#i've decided i subscribe to meg's theory that stewy's faaaairly self-made

[pynkhues]

Any chance of expanding on everyone's favourite "childhood friends to maybe-college-fwb to partners to enemies to endgame lovers" Kendall and Stewy for the two character thing? (I'm not above trying to nudge you towards fic writing in any way I can)

Definitely, haha. Sorry this took me a minute to get to, and full disclaimer, I have no idea what this is, BUT I know it was very fun to ramble for a bit:

-

Okay okay okay, so you know they met in kindergarten at Buckley, they know that too, or at least, y’know. They know it academically, because fuck, the only shit that really sticks when you’re five is the stuff that hurts. The times dad ripped the phone out of the wall or mom said you were the big brother now so you didn’t get carried anymore, even though the nanny was holding the baby, or scraped knees or loud voices or that weird, sticking feeling of being left alone somewhere longer than you should’ve been, long enough that the shadows grew long and sharp and you felt smaller than you’d ever felt and - - whatever.

Look, the point is who remembers anything good about five?

Not Kendall, and not Stewy either, even though he talks a big game about - - well, everything. Has built his own story in the fragments of Kendall’s fucked up memories and he tells it all the fucking time – about seeing a thin-skinned little prince at the edge of the playground, lost outside his kingdom for the very first time, and maybe there’s a kernel of truth to it, but Kendall still tells Stewy to fuck off every time he brings it up.

Like Stewy isn’t a little prince too.

(It’s different though, isn’t it? The Hosseini’s weren’t the Roy’s, they were rich but not stupid rich, and while Stewy might’ve spent those first five years before they met bouncing between Farsi and English in first class between Elahieh and New York, he wasn’t chasing Roman up the aisle of a private jet to visit Connor at Northwestern for the weekend).

(If I’m a prince, you’re, like, what? A duke? Kendall asked him one night, stoned. Or just like – uh – a prince of a smaller kingdom? Stewy hadn’t looked too impressed at that, but he’d pinched the joint from Kendall’s fingers with one hand, and buried the other in Kendall’s hair to yank his head back as he said: I’m new world, man. Republic of fucking me. You should try it one day. Maybe you can partition the state of Kendall away from daddy’s heavy crown.)

Whatever, the point is the way Kendall remembers it, Stewy was just there one day, wavy haired and bright eyed and already so fucking sure of himself, and maybe it didn’t even matter how they met anyway. What mattered was Stewy picked Kendall, or maybe Kendall picked Stewy (some nights, Kendall likes to think maybe he picked Stewy, but then - - maybe it feels okay to be the one picked sometimes too. Maybe, sometimes, it feels more than okay), and then that was that.

They were friends. Best friends. Partners on the playground and doubles in tennis, Stewy with his uniform always slightly askew, just the right side of cool, and only more so when he added football to tennis in freshman year, adds girls to straight A’s, dated a cheerleader at Spence just to dump her for some cat-eyed Linda Evangelista lookalike, started working out and wearing his Calvins like Wahlberg in a way that made all the girls at whatever lounge bar they ended up at stare.

And okay, even then Kendall knew Stewy was - - y’know, not cooler, because Kendall’s like - - he’s cool in his own way, he’s pretty sure, even if Roman and Shiv have started promising him he’s not. Like, who cares if he backed out of trying out for the football team (it’s not like he chickened out, he just likes all his teeth in his skull) or if he only made it to first base with that girl Stewy hooked him up with, they’re just - -

Different.

But different never really seemed to matter.

Not when they stumbled back to Kendall’s place (dad’s place, whatever), blissfully light, free, because the world felt like something small and easy – a bauble to roll between their fingers – and in Kendall’s room they’d peel off their clothes and smoke and drink and plan in that way you can only do when you’re fifteen and feel not like a prince, but a demigod in designer jeans.

In Calvins.

Stewy really knew how to wear them.

How to get the band to sit right, just above the waist of his pants, below his belly button, and in Kendall’s room like this, he’d take his shirt off, until he was just tanned skin and abs from football, and Kendall would make a joke about his lack of chest hair to distract from the way his own pale skin burned and Stewy would wrestle him back on the bed to get his shirt off in response (like you’re fucking Tom Selleck, bro, do you even have pubes yet?) and Kendall would just about throw himself off the side to hide the fact that - - y’know - - like - -

Bodies respond to - -

It’s not like he wants to do anything with Stewy, it’s just - -

It’s normal, and they’re both young, but maybe a seal breaks, or maybe it doesn’t.

Maybe it’s just like there’s this sort of gauze between them that’s never been tested before and suddenly there’s this tension because Kendall thinks about Stewy sometimes when he’s making out with Cindy Simons after the Buckley-Spence Junior Honors Society Mixer, and maybe he catches Stewy looking at him once at the club they definitely shouldn’t be in on East 14th, wet-mouthed and sure in that way only Stewy ever is, and maybe the wrestling, the roughhousing, in Kendall’s room becomes a habit, and maybe it feels a little electric when Stewy’s knee accidentally brushes the inside of his thigh when he pins him on the bed.

That was an accident.

Right?

Kendall’s pretty sure it was an accident, and mom keeps telling him he needs to stop overthinking things, especially now that he’s going to Harvard in the fall, so Kendall does. Tries to.

No.

Does.

But that like - -

That summer between highschool and college, they barely see each other, because Kendall spends half of it at the Summer Palace with dad, who’s still smarting from mom filing the divorce papers which makes it - - not fun, and it feels like the minute Kendall steps back into Manhattan, Stewy’s parents have him back in Elahieh, meeting with diplomats and hanging out with architects and artists on Fereshteh Street before school starts.

It’s not that it makes things weird when they start at Harvard, but there’s an air of something, distance, maybe, of what feels like a lifetime with fractured by a few months without, and the first time they go out to a bar that’ll take their 18-year-old asses, Stewy gets so wasted he starts speaking Farsi (it’s really hard to keep up your liquor tolerance in a country with an alcohol ban), and it just makes the distance feel even further.

Or maybe it doesn’t, because Kendall’s got his own room in the dorms, and Stewy loops an arm over his shoulder and lets him stumble them out, lets him take them up, in, lets him fumble with the buttons on Stewy’s shirt, and the first glimpse of hard chest has Kendall staring at the floor, at their feet, while his hands work, because Stewy’s firmer than he remembers, more real, and sometime this summer, he really did get chest hair, and that wasn’t supposed to happen, and - -

“Fucking - - bro, hey, fuck - - ”

And Kendall looks up, and Stewy’s staring back at him, cheeks flushed and hair mussed in that way that shouldn’t look so fucking like - - like movie star or whatever, and Kendall’s so fixed on that that he doesn’t even notice Stewy huffing until he grabs his face between both hands and says:

“Yeah, so like, here’s the thing, I think - -” he pauses, wets his lips, and Kendall’s gaze fixes on that too, and he can feel the heat in Stewy’s look, can feel the more real heat, pulsing off his chest, can feel Stewy’s hands, clammy at his cheeks, and they’re so close he feels Stewy’s exhale against the bridge of his nose when he says: “I think you should not freak out, okay?”

And then he’s kissing him, and Kendall thinks this isn’t - - Kendall thinks this can’t - - Kendall thinks - - Kendall thinks this time Stewy means it when his knee pushes between Kendall’s legs, thinks this time, the way his body sparks electric, maybe he does want to do anything, everything, maybe - - maybe - -

When it comes to them, there are always going to be a lot of fucking maybes.