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Kenny's eyelashes are stuck together like after a long Saturday night of sweet dreams and starry skies. But the McCormick family's house is never quiet to get enough sleep. The old TV always makes noise, oil hisses in a smoky kitchen, children laugh during games and parents have a daily fight behind a cardboard wall.
Kenny brushes the dust off his blond eyelashes and rubs it over his face. His skin is painfully dark after this summer.
The long and boring vacation gave him a couple of new scars on top of the old ones on his knees and awkward, barely visible freckles. It's a family stuffs: they're all lanky, freckled, in worn second-hand clothes. Unless, they're not ginger for the sake of fullness of the Weasleys' picture.
"Are you awake?" an quiet voice whispers near.
Kenny nods. He finds Butters' shoulders in the dark of room and hugs his arms as tightly as all the physics laws allow to hug people.
"What's going on? A bad dream?" Butters asks worriedly, but Kenny just waves his head.
It's nothing. You have nothing to worry about. It happens to all of us.
This answer is enough. Butters stops asking. The only sound is breathing and soothing snuffling in McCormick's shoulder. Mom never sang lullabies for Kenny when he was a kid. Often she had left children alone with the old radio on, and there was always something boring and country, even for South Park. It would be better, if these midnighters-presenters put the snuffling and sleepy bellowing of Butters. The whole nation would sleep well and pleasantly, without the need for xanax and barbiturates.
Scotch's house is not like Kenny's house at all. Always warm, always tidy, always smells delicious aromatic peels Ikea. There is a lot of this stuff here, in every corner. It's quiet at the Scotches' house after 10 pm. You can't even move or speak in a full voice.
This is great.
Butters always presses his hands with long snowy fingers to Kenny's lips. His hands are whispering: be quiet, and you know what my parents will do, if they hear you. Let's sit together and smile at each other, like we're in old silent film. All the ones that Kenny has seen are just absurd comedies.
No problem at all. They can shoot a new movie. One in the "it's supposed to be the dumbest, cheapest porn, but I kinda just want to hold your hand and things like that. Just don't make a face and don't push me away, please, and I promise you everything will be better than in the most snotty fairy tales" genre.
Butters will wake up in the morning, brush his teeth and put on a turquoise sweater with very long sleeves. He will eat milk oatmeal, listen to the next portion of lectures from the strictest parents and ride a bike to school. In time, out of habit, as necessary.
In the morning Kenny will climb out of Butters' window and go home through three blocks, which separating a safe district from his slums. The house will be dusty and somehow cozy in a special way. He will sit on his holed bed, take off Butters' t-shirt and stare at the broken screen of his phone for a long time.
It will be in the morning. Not now.
Kenny wakes up in his room. Kenny wakes up from a scream behind the wall.
Fuck. It was all just a dream. Fuck.
Boys usually dream about busty girls or oils jocks. Kenny dreams about Butters with his with his puppy dog eyes and his wispy hands.
It's always cold in South Park. Kenny freezes even under a covers in summer.
"It's only seven o'clock, and you're already drinking!"
"What else can I do, bitch!"
"I don't know! Looking for a fucking job, for example?"
Good morning, world. How it's going?
Kenny washes his face with cold water, wakes up his sister, dresses her and dresses himself. Under the orange hoodie, Butters' T-shirt is, which he lent McCormick in gym class and for some reason did not ask for it back. Probably, Butters scorned.
Kenny does 't await the bus, nor does he wait for his friends, who always late for their own reasons. He goes on his foot, having time to smoke a cigarette stolen from his father. He's chilled to the bone.
Along the way he meets Butters on his his immutable bike with broken brakes. Kenny, of course, from bottom of his heart, offered to fix it more than once, but it broke down again and again.
"Hi, Kenny!" Butters pulls up beside. "Need a ride?"
Kenny says "yes". It's always "yes" to Butters.
They hardly talk on the way, except that the boy of the dreams is chatting about something. He's talking about the ducks winter in parks, about mom scolded him again for a spoiled school card, abot clouds form, about cows graze in meadows, about Cartman who has come up with some nonsense again and dragged all his friends into it, about himself, when he went somewhere and for some reason, and then everything turned upside down as usual. Kenny's half listening, locking his arms around Butters' waist.
Not strong enough to hold.
But strong enough to hold on himself.
Kenny is thinking about his part-time job after school. He thinks he should get them free movie tickets and popcorn somehow. He thinks that Butters, of course, will not be allowed to go with him, but Butters will run away anyhow, and Kenny will steal him from parents anyway. After that they will be in trouble, of course. But this is not a big problem.
If Cartman finds out, he will exactly ask if Butters sucked Kenny's balls or Kenny did Butters'. Kenny won't tell him that he's afraid to even take a dream boy by the hand. Afraid to breathe next to him and do something terribly cheeky. Because of, yes, it was supposed to be cheap American porn, but it became what it became.
"You know, I dreamed about you today," Butters says when they get off the bike.
"I dreamed about you too".
"Unbelievable! Interesting, isn't it?" Scotch pulls out a narrow long palm to Kenny's palm. "It's like we're connected".
Butters locks their fingers.
"Yeah" Kenny nods. He want to jerk off in the school toilet or something. Disgusting.
"So, what were we doing in your dream?" Butters asks and smile like he really doesn't know what McCormick can answer just for fun and an incredible plot twist in a snotty melodrama.
They return to the origins of the genre, as people say.
"Let's guess" Kenny squeezes out.
Butters will never know. So he just stands on tiptoes and gently kisses Kenny on the forehead as people kiss the most fragile creatures in the world.
It seems like Kenny is about to fall apart.
"Probably, we were hugging and lying next to each other" Butters says.
He holds Kenny tight.
Kenny will not fall apart and break. Ever.