Kenny had a tattoo. Holy fuck, Kenny fucking McCormick had a fucking tattoo.

And Kyle wouldn't even have noticed if Kenny hadn't spilled gravy on that stupid orange coat during dinner at Stan's place, and Mrs. Marsh hadn't insisted on putting it in the wash.

Nobody else seemed to have seen it; it was never brought up in conversation, and maybe it was only Kyle who happened to be watching when Kenny tugged his coat off and the shirt underneath rode up for a moment, revealing black ink just visible over Kenny's left hip. It didn't even look new.

Kyle wondered what it meant. What everything meant. That Kenny hadn't told them, for one thing. They were supposed to be friends--best friends. Okay, maybe Stan was supposed to be Kyle's super best friend forever, but...

Who was Kenny's best friend?

Sure wasn't Cartman, though Kenny had wound up trailing along behind the fat fuck simply because Kyle and Stan had been--well, they'd assumed. Since they were super best friends forever and all, they naturally would team up, and there was just no room for Kenny. But Cartman was nobody's best friend. Hell, Kyle wasn't sure he was anybody's friend at all. Stupid pissant asshole.

So who was Kenny's best friend, then? Kyle had no fucking idea.

And why was it so surprising that Kenny had a tattoo? So many South Park kids had gotten them lately that the tattoo and piercing parlor downtown had expanded twice. But somehow the fact that Kenny, (one of) Kyle's best friend(s) Kenny had ink was earth-shattering.

Not to mention the design itself. A dollar sign with, like, curly shit all around it. Who the hell knew what that meant. Maybe it was a goal of Kenny's or something, to get really rich someday.

Kyle mulled it over for two weeks.

He kept trying to sneak glances at it, but Kenny showed almost no skin at any time. Even now, at seventeen, he'd retreat into the depths of his coat whenever he was nervous or pensive. Kyle, searching through his memories, realized that his mental image of Kenny was little more than an orange coat with some stray blond hairs poking out. He spent so much time staring at that stupid coat and willing it to lift, just a little bit, that his notes were the worst they'd been in ten years.

Stan, naturally, was too busy tagging after his girlfriend to notice Kyle's preoccupation, and Cartman never noticed anything anyway. So Kyle figured he had gone undetected until Kenny dragged him behind a tree at lunch and demanded to know what the fuck was going on.

"Um." Kyle blinked, a bit owlishly. "What do you mean? N-nothing's going on."

"Jesus, you're a crap liar."

There was no escape. Kenny had both hands fisted tightly in Kyle's coat, his face inches away, right there, blue eyes sparking with annoyance. Yeah, Kenny was skinny, but he still had the advantage over an undersized diabetic Jew who spent too much time in the library. There was nothing for it.

"I--you have a tattoo."

Kenny's grip eased, mild confusion replacing the annoyance. "Yes...and?"

That was just too fucking much.

"And why didn't you tell me? All of us? Why'd you get it? When? And, and what does it mean?"

Dimly, Kyle realized he was ranting, but he simply didn't care. "We're supposed to be friends--best friends, and you know what that means? That means when you make a fucking life-altering decision, you tell us! You don't get a tattoo, a permanent tattoo that will be on you forever until you rot away in the ground, without telling us. Asking us what we think. I dunno, just--just telling us. Me. Telling me."

"Kyle."

"And another thing, when exactly did you get it? I mean, I only noticed two weeks ago--"

"Kyle."

"--didn't exactly look new, you must have had it for fucking ages--"

"Kyle."

"What?"

"Dude, why do you care so much?"

"I--"

Of course I care, he wanted to say. You stupid bastard, of course I care. I just don't know why.

Just then, the bell rang, and Kenny let go of Kyle's coat altogether. "Look, Kyle, I'll tell you about it later if you want. Meet me at Stark's Pond after school?"

"Yeah," said Kyle. "Okay."

It was cold, because it was always cold. Kyle was early or Kenny was late, he wasn't sure, all he knew was that it was cold and he was lying in the snow waiting for stupid Kenny and his stupid tattoo. In the past fortnight, he'd gone over everything he knew about Kenny again and again, and he started over out of sheer habit.

Kenny knew stuff. Had always known stuff. Yeah, Kyle was probably the smartest of the four--hell, the smartest in the school, if you didn't count Wendy. But Kenny had always been a little more--knowledgeable than the rest of them when it came to things that actually mattered.

Kenny had never had a girlfriend. Kyle realized suddenly that he didn't know if Kenny was a virgin or not. He'd never had that stupid expression Stan got after spending a night with Wendy, but Kyle didn't know what people other than Stan looked like after sex. That in and of itself was a tragedy that he had sought to remedy a few times, but...things just never worked out. Girls were weird and Kyle just never, well, connected with any of the South Park girls.

Oh well. He had time, right? He was only seventeen. There were plenty of seventeen-year-old virgins. It didn't matter whether or not Kenny was one, too, did it?

"Hey." Kenny was suddenly there in an orange sprawl.

"Hey," said Kyle, blushed, and hated himself.

"So, um, tattoo. What do you want to know?"

"Well..." Kyle propped himself up on his elbows and stared out over the surface of the pond. "When did you get it?"

"A few months ago, for my birthday."

"It was a present? From whom?"

"Me to me."

"Fuck, this feels like an interrogation," Kyle sighed. "Can't you just...tell me about it? What does it mean?"

Kenny tugged his coat up, exposing the patch of skin. To Kyle, it looked even more stark against Kenny's pale skin than it had before.

"It's a reminder, I guess. That everything has a price. You remember how Cartman used to wave money at me whenever he wanted me to do something? I realized a long time ago that I'm for sale, too. Kyle...I know I'm white trash. I'm not like the rest of you; I'm not going to any college and I don't have a future. This is it for me. I'll do whatever it takes to get enough money to stay alive. So yeah, I'm reminding myself that I'm for sale. I didn't tell you guys because Cartman would make fun of me and I thought you and Stan wouldn't care."

Kyle stared in shock. "That's terrible."

"It's true."

"But--you have a future, of course you have a future. And why wouldn't we care? I care. You're my friend, dammit."

Kenny laughed, hard and bitter. "Fucking hell, Kyle, wake up and smell the shit. I don't have jack. No money, no prospects, no future."

"You've got me," Kyle said, and immediately felt really stupid.

Kenny shot him a weird sideways glance, but Kyle thought he saw a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "That's pretty gay."

"Shut up, Kenny." Kyle felt happier than he had in a long while, just sitting there, close to Kenny in companionable silence. There was homework waiting for him, essays and worksheets and fuck-all, but who actually gave a shit? This was good.

He rolled over to stare at the tattoo some more, and couldn't resist reaching out to run his fingers over it. Kenny's skin was surprisingly warm, and Kyle could feel him sucking in a sharp breath of surprise at the touch. He glanced up to see that Kenny's hood had fallen off, and something undefined shot through him, hot and sudden. Blushing, he scrambled to his feet, muttering excuses, and fled.

A/N: To be continued shortly. Probably one more chapter? Not sure.

I really, really love Kenny.

Edit: um, accidentally listed Mr. Mackey as a char, because his name is right under Kyle's. Fixed.

Edit 11/29/09: so, as is fairly usual for me, I now cannot read this without going "Oh, no. I did not write that, that is terrible. What was I thinking? How could I have let something like that escape from the confines in my head? Who told me it was a good idea to put this on the internet?" Anyway, I've been editing a bit. Not a whole lot, because I'm supposed to be applying to grad school right about now, but still.