"Hey, are Stan and Kyle fucking yet?" Kenny asks, passing Ike the joint.
Ike shrugs, smoke unfurling around his head as he stares out of the window of Kenny's pickup truck. It's been a running joke between the two of them for almost as long as they've been hanging out. Kenny is tempted to start a betting ring at school for how soon and which one of them will top. It makes Ike wanna puke. He doesn't want to imagine Kyle fucking anybody.
"Gross," he says, passing the joint back to Kenny. He tips his head back to watch the smoke ascend from his mouth.
"Wish we had some booze," Kenny says, and Ike does too.
Alcohol makes Ike feel more relaxed than weed—not that he's ever all that high strung—but besides, pot has that irritating side-effect of giving Ike random boners. Ike shivers, remembering the time he and Kenny made brownies. Looking back, he figures it could have ended up a lot worse than the two of them almost touching dicks and fucking Bebe.
Kenny opens the car door without warning, swinging himself out and into the back of his truck. Ike shrugs and climbs in behind him. Kenny's already lying down, staring up at the dark sky and puffing smoke rings at the moon. Ike still can't figure out how to do it, which bothers him more than it should.
Ike follows Kenny's lead and lays down beside him, close enough that their shoulders bump. Cartman would call them both faggots if he saw, but Kenny stopped giving a shit about what Cartman thought a long time ago, and Ike never cared about that fat-ass to begin with.
Besides, they're not really faggots.
Ike likes picking up girls with Kenny, likes rolling his eyes when Kenny uses cheesy pick-up lines that actually work. He likes the shock on their faces too, when they ask Ike how old he is and he tells them fifteen. Ike thinks that he must look older than fifteen, but Kenny says he could pass for younger. It's maddening, the way Kenny is pushing six feet while Ike is lucky if they let him on the roller coasters at Dorney Park.
"Hey, Ken? About that night with Bebe..."
Ike isn't sure what he's getting at by bringing it up. It's not like he could really date Bebe anyway. She's already a senior in high school, and Ike's barely started. It's not like Kenny is dating Bebe either, at least, not as far as Ike knows. And Ike generally knows. Kenny tells him that kind of shit. Right?
"Huh?" Kenny says, before pausing dramatically as if he doesn't remember. For a minute, Ike can't tell if he's faking him out or not. "Ohh," he says suddenly. "That night!" Kenny laughs when Ike frowns. "Dude, what about it?"
Kenny sees a lot of Kyle in Ike, blood be damned. Maybe it's because they were both raised by Sheila, and the temper tends to rub off.
"Chill, dude," Kenny reassures him. "It doesn't make us fags."
"I wouldn't care if it did, anyway," Kenny admits. Although explaining the situation to Kyle would be a doozy.
Ike turns to him, and gives him a funny look, while Kenny quickly changes the subject. He claps his hands together and rubs his palms to warm up.
"Shouldn't we be getting you home?" Kenny asks. "Don't you have homework or something?"
"I can't remember," Ike says with a shrug. "I was asleep in my classes."
Kenny counts himself lucky that he even gotten as far as Sophomore year. School just isn't for him. He figures it's for different people like Kyle and Ike and Cartman-even Stan. It's definitely not for kids like Kenny, who couldn't even remember to carry the one in second grade subtraction.
"I think I'm gonna drop out," Ike says, not for the first time. He announces his high school drop out plans at least once a week.
"Your mom's gonna flip shit," Kenny says.
"She's always flipping her shit," Ike reminds him. "Besides, I've been having some ideas."
Kenny can picture Ike Broflovski becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg, if he even bothers to try. Ike is good a lot of things, but too unmotivated to actually pursue anything. He's lucky if he manages to get to school fully clothed.
"I'm glad you bought this truck," Ike says.
And he really is too! So what if it's a piece of junk. There's blue paint peeling off from when Kenny tried to paint it over a year ago, and one of the windows is completely duck-taped closed with a black trash bag. It doesn't always start up right away either, but it doesn't bother them.
It's where they spend most of their time together—getting high, getting drunk, making water-bongs, cruising for chicks, almost touching dicks—but Ike doesn't think about that last part. Ike tells himself he doesn't even remember most of what happened-that his memory is still hazy from all the drugs and alcohol.
"We should do shrooms sometime," Ike says.
Kenny turns his head to laugh. "Your brother would kill me if he ever found out we do this shit."
Ike snorts. "I'm not a kid."
Technically, he Ike is still a minor. Kenny, on the other hand, has been able to legally buy his own cigarettes for nearly a year. Maybe it's inappropriate that they're friends. Who cares?
"You are to Kyle. You're his kid brother forever."
Ike knows. He almost wishes he could go back to the days of "kick the baby." Ike wonders if Kyle knows he remembers that. He decides to bring it up the next time Kyle hassles him, telling him it's not a good idea to sneak out at one-thirty am on a school night. His parents are bad enough as it is. He doesn't need a geeky older brother compromising his unsupervised time too.
"Nah, but shrooms look fucking awesome. We gotta try it."
Kenny laughs again. "I banged my first chick on shrooms," he confesses. "Do not recommend."
Ike hasn't banged any chicks yet. Not for lack of trying, or even lack of looks-it's his height that's the real deal breaker. It's pretty difficult to get chick when half of them are taller than he is. Kenny might be thin, and even poor, but he's still tall as fuck, and ridiculously hot. No that Ike is attracted to him, ridiculously hot is just something he's heard girls—and Butters—say.
"Would you bang me if I was a chick?" Kenny wonders.
"Dude," Ike starts, "sick."
"Oh come on," Kenny says with a snicker. "I'd probably be ridiculously hot." For a split second, Ike seriously entertains the idea that Kenny can read his thoughts. "C'mon, would you?" Kenny wheedles.
Ike pointedly ignores him, but Kenny doesn't just get pussy all the time by laying around-he's persistent.
"I bet my tits would be huge," he continues, trying to bait him.
"No way," Ike complains. "Who says your tits would be huge?"
"It would fit my frame," Kenny says nonchalantly, hands around his waist.
"You're all skin and bones!" Ike says, a little too loud. "I call bullshit on you having big tits."
"I'm not talking like, circus tits or anything…" Kenny holds eye contact for as long as he can get away with it. "Just a nice triple F-cup"
"Dude!" Ike exclaims, sounding a lot like his brother. "Is that even a real size?"
Kenny bursts into laughter. He honestly has no idea. That's the beauty of bullshit: it doesn't always have to make any sense.
"Nah," Kenny concedes. "I'd probably have boobs the same size as Bebe."
Ike still thinks it's bullshit. Kenny isn't allowed to be hot as a hypothetical girl. He's already hot as an actual guy. Not that Ike thinks that—it's just what he's heard girls says.
"Bullshit," Ike says again. "Bebe's like a D-cup."
"How small do you want my tits to be?" Kenny is the scandalized one for once. "What's wrong with big tits anyway?" He's mimes holding very heavy breasts. "You're just jealous cause you'd have mosquito bites for tits."
"I'd be at least a C!" Ike shouts defensively.
Kenny raises his hands in defeat and inches closer. "Look," he says emphatically. "I'm just basing this off of dick size. Okay?"
"Hold the phone. You trying to say I have a small dick?"
Ike remembers with a jolt that Kenny's actually seen his dick. Somewhere in the back of his head, Ike feels a pang of hurt. It's not that he needs Kenny's approval, but Kenny's dick was been significantly bigger. That time. Not that he'd really looked. Just a glimpse, really.
"Size is relative," Kenny hedges with a small smile.
Is Kenny's dick really that big? Ike didn't exactly have time to whip out a ruler for measurements. Ike always thought his dick was just fine. He counted himself lucky for being circumcised. Uncircumcised dicks are weird. At least, that's what he heard Wendy say.
"You know what my dick's name is?" Kenny doesn't bother waiting for a response. "Titanic." Kenny laughs, waggling his eyebrows. "I was going to just name him Gigantor, but I thought that was too obvious. So I named it Titanic, like after—"
"The ship," Ike finishes flatly. "Yeah, I get it."
Kenny wonders what's crawled up Ike's ass and died. He asks him.
"Nothing," Ike says.
A few moments pass in silence, not exactly awkward—no, they've been friends too long for that—but a little unsettling; tense. Kenny can feel something awful radiating out from Ike in waves.
"I was just fucking with you," Kenny admits. "You'd totally have nice sized B-cups. Like Wendy's tits. They're a nice size for her."
Ike isn't sure what that's actually supposed to mean. Is it a backhanded compliment about the size of his dick? Is it Kenny's way of apologizing for being a jackass? Both, neither? Whatever it is, it just pisses him off even more. Ike doesn't need pity compliments about his dick size. What kind of guy compliments another guy on his dick anyway?
Ike decides to stop thinking about the whole thing. Permanently. Actually, he decides to stop thinking at all. It's easier said than done. Ike's got the kind of brain that never shuts off. Even when intoxicated, he can still spell words like hypothermia and text his brother and let him know he'll be home late, with perfect grammatical precision, no less.
Needless to say, when Ike tries to turn the whole thing off, it only gets worse.
It's kind of like when someone tells you not to think about purple elephants, and for the next ten minutes all you can think of (and try not to think of) is purple elephants. Ike's glad he doesn't have pyrokinetic abilities. He wouldn't mean to, but he'd probably accidentally set people on fire just because he wouldn't be able to stop himself from imagining it.
He asks Kenny, just to be sure.
"What if I had pyrokinetic powers?" Ike ventures. Kenny laughs, but doesn't respond, so Ike explains. "You know, like setting people on fire with my mind."
Kenny smashes out the last of the joint on the side of the truck and flicks the roach onto the asphalt. "You'd probably set me on fire," he says. "Not literally, but, I'd be like, 'dude, don't think of me on fire,' and then you would, and bam, I'd be dead."
Kenny would probably be back the next day anyway. Ike takes comfort in the fact that if he ever did have pyrokinetic powers, at least Kenny would always be there for him, making it worse.
Kenny likes the way he and Ike lay in the back of his truck and interrupt the silence with weird questions like what if I died and didn't come back, or what would happen if we just got in this truck and decided to drive out of South Park in a straight light until we ran out of gas and never looked back? Kenny especially likes talking about that last one.
He likes thinking about leaving South Park. He wants to actually do it—one day. There's isn't much left for him here. Kenny has been working at the gas station for two years and he's still poor and living in still a shit-hole. To be honest, he's not sure what's keeping him.
He tells himself it's not Ike, because really, it isn't—and even if it was, that would be crazy. Ike and Kenny are just bros. Bros before hoes, yeah, but—
"Dude, remember when I couldn't inhale, and we used to just eat brownies all the time?"
Kenny didn't even know how to make brownies before he met Ike, but now he's pretty sure he could make them blindfolded with nothing but a rubber band and two pine cones.
"Remember when Kyle got into them?"
Ike bursts into laughter and Kenny follows in suit. Thanks to an accidental dip in Ike's stash Kyle's first attempt at the SATs was a total wash. When they finally manage to catch their breath, the atmosphere becomes tense.
"Remember when Cartman caught me shotgunning you after school and thought we were sucking face?"
Ike does. He remembers the time their lips almost got a little too close, too. Thankfully, Kenny doesn't mention that part.
Kenny thinks about that part, though. He remembers blowing the smoke into Ike's mouth and trying to convince himself that guys shotgunned other guys all the time. This is one of the reasons Kenny is starting to think he might be bisexual. It's not that he wants dick in his ass or in his mouth or even that he really thinks about guys fucking. It's not like that. Mostly he just thinks about what would have happened if he'd accidentally closed the gap of space between their lips.
"Ike, what's your favorite song?"
"Extraterrestrial, by Katy Perry," Ike answers without hesitation. Kenny almost laughs, but for once, he's trying to be serious.
"Dude," Kenny says. "For real."
Ike shakes his head. "Katy Perry is a lyrical genius."
Kenny laughs then, despite himself, and then bumps Ike with his shoulder. Hard.
"What the fuck?" Ike says, turning to face him. He realizes too late that turning to face Kenny only leaves two inches between their noses and he can actually feel Kenny's breath. He's grateful that all he can smell is the marijuana.
"For real, what's your favorite song?" he tries again. "This is important," Kenny insists, but he can't really remember why anymore. There was a reason, at some point, but now all he can think about is how Ike still looks way too young for this to be appropriate.
Ike sighs. "You already know my favorite song."
Kenny has half a mind to punch him.
For some reason he starts thinking about Bebe and remembering how great her tits must look in that baby blue v-neck she's wearing tonight. He knows because he saw her earlier today and she asked him if he wanted to go roller-skating at this little place right outside of South Park. Kenny thought she was joking. When he asked if Ike could come she looked at him like he had three heads.
Kenny's never hit a girl, but that look she gave him made Kenny want to punch her. Maybe that's why he's thinking about her now. He feels like punching someone. Ike, or Bebe? He can't really remember anymore. He takes no responsibility and blames the weed.
When Ike opens his mouth, Kenny isn't sure if he's singing, at first. "I've heard there was a secret chord..." Ike closes his eyes before continuing. "That David played and it pleased the lord..."
Kenny catches on, better late than never, and rushes to carry the tune. "But you don't really care for music, do you?"
They sing together, almost in unison, with Kenny stumbling behind by a few milliseconds, only half-remembering the words. The off kilter notes remind Kenny of his middle school graduation ceremony.
"It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth. The minor fall, the major lift. The baffled king composing Hallelujah..."
"We have the same favorite song, asshole," Ike huffs, trying to not feel like a woman for being angry that Kenny forgot.
"Who says that's my favorite song?" Kenny says when he's finished. Ike almost gets angry in a surge of Broflovski rage before realizing that it's a joke. "I don't know man," Kenny continues. "I think your right. Extraterrestrial is the song of our generation."
They snort and burst into laughter the goes on for far longer than it should.
"Another song about heartache," Kenny says softly.
It reminds him a little of domestic abuse, personally. Ike, on the other hand, has a much more well-thought interpretation.
"It's about King David from the Bible," Ike informs him. "David played his harp and it was soothing to King Saul so it literally 'pleased the Lord'."
Ike has the nerve to make air quotes when he says this. Kenny resists the urge to tell him it makes him look like a pretentious asshole.
"Later when David is an adult and the King, he gives into temptation after seeing Bathsheba bathing on the roof. He sleeps with her, knocks her up, and then he secretly has her husband killed during a battle. This brings a God-induced shitstorm on the house of David. This pretty much breaks the throne by breaking David."
Ike inhales deeply when he finishes, like maybe he forgot to breath when he was speaking. Kenny takes a moment to process everything before opening his mouth. A rare, but not unheard of occurrence.
"That's what I said," Kenny reaffirms, staring at his fingertips like they're disconnected from his body. Like they're all just nameless shapes floating about in the atmosphere.
"It about how we all succumb to temptation and break the vows in relationships, and how love isn't really—"
"Dude, it's just about heartache, like every other song."
Ike narrows his eyebrows in the darkness. "But it's also an allusion to the Bible. The idea of cutting hair is a reference to a Nazarite, of which Sampson was one, who take a vow not to cut their hair, and—"
Kenny cuts him off. "I know, I get it. Real love is painful, sometimes it's a 'cold and broken hallelujah–"
Ike crosses his arms triumphantly. "Exactly, real love is just an illusion."
"No dude. You're just a pessimist. Just because you know all the biblical references doesn't mean you know the fucking song. It's a broken hallelujah but it's still a fucking hallelujah. And I didn't forget that it was your favorite song, I just wanted to see if I could get you to sing it again."
It's Kenny's turn to take a deep breath. He can't help but think how Ike is beginning to remind him of Stan. He writes it off as teenage angst.
"Jesus dude," Kenny goes on to say. "Everything in the world doesn't have to suck, take it from the guy who's been poor his whole life. Life is what you make of it."
Kenny finishes the sentence with such a sense of finality that Ike doesn't bother to continue the conversation. Something about the way Kenny said the last part makes Ike feel like some dipshit who doesn't know his asshole from a hole in the ground.
This time the silence isn't comfortable. It's awkward and stilted and makes Ike feel like maybe Kenny's right, and he should just go the fuck home and do his homework. Ike is aware enough to know that he overreacted, and smart enough that he's not used to being outsmarted. Kenny is already like five hundred feet taller than him, can't Ike at least have the satisfaction of being right?
In the middle of fuming, between debating on whether or not to cause a scene and storm off, or just let it go and pretend it didn't happen, something brushes his hand. It's Kenny's index finger, curling gently around his own. Neither of them speak, and it's not a bad thing.
Kenny can tell Ike is nervous, he's got a second sense when it comes to him, not to mention the fact that his hand is sweating like a stuck pig. It's almost cute, or something. When he turns to face Ike he almost jumps out of his own. Ike swallows, and glances away.
Very slowly, Kenny begins singing. "You're, so, hypno-tizing."
Ike releases a sigh of relief, hand still cradled in Kenny's grip. The tension drains when Ike figures that holding hands with Kenny late at night and arguing over the intended meaning of a song will just become another one of those weird things they do in the back of Kenny's pickup truck.
"Could you be a devil, could you be an angel?"
Ike rolls his eyes, but join in during the chorus anyway. If he's going to sing a shitty Katy Perry song with anyone, it might as well be Kenny.