Okay. So, after trying it last time, hearts fail...hence the random three after my name in the prologue.
This chapter gave me a bit of grief cause I didn't end it where I thought I should, and then I couldn't find a place to end it but I didn't want it to be too short. And then I found a perfect part. So please enjoy this chapter, and reviews are awesome *thumbs up*
OH! And I failed at their class room description. In case no one gets what I was trying to describe, their class was in the theater, and on the sides of the seats there are little half desks that you can pull up to use. I kinda based it off my high school theater.
And last but not least, a great big thanks to my reviewers:
Zoshi the Confused
Alpha Hydra
Goldfish
You guys totally made my day ^^
-Kami
In The Dark - The Beginning
Christophe was lying on his mattress, hands clasped behind his head. He was faintly aware of the noise coming from his television, but it was low, a background noise to loose himself in. And then his window rattled. In an instant Christophe was on his feet and across the room. His shovel was propped up on the wall next to his bedroom door, the door locked to keep his parents out.
As he wound his fingers around the shaft of his weapon, a flash of bright orange appeared in his window. Christophe blended into the shadows of his hunter green walls. Kenny let out an angry muffled sound and worked on the lock before breaking through it successfully. He tumbled through the window and landed on the mattress with a soft 'umph'.
"What ze fuck are you doing 'ere?" Christophe growled. Kenny popped up and looked around frantically.
["Mole?"] came his muffled voice before he pulled back his hood, "So this is the right house."
"Kenny, you 'ave two fucking seconds to anzer ze question."
"Uhh…sanctuary?" Kenny asked, pushing aside his blonde locks as they fell into his eyes. The first thing Christophe noticed was the swelling bruise around Kenny's left eye. The next was the fact that those large, blinking, baby blues were completely devoid of fear as he approached with his shovel at the ready.
"Sanctuary?"
"Look man, I just need a place to sleep," Kenny said with a sigh, "I can't go to the guys, they'll do something stupid. All I have is ten bucks, so you can have that if you want." Kenny offered. There was a desperation in his voice Christophe had never heard from the boy before.
Christophe had always hated his parents, but he had never feared them. He had never felt so unsafe in their house that he was forced to offer money to a stranger just for a good nights sleep. And he knew Kenny didn't have that bruise going home from school that day either.
"Keep your money," he finally said with a shake of his head. He returned his shovel to its place against the wall.
"Thanks dude." Kenny said with a faint grin. He pulled off his parka and tossed it to the end of the bed. He lay down, curled towards the wall and was passed out in a minute. Christophe had always known Kenny was skinny, but in the dim light that the TV tossed across the room, he looked malnourished as well.
Christophe sighed and flopped onto the mattress, keeping away from Kenny and rolling onto his side.
When he woke up, Kenny was already gone.
---
Arriving at school, Christophe was wary. Really, the only one who matched his paranoia was Tweek, and that was caffeine induced, not from living a life on the edge.
He immediately caught sight of the bright orange parka huddled in a small group. He picked out Stan, Craig, Clyde and Cartman. They seemed to be badgering Kenny for something.
The feeling of rage and betrayal that filled up Christophe had topped everything he'd ever felt. He let out a low hiss of 'sheet' and pulled out his smokes. A nervous habit that no one had really caught as nervous. They all thought he was a nicotine addict. He was just trying to settle paranoid nerves.
He made his way to the front steps, sitting on the second from the bottom and stretching his legs out as he waited. If Kenny had played him, toyed with the little amounts of compassion for the human race that he had, he would kill him.
Soon Kenny broke away from the group as Kyle and Butters approached.
"Fuck off!" Kenny shouted at the people he considered his closest friends. His hood had fallen back and the wind wiped his already mussed blonde locks into a frenzy of knots. "It's none of your business."
He turned and stormed towards the school, pausing when he found Christophe staring at him.
"What? You gunna start bugging me too?"
"Non." Christophe said simply, keeping a calm air around him. Kenny snorted.
"Good. It's not your concern anyways," he snarled before storming into the school. Christophe inhaled deeply on the cigarette in his lips, cocking an eyebrow. He continued to sit on the steps, fiddling with the strap that held his shovel to his back as Kenny's 'friends' started to approach the building.
"Dude, what's up with Kenny?" Kyle asked in a hushed tone.
"Dunno dude," Stan replied, his voice keeping to the whispering theme, "We were just asking about his black eye…"
So, Christophe had jumped to conclusions too quickly. Why would Kenny subject himself to a black eye to try and worm his way into Christophe's good graces? Even if his friends had put him up to it, it probably wasn't something the blonde would readily take to. He stepped on the butt of the smoke he'd tossed to the ground as he stood and dusted off his pants.
The one thing Christophe hated most about high school was the hallways. Everyone talked and whispered and stared. Some shouted, the jocks threw footballs, the cheerleaders screamed cheers in his face. It was really hard not to hit them sometimes.
But, amidst the chaos he, and those few like him, had a chance to hide. To slip through unnoticed as they headed to a sanctuary. Either the library or theater or even a class room.
There was still ten minutes before class, but Christophe had nothing else to do. That and he couldn't help his curiosity. He headed for the theater.
Kenny, for the entirety that Christophe had known him, had never asked anyone for help. He was too proud for it. If he was hungry, he wouldn't say. He had a hard time accepting the food his friends offered. If he wanted something, he worked till he had the money to buy it.
Kenny McCormick was not a charity case.
The first class was psychology. It had been the same since elementary. For some reason, they stayed together as a class, all of them.
Christophe was strategic in his sitting placement. He sat two rows behind Kyle and Stan, and one seat to the left. He could still hear them without straining too hard, and the words he couldn't hear he could pick out with lip reading.
"Do you think it was his parents?" Kyle asked and Stan shook his head.
"It can't have been his family," Stan disagreed, "I mean, if someone was gunna beat on him, we woulda seen it years ago. Kenny's got a mouth on him, but his parents love him man."
"Just a random street fight?"
"Kenny's never been a scraper, you know that." Stan sighed and shook his head, "I don't know what's happened to him, but he's on the defensive---."
Stan's sentence was cut short. Christophe glanced up from under his fringe to see Kenny entering the room.
Kenny hovered in the doorway for a moment, staring at his two best friends before shaking his head. He moved past them and plopped down next to Christophe. Stan and Kyle both turned in their seats to look at Kenny who busied himself with pulling his scribbler out of his messenger bag and pulling up the half-desk part of his seat. Christophe pointedly ignored them by trying to unscrew his desk. He hated these theater seats with the little wood planks that served as their platforms.
When Stan and Kyle realized Kenny was going to keep ignoring them, they turned back around. Kenny let out a soft sigh and dropped his forehead into his hand, leaning his elbow on the wood surface in front of him.
"I'm sorry," he finally said after a moment. Christophe glanced up from the screw he was loosening and stared at Kenny. The blonde offered up no further explanation, so Christophe returned to his vandalism of school property.
Part of his curiosity had been resolved, but that had only opened the door for more.
---
As lunch rolled by Christophe saw something that he had never before seen in his life and it left him slightly stunned.
Bebe was standing in line for lunch with Kenny, and they were talking. Like civil people. Kenny and Bebe never talked like civil people when it came to one another. Usually if the two of them were within fifteen feet of each other it was a screaming match.
Generally it was something along the lines of:
"Hey! Whore, your big tits are in the way! Move them!"
"Shut your fucking face cock sucker!"
"Hey, don't be hatin'! At least I get cock!"
"Oh, you are such a fag!"
"I'd rather be a fag than a big tited bimbo with three different STDs, babe."
And it usually continued on like that until someone shut Kenny up, since nine times out of ten he was the instigator. No one was sure what about Bebe set Kenny off like that, but Craig started the rumor that Kenny was actually head over heels for the blonde chick and she had stepped on his heart like a stiletto on a cigarette butt.
Of course that had been laid to rest by a very pissed off Bebe.
Apparently Christophe was not the only one to notice because people around the cafeteria were buzzing with gossip.
"Look, Bebe," Kenny said softly, not noticing Christophe as he slipped close enough to hear his semi-muffled voice, "It was nothing. Just stay outta Denver for a bit."
"Kenny, what were you doing there anyways?"
"It's nothing Bebe," Kenny said, stressing the sentence. "Just drop the subject, forget the event and stay. Out of. Denver."
"No, you know what? Fuck you Kenny!"
"Yeah! Fuck you, you fucking whore!" Kenny yelled back.
"I am not a whore!"
"Then stay the fuck out of back alleys in Denver, slut!" Kenny snapped, "God, you have no brains, you fucking bimbo! If you did, they all fucking migrated to your life boat tits! God Damn!"
Kenny turned and stormed away.
Christophe shook his head as he pulled out a few loose bills, tossing them to the lunch lady. It had taken him three years, but he'd finally gotten over the suspicion she had been poisoning food and actually started eating school lunches.
Of course he still avoided the cafeteria for fear the idiocy of his school mates may rub off on him.
Heading outside with a small serving of fries, Christophe headed to one of the few picnic tables that were spread around the campus. He watched the students, his eyes almost glazing over until he could stand it no more. He pulled out a small Swiss Army Knife and began to carve up the wood on the table.
"You have a violent tendency to vandalize shit."
"You would rather me be stealing from you zen?"
"No, that's cool," Kenny said, shaking his head, "I'll live with the vandalism."
"Iz dere somezing you want, mon ami? Or are you just here to annoy me?"
"I'm just here to eat lunch. And…" Kenny hesitated before offering Christophe one of his patented 'this-is-my-cute-face-I'm-being-cute-to-get-a-favour-I'm-not-begging-you-fucking-asshole-Cartman-shut-up' face, "Maybe borrow a smoke?"
Christophe was staring more intently on the carvings in the table than looking at Kenny. He didn't see the face. Kenny was starting to doubt the Christophe was acknowledging his existence anymore.
"Okay well…"
Kenny went to get up, but stopped as a pack of cigarettes and a lighter landed on the table. Kenny picked up the pack and studied the foreign lettering. Gitanes. They were only available in France. Maybe Christophe had been there recently, since he normally smoked Marlboros.
"Sweet, thanks d--."
"Ne parlez pas." Christophe informed him.
Kenny fell silent. He watched Christophe's carvings for a moment before turning away, watching the smoke from the cigarette dissipate into the air.
*ne parlez pas = do not speak
I like having French as a sort of second language, I didn't even have to look that one up! And I apologize, being Canadian and a non-smoker, I don't know much about other cigarette brands, so I just took the most popular French brand, and the most popular American brand (and by most popular I mean the one I read about in fics most often).