Breaking and entering was such an intrusive term for what he was doing, so ugly and negative, but after the lank teen had shimmied up the newly installed drainpipe and undid the simple window latch with the library card Kyle had forced him (and Stan too, since they all agreed that Cartman was enough to deal with being semi-literate) get in middle school, Kenny hadn't really been able to come up with anything better than "elective stalking". Sounding no less creepy when he thought of it like that, at least "breaking and entering" sounded more professional and like something he could brag about to the guys if the fancy struck him. It probably would, although that strongly depended on how tonight ended... Anyways, were the bookworm not so inclined to be aghast at the thought of the laminated slip seeing some serious action in such a manner, the blonde would have thanked him for insisting that he always keep the card handy.
Landing gracefully and with nary a sound inside the darkened room, possessing all the skills of a big time cat burglar, Kenny looked around in the light pouring so unforgivingly through the open window, finding things to be considerably blacker than he expected: walls, posters, sheets, rugs, even the wooden supports underneath the dresser and bed were dismally inky shades of jet with very little supporting color to be found. The CD player was a steely black-gray plastic mimicking metal, the albums towering around all imported or obscure names he didn't recognize, and even the shirts tumbling from the dresser seemed more like tar than vomit. Speaking of the dresser, the blonde tip-toed in that direction and somehow found his hand yanking open the topmost drawer to discover a sea of thongs and briefs, the occasional sock adrift without its other half. Odd, after seeing her standing in the snow in her boxers he would have pegged the girl to have different tastes in underwear. And have more than whatever bra she must have been wearing that day... Unless she was doing the laundry or kept them in a separate drawer? Curiosity getting the best of him - yes, yes, more than mindful of that whole cat proverb - he began to snoop throughout the rest of the contents, prodding and poking but careful to shove everything back the way it had been before he found it. There was no hint of another slingshot to be found.
"What are you doing in my dad's room?" Tone prepubescent and unfamiliar, amusement underlaying a practiced cynicism, Kenny turned to see a boy about his little sister's age, gingerly freckled face crinkled in judgment and scrawny arms tight across a baggy Falling In Reverse t-shirt with stylized pink lips and a blue tongue. Aware that this must have been Avery, and how it probably looked to be caught like this, the teen slowly let the handful of ties slip back through his fingers to the depths whence they came. "If you're looking for the drugs, he doesn't keep them there, trust me." Apparently this kid was used to the sort of thing, to 'help' like this. "They're in an unlocked safe under the bed." At those words, both of them gazed across the room to the cotton cot, the generic hand lotion next to the undecorated box of tissues catching the blonde's bright blues. So this really wasn't Hunter's room after all.
Disgust rising as the burning sensation at the back of his throat threatened to overwhelm, Kenny found his voice just as he discovered his knees and stood back up from his previous crouching position, thinking to himself that he'd need some serious mind-soap for digging through some old guy's unmentionables like that. "So where's yer sister's room?"
Auburn brow raised skeptically, face morphing from points A through F, the boy seemed unable to register the question, as if he was utterly incapable of imaging what anyone would want with his sibling - more than a family thing, even Kenny could admit certain truths about his kin, no matter how reluctantly - which was unfair as she wasn't that unfortunate looking. Would she ever be voted a beauty queen, no way, but the way that the tween was looking at him, one would think that the girl was the less-than-attractive redheaded step child of the Swamp Thing and the bride of Frankenstein, that she had gotten the worst ever beating from the ugly stick. Or maybe in his eyes Hunter was not the victim of a savage pummeling but the horrendous creature where the stick had originated? Either way it was fucked on the child's part, because his sister wasn't that busted.
Confusion giving away to the assumption that this was like Van Helsing scouring Dracula's lair for clues on how to destroy the monster once and for all, or whatever train of thought his goth mind was on, Avery just gave up the information, no preamble, no games, no further questions. "Across the hall." More fucked than Hunter had let on (which made him wonder all kinds of things about her), McCormick came to the decision that the little brother must not have had any sort of a filter to assist a complete stranger that could have had any agenda. "She just text me to say that she'll be gone for awhile, if that matters any to you." There was a small pause as the boy did come up with one question before departing, "Are you her boyfriend? Last night I heard her and her little mechanical friend saying some name over and over, Lenny or something. Is that you?"
"Kenny-"
"Don't hurt her." Demeanor suddenly changing to become protective of his big sister, Avery's eyes darkened considerably to the point they seemed almost as liquid as the vinyl in Mr. Bloodworth's notable collection, "It's one thing if you two are just fucking, she can handle that no problem, but if it's more than that, if you let her think that there's more than that, you should know that Hunter may act all tough and like she's cool, but really when she puts her heart into something, it's all in." Subtle, the older of the two males thought that the glint in in the younger's eyes had shot to his jugular - having his neck ripped into was not a new experience, but having it torn into by another human was. "Sunny's been hurt before, and we won't let that happen again."
Sunny? Incredulous to believe that that was a nickname for the tomboy, it truly wasn't much of a stretch to see that Hunter could become Hunny, but where the fuck did the 'S' come from? Being his sister it could have been something like sis, but since she also raised him from the sound of it, it also could have been for super. Hell, maybe it was even for something along the lines of syphilis. What, it was totally possible that the spitfire had contracted a number of things he had no idea about; susceptible like a magnet in a staple factory yet immune in the sense that each death offered a clean slate and a fresh bill of health (more or less), that didn't particularly concern him. Regardless, if Kenneth had allowed this to trouble him, and he was not planning on that outcome, he might have supposed that it had something to do with her having a bright disposition, unless of course it was supposed to be ironic.
All but gulping at the seriousness in which the boy spoke - seriously, it was fucking intense, not to mention creepy how he could change from mellow and doleful to bordering on intimidating (Mysterion had fought worse on the street, but still) - the teen didn't want to imagine who else would be jumping in to honor that threat. "Remember that, Lenny." Backing away from the scene like a sulking candy-cane shaped character from a Tim Burton movie, Avery left the way clear for Kenny to make his next move.
Hesitating for a moment, Kenny looked back over his shoulder at where the gentle breeze was rocking the velveteen curtains, the window itself still thrown wide open and welcoming an exit. From the very moment Kyle had given him the idea, the entire point of this exercise was to find out what he could on South Park's newest resident, to gauge how painful their inevitable talk would be - the bookish redhead was right, as per usual. And yes, there was also the component of checking on what the odds would be of her inclination to workout some species of 'friends with benefits' deal. However, now that Avery had said all of that (minus the way in which it had been delivered), the blonde was beginning to think that it was almost pointless to investigate the contents of the girl's room. Goth lite there had pretty much spelled it all out for him after all, and it would have been easy to just turn around and leave, logical even, but could he - nay, did he - want to just cut his losses?
Every inch of him was screaming to just let it go and bail, wailing deep down even to to the marrow of his bones for it, and yet there was something there keeping him rooted in place. For the life of him he couldn't understand why...
Craig's POV:
Un-fucking-believable. It was one thing for the new kid to somehow labor under that same delusion of self-importance as Clyde and follow him up to his room when he said that he had to go and feed Stripe the Third, and even going for the beer in his mini-fridge without an invitation made some sense since they'd be couped up for so long working, but this? That post-war movement was a step too far, even for a guy that gave zero shits since before it was cool and rocked a similar sense of metallic rebellion as his guest. Truly debatable as to what the worst part of it was, at the moment the noirette was leaning to the side of the argument where Hunter was displaying no signs of apology for her actions, and was in fact looking at him as if she were about to do it again...
Propped on hands and knees with six other various half-constructed spheres set aside for later, the squat jars of his paints lined next to the leg of the wicker coffee table his dad had bought from a garage sale (and never heard the end of) left open to dry in cracking canaries and blistering blues, the pair had been diligent and focused for about an three and a half hours. The intent of keeping the other balls nearby and working so closely together was to ensure that their solar system shared a sense of coherency, that one person might have been the creator instead of two. Now regretting it in hindsight - the suggestion, not the plan of attack - it had been the raven whom had suggested that they take a short break so they didn't burn themselves out, to which she had taken a sip of her beer and dropped the brush that had been carefully crafting the swirls of gas in Venus on the sheet of paper towels they were sharing. It was just more economical that way, if not more annoying than need be. Anyways, after setting down the borrowed utensil the girl had rolled over so that she was on her back staring up at the ceiling, one hand still clutched tight on the bottle. "When we go to my place tomorrow, we're doing this at the table."
Very much a classic Craig move, the tall boy merely rolled his eyes at that. "We could just move it to the table now."
"...Meh." Shrugging from where she laid among the navy sea, Bloodworth took a hearty sip from the brew the same as any guy, none of that dainty stuff going on, "we're already set up here, moving would only waste our time. And anyways," adjusting her head so she was looking up at him, Hunter frowned as if truly disappointed, "when we agreed to work out here I thought you'd have a working tv or something going so we could have fun while we worked. Instead my hand is killing me and I'm so bored by the silence..." Groaning more to herself than to annoy him, or probably doing both equally though he couldn't be sure, the tomboy tossed her flat, athletic build around once more so that she was perked on one elbow. Setting aside his own paintbrush and grabbing for his own bottle, he caught the dangerous 'I just got a shitty idea' gleam in her gray-blue eyes. "I might as well at least amuse myself during the respite."
Gazing at her quizzically with a sinking sensation forming in his gut, unsure of how exactly she planed to alleviate her so-called torment, Craig watched with vague interest as she dripped her right index finger as far as it would go into the green paint he had been using for Jupiter, smearing the mossy pigment across his cheek without warning. Jolted awake by the sudden contact - the coloring was a lot colder than it looked, his guess on it having something to do with the temperature outside - the boy felt a shiver running up and down the length of his spine. Reaching into the rust undercoating of the eventual gold and cream that would surface the big V, the boy closed the limited space between them and returned the favor, globing a trail along the other's jawline with not just his index but his middle finger as well.
Back and forth the colors flew from that time on, all blues, greens, reds, and oranges; calling a cease fire as trails of sticky rainbow fingers ran down the collar of her shirt, he got the last blow in, delivering a shot of tangerine flying through the air to land across the front of the girl's long-sleeved undershirt. Blotting at it with the paper towel, the final landmark causalities stood at speckles of citrus bleeding into the furniture and a dotted streak of carmine sinking into the indigo fibers of his carpet, roughly one half of the unpainted earth needing a coat of white to bleach out the splatters of lemon butter. As for the soldiers themselves, the tally wrapped at half a beard, a fucked-up Hitler that strayed too long on the left side, a violet rash born of red and blue getting flicked, and lastly a polychromatic print of a full hand that smacked part of the forehead and vanished into copper hair. After a good fifteen minutes of all-out war and the utter ruination of two perfectly good shirts, the worst happened.
"Well that escalated rather fast..." Nothing short of shocked that Craig would break his stone casing to join in something so unexpected and wild, or whatever equivalent was running through her head at the moment, he realized that Hunter's cheeks were glowing a bright pink that had nothing to do with the paint. At least he had the hunch that it had little enough to do with the project that had escaped the pair of them and more to do with... Well the kindest answer would have been that it was more her just being a mess from getting rejected.
Yet... Reminding himself that the female was notoriously incapable of handling the buzz that came with liquor (if yesterday was any indicator), Craig was suddenly hyper aware that his own cheeks were burning warmer than usual as he pointed a murky finger in the direction of the downstairs bathroom, "We should get cleaned up. Before the paint stains." Stupid, stupid, stupid! Why the hell was he being so dumb?! The convenient answer would have been that the excursion of battle was only just beginning to take it's toll, however that was was bull and he knew it was more than that.
And then it happened. Nodding in agreement, which in itself was a relativity unknown development, the girl proceeded to unceremoniously pull the final layers of what she was apparently wearing off, single deft movement somehow too fast to object to and just slow enough for the noirette to catch each individual motion. Olive and stretched comfortably, the fine fabric was peeled up and away from the fit panes of a healthy stomach, bunching momentarily at much preferred ant bites before getting yanked over her head. Noticing that the river pushing itself along gravity's path was already pooling against the sable of today's bra, a part of him wanted to say something along the lines of her taking that off too, but instead he slightly more focused on the question of why in the world she would do that again? It was completely uncalled for and failed to earn his interest the first time (true that was more due to the circumstances and the logic/stupidity outweighing the importance of the nudity). And yet if he were to be honest (what, he was still a teenage boy after all), it was not completely unwelcome...
Author's Note:
However you care to look at it, this was not my best written chapter. Like the actual events aren't completely horrible, but the way they happen are, and I'm not completely convinced that Craig's in character. In my defense, I wrote parts of this chapter at like two in the morning, and also, the part just after Avery bails was kinda hard for me to articulate, as was everything that followed. So in other words, this chapter was kind of a recipe for disaster, or waiting for one, or whatever. And yes, it jumped forward a bit more than some of the others (or is that just me?). So what will happen next, I wonder? Well I already have a pretty good clue, but... Oh who am I kidding? Whatever few readers this story had seemed to have fled in droves. Well as discouraging as it is, I'm still going to continue working on this, at least for a bit longer until I change my mind and get sucked into my next obsession/phase.
*Update 12/26/16*
Again, very little in the way of change, but on the bright side I can now work on the next chapter! ...A year later... Oops. Well in my defense I did warn you all that another phase was going to happen...