Work Text:
In middle school, when Xeno has already decided that Stanley Snyder is the only person worth a thing in his proximity, he notices his shredded lips.
Stanley tugs at them with his teeth at all hours, leaving his lips cracked and sensitive to the touch. He'd found that out in a particular moment of weakness. He's still learning how being in love with Stanley works, and he's not good at it yet. In a mistaken moment, he’d reached out to caress Stanley's pretty lips, and earned a flinch and harsh words for it. He had noted that in his findings with distinct distaste.
Soon after, he scours every corner of the world for recipes, and uses his allowance to get the materials for good lip balm. He makes five tins in case Stan likes it. He does.
“Oh, shit. Thanks, Xe!” he says, an honest smile breaking across his face before he can wrestle it down into a smirk. Within the next week his scarred and cracked lips begin to heal and plump. Xeno deals with this normally, of course.
The mixture works well to heal, but it doesn't prevent Stanley from biting in the first place. Halfway through highschool, Xeno tries mixing in a bittering agent with his usual balm—and gets the cold shoulder for a week for it. Maybe the closest Stanley has ever come to killing him is the month Xeno spends trying different flavorings to keep his friend from ruining his lips. It’s an illogical, inelegant fixation, but he can't help the need.
Their afternoons take up routine. Stanley is always at his house anyways, so he might as well test flavors against his particular preferences.
“Fucking pineapple? Why would you even think that would work?” Stanley complains, gargling water to purge the taste of artificial pineapple and handing back the single use tin. Until Xeno finds a taste that Stan actually likes enough to stop biting, there's no point making a full batch.
“Fine,” he drawls, “any suggestions?”
Stanley pauses in his rant. He likes being angry once he gets into the swing of it, and now his momentum is broken. How rude.
“Uh…Well, I'm not the scientist,” he grumbles. Petty bastard. Xeno fears he's swooning.
To properly cope with this, he rolls over in his bed and shrieks into his pillow.
“Hey man, let's go grab a bite. You're getting loopy. When’d you last sleep?”
“I've slept this week.”
“Xeno. It's friday," Stanley recalls with pointed bite.
“I have!” he cries immaturely.
“Xeno H. Wingfield.”
Xeno straightens out of bed. “Let's order in. I'll pay and nap while we wait, since you insist.”
Stanley just smiles.
A pizza is sacrificed to two teenage boys’ appetites within the hour, and Stan watches Xeno sway in place. While sitting down. He hasn't been Xeno-wrangling well enough if he's gotten this bad.
“I’ll wake you up in a couple hours, go lay down. You done your homework?”
“Mmm.”
Stanley figures that's a yes. He gets a little better at translating Xeno’s mannerisms every day, a tedious process of memorizing distracted mumbles and squinting eyes. He's pretty sure Xeno is half cat.
With Xeno already too passed out to complain, he cracks open the window and lights up a cigarette. Xeno doesn't really need to know that he's already found a way to stop biting at his own lips, and it's a worse vice than before.
He'll tell him, sure, but he honestly likes their little game. He likes being pursued like this, even when he's difficult.
He likes that Xeno is willing to go to such lengths to make him happy. If only the idiot could hurry up and realize a far easier way to please him, since they both want it.
The catalyst for that particular finding was a scientific journal of Xeno’s, usually hidden in a corner stacked high with clutter. One day in a fit of remodeling it had been left out in the open, and the whirlwind that was Xeno on a mission didn't notice Stanley looking through it.
It wasn't a journal, it was a diary. About him.
‘New finding—subject reacted extremely negatively when subjected to probing around the lips. Due to damage or aversion to touch? Examine further.’
“Mgh…Stan?” he hears murmured from the pile of blankets on the bed, so he snuffs the cigarette and wafts the scent of smoke out the window, shutting it behind him.
“Lookin’ at the stars,” he supplies calmly before Xeno can even ask, “Nothing good out tonight. We should ride out of town to get a good look.” Or make out, he doesn’t say. He's thinking it pretty hard, though.
“...Mmm, later. I'm still—ah! Stan, notebook!” He interrupts himself, flinging back covers to grab a pen. Without thinking, Stanley tosses the journal dedicated to him over, and waits for Xeno to get his thoughts down. If he delays it and forgets whatever thought caught his mind, Xeno gets incredibly (adorably) grumpy. Luckily, he's too caught up in that wonderful head of his to notice just what he's writing in.
He writes furiously, calling out demands to Stanley like it's as easy as breathing. For Stanley, following him comes just as naturally.
Xeno stands up, clears his desk, and begins mixing the materials he made Stan fetch.
“No flavoring will get you to quit it with the biting, obviously. I should've put that together earlier. Instead, a different approach. Lean over?” he rambles, finally grabbing Stanley's chin and bringing him close.
Stan short circuits completely. Error 404, Stanley is not home right now, please leave a message after the beep.
Xeno presses his pointer finger into the mixture and carefully, light as a feather, applies a deep purple pigment to Stan's lips, mica powder mixed into the base balm. It’s enchanting.
“Now, bite,” he commands, somewhat distracted. On dreamy autopilot, Stanley tugs his lower lip between sharp incisors. As expected, the movement smears pigment all across the curvature of Stanley's oral cavity.
“I've solved it,” Xeno brags.
“How the hell does lipstick fix me?” Stan asks, easily pretending like the charged moment had never happened. There have been a thousand moments where they danced on a precipice. No matter.
“Your tongue is purple,” Xeno says with a glinting smile.
Stan snaps his mouth shut. He pulls at his tongue, just barely able to see how it is indeed painted purple. Unlike all the mix of flavors Xeno presented before, this is a plain and simple deterrent. He doesn't want to be walking around not knowing his whole mouth is a different color.
It becomes something of an inside joke, a quiet moment between them of calling bluffs and dropping facades.
When Xeno tries to deny having feelings for Stan, for one. Once he gets tired of waiting, Stanley gets to caress his face in two hands and tease him, content in knowing he's already requited.
“Stan, I don't—there has been a misunderstanding. I'm sorry if that miscommunication made you uncomfortable, I know you don't see me like…that. I hold no romantic attraction to you,” Xeno lies smoothly. His hands are trembling.
Stan stalks up close, presses the scientific journal dedicated to his specific reaction to all mannerisms of affections to Xeno’s chest, and replies, “Your tongue is purple, Xeno.”
The rest is history.
Even at their wedding, as Stanley helps Xeno to obsessively preen himself in the mirror, their little joke pursues them.
“Stan, you aren't nervous at all?” he asks incredulously.
Stan licks his lips, shakes his head. “I have nothing to worry about.”
Xeno giggles childishly. “My dearest, you've purpled your tongue in the literal sense.”
Stan had forgotten to wear his smudge-proof lipstick to their actual wedding. Xeno is so in love his chest hurts and he has to pause and examine himself for signs of heartburn or heart attack.