This is a Christmas gift-fic for the most amazing person I know. I recommend Christmas carols as you read this. Specifically, "I'll Be Home for Christmas" by Bing Crosby.
Oh, and thanks kyleisgod—totally stole your mistletoe joke xD
Anyone else think Kenny is a Prince fan, or am I just deranged? …don't answer that.
Happy holidays, yo.
For Caturday. You know I utterly adore you. I hope this fic makes you smile a little bit today.
"It's Christmas time, again, it's time to be nice to the people you can't stand. All year, I'm growing tired of all this Christmas cheer. You people scare me. Please stay away from my home. If you don't wanna get beat down, just leave the presents and then leave me alone." –I Won't Be Home for Christmas, Blink 182
Kenny didn't particularly feel "holiday spirit-y" as he trudged down the halls of South Park High School that Friday afternoon. The paper snowflakes, tired silver tinsel draped over the lockers, and the colorful posters announcing the winter dance stuck up on the walls in the hallways passed through his peripheral vision without regard. The tinny multi-denominational holiday songs Wendy Testaburger had petitioned to school to play over the intercom during passing periods were lost on him. A grouchy blot of orange in a sea of red and green—Kenny McCormick ignored it all.
Kenny was instead thinking about how fucking cold it was outside today, and how he was fucking sick of the song "Ill Be Home for Christmas." His sister Karen had been playing it over and over on her shitty boombox at home, and he swore to God, if he heard it one more time…he'd put his foot through frikkin' Frosty the Snowman's face. In front of a little kid. Twice.
He stepped outside through the school's double doors ("Happy Holidays!" declared a message in bright washable-paint on the glass), and he was hit full blast in the face with a gush of winter air. Sighing, he headed home. Snow seeped through his sneakers and made his toes achy and numb, the stinging wind chapped his lips and made his nose turn red, and Kenny wished that for once, Colorado would have a Christmas that wasn't white. White meant cold. Which sucked if your house had no heating system or proper blankets. Like Kenny's house did.
But Kenny didn't really mean to be such a downer during the holiday season. In fact, this morning he'd been feeling practically festive. He'd even tucked a sprig of mistletoe into his belt buckle. That hadn't turned out so well. When he'd wiggled his eyebrows when it was pointed out by Wendy, saying "Kiss me under the mistletoe," he'd been joking. There was nothing funny, however, about getting kneed in the balls. That girl needed to get herself a sense of humor.
Now, considering what had happened, "Jingle Bells" sounded like a threat.
The McCormick's home was strung up with lights in a haphazard fashion. Actually, it looked quite like it had been trussed up with sparkling barbed wire and left on the driveway. "Merry Christmas" was pissed into the snow bank under the front window (Kevin's handiwork, Kenny'd bet his last playboy). And the holiday cheer that echoed from within came in the form Stuart's drunken rendition of Deck the Halls, and Carol's harmonious counter part: "SHUT THE HELL UP, YA FUCKIN' PANSY!"
"I'll Be Home for Christmas" could be heard in faint strains through it all. Kenny rolled his eyes.
"Home," he announced dully as he entered the house. His father tipped a carton of eggnog in Kenny's direction as a greeting, the man's face ruddy and loose from the alcohol. Karen looked up at her brother from her place on the floor by the couch, where she did her homework lying on her stomach. That wretched boombox by her ear emanated Bing Crosby's sappy phonographic voice. She gazed back at him with a grin, papers spread out before her, ankles crossed behind her head.
"Hey Kenny," the small girl stretched out on the thin, filthy carpet smiled brightly at him. Kenny smiled back, shaking off his fantasy about smashing the boombox of evil with a baseball bat and then setting it on fire.
"Hey, Kar," Kenny ruffled her hair and ignored her giggling protest. Karen's wide, guileless eyes were full of a glow Kenny could see reflected in their grey depths. Her happiness was the warmest thing in the household.
But he still hated that fucking song.
"I'm going to my room," he said, dragging a hand over his eye and pulling it thorough his wild blonde locks. He could try to escape it there at least.
"Bye, Kenny," Karen called as he turned to leave. She turned the volume of the song up some more, and Kenny shook his head. He decided that being home for Christmas was overrated, and certainly nothing to sing about.
Two hours of sitting in his room with his Ipod on full power, Prince blasting in his ears to drown out all the sounds of his household, Kenny watched the ceiling. His poster of Adriana Lima in a Santa hat and precious little else plastered above him was Kenny's favorite holiday decoration. Mhmmm. He knew what he wanted for Christmas.
His Ipod then decided to give him the finger and died. Stupid piece of shit just turned off and refused to be turned back on. Kenny groaned as once again, he was assaulted by that-fucking-song.
"Christmas eve will find me...where the lovelight gleams…"
He decided that all he wanted for Christmas was for Karen's music device to spontaneously combust. But even as Kenny thought this, he knew there was something he wanted more than deliverance from a certain holiday carol, or even Miss Lima's perfect breasts within touching distance. He actually wanted lots of things (a warm place to go on cold nights, to fall asleep on a full stomach, A PS3, to be able to buy Karen a warmer sweater so that when she stood at the bus stop, her tiny little shoulders wouldn't tremble like they did), but most of all, he wanted something he could not name. This time of year brought the same quiet but never dissipated longing back to him. It simply sat in his consciousness, insistent and heavy and thudding against his skull harder and harder with every rendition of that godforsaken song Karen kept playing down the hall…
"Please have snow…and mistletoe…and presents on the tree…"
Just as Kenny felt he'd rather jam a fork in the electrical socket than listen to another word of that-FUCKING-song, a large piece of his ceiling cracked off and fell on top of him.
Merry fucking Christmas indeed. Kenny had to admire the irony, even as he wanted to nuke a small country in sheer frustration, when the song that played over the intercom at the welcome center for new arrivals in Hell was "I'll Be Home for Christmas."
Kenny usually woke up in his bed after a few days when he died. But when he woke up this time, it was face first in the snow. Getting up and brushing off the front of his parka, Kenny observed his surroundings, feeling rather disoriented and sour. Was it really that much to ask for to come back after being crushed to death by your own ceiling and not have to wander around in the cold for hours after dark?
But at least he knew, after a few moments, where he was. A quiet street he'd been down countless times, suburban and familiar as any place in South Park to Kenny: he was on Bonanza Circle. This was where Cartman lived. But as far as Kenny could tell, he was not even near the fat boy's house (well, thank goodness for that small blessing). Instead, the drab green house he stood before, numbered 28201, was utterly unfamiliar. He stared at it for a few seconds; why had he been reincarnated here this time?
Maybe whoever kept sending him back to earth had fucked up somehow. Kenny barely cared at this point. No use thinking about it, he guessed, what difference did it make now? And dying always made him really hungry, so that was his main concern. Maybe his family even had some canned soup left over from the food drive Wendy had held for them last week. He'd have to bang the can open on a rock, of course, if they did (the McCormicks lacked many things—and can opener was included in that list of things), but Kenny was trying to focus on the positive. It was starting to snow harder; the places where he'd laid against the ground felt chilled and clammy. God, he just wanted to get home. He turned away with irritability. So much for keeping a good mood. Now he couldn't help thinking about how he had to walk there in the god-awful weather, back to his house, where there would likely be no food and Karen and her boombox of ear-rape still lurked. Just fucking great, he thought. Beautiful.
But as he turned to leave, the most mesmerizing, hypnotizing, heart-wrenching sound he'd ever heard came fluttering into the night, and he swore, it was like his feet were frozen to the floor. Which they might actually have been, God knew how many degrees below zero it was, but in that moment, Kenny didn't even feel cold.
The piano music swelled and trickled and floated over Kenny's head and straight through him. It was a gentle melody with the urgency of the first love and the tenderness of being lonely, and Kenny felt it swelling in the sinking pit of his chest and moving over him. Goosebumps rose on his arms and shivered down his back. He took a few steps towards the source of the music. The green house had a small yellow window, and Kenny approached it, stumbling through the snow, determined to find the source of his awe.
And he peered into the house. A typical home, really, in neutral blacks and beiges, and stylish modern furniture that just spoke volumes about middle class hospitality. And yet, there was a warmth to it. The wreaths hung over the fireplace and the red candles dribbling wax onto the mantelpiece brightened the room, cast gentle radiance and familiarity to the scene. In the corner, there was a baby grandpiano, majestic in its mahogany and ivory, illuminated by a single white candle.
But it was the girl playing the piano that had Kenny's eyes opening a full three sizes wider.
That hair, sweeping and black over her shoulders, those eyes, closed as she lost herself in the music, that soft half-smile, the way she moved over the keys, bending into the crescendos and leaning and stretching away with each pianissimo. Her head bent slightly, her movement hitched over a pause just at the right moment- and Kenny's heart faltered and caught in his throat. It was transfixing. She wove those rich, exuberant chords and bright melodies around each other like the colorful threads twisted into a woolen scarf. Kenny wanted to wrap himself in it.
He'd never, ever seen Wendy Testaburger like this before. He'd seen her angry (the no-sense-of-humor thing was really a downer; didn't she know that a creative line like "Believe me, if you ever saw it, you would even say it glows" could be taken as a lot of things, including a compliment, but certainly wasn't a good reason to threaten someone's life?), he'd seen her enthusiastic (seriously, that girl got worked up about her charity work—Kenny wondered what brand of crazy it was that enabled someone to get excited about trying to convince the citizens of South Park that the schools needed more money for an Anti-Drug Program for kindergartners), he'd seen her worked up (Stan the man apparently forgot her birthday—but watching him run as Wendy swung a textbook at his head was damn funny), but he'd never seen her look like she was at peace. It was undeniably a pretty sight.
When she looked up from her musical trance, magic of the keys beneath her fingers abruptly yanked back into nonexistence, Kenny stopped feeling sentimental. The feeling in the pit of his stomach now more closely resembled fear.
A couple seconds of silence. Kenny gave a little wave. She blinked in reaction, but other wise did not move. He wasn't sure what to make of that, but he wondered if it meant he should be afraid.
He didn't exactly know what he'd tell her to explain his presence on her lawn at this time of night, but he guessed he'd have to come up with something. Because Wendy rose from the piano, swift and sudden, and looking decidedly more like the girl notorious for making full grown men cry that Kenny had known and feared all his life than she had a few seconds ago.
Kenny's hands dropped instinctively to protect his balls.
"Kenny?" Her voice came to him from doorway. She stepped through it and into the night. Her inquiry wasn't shrill with anger or a threat, so Kenny straightened up. He scratched the back of his head, somewhat sheepish, but still wary.
She pulled a purple jacket over her arms, crossed them over her chest and made her way over. Kenny chanced a glance to her face as she did so. Shit—Wendy didn't look happy. Kenny swallowed nervously and prayed. "If she lets me keep my nuts, I swear I'll stop shooting spitballs at Mr. Adler during shop class. I'll stop trying to look up Bebe's skirt all the time. I'll even stop tricking Butters into saying "cunt" during class. Amen."
She drew closer, and Kenny's felt his heart speed up as she stepped near.
"What are you doing here?" Her voice was too quiet, too slow. She DEFINITELY wasn't angry, much to Kenny's relief. He released the breath he'd been holding.
"I don't know," he told her, just as gently.
"You don't know," she parroted him in a sarcastic voice, "Kenny, why were you standing at my window?"
"You were playing piano," he answered dumbly. Wendy faltered for a moment, and then raised an eyebrow.
"That doesn't really explain why you're here," she said cautiously, "what are you doing wandering around at night anyways? It's cold."
"It's a long story," Kenny told her, shoving his hands in his pockets, "and yeah, it is." She thought about that for a moment and then sighed.
"Want to come in for some hot chocolate?" And Kenny found that he did.
The Testaburgers kitchen was a wonderful place.
It contained many glorious things, such as food and running water and Wendy, bent over.
Nah, he wished (she had a fine-ass; he wondered how it had escaped his notice before). For though she was bent over, giving him a very nice view, she was just searching for a kettle to put some hot water in to make hot chocolate. Which sounded almost as good to Kenny, really. Especially because she'd promised him cookies to go with it. The kind you put on a plate and leave out for Santa. Like, with sugar and sprinkles and…goddamnit, there was just no non-sexual way to talk about cookies.
When Wendy set the steaming mug of chocolate-y goodness in front of Kenny, reminding him not to burn his tongue, and placed a gold and red plate piled high with ginger snaps next to it, he guessed it wasn't such bad luck that got him reincarnated here instead of his own bed after all.
"So," She pulled a kitchen chair up beside him and swung one leg over the other, "you didn't really answer my question before. What are you doing here?"
"Santa said stuffed me in a sack and dropped me here. What else did you ask for for Christmas?" he teased her. She actually cracked a grin as she punched him in the arm.
"Shut up," she instructed, but she was still smiling. Kenny noted her good mood, and felt this was definitely a nice change. He wondered what had brought it on, but didn't question it. It was pleasant, so he decided just to enjoy her humoring him. It sure beat the alternative- his "chestnuts" had had quite enough of her "open fire."
"My ceiling caved in on me. I woke up here this time," he explained at last, and shrugged. For some reason, her face fell a little. Next thing he knew, her arms were around his neck, but much to his surprise, they weren't squeezing too tightly or trying to cut off his air supply.
"I'm sorry, Kenny," she said in his ear, and Kenny didn't ask, but he wondered for what, exactly.
And he didn't really know why Wendy was hugging him. But that was okay. She was warm and soft and smelled like vanilla, and it was nice, in a random, confusing sort of way.
And right there Kenny realized: she was tucked up under his arm, head on his chest, snuggled against his side and breathing easy, his heart was beating bit harder than usual, but there was no where he'd rather be.
When she pulled away, she looked flustered. She sat back down and smoothed her shirt and wouldn't meet his eye. Kenny tilted his head a bit, feeling a bit mystified. First she invited him in, then she punched him and told him to shut up, and now she was hugging him?
Women.
Wendy cleared her throat.
"It's just," she blushed a bit (Kenny thought pink was a good color on her), "it…it sucks that you're still…dying, even now, when we're supposed to be celebrating and having good cheer and…I…" Wendy shook her head, "I just don't…don't think that's very fair. You should get a break from that stuff, especially at this time of year."
Kenny stared at her like he'd never seen her before. His face then blanked, and he leaned back in his chair and lifting the front legs off the linoleum floor. For awhile he said nothing, and Wendy was thoroughly embarrassed, clearly regretting her foray into awkward, unspoken territory as she glanced down at the tables surface and picked her thumbnail to avoid looking at him. But when she did look up again, Kenny met her eye, smiled the tiniest bit, and said in quiet voice that let her know her concern for him, her sentiment had been anything but unappreciated:
"Thanks." Two seconds went by and they simply avoided each other, but the silence was only awkward because neither knew what to say. Wendy came up with something first.
"You're welcome." She hid her own smile and stood, began putting the dishes away and rustling about the kitchen. Kenny watched her turned back amongst the cupboards and dishracks, and this time he didn't even watch her ass.
He just stared at the back of her head and wondered how in the world Wendy had made it feel like Christmas again with one stuttering, halted sentence.
And thought to himself that the warm feeling in his stomach really didn't have as much to do with the hot chocolate (that Kenny had ended up burning his tongue on despite the warning) as one would think it did.
Wendy Testaburger had one horrible, horrible flaw as far as Kenny was concerned.
And that flaw was that she was evil and had no heart.
Here's how Kenny had come to this conclusion.
They were walking back to his house, snow falling in wispy floating flakes over the ice-slick streets, talking about the things that annoyed them (Wendy, apparently, couldn't stand it when people put dogs in silly costumes and detested the the song "Buttercup," a song which, incidentally, reminded Kenny of Butter's chinballs).
But her stance against "Buttercup" also inspired Kenny to profess his own endless hatred for every blasted note of "I'll Be Home for Christmas." Which is what had led to his current predicament.
Wendy, upon hearing this, hadn't even pause before bursting into a very loud rendition of the song. He quite dramatically begged her to spare him, to have mercy.
But Wendy did have a sense of humor it seemed. A rather wicked one.
"I'll be hoooooome for Christmas! Yooooouuuu can cooouunnnt on meeeee!" she sang all the louder for his pleading. Kenny stuck his fingers in his ears and began screaming "LALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU!" But Wendy, not one to be challenged, grabbed his hands and pulled them down. She held his arms firmly to his sides and continued singing, somehow managing to stay on key even as she practically shouted:
"Please have snow, and mistletoe, and preseeents under the treeee!" Kenny struggled futilely for a few moments before realizing he had practically only one option.
"Chriiiiistmas Eve will find meeeee. Where the loooove light gleeeaams!" She trilled and Kenny closed his eyes before joining her in an equally booming tenor.
"IIIII'll be hoooooome for Chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirstmas," Wendy took his interruption in stride, still belting the song for all she was worth. Their gazes locked as Kenny sang along with abandon, and Wendy smiled like the star on the top of a tree, snowflakes caught in her black hair, cheeks rosy and eyes dancing.
He was learning a lot about her today. That she played piano, hated "Buttercup," had a sense of humor...and that her smile, her actual smile, made his heart turn over and his spine feel tingly.
She released her hold on him and took a step back, but Kenny closed the distance again, taking her hand. He drew her back in as the song neared the finale, eyes twinkling as she faltered only a moment before allowing herself to be led to stand right against him.
"If oooonly, in myyyyy—"
Kissing Wendy Testaburger one week before Christmas under blue night sky, cool air making them scoot all the closer together as snow crunched under their boots, Kenny couldn't help but to say, with a smirk, into her pretty pink mouth before resuming once again with more important oral activities,
"…dreams."
Kenny knew he'd gotten exactly what he wanted for Christmas. Thanks to Wendy, he knew home was the best place to be for the holidays.