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May. 4th, 2008 22:32![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sekritomgThese chapters might be too long.
They wandered around the school silently for a few minutes, Stan leading the way. Finally, the reached the wooden double-doors of the library. “Here okay?” Stan asked, indicating the entrance.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine,” Kyle panted, not really knowing why he felt so lightheaded.
Stan found a table that was pretty secluded; it was by a window that overlooked the field, which was typically muddy from the combination of melting snow and students trampling over it during gym class.
“So tell me,” he said, sitting down. “What’d he do now?” Stan pulled out a three-ring binder, ostensibly so that people would think he and Kyle were studying.
“It’s not just him.”
“Well, what did he do?”
“Well, apparently he and Butters are dating.”
Stan didn’t flinch at this. In fact, he continued to stare at Kyle, hands in his lap. “Yeah.”
“You know about this?”
“Well, I have trig with Butters,” Stan said. “Also Cartman showed up at my house last night and started asking me if my sister had any pansy scarves he could borrow.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“Well, you know, do you think he’s, like … up to something?” Kyle asked. He was wringing his hands together while he spoke.
“It’s Cartman, of course he’s up to something.”
“Well, what are we going to do about it?”
“We?” Stan asked. “We are going to do nothing. He’s not worth my time.”
“But not mine?”
“Apparently, yeah, considering you keep giving it to him.”
“But what about Butters?”
“Butters is a fucking moron,” Stan said casually. “He’ll figure it out. Besides, you don’t give a crap about Butters.”
“But, Cartman.”
“But what about Cartman? How old are you, 2? Just ignore him, dude.”
“I can’t!”
Stan sighed and placed his hands flat on the table. “Is this all you wanted to talk to me about?”
“No, I’m fucking pissed off at the guys, too.”
“Oh.” This piqued his interest. “What about the guys?”
“Well, they don’t care that this inherently homophobic thing is going on right under their noses.”
“That sucks.”
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
“I don’t know what you want from me, dude.” Stan drummed his fingers on the table briefly. “Just tell me what you want.”
Kyle moaned and fidgeted in his seat, which had suddenly become excessively uncomfortable. “I don’t know,” he croaked. “I just thought, you know, you’re my friend, you’ll help me.”
“Yeah, fine, help you what? What do you want from me, Kyle?” Stan narrowed his eyes. “Tell me what you want from me and I’ll help you.”
Kyle’s mouth twitched, and he squeezed his eyes together. “I don’t know!” he sobbed, burying his head in his arms. “No one can help me!”
“Aw, aww.” Stan reached out and awkwardly patted Kyle’s frizzy hair. “Come on, dude. Don’t cry.”
“But you won’t help me,” he continued to warble.
“Help you do what? I don’t understand, I don’t understand. You just keep saying you want something from me, what the hell does that mean?”
“Help me stop Cartman!”
“I don’t even know what he’s doing,” Stan said.
“Then help me stop Frank Granger.”
“He’s just some lame-ass academic dipshit from
“Nobody understands,” Kyle said sadly, one hand now fiddling with the zipper of his backpack, where he was hoping to find some tissues.
“What am I supposed to understand?”
“You’re not gay so you don’t understand. Those other guys, when they came out, they … they … well, it wasn’t the same for them. When I figured out I was gay I was 11.”
“I know, I know,” Stan sighed, and his voice bore the annoyance of someone who had not only heard a particular story before, but lived through it as well.
“Well, you know what kind of hell it was, having to be in that place all by myself. Now, people come out, no one even flinches. But it was hard for me, and no one else was there for me.”
“I was there for you,” Stan said quietly. He lowered his head briefly. Kyle, who was still sniffling to himself, did not look into Stan’s eyes and see the look of genuine hurt. “You just make it so damn hard to be there,” Stan continued.
“Well.” Kyle’s words were tentative, and they felt like he was trying on a new pair of shoes, testing them out to see if they’d begin to hurt his feet if he kept them on for too long. “Maybe you can’t be there, because you have football and you — you like girls, and you just don’t know how it is.”
Stan lifted his head with a sharp jerk and scowled. “Okay, that is just nuts.” He brushed some hair out of his eyes. “I guess I should be sorry that I can’t understand you like your little gay friends do. Next time you want to moan to someone, try that British shithead, or you know what? Try Craig. I’m sure he can make you feel better.”
“Why are you saying that?”
“I hate you when you get like this,” Stan said disgustedly, rising and scooping his three-ring binder off the table.
“Like what?” Kyle sniffed, wiping one of his eyes with the back of his wrist.
“You know.”
“I most certainly do not!” Kyle hissed.
“Um, you know, you’re all defensive and moody, and … and weepy.”
“Yeah? Well, I hate you when you hate my girly emotions. Are you afraid of them? They make you uncomfortable?”
“Well, no, but…” Stan thought about this for a moment. “Okay, you’re crying in the library during lunch period. No one broke up with you. You didn’t fail a test. I mean, I want to help you but your reactions are just … well, they’re scary.”
“This is a big deal to me!”
“I know.”
“Or did you forget because you’re the quarterback?”
“This has nothing to do with my sexuality.”
“Well, it has everything to do with mine,” Kyle shot back, wiping some snot from his nose with his hand.
“Okay, you know what? I get that this is hard for you, and that you came out way before the other guys, and they don’t understand what it’s like in an environment where, like, not everybody’s gay. But lay off them, because you’re acting fucking scary and it won’t help your cause. And seriously, lay off me. I’m your friend, Kyle. I just don’t know how to deal with this.” With that, Stan began to walk out of the library.
“Deal with this, Stan!” Kyle screamed, throwing one of his balled-up tissues at his departing friend. It fell a few feet from Kyle’s chair and made a lackluster landing on the ground. “God dammit,” he sighed to himself, wiping his eyes again.
~
Kyle was furious — furious — as he stormed to his locker. God damn that asshole Stan, and fuck those bitches he sat with at lunch. Once again he was alone, right back at the start where he always was. He became even more agitated when he saw, from a distance, that someone had stuck something to his locker. Why didn’t anyone understand that he just wanted to be left alone? Why did Cartman have to be in Latin with him?
Kyle tore the flyer off of his locker and looked it over. It was an invitation to next month’s Spring Fling, which was being put together by the social committee. Not caring — the person he’d like to go with would never go with him, anyway — he crumpled it up and tossed it on the ground.
“Now, that isn’t very nice.”
Kyle turned around and nearly slammed himself back into his locker when he saw Butters standing there, arms crossed. “Someone worked real hard on that flyer, and you’re just going to throw it on the floor?”
“Someone really wasted their time, then.”
“Oh, that’s not very nice.”
“Why should I give a fuck about being nice? No one’s nice to me.”
“I think everyone’s pretty nice to you,” Butters said. “And what’s more, I’m on the social committee. Aw, heck, I’m the president of the social committee. And I made that flyer.”
Kyle looked at the balled up thing on the floor, and kind of nudged it with his foot. “It was nice,” he said sheepishly. “Nice job, Butters.”
“Oh, you don’t mean that. You’re just saying it. But to make up for it, you can do me one little favor.” Butter’s tongue stuck out of his mouth while he fished something out of his back pocket. “I know you’ve got Latin next period with Eric and all, so … would you mind giving this to him?” Butters proffered a folded-up piece of notebook paper with the cheery label “To Eric! Love Butters! XOXOXO!” and every last “O” was in the shape of a heart.
“I, um…”
“It’s a love note!” Butters gushed the obvious.
“Yeah, uh, Butters, here is the thing: I’m not sure I should be giving anything to that bastard.”
“Hey! I’ll thank you not to talk about my boyfriend that way.”
“Yeah, well, here’s the thing with that: Are you really sure you want to date Cartman? I mean, you know … can you really trust him?”
“Why the heck wouldn’t I?”
“Butters! It’s Eric fucking Cartman!”
“I know,” Butters sighed. “Isn’t he just so … ?”
“No, he’s, ugh, why do you do this to me? Butters, what is wrong with my face?”
“Well, it looks like you ran into a door or something, my mom sometimes has that problem too.”
”Yeah, that fa—I mean, your boyfriend beat me up. In the hallway yesterday.”
“He did? That doesn’t sound like my Eric.”
Kyle slapped his forehead. “I am going to forgive the fact that you said that because it’s been a long, long day. But seriously, Butters, this is Eric. Fucking. Cartman. Why, why does it not occur to you that he is probably using you for some fucked-up money-making scheme?”
Butters’ face became very grave. It was as if a switch had been flipped, and his upbeat attitude had been powered down. “I know everyone thinks I’m dumb.” His voice was cold and detached, and this was quite unlike Butters. It certainly caught Kyle’s attention. “But I’ve loved him for as long as you’ve loved Stan. I think he’s very handsome. I know he’s not nice, but I can’t help how I feel. And when the boy I love shows up at my front door and tells me he wants me, well. What am I to do but say yes?”
“This goes beyond not nice, dude. This is Cartman.”
“Well, we overlook people’s flaws if we want them to overlook ours.”
“Butters, your greatest flaw is being too naïve and trusting.”
“And you have too many to count.” Butters’ eyebrows shot up, and a smile returned to his face. “Give Eric my love, and my note. I’m seeing him after school, we’re going to meet some friend of his. He’s so excited to introduce me to his friends.”
“Cartman has no friends.”
“Well,” Butters huffed, poking Kyle in the sternum. “This might surprise you, but he does too have friends. He’s friends with a Mr. Frank Granger, who we’re gonna go meet after school. Just please give him my note, please, will you? I’d be ever so appreciative, I would.”
Butters turned and walked away from Kyle, who was left with his arms hanging limply by his sides, the folded piece of paper barely secure in his hand. “That bastard,” Kyle whispered. “That fat fucking bastard.”
~
Kyle did indeed give Cartman his note during Latin, placing it effortlessly on the desk where Cartman has his notes and textbook spread out before him. The linebacker quirked his lips in a smile when he picked up the note, only to roll his eyes when he read the label scrawled on the front. He looked around and shoved it in his bag without any fanfare. Although he wondered what this could mean — did it have to do with the study? — Kyle quickly shook his head and turned away from Cartman as he took his book out of his bag. The entire time the teacher was scrawling notes about the superlative on the board, Kyle eyed the clock, praying that there would be a fire drill, or maybe just a fire, and not only would class prematurely end, but the school would burn down with Cartman trapped inside of it. To his great dismay this didn’t happen.
~
When the day was finally over, Kyle felt splendidly miserable. His bristling rage toward Cartman, Stan, and his disaffected clique had dissipated, and now he was left with a hollow numbness. It was like walking in a fog of melancholy, but the figurative fog in his mind gave way to the very literal one waiting for him outside. It was a gray day in
He couldn’t really remember what he was pissed at Stan for. He remembered exactly why he was angry at Cartman, obviously, but it greatly bothered him that he couldn’t name what was troubling him in regard to his best friend. He wanted to berate himself for being so damn infatuated, and it seemed natural that he should assume that it was his fault, seeing as he’d broken that line between romantic friendship and pathetic, undue lust. But Kyle knew that he had been keeping his feelings for Stan in line for too many years for this to be a problem anymore. Well, no, it would always be a problem, but it was a problem for him and him only. The great crippling sadness of knowing that his friend couldn’t return his feelings only reared its head sometimes, when Stan was out with a girl or on a date with a girl. Stan liked girls, and girls liked Stan. In a town as small as theirs, a moderately normal 16-year-old boy didn’t have to try terribly hard.
Coupled with the ever-growing ranks of homosexuals, the straight males in the class got an undue amount of action.
As he trudged back to the car, Kyle’s mind flickered between two looming shadows: What to do about Frank Granger, and what to do about Stan. It was as if something in their relationship had shifted recently. Kyle didn’t love Stan any more now than he did a year ago, though. Did Stan just hate him? It didn’t make any sense.
Kyle was moderately surprised to see someone lying on the hood of his car. From the angle he approached at, he could only make out a pair of shit-kickers, but Kyle knew only one guy in the entire town who wore Doc Martens with pinstriped pants: Craig.
“I was so bored,” Craig said loudly as Kyle withdrew his key from the pocket of his jeans. “I thought you’d never leave school.”
All Kyle said was, “Neh.”
“Give me a ride,” Craig ordered, sitting up.
“To where?”
“My house, your house, Harbucks, doesn’t matter. You’re coming with me.”
“I am?”
“Yeah,” he said, opening the passenger-side door. “We have a couple hours, Degrassi isn’t on until later.”
Kyle sat down behind the wheel. Craig sat down next to him and fastened his seatbelt. “You watch that?” Kyle asked, slightly too confused to turn the car just yet.
“Yeah, I love it. Never miss it. It’s fucking hilarious. Every single kid is a whiny little shit. I want them all to die.”
“So, you watch it…”
“Because I hope they’ll all die. And they’re all fucking hideous, too. I love it.”
“Right.” Kyle didn’t know why this made so much sense, but it really did.
~
Kyle didn’t want to go to Craig’s house. His family was aggressively annoying. Worse than being aggressively annoying, they weren’t welcoming or catering in any way. For Kyle, who had spent his entire life being welcomed graciously into the homes of his good friends (and Cartman), Craig’s parents just rubbed him the wrong way. So he decided to take Craig back to his house, and if Craig wanted to leave to watch bad Canadian angst porn, he would give him a ride if he felt like it.
They crept into the kitchen, and no one was around. Kyle checked his watch, and remembered that his mother and Ike were probably at krav maga. A slow cooker was sitting on the counter, and Kyle didn’t want to think about what was in there. “Do you want a drink or something?” he asked.
“Your parents aren’t home?”
“Guess not.”
“Can you make me a whiskey sour?” Kyle did a double take. “If you don’t know how to make one it’s cool, I do.”
“I really don’t think, uh, either of us can make that.”
“What, do your parents measure their booze every night?”
“Have a Coke,” Kyle said obstructively, handing Craig a can. Craig took it and the can opened with a hiss, but he didn’t say ‘thank you’ or anything. He just stood there drinking it, and to Kyle’s amazement he finished, wiped his mouth, crushed the can in his hand and handed the can back in about a minute.
“You are insatiable.”
“Let’s go to your room.” Kyle obliged.
Upstairs, Kyle fell onto the bed and Craig sat down next to him. “What are we going to do?” he said. “What are we going to do about Frank?”
“Frank?”
“Yeah, the guy with the study.”
“Right, him.” Craig paused. “Why do we have to do anything?”
“Because!” Kyle barked. “We can’t let him get away with this.”
“What’s he getting away with?”
“Finding out why people are gay.”
“Why are people gay?”
“I don’t know.” Agitation tinged Kyle’s voice. “That’s what he wants to know. Frankly I don’t care.”
“You don’t?”
“No!”
“I am so curious,” Craig confessed. “I wish I knew.”
“Why?” Kyle hopped off of the bed and began to pace in front of Craig, back and forth across his room, which was about 10 feet long or so. “So you could make yourself straight? Or make your children straight?”
“No, I don’t want to be straight. And I hate children. I’m just, you know, curious.”
“You hate children?”
“Yeah, they’re noisy, dirty little fuckers.”
Kyle stopped pacing for a moment and looked at his friend. “You don’t want to have children?”
“Maybe if I met the right guy,” Craig said thoughtfully. “But he’d have to be pretty amazing.”
Kyle thought he heard a note of tension in Craig’s voice, or some kind of restraint. But not wanting to pry he pressed no further, and soon enough he was back to pacing. “I’ve got to stop Granger. He can’t do this! It’s inherently homophobic. And now Cartman’s helping him!”
“Cartman?” Craig asked.
“Yeah, him, that fat fucking cunt.”
“He’s not really fat.”
“Ugh, whatever.”
“I do hate him though.”
“Yeah, so do I, I mean — what?”
“I said, I hate Cartman,” Craig repeated. “I fucking hate him. He’s a piece of crap. I hate how he walks, I hate how he talks, I hate how he treats you, and I hate how he took my topic for history presentations in seventh grade. I just fucking hate him.”
Cartman’s seventh grade history presentation had been on the Stonewall Riots, and how drag queens were mentally imbalanced which is why they felt it necessary to disrespect the authority of the
“You wanted to do a report on Stonewall.” Recognition crept into his voice.
“Well, yeah, I came out like the week before that.”
Kyle sat back down on the bed. “So why don’t you care?”
“About your Duke man? I mean, I care. In the abstract.”
“Do you think you can care concretely?”
Craig blushed and lowered his head. “I care about anything you do.”
“What? Why?”
“No reason.” Craig was smiling stupidly, and he tilted his head to the side. “So, what is it that you want to do about this?”
“Oh.” Kyle was caught off guard. He wasn’t really paying attention to what Craig was saying; he was, however, looking into the other boy’s eyes, trying to decipher that misplaced blush. “Um.”
“I mean, do you want to call the school? The ACLU?”
“I don’t know if the ACLU would be the right people to call.” Kyle paused. “Also, they sued Stan and me a couple years back, so we’re not really on good terms,” he added quickly and quietly.
“I remember that.” Craig nodded knowingly. “What was Stan doing with the Constitution?”
“It was a reproduction. Stan and I got off.” Kyle immediately cringed at his choice of word, but Craig didn’t seem to notice.
“Okay, fine. Who would you contact about this sort of this, then? GLAAD?” Kyle had to stifle a giggle at Craig’s pronunciation, because when he said it he said it with a drawn-out short A and it sounded like “glaaaaaaaaaaaaahd.”
“Hmm.” Kyle put his arms on his knees and his head in his hands. “I guess we could just as easily go to the source.”
“You mean the guy.”
“His name is Frank fucking Granger.”
“I wish my middle name were ‘Fucking.’ ”
“I thought it was.”
“Only in my dreams, baby.”
Kyle rolled his eyes. “Can you be serious for moment?”
“Yeah, I can. You know what I think would work? Strength in numbers. Maybe if you could get the entire town to show up or something, he’d be pressured to leave.”
“Hey, yeah,” Kyle said with a note of revelatory amazement in his voice. “Fuck, yeah, this sounds like a plan.”
“What sounds like a plan?” Craig wiped his nose with his sleeve immediately after saying this.
Kyle got up off the bed, turned to Craig, and struck a glorious pose. In reality, he looked a little silly with his left leg forward, his right hand on his hip, and his other arm raised in the air triumphantly.
“Ta-da what?” Craig said, studying Kyle’s stance. “What is your idea?”
“A protest!” Kyle clapped his hands together. “If there’s anything the people in this town are willing to do, it’s give entirely in to mob mentality and get really pissed about something they don’t understand.”
“So you think picketing will get rid of Frank Fuck.”
“Yes, I certainly do!”
“And how the hell are you going to organize this little party?”
“I’m not too worried.”
“And why is that?”
“Craig, dear,” Kyle said gravely, grabbing one of his sitting friend’s hands. “Do you have any idea who I was raised by? It’s in my blood.”
~
Kyle was surprised to find that Craig was more than willing to forgo reruns in order to stay and help his fledgling gay rights career. They ran out of the house to get poster board so quickly that they didn’t even notice his mother lecturing Ike in the living room, and they certainly didn’t stop to answer any of her questions about where they were going. When they returned to the house, she stopped Kyle by the front door to question him about where he’d run off to, and why he was slumming around with Craig, and forget that he’d ignored her, shouldn’t he be doing his homework? All of her questions were forgotten, however, when Kyle told Sheila his plan to stage a rally.
“Oh!” she cried, squeezing him affectionately. “My little boy isn’t just brilliant, he’s proactive!”
“Please, Mom,” Kyle pleaded. His voice was dripping with chagrin. “Not in front of Craig.” He swore he could hear Craig snickering behind him.
“Nonsense.” Sheila dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “There’s nothing embarrassing about being hugged by your mother in front of your friends. Is there, Craig?”
“Yes.”
“What? Did you just give me the finger, young man?”
“No.”
“I think you did!”
“I didn’t.”
“He really didn’t, Mom,” Kyle sighed. “Come on, dude. Let’s go back upstairs.”
~
Kyle quickly learned that Craig was horrible at making signs. “At least they’re not as boring as yours,” Craig scoffed derisively, pointing at one of Kyle’s lackluster ‘Gay is Good’ creations.
“Shut up! At least I didn’t paint a dying blowfish making out with a camel on mine!”
“It’s two dudes fisting each other,” Craig clarified. “That one has a mohawk.”
“If that looked anything like what you just described it would be much worse. So thank God it doesn’t!”
“You’re such a priss! Haven’t you ever tried it?”
“No!” Kyle stood up and crossed his arms. “And I bet you haven’t either!”
“Well, no,” Craig confessed. “But we could fix that right now.” He waggled his eyebrows.
“No thank you.” Kyle felt himself blushing, or at least knew he was blushing. “It’s midnight, though. Can I drive you home?”
“How about we walk home?”
“Back to your house?”
“Yeah.”
“Dude, I have a car.”
“Come on,” Craig prodded. “It’s nice out, and I live four blocks away. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do.”
“My mom would never let me go out now,” Kyle lied.
“Well, just walk me.” Kyle shook his head. “Come on, you know you want to.”
Kyle sighed and heaved his shoulders. “All right, fine! But I’m not in the mood to do anything retarded like throw rocks at Tweek’s window.”
Craig frowned. “But he always thinks it’s his dealer coming after his toenails to even up his debts.”
“Yeah, and the last time he nailed me with a balled-up pair of socks, and they weren’t close to clean. So I’m going to decline.”
“Fine, no riff-raff.”
“Fine. Let’s go.”
~
The walk home was mostly silent, except for Craig’s wheezy breathing. Kyle was used to listening intently to Stan’s inhalation and exhalation, and Stan supposedly had asthma. But Stan did not make noise when he breathed; it was eerily calm, and all Kyle was usually able to hear was his soft breath expelling. He was pretty sure that he was the only person on the planet who could hear this sound.
Craig, on the other hand, sounded like a dying mule, or perhaps a fucked-up old car with an erratic motor. But other than that,
“I really had fun,” Craig said.
“What was this, a date?” Kyle asked.
Craig grabbed Kyle’s hand, which was hanging effortlessly by his side. “You’re great, you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” said Kyle, narrowing his eyes.
Craig took Kyle’s other hand. “Come on, dude. No one is this oblivious.”
“Oblivious to what exactly?” Kyle asked. “I have to get ho—” He did not get to finish his thought, because his mouth was suddenly the victim of an unexpected assault by Craig’s tongue. Kyle closed his eyes but otherwise, didn’t move.
“You’re not kissing back,” Craig said, pulling away.
“I didn’t say you could kiss me!”
“Who asks for permission?” Craig let go of Kyle’s hands and grabbed his head with both hands, pulling the redhead into his face. This time, though it took a few moments, Kyle slowly began to return the gesture, carefully inserting one hand into Craig’s back pocket. He gingerly began to press back on Craig’s tongue, almost as if he were trying to push it out of his mouth entirely.
Craig began to push his thigh into Kyle’s crotch. If Kyle had read about someone using this move in some bad online erotica, or had it described to him by a friend, he would have found it ridiculously juvenile and mundane. Now, however, in the heat of the moment — albeit a moment he didn’t remember beginning and wasn’t going to think about ending — he found it incredibly alluring, and as Craig kept kissing him the boy in the blue hat moved his hands to Kyle’s rear, which clenched as Craig continued to rub him with his thigh.
“Whoa,” Craig panted, pulling his mouth away, but continuing to knead Kyle’s backside with relish. “Let’s go inside.”
“I,” Kyle began, his breath coming in heaves. “I can’t, I need to go, um, go home, my mom…”
“She’s probably asleep.” Craig kissed Kyle’s jaw. “Just come in.”
“I can’t, dude. Your family…”
“They don’t care.” Craig took his left hand off of Kyle’s ass, and removed his leg from between the other boy’s thighs. He immediately replaced his thigh with his hand and began to feel Kyle’s erection though his jeans. “Come,” he said. “Come inside.”
“I, ah, I really, you know.” Kyle leaned into Craig a little more. “I can’t!” his hissed, resting his head on Craig’s shoulder.
“Shhh, that’s okay.” Craig carefully undid the button fly on Kyle’s pants. “We don’t need to go inside.” Kyle wasn’t looking, but he felt Craig’s knuckles brush against him, and for a brief moment the cool (but not freezing) air was inside of his boxers, stinging at sensitive areas. Then the cold was blocked by something more intrusive: Craig’s hand. Kyle let out a little whine, burying his face deeper in Craig’s shoulder, the tie on his hat bonking Kyle on the bridge of his nose.
Craig was adept at this, moving carefully and stealthily up and down, pausing occasionally to give a slight grope. Kyle’s mind was almost entirely blank during this experience, but that didn’t mean anything was particularly clear. He could only focus on Craig’s hands, one of which was inside of his underwear. The other was now sloppily fumbling through his hair while Craig resumed kissing him, although it was no longer relegated to Kyle’s mouth. How curious that at any other time he would have been resolutely disgusted by the idea of anyone, human or animal, smearing lukewarm and slightly too viscous saliva all over his cheeks, but now — in the slush outside of Craig’s house — he found it strangely appealing.
Things were becoming dire down below, and Craig began to whisper little things to Kyle. “Sweet nothings,” they called them, but when Craig was using them they were less sweet than dirty and rather than innocuous, they were loaded barbs of solemnity. “Look at what I’ve reduced you to,” he said softly and sharply. “It won’t take long now, will it?” Craig did not receive any response to this more complex than formless whimpering.
Craig was nothing if not perceptive, and in this instance he was correct; it did not take long. Kyle was breathing heavily, but he didn’t say anything — he shuddered and tightened his tenuous grasp on the other boy’s shoulders. Withdrawing his slimy hand from Kyle’s jeans, Craig glanced upward briefly, and pressed his lips into an O-shape. “It’s snowing,” he said, and in fact it was true. Being busy they hadn’t noticed, but soft, small snowflakes were falling straight down, unencumbered by wind, failing to stick to the ground, which was soft and sloppy in mid-March.
“I really thought we were out of the season, now,” Craig muttered. Kyle just blinked and moved his cheek to Craig’s. Craig, not knowing what else to do, licked his hand clean. He kissed Kyle’s jaw again, and then his cheek, and continued to work his way around the shorter boy’s pale face.
“Go out with me Saturday night,” Craig breathed into his friend’s ear.
“Ah.” Kyle continued to cling to Craig.
“Say yes.”
“Mmf.”
“No, that’s not a yes, say yes.” Craig deftly began to re-button the open fly on Kyle’s pants.
“Yeah,” Kyle sighed. “Yeah, okay. I, um, yeah.”
Craig removed Kyle’s hands from his torso and took a trembling hand. Craig began to lead him away somewhere, into the house, but Kyle stood perfectly still for a moment, his body not tensed at all, seemingly unsure of what to do. “Come on, dude,” he said, gently tugging his friend along. “Let’s go.”
Inside the house, they collapsed on the couch. “Your family,” Kyle said cautiously, looking around.
“They’re sleeping,” Craig assured him. “And even if they weren’t.”
“Even if they weren’t what?”
“I don’t know, they wouldn’t care.”
“Huh.” Kyle looked around again. “They’re really not going to wake up?”
“My sister might,” Craig shrugged. “But no, they aren’t.”
“Okay, okay.” Kyle felt comfortable with this, and he leaned into the other boy’s frame. “I should really… return the, uh, the favor.” Kyle touched the top button on Craig’s pants, which would have been formal if not for the fact that Craig wore them to school, to paint posters, and while giving a hand job on the front lawn of his house while it snowed.
“Go right ahead.” Craig spread his legs about as wide as they would go.
“You’re not very subtle, are you?”
“Actually, I’ve been subtle for so fucking long that I can’t stand it any longer. I mean,” Craig sighed, “it’s been like two years now that I’ve, you know … wanted you.”
“Wanted me?”
“That makes me sound like a perv. No, I.” Craig didn’t know what to say. “You know, it’s just, I’ve been trying. But I—” He became even quieter. “I couldn’t compete for your attention, could I?”
“Oh? And who was I lavishing this attention on?”
“Oh, you know, that whiny little breeder.”
“He’s my best friend.”
“Well, yeah, but dude, he … well, he’s not … well, that guy is such a dick. He shouldn’t string you along, but he does, I don’t know what his game is.”
“Don’t say that about Stan!”
“Shhh, dude, my parents.”
“I don’t even like him! Why does everyone think that?”
“I, uh, I don’t know. It’s just, well, it’s obvious, dude.”
“How is it obvious?”
“Look,” Craig said huffily. “I’ll talk about Stan with you until the cows come home.” The cows had indeed fallen into the habit of escaping their pen quite frequently. “But, you know.” Craig pointed down to his crotch. “She likes to get what she wants.”
“She?” Kyle gaped at Craig. “Your dick is a … she.”
“No, it’s just, ah, come on, dude. I know you got skills.”
“How do you know that?” Kyle asked. He was so exhausted this didn’t even insult him.
“People talk, dude. Just like people talk about you and Stan. It’s nothing. It’s just … gah, I am so horny, dude.”
“I don’t want people talking about me and Stan anymore.” Kyle slipped down off the couch and began to rub Craig’s thighs through his pants. “I don’t like being talked about. So please.” Kyle paused to undo the fly with his mouth, which made Craig’s eyes go wide as his gaze bore down on Kyle. “I do not like Stan. And I will prove it here, okay?”