathered wings sprouting from his back, crouching down beside him and whispering wetly against his ear, “You’re pregnant, Kenny.” He wakes up sweaty and horny and utterly terrified.
He can’t look Kyle in the eye for a week.
03.
They start counting; tallying up the hours Kenny loses when he dies. There’s a small red notepad in Kyle’s desk drawer, and at the end of each month he adds it all up and scrawls it out in bold black numbers that fill a whole page. It was all Kyle’s idea, after Kenny mentioned feeling like his death was like wasting time; that he hated that he’d never get it back. He doesn’t understand why Kyle does it, why he still believes there must be scientific reasoning behind it all and tries to be there for every moment of Kenny’s death. He supposes maybe some day it will make sense and the numbers might eventually mean something. Maybe one day they will tell him who he is.
04.
Kenny sits on the concrete steps outside of the local church on a Sunday and listens to Father Maxi give his sermons. They’re pretty fucking boring, repeating the same thing over and over, and the church-goers all eye him suspiciously afterwards as they leave the building. By 7th grade Kenny’s death is old news. When reports of it had first reached Father Maxi he was quick to declare it a miracle; the second time it was yet more of a miracle. The third and fourth time it was thought of as less a miracle and perhaps more the workings of a hoax. By the time Father Maxi had witnessed Kenny’s death on several occasions he declared it the work of the devil, and announced to the congregation that surely Kenny had made a pact with Satan. He was banned from the church from that day forth; no one bothered trying to save his soul, and he supposes they believe he doesn’t have one at all. Kenny wouldn’t know, he hasn’t got a clue what having or not having a soul feels like.
He watches his mother wash the dishes at night, the naked light bulb above her head illuminating her dark hair like a halo. “What the hell’re you looking at?” she spits, face scrunched up into a scowl as the dishes crack loudly against the sink. His father yells out from the other room, angry and demanding, and Kenny turns his back on them, retreating through the battered fly-screen backdoor and out into the night.
05.
Kenny climbs through Kyle’s bedroom window for the first time in 8th grade. Kyle says, “What the fuck?”
Kenny replies with, “The latches were undone,” and for a good two minutes they just stare at each other, Kyle blinking rapidly out of sleep and squinting to try and focus in the dark.
“Dude, it’s past midnight,” he says eventually, “We have school tomorrow.” Kenny shifts from side to side a bit, and he feels kind of bad about intruding, but “Can I sleep on your floor?”
Kyle looks confused, but he nods and throws one of his pillows on the floor along with an extra blanket from the end of his bed; he knows what Kenny’s deadbeat father is like after all. Kenny doesn’t sleep, he listens to the sound of Kyle breathing, the high pitched wail of the wind outside, then finally Kyle tossing and turning and saying, “Kenny, are you awake?”
Busted, Kenny sighs. “Yeah, are you?”
Kyle laughs, “Its fucking freezing dude, come up here. I’ll move over.”
“Isn’t that kinda gay?”
Kyle doesn’t speak for a few minutes, as if considering. “Would you rather freeze to death?” Kenny’s done that twice already since Easter.
He wakes up before sunrise an inch from the edge of the bed with Kyle’s arm slung over his waist, the other boy’s warm breath ghosting over the hairs on the back of his neck. It feels good. ComfortableDangerousSafe. He slips out of the bed and pulls on his shoes.
Kyle watches him go, he knows because they make eye contact as he’s trying to make his secret, silent escape out of the window. Kyle says nothing, just stares, and Kenny leaves, walking home feeling like the weight of Kyle’s arm is burned into his flesh forever.
They don’t talk about it at school (if Cartman ever caught wind they’d never live it down) but Kenny can feel it hanging over them all day. Kyle walks Kenny home after school. Outside Kenny’s house he says, “About last night…” and Kenny cuts him off, “I’m fine. It was nothing,” then retreats into his house as quickly as possible. It’s only once he’s safely through his bedroom door that he realizes that Kyle might not be okay about it, but by then it’s too late to backtrack, and Kyle’s already crossing the road to go home.
06.
Kenny had a girlfriend, once. It was long distance, and she was kind of annoying if he’s honest. He kissed her a few times when they did see each other, and she actually appeared to care about him. It takes him a good year to understand why she broke up with him; the revelation comes to him while he’s lying broken under the weight of a steel beam at the construction site.
He thinks 5…4…3…2…
And wakes up on Kyle’s bed, the soft taptaptap of Kyle’s fingers hitting the computer keys bringing him out of unconsciousness, the end of his train of thought springing back into his mind: It’s because I don’t like girls, Kenny thinks and panics briefly when Kyle swivels round on his chair and stares at him, wondering if maybe he’s said it out loud. Kyle says, “Six hours,” and Kenny adds it to the mental tally that he always forgets.
07.
Kenny saves his money. By the 4th of July he has enough to buy Kyle the enormous bottle rocket he’s been coveting in Uncle Jimbo’s basement since they were twelve. That night most of their class gathers in one of the open fields behind Kenny’s house and they light it up. It flares once, twice, and then explodes in Kenny’s face. Lying on the ground he can hear girls screaming and Cartman laughing; the pain is unbearable. He wakes up where he fell. Kyle is lying next to him wrapped in a sleeping bag, arms folded behind his head, staring at the cloudless sky. “Twelve hours,” he whispers, rolling onto his side. “Everyone else went home after it happened, it was pretty gross. Want some water?” Kyle sits up and digs around in his backpack for a sipper bottle.
Their lives are relatively uneventful, despite the crazy that seems permanently attached to their town. The tourists don’t seem to notice, and Kenny thinks he saw a movie like this once. He thinks maybe everyone in South Park is dead and they don’t even know it. Kyle reaches round behind himself at lunch and scratches uselessly at the middle of his back. Wings Kenny thinks, and yeah, he’s seen enough crazy shit in his lifetime to believe that Kyle might be an angel. It doesn’t make any sense, but he dreams about it all the time. He dreams he’s fucking Kyle’s brains out and there are feathers flying everywhere. It’s pretty girly, he supposes, imagining your best friend all decked out in white and glowing golden. But it’s perfect and when his dad hits him and he’s lying bloodied on the bathroom floor it’s the only place he can escape. He thinks about Kyle a lot when he dies, especially if it’s prolonged, but he doesn’t tell him that. It’s probably a pretty creepy thing to say out loud.
He looks up from his lunch and across the playground Craig flips him off. Kenny spends the rest of the day trying to turn the other boy’s bottle of water into motor oil using his mind. It doesn’t work. Cartman tells him to stop thinking so hard, or he’ll get an aneurysm. For once Kenny pays attention; he’s heard they’re pretty painful.
08.
Kenny comes back to life alone on the shore of Starks Pond near dawn on a Wednesday. He crawls into Kyle’s bed while it’s still dark, and the other boy’s body is tense beside him. Kyle whispers, “I pray for you every fucking day, so why do you keep dying?” Kenny has no reply to that, so instead he slips his hand underneath Kyle’s pajama top, sliding his fingertips over the warm skin of his stomach. The other boy shivers but Kenny doesn’t stop; Kyle feels so goddamn good; so warm and so alive. “I can’t,” Kyle chokes, like he’s about to fucking cry. He rolls onto his side to face Kenny, but won’t look him in the eye. Kenny gets his stuff together and leaves.
“Don’t go,” Kyle says, but Kenny pretends he doesn’t hear.
09.
Kyle dates Bebe for a month in the 10th grade. Terrance and Phillip release their third movie Farts on a Plane during the Summer, so they all go together as a group, laughing at their own in-jokes as they buy the tickets and take their seats. Bebe grabs Kyle’s hand as the movie starts, her eyes locking with Kenny’s as the lights go down. Kenny’s always hated her and spends the whole movie plotting her ultimately painful downfall.
Afterwards, Bebe berates the juvenile humour of Terrance and Phillip which fires Cartman into a lengthy rant that proves enough of a distraction for Kenny to drag Kyle into the bathrooms.
“You don’t really like her, do you?” Kenny asks, backing Kyle up against the far wall. He feels kind of foolish, he knows he looks desperate.
“And what if I do? She’s pretty and smart and…” Kyle shuffles his feet, licks his lips, looks anywhere but at Kenny’s face.
She doesn’t die, Kenny thinks, sadly, and supposes he understands.
10.
At seventeen Kenny knocks up some girl called Jenny in the year below them. She’s pure white-trash; bleached blonde hair and perky tits that Kyle says he can see through her white singlet when the sun comes out. She exhales her cigarette smoke onto his face when she talks. Cartman tells Kenny quietly while they’re out by the pond that Kyle hates Jenny’s guts and Kenny can’t help but laugh. Inside he’s screaming, and when they’re together he wishes Kyle would hear; it’s the worst nine months of his life.
Jenny gives birth on a Sunday to a stillborn baby boy. Kenny takes it in his arms and just stares at it, his eyes expressionless, until the nurse comes in to take the corpse away. “I thought it might come back to life,” he says later, buried beneath the warmth of Kyle’s faded jet plane duvet. Kyle says nothing, and Kenny falls asleep tightly gripping onto Kyle’s hand, waking up while it’s still dark to the sound of Kyle crying into the pillow beside him. “It’s just sad, that’s all,” Kyle says.
Stan tells him a few weeks later, long after Jenny’s left town that Kyle had felt guilty - he’d been wishing for complications since the very start.
11.
It’s midway through December when Kenny accidentally kills a man out by Starks Pond. He falls through Kyle’s window just past 5am, hands stained brilliant red. Kyle trips over his own feet, scrambling to switch on the light. He strips the clothes from Kenny’s body quickly, patting him over with shaking hands to try and find the wound. Kenny’s skin is white and he can smell the blood drying on his own heated skin. There’s no visible injury, and it doesn’t take Kyle long to figure out that it’s someone else’s blood. “Kenny,” he says, backing slowly toward the opposite side of the room, “What have you done?”
Kenny spends a good twelve hours in shock, the first five of which he spends sitting in Kyle’s bathtub, staring at the wall until the grouting between the tiles gets fuzzy and the water goes stone cold. Kyle sits on the floor with a towel wrapped around his shoulders, head falling against the rim of the bath every ten minutes or so as sleep overtakes him. The bath water turns red and Kenny can’t even force himself to change it. It pools around his knees and really, he should be used to it by now. But it’s not his blood, and there’s some crazy guy floating around in Starks Pond with a piece of scrap metal sticking out of his chest. “Kyle,” Kenny croaks, and Kyle’s instantly awake, looking at him with glazed and bloodshot eyes. “I would have been fine if he’d killed me,” Kenny says, looking at his blood-stained fingernails, “But he’s never come back.”
Kyle doesn’t say anything, just gets up and pulls the plug out. They sit in silence as the water gurgles down the drain.
12.
In the 12th grade, Kenny starts wearing black and hanging out with the Goths. He puts holes in his face where Kyle says he didn’t think holes could be made, his lip and ears glinting silver in the weak-ass cloud-covered sunlight. At the bus stop Cartman sees his black nailpolish and calls him a fag. Stan tells him to stop trying to be so fucked up. He sits behind the gym and smokes Lucky Strikes until the bell rings, then skips out and sits alone by the arcade until the others finish school.
“How’re the Goths, fag?” Cartman scoffs, ripping open a bag of nacho cheese corn chips.
Kenny just shrugs. “They hang out at the cemetery too much. And their poetry is shit”
In the end it’s pretty short lived; the Goth’s can’t even deal with Kenny’s constant death, despite all their eternal pain and sorrow bullcrap. “They’re sick of watching me bleed,” Kenny explains around a mouthful of Kyle’s mom’s spaghetti, droplets of tomato sauce falling onto his clothes. Kyle nods as if he understands.
13.
Kenny doesn’t apply for college. On the final day for applications he gets drunk and stands in a field of ice screaming, “Are you there God? It’s me, Kenny!” at the top of his lungs, shaking his fists at a cloudy, unresponsive sky. Kyle’s waiting by the edge of the field staring out at the mountain ranges when Kenny starts his long stumble home.
“Shouldn’t you be …applicationing?” Kenny slurs. Kyle shrugs, putting his arm around Kenny’s waist, “Nah, I’m not really in a hurry to leave.” Kenny doesn’t believe him - everyone’s in a hurry to leave South Park.
Two hours later at Benny’s the waitress offers them another round of coffee. Kenny puts five heaped teaspoons of sugar in his, watching bleary-eyed as it dissolves into the black liquid. He tongues his lip ring idly and outside it starts to rain.
“Stan says he’s going to ask Wendy to marry him,” Kyle says conversationally, looking thoughtfully at the lunch menu.
Kenny laughs, stirring his coffee and shaking his head. Kyle looks up at him, raising an eyebrow. “Holy shit, you’re not kidding.”
Sometimes Kenny forgets that they’re not in the 4th grade anymore. They’re practically adults now, and he wonders sadly why he hasn’t grown out of dying yet. He puts his spoon down and takes a sip of coffee; it tastes like crap. The waitress comes back and he asks for more; Kyle orders them both a plate of blueberry pancakes. Kenny doesn’t know what he’d do without Kyle, who gets up to find an extra bottle of syrup so they can have one each, then stands three tables over and reaches behind himself to scratch awkwardly at the middle of his back. Kenny still thinks of wings, and he’s never stopped wanting to touch Kyle. He’s only ever done it once but his fingers burn. Kyle sits back down and says, “Wonder who he’ll pick to be best man?”
Kenny thinks: I’ve loved you my whole life. He says, “Probably Craig,” and they both laugh.
14.
Kenny gets a job at the unisex clothing store a block away from Raisins. He starts at 10am, serves fewer than five customers before 11, then folds and unfolds jackets and shirts until lunch. On his break he visits Kyle at the library. Kyle tells him that the place is a mess and he’s been given permission to tidy it up, to order new books and attack the shelves with spray-and-wipe. Kenny doubts they’ve ever had anyone as motivated as Kyle to work for them, and Kyle really does look pretty excited. Kenny’s stomach knots up at the grin that spreads over his face. They take turns buying each other takeaway coffees from the new Starbucks that opens down the street and Kyle practically falls over himself to get to the pumpkin spice latte cradled in Kenny’s hand, saying that he’s never tasted anything so fucking amazing in all his life.
Stan starts working at Starbucks a few weeks later, taking great pleasure in denying Cartman the extra cream he demands on top of his full-cream-all-fat-triple-shot-block of solid caffeine. “Goddamnit,” Eric grumbles, unscrewing the lid from the chocolate shaker and pouring the contents free flow all over his drink, “You’re such a goddamn asshole, Stan.” Kenny’s pretty sure Eric’s going to die of a heart attack, even if he has lost a considerable amount of weight since they were kids. He can imagine all the congealed fat in Cartman’s veins, blocking up his arteries and, “Make mine low fat, okay?” he whispers to Stan over the counter.
Stan looks up and over to where Cartman is greedily shoveling cream into his mouth by the condiment stand. “Yeah. God, yeah, totally,” he tips Kenny’s drink down the sink and starts all over again.
Kenny recounts the whole episode to Kyle, who is sitting on the floor surrounded by books with their covers torn and pages tattered. He laughs, shaking his head in that ‘some things never fucking change’ kind of way, sorting the books into piles, opening them up one at the time to survey the damage.
“I can’t believe they let the books get this bad,” he says mournfully, and Kenny doesn’t know what to say, except for a snide remark about how typical it is of South Park. He’s never really understood peoples attachment to books, he never owned any and his parents weren’t exactly the most prolific of readers – they were lazy and just assumed that if something was important it would be on television – but he can appreciate Kyle’s regard for dusty smelling pieces of bound paper. Well, kind of. Kyle hands him a book before he leaves, the cover totally destroyed by pen scribbles and water marks. “It’s a classic,” he says, and Kenny immediately assumes it’s going to be about Cowboys.
He gets back to the store ten minutes late. No one’s waiting to buy anything, and the part-timer is out the back in the supply cupboard messing everything up, dropping boxes everywhere and being generally retarded. He sits down at the counter and opens his book, ‘The studio was filled with the rich colour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn…’ it begins, and Kenny wonders why Kyle gave him a book that is so obviously fucking gay. He reads it anyway, and it’s pretty heavy considering the lacking amount of books he’s read in his lifetime. It draws him in, and he stays up half the night trying to devour as much of it as possible.
The more he reads, the weirder his dreams become. Kyle is always a feature though, wearing a top hat and confessing to him his undying love. He usually sprouts wings at some point and it all goes to hell, like the crazy surrealist paintings Kyle keeps showing him at the library. Everything starts melting, drooping, clocks keep ticking and he feels like he’s losing ground.
Kenny finishes The Picture of Dorian Gray before his break on a Thursday and completely forgets to buy them coffee on his way to the library. “Oh my god,” he says, “That was so fucked up.” He’s almost bouncing off the walls with excitement, and it could partly be because he’s never finished a whole book before - nothing so meaningful, anyway - and maybe it’s a little bit because Kyle looks impressed.
Kyle takes the book gently from Kenny’s hands and puts it into a pile with some others while Kenny rambles on about how sad the story made him – “but don’t tell Cartman, he’ll kick my ass if he hears I got all sissy over a book” – and Kyle smiles, but it doesn’t meet his eyes.
“Do you want another one?” he says eventually, and Kenny barely manages to contain his glee. He decides later that it’s not the actual books that make him so happy; it’s that they’re from Kyle. Which is stupid, but it’s something to do while he’s serving approximately zero customers a day.
15.
Stan asks Wendy to marry him on the first day of spring. It’s hardly a perfect afternoon, but the sun does shine and there are already flowers starting to poke their heads up through the snow. “She said yes!” Kenny hears him shout at Kyle down the phone line, and he feels somehow like he should be happier.
They celebrate over beers at Stan’s house, his mother practically blinding them all with the glow of her smile. Wendy dangles her ringed finger in front of their faces as often as she can, clinking it against her wine glass loud enough for those closest to her to be able to hear over the music.
Cartman’s pretty drunk and chain smoking on the patio by half 10, which makes it easy for Kenny to scab a cigarette off him. “Jesus Christ, you’re the unhealthiest guy I’ve ever met,” he says, taking a long drag and watching Eric shove handful after handful of m&m’s into his mouth.
He can make out a muffled “Fuck you” and Kenny wonders if Cartman will ever get married. He’s pretty sure if there was a ‘marry yourself’ option, Eric would do it in a second. But there’s not, so he supposes Bebe is a prime target. They hang out an awful lot, though Kenny’s fucked if he knows what she sees in him. Kyle stumbles outside a while later, clutching a bottle of vodka to his chest and slurring something about ‘the best shots in the world’ and his ‘best friend Stan.’ And everything is just the Best Ever for about an hour, until he realizes he’s only wearing a t-shirt and jeans and holy crap, it’s really fucking cold outside. He climbs gracelessly onto Kenny’s lap, balancing the mostly empty vodka bottle on the table, and puts his head on Kenny’s shoulder, snuggling himself impossibly close to Kenny’s chest.
“Kyle. You are the biggest, gayest Jew in all the world,” Cartman says quietly around his cigarette, but his eyes look kind of fond, which is totally weird and probably means he’s very, very drunk; drunk enough to let his guard down, if only a little. Kyle mumbles something against Kenny’s jacket, and Kenny think maybe he was wrong about them almost being adults; they used to do exactly this when they were fifteen, only Stan was there too, drunk and waxing philosophical about politics and religions and love. He can hear Stan laughing on the other side of the sliding glass door, probably totally ripped on bourbon, showering Wendy with kisses. Kyle suddenly gets heavy in his lap, and Kenny supposes he’s fallen asleep. He spots a shooting star to his right and Kyle’s breath tickles his neck. He lets his head fall back against the shingles and closes his eyes against all of the want and need and the absolute, blinding panic.
Stan laughs again. Kenny’s glad one of them is finally getting what they want.
16.
Kenny wakes up early on his eighteenth birthday and brushes the blood from the front his faded GO COWS t-shirt. Downstairs his father is sprawled out on the couch in front of the muted television with a beer still in his hand, which is presumably where he’s been since he beat Kenny to death the previous evening. He cooks enough pancakes for everyone in the house, though he doubts anyone will actually remember what the occasion is. They taste pretty damn good, which makes him happy he took home economics, even if he did get hassled mercilessly about it for years.
He stops by Starbucks on his way to work and Stan gives him a free vente cappuccino that tastes amazing but gives him two hours worth of the shakes. Wendy stops by before half 11 to give him a gift. The card says “from Mr. & Mrs. Marsh to be” and has some balloons on the front. She looks ecstatic and Kenny kind of hates her. Their present to him is a brand new bright orange hoodie that makes him equal parts sad and happy; he hasn’t worn anything so vibrant since he grew out of his tangerine parka in the 5th grade. It’s still lying crumpled in his closet where he dumped it after the whole thing fell apart at the seams. He thanks her, and she kisses him on the cheek. At lunchtime he wears the hoodie out to buy his coffees and Stan wolf whistles when he walks through the door. Cartman says it makes him look like an eight year old. Kenny flips him off and leaves the store to the sound of Eric bitching about the Spartan nature of the chocolate shakers.
The library is eerily quiet when he arrives and a little bit darker than usual. Kenny looks up and sees a whole row of light bulbs have blown which makes him roll his eyes and feel kind of sorry for the checkout lady who squints through her glasses at the book on her desk. He finds Kyle sitting crossed legged in the Arts & Crafts isle, the tangle of red curls on his head looking even more of a mess than usual, his hands folded over a large rectangular object in his lap. Kenny sits down awkwardly in front of him, offering his friend a cup of coffee. Kyle takes it and puts it down beside him, picking up the thing in his lap and putting it on the floor, pushing it across the gap between them. “Happy Birthday, Kenny,” he says.
Kenny feels a little weirded out, but he pulls at the wrapping around the gift, tears it off and throws it over his shoulder. He looks down. Staring back at him is the gold-embossed face of Mary, smiling sadly toward the angels that surround her. He opens the book to more of the same, page after page of her smile, of golden glow and angels and serene landscapes as far as the eye can see. Kenny’s pretty overwhelmed, which he tries to say out loud, but when he opens his mouth nothing comes out. He knows if he looks up he’s going to well up, which is totally weak, so he stares down at the pages until his vision goes hazy and the silence around them gets too loud.
“I stopped counting months ago,” Kyle says softly, “there’s no science that can explain you.”
Kenny nods. He says, “Thank you,” and closes the book. When he glances up Kyle looks uneasy, like he’s about to say something, or he’s waiting for Kenny to say something back. Neither of them says anything for a while, until Kyle finally breaks the silence with a laugh, “Nice hoodie.” Down the next isle another light bulb blows.
17.
Ike’s class performs a play on a Monday afternoon. Kenny leaves work early so he can get changed and make it to Kyle’s house in time to catch a ride. He slips on a patch of new ice on the way home and wakes up at 1am in a ditch with a brutal headache and mud all over his orange hoodie. He doesn’t bother to clean himself up, just lets himself through Kyle’s window and stands there feeling miserable and disappointing and cold. Kyle switches on his light and slips out of bed, he unzips Kenny’s jacket and pushes it off his shoulders, takes hold of his saturated tee and peels it away from his skin. Kenny’s hair is wet, hanging down over his face; droplets of water cling to his eyelashes and run down the sides of his face. He closes his eyes, thinks very hard about bloodied wounds and Stan’s stupid sister’s ugly face and not about Kyle’s palm against his cheek, or the fingers of his other hand that are all of a sudden tangled in his hair. “I’m sorry I missed Ike’s play,” Kenny says, and Kyle is suddenly very, very close; so close Kenny can feel warm gusts of his breath against his face. “Don’t worry about it,” Kyle mutters, just before he closes the space between them and presses their lips together.
Kenny supposes when you’ve wanted to fuck your best friend for almost forever, actually having the opportunity is going to make you go a little mental. That doesn’t explain the almost vicious desire he has to rip Kyle apart and crawl the fuck inside his skin, warm and safe and sheltered, never to be seen or heard from again. He wraps his arms around Kyle’s waist and urges him forward instead, lets Kyle slip his thigh between Kenny’s legs and arch closer. Kenny wonders why Kyle’s chosen this moment, this exact and completely insignificant Tuesday morning, although he decides it doesn’t really matter, what with Kyle dragging his tongue along the length of Kenny’s jaw, sucking on his earlobe and somehow managing to unfasten his jeans all at the same time. Kenny can hardly even breathe, let alone perform complicated tasks with his hands. He hears his belt hit the floor before he registers it coming off, feels himself clumsily pulling Kyle’s shirt up over his head before he really even thinks about what he’s doing.
They fall onto the bed and Kenny doesn’t remember having anything to drink, but he feels absolutely fucking wasted, everything is spinning and it’s impossible to focus. Kyle straddles his hips and looks down at him; from this angle, the light bulb in the center of the room highlights Kyle’s curls and makes his skin glow lily white. He leans down, hands on either side of Kenny’s shoulders and he’s shaking like a junkie, like holding up his own weight is the hardest thing in the world to do. Kenny thinks maybe he should ask what the hell is going on, but instead he reaches down and cups Kyle’s dick through his pants, which isn’t really what he intended to do. Kyle makes the most amazing sound, groaning like he’s dying and Kenny finally feels as though he’s living, pulling the other boy down into a kiss that lasts until long after sunrise.
18.
Stan marries Wendy at the South Park Catholic church. Father Maxi allows Kenny inside for the occasion, but still looks him up and down suspiciously as if a demon might explode out his chest at any moment. Kyle’s the best man, not that there was any doubt that it would happen otherwise, and all of their mothers sob the whole way through the ceremony. Confetti flies everywhere and they spray JUST MARRIED on Stan’s parent’s car, one of the cans tied to the back coming loose and narrowly missing Kenny’s head as they drive off toward the reception.
Kenny drinks several flutes too many of champagne and walks in on Cartman sucking face with Bebe on Stan’s bedroom floor, which makes him want to throw up more than the time he swallowed rodent poison to try and make the rats leave him the hell alone.
Cartman says, “Heeyyyy, Kenny,” in his usual drunken whine. Bebe giggles and her society-destroying breasts jiggle in her low-cut top. Kenny backs out of the bedroom and down the hallway, stumbles down the stairs and out onto the lawn before realizing he’d been upstairs searching for Kyle. Kyle who’s sitting by the buffet table and probably had been the entire time. “I just saw Eric kissing Bebe,” Kenny whispers against Kyle’s ear, grabbing himself another glass of booze. Kyle laughs so hard he chokes on his salmon pate cracker and Kenny thumps him on the back several times, guzzling back the bubbles as he does. “Oh my GOD,” Kyle exclaims once he regains his breath, perhaps a little too loudly, because all of the guest around them turn to stare. Kenny grabs Kyle’s hand and pulls him up – Kyle makes a grab for the snack plate closest to him and grabs a handful of hor's douvres –dragging him out onto the road.
“Where’re we going?” Kyle says around a mouthful of …something on a stick that looks kind of like ham.
“Your house,” Kenny replies, still holding Kyle’s hand in case he gets the urge to run away.
Kyle goes along with it for a while, but as soon as they round the corner he pipes up again. “But…the food?”
Kenny’s not surprised that that’s all he’s thinking about. “We’ll be back before they even notice we’re gone,” Kenny assures him, and Kyle seems satisfied with that.
They fuck for the first time awkwardly and drunkenly on top of Kyle’s jet plane duvet, which makes Kenny feels a tiny bit skeevy, but he gets over that pretty quickly. There aren’t any feathers, not that he’d expected them, but Kyle’s body fits perfectly against his own. He presses his lips into the curve of Kyle’s collarbone and he can feel his heartbeat in a million different places at once.
They’re back before the speeches begin and the grin on Kyle face threatens to take over half the state of Colorado. He’s happy and Kenny’s happy and everybody’s happy, and he’s probably had too much to drink but he’ll deal with that later on, because in a surprising turn of events, Cartman gets up in front of the crowd and gives a speech. He rambles on about life and love and family, and how they’re all his brothers. By the end there’s not a dry eye in the house, including Kenny, who doesn’t know how he never thought about it that way before. Kyle grabs hold of his hand when Eric moves forward to give Stan a hug, turning to him with bloodshot eyes. “I’ve learnt something today,” he says, “You can never judge a book by its cover.” Kenny’s too stunned to reply, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because Cartman chooses then to pull them both up out of their seats and into a giant hug that leaves Kenny winded and unfathomably happy to have been blessed with a family as fucked up and wonderful as his.
19.
Kyle opens a bookshop half a block away from Starbucks just after he turns twenty. His dad helps him get it off the ground, offering money and support, which Kyle seems grateful for though Kenny thinks he’s smart enough to have done it on his own. Kenny quits the clothing store and works full time at Kyle’s Bookstore instead. Despite Kyle’s protests Kenny helps out with the debt he owes his father, and within hardly any time at all they’ve paid it back with interest, using the unexpected extra Mr. Brofloski gives back to rent out the apartment on top of the store. Kenny re-decorates on his days off, which is less decorating and more rearranging the furniture a little bit. Kyle tells him sarcastically that home economics class really paid off.
More often than not he finds Kyle in the storage cupboard, checking for customer information and trying to think of what he can order in next. He shuts the door quickly and quietly and they make out behind shelves of boxes and book orders and spare shelf units, grinding against one another like their lives depend on it until the part-timer knocks on the door and yells at them for slacking. It never stops being funny. She kind of reminds them both of Cartman, which Kenny finds isn’t really such a bad thing anymore.
20.
Kenny still dies sometimes, but it’s not nearly as horrific as it used to be. Kyle’s still beside him when he comes back to life most of the time, and occasionally he says how many hours Kenny’s lost out loud. He never writes it down though -they burned the red notebook a long time ago. “I think its better not to worry about it,” Kyle had said, and Kenny had agreed completely.
Kenny doesn’t mind so much waking up on the bathroom floor with a splitting headache and blood on his clothes. Kyle looks down at him from where he’s sitting on the toilet and smiles, “I love you, y’know,” he offers a hand to help Kenny up. “I kind of always have.”
The blood falls away from Kenny’s shirt like dust when he moves. “Yeah, I know,” he says, “But don’t let Cartman hear you say that. He still gives a mean titty twister.”
They’re still laughing when they get into the kitchen. The clock reads 8am, and Kenny’s pleased to see that he’s just in time for breakfast.