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Kyle was in bed by eight. This wasn’t usual nor expected, but Colorado winter nights were long and cold. It had already been three hours since the sun set, and somehow the sky got darker as the stretch of time yawned; the clouds were heavy and blanketing the small mountain town in a way that never got tiring. The air was still, and the piling amount of stress Kyle had been experiencing in the past week melted away as he fell asleep on his math homework.
He was awoken, his multiplication tables wet with drool, as a sharp knock came at his second-story window.
His eyes blinked wearily, accepting it as hail, or even something of his imagination before it came again. A rock against his window.
His realization was immediate and smothering, and although exhaustion crept up his spine, he knew the only person who would come knocking like this was his best friend. When he opened his window, he was proven right as he found Stan’s figure hunched and shivering in the flurries of tonight's promised storm.
“Kyle!” Stan whisper-shouted, waving like they weren’t making direct eye-contact.
“What do you want?” Kyle asked in return, brushing a hand through his hair before realizing his ushanka was back at his desk. Suddenly, he was self-conscious about how his hair might look, surely frizzy and matted from wearing his hat all day and then falling asleep.
“Can I come in?” Stan asked, his voice glittering with a slight panic.
Kyle, unrelenting at most times, especially when it came to Stan, sighed. His sleep dwindled until it was only a slight pulse at the back of his eyelids. “I’ll be right down.”
When he opened the door, Stan came rushing in, snow and mud tracking through his house. Kyle followed, fiddling with the buttons of his pajamas that were misaligned and his socks soon grew soggy with snow melt. At the threshold of Kyle’s room, Stan finally stripped his boots and socks and coat.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” he asked when he closed the door to his room. He didn’t want his mom to know he had Stan over so late–again.
“Okay, okay,” Stan huffed. He was pacing, and it made Kyle on edge, like he was watching a science project about to explode. “So I was talking to Clyde and he told me that Tolkien told him that Bebe told Tolkien that Lisa told Bebe that Wendy told Lisa that she was going to kiss me in the school yard tomorrow!”
Stan had to catch his breath, and Kyle’s eyes burned tired and unblinking. This is what Stan had came to tell him?
He jumped up onto his bed and pulled back on his ushanka. Stan’s eyes followed the movement and then darted towards his face–like he wanted an answer to something that was not a question.
“So…why did you need to tell me…right now?” Kyle asked.
“Because!” Stan groaned, “You’re my best friend! Who else was I going to tell? It’s driving me insane Kyle, I can’t stop thinking about it…it just makes me sick to my stomach,”
“You don’t want to kiss her?” Kyle asked, leaning back onto his palms, his stomach was growing nauseous at the thought too.
“No! No I do!” Stan clarified desperately, stepping closer to Kyle. His features softened in the blanched moonlight, and with it, his voice quieted to a murmur. “I’ve just never kissed anyone before…what if I’m bad at it? What if she never wants to talk to me again?”
Kyle held back a laugh; he’d never seen Stan so nervous. “You’re not going to be bad at it,” Kyle rolled his eyes. Stan was perfect at everything; how could he be bad at something so…easy.
“How do you know that? If I embarrass myself in front of the whole class, do you know how bad that will be?”
“Stan–” Kyle tried again, tried to mend his confidence with meaningless provisions of pride, but in reality, there was no breaking through Stan’s anxieties. He’d have to listen to him complain until the moment came, and then he’d come back to him and tell him how amazing it was and that he shouldn’t have made such a big deal out of it.
That’s how it was when he finally told Wendy that he liked her. Kyle had, just like now, told him to go for it, how it couldn’t be that bad.
Though every smile he threw his way afterwards was like an icicle to his chest.
Right now, Kyle could even feel his own smile start to fade; brisk reminders of the realization he had come to last year now sank into his brain like molasses.
Sticky.
Stan clambered onto the bed next to him, his body hot with pulsing excitement, stringy, fizzy anticipation. “So I had this idea,” He said, angling his face towards him.
Kyle’s movement was sluggish, distracted, and Stan’s eyes were syrup. “Huh?” Kyle inclined him to continue as he watched his frost-bitten cheeks dilate in their redness.
“Well, you have to promise you won’t get weirded out okay?” Stan chewed the inside of his bottom lip, leaning away enough that cold air rushed between them from the window that Kyle had left open.
“What? Dude, we do weird things all the time, just tell me,” Kyle exhausted, slapping at Stan’s arm.
Stan nodded in reluctant agreement, leaning in again, “I was thinking we could…y’know, practice, so that,” Stan shrugged his gaze pulled like a wire away from Kyle’s face, “I don’t make a fool of myself in front of Wendy,”
The molasses in Kyle’s brain must’ve turned it numb, “Practice what?”
Stan sank into his body like Kyle had said something wrong, “How to kiss,”
He could feel the substance leak through his head, down so his hands were dripping in the golden syrup. In between his knuckles, creating webs as he spread his fingers apart. He had to swallow three times for it to clear from his throat.
“What?”
“I’ve never done it before,” Stans eyes finally began scan Kyle’s expression and so he sealed everything up, let the heat turn his skin to sand. “I told you not to be weird about it,” he exasperated, pouting.
“I–” Kyle stammered. He’s never kissed anyone before either. He’s never wanted to kiss anyone. But at the same time, no one had ever wanted to kiss him. Not until now, not until Stan.
But Stan didn’t really want to kiss him. He wanted practice. He wanted Wendy.
Kyle let a breath escape from his lips, his chest deflating. “Okay,” He said, just because he wanted to help a friend, to see the nervous spark in Stan’s eyes dissipate and fill with a flame of relief.
He didn’t want things to feel weird between them, and Kyle believed that started with going along with any weird thing the other suggested. He knew Stan would do the same thing for him.
“Okay,” Stan smiled, then faltered, “But you can’t tell anyone,”
Kyle’s palms were sweating where they gripped at his comforter, at the back of his neck. “Well obviously–” He nervously laughed.
“No–I just mean,” Stan reached out, his hand gripping his wrist, “Wendy can’t know that my first kiss wasn’t with her,”
First kiss.
How sacred it was talked about, how it filled the air like sunlight, filtering through giggles and passed notes. Kyle felt shaken, stupidly smug over something he doesn’t even own yet.
“Yeah, of course dude,” Kyle nodded. Stan’s hand was hot on his bare skin. He wondered how hot his mouth would be. And for once, that wasn’t a useless thought.
“Okay,” Stan breathed, gulping down the mountain air. “So…” His voice fell to a whisper, a secret between them. But that’s what best friends do: They share secrets. “Do we just…?”
Kyle didn’t know better than him, but he’d seen his parents do it and he’d seen it on that one romcom channel on their TV downstairs that Kenny always puts on.
Leaving his one hand on the mattress he lifted his other hand to cradle the back of Stan’s head. The tufts of hair that escaped his hat were soft, easy to slide between this fingers. “You sure this okay?” Kyle asked because he needed the blood in his wildly beating heart to go somewhere, straight into his words, leaking over his lips as he licked over them.
Stan nodded, his eyes widening. And Kyle couldn’t look at him anymore, the slight bags under his eyes, or the pink on his cheeks, how his hair was growing out over his ears; he couldn’t look at him anymore and not kiss him.
So he leaned forward, guiding Stan’s head gently to angle it so that their lips slotted together. The initial bump was awkward, lips mushing together, dry and pressing. Kyle’s nose bumped into Stan’s and Kyle cringed, making to pull away but the hand that was on his wrist skirted up his arm quickly to cradle his face.
Mouth against mouth, hot air traveled like a vice. Kyle’s body melted like morning snow, the heat left sunken and molten in his belly. He didn’t have to move, not that he could with Stan’s fingers soft against his neck, when Stan kissed him again.
Naturally, Kyle’s hand sunk deeper into the nape of Stan’s neck, delving into raven hair. Kyle tried to move his lips to the rhythm that Stan was setting, slow and inexperienced, but somehow…easy.
Kyle was right.
The winter air was finally surrounding him, stuck in a cloud he basked in the rigid calmness. Though he knew that if he moved, just a twitch in the wrong direction, this delicacy would break and shatter like ice.
He shivered, an involuntary movement ripping through his shoulders. Stan pulled away, a displeasure, giggling, a wonder. He sat back on his palms, his hands somehow now far, far away from his skin.
“Was that…good?” He asked, his head tilted in a way that let the moon cast curious gleams over his red lips.
Kyle bit back his own laugh, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. “I think?”
“It wasn’t as scary as I thought,” Stan said, moving to wrap his arms around his body. It had to be well-below freezing and here they were, sitting next to the window, letting the snow in as they sat in their pajamas.
“See?” Kyle chattered, “I told you, you weren’t going to be bad at it,”
Stan shook his head and moved to shut the window. “Can I stay?” He asked then, once all of the noise had been sucked out of Kyle’s room. “I don’t think I can get back into my house without my mom seeing,”
—
The next day was chaotic. The whole class was whispering about Wendy and Stan all day, inbetween Mr. Mackey’s glares, or over the lunch table, and by the last hour Kyle just wanted it to be over with.
Not because he was jealous, but because he kind of felt bad. And maybe he missed a little bit of Stan’s attention.
But, he had overheard Wendy say, “We’re going to be eachothers first kiss,” and something turned rotten inside him. He couldn’t help the stupid smile that pulled at his lips.
Stan had barely talked to him, busy chittering with Clyde—as he was somehow the telephone line between the boys table and the girls table–and bragging to the others about how he was going to be the first who was in a “real relationship”.
But even Kyle’s disdain didn’t stop his curiosity and he flowed and ebbed with the rest of the crowd that congealed outside near the playground once school had ended.
Stan and Wendy sat underneath the platform, partially hidden and when they kissed the crowd exploded into sounds of disgust and laughter. Sweet and innocent. Syrup all over again, Stan melted into Wendy before running off holding a hand over his mouth. Wendy was ushered away by her friends, all blushing and girly.
And Kyle could think about? As the playground cleared and the ice became water in his shoes?
How last night in the dripping dark, consumed by the softness of sleep and snug beneath blankets Stan rolled over onto his side. Kyle peeked an eye open at the ruffling. “What?” He asked, a secret.
“Can I try again?” He asked, the moon a halo behind his head.
Kyle just nodded once, his chin bumping against his shoulder. Stan kissed him, a hand searching to rid the ushanka off his head so he could card his hand through Kyle’s hair like he would do to a girl.
They kissed until they were breathless, and even then, Stan wanted more practice.
-Syrup