#UGH high school drama will they wont they childhood friends strangers to friends to best friends to lovers

[southieparkie]

i love bunny bc theyre two kids that dont feel seen or heard getting together to see and hear each other. i saw a post from someone saying that kenny would only hang out with butters because he pitties him and its been sitting with my soul for so long.

expanding on that idea, what if kenny would one day realize that he’s treating butters the same way everyone else does because he doesn’t truly care about what leo has to say, even though they hang out often. so to fix that, one day he’ll just decide to tune in on one of his rambles. and he sees a twinkle in leo’s eyes when he talks about what he loves, and kenny just gravitates towards that joy.

so he decides to chime in with the things that he loves, and leo listens with no judgement. nascar, halloween, they even get into a lengthy conversation about playboy and kenny’ll show off his collection. leo will be impressed and enamored, and soon they’ll spend an entire afternoon looking at boobies.

then they’ll grow up, doing the same thing they always have: rambling about their interests to each other and listening to what they have to say.

one day, kenny’ll have a breakdown at school over his curse and how nobody will believe that he’s immortal, and butters’ll comfort him, saying that this whole time he’s known. just not in this world, in this universe. he’d have dreams where kenny would die in the most gruesome ways, and they would petrify him. so he understands. he understands the pain he’s going through, and he cries with kenny because kenny is so hurt. he’s in so much pain, and he cant make it disappear at the snap of his fingers. all he can do is be present, which he is. at this moment, with leo nurturing him, making him feel like a kid being protected by a competent adult, a feeling he’s never gotten the pleasure of having much growing up, he falls in love.

but leo doesn’t. he still sees ken as a confidante, a pal, a broken soul to heal, but never a partner. he sees other people, looks at other people, because he’s finally earned the confidence to be such a social butterfly. he’s blossomed, everybody loves him, especially the boys.

kenny is pissed, even getting overly protective at times, because he and leo are supposed to be together. doesnt leo love him? he would’ve walked away when kenny barked for him to on the day of his breakdown if he didnt, right?

still, he cant help but be happy for his lil buddy, because he’s finally becoming the “leopold” that “butters” never was. he has so many friends, and stephen and linda are out of the picture now. he’s free. sure, kenny’s still stuck in hell on earth, with only karen and leo (and he supposes stan and the guys) to keep him completely sane. but he doesn’t care. his heart is being fed by leo’s happiness. if leo wasn’t happy, he’d feel so empty. his heart would be so hungry.

leo would come around after a night at a party with viciously spiked punch. kenny would hold his hair back as he vomited on the stevens’ sidewalk, his vision blurred and his body shaking. kenny would lead him all the way home, and beg for miss nellie and her brand new husband to not ground butters, because he’s had enough groundings in his life. leo overhears the encounter, kenny politely yet frantically asking that they take it easy on the trashed blond and offering to take him back to his bedroom to tuck him in, and it clicks

no one else was ever going to treat him this way. no one was going to be this good to him or treat him like something other than a failure. he knows kenny will protect him the same way he wants to protect kenny, which is a key aspect in a relationship that his parents never seemed to have. he confesses his newly aquired infatuation once he and kenny are upstairs, still a bit buzzed off of the alcohol, and kenny immediately accepts and reciprocates, perhaps being a little tipsy off of the punch himself.

of course, they would build their “going steady relationship first before the big “i love you,” which they shared at leo’s last cheerleading compotition as a sophomore, the juniors and seniors going wild that their little sunshine blond flyer has finally found his perfect match

(YALL I WANNA WRITE THIS FIC SO BAD BUT I JUST…I CANY. I. I HAVE BIG FEELINGS RN. I AM CRYING AS IM TYPING THIS.)

#south park #sp #sp bunny #im emotional #kenny mccormick #butters leopold stotch #this could be ooc? idk #granted i did write this in like ten minutes to do with this what you will #UGH high school drama will they wont they childhood friends strangers to friends to best friends to lovers #i will pay someone to write this for me #long post #ykw idek what this is #a rant? a retrospective?? #a brief moment of my own vulnerability because i wrote leo’s perspective from my own POV?? #yeah im banking on that one being it