Perhaps, in some way, it was Sheila's fault.

Kenny entertained the idea briefly, crouched at the top of the stairs just outside Kyle's bedroom. He could see just barely into the kitchen, the lower half of Sheila's rotund form perched atop a stool at the marble-topped island, Kyle standing with his back to Kenny clutching with both hands a white ceramic plate bearing a haphazardly-pasted peanut butter sandwich.

"—smart boy Kyle, but you are not doing your best. You have a lot of potential and—"

Sheila, in her Jersey accent. "Sorry dude my mom wants to talk to me," Kyle had said, clawing the sides of his head vexed-eyed, Sheila's cries of "Kyle? Kyle!" still ringing up through the floor from downstairs. "She's been all up in my face ever since we started high school. First semester grades aren't even out yet. It's totally gay. I'll get you a sandwich or something. Peanut butter ok?"

Yes, peanut butter sounded fucking awesome. Kenny grinned for thanks, glancing up from the notepad on his knees, Kyle's for math, where he'd been doodling strip comics in the margins between clusters of numbers and letters and various operations he didn't recognize. A few seconds after Kyle left the room Kenny tossed down the notebook and crept silently after.

"—start thinking about the future. You want to have a good job in the future bubbelah, and that means you need to start taking things a bit more seriously and putting your best—"

These talks, Kenny didn't really understand them, these relics from a foreign world of ambition and expectation and performance. Sheila's words, which flushed so urgently from her lipsticked mouth ran over his ears like water, cool, abstract and profoundly unaffecting. He watched Kyle's back. He leaned his head against the stair railing, sighed, eyed the plate in Kyle's hands glumly. He would just wait like that. It was fucking mundane already, this sort of conversation, occurring so routinely at Kyle's house late on Friday nights.

"Mom, please—" Kyle was trying to say. His flinched as she cut him off again.

"—smarter than other kids Kyle, you should be proud that your father and I expect such things from you, ok? Life isn't a joke anymore, bubbelah. To be honest—"

Fair enough, Kenny thought dispassionately to himself. He eyes fell on Kyle again, Kyle's shoulders narrowing rigidly, and on second review it seemed that perhaps the conversation was no longer so peachy as it had initially seemed. Another couple fluxes of verbosity and Kyle was shaking his wrists back and forth, hands blurring into half-discs as they shook, a nervous habit of his.

Kenny lifted his head off the rails, frowned.

"—handsome, intelligent young man like you. You could be so—"

Sheila was reaching to pet Kyle's jaw. Kenny blinked. No don't do that, he thought, a sudden twinge of panic. Her wedding ring glinted dangerously as her forearm supinated.

"Shut up!" Kyle screamed. With a slice of his arm like a tennis serve he flung the plate away and it split rather spectacularly against the opposite wall, shards skating across the floor sounding like marbles.

"Kyle!" Sheila shrieked.

Kyle sank onto his knees, wrapped his forearms over his head and buried his hands deep in the back of his hair. Sheila struggled off the kitchen stool with a thump.

"Don't come over here," came tightly Kyle's voice, gritted and muffled. "I'm really, really sorry. I had a really long week. I'll clean it up. Please just go to bed."

"Bubbelah…"

"I'm really sorry," he gritted. Sheila sighed, reached out as if to pat the back of his head, reconsidered, and left.

Kyle released from his balled crouch and flopped onto his back on the kitchen floor. "Motherfuck," he hissed into the air. He rolled over, scanned the stairs and froze appalled.

There was Kenny.

"I'll help you with that," Kenny blurted, averted his eyes, leapt up, felt near tumbling down the stairs as he descended by twos. He snatched the dustpan from under the sink. Kenny could feel Kyle watching him and his face began to burn and he kept sweeping at the corners of the kitchen even after there was nothing left.

"All done," he announced, as if it wasn't fucking obvious. He didn't meet Kyle's gaze.

"Hey Kenny, I'm sorry but maybe you shouldn't stay over tonight."

Relief. "Yeah of course, that's totally chill."

"But can I walk you home?"

Kenny's heart lifted before immediately thereafter sinking, with a sort of foolish-feeling disappointment. Because—no.

"S-sure dude."

—

"I can't believe you fucking watched that."

Kyle had been silent for surprisingly long before sidelong hissing that.

"Dude, I'm sorry," Kenny replied, scratching the back of his head. He felt he ought to say more but couldn't think of what. He placated this anxiety with the rationale that it was probably better to just let Kyle steam it out anyway.

"Like don't you feel weird eavesdropping on other people's personal conversations? I mean I don't listen in when your mom's going at you. You fucking piss me off."

A few things he thought: First of all, there'd been nothing personal about the conversation until the end, and he obviously couldn't un-hear something he didn't barely see coming. Second, none of them were ever at Kenny's, least of all Kyle. Finally, Kenny's mom never even "went at him" like that, least not about those things, in the first place. And even more finally, there was something else on Kyle's mind and he was doing a piss poor job of hiding it.

"Listen dude," Kenny sighed, testing a glance over at Kyle who was visibly fuming. "What are you so worked up about?"

"I dunno man," he grumbled. "I just—"

He looked suddenly lost.

"You know, she made me sign up for calculus even though I never took the prerequisite class. So I had to learn all that preliminary crap on my own last August and the shit's fucking hard 'cause I barely have a handle on the old stuff and I'm the only freshman there so I feel retarded asking questions."

"Uh-huh." Kenny raised an eyebrow to commend a nice try.

"Okay it's not that, it's—I just I hate it when she says all those things. Like 'Kyle, bubbelah you're so gifted'—" he crossed his eyes absurdly as he said the word 'bubbelah' which made the corner of Kenny's mouth twitch "—'cause it makes me feel awkward as hell, like I have to grow up and become like—I dunno—a sexy ripped version of Moses that specializes in, like—personal injury litigation or some-fucking-thing."

"I get what you're saying." Kenny nodded absently.

"No—Kenny, why do you ask me what's going on when you don't like what I tell you?—I don't know. I—"

He broke off, and they walked in silence. They were just crossing the tracks, the whole place deserted and damply silent with snow. Kenny hitched himself lightly over the crossing gate, Kyle behind him. The four oven them had made a dumb pact when they were younger not to just go around the thing, purely to see Cartman grunt and struggle.

They'd reached Kenny's neighborhood by the time Kyle spoke again.

"Ok Kenny I just got really pissed back there."

"I know dude." Kenny stopped to grind a pinecone into the snow with his heel.

"I didn't like it—it just got to me when—like when she was like, 'life isn't a joke anymore.'"

"Are you serious?"

"Dude, shut up, ok? You fuckin' asked. But anyway like, what does that even mean, 'life isn't a joke anymore?' Like what, things were a joke when we were kids? 'Cause what about that was a joke? The fact that we were happy?" He scoffed. "I mean if anything, it seems like life is just starting to become a joke."

Kyle's eyes were pained and Kenny resisted the urge to sigh. Not because he was exasperated or annoyed or anything, but because the conversation felt suddenly, irreversibly heavy.

"She's just tryna get you to grow up a bit man."

Kyle didn't respond, just scowled.

Kenny kicked the side of his friend's sneaker lightly, affectionately.

—

Turns out Kyle didn't wanna go home.

"You know there isn't like, anything to do here though," Kenny said as he unlocked the front door. "You don't have to take your shoes off," he added over his shoulder. The house was dark.

"Dude, do your parents go to bed this early?"
It was a little after midnight.

"No they're just not home. Dunno where the hell they are."

They went to Kenny's room. Kenny on his bed, Kyle perched on a crate by the the door, looking around.

"I forgot how your room is like, simultaneously cramped and empty. Oh wait I guess the word for that is 'small.'"

Kyle's phone buzzed. Kenny watched him scowl at the screen. He tapped out a short message. Phone buzzed again. "Bitch," Kyle muttered. Probably his mom, Kenny thought, trying not to smile as the tune of "Kyle's Mom is a Big Fat Bitch" in Cartman's quacking tones resurfaced vaguely in his head.

"Kyle."

"Yeah?"

"I'm not much help when it comes to that school stuff. Like, I honestly don't really get it when you say you're stressed out about grades and college. I mean to me—"

The phone buzzed again. Kyle huffed, shook his head for Kenny to ignore it.

"—Okay. I mean to me, pulling a B in calculus seems awesome. And I don't get why your mom gets her tits in such a knot. And I think you should be less worried about shit 'cause you're doing good. Well."

Kyle smiled somewhat sadly at the carpet. "That's nice of you dude. To be honest though it's not my mom. It's like, me."

"Whaddaya you mean?"

"I mean that, like, I'm confused. As to what I should do. With like, myself. And of course to my mom it's very clear what I should do—"

The phone buzzed again.

"—Sorry. What I was saying is, to her it's really cut-and-dry, like as in 'get As and go to a fancy college' so I try my best to—you know—do that and not worry, but at the same time I feel like I just can't get behind it, like—"

The phone, this time in two consecutive buzzes for a text that couldn't all fit in one bubble. "Fuckin' sorry," Kyle muttered. Kenny watched his lips move silently, slightly parted as he read the text to himself, watched Kyle turn the phone off and sigh, still for a moment before clearing his throat and straightening up on the bench.

"Things aren't the same for you and me. I know," Kyle continued. His eyes were oddly narrowed and Kenny noticed he was suddenly talking very quickly as if, if he didn't force these words out, they might become trapped at his tonsils and decay into unuttered lexical plaque or whatever-the-fuck. "So let's do something that transcends socioeconomic and educational differences."

"Uh… Like—" Kenny scoffed, mildly annoyed at this sudden flux of cryptic speech even though he knew, at this point anyway, that Kyle did it when he was nervous and without intent to aggravate. "—you wanna play catch or something?"

"No I wanna fuck."

"You…" Kenny rubbed the unbruised eye with the heel of his hand. He was tired, truly. "…sorry. Come again?"

"Dude I think you fuckin' heard me," Kyle frowned.

Kyle was standing over his bed, pale face cocked against the lamplight. His eyes had that Euro-Semite look, dark brows over heavy lids. His hair was more russet now. Dusty freckles where the sun hit and irises that militaristic shade of green.

If he was gonna be real about it Kenny had noticed this all before—as in, many, many times—but it was different being, like, ambushed with it, like—forced to confront everything he thought was holy and beautiful on a notice so short it could possibly be considered negative.

"I, uh—"

"It's ok with you right? Like, you've had sex with Bebe tons of times right? So it's not like this is a big thing or whatever."

"Y-yeah but—"

"Ok good."

Kyle had one knee on the bed and Kenny scrambled backwards against the wall. He was searching desperately for words but couldn't find them. Kyle leaned over and dragged him closer with two hands around his ankle. The bedspread caught and rumpled underneath him. Kyle grasped the hem of Kenny's sweatshirt and plucked it over his head, Kenny resurfacing pink-cheeked and wild-haired. His hands traveled to Kenny's pants, thin fingers cold as they brushed against his skin while working at his fly.

"Wait," Kenny blurted. "I—"

"It's ok Kenny," Kyle said quietly. His fingers had elapsed the zipper and were slipping past the waistband of Kenny's boxers. Perhaps the chill of Kyle's hands had galvanized the congealed sectors of Kenny's brain because:

"I have herpes!" Kenny nearly shouted. "I-I got it from Bebe! It's—it's real bad!"

Kyle raised an eyebrow.

"No you don't." But he withdrew his hands from Kenny's pants and folded them neatly in his lap. He sighed before looking Kenny square in the eyes.

"If you don't want to, just say it."

"Say…"

"Say you don't want to."

Kenny faltered.

"Here, I'll help you—" he grasped Kenny's chin between his thumb and moved moved it up and down mechanically, speaking out the side of his mouth like a ventriloquist as he did: "'I. Do. Not. Want. To. Fu—"

"Stop that!"

"Then say it yourself."

"I…"

Kyle inclined his head expectantly, motioning with a hand rotating on its wrist like a forward-turning gear for him to continue.

"I…"

Kyle glared now. "Look, you can't even say it."

Kenny must have looked positively distraught because Kyle's eyes softened and he smiled wanly and suddenly Kenny felt a desperate urge to explain. Things.

"I know I—with a lot of other people," he whispered. "But you're—"

"Different?"

Kyle let his head fall sideways onto Kenny's shoulder. His hair tickled Kenny's neck and Kenny declined his head slightly to put his nose and lips into the curls. Kyle's hair smelled like mint. "It's not true," Kyle said, speaking dully to the wall. "I'm not different. No one's different. That's all just in your imagination. Now can we please fuck."

His hands, they'd crept back to the bend of Kenny's hips and Kenny didn't stop them, let them shimmy his pants down and touch him. He breathed deeply into Kyle's hair, opened his mouth and ran his teeth along Kyle's shoulder.

Kyle shoved him back, elbowed his knees apart and arched down to use his mouth and Kenny moaned weakly. Curled his fingers into Kyle's hair, hips jerked as he tried not to thrust, feeling very distinctly the flickering of Kyle's tongue against him. He struggled grandly to reach beneath his bed with one arm as Kyle worked, finally pulling up with difficulty a condom packet grasped barely by its corner.

"Here," he rasped, mouth parched and hot.

Kyle plucked it from him without even looking up, holding up the foil square between his index and middle finger shaped into tongs, casually, like "got your memo thanks." He sucked more deeply and Kenny felt the back of his throat, the flick of the underside of his tongue as he came up, the graze of his teeth as he went down. He shuddered, insides of his knees pressing into Kyle's ribcage.

"Kyle," he whispered. "Ky—"

He broke off, moaning. His head was beginning to pound, eyes fluttering. He grabbed a fistful of Kyle's hair, wrenched him off, the both of them panting. Kyle's face was flushed and he wiped a trail of saliva from his chin with the back of his hand. He understood, swatted Kenny's hand away and ripped open the packet with his teeth, exactly as they'd been taught in school not to do. Kenny pumped himself as Kyle kicked off his pants and took care of logistics, feeling too needy at that point to go even a few moments without being touched.

"Turn over."

He obeyed. Kyle yanked Kenny's knees apart, as it seemed he was already fond of doing. He heard Kyle behind him spit into his hand and shortly after the prod of slick fingers which made him press his forehead into his mattress and groan. After that a dull pressure and burn that he gritted his teeth against. He heard Kyle moan, cursing hoarsely, felt Kyle's hot breath between his shoulder blades, felt Kyle's hands slipping under him, long fingers that tangled with his own.

It felt too good. Kyle's lips which grazed the nape of his neck, skin skimming over skin and the burn where their bodies met. It was too young and too good and afterwards they slept with thin limbs tangled, barely covered by sheets, and the room didn't become cold again until early morning.

Thank you indigoapple, my first reviewer!

To indigoapple: Thank you for your kind comment! So grateful to hear that, I really do my best to keep interactions between characters simple and natural... And yeah I always liked hooker-Kenny too, I mean it feels so canon-ish, like how could someone not call it after that Krazy Kenny Show episode hahaha :D