"So what about you?" Hunter had to admit that as much as she liked Kenny and as good of friends as they had become, there was still a lot about him that she didn't know. "There has to be something that made you want to talk with me tonight." Maybe it was just her naivety, but if Kenny didn't want to get into the hows and the whys, he wouldn't have invited her over.

Dammit, was the girl getting more perceptive about him? They both knew that they could only blow off talking about where they stood for so long, but that didn't mean that they had to talk about it tonight, or even this week. He didn't think that it was obvious, but had she read the signs that he was seriously considering something more than friendship? "You wanted to know if I meant it -" The blonde saw that the girl had suddenly tensed up, her entire body tauter than a bowstring. "-when I told the cashier that you were my girlfriend. I don't know."

Hunter had no clue if that hurt worse that him saying no. "I get it - I know that I'm not really girlfriend material. Honestly, I have no idea what it even means to be a girlfriend-" Or boyfriend, as many of their classmates would believe, assuming that anything did happen. "-But I really like you. Can't you see that? I bought this ridiculous outfit just for you, because I thought that you would like it. I know that I'm not pretty, and I'm not girly, and you could have anyone else you wanted, but I really do like you Kenny."

Why did she have to say that? Couldn't she understand that he wasn't in a position to think about himself? "It's not that simple-"

Experience had conditioned her for failure, but she wasn't prepared to go down without a fight. "Yes, it is." In her life, it had always been about her father or her little brother, so why couldn't this once it be about her? "Either you like me or don't. And from where I'm sitting, I think that some part of you does. Why else would you say that we were both going to pay for this?"

In truth, there had been a lot of little indicators that he liked Hunter as more than a client, or even as a friend, but this right here, this was exactly why her being a girl complicated things. At least if she had been a guy, it would have been easy enough to lie and say that he couldn't be in a serious relationship with another male. Although, now maybe he could make her see why it wasn't a good idea to want anything to do with him. "Because I'm no good. Not for you, not for any one. The person I am, the things I'm involved with, none of it is right. I have no right to be interested, and I know that I shouldn't encourage you..."

Really? Was he seriously trying to pull that self-sacrificial hero card? When were people going to realize that the girlfriends of heroes were always in danger, even when they weren't dating the hero. "Shouldn't I have some say in what's right and wrong for me?" Pulling herself up from the floor, where she had seated herself during the story, the girl stood in place, scoping the room for something. "Or did we suddenly land back in the fifties? Funny, I don't see a vacuum anywhere or a martini in my hand."

Looking into her face, Kenny could clearly make out the squared set of her jaw, the dangerous fire burning behind her eyes. She really did like him, didn't she? Well it wasn't like that was ever in question anyways. Yielding to more than just her smoldering gaze, Kenny gave in to a world of trouble just waiting to spring it's nasty and bitter bear traps. He should have known better than that by now, that these kinds of things always end badly, but dammit all, he just couldn't say no to a pretty pair of tits. "Lois Lane was screwing Superman, not Dracula."

"Dracula?" Deflated by that odd counter, she had no idea where he was going to go with this.

Inviting her to join him on the bed - only a marginal comfort to the ground- he gave the antiqued mattress a friendly pat before starting his own narrative, beginning with the story of two alcoholics that went to cult meetings just for the free booze. Clearly, her first thought was of how the cult thing had to connect, but Hunter undoubtedly decided that the point was that they were so broke and so hooked, they would do just about anything for their fix, which sadly wasn't far from the truth. However, Kenny was only just getting started - if there was ever going to be anything between them, she would have to know what was perhaps his deepest, darkest truth.

Rolling his thumb over his knuckles, Kenny wondered if maybe the prostitution thing wasn't better to reveal instead. "Do you trust me?"

Catching her even further off guard with the timing of this new question, Hunter couldn't help but to gaze sideways at Kenny. "Why shouldn't I trust you? You've appeared to have been honest with me so far." She knocked her knee against his own. "If I didn't trust you, today wouldn't have happened and you never would have gotten to hold Squashy."

Maybe her memory wasn't perfect. "Squishy." He corrected her with a small smile, one that she quickly returned. "You know, most other girls would have punched my lights out for that."

In a confidential manner, she whispered back, "If you haven't noticed, I'm not most other girls." Raising her voice back to normal, she went on. "Besides, if you had been any other guy, I might have."

Good to know that she gave him special license, and that if anyone else tried to touch her boobs, she'd not stand by and allow it. Someone like a close friend. "What would you say if I told you that I couldn't die?" This was often the point when girls would laugh and ask him if he was serious. It was the point of no return.

"Couldn't die?" Hunter thought back to something that he had mentioned before. "You told me that you were were in Coon and Friends, and I know that one of them had that very same power..." Holding her hand up so that it was blocking out his eyes, she tried to picture the dark cowl over his shoulders. "Are you Mysterion...?"

Well that was one way to take it. Talking about heroes and immortals, he could see how she had reached that accurate conclusion. "That's not important right now..." Shifting her hand so they could see each other properly, Kenny carried on. "I can't die. Stab me, shoot me, watch me bleed out my ass, I won't stay dead. I've been impaled, run-over, you name it."

Impossible. That's what Hunter wanted to say, but between the telling gleam in his blue eyes expressing a world of untold torment and an incident with her mother's brother, she couldn't deny it that it wasn't possible. "...That cult, did they worship Cthulhu by chance?"

Kenny nodded softly, amazed that she knew of Cthulhu. Sure, there was that whole thing when The Coon had allied himself with the demon, going on a world tour of mayhem and destruction, but even a month after that, very few people acknowledged what had happened. "How...?"

Acting as if it was a black mark on the family name, Hunter shook her head. "My uncle was in charge of the Boise chapter. He tried to use Avery as a sacrifice when we visited him, but he was killed by the shed collapsing. Our dad tried to save him with my little brother, but the beams had him pinned so that moving him would have caused a tear on his organs that would have caused him to bleed to death internally." The girl shivered violently at the thought of losing her little brother. "So it worked?"

The immortal could see that she was horrified at what could have happened to her brother if her uncle had succeeded. With no ulterior motives whatsoever, the blonde snaked his arm around her shoulders as he comforted her. "Not exactly. Whatever they did, they did it before I was born." Kenny didn't say it out loud, but he thought that if they had tried to resurrect Cthulhu in her brother's body, it would have failed and the boy would have died.

While actually believing his claim that he was unkillable was going out on a limb, Hunter did acknowledge that it really might have been possible. After all, who was to say what was and what wasn't? "Do Stan and Kyle know?"

A dark look crossed over his expression. "I've told them before-" Fuck, Kenny had even killed himself right in front of his friends, but none of them ever believed him, and that was back when they still played make believe. "-but they never believed me. No one ever does."

Personally, Hunter saw no reason that anyone would try to maintain a lie like this, especially when no one bought it and there was nothing to gain from it. Maybe if the person was crazy, but Kenny seemed pretty put together to her. "Is that why you don't know?"

Well it was more than just that, but if she couldn't see a majority of the reasons by this point, the girl was obviously retarded. "Basically."

Again, some not very nice language.

I do not own South Park, that's all on Matt and Trey, but I do own Hunter and Avery!