Chapter Text
Kissing Kian tasted like alcohol and salt.
Rand doubted that it always did, after all Kian had been drinking when Rand found him, tears streaming down his face and leaving behind streaks of black mascara.
The tears didn’t stop even now, with Kian’s lips pressed tightly against his.
He wasn’t quite sure how he got into this situation.
What Rand did know was that Kian had come to school in a skirt for the first time two weeks ago. An older kid, a head shorter than Kian but with enough muscle to make up for it, had shoved him into the lockers just before second period, the word Faggot curled cruelly around his lips. Rand caught a black eye, a bloody nose and detention that day.
Kian had gotten a telling off and a warning for “indecent conduct”, but both Rand and the teachers knew there was no detention that could hold Kian Stone, and contacting his parents would not lead to anything but a load of wasted time.
There hadn’t been a day since then that Kian hadn’t proudly worn one of his mother’s skirts to school.
What Rand did know was that today Kian had walked through the classroom door with a full face of makeup. Rand had immediately been transfixed by the dark charcoal beneath his eyes and the glittering purple above them as Rolan beside him gasped softly.
Rand had spent the first period trying not to stare at Kian’s bright red lips.
In the break afterwards some twerp had slammed his fist into Kian’s stomach. This time, before Rand could jump in, Rolan had already crossed the hallway in a few long strides, rage red-hot high on his cheeks as he stood over Kian’s crumpled, heaving figure. This time Rolan ended up in detention.
What Rand did know was that after school he’d gone looking for Kian, and had found him drunk and miserable behind the bleachers.
The lips against his were moving, Rand realized. There was a hand in his hair.
Rand’s own hands were at his sides, picking at his pants. The tension that usually resided in his shoulders had spread throughout his body, leaving him still and rigid. His sunglasses dug uncomfortably into his cheek.
Kian’s breathing turned desperate. The grip in Rand’s hair tightened.
When Rand felt a tongue touch against his upper lip, a jolt shot through him, from the point of contact all the way to his brain and down his back. His eyes snapped open and he stumbled back. He felt Kian’s fingers slip from his curls.
His chest hurt. Greedily he sucked in whatever air he could. It didn’t seem to help.
In front of him Kian had finally stopped crying, his breath heaving in tandem with Rand’s, hitching occasionally. His makeup was utterly ruined. Black streaks now covered most of his face, even running down his neck and beneath the collar of the loose v-neck shirt he wore, and the color on his lips was smeared. Rand felt himself run hot as he trailed the red with his eyes.
Time stretched like taffy. It felt as if the world had been hollowed out, everything and everyone else falling away, and now there was only Rand and Kian; less than a foot apart, staring into each other, waiting for the silence to shatter.
When it did it was to the strangled gasping sound that tore itself free from Kian’s throat.
With the tension finally ripped to shreds, the severity of what had just happened settled deep in Rand’s gut and he threw a paranoid glance over his shoulder.
Meanwhile a stream of liquor-slurred words and aborted apologies began dripping from Kian’s mouth like tar.
“Shit. Rand- fuck. I’m so- Dude, I’m so sorry, man, I shouldn’t’ve-” Kian’s voice came out strained. His breathing picked up, turning hectic and shallow. “I didn’t- Rand, I- You’re-”
The flood of words cut off abruptly when Rand turned back to Kian and their eyes met once more.
Rand’s mouth felt dry.
Kian had a bruise. Rand hadn’t noticed before, but Kian had a bruise on his forehead, half hidden beneath blonde hair.
Unbidden, Rand’s mind conjured up the image of Kian curled into himself on the cold linoleum floor of the school hallway under Rolan’s protective stance, gripping his head or maybe his stomach. It delivered him the memory of Kian slumped against the lockers behind Rand, his eyes filled with fear for just a split second of vulnerability when Rand had cast his gaze over to him just long enough to make sure he was alright.
He thought of the way Kian had leaned against the bleachers when he found him, grip loose around the neck of a bottle, hair falling into his face and shoulders shaking.
They’d been friends for years and Rand hadn’t seen Kian cry once before today.
He pushed his glasses to sit on top of his unruly brown hair and opened his mouth a few times in a fruitless effort to say something comforting and profound.
When the words did come, his voice was hoarse.
“Nah, man, it’s all good.” One of his shoulders twitched upwards in an almost shrug.
“But-”
“I already knew you were a queer, it’s fine.”
Kian’s eyebrows shot up at that and he gave a little congested exhale of air that could’ve been a chuckle as much as simply a noise of surprise.
“That’s not…” His voice trailed off, soft and shaky, so utterly unlike anything Rand had ever heard from him.
His eyes fell from Rand’s and down to his lips.
Kian suddenly turned away, clearing his throat. He leaned down to pick back up the bottle of cheap vodka he’d put down earlier, and in one surprisingly fluid motion given his drunkenness, righted himself and pulled a tissue from one of his many pockets.
He gestured at Rand with his chin — a short, sharp nod — and started to wet the tissue with the alcohol.
“You’ve got something on your face.” Readying the now drenched tissue, Kian stepped closer to Rand, the hand still holding onto the vodka coming up to place a delicate finger under his chin and gently tip up his head.
The cold glass of the rim of the bottle bumping against his jaw made Rand all too aware of how hot his face had gotten.
“Relax your mouth.”
“What?” Rand’s voice climbed an octave, incredulous.
Kian poised his tissue in front of Rand’s face. “Dude, you have my lipstick on your lips. Should probably get it off before someone sees you, yeah?”
“Oh.” Right. Rand shook his head a little to dispel thoughts he would deny until his dying day, then nodded slightly. “Go ahead.”
His voice was shakier than he would’ve liked, but it didn’t seem like Kian noticed. Or maybe he didn’t care.
As Kian started gently swiping across Rand’s lips, Rand’s eyes were busy searching the other’s face for any signs of what was going through his head. With him so close (again), Rand could clearly see the redness decorating his puffy eyes underneath all that heavy black. But where Kian just a minute ago had seemed out of his mind with pain or desperation or maybe simply the alcohol, his gaze now held nothing but a crystal clear concentration.
Rand didn’t buy the facade for a second. He knew Kian well enough by now to see through it — or at least make an educated guess as to what lay behind it.
“If-” he started lowly, “If you’re worried this will change things, that I’ll become like them, that I’d ever-” His voice broke, so he tried again, “That I’d ever-”
Kian shushed him. His eyes flicked up to Rand’s. “Hold still. I’m trying to make you look like someone who doesn’t kiss boys behind the bleachers.”
He went back to his work in silence. With Kian’s eyes fixed on his mouth, the finger under his chin simply resting near his pulsepoint now instead of holding him still, and the firm yet tender motions of the wet tissue over his chapped lips — left to right, upper lip, lower lip, over and over and over — Rand could feel himself holding his breath, his lungs pressing up against his ribcage, blood rushing in his ears. Between one swipe and the next his tongue shot out to lick at the slight sting the tissue left behind and came back coated in the sharp taste of shitty vodka.
Eventually Kian let out a long breath. He didn’t tear his eyes away from his task even as he started talking.
“That’s not what- I didn’t think you would. Treat me the way they do, I mean.”
Rand raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t sure if Kian had noticed the unspoken question, but he continued anyway.
“You see man, I’m a-”, he huffed a raspy breath, “a ‘queer’. I know that. You know that. The other kids know that.”
Rand let Kian talk, anticipation rising in his chest.
Kian finally looked up and his piercing blue eyes cut through Rand’s brown ones. The tissue on Rand’s lips stilled. “But you’re not.”
Rand furrowed his brows, mouth already halfway through forming the confused What on the tip tongue, but Kian barreled on.
“I kissed you!” Rand watched tears forming in Kian’s eyes once again, moisture clinging to his lashes, and could practically hear the lump in his throat as he spoke. “Fuck, Rand, I fucking kissed you, dude!”
He stepped back and Rand finally felt like he could breathe again. Kian dropped the tissue to the ground and let his now free hand rake through his curls.
As if on instinct, Rand took half a step towards him, following him, putting his hands up as if to soothe a scared animal.
“Kian. Kian, hey, it’s alright.” Rand used this voice a lot whenever Rachel was upset. He figured it might be appropriate here. “I didn’t mind the- the kiss. It wasn’t- I didn’t hate it, alright?”
Almost immediately he realized his mistake, and backpedaled, his precious calming tone lost to the incessant need to clarify, “I mean, it’s not like- it’s not like I liked it. Because you know, like you said, I’m not- I didn’t like kissing you, but- it was… It was fine, I guess.”
The words felt unwieldy as they tumbled over his tongue and out of his mouth only to fall flat in the space between him and Kian.
His hands were back to fiddling with the seams of his pants.
Unfortunately, his clumsy attempt at calming Kian did nothing of the sort. Rand had expected Kian’s shoulders to drop from where they’d been pulled up to Kian’s ears. Instead Kian just kept staring, sorrowful dread in his eyes, and tightened his grip on the vodka he still hadn’t put down.
“Yeah, but Rand, that’s not- I mean I’m glad, but- Dude, what if this gets out?” His eyes were wide with terror, the alcohol making him uncharacteristically honest. “If word gets around you made out with Kian fucking Stone like some kind of fucking faggot-”
Kian cut himself off, chest heaving again. The tears sitting heavy against his lower lashes threatened to spill and sully his soft face further.
Rand’s eyes trailed up to Kian’s forehead.
With his hair brushed out of the way, the bruise sat there in plain sight, mockingly, still as purple as it had been when it had shone through Kian’s once carefully styled bangs.
And, yeah ok, Rand had been worried about that as well. He couldn’t deny the panic that rose inside of him at the thought of being discovered, being spotted kissing a boy. But something about it being Kian — something about him being the only boy who was brave enough to come to school in skirts and makeup while getting insults hurled at him from every corner, brave enough to be confidently and entirely himself every day, even though he knew it would get him beat up just for the crime of being different… It made cold, hard resolve settle in Rand’s gut.
If Kian needed him brave, he could be brave.
So he just shrugged his shoulders.
“Man, they already hate me,” he said. “I’ve got you and Rolan and a steady supply of the Mary Jane, what else could I want?”
“But-”
“Besides, I’m not gonna tell anyone. Are you?”
A silence stretched between them. Rand had his eyes trained on Kian, an easy smile on his newly lipstick-free lips, and he waited with a cocked brow until the left corner of Kian’s mouth hesitantly lifted, only slightly.
Kian shook his head, sending his hair swinging around his shoulders almost hypnotically, and — with a voice that spoke of endless relief — breathed out, “No. I’m not.”
Rand grinned at him, and Kian smiled back. With an easy flick of the head Rand knocked his sunglasses back down onto his nose, then pushed them up with his middle finger.
“See? ‘S all good. You’re fine, I’m fine, we’re all just dandy. Now let’s get you cleaned up, yeah? You can come over to mine; my dad’s still at work and my mom fucking loves you. Besides, she’s making chicken and dumplings today and you don’t wanna miss my momma’s cooking.”
And if, when they arrived in the cramped attic space that Rand called his room, Kian collapsed into his friend’s arms, spent and vulnerable, and Rand carded his fingers through the blond hair underneath his nose with more fondness than he would later admit to, that was between them.
And as long as neither of them ever spoke of it, it was almost like it had never happened at all.