#dude your reasoning behind choosing andrew for fog?

[traitor-boyfriend]

So Viel

Words: 3004

Pairing: Stan/Kyle

Summary: Kyle finally returns home from a year abroad.

There’s an uncomfortable buzz of anticipation shelved in the back of Stan’s brain as he turns onto the main road, his fingers tapping idly along to the crackling radio. Home for all of six hours, there’s a lot that Stan can’t wait to show Kyle upon his eventual homecoming from a year abroad in Germany. He wonders whether to lead with his newly-chipped front tooth, courtesy of the only hockey game he neglected to wear a mouth guard, or the outline of an eventually complete tattoo on his left arm. Neither will matter; the first thing Kyle is sure to notice is that Stan is finally sporting an adult haircut. It’s nothing special -- just exceptionally short. More of an overgrown crew cut than anything. The wind brushes his bare forehead and he reaches to part the spindly wraith of where bangs used to be.

His phone buzzes with a text from Kyle.

My mother is driving me crazy. Please hurry.

Stan grins to himself and assures Kyle that he’s on the way, hoping that the hasty cleaning of his car done beforehand is enough to prevent too big a hissy fit about it. He thinks as such before knocking an empty and forgotten coffee cup beneath the passenger seat at a red light.

Ike is the first to answer when Stan rings the doorbell; he’s seventeen now with all the acne to prove it, the budding facial hair along his chin that’s as ordinary and ugly as it is exceptionally disconcerting. He listlessly invites Stan to wait inside while Kyle remains holed up in the bathroom.

Gerald flicks a newspaper corner in his direction as a greeting; Sheila wanders in from the kitchen and gives Stan a terse nod of acknowledgment, her cherubic hands pruned with dishwater. They exchange half-hearted pleasantries about the weather, the news, a shared eagerness in having Kyle home, and Ike makes sure his performative grunt of irritation is heard. Though he’s not sure when it started, there’s a tightrope balance to maintaining friendliness with Kyle’s mother now – as if any moment he may be ushered from their home by a wicker broom out into the street like a mangy cat. She suddenly insists on calling him ‘Stanley’ and remarks about his tattoo. She calls it “interesting” and nothing more.

Kyle emerges from the bathroom about five minutes later. Shower gel and shaving cream follows him, as does an air of humidity. He fiddles with minor details of his outfit when ambling through the hall before noticing Stan.

“Your hair!”

Stan smiles and runs his fingers through what little of it is left. “You like it?”

Kyle smiles ear to ear before declaring that he hates it.

He playfully gives Stan’s cheek two gentle slaps, hand falling to his shoulder. “I liked your hair long,” Kyle says. “You don’t even look like you anymore.”

“I could say the same to you,” Stan smirks, directing his attention to Kyle’s perfectly coiffed and incredibly stylish undercut. Kyle asks if it looks stupid, to which Stan assures him that it doesn’t. It looks very nice on him. By far, it’s the most fashionable aspect about him – the rest of Kyle clad in the same oversized earth-tone flannel shirt he’s owned since ninth grade, scuffed ankle boots, and a charcoal pair of jeans that are looking a little worse for wear.

The lingering distance dissipates between them in a quick hug; Kyle collects his things with Sheila warbling about their whereabouts from the other room, Stan not protesting as he is carelessly rushed out the door.

Kyle is immediately drawn to the tattoo once outside, taking Stan’s arm and examining it with clinical fervor in the flood of porchlight. He asks what it is.

“A rabbit smoking a pipe,” Stan says.

Kyle turns Stan’s arm at an angle once, twice, releasing the sturdy grip on his flesh. He nods. “Interesting,” he says.

They head to the new and improved Shakey’s, which is neither new nor improved but rather under different management; such management includes the obtaining of a liquor license and excommunicating itself of its titular mascot, which makes Stan both relieved and slightly sad. Several of the overhead lights are burnt out, a dim fog of body heat and grime nesting in every small nook, the floors still sticky as ever. A backwoods baby blanket of childhood baseball games and poorly planned birthday parties. They order a large cheese pizza and a pitcher of beer.

It’s still surreal to be sitting with Kyle again – to be able to see and hear him clearly. Though he understood, it was difficult for Stan to cosign to a year of dwindling phone calls and video chats, to a blurry, garbled visage of Kyle that lived on in his cell phone or webcam that may be disconnected at a moment’s notice. A year seemed intolerable, and far too long to live with the phantom ache of reaching for Kyle only to find him missing. Fostering companionship in others was futile; it was a stark realization on just how little he confided in anyone else. His first sip of beer is cold and crisp and tastes both familiar and brand new.

Obligatory small talk and catch-up questions out of the way, the two fall into the familiar rhythm of silent communication: pointed flickers toward the homey rednecks worthy of their ridicule and concealed snorts, jested kicks beneath the table, cheeks burning bright and eyes filled with light. Stan tells a joke and Kyle grasps breathlessly at his arm as he laughs. Every touch feels so good it hurts.

Kyle pecks his pizza like a sheepish bird, but with encouragement to drink he becomes equally greedy as Stan, the two of them batting greasy fingers at each other like when they were teenagers calling dibs on the unevenly large slices, ready to pounce if the other tries taking more than his fair share. Stan smiles and stares, feeling prematurely drunk. Kyle asks a defensive, “What?” as a long sliver of mozzarella falls from his lips; Stan only shakes his head and grins.

He has a fresh bite in his mouth when Kyle reaches across the table and snatches his chin. He commands Stan to swallow immediately and show his teeth, which he does.

“Christ, what did you do to your beautiful teeth!”

“It’s one tooth,” Stan says. “Hockey.”

Kyle’s internal ticker begins to rattle off, flailing his arms in fury over what a stupid and dangerous sport it is – how it’s bad enough that Stan feels the need to play, but he’s also the reason Ike plays now too, so he’s basically the only responsible party if any injury befalls him – and speaking of responsibility, to be so irresponsible as to forget his mouth guard? What was he thinking? Does he know how much worse he could’ve been hurt?

Stan patiently waits for Kyle to exhaust himself. He does so quite dramatically, flopping back into the booth with a dissatisfied puff. Stan smiles sweetly.

“It’s not that bad, and I’m getting it fixed,” he says. “You don’t need to worry so much.”

Kyle hardens. “Well, I do worry about you,” he says, quiet. His gaze briefly pans to the other side of the restaurant before returning to Stan, holding his drink close without sipping from it. For a moment, Stan wishes to preserve him in exactly this way – loving scowl, knobby knuckles curled around glass, gap teeth bit down on his bottom lip. “And don’t tell me what to do. I’ll worry about you as much as I goddamn please.”

Stan grins and accepts this as an inevitability.

Soon after, he regales Stan with stories of Germany: no tipping the waiter, nothing open on Sundays, the electrifying terror of driving on the Autobahn. It amuses him greatly to admire all the little ways Kyle is both inconvenienced, fascinated and utterly irritated by arbitrary social conventions, exhausting himself regardless of whether he chooses to defy or comply with them, his curious fixation with their very existence reading as evidence to something greater of who Kyle is as a person – though, of what, Stan isn’t sure. All he knows is it makes Kyle very interesting to listen to.

Stan is responsive to the intricate cultural comparisons, albeit only mildly until Kyle makes mention of a man named Lukas. A friend of his host family. He’s expecting the bomb before Kyle drops it; Stan isn’t sure when or where his odd possessiveness of Kyle first emerged, but it beats tried and true as ever, hallowed in his chest by mention of the man being six years older. Kyle insists it wasn’t ‘weird’ or ‘manipulative’ or any of Stan’s other fears – Lukas made the whole experience all the richer. Lukas was sweet. This is worse somehow.

And then the conversation of romance turns its head to Stan. Kyle asks about Andrew. Though, he doesn’t address him as such. Andrew, to Kyle, is “that swimmer, or whatever he was” and nothing more.

Stan says shakes his head and sips his beer. It’s a slightly tender wound that Kyle jumps to salt almost immediately. He raps his nails against the table, obviously waiting to be given the gory details, an unabashed lust for melodrama. The real story is far less glamourous. A nice girl from his botany class who frequently loaned him pens pulled him aside before class several weeks before and informed him that she saw Andrew with his tongue in the mouth of some unrecognizable stranger the night before. It took Stan an additional week to confront him about it. Easily the most upsetting part of the whole ordeal was the ease and unrepentance of Andrew’s confession to it and the months-long secrecy behind it. Reliving it in technicolor vividness makes Stan feel foreign in his own skin.

“That’s it?” Kyle asks, incredulous. “He was just out with some other dude at a party? Not even trying to hide?”

“Yeah.”

“God, what a dick.”

“Yeah. But I liked him, y’know.”

“Oh, I know… and I’m sorry, I guess. He was a dick though. I could tell from the moment I met him – when he told me he liked Bukowski, I was, like, ‘Oh, I bet this guy’s a dick.’”

“You think every guy I date is a dick.”

Kyle snorts. “Yeah, because they usually are. I swear, Stanley, you have the worst taste in men.”

Stan nods reluctantly. Andrew did cheat on him, so it’s not as if Kyle is wrong. He isn’t privy to the consequences of wrongness with the same triage as Stan. He thought to be suspicious when he still wouldn’t say “I love you” after six months of dating; everyone assured him he was merely being paranoid. And sure, maybe he was, but it wasn’t for no reason, he wasn’t simply imagining things, but he felt a need to—

“You can do better, dude,” Kyle says, furrowing his brow, a crown of righteous indignation atop his head on Stan’s behalf. He offers a tender touch of the hand, a thin sheen of pizza grease still coating his fingers. His eyes soften. The overhead light makes Kyle look like an angel. Stan feels something dizzy stir in his stomach. “Way better.”

He thanks Kyle and they polish what’s left of the lukewarm beer, leaving their money on the table.

In the parking lot, they sit in Stan’s car with the radio on and the windows down. He’s a little buzzed but decent to drive, though he finds it best to wait given the unmarked police car across the street, not wanting to end on a dour note with an arrest. Wind blows steady and cool with the suggestion of a possible storm in the coming days. Kyle doesn’t argue over Stan’s choice of music, and the delicate bleating of an acoustic guitar serves as a lovely if ominous backdrop to the brisk bite in the air.

A year in Germany has only exacerbated Kyle’s smoking habit, and he offers a cigarette to Stan before pulling back in embarrassment.

“Shit, sorry,” he mumbles. His cigarette hovers near the opening of the pack without being tucked away. “I shouldn’t even be smoking around you.”

“It’s okay,” Stan says. “I don’t mind.”

“No, it’s not – God.”

“Dude, I haven’t had an asthma attack in four years. Really, it’s okay.”

Kyle apprehensively twirls the cigarette in his fingers. Stan can tell he’s itching for the relief of nicotine – unable to smoke at home for fear Sheila might catch and promptly berate him – but continues to stare at Stan with lilted worry. Stan scoffs and shakes his head; he reaches for Kyle’s lighter and sparks it for him, the flicker of fire illuminating Kyle’s short and uneven lashes.

Kyle smolders and leans towards the flame. “You’re so good to me.”

Though he isn’t sure when, the smell of cigarette smoke, particularly when mingled with the aura of belonging to Kyle, had transformed from something previously chemical and unpleasant. It was homey now. A familiar pillar to the foundation of his life, like the endless drift of pine needles and gasoline, effervescent chill of snow on his bedroom window, the bellowing of his parents arguing through paper-thin walls. Something that could always be relied on as a universal constant.

He watches Kyle drag and sigh and wave his emphatic hand while he prattles on about the arduous event his mother made of picking him up from the airport, but Stan has trouble paying attention. There’s something even more captivating about the sharp curvatures of Kyle’s face in low light, the wet shine to his teeth when he delights himself with a particularly funny observation. He finds himself wanting nothing more than to kiss Kyle, but beyond that, to allow his face as close to Kyle’s as possible in a dangerous precursor. Just to be close. Very close. So he does, touch-starved and aching and utterly helpless to the allure of self-destruction.

Kyle asks what it is that Stan is doing.

And Stan finds himself kissing Kyle’s cheek before his brain has made any conscious decision to do so. It’s soft and chaste and fearfully quick. It’s the only way he knows to address this benevolent, pernicious connection between them that refuses to be severed, come hell or highwater. Or Germany.

Kyle blinks, oblivious and dumbfounded. Stan’s heart sits crooked in his chest doing its best to find any way to contort itself in search of relief.

“Stan, I, uh.” Kyle murmurs, his voice a gravelly whisper. He laughs to himself and Stan fears it to be mean. Kyle flickers him a glance. “You don’t want this,” he says. He sounds pensive and sad. “Me, y’know.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“No, you don’t. You can do better.”

“No. I can’t.”

It’s an admission that leaves a hot tickle in some part of his body indistinguishable from his heart or his stomach.

Kyle doesn’t speak right away. He swallows, saliva bobbing in his throat, staring out the windshield until he repeats Stan’s name again, twice, three times in a daze, and its everything he finds himself ever wanting to hear – his name said with that exact inflection of confusion and desperation and loving fondness.

Stan goes for his cheek once more and finds himself on Kyle’s lips instead. He gives a low whine against Stan’s mouth, accepting the first timid brush of Stan’s tongue; it feels so good it hurts. Kyle nips at him eagerly. It’s a gentle stasis, slow and warm and on the brink of collapse at any moment.

Kyle pulls back first. He clears his throat and drags on his cigarette, letting the smoke escape through his nose. Stan tries to find where exactly it is that he buried his voice. “Is, uh. Is this a date now?”

“Do you want it to be?”

Stan is thrown by the question. Kyle looks at him with obvious curiosity; his tone is void of its usual smarmy sarcasm, plain and honest, as if asking whether or not he should be anticipating rain later of if he has something stuck in his teeth. He shouldn’t, and he doesn’t, and Stan is unsure how to respond. He stares beyond Kyle’s eyes with a hand still gripping to a gelled patch of his hair.

“I missed you,” he breaths.

“I missed you too,” Kyle says. He pensively bites on his bottom lip before pawing at Stan’s face, fingers tracing the curve of the shell of his ear. The heat of burning ash radiates against his skin. “I missed you so fucking much, Stan.”

They spend a minute or two like that: hands wandering around the other, foreheads almost touching, but not quite. It’s a culmination of all the years Stan stole little moments, because that was all he had and would be given – hands brushing together, slightly-too-long hugs, drunk over-affection, one of Kyle’s angular hands soothing his back during a two-a.m. meltdown while the other hastily wiped at Stan’s wet eyes, gentle but firm yet exhausted commands to stop crying. He’s not sure how he’s been able to go this long without allowing it a name; he’s terrified of possibly having to continue it this way.

“Say something romantic to me in German,” he asks. It’s all he can think of.

“It’s not that kind of language,” Kyle says through a grin. “It’s not romantic at all.”

Kyle pulls away to savor what’s left of his almost-extinguished cigarette; he flicks the filter beneath the neon storefront, blustering the acidic fog of smoke out the window.

“Can we go back to your house?” Kyle asks. He bats his eyes at Stan, fiddling with the folded cuffs of his pants. “I’m so tired. I’m still kind of jet-lagged.”

Stan smirks, newly emboldened by Kyle’s indirect shyness. “And you wanna sleep in my bed?” he muses.

Kyle rolls his eyes and sighs with a lofty hue. “If you’ll have me.”

Stan grins, laughing. “Of course,” he says. “You’re the only one I would.”