Amber Waves

Amber Waves
By Jaden56

-
South Park & Characters are property of Matt Stone & Trey Parker
-

One Shot

Red kicked back on the splintered picnic table overseeing the seniors' parking lot at the east end of the football field, torn denim pants deflecting shards of wood that would have otherwise embedded themselves into his bony ass. His knee-high combat boots made themselves comfortable on the attached bench, differential to the accumulated sticky patches of bird shit and spilled soda. Smoke drifted lazily from the burning fag hanging between his fingertips and spilled out between the soft part of his pierced lips on an exhale, head tilted upwards with open disdain for his companion's pansy-assed allergies.

Long, deft fingers caked with dirt under bare nails toyed with the safety pins hooked on his boots, Red's own unoccupied hand twisted around plain, un-dyed brown hair in return. Clyde's hair was only mildly tousled and damp despite having had his meathead crammed in a fucking conformists' helmet with a stupid cow stamped on the side, his shoulder broad and brawny where he leaned companionably against Red's leg.

Clyde turned his head and propped his chin on Red's knee, the Goth's hand tightening briefly in his hair before he eased up and resumed his languid tugging. Red was fascinated by his hair's virgin texture, his own long-since debauched by black dye and flat irons that were aggravatingly useless against his auburn roots and persistent waves that slashed like heavy drapery across his eye.

His rebellious attire, his days-old eyeliner, his contempt became a part of his individuality as completely as every single scrap of metal stabbed through his clothing and flesh. Even his given name had ceased to lose meaning, letting those few he came in contact with name him as they wished.

Clyde was uninventive and unfortunate enough to comply with his classmates' banality and simply call him 'Red.' The Goth was grateful enough for the duplicity, though, on the occasion when his soul-sucking parental units had hailed him down for dinner during one of the rare times Red had snuck the brainless jock into his room. The sharp odor of incense, sulfur from matches, and cigarette smoke mingled with the even headier musk of sex was dazzling to him until Clyde's ridiculously nasal laughter broke him of the hedonistic scent-spell.

"Bar-Bartholomew? Jesus fucking christ, Red, no wonder you wouldn't tell me your name!"

Red immediately longed to crush his midnight-varnished fingers into Clyde's windpipe, his sardonic mouth twisted even further downwards from his mother's echoing call, but the meathead was already choking on the cloying smoke fusing with molecules in the air and on their slick skin. He assuaged himself in knowing it was only a matter of time before Clyde passed the fuck out from respiratory failure, and then Red would exalt in raping him with the long end of a tarnished crucifix.

Red took one last drag on his depleted fag, the burning orange tip nearly to the filter, before he extinguished it dead-center in the middle of initials etched into the tabletop next to his hip. He ground the ashes slowly into a perfect black circle over the stylized letters which connected the lines and curves of "R" and "C" into a single unique character, and flicked the dead butt into the dry, brittle grass. He idly wished that he'd left a spark to ignite a brush fire that would hopefully spread to the school, or at least the fuckin' football field. Christ.

The Goth stretched and rubbed absently at his lower back where the very same mark had been abraded into his ghastly white skin, raised and still scabbed from his at-home tattoo kit comprised of sharpened pen nibs and India ink. Clyde was slightly flushed and feverish from his own receding infection, the heat of his cheek bleeding through the rip in Red's pants at the knee and searing the skin beneath like a second brand.

He hauled Clyde up by the collar of his Letterman's jacket, shot-gunning the flavor of his recently finished cigarette and world-weary carbon dioxide exhalations into Clyde's mouth that tasted like fried chicken and 2% milk. Clyde tensed all over guiltily when their mouths met, the contact too public, too wildly exposed, even as he moaned Red's stale breath back into him and reflexively licked up the copper spill of blood from the startled crush of his teeth against Red's bottom lip.

Red felt taut and nervous, barely managing to keep his tongue loose and agile with the high school's football team running drills a hundred yards behind his back on the field, his own darkly collective group a hundred yards behind Clyde's smoking between parked cars and contemplating which asshole's tires to slash.

Clyde moaned again softly, his fingers clutching at Red's mesh shirt and ripping the holes wider, dirty nails digging at the thin white skin beneath. Red felt the disconnect when they both succumbed to the kiss in the same moment; too-quick, forever-long stretches where everything else fell away, their mouths soft and hot and eager.

Red squeezed his eyes shut and shoved Clyde away roughly when their brief forever kiss lingered a little too long, both flushed and panting afterward. Clyde's breathing hitched into a frantic, painful wheeze, and Red rolled his eyes as he dug an extra inhaler from the deep pocket at his thigh and shoved the plastic mouthpiece between the jock's swollen lips, deploying the chemical propellant the same time Clyde took a grateful, shaky breath inward.

Clyde, the dumb shit, never carried an inhaler on him, terrified of the incriminating little canister falling out of his pocket or fucking jockstrap and getting him kicked off the team. It was a plain, goddamn miracle he'd never had an attack on the field, but there was an ever-growing pile of cigarette stubs accumulating under the bleachers and chipped fingernails bitten to bloody stubs just waiting for #23 to collapse mid-kickoff.

A short piercing whistle echoed across the school yard and Clyde straightened like a shot, already pulling away and scrubbing his sullied mouth clean with the back of his hand.

Red pushed himself away from the table, snatching up his worn backpack with straps just barely held together with safety pins, and stalked towards the chain link fence, towards the parking lot without looking back. Only stark dismissal could ease the pang as Clyde picked up his helmet by the face guard and took off at a sprint towards the green white-lined grass, cheeks pink and healthy while Red's only paled further as colorless smoke curled ominously around a rusted Toyota that signaled him back to his own.

He fingered his cracked, plastic lighter that knocked softly against Clyde's inhaler in his pocket, and wondered if he wouldn't burn the football field after all.

-fin