Alone with Wendy out of the way, at least for the time being, Kyle was by himself with Stan, left once more to put the pieces of his best friend back together again and figure out how the other teen had been shattered this time. It was not a job that Kyle enjoyed in the slightest - his mind imagining that only someone as damaged as Cartman could possibly find some kind of enjoyment in it - but by this point, it was one he had became rather good at. Sitting down on the couch next to his best friend, Kyle leaned forward, hands laced thoughtfully and fingers steepled with honest attention.

Cautious of saying the wrong thing, the young man dared to be blunt about it, just to see how to proceed. "So you ditched school?" Stan remained passive and still, nodding only slightly. "Why? Was it a family emergency? Is Shelly coming back for the weekend?" Almost any dose of Shelly was too much, so he could see how that would have been a cause for concern. "Are your parent's thinking about getting divorced again?" Although that one was frequent enough that it shouldn't have mattered this much. "Did your Grandpa finally manage to kill himself?" Even in his assisted living, Grandpa Marsh wasn't letting up much in his attempts to get himself done in.

With what appeared to be great effort, Stan collected all of the strength left in his husk of a body and shook his head, thinking the entire while how to break the news to his best friend, since he needed to confide in at least one person about this mess. "Wendy was here..."

It was an impossible task to remain impartial about that, his eyes rolling almost automatically at hearing that cunt's name spoken out loud. "Yeah, I just passed her at the door." Kyle thought back to how she had been crying as she departed. "She looked really upset. What happened?" It was risky asking that, but Stan was being more responsive than Kyle had anticipated, so it was worth it to gamble on.

Gazing passed Kyle, Stan shook his dark head once more, mind still envisioning Wendy as their conversation played back in his head, repeating all of the harsher parts in stereo. Adoption! He wasn't strictly thrilled by this discovery in the first place, but adoption?! "Wendy just told me today that she's going to have a baby."

Now it was Kyle's turn to gape idiotically. "She's pregnant?! Dude, I thought that you two were using protection!" He knew for a fact that they had, because more than once, Stan had bugged him for a couple of spare rubbers, once even while he himself had been out with a girl. "Are you sure that it's yours?"

What the fuck kind of a question was that?! Of course it was his kid! "Who's else would it be?"

Kyle didn't say anything, thinking back to that night so long ago...

[South Park]

Steaming from the top and piping hot, the burgers had been set out on three dishes, each one complimented by a different drink, a side of semi-fresh vegetables, and a heaping helping of previously frozen tater tots. At the head of the table was a tall glass of sweetened iced tea and a bottle of beer next to that, while the right-hand side was unsweetened ice tea mixed with milk, and the left-hand side was a glass of ice water. Avery had some very strange ideas about his drinks. Honestly, what kind of a freak drank plain old water?

The conversation was quite dead, the kitchen filled primarily with the crunch of carrot stick and slow, savory chewing. Looking across the table at each other, the Bloodworth siblings were so intimidated by the cloud hanging over their father's head, neither seemed as eager about the blossoming of their love lives as they were before dinner. It was an unspoken rule in their house to keep as muted as possible when their father came home from work with little more than grunts and glares, but after all, rules were made to be broken...

Finally, as the tea soothed away some of the apparent anger and the beer softened the rigidity of his shoulders, Hunter dared to speak up. "So, Avery is going to go on his first date this weekend. That's exciting news, isn't it daddy?"

"Avery?" No matter how steamed he had been about Hunter - that particular cloud just waiting to burst - hearing that his son was becoming a man now had beaten that issue down in size. "Is this true? My boy has finally discovered love?"

Seeing that Avery growing up meant a lesser punishment for herself, Hunter nodded at her brother encouragingly. Unaware of the troubles facing his sister since he had stayed the night at Ike's, Avery nodded slowly, still uneasy about addressing his father at the moment. "Uh, yeah. Karen said I can take her out this Friday. I mean if that's okay with you."

Of course he wanted to give his blessings to Avery, but there was still the matter of his daughter to deal with, as well as their delayed dinner with their next door neighbors. "This weekend looks packed... Between having dinner with the Cartman family and your sister being grounded to her room for the next three months... But how many times does your only son get to go on his first date? Alright, you can go on Friday, and we can set the dinner in stone for Saturday."

Three months? What? The! Fuck?! Maybe it was a tad bit late, but she had finally thought to cook up some cock and bull story... Mother fucker... "Oh, we still have to have that dinner? I'm fine with his mom, but I really don't want Cartman coming over. Especially now that I-" Hunter caught herself about to say that she didn't want to give him the extra time to mock her relationship with Kenny, but she wasn't quite ready to let her father know that she was dating. The timing looked bad for her story, so she wanted to give it a couple of days before she told her father.

Mr. Bloodworth raised his eyebrow at the slip-up. "Yes?"

"Urmm... Uh... I just don't want him to have even more time to-"

"To make fun of you for your new relationship with that grungy hoodlum?" Mr. Bloodworth was just as connected to the internet as anyone else's parents. "I stay up all night long-" Granted, he had nodded off at some point without meaning to, and had had the strangest dream about that neighbor kid dressed up as some kind of rodent and attacking him, "-worrying, and you're out making some love connection with the local tramp?!"

Avery looked over at Hunter, genuinely sorry to see that the news leak on the net had reached their father. "Dad, in fairness she liked that guy for a while now. It just took them a while to put it out there and do anything about it, because they're idgets."

"People are saying that you two..." He trailed off awkwardly, not wanting to even think about his daughter so much as kissing a boy. "Is that true?"

Shrugging over at her, Avery didn't know how to try to help her out of that one. Hunter thought quickly, using the most powerful card she had at her disposal. "Daddy, I'm appalled that you would believe Facebook over your own daughter! I'm your little girl, and I would never act so unseemly! Yes, it is true that I'm dating my friend Kenny now, because he asked me out after the game, just as we were all checking out of our rooms this morning, but we're not doing anything like that! I'm more respectable than that."

Surveying her carefully for a moment as if a sign would appear on her forehead if he stared long enough, Mr. Bloodworth buckled at the 'daddy's little princess' routine. "I'm sorry Hunny-Bunny. Can you ever forgive daddy for just jumping on the bandwagon?"

Playing the part down to a T, she gently patted his shoulder in a consoling fashion, "Of course I can. I mean, I do have three months to think about it. Which is totally fair, because my cell phone died before I could call you and tell you what had happened, and we barely had enough for the two rooms, so we couldn't afford the price to call out. And I couldn't use the other's phones, since Stan forgot his - terrible, I know - Kyle's was lost or stolen, I'm not sure which, and Kenny's phone was out of the coverage area. So we were pretty boned in that department."

"Well maybe that was a bit harsh..." Like so many of his other punishments, but when had that ever stopped him in the past? "But I was just frightened for your safety. You'll understand that someday, when you have a child of your own. Someday, in the very distant future when you've been married for several years." Or never. Preferably never. Seriously, the day that his daughter discovered boys would be a very dark day indeed.

Barely believing her own luck at talking her way out of that one so easily, Hunter dared to ask the million dollar question. "So, am I still grounded for three months?"

Damn the adorableness of his children! Proud of but not liking the fact that his children were growing up, Mr. Bloodworth realized that it was his job as a parent to give them the best chance that he could. It would have been considerably lighter on him if they still had their mother to do all the doting, or even if they hadn't chosen the same time to start dating. "Well I'll need you to help with the dinner," which translated as it was up to Hunter to prepare the entire thing, "but since Avery is going out on Friday, it wouldn't be fair to keep you couped up, so I'll give you Friday too, if you agree to serve a month, without complaint, problems, or wiggling."

A month was more than reasonable - especially from her old man - but four weeks without being able to see Kenny outside of school? That was just unjust. "That's fair." Aware that she was pressing her luck, Hunter had one last chip to bargain with, "But wouldn't it be fairer to say that I can go out if Avery does?"

Seeing what she was doing, Mr. Bloodworth wasn't completely oblivious to her manipulation. "How's this," being a lawyer really positioned him for negotiations, "My previous offer stands, but you may have company so long as it's in the house with the presence of either myself or your brother." He figured that she would be squeamish about doing anything below the belt with her family in the building.

Not entirely wrong about that, Hunter saw that that was going to be the best deal she could get, so she held out her hand to shake on it. "Deal." She wondered if he was that fast at coming up with plea bargains...

[South Park]

Doing the teenage girl thing - or at least what the movies led her to believe was the thing that girls her own age did - Hunter laid in bed after diner, front still wet from doing the dishes, legs dangling over the side as she stared up at the ceiling. Grounded, but with some freedoms still, she had called up Kenny to fill him in on the situation, as well as the free time she was going to have that Friday night.

Timing it so that he would be back from work by now, the girl wondered if he could even fit in a weekend visit. Well, she'd find out soon enough. "Can you talk?"

On his end, Kenny excused himself from the table and headed for his room, just on the chance that this turned into one of those kinds of calls. He was really hoping it would be. "That depends - what are you wearing? Please tell me its nothing."

Laughing, Hunter couldn't resist messing with him. "You caught me - I'm all wet and thinking about you."

Thank you Jesus! "I could help with that."

"I bet you could." Her mind flashed back to that morning, and of what he had tried to get her to do. "But I think that I'll just use my towel to dry up the dishwater. Although, if you're available on Friday, we could always talk about it then... Maybe weigh our options and see where the night takes us..."

Dirty birdy. If she kept teasing him like this... "Why wait?"

And there came the moment she was waiting for. "I'm grounded for being a bad girl and staying the night with some roué. The reason I'm calling is because I won't have to baby-sit, and my dad decided that I'm only slightly grounded. Being my boyfriend, I thought that that was the kind of thing you should know."

Curiosity piqued by the concept of being 'slightly grounded', Kenny asked what that meant, and he listened as she explained the situation in greater detail. Once he was clear on all of the conditions of her parole and such, he spoke, serious with an honest idea. Yes, even Kenny McCormick was capable of such a thing. "So, since you're not doing anything Friday, want to go out with me after I get off of work? I got the early shift that day."

A date? Was he asking for a real date and not just a hot hook-up? Color her as impressed as she was over the moon, the teen was suddenly reminded of an earlier idea she had. "That sounds nice. Alright it's a date! And maybe then I can run something else by you that I've been thinking of..."

I've never thought to mix tea and milk, but now I admit I'm a little curious... So the double-standard is at play, sorta. It's ok for the son to be dating, but the daughter means the end of the world. Wonder how Mr. Bloodworth is going to handle it when he learns that his precious little pathological lair is in fact having smex with a very smexy boy?

I do not own South Park, that's all on Matt and Trey, but I do own Hunter and the rest of the Bloodworth clan!