Nonsense About Romance
Chapter 8: Sex Is Better With Ketchup
written by domolovesyou - illustrated by Noxicosis and Synnesai“Ugh,” said Kyle, dragging his stuff into Stan’s room. “This place stinks.”
“Oh, shut up, you’re used to it,” said Stan, following him inside.
Kyle was to sleep over at his house tonight, mostly because it was a Friday and neither of their parents had any reason to say no. Their sleepovers were usually frequent, of course, though it had been a while since they had last had one, and Stan had mostly been holding out on asking him over due to any awkwardness that would ensue inside of him. But it had been a while. Besides, Kyle had invited himself over today, it wasn’t like he’d actually asked him. So it wasn’t awkward at all. No. No way. Well, it was never awkward, so why should it be awkward now?
Stan tried to reassure him of this as Kyle took his usual place on the ground next to Stan’s bed.
“Man, it sucks that we aren’t small anymore. Then I wouldn’t have to sleep on this cold, hard ground,” he joked.
“Yeah, you’d share the bed with me instead.” Stan rolled his eyes, though his insides definitely did jump when he said this. “I guess technically you still could, since we’d probably fit.”
“I doubt it.” Kyle glanced dubiously over at the twin bed, which was nearly as old as them.
“You sure about that? Let’s try it.”
Stan climbed into his bed and then patted next to him for Kyle to sit. “C’mon dude,” he said. “It’s not like we’re lying down or anything.”
“Oh—Oh right.” Kyle walked over to him and sat down. They fit snugly side by side, though when Stan stretched his left leg to the side his foot banged horribly against the headboard.
“Yeah that’s not gonna work if we sit like this,” he said. “Let’s face the other way!”
“Won’t that be kind of gay?” said Kyle, starting to get up (though secretly, of course, he didn’t mind at all.)
“It’s only gay if you make it gay,” said Stan, grinning and tugging him back down. He turned around so that his back was against the headboard now and his legs were stretched out and only mere inches away from the edge of the bed. Kyle sighed and put himself in a similar position. Their legs were warm against each other.
“Okay, yeah, this is really gay,” said Kyle, quickly getting back off.
Stan felt a little bit hurt. Did Kyle not want to sit next to him? “Don’t be a dick, dude,” he said, though without any rancor nor amusement in his voice.
“I’m not,” Kyle said quickly. “It’s just—yeah. Want to help me get my stuff out?” he said, changing the subject.
Stan assisted him with rolling out his sleeping bag, which Kyle had done so well and that Stan had always been jealous of. He could never roll his own sleeping bags. Every time he went on camping trips with his family, he would always get Kyle over to roll up his sleeping bag for him. Kyle often called him a hopeless case, which Stan had to admit that he was.
“So,” said Stan when they were done, sitting on Kyle’s green sleeping bag (he had grown out of his Terrance and Phillip one). “Let’s go downstairs and play video games.”
“We can if you get your fat ass off so I can put my pillow down,” said Kyle.
Stan snatched his pillow from him and hugged it. “No,” he said. “This is my pillow now.” He instinctively buried his face in it and smelled it. It smelled like Kyle’s hair.
Kyle rolled his eyes and gave him a look. “Stop being so petulant and give it to me.”
“Ooh, all high and mighty now that we’re using big words?” Stan gave it back.
“‘Petulant’ is not a big word.”
“Sorry not everyone can have the same level of intelligence as you.”
“That’s right,” Kyle said smugly as Stan got up and they made their way out of his room. “That’s because I’m smart and everyone else is a dumbass.”
“Glad you think so highly of yourself.”
“Higher than you, of course.”
Kyle glanced at Stan as they walked into the living room and Stan looked at Kyle, and suddenly they dove at each other and started wrestling, falling to the floor. Kyle was laughing as Stan attempted to shove him down, but Kyle managed to get up and trap Stan into a headlock and wouldn’t let go.
“Say Uncle!” said Kyle victoriously. “Say Uncle!”
“Never!” Stan wheezed.
One of his hands touched the small of Kyle’s back and he squealed and leapt off of Stan immediately. Stan fell down behind him and started tickling Kyle’s feet, and as Kyle giggled, he made his way up to tickle Kyle’s legs and back too.
“Not... fair... ahaha... aaa,” Kyle gasped between his chokes of laughter. “I’m... ticklish... and you’re... not... Fair...”
“No, it’s not,” said Stan, grinning and ultimately winning their wrestling/tickling match.
He let Kyle go, though, and then turned on his GameTetrahedron. They hopped onto the couch with game controllers in their hands, and Kyle reached over and wiggled his fingertips on Stan’s neck. Stan looked at him funnily.
“What are you doing?” he said.
Kyle looked embarrassed and his cheeks reddened. “Nothing,” he said quickly, retracting his hand. “Just seeing if your lack of ticklishness has changed.”
“It will never change,” said Stan, grinning, and Kyle kicked him in a measly attempt to get him to fall off the couch.
They played a racing game for a little, which was dumb, and then Tiger Woods PGA Tour 27, because Tiger Woods had recently been caught in another scandal and the goal was to make it through Tiger Woods’s life without encountering crazy men claiming that he had an affair with them. After that, Stan got bored and asked Kyle if he wanted to play Guitar Hero, but Kyle made a face and shook his head.
“Ew,” he said. “Nah. Bad memories.”
“But we beat the game.” Stan looked at the disc fondly. “How about for old times’ sake?”
“Stan, never say that phrase again, and no,” said Kyle. He threw down his controller. “I’m bored. Let’s play something more fun.”
“We can throw ketchup-filled condoms at cars?” (Kenny had taught them that game.)
“Good idea.”
They went into the kitchen where Mrs. Marsh was and took the ketchup, saying that they needed it for an “experiment”, and Mrs. Marsh, trusting Kyle more than she did Stan, wasn’t suspicious at all. Then they stuck into Stan’s parents’ bedroom to try to find the condoms.
“Dude, it’s so gross thinking that my parents have sex,” said Stan, crinkling his nose. “That they have condoms.”
“Sex is technically more pleasurable without condoms,” said Kyle, rifling through Mr. Marsh’s underwear drawer.
“Do I want to know how you know that?” asked Stan.
Kyle turned red, though the lights in the room weren’t on (so they wouldn’t rouse suspicion) so Stan didn’t see him. “I learned it in health in ninth grade,” he said. “You should have been paying attention.”
“Oh, yeah. I was probably asleep, wasn’t I?” said Stan thoughtfully. “And we learned about it back in elementary school, though I can’t remember anything from that... All I remember is that I did something stupid to make my dick hurt a lot.”
“I think that was when we put condoms on for the first time,” said Kyle. “And the chicks were being pussies about everything because they were scared that we could give them an STD.”
“That would make sense.”
“Nothing makes sense around here, though.”
“You have a point.”
They found the condoms that they washed thoroughly even though they were unused (but both were still very disturbed that they were Mr. and Mrs. Marsh’s), then went outside with the package of condoms and ketchup, and to the ledge that overlooked passing cars.
As they filled the condoms with the ketchup, Stan said, “So did you know that Kenny’s hanging out with Butters tonight?”
“Yeah,” said Kyle, working on pouring ketchup into his condom. “I wonder if he’s gonna have sex with him soon.”
“Maybe,” said Stan. “I don’t know. I mean, even though he’s a horndog all the time, he’s got to have some feelings, right? Remember how he got all angry at me at the mall?”
“Well yeah, that’s true. Then again, that was a pretty dick move.”
“You would have done the same thing.”
“I would.”
They both tied their condoms shut like they were balloons, and as two cars passed by, they dropped the condoms on their windshields. One of the condoms splattered and the driver shrieked and swerved to the side, but the other just bounced off (though they did hear that driver cursing at them.)
“Man,” said Stan. “I can’t make a ketchup-filled-condom like you can.”
“That’s because I work with precision and know the exact amount of ketchup to make it fall and explode the moment it lands.”
“Really?” said Stan.
Kyle snorted. “No. You just suck ass at this. I’ll make the bombs, you can throw them down.”
They worked like this for a while, earning some amusing reactions like when a bear came out of nowhere and mauled one of the cars that had been hit with ketchup (luckily the driver had been a Visitor, so it wasn’t like he could die), or when another actually pulled over to the side of the road and started screaming at them. He was old and could barely speak though, so all they saw was a tiny bald little man flailing around and making angry gestures at them.
“Hey look, there’s some idiot walking over there,” said Stan, peering over the ledge. A guy was indeed strolling along the side of the barren road in the cold spring air, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“Let’s see if I can hit him!” said Kyle, tying up a condom shut, and then aiming and firing.
He hit the guy in the face. The man hollered, “You damn teenagers!” to them, but Stan and Kyle barely cared at all.
“Yes!” said Kyle, falling back onto the snowy ground and laughing.
“Ten points to Gryffindor!” said Stan, laughing as well.
“Dude,” said Kyle, getting back up. “This never gets old. How long’ve we been outside?”
Stan checked his cellphone. “About a half an hour,” he answered, closing and pocketing it. “How much ketchup do we have left?” He knew that if they ran out of condoms, they could always just run to the convenience store for more, though it’d look a little gay if they went in together. But they didn’t need to worry about his parents wondering, because Stan was pretty sure they had another secret stash elsewhere that he’d prefer not to know about.
Kyle shook the ketchup bottle. “There’s some left. Wanna go back to your house? I think your parents might get worried if we’re out too long.”
“My parents won’t care,” said Stan, rolling his eyes, but said, “But okay. Just one more, okay?”
He took a condom from the condom case, and the ketchup bottle from him and started filling it up. “This time, mine isn’t going to be retarded,” he said.
“Like that’ll happen,” said Kyle sarcastically, watching him. Stan poured ketchup nearly to the brim, tied it, weighed it carefully, and then dubiously held it over the cliff edge.
“I swear, this one’s gonna work,” he said, though his voice suggested some hesitance.
“Stan, I’m doubting your skill as a condom tier.”
“Dude, I’m positive it will.”
“Oh, a Harley rider’s coming!” said Kyle excitedly, looking down the road. “Drop it on him! This guy actually deserves it.”
Stan waited until the Harley rider was only a few meters away from the cliff edge, his ketchup-filled-condom dangling precariously from his hand, then—splat! The condom landed straight on his bald head and ketchup sprayed everywhere. Stan and Kyle watched with awed amusement as the rider pulled over to the side, swore, and then looked up to see their grinning faces.
“Fuck you!” he said, throwing both his middle fingers up at them.
“Fuck you too!” they called back, showing their own middle fingers. “FAG!”
The Harley rider continued swearing at them, but Kyle decided that they had enough fun with him already. “C’mon dude, let’s go,” he said to Stan, who had started making faces at the motorcyclist just to earn even angrier reactions.
“What?—Oh, okay,” he said, bringing his fingers from pulling on his eyelids and following Kyle back into town.
“You’re so immature,” said Kyle.
“Well I could have pulled down my pants and showed him my ass, but I wasn’t feeling like Cartman today. Or Kenny,” Stan added thoughtfully.
Back at Stan’s house, they played more video games, but after a while Kyle said that he was starting to get tired so Stan relented, though he wasn’t a bit tired at all. The things he did for him.
“I swear, you need to stay up more and be less of a wuss,” he said as Kyle came out of the bathroom while brushing his teeth. Kyle tossed his jacket off and tossed it on top of his sleeping bag, and then shoved Stan onto his back on his bed.
“I stay up plenty of times,” he said through his mouthful of toothpaste.
“Yeah,” snorted Stan. “Studying.”
“I’m Jewish, I can’t help it,” said Kyle, before trudging back to the bathroom. Stan heard him spit in the sink, and then wash his mouth with one of Stan’s cups, though it was the cup that Stan rarely used because Kyle always used it every time he came over. Technically, Stan supposed, the cup could be called Kyle’s.
Stan brushed his teeth afterwards then went over to turn out the light when he saw Kyle all fit and snug into his sleeping bag. He looked kinda cute like that, with his frizzy red hair started to poof a little bit after being let out for so long, and only half of Kyle’s face peeking out because of the cold Colorado air. Kyle peeked out and gave him a funny look.
“What are you staring at?” he asked.
Stan quickly wiped his face of expression in case his staring might have looked a little bit too suspicious... or creepy. “Nothing. You’re just funny-looking,” he added, before shutting off the light.
“Ha-ha. And you’re clearly better looking than me,” said Kyle’s voice in the dark, deadpan.
“How would you know? You can’t see me right now.”
“And thank god for that,” said Kyle.
Stan dangled his leg off his bed and searched around to kick him. He felt himself kick some part of Kyle, and heard his best friend yelp. “Ow! That was my nose!”
“You’re Jewish, I can’t help it.” Stan smirked, even if only his ceiling could see it.
“Dick.”
“No you.”
“Then I’m a longer dick than you.”
“That means you’re a bigger one.”
“Yeah, but I’m still longer.”
“Well you are circumcised.”
“... that’s true.”
“Would you rather be a bigger dick, or not a dick at all?”
“You’re sounding like Kenny,” said Kyle.
“I’m just wondering!”
“Not a dick at all, then. Now, if you don’t mind, goodnight.”
Stan heard him roll over in his sleeping bag. “Goodnight, Kyle,” he whispered, feeling himself smile.