400 Lux
by: Maddy
Chapter 1
"Why do you always wear that stupid fucking hat all the time?"
The question is accompanied by breathy whisps of cigarette smoke mixing into the chilled winter air.
"Why do you always wear that stupid fucking parka?" His reply is biting and sarcastic, but Kenny can sense that his heart isn't really in it today.
He smirks, "Touche."
Craig gives him a distasteful look and takes another over exaggerated drag off of one of his American Spirits.
Kenny calls him a pretentious hipster asshole but he honestly just can't afford anything more pricy than his convenience store Marlborros.
This doesn't stop him from saying it though.
"At least I'm not a poor piece of shit."
A pretty typical response.
"Fuck off."
They fall into comfortable silence. The snow is really more of a disgusting slushy mixter today and it has been falling in slow endless drones for hours. It's the type of cold that burrows it's way under you skin and refuses to leave until you've swaddled yourself in blankets in a heated room for a good hour. Which is hard to do when you're poor as shit and don't have any heat.
They're huddled close together, shoulder to shoulder, cigarettes clutched in frozen fingers. It's that horrible kind of temperature. That type where no matter what you put on before leaving the house you're doomed to freezing your ass off. Which is why no one in their right mind is outside at 6:00 on a Saturday morning besides them.
Kenny at least attempts to dress in as many layers as he can, which is difficult considering his very limited options, but they both end up looking slightly homeless.
For Kenny it's simply because he can't afford any new decent clothing but for Craig it's by choice. Kenny thinks it is anyway, he hasn't asked. Craig has, however, been wearing the same worn off-red hoodie since eighth grade. He'd traded in his trademark blue ski jacket, (Kenny never understood why, he liked the black lining on it, and he knew it was well insulated from the time that craig let him borrow it on a school trip in seventh grade. He'd almost asked to have it when Craig cast is aside on a seemingly random Saturday morning, but thought better of it.), and had never gone back.
Kenny had a bit of a love-hate relationship with that red monstrosity. It's too big and swaddles Craig's already scrawny and lanky body and makes him appear even scrawnier and lankier. The sleeves are far too long, even for Craig's weirdly long skinny arms, and he usually has them rolled up or else they nearly cover his entire hands. When it's like this you can see the frayed stringy ends of the cuffs where his guinea pig has chewed them all to hell. The ancient fabric is so far faded that one could almost call the damned thing pink and the strings hanging from the hood are knotted in random places and always covered in a perpetual layer of slobber from Craig gnawing on them obsessively, the cheap plastic aglets long gone.
All that aside, Kenny isn't sure what he'd think if that hoodie was cast aside like the old blue ski jacket so long ago. He's grown used to it now. Possibly even just a bit fond.
More than possibly.
Kenny will never admit it, but a few times after he and Craig had finished smoking a bowl and Craig had crashed in whatever comfortable place he'd curled up in, (Craig claims that smoking weed either makes him very tired or very horny), Kenny has taken Craig's off-red hoodie that he always casts aside when indoors and puts it on. It's big on him, which isn't surprising considering he's even skinnier than Craig despite being the taller one, and he can't help feeling a bit enveloped in it. He tucks his hands into the chewed up cuffs of the sleeves and pulls his knees up and under it and tight to his chest. He even sometimes pulls the oversized hood up and cinches up the slobbery ties and just lets himself be swaddled in it. It always smells like comfort and somehow like food. Hell, it smells like Craig.
It's this odd mixture of cheap store-brand deodorant, lingering smoke woven in with the stitches, wood chips from Stripes meticulously kept cage, and nicer shampoo than Kenny can afford. Beneath it all there's just that inherent Craig smell. Kenny knows he shouldn't find it as comforting as he does, but with that smell comes food and warmth, free smokes, companionship. Oh and the occasional free fuck.
Kenny's not so sure what's up with that last one but it's happened a few times, plus a decent handful of promiscuous activity in the back of Craig's pickup, but he's sure as hell not going to question it.
It had just started with a couple hurried handjobs behind Starks Pond. It was sort of awkward and fumbly but goddamn if that wasn't WAY nicer than Kenny would have thought it would be.
Craig had been weird all that day, well weirder than usual. Sort of clingier in some odd way, although he seemed to be avoiding touching Kenny as much as possible.
Kenny can't quite remember how their bickering had turned into frantic kissing and shaky fingers in the the dim evening light but he didn't worry about it too much. They'd been doing this thing, whatever this thing is, sort of off and on since that night. The next time was when Craig failed a math exam, the third was when Kenny showed up with a black eye and a partially fractured rib bestowed upon him by his lovely brother. Kenny thinks that time might have just been out of pity, and despite having gotten some of the best head of his life it makes his stomach churn a bit.
Kenny sometimes feels like he should question this "thing" a bit more, or at least be a bit more worried. At least his "thing" with Bebe is more clearly labeled. It's "Hey if you'll come be my booty call I'll let you mooch off my food and watch cartoons with me and sometimes we'll just hang out and I'll paint your nails and ask how Karen is..." ...OK maybe his thing with Bebe isn't as clear as he'd like it to be, but goddammit, it's less confusing than Craig. Pretty much anything is less confusing than Craig, he thinks bitterly. Although compared to how confusing and insane the rest of his life is Kenny guesses that it's rather fitting.
Besides, he's barely spent any time with Bebe these last couple months, let alone been her booty call. He thinks it's because she thinks Craig is a bad influence or something. Which is pretty ridiculous considering that Kenny sells pot to HIM. Plus Kenny is pretty sure he may have taken his virginity. He's pretty sure that Bebe has other reasons to dislike Craig but he doesn't ask about it. Besides, she's been spending a lot more time with Tweek as of late.
The fourth time is the first time they actually had sex and is one of Kenny's fonder memories. It was on his Birthday oddly enough, although he's pretty sure that Craig didn't know that. Craig wore his stupid red hoodie the entire time, complaining that Kenny's house was 'too goddamn cold to be naked fucktard'.
Kenny scowls, yeah he definitely hates that goddamn jacket.
As if hearing his thoughts Craig plucks up one of his fraying red ropes and sticks it in his mouth and chews thoughtfully, the butt of his cigarette still smoldering slightly against the icy concrete.
"What do ya wanna do today?" His questions never really sound like questions, more like statements that he expects a response to. His inflection is always just a bit too bored and uninterested to sound like an inquiry.
Kenny shrugs.
"I have pot."
"You always have pot."
They fall into silence again. A gust of wind whistles by a bit louder than the rest making the snow covered pines sway dangerously to the left and Kenny leans a bit closer into Craig's warmth. Craig is like a human heater when Kenny's fingers are always freezing and he has to constantly fight against his own poor circulation. Craig doesn't usually mind Kenny's cold hands too much though. Or at least he doesn't complain about them.
Kenny finds his head sort of resting on the top of Craig's while he nurses the last of his cigarette and somewhere in his mind he dimply notices that they are being far more touchy than they usually are. Maybe it's because of the cold weather conditions. It's odd. Although it's a far nicer type of odd than the rest of his life, he thinks.
"Token's having a Christmas party."
Craig scowls and gives the string in his mouth an extra aggressive chomp.
"So? He has one every year. It's just every teenager in town getting drunk off their asses on spiked eggnog and dry humping to obnoxious music."
Kenny grins and says, "Doesn't sound too bad to me."
Craig scowls and kicks his boot against Kenny's ratty converse a bit too hard but Kenny just cackles out a laugh.
"At least we could score some free booze?" Kenny offers half-heartedly.
Craig doesn't seem at all enticed by the idea but after a beat he lets out an irritated, "Fine."
Another short moment passes before he adds, "But you can't ditch me for Stan and those assholes."
Kenny thinks this is an odd thing to add, they've never really had any sort of rule that they stick together, not even an unspoken agreement. It has always just sort of been along the lines of, 'I'll stick with you unless a better situation arrises', which rarely ever happens. Actually it never really happens.
Kenny frowns. Maybe I should start wondering about things more than I do, he thinks numbly.
"Yeah I swear."
Kenny feels Craig's head bob slightly in a nod underneath his chin.
They each have another half of a cigarette before they can't stand the cold any longer and head in the opposite directions of their homes.
Kenny decides to attempt to take a shower since he's going to be at a party and actually around other people besides Craig. There will probably even be hot girls from North Park drunk off their asses and scantily clad despite the harsh weather conditions. For some reason the thought doesn't seem quite as exciting to Kenny as it usually would.
Although he does have a current reliable fuckbuddy now right? If that's what they are? Kenny never really wants more than one person at a time. As long as he has someone he can go to when life is shitting on him and he can fuck until his brain turns to mush, he's satisfied. He doesn't want some random bimbo every night or random bar girls, although those are all very well and good, as long as he has someone to repeatedly go to when he has no where else to turn, when he needs some release, he is satisfied. And he has that right now.
Kenny knows it's a bit more than that though. He knows that despite both of their fervent denial, that they are, indeed, friends. He thinks they get each other more than other people do, or something equally as retarded as that.
These thoughts make his head feel sort of clogged, like it's full of cotton, and his stomach gets heavy and sick, and he finds himself glaring into his own reflection in the chipped bathroom mirror.
He evens out his expression and takes in the startling light blue of his own eyes.
He knows that others consider him attractive. His naturally dirt-blonde shaggy hair and dimpled smile, the light pepper of freckles across the top of his cheeks, he's been described as charming and charismatic. When he was younger he was even often described as "angelic" looking. Kenny always used to grimace at the irony of that.
He knows that this is true, and he certainly has never had any trouble getting girls, but when he looks at himself sometimes all he can see are his flaws. The pinched white scar on the upper right of his top lip, his badly chipped tooth from when his head had been slammed against a coffee table in the sixth grade, the dark circles that never quite seem to leave the underside of his eyes. When he looks at the almost unnatural-blue of his own eyes all he can see are the endless map of scars and markings etched across his skin that he keeps covered at all times, smothered in layers of worn cotton and jackets and parkas. All he can see are the thousands of injuries and deaths and tragedies written across his skin in permanent marker.
Craig called them pretty once.
Kenny still catches himself smiling sometimes when he thinks about it. About how he'd said it.
It seems like centuries ago now, although it really wasn't. It was in the middle of summer. In one of those few weeks out of the year where it was actually hot enough to dress like it's actually summer. Everyone was barbecuing and wearing t-shirts, and visiting the water park, and it was generally one of the better times of the year.
Summer is usually nice for Kenny. It's one of the brief times where he doesn't have to worry about his sister freezing to death in her own bedroom. He actually has sufficient clothing to wear and his brother is usually off on some road trip while his sister is spending time with her friends that are also off from school. For some reason summer always brings about an odd level of motivation to the McCormick household and his parents start making promises of jobs and new beginnings. Kenny doesn't know if it's something about the sun and heat, or general happiness of him and his siblings, but nearly ever summer without fail his parents are out looking for employment and bringing home more food than they've had available all year. It never lasts, it all starts going to hell as soon as the weather does, but it is pretty nice. Kenny sometimes thinks that in the summer there are more people out and about and it's harder for them to make drugs in the backyard and they have to resort to other means of payment. Whatever the reasons, Kenny is grateful for those glorious handful of summer weeks.
However, despite all of this, Kenny often finds himself rather bored. What with nearly everyone in his household gone most of the time and most of the kids from school going on vacations and playing sports or just doing things that Kenny is just generally not interested in, he finds himself rather alone. So, this past summer he had found himself spending the vast majority of it with one Craig Tucker.
Thinking back on it, it all seems rather odd and sort of dream-like to Kenny. Like it took place in a completely different world than the one he is living in currently.
It was one particular night, that the heat grew to an almost overwhelming degree. It was sometime around 2:00 in the morning, after a good 45 minutes of trying to get to sleep, that they decided to go lie out in the Tucker's tree house.
It's a pretty decent sized structure that Craig's dad had built him and his sister some years ago out of plywood from the local saw mill he worked at. It was the best tree house out of all of the kids in South Park and many grand sleepovers and truth or dare games had been held in it growing up. Kenny hadn't been up in it in some years, he's pretty sure no one has besides Craig's sister Ruby who still plays in it sometimes with Karen when she stays over with Kenny.
The tree house is set pretty ridiculously high in their old oak tree and Kenny generally has a strong aversion to heights, (you would too when death follows 50% of the time), but Kenny didn't say anything as they slowly ascended the old wooden boards hammered haphazardly to the cracking bark.
The treehouse doesn't have any window panes, just large open squares sawed into the wood, and no insulation, so they find it much cooler and comfortable up high in the rickety wooden structure.
They spread out the large sleeping bag Craig had managed to lug up with them and lied down on it. They found themselves talking about nothing in particular. Just whatever came to mind, meaningless things they heard or thought were funny, new video games coming out, how annoying their sisters can be. Kenny noticed that Craig was being far more talkative than he thought he'd ever heard him. He'd probably strung more full sentences together than he'd heard him say all year.
It was at one point that Kenny was laughing at something that he decided to slip his t-shirt over his head. He didn't really think about the action or consider that his undershirt might ride up along with it and show his scarred stomach. Usually he'd be worried about something like that, but he was just too warm and reacted on impulse.
When he'd lowered his tank top back over himself he noticed that the night air had gone silent and realized that Craig was staring at him.
"What are those?"
The question sounded somehow innocent. Kenny also couldn't help but notice that it actually sounded like a question too.
"Scars." Kenny didn't know what else to say, no one had ever really asked before. No one had ever really seen before. Growing up he'd always swaddled himself in his thick orange parka and after he'd grown out of that it was thick layers of t-shirts and random hoodies. Sure girls that he'd slept with had seen him naked, some even commented, but not like this. They weren't really asking. Not even Bebe asked about them. But he thinks that was more out of some type of mutual agreement or respect.
"Can I see?"
Kenny blinked at him slowly. He wasn't really sure what to do in this situation, wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel about this. He knew he should be worried about what Craig was going to say, knew that they were somehow walking on a very fine edge with this situation, one wrong move could tear down everything they'd built up.
But what was it that they'd even built up?
Kenny decided to stop thinking and sat down beside Craig's lounging form on the sleeping bag and carefully pulled up his old stained-white wife beater.
Craig's eyes appeared almost black in the dimly lit treehouse, nothing but the faint glow of a streetlight through one of the windows illuminating them as they slowly scanned Kenny's chest and stomach.
Long moments ticked past and Kenny had somehow felt more vulnerable and exposed, more naked, than he ever had in his life. And he had been naked with quite a few people.
Craig had slowly reached out as if to touch one but stopped.
"They're pretty."
Kenny blinked in surprise at the word. Out of all of the words that had ever been used to describe Kenneth McCormick he was pretty sure "pretty" had never been one of them. It was almost funny. But Kenny didn't laugh, he wasn't even close.
The way he'd said it had sounded so sincere. Like he hadn't even remembered Kenny was listening, he was just taken aback by the markings and he'd let the word slip out past his lips.
He hadn't looked very embarrassed when he realized that he'd said it though, just looked up at Kenny with those eerily calm, dark eyes.
"Do you have any scars?" Kenny's voice was barely audible, just barely above a whisper in the harsh darkness.
Craig had nodded and gingerly pulled up his choppy black bangs to reveal a long white puckered scar retreating back into his hairline.
"Ruby hit me with a golf club when I was ten."
Kenny smiled at this, genuinely smiled, as he lowered himself down next to Craig on the sleeping bag.
"How did you get that one?" Craig asked pointing at the one on Kenny's upper lip.
And Kenny told him. He had told him about a bunch of them, and after every explanation Craig would just nod slowly and point to another one.
After awhile they started talking about other things. Things that Kenny never liked talking about before but had somehow seemed not only OK, but very important to talk about in that moment.
Craig also told him things. Things about his dad. Things about his depression and insomnia. About how the medication he takes and how he wasn't sure if he likes the way it makes him feel.
Kenny felt uneasy. A feeling of dread washing over him. He kept thinking that he shouldn't be hearing these things, he shouldn't be the one Craig is trusting with this information. But at the same time he felt an overwhelming amount of calm and couldn't stop listening, and telling. He felt himself wanting to know more and more.
For the first time in so, so long, he hadn't felt quite so alone.
They had talked for hours, just talked and talked until the blinding summer sun had peaked over the mountains and even after that. Kenny wasn't sure when he had fallen asleep but when he had woken up his face was incredibly close to Craig's and he was tightly clutching the front Craig's old Red Racer t-shirt like an anchor. Craig had still been asleep and it was sometime in the late afternoon. Kenny hadn't even given a second thought before snatching up his clothing and scurrying out of the tree house so fast that he slipped on the last two wooden slabs and fell on his ass in the freshly mowed grass.
Things hadn't been the same after that night for awhile. Kenny hadn't even hung out with Craig for nearly a week afterward. But ever so slowly things had returned to normal, although they never entered the tree house together again.
But then sometime in the middle of final exams, that fateful day at Stark's Pond had come, and things became even less normal.
Thinking about these memories always makes Kenny feel sick. It's like everything in his life is set, he's the poor kid, the fuck up, he takes care of Karen and occasionally his mom and he smokes pot with friends and he gets by. It's just like the scars and markings littering his body, it's all mapped out and written in permanent ink. He's not supposed to stay up all night talking with someone who he's not supposed to care about, he's not supposed to love the smell of his stupid hoodie and get slightly turned on by the right shade of pinkish-red, and he's not supposed to worry about what this "thing" is. He is NOT that guy, he is a pair of blue eyes and an ugly chest and way too many layers and hangovers and random nights with random girls.
But even still, Kenny can't help but find himself smiling under the luke-warm water of his shower at how Craig had described his scars so many months ago in the middle of a sweltering summer.
We're never done with killing time
Can I kill it with you?
'Til the veins run red and blue
We come around here all the time
Got a lot to not do
Let me kill it with you
Hello! This is the first chapter of a story I've been working on for awhile. I actually wrote this chapter quite awhile ago and never got around to posting it, (My life's been kind of crazy!), but I hope you like it so far! I got the idea for this story while listening to "400 Lux" by Lorde, (that song seriously makes me think of Crenny so much!), and because I'm me I had to include some of the lyrics haha. I've been writing a lot of destiel, and one of the only stories I've posted on here is destiel actually, and I've been having major withdrawal from writing crenny haha. Anyway, hopefully I'll update this fairly quickly but reviews and follows mean a lot and I hope you continue reading!
-Maddy