"Y'know, you're a fag."
Kenny did a quarter-turn away from the open fridge, toward the kitchen table, where his older brother sat, his chin cradled in his palms.
"Why?" The deadpan in Kevin's voice was what brought on Kenny's honestly interrogative reply; he wasn't directly insulting him, though it was probably a bonus—he was stating what he considered to be a fact.
"Straight people don't wear shorts like those."
Like those? Kenny untwisted his spine to stare openly down at his shorts, arms out; they didn't seem to particularly conjure any adjective or idea to Kenny—plain, J-Mart khakis, a requirement for the weather (July was barreling through like a bottle rocket.)
"What's wrong with my shorts?"
"Straight shorts," Kevin's head bobbed slightly as his chin pushed against his hands, "don't come above the knee, and they're not…tight."
Brow furrowed, Kenny once again inspected the apparently offending article. "Well it's not like I bought 'em like this," he grunted, pulling a bottle of generic juice from the interior of the fridge and shutting the door with a bit of force, "I just outgrew 'em."
"I still say you're a fag."
"Oh, and like you ain't?"
"Like how?"
"You wrestle!" Kenny threw his arms up slightly before slamming the bottle down on the dirty counter. A small chip of the drywall fell from the adjacent wall.
"How is wrestling gay!? Wrestling's, like, the manliest sport ever."
"I'll say."
"Wrestling's beating the shit out of another guy. That's not gay!" Kevin was now sitting up straight, his jaw slightly slack in a gruffer version of the pout.
"Wrestling's holding men in various ways, often involving jamming their face in yer nutsack, while wearing tights. Then you all slap each other on the ass and take a shower." He screwed the cap back on the juice and moved back to the fridge, smug now that he was on the offense.
"Ass-slapping's football."
"Oh, sorry, you're right then, just the whole tights and nutsacks thing isn't gay at all."
In a flash, Kenny's glass was on the other side of the kitchen, the splintered linoleum splattered with sticky amber liquid. Kevin was on top of Kenny, holding him to the floor with a practiced grip—Kenny's face was contorted slightly with a grimace, his joints aching from the sudden plunge to the hard floor, while Kevin grinned sadistically, showing his missing tooth.
"So? Still think wrestling's gay?" He laughed, pushing Kenny harder into the floor to highlight his point.
Through the vague pain, Kenny sighed, and with the tone of trying to teach a stubbornly ignorant toddler a simple fact, grunted, "I have a face-full of nutsack. Yes, it's still gay."
It was at that point Karen wandered sleepily into the room, surveyed her oldest brother holding her older brother to the floor with junk pressed into his face, both sticky with juice and with Kenny's shorts ridden up a bit farther than she ever needed to see, turned on her bare heel, and marched back out of the room, deciding it was really too early to be awake anyway, being one PM and all.