AN: Short chapter, sorry! Thanks for all the past reviews everyone, you're all so nice to me! This story has a really calm, mellow feel (I think) as that's how I write, but I hope to get in some more...umph, later on. Right now its all about Stan and Kenny and getting them closer. But don't worry I'm a firm believer in Kyle and Stan being together, whether romantically or in friendship.


Watch the Pendulum Swing

By the time I get to South Park I'm drenched, freezing and dead tired. Maybe I should have taken all those offers for a ride home. My feet are killing me and I know there is no way I can make the next few blocks to my house, I have to sit and rest somewhere so I choose Starks Pond. Its not that late, probably only seven or so but the ponds deserted, it is around dinner time. I take a seat at one of the few benches that surround the place and decided to lay on the entire bench. I'm facing up with my eyes closed and the cold ice rain continues to attack my face, thought it doesn't matter to me anymore. I'm already as wet as I can possible get and I'm so cold that I've turned numb.

I'm getting kind of sleepy but my brain tells me to stay awake and it urges me to go find shelter and get warm but I ignore it, mostly because I don't feel like moving. When the rain stops falling on my face, even though I can still hear it thumping against the bench I open my eyes curiously and look at the holder of the umbrella.

"Dude, what are you doing out here? You're soaked," he asks.

I sit up and he adjusts the umbrella to both our height. "Just taking a walk," I tell him, and he looks at me disbelievingly.

"In the rain? Without a hood or an umbrella?"

"I got caught in the downpour."

"It's been raining for over three hours," he kindly points out and I answer him with my silence.

"What are you doing out here?" I ask, "shouldn't you be inside having dinner or something?"

"I've been looking for you. I almost called your house, before remembering you don't have a phone so I walked over, to ask your parents where you were and when you'd be back. They said they didn't know, before telling me if I saw you to come home and clean the fucking house up. Their words not mine."

I laugh and my body shakes, sending rain droplets from me to him, "alright, what did you want?"

He looks at me for a moment before looking across the pond, which looks black because of the early night, "nothing to be honest, but it's a Friday night and we're two eighteen year olds, it'd be pathetic if we stayed indoors. There's a big party being thrown a few blocks from here, want to go?"

Stan looks back at me with this forced smile, and I look down at myself. "Stan, like you said yourself, I'm soaking wet, besides, I'm not really in the party mood and from the looks of things neither are you."

He sighs, "yeah, not really. I just wanted to wash my problems away in alcohol."

I make him stand with me and he looks at me questionably, "if that's all you wanted I can take care of that, come on." He says nothing and follows me from Starks Pond as we head to my house. Because of the umbrella and the fact that the rain isn't pounding on me anymore my body starts to warm, and the numbness feeling fades, leaving me shivering. I try not to shake and chatter my teeth but after awhile I cant help it. Stan see's this and puts his free arm around my shoulder, but it really doesn't help that much.

When we get to my house I see someone managed to pay the electricity bill as the front light is on. I walk in cautiously and Stan turns to shake off the rain from his umbrella before folding it in, he tosses it on the floor next to the front door and he looks at me expectantly. It doesn't sound like anyone is home. I make a quick search of the house and find that indeed, it's void of my family. I release a huge sigh of relief and make my way into my parents bedroom, Stan on my heels.

I'm ransacking my dad's stash of beer and other miscellaneous liquor, from his broken dresser, pulling out what looks good, only taking a moment to glance at the gay porn that's not well hidden. It's always been strange to think that my white trash homophobic father gets off on gay porn. I close the dresser doors and see that Stan has been watching me as he sat on my parents bed. I cringe inwardly deciding its best that I don't tell him what diseases he may have caught from just touching that bed. He seems to have enough emotional problems as is.

My hands are full of the drinks and I unload some into Stan's arms. He looks at all the booze through wide eyes before we make our way down the hall to my bedroom.

"What is half this stuff?" He asks as he inspects the worn labels, some don't have any at all.

"Stan," I say as I open a small bottle of a clear drink, throwing it down, ignoring the firey pain it causes my throat. "If you really want to drink away your problems you cant take the time to figure out what you're drowning your problems in."

He considers this and swallows some of the cheap beer, he obviously doesn't like the taste but we're not here to enjoy the pleasantries of a nice cocktail.

"You've never drank before, have you?" I ask him, sipping something pink, while half wondering if it should really be that color.

"Not really, I mean I have some wine and stuff on holidays, but nothing this... shitty," when he says that we laugh and when the laughter dies I suddenly sneeze. He laughs again holding out his hand that has the beer in it. "You still have your wet clothes on."

How had I forgotten about that? I nod, and set my pink drink down and I start to walk out of the room before turning to look back at Stan. "I'm going to take a shower, when and if the world starts to get a bit fuzzy, stop drinking okay?"

He nods and I head to the shower. We don't normally have hot water but when I turn on the faucet the warmness comes and I sigh in content. I strip and hop into the hot falling water, taking in deep breaths of the forming steam. I close my eyes like I had done at Starks Pond and let the water cascade down my body, soothing my skin. I only leave when I've used up all the hot water, which is when I remember Stan is still waiting for me.

After climbing out I wrap I towel on my waist and head back into my bedroom, realizing I meant to take in some clothes with me. Stan is still sitting in the same place he was when I left, my bed, and I don't say anything to him until I notice all the empty bottles at the base of my door.

While halfway in my closest I turn to glance at him, "you didn't drink all of those did you?" I ask, as there's more empty bottles there then any non-drinker should drink.

He looks at me with glassed over eyes and looks down at the floor, his head unsteady, "yeah. I think... I know I did."

His words are slightly slurred and I shake my head since he didn't listen to me, he's drunk, completely wasted and its only been an hour. I watch as he gets fascinated with his hands, I'm sure they're dancing with colors and he falls back against my bed in what I'm sure is dizziness.

I peak over at him to be sure his eyes are closed, before quickly putting on some boxers. Just then his eyes open as I start to heft myself into a pair of clean, make that, dry pants. As I look in my dresser for a shirt Stan starts to mutter something.

"What?" I couldn't hear him through his quiet slurring voice.

"I said," he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Kyle kept calling me, that's why I wanted to find you."

I don't say anything and let him go on, thank god his drunk state of mind seems to enjoy rambling.

"He wants to know why I'm avoiding him...hmph, and I cant say."

"Why not?" I turn back to the important matter at hand, finding a shirt, but everything's either stained or filled with holes.

"It's too weird, I can barely look at him without wondering if maybe he really does have a fucking thing for me. What if he does Kenny, what should I do? I mean he's my friend and I want him to stay that way but if I, I don't know, reject him or something that's going to put a real strain on our friendship."

"You never know, he may not even admit to it," I hold up a shirt in the air, thinking it might possibly be acceptable but then toss it when I see the entire left side is split open.

"Maybe, but that wont make it better because I'll still know."

"Well you cant avoid him forever, he's worried he's done something really wrong. I know if I were in his place I'd be worried."

"Don't worry about you, I'll always be at your side. Sometimes being with Kyle always made me feel like I had to live up to something, like I had to continuously be the best at sports as he was at school so we'd balance each other out."

This made me turn back to him in surprise. He was looking closely at me and I tried to think of something intelligent to say, but the way his eyes were on me... the thing that came out was, "do you think your drunk ass could manage to hand me that shirt on that lamp?"

He turned sloppily and grabbed the shirt, almost causing my lamp to crash to the ground before tossing it to me with horrible aim. I reached down to pick it and when I stood back up he was directly behind me breathing heavily. I could smell his alcohol induced breath and I froze when it touched my skin.

"That cuts going to leave you with a scar," he says as he brushes a hand against where the cut would be if it wasn't for the soaking wet bandage. I allow his shaking drunk hands to rip the bandage off and he brushes his hand over the wound.

"I don't like seeing you with scars Kenny," he says and I can hear my heart thump madly against my chest when he bends down, and kisses the cut on my arm. He then brings his head back up and rests it on the top of my shoulder, his breathing has calmed and I keep my face straight ahead.

As much as his touch sent shivers through my body, he had said that he needed me. Part of that need, I could tell now, was going to be taking care of him in this state he was in. He was a friend and I ignored my body's urges and stepped away from him, putting my shirt on. Stan was only confused, too much had happened because of one stupid Cartman incident. When I glanced back at him he didn't seem fazed and he sat back on my bed.

"Kenny?"

"Yeah?"

"You're not mad are you?"

"No."

"Good," he said in which he ensued to throw up on the side of my bed that I, thankfully, wasn't facing.

I went over to him, sitting next to him on the bed, giving him a friendly pat on his back to be sure he got it all out. "Looks like we'll have to find something else to drown your problems in," I told him. He looked up groggily and nodded before leaning back over, heaving up the rest of the alcohol.

When he was done he fell back against my mattress and looked to my ceiling, blinking tiredly. I made my way off and looked at him for awhile before saying anything. "I guess I'll have to walk over and tell your parents you're over at my house."

"Don't bother, I said I'd be staying over at someone's house, so they don't expect me back till tomorrow afternoon," he croaked out.

"Okay," I said and heaved a sigh and went to work on cleaning up Stan's mess. The whole time I was cleaning he never said a word so I assumed he had passed out. When I had finished I grabbed my lighter, cigarettes and a bottle of beer that he hadn't drank and headed outside. It had stopped raining so I grabbed a ladder from the garage that I'm sure wasn't ours. Climbing to the roof of our house, I sat in the middle beams so the thing wouldn't collapse under me.

It looked like the rain clouds were passing and I could see the snow clouds following from behind, because of the clouds it was pitch black, stars couldn't be seen and I could barely see which cloud the moon was behind. Lighting one of the last few cigarettes I had and after awhile of complete silence I heard a noise from where the ladder was. I leaned over carefully and peeked down, watching as a still drunk Stan tried to climb the ladder.

Balancing the cigarette so it stayed in the side of my mouth I helped him the rest of the way up, before he settled next to me in the middle beam. I unscrewed the beer, took out the stick in my mouth and took a drink.

"Thought you passed out on me," I said to him when I had swallowed a few gulps.

"I was in and out," he responded looking at the lit cigarette in my hand. I was about to put it out for his comfort when he took it from me and inhaled it himself, my eyes widened slightly when he didn't cough the smoke back up like a beginner.

"What ever happened to smoking is bad for you? Especially when you have obviously done it before?" I asked him and he shrugged giving it back to me.

"I'm not addicted like you," he looked up at the dark sky. "I'm fucked up emotionally right now."

"I've always been fucked up emotionally," I answer back

He smirks, but his eyes don't move from their place, "you know what? Cartman can have Wendy, I got bored of her years ago, and Kyle..., Kyle can keep on having a thing for me if he really does. Right now, I'm content with this, you and me Kenny."

I wonder if he'll think like this tomorrow when he's sober.


AN: I would like to point out that smoking is bad for you, Kenny is headed for a road I like to call the road of lung cancer. While I'm at it don't drink until you're of legal age, and even then please drink responsibly. Also when you feel the need to have constant sex with people you don't really know, use contraceptives and check with your doctor often to be sure you don't have an STD so you don't spread it to others. People, AIDS and HIV is preventable, lets be smart and get ourselves checked regularly. :) Please read and review!

Faery Goddyss