Kyle and Kodi - 2. Chapter 2

“Kyle, we need to talk to our parents about us.”

“I know, Kodi. Do you want to tell my parents first or yours?”

“Why don’t we tell both sets of parents together, tonight at dinner?”

“Sounds like a plan to me. What do we do about Mika and the twins?”

“Kyle, we do need to tell them and we will, but don’t you think we owe it to our parents to tell them first?”

“That’s not what I meant Kodi. I meant how are you going to see them all day today at school, hang around them at lunch and break knowing you can’t tell them about us until tomorrow?”

“It’s going to be hard. God knows we owe those three more than I can ever put into words, and I know we both agreed a long time ago that we would tell them when we had our first boyfriend, our first kiss and all the rest just like the straight kids at school share with their friends. I just feel that we would be doing our parents a great disservice by not telling them first. You know they have been so cool over the whole us being gay that we need to show them, now even more so, that we trust them and that they weren’t wrong in agreeing to support us.”

“You’re right Kodi. I’ve read such horror stories about the way parents react to their kids coming out as being gay. I know mum’s initial reaction was ‘what about grandkids?’, but apart from that she’s been brilliant. She’s even been talking about going to some of the Pride events with me this year.”

“That’s precisely why I think we owe our parents the courtesy of telling them first. Jon and the girls will get over it, but our parents might be seriously pissed if they found out that we told our friends before telling them. You know our dads are already unhappy with us about keeping our friends’ parents in the dark about us being gay, but they have accepted our rationale for why, at least for the time being, we are afraid of their parents knowing about us. If we ever need a time for our parents to stand by us, this is it. And the only way I know how to show our parents how much their support and understanding has meant to us, is to tell them about us being boyfriends first. Now, I’d better get up and get ready for school. We can’t all stay in bed all day long watching Star Trek reruns like some people who are so smart they don’t have to go to school anymore.” Kodi winked at me and smiled to let me know he was joking. I’d always told Kodi I watched the reruns of the original Star Trek to perv over the young Walter Koenig and George Takei (I love the episode with the semi-naked Sulu running around with a fencing sword – yum!), I’m not quite sure how he’ll react to the truth - I’m a closet Trekkie.

“I’ll only let you get up if you give me another kiss.” Or “kith” as it came out – I hate this bloody lisp of mine, it makes me sound like a four year old.

“I love the way you sound when you lisp,” Kodi said smiling, as he leaned in and gave me a kiss that was so soft and gentle, that if my eyes weren’t open I’d never have known he was kissing me.

I don’t know if Kodi was being genuine or if he was taking the piss about loving my lisp, but I thought that it’s a very strange thing to be turned on by – I never did ask him about it, but I would like to think I know him well enough to know he was being genuine. Saying that though, his soft Welsh accent is so sexy, it really does it for me – I guess we all have our weird side.

Kodi practically skipped off to the shower. I lay back in bed, closed my eyes and replayed the events of yesterday.

The previous day, 3.30PM, at my house:

“Kyle, can you help me with my history project?” Kodi asked.

“Sure. What’s it about?”

“The ancients Egyptians,” Kodi stated – as though that was going to help me know what was in store. Four thousand years of history, politics, science, religion and culture distilled into three simple words.

“I meant the specifics,” I said, shaking my head in mock anger.

“Oh. It’s about the collapse of the Egyptian empire. I know you did that big project last year on the decline of Egypt following the death of Ramses II. Any chance I can simply recycle it?” Kodi asked, knowing there was absolutely no way that was going to happen.

Kodi knows I am more than willing to spend however much time helping him on school work, but he also knows that I’d never do the work for him. I remember how proud Kodi was last year when he got a B minus on his history essay on The Hundred Years War. He’d spent 4 weeks on it, and worked his butt off (it was the first, and so far the only, grade above a C he has ever gotten for an essay). He was so happy, he cried; his parents cried; even my parents cried for him. Of course, I was so proud of him, I couldn’t find the words to tell him. I just sat there absolutely dumbfounded that he had gotten himself a B minus - I knew the work deserved it, but I couldn’t believe Kodi had actually achieved it himself. Ever since then, I’ve pointed him in the right directions, steered him clear of dangers and pitfalls, but pretty much left him to his own devices.

“Kodi that is what I would call a gimme essay (as in gimme an A). All you need to do is read the material, and with my help, you may even better that piece of paper on the fridge with the B minus written on it – how does an A sound to you?” As I raised my eyebrows, I couldn’t help but think of Kodi Waughrin (AKA Kodi “The D minus kid”) with an A – the thought of it was almost beyond belief.

“Sounds like me in a swimming pool, that’s been filled with custard, and I’m surrounded by a load of 13 year old boys.”

“Huh?!”

“Like a frigging dream come true,” Kodi said, with a huge smile on his face.

Believe me: Kodi is more than capable of getting an A on this essay, with the right prodding I dare say he could even get an A plus; Kodi is far brighter than his lacklustre grades and report cards suggest; the only problem with Kodi Tobias Waughrin is that for his entire life nearly everyone has told him that he doesn’t even have the brains that God saw fit to give a gerbil, and sadly Kodi has bought into it. Thankfully, unlike the American school system of grade retention, we don’t hold back kids with poor test results or Kodi would probably still be in year 5.

“When’s the essay due in?”

“Before we break up for Christmas, so I’ve got about seven weeks.”

“Kodi, tell you what. Let’s spend an hour reviewing the material, and then we’ll catch a film at the cinema.”

“What do you mean ‘catch a film’?”

“No wonder people think you’re an idiot. ‘Catch a film’, means you and I go to the CineWorld; we purchase tickets at ten quid a pop; purchase popcorn, coke and God knows what other junk-food for however much money they’re demanding, then we sit back, scrum ourselves stupid and enjoy the film,” I said, absolutely deadpan; awaiting the outburst from my best friend.

”I’m well versed in going to the pictures thank you very much!” Kodi shouted, rather indignantly, almost to the point of crying. “What I meant was, ‘why are we going to see a film instead of studying’?”

I couldn’t help myself. The exasperated look on Kodi’s face combined with his indignation at the thought of scrawny little me taking the piss out of him, led me to do the only thing I could do in the circumstances. I laughed. I laughed like a hyena high on nitrous.

Kodi’s expression turned from one of exasperation to one of hurt in the blink of eye. He was hurt at the thought of me really taking the piss out of him, the thought of me laughing at him.

I saw a silent tear fall from his eye, he didn’t bother to wipe it off; I saw my laughter reflected in the twinkle of his eyes and I stopped laughing in less time than it takes for a hummingbird to flap its wings. Without meaning to, I had done to Kodi for the first time ever, what others have taken a great perverse delight in doing over the years – I had reduced him to tears, and I felt like a piece of shit.

Before I had time to think, I had Kodi hugged tight to me, my hand holding his head. “Oh, Kodi. I’m so sorry,” I whispered, “I was only kidding. I guess...No...I know, I took it too far. Please forgive me.” I was practically on my knees in front of my friend, my brother, the other half of my soul, begging for his forgiveness.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Kodi whispered through his tears. “Your friendship, your love, your compassion, means more to me than anything.” Then he did something he has never done in our thirteen years as best friends. He kissed me. Not on the lips, but on the forehead – I think it was the tenderest thing I had ever known Kodi to do. “There’s nothing to forgive, when someone loves you as much as I do.”

I pulled back from our embrace and looked at him, surprised at what he had said. Our eyes met. And in that moment, everything fell into place – I could almost hear the clicks of the jigsaw fitting together. Us being gay; us not having found “the one”; us being so close growing up; our parents unusually easy acceptance of us being gay. He looked back at me. Time stood still. The universe faded into the background - hell let’s tell the truth, it paled into insignificance. The only thing I saw were his pale blue eyes, with dancing flecks of dark purple, my smiling face reflected in his pupils. We slowly closed the distance between each other – each as afraid as the other. As our quivering lips touched for the first time, the universe erupted into a multitude of colour. There were fireworks – oh, my God, so many fireworks. It was like Heaven Itself had been set on fire, and the flames of Hell had been let loose. It felt so right. It felt so, so right. We gave our hearts over to each other. We gave our souls to each other. We gave ourselves to each other. Our lips intertwined, our hearts intertwined, our souls intertwined. We melted into each other and became one. I don’t think I’ve even been as happy, as content, as loved and in love as I was at that moment.

We kissed like that for what felt like the entire afternoon, but actually turned out to be just under three minutes. We kissed each other softly, sweetly, but with oh so much passion. For some reason we didn’t go beyond kissing on the lips – no tongues, no grinding, not even so much as a t-shirt coming off. Mind you, if just kissing Kodi on the lips feels this good, I’m so afraid of how good the rest will feel – when the rest finally does come. Without even realising I was doing it, my hands slowly travelled down Kodi’s back, and came to rest on his peach of a butt, and there they stayed – no squeezing, no patting, no nothing, just resting there quite comfortably, as though it was a perfectly natural thing for me to be doing, as though I had done it countless times before. The first moment I realised where my hands were, was after Kodi’s hands had come to rest on my own butt. In a way, it felt so weird; but it also felt so right, so perfect and so damned good.

“Your hands were on my butt,” were the first words out of my mouth as we broke the kiss, and I giggled again.

“So. You have a nice butt. Anyway, your hands were on my butt first, I was merely returning the favour,” Kodi said, with a huge grin on his face.

“So, does this mean we’re boyfriends?” I asked, with a shy smile. Afraid the answer would be “yes”, but oddly even more terrified that the answer would be “no”; that Kodi was just looking for the occasional casual hormonal release, kind of friends with benefits.

“Only if you want us to be.”

“I do, God knows I do. I’m just afraid that once we take that step, we’ll lose our friendship if something goes wrong. You remember last year when Pete and Nathalie broke up, they still can’t bear to be in the same room as each other. Nattie even tried to get herself moved to a different school. I don’t want us to end up hating each other that much.”

He pulled me into a hug and said, “Oh, Kyle. For someone who is as smart as you, you really can sometimes be an idiot. That will never happen to us. We’ve never been mad at each other for more than an hour because we’ve always been able to talk to each other about anything. That’s why we’ve always been so close. Besides, you know they broke up because Nattie caught Pete kissing Sandra. If I caught you kissing Sandra, you’d be the worse gay boy in history.” Kodi laughed lightly as his own little joke.

“Kodi, with all my heart I do want to be your boyfriend. We have to promise each other though, that we will always talk to each other, tell each other anything that is troubling us. And there is something I want to talk about now. It’s probably nothing, but it is worrying me.”

“What is it?” Kodi asked, with concern in his voice.

“How do we know that this is love, and not just us getting confused because we’ve always been so close? I mean, I know I’ve thought about you when I’m...you know...but that’s always been because you’re good looking and have a good body, not because I’ve actually thought about us doing anything together. We’ve never shown that kind of love in our years as best friends, we’ve never kissed each other before today, and we’ve certainly never held each other’s butts before.”

“Well, just so you know, I always think about you too when I’m...it’s because you are so cute. ‘Is this really love?’ is a question I think a lot of friends ask before going further, I think it’s how everyone feels who were friends before becoming couples. We’ve certainly been friends before being a couple, and I think the longer people are friends first, the more they question whether it really is love or not. We’ve been friends all our lives; I know and I’ve seen how much you care for me, just as you know and have seen how much I care for you. I don’t know, maybe that’s why we have always been so close, maybe even back then we knew that we were gay and wanted to be boyfriends but we were simply too young to truly understand what our feelings meant. So we wrapped it all up neatly tied a big bow around it and called it a close friendship until we were old enough to understand.”

“When did you get to be so insightful? You just about average a D at school?” I said, laughing so Kodi would know I wasn’t being serious.

“That’s school work. I do much better at the real life stuff, kind of like our counsellor at school. She’s a nice enough lady, really knows her stuff, but she told me last year she never got her O levels, she left school at 14 and started work. She was telling me all about her life and stuff, how and why she left school, and after struggling with a load of crap jobs for years she decided to go back to school and get her degree. I don’t really need to see her about anything, but I like talking to her, and I’ve learned a lot. You know, she’s more like a friend than a teacher, so I’m a lot more relaxed around her because I know she won’t take the piss out of me if I say something stupid, unlike the teachers.”

“Since we’re boyfriends, you know things between us are going to change,” I said.

“How?” Kodi asked, looking surprised.

“Well, we’ll be going out on dates, spending the night, holidaying together, doing...‘stuff’,” I replied shyly.

“Kyle, apart from ‘stuff’, we basically do the rest of that anyway. We go to the cinema together, we go to restaurants together and we go on holiday together, hell we sleep over at each other’s at least 200 nights of the year. Nothing is really going to change in the short term. ‘Stuff’ will happen, but there’s no rush or pressure to do anything. If we want to hold hands we will, if we want to kiss we will, if you want to stick your tongue down my throat I’m not going to object, if you want to pat my butt you will. I don’t know about you, but I plan to wait before having sex.”

“Back up a sec Kodi. I wasn’t even thinking about sex,” I said shocked.

“You mentioned ‘stuff’. The last time I checked ‘stuff’ included sex.”

“I know I’m going through puberty and I’m horny all day every day, but for God’s sake I’m 13. I’ve never even seriously thought about having sex, let alone sex with you,” I said, sounding even more shocked.

“And what’s wrong with having sex with me?” Kodi asked, putting on his sad face; his lips pouting.

“I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was I’ve never even looked at you, let alone thought about you, that way until today. I know I’ve thought about you while I’m...but that’s just thinking about you, you know your body and stuff, not actually thinking about bending over for you.”

“Oh, and what makes you think it’s going to be you bending over for me?” Kodi asked, dropping a very salacious wink.

“Well, you’re the muscular sports freak and I’m the 95 pound soaking wet library nerd captain of the chess club.”

“Oh, my Kyle, my Kyle. You know so much about me, yet there is oh so much about me that you don’t know.”

I saw the devilish glint in his eye, and I couldn’t think of a response. My brain had no words for this piece of information; I could almost feel my synapses short-circuiting whilst trying to process this; I could hear those poor synapses working overtime trying to think of something to say; I could see them starting to wave little white flags in surrender. And since I couldn’t think of anything to say, I did the only logical, rational, sound, sensible thing I could do. I wrapped him in my arms, pulled him close to me and kissed him again.

We never did make a start on Kodi’s essay; we never did make it to the cinema; I don’t think we actually did anything for the rest of the afternoon – no snacks, no drinks, no TV, no nothing. Kodi and I lay on the sofa; me on top of him, both of us totally absorbed in each other and the universe did that fade out again. I was running my hands through his hair, him with his hands on my butt, with us lying like that I could feel the beat of his heart though his shirt, and he could no doubt feel the beat of my own heart. We stayed there like that for nearly two hours, taking occasional breaks just to breathe. I was so happy, so in love that I was purring like a kitten that got the cream.

“Byddaf...i yn caru...ti am byth,” I whispered to Kodi over and over between each breath.

Language note:

“Byddaf i yn caru ti am byth” is Welsh, and is pronounced “Buh-thav e uhn car-ree tee am bith”. It means “I will love you forever”.