Other Table 10/10
Sep. 12th, 2011 20:12![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sekritomgTitle: The Other Table (10/10)
Pairing: Stan/Kyle; various
Rating: NC-17ish, this chapter
Summary: So many boys in 11th grade at South Park High School are gay that an academic comes to town, looking for answers. Kyle agrees to help him.
Author's note: Yeah, this is late. But it's fucking done. Some of this I wrote this morning. Some of it was written in February 2008. This is seriously for anyone who for some reason asked me to finish this story.
By the way, this is the first story of any variety I ever started writing. I know it's been a while since I last updated, so feel free to ask questions about, like, what actually happened. Okay, I think that's it. Enjoy! Thank you so much for reading!
Previous chapters:
One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | ALL
Getting through a school day on the false pretense that everything in life was normal was not easy for Kyle. Wendy smiled at him in chemistry, and he could only return it after reminding himself that his grasp on things was too tentative to let it dictate his demeanor. At lunch, he didn’t know where to sit, again having to decide if he’d rather face the uncertainty he felt about interacting with Stan and Kenny, or the painful reminder of lunch with Craig. He emerged carting a tray filled up with wan iceberg lettuce leaves drizzled with amber-colored salad dressing and a plastic cup of lumpy tapioca — Kyle didn’t even like these things, but he’d been so distracted in the lunch line that by the time a sophomore boy was barking at him to speed the hell up, he could only grasp for the nearest sustenance and move on. He still didn’t know where to sit. Kenny didn’t seem to be at lunch, but the thought of sitting with Stan still bothered him — he had no idea how to pretend they hadn’t kissed the night before.
Then again, at his usual table, Craig was still holding court, talking to Thomas and seductively licking a popsicle, gesturing obscenely at anyone who contradicted him. Only then did Kyle remember that he’d kissed Craig yesterday, too.
Kyle dumped the salad and pudding off of his lunch tray, and went to sit by himself in the library again. For someone who’d kissed a lot of boys, he sure felt lonely. As it happened, his parents had been grocery shopping when he’d come home the night before, and didn’t hear his key twisting in the knob. Ike was home, but swore he wouldn’t tell. “I’ll blackmail you later,” was the best Kyle got. How he was going to get out again tonight was anyone’s guess. Maybe if he just walked out no one would notice. Maybe if his mother caught him, he’d leave anyhow. After all, what could she possibly do — physically stop him from going out?
In Latin, Cartman smirked at him, making kissy-lips and batting his eyelashes shamelessly.
“Grow up,” Kyle hissed after the bell rang. Their classmates where throwing things into backpacks, trying to get to the next period.
“I know some-thing you did last night that you weren’t supposed to,” Cartman sang.
Kyle was no longer shocked by what Cartman could fit into a tuneful taunt. “I’m honestly not in the mood to do this,” he said.
“So who cares if you’re in the mood?” Cartman asked. “It’s no fun giving a hard time to someone who wants to be hassled.”
“But isn’t it supposed to be more fun if I respond to your bullshit?”
Cartman shook his head. “Absolutely not,” he replied. From his pocket, he produced a fussy, compactly folded sheet of yellow notebook paper; unfurling it revealed a scribbled set of calculations running along a marked-up bell curve. “You see, Jew, over here” — he pointed to the start of the curve — “is you disinterested in arguing with me. As you can see, this results in you ignoring me and walking away. Over here” — he shifted to the opposite side of the diagram — “is when you want to argue. That’s when you can get the better of me. Granted, that rarely happens, but I find it’s much more enjoyable to win against a worthy opponent. And in the middle, the high point of arguing.” Cartman tapped on the apex of the curve, labeled with a crooked star and an exclamation point. “And here we have the climax — I know you have a hard time achieving those, but even you can understand the high point of any good rivalry. I like it when you’re not so invested in the duel that you can win, but at least interested enough so that I piss you thoroughly off. It’s all about calculations, Kyle — the best generals, like Napoleon and Hitler, knew when to strike.”
“I’m so glad you waste your time making up elaborate charts about how to get to me. I shouldn’t even remind you that both Hitler and Napoleon were defeated eventually.”
“Yes, but greatness can always be improved upon.” Cartman re-folded his piece of paper, and stuffed it back into his pocket. “Auf wiedersehen, Kyle. Enjoy your date tonight.”
“Hey!” Kyle called after Cartman. “How the fuck do you—”
But Cartman was gone and wasn’t turning back.
~
After school, Kyle visited the main office with the intention of making an appointment with South Park High School’s college counselor — a middle-aged lady who wore very short pinstripe skirts, and had a girlish, grating titter that Kyle could sometimes hear as he walked by her office. Maybe it was her off-putting personality that had kept him from doing this earlier, and maybe it wasn’t. He got an appointment — next Friday after school; he was supposed to bring his transcript. “Where do I get a copy of my transcript?” he asked Miss Johansen, the school receptionist.
“I’ll print one out for you,” she said warmly, scribbling his appointment down on an adhesive note. “Best of luck, Kyle.”
He shrugged and said, “Okay. Thanks.” He wasn’t really sure why he wanted to do this. He knew he had a 3.74, ranked fifth out of however many, and Kyle didn’t care. He had help from some of his honors courses, but he had little patience for gym class, or art classes. He wondered if this was going to hurt him if he wanted to go to a nice college and get the hell away from Colorado.
~
When Kyle’s mother picked him up from school, Ike was already ensconced in the front seat. It had been so long since Kyle had been driven around by one of his parents that it didn’t even occur to him that perhaps someone else might be riding shotgun. So without noticing his brother, Kyle had opened the door, and thrown his backpack onto Ike’s lap.
“Hey!” Ike squealed, tossing it right back at Kyle. “I’m here already!”
Kyle blinked. “Well, get out. I’m in front.”
Ike rolled his eyes. “Not going anywhere,” he protested.
“I’m older! You get in back.”
“I was here first!”
“But I’m older—”
A loud blaring noise disturbed this argument, as Sheila leaned on her horn. “Kyle, don’t be difficult!” she snapped. “Get in the backseat.”
“I’d rather walk home.”
“You are not walking home because I don’t trust you, and who knows where you’ll go?”
“Well, since I have no friends and this pathetic excuse for a town is missing anything of any value, I don’t really have anywhere to go, do I?”
“Kyle!” Sheila unbuckled her seatbelt. “If you don’t get into the car right this second I will God help me throw you in. Is that understood?”
As Kyle slipped into the backseat, cheeks red, feeling impressively impotent, Ike turned around to smirk at him.
“Don’t push it,” Kyle growled.
“Ike, sit back down like normal and put your seatbelt on. Kyle! You too. Seatbelt!”
“Yes, mein fuhrer.” Kyle tugged at the seatbelt. “Whatever you say.”
“That is so inappropriate!”
“Eh.”
The drive home was not long, but first his mother wanted to stop at the post office, leaving left her sons to wait in the car across the street. Briefly Kyle figured that this was his chance to escape, and he could deal with the consequences later. But when he tried to get the door open, he realized his mother had used child-safety locks. This enraged him, but he decided to quell that anger and appeal to his brother.
“Ike,” he said sweetly, scooting more toward the middle of the car so they could talk. “Can you do me a favor and turn off the child locks?”
Again, Ike got up on his knees and looked Kyle in the eyes. “I really think I shouldn’t. I think that what will probably happen is you’ll want to run out of the car. And if that happened, um, Mom would be kind of angry.”
“Well, we don’t have to tell her you undid the safety locks,” Kyle said, trying to rationalize disobedience. “Just say you were trying to open her window, and you hit it by mistake, or you were trying to get the heat on—”
“I’m not stupid, Kyle.” Ike rolled his eyes. “The heating controls are in the middle, not on the door.”
“Oh, aren’t you smart? Seriously, though, Ike, it would really mean—”
“No! Stop pressuring me!” At which point Ike turned back around and put the radio on at full volume. Unfortunately, Ike listened to this generic alleged “classic rock” station that usually played endless hours of hair metal and cheesy grunge imitators. Kyle groaned, and lay down across the backseat.
It wasn’t long until Sheila returned. “That line, it’s ridiculous,” she explained. “Sorry, boys.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kyle muttered, sitting back up. “I’m a prisoner anyway. I can’t go anywhere.”
“I can give you somewhere to go,” his mother suggested. She was driving down Main Street now, away from the post office, at a speed of about 12 miles an hour. This really pissed Kyle off, but he felt it was best to hold his tongue. (The speed limit was twice that, though, and it was nerve-racking.) “Your brother has krav maga at 6 p.m. You can do me a favor and drive him.”
“Oh, super,” Kyle said, sarcastic. “That sounds fun.”
“But you have to come right home,” she added.
“Oh, goody.”
“Okay, that’s great. I can have more time to make dinner now. I was thinking lamb chops. I have some in the fridge.”
“Wow, super,” Kyle lied. He knew he wouldn’t be eating lamb chops that night, regardless of whether or not his mother was cooking it.
~
For homework, Kyle had a translation of 15 Latin sentences, all using the ablative absolute. The first was easy: “While Caesar lay dying, the senators were at home.” Gradually they became harder and harder until the final, the most difficult, proved impossible to translate. Kyle got as far as, “Although it was said that as the slave was at the forum,” something something, and then the end of the sentence was, “fornicated with.” This made Kyle chuckle, and he gave up, and felt lucky he didn’t have to read any of the fucking Aeneid that night. Maybe the slave wasn’t fornicating. Maybe Kyle had mistranslated. He couldn’t even tell who was the subject of the sentence. It could have been the slave, because ‘the slave’ was in the nominative and ‘the forum’ was locative, it could also have been any of the other nouns in the middle clause. Or maybe those were adjectives. Kyle was tired and impatient and he didn’t care. He could leave one sentence untranslated, and if his teacher didn’t like it, fuck that guy. Kyle still had not forgiven him for siding with Cartman about Dido and Aeneas.
At 5:45, Ike banged on Kyle’s door, screaming, “It’s time for krav maga! Hello!”
Kyle slammed his science textbook and stood up, pulling his shirt down. “How do I look?” he asked.
Ike scrunched up his mouth. “Um.” He shrugged. “Why does it matter?”
“Oh, no reason, just want to look okay in case I … run into anyone I know.”
“Accidentally?” Ike asked. “Or on purpose?”
“Accidentally on purpose.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen. You don’t know anyone at the JCC. It’s all old women who like self-defense classes. I mean super-old, like 35. One woman, she thinks I’m adorable and brings me a bag of potato chips every class. But don’t tell mom because she’d say it’s not gracious to accept a food-gift and besides, it would ruin my dinner. But I get hungry during krav maga! It’s hard.”
Kyle sighed, grabbing his bag. Then he dropped it on the floor. In a manic fit of anticipation, he’d packed an entire overnight bag, cramming the front pockets with condoms and little packets of lube. But at the last minute, he felt it wasn’t such a good idea. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“What’s that bag for?” Ike asked. “Why aren’t you bringing it?”
“I’ll tell you in the car.”
On the way out the door, Kyle’s father stopped him. “We just want you to know that we appreciate you driving your brother to his lesson,” he said.
“Well, I don’t see why Mom can’t do it,” Kyle said.
“Well, she has to cook dinner. Lamp chops.”
“Yeah, I know. I know about the lamp chops.”
“Come on!” Ike squealed. “I’m going to be late!”
“You do know that your mother and I, we — we only do the things we do because we care about you.”
Rolling his eyes, Kyle replied, “I think that’s what wife-batterers say, too.”
“I’m going to be late!” Ike repeated, stamping his feet. “Kyle, if I’m late I have to stay late!”
“All right, fine, we’re going.” Kyle turned to head outside with Ike, grabbing the key to his Volkswagen from a hook by the door, to which it was tethered by a lanyard.
“I’ll lock the door for you,” his father called after them.
After getting in the car and buckling his seatbelt, Ike turned to Kyle, who was shifting to reverse and checking the rearview mirror. “So, what’s your big plan?” he asked.
“What?” Kyle turned around to look for traffic. “No plan. Do I look like I have a plan?”
“Yes. You look like you’re up to something. Are you up to something? What are you up to? Sneaking out? Sneaking out to where? Do you know someone at the JCC? I told you, it’s only old women there, old women and me. You could sign up for a class if you want. They have crochet classes and also calisthenics. I think that one’s during the day. Once when Mom was late to get me from a lesson I read the brochure. They have all these pamphlets on the wall by the door. I seriously hope you’re not late to get me because I hate sitting in the building alone. Maybe you can just stay through the class, but don’t make fun of me. It’s a serious thing, krav maga. They do it in the IDF, you know.”
“Ugh, Ike. Do you ever just shut the fuck up?”
“Sometimes.” Ike blushed. “But, Kyle, I’m not an idiot. Maybe I’m shorter than you but I’m not stupid. You’re going somewhere. I don’t know a lot but I know when you’re trying to look fancy.”
“How is this fancy?” Kyle pointed to the black button-down shirt he was wearing. They were stopped at a red light at Main and Bonanza; Kyle had to make a left to get on the highway. The JCC was about three exits away, or 14 minutes of driving. Once, when he was bored, Stan had timed it — the exact time between exits on 285 heading toward Denver if one is driving exactly 63 miles an hour. And Kyle always, always drove exactly 63 miles an hour.
“That’s what you wore to go out with Craig that one time,” Ike pointed out. “I remember. To that dance.”
“Oh, you remember, good job, that was like a week ago.”
“I’m like the raptors in Jurassic Park. Have you ever seen that?”
Kyle groaned. He missed Ike being severely afraid of him. It made the kid a lot less easy to deal with. But Kyle knew that Ike knew that Kyle wouldn’t dare risk his parents’ wrath on something so trivial as sticking his fist in Ike’s mouth. “Yes,” Kyle gritted out. “I’ve seen Jurassic fucking Park.”
“You’re definitely going somewhere,” Ike repeated. “And you are so not supposed to.”
Kyle just grunted, and they drove in silence until pulling up in front of the JCC. It was an ugly old 1970s building in turquoise-painted brick, the sight of which made Kyle shudder a little.
Ike was unbuckling his belt, and about to say goodbye, when Kyle stopped him by saying, “So, what are you going to do, are you going to tell on me?”
“I think Mom and Dad would be pretty angry to know that you’re grounded and I helped you get out of it,” he said quietly. “You’re such a dick, Kyle. Why do you have to be such a dick?”
“I really need to do this, Ike. Really. I don’t think you can understand how much.”
“So, tell me.”
“Have you ever liked someone so much you just wanted to be with them every moment of your life? That whenever they were with anyone else, it actually hurt to breathe?”
Ike cocked his head. “I’m 10. Besides, I think if you can’t breathe you should see a doctor. It might be making you stupid because oxygen can’t get to your brain.”
“Ike—”
“Sheesh, relax. I’m not going to rat you out. I hope you remember what a mensch I am the next time you get pissed and want to hit me or something. Then again, if you do…” Ike hopped into a defensive position and shouted, “Krav maga!” He lifted his hands into two supine fists. “I’ll kick your ass!”
“Oh, Jesus.” Kyle rubbed his eyes. “Okay, thank you. I’ll remember. I promise.”
Ike nodded. “Very good,” he said. He toddled into the building.
Kyle sped off.
~
Leaving his car parked behind the library, his cell phone off and stashed in the glove compartment, Kyle dodged through the backyards. In some there were children, in others there were dogs. Generally there was no one, everyone seated at their dining tables having dinner with their families. Kyle thought about his own mother, preparing a dinner no one was going to eat. While he vaunted over a chain-link fence, he felt bad about it — but then his feet hit the ground, and he realized he didn’t. Fuck her.
Stan’s backyard was fertile, but unkempt. Weeds and crab grass ruled back here, and had since Randy Marsh decided abruptly one day not to mow any longer. Stan had never been so dutiful as to contribute to household chores, and the whole place was a mess, so unlike Kyle’s own yard. But he didn’t really care. He didn’t like Stan for his dandelions, he liked him for his heart or whatever. Maybe his triceps. Maybe. Kyle liked to think he wasn’t that shallow.
He was weak, though, his lungs burning from all the running and jumping and fighting and climbing he’d been up to, and at a loss for how to get Stan’s attention without a phone. Could he climb up the side of Stan’s house, knock on the window? Kyle searched for a foothold, but found only an even façade of green-painted brick. He didn’t want to ring the bell, or even knock on the back door — Randy might not care, but he knew Sharon Marsh would turn him in immediately to his mother. They were in communication about this sort of thing, problems with their children. Kyle decided not to risk it.
He remembered when Craig had come to his window on a Saturday morning, trying to get his attention. What had Craig thrown? Gumballs. In retrospect it seemed retarded to Kyle, juvenile and sloppy. But it had worked, hadn’t it? Hadn’t be been charmed by it? Kyle searched through the grass for a stone, then flung them at Stan’s window with an exaggerated windmill gesture.
Tongue between his teeth, Kyle tossed rocks at Stan’s window. Some hit and some missed, but with every stone that fell back to the grass, the urge to cry built in him. Kyle knew he was not a romantic hero, was not made for this shit. He was going to be caught by his mother throwing rocks at his best friend’s window, having abandoned his car by the town hall and his brother at a JCC up some mountain highway, shirking his responsibilities to homework and his punishment for — for what, for wanting to be a human being, to have a boyfriend, to live a normal life in this oppressive, awful town. The injustice of it all burned at him, make him want to fling himself on the ground.
Then Stan stuck his head out of the back door. “What are you doing?” he asked, impossibly calm.
“I—” Kyle began. “The window — I wanted…”
Stan laughed. Not derisively — with amusement. “I was sitting in the kitchen,” he said. “You should have called.”
“Your mother—”
Stan walked over to Kyle, grabbed him by his shoulder, dragged him into the house.
“Is at the store. You have to stop overthinking everything. Look at you.”
Kyle sniffed. “What am I looking at?”
“Nothing.” Stan picked up a tangle of keys from the kitchen table. “You look good.”
“I do?”
“Yes.” Stan’s voice was very heavy. It made Kyle want to die right there, to fling himself on the ground and bury his head in Stan’s lap, to just suffocate like that. It completely aroused him and he wondered if maybe dinner was unnecessary, maybe they could just go upstairs and talk. “Well, um.” Stan was shuffling his feet, clearly more awkward than aroused. “If you’re ready to go, we can—”
“Yes,” Kyle breathed.
“Um, I’m borrowing my dad’s car…”
“Okay.” Kyle clasped his hands, pulled at the sleeves of his jacket. His feet were crossed and he felt unsteady.
Stan shook his head. “Okay, well, let’s go.” Kyle dutifully followed him out to the car.
They went, unpredictably, to an Olive Garden. It was not exactly nearby, but not so far away — suburban Denver, pretty much, a short, stilted drive down from the mountains, during which Stan kept the radio tuned to local chat about the traffic. Kyle said nothing, just looked out the window, thinking about how these were all the things he was looking at on his date with Stan, guard rails on the overpasses and malls stretching from laundromat to pharmacy, with taquerias in between.
As they pulled into the parking lot, Kyle had to keep himself from exploding with indignation. “What?” he gasped. “Why here?” It was so big, so … public. Not what he’d been thinking at all.
“I dunno,” said Stan, as he turned off the engine. “I’m not, um. I’m not very good at … you know, dating.”
Kyle could not keep himself from saying, “No shit.”
This seemed to make Stan at least slightly insecure, or at least he got defensive about it. “I guess I thought it would be nice,” he said. “I was trying to think of a nice place. Plus, you know, I’ve come here with football. For after the games, you know. After we clean up. They’ve always been nice to us. And I’ve come here with a couple of girls, too, who suggested it. One girl from Middle Park—”
Kyle felt his stomach drop into his pelvis. He must have made a face to this extent, because Stan sputtered, “It’s not like it means anything!”
“Oh, so you’re taking me to where you take girls you’re trying to hook up with when it doesn’t mean anything!”
“No, I mean—” Stan seemed utterly confused, trying to talk his way out of this. “They have suggested it, and they obviously liked me, so I figured this was a place people liked to come when it meant something? When they wanted it to mean something? I, um — I mean, I wasn’t thinking about it that much, I just want to go somewhere … someplace nice, you know? And out-of-town.”
“Oh.” The last part, at least, made Kyle feel better. “That makes sense.”
“Plus I’ve been here enough that I know my fake ID works.” He unbuckled his seatbelt, smirking.
An incredibly bubbly waitress sat them. Then another one came with some water. Kyle did not like the way these girls, this one in particular, looked at Stan. They seemed to know him, or something. He began trying to silently talk himself out of it, about to let it go, when their waitress set her water pitcher down and put a hand on Stan’s shoulder, asking if she could start them on drinks. Stan ordered two beers, Blue Moon on draft. Kyle was not sure if he was interested in drinking beer with Italian food, but he figured he could get a little tipsy and this insecurity and awkwardness he was feeling would dissipate.
But then the waitress asked to see Stan’s ID, and when he handed it over, she gasped, “Hey, I know you,” she said. “You’re Stan Marsh!”
“That’s right, I am.”
“You’re the quarterback of the football team.”
Stan shrugged, but she kept looking at him intently, so he finally answered, “Yes.”
“Oh my god! What are you doing eating here?”
“Um.” Stan looked around. “I’m having dinner with my friend Kyle.”
“Oh, yeah, your friend Kyle,” Kyle muttered.
“Oh my gosh, I go to school with you! I’m friends with — hey.” The waitress furrowed her brows at Kyle. “I know you. Aren’t you that gay Jew who got beat up by Eric Cartman? Craig Tucker’s ex-boyfriend?”
“That was some other gay Jew.” Kyle picked up his rolled napkin.
“Oh, sorry.” She narrowed her eyes. “You look a lot like that guy.”
“Yeah, people are always saying that,” Stan remarked. “Anyway, um, you’ve seen my ID. Would you mind please bringing us the drinks I ordered?” His lips broadened into a smile. “I would so appreciate it.”
“Right away, Stan! I mean, sir!” She bounced off in a hurry.
“Dude.” Stan grasped the cold, sweaty glass of water in front of him. “What the fuck was that? You’re most definitely the gay Jew Cartman beat up, and you’re totally Craig Tucker’s ex-boyfriend. What gives?”
“I don’t fucking know.” Kyle gave a quick jolt to his rolled-up napkin, and it unfurled, silverware tumbling out onto his plate. “I don’t owe some chick working in an Olive Garden an explanation. Frankly, it’s creepy. Speaking of creepy, what are you doing ordering drinks? I never said I wanted a beer!”
“Trust me, you do.” Stan took a sip of water. “I’m going to get you—”
“What, destroyed? Drunk?”
“No, not — not destroyed. Just — you know, it’ll be easier to do this if you’re a little ... in the mood. I need to get you in the right frame of mind.”
“The right frame of mind for what, Stanley, pasta?”
“You don’t have to order pasta, order whatever you want. My dad gave me his credit card. Order the whole menu for all I care.”
“Stanley, if you are insinuating what I think you are insinuating, which is that you’re intending to … to — to have your way with me after dinner, or something, you’re out of your fucking mind.” Kyle’s voice had dropped down to a whisper, but Stan heard him clearly.
“Well, what do you think I brought you here for?”
“You said to talk!”
“And you said if I bought you a nice dinner you’d put out!” Stan shot back.
“I was kidding! I just didn’t want to eat pizza for the thousandth fucking time this year. I’m sick of it. I’m over pizza.”
“Kyle, you were not kidding!”
“Yes, I was! I was joking!”
“How is enticing me into buying you a nice meal by implying you’d sleep with me afterward a joke?”
“Because it’s not true and I wasn’t being serious!”
“It’s not a joke because it’s not funny,” Stan said. “What you said wasn’t funny.”
“Jokes don’t have to be funny,” Kyle argued.
“Dude, that’s what makes something a joke!”
“Ugh!” Kyle slammed his fist on the table, making the silverware on his plate jump and the water in his condensation-slick glass slosh gently back and forth for a moment. The specials card in the middle of the table flopped over pathetically. “I’m not here to have sex with you! You said you wanted to talk to me, and I thought maybe—”
“Yeah, we should talk. We’re talking, aren’t we?”
“Fine, yeah, let’s talk and eat some pasta. Then after dinner, what? We’ll do it? That’s great. Then you’ll really respect me, I’m sure, I bet that’ll make me an enticing prospect. Then what?”
“What do you mean, then what?”
“Well, then what happens? When do I get what I want?”
Stan frowned. “Well, maybe I had this wrong,” he said, “but I was pretty sure what you wanted was to have sex with me.”
The words sounded so hard to Kyle. He felt as if someone had socked him in the gut.
“Are you okay?” Stan asked.
Kyle nodded. He realized that, well, yeah, that was what he’d wanted all along — to have sex with Stan. He thought about it so much, sometimes in such ripe detail, that the entire concept seemed to have been stripped of any meaning.
“Yeah,” he gasped, seizing the pint of beer that their waitress was setting in front of him before it had ever reached the table. “I do want that.” He took an enormous gulp, watched Stan carefully, set his glass down, wiped his mouth. Suddenly he regretted doing something so inelegant, but Stan was just peering at Kyle from over his glass.
“Okay, good,” Stan said, before taking a sip. “Whatever.”
“No, not whatever!” Kyle now felt very thirsty. “If we do it, what happens?”
“I don’t know what you mean, what happens?”
“Do we just roll over and get up and go back to being best friends?” Kyle took another gulp of his beer, for courage. “That’s not what I want. Stanley, fuck, you’re my best friend. Clearly I want you. So afterward, do we date? That’s what I want, Stanley. I want a boyfriend.”
“Why don’t we just try it? And see what happens?”
“Because we’re best friends! What if — what if it ruins everything?”
“We have to be honest with each other,” Stan said. “We don’t feel about each other how best friends should.”
“Yes we do!” Kyle cried. “Stanley, listen. That’s insane. You mean more to me than anyone alive, anyone I know, and that includes my immediate family. You mean everything to me.”
“I’m not debating that, and I’m sure you know that I feel the same way.”
“Actually, I don’t know that. I — well, I haven’t been sure for the longest time that you even like me.”
“Well, it’s true, there’s a lot about you I don’t like so much right now. But there’s no way to get around the fact that I care about you so much more than I want to.”
Kyle gasped. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything.”
“I feel like I have to!”
Stan laughed. “Just, let’s be honest here, dude. You want me, I want you. We love each other. Thoroughly. It’s retarded to deny that. But the things I want from you, they’re not things I’d ever want from my best friend. In fact, I’m not certain I even want a best friend. Because I’m not, you know, 12 years old.”
Kyle felt his sinuses beginning to hurt. He had to bite his lip to stop tears from starting—not so much from sadness, but from utter confusion. He reached for his beer and realized that it was empty. “But I thought—”
“I care about you. Deeply. But I’m a guy, dude, and — I don’t know, I think the sexual tension between us has reached its boiling point. Are you going to let me boil over, or not? There’s only so many girls I can fuck and pretend it’s you.”
Whimpering, Kyle grabbed his water goblet and chugged about half of it in 10 seconds. Then he swallowed some down the wrong pipe, and started choking. Not choking, really — hacking. It was, of course, at this point that their bread sticks arrived.
“Here you go,” their waitress said amiably. “You just let me know if you need some more of those. Is he — is he okay?” She nudged an elbow in Kyle’s general direction.
“He’ll be fine,” Stan replied. “I think he’s just excited. I think he needs another drink, though. Maybe a glass of white wine or something?”
Kyle tried to protest this in between coughs: “Don’t … talk about me … like I’m not … here!”
“Yeah, he’s great,” Stan told their waitress. She shrugged and walked away; Stan began slapping Kyle on the back.
“Not helping!” Kyle got up, tossing his napkin in his chair, and ran to the bathroom, shoving aside an old woman and several different waiters. Once there, he bent over and coughed until he felt his tonsils were going to fall out. Then he splashed cold water on his face, washed his hands, and went back to the table, where a glass of wine was waiting for him next to Stan’s beer.
“Cheers,” Stan said, raising his glass.
“Sure,” Kyle agreed, meeting Stan’s drink with his own in a half-hearted clink. He sipped it — it was bitter, almost acidic. Kyle didn’t know a thing about wine, let alone enough to call himself an expert, but he could tell that this wasn’t exactly good. Still, booze was booze, and he figured whether or not he was going to bed with Stan, he might as well get as shitfaced as possible, so long as Randy Marsh was going to pay for it. This couldn’t be any less horrible than it already was, he figured.
“Is she even going to take our order?” Kyle asked, thoroughly disgusted.
“I ordered for you,” Stan said.
“You what? Jesus Christ, what are you even doing?”
“Oh, you never eat anything anyway. I got you some pasta.”
“What kind?”
“Just capellini,” said Stan. “With, like, tomatoes.”
“Tomato sauce?”
“No.” Stan shrugged. “Not really. Just tomatoes.”
Kyle reached for his wine. He had no problems with capellini. He had barely read the menu, though, so it was just as well that Stan had ordered him the blandest-sounding thing. After guzzling some wine Kyle reached for a bread stick, and nibbled it slowly while he watched Stan eat salad. “Is that good?” he finally asked.
“Yeah, pretty good. You want some?” Stan pointed to the clear plastic salad bowl, shreds of carrot and iceberg clinging to the sides.
“No, I’m cool,” said Kyle, thinking of the salad he hadn’t eaten at lunch. “Or maybe just a little.”
Stan served him a neat pile of salad with one wedge of tomato via plastic tongs. Kyle looked at his food, unable to help grinning. Stan had served him! It was so … Kyle wasn’t sure, so he grasped at his wine glass, only to learn that he’d drunk the whole thing.
“That was disgusting,” he announced. “Can we get a bottle?”
Stan smiled at him. “Sure. Anything you want.” He reached across the table, taking Kyle’s hand. Kyle looked up at him, and smiled back. “Kyle,” Stan breathed. “I’m not good at this.”
“Good at what?”
“I’ve never had a girlfriend.”
“I’ve never had a girlfriend,” Kyle repeated.
“Or a boyfriend.”
“Well,” said Kyle, “you’re not gay and you get a lot of girls, so, so — I guess that makes sense, maybe I wouldn’t want a girlfriend either. But I don’t know. All I know is that you’re straight, and you want to have sex with me, but if we do it I don’t know what happens next.”
“Well, fine,” Stan replied. “Look, I don’t know that we have to know, or even should know, what happens when it’s over. I’m scared too, okay?”
“Scared of what?”
“Well, you keep saying, ‘You’re straight, you’re straight’ to me, like—”
“Like what?” Kyle asked. “You are.”
“I’ve never said that. You’re the one who’s always saying that.”
“Because you are!”
Stan rolled his eyes. “I’m getting you drunk at an Olive Garden while I proposition you. Clearly I’m not.”
Kyle didn’t think he was drunk, but the thought was enough to make him grab his wine glass again. Sadly, it was still empty. “But you sleep with girls! A lot!”
“Well, sure, but—”
“But what?”
Stan sighed. He leaned back in his chair. “Kyle, one by one, every guy in our grade has turned gay.”
“Clyde’s not gay,” Kyle snapped. “Or Tweek, or Cartman, or—”
“Or me?” Stan smiled. “Look, okay, you’re clearly trying to protect yourself, because if I’m totally straight I can’t reject you. I can’t tell you if I’m gay. I don’t know if I am. I don’t really think about it a lot. But I do like you. Can’t we please just—”
Stan was interrupted by their waitress delivering their meals, Kyle’s capellini and Stan’s entrée as well. He ordered a bottle of the white house wine Kyle had been drinking, and the waitress ran off to fetch it for him.
She was too enthusiastic for Kyle’s liking, and he was glad to see her go.
“What is that?” Kyle asked, pointing at Stan’s dish.
“This is called ‘Tour of Italy,’ ” Stan said. “It’s a sampler.”
“Are you ever afraid your heart is going to explode from eating so much?”
Stan rolled his eyes. “I can’t build muscle if I don’t eat a lot,” he said. “And then I can’t be good at football. And then I can’t protect you from assholes like Cartman. Of course, you never let me. But I could. You know, if you wanted that.”
Kyle’s cheeks flushed.
“Do you want a bite?”
Kyle took his fork and stabbed a piece of chicken parmesan that Stan had cut. He chewed it slowly.
“Like that?” Stan asked.
“Not really,” Kyle said, his mouth full. He was too drunk to notice. “But, kinda.”
Continued here.
Pairing: Stan/Kyle; various
Rating: NC-17ish, this chapter
Summary: So many boys in 11th grade at South Park High School are gay that an academic comes to town, looking for answers. Kyle agrees to help him.
Author's note: Yeah, this is late. But it's fucking done. Some of this I wrote this morning. Some of it was written in February 2008. This is seriously for anyone who for some reason asked me to finish this story.
By the way, this is the first story of any variety I ever started writing. I know it's been a while since I last updated, so feel free to ask questions about, like, what actually happened. Okay, I think that's it. Enjoy! Thank you so much for reading!
Previous chapters:
One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | ALL
Getting through a school day on the false pretense that everything in life was normal was not easy for Kyle. Wendy smiled at him in chemistry, and he could only return it after reminding himself that his grasp on things was too tentative to let it dictate his demeanor. At lunch, he didn’t know where to sit, again having to decide if he’d rather face the uncertainty he felt about interacting with Stan and Kenny, or the painful reminder of lunch with Craig. He emerged carting a tray filled up with wan iceberg lettuce leaves drizzled with amber-colored salad dressing and a plastic cup of lumpy tapioca — Kyle didn’t even like these things, but he’d been so distracted in the lunch line that by the time a sophomore boy was barking at him to speed the hell up, he could only grasp for the nearest sustenance and move on. He still didn’t know where to sit. Kenny didn’t seem to be at lunch, but the thought of sitting with Stan still bothered him — he had no idea how to pretend they hadn’t kissed the night before.
Then again, at his usual table, Craig was still holding court, talking to Thomas and seductively licking a popsicle, gesturing obscenely at anyone who contradicted him. Only then did Kyle remember that he’d kissed Craig yesterday, too.
Kyle dumped the salad and pudding off of his lunch tray, and went to sit by himself in the library again. For someone who’d kissed a lot of boys, he sure felt lonely. As it happened, his parents had been grocery shopping when he’d come home the night before, and didn’t hear his key twisting in the knob. Ike was home, but swore he wouldn’t tell. “I’ll blackmail you later,” was the best Kyle got. How he was going to get out again tonight was anyone’s guess. Maybe if he just walked out no one would notice. Maybe if his mother caught him, he’d leave anyhow. After all, what could she possibly do — physically stop him from going out?
In Latin, Cartman smirked at him, making kissy-lips and batting his eyelashes shamelessly.
“Grow up,” Kyle hissed after the bell rang. Their classmates where throwing things into backpacks, trying to get to the next period.
“I know some-thing you did last night that you weren’t supposed to,” Cartman sang.
Kyle was no longer shocked by what Cartman could fit into a tuneful taunt. “I’m honestly not in the mood to do this,” he said.
“So who cares if you’re in the mood?” Cartman asked. “It’s no fun giving a hard time to someone who wants to be hassled.”
“But isn’t it supposed to be more fun if I respond to your bullshit?”
Cartman shook his head. “Absolutely not,” he replied. From his pocket, he produced a fussy, compactly folded sheet of yellow notebook paper; unfurling it revealed a scribbled set of calculations running along a marked-up bell curve. “You see, Jew, over here” — he pointed to the start of the curve — “is you disinterested in arguing with me. As you can see, this results in you ignoring me and walking away. Over here” — he shifted to the opposite side of the diagram — “is when you want to argue. That’s when you can get the better of me. Granted, that rarely happens, but I find it’s much more enjoyable to win against a worthy opponent. And in the middle, the high point of arguing.” Cartman tapped on the apex of the curve, labeled with a crooked star and an exclamation point. “And here we have the climax — I know you have a hard time achieving those, but even you can understand the high point of any good rivalry. I like it when you’re not so invested in the duel that you can win, but at least interested enough so that I piss you thoroughly off. It’s all about calculations, Kyle — the best generals, like Napoleon and Hitler, knew when to strike.”
“I’m so glad you waste your time making up elaborate charts about how to get to me. I shouldn’t even remind you that both Hitler and Napoleon were defeated eventually.”
“Yes, but greatness can always be improved upon.” Cartman re-folded his piece of paper, and stuffed it back into his pocket. “Auf wiedersehen, Kyle. Enjoy your date tonight.”
“Hey!” Kyle called after Cartman. “How the fuck do you—”
But Cartman was gone and wasn’t turning back.
~
After school, Kyle visited the main office with the intention of making an appointment with South Park High School’s college counselor — a middle-aged lady who wore very short pinstripe skirts, and had a girlish, grating titter that Kyle could sometimes hear as he walked by her office. Maybe it was her off-putting personality that had kept him from doing this earlier, and maybe it wasn’t. He got an appointment — next Friday after school; he was supposed to bring his transcript. “Where do I get a copy of my transcript?” he asked Miss Johansen, the school receptionist.
“I’ll print one out for you,” she said warmly, scribbling his appointment down on an adhesive note. “Best of luck, Kyle.”
He shrugged and said, “Okay. Thanks.” He wasn’t really sure why he wanted to do this. He knew he had a 3.74, ranked fifth out of however many, and Kyle didn’t care. He had help from some of his honors courses, but he had little patience for gym class, or art classes. He wondered if this was going to hurt him if he wanted to go to a nice college and get the hell away from Colorado.
~
When Kyle’s mother picked him up from school, Ike was already ensconced in the front seat. It had been so long since Kyle had been driven around by one of his parents that it didn’t even occur to him that perhaps someone else might be riding shotgun. So without noticing his brother, Kyle had opened the door, and thrown his backpack onto Ike’s lap.
“Hey!” Ike squealed, tossing it right back at Kyle. “I’m here already!”
Kyle blinked. “Well, get out. I’m in front.”
Ike rolled his eyes. “Not going anywhere,” he protested.
“I’m older! You get in back.”
“I was here first!”
“But I’m older—”
A loud blaring noise disturbed this argument, as Sheila leaned on her horn. “Kyle, don’t be difficult!” she snapped. “Get in the backseat.”
“I’d rather walk home.”
“You are not walking home because I don’t trust you, and who knows where you’ll go?”
“Well, since I have no friends and this pathetic excuse for a town is missing anything of any value, I don’t really have anywhere to go, do I?”
“Kyle!” Sheila unbuckled her seatbelt. “If you don’t get into the car right this second I will God help me throw you in. Is that understood?”
As Kyle slipped into the backseat, cheeks red, feeling impressively impotent, Ike turned around to smirk at him.
“Don’t push it,” Kyle growled.
“Ike, sit back down like normal and put your seatbelt on. Kyle! You too. Seatbelt!”
“Yes, mein fuhrer.” Kyle tugged at the seatbelt. “Whatever you say.”
“That is so inappropriate!”
“Eh.”
The drive home was not long, but first his mother wanted to stop at the post office, leaving left her sons to wait in the car across the street. Briefly Kyle figured that this was his chance to escape, and he could deal with the consequences later. But when he tried to get the door open, he realized his mother had used child-safety locks. This enraged him, but he decided to quell that anger and appeal to his brother.
“Ike,” he said sweetly, scooting more toward the middle of the car so they could talk. “Can you do me a favor and turn off the child locks?”
Again, Ike got up on his knees and looked Kyle in the eyes. “I really think I shouldn’t. I think that what will probably happen is you’ll want to run out of the car. And if that happened, um, Mom would be kind of angry.”
“Well, we don’t have to tell her you undid the safety locks,” Kyle said, trying to rationalize disobedience. “Just say you were trying to open her window, and you hit it by mistake, or you were trying to get the heat on—”
“I’m not stupid, Kyle.” Ike rolled his eyes. “The heating controls are in the middle, not on the door.”
“Oh, aren’t you smart? Seriously, though, Ike, it would really mean—”
“No! Stop pressuring me!” At which point Ike turned back around and put the radio on at full volume. Unfortunately, Ike listened to this generic alleged “classic rock” station that usually played endless hours of hair metal and cheesy grunge imitators. Kyle groaned, and lay down across the backseat.
It wasn’t long until Sheila returned. “That line, it’s ridiculous,” she explained. “Sorry, boys.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kyle muttered, sitting back up. “I’m a prisoner anyway. I can’t go anywhere.”
“I can give you somewhere to go,” his mother suggested. She was driving down Main Street now, away from the post office, at a speed of about 12 miles an hour. This really pissed Kyle off, but he felt it was best to hold his tongue. (The speed limit was twice that, though, and it was nerve-racking.) “Your brother has krav maga at 6 p.m. You can do me a favor and drive him.”
“Oh, super,” Kyle said, sarcastic. “That sounds fun.”
“But you have to come right home,” she added.
“Oh, goody.”
“Okay, that’s great. I can have more time to make dinner now. I was thinking lamb chops. I have some in the fridge.”
“Wow, super,” Kyle lied. He knew he wouldn’t be eating lamb chops that night, regardless of whether or not his mother was cooking it.
~
For homework, Kyle had a translation of 15 Latin sentences, all using the ablative absolute. The first was easy: “While Caesar lay dying, the senators were at home.” Gradually they became harder and harder until the final, the most difficult, proved impossible to translate. Kyle got as far as, “Although it was said that as the slave was at the forum,” something something, and then the end of the sentence was, “fornicated with.” This made Kyle chuckle, and he gave up, and felt lucky he didn’t have to read any of the fucking Aeneid that night. Maybe the slave wasn’t fornicating. Maybe Kyle had mistranslated. He couldn’t even tell who was the subject of the sentence. It could have been the slave, because ‘the slave’ was in the nominative and ‘the forum’ was locative, it could also have been any of the other nouns in the middle clause. Or maybe those were adjectives. Kyle was tired and impatient and he didn’t care. He could leave one sentence untranslated, and if his teacher didn’t like it, fuck that guy. Kyle still had not forgiven him for siding with Cartman about Dido and Aeneas.
At 5:45, Ike banged on Kyle’s door, screaming, “It’s time for krav maga! Hello!”
Kyle slammed his science textbook and stood up, pulling his shirt down. “How do I look?” he asked.
Ike scrunched up his mouth. “Um.” He shrugged. “Why does it matter?”
“Oh, no reason, just want to look okay in case I … run into anyone I know.”
“Accidentally?” Ike asked. “Or on purpose?”
“Accidentally on purpose.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen. You don’t know anyone at the JCC. It’s all old women who like self-defense classes. I mean super-old, like 35. One woman, she thinks I’m adorable and brings me a bag of potato chips every class. But don’t tell mom because she’d say it’s not gracious to accept a food-gift and besides, it would ruin my dinner. But I get hungry during krav maga! It’s hard.”
Kyle sighed, grabbing his bag. Then he dropped it on the floor. In a manic fit of anticipation, he’d packed an entire overnight bag, cramming the front pockets with condoms and little packets of lube. But at the last minute, he felt it wasn’t such a good idea. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“What’s that bag for?” Ike asked. “Why aren’t you bringing it?”
“I’ll tell you in the car.”
On the way out the door, Kyle’s father stopped him. “We just want you to know that we appreciate you driving your brother to his lesson,” he said.
“Well, I don’t see why Mom can’t do it,” Kyle said.
“Well, she has to cook dinner. Lamp chops.”
“Yeah, I know. I know about the lamp chops.”
“Come on!” Ike squealed. “I’m going to be late!”
“You do know that your mother and I, we — we only do the things we do because we care about you.”
Rolling his eyes, Kyle replied, “I think that’s what wife-batterers say, too.”
“I’m going to be late!” Ike repeated, stamping his feet. “Kyle, if I’m late I have to stay late!”
“All right, fine, we’re going.” Kyle turned to head outside with Ike, grabbing the key to his Volkswagen from a hook by the door, to which it was tethered by a lanyard.
“I’ll lock the door for you,” his father called after them.
After getting in the car and buckling his seatbelt, Ike turned to Kyle, who was shifting to reverse and checking the rearview mirror. “So, what’s your big plan?” he asked.
“What?” Kyle turned around to look for traffic. “No plan. Do I look like I have a plan?”
“Yes. You look like you’re up to something. Are you up to something? What are you up to? Sneaking out? Sneaking out to where? Do you know someone at the JCC? I told you, it’s only old women there, old women and me. You could sign up for a class if you want. They have crochet classes and also calisthenics. I think that one’s during the day. Once when Mom was late to get me from a lesson I read the brochure. They have all these pamphlets on the wall by the door. I seriously hope you’re not late to get me because I hate sitting in the building alone. Maybe you can just stay through the class, but don’t make fun of me. It’s a serious thing, krav maga. They do it in the IDF, you know.”
“Ugh, Ike. Do you ever just shut the fuck up?”
“Sometimes.” Ike blushed. “But, Kyle, I’m not an idiot. Maybe I’m shorter than you but I’m not stupid. You’re going somewhere. I don’t know a lot but I know when you’re trying to look fancy.”
“How is this fancy?” Kyle pointed to the black button-down shirt he was wearing. They were stopped at a red light at Main and Bonanza; Kyle had to make a left to get on the highway. The JCC was about three exits away, or 14 minutes of driving. Once, when he was bored, Stan had timed it — the exact time between exits on 285 heading toward Denver if one is driving exactly 63 miles an hour. And Kyle always, always drove exactly 63 miles an hour.
“That’s what you wore to go out with Craig that one time,” Ike pointed out. “I remember. To that dance.”
“Oh, you remember, good job, that was like a week ago.”
“I’m like the raptors in Jurassic Park. Have you ever seen that?”
Kyle groaned. He missed Ike being severely afraid of him. It made the kid a lot less easy to deal with. But Kyle knew that Ike knew that Kyle wouldn’t dare risk his parents’ wrath on something so trivial as sticking his fist in Ike’s mouth. “Yes,” Kyle gritted out. “I’ve seen Jurassic fucking Park.”
“You’re definitely going somewhere,” Ike repeated. “And you are so not supposed to.”
Kyle just grunted, and they drove in silence until pulling up in front of the JCC. It was an ugly old 1970s building in turquoise-painted brick, the sight of which made Kyle shudder a little.
Ike was unbuckling his belt, and about to say goodbye, when Kyle stopped him by saying, “So, what are you going to do, are you going to tell on me?”
“I think Mom and Dad would be pretty angry to know that you’re grounded and I helped you get out of it,” he said quietly. “You’re such a dick, Kyle. Why do you have to be such a dick?”
“I really need to do this, Ike. Really. I don’t think you can understand how much.”
“So, tell me.”
“Have you ever liked someone so much you just wanted to be with them every moment of your life? That whenever they were with anyone else, it actually hurt to breathe?”
Ike cocked his head. “I’m 10. Besides, I think if you can’t breathe you should see a doctor. It might be making you stupid because oxygen can’t get to your brain.”
“Ike—”
“Sheesh, relax. I’m not going to rat you out. I hope you remember what a mensch I am the next time you get pissed and want to hit me or something. Then again, if you do…” Ike hopped into a defensive position and shouted, “Krav maga!” He lifted his hands into two supine fists. “I’ll kick your ass!”
“Oh, Jesus.” Kyle rubbed his eyes. “Okay, thank you. I’ll remember. I promise.”
Ike nodded. “Very good,” he said. He toddled into the building.
Kyle sped off.
~
Leaving his car parked behind the library, his cell phone off and stashed in the glove compartment, Kyle dodged through the backyards. In some there were children, in others there were dogs. Generally there was no one, everyone seated at their dining tables having dinner with their families. Kyle thought about his own mother, preparing a dinner no one was going to eat. While he vaunted over a chain-link fence, he felt bad about it — but then his feet hit the ground, and he realized he didn’t. Fuck her.
Stan’s backyard was fertile, but unkempt. Weeds and crab grass ruled back here, and had since Randy Marsh decided abruptly one day not to mow any longer. Stan had never been so dutiful as to contribute to household chores, and the whole place was a mess, so unlike Kyle’s own yard. But he didn’t really care. He didn’t like Stan for his dandelions, he liked him for his heart or whatever. Maybe his triceps. Maybe. Kyle liked to think he wasn’t that shallow.
He was weak, though, his lungs burning from all the running and jumping and fighting and climbing he’d been up to, and at a loss for how to get Stan’s attention without a phone. Could he climb up the side of Stan’s house, knock on the window? Kyle searched for a foothold, but found only an even façade of green-painted brick. He didn’t want to ring the bell, or even knock on the back door — Randy might not care, but he knew Sharon Marsh would turn him in immediately to his mother. They were in communication about this sort of thing, problems with their children. Kyle decided not to risk it.
He remembered when Craig had come to his window on a Saturday morning, trying to get his attention. What had Craig thrown? Gumballs. In retrospect it seemed retarded to Kyle, juvenile and sloppy. But it had worked, hadn’t it? Hadn’t be been charmed by it? Kyle searched through the grass for a stone, then flung them at Stan’s window with an exaggerated windmill gesture.
Tongue between his teeth, Kyle tossed rocks at Stan’s window. Some hit and some missed, but with every stone that fell back to the grass, the urge to cry built in him. Kyle knew he was not a romantic hero, was not made for this shit. He was going to be caught by his mother throwing rocks at his best friend’s window, having abandoned his car by the town hall and his brother at a JCC up some mountain highway, shirking his responsibilities to homework and his punishment for — for what, for wanting to be a human being, to have a boyfriend, to live a normal life in this oppressive, awful town. The injustice of it all burned at him, make him want to fling himself on the ground.
Then Stan stuck his head out of the back door. “What are you doing?” he asked, impossibly calm.
“I—” Kyle began. “The window — I wanted…”
Stan laughed. Not derisively — with amusement. “I was sitting in the kitchen,” he said. “You should have called.”
“Your mother—”
Stan walked over to Kyle, grabbed him by his shoulder, dragged him into the house.
“Is at the store. You have to stop overthinking everything. Look at you.”
Kyle sniffed. “What am I looking at?”
“Nothing.” Stan picked up a tangle of keys from the kitchen table. “You look good.”
“I do?”
“Yes.” Stan’s voice was very heavy. It made Kyle want to die right there, to fling himself on the ground and bury his head in Stan’s lap, to just suffocate like that. It completely aroused him and he wondered if maybe dinner was unnecessary, maybe they could just go upstairs and talk. “Well, um.” Stan was shuffling his feet, clearly more awkward than aroused. “If you’re ready to go, we can—”
“Yes,” Kyle breathed.
“Um, I’m borrowing my dad’s car…”
“Okay.” Kyle clasped his hands, pulled at the sleeves of his jacket. His feet were crossed and he felt unsteady.
Stan shook his head. “Okay, well, let’s go.” Kyle dutifully followed him out to the car.
They went, unpredictably, to an Olive Garden. It was not exactly nearby, but not so far away — suburban Denver, pretty much, a short, stilted drive down from the mountains, during which Stan kept the radio tuned to local chat about the traffic. Kyle said nothing, just looked out the window, thinking about how these were all the things he was looking at on his date with Stan, guard rails on the overpasses and malls stretching from laundromat to pharmacy, with taquerias in between.
As they pulled into the parking lot, Kyle had to keep himself from exploding with indignation. “What?” he gasped. “Why here?” It was so big, so … public. Not what he’d been thinking at all.
“I dunno,” said Stan, as he turned off the engine. “I’m not, um. I’m not very good at … you know, dating.”
Kyle could not keep himself from saying, “No shit.”
This seemed to make Stan at least slightly insecure, or at least he got defensive about it. “I guess I thought it would be nice,” he said. “I was trying to think of a nice place. Plus, you know, I’ve come here with football. For after the games, you know. After we clean up. They’ve always been nice to us. And I’ve come here with a couple of girls, too, who suggested it. One girl from Middle Park—”
Kyle felt his stomach drop into his pelvis. He must have made a face to this extent, because Stan sputtered, “It’s not like it means anything!”
“Oh, so you’re taking me to where you take girls you’re trying to hook up with when it doesn’t mean anything!”
“No, I mean—” Stan seemed utterly confused, trying to talk his way out of this. “They have suggested it, and they obviously liked me, so I figured this was a place people liked to come when it meant something? When they wanted it to mean something? I, um — I mean, I wasn’t thinking about it that much, I just want to go somewhere … someplace nice, you know? And out-of-town.”
“Oh.” The last part, at least, made Kyle feel better. “That makes sense.”
“Plus I’ve been here enough that I know my fake ID works.” He unbuckled his seatbelt, smirking.
An incredibly bubbly waitress sat them. Then another one came with some water. Kyle did not like the way these girls, this one in particular, looked at Stan. They seemed to know him, or something. He began trying to silently talk himself out of it, about to let it go, when their waitress set her water pitcher down and put a hand on Stan’s shoulder, asking if she could start them on drinks. Stan ordered two beers, Blue Moon on draft. Kyle was not sure if he was interested in drinking beer with Italian food, but he figured he could get a little tipsy and this insecurity and awkwardness he was feeling would dissipate.
But then the waitress asked to see Stan’s ID, and when he handed it over, she gasped, “Hey, I know you,” she said. “You’re Stan Marsh!”
“That’s right, I am.”
“You’re the quarterback of the football team.”
Stan shrugged, but she kept looking at him intently, so he finally answered, “Yes.”
“Oh my god! What are you doing eating here?”
“Um.” Stan looked around. “I’m having dinner with my friend Kyle.”
“Oh, yeah, your friend Kyle,” Kyle muttered.
“Oh my gosh, I go to school with you! I’m friends with — hey.” The waitress furrowed her brows at Kyle. “I know you. Aren’t you that gay Jew who got beat up by Eric Cartman? Craig Tucker’s ex-boyfriend?”
“That was some other gay Jew.” Kyle picked up his rolled napkin.
“Oh, sorry.” She narrowed her eyes. “You look a lot like that guy.”
“Yeah, people are always saying that,” Stan remarked. “Anyway, um, you’ve seen my ID. Would you mind please bringing us the drinks I ordered?” His lips broadened into a smile. “I would so appreciate it.”
“Right away, Stan! I mean, sir!” She bounced off in a hurry.
“Dude.” Stan grasped the cold, sweaty glass of water in front of him. “What the fuck was that? You’re most definitely the gay Jew Cartman beat up, and you’re totally Craig Tucker’s ex-boyfriend. What gives?”
“I don’t fucking know.” Kyle gave a quick jolt to his rolled-up napkin, and it unfurled, silverware tumbling out onto his plate. “I don’t owe some chick working in an Olive Garden an explanation. Frankly, it’s creepy. Speaking of creepy, what are you doing ordering drinks? I never said I wanted a beer!”
“Trust me, you do.” Stan took a sip of water. “I’m going to get you—”
“What, destroyed? Drunk?”
“No, not — not destroyed. Just — you know, it’ll be easier to do this if you’re a little ... in the mood. I need to get you in the right frame of mind.”
“The right frame of mind for what, Stanley, pasta?”
“You don’t have to order pasta, order whatever you want. My dad gave me his credit card. Order the whole menu for all I care.”
“Stanley, if you are insinuating what I think you are insinuating, which is that you’re intending to … to — to have your way with me after dinner, or something, you’re out of your fucking mind.” Kyle’s voice had dropped down to a whisper, but Stan heard him clearly.
“Well, what do you think I brought you here for?”
“You said to talk!”
“And you said if I bought you a nice dinner you’d put out!” Stan shot back.
“I was kidding! I just didn’t want to eat pizza for the thousandth fucking time this year. I’m sick of it. I’m over pizza.”
“Kyle, you were not kidding!”
“Yes, I was! I was joking!”
“How is enticing me into buying you a nice meal by implying you’d sleep with me afterward a joke?”
“Because it’s not true and I wasn’t being serious!”
“It’s not a joke because it’s not funny,” Stan said. “What you said wasn’t funny.”
“Jokes don’t have to be funny,” Kyle argued.
“Dude, that’s what makes something a joke!”
“Ugh!” Kyle slammed his fist on the table, making the silverware on his plate jump and the water in his condensation-slick glass slosh gently back and forth for a moment. The specials card in the middle of the table flopped over pathetically. “I’m not here to have sex with you! You said you wanted to talk to me, and I thought maybe—”
“Yeah, we should talk. We’re talking, aren’t we?”
“Fine, yeah, let’s talk and eat some pasta. Then after dinner, what? We’ll do it? That’s great. Then you’ll really respect me, I’m sure, I bet that’ll make me an enticing prospect. Then what?”
“What do you mean, then what?”
“Well, then what happens? When do I get what I want?”
Stan frowned. “Well, maybe I had this wrong,” he said, “but I was pretty sure what you wanted was to have sex with me.”
The words sounded so hard to Kyle. He felt as if someone had socked him in the gut.
“Are you okay?” Stan asked.
Kyle nodded. He realized that, well, yeah, that was what he’d wanted all along — to have sex with Stan. He thought about it so much, sometimes in such ripe detail, that the entire concept seemed to have been stripped of any meaning.
“Yeah,” he gasped, seizing the pint of beer that their waitress was setting in front of him before it had ever reached the table. “I do want that.” He took an enormous gulp, watched Stan carefully, set his glass down, wiped his mouth. Suddenly he regretted doing something so inelegant, but Stan was just peering at Kyle from over his glass.
“Okay, good,” Stan said, before taking a sip. “Whatever.”
“No, not whatever!” Kyle now felt very thirsty. “If we do it, what happens?”
“I don’t know what you mean, what happens?”
“Do we just roll over and get up and go back to being best friends?” Kyle took another gulp of his beer, for courage. “That’s not what I want. Stanley, fuck, you’re my best friend. Clearly I want you. So afterward, do we date? That’s what I want, Stanley. I want a boyfriend.”
“Why don’t we just try it? And see what happens?”
“Because we’re best friends! What if — what if it ruins everything?”
“We have to be honest with each other,” Stan said. “We don’t feel about each other how best friends should.”
“Yes we do!” Kyle cried. “Stanley, listen. That’s insane. You mean more to me than anyone alive, anyone I know, and that includes my immediate family. You mean everything to me.”
“I’m not debating that, and I’m sure you know that I feel the same way.”
“Actually, I don’t know that. I — well, I haven’t been sure for the longest time that you even like me.”
“Well, it’s true, there’s a lot about you I don’t like so much right now. But there’s no way to get around the fact that I care about you so much more than I want to.”
Kyle gasped. “I don’t even know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything.”
“I feel like I have to!”
Stan laughed. “Just, let’s be honest here, dude. You want me, I want you. We love each other. Thoroughly. It’s retarded to deny that. But the things I want from you, they’re not things I’d ever want from my best friend. In fact, I’m not certain I even want a best friend. Because I’m not, you know, 12 years old.”
Kyle felt his sinuses beginning to hurt. He had to bite his lip to stop tears from starting—not so much from sadness, but from utter confusion. He reached for his beer and realized that it was empty. “But I thought—”
“I care about you. Deeply. But I’m a guy, dude, and — I don’t know, I think the sexual tension between us has reached its boiling point. Are you going to let me boil over, or not? There’s only so many girls I can fuck and pretend it’s you.”
Whimpering, Kyle grabbed his water goblet and chugged about half of it in 10 seconds. Then he swallowed some down the wrong pipe, and started choking. Not choking, really — hacking. It was, of course, at this point that their bread sticks arrived.
“Here you go,” their waitress said amiably. “You just let me know if you need some more of those. Is he — is he okay?” She nudged an elbow in Kyle’s general direction.
“He’ll be fine,” Stan replied. “I think he’s just excited. I think he needs another drink, though. Maybe a glass of white wine or something?”
Kyle tried to protest this in between coughs: “Don’t … talk about me … like I’m not … here!”
“Yeah, he’s great,” Stan told their waitress. She shrugged and walked away; Stan began slapping Kyle on the back.
“Not helping!” Kyle got up, tossing his napkin in his chair, and ran to the bathroom, shoving aside an old woman and several different waiters. Once there, he bent over and coughed until he felt his tonsils were going to fall out. Then he splashed cold water on his face, washed his hands, and went back to the table, where a glass of wine was waiting for him next to Stan’s beer.
“Cheers,” Stan said, raising his glass.
“Sure,” Kyle agreed, meeting Stan’s drink with his own in a half-hearted clink. He sipped it — it was bitter, almost acidic. Kyle didn’t know a thing about wine, let alone enough to call himself an expert, but he could tell that this wasn’t exactly good. Still, booze was booze, and he figured whether or not he was going to bed with Stan, he might as well get as shitfaced as possible, so long as Randy Marsh was going to pay for it. This couldn’t be any less horrible than it already was, he figured.
“Is she even going to take our order?” Kyle asked, thoroughly disgusted.
“I ordered for you,” Stan said.
“You what? Jesus Christ, what are you even doing?”
“Oh, you never eat anything anyway. I got you some pasta.”
“What kind?”
“Just capellini,” said Stan. “With, like, tomatoes.”
“Tomato sauce?”
“No.” Stan shrugged. “Not really. Just tomatoes.”
Kyle reached for his wine. He had no problems with capellini. He had barely read the menu, though, so it was just as well that Stan had ordered him the blandest-sounding thing. After guzzling some wine Kyle reached for a bread stick, and nibbled it slowly while he watched Stan eat salad. “Is that good?” he finally asked.
“Yeah, pretty good. You want some?” Stan pointed to the clear plastic salad bowl, shreds of carrot and iceberg clinging to the sides.
“No, I’m cool,” said Kyle, thinking of the salad he hadn’t eaten at lunch. “Or maybe just a little.”
Stan served him a neat pile of salad with one wedge of tomato via plastic tongs. Kyle looked at his food, unable to help grinning. Stan had served him! It was so … Kyle wasn’t sure, so he grasped at his wine glass, only to learn that he’d drunk the whole thing.
“That was disgusting,” he announced. “Can we get a bottle?”
Stan smiled at him. “Sure. Anything you want.” He reached across the table, taking Kyle’s hand. Kyle looked up at him, and smiled back. “Kyle,” Stan breathed. “I’m not good at this.”
“Good at what?”
“I’ve never had a girlfriend.”
“I’ve never had a girlfriend,” Kyle repeated.
“Or a boyfriend.”
“Well,” said Kyle, “you’re not gay and you get a lot of girls, so, so — I guess that makes sense, maybe I wouldn’t want a girlfriend either. But I don’t know. All I know is that you’re straight, and you want to have sex with me, but if we do it I don’t know what happens next.”
“Well, fine,” Stan replied. “Look, I don’t know that we have to know, or even should know, what happens when it’s over. I’m scared too, okay?”
“Scared of what?”
“Well, you keep saying, ‘You’re straight, you’re straight’ to me, like—”
“Like what?” Kyle asked. “You are.”
“I’ve never said that. You’re the one who’s always saying that.”
“Because you are!”
Stan rolled his eyes. “I’m getting you drunk at an Olive Garden while I proposition you. Clearly I’m not.”
Kyle didn’t think he was drunk, but the thought was enough to make him grab his wine glass again. Sadly, it was still empty. “But you sleep with girls! A lot!”
“Well, sure, but—”
“But what?”
Stan sighed. He leaned back in his chair. “Kyle, one by one, every guy in our grade has turned gay.”
“Clyde’s not gay,” Kyle snapped. “Or Tweek, or Cartman, or—”
“Or me?” Stan smiled. “Look, okay, you’re clearly trying to protect yourself, because if I’m totally straight I can’t reject you. I can’t tell you if I’m gay. I don’t know if I am. I don’t really think about it a lot. But I do like you. Can’t we please just—”
Stan was interrupted by their waitress delivering their meals, Kyle’s capellini and Stan’s entrée as well. He ordered a bottle of the white house wine Kyle had been drinking, and the waitress ran off to fetch it for him.
She was too enthusiastic for Kyle’s liking, and he was glad to see her go.
“What is that?” Kyle asked, pointing at Stan’s dish.
“This is called ‘Tour of Italy,’ ” Stan said. “It’s a sampler.”
“Are you ever afraid your heart is going to explode from eating so much?”
Stan rolled his eyes. “I can’t build muscle if I don’t eat a lot,” he said. “And then I can’t be good at football. And then I can’t protect you from assholes like Cartman. Of course, you never let me. But I could. You know, if you wanted that.”
Kyle’s cheeks flushed.
“Do you want a bite?”
Kyle took his fork and stabbed a piece of chicken parmesan that Stan had cut. He chewed it slowly.
“Like that?” Stan asked.
“Not really,” Kyle said, his mouth full. He was too drunk to notice. “But, kinda.”
Continued here.