Chapter Four – Beige Soup.
Two weeks comes too slow for Kyle, the anticipation of being reunited with his family and best friend almost made him sleepless, too many times during the past fortnight had be woken up far too early for his liking, plagued with thoughts about Stan's baby and Ike's new drastic haircut which Ma disapproves off. He finds himself starring at Kenny during these hours, besotted by his deep blonde lashes, his tasselled brows and taunting lips. He wants to kiss Kenny awake until his lips swell and his lungs bleed, to scream 'I love you, mine, mine, mine' until the words lose all sense and his voice is broken, and Kenny is repeating, 'I'm yours, yours, yours.'
Kyle agrees he thinks far too quickly during these hours because he ponders everything and when Kenny finally begins to stir after several awful hours of pondering, Kyle is halfway to believing he knows why a raven is like a writing desk, yet he forgets when reunited with Kenny's smile.
"Up early again?" He questions this morning, Kyle hums and takes this as his chance to finally slip out of bed, planting a kiss to Kenny's forehead. "You know you can wake me." He calls after Kyle, who's halfway out the door and trying to recollect the distinct shade of ink.
It Friday morning and if they weren't expecting Kyle's family to appear at the airport in the next six hours, Kyle would already be at work, unlocking the shop and clicking his tongue at the distasteful graffiti that has wound up on the metal sheeting that protects the shop from rebelling teens. He's thankful he's in his family home so he can ground coffee beans and make a proper cup instead of using the instant blend at Kenny's house. The noise rouses Kenny from the bedroom, he collapses into a breakfast chair which stands against the kitchen's island. He lays his head on it, only lifting it up to view the coffee Kyle's placed before him.
"I've slept so much compared to you, yet I'm still tired."
"Well, considering that it's only half seven, I would expect you to be." Kyle counters, pulling himself up alongside Kenny, the stool wobbling slightly as Kyle situates himself onto it.
"That's probably the worst part!" Kenny sulks, waving his coffee around and ignoring Kyle's sizzling hummer when he spills some of it down his wrist. "I still don't get why I'm awake this early if we finished all the jobs yesterday. I finally get a day off, and I'm up earlier than normal."
"We're still going to be busy today! We need to go food shopping for a meal tonight, finally put some gas into my car so I can drive down in it later to pick my family up. And," Kyle leers, his voice hushing as he leans forwards, his knee presses against Kenny's, his eyes ablaze; "I want to rechristen the house before we leave for the month."
.
"How many Jewish people does it take to buy meat?" Kenny pries desperately, waving his hands at the long queue of people gathered in front of them.
"That sounds like the introduction to a joke." Kyle replies, ignoring Kenny's impatient attitude. This is the only kosher place in South Park and Kyle intents to use it to its fullest with his parent's arrival tonight. Kenny's still fidgeting, he hates standing in the cold and staring at bloody joints of holy meat. It's the smell more than anything he decides, he peers at his watch and shakes himself, ignoring the two women in front of him who simmer their conversation to turn and stare.
"I'm starting to feel queasy." He whines, slouching himself forward to look frail.
"Kenny, you've been a meat eater all your life, what's your problem?" Kyle states, ignoring his pathetic display, starring dazedly at his checklist for tonight. They come in here often enough for Kenny to have gotten used it, yet each time they have the same conversation, mostly because Kyle likes teasing Kenny about his irrational fear of food.
"It's the blood!"
"Kenny, all meat has blood in it?"
"There's no such thing as a bloody chicken nugget, Kyle!"
"Right…"
"Who asks for a medium rare fish finger? Who?"
"No one, I get it." He smiles, pushing against Kenny. "You can stand outside if you want, we're almost at the front."
"I want..." he murmurs as he squeezes past the two old ladies, who stop their order to turn and peer at him. He ignores the way the butcher cuts a slab of unknown meat on the counter and how its blood pools around it. He hovers outside until Kyle appears, holding a blue and white stripped plastic bag and reaching out for Kenny's hand. "What were those ladies saying?"
"I don't know, I can't speak Hebrew."
"You can speak a little."
"Not really." Kyle shrugs nonchalantly, handing Kenny the plastic bag instead of his palm. Kenny takes it with a whimper, pouting back at Kyle. "You know they drain the meat here, right?" He's still looking at his list, mentally checking off everything he's collected, he's glad to see that they're almost gathered everything.
"Obviously not enough, I can still see it."
"You're strange." Kyle dismisses, gripping Kenny's free hand and smiling up at him, his eyes closing partly as he entwines their fingers. He presses himself into Kenny whilst doing this, a romantic notion that's ignored due to its constant use. He raises their joined hands and points forward; "Now, onto the grocery store!"
.
"Kyle?"
He turns to find Kip also checking out soup cans. He's smiling up at Kyle, holding a tin of Isaac's Chicken Broth in his left hand and basket in the other. He looks dirty; hair wet and thin, tied up with loose, straggling curls with stick down the side of his forehead. His eyes are dull and droopy and tired. He looks ill, but Kyle doesn't question anything, he hasn't got time to involve himself any further into Kip with his parent's arrival tonight – wants to but fears he'll invest himself too deeply. especially now with Hannukah and Christmas and Stan coming. He doesn't know Kip well enough to poke his nose into business that isn't meant for him, so he ignores his sunken demeanour and grins back.
He doesn't know what to say, he wants to blurt "I didn't think I'd find you here" which would be stupid or "I just can't seem to escape you" which is infinitely worse, so he tightens his hold on Kenny's fingers and tugs him forward, "This is Kenny." He introduces, jerking his head in Kenny's direction as if Kip might get confused who Kenny is with no one else around to mistake him for.
"Ah," Kip motions in recognition, dropping his Chicken Broth into his basket and stepping forward, "Nice to meet you." He greets, fingers outstretched for Kenny to return. He drops Kyle's hand to take Kip's; ignoring the intense, vice hold which leaves his palm white and pulsing.
"Why are you buying so much soup?" Kenny asks before Kyle can reengage the conversation towards himself, "Stocking up for winter?" Kenny lets out a boisterous, forced laugh which Kyle cringes at, irked that Kenny has to question Kip's shopping habits and how his voice sounds belittling.
Kip lets out the same forced chuckle, bewildered, he brushes a curled hair away from his face, "Yeah, something like that…" He mutters, his eyes flickering to Kyle briefly whilst he speaks.
"You can never have enough soup." Kyle intervenes, smiling weakly "I love soup – especially–" he peers at the soup tins closest to him – "leak and potato." He struggles to rebalance the conversation, dropping the can into his bag and pinching Kenny's thumb when he goes to correct Kyle.
"Yeah?" Says Kip weakly, his eyebrows softly pressed together and his tongue darting out quickly to wet his lips. He's mulling something over in his mind, his tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip briefly. Kyle gathers himself, his fingers ripple against the basket as he drums them, body hunching as his mind retreats elsewhere as Kip studies them both. When he's visited Kip, it always seems friendly enough, quiet and sometimes embarrassing but whenever its unexpected, whenever he hasn't prepared himself; its uncomfortable and startling and Kyle always tries to find an excuse to leave. He goes to speak his now, but Kenny beats him too it.
"We should go." Kenny points before Kip can question whatever's playing on his mind. "Nice meeting you." He calls as he turns them both around and begins walking away from him. Kyle waves over his shoulder and sighs as he looks away.
"Who is that?" Kenny asks when they're far enough way.
"Kip. The guy I went to Casa Bonita with."
"He's weird." Kenny revokes, his fingers squeezing tightly onto Kyle's, he peers down; "Do we like him?"
"I think so, but to be honest, I'm not entirely sure."
.
They've been home barely 15 minutes before Kyle is giving Kenny a wanton, breathless gaze which has Kenny dropping his ladle and hastily switching the stove off to stalk towards him, he presses his lips against Kyle's cheek briefly, gesturing his intentions. Kyle keens around him, developing Kenny into himself and whining boisterously.
"I've waited too long." His body yearning towards Kenny's fingers. "Please. Cook later."
It's a moment of long lazy kisses, which turn into a passionate, starving string of needy kissing. Kenny lifts Kyle easily, refusing to unlatch his mouth from Kyle's as they wobble around the kitchen until Kyle's back's laid against the table and his legs hang wide and limp for Kenny to pull himself between. Kenny's kisses begin to get jumbled, he travels down the side of Kyle's mouth, pressing himself into Kyle's chin and jaw and throat. His hands glide up underneath Kyle's top, brushing past his abdomen and feeling him clench unconsciously at the ticklish feeling.
"Let's do it in all our favourite places." Kyle whispers when Kenny reunites their lips, "We can start in the kitchen and finish in the shower."
"You need to leave to get your parents in an hour. Will we have enough time?"
"We'll make time."
.
Sheila has been raving about a woman on the plane for the last 10 minutes, huffing as she repeats herself, she's reserved the front seat in Kyle's car, wildly waving her hands about as she reiterates the flight over and 'the incessantly rude woman and her crying child.'
"H-how's you and Kenny doing?" Gerald interrupts when he can, his wife turns from the front see to glare at him briefly before engaging with Kyle's talk of Kenny.
"We're doing really well, Kenny recently got a promotion so after Christmas he's going to quit his second job at Burger King and focus solely on mechanics, the owner wants Kenny to get a degree in Engineering so he can take over the business, and I'm doing well at Tweak's Coffee now that I'm the Store Manager."
"Is Kenny going to go for it?"
"Hopefully this time next year we'll have enough saved for him to go someplace, we haven't really started looking with everything that's happening. But I really want him to go."
"Stan's coming back to South Park, isn't he?" Sheila quips, squeezing months of information out of Kyle in seconds, they'll talk about it over the next few weeks in more detail. But for now, Sheila craves gossip, needs to know everything that has happened whilst she's been away living with Ike and leaving Kyle alone to run her house for her.
"Stan's coming back for Christmas so we're all going to celebrate together and we're going to finally meet little Alice – their daughter. He and Wendy are getting here next week, they're staying with Wendy's family because Stan can't trust his."
"That's because Randy is a douchebag."
"Ike!" Both his parents bark, quipping their heads around to glare at him. Kyle lets out a soft, whishing chuckle, he's missed them all so much. He's a little sad that he has to leave his childhood home for the next few weeks to camp out at Kenny's, but it's his choice and sleeping in a bed alone would almost be torture. So, he blinks back his sorrow and smiles, because he's seeing his family again after 12 long weeks apart.
"What do you think Ike? Now that you're the expert, should Kenny consider university for his engineering degree?"
"Definitely, if he doesn't mind selling his soul to the Devil of Academia. I'm so glad my course is over for the year."
"Yes, but you need to make sure that you're on top of your revision, it doesn't matter if you are an academic genius who finished all his high school exams by age 12. It doesn't mean you get to slack off!" Shelia pipes in, her finger raised for exaggeration, Kyle wonders how many times they've already had this conversation from Ike's telling sigh and his exaggerated eye-roll.
"Say that one more time and I'll burn all my books."
"I won't care it doesn't affect me or my life." Sheila quips back, Ike's growl of frustration is drowned out by Kyle's laugh; it's good to have them back.