Chapter Text
Frankly, he’s not quite sure how they ended up here. Just moments ago—or at least what felt like moments ago—they were talking about the same shit as usual: school, video games, sports. Boy shit. Yet now, somehow, they’re talking about…romance. Holding hands. Kissing. The whole ordeal.
Stan figures it’s probably because of Wendy. Well, not directly because of her, but rather because he always ends up mentioning her at least once. He can’t really help it—they’ve been dating on and off for forever and when she ended it the last time a year or so back, he began to feel sort of distracted.
Not that he wanted her back or anything, no, Stan knew well enough as the rest of South Park that neither of them had truly wanted to stay together for a good few years before their inevitable crash and burn. It boils down to the change in his daily routine, the lack of someone who was always there just suddenly up and…disappearing.
He knows that’s a dramatic jump in conclusions, but Stan has never been one to embrace change and he sure as hell isn’t starting now. The thoughts are starting to twist and pulse at the forefront of his head, where his hand promptly reaches up and tugs his toque down over the skin as if it would dull the oncoming pain.
“Dude,” Kyle’s voice punctures through the thinly-veiled shield his thoughts have accumulated around him, “are you even listening?”
Stan grumbles out a response, though none of the sounds are distinguishable enough to be called English. His head falls to the side and finds his best friend propped up against the headboard of Stan’s bed, knees pulled up and arms splayed over them without a care in the world. It’s hard to fight the smile that’s cracking through his features as he watches Kyle’s expression morph from annoyance to something just a little softer.
“I’m listening,” he says, clearer this time. The words register properly and Kyle hums as he twirls a thick strand of curly, ginger hair around his finger.
“What did I say?”
Shit. That’s not fair.
“Uh,” Stan turns his gaze away and watches the ceiling fan spin round and round as if it could carry away his white lie, “that I’m super cool and that you’re honored to have a best friend as cool and epic as I am?”
Kyle scoffs. Stan isn’t looking, but he can practically see the way his cheeks rise in an unsatisfied, yet amused grin—the kind he always wears when Stan says something stupid enough to get a rise out of him.
“I did not say that.”
“Well, I heard it, so you must’ve said it.”
“You’re the most uncool guy I’ve ever met.” Kyle juts his leg out and nudges Stan’s shoulder with his knee. “I’m embarrassed to even call myself your friend.”
“Best friend,” Stan corrects.
“Super best friend,” Kyle retorts. He lifts his leg back up and tucks it under his arms again, just after adjusting the light green ushanka atop his head. “Seriously, though, man. Like…did you guys do anything?”
Stan blinks. “Backtrack,” he says, an admission of more guilt than he’s willing to put into words. He can hear another huff escape Kyle, but he must be merciful today because he does backtrack without ripping on Stan a second time.
“You and Wendy, dude,” Kyle says. “You guys were together for, like, ever.”
Stan makes a noise of acknowledgment. He turns over on his side facing Kyle and props himself up on an elbow. “Well, yeah,” he mutters, “but, I dunno, it’s not like it was anything…for real. We kissed maybe once or twice, but that was back when we were still little kids.” He pauses, as if unsure, but then continues whilst playing with the bedsheets between his fingers, “The farthest we’ve ever gone was just holding hands.”
Kyle’s face warps into some indiscernible emotion, but Stan notices the change all the same. “You haven’t kissed her since elementary school?”
He tries not to, but a snort finds its way out of Stan’s nostrils at the strange tone carrying across Kyle’s words. “Dude, I don’t really care about all that—not anymore, at least. Besides, she dumped me for good, remember?”
“How could I forget? I thought you were going to die.”
“Okay!” Stan shifts himself upright at that, crossing one leg over another. He rolls his eyes and brushes away a few stray pieces of hair caught over his eyelashes. “It wasn’t that catastrophic. You thought wrong, clearly. Not dead yet.”
When Kyle laughs, Stan feels a jolt of pride swell up inside his chest; he likes making people laugh, but most of all he likes making Kyle laugh. That is no easy feat.
“Alright,” Kyle says, and although he tries to come off as irritated by the way he rolls his eyes, he can’t quite bite back the fond smile ever-present on his lips, “I guess you weren’t as torn apart about it as I thought you would be. I expected you to open the door drenched in your own tears and vomit.”
“Gross, dude.”
Kyle shoots him a look. “You used to throw up all the time as a kid!”
Stan winces. “I was a kid,” he shoots back, leaning forward against the palms of his hands. “It’s not my fault my stupid stomach couldn’t keep shit down when I got nervous or whatever!” He notices the way Kyle’s begun playing with the ends of his sleeves and lets out a soft breath. “Why’re we even talking about this again? It’s like beating a dead horse. We’re over, we’ve been over, and I don’t care about Wendy like that anymore—as a friend, sure, she’s great, but that’s the extent of it.”
There’s an unnatural pause in Kyle’s remarks to his whining (though Stan himself wouldn’t call it that) and Stan almost apologizes for being a burden until his friend breaks the silence again: “Aren’t you, like, curious though? Even a little?”
Stan frowns. “About Wendy?”
“No, I mean,” Kyle grumbles between the syllables, and Stan realizes much too quickly that his cheeks are turning rosy with his sudden bashfulness. His voice is smaller than usual as he continues, “kissing…and stuff.”
Stan is still leaning forward against the palms of his hands, but he suddenly feels like he should be leaning backward instead. So he does. He leans back and stares at Kyle for a moment longer, eyebrows raised, until he feels the gears finally click into place and asks, “Are…you?”
“Isn’t—isn’t everyone?” Kyle’s face is reddening as he speaks, tone peaking with defensiveness as if Stan would ever actually judge him for something like this. Playfully, sure, but seriously? Never in a million years. “Even when we were little, we would always talk about…y’know, getting chicks and going on dates and—and kissing and having sex. I never really cared that much. I didn’t feel like I had to care. I don’t, but,” he sighs, finding his hands out in front of himself as he’d been gesturing to exaggerate his points, “you know what I mean, right, dude?”
“I…guess so,” Stan mutters, still a little shocked that Kyle of all people is talking about this. Romance on its own is enough of a shocker, but to double down and talk about wanting to kiss and be kissed is a whole other thing. Stan sort of just assumed Kyle wasn’t interested in any of that at all. “I thought you had a girlfriend before, though. Back when we were kids.”
“I didn’t really—I liked her, I guess, but it didn’t really go anywhere.” One of Kyle’s hands has now found itself at the side of his ushanka, lightly tugging at the ear flap. “I dunno if I ever really even liked her as much as I thought I did.”
“Oh,” Stan says, mostly because he doesn’t know what else to say.
Kyle frowns, then points out, “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“Which one?”
“About the—the kissing, dude. What else?”
Stan shrugs. “I guess I am kinda curious,” he admits, both to Kyle and himself. He hasn’t really thought about things like that ever since he realized his feelings for Wendy had faded—he hasn’t had a reason to think about them. He doesn’t have anyone he wants to kiss in the first place.
“Do you wanna try?”
The words are garbled together, fast and breathless, but Stan still catches them.
What?
“What?”
He finds Kyle’s viridian gaze through the sudden blur that encapsulates the corners of his vision. His face is still as red as his hair, but his lips are pursed and his eyebrows are knit together in the middle, not quite certain and not quite uncertain.
“Do you wanna try kissing?” Kyle asks again. Then, almost rushed, he adds, “Each other. Kissing…each other.”
Stan can’t exactly pinpoint what he perceives first, but he becomes acutely aware of the way goosebumps form underneath his skin and the blood in his veins might as well be gasoline set alight. It’s a passing thought, hardly even computing in his malfunctioning brain, but Stan wonders for even a second just how red he must be in that moment. Blistering crimson from his ears down to the tips of his fingers, yet he can barely even discern why he feels nauseatingly embarrassed rather than put off by the offer.
When he feels he can breathe properly (when did he falter?), Stan attempts to loosen his stiffened and locked posture and grasps at whatever words seem promising enough not to fail him. “You—you want to kiss me,” is breathless and airy and not all there, but he knows Kyle hears him when the boy straightens himself against the headboard.
“Shit, wait, I don’t—” Somehow relieving, Kyle sounds just as buzzed and frantic— “I don’t mean it like that, dude, I swear. Just—just a friend thing, so…when we actually have to kiss our future girlfriends or whatever, we won’t fuck it up.”
Faintly, silently, Stan doesn’t buy it. The doubt is gone faster than it arrives— this is Kyle, he assures, and the way his gut churns is none of his business.
“Like…as practice?”
Kyle’s shoulders visibly relax. “Yeah,” he hurries atop the words as they leave his tongue, “like practice. ‘Cause—well, you know. Kenny’s…Kenny and there’s no way in hell or on earth I would ask Cartman something like this.”
Stan isn’t sure when their gazes had fallen apart, nor when they had found each other again, but he’s almost mesmerized by the vulnerability displayed inside of Kyle’s. The light shimmers like liquid inside his irises and a funny feeling rises up inside of Stan that he’s all too eager to stamp out.
His fate is sealed when Kyle scrunches his nose, fingers twisted in the sheets beside him and knuckles pale from the grip. He looks pitiful.
“I trust you, Stan.”
“Okay.” He feels stupid. His head is spinning. “Okay,” he repeats, and Stan doesn’t know who reaches out first. He barely cares.
It’s messy—of course it’s messy—but neither of them knows how to properly navigate the space between them on that shitty, small mattress of Stan’s, let alone when their lips are inches apart and they can feel each other’s breath. Kyle’s hands press against Stan’s shoulders in an awkward grip to keep him from pulling away (or maybe that’s just what Stan wants it to be). His own hands find the loose wrinkles of Kyle’s t-shirt and occupy that area, unsure of whether gripping at his best friend’s waist would be the best thing to do.
Kissing is one thing, he thinks, and thinks, and thinks. Is that too far?
Evidently not, because Kyle’s hand wanders as their teeth knock together—Stan hisses quietly and Kyle mutters a rushed apology—and his palm presses flat and open against the side of Stan’s neck. It’s hot, particularly warmer than the rest of his body, which seems impossible given the licks of fire burning under every inch of his skin, but who is he to argue with facts? Each movement of Kyle’s fingers, no matter how subtle or minuscule, is devastatingly easy to catch thanks to body heat. At the very least, Stan finds solace in the fact that they’re equally embarrassed about this—equally as nervous.
It’s only when Kyle pulls back that Stan finds himself taking note of the way his lips had felt and tasted; there’s nothing that particularly stands out, but he does realize that he has surprisingly soft lips. There’s a fuzzy memory playing somewhere in the back of Stan’s mind of Kyle applying chapstick.
“…So?”
Kyle looks at him and Stan stares back. His lungs feel simultaneously overflowing and barren. He doesn’t know what to say.
“So,” Stan echoes dumbly.
Kyle turns his head to the side, just the slightest bit, as if he wants to run away and stay put all the same. “That…wasn’t really anything special,” he decides for the both of them.
Stan disagrees. “Yeah,” his mouth disobeys.
The silence returns, heavier than before; it’s clear that neither of them knows what to do now that they’ve crossed this invisible boundary, nor do they know what the next step is. In the silence, Kyle shuffles backward on the bed and reaches down for his backpack.
Oh.
“I think—I think I’m gonna get going,” he says. It’s hard to meet his eyes now. Stan searches regardless.
“Oh, uh, yeah,” Stan mumbles. He doesn’t find them. “I didn’t…realize how late it was.” His throat becomes scratchy with hesitancy and he clears it with only a flicker of a second thought. “See you tomorrow, dude?”
And Kyle slings his bag over his shoulder and nods. “Yeah,” he says, indecipherable. “See you tomorrow.”