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“So-” Kenny cut himself off, opening and closing his mouth noiselessly, eyes bugged out like a certain aquatic animal that Butters couldn’t place. “So you just-” He failed to finish his sentence again. Butters was starting to feel a little guilty… had he said the wrong thing? Cartman was always telling him how ‘autistic’ he was. He didn’t know what that meant, but he knew he was bad and wrong. He scuffed his shoes against the asphalt, mournful.
When he looked back up, Kenny was still staring at him, maw hung open like he was dead again. Only a few minutes ago, Butters had said something stupid and Kenny had whipped his head around so fast his hood fell off. Now a light snow was falling, the shock of gold hair dulling in that dry dust. Butters shivered and stepped closer to Kenny, taking the nice warm fur of his parka and pulling it back over his head. Maybe that’d fix this.
Kenny just kept staring at him, now two blue eyes out of nothing, like the snowflakes that materialized themselves out of an empty sky.
“Sorry, Ken.” Butters murmured, head lowered.
He hadn’t meant to mess up, it just happened so fast. He had been alone on the concrete stairs by the middle school, twiddling his thumbs because he was ‘too insolent to deserve lunch’, as his father said. He didn’t know what insolent meant either. He was contemplating the meaning as the massive doors creaked, heralding a bright orange flash in Butter’s periphery. Kenny hopped down the first few stairs with a thump, in a hurry to go be with the other kids.
“K-Kenny!” Butters yelped. Maybe he hadn’t seen Butters, or maybe he was ignoring him. But just in case, he wanted to say something- Maybe in case Kenny still liked him, even though they were 6th graders now. Something underneath his wool jacket, and underneath that too, strained for the attention of the other boy. That was probably insolent. That was probably bad. But Kenny was leaping down the last few stairs, so he just said the first thing that came to mind.
“Sorry about your death yesterday!”
Kenny had been a few feet from the stairs when he whipped around, frozen. Delicate little flakes continued to fall around them, preserving both of them in their positions, like they were the fossils he learned about in science, buried rigid wherever they might have been standing.
Because he knew that though the flakes were small and delicate, they could evoke themselves into a great mass if left alone; burying roofs and walls and leaves. So Kenny’s stillness unsettled him, irrationally. He never stayed dead for more than a few minutes. Maybe that’s what compelled Butters to awkwardly shuffle over, and feel so dreadfully sorry at Kenny’s ruffled hair and wide eyes as to pull his hood back over. He adjusted the little strings. Now if Kenny died he wouldn’t be cold.
“But you never- you-” Kenny whispered, muffled by the thick silence hanging over the moment. His breath was warm on Butter’s nervous fingers. His head was lowered too, as they watched Butters fail at zipping up the mouth-cloth.
“You never said anything.”
There was an uncharacteristic horror in his tone, vulnerable in a way that bothered Butters. Because Kenny never got too beat up about this sort of stuff. He never got beat up at all.
“About what?” Butters blinked up at him, and Kenny jerked his head up with a strange expression. His eye twitched, the same one that scarred half of Butter’s face.
“That you, you-know; saw me.” He glared at Butters with no real malice. Butters stepped back anyway, his heart tugging awkwardly, unexpectedly, like when Cartman tied his shoelaces to his chair.
“When what?” He still didn’t get it. It was always like this.
“When I died, dumbass.” Kenny’s brow furrowed, puckering wrinkles around his mouth and nose, as if the topic grossed him out. Hushed wind was picking up, drowning out their voices. Flurries cast the world off-center, surreal and dizzying and not-a-very-big-deal, how it felt when Butters found Kenny impaled on the tether ball after recess.
“But you die every day.” Butters tried. Kenny didn’t respond. He tugged the strings of his parka tighter, obscuring his face.
They stood there, averting each other’s gazes, because Butters didn’t know what to say. Kenny was clenching his fists tightly around the strings, and Butters thought he could see them tremble. He glanced between his fists and where he hid his face. Slowly, a revelation was coming over him, too vague to comprehend yet, until Kenny made a soft noise.
He was sniffling.
A shot of panic ricocheted upwards to his skull. Butters reached out towards Kenny, but Kenny was faster. He dodged, simultaneously pulling his hood further over his face. He hunched as he turned from Butters, hiding, and when Butters stumbled towards him he caught Butter’s hurt expression through the last horizontal slit he couldn’t pull closed. Seeing that, and seeing that Butters saw him, Kenny ran.
“Oh- Ken-” Butters barely got out before Kenny moved, which Butters barely processed in time to trail after Kenny, side-hopping antsly. Kenny sped up, and soon Butters was running too, too focused on his friend to care for the cold or for fifth period. He didn’t know where they were going, but as Kenny jumped onto the chainlink fence, hoisting one foot up, Butters had an idea.
Butters reached out again, grabbing his arm. Kenny tried to shake him off, but couldn’t do much but jerk his shoulders as he latched another foot up. Butters tugged on him with all his weight as he leaned backwards.
“Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you say anything!?” Kenny shrieked at him, voice cracking in its pitch as he struggled. He twisted away violently, grappling his other hand higher as he curled this way and that, flailing in an attempt to buck the other boy off. Butters didn’t budge, looking at him with big wide, worried eyes. Kenny kicked him.
Apparently this wasn’t a situation that granted much insight, from the moment-to-moment actions. Butters grunted with the impact, wincing and gripping Kenny’s arm with a blanch of his knuckles. Kenny’s other foot took the inopportune moment to slip, and they fell tumbling onto each other in a great huff of dirt and leaves and snow.
The chainlink fence now towered infinitely high and dizzy before them, meeting the leaden sky as their solemn superiors. They both paused, breaths coming in gasps and hiccups. The wind had been knocked out of Butters, because all hundred and one pounds of Kenny had fallen on top of him, and though Kenny wasn’t very big Butters was still smaller. Kenny was shocked into silence, which gave the time for adrenalized anger to subside back into sadness. Even worse, a listless kind.
He rolled off Butters onto his side, which made said-boy wheeze, and just laid there. After a moment, Butters turned his head to the side, squinting at Kenny’s dirtied back. Big clumps of wet snow clung to him, uncomfortable and heavy.
“...You want to know why I didn’t say anything?” Butters spoke up after a while, voice shy enough to almost be a whisper. Kenny gave no indication he heard him at all. Butters faced the clouded canopy blankly. He watched the flakes spawn from emptiness, dancing and twirling down onto his nose. No other kids were out now, just them. If he was quiet enough he could hear himself breathing. And if he was still enough he could see Kenny breathing, too. It was there, an imperceptible rise and fall.
Butters still didn’t know what to say. But they couldn’t just lay there …or maybe they could. Does this count as hanging out? His fingers tingled without their gloves, but only distantly, as if he was somewhere very far from his body. He wondered if this is what Kenny felt like. He hoped so. It was nice, soft and fuzzed out at the corners. He’d sort of like to die with Kenny.
But Kenny wasn’t feeling well. His shoulders shook and Butters frowned. And he never liked to see his friend that way. If he wanted to know why he never said anything, if that made him feel better, how could Butters refuse him that? He had already messed up enough, so it was the least he could do. He took a deep, shaky inhale.
“Well,” Butters began. Kenny still didn’t stir. “Well… uhm.. It’s like, you're like my pet goldfish.”
There was a pause.
Then Butters had to suppress a yelp, because Kenny flipped back onto his back very suddenly, limp hand knocking his shoulder. Raising slightly on his elbow, Butters blinked rapidly, scrubbing his scarred eye with a balled-fist, adjusting. When he stopped, Kenny wasn’t crying anymore, but glaring into the sky incredulously. His mouth was open again in a half-grimacing half-frown, and nervousness kicked sharply at Butters ribs from the inside.
“I mean, well, you just keep on dying in these funny ways..” That didn’t come out right. “Like! Like the time I found my goldfish with its ovaries on the wrong side, at the bottom of the toilet when I went to take a wee… and I’d never forget that, Kenny. I don’t forget! Pinky swear.”
Kenny finally met his gaze, eyes still shining with sensitivity. He was still frowning, though in a different way. He wasn’t crying anymore at least, but the tears had iced over his face, freezing his eyelids. They sort of burned. He could neither blink nor look away from Butters as the other boy held up his pinky finger.
Kenny weakly lifted his own, and a little spark flickered in Butters chest. He tried not to shake them too vigorously. Butters was leaning over him now, both hands holding him up.
“But the next day my dad bought another one, and he told me it was the same goldfish, and I just went along with it. Cuz, well, I like to believe it’s the same goldfish. Even if I saw its dead body.”
And to Butter’s surprise, Kenny smiled at him.
Warmth fluttered in his chest, a little like the nervousness kicking, but incomparable in the way it made him feel. Nobody ever saw Kenny smile, but Butters had done a pretty shit job of rezipping his coat. So when his lips split into a grin with a few too many teeth missing, Butters couldn’t help from smiling back, sheepish and happy.
And later, when they walked home together –even though they live on opposite sides of town– the feeling didn’t fade. They didn’t have anything more to say, so Butters waved an awkward little goodbye as he left him at his doorstep. And as he left, he thought that maybe, probably, he could see the corners of Kenny’s eyes crinkle up. And the next day when Butters found Kenny’s bashed-in body on the side of the road, crushed by the bus again, he let a little dorky blush spread to his ears. Because he knew his goldfish would come back.