Kenny was confident about the second challenge. He was an okay artist—he'd always doodled whenever he was thinking, and several people had told him that they weren't bad. The assignment was simple—Kyle wanted them to draw portraits of him. Kyle lounged on top of the table, striking different poses. He was joking—no one was drawing directly from his likeness. Kenny bit his lip, watching him toss his head back and shake out his gorgeously curly hair. He stared hard at his pale, slender throat, swallowed hard, and turned his attention to the page in front of him.

He set his pencil down to the page and began, letting himself focus completely on the task at hand. He couldn't really capture Kyle realistically—he strongly doubted any of them were that talented at drawing—but he could capture the feel of him. He drew a figure in an ushanka, with curly hair poking out of the bottom, standing on a fictional hill overlooking Stark's Pond. You knew it was Stark's Pond, you see, because Kenny drew the sign and wrote Stark's Pond right on it. Ken's tongue stuck out just slightly in his concentration.

"Your daughter is a slut." This came in a conversational tone from Cartman. Kenny started a little upon realizing that he was speaking to Wendy and therefore referring to Kyle. "Look at her, showing off for suitors like a common whore."

Kenny looked up in time to see Wendy cast him a scathing look. "You'd know all about common whores," she hissed. "That's all you have down in Pleasant Hills. Or should I say Peasant Hills?"

Kenny muffled a snort into his gloved hand and refocused on the drawing, unwilling to let himself be distracted. He started to draw himself in next to Kyle, with big smiles on both of their faces. Maybe he'd have them holding hands. He heard Cartman and Wendy continuing to argue but kept drawing, pushing their voices from his mind.

OoO

Kyle had stopped posing and instead sat up straight on the table, legs stretched out in front of him, glaring at Cartman after the slut comment. He could see the alliance falling apart quickly, and wondered what his character motivation in this situation would be. Does he want the alliance to fall apart so he will not have to wed, or does he want to stop the civil war brewing in the far reaches of his kingdom?

"If what you're after is a common whore," he said coolly, interrupting Wendy who had just begun to speak, "Perhaps I could offer the services of my chambermaid?"

Butters stiffened upon realizing that he was, in fact, the chambermaid, and flushed bright red. The Warlock looked him up and down, his anger deflating, and nodded once. "Yes, actually," he said, his tone dangerous and cocky. "That will be fine."

Cartman always overdedicated himself to characters and would not shy from taking a specific course of action that might embarrass him as long as it was in character. The rule was that you had to go into the next room and either have sex for real (usually the only pair to take advantage of this was Stan and Wendy, and on one deeply memorable occasion, Tweek and Craig), or make very loud, very fake sex noises for a few minutes. Butters HATED making the noises, and secretly, Kyle was pretty sure Cartman didn't like it either. Maybe it reminded him of when his mother was still entertaining men in the house.

Cartman grabbed Butters' wrist and began to tug him towards the door that lead to the little room where the washer and dryer were kept. Wendy whistled and winked at Butters, who turned tomato red and sputtered, looking helplessly at his longtime friend, Eric, who merely pushed him into the cramped room and shut the door. Kyle, Wendy, and Clyde stared expectantly at the door, but no sounds emerged. Wendy raised a thin, dark eyebrow after a few minutes of silence and called snottily, "Follow the rules, fatass! Either fuck or fake it!"

Everyone in the room froze as Cartman's voice called back breathlessly, "I am, asshole!"

Wendy clapped her hand to her mouth and Clyde looked rather green. Kenny looked up for long enough to grin wickedly at the closed door, but then he became distracted again. "I thought you said he had a girlfriend!" Kyle shot at Wendy, who shook her head, cheeks pink.

"I thought he did!" she insisted. "You just actually whored Butters out!"

The redhead rolled his eyes back at her. "It's not my fault Butters is a common whore!" The words were playful. Kyle checked his watch. "Five more minutes on the drawings! He called to the competitors.

Kenny looked absolutely panic stricken, Kyle realized suddenly, glancing between his paper and Token's with an air of desperation. He seemed frozen with indecision, pencil hovering anxiously over his own art, but his eyes fixed on the other boy's. Kyle frowned, worried that Kenny was getting too worked up over the competitive aspect of the game as some of the boys sometimes did. He needed to calm down.

The last minutes ticked away, Clyde and Kyle improvising a chat about trade with a nearby kingdom, the Land of the Gnomic Regime, in order to block out the very faint sounds coming from beyond the door to the washing room. Kyle had been very unwilling to continue listening after hearing what he swore was a squeal, and they spoke a little louder than necessary. Finally, Kyle called time.

"Bring up your drawings!" His voice was sing-songy and he held out his hand to take the first drawing, smiling broadly. "Hurry up, Cartman!" he called over his shoulder.

"Shut the fuck up, Jew, we're getting cleaned up!" Cartman called back. Kyle rolled his eyes, taking the paper from Craig, who stared impassively at him, and looking down at it with mirth in his eyes.

Kyle choked upon seeing the image there. It was shoddily drawn in anime style, and a doe-eyed Kyle Broflovski stared up at him from the page, naked with his leg bent to cover his privates, and blush lines drawn on his cheeks. 'B-baka!' read the speech bubble drawn close to her head. He stared at it, able to see where Tweek and Craig had worked together on the drawing with mixed results. The arms looked like they were drawn independently of each other.

Suddenly, Cartman was at his shoulder, a little flushed and damp at the temples. "Nice," he commented. "Did everyone draw you naked?"

Kyle whipped his head around to look at Kenny and Token, terrified that they had, indeed, chosen to also draw him nude. They both shook their heads. Kyle glowered at Tweek and Craig, who held hands as they looked at him hopefully from across the table, Tweek with a delighted smirk on his face and Craig only displaying his amusement in the slight crinkle around his eyes. "You two are terrible," he scolded. "If no one else drew me nude, I'm disqualifying you on the basis that you've failed to respect the crown."

Tweek giggled delightedly. "Can we keep the drawing?" he asked. Kyle rolled his eyes and handed it back, looking to Kenny expectantly. The blond mutely handed over his page, looking pale.

A smile curved Kyle's lips as he took it in. It was cute and cartoonish, depicting himself standing with Kenny in a landscape park scene. It was very sweet, and the sight of their little ball hands overlapping was positively heartwarming. The Kenny in the picture was looking at the Kyle, who looked out at the viewer. "Much better than that pornography," Kyle scoffed, gesturing rudely to the first paper. He sat Kenny's down carefully and looked up at Token, smiling.

The look in Token's eye caught him off guard. It was heated, and his eyes lidded, and Token's hand brushed against his own as he handed off his art. Kyle did not know Token particularly well. They'd always gotten along fine, but honestly, Kyle had barely even seen him this summer. The change in behavior was unsettling, and, deigning to ignore it, he turned his attention to the page.

Kyle gasped.

It was him. It was stunning—rough, but realistic, well proportioned and excellently shaded, and undoubtedly him, his head propped up on his fist, his gaze off to the side and distinctly wistful. There was meticulous attention to detail with the shape and shading of the eyes and the lips, and a smattering of freckles on the nose, and Kyle knew instantly that Token was not playing any game. His eyes flashed up to meet those of the tall, handsome man whom had drawn him so lovingly, and found his dark eyes warm and heavy-lidded.

Desperate for an escape from the intensity of that look, he glanced at Wendy, who looked concerned, and then to Kenny, who appeared to be shaking slightly. His eyes were flickering back and forth between Token, who still stood directly across the table from Kyle, looking at him with longing, to the page held in Kyle's small hands. There was anger in the set of his jaw and Kyle realized that they were both serious.

His face flushed and his stomach clenched, and he turned away from them both. His voice was high and plainly displayed his discomfort as he pushed forward. "W-well, on to the third challenge then. The final round of this, of this competition, is, ah, a duel."

And before Kyle could begin to explain that they'd be sword fighting with some of the plastic swords from when they were kids, he heard the unmistakable sound of flesh on flesh and whipped around to see Token on the ground, Kenny hurling himself down on top of him.

OoO

This is weirdly boring. It's like I can't feel the characters, and I'm recounting the story as an observer. I'm going to try to just finish it up and call it good practice, I think. Rating will change next chapter.

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