Even If It's Not True - Style +18

 "I love you."

He said it while saying goodbye to Stan. While giving him a friendly hug. Then he followed it with a goodbye gesture. Stan smiled at him with his lips and eyes. A unique glow sparkled in his blue irises in the moonlight. Kyle felt his skin tingle. He was anticipating the words. One, and three, and two. "I", and “love”, and “you”.

But Stan didn't say them. After saying goodbye to him, he kissed Wendy goodbye. Kyle stared at the space that had formed when they separated. Replaying the sound of skin on skin in his mind.

"Are we always going to the airport together?"

Kyle blinked several times before answering.

"Sure, I'll drive us."

Stan chuckled softly. "If your bottle-butt glasses don't kill us first."

"What are you saying, dude? I drive excellently, bottle-butts and all. We're more likely to die in the air than with my hands on the wheel.”

Stanley rolled his eyes and shook his hand one last time. Kyle had been waiting for him. This had to be the moment. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you and I love you. I love you and I love you.

And no. He didn't say anything. He just walked away.

Why hadn't he said anything? Why didn't he reply? Didn't Stan love Kyle? It didn't have to be romantic love, but they had a history. More than a decade together. Love between friends counts as love too. So why didn't he reply? Why didn't he reciprocate?

After all... after...

"Kyle, it's getting late, let's go," Wendy asked, now sitting on the passenger side, the spot where Stan was.

Kyle came out of his trance and nodded. He adjusted his glasses—his "bottle-butt" ones that he needed to drive—and got back in.

He couldn't stop thinking about what had happened before. About the unrequited "I love you," about the ear-to-ear smile that felt like some consolation prize, like a fragment of everything Stan could offer Kyle but wouldn't. He felt something tickle under his skin. He might throw up.

It would always be like this with Stan. Fragments. Parts. Pieces. Little touches. Knowing glances. Smiles. It was like Kyle was thirsty and Stan spit in his mouth. It would never be enough. He needed more. He needed everything.

He glanced at Wendy out of the corner of his eye as she stared out at the streets, oblivious to Kyle's eyes. Stan had kissed her. He kissed her goodbye. Like one those kisses he used to give Kyle under the covers and the covers only. Hidden from the whole world. As if they were committing a crime...

Why could Wendy have Stan openly in the long night and bright day, but Kyle couldn't? Why did Kyle have to resort to fragments?

He couldn't stand it anymore.

He parked in a dark corner on the side of the road, a few blocks from Wendy's house. The girl looked at him, bewildered.

"What's wrong?"

As soon as she said that, Kyle leaned toward her mouth, and she reciprocated, pressing her back against the car door. Kyle's mind never left the lips that had previously been on Wendy's. The lips that had been on hers all night. The morning before school. After the game. At the party. Kisses, kisses, kisses. Stan's lips devouring Wendy's multiple times. It was intoxicating. He could almost feel them. He leaned closer to her mouth, open-mouthed and needy. He wanted more. He wanted to close his eyes just enough and pretend it was Stan in his arms.

 "I thought you said..." Wendy gasped during a moment of respite, "... That we wouldn't do this again..."

Kyle silenced her again with another kiss, and she gladly accepted. They'd been doing this for months. It started the same way it had that time, after a party, while Kyle served as the designated driver, driving Wendy back to her house after dropping Stan off. It was one of those "breakup" or "we're-thinking-things" periods, but Stan had insisted on doing her the favor. Kyle had noticed the signs before, even though he'd ignored them. And he would have ignored Wendy's clichéd advance of, "Do you want a drink? My parents aren't home" too if she weren't wearing Stan's green football jersey with the Park High Cows logo on it, which was so laced with his perfume that the entire time they were having sex, he couldn't take his face out of the fabric. Not even for a moment.

Stan had started doing that sneaky kiss thing during sleepovers. Kyle had become addicted to his lips. To the texture of his hair. To his smell. To him. To him. To him.

It sounded pathetic. And Kyle was pretty sure he was gay. But when the closest thing to Stan Marsh was staring at you hungrily and seeking your closeness, the most logical decision you would make would be to give in and drink the taste of his lips from her mouth.

Wendy moaned and rocked until she was straddling Kyle's lap, who moaned back and deepened the kiss. Stan had been holding her throughout the party, stealing kisses, flirtatiously mouthing at her neck, wrapping his arms around her. His scent was everywhere. The Carolina Herrera his mother gave him for his eighteenth birthday and wore constantly, mixed with that scent that was uniquely Stan. Kyle felt like he was going crazy. He bit and licked Wendy's chin in the futile hope of tasting the scruffy texture Stan had on his face hours after shaving.

The sex was easy because Wendy was wearing a skirt and was dripping wetly between her thighs. She had other reasons for these encounters: her relationship with Stan was unstable, and they hadn't fucked yet. Stan had discussed this with Kyle before, saying he wanted their first time to be special; recently, he'd even said he'd have sex with her when they got home from winning nationals, because Wendy deserved a true winner. Kyle thought he was both silly and adorable. But he'd shattered those illusions. Both by taking away that privilege with Wendy and by having sex with him multiple times in his mind, especially through Wendy.

He had to close his eyes as the girl's body panted and bounced up and down on his lap. He imagined the curve of Stan's neck, sweaty and glistening in the moonlight. The faint, barely perceptible blush on his face and shoulders. His abdomen contracting. Kyle kissing the mole between his pecs. Kissing with his lips and teeth. Open-mouthed. Desperate. Needy. Hungry.

Hungry, he thought, blinded by the trance. He moved to kiss Wendy again to avoid the wrong name escaping his lips and having to explain something he didn't have the energy for. Wendy moaned against his mouth and babbled between kisses. Kyle captured her lower lip and pulled it between his teeth, drawing a surprised whimper from her throat.

Ah, all he could think about was Stan's mouth on his. Capturing his lips with that hunger. Letting out the same sounds. Sighing, he wrapped his arms around her.

The secret kisses weren't enough. Kyle appreciated them, and he really did, he indulged in them whenever he could, but he always wanted more from Stan. More, more. He was the captain of the football team. He had an entourage of girls who idolized him. The attention of all his friends and team members. It wasn't fair. Everyone wanted a piece of him, and Kyle wanted the biggest one. Not just the biggest, he wanted the whole plate, and to chew the glass off the plate it was served on just so he could taste the remains.

Why hadn't he said anything when Kyle told him he loved him? Why? Why? Didn't he feel the same?

He looked at Wendy through a slit. Had he told her that? How many times had he? Why her and not Kyle? Wasn't their friendly love enough?

He feared for the future. He was afraid that Stan would marry Wendy and that they'd both have an unstable marriage and live together and that he'd forget about Kyle and that Kyle would just live out the rest of his miserable life while constantly reminiscing about the times in his life when Stan Marsh would look at him lovingly and kiss his lips with pubescent charm. The times when he could fuck his girlfriend and pretend Stan was the one jumping on his lap and moaning in his ear. Nothing would get better than that. Much less if Stan would just take him out for drinks while he asked Kyle for names for the first daughter he'd have with Wendy. The thought sickened him.

"Wendy," he mumbled breathlessly. "Wen... Wendy..."

"Mhm?" She nodded, her eyes closed in the midst of her frenzy.

"Say you..." he licked his lips. "...Say you love me."

"What...?" She felt a flash of clarity, and her swaying slowed.

"It doesn't have to be true, okay? Just... just say it. So I can come."

"Kyle, I..."

"Please," he begged, "please, Wendy."

"Okay..."

Kyle hugged her and buried his face in her neck, inhaling the remnants of Stan's perfume. He closed his eyes and began to thrust into her against the steering wheel. Wendy clung to him and began to babble, "I love you, I love you, I love you."

Kyle frowned. He could feel it coming. Stan loved him. He loved him. He loved him just like Kyle loved him. It was true. It was true.

"I love you, I love you, I love you. Stan. Stan. I love you so much. God, I love you. I love you. Stan. Don't leave me. Please don't…"

He wanted to hold him in his arms. He wanted to be able to kiss him with mouths open and chins covered in slick. He wanted to touch his body. To stroke, hold, grab, pinch, bite. Yes, he wanted to bite. He wanted to break his skin and know what was inside. To truly taste him in his lips. Yes, yes…

With a loud, embarrassing moan, he climaxed. He gripped the steering wheel behind a trembling Wendy who had just reached her orgasm with a loud moan. His body felt light. His head felt like cotton wool. Still feeling like he was in a world where his feelings for his best friend could be reciprocated.

"Kyle! Ugh! How am I supposed to cover this up?!”

Kyle licked his lips, feeling the metallic taste of blood stain his tongue. In front of him, Wendy was touching the teeth mark on her shoulder with her fingertips, her face twisted in pain. Kyle panicked.

"Shit! Did I do that?! Oh my God, Wendy, I'm sorry."

"You need to be more careful, damn it," she complained. "I'm going to have to wear full-body swimsuits for the rest of the summer if I don't want people to ask me questions. What were you even thinking?”

Kyle licked his lips again, tasting the remnants of blood. An image flashed through his mind. A tanned neck, sun-kissed, covering the new bite mark on it with a slender hand, an expression somewhere between pain and arousal on his face. A pair bunch of short, unraveled black hairs. A flat chest rising and falling rapidly.

He cleared his throat, feeling a thick warmth forming in the pit of his stomach and a tingling sensation beneath his skin.

"Nothing... I don't know.”

October 8th 2025