Chapter Text
"Karen! C'mon, we're both gonna be late if we don't hurry up!"
Kenny's by the front door stepping into his beaten up shoes when he finally hears Karen running out of her room, throwing her backpack over her shoulders. "Sorry, Ken! I couldn't find my homework!"
Kenny turns to look at her then, snorting. Her ponytail has almost completely slipped out by this point in her frenzy. Kenny stepped behind her to fix it, twisting her hair tie around his fingers enough that it would actually stay put this time without it being too tight. "Did you find it?" Karen nodded, making this task more difficult than it had to be. But Kenny's been putting his sister's hair up for her since she was little, kicking and screaming and throwing fits the whole time because "she was big enough to do it herself now!" This was a piece of cake compared to those days.
"Yeah! I'm ready now, I swear."
Kenny nods and takes her hand, leading her out of the house. "Let's go."
He walks Karen to her bus stop first and gives her and her friends a small wave before he has to head back the opposite way again to his own. She keeps insisting that he really doesn't have to, if there was a chance that it could make him late. But Kenny doesn't mind this time that they get to spend together, especially when he doesn't have the luxury of knowing which days he'll be able to go to school. If he dies the night before, he could end up missing out on their little walk and it eats him up every time. She might not even remember that he hadn't been there to escort her, but he does. Karen is one of the few lights left in his world that make it brighter every day, and he wants to make every moment with her count.
Kenny finally met up with his friends, slightly out of breath after he'd checked the time on his phone and decided that he needed to jog the rest of the way to make it in time. Stan and Cartman are having a heated argument about the newest game they had each gotten, and how they each have leveled their characters up more than the other or how one of them has better armor than the other. Bladity blah.
Kyle looks over at Kenny when he comes to join them, a warm smile immediately lighting up his face. "Morning, dude."
Kenny shoots him a little nod, stuffing his hands back into his pockets. His body had warmed up significantly from his little jog but the frigid breeze had only made his hands colder. He knew he was forgetting something when he left the house, his damn gloves.
"Sup. How much you wanna bet they're gonna forget all about this game by the end of the week?"
Kyle snorts at that, eyeing the two of them as Stan starts tugging at Eric's ear and making him whine like a little pig. "Less than that, honestly. With all the new games coming out this week, they'll drop it like nothing."
Kenny nods, a smile forming on his own face. He's noticed that lately, when he shows up at the bus stop, he and Kyle will fall into this comfortable exchange of words that never really goes anywhere important. He tries to pretend that he doesn't see the way that Kyle perks up when he sees him. But he knows that Kyle is genuinely happy to see him because it means he's actually going to school today. That he survived another night.
Nobody has ever noticed before. When Kenny wasn't at school because he was dead, or because he was still making his way back to the world of the living, people didn't notice. But Kyle apparently did, and when he would ask about Kenny before he knew what his curse was, people would look at him like he was crazy. They'd tell him that they just saw him in the cafeteria, or in the restroom, or in their class. For reasons that still don't make sense to them, people that didn't even witness Kenny's most recent death would apparently act as if they were under some sort of hypnosis. Maybe they imagined what they would have seen Kenny doing if things had gone the way they were supposed to had he not died again. Like they were going off a script, and the universe wouldn't let Kenny's little hiccups get in the way of its play.
But Kyle wasn't one to just play along with everyone else.
Ever since the last time Mysterion himself had crawled into Kyle's window and bled out on his bedroom floor, things have changed. Kyle remembered a night that he wasn't supposed to remember for the first time in great detail, so much so that it had left Kenny stricken with guilt. He's always wanted somebody to remember for once, to show just a little empathy for the pain he's constantly going through. But when he thinks about it now, he just feels selfish. He didn't want Kyle, of all people, to be forced to remember such trauma. It was bound to wear him down at one point, right? The guy is already so stressed with school and college applications that he doesn't need Kenny's problems dumped onto him as well.
So, he doesn't bring it up at all unless Kyle has questions. Sometimes, they're actually really thought out and logical, like he's trying to help him figure out all the bells and whistles that come with his curse. It's almost scientific in a way. Sometimes he has silly questions (Could eating Mentos and drinking Sprite actually kill you? I bet you would've tried it for shits and giggles") and it does help him to feel a little better about it. But that's as far as he will go.
So naturally, he made it his personal mission to stop climbing into his room as Mysterion anymore when he's dying.
Kenny would do it all the time, selfishly, just to seek out some comfort. Dying alone, especially slow deaths, really sucked. And Kyle was always there to hold him, to whisper nonsense to distract him from the pain even if he was sobbing. Since he never remembered the gory details of his deaths, he did it time and time again. Now that he's aware of it all, though, he can't bring himself to do it. Maybe slumping down in a dark alley was for the better, which was his new go-to move these days. He hoped that made things easier for Kyle, if he's even noticed that Mysterion isn't visiting as much anymore.
Kenny snaps his head up when the bus shows up and he goes to sit with Eric as a way to diffuse the tension between him and Stan, and so Kyle could catch up with his best friend. He didn't really feel like going to school today, or any day really, but when he remembers how Kyle looks so happy to see him there, alive and as well as he could be....maybe it's worth it.
--
Kyle sought Kenny out at lunch later that day, finding him out back behind the school by the skater tree. Well, former skater tree. They'd found a spot that they'd deemed cooler and it eventually became known as the smoking tree. None of the faculty ever came out here so Kenny would come out here and light up a cig or two just to pass the time after he ate if nobody else was around. He had a lot of time to kill when his lunches were sometimes just a bruised apple and a bag of Takis. And Kenny isn't about to spend his time doing homework or studying or anything of the sort. It's not like he's going to be able to afford higher education when he graduates high school, so what's the point? As long as he can scrape by enough to graduate high school so he can keep a job, he's solid.
Kenny looked up as he heard Kyle's shoes crunching in the snow, taking a big hit from his cigarette. The guys usually don't bug him out here, so something about seeing Kyle coming over alone makes his stomach flip.
He's had a crush on Kyle for as long as he can remember. He's had crushes on other people over the years, too, of course. Because he always held Kyle up on almost a sort of pedestal, someone he could never hope to attain. He was just too good for him, too smart for him. Too motivated to grab life by the reigns and take control while Kenny just sat back and let life take the reigns on him. But whenever he thinks he's moved on from him, he always crawls right back into his heart, with thoughts of his pretty green eyes and cute brown freckles spackled across his nose and cheeks clogging his mind.
There were a few moments that just really cemented his crush on him, that kind of puppy love that you'll never feel again because the first one was always the one you never forgot. That time that Kyle had his huge growth spurt before the rest of his class. That day he came into class with the widest smile anyone had seen from him in nearly two years because he got his braces taken off. That day he showed up with his arm in a sling, telling people that they "should see the other guy."
(He'd actually just fallen off his bike. Nobody had believed otherwise.)
He keeps coming back to haunt him but Kenny's gotten pretty used to stuffing his feelings down. Locking them away so he could go to homecoming with pretty girls, so he could kiss a boy in exchange for a pack of smokes. Pretend he was putting his all into dates when he really didn't care. They just weren't Kyle, but that was fine. It was easy to pretend.
That is, until recently. Ever since Kyle had made his promise that he would be there whenever Kenny needed him, so Kenny didn't have to suffer with his curse by himself anymore, his feelings have been bubbling up to the surface again. Little by little. Kyle has been wrapping his arm around his shoulders more often when he talks to him, keeps bumping into him playfully when Kenny blurts out a terrible joke. These tiny bits of physical touch that he never used to do before that send tiny shocks through him at the point of contact. It's making things difficult and it might actually start to drive him crazy just a little bit.
Which is why seeing him coming over right now has him feeling nervous.
Kyle looks down at Kenny where he's sitting under the withered tree, crossing his arms over his chest and huffing. "Do you ever do anything out here other than smoke?" Kenny knows that Kyle wants so badly to be able to tell him off about smoking. That it's bad for him and that it'll kill him. But he knows that it's a useless fight now and knowing that it's something Kyle can't mother him about brings him some sick joy. It's the one thing he's got over him.
Kenny turned his head away from him to let out the puff of smoke and Kyle stifled a groan anyway. As if Kenny would actually blow smoke at him. He's almost offended. "It's the smoking tree. With you here, we could turn it into the make out tree if that's any better," he smirked.
Kyle rolled his eyes, and Kenny can tell by the way he's shifting his weight from one hip to the other that he wants to sit beside him but Kenny's smoke is too strong for him to handle. "Yeah, no thanks. You know, you could be joining us inside or something. You've been coming out here an awful lot."
Every day, in fact.
"Is everything alright with you?" Kyle's voice goes softer as he asks and while Kenny knows he's being sincere, he finds himself frowning. It's that look that adults would give him and his sister when they'd walk home from school in elementary and notice the terrible condition their clothes were in. That look of pity that he knows, coming from Kyle, means well and that he isn't looking down on him in any way. He holds him as an equal. But it still instinctively makes his hackles raise just a little bit.
"Yeah, why wouldn't it be?"
Kyle squints at him, sighing. "Mysterion is being weird." Ah, poo. "I watch the news, I see the bad guys we track down getting taken into custody. But you never come to see me after it happens anymore. You only call me up for information and then I don't hear from you for days." He emphasizes his words by pointing a finger at him. "You're avoiding me."
Fucking hell.
Kenny takes a final hit before jabbing the butt of his cigarette down in the snow.
"These jobs lately have me finishing up late. I don't want to keep you up and ruin your beauty sleep. Not that you need it, anyway."
"That's total bullshit!" Kenny has to bite back a laugh at how comically Kyle throws his arms up in frustration. He's learned to let Kenny's flirting just roll right off of him, not letting it catch him off guard. "I made a promise to you, and it doesn't have a curfew. I know you've been dying because of some of these missions when people don't report Mysterion sightings at the crime scenes. But then I start to think maybe this has all just been a big joke the whole time and that I am starting to go crazy," he frowns. "I haven't been there for you since...that night."
He hasn't seen him die since then, he means. And therefore, he's starting to doubt him again.
Kenny stands up then, brushing snow and dry grass off of his pants. "So, what would make you feel better? Watching me die painfully in your arms again so you believe me, or me lying to your face and saying I've been making it up this whole time?" Kenny blurts out, raising a brow at him. He doesn't mean to get so defensive, but when he gets defensive his words get sharp. Kyle merely suggesting that Kenny's curse is some elaborate prank like he used say all the time suddenly triggers something in him now in a way he hasn't felt in a long while. "Which one would help you sleep better at night, Kyle?"
Kyle blinks and takes a step back. It's a little scary to see Kenny switch from his normal chill self to something akin to his Mysterion persona in real time. His eyes go darker and it makes Kyle's breath catch for a moment. As unbothered as Kenny usually is, he's definitely touched a nerve with this. "I-I just-"
Kenny steps forward and pokes Kyle in the chest, only feeling a little bad when Kyle raises his hands in defense. It's almost funny, considering Kenny is the shorter one here. But he knows he can be an intimidating motherfucker regardless of that and he's not backing down until he gets his point across. "I don't want you to see me like that anymore if I can help it. And I'm not making this shit up. It's not a fucking joke."
"I...no, I know it's not. I'm really sorry, dude." Kyle rubs at the back of his neck as he sidesteps away, avoiding Kenny's glaring gaze. "Look, we've gotta get ready to go back to class soon. But I'm not done talking about this, okay?" Of course he's not. Kyle doesn't know how to push problems aside like Kenny does. He has to face them head on and squash them before he can move on with his life. He can appreciate that about him sometimes.
Kenny lowers his shoulders from when they'd tensed up, letting out a heavy sigh to calm himself down. He didn't have to be getting so riled up over this.
"I'll be here after school," Kenny gestures vaguely to the tree, his voice having lost its bite. He can't stay mad at Kyle for more than two seconds, and if their friends were around they'd call him whipped. For someone that he considered to be pretty perceptive, he'd consider Kyle to be denser than their peers when it came to Kenny's feelings for him.
And it should stay that way. It's for the best.
Kyle looks up and watches as Kenny lowers his defenses again. "Alright. I'll see you later, man."
Kenny considers taking himself out just to delay the conversation a bit longer but Kyle would figure it out eventually and he can't just kill himself every day to avoid him. He's going to have to hear out whatever the fuck Kyle still has to say.
Ugh.